Waking Sasha

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Brenan replied, but still made the effort to offer the barmaid a third silver crown to at least show her that he appreciated the offer. Apart from his eagerness to get Sasha and get her back to his ship, Brenan was also motivated in turning down the barmaid’s advances by the fact that Julien, who was younger and far more dashing than he, Brenan wasn’t proud enough to refuse to admit that, was sitting unattended with his mug of beer just a few feet away. Had he already turned down her advances while Brenan was busy checking out the back?

“What a shame,” the barmaid replied with a thin smile, and Brenan was half-expecting that to be the codeword triggering an attack from the two armoured men, but as the threat of someone moving towards him at great speed failed to materialize and Julien remained where he was, he slid off his chair and returned the barmaid’s smile.

Minutes later, Brenan had paid Sasha’s bill and had said a friendly goodbye to the barmaid before heading upstairs and locating the room in which Sasha was sleeping, glanced around to make sure that no one was watching him, and found the lock easy enough to pick.

The room was small and sparsely furnished, but at least it was relatively clean, and Brenan could hardly fault the girl downstairs for the collection of clothes that littered the floor or the unkempt state of the narrow bed that a young redhead, Sasha no doubt, was currently sleeping in.

Even when she was on her stomach with her face turned towards her left and was busy snoring rather unwomanly in the wake of what might just have been a colossal bender, Sasha was a strikingly attractive creature, better-looking than the cute barmaid but not quite as beautiful as Red, Brenan decided, instantly being annoyed with himself. It was bad enough that he had begun to compare all women that he met with Red, and worse still was his adolescent inclination to decide than none of them could match her beauty. He might as well start writing ghastly poems about how she had eyes like diamonds and how her hair was the crimson colour of love if this dragged itself out for much longer.

“Come on, wake up!” Brenan allowed his anger at his own foolishness to shine through in the rough manner in which he shook Sasha’s shoulder and the sharp quality of his calls for her to rise from her sleep.

Brenan’s words resulted in nothing more than Sasha letting out a pained moan and rolling over onto her back, leaving him fully aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything above the waist. Faced with a pair of firm, round breasts, Brenan looked away and clenched his fists as he decided that someone had decided that he still had a lot of atoning to do for his past sins.

“Sasha!” Brenan tried calling her name, and found that very ineffective, even if he had a hard time mustering the courage required to look at her.

Thankfully, there was a small tin pitcher placed on the nightstand, and after taking a deep whiff of it to make sure that it contained water rather than piss, Brenan held it over Sasha’s head and turned it upside down.

Coughing and otherwise noisily protesting the sudden downpour of water, Sasha slid up into a seated position, held her arms up in front of her, opened her eyes as she stopped having water poured onto her head and reacted to the presence of a stranger in her room by pulling the quilt up to cover her breasts.

“Who are you?” Sasha asked, sounding both confused and frightened. Thankfully, it seemed as though she was too hung-over to scream, an impression given to Brenan by the way in which she was squinting at him whilst sporting a fairly pained expression.

“James and Julien are waiting downstairs, so get dressed and get ready to leave, unless you want the Veer agents to find you.” Brenan was talking calmly and without raising his voice, reasoning that soft-spoken but unwavering pressure was the best way of getting Sasha out of bed.

“The Veer?” Sasha asked, and Brenan found himself wondering if there was just fright in her voice, or if he could detect a streak of shock and surprise in it, as though she had had no idea of the allegiance of the people that were hunting her.

“Yep, now get dressed and I’ll take you back to my ship,” Brenan replied, guessing that mentioning that he had a ship would motivate the young redhead.

It did, and after he had turned round to offer Sasha some privacy, Brenan could hear her hurry to get her clothes and collect what few possessions that she had.
There were no new arrivals downstairs when he and Sasha got there, and Brenan merely nodded at the friendly smile that the barmaid offered him, stopping for nothing or no one as he led his new ward out into the streets, knowing full well that now began the hard task of actually getting her back to his ship without being caught.