The heat of the flaying hall met Konrad like a wall — a living warmth, damp and rich with the mingled scents of wet stone, oil, and steamed herbs. The male bather stood ready, birch branches already soaking in a wooden bucket, their green leaves releasing a sharp, clean fragrance.

Konrad stepped forward, bare but for the steam curling around his broad Nuremberger frame. His skin, pale from winters in armor, bore the small scars of blade and arrow. The bather motioned for him to sit, and Konrad obeyed, feeling the rough bench against the back of his thighs.

The first lash of birch landed on his shoulders — not cruel, but firm enough to wake every muscle. The rhythm was steady, striking across his back, arms, and thighs, the branches flicking over his skin and drawing a deep flush. Each stroke sent a warm sting into him, chased by the release of tension he didn’t know he carried.

Between strikes, the bather dipped the branches again, water dripping over Konrad’s skin in rivulets.

“You carry much on your shoulders, Sir Konrad,” the man said.

“The king demands much of his knights.”

Konrad grunted in agreement. “Too much, perhaps.”

From the corner of his eye, movement caught him — and there she was. Isla. The curvy servant from before, tending to another knight across the room. Her dark hair, piled high but loose at the edges, framed a face too exotic for these parts — almond eyes, warm brown skin kissed by the sun, and lips that seemed made for sin.

Her accent floated even from here, lilting and musical when she spoke to her guest. She was unlike the pale-haired women of Nuremberg, and that difference pulled at Konrad’s gut like a hook. Even across the steam-filled air, he caught the faint trace of clove and some sweet island fruit, as though her scent sought him out deliberately.

Another strike of birch brought him back to the present, but his gaze clung to her. She was oiling his fellow knight’s shoulders, the thin linen of her dress clinging where a splash of oil had landed, outlining her breasts, the curve of her hips. Konrad’s blood heated for reasons that had nothing to do with the bath’s warmth.

The bather’s voice drew him back. “And where were you stationed this season?”

Konrad forced himself to answer, even as his mind drifted. “After coming from the crusade, we had a one-month stop in the North. Too close to the border for comfort.”

“You returned whole. That is more than most.”

The bather dipped the birch again, striking lower — over Konrad’s thighs, up the sides of his ribs. The rhythmic slap and sting blurred into the rhythm he watched across the hall: Isla leaning in to press her hands into the other knight’s chest, the soft give of her body as she worked.

He imagined the birch replaced by her palms, slick with oil. The hall, the bather, and the other men all faded. In his mind, it was just her and him — Isla behind him now, her warm skin brushing his back, her hands sliding down his arms, lingering at his forearms, fingers curling slightly as though reluctant to let go.

The bather finished the flaying and set the branches aside. “Now for the oiling.”

Herbal oil replaced birch — thick, amber-scented, warmed in a small copper basin. The bather began at his shoulders, firm palms sliding over tense muscle. Konrad exhaled slowly. In his mind, the touch shifted: Isla’s hands now — smaller, softer, yet firmer in their intent. Her breath against his ear, whispering something in her island tongue he couldn’t understand but felt in his bones.

The oil traced down his spine, each vertebra marked by the slow press of her palm. In reality, the bather’s touch stopped at his lower back; in Konrad’s mind, Isla’s slid lower, her thumbs kneading into the strong curve where his back met his hips.

His thoughts slipped further.

Isla straddled his hips, hair loosened, cheeks flushed from steam. Oil gleamed on her brown skin, gilding her curves in flickering firelight. Her hands moved slowly — first over his chest, then down his sides. Her eyes met his.

There was no shame. She held the hardest and fiercest sword she had ever touched — the pride between his legs, standing, summoning her to open her thighs wider as she sat on his lap.

His hands gripped her thighs. She gasped, urging him to squeeze her ass, then guided his other hand to her clit — the pearls he had awakened. His fingers pinched and stroked, her slickness coating them as her hand slowly buried his cock into her dripping pussy. A gasp.

Isla rode him — not forcefully, but with tender dominance, as though she was the one being healed by his kisses and embrace. Water dripped. Fire popped. Moans built like waves — gentle but unstoppable.

Konrad unclasped Isla’s dress, baring her beautiful, full breasts. They swayed before his face, and while one arm held her close, his other hand cupped her breast and he sucked it — gently at first, then hungrily. He feasted on her skin, biting her erect dark nipples one after the other; licking, kissing, and biting her cleavage, her shoulder, her neck, all while thrusting into her over and over.

Isla moaned and cried out, her fingers digging into his arms. Konrad’s head fell back as her legs gripped him tighter with each thrust. He drove deep, hitting her sweetest spot with precision. She screamed as her body gave in, flooding his cock with thick cream, hotter than any oil.

His cock loved that heat, and with one final thrust he exploded inside her, groaning deeply. They panted together, eyes locked, foreheads touching, breathing in the mingled scent of sweat, oil, and sex.

He was no longer aware of the room. Not the real bather’s hands on his shoulders — only Isla’s imagined grip tightening around him.

Then stillness.

“You’ve gone far, Sir Konrad,” the bather said with a grin. “I nearly thought you’d crossed to Valhalla mid-treatment.”

Konrad blinked. The walls of the bathhouse returned — the steam, the pale stone, the muffled coughs and sighs of other men wrapped in towels or silence.

He dared a glance across the misty room. And there she was.

Isla moved around the other reclining knight, trailing a small jar of warmed oil between her palms. Damp tendrils of hair framed her flushed cheeks. She bent forward, her skirts catching oil from the man’s slick shoulder as she reached to smooth the mixture down his arm.

The stain spread slowly. Oil seeped into the weave of her linen, darkening it. Clinging. Revealing.

Her curves emerged like sculpture beneath water — the slope of her hip, the generous swell of her thigh, the dip at her waist — all more vivid now that the cloth obeyed the oil’s command.

Konrad’s breath caught. "If I were the oil, he thought, I would linger beneath her breasts, cling to her belly, run down to her thighs, and taste the pearls between them."

Her hand on the other knight paused mid-stroke. She looked up — as though she felt his stare.

Their eyes locked. She didn’t look away. But her gaze held him. A moment too long. A breath too full.

And then—calmly, almost cruelly—she returned to her task, dabbing oil across the chest of the other man, her fingers dancing over the sternum with the same rhythm she once used on him in the bathtub room an hour ago.

Konrad swallowed hard. His blood pounded. The chill of the mint-laced cloth on his skin meant nothing. All he could see was the way her wet linen clung to her curves as she leaned forward.

He shifted on the stone bench, jaw clenched, breath sharp. No war had ever stirred this ache. No enemy had ever conquered him so completely.

He wanted.

God, he wanted.

Not in the crude, drunken way of soldiers in brothels. No. His hunger was slower, deeper — forged in heat and dream and denied touch. He wanted to taste the sweat at her nape, to press his palm against her soft, bare back, to feel her yield beneath the same rhythm that now torments him.

He shifted on the stone bench, jaw clenched, breath sharp. No war had ever stirred this ache. No enemy had ever conquered him so completely.

“Name?” he asked, voice rough.

The bather followed his gaze and chuckled. “Isla. Not from here. Some say her father was an Iberian trader. Others say she came north on a ship and never left. Quick with the towels, quicker with the eyes. Careful, Sir Konrad — that kind burns longer than the stones.”

Konrad did not respond. He could not. The fire had not cooled. It had only learned to wear his skin.

He sat up, sweat shining on his chest. The bather gestured toward the cooling pool.

The plunge was a shock — cold enough to steal his breath, yet it only pushed his arousal deeper. When he surfaced, water dripping from his hair and beard, he saw her again.

Isla was at the far corner, wiping down a bench. The oil from the other knight still clung to her dress, making the linen sheer, revealing the swell of her hips and the curve of her breasts. She turned, her gaze lingering from his eyes to his chest, down to his chiseled stomach — and lower.

It wasn’t an accident. Her lips parted slightly, as if caught mid-breath. In that moment, he knew she felt it too — that sharp pull between strangers bound by nothing, yet charged with hunger.

And he knew: this was not over.