AN: Two days after writing this I got to the (spoliers) Chantry bit. Ooooh was I some kind of pissed. Ugh. Enjoy fluffy smut with the JERK.
Lisbeth Hawke paused at the entrance of the clinic to watch Anders. She was determined to keep visiting him every week like she had done from their first meeting, but it had proved harder than she could have imagined when she first spoke to this man, some ex-Gray Warden, who had proven to be much more than the dim fairytale man his title had made her expect him to be. One week she was held at bay by need. Merely picturing him would send her whole body astray and she held herself trembling to the bed that she would not assault the poor man with desire. And the next week it was something akin to fear, not that he would hurt her, but that something would have cracked in him – that who he was would be lost to the Fade, or worse, that he would be sane but lost to
her, unwilling to be with her the gentle, intelligent man he had sometimes allowed himself to be.
She watched his back as he opened up a cabinet and took something out, watched his shoulders shift while placing the something on the table, then she moved her gaze to his hair, the same warm copper color as his eyes, moving against the skin of his neck, and she took a breath, slowly, in, pausing, and out again. As she did he had turned around and saw her. A small smile played across his lips, but was swiftly hidden, pressed into a tight line, before he walked over the doorway in which she stood.
“Hawke,” he said, “good to see you.” She smiled back as he bent over and she could not help but briefly admire the shape of his ass under the well-fitting robes.
He rose. “You too, Anders,” she replied, flushing as she forced herself to look at his face instead. He eyed her strangely, and sure that he knew where she had been looking, she chose to smile again, but this time, with a flirtatious gleam in her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving out milk for the cats.” He seemed to have ignored her pass, gesturing instead behind her, towards the one mangy cat hiding behind a support beam. “I miss them, since I have been out dragged along on adventures most days. And,” he grimaced, “I think the refugees have been eating them.”
“Oh, Maker, don’t say that. They’ve probably just been scared off.” He smiled at her and nodded, and she could tell that he was troubled – not that he wasn’t, usually, but she took it upon herself to ease those troubles wherever she could.
She had no fear that he would try to end himself. She knew better than most the resolve he’d gained from the trials he had been through, that it had strengthened his desire to fight and that he would never give up that fight if he had breath in his lungs. How much of that resolution came from Justice, she could not say, but it comforted her, either way, that his life would not end by his hands, despite everything.
“Do you want to talk?”
Relief mixed with wariness in his expression. “Talk?”
He wanted to vent but he wanted her permission to do it. “Yes, Anders. You’ve been here for weeks now, and I left you alone because I wanted to give you a rest, but the last I saw of you was your back. You ran out on us.” She paused. “I want to help.”
Anders glanced around, like she’d been talking too loudly, and took her wrist, leading her to his desk at the back of the clinic. Letting go, he shoved his fingers through his hair, forcing his ponytail loose and then playing nervously with the band he used to tie it, silently the entire time. Finally he spoke up. “It’s harder to deal with, without the routine of the clinic, when every day I knew what to expect and there were no distractions and nothing to rile me up…. I’ve tried to hold back.”
“And you’ve done an excellent job of it. Honestly, nobody in Kirkwall knows anything about it.” She reached up to touch his hand but he drew it away, began tying the ponytail back up even more strictly than before, but each time he did, more hair fell free of it and framed his angular face with an uncontrollable tangle.
“But she does! You saw what I almost did to that girl.” Over and over again he tried to fix what he’d done and in the end gave up, rubbing his fingers along his temples with his eyes closed, deep lines of distress creasing his forehead. “You saw what he’s like when-“
“Anders!” She lunged for his right hand, chased it when he tried to avoid her, but he wrenched it from her grasp. “I have faith that you know the self-control to keep yourself separate from him when it counts the most. You’ve years of practice. Yes, I’ve seen it. But I also saw you fighting it, and I saw you beat it.”
“Only because you were there!” He stepped closer to her, and his distress, she saw, had half turned into anger – at himself or at her, she could not be sure. They were but inches away, and the intensity of his gaze was intimidating. “If you hadn’t,” he would have been yelling, but for the force with which he kept his voice hushed, “like you weren’t in the past, things would have been as they were then, and she’d be dead and in the ground like the others!”
She took his hand again and he did not fight, and she managed to get the other hand too, holding them down at his sides, and for the first time the proximity of their bodies seemed to occur to him, and clouded over the anger. “Anders,” she said again more quietly, as the tension in his body did not lift at all, but did change in character.
“You’ve seen what I am, but I’m still a man.” She heard his breath, coming hard, but his temper... she was sure it was just anger.
She recalled the other times she had tried to flirt with him, and how aptly he had turned aside her advances. He’s possessed, he really can’t afford to and neither could she, he’d devoted his life to an “other” and there was no room in it for the frivolities of lust, she had heard all of his excuses, but the trouble was that he really seemed to believe them, had resigned himself to them. She had believed them too in the end, and was coming to see him in the capacity of a friend, despite the want she had kindled for him for so long.
His demeanor to her was cool and unaffected, her flirtation brought nary a blush nor a smile most of the time, and that would dishearten even the most arduous courtship.
And that was why when he spoke now and the way he spoke came as such a surprise to her. He altered his stance so his gaze was tilted down at her, not an overbearing ledge but a soft and promising slope, and she could practically feel the heat from his body, feel the closeness of his legs, his body, to hers. “You can’t tease me like this,” he said slowly, “and expect me to resist forever.”
But she never let it be said that she was left without a witty comeback. She could adapt to this. “How long will it take before I drive you mad?” she asked sweetly, the hand on his right slipping up to dance on the slightest bare skin of his wrist.
She was caught off guard, and then thrown entirely off-balance by his kiss. In less than a hair’s breadth of time he had cupped her cheeks in his hands and pulled her to him, their bodies and then their lips crashing together as his eyes wrenched shut, funneling all his need into the press of his mouth on hers. Her eyes closed as her lips opened and immediately, their tongues met, played, while her hands searched for purchase on his robes, finding it on his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head, and one of his upon the small of her back held them so closely sealed that she could not have wriggled herself free even had she wanted to try.
Almost as soon as it had begun it was over. The hand on her back slipped to her hips and pried her away. Leaving her standing dizzily, he wrung his hands together worriedly. He was still close, she could still feel him, wanted him, and she could see he did too by the way he reached out delicately and brushed a strand of hair from her face, paused, and drew his hand back, avoiding her skin deliberately.
“This will be a disaster,” he said dejectedly. “But by the Maker, Lisbeth, I can’t live without it. We could die tomorrow. I don’t want it to be before I tell you how I feel.”
“Then show me how you feel.” The words were out of her mouth before she had even finished thinking them. Sidling up closer to him, she slipped her hand under the jacket, to the tunic underneath, and held his waist, and he watched her do it unmoving, like it would break the spell. Like he’d resigned himself to the tragedy that was his lust. The thought of it made her smile. Her hip grazed against his belt, against his body, and he flinched.
“Show you…?” he said weakly. His face was red. She never thought she would live to see such a thing, cool Anders with his feathers finally ruffled! “I thought with Justice… this part of me was over.”
“Why? Because you couldn’t love anybody, or…?”
“Yes. I can’t give anybody a normal life. If you’re with me, we’ll be hunted, hated. And I expected to be hated by any woman anyway, as soon as she found out. I had given up on it entirely.”
“It? You mean to say… sex?”
“I, ah-“ his blush deepened and he met her eyes finally, “yes, I mean to say.” Hawke smirked. “But Lisbeth! I mean it, meant what I’ve been saying, that it’s dangerous,
I’m dangerous, and you’ve been so damned persistent. If it really is your choice, that you’ll ignore every semblance of caution…”
“If my door is open tonight…” Lisbeth drawled, leaning in so that her lips could just barely touch the line of his jaw.
“I-if it is,” he stepped away again, and she took back her hand, “I will come to you. If not, I’ll know you took my warning at last.”
Knowing that here in public what they had already done was foolish enough, she nodded. “Tonight, then,” she murmured to him, and his eyes lingered on her as she turned and walked slowly out of the clinic, the promise of the night weighing heavily on each of their minds.
xxx
Lisbeth Hawke had already paced around her room a hundred times. Thinking enough about Anders was usually enough to get her hot and bothered. Sometimes Isabela noticed, or saw when she was looking at him, and teased her about it to no end. “Oooh, I see, so it’s not the honey-voiced Fenris you’re after. I didn’t know your taste ran to the ragamuffin side, but I guess I wouldn’t mind having that shapely, stubbly chin rubbing
my thighs either…”
She shook the memory, and then tried to shake her fears as well. What was keeping him? It was well past nightfall. They hadn’t really specified a time, but if he had the same desires that she did, what would keep him waiting? Why wouldn’t he try to get here early? Maker knows she would, were their positions reversed. Or maybe it was something else keeping him away. Maybe he’d made a decision to stop it all, despite what he said earlier. Maybe he would tell her tomorrow that it was all a mistake, that he couldn’t possibly do it, and maybe he’d better not hang around to help her out either.
But those weren’t good thoughts either! She strode over frustratedly to the fireplace, staring in, and started cracking the joints in her fingers, seeking some small release. She drove her thoughts somewhere more positive.
Like the stubble Isabela had mentioned. She hadn’t had much chance to feel it, but for that kiss they shared earlier in the day. And she’d almost been too stunned, but felt it she had, and the roughness of it, how it tingled against her lips and on her cheek when he moved, oh, it was good. She’d never been quiet as lecherous as Isabela, but she’d had her fun with a couple of men here in Kirkwall, and in Lothering too, before, and she certainly had a healthy sexual appetite – and imagination. But most of the men were young, or kept their faces quite trim. She could imagine what the stubble might do to her if she felt it in the right places between her legs, how the lightest of touches might make her squirm before his lips even parted, and-
Over her fantasies broke the sound of the door creaking open. Anders had a key to the estate – all of her companions had – but in the wanderings of her mind she had forgotten that he could come in at any time, and she found, as he stepped into the room, that her hands had made their way to her inner thighs.
“You’re here!” she said startledly. She refused to be embarrassed, and instead held her hands in front of her, grinding her thighs together.
Self-control, Lisbeth. “I wasn’t sure you would come…”
“I- ah, yes…” He moved into the room slowly and closed the door behind him. His face was red again – of course, he was a grown man, he’d be aware of what it meant if a girl was alone in her bedchamber with her hands between her legs, even if she was fully clothed and hadn’t gotten very far. “Justice does not approve of my preoccupation with you. I suppose you could say we had a small argument…”
As he approached her she shifted her stance, sliding her hands around to her hips and tilting her head at him seductively. “Oh yes? What reason would he have to disapprove?”
He had reached her, but kept a small distance, that she could just touch his chest if she reached out. “He believes you are a distraction,” he murmured. “It is one thing he and I disagree about…” The firelight flicked over his shapely cheekbones and narrow jaw, and highlighted the melting-bronze quality of his wonderfully warm eyes. Something in Lisbeth always softened there. He still held doubts, that much was obvious, and the worry tainted his gaze and his stature. If she could but take that worry away…
“Oh, Anders, come here, I’m not going to bite.” She took a step and guided his arm around her, an easy one-armed embrace that left her other hand free to reach up to his face, smooth back an unruly strand over his ear. Both he and the fire warmed her, made her ache.
He looked at her and smiled a little. “But what if I want you to?”
“Ah.” God, but when a man held back from such things until a moment like this, and every word of lust he spoke was like a stroke against her nethers. “Oh, keep talking like that, my dear apostate,” she touched his jaw, stroked delicately down to his chin, “and I’ll do whatever you ask.”
“
Anything?” He grinned. “Haven’t you heard how depraved we apostates are? You could be setting yourself up for a lot of trouble.”
She leaned in for a kiss, but he turned slightly so it landed on his cheek, and when she drew back he held her gaze more seriously.
“For three years,” Anders murmured, lifting his hand to touch her, first her neck, moving up to her jaw, then so lightly, her lips, tracing them, and her eyes fluttered closed. “Three years I have lain awake every night aching for you. Being around you, it’s like I’m in some sort of dream - I’m still terrified I’ll wake up.”
She kissed his fingertips, then wove them with her fingers and held their hands, intertwined, to her chest. “It’s no dream, Anders,” Lisbeth replied.
“It’s just strange. No mage I know has ever dared to fall in love. I have… been with others, but not – well, it hasn’t been like my time with you. And I’m afraid that because of… the emotions involved, that there’s a danger of-”
“Of Justice? Shall he be, say, an unwilling participant in our little… threesome?”
“Oh, Maker,” he groaned, “please don’t call it that. You sound like Isabela.”
“She may have given me some tips.”
His eyes widened, and for a moment she considered their differences. He was older than her by a good ten years, and older than any of the other men she had been with, and this excited her, his maturity, the elder air of his speech, the assuredness of his movement and action. But she seemed to have impressed him, and she wondered briefly at how much experience he actually had. The arousal in her had been growing as they touched and spoke, and she was beginning to be impatient for the answer to these questions.
“What sort of – tips…?”
“You’ll find out,” Lisbeth muttered, and leaned in for a kiss again, but Anders shook it off.
“But, Lisbeth, please, listen to me. If Justice…”
“He may join for all I care. I can show him what he is missing with his ‘disapproval.’” She grabbed his waist and closed the gap their half-embrace had made, her breasts, free of armor and clad only in her soft noble’s garments, pushing up against his chest. Her lips found his even as they moved to speak again and her tongue dove into his mouth, silencing his protests, and though at first he tried to close them, tried to move his head up, anywhere away, he slowly gave in, could not help but kiss her back.
The next few minutes were a flurry of the momentum that she had begun before he even entered the room. Her lust and his, aching in them for so long now, would not be ignored, even with the urgent voice of caution growling in the back of Anders’ head. She stumbled backwards, bringing him with her without parting, and when they reached the bed she simply bent her knees and fell on to it, and he landed atop her.
Contact was broken for but a moment, and they both gasped for air. “This is the rule,” Anders groaned, “I will most cherish breaking-“ The word was captured from his lips by hers, sliding together in a hurried need. She could feel him through his garments, every inch of him, and it occurred to her that the robes he normally wore covered everything, even the form of his body.
Determined to explore, she felt, first, as she kissed him, what she would see and touch. His leg was cradled between hers, and at her touch, he moved it up so it was pressed at the meeting of her thighs. They were muscular, thick. His chest against hers was hard; she grasped at the corner of his tunic, pulling it up from under his belt until she could touch the bare skin, sleek and sculpted but so hot.
Anders gently stopped her hand with his, nipped very lightly at her lip, and then rose from her, despite her weak protests, to pull the tunic off and toss it aside, but she hummed her approval at what it revealed. His golden hair spread across his pecs and touching it, she found it soft. Her fingers fanned out and traveled down his chest to the line of amber, tightly curled hairs darkening as they ran from his navel to the V of his hipbones and musculature, tantalizingly hidden by the belt and breeches.
He was looking at her with such desire, but though he did not voice it, he was still held back, his hands hovering at his sides hesitantly. She took one of the hands and led it to where his leg held her thighs spread, where the wet had already reached her undergarments. Two fingers pressed softly against the thin, damp cover of stocking and panties over her pussy, and she gasped, for, Maker, how long had it been that only she ever touched there? How many times had she thought of this, of his strong but ever-gentle hands doing this, stroking her there, everywhere…?
He bit his lower lip at the feel of it, at her clear arousal, and at a loss, allowed her to tell him where to put his hands. Her grip on his wrist and the pull, he knew what that meant – his two fingers pressed, and then stroked upwards, nudging her clit on the way, and then slid back down, and he turned and pressed a joint of his pointer finger into where the slope deepened, where his cock longed to be instead. As if knowing the thought it twitched, throbbed in his trousers, wanting attention.
She had guided his other hand to her breast and reached for his belt, tugging at the buckle. Her garments had come loose and one shoulder was bare, the sleeve fallen over. With the movement of his hand on her, it had slid down more, and with fingertips he pulled it so that her breast was bare to him. She had goosebumps, which dotted the pale skin of the swell and hardened her nipple, though it was so warm in here, was it him that had done that? He pondered lazily the strong reactions her body was having to his lightest touches, dizzily, he did what she had asked him to. Pinching her right nipple, he rolled it between his fingers while his other hand stroked up over her clit again, and she released an incredible mewl of pleasure.
Oh, god, the things she did to him. He leaned in and sucked at the skin at her clavicle, a stupid teenage boy again leaving hickeys on the flesh. His teeth grazed the bone there, then moved down to nip at the soft flesh of her breast.
Her efforts at his buckle had loosened the belt. It slipped down at his hips and then his trousers, too, were lower, and her hands were feeling their way down where her eyes could not, her thumb stroking the trail of hair as her fingers moved down the outside of his thigh, then came together to circle around…
Anders’ body jerked against his will when she touched his cock, sprung from the prison of his clothes, and he let out, helplessly, a low moan. She had gripped it at the base, hard, but lightened her touch and pulled towards the tip, barely glancing across the underside of the head, where a bundle of nerves lay, and his hips bucked forward.
“Oh, Maker, Lisbeth, I can’t-“ But she had entwined her hand in his hair with her free hand and grasped it, now, pulling his face to hers and kissing him hard, and his hand on her breast gripped it, then released hurriedly. She cried against his mouth before releasing his lips, and his heavy breaths fell hot against her cheek. “I don’t want to- I’m so afraid to hurt you.”
“Don’t be,” she murmured in her ear, nibbled lightly at the lobe, pulled. “Hurt me, Anders, mark me. Make me yours.”
“Don’t
tell me that,” he groaned, but kissed her neck, nevertheless, twisting his wrist as his thumb flicked over her nipple, sending a new wave of gooseflesh over her body. His fingers at her cunt instead grasped her thigh, and as his leg moved down to make room. Her stroking hand at his cock led him in, and found the warm space of her, wet, not skin but so close to it that it drove him absolutely mad.
With his cock sliding against her crotch, she ground upwards, and though lust burned his skin everywhere she touched him, his worry held him at bay, and he held still there. Her tunic slipped over the other shoulder and both of her beautiful mounds were bare to him, her skin creamy and peaked with sweet pink. He forced himself to go slowly, and he so gently cupped her in his hands like she was precious water and he was dying of thirst. With a very deliberate press back against her hips, he fondled her, slid his hands to her ribs and then his thumbs over her hipbones, his fingers massaging the small of her back. His mouth slid along her shoulders and kissed at the delicious plane of skin below her neck, gingerly, almost.
Growing anxious, Lisbeth dug her fingernails into the back of his neck, and he grunted; silencing him again, she kissed him, grinding harder onto his thick cock that was driving her, too, up the wall with desire. For a moment she gasped, “Anders, please, fuck me,” and again parted his lips, arching her back to meet his bare chest.
His mind slipped away from him as he feared it would when confronted with such an intense emotion, such powerful need. He had felt his descent from control, felt the walls he had built in his mind chipping away so slowly he could imagine that it was not happening, try to deny it - to allow him these minutes of bliss before they were taken away from him. Those minutes were slowly ticking into seconds.
Anders’ body became tense, his hands on her gripped tighter, pinching her skin, and she cried out. He dug under her tunic for the waistband of her stockings, dragging them down her thighs and leaving a pink streak of abrasion behind. Lisbeth looked to him for the source of his sudden passion, and found a face unfamiliar, unnerving; Justice stared back at her, blue lines glowing with power streaking his cheeks and jagged across the muscles of his chest, eyes alight and frighteningly angry.
Stepping back, Justice tore the stockings and panties off together, threw them to the side. Returning to her swiftly, he ran his fingers underneath her tunic, hiking it up around her shoulders, and took her breasts harshly, his nail flicking over the nipples, making her wince.
“Justice?” she gasped as he pushed her into the bed with his weight, through his arms, and she felt the belt still on his hips at her thighs and the length of his cock against her now-bare pussy, so slick with desire.
“Little girl,” came the strange voice, deep and harsh and totally otherworldly. The mouth – Anders’ mouth but this weird creature’s now, and it was his will that guided the movements – descended on her neck, dragged a tongue down from her jawline and then bit down suddenly on the meat of her shoulder, and she cried out again.
“Justice, what is this?” She grasped for his waist, pushed him away feebly.
“This is what you wanted,” he grunted, nose against her neck. She thought of asking where Anders was, but kept quiet at that, knowing it was a ridiculous question.
“I wanted
Anders,” she gasped, when he moved his hips just so the head slid over her clit. She drove her fingernails into his skin again, dragging it up his sculpted back, and pulled him desperately to her body. His grip descended to her hip, her ass, which he cupped, tilted backward, positioning, and forward to meet the head of his hard cock to the silky folds of her.
“He is here.”
Lisbeth was barely able to moan. Justice had no intention of teasing or playing with her. With just a moment of movement at her entrance he plunged into her, and she yelled, “Oooh, Maker!
Fuck!” There was no sweet or gentle thought in this, no hesitation, and no concern for her. With both hands gripping the swell of her ass, he drove his cock into her tight insides, down to the balls, which slapped against her skin. “But it’s you-“
“Uuungh,” interrupted with an inhuman groan of hunger, Justice drew out, plunged into her again. “He feels you still, girl.”
He grabbed onto the undersides of her thighs. “W-wait, Justice, I haven’t…” She trailed off as he lifted her legs into the air until her knees were hooked over his shoulders, her thighs flush against his taut chest, felt him moving inside of her while he adjusted her position.
“He feels this,” he said, then drove his cock, deep, as though he were trying to split her in half, and began a rhythm, a steady in-and-out but growing faster with each push in, filling her up, sending a fresh wave of incredible pleasure crashing through her, and with each move, she let out a short moan, cut off each time by the next gasp and cry and heavy breath.
Anders’ normally gentle hands, hands that heal, were leaving marks on her thighs with their force, and energy crackled from his skin. “I thought,“ words came fast and breathless, “that this… little preoccupation was… a waste of time.” Lisbeth watched him with lidded eyes, drifting her touch to her breasts and fondling herself, playing with the nipples on her palms.
She saw him begin to watch her as she did, saw what might have even been desire in Justice’s eyes. Could spirits of the Fade even feel such things? He felt Anders’ anger and was colored by it. Could he have also been colored by Anders’ lust? “Spirits are not,” the deep voice grunted in reply, “above making errors… nor above sensation-ngggh-“
And she heard his breathing. She thought Anders had been desperate for air when they first kissed in the clinic, but Justice, in heavy throes of ecstasy, took each breath harshly, drawing in and out like it was the hardest thing any being had to do, and his gaze on her, hazy too with need, it made her crazy. Justice, and this incredible hunger, it made the heat flush throughout her body and electricity and fire dance together in the peaks of feeling in her breast and in her belly, a rush leading down to her core, which tightened, needing, around his cock each time it entered her.
He thrust harder and harder now, the head of his cock reaching the very end of her, a little spark of pain, and her moans-turned-cries grew louder and more high-pitched, and for a moment she worried that, despite the thickness of the walls, somebody would hear her and think she was dying, and for all she knew she might have been. The angle he achieved by lifting her legs – and now he leaned forward, bending her legs towards her chest, bouncing them – made him able to force every inch of himself into her to the very base with ease. She was not used to the violence in this act nor with the depth he reached in her on and on, and the slap of skin on skin – his hands which made deep, indelible red spots in her flesh, which next grabbed at her waist for leverage like a man held the cliff from which he would soon fall.
Justice had long since stopped speaking, but his moans of pleasure, gravelly and alien to her ears yet still arousing, grew louder too. She could feel his cock pulsing, thickening, and could even feel the energy of the Fade making her flesh creep with the sense. She could feel it in herself, blood rushing from everywhere else in her body to the delicate nerves of her clit, warming her, and tightening her, almost ready for release.
His strokes were now not so fast and hard, but longer, deeper, the full length of him teasing the head at her opening and then sliding all the way in and up, slicking along the bundle of nerves as it went, repeating, his hipbones pounding against her ass, bruising… and suddenly on a thrust in, he held there inside her, at that deepest point, his entire body as still and hard as a strung bow, his strong hands a cage on her body. She could not move but her lips, to say, “Oh,
Maker,” and her arms, to squeeze and seek relief somehow in her own skin, as he pumped his cum into her, shuddering slightly with the waves of his orgasm.
The haunting blue masks on his eyes were hidden, wrenched shut, and his mouth curled by utter need, until the last wave subsided and the strength in him left too. He did not move out of her, but his hold on her waist lightened, went to hold her legs against him, but gently.
Finally he opened his eyes, and they were golden again… and utterly horrified.
“Oh, Maker, I am so sorry, Lisbeth, I didn’t…”
“Anders, I didn’t finish...” Her frustration was mounting now his heat and the passion of Justice had been taken away. She straightened her legs down to his sides, hanging off the bed with him standing between.
The mage ignored her or did not hear her, when he saw the welts on her side and gasped. “I hurt… that was
rape-“
“Anders,
stop,” Lisbeth interrupted. Furiously, she took him at the forearm and wrenched him up, over her onto the bed, and he stumbled into position, his elbows on either side of her head and her arms wrapped around his neck. Her tongue darted playfully out to his lower lip, followed by a gentle tug of her teeth, and he was drawn down again into languid kisses, although he moaned his distress against her mouth. She did not keep him long. “Anders,
please help me finish.”
“I wanted this night to be special, Lisbeth. I wanted to be gentle with you, to touch every inch, to love you slowly…” His brow was knit with despondence, with worry for her.
Palm against his stubbly cheek, she kissed the corner of his mouth then murmured, “You still can, darling. Please,
Maker, touch me exactly how you’ve been…” her back bowed up, sealing the gap in their bodies, “
aching to do…”
Now the worst of his fears about this night had already been realized. The damnable spirit had taken his first time to sleep with her, but he had watched every bit of it, heard Justice speak of
his feelings, felt every bit of every stroke and thrust, and felt an unimaginable warring in his conscience between lust and the wrongness of it. But Anders tried his best – for her – to dispel the rest of his concerns. He needed to do what she needed him to.
“Alright, Lisbeth…” he finally consented, sweeping a quick kiss onto her brow before lifting his weight from her to lie on his side. Her naked body was splayed beside him, still flush with arousal; her beautiful face was framed by her mess of blonde hair in a halo around her on the bed. Her lips, parted slightly, her breath was intoxicating and heavy. But the beauty of it lay not even in the sweet suppleness of her curves, the firmness of her breast and finely toned limbs, nor the silken quality of her skin… but her face as she looked at him: intensely needy, and forgiving, even delighting in what Justice had done in his body… and the fact that her arousal was for nobody but him. He had inspired it, and she was his for this night. Entirely his.
He took one of her nipples into his mouth, scraping his teeth over it gently, then biting, so lightly, with a small tug. His right hand smoothed over her belly, her hips, and the outside of her leg, squeezing there affectionately before moving to the other side, diving between her thighs as she spread them for him. Her mouth parted wider in a small moan when he slicked his finger in her raw pussy, dripping with both of their juices.
“Darling, he was,” he paused, “rough… with you.” Anders teased her lips, moving in an oval around her, up, glancing off the clit and then down. Lisbeth’s shoulders rose up and her fists clenched in the sheets, her ass wiggling in a useless effort to get him where she wanted him. Finally he pressed his middle finger to her opening, very slowly inserted it, and then curled it up at the knuckle, stroking her inside, hitting on the same nerve bundle. “Is this alright…?” he asked her, breathless himself at her reaction.
“Yes, yes, ooh, Anders…” Her little fingers on his side wrapped around his wrist as he slipped his finger out, then curled it in, the slow and sweet movement she expected from her Anders. His mouth covered her nipple again and sucked lightly, then made a slow circle around it with the very tip of his tongue in tempo with the sliding of his finger; he added another, stroked, and placed his thumb on her clit, very slightly brushing it, but it was enough to make her body spasm. Her hummed-out moans came in the intervals in which he entered and left her.
Her grip on his wrist let her feel it, feel his arm moving with the smallest change in his ministrations to her… and to feel the tensity in his muscles, the care he took with her. It was not the harsh, throbbing lust of Justice. It was no less incredible for that. With his arm around her, his left hand on her opposite shoulder, holding her close to him… and his mouth and his fingers working wonders on her, sending her into a dream-world of pleasure, she could feel him
loving her with an entirely different sort of passion.
He added a third finger, making her whimper with delight and chew on her lower lip to stifle it. His mouth brushed against her nipple, then flicked his tongue over it, and his breath upon her breast came hard, the throb of his need for her not at all subsided, even if he could not love her again at this point. His thumb worked circles around her nub and his fingers glided in and out of her sensitive insides, putting pressure on that spot inside of her that created such magnificent feelings, and slowly, Lisbeth’s mind rose off to a higher and higher plane while the tension in her clit built and such heat spread through her entire lower half.
He abandoned his work at her bosom and kissed a trail from her neck to her cheek, and she turned her head to meet him. It was then that the surge of orgasm came over her, and she moaned hotly against his mouth, clenched onto his wrist as her insides did his gentle fingers, her hips lifted from the bed, toes curling.
“Oh-“ she whispered, when it was over, when he let her lay her head back and tucked her in against his body. “Oh, Anders…”
“Lisbeth, you’ve no idea how long I have wanted to hear you make those sounds for me…” He smiled a little, when her eyes finally fluttered open to meet his affectionate gaze. She draped her arm over his waist and held them closer together, locked in a lazy and comfortable embrace.
“Now I wish I could make you cry out the way Justice did…” she mumbled, her face buried against his neck.
“You did, sweetheart. I felt it all but… was going mad in there, not being able to do it myself. Being inside you was…” his voice cracked. “I- I haven’t felt such bliss for longer than I can remember.”
“Mmmm,” she hummed her approval with a prideful smirk. His chin rested on top of her head.
She went quiet for a while, pondering.
It was not an uncomfortable silence, but his mind was wandering too, and he needed to voice his thoughts. “You must know I love you, Lisbeth,” he began, and she nodded shortly under him, “I haven’t felt so strong for anybody before. I pushed it down – before Justice, it was against the laws of the Circle, and after, it wasn’t even a vague possibility. So I can’t help but fear an end. I couldn’t stand it if anything took you away from me, including Justice.” He held her tighter at this, jealously, like Justice were another man. “And it kills me when you come into the clinic for healing. I hate it, seeing you harmed…”
He trailed off helplessly, wordless in the face of this overwhelming feeling for this limber, gorgeous woman in his arms whom he had just loved, this insatiable fondness and need. Would he ever be able to spend enough time with her, to love her often enough, to know each crevice and curve of her body and her mind well enough to be satisfied?
“Don’t leave, then,” she said lazily into his shoulder. “This manor needs some more life, with Bethany gone. You can be my
personal bodyguard.” She pursed her lips and kissed his chest a few times, slow, little pecks. “Besides the non-guarding-related things you can do with my body, of course…”
“Do you mean that? Would you have me here, living with you?”
“Yuss.” She was nodding off a little more each sweet minute in his arms.
His eyes drifting closed with the honeyed approach of sleep. “Would you tell the world,” he said so very quietly, his lips to her mess of hair perfumed with jasmine, “the Knight-Commander, even, that you love an apostate and will stand beside him?”
“Yes, love,” she responded, nuzzled him as if to say “you can be quiet now,” and settled in to slumber.
He grinned. Three years ago he turned his staff on this girl ready to kill, thinking she would bring the Templars down on his clinic. Shortly after that, she helped him save his friend from those Templars, and Justice took over. He killed the lot of the men. He’d thought surely then it was all over, and then this day happened. And even after Justice had set his gaze on
her… Well, she would never cease to surprise him.
Yes, Anders thought contentedly – or maybe it was Justice, as their thoughts did tend to merge and twist into each other.
I do think I could get used to this girl… He shifted the set of his arms, cradling her head to his chest, her slim form against him,
his Lady Hawke, and allowed himself to doze off.
