cheeezncrackers - Tumblr blog

cheeezncrackers · 2 months

Text

coconut skins. - Chapter 1

Pairing: Rolan x F!Tav

Warnings: Tailplay, Light D/S, Explicit Sexual Content. 18+, Minors DNI.

Word Count: 2,674. Read it on AO3.

While she was immensely proud of the work Rolan put into his studies - the achievements he’s managed to garner at an age much younger than those before him, the respect that his new title commands - she would be the first to admit that sometimes it all became a bit of a slog. The constant late nights studying, crawling into bed beside her long after the sun had set over the Gate and the sky had become scattered with pinprick starlight.

She tried to stay up with him when she could; she’d drape herself over a chaise in the study and pretend to read while he worked. In truth, she was spending more time watching him. Fingers twitching as he scrawled notes on a piece of parchment with a quill, the shape of his mouth and he silently rehearsed the verbal components of new spells he was working on. Something so mundane should hardly be considered intoxicating, and yet the competency set a heady thrill in her veins. The Master of Ramazith’s Tower.

Gods above, but he deserved it.

Tonight, boredom has settled itself into her bones, leaden and heavy. She’s been sprawled out on chair in the study for the better part of six hours now, idly leafing through a book while he pours over research and hastily scribbles notes in the margins. She can see the exhaustion radiating off of him, the soft hunch of his shoulders, the way he’s rubbing at his temples and mumbling under his breath. She wonders, idly, if he even knows what time it is. If he had even been aware of the sun sinking far below the horizon two hours ago, painting the room in split yolk yellow and flicker flame orange.

She rises from the chair delicately, walking across the room to his desk; footfalls ghostly silent against the carpet, her fingers fiddling nervously with the hem of the sleeve on her thin nightgown - a gift from him a month or so ago, with delicate flowers embroidered on the material.

“Love,” She murmurs softly, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind, pressing a whisper of a kiss against the crown of his head. “You’ve been at it for hours. Why don’t you take a break, hm?”

“In a moment.” He replies, not looking up from the paper in front of him - she swears he’s been stuck on this one for over an hour now, some text about the importance of somatic components in spellwork, written in tiny, cramped hand. “I’m nearly done with this one.”

Something tells her that’s not true - that he would sit here for another eternity if she let him; not bothering to slink to bed until the sun began to lazily pull itself over the horizon, and even then only allowing himself a half hour of rest before getting up to tend to Sorcerous Sundries for the day. She knows this because he has done it before, more times than she can count on one hand. Murmuring a quiet apology for being so late to join her, then turning around and doing it all over again the next day.

“Rolan, you’ve been staring at the same piece of paper for hours. Maybe it’ll make more sense after some rest and some breakfast.” One of her hands gently rubs over his shoulder, soothing small circles against his robe with her thumb.

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”

Getting him to be anything other than self-sacrificial is a task akin to pulling teeth even on the best of days. He runs himself ragged constantly, all weeping edges. Nose to the grindstone until there’s little left but marrow. It makes her chest ache, truthfully; the extent to which he is willing to go in some misguided venture to prove himself.

He doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone, anymore.

She tucks a stray lock of hair behind the tip of a pointed ear, and brings her lips to the stark line of his jaw; no amount of pleading will get him to relent, but perhaps there are other methods at her disposal that will be effective. He’s always had trouble saying no to her when she looks at him with soft eyes, when she’s soft and clingy and sweet. Like he has a weakness for the saccharine. Or maybe just a weakness for her.

“Tav.” He rumbles, low and throaty - a warning.

She’s never been particularly good about contemplating consequences.

“Come to bed.” She whispers against his skin, dragging her mouth down to the slope of his throat. Open-mouthed and damp, her breath ghosting over his pulse point, her arms still draped over his shoulders.

He makes a sound in the back of his throat that sends heat spooling in her stomach, makes her feel effervescent. He’s still looking at the desk, but his gaze is unfocused and hazy, and she thinks, for one triumphant moment, that she may be winning this battle.

A few things happen in the span of a moment. He rises from his chair rather noisily, and a flicker of fear that she has somehow overstepped jolts through her. But then he’s pushing her up against the desk, the edge of the hardwood digging into the small of her back, his hands planted firmly on her shoulders. He leans dangerously close to her, his breath a heavy and ragged thing, a few strands of his hair coming loose from their tie and framing his face in a way that would almost be considered soft were it not for the glimmer of hunger held within the aureate flame of his eyes.

“Someone ought to teach you a thing or two about patience.” His voice is sharp and hushed, gravelly in a way she’s not sure she’s ever heard from him.

She stares at him with wide eyes, her lips parted in a silent question, her hands curling into the soft material of his robes at his flanks. He tilts his head to the side, eyes trained on her, flicking over her expression to see if there’s any hesitance. When he doesn’t find any, he leans in further, his breath hot against the shell of her ear.

“Is this what you wanted, Tav? To test my resolve? To see how much it takes for me to snap?” A yawning chasm of want splits open within her, a flush rising to her cheeks. “For me to pin you down and have my way with you like some kind of animal?”

“I’m certainly not complaining.” She finds her voice, shaky and uncertain as it may be, and the words fall forth in the ghost of a whisper.

“You would think that the time you spent saving the Sword Coast would have taught you even a little in the way of self-preservation, but here you are. Still so godsdamned brave.” His teeth graze over her earlobe, and she stifles a soft sound. “I could eat you alive. But you don’t care.”

“Because I know you wouldn’t hurt me.” She does, in her bones. He’d been reticent to even entertain the notion of anything that would put her in harm’s way, even if she’d expressed enthusiastic consent. Pain was not associated with pleasure in his mind, and she had never been about to argue - he’d been through enough. She wanted to be a safe place for him. A respite from it all.

He pulls away to look her in the eyes once more, a soft smile dragging up the corners of his mouth. “I wouldn’t.” He echoes, quiet.

“This is nice, though.” She feels like such a shy creature when faced with the intensity of his gaze. What a difficult thing, to be seen so thoroughly. For him to peel back the layers of herself, scrutinize each one. To know and be known. “The confidence.”

“I’m glad you think so.” He laughs, soft, all breath. “I’m rather uncertain of what I’m doing.”

She presses her lips to his cheek, featherlight. “Just do what feels natural. Or do nothing at all. I’m not trying to pressure you into anything.”

He contemplates her for a long moment, as though trying to determine the best course of action. It feels rather silly, to calculate intimacy, to map it out into data points and facts and figures. But she’s intrigued, curious as to where, exactly, this is going to go.

“I want to try something.” He says after a while. “Do you trust me?”

“Endlessly.” She replies immediately - she doesn’t even have to put thought into the question. She’d put her life in his hands if he asked her to.

“Undress for me.” The words are offered up on a breath, still so gentle.

She wordlessly moves to comply, shaky fingers moving to the hem of her nightgown, gingerly pulling it over her head. She takes the time to fold it neatly - she’d loathe to unceremoniously toss something so delicate, something he picked out for her by hand, on the ground. She turns to look at him with expectant eyes.

“Everything.” He’s perched back onto his chair, and he watches her with a neutral expression, his tone settling into something detached. It shouldn’t send a thrill of heat through her, and yet it does all the same.

She drags her bottom lip between her teeth, all nervous energy, but does as she’s told with no resistance. She steps out of her smalls, undoes her breastband, sets them both to the side. He looks at her appreciatively, eyes roaming down her body in a way that has her feeling like he could see right through to the bone if he so desired.

Oh, how vulnerable it is, the mortifying ordeal of being known.

He taps two fingers against the corner of his desk that is free of paperwork and stacks of books. “Sit.”

She wonders what he’s playing at here, exactly.

She settles herself down on the hardwood, sucking in a sharp breath at how cold it is against her bare skin. Suddenly so unsure of how to take up space, she folds her hands in her lap. Her movements feel awkward, unsteady.

“I’m going to finish my work.” He motions towards the paper he’d been engrossed in earlier. “And you’re going to sit there quietly.”

“And I need to be naked for this because….?” She blinks at him - suddenly she is very much feeling like the one who has been played here.

“If you’re good,” He ignores the question. “I’ll give you the attention you so desperately desire, once I am done.”

And just like that, he’s once again directing his attention downwards, beginning to resume his reading. She shifts awkwardly - the idea of sitting still, bare before him, with him not even paying attention to him…. It fills her with equal parts arousal and defiance, makes her want to act out so that this is over faster.

But she’ll let him have his way for now.

One of his hands comes to rest on her thigh - not gripping, simply touching. It sends sparks rolling through her, bright bursts of something fluorescent and alive. She takes in a soft breath, tremulous, and he offers her a pointed look before returning his gaze to his work.

And you’re going to sit there quietly.

Ah. She’s beginning to understand the game, now.

Silently, he pushes her knees apart, and she knows with resounding certainty the moment his hand splays out flat against the inside of her thigh that she is well and truly fucked. His nails drag a slow path upwards, and her stomach lurches, teeth sinking into her bottom lip in an attempt to keep silent.

There’s a heavy ache between her thighs, and it takes more than a little self control to not press them together, to coax his hand higher, to open her mouth to plead with him to relent. He’s still reading, and she wants to take back everything she said earlier about finding his bravado intoxicating - such a selfish creature suddenly in the face of such overwhelming want.

Perhaps he’s feeling merciful, perhaps he can sense the yearning bubbling beneath the surface of her, because his index and middle finger graze over her slit, and she nearly whines. He lets out a breath when he feels the evidence of her arousal, how wet she is just from being made to sit before him like this - but his gaze does not leave his work.

The callused pads of his fingers press against her clit, and her hands come to grasp at the edge of the desk, knuckles white from the effort of it. She hopes to all the gods above that he is not nearly as patient as he makes himself seem.

She thinks that perhaps she can handle this - a little touching, a little teasing, and then he’ll cave.

And then comes the tail.

The point of it drags over her thigh, and oh, that’s new. She does let out a gasp when he brings it up higher, when he flicks it over her slit like a silent question. Tentative, cautious, curious. Without really thinking, she spreads her legs a little wider, invites him to indulge in the impulse.

It’s different than anything she’s ever felt before. The stretch of it, the hesitancy he uses. He’s no longer paying attention to the words on the paper before him, instead staring at her with wide, glossy eyes, his lips parted.

“Look at you.” He breathes, the tone of his voice awestruck, and she lets out a whine - her patience has been unraveled, decorum discarded.

She shifts her hips, desperate for more - something, anything. He relents, dragging the spade of it out, pushing back in.

Fucking her with his tail.

It feels licentious. Base. Wrong and filthy and yet so completely and wholly right. She moans, her head tilting back, her eyes fluttering shut. His fingers work against her clit more insistently now, his breath heavy, leaning forward in his chair, drinking in the sight of her.

“Fuck.” She manages, shaky, all breath. “Holy fuck, Rolan -”

“That’s it, Tav. Just like that.” He’s all rasp and gravel, and she cracks her eyes enough to see him palming himself through his robes. Something within her snaps, fractures. “Want to see you come like this - want - Gods.”

It takes little more in the way of prompting for her to get there; flashbang bright behind her eyelids, her lips splitting open in a silent cry. It feels like drowning in the most pleasant way possible, the way it rips through her. He hisses out a curse from behind gritted teeth, his movements slowing, then stopping completely.

She’s panting as she comes down, peering down at him through unfocused eyes, her hair sticking to her forehead - skin slick with sweat, her chest heaving. He’s looking at her with a reverence in his eyes, an awe that she feels wholly undeserving of.

“That was - that was different.” She fumbles for the words, coherent thought having evaporated from her mind.

“If I had known you would have responded positively, I would have suggested trying that a while ago.” He leans forward to press his lips against the back of her knee, soft. “Was that alright?”

She motions to herself, disheveled on his desk. “I hardly think you need to ask, Rolan.”

“Right, yes, well.” He clears his throat. “No harm in checking.”

“Will you come to bed now?” She tilts her head to the side, her gaze flicking over his form, lingering on his lap. “I’d rather like to repay the favor.”

“I… believe I’m at an appropriate stopping point for the evening, yes.” He smooths out his robes and stands, offering her a hand. “But please don’t feel like you need to -”

“Rolan.” She takes his hand and gently slides off of his desk, lifting a finger to his lips. “If you don’t take me to the bedroom and ravish me right this minute, I swear to all the gods in every pantheon, I will cry.”

“Well, we can’t have that, I suppose.”

95 notes · View notes

cheeezncrackers · 2 months

Text

manibus adhuc mollior.

In celebration of 100 followers.

Pairing: AFAB!Tav/Rolan

Warnings: Explicit sexual content, canon-typical depictions of gore and violence, angst. 18+, Minors DNI.

Word Count: 2,861. Read it on AO3.

The admittance of their feelings for one another had been agonizingly unceremonious; hurried, teary murmurs – quiet and resigned, as if to admit such a thing was to sentence the other to death. There was little time for grandstanding or lavish gestures, the Elderbrain visible in the sky, half the city in ruins. If he had had it his way, he would have courted her properly, he would have wined and dined her. Stargazing and stolen kisses and the slow thaw of their hearts behind their sternums.

It seemed that lately, not much of anything ever went his way.

He kissed her, then, and it felt more like a farewell than anything else. Firm and solid, a silent plea for her to come back to him. To not make their first be their last. Please, Tav, just this once, try not to get yourself killed. Please. He had half of a thought, selfish and unbidden, to ask her to stay. To set aside the heroics, to choose him over saving the world.

But that wasn’t possible. This had always been her fight, and it would be her that saw it to its bitter conclusion, whatever that may be.

The waiting feels like agony; an ache in his sternum that he has not felt since the Shadowlands when he was waiting to see if Tav came back with Cal and Lia. Hungry, feasting upon premature grief, a blossoming sorrow here before its season. He has no reason to be distraught – she may come back to him in one piece yet, a savior, bright and beautiful and brave. He’ll tend to her wounds and she’ll let out that stilted, relieved laugh that she so often does; the one where it cuts off into a choked, strangled sort of sob. And he’ll hold her. And they’ll have forever at their fingertips, a yawning expanse of possibility far larger than even that of the Weave.

Or she’ll die, and he will once again learn to navigate the dying embers of loss.

Hours blur into one another, and he finds himself restless. Pacing the library of the tower, suddenly so terribly unsure of how to take up space. He tries reading, but he cannot bring the words into focus sharply enough to comprehend them. He tries sleeping, but every time he closes his eyes he is haunted by images of her body, spattered with crimson, arms bent at odd angles, eyes lifeless and hollow.

He settles for waiting on the ground floor, salves and elixirs on standby for her return. He will take care of her. He will prove that he, too, can be gentle. And he will never take her for granted ever again, he swears it.

All plans of being a doting savior go out the window when she shows up to the tower. Her hair is matted with grime and viscera, her hands shake ever-so-slightly, and he’s certain it is the first time he’s ever seen her so visibly shaken. He assumes that it’s because of the fight, that the very foundations of her being have shifted from such a profound battle – she saved thousands of people, she is, by all accounts, a hero. Surely that is not a title won without hardships.

But she’s pulling him into her arms hurriedly, burying her face in the crook of his neck as though he is the last thing keeping her grounded on this plane. And her voice trembles as she breathes against his skin, “I wasn’t sure – Gods above, I thought that I might have lost you.”

“You were worried about me?” He winds his arms around her and holds her firmly. For once he cannot find a biting remark, a scathing retort; she is here, and she is alive, and he’s never been one for religion, but he is thanking every pantheon known to man in this moment. “You were the one out saving the world, Tav. I was worried sick about you.”

“You? Worrying?” She pulls away from him to look him in the eye, her gaze something bright sparkling beneath the blood and the dirt. Her lips tilt up into a lopsided grin. “I never would have guessed that the revered Master of Ramazith’s Tower would be so prone to something as mundane as feelings.”

“Yes, well, you have a remarkable knack for making me act rather out of character.” His hand comes up to cup her cheek, thumb smoothing over a nick on her skin, his voice far, far softer than he thinks he has ever allowed it to be.

He would move the heavens for her if she asked him to.

They stay like that for a long moment, with her leaning into his touch and an unspoken understanding hanging between them. Words are wholly insufficient here; Common does not hold the syllables required to articulate the relief that weighs in his chest.

“Are you hurt?” He asks quietly after a while.

“Nothing that Shadowheart couldn’t heal.” She murmurs in response. “Just some bruises and cuts here and there. I’m fine, Rolan, I’m here. You can stop worrying. I came back to you.”

“You came back to me.”

“I promised you I would, didn’t I?” She smiles, soft around the edges.

“So you did.” A quiet chuckle bubbles up from the back of his throat. The moment feels charged in a way that he cannot quite place; thick and heavy and suffocating. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear that the gloss to his vision is from tears, not weariness.

She kisses him.

It isn’t nearly as frantic and demanding as their first – shared in the tense moments before conflict, a demand for more to come. It is gentle, as she so often is; it feels much like coming home. Warm and relaxed, a promise of sorts. He meets it with equal tenderness, his eyes fluttering shut, a breath he did not know he was holding let out into the soft press of her mouth. His tail wraps around her waist as if of its own volition, staking a quiet claim. Alive. Mine. Together.

She pulls away for a moment, her breathing a little heavier, ghosting against his face; she’s still millimeters away, looking up at him through her lashes, and he silently files the image for later.

“You should get cleaned up.” He whispers.

“I should.” She agrees, but then her lips are on his again – hungrier, this time, as if searching for proof that this moment is real; that she survived, that he is flesh and blood before her. Her hands curl loosely into the front of his robes, and he pulls her closer, one hand finding purchase on the space between her shoulder blades, the other tangling in her hair.

He cannot be bothered to care about the blood – it’s nothing that a simple cast of prestidigitation cannot fix. He focuses on the shift of her ribs with every breath that she takes in, revels in the rise and fall of her chest where it is pressed against him. The feeling of her tucked into his arms, of her kiss, is far headier a blend than any glass of Arabellan Dry.

Alive.

She’s fumbling with the ties of his robes, and he remembers himself – where they are, the ash-choked air that seeps in through the cracks at the bottom of the front doors. The smell of flame hanging heavy around them.

“Tav,” He rasps, pulling away and sucking in a breath. “We shouldn’t – not here.”

“Why not?” Her hands pause their movements, and his protestations nearly go by the wayside when he sees how utterly debauched she looks in this moment; her lips spit-slick and flush, her pupils blown and eating away at the soft color of her irises. “This is your home, I thought we’d established that?”

“I know, I just – I would really rather not have our first time be me pressing you against a desk like some depraved animal.”

He’s thought about what it would be like to have her plenty of times now; what she would look like tangled in the soft silk of his sheets, her hair splayed out around her like a halo, her eyes screwed shut as he disassembled her piece by piece. Put her back together again. He would take her time with her, he would be reverential, he would show her the gratitude that he failed to in the past.

“You’re a wizard.” She laughs, warm and husky, and the sound goes straight to his stomach. Pools there, cements itself. He feels ungentlemanly in the way his blood is rather quickly rushing southwards. “Can’t you just… conjure up a bed or something?”

“I could,” He muses, but decides that such a gesture would be wholly insufficient in displaying his adoration for her. “But we have time. Let us go upstairs.”

The only magic he allows himself is a quietly uttered cantrip to clean the viscera from the both of them. He is all nerves as he closes the door of his bedroom behind them, suddenly feeling much more like a bumbling, awkward virgin than a prodigy of any kind. And she, always perceptive, picks up on the unease immediately. She settles herself onto the edge of his bed and beckons him to come sit beside her.

His lips do not leave hers this time as they undress quietly; he is far easier a task than she is – armor is really rather difficult to remove, even more so when all logical thought has gone out the window and every ounce of blood in your body is focused between your thighs.

When he does pull away to catch his breath, he’s afforded the opportunity to drink her in in all her glory. Bare and breathless before him, her skin a canvas littered with freckles, with cuts, with bruises. Some old and scarred, cigarette-paper thin reminders of the hardships she’s faced. Others new, likely from the ferocity of the fight today, scabbed over and tender still.

She is the most stunning creature he has ever laid his eyes on.

She looks apprehensive before him, suddenly a being of profound shyness, and he works to soothe that insecurity immediately; gently, he guides her to lay down on the mattress, and his lips find the soft slope of her neck. She sighs, soft and sweet, and a hand comes to his shoulders, fingers brushing over the leathery flesh of one of his vestigial wings. So sensitive, so unused to touch, he hisses out a breath between his teeth, sensation crackling through him – electric and bright and sharp.

“Sorry.” She murmurs at the sound.

“You hardly need to apologize. I rather like it when you touch me.”

That seems to encourage her; she grows a little bolder, hands skirting over his skin – down his back, the meat of his flanks, the just of his hipbones. Touches every ridge and dip – and there are plenty – with a level of reverence he had never even considered he could be regarded with.

Her nails graze over the base of his tail, and he has half a mind to be embarrassed by the sound that the action pulls from him; high and needy, his hips rolling against her thigh. She seems to gather some sort of satisfaction from that, because she repeats it, and he has to busy his mouth with other pursuits to keep the last scraps of his composure. He traces a path down her body, open-mouthed kisses against every bruise, every cut; this is not intimacy, this is worship – this is him posturing before her, heart split wide open, vivisection on full display; the edges of him ragged and weeping, hers to feast from as she pleases.

He comes down to the soft expanse of her thighs, and her hands on him still, her breath hitching in anticipation. He looks up at her with heavily-lidded eyes as he kisses his way up them; a press of teeth here, a touch of tongue there. One her hands slides into his hair, fingers shaking as she gently grasps the strands – not hard enough to pull, but gentle enough to ground herself.

“May I taste you, Tav?” He rasps, the words rumbling in his chest, his voice hoarse.

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and she nods, her other hand grasping loosely into the sheets beneath her. He leans in and presses a kiss to her mound before flattening his tongue and licking a stripe up her slit. She keens, and the fingers tangled into his hair curl around one of his horns, gently tugging him closer.

He takes her apart slowly, his tongue against her clit, his fingers curled inside of her. She’s a babbling mess, one hand fisted in the sheets, her hips bucking up into the contact. He uses the forearm of his free hand to hold her down gently, each movement laced with heavy deliberation – making mental notes of every sharp inhale, every ragged breath, every whimper.

He sucks against her clit, and she falls apart without warning. Her head tilts back in a silent cry, her hand clawing against the base of his horn, unsure of whether to pull him against her or push him away. He slowly works her through it, looking up at her as he does – she’s beautiful here, flushed cheeks and heaving breath, white-knuckle grip against the sheets.

He makes his way back up her body as she comes down, crashing his lips unceremoniously against hers. A jolt goes through him when she moans into his mouth at the taste of herself on his tongue, one of her hands resting on the nape of his neck, the other on his shoulder.

“Fuck me.” She breathes out against his lips, hoarse and needy. “Please.”

“Yes.” He pants, and one of his hands comes down to spread her open, the other lining himself up with her. She hooks her leg over his shoulder, and he sinks into her – slow, they have time, he has to remind himself. All they have now is time, he supposes.

He lets out a choked sound as he bottoms out, one of his hands landing beside her to steady himself. He’s sure he’s a sight, hair falling in his face, having come loose from its tie at some point in the beginning of them kissing. His cheeks flushed, his lips parted, eyes screwed shut.

“Rolan.” She manages, breathy and thin, her nails digging into his shoulders. He would do anything to hear his name in her voice like this time and time again; drunk on it, lost in it, drowning.

The time for tenderness has passed. He is reduced to a thing of desperation, the need to let himself have this – to prove that this is real, that she is real – overrides all coherent thought. He rolls his hips against her, no longer having the wherewithal to have shame for the sounds he makes. They blur together anyways; the soft pitch of her moaning, the breath of his groans.

“Fuck, Tav.” His free hand comes down between her legs, the pads of two callused fingertips finding her clit. “Want you to come for me again. Please.”

“C-can’t –“ She tries, her voice breaking.

“You can. You will.” He presses a little more firmly, circles a little tighter. The movement of his hips has become a stilted thing, rhythm quickly leaving him as he nears his own peak. “Please, love. Let me have it, let me feel you.”

Her breath hitches and her muscles tense, and then she lets out a choked, sharp sound that sounds more like a sob than anything else. He falls apart with her, his hips stuttering, his nails digging into the sheets. He has a moment to settle himself next to her before his strength gives out, and his gaze is hazy as he looks up at the ceiling, his chest heaving with the effort of his breath.

“I love you.” She breathes out into the stillness of the room, tucking herself against him, her cheek resting against his chest.

It somehow feels more monumental than the sex, this proclamation – they’d disclosed feelings, yes, but that word, the heaviness of it, had not been uttered by either of them. It feels insufficient, to summarize the ache in his chest that he holds for her with a single word.

And yet, at the same time, it feels like it is the only one that is correct.

“I love you too, Tav.” He presses his lips to the crown of her head, his arms wrapping around her, holding her close. “Please don’t go rushing into danger again. I rather like this.”

“The sex?” She asks with a tired laugh, her lips splitting into a grin.

“Not just that.” He rolls his eyes at her, his usual snark replaced by something far more boneless, something with far less teeth. “You, in general. Being with you.”

The sincerity of it makes her stop, and she regards him with a softness that makes his stomach twist into knots. “I promise I won’t go anywhere this time, Rolan. I promise.”

And he, probably foolishly, believes her.

140 notes · View notes