Chapter Text
Every plan I’ve ever made has gone to shit.
He’d told Blackwall that. Way back at the inn past Val Chevin. Or Amaranthine?
When Varric sold their stories in a few years, the book will say it was an accident, a bad fall. Too much rum, not enough light, a case of the piss-shivers that made him stumble down the stairs to land in a bloodied heap against the Inquisitor’s door.
It was worse than an accident; it was a plan barely an hour old. That’s as long as it took Evelyn to fall asleep so he could creep out of her bed like a cheating lord gone to bother the kitchen girls.
The row of tailor’s dummies dressed for Halamshiral mocked him as he pulled his breeches on and found his shirt where she'd thrown it on the floor. No choice now, they were set to leave in another day. A bum knee would take weeks to heal properly. It was either smash his kneecap or lop off a toe or two. No matter what it took he couldn’t be in Orlais again. Cold sweat struck him at the very thought.
He turned his back on the red jackets to check she hadn’t stirred. Of course not. If there was only one thing he could do right, it was fuck her ragged when it was needed. She'd damn near pulled a bald spot on his scalp tonight, her hands tangled in his hair with his face between her legs.
The tailors had left behind a mess of thread and scraps of wool, and a heavy sack of extra gold buttons.
“Shame nobody will see it,” he said to the blank muslin of his dummy’s chest. The old crone had worked hard on his uniform, a waste. His measurements were inked into the neck. With a sigh he snatched up the bag of buttons, weighed it in his palm, then added a pig iron doorstop. That would do.
Evelyn kept a decanter of strong rum on the desk. He poured himself three fingers. While the burn stirred through his stomach he propped his foot on the hearth, got a good swing going, and slapped the bag of metal against his knee.
When he was sure he wouldn't faint from the pain he drank more of Evelyn’s rum. He threw the doorstop aside, replaced the bag of buttons, had another drink then hobbled to landing. He prodded the swollen spot until he saw stars. In Evelyn's mirror a sweating, red faced mongrel grinned back at him. Fuck it. He dropped to his hip and slid down the stairs to land in a heap of bloody elbows and ripped linen at her door.
When Varric writes this up he'll make it sound better. The truth is off limits any time and there's no point coming clean now. Not when he's already done something so foolish.
Evelyn heard him crash into the door, of course. She ran down the stairs, the long sleeves of her dressing gown fluttering at her sides then sticking on the bloody mess of his temple when she pushed his hair out his eyes. He closed them a moment to gather his wits.
When he came to he was back upstairs. A pair of Cassandra's finest had hold of him by the armpits. Agony splintered up his thigh and a wave of nausea hit him.
"Leave off," he insisted through the pain. He pushed their hands away, put some weight on the leg. "Maker's Warty Taint, let go! I'm all right."
They let him try to stand on his own. One step turned the edges of his vision black. Evelyn grabbed two handsful of his shirt just as his eyes rolled back.
"Keep him talking, keep him talking," a strange voice came through the fog.
"Fuck off!"
"There you are." Evelyn leaned over him, her dressing gown clutched closed with one hand and the other holding a lump of ice to his head. She was dead frightened, her bottom lip bitten tight and the mark in her palm fizzing green. They'd propped him up in her bed. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"Fell down the stairs, didn't I?" He groaned at the searing pain in his left knee.
A mage healer, judging by his robes and the blue glow that surrounded his hands, apologized as he cut away the leg of his breeches. Without the pressure of the leather his knee throbbed in time with his pulse. It was already purple, and swollen half the width of his thigh. He had meant to buy himself a way out of Halamshiral but he might have crippled himself for good.
"I'm Camdor, Ser. My clan's healer for many years." He was small even for an elf. The tail of Camdor's intricate braid tickled where it brushed against his bare shin.
"Pleasure," he grunted. "How bad is it?"
Evelyn glanced at the ruin of his leg and shuddered. “What should we do to help you, Camdor?"
"The kneecap isn't broken or disconnected, which is good. But." The mage shook his head. “Knees are tricky things.”
She let the ice slip down a bit, until it was over his ear. “I beg your pardon? Do you mean to say you can’t heal this?”
“No, no.” He rushed to assure her he wasn’t useless. “I could do, but I shouldn’t. Knees are a real bitch, pardon my Orlesian. One mistake and…” he trailed off with a guilty look at him.
“He’s right.” He swallowed, head swimming. “If it mends poorly it won’t bend proper later.”
“It’s better to give him something for the pain, and wait. Let nature take its course.”
“Fiona,” Evelyn declared as she put his ice aside, stood up to tie her dressing gown more tightly. She tossed her tangled hair out of her face. A red imprint of his own teeth showed on her throat, just below the ear.
“I’m sorry?”
“Fiona, please, have her come right away.”
“Inquisitor, it’s not even half dawn. I’m sure the Grand Enchanter is sleeping.”
She gave him an astonished glare. The guards who must've carried him up the stairs hovered at the fireplace, not sure what to do. A freezing cold trickle of melted ice ran down the sheets under his bare thigh and that was all the excuse he needed to throw the rest of it at the nightstand. It broke the water glass there, Evelyn jumped back to avoid the shards near her bare feet.
“I don’t need Fiona,” he snarled at her. “I need him to mend my fucking skull and fetch a pain potion.”
Maker, if he could have stood on two good legs he could break every stick of furniture in the room. The line of red jackets in their mocking formation would go over like dominoes. Not even sure what the rage was for, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Evelyn left him on the bed and dismissed the guards, glancing over her shoulder and whispering.
Camdor bent over him to peer into his eyes. “You have a concussion.”
“Well spotted,” he muttered and wiped at the blood that ran down from his hairline. His stomach roiled, his mouth watered unpleasantly. Camdor's hands cupped his head gently, like he was about to lean in for a kiss. "Fetch a bucket."
"Inquisitor?" He twisted to look at Evelyn. "Have you a bucket or a basin?"
She tipped apples out of the fruit bowl on her desk. "Will this do?"
"Maker's fucking balls," he rolled his eyes and wished he hadn't. His skull felt like a cracked egg.
"What?" Evelyn froze, uncertain.
"Just give it." If anything summed up his daft Ostie bint it was the idea that crystal was just the thing for catching puke.
Bandaged and rubbed down with liniment like a horse gone lame, he woke in the crowded dark of her curtained bed. Evelyn snored on the opposing side of a pillow barricade/ She startled every so often, trying to curl into him out of habit. Dawn was close, he would have woken anyway but the potion had worn off. His knee throbbed in time with his heart.
"Leave it alone." She grabbed his wrist, stopped him rubbing the bandages, her voice raspy and tired. "Is it hurting again?"
"Never stopped," he grumbled. She got out of bed to fetch another bottle from her desk, not bothering to cover up.
Evelyn twisted the cork free as she padded through the faint light of her picture windows. There was no artifice to her now, no wiggle in the hips or slight arch of the spine that naked women thought he would appreciate. She carefully poured a measure of the yellow syrup, watched him swallow it then handed him a cup of tea gone cold on the nightstand to wash it down.
"Nursing's easier to take when it's done your way." He patted her bare hip, which reminded her it was bare. She rolled her eyes as if she found him tedious but straightened up to her proper posture, stiff as a lance, for the walk round the bed to her side. He wished he hadn't said anything. She slipped under the heavy covers, careful not to jostle him and replaced the one thin blanket she'd insisted he sleep under. It was roasting hot in here, as always, so he pushed it down off his shoulders. She sucked her teeth in annoyance, looked him over one last time for any other sins, then closed her eyes.
It still bloody hurt. He couldn't get comfortable and shifted the bolster under his leg.
"Shhh," she took his hand away from his knee, held it clasped in her marked fist, her eyes closed. "Let the potion work, wait a moment," she said around a yawn. She rubbed her thumb on the back of his hand, gentle circles. "Shh."
She was right. Another minute passed and heavy warmth spread out from his belly, up his spine to fuzz his thinking. Her fingers were cold when he pressed a kiss to her knuckles so he tucked her hand under his on his chest.
"Better?"
It was. He put the blanket back where she wanted it, kissed her fingers again. They smelled of the pain potion and also faintly of spit and his own seed.
"Try to sleep, now." Her lovely beak of a nose was buried in her pillow, voice muffled by goose down. That thumb started petting him again, tickling the hair over his sternum.
Tongue loosened by the felandaris, he sighed, "I bet you were a good Mum."
Her hand went dead still under his.
Blinding sun reflected off the snow on the mountains around them when he startled awake. The bed curtains were pulled back, Evelyn's side of the bed was neatly made, coverlet so crisp you could bounce a sovereign on it. He rubbed his gritty eyes and tried to say something sensible to her maid struggling under the weight of an overloaded tray.
"Morning, Your Worship, Warden Constable, Ser." Lorienne bobbed a curtsey, looking about for a flat surface not covered in ledgers or empty potion vials. She kicked the remains of his trousers that had been cut off him out of her way.
Evelyn smiled at her but didn't notice her predicament. In the end Lorienne managed to put their meal down without breaking anything. She brought him a plate of kippers, soft boiled eggs and soldiers and a perfect clementine, long stem and a single green leaf still attached. Of course. Her Highness wasn't eating a bowl of porridge stood over the fire, why had he thought otherwise? Light passed through his tea cup as he greedily downed it. Lorienne refilled it, careful not to look at anything but the cup. He pulled his blanket up a bit higher, double checked it was still covering all the necessary places. Elven women got nervy around human men with their pants down. Couldn't say he blamed them.
Breakfast seen to, she took away their mess while Jenny, a pretty cobbler's daughter from Denerim, put Evelyn's hair up. She attacked a heavy velvet dress with a clothes brush until it met her standards then laced and buttoned Evelyn into her noble's battle gear. He shifted to try and take the pressure off his bladder full of tea and last night's rum. Jenny finally left after asking three times if she could do anything else for either of them.
"C'mere," he waved a hand at Evelyn's reflection in her vanity. His leg was stiff as a board as he swung himself around to put one foot on the floor. If she let him lean on her shoulder he could hobble the ten paces to her privy.
"You'll need a cane," she said, as if just noticing how fucked he was.
"I need a piss, first."
"Of course, I'm so sorry. Here." She jumped up, not to take his arm and haul him upright, but straight down the stairs.
So there he sat, his tackle under a sheet, when Camdor, Adan, and a fucking druffalo of a surgeon's apprentice came trooping up the stairs. The Avvar apprentice suggested, not a bit of humor, carrying him to the privy.
"Looks like you could." Tattooed axes ringed a neck bulging with muscle. "But just help me up, that's a good lad."
"Couldn't they find you a nightshirt?!" Adan called from Evelyn's desk where he had laid out his apoth's kit.
"Get fucked," he grunted as he got his feet under him. The healers didn't flinch at the sight of a bare ass, at least.
"Nice hickey," Adan snorted.
He considered staying in the privy until all three of them grew bored and went away. "I can see myself back to bed, lad," he called through the door.
"No, Ser." The answering voice was polite but firm. "I must help you."
They fussed over him, Camdor giving terse instructions that Uvol took deathly serious. When it was finally time to swallow more painkiller Uvol gave him a double dose. Camdor had healed a warden once before, and went on at great length about how a warden's blood shook off potions quickly. He dozed off with Uvol sat in Evelyn's sturdiest chair, a book in his lap. Adan didn't need him to be awake for whatever disgusting poultice was about to be applied.
He slept the day away. Uvol helped take care of the necessities then poured more potions down him at noon. While he waited for his eyelids to fall, he studied his nurse. The Avvar he'd fought over the years were always painted with flaking white mud and smelled like a goat soaked in piss so it was odd to see one in tidy blue robes, hands chapped from lye soap. His scalp under the tattoos was freshly shaved, goatee trimmed short and neat around what looked like a permanent scowl. That made sense. Couldn't be shedding whiskers into open wounds.
"How long have you-"
"Violence no longer serves my god." Uvol interrupted. He leveled clear brown eyes at him, defensive, and a little insulted.
"I meant no offense."
"Lowlanders always ask why I'm not out raiding your villages in a storm." Uvol picked his book up again. "You waited a few hours longer than most soldiers."
"You're needed elsewhere, surely. I can manage on my own until tomorrow." Tingling warmth from yet another double dose of felandaris heavy potion made his mouth lazy. He cleared his throat and tried not to slur. "Just leave a bell or somethin'."
"That's very kind of you," Uvol settled more comfortably by the window with his stack of books. "Sleep."
The pain was penance enough, but now Adan pounced on him, too. Evelyn found him funny. Always had, since back in the early days scrounging for ram meat in the hills around Haven. Trapped on the bed, a stinging, rancid poultice on his leg, he had time to get better acquainted with the Inquisition’s best apoth while it cooled. Adan knew jousting. He was wrong about damned near everything that mattered about it but it was something to pass the time.
He still didn’t like him. Adan spent too much time on his hair. He was full of himself and over-familiar. His cologne was obnoxiously expensive. Midway through this list of faults he realized with sudden clarity that ten years ago, Adan would’ve been his best mate. Drinking and whoring with him in Val Chevin, standing as second in the occasional duel. They would’ve been barred from every decent tavern in Orlais.
But the Inquisition’s best apoth had let old lady Mantillon latch onto him like a lamprey. He assumed she was using him for poison supplies or worse yet, he was making up new and nastier ones just for her.
"How do you sleep nights?"
"Soundly."
"No, I mean-" he hissed at the burn as fresh air met the slime on his skin when Adan peeked under the poultice wrappings.
"I know what you meant." Adan sat back, wiped his hands on his jumper and crossed his arms. "So, I'll tell you I sleep like a man who's been shagged right into the ground."
"That's where she'll put you."
Adan laughed.
"She's, I mean no offense, but she's a killer."
"So's everybody." Adan shrugged off his concern, made a wanking motion.
"That's not," he started then shook his head. "There's other girls. Nice girls."
"Nice girls like yours?" Adan smoothed his beard down, twisted the edges of his moustache just so. "I heard about the bandit down in the Coast. Nasty way to go, fire."
“But a healer and a poisoner. How’s that?”
“I’m not a damned healer. I don’t go around tending to boo-boos. But the Inquisitor will have my guts for garters if one of these trench surgeons cripples you for life.”
That stung, even coming from another commoner who was also fucking above his station. Her Worship's pet, fussed over because he was poorly. “Not worried about your professional reputation?”
“You’ve been swallowing the stuff that comes out of my cauldron since Spring and haven’t died once. Not so much as a canker sore.” Adan scraped away the poultice, its efficacy spent. He slung the wet handful of slime into a waiting basin. “Quit griping. Daddy knows what he’s doing.”
Evelyn’s door banged shut and a pair of footsteps came along the stairs. Oh Maker, it was the fucking Nightingale with her. Leliana nodded at Adan and gave him a once over that made him want to pull the sheet up to his chin.
“Any improvement?” Her soft voice gave him the shivers.
Adan wiped his hands on a towel, dumped the spent poultice into the fire where it sputtered then sent a cloud of yellow smoke up the chimney.
“Not really. I know you’re all hoping for a miracle but the,” he snapped his fingers a few times, lost in thought. “The stringy bits on the sides are swollen fit to burst.”
“Tendons?” Leliana supplied.
“It doesn’t inspire confidence, you not knowing proper names,” he called from the bed. If they were going to talk about him like he wasn’t in the room he could make all the snarky comments he liked.
“Do you know the difference in potency between felandaris pollen that grows on the north side of a tree versus a plant on the eastern side?” Adan snapped. “I don’t need to know all the parts of the knee to repair yours. But it’s going to be weeks not days.”
Evelyn gave him a look full of pity. He wearily pushed himself up a little higher on the pillows at his back.
“Thank you, Adan, very much." Evelyn sighed. "I’m sure you have other things to see to this morning.”
“Yeah, I get to start tomorrow’s batch. It’s a good thing you’re rich, Inquisitor.”
And there it was. Evelyn winced at the mention of coin, looked at him guiltily. Leliana slipped a ribbon off an enormous rolled piece of parchment, her cold eyes turned away for a moment. He sucked another mouthful of pain potion out of the bottle. Uvol raised his brows but said nothing as he drifted off, too cowardly to face their scrutiny any longer.
Evelyn woke him with a freshly laundered shirt and a plate of marrow bones and toast.
He patted his grumbling stomach before he pulled the shirt over his head. "Sick of the sight of me already?"
"Hardly." She kissed his cheek. "But as fussy as you are about crumbs in your beard, I thought toast in the hair on your chest would be worse."
The toast rack was silver, shaped something like a dreadnought. It was too foolish to be anything but a gift from someone in the Orlesian court.
"Duc de Brousse," she nodded. "Varric says the Artisan's Guild adore him. Big spender." She sat cross-legged on the bed and picked at the food.
Surely she had eaten down in the Hall. When had she given up inviting him to dine at the long table with Josephine and Cassandra? It must have been a fortnight since she had asked. She knew he would say no every time. But he still liked her asking.
"Must have cost a pretty penny. Looking to cozy up, is he?"
"Have you seen him?"
He hadn't, but her skeptical wince spoke volumes.
"A severed toe in a riverbed is more attractive."
He inhaled crumbs with a surprised snort of laughter, coughed his way through it then wiped his watering eyes. She laughed, too, but he saw the worry beneath it, the way she glanced at the crutch Uvol had brought him.
Done nibbling at the bitter greens left behind on his plate, she rubbed her eyes and padded to her vanity where a half dozen jars sat in neat rows on a filigree tray. Evelyn pried the lids off a few, warmed a dollop of whatever was inside between her palms then rubbed them carefully into cheeks and throat, patted some of it into the skin around her eyes, and even the back of her neck. To get to her shoulders she shrugged out of the dressing gown and pushed the straps of a slippery looking nightie out of her way. The sweet curve of her breast in profile made his heart flop over in his chest. The sting of tenderness was too much, so he put his plate aside with a clatter of silverware.
She turned at the sound and saw him watching and pulled the nightie back into place, cheeks gone pink.
He huffed in disappointment.
"I appreciate the compliment, but you've seen scores of naked women. Read your book, you dirty old thing."
“If you’re starkers there’s nothing better to look at.”
“Flatterer.”
“No, I’ve got good taste, that’s all.” While he was sleeping she'd taken off her jewelry and left it in a neat pile on the nightstand, just as she always did. He picked up the Trevelyan signet with its rearing stallion, for something to fidget. It fit his smallest finger. “And I’ve not seen as many as you’d think.”
She gave him a look that said he was daft for even trying it. But it was true. Evelyn was thinking of tavern girls, of camp followers, of brothels. But those girls were strictly skirt up, bodice down. Nine times in ten they had both been in their shoes, occasionally even a hat. He hadn’t been naked - really bare-arsed, with a lover in a decade, he reckoned. Masks. The thought of fucking in a mask again was bloody awful. The thought of fucking anyone new was awful. You've ruined me for anyone else, she'd said, and whether it was ten days or ten years until fate caught up with him, he was in the same damned boat.
Evelyn blew out the candles around the room one by one, though she left his alone. Back at the vanity she paused, uncertain, with a bottle in hand.
"What?" He took a book from the stack Uvol had left within his reach by the bed. It was one of Varric's.
"Nothing," she insisted. She threw back the covers then kicked her carpet slippers off and settled on the crisp sheets to pour a dribble of oil on each knee.
"Smells good." He watched her decide not to care that he was watching. Was he the first bloke to witness these rituals of hers? The husband, Sigurd, had slept in a whole other room. Down a hallway, around a corner in another wing of their estate. "You'll like Halamshiral."
"Do you think?" Evelyn wrinkled her nose and rubbed oil into her calves. "I expect the stakes will be a lot higher than toast racks and furs."
"Is he a pest? De Brousse?" He couldn't place the man's face. Another pompous git in red feathers, certainly. "Trying to get more than..." She stiffened up. "Would you? If it came to that?"
She put the cork in the bottle of oil, wiped her shining palms on her thighs then pulled the sheets and blankets into place. The longer she took to tell him no the farther his heart climbed up his throat.
"Of course." Evelyn twisted to get her pillows settled just so. "Not him, specifically, he doesn't have those kind of assets. But, yes, if it was the only way."
He was too surprised to say anything. She didn't look straight at him but she was watching from the corner of her eye as she settled under the covers.
"I would tell you first, of course."
"Right," he nodded. He snuffed the candles on the nightstand. The nobility weren't much for fidelity. "Right."
"Is that too much?" She was trying to sound reasonable, level headed but he heard the fright in her voice. She stuck to it though, her mouth a prim little line. "We've never talked about exclusivity. I don't know if I have the right to ask that of you."
"You asked me to save the fucking world for you."
"That was for the cause."
It was on the tip of his tongue to say It was always for you, you daft bint. But instead he pulled her closer by the edge of her nightie until he could tuck her into his side. She smelled delicious. Free from looking her in the eye, he kissed the top of her head and rubbed her greasy shoulder.
"You're all right, aren't you?" She curled into him, her breath tickling his ear.
"I'm all right." He swallowed almost the last of the potion on the nightstand.
"Be careful with that," her voice cracked on the last word.
"What?" There wasn't enough light to see for certain but if he leaned away a bit her eyes looked wet. He cupped her chin and thumbed her lip gently free of her teeth. She laughed it off, wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.
"I've already had a dead husband. My reputation can't afford another accident with a-" Evelyn paused to think about what to call him, then didn't call him anything. "Man."
"You're off in the morning." He squeezed her tighter. "Leave me tucked in, and whoever finds me will blame Adan's potion. Serves him right." Her muffled snort of laughter warmed him alongside the felandaris until she nodded off on his shoulder. The mad urge to wake her, to tell her everything, struck him. He swallowed more pain potion instead.
She was late leaving. All the trunks were down the stairs, the maid and the traveling desk and all of her spare handkerchiefs gone, waiting in the carriage. He'd been packed up and trundled along through the great hall with the rest of her Worship's belongings, only he didn't go as far.
He leaned on the crutch under his arm and looked at the neat stack of shirts and trousers on a bed in his new quarters by the garden.
"Putting all the ladies' pets in one place?"
She turned back from the small shadowed window with a frown of confusion.
"Adan's next door." He didn't want to know what either Adan or Montillard sounded like fucking, but it looked like he was about to. The shirts smelled of starch, he picked one up, shook it out with the hand not holding his crutch. "Where did these come from?"
"I had the seamstress make new for everyone. I can't have us looking like poor relations in front of Celene."
"Sera in fresh togs? Luck with that." He sat heavily on the bed, his bad leg stuck out on the knotted rug. It was too soft. He poked at the mattress.
"Hers cost more than even Dorian. All that plaidweave." Evelyn picked up his new clothes, dropped them in the open trunk by the washstand. Someone had brought up his traveling bag, the stack of books he'd left in the hayloft. She pulled out his whittling kit.
"Leave that," he snapped. "Don't fuss."
"I don't know what else to do!" Evelyn twisted both hands in her long skirt before she caught herself, pulled the Ostwick highborn out to smooth her features into vague annoyance.
His knee throbbed in time with his heart.
"I don't know what else I can do for you before I go," she said in her careful voice.
"Nothing. Sleeping in here won't kill me."
She blinked at him. Over her shoulder, through the open door he could see three Chevaliers, their red plumes nauseatingly bright in the garden's morning sun. One of them kept glancing over, clearly eavesdropping.
"What?"
"Fucking Chevaliers," he spat. "Out there pretending not to listen. Jumped up second-rate nobles, cut their teeth slaughtering peasants down the Dales, didn't they?" A village with nothing but pitchforks to defend themselves wasn't a battle. Wasn't anything but murder.
Evelyn shushed him and closed the door. The gold links of her heavy locket chain reflected a little of the green flare of her mark.
Wasn't this what he wanted, all those years ago? Is this what it's truly like? In Orlais he thought he would fuck his way up the ladder, then ascend above the wife he bought off the Guerlains or the de Lussards. But he was always going to be a hired cock, he wasn't going to sit at the table as an equal. And at the time he told himself he didn't want to.
Did he want to?
The pain potion she brought him from the basket above the fireplace was insulting. He downed it anyway, furious at the pity in her eyes.
"I have to go." The midmorning bells rang and outside his window a page hovered, not sure if he had the balls to knock and interrupt the inquisitor.
"Be careful," he said around the peck on the mouth she leaned down to give him.
"Of course." She gave him her dazzling false smile and opened his door.
Fuck. Shit.
"Hold, hold a moment." He levered himself up out of the quagmire of a mattress with the help of the blighted, embarrassing crutch. Evelyn turned around with her hand still on the latch, a crack of sunlight in her mad hair that had already escaped some of its braids and pins. When he kissed her she sighed into his lips and let the door close again.
"Don't worry so," she tipped her chin up to look him in the eye.
He pulled her in tight with a hand at the small of her back but she stiffened, palms braced on his shoulders so he changed course, went for the crook of her neck instead. She could never resist a string of kisses up to her ear. She squirmed a little, pretended to push him away with a laugh but he felt the jolt run through her when he cupped her cheek in his hand. Neither of them could look at the other but he knew, just from the tremble he got out of her, when she gave in. He should have to work harder for it, for her fingers in his hair, her sweet mouth under his. How long can it last, the ignorance that lets her open up to him like this? She shuddered when he bit carefully at her throat, her ear. She should know better.
Maker, will he see it the moment she does?
No matter what, she'll be the last one he kisses like this. So he took his time. He worshipped the long line of her neck, the hard lines of collarbones, the archer's callus at her right cheek. He squeezed what he could through the ornate bodice of her dress, thumb rubbing until he barely felt a hard nipple press back.
"Oh, stop that," she sighed into the hair above his ear. Her hand crept down to his belt, fingers wiggling underneath. "Mmm, stop it, you dirty old thing."
Her thigh above the line of her stockings was warm. Evelyn shifted a little to let his hand up where they both wanted it. She moaned into his mouth as he took her bottom lip between his teeth and nudged her posh Orlesian knickers to one side.
"There's no time," she insisted, voice shaking as much as the hand at the back of his neck. "No, no time, oh Maker, oh don't stop."
One foot came off the floor and she canted her hips up into his touch so that his fingers slipped down just right, and she wasn't slick yet but she would be, any moment.
"I don't want you going without me," he confessed. Like a fool, like an idiot with the freedom to say what he wanted.
"Neither do I," she closed her eyes on a groan. "Can't you feel that I want to stay?"
"I can feel you," he nodded.
She bit him through his shirt, dangerously close to the old wound on his shoulder. It ached when her teeth grazed it proper but he let her bite down again, took the pain without a sound because fair was fair. He deserved it and worse.
On the other side of the door voices grew a little louder, a little more obvious that people were waiting, that Her Worship was needed. He held the nape of her neck, held her open mouth against him while he drew tender circles between her legs that made her flinch with a shriek muffled by his shirt. She nodded silently, trembled in his arms, her stuttered breaths all the encouragement his conscience could bear. But gods he wanted more.
"Say it," he rested his forehead on the door, with her trapped against his chest.
"What?" she gasped and bit him so hard he knew she was close. She didn't lose herself like that until she was on the edge. "I don't know, oh Maker yes. Please."
"Tell me," he demanded, gone hoarse. What was he saying? The clawing greed pushed him along, he wanted. Something. Any moment now she'd break and take the best orgasm she'd had in ages. She was mad with it, desperate for it, for him.
They both jumped at the sharp knock.
"Get fucked!" he barked at the door.
Evelyn ground against his fingers with a grunt of frustration. His hand was nearly dripping but she pushed him back. "Damn. Damn!" she whispered. "No," she panted, a hand pressed to her heart as she caught her breath. "It's gone. Damn."
He should have taken the moment to step away, to laugh it all off with her: bad timing, the perils of command and all that. But the felandaris was hitting him like a fist, and he pulled both her soft hands to his cheeks, as he never allowed her to do.
"We'll finish when you come home," he promised.
Her startled smile faltered and he saw her consider - whether this was home, whether a place with him in it was home. She thought about it and he saw it didn't fit.