Work Text:
It was an easy enough performance for Brid, these sorts of parties always were: nod, give the occasional warm laugh, make sure her smile went to her eyes, try to look lady-like in the ridiculous silk gown Rolan had—at her own harried request—chosen for her. She was, of course, required to recount an exploit from some time between the nautiloid and the defeat of the Netherbrain every so often. The patriars who had so benevolently arranged this dinner in her honor hung on her every word, each scrambling to be the first one to gasp or laugh when her stories called for it.
But, as much as she loved spinning up yarns about her bravery and cleverness that earned their fawning attention, as much as she loved telling terrible jokes they felt obligated to laugh at, Brid had begun to grow weary of the pressing gazes of old men. And despite her best efforts, no amount of their excellent wine could dull the irritation beginning to bloom in the back of her mind. Just as her posture began to stiffen—Hir Rillyn was slinking in her direction, and if he tried to corner her again, Brid could not be held liable for whatever injuries he might incur—a confident hand slid in a much too familiar way onto the small of her back.
“You watch your wandering h—!”
“A thousand pardons, Lady Durinbold,” Rolan cut Brid off with a honeyed voice, addressing a beautiful elf to his side, “but I promised our savior I would escort her out for fresh air some ten minutes ago. You have my word I’ll find you when we’ve returned.”
Without waiting for any response, Rolan wrapped his arm around Brid’s waist and led her from the sitting room they’d been relaxing in out to a hallway. Brid allowed herself to be pulled around a few corners, occasionally giving Rolan a sidelong glance. He was intensely focused on something she couldn’t see, his eyes snapping back and forth until he seemed to find what he wanted. He took a hard turn into a room that appeared to be a study—an ostentatious desk faced an enormous window looking out over the city—and pressed the door shut behind them.
“Is there some urgent scribing you—”
Brid was again cut off, this time by Rolan forcing her back against the door, his lips crashing into hers. There was no tenderness in the way his mouth moved, just a heated desperation, an irrational hunger. His hands jerked her closer, even while his body pushed her back, and Brid felt a dizzying pleasure spiral from her belly up through her chest.
“I’ve never known you,” Brid said as Rolan’s lips slid down to her jaw, “to skip all the teasing you so love like this, Master Rolan.”
“Seeing you in there with all of them, with all those old fools,” he murmured against her neck, “drove me wild. I couldn’t stand the way they looked at you.”
Brid couldn’t stop the surprised guffaw that came out of her. “I would call you many, many things, saer wizard, but jealous would never have made my list.” She angled her head to give him a grin. “Do you really care if some ancient hounds leer like they might want to fuck me?”
As a response, Rolan nipped at the soft skin below her ear, then spoke in a low voice, “It’s not jealousy—they didn’t look like they wanted to fuck you enough.”
Brid’s head thunked back against the door as the force of Rolan’s desire punched the air out of her lungs. He took the presented opportunity to move his mouth to the column of her throat, his hands sliding around to the front of her bodice and up to the curve of her bust. Brid arched gently into his touch, letting one hand tangle into his hair, moving the other to softly rub a thumb around the base of one of his horns.
“You didn’t seem to have had my same problem,” Brid said, her voice hitching slightly as one of Rolan’s thighs slid between hers.
“Hm?” was all Rolan could manage as he wandered the junction of her neck and shoulder with his teeth, a hand sliding down to grope at her backside.
“The lady of House Durinbold is as lovely as all the whispers about her suggest,” Brid said, “and she seemed rather taken with you, Master Rolan.”
He made a noise against her skin that was somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff. “Taken with what a little novelty I am.”
Actual confusion drove Brid to give Rolan’s hair a light tug, forcing his eyes to hers. “You don’t think the fact that you are clever and handsome and powerful and a plethora of other attractive words is what drew her to you?”
“I think”—Rolan pressed his hips forward, holding Brid more firmly against the door—“she is intrigued that I am all of those things while also being a tiefling.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I’m an interesting plaything to someone like her, to be toyed with and then set on a shelf. A simple curiosity to the rest of them—with most of their curiousness centered on when you’ll grow bored of me.”
A strange emotion burst to life in Brid’s chest, and she suddenly understood much more clearly what Rolan had meant earlier—what was the opposite of jealousy? What was the word for when one grew angry that another would not try and steal some precious treasure? Brid found it difficult, impossible, to imagine looking upon Rolan and not wanting to selfishly dig her fingers into him; to speak with Rolan and not feel the urge to cage and claim him. And to think she would ever grow bored of him, that she would ever be separated from him by any means other than being cut away like stubborn, overgrown ivy—they truly were old fools. Brid’s teeth ground together for a moment.
“If that’s how they feel,” Brid hooked an arm around Rolan’s shoulders and dropped her voice, “then I’m of a mind to drag you back to that wretched room and have you bend me over one of those dreadful couches. Let them puzzle out how long it would take me to find you dull.”
Rolan’s roaming hands had stilled and his breathing had become heavy. Brid could not help but allow her lips to curl up into a smile as she saw how little of his shimmering, yellow irises remained visible. His grip grew tight around her waist.
“Do you mean that?” It was barely a whisper. Brid was certain he could hear her racing heart, and that should have been the only answer he needed, but all the same, she raised her chin and nodded.
One more still moment, the heat of Rolan’s gaze igniting an urgent need between Brid’s legs, and then she was in Rolan’s arms as he strode toward the window. His eyes darted from one side of the window to the other, and after a few hushed words, Brid felt the warm caress of the late summer night’s air against her skin.
They were now on a little terrace, situated on the corner of the mansion in which the dinner was being held. There was a door into a bedroom on their current side of the corner, but rounding to the other side, they found themselves secluded, with no door, and a trellis blocking the rest of the mansion wall. Rolan set Brid down facing the stone balustrade, situating himself against her back, then inching her forward until her hips and waist were pressed against the rail.
“It’s not quite ‘that wretched room,’” his voice was low and hypnotic in her ear, his hand was between her shoulder blades, “but I’m still very able to bend you over.”
Rolan ground his hips against her backside, and Brid could not stifle her hungry groan; even through all the layers of linen and silk, she could feel how stiff he’d already become. She offered no resistance as Rolan pushed her to bend at the waist, her breast meeting the cool stone. Her skirts rustled against her legs, and she instinctively gripped the outside of the wide rail as Rolan hiked them up and over her hips.
“Would you let me expose you like this?” There was a faint ripping noise as Rolan tore away her small clothes, “Let them see all the softest and most delicate parts of you?”
“If it meant they might glare with envy at the man doing the exposing, then yes,” Brid breathed. She did her best to maintain some level of quiet as Rolan slid a finger through her folds—behind her, there was an amused hum.
“Would you let them hear you?”
Brid was almost dizzy with the desire pulsing outward from her core. “I would want to leave them with memories of what the pleasure you give me sounds like, of course.” Rolan’s finger disappeared, but before Brid could complain of its absence, it was replaced by the hot press of his cock. Brid’s cheek came to rest against the rail, her breath devolving to sharp pants as Rolan coated himself in her arousal with slow thrusts.
“Would you be this good, this docile for me?” Rolan’s voice was closer to her now, as he curled over her. “Would you let them see how weak I make you?”
With the promise of being full so close, and Rolan’s whispers burning through her self-control, Brid fought to keep her back from arching, a near-painful and irrational need to perfectly act out this little fiction they had created overwhelming her.
“They would watch as I did anything and everything you asked.” Her fingernails scraped against the stone. “They’d see how desperate I become to hear you say good.”
Rolan filled her in one eager thrust, his own hunger held back for a moment as Brid muffled a cry of relief into her arm, the way he stretched her cunt briefly eclipsing every other sensation. Without a word, Rolan picked up a steady rhythm, bracing himself on the inside of the rail.
“Gods, they would hate me,” he murmured, his smile evident in his voice, “defiling such a celebrated and adored hero in their presence.”
“One must first be pure to be defiled,” Brid gasped out, “and they would only hate the proof of their own inadequacy.” Rolan’s claws dug lightly into her hip, and she took a few steadying breaths. “In their hearts, they would marvel at your beauty.” Rolan at last let loose a soft moan, his forehead settling near her shoulder, his hips beginning to speed up. Brid felt his tail curl around her thigh.
“Would you delight in the infernal parts of me in front of them?” His voice was rougher now, an unfamiliar emotion bleeding into it. As a response, Brid moved a hand up to carefully feel for one of his horns, her fingers trembling from pleasure as they slid around it.
“I would not be kept away from any part of you,” she said, with perhaps more conviction than was necessary, but Rolan did not notice.
“Would you call out my name? Would—” For the first time, Rolan stumbled over his words. He let out a gasp, then shook gently out of her hold. He laid kiss after kiss on her shoulder and back, eventually brushing his lips against Brid’s ear. “Would you call me master? ”
She clenched hard around his length, unprepared for the surge of arousal his question stirred in her, and how quickly she wanted him to know her answer. “I would remind them of your position and power,” Brid could feel prickling in the corners of her eyes, and she wished desperately that he could take more of her, bury himself even deeper. “In this city. Over me.”
The pounding rhythm of his cock inside her became less even. Rolan’s hand left Brid’s hip and his fingers slid into the knot of hair at the nape of her neck, tugging her head up so he could whisper, after a shaking breath, against her cheek.
“Would you tell them you love me?”
This was no longer a fiction, Brid realized. Rolan was revealing something to her, a deep and private fear—that she would come to see him as the ignorant elite did, a mongrel outsider unworthy of prestige, no matter how much it might be earned. That if she were pushed by them to be honest, he would be reduced to a mere infatuation, a flight of fancy. That love from her kind was not something that could ever belong to his.
Brid had spent her life taking childish joy in saying as many things in as many words as she could manage. It had never ceased being a treat watching the light leave people’s—especially Rolan’s—eyes when they realized how long she could prattle on. She even occasionally used her many and sundry words for kindness or affection, as she had for every one of Rolan’s questions tonight.
But now, hearing the honesty and doubt in his voice, Brid decided that for once, simplicity would do.
“Yes.”
Rolan choked out a harsh moan. “Brid, dove, I’m—”
The last of her self control vanished, and Brid shoved her hips back toward his, starved and half-mad with the need to feel his release. His fingers tight in her hair, his face buried in her neck, and her name on his lips, Rolan’s climax overtook him. He thrust his spend, warm and soothing and perfect, deep with a final stutter of his hips, then held himself there as his ragged breathing began to slow. A tear broke loose and slid down Brid’s cheek as he eased his grip.
Rolan drew out of her slowly, pausing for a moment to gaze at the way his come dripped from her slick cunt down her thighs, before cautiously letting her skirts drop a bit so he could turn her toward him. His eyes roved Brid’s face, a bit of color rising in his cheeks as he brushed the errant tear from her skin.
“Let me clean you up.” Rolan sounded shy, sweetly embarrassed by his own sincerity. Brid caught the wrist that had begun to trace out a spell with one hand, and pulled up the front of her skirts with the other.
“If I’m to go back to all those men,” she said, holding Rolan’s gaze, “and if it would be considered improper for you to show me the affection I desire in public,” she released his wrist and slid her free hand between her legs, “then I will keep this piece of you with me, so I may feel you whenever I grow tired of their babble.”
Rolan sighed, and Brid could see his lips tense as he tried to hold back a smile. Dragging her fingers through his spend, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth that turned into a quiet moan against his skin as she circled her clit. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned into her, skimming his lips and teeth along her collarbone, then ducked to the soft skin of her breast.
Sharp pleasure arced through Brid’s body between her fingers and Rolan’s mouth—between his lingering kisses, he would pause to suck greedy bruises to her skin. It only took a few repetitions before Brid found herself balanced on the edge, her legs barely able to hold her up as Rolan whispered in her ear.
“Let me hear you come,” he demanded, “just me. Come just for me.”
Near delirious, Brid pressed her mouth to the skin of his neck as her fingers spasmed against her clit. Her orgasm shivered up from between her legs, through her belly and along her spine, until it forced its way out of her mouth as a loving cry of Rolan’s name. Rolan murmured soft things to her as little aftershocks shot through Brid’s exhausted body, holding her up as she slowly touched back down in their plane.
Once she had blinked back into a state of semi-consciousness, Brid felt herself lifted to sit on the balustrade. Rolan took her hand, her fingers still glistening with their spend, and held it out of the way as he smoothed her skirts down over her legs. Then, his eyes flicking to hers for a short second, Rolan slipped her fingers into his mouth.
Brid’s chest grew tight at the way he leaned into her, took her fingers as deep as he was able. She tucked some stray hair behind his ear, sighing as his lips sealed around her and his tongue slid between her fingers. There was a moment where Brid struggled to hold her hand still, to not press further into his mouth, into this tender inversion of what they had just done. She forced herself to stay still and simply commit to memory the way his brow furrowed in concentration, how hot and wet his tongue was against her skin, the slight but blissful hum she felt reverberate through her bones.
When neither of them could pretend this was an innocent act of cleanliness any longer, Rolan pulled his mouth free, kissing the tips of her fingers before releasing Brid’s hand. They sat in silence for a pleasant minute, each just studying the other, until Rolan straightened up a bit.
“I think we’ve gotten what would be considered the maximum reasonable amount of fresh air for now.”
Brid snorted, then adjusted her posture so Rolan could scoop her up again. “Then I suppose I am willing to be borne once more to battle, Master Rolan.”
They were about to turn into the sitting room when Brid was snatched by her waist and jerked away from the door.
“Rolan,” Brid snapped, “I understand you have a particularly voracious appetite tonight, b—”
For a third time, she was cut off as Rolan shushed her and dragged her over to a large, gilded mirror hanging on the hallway wall. He planted her in front of it, then pointed to her chest. There on one side, only partially covered by her gown’s neckline, was a line of bruises that were rapidly turning an indecent shade of purple. Brid glanced up to Rolan’s face to find him looking genuinely distressed, and only just managed to catch her laugh in her throat.
Brid pulled out the few large pins that held her hair in a rapidly unfurling knot to let it fall loose. She twisted a bit of it back and out of her face, then combed the rest down with her fingers to cover most of her chest, including the bite marks Rolan had so generously left. She looked at him in the mirror with a grin, motioning to her freshened top half.
“You can’t be serious,” Rolan said in a quiet voice, making sure she caught the roll of his eyes. “You still look—very obviously—like you’ve just been fucked.” He rubbed his chin in thought for a moment. “Rather expertly, if I had to guess.”
“Yes,” Brid said, teasingly elbowing him away from her, “and luckily, not a single one of the bored twats in that room knows what being 'rather expertly fucked’ looks like.”
Shaking his head, Rolan at last grinned back at her. “Be that as it may, you still look deliriously—suspiciously—happy.”
Turning and straightening out a bit of his collar that had gone crooked, Brid’s grin softened to a smile. “And luckily, not a single one of them know what that looks like, either.”
Brid hooked his arm around her waist, as he’d had it when they’d left, and marched back to the sitting room, Rolan exactly at her side.