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1800titz · 11 months

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Here is chapter 8! 17.6K words feat. Mr. Business Casual Baring it All, BUTTERFLY WORSHIP, BUTTERFLY WORSHIP, BUTTERFLY WORSHIP, and some more of the cane (except this time it's less fear play and more "Let's make good associations!"). You can tell where I cut off the scene — if I'd kept going, this piece would end up at, like, 25K. I mean, I would have kept going, and going, and going, and going. But the pause just means we'll have more content for the next chapter! I will put a TW for the villain origin story on the cane situation, though. We learn Isla's history with the cane in this one — if it makes you uncomfortable, put yourself first and skip that little block of text. Otherwise, happy reading, and enjoy! (✿◠‿◠)

PREVIOUS PARTS HERE — WATTPAD ALTERNATIVE HERE

If you’re a normal person, with a normal sense of empathy, seeing someone cry would probably cull some form of discomfort.

If you’re Harry, some, very specific circumstances may draw arousal.

This isn’t one of those circumstances.

He doesn’t detect it at first — the way the pattern of her soft breaths thins into becoming detained by her lungs, to stave off huffs. The way she shrivels against him, the smidge of a shift in the position of her head, so that his linen shrouds her face further. The way her soft press over his pec contorts into a fist at the fabric. He doesn’t note the first sniffle. Not until the second one comes.

That’s not innately weird — Harry stares at the ceiling, it feels so far away, and he chalks the sound up to remnants. Typical traces. And then he spares her a glance and realizes she’s holding onto his dress shirt like a lifeline, and he hears the third, and something scary twists in his chest.

Thrown, the dominant cranes his neck to give her a good look, but all he’s capable of viewing, at the angle, is her middle part, so. And she just nudges further into him, as if sensing the motion.

“Hey, hey. Sweetheart,” he ducks his chin a bit and presses his hand to her cheek, just kind of mentally coaxing her to turn back to him, hopeful that just the press of the gentle touch is inclination enough. His accent carries bewildered notes, “Baby. Are you crying? Hey. Talk to me.”

And Isla just shakes her head against him, and that’s — he blows out a breath. That’s the opposite of talking. Kinda nullifies the entire basis of discussion.

There’s this thing that’s inherently strung along with sleeping with Harry, at Indulge. It’s masked, first and foremost — a tagline of anonymity that shuns strings and deflects feelings. It’s not real. It’s real sex. Real, really good sex. But it’s nothing beyond that, and for now, it’s just real, really good sex on a time crunch. The hourglass looms over them — their encounters — every Friday night. Like an invisible, unspoken holograph of peril. At first, it just seeps. It seeps slow, sand slinking through the crevice, from one end to the other, and at first, it kind of doesn’t fucking matter. Because, so much sand, right? So much time. So much time to indulge.

Except, the thing is, eventually there isn’t. Eventually, there’s only grains, and they flit through the cranny as the time flies by, and six sessions morph into one in remainder. And that’s kind of sad, right? That this — that enjoying real, really good sex with Harry, is probably going to happen one more time, contractual obligations concerned. They’ll reconvene, at some point or another, probably. He’ll merge into her cycle of perpetually circulating doms, and she’ll merge into his, of subs. They’ll rotate each other out, fusing when their schedules alott it. And it’ll be normal and fine.

Except — no.

Because everything has started to blend and turn murky, because this doesn’t just feel like really good sex, anymore. Not after drawing the correlation between Eros and Harry — a curly-haired, charming stranger who’d nosily probed his way into her life by interrogating her on her shopping basket contents. Who spent Friday evenings toying her body into submission, and spent the rest of the week lending a helping hand in her house-searching process.

Isla is crying, because it all feels like too much, and too little, all at once. She’s never been burdened with such an intense twisting in her chest linked to someone from Indulge, and if she were in the right state of mind, she’d definitely curb the tightening in her throat and the impending wave of tears until she was at least in the driver’s seat. She’d squeeze the purple-padded steering wheel in the safety of her Corolla and let her emotions crumble and give. Instead, it all sort of splashes out, then and there, because everything is fuzzy, and buzzing, and incomprehensibly uncontrollable. Everything. It’s a coalesce of confusion, and she doesn’t have control over any of it, it seems.

And she doesn’t want to submit to that.

And Harry — well, of course he does all the right things, the best things he could do, given the circumstances, and that kind of just makes Isla break down further. Because she doesn’t want to discuss her feelings, not when they aren’t linked to whatever cruel and unusual sexual punishments he’s brought to the table, standing over her like a cartoonish devil with a bullwhip of braided nylon. And he’s always so open to imbibe, regardless of the lack of tether. Always so eager to wipe her tears away with smooth, pleather-coated thumbs and velvety croons.

If she told him, I don’t want this to end — I don’t want our contract to end next week, he wouldn’t look at her funny. She’s sure of it. Jade would soften through onyx latex, and his pupils would scope over her pitifully ruddy face as he’d wipe away her drool.

Isla can’t do it. Expanding their one-on-one would just fissure the rift further, the one over the surface, and it’d dig deeper into deeper sentiments that she was horrified to recognize and acknowledge inklings of. Because in some ways, maybe just a little — enough to make her sob into his chest, apparently — Isla yearns for …more, beyond the masks. He’s cheeky, and he’s kind, and he just has a way …about him. This particular way, that she’s so sure she’d let him walk her down the streets of San Francisco on a fucking leash. She craves them, those innocent, intimate details to him, all with a sense of curious wonder. She imagines what he’s like outside of Indulge — outside of work and Indulge. She imagines his hobbies, his habits, his friends. She wonders if he sleeps on the right side of the bed or the left — whether he curls up on his side or splays flat on his back. She mulls over whether he prefers coffee or tea, in the mornings. She thinks about Harry picking her up in his Range Rover. She thinks about holding hands with him over a booth in some uncharted little restaurant, in a nook on a side street, with really good paella, sharing tapas while they make jokes and laugh. She thinks about him tucking her away at his place, post dinner, and doing the same vicious, nearly unspeakable things they do at Indulge. Only, she’d have a spare toothbrush in a little cup, beside his own, and she’d spend the night coiled up against his side instead of slipping into her Corolla and driving home to be met with an empty bed.

It’s sad. It’s sad, it’s fucking weird, and it’s insane. It's an uncomfortable fantasy — an odd one, it’s just—

She couldn’t say that to him. Ever.

How absolutely pitiful, Isla thinks, digging her digits further into a fist at his button-up, unable to stifle the sobs that jolt her shoulders. How absolutely pitiful, that all good things, eventually, must come to an end.

“Baby, baby. Making me worried. Did I hurt you?”

Baby — GAAAAH. She’d like to sink into the mattress until she slinks through and her body’s only unveiled on the opposite end — away from his prodding inquiries. The young woman shakes her head, side to side, her only response for his peace of mind. The crease that’d carved between his brows doesn’t let up with the notion, though.

Okay. Seeing the young woman — feeling her, lachrymose, against him, weepy and nuzzling to seemingly ward off his questions, incites trepidation to swirl in own chest. They were fine — everything was fine, only moments prior. He’d checked in with her, during the scene, coaxing her to nurse a beverage even when she’d brazenly refused, at first. When he’d undone the cuffs, she’d been alright. When he was petting down her bare back, the only rise, beneath his palm, was slow and controlled as she took dazed breaths. His face twists. Had it been something he said, maybe? He thinks back, mentally listing through precedent coos, for any insinuation of anything disheartening — anything that would trigger this type of reaction. Maybe something, between the lines, he’d overlooked? But — no. Nothing immediately crests behind his skull. It’s all sort of a script (as insensitive as it sounds) — a general baseline of phrases to be said during aftercare with any of his partners. He slips into it, almost like autopilot, with the comedown. It’s difficult not to, when it’s routine. Though, his words are never false. He is proud of her — she does make him happy. The point is, everything he’s said tonight, he’s said before. She’s stiff against him, she holds her breaths, and when they spill she shakes like a leaf. The cycle repeats.

The dominant regards her, for another moment, face twisting with pity, and eventually settles back against the mattress, a newfound tenseness in his jaw. He can take a hint. She doesn’t want to discuss, evidently, (though, they absolutely will be discussing this when he’s able to lure a reaction from her beyond a tremble and what can barely be deemed a headshake), but for now, the man settles on cradling her and just letting her cry, as uncomfortable as his own lack of action may feel to him. And it is, it’s so fucking uncomfortable — because if he can’t find the root, then he feels like he can’t fix the issue, and he has to fix the issue. It’s his job. He can’t find the root when she's sobbing against his heartbeat, (which has picked up in pace considerably since he’d made the observation), and he’s just laying there shushing her.

“S’alright, darling,” he promises, eclipsing his own notes of worry from his vocal chords with a firm baseline of gentle reassurance, fingertips gliding down the back of her ribcage, “You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

That just makes her cry harder — so. Okay. He handles her tenderly in his palms, then, for a bit, warding off the buds of melancholy that bloom within him by pressing his chin against her head, traces of a frown looming between his brows and faint lines of a grimace shaping his cushiony mouth. Eventually, though, she stops quivering beneath his arms, her sobs stifling into sniffles and simmering off. Even still, though, he bites his tongue, worried to launch off another episode of tears. He doesn’t say anything, not until she says, against his chest, “Sorry, sorry.”

The way her voice is small, and teemed with chagrin makes his heart swell, in a sad kind of way.

Isla hears the rumble of his voice from his chest, as he clears his throat, as if to ground sure notes into his cadence before he tells her, “Nothing to apologize for, pet.”

He strokes at her hair all caring-like, too, and that just makes her feel worse. Isla sighs. There definitely is. An abrupt influx of emotions, post a scene, has to be at least a bit disturbing for him to witness. Unsettling, maybe, at best. She sits up as it clears. She still feels shit, mostly, but now the intensity of her sadness has dimmed, and it enmeshes with embarrassment.

“Fuck — sorry,” the submissive tells him again, rubbing a hand over her face. The lace is sopping, but to a bystander, it bleeds with black, so she supposes it won’t make a difference to the naked eye, anyhow. Just to her face. Doesn’t feel very nice. She sniffles. God — a whole little patch of his shirt has sodden through, and normally she’d be all too keen to notice the shapes and shadows over his skin through the wet white, but it just makes her feel worse, it all makes her feel so much worse—

“What’s got you so upset, baby?” she’s snapped out of her staring daze as he shifts over the sheets, using core strength to brace himself onto his forearm. The dominant strokes a bundle of hair strands, that’ve grown frizzy and unkempt, off of her forehead, his gaze full of concern, “Talk to me, hm?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” is the response he gets in return — another unnecessary apology. At least, this time, she tacks on some form of explanation. The young woman pinches the bridge of her nose between the pads of her thumb and forefinger, sniffles loudly, and tells him, “That was just a— I don’t know. Intense scene, I think. Didn’t mean for all of it to come out like that.”

It’s not a lie, Isla thinks, in its entirety. The scene was intense — it’d gotten her into a vulnerable headspace, and in turn, her emotions had brewed and bubbled to the surface amidst it all. There’s a bit more to it than just that, but. What she doesn’t blatantly let on isn’t inherently called lying.

Just glossing over the truth, Isla thinks, as his eyes soften and flit over her face.

“You’re quite pretty when you cry, but when you cry like that, it makes me worried,” Harry tells her, his lips crooking, traces of joking interlacing the syllables of his concern.

Instead of settling for the jesting fragment, Isla settles into his concern, letting the waves of it lick at her until she’s basked by chagrin. “I know. Sorry.”

“Hey — don’t apologize, darling. S’just intense? That’s it?” the dominant lifts his hand to stroke over her digits, lax in her lap, his jade searching for something — anything, “You promise?”

No.

“Yeah,” Isla tells him, bobbing her head in a nod to subdue his worries. Because eyes are windows — they say more than any other piece of her face could, but they can’t give anything away if they’re out of sight. She flexes her fingers into squeezing at the placating, sweet pet of his own digits. The submissive sighs, and the inhale she takes through her nose still sounds horribly congested. “Yes. I promise.”

See — that part, vehemently, audibly promising — that’s teeming into the territory of lies. The young woman stifles and shoves down her guilt by wearing a brave face, letting her lips quirk up, hoping the notion isn’t as half-hearted as she feels. Perhaps it’s less of a sin to lie than it would be to admit she’s past the interest of protecting anonymity, with him.

“Promise. All good, now.”

Harry regards her in a way that inclines her to believe he doesn’t accept it at face value. He chews into his cheek, letting her squeeze his hand a bit longer, before he tugs it away and uses his palm to stroke over her thigh, instead.

“If I did something,” he starts, slowly, casting his gaze from the touch to her face — and his eyes, they’re so piercing, then. They’re soft, they’re full of comfort, but they read into her, just in this way that he does. As if he can see behind her mask — as if it’s composed of mesh. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, love?”

Something twists in her chest.

“Of course.”

“Because if I ever do anything that’s not a vibrant green light—“ he doesn’t take his sight away from her as he talks, gentle in tone but with this firm, inherent nature, “anything you’re not into, at all,” he glances to the caress, Isla watches his tongue peek out to glide against his lips, he squeezes and looks back to her, “I need you to tell me. Even if you realize after. Even if it doesn’t seem important. S’important to me.”

I kissed you, Isla wants to tell him, her throat growing dry, like it’s become parched with cotton balls. His eyes scope over her, and she feels like she can pinpoint what he’s vaguely referencing without his hints. You didn’t break a limit. I kissed you.

But that admission opens doors. It opens doors into conversations, about her boundaries, about the meaning behind her boundaries, and what it means for her to take the leap and break past them. She doesn’t wanna do it. She can’t do it. Slowly, Isla shakes her head. She feels as if her mouth is the Sahara desert.

“No. Everything was good. I promise. Just a little intense, and I think I slipped a little too far. It’s happened before—“

Lies. She’s never just cried like that, after a scene, after she was fine. No one’s drawn that reaction.

“—I can get really emotional when I …slip like that.”

Less lies. More truth to her statement, but. Still not the entirety. But she’s not under oath, she supposes, so she can …twist and dilute the details. Harry looks over her, pupils roving, for a second, as if he isn’t keen to just accept the answer. And despite it all — despite her demure to gloss over the broken boundary entirely (it’s her boundary to break) — he still brings it to the table, like he’s unable to gloss over it himself. Isla wants to bash her face against the headboard.

“And the kiss,” he says slowly, jade bouncing from her face to his gloved palm, fondling over her thigh.

Because we talk. That’s what we do, his words from nights prior ring behind her skull.

His irises sparkle like emerald stones beneath the sweep of his lashes, “That didn’t have anything to do with it, pet?”

“I kissed you,” she expels in a breath, after a second, refraining from ogling her fingers and picking at her nails — a telltale, she can’t give him that. Not when she’s trying to hide an elephant behind a napkin. Her voice is much more sure on the latter, “Not the other way around. You didn’t break any limits. I promise.”

Harry gnaws into the corner of his mouth. Isla half-expects the man to prod further, to dredge deeper into the sentiments behind the fissure in her self-imposed limits, but he doesn’t need to. Isla can see the gears turning behind his skull, slotted like puzzle pieces, cycling with his thoughts. He doesn’t say anything. Not for a moment. There’s a quiet moment, where he kind of just pets at her skin sweetly and mulls over the words. The two slip into a kind of limbo, then — words with sentiments unsaid. They hover over them, and they loom alongside the hourglass, in oblivion.

A ham and cheese croissant, an oat milk latte, and a book about pain-slut-ism (sort of, there’s a bit more to it than that) — that’s what Harry and Isla bond over the next time their windows overlap in a public space.

She’s on her lunch break, and she didn’t grab lunch from home this morning, but today the sun beams down instead of being shrouded by clouds as a torrential downpour annihilates the streets, so it’s all sort of okay. Isla’s in line at the bustling cafe across the street from her office — second in line for the register, actually, with a whole myriad of patrons waiting patiently behind her, nearly stood up to the welcome mat beside the glass door, and the young woman is cradling a physical edition of Hold me Down by Sara Taylor Woods. Great read — probably not the greatest to be caught perusing in public. But the imagery over the cover is innocuous enough for her to catch up on some light reading at one of those little, round tables, by a window, despite the content.

There’s a lot going on, around her — volume-wise — and she’s become zoned out as she stares ahead at the back of the customer ordering. At least this one isn’t wearing unsightly, sagging jeans. Just a crisp, white dress shirt. Slacks. Tailored, of course. Very smart — lush, in fact. Tall Stranger is put together. Isla’s only snapped out of her daze when a familiar inflection beckons her.

“Isla?”

Her pupils flit. Harry Styles has turned. He’s the customer ahead, whose back she’s been ogling for the better part of the last two minutes. Harry Styles — her charming realtor, her bane of sexual demise. How opportune, universe — truly. Yes, let’s flip the day upside-down at eleven AM. Dimples dig into place beside his soft smile as he regards her warmly. She blinks out of her stupefied daze, and then her face morphs.

“Oh— hi! Jeez. Small world.”

“Small world,” the man grants her a little nod of agreement, jade sparkling as it stays fixed on her. His pupils roam down to her book, then, pasted between her arm and her side. He eyes the title. Hold me Down. The irony is blistering. Harry clears his throat, “Catching up on some reading?”

Isla blinks, sparing a glance to her book, and after a beat of lull that goes on just too short to be deemed an uncomfortable pause, she curbs and mentally wills her face from turning ruddy. “Yeah. Yep.”

And then Harry’s chin pivots toward the girl working the register, and he tells her, “Sorry, could you add her order onto mine, if you don’t mind?”

Oh — Oh. No—

“Oh, you don’t have to do that—“ Isla starts, quietly, but her speech is stifled by the expectant looks encircling her. She starts again, her smile small and uncomfortable and polite, “Um. Just a small iced latte. Oat milk. Thank you,” she rocks forward onto her toes, and dips her cadence into a lower volume as she steps forward and tells the cashier, “and could you just add a ham and cheese croissant onto a separate tab—“

It’s a poor attempt. Harry clears his throat. “Same tab,” she hears him say, from beside her, and Isla physically bridles her grimace. The young woman sighs, a little indignantly, because why was he buying her lunch— but then the girl working the register just taps it all into the POS and casts her gaze towards the curly-headed brunette. Isla looks up at Harry from beneath her lashes, a bit sheepish, “Thank you.”

“Sure. S’my good deed of the day,” he shoots her a look, wearing a cheeky smile as he taps his card over the pad, and then stuffs it back into his wallet, tucking that away into a pocket. He motions with his arm, “Any thoughts on the property I showed you?”

“It’s a great property,” Isla tells him, towing behind as the man winds around the bend in the counter to stand ahead of the sill — the next customer steps up into line. It’s humdrum in the making. The world spins. “Definitely at the top of my list.”

“Yeah?” he spares her a glance, “That’s good to hear. Mulnich or Sweeger?”

“Both,” the young woman responds, after a moment of musing, “But I think — maybe Sweeger, a little more.”

“Really?” Harry’s mouth quirks, passing her a straw and her respective beverage before taking his own as it pops up on the sill, “I would’ve thought Mulnich, for sure.”

“They’re — thank you — both great, but. I don’t know, that rope swing,” Isla tells him with a shake of her head. Really, it’d been the sheer space of the backyard, the vaulted ceilings, the renovations, the pretty palette of neutral tones, the distance from the heart of the city — but she just can’t afford to let the joke slip past without wringing it a bit. It’s worth it, Isla finds, as the corners of his mouth buckle in response, and she has the pleasure of being graced with his dimples.

“That’s the selling point for you, innit,” he motions out with his cup, showcasing perfect, beaming white teeth in a grin before he takes a sip of his coffee — black, simple, satiating, “A rope swing?” his lips curl over the lip of the lid. It’s kind of scalding hot, but being around her, in unsuspecting circumstances, sort of sends a chill down his spine, anyhow, so he supposes it’s all got a strange way of balancing out. Can’t say some inane shit if he’s burned his taste buds off.

“Mm,” Isla hums, wrapping her lips over the end of the straw and nursing a sip — chilling, in comparison to Harry’s beverage. Her croissant, warm in its wrapper, slides through on the counter, and she wraps her hand over it.

“Is it any good?”

“Sorry?”

“Your book, love,” the man grins, “I’ve been trying to get into reading more, and I’m really looking for recommendations.”

“Oh,” her eyes widen a smidge, a nervous note of laughter leaking into her cadence, “I don’t know if—“ those same eyes scope over the book pressed against her, “I mean, yeah it’s good. Really good, actually. But it’s,” Isla clears her throat, “It’s kind of a romance, so I don’t know if… I don’t know that…”

The young woman discovers Harry staring at her, then, partly expectantly, and majorly amused. Christ. She wishes the ground would swallow her whole, then. Explaining that her current re-read was a BDSM-centered erotica focused on the pleasures of exploring masochism to her dominant-who-doesn’t-know-he’s-her-dominant was not the way she thought she’d be spending her lunch break.

His lips twitch. “What’s it about?”

”Learning that being yourself is okay,” the young woman tells him — that explanation comes easily enough. It’s the same reason the book is one of her favorites. Sure, the erotica is great, and the writing is brilliant, and the character details, their actions, their methods, their hearts — it makes it easy to fall in love with them. But the main message, all about learning to be yourself, that the things others say, the journey to the climax (pun unintended), the journey of the protagonist’s foils and struggles, and the subsequent resolution — that makes the book for Isla.

“It sounds beautiful,” the dominant-unclad tells her, amusement lacking as his features soften into something …serious, and open, and curious, “Can you tell me more?”

Well. Not that she would prefer not to discuss masochism in a bustling cafe, but. Honestly, she’d prefer not to discuss masochism in a bustling coffee shop. But then her counterpart just sort of looks at her with those eyes that speak volumes, the same ones she’s grown so familiar with, but they don’t say anything. Not in the way they do during a scene, glinting with mischief. They’re just curious, interested, bemused, open. She glances about herself. The patrons are consumed with themselves, and for those who wear headphones and browse through their laptops in silence, there’s five more who chatter away, and the baristas mill as the line grows lengthier and lengthier. Nobody is going to listen in on Isla discussing the adventures of masochism. And, well. She blinks up at him. If it wasn’t Harry, and she wasn’t positive that he’d beat her with a strap in a fetish club two weeks ago, even if he wasn’t aware that she was the one wearing the lacy mask, she’d probably reject the idea, but. Isla’s well aware that her spark notes are not going to leave him thinking that she’s weird for enjoying that kind of literature.

“It’s all about this girl that, well, she has these,” the young woman follows Harry as he ambles towards one of the tables, gaze fixed on her entirely to cue that she’s to tail him, and a pinch works between her brows, “desires. Like, she’s into pain, and she doesn’t know how to cope with it properly. Like, she’ll go into the gym for hours on end to feel it, and wear a rubber band on her wrist, and — well, actually, it’s kind of dark. I don’t want to spoil anything, but at some points it’s mentioned that she goes really far to get this pain that she’s craving.”

She blinks. Harry is still with her. He scootches out a chair for her and then sits in the one across. Isla takes her seat, and the legs scrape over the tile loudly as she scoots the chair in.

“But she also has all this other stuff going on in her life, like — she has this awful relationship with her father and she goes to this God awful therapist, right. Like — terrible therapist. And everyone, the entire time, is just trying to dissect her and tell her that she’s not healthy, and that everything she feels is wrong,” Harry watches as a crease works its way between her brows, enthralled by her passion. There’s something she’s related to, in this story — he can tell, and he listens to her explain, “and, well. She meets this guy at the beginning of the book named Sean. And despite everything she’s heard her entire life, and everything she keeps hearing, Sean is trying to show her the entire time that it’s totally normal to like what she likes and, like, through meeting him she learns to handle these desires she has in a healthy way, and he really alters her self image in a positive direction.”

”Does it have a happy ending?”

The paper crinkles beneath Isla’s palm. She almost unveils her sandwich, but doesn’t.

”I — well, I don’t wanna spoil it, but it does, yeah. I just really like the message behind the book. Because when you read between the lines, it’s got so much more meaning than just, like, a love story with kinky sex,” she looks down at her drink, a pinch working over her brow bone as she verbally expands on her thought process, “It’s a journey about being yourself, and that it’s okay to be yourself.”

There’s a moment of lull. Which — technically there isn’t, not around them. The world still mills and bustles with pedestrian routine — a coffee machine dings, a wrapper crinkles, shoes scuff over the tile and chatter flows in overlapping waves over the soft electro-indie leaking from the speakers overhead. There’s a pause between them, though. Isla feels like, maybe, she’s said something too much, or maybe he thinks she’s strange for her ardent attraction to pages depicting a bunch of pain-slut-ism erotica, but then she shoots him a peer from the nervous stall she’d settled on with her latte, and he’s just …watching her.

“You’ve convinced me,” the soft smile that toys at his cushiony mouth has her heart speeding up a smidge, “S’going in the kindle cart.” And then he casually fishes out his phone. The young woman watches him scroll through a few tabs, silent, until the pads of his thumbs swipe over the LED display, like he’s typing, and Harry says, “Hold…Me Down…by?” and shoots her a glance through his lashes, chin dipped.

“Sara Taylor Woods,” Isla supplies, crossing her legs beneath the table. It digs into her knee a bit, in a nice, grounding way. His gaze flits away, back to the screen.

“Sara Taylor…Woods,” the man thumbs through his phone for a bit longer before he casts his gaze up to her and tells her, cheekily, “I’ll give you my review when you call me about putting in an offer for that property.”

She bites into her cheek to stifle her smile and rolls her eyes, “I’m not sure about the property yet.”

“Fine, you can use my number to set up a formal book club, then, since you have it.”

Slowly, Isla doffs the wrapper from her croissant, and laughs before she quips, “Is a two person book club really a book club?”

“Fine, we can go out to dinner, and I’ll happen to give you my review on the book,” the left corner of his mouth jolts up, crookedly, and he tacks on, when she blinks at his proposition, “and then we’ll talk about the property. How’s that sound?”

Isla just sort of stares a little, kind of stupefied. Was he — was this…was he asking her out on a date? She’s unsure if she’s supposed to be offended that he was pursuing another woman, even if it was herself, just in a …different context, by proposing a date when they had a sexual arrangement (a whole contract, in fact), or if, maybe, she should be flattered that he was asking her out on a date. She nearly stuffs her croissant back into its paper confines.

“Oh— I… like a…?”

“I’m asking you out to dinner,” the man supplies, irises intent and intense upon her. He wears soft traces of a smile as he casts a glance to his beverage — taller than her own, whatever it is, and the young woman watches his ring clad digits stroke down the papery cup. “How does next Thursday sound?”

Next Thursday — Isla wracks her brain, mulling as if there’s a viable reason to do so. Her Eros was asking her to dinner — if need be, she’d clear her schedule to make room. She refrains from picking at her cuticles and keeps her voice ludicrously even and nonchalant when she tells him, “Okay. Yeah, that should work.”

“Sick. Thursday, next week.”

Sick.

Sick, I think we’ve covered all the bases.

His mouth quirks, “I’ll text you,” the man’s shoulders jump once he presses the lip of the lid to his mouth, and he swallows the warm liquid before he tacks on, “the details for the dinner — not my book review, mind you. While I’ve got you here, though, any other literary recommendations?”

“I have a request,” Isla says, her arms slung over his shoulders.

Eros is sat back, braced with locked elbows and palms planted, on the Scary Sheetless Mattress — a routine spot of many rendezvouses and discussions, it seems — in the Dungeon.

“I’m all ears, darling,” the dominant tells her, head cocked and mouth crooking lewdly. This is a thing — it’s their thing. Their …last thing. Isla stuffs the unpleasant reminder back into the dark dells — she won’t let it get her down. Besides, he’s asked her out to dinner — maskless. Unbeknownst, perhaps… probably, actually, but. All the same, in a way.

It’s why she brings it to the table now. Because, if it’s their last thing, at least for the time being, she’d like to explore something new.

“I want to…” she licks out at her lips, and Harry watches the tongue swipe hungrily, “A couple weeks ago, you…”

“I…?” he blinks at her, raising his brows behind the latex expectantly, a tad teasing.

“Well. You talked about the… changing the association that I have,” Isla swallows, making a valiant effort to stifle the butterflies that bloom in their flume and flutter along her insides, “with the cane.”

She expects some sort of reaction. Something — maybe not as far as his eyes brightening, but something settling into curiosity, or some form of ardor, something with intensity beside a blank gaze. In lieu, she gets nothing. There’s no shift in his body language, or his touch, or tone, or the verdant of his gaze. He stays a blank slate.

“Mm.”

“And I wanted to explore that,” Isla tacks on.

“Okay. We can do that,” he jerks his chin in a little nod, and then cocks his head as she continues.

“Just don’t — I mean, don’t beat me with it,” she tenses up a bit, her eyes widening — though he can’t see, behind the lace — for emphasis, and her knees shift over quilted stitching and rosettes.

The dominant’s mouth crooks, and he reassures her, intentions pacific, “M’not gonna do that.” And then he lifts a hand to pat at her hip. His oddly ominous words wear an almost unfitting, placatory tone when he tells her, raising his eyebrows, “But. You’ll have to trust the process. Yes?”

Isla takes a bated breath, and tries to stave off the chill that wracks down the knobs of her spine with the insinuation — if we do this, we’ll do it my way, and it’ll be uncomfortable, at least at first. But the apprehension that teems her is welcomed. Like the kind before jumping off of a cliff into deep, warm waters below. She gives a little nod, “Okay.”

“Okay,” she watches his strawberry tongue glide out over his pillowy, pink mouth. Eros traces his touch over her hip, then, sitting up a smidge to encompass the motion when he prods, “Can you tell me a bit more about the …villain origin?”

His mouth quirks up, and he smooths a hand over her waist, “Y’don’t have to. But I’d like to know.”

It’s — she’d sort of expected the inquiry with her suggestion. Of course he’d want to dig deeper to comprehend her traumas if they were going to push against them. And it’s not like the recollection coaxes this horrifying unnerve in her — it was just a bad play. A bad call — on her part, on the dom’s, in the scene. A nudge on limits that’d breached and marred, at the time, but she wasn’t fouled-up past the point of discussion with it. It sucked, but when you’re trying loads and loads of new, scary, dangerous things, something can always go wrong, and Isla knew that — sort of from firsthand experience. It’s how you learn your limits, after all. That was her wrong thing. Except, when you’re learning limits, the routine goes: you try something, you go, shit, I didn’t like that, and it ends there. Except it didn’t. Her hesitancy flourished, and she nourished it with the cycle, and it grew and towered, until its roots were intertwined in her like her veins, and she couldn’t pick them out.

But it didn’t all start out that way.

Titan was a nice guy. Nice guy, but the label wasn’t to be confused with his inclinations as a dom. In the dom aspect, keyword, he was mean. But in every other circumstance, Titan was nice, with his spiffy white sneakers, and his golden pendant on his golden chain. He’d hold the door for her, and sometimes he bought her a mocktail, and he always gave really, truly, beyond adequate aftercare. He was good with that. Titan was a routine she’d slipped into post the exit of Artemis — her first dom experience outside of the familiar. He was a good trial run — a really good trial run, and Isla was never left unsatisfied post his cruel affections. And the thing with Titan, just like it was with Artemis, was that Isla was all too eager to try new things. She was still fresh-faced to the scene, at the time, but she knew just enough to where she became comfortable to push. And Titan liked that — he liked pushing her, and he liked that she was willing to push herself. He was a sadist, true in form, but he was careful. He was good, and he was careful, and he was really thorough about everything.

Isla wasn’t.

Isla liked the push — the push she gave herself, the push on buttons, the push on limits. Exploration — it felt like. Adrenaline, alive, sans common sense, back then. Because Isla was eager, and she was flippant, and she didn’t understand that body cues were to be read with intent caution. Titan let her push herself. It wasn’t his fault, innately. She was fresh-faced, but she wasn’t fresh to Indulge, and she knew all about the implements she liked, and how she liked them, and just the way she wanted to be coddled and grounded post whatever new thing they tried in a night. He’d stand over her with a flogger and it felt like terror in its purest, rawest form, but there was a safety to it — like melting back into a plush, red seat at a theater showing of Paranormal Activity in 3D. The fear could bite, but it couldn’t mar beyond play. Right?

The cane was something Dan Sever never wanted to explore. He was always a little weird with it — a little weird with marks. And canes, sometimes even with a solid groove of warm-up, left stripes — and sometimes those would bleed, if you weren’t careful. It was kind of funny, in an ironic way, Dan Sever comically stood over her with all sorts of terror-inciting toys, sans the ability to stomach the thought of blood, which. That was never Isla’s thing, anyways, but she sort of found it interesting that Dan didn’t even enjoy leaving finger-pad-shaped bruises over her hips. Dan liked control. He liked having control, he liked seeing her pain, he liked seeing her pleasure, and he liked being in control of it all. But Dan didn’t like the really intense, sort of hardcore stuff, per se. So, anyways, Isla didn’t delve into that toy — not until Titan, who was all too eager, just like Isla.

They started slow — the first time wasn’t it. The first time she’d been warmed up well, and she’d received maybe ten strikes with it (probably, not even — probably nine, but the memory is hazy) that left pretty stripes over the backs of her thighs, and that was that. It hurt, but there was this bloom of pain she was enthralled by, and she fell in love with monitoring the marks morph, over the course of the week in her bathroom mirror until their next liaison, in the same way she’d fallen in love with Indulge. She couldn’t let it go. So she asked for it again, and she’d read up, on the amazing, spectacular internet (which knew all answers on everything) that a cold caning would cause far more intense bruising. Which sounded nice, because the marks would last longer. It’d hurt more, sure, but this was all a very …controlled environment.

So she’d brought the concept to the table with Titan. He entertained it. The second time was definitely a further nudge into fuck-this-sucks-territory than the first had been — she cried pretty easily with it, but it was a short session and the marks to admire over the following week or two were well worth it, Isla deemed. And the tide of endorphins with that raw kind of pain was unfathomable, almost. It was like bliss. How did you like the scene? Titan had asked after, when he’d coddled her out of her teary spell. Isla was on her stomach, and she’d shot a weak, dazed peer over her shoulder at the little blooms of aubergine in thin lines, and—

Yes. Just — yes. How she liked it, the young woman wasn’t too sure, but she did, undeniably. She liked it.

Introducing the cane as a punishment had been Titan’s idea — not her own. And it wasn’t this devious, out-of-pocket suggestion sculpted from his mind based on his own cruelties and thin air — they’d already explored it in different contexts, and Isla had enjoyed it, so the prospect wasn’t as terrifying as it would’ve been had she not been exposed to the implement, prior. They discussed it before the scene began — an informal negotiation. She doesn’t remember what had been the catalyst — a disorderly series of comments, on her part, or something, maybe, so he’d hauled her across the room by a firm hold on her upper arm and bent her over one of the leather-padded benches (in a room since renovated). The warm up was his hand, first, and then they worked their way up to a short session with a little, rectangular shaped paddle that would kiss her backside with a bite. The cane was one of those long, thin, switch-y ones, but it didn’t innately terrify her. She felt the warp in her, when everything started to grow fuzzy and floaty on the high of endorphins — when it’d seep into the marrow of her bones and she was just left pliable. It wasn’t entirely either party’s fault — Isla was floaty, and Titan didn’t space the strikes out enough, and there had been this rift that’d grown between them in the communication process over the course of the caning. And the thing with the whole incident was that Titan had warned her — he’d warned her that it would hurt more, he’d warned her that it was important to listen to her own cues. The first few were fine — they made her gasp, and rise up on her toes, and claw at the padding over the bench while her knuckles grew white. And then the sixth one hurt, and the seventh hurt worse, and the eighth felt like red. She wasn’t sure what had caused the sudden morph of a green light into a blazing crimson, but something had. It felt fiery red — it felt like a yellow that’d shifted, and still, even as the stoplight hit red, she hurtled past the white line and ran it. And then ninth was just one past red, and then the tenth—

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not inherently — it was just one of those freak-accidents that was sort of bound to happen when you’re doing a power-exchange with loads, and loads of scary-looking things that have the potential of culling serious levels of pain. She knew that, but she was still kind of incapable of reassuring Titan as he roved over her hands, after, his hair in wild disarray and his eyes wilder with the self-imposed recognition of danger. And later, when he was holding her, and she cast her gaze up to him, his gaze wasn’t nearly as wild, but it was tired and worn, distant and mulling.

There’s always this initial discomfort that settles, at first, when a boundary is broken. Because, what can you do, really, besides learn from it? It can torment both parties in different ways, and sometimes it’s much more difficult to bounce back from than other instances.

They worked past it. They didn’t play with the cane anymore.

Her interest in the fear-play aspect didn’t spawn until months later, when she was playing with a different dom, and he’d stood ruminating over the wall of implements. His hand had stroked over a cane — a long, wooden one in beige-y hues, and her hair had literally stood on end at the sight, chills erupting over her arms and her throat growing dry on her swallow. He hadn’t done more than smoothed his fingertips over it, glance momentary in timespan, before he moved on and culled a paddle — but it was enough for this peculiar sense of dread to bloom within her. And more peculiar, maybe — the excitement that ensued as the dread ebbed. It was like… liquid relief. She swallowed it, and it left her rejuvenated, and jittery, and—

It was weird. It was really just …something odd, but after that, every time he’d waltz back over to that wall of implements and drag his fingers over the varieties, she’d sort of …perk up a bit. And watch. She’d take that shot of adrenaline, and it would run through her veins, spiking her heart rate as he mused, and she’d chase it with relief when he passed over the toy. Sometimes she’d sort of hope he’d sift through the options and elect one of the canes, in a weird, half-hearted, sort of way. He never would — it was on her list of limits, pre-discussed. Of course, he never would.

But that was the start of it.

And then came Hercules — and she’d explored the interest with him, baring her vulnerabilities with him tentatively in negotiation. Because it was weird, right? This thing, it freaked her out, so why would she feel this bizarre interest in chasing after that fear. Hercules didn’t make her feel weird about it. Hercules just told her that it was all cool — Hercules was the one who had really introduced her into the fearplay aspect. And at first, the dread stemmed from the discomfort of the memory ingrained — she’d remember the way it had made her feel, and it made her pulse quicken. Eventually though, it became as if she was classically conditioned to have a sudden influx of adrenaline. The attachment of the memory faded, and, as if she was expecting to experience the hormonal release, it began occurring on its own volition. Now, just the sight of the implement beside her incited her nervous system to go on overdrive. But, she found that she liked that, too. That rush of adrenaline — like the drop on a roller coaster.

Isla tells him the story, barring the crude, verbose details, half-expecting to see something in his face contort, even a smidge, and twitch at the mention of another play partner. But nothing happens. His eyes stay a blank slate, open and imbibing of her uncomfortable past with the implement while he listens quietly. Halfway through, Isla slips into the routine of picking at her cuticles — telltale inklings of her apprehension, and the dominant’s gaze skids to the motion, bridling a verbal command for her to stop. She does it on her own, eventually, and her shoulders rise in a shrug, and she casts her gaze up to him as as the tale comes to a close. For a moment, Harry doesn’t say anything. His pupils roam over her, over her face, down the column of her throat, over her stomach, but by that point the motion of his sight seems to be absent-minded — hand in hand with his musing. Finally, he sighs.

“‘M’sorry that happened to you, pet,” the man draws with a crooked knuckle in over her cheekbone, a frown painted over his lush mouth — the digit grows laxer with his sweep, and eventually he’s drawn a line down her jaw with the pad of his forefinger.

It sort of tickles — his touch — and the softness behind it incites a warmth to flourish in her chest when she brushes off the discomfort of the story and tells him, “I mean, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Kinda bound to happen if you’re not careful enough.”

Harry gives her a half-sad sort of look, like she’s not wrong, and he doesn’t know much more he could add to the conversation. He slides his palm over her hip, and casts his gaze down, lips parting as if he’s about to say something — and then he just stops. His mouth purses. Eventually, he does talk.

“I guess. I wouldn’t say bound, though. I feel like I get it, with you — you were new to it, and you were too eager. But he should’ve been more careful when it came to picking up on your cues. Especially when playing with something like that.”

“Sure,” Isla concurs, placing her hand on to his cheek and thumbing at the open zipper over his eyes. The pad of her digit focuses on the little fragment over the bridge of his nose, and she wishes, with a blip of disappointment billowing, that she was able to stroke over his cheekbone and feel skin beneath her fingertip, rather than a smooth, rubber coating. “Water under the bridge, now, though,” she supplies, her shoulders rising in a shrug as her mouth pastes together into a half-hearted sort of smile.

“S’a shame, too,” Harry tells her, after a moment, fondling over her bare thigh — she shifts over him a little with the motion, “Caning can be quite sensual.”

“Sensual?” Isla bridles her snort as her nose crinkles behind lacy fabric, “It sucks.”

Harry sets his strawberry mouth into a line and shakes his head from side to side, “I thought you liked it, at first.”

“I did— but it still sucked,” Isla’s laugh chokes off, “Like. Still, …ouch. It was more about the marks.”

More about the marks. That — Harry could relate to. His caress over her flesh turns a little firmer, and the glint in his irises turns a little more lewd …with flecks of mischief.

“You,” his tone becomes more …suggestive, growing lower as the conversation dips into more lighthearted territory, “always treat me like an evil, little …demon for getting off on the marks. But it looks like you and I are one and the same, after all.”

Isla’s unable to stifle the bark of nervous laughter that leaves her cheeks teeming with warmth at the insinuation. She leans back from him a bit, because — no, “Oh — we are not the same. And you are like an evil, little demon.”

“Well, that’s just impolite.”

“You are— it’s like,” she pauses, unable to come up with a credible argument, and she scoffs, motioning with the hand that’d so fondly brushed over the bridge of his nose only moments prior as the corners of the man’s mouth buckle in dirty knowing.

“It’s like…?”

“Well, it’s different!” the young woman exclaims, but she’s not the least bit convinced by her own statement, even when she tags on, “It’s different because I don’t get off on leaving them on other people — therefore, I am not an evil, little demon.”

“Now you’re just kink shaming— that’s quite rude, you know,” the dominant tells her, raising his eyebrows and feigning seriousness despite the obvious nature of their banter. She knows him far too well to fall for it, anyhow. “Why does either of us have to be the evil, little demon?”

“I guess—“ again, the young woman’s shoulders rise in a shrug, “Neither of us has to be. But those were your words,” she points with her index at his chest, the pad of her finger digging into the linen a bit, “not mine.”

“Exactly,” Harry lifts the palm that isn’t gripping and manhandling over her thigh to motion and cocks his head, eyes rolling in with exaggerated mirth, “Neither of us has to be. So you agree?”

“Agree…?”

He ducks his chin, a crease between his eyebrows behind the rubbery hood, “That we’re just two sides of the same coin?”

Again, her nose crinkles, and the visible features of her face contort, coaxing the edges of the dominant’s lush lips to curl up. “Absolutely not.”

“Why are you so against it,” Harry prods, laughter interlacing his smooth cadence, “Hm?”

It’s sinful, honestly, the reaction he manages to draw when his tone turns a little more sensual, when he lowers his volume and teases, “Just admit it. After I strapped you, you spent a couple of days admiring the marks in the mirror.”

The accusation — no, the unbeknownst reminder, rather, causes her to nearly choke on her saliva, all pliable good-nature in her system washed away by the violent wave of lust that crashes over her, post the sentiment. Because she had. She had admired them — the faint, ruddy tinges fading into an invisible ache, some splotches settling and sticking for days after the majority of the canvas had dissolved back into her skin tone. The love bites over her backside, in particular, her irises had come to wend over, again and again. She’d eye over the blooms of bruises and think back to his lips being there. His tongue, laving over her florid skin. The press of his bare hand on the opposite side while his mouth sucked bruises into her skin — like palpable remnants of his affections, as if they were meant to be admired for days after. Because they were.

Her eyes slip shut, all traces of the smile she’d worn, previously, melting away. And he doesn’t need her to admit it, because the wordless retort is sort of all the confirmation he needs. In return, the man’s stupid, stupidly-kissable mouth crooks up. She wants to bat his touch away for making her thought process so incomprehensible so early on in their rendezvous, but he’s got her in this sort of grip that leaves the rest of her body, physically, just as dumb and pliable.

“You’re—“ she sniffs, casually, shaking her head in an attempt to gather her bearings in, at least, a somewhat dignified manner (the man’s lashline narrows in cheeky awareness), “What were we talking about?”

“Your diabolical infatuation with marks,” Harry supplies, entirely unhelpful. The young woman’s mouth is twitchy as she fights her smile at his dumb, typical quip, and she has to physically curb the instinct to roll her eyes behind her mask.

“Right,” rather than poking at him on his side-tracked discourse on diabolical infatuations with marks, to stave off yet another side-tracked bloom of discourse, Isla doesn’t bother entertaining the banter, “Before that.”

The dominant digs his tongue against his cheek, taking his free palm to fondle at both globes of her ass, he shifts her over his lip with his palms and says, after a moment of apparent mulling, “Caning can be sensual.”

Right — that. Yes. No. Isla disagrees.

“You just did it wrong,” he expresses, his hands squeezing cheekily with the remark.

“Oh? And what’s the right way, then, Mr. Sensual Caning Connoisseur?”

Eros gives her a look — one of those looks, like she’s being improper by referring to him with an improper honorific, but then he just …licks his lips and clears his throat, like he’s chosen to gloss over it entirely. Pick your battles, and all that, “You start off with a massage, relaxed muscles, do a solid warm up with another implement — more massage to relax more. Start gentle, only increase in little bits. Go slow.”

He shrugs, and tugs her closer to him with the grip over her backside, as if this is all very simple common sense, “It can be fun.”

Isla’s eyebrows quirk up, and she’s about to insert a sarcastic retort on the impressive nature of his knowledge, all for the sake of joking around before her impending doom — but then he keeps going. Tacks on, like an afterthought, “Position matters too. Y’know, cause—“

The young woman’s breath catches in her throat when the dominant shifts again, the pads of his glove-clad fingers digging into her skin with his shameless fondling, “If you’re bent over, then you’re, like. Stretching more. Versus, if you’re laying flat on your stomach, the skin is more relaxed.”

“That,” Isla sighs, far more swooned with arousal than she would’ve anticipated (it’s the fondling — the fucking fondling), “makes sense. Mr. …Professional.”

Her mouth twitches on the latter, a note of amusement interlacing with the syllables. She watches his tongue run a tantalizing line over his pillowy bottom lip, pulsing between her thighs, and then watches it pause, just poking out a smidge, at the corner of his mouth. And then Eros puts it away, entirely, his mouth closing. Flinty jade narrows, and one of the palms that’d been squeezing so sweetly only moments prior pulls away and smacks on one side, coaxing a squeak and a subtle jolt forward from her.

“Stop doing that,” he warns, but there’s faint traces of amusement to his inflection.

Isla feigns innocence, despite her stinging skin, “Doing what?”

“The Mister shit,” Harry chimes, unimpressed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she giggles, “what honorific would you prefer?”

“Sir.”

“Mr. Eros—“

Her giggles dissolve into a gasp and a pout when he just does it again. She grumbles, rocking forward a little and tucking her hair over one shoulder before she asserts, “You call me little miss! That’s hypocritical, you know. Very mean.”

His mouth quirks in response, and he assuages by rubbing over the stinging skin with his palm. Isla focuses on his lips with her eyes — perfect, a shade of muted berry, just there, and so close, so irresistibly …kissable. Her train of thought is derailed when the man pats at her thigh and coaxes, “I know. I’m so horrible. Hop up, little miss.”

“Sir, yes, Sir,” Isla cocks her head, her voice teeming with impetuous sarcasm. She muzzles her quip of Mr. Bossy, picking her battles and bridling them to become spaced apart. It’s a wise choice, because her Eros doesn’t comment on her words, despite the tone, unlatching his grip and holding onto her hips as aid when she climbs off of his lap.

Then, Harry stands and takes a few slow steps away from the mattress. Isla falls back onto it, unceremoniously, only sitting up to watch his planning process, in action, with a sense of curiosity.

“Here’s how this is gonna go. You’re gonna stand,” the dominant takes a few more, slow steps, until he taps out at an expanse of empty, concrete flooring with the toe of his shoe, clearing his throat, “Right here. With the wand,” he shoots her a glance. Isla relaxes back a bit. The wand. She likes this train of thought.

“Whatever setting you’d like. And I’m just gonna touch you with the cane. The whole time. If you can make it until you cum without crying,” he crosses his arms over his chest, casting his gaze back onto the young woman, “Then I have a proposition.”

Isla, from the sheetless mattress, leans back against braced arms and planted palms and cocks her head in question.

“If you cry — facial,” Harry tells her. Isla’s features twitch behind her shrouding. A facial didn’t seem like all that vilely discouraging of a consequence.

“But,” the man swivels to face her fully, “If you can make it the whole way without breaking down, then you can have a creampie.”

And that’s — just — wow. Okay. Shit. His filthy suggestion sends a current of warmth lapping in the trench of her tummy, it sends her body tensing up a tad, and it leaves the pace of her pulsing speeding up. Despite this, Isla sits up a tad. There’s a nervous quality shrouded by mirth, in her voice.

“Um,” she starts, a crease working between her brows as Harry regards her apparent …rejection with bemusement, “You don’t have to… if this is because I kissed you last week—“

When she slides her gaze back up to his face, though, traveling quickly from the concrete, to his dress shoes, over his attire, and finally settling on onyx latex, she can see that his mouth has curled up.

“I— what? What’s funny?”

“Nothing’s funny.”

“Then… well, then, why are you…?” her words melt away as he turns, one, pleather-coated hand in his pocket and the other by his side as he takes slow steps back to stand ahead of her, until her neck is craned back to encompass the height difference in her seated position.

The hand that isn’t tucked away in his slacks comes up to her face, at first just brushing, and then it morphs into a squeeze over her cheeks. She pants in his grip before he runs his thumb over her lips.

“It’s not because you kissed me,” he asserts, his voice soft, “It’s not a quid pro quo. I just …want to, and you’ve expressed interest in it, so I thought you did, too.”

He makes sure he’s done everything he can to meet her eye, despite the lacy veiling that shrouds the brown irises he knows hide behind it, before he tacks on, carefully, “But if you don’t want to, anymore, then that’s okay, too, love.”

Isla weighs his words behind her skull, the personal nature of the confession. I want to break a personal boundary with you — something that’s personal, to me. She tries not to let the admission rile her and send her imagination off onto a wild exploration of what it all could mean.

“It’s just that …you’ve talked about how it’s too personal for you, is all, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to,” she gnaws into her lip as his touch withdraws and he peers over her, “I don’t know. Return the favor, or something.”

For a second, Harry doesn’t say anything. The man stuffs both of his hands into his pockets, just standing over her, looming with this undeniable allure of dominion, and then he asks, “Why did you kiss me?”

The brazen question catches her so off guard that Isla nearly has whiplash in the process of trying to gather a suitable answer for him.

“What?”

“Why did you kiss me, darling?” he reiterates. Simple. It’s a simple question. It could have a very simple answer, or it could have the truth.

Because I’m into you beyond the masks. Because you’ve unwittingly encroached upon the personal realm and broken down my boundaries, unintentionally, just by existing outside of Indulge, and you’ve gotten far closer to the real me than anyone here ever has before. Because I like you, beyond the sex. Because I want to do more than just this with you.

These are all very …viable answers. They’re all true, but as the words flit through her mind, showcasing what she’s tried so long to avoid recognizing and acknowledging, it’s just. She couldn’t admit it to him. She can’t. Isla clears her throat.

“Because I wanted to,” the young woman settles on. It’s the bare bones of legitimacy.

Harry doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t prod further. He just nods at her answer and then tells her, “Exactly. And I want to.”

The dominant doesn’t tack on, it doesn’t have to be more than that, right now, despite his deep-seated hankering for it to be everything more. Everything beyond the masks — everything beyond Indulge.

“If you don’t want to, we don’t have to. I can always,” he shifts forward just a bit, insinuating that he’s got far more than what’s fathomable upon first glance, up his sleeve, “give you another reward.”

“That’s not it,” Isla promises, shaking her head from side-to-side, “I want to do that, I just don’t want to …overstep what’s a boundary, to you.”

It’s not a boundary with you, he wants to assure, all while he thumbs over her cheekbones and tucks away that skimpy, knickers-looking thing that shields the pretty face beneath. I don’t want to have any personal boundaries with you.

He can’t do that. He can’t do any of those things, tell her any of those things, because she is a walking boundary that he’s deemed himself unable to overstep. Here, where he can see her scantily clad, where he can witness the tip of his cock nudging up against the inside of her cheek, where he can press his fingertips between her legs, she’s Peitho. She’s Peitho in intimacy, with nothing intimate beyond sex. And he can’t do those things with Isla Cleery. Isla Cleery is all soft smiles and professionalism, and friendly banter that rides the edge of innocuously flirty, at most. And he can’t kiss Isla Cleery. He can’t shove his digits past Isla Cleery’s lips and rest them on her wet, strawberry tongue, and he can’t wrench her neck back with a hold on her throat while his hips rock up against her. He can’t fill Isla Cleery’s cunt with his cum, and then watch it dribble and gush out onto her inner thighs, staining them, before he shoves remnants back in with his touch.

It feels as if he lives a double-life, kind of, with her. Because he has to toe at this, like, weird, uncomfortable line that divides Peitho and Isla Cleery, and simultaneously, he has to toe at the weird, uncomfortable line between Eros and Harry Styles. But he’s always toed at the line — he’s used to toeing at that line. It’s the way he lives, and he’s never encountered a situation in which the two become close to intertwining, especially with the precautions he takes to become unrecognizable as Eros in every context but Indulge. Because on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and Thursday, Harry Styles is just Harry Styles. Charming bachelor, the realtor with signature dimples pasted on benches. He’s dark blue trunks contrasting against milky skin when he runs out to grab the mail in the mornings, and house tours with cheap-ish, plastic-containered cookies, and occasional bar outings with a handful of close friends sharing alcohol and jokes. He’s just Harry on every day except on Friday nights.

But that line’s become worn awfully thin. And somehow, for one reason or another, he feels that line smudging and enmeshing the two. He feels Eros, slowly but surely, slipping into Isla Cleery’s bubble, and vice versa.

Harry wants to run his gloved fingers over Isla’s cheeks, he wants to smush over her lips and press a kiss to her mouth when he assures her that he doesn’t want a creampie, of all things, to be a limit with her. He doesn’t. He doesn’t tell her that, or duck forward to paste his mouth against her own.

Instead, he runs a knuckle over her jawline, and tells her, “You’re not breaking a boundary. Wanna fuck you, and then wanna watch my cum drip out of you.”

His words are intimate, in a coarse, sordid way — but the statement is far from romantic, far from the things he wants to tell her. Because he can’t. It doesn’t matter, anyways. It seems to be all the convincing the young woman needs, because her back grows as straight as an arrow, and her breathing pattern stifles and grows …slower, with the admission. Like she’s hungry for it.

And all Isla Cleery can say, in response to that, is, “Okay.”

“Okay?” his mouth quirks, and he satisfies his penchants, in part, by dragging his thumb over her bottom lip. It’s the only aspect of the privy desires he’ll allow himself to enjoy.

Isla nods, a small, nudging sort of motion, like she’s scared the movement will coax his digit away.

“Then we’re all squared, aren’t we?” the dominant tells her, his soft-spoken cadence barely over a whisper. He muzzles the instinct to duck and cherish her mouth with his own. Instead, he retracts his touch altogether, and takes a step back, cocking his head, “You’re on some form of birth control, aren’t you?”

He’s sure the answer will be an agreement, considering she’d expressed her interests in the activity, prior, but he asks just to tie up any loose ends. It takes Isla a second to respond, almost as if she’s been rendered brainless, sort of, on account of his physical attention. The man represses a self-satisfied smirk. Good. He quite likes when he’s able to get her that way, so easily.

“Yeah— uh. I have an IUD.”

He stuffs his hands back into the pockets at the front of his dark slacks and walks back into the area he’d designated for her, nodding at the ground as his dress shoes click over the flooring. “Wonderful.”

The young woman’s cadence, then, soft and subdued from the mattress behind him makes him take pause.

“Actually — I. Well, I have another …request.”

“Shoot,” Harry encourages, scraping at an uneven fragment of the flooring with the toe of his shoe.

“I— um,” the submissive starts, her speech dying off in the back of her throat once it registers how ludicrous and …oddly personal the request would be. Isla thinks, perhaps better not to ask at all.

The dominant, whose pockets shroud his gloved hands, pivots from across the room to face her, his lush lash line narrowing at the notes of hesitancy plucking at her vocal cords. Oh, no — now was definitely not the time for apprehension to go unsaid. He turns a little more, and takes slow steps in an amble to the bed, where she’s sat with her own fingers dug into the thickened hem over the sheetless mattress.

“Tell me,” Harry prods after a second, cocking his head down at her. He watches Isla’s tongue sweep out over her lips, her chest rising on her inhale at his sudden, no-nonsense beckon.

“It’s—“ a bemused crease works between his brows as the young woman shakes her head from side-to-side, “it’s silly. Don’t worry about it.”

His hands unveil from their confines, less lax in body language, before she feels his palms grasp over either side of her face. They don’t press, but they guide — until her gaze is cast up to him and she’s forced to endure the curiosity of his prodding, the softness of his gaze that has no lack of that firm dominion she’s grown so familiar with.

“Love. S’kind of my job to worry. Tell me,” Harry coaxes, his cadence gentle and inquisitive — a gentle contrast against the bite of his typical tone in these rooms.

“Well,” Isla starts, her pupils flitting behind him, despite the fact that he can’t witness the motion. The young woman feels a little less silly if she’s unable to blatantly witness the unintentionally ridiculing rejection that she’s sure will crest his features upon hearing the request. “It’s just — well I’m always naked, and you’re …never …naked.”

The worry that’d begun to bud in his chest shrivels back into its root until the blip vanishes with her insinuation. The corners of his mouth buckle. Isla sees it, faintly, in her peripherals, and the submissive focuses on marred brick as Harry’s backdrop, harder. If his gloves were off, maybe, the way blood rushes to her face would be palpable to his hands.

“Mm.”

Her features twist up and she sighs, batting his touch away as her chin turns towards the wrought-iron headboard, “It’s silly— I told you. Don’t worry about it.”

Jade roves over the submissive, curiously. It wasn’t a jarring observation — there was a purpose to his lack of dishabille. Ink caught stares and etched memoirs — identifiable fragments that posed a risk if he were to be seen out and about in shorts and short sleeves, bearing eyefulls of matte sketches. They’d spawn memories and draw unnecessary connections — connections he didn’t need mangling anonymity. It’s a crying shame. Truly. The conflict of Harry’s affinity for being nude and the interest — no, need to shroud all of his trackable characteristics. His face, his hair, his tattoos. Harry took great care in hiding those, always, for a reason. Now, though, he weighs her words behind his skull. Isla Cleery wants to level the playing field, and Isla Cleery was Isla Cleery. Strangely (and to some degree, unsurprisingly), he’s past denying her.

The man lifts his leg, then, plants the sole of his shoe against the mattress, an empty space beside where Isla’s legs are pressed together, bends to brace his forearms against his thigh, and nudges with his chin as he tells her, “Untie my shoe.”

A pinch works between her brows before she ducks her chin and her eyes stick to his shoe, shiny and ever-so-formal. Typical. She tears her gaze away and casts it to him, her confusion shrouded by the fabric over her face. And Harry — he just blinks, unimpressed by her tentativeness.

“Untie it, and take it off.”

Slowly, her hands rise from the stubborn spot they’d taken in her lap, and she brings her fingers to his laces, tugging with her fingertips and unraveling the loops and knots. He watches the motion quietly, and once Isla’s dug her forefinger beneath the tongue on his shoe and loosened, he levels his torso back up straight for her to slide the shoe off. She does cast her gaze up to him apprehensively, before, though.

“Take it off,” Harry tells her. His inflection is soft, but his voice still carries that undeniable, underlying firm note of dominance.

So Isla does. She wraps one palm over the back of the shoe and presses the opposite over the top, before she slides the

shoe off of his foot. With one foot bared down to nothing but a sock, he sets it back onto the concrete flooring and switches, this time placing the other foot on the other side of her legs. Wordlessly, the dominant gestures with his chin toward the dress shoe.

So Isla mirrors her actions, discarding the opposite, and then the man leans over, grasps each shoe with a curled middle and forefinger, and sets them down beside the bed, on the ground, sort of unceremoniously. Isla stares at him, bemused as he just seems to ogle her in this weirdly sexual, silent tension.

“I don’t think it’s silly,” Harry starts, lifting one of the palms she’d batted away to grasp at her chin — he tucks it between his thumb and forefinger, pulling her, literally and figuratively, from her cycle of overthinking, and turns her back to face him.

His expression is soft behind smooth, shiny latex, Isla can tell, and his eyes stay on her as he takes his touch away and works over each glove, digits first, beginning with the right.

“I get it. It’s no fun being the only naked one,” the dominant speaks, his vision only skidding away as he tugs one of the gloves off. He tosses it beside her, onto the mattress, and Isla’s mouth waters as he brazenly begins working over the opposite.

“So you want me to get naked, too, right?” his gaze stays locked on her as he discards the second, and Isla’s own sight jumps from his face to his hands, tanned, familiar — neatly manicured by lilac polish.

Harry’s chin dips to his collar as he brings his fingertips to the first button, unlooping it through for fabric to part, and Isla’s just …stupefied, kind of. He shoots her a glance, the corners of his mouth buckling, and then the man sticks one of his hands out and nonchalantly wriggles his fingers — an invitation for her to place her own hand into his. The young woman’s throat bobs as she swallows, and slowly, she lifts her palm, slotting it against his own. It encompasses her nerve endings with warmth, but the heat that teems within her when he guides her hand to his belt buckle — that doesn’t even begin to compare.

Eros tells her, then, cadence soft in decibel and firm in tone, almost distracted-sounding as he works on the third button — beaks, Isla can see more, belonging to birds that she’s only witnessed in glimpses, prior, “Take it off for me, baby.”

Yes, okay. Take his belt off for him — baby—

Isla physically curbs the desperate whine that nearly escapes from the back of her throat as she short circuits. For a moment, the young woman blanks, her palm settled over his belt buckle and her fingers twitchy in lulled astonishment. And then her Eros pops open another button, and she’s faced with the beginnings of a great, big butterfly that sweeps in ink over his abdomen — that’s a new view. The dominant’s mouth quirks at her shock-stifled response, and—

“Well, go on. Not gonna bite you,” the man teases, chin dipped to his handiwork and mirth palpable over his softly curling strawberry mouth as he tacks on, in a quiet note of absolute deviousness, “Yet.”

With fumbling fingers, Isla undoes his belt buckle, loosening it before she pastes the touch to his button, and then his zipper, until she digs her thumbs into his waistband and untucks his dress shirt to expose laurels she’s seen prior, peeking from the lettering of Calvin Klein. She’s unable to muzzle her soft sound when he parts the shirt, entirely, and his shoulders rise and ripple with muscle to shrug the sleeves off. Because that just exposes more — it showcases graphic designs etched into his skin over his shoulders, over his biceps, over his forearms. Images that wind over skin and move as muscles flex. Her pupils rove in a frantic daze as she attempts to note details that’ll serve as palpable memoirs behind her skull — she tucks them away. A heart, a coat hanger, three nails, a ship, a fern, a rose. A mermaid, a bible, an anchor. Smaller symbols, over his wrist, that become put on display as his hands twist — one of which she makes out to be the aquarius symbol. Interesting, very interesting, this is all very interesting. Eros folds the shirt, and leans over to hang it over the headboard.

Her irises flit to the vertical line of coarse hair that starts from below his belly button and dips into his waistband — his fucking happy trail (yes, these are all happy revelations) — and Isla feels her the saliva flooding from beneath her tongue as she stares. Her eyes slink back up to the butterfly, sketched in jet over firm muscle. It nearly flutters as the man’s abdomen rises with each breath he takes. Her ogle on it fractures as Isla risks a glance to his face, looming above, and he’s— it’s—

His gaze is darkened, pupils blown with lust bordering danger, the kind that makes Isla feel as if she’s simply prey to him and his predatory teeth. Those have tucked his plush bottom lip behind their bite, like the sight of her so stunned by the sudden bareness of him makes him weak, and Isla can only swallow dryly, weakly, when he asks, with a rasp to his voice, “Like it?”

The young woman doesn’t have to inquire to know that he’s referencing the butterfly — she’s been honed on it as if physically magnetized. Even if he can’t directly see her line of sight, the dominant can certainly tell when her face is lined up to stare straight ahead. When it stays like that, with her gaze pasted to his abdomen. She gives him a little nod of acknowledgement, a weak motion.

When he tells her, “Why don’t you give it a little kiss, then?” no jesting to tone, with his tongue swiping out over his pillowy mouth, pink and glimmering in the highlights surpassing the shadows of his downcast face, Isla feels her cheekbones and temples teem ruddy.

Weak, she’s weak, she is so beyond weak for this man, and she’s relieved to be sat down, because if she were standing, she’d surely crumble like a sandcastle gone wet, with the crash of a wave, at the suggestion. Slowly, Isla leans forward and pastes her mouth to the column between its wings — her lips linger, but apparently, the man deems it chaste. His head tilts down at her a tad as he tuts.

“That’s it, darling?” Eros gnaws into the corner of his mouth, before he adds, “That’s all it gets?”

With more determination (post his obviously unimpressed comment) spurring her motion, the submissive glues her lips back to his abs, pasting another kiss — a longer one — onto the drawing’s thorax. Harry watches her, pure, hedonistic want brimming beneath it when her puckered lips detach and press back again onto a wing. And then another, and another after that. She draws kisses over it, mirroring what’s been done to one wing on the opposite, and her palm presses beside the tattoo as her gaze bolts to his face to gauge his judgment. She finds traces of craving there — he’s not weak for her in the same way she is for him, if initial impressions are clues. He’s weak in that it makes him darker, harder, his irises cloudier with hunger.

When she filthily drags her tongue over the center of the tattoo, Harry’s jaw unhinges for his mouth to part a smidge. He pants and imagines her pretty brown eyes peering up at him as she draws vague shapes against him, aching for his approval. The mere thought is pure eroticism. Her lips smush over the ink, and she drags mouth over a little fragment of the tattoo, the motion tugging her bottom lip down, and the dominant’s cock pulses in its confines. And then Isla starts nipping at his skin — her open-mouthed kisses morphing into suckling as her short nails scratch against him and that’s— she’s—

Christ.

The husk on the “Fuck,” the dominant manages out causes her ministrations to stall, and she eyes him through her lashes behind the lace. Her mouth grazes against his abdomen wetly when she speaks.

“Is that better, Sir?”

And she’s so …knowing and mischievous, feigning innocence like she’s blissfully unaware that her little display has caused his heartbeat to race and his insides to coil with want.

“Filthy, little thing,” the dominant croons, raking his digits into her hair along the side of her scalp as her cheek smushes to his sternum. Harry exhales, wrapping the opposite hand over the nape of her neck in a manner that incites chills to rise awake over her skin. “Gonna be a good girl for me tonight?” he flexes the fingers in her hair to tighten, just a smidge and feels the warm puffs — chilly against his skin from the wet residue — fall a little heavier as her mouth parts on the motion, “Hm?”

Isla muzzles her desperate whine, his touch coaxing desire to swirl in her. The palm over the back of her neck squeezes a little. “Yes, Sir.”

“Take them off,” Harry instructs, in reference to his trousers (which are still slung, loosely, now, over his hips), “and, y’know what,” he says, his eyes narrowing just a bit, for a moment — the motion is nearly indecipherable — before Isla has the opportunity to dig her fingertips into the fabric. The man takes a few slow steps back, just enough to give her room to slip onto the floor — though, she doesn’t realize that’s what he’s planned until he shoots her a glance and gestures with his chin, “Why don’t you get on the floor, for me, right here.”

For a second, Isla just stares, her fingers clutching at the edge of the mattress, and then, slowly, she slides off and slips into a kneel ahead of him.

“Better angle,” Harry tells her, a lewd sort of smirk gracing his mouth at the sight of her, submission, beneath him, “More …subservient. And you always look quite pretty, down there.”

Isla doesn’t smile. She suppresses melting in response, like a popsicle left out in the sunlight, and tries to regulate her breathing pattern and the intense arousal that always seems to bloom upon seeing him just …ooze sex like this, so nonchalantly. Like it’s innate, of him.

His next words don’t help. Not a bit.

“Always so sweet and pretty when you kneel for me like this,” Harry states, almost like a comment made offhand, and lifts a palm to stroke over her hair. And then his thumb just …winds lightly and brushes over the bottom-most hem of her mask, on the right side, just below her cheekbone. Like he’s testing. Whatever thought he seems to have, in the moment, dissipates, then, quickly fleeting.

“Finish up what you started, and take them off, all the way, Peitho,” the dominant commands, his touch withdrawing.

She can’t deny him. She doesn’t want to deny him. Isla digs her fingertips, obediently, in on either side of his waistband and tugs the fabric down over his sculpted thighs (GOD, why are they so sculpted? He’s pure sex). Her pupils travel and roam over tanned skin, and hair, and a tiger tattoo, what the FUCK has he been sheltering from her? These expanses of skin are a sin to hide, Isla decides. Partly because she feels blessed to bask in the sight of, now. She’s also greeted by the view of his dark trunks — they rise high on his quads, but what catches her eye most in the bulge he’s sporting. That aspect she’s all too familiar with. She’ll definitely come back to that. When the young woman has drawn his trousers to his ankles, she shoots a glance up to him — he’s towering over her, Christ, and the sight is familiar, but it never fails to incite this fiery arousement in her. The dominant steps out of the pants, pooled on the cemented flooring, and Isla swipes them aside, almost absentmindedly, but then—

“Ah, ah,” Harry tuts from above, chiding, his jade narrowed in a way that nearly coaxes chills to form over her skin, “Fold them. Nicely. If I find wrinkles in them, you’ll have consequences.”

How can you punish me when this our last contractual scene, Isla wants to chime, brazenly, but she restrains the insolence and picks the trousers back up, like a nice, (uncharacteristically) subservient submissive, and stretches them out before she starts to tuck the edges together. The circumstances cull blood to the surface of her face. She’s a horrible feminist, all things she lets Eros do to her, considered. Still, she gathers he slacks and hems them crisply, placing them on the ground beside her, and she looks up at him, like she’s searching for his approval.

The “Good girl,” he awards her with is well worth feeling like a shit feminist. She is, right now. Definitely. The 20th century sisterhood is probably screeching at her, from somewhere. It’s all kind of well worth it.

“Gonna leave those on?” Harry questions, obviously in reference to his underwear, but there’s no genuine question to his cadence — just partly unimpressed complaint, when she takes too long scoping over his skin. Mental images, these are all valuable, mental snapshots. And — he’s such a cocky fucker, Isla thinks, her gaze narrowing up at him. He’s being mean, and in turn, she cups over his bulge, still clad in fabric, and nuzzles her face against his thigh, just gazing up at him, though he won’t see it. It satisfies her, in that moment, in a twisted sort of way, knowing that he’s missing out on the sight of her lashes fluttering up at him.

That decision culls a sharp inhale, from him, and a subtle jerk forward of his hips. Isla squeezes lightly. Harry doesn’t offer much of a reaction besides the inklings in his change of breathing pace.

“Be a good girl and take those off, too,” he coaxes, eventually, tracing a bare fingertip over her temple, “Wanna do a good job, don’t you?”

She wants to rile him, partly, but mostly, she does want to do a good job. She wants him to be happy with her. She’d bend over backwards, there and then, if that was what it took to siphon his pride for her. Cheek pressed to the fabric and lips mouthing wetly over his hardness, Isla hums in agreement.

“Then finish up, and get everything off, sweetheart.”

So the submissive does. She goes for the last fragment of clothing she’s capable of discarding (besides his socks), and wiggles her digits up under the waistband and tugs. It always makes her happy to see his cock, but evidently, his cock is just as happy to greet her. It springs free from beneath the Calvin Klein lettering, bobbing with a bead of precum bubbling from the tip, and it takes all of her willpower not to lean forward and swipe it away with her tongue. Instead, she shimmies the fabric all the way down his (newly denuded!!) thighs and casts her gaze up to him until he steps out of those, too.

“Good girl,” Harry runs a bare hand and rakes it through her roots — bare, he’s so bare, and she nearly can’t wrap her mind around the concept. He’s all tanned skin and muscle and ink, and she could stare at him, like a piece of art, for hours.

She doesn’t though. The dominant coaxes her to stand up, and his cock brushes against her tummy when he winds his arms around her back and works over the clasp of her brassiere. It pops open with a little click, and he slides it off of her, down her arms. And then he kneels, irises sparking like emeralds when he peers up at her, pressing kisses in a line down from her sternum to the edge of her panties. Harry nudges his fingertips onto either side and tugs. It’s all kind of a tacitly …romantic ordeal, all things considered, Isla thinks. She thinks about it while he stipples his pillowy mouth to her skin, when he looks up at her through his lashes, when his mouth travels to the soft, naked crease between her thigh and her pelvis. When he wrenches his gaze away and ducks his chin, cuing her to step out of her panties. The crotch is wet.

His mouth is all twitchy when he reaches over, grabs his neatly folded trousers from the ground, and his lips still wear cocky traces when the man hands the clothing pieces to

Isla. Harry instructs, “Go and put these on the bed. Nicely.”

The young woman cradles the articles, only hesitating for a moment — though, long enough for Harry to blink at her, expectantly — before she turns and takes her steps towards the sheetless mattress. She sets the slacks down first, and then she makes a neat, little pile of her own with her lingerie. By the time she turns back in Harry’s direction, he’s stood, taken his socks off, and is mid-walk towards the back wall of scary toys. How …wonderful. It is sort of a wonderful sight, though — she can’t deny that. He’s all disrobed, and sexy, and the muscles in his arms and back visibly ripple, and—

A hook rattles when he culls a cane. Her breath catches and stalls in her lungs. Harry shoots her a glimpse, purses his mouth, sets it back onto its designated area. The smaller, thinner implement he chooses isn’t much better of an option. And his mouth is still all purse-y when he makes his way back to the spot he’s deemed for her. Her eyes jump from the cane, lax and nonchalant in his fist, by his side, to the way he strokes with his hand and twists with his opposite wrist, over his cock.

“Still wanna do this?” the man teases, but there’s genuine inquiry to his words.

“Yes,” Isla clears her throat— there’s a nervous apprehension that hinders a convincing quality, even to her own ears, so she tries again, “Yes, Sir.”

He just ogles her, for a moment, weighing the impression of her demeanor, before he nudges with his chin to incite her to come over. So Isla does. She does, and does, and does — follows and appeases each of his requests, her bare feet padding over the flooring until she’s stood ahead of him, despite the hammer of her heart behind her ribcage. When he winds around her, the smooth implement grazing her thigh, just barely, she narrowly stifles a gasp.

“‘M’not gonna hit you with it,” Harry promises, cupping over the vale of her waist from behind, and even with the reassurance, she can’t help the way her mouth sets into a line or the goosebumps that rise over her skin when he draws the cane over her tummy. The young woman squeezes her eyes shut. His mouth brushes over the shell of her ear as he talks all low, “What’s the goal?”

What’s the goal? This is …a valid question. There is …a goal? Isla can’t fathom it when his hardness presses into the small of her back and a mortifying, little stick incites her chest to tighten.

“Um,” she stares at the door, fighting to stabilize her thoughts into something cohesive, “to— not to cry.”

“Right. And what do you get if you don’t cry?”

Her cadence takes on a cheery kind of quality with the reminder, and quiet notes of glee pluck at her vocal cords when she responds (with a cherubic sort of excitement that has soft dimples forming in the dominant’s cheeks), “A creampie.”

“A creampie,” Harry mirrors her quiet enthusiasm, his lilt washing the area behind her ear with warm breath, “and because,” the hand that’d settled over her waist detaches to tuck loose strands back behind her ear, “I’m such a nice person, we’ll even do a trial run first, so you’re prepared. So we’ll have a clean slate if you can’t quite make it the first go-round. Sound fair?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He ducks her chin a smidge, coaxing her chest to roll with soft breaths when he holds the cane out, ahead of her, “Hold this for me.”

With shakey, obedient palms, Isla complies. She takes the cane in a loose grip, wrapping her fingers over the stem, and Harry pats over one of her hands like he’s pleased with her. Okay. Holding it — she’s just holding it, Isla tells herself.

“Thank you. Very good helper,” Harry chimes, a smirk playing over his strawberry mouth. His joke-y nature nearly inspires the corners of her mouth to twitch up, a bit, but then his next words steamroll all of that alleviation.

“Are these sore?” he ponders aloud, plucking at her nipples with both of his newly freed hands. Isla stiffens.

“No…”

“No?” his mouth pastes to her neck, and his speech is a murmur against her skin, “Let’s make them a little sore.”

Isla can only melt into him when he rolls the sensitive buds between his fingertips.

“I don’t play with these nearly as much as I’d like to,” the dominant expresses, and Isla’s digits tighten over the cane with the pinpricks of delicious pain his touch siphons.

Her breathy little sound enmeshes with apprehensive mirth, riding the wave of a nervous laugh before she chimes, “You use those clamp-things …all the time.”

He hums against her neck, behind her ear, into her hairline, the singular, palpable inkling of his amusement to her answer. “Sure. But that doesn’t mean I’m playing with them, does it?”

The dominant emphasizes his point by pinching the nubs with either thumb and side of curled forefinger, “Right? Not my fingers—“

Isla chances a glimpse at his handiwork, and just the sight of his bare digits, short nails polished with lilac, playing with her nipples, has her tummy absolutely coiling with hunger. A warmth spawns between her thighs on full-heat. The sturdiness of her knees nearly melts away entirely.

“—Not my tongue on them. You’d like that, I’m sure.”

His tongue, on her—

Christ. Isla might self-combust. The mental images the dialogue inspires of Harry, on his knees with his tongue laving over one of her tits while he fondles the other in his colossal grip are enough to send everything within her on overdrive. Fuck.

“Wouldn’t you, little miss?” Harry sponges kisses down, pausing in the nook between her neck and her shoulder. Isla nearly drops the cane altogether when he switches from pinching at her nipple and starts squeezing over her breast.

And then he lets go where he was squeezing and just …wraps his right palm over the middle of the implement in her clutch. Her hold only grows tighter, then. Still, he slides it from her hands, and she just lets it happen. The submissive’s breathing grows shallow. Surely he can tell her pulse has quickened from the absolute camp he’s set up, to paste kisses.

“Still doing okay?”

“Yes…” Isla responds, but there aren't even traces of a convincing element to her response.

“Look, s’not even the big, scary one,” Harry tells her, rolling a nipple between deft fingertips as he draws with the thin implement over her torso.

For a moment, Isla freezes up, solely under the erotic pressure of his fingers toying at her, but then he nonchalantly slides the cane down to her thighs while his pillowy mouth pastes to her thundering pulse, and she makes a soft sound in the back of her throat and shifts on her feet. One of her thighs shies away as her foot twists on its toes with apprehension.

“But that’s worse, that’s so much worse, those hurt so much worse,” the submissive whines, shifting on her feet in his grasp, and she gasps when he prods at the crease between her thigh as her pelvis with it.

Harry’s mouth quirks against her skin, upturned at the melody of her squeaks and sighs when she pinches her nipple harder and taunts her with the implement.

“Well. That is how the physics of it works, technically, yeah,” he croons against the shell of her ear, notes of mirth leaking through his inflection, “Smaller area of impact, more concentrated pressure, right?”

Harry expects her to make a snide comment about the impressiveness of his physics discourse, deadpan and laced with sarcasm, or something. Or he expects her to whine a bit more and jerk around on her feet. What he doesn’t expect is that she just stands there and when she sighs, her breath comes out all shuddery.

“But it’s just a little stick,” the dominant promises, slowly, in a soft-spoken croon that bathes her in lull. His voice husks, raspy, and his accent is thick, and his warm breath caresses the back of her ear. It sends chills spiraling down the nape of her neck while the pads of his fingers send tides of pleasure rolling through her. Waves that the fear surfs on its little, resin-coated board.

Isla sniffles. She takes a breath, and while she holds it, Harry pauses, his chest still pasted to her back as her shoulder blades expand and shrivel back into place with her quivery sigh. The man tuts.

“Oh, no, no, no—“ he starts, cocking his head, and a comforting sort of condescension glazes over his voice when he prods, almost in a whisper, “Are we already crying?”

Isla doesn’t have it in her to make a derisive remark. She doesn’t have it in her for her jaw to set, to duck her chin and scoff, to turn away for her gaze to narrow with resolve while some sarcastic retort plucks at her vocal chords. She wants him to make her feel small, then, like she doesn’t know the answers. Because then he could be her narrative foil. When he talked to her like that, it meant that he knew better — that he had the answers, that he could solve every dilemma, that he knew what she needed and what she needed to do next. And that was, undeniably, a nice thing to fall back on, from time to time.

Isla Cleery is self-reliant. She’s determined, she was bred for success, and she likes to know all of the answers to everything — she needs to, almost. It’s a yearning ingrained. She has her own apartment that she pays for with her own money, she manages nearly every aspect of her life alone, and she doesn’t let those smarmy mechanics mansplain the importance of replacing her blinker fluid, or let them convince her into buying premium air for her tires when she goes to get an oil change. Last month she put together a shelf from IKEA all by herself, and there’s never even written directions on those instruction pamphlets. The sense of accomplishment was kind of unparalleled. Isla Cleery needs to be perfect, and she needs to have that innate, woman-versus-self-esque pressure on her, always, at all times, and she certainly doesn’t ever need the “expertise” of a man prying into her endeavors, trying to smooth anything away with answers.

Except, at Indulge, Isla Cleery isn’t Isla Cleery. She’s Peitho, and Peitho doesn’t have to have the answers, and Peitho doesn’t have this all-consuming need to DIY. Peitho is lax — Peitho gives up the reins and falls back into the safety net, because the safety net decides that he knows better. And it’s really, really, really nice to just let go and give in, in the circumstances. Because Peitho is already crying, because Peitho is allowed to be weak, because Peitho is scared, and Peitho doesn’t know how to trounce the obstacle.

And Eros has all the answers.

“Hm?” Eros prods, nipping at her earlobe and tracing with his tongue down her neck for a moment — it distracts her, momentarily. But when the pads of his digits switch to a palm, fondling over one of her tits, and he draws the cane just above her belly button in a horizontal line, Isla gnaws into her cheek. “Are you already crying? How are you gonna hold off for the real thing, if you can’t do it during the trial run?”

“I don’t know,” the young woman admits, letting her vulnerability suffuse her tone.

Harry pauses. There’s this sort of coiling in his tummy that comes about when she’s all tender and weak for him like that, when they’re in a scene — and normally, it incites this …particular form of self-satisfaction. Pride, where his ego swells like a water balloon wrapped over a running garden hose. It happens when he breaks her derisive barriers — when he trounces her brazen spirit of insubordination and mangles her into subservience, because she won’t give without a push, because she wants him to tear her walls down like she’s barricaded by old cabinetry, and he’s a sledgehammer.

It’s different, right now, though, because the aim isn’t to break those barriers. Her vulnerability is instability — it’s a fragility he’s meant to mend, and she’s open with it because she wants him to mend it all. To make all the choices, to tell her what she should do. The pride warps and simmers away into softness. Tucking loose strands behind her ear that’ve become disheveled back into disarray, Harry presses back to her ear and guides, tone gentle, “Look at the door. Focus on it.”

His tongue peeks out from his mouth and swipes, his cadence a velvety croon that swallows her like a blanket, “What do you do when you’re scared? You find something, and you focus on that, to take your mind off of the fear, right? Tell me about the door.”

Isla blinks. The organ behind her ribcage hammers away. Harry draws the tip of the cane over her thigh. Her hands squeeze into fists, but she doesn’t screw her eyes shut. There’s a burn, back there, settling. And she knows that this whole first attempt doesn’t count, really, but she just… doesn’t want to give into it. Not so easily.

“Go on. What do you see about the door? Describe it.”

“It’s green,” Isla answers finally, a nervous note in her voice that seems to have made itself at home for the duration of the session, “It’s green, and it… it’s, like, peeling. And it has one of those long door knobs instead of the twist-y circle ones.”

“Pick a spot on it. The doorknob, let’s say. And you just focus on that.”

Isla does. Her pupils hone onto the rust-stricken knob and fix onto it, like his suggestion is a lifeline in this little game they play. The tip of the cane ventures into the space between her thighs — they’re parted, but they nearly press together in frenzied desperation when the edge of the implement skims her inner thigh. That burn-y ache flourishes at the backs of her eyes. Isla focuses on the doorknob.

TDIAG MASTERLIST HERE

#dom harry styles #harry styles smut #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles wattpad #harry styles writing #harry styles dirty fanfiction #harry styles x oc #dom!harry x sub!reader #dom!harry #harry styles fanfic #harry styles angst #angst to fluff

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wild-houseplant · 2 years

Text

Have Warden, Will Travel- Chapter 6

After a bloody AGE I finally got the bastard done! I swear, writing action scenes should be illegal. I present the Battle of Redcliffe, complete with death (nobody we knew, though) and swear words!

Here’s the link for AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35465686/chapters/98737821

Snippet below, complete chapter under the cut! Hope you bunch are having a gorgeous day and drinking your water!

§§§§§

“Carmela was joking. Tell me she’s having me on.” Taliesen slammed his brandy glass down on the table, knocking his chair on its side as he stood up and stormed over. “I didn’t really find out that the Zevran whose mournful arse I have covered for the last six months has put in a bid for the SOLO WARDEN CONTRACT!”

Zevran folded his arms and raised his eyebrows at the looming, incandescent bulk. “You did, in fact.”

He heard the slap to his cheek more than he felt it. There was enough bite in it to warrant staggering, but he’d have been on the floor if Taliesen had meant to put him there.

“You little shit. What fucking hot water you’ve landed yourself in this time. You and a handful of local hires against Grey Wardens!” Taliesen let out a groan, his shoulders crumpling like a concertina. “Why, Zev? You can’t even get through a normal job without help. I chose the three-threes contract to keep it easy ‘til you came good again. We’ll get a master contract soon. We’re doing well, even without Rin–”

“Enough, Taliesen–”

“No. No it fucking isn’t enough,” Taliesen held up two fingers. “Here’s two truths for you, my darling. Number one, Rinna is– shut up and listen!– Rinna is dead. And number two, because she’s dead, that makes me the planner again. ‘Cause let me tell you something, Zev: your plans are horrid. Why is that, hmm? Why are your plans always so horrid?”

Zevran scoffed. “I cannot imagine.”

“So if I have understood correctly, my Grey Warden: my strategy tonight is to stay behind you as you cast spells?”

They paused as Rhodri fastened a leather utility belt around her, cinching her huge robe in until her top half looked like a collapsed hourglass. Her hands checked and re-checked the holsters keeping three flasks of lyrium in place.

“Essentially, yes. If one of these creatures accosts you from behind, let me know and I’ll handle it. Or you can kill it, if you feel up to it.”

“Ooh. I do love a little action, myself.”

The Warden chuckled and sighed, gently motioning for them to walk again. “It’d be nice if someone knew what these things are. I’d have a better strategy if we had more information than the descriptors ‘evil’ and ‘monsters’.”

“We know they come out at night, they kill en masse, and slink away,” he mused. “I am not sure what that could be. Wolves, I might have guessed, or some nocturnal animal, but surely the villagers would recognise them.”

"I would think so. If I were feeling fanciful, I might've guessed something magical was afoot."

"Oh?"

"It’s possible a maleficar is summoning wraiths or some other Fade creatures. Their eyesight’s poor this side of the Veil, so they navigate by the emotional energies around them." Rhodri rubbed her chin. "If someone wanted to kill a whole village, setting them on frightened people in the dark is a sure-fire winner."

"Ah.”

"But then it begs the question," she waved a finger now, "why would a maleficar target Redcliffe? Ferelden’s impossible to invade, and there's no opportunity for a mage here. Now Tevinter’s a different story. There, they could train in more tasteful magic and step into a cushy job. Talk about staying where you're not appreciated."

Zevran choked out a shocked laugh. "Does this sort of thing happen often in Tevinter, my Grey Warden? Mages fleeing the rest of Thedas and amassing a grand fortune in your fine country?"

She wobbled her head from side to side like he’d asked her opinion on jam. "Not really. Even with schooling, most mages are average, and average mages are only rich if they’re born or marry into wealth. No, I’d say someone very powerful is behind this."

"... Yet you do not seem worried."

His pint splashed in his belly as she gave a shrug.

"I'm a powerful mage, too. So is Morrigan. That's two against one already, and Alistair’s Templar skills are also very useful."

"Mm…? There is no possibility of more than one of these maleficars?"

“Hah! It's already unlikely that one gifted maleficar is squandering their time here. Once we get into the multiples, it's the stuff of fantasy."

Zevran caught his eyebrow rising and promptly put it back down.

"Hm-hmm!" Rhodri grinned. "I saw that. You disagree? Do you want to make a bet?"

He pursed his lips to school his nervous laugh into a sultry hum. "Now there's a thought. What would you desire if you win, my lovely Grey Warden?"

"Let's see… if I bet there are no maleficarum and win, you can tell me a story. Doesn't have to be long or true, or even good. Just a story. What do you think? Is that fair?"

"Oh yes, very fair indeed. And if there are maleficars behind this, you tell me a story, yes?”

“Right! It’s a deal. Now, let’s cover some safety pointers before we start practising.”

The Warden’s speech on magical hazard prevention was brief and absurdly commonsensical. Standing between a caster and the target was unwise, as was standing too close to the target, in the event of friendly fire. Do not distract the mage mid-spell, if possible.

When the Warden urged that he do his utmost to avoid being hit by a mage’s staff or limbs in the event of unpredictable flailing, the last of Zevran’s willpower dissolved and he fell into paroxysms of snorting laughter. And at this point, why not? If she were to kill him for it, it would at least be quicker and less gory than an unidentified monster disembowelling him.

When he had calmed enough to look at her, Rhodri was fixing him with a crooked smile as she rocked on her feet.

“You may laugh, my friend,” she wagged a finger playfully, “but getting a hand or staff to the face makes up the bulk of magical injuries to bystanders!”

Zevran bit his lips together. The second onslaught of mirth came out like sobs as he glanced at Rhodri’s staff. Gnarled, sickly twig of a thing it was. Between the two of them, the staff would come out the worse for wear if it hit him in the face.

Unless…

“Do… ah…” he broached, sobering with remarkable speed, “magical injuries come from touching the staff?”

The Warden shook her head. “Not unless you have lyrium affliction. You’re safe with me if you do, though, because my staff isn’t enchanted. I have the affliction, too, you see.”

He frowned. “I have never heard of such an ailment, but I suppose I could have it? How would I know if I did?”

“Well, most of the people who have it are mages, so it’s unlikely. Have you ever touched lyrium or an enchanted object before?”

Zevran nodded. “One of my better daggers, I believe, is enchanted.”

“Any itching, pain, burning, bleeding, or blistering when it’s close to you?”

“Not unless I accidentally cut myself with it.”

Rhodri smiled. “No lyrium affliction for you, then.”

“But you do have it?” He pointed his nose half-heartedly at the potions strapped to her hip.

“Mmm. The lyrium’s safe like this. No fumes get out through the glass or cork.”

“You drink it, though.” He had meant it as a question, but it came out more as a statement.

The Warden’s face hardened. “If I must, yes.” She shook her head like she’d caught herself being too serious, and fixed him with a careful smile that chilled his guts. “But that’s not for you to worry about. Tell me, Zevran, do you dance?”

He raised his eyebrows at the irrelevant and frankly unnecessary question. “We are Northerners, my Grey Warden.”

She grinned and rolled her eyes. “All right, all right. My fault for not being more specific. Are you good at dancing? Can you hold a rhythm?”

A cheeky smile was on his face before he could think to put it there. “My answer remains the same.”

“Aeya, you’re a wag! Look, the reason I ask is because we should start practising, and you’ll find my combat drills to be very similar to a dance. If you’ll follow me over to this little clearing with the wall, I’ll show you what I mean…”

They strode over to a barren, cork-earth patch beside the Chantry with a crumbling stone wall on its perimeter.

“Now, I’ll go through a drill, and we’ll take it from there, yes? Watch for the spell boundaries.”

The moment Zevran nodded, the Warden was facing the boulder, holding her staff as though she intended to run someone through with it. The air between them fell into a stifling stillness. When he was uncomfortable enough to try fidgeting a breeze into existence, small currents picked up near the back of the staff.

The sound of a whip crack had Zevran darting back, knife at the ready, in time to see a series of pearlescent orbs leave the business end of Rhodri’s staff. They hissed through the air into the stone wall, where they burst open like fistfuls of powder and fizzled into nothingness. He kept his mortified scowl to himself, stepping back and resheathing the blade before she could catch him with it.

Besides, had he not been disappointed that her spells were amateurish and invisible? If the Warden did have the capacity for magic that twisted the air and summoned stars out of nowhere, it was clearly for special occasions. Not for him, healing or harming– and rightly so.

He was already smiling as Rhodri looked over her shoulder.

“Bit like an Antivan two-step, don’t you think? Shall I do it again?”

Zevran froze. Had anyone asked him to recount the auditory and visual fancies of the last few seconds, he could have supplied copious details. Information on how the Warden had moved around to facilitate these, however, was rather more scarce.

“Yes, please!” The answer was rather more eager than he had intended, but if anything, she was thrilled by it. With a jolly nod, she turned back to the rock.

Zevran watched closely as she started up again. The staff was sweeping around her like she was rowing both sides of a boat, moving in fluid, precise motions. By his reckoning, two of him could have stood behind her without being hit. Moving with her perfectly, it might have gone up to three. Even a novice could have knifed her flank with ease. Oh, this mage would be in terrible trouble without him at her back.

As the second drill finished and the Warden turned around again, he smiled and nodded approvingly, if a little unevenly.

“Lovely footwork, my dear Grey Warden. I am quite confident these creatures do not know what trouble awaits them! All those stars and crackles, such raw power… mmm! You are a marvel!”

Rhodri shook her head. “Not raw power. If you can see or hear a spell, it usually means the caster isn’t concentrating hard enough. Those noises and stars are Fade energy escaping.”

Zevran’s thumbs twitched so violently they flicked his legs. “Ah,” he croaked.

“... Zevran?” The Warden’s hand had barely begun to reach out before it drew back. Unexplained comprehension widened her eyes.

“Ah! The magic is frightening. Yes, I remember you were nervous when I talked about it on your first night with us, too. You were staring at me just like you are now.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You must have heard a lot of disturbing things about mages.”

He forced a smirk before the horror could paralyse him. “Hmm! I have read tales of angry mages turning people into toads, it’s true.”

“Hah! Those stories are pure grot. Especially the shapeshifting ones.” She chortled. “In my experience, angered mages like to target the eyebrows with a growth spell. You wouldn’t believe how many apprentices came to me with brow hair down to the waist after an argument.”

Distract her.

“... How many?”

Rhodri nibbled her lip. “Ooh… probably happened once or twice a week. Very popular revenge tactic. The Templars were usually laughing too hard to punish anyone, see.”

She waved a hand. “We’re off-topic! My point is: if you’re worried, it’s all right. Over the years I’ve taught sixty-three children. How many do you think came to me unafraid of magic?”

He shook his head.

“Four. You’re not alone. I promise you, though, that your safety matters to me. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t insist on practising together now.”

Zevran had to say something, but how did one get words out through a locked mouth?

By the time he had managed to unlatch it, Rhodri’s shoulders drew up in a slow, tight shrug.

“That didn’t really help, did it?” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you well enough yet to know what calms you best.”

“No, no,” he began, the overdue words falling out at a blather. “Not at all necessary. Forgive me, I–”

Rhodri gently held up a hand to silence him. “You need to be at least somewhat settled before tonight, Zevran. If my spellcasting makes you jumpy, you could get hurt, and I don’t want that for you.” She puffed out a sigh. “Look, maybe we just need an uncomfortable truth for now.”

That wild, half-witted laugh was threatening again. An uncomfortable truth. An.

“Had I intended to harm you, I already would have. Very effectively, too. And if you wanted to, you could do the same to me, when my back is turned.” She shrugged again, much more loosely this time. “But I like you. I don’t want to hurt you, and you obviously have no interest in killing me. So far, neither of us have laid a finger on each other, or even raised our voices.”

Zevran clapped a hand over his heart. “You have my word, my Warden, that I have only your very good health in mind.”

She nodded. “I know. I need you to know I prioritise your health, too. We’ll take as long as possible now to make you more comfortable, but if you’re still not settled by then, you might need to find solace in a calculated risk tonight.” Rhodri gave him a small smile, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m a better bet than the monsters, after all. Well, at least until I have to identify herbs, anyway.”

He squeezed out a laugh. The Warden brightened immediately, bringing her hands together and rubbing them with a chuckle of her own.

“Right! Let’s get back to it, then. Shall I do another drill?”

For all its weakness during working hours, the Fereldan summer sun put in a long day. It felt somewhere near midnight when it finally disappeared (to spend a few hours wheezing and gasping, he presumed). Even then, the sky was unflatteringly bright as Zevran watched the moon rise from his place in front of the Redcliffe windmill. The Warden stood like a sentinel to his right, and the rest of the party was sandwiched between them and the decidedly inebriated townsfolk-cum-soldiers.

“Almost time, I suppose,” he mused aloud, fingering the pommel of his dagger. “I hope these monsters do not come late to our party, after all the effort we have taken tonight.”

The Warden chuckled and looked over at him. Her expression fell back into the usual severity as she ran her eyes over his face.

“It will be all right, Zevran,” she informed his cheek with jarring gentleness. “You shadowed me excellently while we practised. Not a single scratch on either of us! Absolutely nothing to worry about in that regard.”

He blessed the Maker twice over as a thud sounded from behind them and Rhodri’s gaze returned to the front.

“Was that the third drunken militia member to topple down,” she asked serenely, “or the fourth?”

Zevran didn’t bother to hide his snicker as slurs of ‘I’ll help y'up’ preceded a gasp of surprise and another thud. “I believe we are at five, now.”

“Hmm,” she nibbled her lip. “I think it might’ve been unwise of Bella to announce those free drinks, you know. Whatever these monsters are, I hope fire isn’t their weakness. If our comrades here,” she jerked her head over her shoulder, “get too close while I’m casting, they’ll go up like a torch.”

He laughed through his nose. “Let us hope, for their sake, it will not come to that. On the bright side, though, once they're down, they are unlikely to move from where they are. Perhaps if you need to cast fire and they are in the way, we could have someone roll them down the hill to the Chantry.”

A loud guffaw burst out of the Warden before she pressed her fist over her mouth. She cleared her throat, “Sorry. That was probably meant to be serious, but what a thought!”

“Oh, I was only half-joking there. Stranger things have happened.”

“Like standing in an odd little village waiting to fight unidentified things?”

Zevran glanced at the castle behind her. A putrid yellow mist had escaped the highwalled confines, flooding across the drawbridge like a lanced boil.

“I do not think we’ll need to wait much longer to identify them, my Grey Warden.” He pointed his nose at the spectacle in the distance.

The Warden looked over her shoulder and chuckled.

“Hah,” she said under her breath. “That time already, is it?”

She nudged Tomas, the man who had stopped them upon first entering Redcliffe, and indicated the castle. Tomas nodded, and with a yell that made the Warden flinch back and scowl (“Maker’s tits, you don’t have to be so loud…”), he had started a chain reaction of unsheathing weapons, frenzied prayers, and the occasional bloodthirsty, drunken roar.

Facing her own party, a rattled-looking Rhodri motioned for them to come closer.

“Well," she said with a thin smile. "Our time has come. We’re ready, yes?”

“Down to the last detail,” Morrigan huffed. “If you revisit your plan once more, I shall start to forget things.”

Rhodri hummed wryly. “If only we had details. Well, in any case, we all know what to do. Mind your stamina. Rest by the Chantry if you’re tired. Protect it as much as you can, watch out for each other, and come to me if you need healing.”

Alistair drew his sword in one neat motion, his face hardening as he watched the approaching fog. “Right.”

With a flick of the Warden’s hands, shields swelled up around each party member– except Zevran.

“Zevran?” She smiled gently at him. “Are you ready for your shield?”

It took an unfairly large effort to suppress a mortified wince.

Is my hair golden enough to pass for hay? I could hang myself up in a field with the scarecrows overnight and take my chances.

Shelving the ridiculous temptation, he rested a hand on his hip and pouted his lips. “Oh, yes. Do please lavish me with your marvellous spells, my dear Warden.”

She snorted, and one flicked hand later, he stood in a bubble of his own.

A hushed prayer from Leliana coincided with a mouldering reflection of Redcliffe’s own army appearing, shambling down the hill in piecemeal bodies and rotting armour.

From Zevran’s right, the Warden hissed a string of profanities.

“I don’t believe– Morrigan! Are you seeing this?”

The witch drew up beside them, expressionless and humming softly in agreement. “The dead walk, it seems.”

Rhodri twisted her head and eyed the ashen-faced Tomas in open disbelief.

“You told me nobody knew what they were!” she exclaimed, throwing a hand in the direction of the approaching horde. “They’re corpses! How can you not know what a bloody corpse is? It’s you, but dead!”

The man’s indignant splutters fell away as she let out a low groan and beckoned to Zevran.

“Let’s go. Honestly, you couldn’t make something like this up…”

They snapped into a jog. Zevran took longer than he should have to thank the Maker for the belt that kept Rhodri’s robe from catching the breeze and accosting his face as he moved behind her.

Dodge, dodge, swivel-step, dodge, dodge. Check behind- clear. Dodge, dodge, swivel-step…

He couldn’t help but snort to himself. The displaced Antivan hireblade, whiling away a war in a dance with the back of a shadow. The spells were silent, and the effort of filtering out the toppling drunks and singing steel to catch the sound of an impact strained his ears. Time snailed and sped all at once.

At some point, the Warden began to wheel around. He checked his back and was already behind her by the time she said his name.

“Break for a moment. I think they can handle the rest,” she nodded in the direction of the handful of corpses still standing, outnumbered by their party alone. “Let’s see if we can’t help some of the casualties, hmm?”

Zevran followed her over to a ghostly man, prostrate and groaning in a half-halo of scarlet dirt. The sword was out of his wound but still in his hand, and blood poured out of it like a broken wine cask.

He raised a hand that she never saw. “My Warden?”

“Mmm?”

“We cannot help him.”

She paused and looked at Zevran. “Why not?”

He shook his head, keeping his voice low and gentle. “He has lost too much blood. The sword was in his liver, you see?” He drew a finger over the same spot on his own torso. “Many veins and such there. He should not have taken the sword out.”

The Warden glanced over at the shivering man and sighed.

“Allow me,” he indicated his dagger, making to step forward. “It is better than leaving him to suffer, and I am quite used to doing it.”

Her arm went out in front of him. “No. It’s not for you to do that sort of thing any more.” She shook her head, mercifully oblivious to the way Zevran's eyes widened without his say-so. “I’ll do it. I just… you’re quite sure there’s nothing we can do for him?”

Zevran pinched his thigh to force some sense into himself. “I am sure, yes. I have plenty of training in knowing when someone is beyond saving.” He pointed his nose at the man. “He is very close to the end now, my Warden. He should be attended to quickly.”

He heard her swallow; she nodded.

“I believe you.”

She went and knelt down by the man, brushing the damp hair out of his eyes and murmuring softness Zevran heard in spite of himself. A simple turn of the hand was all it took to freeze the body, another to unfreeze it, and she rose to her feet again, scrubbing her hands as she did.

He inclined his head to her respectfully, the relief crowding out uneasy thoughts of being gratuitously frozen himself.

She spoke before he could. “Thank you, Zevran. He might have suffered with me, if I’d tried what I was thinking.”

His smile was already in place, a modest reply all but leaving his mouth as a panicked footsoldier screamed his way into earshot from further downhill.

“THE CHANTRY! THEY’RE DOWN BY THE CHANTRY! YOU HAVE TO HELP US!”

Rhodri’s mouth fell open. “I don't believe–"

"ANOTHER ROUND OF THEM!" Came Tomas' voice from further up the hill. Zevran glanced in the direction Alistair had bolted and sure enough, a second swarm was departing the castle.

“I believe they are asking us to be in two places at once,” he remarked wryly. “If only it were possible, hmm?”

The Warden’s eyes widened. “Perhaps we can’t be in both places physically, but with magic we can make it as though we were… Maker’s tits, you’re a genius!” She beamed. “We’ll light a grease fire, kill them that way!”

“Provided the fire actually kills them,” Zevran added quickly, “lest we end up having to deal with flaming undead. Could something be done to trap them, perhaps?”

“That’s a good point! Mmm– ooh! Morrigan might be able to help there!”

They weaved through the first-wave stragglers until they reached the witch, who was shaking her head in disgust at the onslaught coming down the hillside.

“This is unsustainable, Warden,” Morrigan barked. “This handful of novices will not survive a second, let alone a third or fourth visitation of these creatures. ‘Tis useless!”

“I know. Listen, Morrigan, how are you with earth spells?”

The witch raised an eyebrow. “You intend to bury us alive to spare our pride?”

“Hm? No, no, nothing like that. I want a crack in the earth wide and deep enough for them to fall into.”

“‘Tis merely delaying them, to trap them in something like that,” Morrigan shook her head. “They can climb.”

“Line it with ice so they can’t grip. I can go further up, grease them, and set them alight. They’ll fall into it and burn to death before they can get out. Most of them, at least.”

Zevran flitted his gaze between the urgently eager Warden and her blank-faced counterpart. The silence grew heavier until the latter shrugged.

“Very well, have it your way. I shall start work on the crevice. I suggest you hurry, though, as they draw rather close.”

Rhodri grinned. “Thirty seconds? Enough time for a holiday. Come on, Zev!” She let out a laugh and broke into a run before his stomach could finish dropping at the unexpected name.

A hard shove to the back sent him stumbling forward.

“Get out of the way, elf,” Morrigan spat from behind him. “Unless you wish to be at the very bottom of this crevasse.”

Zevran burst into a sprint without looking back and quickly caught up to the Warden, who was already dousing the incline ahead with a lake of pearlescent slick.

“Are you ready?” she said over her shoulder, face shining with sweat and gleameyed enthusiasm. “This is the good bit!”

“I was born ready for the good bit,” he purred.

“I won’t keep you waiting any longer, then!” A small tongue of flame materialised on the grease and rolled up the hill, carpeting the earth in a blockish inferno that blazed taller than Alistair.

“Warden, will you get a move on?” came Morrigan’s impatient voice from behind. “I cannot widen this crevasse before you have crossed it!”

Rhodri grinned at him. “No admiring our handiwork today. We'd better go before she kills us.”

A foolish laugh escaped him before he could stop it, and Rhodri joined in, twice as loud and three times as ridiculous as she waved him into a run with her. They cleared the gap with a dramatic spring that won a satisfying ‘ugh’ from Morrigan. The witch struck her staff once, twice, three times on the ground, and the gap yawned until it was too wide for even a galloping horse to clear.

“Ooh, marvellous! Keep an eye on that thing, would you, Morrigan?” The Warden beamed at her. “We’ll see to the nuisances by the Chantry.”

Had she waited for a response, Rhodri would have seen the sort of eyeroll that turned knowing recipients to stone. Zevran suppressed the urge to sigh– they were, after all, running away before they could witness the ‘good bit’ in action– and hurried down the hill after her.

Zevran noted with delight that the incursion that had dragged them away from the pyrotechnics show uphill was smaller in number than the first two waves. Five or ten fewer– but fewer nonetheless!

And, better still, with the sky finally dark, the fiery patch was easily observed from the bottom of the hill, obscured as it was by fir trees and long grass. Between the usual ducking and dodging in synchrony with the Warden’s massive, shrouded form, stolen glances were worth gold.

It was outright ungratefulness to will the sun away when it threatened at the horizon again and drowned out the silhouette of the fire. Zevran’s apology to the Maker was easily given upon seeing the last of the undead flee back toward the castle. He gave another apology with far more sincerity when the exhausted, bloodstained party found themselves assembled at the front of the Chantry. Bann Teagan stood to their left, the survivors in front, and a sea of corpses– their side who went down in battle, those that couldn't be saved afterward, and the maleficars’ lackeys all together, spanning out behind them all the way to the water's edge.

The man was making a grand speech of sorts that had the rapt attention of everyone but the Warden. Zevran watched on curiously as she frowned and rubbed at the grime on her wrists and robes with increasing irritability, not even stopping when the Bann turned to her and began addressing her.

“Ah… Warden?” Teagan cleared his throat politely. “Ser Grey Warden? I was, ah… just saying that we have some food ready, if you and your party would join us for a quick repast.”

Rhodri looked up and nodded. “Thank you. My party can do as they please, but I must wash and put on clean clothes before I eat.”

The Bann shared a glance with Alistair.

“They’ll have wet cloths to clean your hands with in the Chantry, Rhod,” Alistair said, “but you’d have to go back to camp for anything else. The post-battle meal is only twenty-odd minutes, so we’d be done by the time you get back.”

“Quite fine. I’ll eat at the camp, then.”

Another, rather more uneasy glance, which the Warden appeared to miss. Good manners, however, snapped back into place for the Bann with the quickness befitting of nobility.

“Of course,” he inclined his head. “Please tell me if you would like anything from the meal, or anything else.”

“Thank you, we have food at the camp I was planning to eat. My companion, however,” Zevran’s stomach dropped as she indicated him, “is without a tent. I would appreciate it if you could supply him with one. I'm happy to pay, of course.”

Teagan blinked. His mouth opened and closed, and then opened again. “Yes, of course. I will see to the tent immediately, no payment needed.” He clapped his hands together decisively. “In that case, shall we go?”

“You shouldn’t go back there alone, Rhod,” Alistair protested. “Really. Just… ten minutes? Eat and go? I’ll go back with you early, even.”

The Warden’s face hardened. She rocked on her feet a little. “You know I always clean up before I eat dinner.”

“I think we’re probably closer to breakfast now, actually–”

“But this isn’t breakfast,” she insisted, her tone straining. “I didn’t wash, and I haven’t slept. I need to sleep. But I need to eat before I do that, and before I eat I need to wash and get these dirty clothes off.”

The exchange was pulling glances from sober passers-by, and outright stares from the drunken ones. Bann Teagan and the party hovered halfway between them and the doors to the Chantry, gaze wandering in every direction but the relevant one.

“Perhaps I will go with you, my Grey Warden,” the words fell out of Zevran’s mouth like water, stunning him in the process, “I could do with a change of clothes, myself. I would hate for the grime to stain my leathers.”

“Not bloody likely–” Alistair began.

“Zevran has been at my back the entire night,” Rhodri cut him off firmly. “I am well, as you see. In fact, he helped to plan the firewall that kept you from being overwhelmed uphill. As far as I'm concerned, he has more than proven himself to be a remarkable addition to our party."

She took the Templar's hands in hers and gave him a wan but genuine smile. "I'm going to leave for camp now. Please go and eat. Enjoy your food and the company, and when you come, you can bring the tent with you, or have me come down to collect it.”

Zevran jumped to attention as she turned to him.

“Are you ready to go?”

He nodded quickly. Not having it in him to take in the looks of the others as they left, he watched the path ahead, the Warden's praise rattling in his head the entire way back to camp.

link again if needed: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35465686/chapters/98737821

#HWWT #Action scenes are now officially illegal and we will hint to them in the same way Victorians did to sex: via short but meaningful euphemis #Rhodri Amell #Zevran #Dragon Age: Origins

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