Chapter Text
To be the seamstress of Madame de Fer is to be at her constant beck and call. So when the Madame informs Xenia, her assistants, and apprentices that they will be going to Have to serve the Inquisition, there’s no saying no. Though Xenia doesn’t want to, as someone has to put the world back in order, and it seems the Inquisition and the supposed Herald of Andraste are the only ones willing to do it. Besides, she trusts Madame Vivienne’s judgment. If the Madame is willing to serve them, then Xenia is, as well.
Vivienne travels ahead, with the Herald and her little band of companions. Xenia’s party travels at a much slower pace, slowed by the carriage carrying Madame’s servants and the wagon full of supplies. She insists on riding on horseback instead of being cooped in the carriage. Lover Boy, her sweet but high tempered Strider, enjoys the trip more than anyone else. It’s been a long time since they traveled for more than a day.
Haven is a mess of scattered cabins and tents, a snowy field given over to training and the Chantry on the hill above. Xenia’s placed in a cabin with her assistants, which is fine by her, and the Madame offers her services up to Ambassador Josephine in whatever capacity they may be needed.
This is how Xenia comes into contact with Commander Cullen Rutherford. She’s sent to get his measurements and come up with some pieces of clothing that show his new station and rank. The man is so big she wonders if he’s got Avvar blood in him. He’s got golden curls and brown eyes, a strong jaw and a deep voice, the mere sight of him makes something low in her gut pull hot and tight.
She wishes her assistants weren’t busy with other work. Xenia’s really quite sure she’s going to make an absolute fool of herself.
The Commander is barefoot in his command tent, stripped of armor, so he wears nothing but a linen tunic and old, broken-in breeches. They hug his everything in a way that is wholly distracting.
“You work for Madame Vivienne?” he asks as she’s measuring his arms, shoulder to wrist. He’s got fine hands, big hands, scarred and calloused. She wonders what they’d feel on her skin, and then bites her tongue. She’s not a girl anymore, and she’s not going to collapse into fits of lust just because she’s in the presence of a man. Yes, he may be the most handsome man she’s ever seen, but still.
“What?” she says, blinking back into reality. “Oh, um, yes. There’s always something interesting to work on.”
“You enjoy your work?” he presses, head tipped down to watch her. She strings her measuring tape around his bicep, praying she isn’t as flushed as she feels.
“Very much,” she assures him. “My Mama was seamstress to Queen Anora, before the war. I grew up helping her design gowns, doublets, what-have-you.”
The Commander makes a low noise in the back of his throat, watching as she steps away to note measurements down in her book. The scarred side of his mouth quirking upwards. “I’m shocked the Madame trusts a Fereldan to design her clothing.”
“Where else would she go for true excellence?” she quips back, shooting him a grin. “She sets trends instead of following them. Have you seen the nonsense they’re wearing in Val Royeaux recently? Dropped waists that look ridiculous. ”
“Can’t say that I’ve been keeping up on recent fashion trends,” he answers, a tease in his voice. He watches as she comes close again, snapping out her measuring tape before dropping to her knees. She doesn’t look up at him, because she’s imagining all sorts of filthy things and is afraid he’ll be able to read them on her face.
Maker. Is she a teenager again?
“Legs a bit more apart please,” she asks, tapping one calf. “There we go. I’ll be taking your inseam, now.”
She’s a strong, professional, adult woman. She is not blushing so hotly that sweat breaks out on her forehead and the back of her neck as she lines the measuring tape up. There’s nothing remotely interesting happening right now, and she’s being ridiculous.
“Sweet Maker,” she mutters, dropping down to note the measurement in her book. She’s placed it to her side, easy to reach but out of the way.
“What?” asks the Commander, a rather interesting tone in his voice. It has not, she firmly tells herself, gone lower. Rougher.
Clearing her throat, she turns back to his legs, pulling the tape around his thigh. “Your inseam,” she says. “Thirty-four inches.”
There’s a pause, a missed beat in the conversation that makes her look up. He’s looking down at her, eyes gone dark and a touch hungry. But no, that is absolutely wishful thinking, because he’s impossibly handsome and she’s short, fat, and freckled. Being a seamstress in Val Royeaux means that she’s seen the loveliest of women, tall and sleek and thin, with small, high breasts and gently swelling hips. There’s no lumps or bumps, no wide hips, no fat arse, no thick thighs.
“Yes,” he says, head jerking up and jaw setting in a rather hard line. “I’ve got rather long legs.”
“Rather long,” she snorts. “Commander, you’ve got the longest legs I’ve ever seen, by a solid four inches.”
Now she’s measuring his calf at the thickest point. He’s all solid muscle covered in a cushion of soft fat, and it’s like the Maker made him from every fantasy she’s ever had.
“I suppose that comes with your work. Comparing men’s measurements, I mean.” There’s an amused, teasing tone to his words that makes Xenia go hot again.
Now she’s on to his ankle, thumb accidentally slipping beneath the hem of his breeches and brushing the jut of bone. His toes twitch. There’s a faint trail of golden hair on top of them. Xenia informs herself she’s not remotely interested in those long feet, the high arch, the shape of his ankle. She’s a professional doing professional things, not lusting like a school girl.
“Trying to find out how you measure up?” she asks, quite against her better reason.
“I believe we’ve established I’m the winner,” he says, and when she peaks up at him he’s blushing. But there’s a grin on his face, making him appear almost boyish. “By four inches, as you just said.”
The innuendo makes her blush so hard she feels a bit a faint.
By the end of it, she’s got a page full of measurements and a design for a surcoat sketched out in her book. She shows it to the Commander, who looks at it for a long moment before nodding. “It’s good,” he says. “Unusual.”
“I was told to make you stand out,” she says, snapping the book shut and giving him a wide smile. “I intend to do so.”
There are few more pleasantries exchanged before she leaves, stepping out of the tent and into the cold Ferelden air. Sucking in a great gulp of it, she turns her face towards the sky and tries to calm her racing heart.
She’s absolutely sending an apprentice next time.
*
The first time is after Haven, after the long march through the night to a shelter of craggy outcroppings in a natural bowl at the crest of one small mountain. The Herald is found shortly before dawn. Xenia saw Cullen carry her in, wrapped in his surcoat and half blue with frostbite, delirious from fatigue and energy. She was rambling in elven, words low and slurred. Xenia worked with enough elves to have picked up a few elven words and phrases, the little fragments of their language still spoken in alienages. B there’s only one word that she can truly make-out: mamae.
It breaks her heart, makes her hide in the back of a tent and weep, until she coughs and gags and heaves.
Everyone thinks her survival is a second miracle, another sign from Andraste. Xenia’s never been particularly religious, though she grew up a good Chantry girl and still attends, out of habit and duty more than any pious leanings. But she can’t understand how Lavellan survived unless there was some level of divine intervention. A fucking mountain was dropped on her head, after she faced that nightmare the scouts reported. Still, she’s hovering on the edge of death, and healers surround the Herald’s cot. Even Xenia, who hasn’t a drop of magic in her at all, could feel the spells they weave and cast when she stood outside the tent and prayed.
How long has it been since she prayed and meant it?
More than a decade. Not since she and Mama and her siblings left Denerim behind, not since Papa remained despite the fact the darkspawn horde was on fast approach. Still her father died. And for what? To defend the royal stables? To be honorable?
Honor only ever gets good people killed. Except, it seems, for the Herald of Andraste.
Xenia spends the next day and the rest of the night hard at work, sewing under the thin mountain sunlight and then by the light of a dozen lanterns. Not gowns or doublets, breeches or hose. No, she all but stole one of the little tents meant for food storage, lining the canvas with costly velvet and brocade that she had her assistants haul out of Haven during their desperate flight. Harritt and his people stripped branches from young evergreens, leaving the pine needles to be sorted through, to be used in place of proper pins. They scrape the bending wood free of bark, whittling the branches down to bare white wood that’s easily bent. Then he moves on to drilling holes in the sides of a wagon, the spacing marked out by Xenia with a bit of her dressmaker’s chalk.
The children are going to freeze. They already lost three on the flight away, and two more in the cold night since. It’s past dark when she and her apprentices finish, and she climbs into the back of the emptied wagon to help thread the whipping branches through the channels they sewed in between the bolts of rich lining. Herritt makes a glue from tree sap, water, and some powder sprinkled from a pouch at his waist, dripping it into the holes before they carefully slide the whipping branches into place and hold them in. Then they’re bent and molded, so that they carry the weight of the canvas in a great arch before the branches are secured on the other side of the wagon.
Xenia proceeds to a cot only after she’s seen all of Haven’s children, noble-born and low-born alike, bundled up in the wagon with the thickest of blankets and quilts brought with them for further warmth. She shivers under her riding leathers and the thin wool blanket until she crashes, going so deeply under that a second mountain might have collapsed on their heads and she would have slept through it.
She wakes sweating and confused. There’s a body behind her, a big body, and it’s radiating heat like a furnace. Muttering under her breath she struggles her way out of her blanket, bedraggled head appearing. She takes in deep lungfuls of cold mountain air.
She’s not shocked that there’s someone slid onto the cot with her, though whomever it is so large that she’s resting more on his arm and leg than the cot itself. They haven’t got enough beds for everyone, so they’re being used double and triple. Still, she’d expected one of her assistants or apprentices to crawl in with her, not this massive –
Squirming around, she tries to get a look at the man behind her. She catches sight of an unshaven jaw and a red surcoat, worn not over armor but a thick tunic. “Commander?” she asks, trying to rise up on one elbow. But his arms are around her, not tight enough to crush but hard enough to pull her right back against him.
“Shh,” he whispers, curled so that his mouth is above her ear. “You’ll wake everyone.”
His hand spreads across her stomach, as big and hard as the rest of him, and a completely inappropriate surge of lust uncoils in her stomach. She goes stiff as a board, wide eyes staring into the shadows and the flexing wall of the canvas tent, moved by the strong mountain winds. She can hear it howling outside.
The Commander’s hand slides from her stomach to hip, curling over the rise of it before he strokes up to her ribs. Then back down, to mid-thigh. It feels like he’s soothing a nervous mare.
“Your teeth were chattering in your sleep,” he says, voice just barely over a faint murmur. She can feel his breath, warm and faintly damp where it touches bare skin, and she can no more keep herself from shuddering now as she could stop her chattering teeth when she was sleeping. His hand pauses on another downward stroke. Then it spreads wide over her thigh, fingers into flesh before he pulls her against him.
He’s hard behind her. She can feel how impossibly, dizzyingly thick he is, even between two layers of leather.
“You left the Chantry when I told you not to,” he says, and there’s a hard, ugly edge to his voice.
When her assistants and apprentices had started hauling fabric into the tunnels beneath the Chantry, Xenia had run out into the madness. It was luck that she made it to the stables, where Dennet was freeing the last of the mounts, only two soldiers with him. Brave Heart – or Asshole, as everyone else calls him – was screaming and bucking in front of the stables, reins dragging the ground. He’s a massive war stallion, damn near seventeen hands, gold with a silvery white mane and tail. He was, is, the Commander’s steed.
But Commander Cullen was heading their escape, and she knew that he was the only other person that could get Brave Heart under control in those conditions. So off she’d gone, heart thundering in her ears as she remembered Papa staying behind in Denerim. The royal horse master did not abandon the stables, he’d said, not even the face of a Blight.
It was probably the first time in her life she’d understood why he stayed.
She’s not sure how she got Brave Heart to calm enough for her to approach, her arms spread wide and a dozen soothing words leaving her mouth as she crept up to him. His eyes were rolling and fury filled, teeth grinding on the bit, but he’d dropped his head when she ran a hand over his neck. Let her take him to the nearby fence, so she could climb up it and leap on his back. Then she dug her heels in and whistled, high and loud, leaning hard over his neck as the stallion charged off. A good thing she is a stable master’s daughter, riding before she could walk. Better still that her thighs were strong from years of riding and hiking. Otherwise he’d have sent her sliding off his unsaddled back.
The Commander was furious when she’d rode him into the Chantry, Dennet bringing up the rear on a terrified Forder. She could see it all over his face, in his golden eyes, but he’d set his jaw and jerked his chin. “Hurry up,” he barked, waving them on towards the back of the Chantry.
“Brave Heart –” she starts to say, before her words die in her throat. The Commander’s head is bent low, mouth opening so he can set his teeth on her neck and bite. Hard . Lust spikes with such a fury that there are spots flickering in front of her eyes, red and yellow and white against the black of her closed eyes.
Oh, she realizes distantly, that’s how it’s going to be.
She’s heard a dozen couplings since they escaped Haven. No surprise there: near death and surviving by the skin of one’s teeth has that effect. She just hadn’t expected the Commander to fall prey to it. Or at least, not with her, a fat little seamstress with a face full of freckles and red hair. Maybe with the Herald, who is lithe and lovely, though admittedly too injured and ill for such things. Or Josephine, who is one of Antiva’s greatest beauties, as far as Xenia’s concerned. One of the soldiers, perhaps.
“Asshole is a horse, ” he hisses against her neck. Then his hand is at the laces of her jerkin, the leather cord snapping in a half-dozen places when he gathers it up in strong fingers and jerks. Her upper body is moved by the force of it, but there’s a high, keening noise in the back of her throat and she’s reaching behind her. Her hand finds his flank and then slides further back, so she can dig her fingers into the back of his thigh and hold him against her.
Jerkin opened, he yanks up her tunic. She’s shocked to realize he’s not wearing gloves. When he takes one heavy breast in his hand she moans loudly. Too loudly, she realizes, eyes snapping open. Cullen is breathing hard against her neck, catching her nipple between thumb and forefinger, pinching and twisting until her hips roll and her head presses back against his shoulder. He makes this noise in the back of his throat, so close to a growl that she can feel the slick flood out of her body and wet her smalls.
Then he’s rising up on one elbow, ripping at the laces of her breeches in the same way he had her jerkin. The twang and pop of the leather is unexpectedly arousing, and she bites her tongue against another sound of lust. When Cullen yanks at her breeches, she twists and squirms, helping him pull them down to the tops of her knees. Then his big hand wedges itself between her thighs, fingers sinking into the wetness there.
“Think I didn’t see you watching me?” His demand is low and ragged. “When I worked the men? When I was riding? When you were on your knees measuring me?”
Taking his measurements had been a trial of embarrassment and control. She’d felt like a girl again, back in Denerim Palace and all hot flushed and damp at the merest sight of the then Prince Cailan. The Commander is even bigger than the dead king was, broader and thicker and more heavily muscled. Taking his inseam had her professionalism cracking like overheated glass. Measuring his massive thigh had her biting the inside of her cheeks and blushing like an untried girl.
Of course he’d noticed.
He rubs tight, hard circles over her clit, and Xenia’s back bows. Her hand scrabbles out, finding the edge of the cot and clinging to it so forcefully that surely her knuckles go white and bloodless. “Should have fed you my cock then,” he whispers. She can hear how wet she is, hear his fingers moving through it. Blood pulses hard in her ears, almost as loud as the wind. “Should have bent you over the table and fucked you til you screamed.”
Xenia does not fall into an orgasm so much as she crashes into one. It hits her all at once, no warning at all, like getting bucked from a previously gentle gelding and toppling into thorn bushes. Sobbing loudly, she scrabbles at his wrist, his hand, trying to stop his movements or at least slow them. But he’s too strong, too focused, and he keeps on working her up, and up, and up, never allowing the peak to fall. Her second orgasm comes quickly, booted heels kicking against the Commander’s shins and the cot.
Then he’s moving, rising up on a knee and bracing his other foot on the floor. He pulls his hand from between her thighs with a slick pop, grasping her hips and maneuvering her up. He presses her upper body down, against the uncomfortable cot, gets her ass high up and bare to the cold air. It’s dark but not dark enough to hide what they’re doing, to hide how he’s pushing her legs as far open as her breeches will allow. They’re still caught around her knees, her boots still on and laced, but all she can focus is on how hot his hand is on her ass.
She can hear him behind her, hear the rustle of his clothing as he unlaces his breeches. Then she feels him, feels his cock as he rubs it against the slick seam of her. He hisses through clenched teeth, a long sound that makes Xenia turn her face against the cot and struggle for air. Maker, his cock is huge, so thick that she’s worried he won’t fit inside her. But she wants him to try, wants to push against him as he rubs and presses, covering himself in her wet so thoroughly she can feel his knuckles slide against her where he’s holding the base of his hardness.
She should have realized he’d be big everywhere.
Now she can feel the blunt head of his cock against her, pressing into her, and she reaches up and takes another hard grip on the edge of the cot above her head. It’s been a while since she last had sex, and despite how wet she is, despite how ready she is, there’s a burn as he works into her.
“Open up,” he half begs, hand hand spreading over the small of her back. He thrusts shallowly, pulling out only to press more of himself in, then more and more and more. “Let me in, sweetheart.”
Pulsing around the impossible girth of him, Xenia keens, rocking herself back with a desperation she’s never felt before. She’s had good sex, but this? This is already beyond anything she’s experienced.
All at once Cullen snaps his hips, a chesty rumble escaping him as her body obeys and opens to his welcomed invasion. He bottoms her out so thoroughly that stars spark behind her eyes, bright flashes of white and silver, and then she’s coming again, back arched and body straining as she tries to keep quiet. But she can’t possibly be silent, not when she’s so full it aches, wonderfully, deliciously. “ Commander, ” she half-sobs and half-gasps, arms and hips and legs shivering violently.
He bends over her, brackets her body with his arms and presses a wet, open mouthed kiss to her neck, her cheek. “That’s not my name,” he rasps. Then he’s pulling back, slowly, the drag of his cock inside her making Xenia turn her face against her arm and whine. Now he thrusts forward, sharply, so the cot creaks dangerously and she can feel his open breeches against her ass.
Then he begins to fuck her earnest.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he pants against her ear. “Tell them who’s fucking you.”
She shakes her head, biting the leather over her arm so hard she can feel it through the thick material. Not because she doesn’t want to scream his name, but because they’re in a tent with Maker knows how many other people, with hundreds more beyond. But he’s intent on hearing it, on thoroughly ruining her for anyone else. He takes a grip on the side of her face and chin, pulling her head up so he can bend and curl around her, kissing her with such desperate force that Xenia thinks her heart might stop.
He sucks her upper lip and then bites the lower one, dragging his tongue against the hurt. Then he pulls back, breathing against her face as he demands, again, “Tell them who’s fucking you so good, Xenia.”
“ Cullen, ” she moans, and it makes him snarl like a feral thing. He rises high up, one hand curled over the back of her neck while the other takes a grip so hard on the fat of her hip that she knows there’s going to be bruises there later. He fucks her hard and deep, so thoroughly that she can feel wet sliding out of her like a decorative fountain. It’s so loud, the slap of skin and slick, their breathing and groans and the creaking of the cot. Anyone nearby is going to know exactly what’s happening. Going to know that Commander Cullen has her face down and arse up, so full of cock that she thinks she’s going to choke on it.
“Please,” she sobs, straining as another orgasm begins to build in her. “Please, Cullen, please. ”
“That’s right,” he hisses, sliding his hand up from her neck and fisting the loose hair above the start of her braid. He pulls her up, so she’s braced on her hands and knees, body pulled taut. “Beg me, sweetheart. Beg me and I’ll make you feel so good. Make you come so hard. Fill this tight little cunny up with so much come it’ll still be dripping out of you tomorrow. Want that, don’t you? Want to be full of me? Come on sweetheart, beg so pretty again, and I’ll give it to you. I’ll give it all to you, Xenia.”
“ Please, Maker, fuck, Cullen, please, please, please –” Words escape her in a hot, mindless rush. She’s on the edge of completion, muscles tight and tensed, her hips shaking and lifting against him as he fucks hard, and deep, and dirty. The hand on her hip slides down, curls around so he holds her pussy. His palm grinds against her clit, fingers spread so he can feel himself moving in her.
Xenia comes with a thin wail. She can feel the heat of her own pleasure gushing out of her, can hear it pour out around him and trickle down her thighs. Cullen snarls, jerking her up so she’s up on her knees, back against his chest as he lowers his head and kisses her. She’s open mouthed and panting, too caught in pleasure to fully respond, but she loves the slide of his tongue and taste of his breath. Then he hilts himself, harder than ever before, hard enough that her orgasm bleeds into another in a way she hadn’t imagined possible. She can feel the throb and pulse of his heavy cock deep inside, can feel the first flood of his seed spilling into her.
Moaning into her mouth, he pulls back and hilts himself again. Then again. Again. Each time he gives her more, spilling so much come that she imagines she can taste it in the back of her throat. He’s shaking behind her, shivering, arms gone tight and hard around her body. All at once he groans, wobbling back until his arse hits the one boot still on the bed. Xenia follows him as he falls back, head far back as she stares at the shadows on the tent ceiling, her vision gone blurry.
“Maker’s breath,” Cullen rasps. His grip on her loosens, hands sliding up and down her body in long, soothing strokes. “Sweet Andraste, woman, my heart nearly stopped.”
Xenia giggles, delirious and giddy. They sit like for a while, too long, probably, before Cullen slowly tips her forward. She slides down onto the cot, whimpering at the loss of his cock. She feels achingly empty, stretched wide and wonderfully used. She’s on her stomach, head cradled on her arms, and he rests over her for a time. She likes his weight, likes how it makes her feel safe and protected. His hand strokes her messy hair, playing with the frizzy curls coming loose from her braid.
“If you ever do something so foolish again I’ll whip your arse til you can’t sit for a month,” he warns her, in a tone so absurdly gentle that her core and heart both pulse at the sound of it. It takes her a minute to realize what he’s talking about, given how foggy her mind is.
“I couldn’t just leave him,” she murmurs around a yawn.
Cullen says something, but she’s drifted too far to understand the words. Then she’s asleep, worn and aching in all the best ways.
*
He’s gone when she wakes, and they’re both too busy to even think of attempting to speak. But Xenia feels eyes on her sometimes, turns her head and sees him ordering his men, talking with the Inquisition leaders, or leading a fragile Herald by the arm. Each time he’s watching her, eyes dark and hungry and knowing.
She’s been an employee of Madame Vivienne for several years now. The mage is as terrifying as she is lovely, but for those who manage to slip behind her hard shell, there is a kindness about her. Sometimes she’s motherly towards Xenia, fixing her hair or gently steering her towards matches that would put her in the lower rank of nobility. So it’s no surprise when Vivienne finds her around the campfire at dinner, settling herself on the log beside Xenia as though it is a throne.
“How are you feeling today, my dear?” Vivienne asks, smoothly crossing one leg over the other. “It’s been a difficult time, and I haven’t had the time to check on you.”
“I’m fine,” Xenia assures her. “How’s the Herald?” Vivienne had been one of the healers tending Lavellan. A good thing she’s here, as Vivienne is as adept a healer as she is a formidable foe in battle.
“Shockingly well,” the Madame informs her. “No extremities lost to frostbite. What remains of her injuries will fade in time. She’ll be whole and well in due time.”
They’re quiet for a while, watching the crackling fire and the movements of the people around them. Then, with a shift that sets the drape of her armored robes just so around her hips, Madame Vivienne asks, “I trust you had an enjoyable morning with the Commander?”
Xenia chokes on the mouthful of stew. She hacks hard, gone redder than her hair and approaching death by sliced carrot. Vivienne watches with a smug little smile.
Wheezing, she reaches down and grabs her water flask. It’s full of snow melt, clean and pure, and she takes a long drink of it. “Um,” she says, feeling as though she’s discussing sex with her mother, if her mother was both deadly and incredibly fashionable. “I – we – yes. It was...yes.”
“He is a good man,” the Madame says approvingly. “A fine Templar and leader. Given his position in the Inquisition, he will soon be a highly sought after match.”
“It’s not like that,” Xenia says, poking at a hunk of meat with her wooden spoon. “Um, we just...we almost died. You know how it is.”
“Mm. It sounded like rather more than a desperate affirmation of life, my dear.”
Weakly, she asks, “You heard us?”
Arching one perfect brow, Vivienne tips her head and says, “Darling, the entire camp heard you.”
Xenia’s not sure if death by blushing is possible, but it seems as though her body is attempting to be the first to achieve it. “Oh,” she squeaks. “That’s...oh.”
“Do take note of the Commander’s gaze,” Vivienne advises. “He watches you like a man starved.”
“Now you’re just being hyperbolic.”
“Only an observation, my dear. Enjoy your meal.” With that she stands, swanning elegantly away.
*
Xenia’s not entirely sure, but she thinks the Herald has officially become a divine figure. After Mother Giselle led them all in song, the hymn rising high to the sky and bouncing off the mountain sides, devotees knelt before Lavellan like supplicants before an idol of Andraste. The poor thing looked terrified. She wishes she knew the woman well enough to offer her comfort, but it seems Messere Solas took her away to give her some level of support
The next day they set off, led by the Herald through deep snow and rough terrain. That day bleeds into another, and another, and soon they’re all aching, and sore, and exhausted. She splits her time between her apprentices and assistants, and Dennet and the horses that survived Haven. Most of them are carrying soldiers or supplies (including her Lover Boy), but there are few yearlings too young for such weight. She helps lead them through high mountain passes and narrow paths, feeding them bits of dried vegetables nicked from their supplies.
On the fourth day she’s trundling through snow halfway up her shins, furious with the world at large and desperate for a bed. That’s when Cullen comes up from behind her, astride Brave Heart. He pulls the stallion to a halt, smiling down at her with obvious fondness and a faint blush. Heart turns his head and begins licking and nipping at Xenia’s hair and face. She laughs, immediately brightened as a long, thick tongue licks a sloppy line up the side of her face.
“Quit that,” she scolds, cupping his broad muzzle and placing a smacking kiss on his forehead. He’s marked with a blaze of white between his eyes, in the shape of a heart that bleeds into a long trail of white. “My handsome boy, I’ve missed you.”
“He took a bite out of one of my lieutenants today,” Cullen says wryly. “And yet he’s sweet as sugar to you.”
“Maybe if everyone didn’t call him Asshole, he wouldn’t be in such a foul mood,” she says pointedly.
Broad shoulders lift in a shrug. “If he didn’t act like one, I wouldn’t have named that.”
“Don’t you listen to the mean old Commander,” Xenia croons. “You’re a precious angel and I love you.” Brave Heart knickers, nipping at her face again.
Shaking his head, Cullen leans down and stretches his hand out. “Ride with me?” he asks, going red right to the tips of his ears. Xenia flushes as well, but accepts his hand. She lifts a boot to his foot, bends her knee, and then jumps as he pulls. It’s a bit awkward swinging on with a person behind her, but they manage it.
She then immediately regrets this choice, as she’s caught between Cullen’s hard thighs and strong arms. She can smell him, something musky and almost herbal, and his armor is cool even through her leathers. Tapping his heels against Brave Heart and clicking his tongue, he sets the war stallion off at a gentle walk.
“I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you since, ah…” Trailing off, Cullen clears his throat. “It has been busy.”
Xenia pats the arm holding the reins. “It’s fine, Commander. I completely understand.”
There’s a rush of breath from behind her, a sharp exhale that ruffles the hair on top of her head. Leaning down so his lips brush her ear, he murmurs, “I thought we established that my name is not ‘Commander.’”
There’s no hiding the shiver that races down her spine or the blood that pools in her face. “Um,” she half squeaks, “I wasn’t – I though it may have been – things are said in the heat of the moment, you know, and –”
His arm wrapping low around her hips brings her stilted words to a halt. “Cullen,” he says, before kissing the soft skin behind her ear. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” she says in a breathless rush. Her mind is full up with that night, with the memory of his hands and his cock and oh, Maker, the things he’d said.
“Good.” Another kiss is placed on her neck, a bit lower this time. “I like the way you say my name, Xenia.”
The air leaves her in a hard whoosh. When Cullen laughs it comes out as a satisfied little chuckle.
“You’re getting too much enjoyment out of this,” she grumbles.
“Not nearly as much as I want,” he assures her, pulling her a bit tighter against him, so she can feel how hard he is. Of course this is when they pass by Madame Vivienne, who tips her head up and gives Xenia a knowing look.
“Good morning, Commander. Xenia.”
“Good morning, Madame,” Cullen says, tipping his head in greeting.
“Good morning,” Xenia squeaks, hoping she isn’t as flushed as she knows she is.
Then they’re past her, Brave Heart’s long strides eating up the ground.