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“This is a tree,” he says blankly, as she leads him up to her so-called door. “You are a parody of yourself,” he tells her between kisses, still flushed from the dance and the wine and her hand in his, from the terror of facing her amused, dubious family. It is difficult not to smile, in spite of everything in front of him. She has a hand in his and her mouth on his and is doing her level best to devour him. “Is that—is your bed made of moss, you lunatic—”
It’s all he has time to say between kisses before she has him shoved against the wall, pink-cheeked and bare-footed and blindingly happy. “Sarkan,” she says caressingly, “be quiet.”
He obeys, grumbling, as she tilts her head and kisses him, startlingly filthy and deep, like she wants to drink him down. No skill or artifice, only enthusiasm, but she learns quickly. Her tongue is, as always, infuriating, her teeth sharp and teasing, and she laughs when he groans and clutches her.
She is a mess, gloriously, horribly so, humming into his mouth and lighting up his skin.
“You’re still so put-together,” she complains fondly, and nips at his collarbone, gets her teeth in his skin and hands in his hair and worries at both until he feels nearly as disheveled as she is.
“I missed you,” he says, without any prodding or spellwork at all, and she pulls away from where she was mauling his neck to look at him, wide-eyed. “But must we live in a tree?” he adds waspishly, because his heart is throbbing like a vial of uncorked fire-heart.
“Yes,” she says, eyes shining at him, and somehow, despite being the least coordinated creature in the world, she has managed to wrap a leg around his waist, and his hands are beneath her skirt, firm on her skin, and she’s rocking against him insistently—he can feel the heat of her through his trousers, and it sets his hands to shaking.
“But we can have a tower too,” she allows, and throws her head back to stare at the tree trunk above them, living wood and bark, the life of it thrumming all around them, as though they have not had enough of trees for several lifetimes. He is growing moderately fond of this one, in spite of himself, but that is due to not intrinsic quality of the plant itself.
“So long as you promise to let me drag you outside every other market day,” she adds breathlessly. “Oh, and—ah, Sarkan, please—on, on feastdays. And! You have to try one of the fruits.”
Ridiculous. He’s glaring at her even as he tries to kiss her quiet, and she’s humming when she’s not prattling on, as though this, too, is a spell, a song she’s learned to sing, and her hips are moving to a beat that is driving him mad, his breath coming out in short pants.
“You are impossible,” he gasps into her throat, and finds her breast, the delicate curve of it cupped against his hand, nipple nestled hot against his palm. He wants so much, all at once, that it nearly prevents his moving at all. But she’s still pushing against him insistently, impatiently, and he refuses point blank to reach completion in his jerkin.
“Why not?” she asks curiously, and laughs at him when he stares. “There are cleaning cantrips,” she teases, and laughs all the harder when he picks her up and tosses her onto what passes for a bed.
“Another time, then,” she whispers, and wraps her legs back around him.
“What do you want?” he begs, pressing his forehead to hers. She’s wonderfully cool against him, crisp and refreshing as lake in midsummer; he feels as though he’s burning her, but she only rubs against him, sighing in pleasure, eyes dark and smile curling.
“Hmm,” she says, alarmingly thoughtful for how little his own brain is currently functioning, and with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Let me find out.”
Her magic shivers over him, their clothes melting away into the shadows—they had better not go to outfitting her pet walkers, he warns her absently as he tries not to spend instantly upon her body at the sight and feel of her. It’s been barely months, he scolds himself desperately; you have gone near-centuries without another’s touch. Control yourself.
“Why would you want to do that?” she scoffs, and he glares at her. She smiles, and rolls herself on top of him. She says his name, and his very being feels as though she’s struck it lightly, a ringing glass, a bell. “Sarkan,” she says again, tasting the consonants of it, and he shudders under her, gripping her hips. “Could you come just from this?” she wonders, rocking her hips. She’s sliding over him, slick and hot, teasing his cock with her entrance while she kisses him with little dips of tongue, playful imitation of the roll of her hips. “You could spend all over me. I think I’d like that.”
“You’re filthy,” he rasps automatically, awed and shivering, and immediately realizes it was a mistake, since she raises an eyebrow and sets herself to the task of making him come against her body at once. It takes… very little time. Her eyes find his again, her head tilts, and with a slow blink she looks down his body, tilting her head, and he feels lit up beneath her, a forest in the body of one man.
“Ah,” she says, soft and surprised, and takes his hand and holds it to her hair. “You—like it? Really? But it’s such a mess.”
Tangled and soft and a thousand colors at once, impossible and beautiful and infuriating. He shudders beneath her as she leans over him, and her hair curtains out the trees, the distant firelight, the world.
“Agnieszka,” he says, and she kisses him open-mouthed, wet and messy. Her sex is slick against his and he’s trembling under her, pressing his face to her throat. Her hair is silky against his skin, a living thing, and she smells of honest sweat, of wind and good soil, and he is trembling with it. He has never come like this, with so little direct contact, so quickly. He thought he knew his body better than this—but she always surprises him. “Please, let me—”
Barely months, and it feels like it’s been longer than his lifetime. He’s desperate for the taste of her, wants to spend days, weeks, in this horrible tree, doing nothing but drinking her body in with his mouth.
“Oh,” she says, eyes shining as he catches her hand in his and lets her draw him deeper into the song with a sob. “You’re going to—oh, Sarkan, oh—”
He manages, through years of training in endurance and stamina and skill, to tug her nipple into his teeth and fit his hand between her legs, even as he’s shuddering and coming against her in long, slow jerks. She moans and arches and thrashes delightedly, soaking his palm, and rocks against his belly, until the both of them are disgustingly wet with it.
It is filthy, he points out hoarsely, especially when she takes the time, as she hadn’t before, that single night shared, to explore. A finger swirled between them, a thoughtful blink and a pink tongue.
“Fuck,” he swears, feeling his cock twitch, and is delighted and annoyed at once to see her flush at the obscenity. “Honestly, you are the most impossible, ridiculous contradiction—”
“What next?” she interrupts, and tests his cock with her hand. He is distracted a moment by her explorations.
“Ah,” he says, head tipped back to regard the hateful ceiling, and tries to assemble his brain into something that can approach functionality. “I’ll be capable of rousing again in another… nineteen minutes,” he estimates, and as her head slowly rises and her eyes meet his, he is suddenly, starkly sure he’s made a grave error, though he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is now. “I’m more than happy to keep you occupied with my mouth or hands in the meantime,” he promises silkily, and sees this snag her attention for a moment before it slides back.
“Sarkan,” Agnieszka says, very seriously, settling on top of him with only a mild amused squirm as he casts a cleaning spell—they were sticking together—he points out crossly, and is furious with himself for the way his heart thuds when she kisses his nose dismissively.
“Sarkan,” she croons, and he eyes her warily. “You’ve a whole book of notes on this, don’t you. Confess.” He is, for a moment, completely bewildered, then he goes still and stiff. “Did you—you did, you experimented! You observed all the components and variables and—oh, Dragon,” she says, shaking her head and sounding impossibly fond, and he glares at her, helplessly furiously besotted by this madwoman. “You absolute—you can’t codify sex.”
“I am far older and have had far more sex that you. And I can so,” he says frostily, and is for a moment completely overset that this is so familiar, so comfortable an argument. One they’ve had before over other subjects, but now they are having it sweaty and close, with his hand stroking insistently over her inner thigh and her chin on his naked chest. “I can observe constants and variables, it’s no different than any other behavior,” he says stiffly, and shivers when she bites him on the nipple, sharp, then tender and lingering.
“Ten minutes, maximum,” she says, with that gleam in her eye again.
“I was not capable of that when younger; I can’t imagine why you think I would be now,” he says, refusing to let uncertainty enter his voice. Either way, he is fairly sure, even if he has to suffer admitting he was wrong, the consolation will likely be worth it.
“Where,” he gasps a minute later. “Did you hear of this? Was it the soldiers? How—”
She leaves off her exploration a moment to look up at him through her hair—he scowls down at her; he will never know peace, now that she knows how weak he is to her bright eyes through that shining curtain.
“I didn’t hear anything about this from anyone—do other people do it?” she asked interestedly, and pressed a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the head of his cock. He can feel her smile, though not see it, as his eyes have slid shut and his fists are rending the leaves beneath them. His body feels like it’s singing for her, like she’s coaxing out what it, he, will like best.
He now knows what it feels like for her to hum around him, low and throaty, and he may die of the knowing it. Not all enjoy this act—some of his previous partners have acted as though they were doing him a grand favor, a tedious service—but Agnieszka is not one of them. She’s thoroughly curious, and her smug delight grows every time he gasps and tries desperately to hold himself back. The happier she sounds, the more he sweats, and pants, and clings desperately at control.
It has been far less than ten minutes. He closes his eyes and thinks of snow, of endlessly complicated spells, and has nearly steadied his heart and calmed his breathing when she pulls off, laying her face against his thigh. He can feel a slow thoughtful blink, the brush of her eyelashes making him shiver, and then she says, “Give me a moment. You may not like it at first, but—give me a moment to try.”
He props himself up on his elbows to eye her suspiciously. It’s hard to maintain with her all skin and sweat and tangles between his legs, especially when she licks her lips at him and takes him back into her mouth, slower this time, almost torturously, idly slow.
Then he feels her fingers dipping backwards, and he blinks, shocked, at the ceiling. She moves slowly, slow enough that he could easily stop her, without shifting the mood or making it more awkward than it already is. He’s determined—he will give her her moment, and then, after well enough time has passed, it will be his turn. He was going to give her an orgasm that shook the bedrock of the Earth beneath them, and be damned to whatever questions the Valley had for them tomorrow.
Then his back comes off the bed without his consent, and he’s sitting upright, panting, and feels as though she has, without his noticing, called lighting down here within the tree.
“What are you doing?” he snarls, and cups the back of her head reverently, and shudders as she crooks her fingers again. He swears, and hears something pop outside. His body is shaking under her, beneath her fingers.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asks, seriously and then slowly beams as he glares at her glassily, pushing back against her hand. “You like it,” she croons, and then says, “Oh, I think you can come more than once if I—do this—”
His notes are thoroughly overset; he spends, in fact, three times in less than an hour. By the end, he begs, not sure if he’s asking for relief, for surcease, or for more, and she presses reverent kisses against him until he’s stopped shuddering.
“You are—impossible,” he slurs, and drags her up. “Sit here. I’m—you—”
“Have I broken you?” she asks interestedly, and he thinks, possibly, yes. Long ago. Wonderfully. But he just huffs out and arranges her until she’s awkwardly straddling his face.
“I’m not sure,” she says hesitantly.
“I assure you, I can breathe,” he says, and pulls her down on to him, nosing and biting and licking, pulling at her hips until she catches his rhythm. He looks up to see him staring down at her, eyes dark and shocked. Their gazes lock and he takes her hand in his, brings it to his mouth to kiss at the fingertips, and she shivers all over, swearing at him. He tastes her shuddering completion, once, twice quickly thereafter that way, then rolls her over and uses his mouth and fingers until she screams, and outside there’s the sound of thunder, and pouring rain.
“There,” he says, feeling nearly as drained and spent as if he’d cast a Summoning alone, as washed clean and raw and awed with it. She falls back to the bed and he regards her: her heaving chest, her clenched fingers and toes, the red slick ripeness of her cunt, dewy as any rose.
She’s smiling at him now. “A satisfying working?” she asks.
“Adequate,” he allows, and lets himself at last collapse into the bed—barely a bed, though he’ll grant it’s expanded generously for them. She pinches his side and laughs when he raises a face to scowl at her, and then a short agony of kissing ensues: both their faces slick, mouths bruised, breath coming in hot damp pants against each other. It is disgusting, he thinks distantly, holding her close.
Then he gropes about on the floor, and finding a shift, flings it at her weakly with one hand—she, wretched creature, has noticed he’s roused again, and is questing between his thighs with an interested hand.
“Peace!” he bellows into her neck, too tired to raise his head. “Until morning at least, you madwoman.”
“Hmph,” she says, but settles against him sweetly enough. He is too tired to truly mind the stickiness, or the dirt, or the sound of the rain, dripping close by, or the leaves stuck to his body, or anything at all. “I hadn’t thought you that old already,” she yawns.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I’ll need to adjust some of my calculations,” and he makes to summon some parchment and a quill, just to have her tackle him—as though he was incapable of doing mental adjustments, he thinks fondly. He falls asleep to the sound of her sleepy giggling, and the tree growing, and deep beneath it all, the Spindle breathing magic into the night.