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“Do you mind it?”
It was an idle question, one she asked lightly. He seemed confused by it, warm brown eyes running over her face as if needing to decipher some deeper meaning.
“Mind it? Whatever do you mean?”
Dottie stretched on the rickety wooden chair, bringing one leg up and wrapping her arms around it, resting her chin on her knee. She felt the prickle of tiny hairs against her face and inner forearms. The room at Last Light was luxurious compared to tents and bedrolls and icy cold streams, and it was theirs for the night, something she wanted to enjoy. But it was also a different context which brought all kinds of insecurities she’d forgotten she had rushing to the fore. It was easy to ignore when they were covered in dirt more hours than they weren’t, and when ‘scrubbing up well’ meant not being covered in goblin viscera. No one worried about little things like shaving when not smelling like burnt gnoll fur was practically like wearing expensive perfume. It hadn’t really come up as a thought, so overwhelmed and distracted by having someone to be with in the midst of all the blood and desperation.
She hesitated, trying to work out how to explain. “Well… you were with a goddess for the last… however long it was. A while. There’s… body stuff, mortal body stuff that - that people have preferences about. I… I wondered if you had a preference. That’s all.”
Gale continued to look affectionately baffled. “As flattered as I am that you believe I can solve any puzzle you lay before me, I don’t currently have a ‘detect thoughts’ spell to hand and I would rather not utilise our illithid stowaways for a simple conversation. So unless you would care to furnish me with a potion of mind reading or some other such aid, you’re going to have to be a little more explicit about this ‘mortal body stuff’ that’s bothering you, my love.”
“It’s not bothering me,” she flushed pink. “Oh Hells, Gale, why are you making me spell this out…”
He came over and knelt in front of her, ignoring the noise his knees made in the process. Dottie took a slightly shaky breath. His warm palms pressed thigh and calf, soft lips against her shin, and she twitched at the scratch of his beard where she hadn’t felt it before, tensed as she wondered if he felt anything remotely similar against his mouth.
“You’re embarrassed.” It was a gentle statement but it prickled her anyway.
“No. Maybe.” She sighed, burying her fingers into the smooth, silky tangle at the crown of his head, earning her a breathy, pleased noise that was warm against her inner thigh. She swallowed. So many considerations that hadn’t seemed important in the snatched moments in dark, dusty corners or grassy clearings or beneath humid canvas shelters. That weren’t important compared to the sticky, urgent heat of taking what they could before they couldn’t anymore. There was never enough time to worry before.
Now his face was very, very close as he laid his head on her thigh and she was acutely aware that she hadn’t shaved, hadn’t really, properly bathed for weeks now, and that her human ancestry was far too evident for her liking in the soft, dark hair on her legs and beneath her briefs.
In fact it was too close, she realised with a sick spike of adrenaline that flipped her stomach. She slid her heel off the chair, nudging him back and pressing her legs together with a frown. “Let me - I need to w-” she was about to stand when his hands gripped her outer thighs and he pressed his face between her knees nuzzling them open insistently.
“Gale!”
It tickled, that close-clipped hair on his jaw and chin making her squirm as it scraped against her inner thighs. She couldn’t help letting out a nervous laugh as he pressed higher, closer, and the unease wriggled in her lower belly along with an uncomfortable arousal in spite of herself. “Please,” she tried, fingers tightening around the twist of chestnut locks they were embedded in, “please, don’t, I haven’t - let me use the bath first -”
There was a frustrated moan and a huff, the vibration and flutter of hot air so close to the dampened crotch of her underwear it made her twitch. He didn’t pull back, merely tilted his face up towards hers. The look in his eyes was enough to make her twitch again as if he’d touched her.
“There is something exquisite about the pleasures of mortal love that are bound up in this… corporeal experience…” His thumb pressed against her inner thigh hard enough to feel the throb of her pulse. “Flesh and blood… the dew of perspiration… the scent of desire…”
“You can’t actually mean -” she was cut off by him burying his face between her thighs once more, her protests ignored as he pressed his mouth and nose against her crotch and breathed deeply, exhaling a low, heated groan. Her eyes widened and she made to push him back in surprise but his grip had slid around to her outer thighs, arms hooked under her knees, hot hands burning against her flanks as he took another long, torturously warm inhale, eyes fluttering closed and his open mouth practically scorching through the increasingly soaked fabric of her briefs. He was mouthing at her aching core, murmuring half-formed, lust-drunk sentences of adoration against saliva-and-slick sodden cotton. She was turned on in spite of the insecurities that were causing a strange, twisted kind of anxious desire to shiver through her limbs. It was torturous, she didn’t know whether she wanted him to stop or to keep going, the fears in her mind warring with the needy sensations squirming in her lower belly, until eventually she couldn’t take it any more.
“Gale, please,” she said and was startled to find tears in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t feel… I don’t feel clean , you know? It - I’m worried you won’t… that it’s not - that you won’t like it…” She pushed gently on his forehead with the heel of her palm, trying to get him to move away and stop the cacophony of doubts that were screaming in her ears.
As soon as he heard the tone of her voice he stopped, raising up and pressing a kiss to her palm, letting his hands slip from her thighs and cupping her cheeks to thumb away the sudden dampness.
“Oh, love,” he exhaled. “You must know that this privilege of our relationship is something I cherish, in every form it takes. Your body, your touch… it reminds me what living can feel like. And besides… I rather adore your musk…” A small smirk on his lips, even with the sincerity in his gaze. It still made her squirm, cheeks pink, unable to fully meet his eyes. His forehead rested against hers and she could feel his brow furrowing in concentration for a moment.
“You’re still uncertain,” he murmured in a low voice, “and the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable. So… let me make you comfortable? Let me help. Please.”
She opened her mouth to question as she saw the faint blue glow and felt her arms gently being tugged behind her back, behind the back of the chair, being held loosely at the wrists by spectral fingers. “What do you mean?” she asked nervously, watching him stand and begin to busy himself in the tiny, dingy room, collecting various items.
“Trust me,” he pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he passed, “let me do this for you.”
Dottie swallowed, her heart rate picking up. She did trust him, of course, more than she had trusted anyone for a long time; she tried to remind herself of this as her eyes tracked his pathways across the room until he settled in front of her on his knees once more, a neat leather roll in his hands which he placed on the floor beside the ceramic washbasin and assortment of towels he’d gathered. A deft flick of his fingers and the basin filled with water. Another and steam began to rise. Those same nimble fingers danced up her thighs to the waistband of her underwear, lightly tucking in against her stomach, making her muscles flex in anticipation.
“May I?” The smirk was back, infuriatingly handsome. Cockiness looked unfairly good on him and it made her want to kiss the smug look right off of his face. He sensed her hesitation, “Dottie, relax …”
“I’m trying, I swear… talk to me?” She felt the mage hand shift against her wrists in a gentle, reassuring squeeze as he peeled her underwear down, sliding it off of her legs, the cool air of the room hitting her naked sex in a way that felt vulnerable and uneasy.
The smirk widened, his dark eyes sparkling as they met hers. “You know I rarely need an invitation to do so… what about? Any particular topic capturing your attention this evening, my dear?” A brief moment where she noticed his hands trembling, a brief moment where she noticed a shyness flitting across his expression, and then he brought the damp crumple of fabric in his hand up to his face and took another deep inhale, breathing in the heady scent of her arousal and sweat and messy, animal humanity contained within the fibres. Dottie stared at him. He really had been telling the truth about liking her ‘musk’, then. The cockiness was still there when he finally put it down, though it was tinged with sheepishness, a look that said ‘ couldn’t resist’ and that made her cunt throb. “Well? Or should I select a particularly fascinating, error-laden passage from the writings of Volothamp Geddarm to summarily deconstruct?”
She laughed, “Gods, you’re trying to kill the mood… no, please don’t do that…” Dottie cast about for something, anything. “I don’t know, tell me something about… uh… lanceboard…”
It was Gale’s turn to laugh. “Very well,” he nodded. Those nimble fingers were sure again, the trembling instantly vanished as they turned up the sleeves of his linen undershirt, revealing his forearms to her hungry gaze. His voice was soothing, holding her gently as he dipped a small cloth in the hot water by her feet and reverently took her foot in one hand, running the warm, damp flannel over her calf and shin with the other. She watched, fascinated, at the methodical process of lathering soap against her skin, his fingers kneading the muscles in her lower leg until they relaxed and she let out a tentative sigh, releasing some of the tension that was tightly wound in her body. And then he wiped his fingers clean and dry and unrolled the strip of leather, revealing the glint of silver.
“Oh! That’s -” Her eyes flicked up to his. The straight razor gleamed in the low candlelight, reflected in the gleam in his warm, honeyed irises. A thrum of edgy, anxious desire travelled along her nerves, twitched in her centre, shivered along her skin as he carefully placed the blade against her shin. She realised she was holding her breath.
“Yes. How else did you think I kept my beard appropriately tidy? Scavenged, all of it, and nowhere near as nice as the kit I have at home in Waterdeep, but it does the job.” He grinned. “Now you’re going to want to stay quite still as I explain the uses of the Theskan Double Counter-Gambit and the strategic advantage of seemingly entrapping oneself…”
There was quiet except for the soft scrape of the razor over her skin, the murmur of his voice, and the occasional splash and clink as he rinsed the blade in the basin. Dottie couldn’t focus on anything except the methodical, rhythmic glide of metal on warm, soapy flesh, almost ticklish, tender and soft yet with the ability to draw blood should either of them slip. She couldn’t quite believe that Gale was on his knees shaving her legs for her . It was… thrilling, in a bizarre kind of way.
And over almost too quickly, as Gale rinsed the razor and wiped it on a towel, placing it back down onto the leather roll and wetting the flannel cloth once more. The warmth seeped into her skin as he pressed it against her, slowly wiping away the remaining flecks of soap. “...and then one would be in a position to threaten the Cyric,” he explained as if she had heard a word of what he’d been saying for the last however many minutes it had been. She was about to respond, to thank him somehow, attempt to leverage herself out of the chair but the spectral fingers resisted the tug of her arms and he looked up. Sly. Wanting. “Oh no, we are not finished. Certainly not.” He murmured in a tone that made her cunt clench and ache, made her realise just how arousing his focused, methodical attention had been. And then he was pushing her knees apart, shaking his head at her weak spluttering, those impossibly warm palms burning against her backside as he shifted her hips forward.
“Spread your legs a little more for me, love,” he pressed kisses into her inner thighs, encouraging them to fall wider. Dottie could hear a shakiness in his breathing as he clearly resisted the urge to move his mouth to her folds and lick into her right then, though at this point she wouldn’t have minded any more if he did, her insecurities thoroughly muffled under the blanket of lust clouding her mind. She was aching with need, biting her lip and trying not to squirm towards rather than away from him now. But Gale clearly had a plan, and wasn’t going to change it for his own sake. She felt like she ought to tell him.
She was about to give voice to her change of heart when she felt the scrape and sting of teeth on her inner thigh and yelped in surprise.
The searing, bright pain of the bite knocked the breath from her, made her burn, the scratch of his beard against the damp, sensitive skin igniting nerves, a flood of heat and wet in her cunt. Teeth, again, this time the other side, pain flowering sweetly along soft, intimate flesh and pushing a shivering cry from between her parted lips. His eyes were dark and fathomless, lips shiny as his tongue glossed over them, licking the taste of her bruised body off his mouth. “You like being bitten,” he murmured, confirming it to himself, and then seized the meat of her leg between his blunt, white incisors, leaving spit-slicked red indents in the shape of his smile. Each one a burst of delicious agony far too close to where she was aching to be touched, new blooms of pain agitated by the brush of his beard and soothed by sucking pressure and soft swipes of his tongue. The need to reach out and fist her hand in his lovely hair was too much and her arm jerked painfully against its magical restraint, lovingly holding her in place hooked over the back of the chair.
It felt like an age before she felt the press of his fingers close to her knees and he pushed himself back, licking his lips with a shuddering breath. His eyes were half-lidded and hazy and he looked as though he was trying very hard to regain his composure. The soft, warm, damp cloth was back - clean water, she noted, too dizzy with need to have noticed when he cast another spell to replenish it - this time tenderly against the reddened, bitten plushness of her inner thighs. And then higher, higher still, until the warm, wet drag of it moved over her desperate, needy slit and her head fell back with an intense groan.
The contrasting cool air when it disappeared made her clit throb and her hips jerk, and then there was the heat of his breath as he leaned in close, soapy fingers gently massaging the crease between her leg and her lips. She gasped, eyes widening, caught between intense arousal - her body instinctively moving, legs widening and sliding herself forwards - and the fluttering bolt of anxious anticipation lancing through her chest. Surely he wasn’t going to shave here…?
“That’s - you don’t - you - um…” she was spluttering, surprised, cheeks flushed. Gale tutted in response.
“ I have no qualms about any way your body naturally tends to be,” his tone was faintly admonishing and amused at the same time. “All of this -” he ran his fingers through the soft, dark curls of her pubic hair, making everything tingle and her breath catch again, “is beautiful. However, I got the distinct impression that you would be more comfortable if things were aesthetically a little more… contained. Or am I wrong?”
Dottie bit her lip. “You’re… you’re not wrong. I don’t… I dont know why,” she mumbled, still distracted by the way his fingertips were massaging her so intimately. His breath ghosted over her slit again in a hot, satisfied puff of air.
“Then let me make you more comfortable,” he murmured, and then there was the cool glint of steel between his fingers and a blade against the thrum of her pulse. So close to somewhere that could spell disaster, if he were to slip, or tremble, or lose his grip on the keen edge.
It was deliciously, delightfully, painfully terrifying, the razor smoothly scraping across thin, highly sensitised skin, thumping blood vessels dangerously close to the surface. The anticipation was so intense she could scream. This time there was silence, none of Gale’s commentary as he paid close scrutiny to his actions, hands steady and sure but with finely-tuned focus that had her scarcely able to breathe. The relief, then, of the flannel against her skin, of warmth and softness as he wiped her clean. Shaky, half-laughing whimpers bubbled from between her lips, and she wanted to grind into his cloth-covered palm. Her core ached for attention, for friction, for something that wasn’t the maddening, barely-there flutter of heated breath or cool air or brief, wet pressure of the towel.
“Gale, I - I need you to - it’s fine, really…” She wasn’t sure if the stickiness under her was water on her damp skin, or sweat, or her own arousal that had run down onto the chair. He smiled. There was so much barely restrained, agonised impulse in that smile.
“Almost done.” His voice was hoarse. The razor was cleaned and neatly placed back in the leather roll. She wondered what else there could be, how could he possibly wipe away any more of the shame of her body and transform it into wanton, unfettered desire. Her train of thought was interrupted by the slide of two fingers along the messy, swollen folds of her cunt. She bucked and a keening noise she didn’t recognise ripped from her chest, stilled by the warning twine of those fingers into the curls of hair on her mound, a gentle tug that had her eyes rolling back and sounds that were something like begging spilling out because she no longer cared, no longer had the wherewithal to care about how she looked or tasted or smelled or sounded, she just needed.
“What a reaction,” there was gentle laughter in his surprise. “Be careful, my love, I do need you to continue to stay quite still. Is that alright?”
She summoned up the willpower to look down and meet his gaze, to nod slightly deliriously, to still her hips against the painful, clenching hunger telling her to chase his touch. Which is, once he was satisfied she wouldn’t jerk suddenly, when he began to use a pair of small, delicate scissors on the dark thatch of curls over her outer lips.
The strangest thing, that this was so arousing. So unexpected. The intense focus, his brow furrowed in concentration as he became intimately acquainted with a part of herself she barely saw. The scrutiny of it, the vulnerability as she was laid open, almost completely bare, helpless and immobilised by the near-forgotten restraints around her wrists. The gentle, teasing brushes of his fingertips, the odd pull and release of the blades of the scissors that revealed more of her wet, swollen inner parts with each pass. The way he was looking, serious and reverent, as if she truly was beautiful to him, even there.
Mercifully short, the amount of time before the cloth was pressed against her once again, warm and wet, but she was warmer and wetter and desperate now. And so was he. The swipe of the flannel was almost immediately replaced by the swipe of his tongue and Dottie nearly hit the roof, the anticipation, the gentle, maddeningly not-enough touches and strokes and tender attention having worked her to a point of sharp-edged craving. The sensation was different, too, able to feel so much more, the revealed skin without its usual downy protection and alive to touch in a way that made it electric.
“So soft,” he murmured, drawing back for a moment and placing his palm over her. Wondering. Burning hot. “So soft here…”
His tongue was back once again, and it only took a couple of slow, filthy licks before she came embarrassingly fast. She writhed in the chair, sweat covering her chest and forehead, hips held prisoner in his relentless grip as his mouth coaxed wave after wave of pleasure from her twitching, needy cunt. Her head fell back and husky, pleading whimpers for more and don’t stop and Gale tumbled from her mouth until it was just halting, jagged exhales. Her hips writhed and jerked in his grasp as she came down from the heights of orgasm, instinctively seeking respite from the now overwhelming lap of his tongue.
Gale didn’t cease, merely slowing his ardent attentions on her oversensitive flesh. She bit her lip as the sensations tipped over into a twisted mix of discomfort and pleasure, right at the edge of her tolerance, chest heaving, sweat glistening on her skin, trying to regulate her breathing a little as his mouth kept working her overstimulated core. Her nails scratched at the back of the chair, scrabbling against the wood, and a muffled whine slipped out through her bitten lips, the agonising arousal flooding her senses in a heady, overwhelming experience in her body.
"Ah! Fuck!" A little cry was knocked from her chest as he flicked her clit with his tongue, a jolt of pleasure-pain running through her, making her jump. The sensations began to plateau again at a level of just-tolerable, searing, torturous ache mingled with uneasy ecstasy, her body trembling with the effort of resisting her reflexes to pull away. He kept his mouth pressed tight against her, buried in her, the soft swipes with the gentle flat of his tongue turning into a brutal tease as he stiffened it into a point, licking the sweetness of her slick from her entrance and tracing her throbbing clit. Each pass of the tip of his tongue was an intense bolt of just-bearable sensation, pleasure bordering on pain in a tantalising way. The keen edge of sensitivity gave way and she felt herself hurtling towards another orgasm, shuddering, arching, begging, she was so close, so close -
Those two clever fingers slid inside her easily, sinking into the grasping, slippery heat of her, filling her and pressing just right up into the soft hunger deep inside, his hand and his mouth and his beard soaked in her slick and pushing, teasing, twisting her until the taut string of her desire snapped and she was coming again. Her vision whited out at the edges, every inch of her skin alive and burning to the touch when her arms were suddenly free and Gale had launched himself from his knees, the wetness of his mouth now thrust in the heated, sweat-damp burrow of the crook of her neck, slick-covered chin and cheeks smearing it against her and she didn’t care about that either because she could feel the beautiful, painful friction of his rock-hard, fabric-restrained cock grinding wildly against her cunt.
She barely had time to thrust a trembling hand into the confines of his breeches, fingers twisting around his throbbing shaft, fingertips digging into his back before she felt him twitching in her palm at the contact, his breath searing against her throat as he panted and moaned. Her own body was still shuddering, rocking back to meet his in the ebbing heights of orgasm. She raked her nails up and grabbed a fistful of that lovely hair and that’s when she felt the hot spill of his seed splashing against her palm, his stomach, her forearm, not even out of his undergarments.
Dottie cradled his head in her neck, letting her own tip forward to rest on his broad shoulder as he slipped back to his knees between her legs, curling over, loathe as she was to let go of his softening prick. The sticky mess between them began to cool as their mouths searched for one another blindly, finding a slow, delightfully sloppy kiss, all tongue and heavy exhales and heat.
Eventually Gale pulled her hand out and tucked himself away, cheeks flushed and hair in disarray. She felt practically stupid, her thoughts fuzzy and incoherent.
“I suppose it’s my turn to clean you up, now,” she said, her tongue feeling thick and already missing the mingled taste of herself and his mouth.
“That isn’t necessary, I didn’t do it as an act to be returned in kind, it was -” Dottie rolled her eyes and stopped his breathless protesting with another kiss.
“You…” she started, after sucking his lower lip between her teeth and eliciting a satisfying grunt, “have a pathological sort of drive for generosity.”
“Ah, you know what they say, it is a noble virtue - whether it be in the streets, at the charity box, or betwixt the sheets…”
“Or on a half-broken chair in the middle of a terrifying shadow curse,” she quipped. “One day you’re going to let me return the favour.” She cupped his cheek, rubbing her thumb through the softness of his beard.
“Hmm, that sounds rather like a threat. As long as it doesn’t involve shaving this off,” he leaned into her palm, “it may get you into Tara’s good graces but it certainly wouldn’t keep you in mine.”
She laughed, wrapping her arms around him once again and planting a kiss on his cheek. “As if you’d ever let me anywhere near your face with a straight razor… I’m going to have to find another route to charming my way into a tressym’s heart, it would seem.”
“You have a point, I’ll grant that. Nonetheless, I - and my beard - thank you.” The ensuing kiss was teasing, smiling against her lips. And then, quietly. “She’s going to love you, I know it.”
Dottie flushed pink again. It was ridiculous, she thought, to be planning for a future with odds so stacked against them, to be thinking of mundane pleasures and introductions to old friends and lives in other cities when tomorrow was less than guaranteed. But for a moment it could feel certain, and that had to be enough. More than enough. She pushed him back with a playful huff.
“Ok, I’ve hit my limit for sentimentality and you’re wearing far too many clothes. Get cleaned up and then you can tell me again all those things I definitely listened to you explain about lanceboard…”