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When the vampire spawns so brazenly attacked them in the heart of Baldur’s Gate, Asheera decided they would resume their nightly watch duties once more as if they remained in the wilderness. They couldn’t afford an incident like that again. It didn’t matter where they rested anymore, though they enjoyed relative paradise in the Elfsong Tavern. There was far too much at stake.
For the most part, the others took her orders well. Convincing some of them not to indulge too deeply was another matter. She’d lived through her share of watch cycles with a drink, and she knew how badly it could go if one set of eyes closed for too long.
The life of soldiering seemed a lifetime ago. Relaxing in the Elfsong, even with their renewed watch duty, was quite different from sitting in a river fort or finding some way to pass the time on a ship navigating rollicking waves.
But there were no further attacks in the days that followed. Nevertheless, Asheera maintained they keep watch. It was an easy routine to fall back into, at least for some of them. Thankfully, Lae’zel and Karlach understood her caution.
The others finally understood when Asheera asked Lae’zel to bring her grindstone in to sharpen her sword. Specifically, in the mornings after the worst of a late night drinking spell. Asheera took the opportunity to liven up her own sword’s edge. Maybe, she loudly considered that morning, she would see if Karlach’s axe needed the same attention.
The best look on all their faces, though, was on Shadowheart. She grumbled about the noise, and the others chimed in soon after. Compared to them, she was positively thrilled to be woken up by the constant grinding.
That night, after enjoying a laugh with Shadowheart at their companions’ annoyance, Asheera turned to her in the lounge at the heart of the Elfsong’s rooms. She set down the book of assorted, bawdy poetry she had been reading. The suite was quiet save for their jokes, most over the poems, and the occasional squeak from the upholstery of the high-backed chair where Asheera sat.
Reclining on a divan across from her, Shadowheart thumbed through her own book. A romance, no doubt. “Oh, my Lady paladin,” she said, closing her book, “you wear orders on your lips so well.”
“I wish some people would actually listen to them,” Asheera replied.
“Oh, they do. Eventually.”
“It’s not as if I’m saying they can’t enjoy themselves. We just can’t carouse all day and night. Not when we still have so much left to do, so many people we might save.”
“Asheera.” Shadowheart set down the book on a table next to the divan. She reached out to Asheera, took her hands in hers. “You are doing what you can, with what you have. If you need me, I’ve no issue helping keep them in line.”
Asheera laughed once in a harsh report. “Thank you. Knew I could count on you.” Pressing their hands together, the leather gloves she wore from an earlier spar squealed. She pulled Shadowheart into her lap. “Let’s make it official. The commander and her right-hand woman.”
“Oh, please.” Shadowheart rolled her eyes, but her impish smile betrayed her. “You say it as if I’m unaware I’ve already taken that role. Gladly, might I add. Do you really think me so daft?”
“You, daft? No, never.”
“Don’t say it like that.” Shadowheart slapped her shoulder playfully. “Besides, I prefer to fight at your left hand.”
“How about my second-in-command, then? Do you like that title better for this task?”
Shadowheart gave her another eye-catching smile in answer. “Now, there’s an interesting idea.”
Staring, Asheera blinked rapidly. She could stay watching her, staring at Shadowheart smiling, forever. The world entire compared ill to seeing her display her joy so openly.
Though there were dark days ahead of them, and they had yet to confront whatever waited for them in the House of Grief, it was a reminder that they would make it through this. There would be flowers, and there would be all the colors in all the realms, and they would live, together, with as much of their joy as they could muster.
Asheera knew it, and she would not release the hold that belief had on her. Like an oath, that picture of their life after — their now, and their always — needed her conviction to thrive.
Shadowheart’s touch, their embrace, drew Asheera back. Back to Shadowheart sitting in her lap, an arm looped around her neck. She was so close, the perfume of citrus-infused soap redolent and mixing with the wine on her breath.
Their joined hands drifted apart, but only long enough for both of them to roam one another, traipsing over every inch of flesh, clothed and bared. Hands fell to hips. Caressed the shapes of stomachs, cupped curves in a mutual desire to feel as much of the other woman as possible in those featherlight touches.
“I can’t stop daydreaming,” Asheera said. “About us, what we’ve got ahead of us.”
“Daydreaming in the evening? I believe there’s a word for that.”
“Aren’t you so clever.”
“Aren’t I just?” Shadowheart leaned in closer, at eye level only because she sat in Asheera’s lap, and her lips brushed one of Asheera’s tusks.
Asheera met Shadowheart’s mouth in a kiss first, angling into her embrace to taste her first. As close as they could be on that chair, they still tried to enmesh their bodies even closer. Tried to meld into one into that kiss, into their hands. Shadowheart opened her mouth for Asheera, and the kiss deepened with the soft gasps at the back of Shadowheart’s throat.
Those sounds lit a fire in Asheera’s belly she hadn’t been aware of before then. Her pleasured sounds and breathy gasps were vulnerable, almost like gifts in their own right. Gifts Asheera cherished in every kiss. Every brush of her tusks against flushed skin. Shadowheart favored discretion, and she did not suffer anyone to pry into parts of her that were not for their knowing.
Cupping Shadowheart’s face with one hand, the other squeezing her thigh, Asheera bit softly her lover’s bottom lip. Dipping her fingers deeper between Shadowheart’s legs, she relished another of those lusting, breathy sounds.
When pulled away long to admire her work on Shadowheart’s lip, she focused on the spots where her teeth had sunk into her. Playful like that slap on her shoulder.
Turning her gaze back to Shadowheart’s eyes, she struggled to maintain her own composure. Hard as iron in her leggings, she drank in the sight of Shadowheart’s rounded pupils, her mouth half-hung open as if to leave the indentations on her lip as long as possible.
They both rushed in again, their kisses fiercer. In a surge of need, that fire in her gut raging, Asheera raked her fingers through the hair at the nape of Shadowheart’s neck. Pulled ever so, enough to find purchase.
A moan answered her. Deep, desirous. Shadowheart’s moan warmed their kiss further, hot and desperate. She was louder when she did it again as if asking for more. Hands wandered again, grabbing handfuls of muscled arms and thick thighs.
Movement in the adjacent rooms stopped their kissing at once. Without thinking, Asheera pulled back and covered Shadowheart’s mouth with her hand. The leather of her glove ran against Shadowheart’s wet lips swollen from their kissing. As she held Shadowheart’s moans in silence, Asheera glanced around the room to be sure that there were no intruders.
After a time, the movements ceased. There was not another soul in the suite commons with them. Satisfied, she turned back to Shadowheart, and Asheera readied herself with a joke about how jumpy she was despite how hard She was between her legs.
The stare from before, from that bite, still laced Shadowheart’s features. Hunger lidded her eyes. With the leather glove masking her completely, she exhaled hard and ragged into Asheera’s palm.
Asheera withdrew her hand carefully, sure to brush the fine leather along Shadowheart’s jawline and then cheek in steady course. When her fingertips reached Shadowheart’s mouth, she hesitated. Pressed her fingertips against her mouth, against the misshapen flesh marked by Asheera’s own teeth.
Not breaking eye contact, Shadowheart opened her mouth. She nodded.
“Oh, come now. Use your words,” whispered Asheera with ravenous glee. “You’re my second-in-command, aren’t you?”
Another nod. Then, finding herself, Shadowheart managed to say, “Yes, my Lady paladin.”
“Then, tell me what you want.” Asheera traced Shadowheart’s jawline with two fingers.
“Your fingers,” Shadowheart said. “I wish to taste them.”
“Not while I’m wearing my glove.”
Taking her time, fervor in her eyes, Shadowheart slipped the glove from Asheera’s right hand. Finger by finger, she freed her of the leather. When her hand was naked, Shadowheart lifted it to her mouth, tips set to her lips, and opened for her once again.
Sliding inside her was effortless. Shadowheart took her fingers easily, swallowing two of them down to the second knuckle without blinking or looking away.
Asheera drew back and slid her fingers into Shadowheart’s mouth again. Repeated that motion until she heard Shadowheart gasp more deeply, that sound at the back of her throat soaking her tongue as she crossed her legs in Asheera’s lap. She bobbed her head on Asheera’s fingers once.
That one motion was enough to have Asheera lift her and set her back down on her divan. She released herself from the all-too-tight confines of her clothes, expecting to take Shadowheart’s mouth, but Shadowheart had plans of her own.
She shifted on the divan until she sat at the pillowed end, totally nude from the waist down, and lifted herself onto her knees. Steadying herself on the pillow with her palms, she breathed hard. Her back muscles flexed beneath the tight shirt she wore, the tail of her braid hanging loose over her shoulder. As if that wasn’t alluring enough of a sight for Asheera, stroking herself, Shadowheart spread her legs wider until she presented herself, dripping.
“Gond rebuild me, you’re eager,” Asheera said low, her own voice rattling in her chest. She reached between Shadowheart’s thighs, running her fingertips along her lover’s cunt. “Fucking hells.”
“How long are you going to keep me waiting?” Shadowheart asked, that desperate tone now blatant.
Asheera leaned forward, sure to press the head of her cock against the curve of Shadowheart’s ass. “How long d’you think?”
“You tease.”
“A tease? Me?” Asheera slipped her one gloved hand free of its leathery confines, and she set the glove on the small of Shadowheart’s back where she curved her spine to display herself. “See, that’s teasing you.”
Not waiting for her to respond, Asheera sunk herself into Shadowheart. Slow enough to feel Shadowheart’s soaked lips drag along her length, luxuriating in her. Drawing her inside, clenching in pulses around her with that same desperate energy.
She was hard as iron, hungry in her own right to press Shadowheart hard into the divan. Take her like that, mouth pressed into a pillow and the loose braid in her own hand. Blood thundered in her skull and between her thighs — gods, she wanted this, badly.
Still taking her time, Asheera slid herself deeper, inch-by-inch, until she sheathed herself to the hilt. She relied on all the restraint she could summon not to fly into a furious rhythm.
But it was easy when Shadowheart answered by pushing herself back. The blunt, wanton need in her motions, and in the whining noise, told Asheera everything that Shadowheart wouldn’t speak. The plea for more and more was plain as her silent bucking. At least until Shadowheart was silent no more.
A moan fell from Shadowheart’s lips as Asheera reached between her legs and found her clit. Louder still, a second followed. She groaned a bestial noise, bucking back into Asheera again.
“Quiet,” Asheera warned her. Again, she let her hand rest on Shadowheart’s mouth, feeling her moans hot against her palm. “Love, quiet. We’ll be caught.”
Shadowheart nodded against her.
In answer, Asheera slowly found her rhythm, filling Shadowheart until arousal spilled over her length with each successive motion. Legs parted and struggled to go wider, to pull Asheera in and wholly engulf her as she snapped her hips with that consistent rhythm.
The moans in her hand, Shadowheart’s pleasure in her palm, were her rewards. As were Shadowheart’s sloped back, her muscles glistening with sweat and the fat of her thighs shaking from her body’s pleasured tremors. Those pulsing walls tight around her cock clenched harder. Asheera groaned into the sensation, focusing on her hand between Shadowheart’s legs. She drew small circles around the engorged flesh peeking from its hood.
She buried herself in Shadowheart, her shaft coated in her lover’s need. The aching sounds for more rumbled in Shadowheart’s throat and spilled all over her palm with her attentions, rocking hips devolved into lavishing Shadowheart’s body with her adoration.
“Quiet,” she said again, barely forming the words.
Her hand dropped momentarily, resting on the side of Shadowheart’s neck. Asheera hooked her fingertips to briefly grip Shadowheart’s clavicle.
“Gods, I needed this,” Shadowheart breathed. She crossed her arms on the pillow and rested her head there. “Been so long since we’ve been like this.”
“Since I’ve taken you like this, you mean?”
“You’ve wit enough to know the answer to that.”
Asheera slowed herself, sinking into Shadowheart at a lazier pace. “How about this?” Asheera asked, relaxing her fingers against Shadowheart’s throat in a loose, ghost of a grip. Her mouth watered at the feeling of Shadowheart’s pulse in her hand, vulnerable and naked. “Or does the second-in-command need something else?”
For a span of a few breaths, Shadowheart only answered by pushing herself forward and back onto Asheera. Harder and faster, she sped up, and her hips slammed back onto Asheera eventually, riding her length on the divan, fingers around her neck.
The sweetness of that grip, without any strength, was something Asheera could barely understand. Maybe it was Shadowheart’s trust that delighted her. The exposed flesh was at her command. Maybe it should have frightened her, terrified her to have that with Shadowheart. Yet it was a moment of profound trust that Shadowheart exchanged with her happily, eagerly.
As eager as the way she pushed herself back onto Asheera. She reached up to touch the fingers on her neck. “More,” she said. “Just… just a little, my Lady paladin.”
“Gods,” Asheera said, finding the pressure that drew out another moan, “I love when you’re like this.”
Letting a breathy noise melt from her lips, as slick as the desire pooling between her knees, Shadowheart replied, “I love when you make me like this.”
Resuming their raucous pace, Asheera sunk to her base and relished in the sweet heat clenching around her. The swollen flesh between Shadowheart’s thighs and against her free hand’s fingertips. An endless fire burned in her stomach then, hardening the muscles there into a wall that she pressed against Shadowheart’s back until they were melded into one shape.
Forged into them, into their glistening bodies responding to heartbeats and to whispered pleas for more and to the pulse of their souls. To fingertips against throats.
Asheera ran her lips along the half-elven tip of Shadowheart’s ear, pressing down faintly her teeth into her lover’s lobe. She kissed along Shadowheart’s jawline and the side of her throat, shifting her grip to give herself the skin to explore as she held the rest of her love’s breaths captured, enraptured.
When Shadowheart pulsed around her length and breathed jagged noises, Asheera listened for the signs of how close she was. Close to her peak.
As Shadowheart crested with another deep thrust, trying to strangle the noises in her throat, Asheera reaffirmed her grip on Shadowheart’s throat. There was no true force there, just the pointer finger and thumb underneath the ridge of her jawline, pushing into the soft tissue there.
“Fuck—”
The syllable left Shadowheart’s mouth abruptly. Asheera cut it off with a kiss, capturing Shadowheart’s mouth with her own to taste that delectable noise and need and pleasure. Tightened muscles answered her, knees pushing together as best they could to tighten her grip on Asheera.
Her own release climbed her stomach and filled her limbs, emptied her. That little fire burned her, overwhelming her as the taste of their tongues turned hotter and messier.
Sheathed to the hilt, Asheera pumped and pulsed inside her lover. As the fire dimmed in waves, beating in her heart and against her ribs, Asheera calmed herself but still embraced Shadowheart. She kissed Shadowheart’s neck, now free from her grip, and found her lips again for a kiss that was tender, gentler.
As they came down together, they broke their kiss at last. Asheera marked a trail along the hollow of Shadowheart’s back with another kiss, not yet done with tasting and feeling all of her.
“We’ll need to clean ourselves up,” said Asheera softly, moving to lay facing Shadowheart.
Eyes clouded, awash in bliss, Shadowheart said, “Soon. Perhaps you’ll hold me until then?”
Though they’d only recently begun exploring those scenes together, their harsher fantasies and desires, Asheera knew what that question meant. It was a demand not only for Shadowheart’s comfort. It took Shadowheart asking that for Asheera to notice the fatigue seeping through her muscles to her bones. She was in no condition for anything but holding, and being held.
Where would she be without Shadowheart? Without her right-hand woman, without the woman that was her shield arm at her left, the realms would be plain sketches. She could live, and at some point she’d find a way to while away the years; but thinking of that empty room, sitting with just Shadowheart’s book and no one to read it — nobody to read aloud her favorite lines — was as empty as a dead forge.
A forge awaiting its fire, a poem half-written. That would be her life without Shadowheart. Asheera dreaded the thought, but it was no matter. Together, with their companions, they’d carve the path to their own tomorrows.
Pulling Shadowheart into her arms, Asheera muttered, “All right. So long as you hold me. For a little while.”
“Insistent that we need to clean up?”
“Mhm.”
“But you already sound comfortable.”
“Hmm.” Asheera’s eyelids were suddenly heavier. “You’re right. Clean up. Then cuddle.”
Tutting, Shadowheart said, “Fine. As long as you promise not to renege on that offer.”
“I swear it as—”
“You would an oath,” Shadowheart finished for her, teasing. “Naturally. My Lady paladin, you mustn’t swear oaths left and right like this. Who knows what trouble you’ll find for yourself.”
The unspoken addition was obvious. Asheera had known Shadowheart long enough to understand what she meant. What trouble was there, Asheera thought as they found their clothes and made to wash up, in finding someone whose touch and care filled her heart?
Maybe one day she’d convince Shadowheart of that truth. That truth of what she felt when they pressed their soapy hands together, giggling quietly in the washing room as if they’d be reprimanded if they were caught. One day. Until then, she’d spend every hour proving that being with her was no burden; all that they shared, their mutual trust, was a gift she treasured more than anything.