Chapter 1 - The Star of Each Night
Arabella often finds herself wondering about how different things would have turned out had her mother not taken her, Bethany and Carver back to Kirkwall after the death of their father.
Would they have a less restricted life under the open sky in Lothering or somewhere else? Would they have survived the Blight ravaging the town they used to call home, or would they have perished with it? Would Bethany be in the Circle or hiding from Templars, and would Carver be a Templar or guard or something else entirely?
She stares down into her drink – her fifth thus far this night – knowing there's no point in dwelling on what might have been. Bethany is in the Circle and Carver a Templar to be; not long until he'll take his final vows. Her siblings are doing well according to their letters, few as they are and far in-between.
Arabella envies her siblings sometimes, and tonight in particular. Being the eldest of the Hawke/Amell family means she has responsibilities, and they're even more important to her mother because it's highly unlikely her brother and sister will ever have children. Carver can't become a Templar unless he takes vows of celibacy – not that she could ever envision her brother finding a woman willing to hold out with his personality – and unless he manages to leave the order – which she highly doubts – there will be no children born to carry the name Hawke.
Bethany being in the Circle is not so different, but there is no chance of marriage, no chance of her being able to or allowed to raise her own children, especially if one or more turn out to be mages.
And so it's up to her, as the eldest Hawke and daughter of Leandra Amell to carry on the legacy of her house and name. Sometimes she wonders if Bethany have it easier, as being a mage means no respectable family with any money in southern Thedas is willing to marry her because of her gift. Curse, more like, in this city.
She downs her drink, dreading to return to her mother to be scolded like a child for running away at the mention of something she doesn't want.
When Leandra had approached her and said she had arranged a marriage with the ruling family of Starkhaven for Arabella to marry Sebastian Vael – the youngest of three sons – Arabella had had enough of her mother's interfering.
Arabella can't see why the match would help the Vael family at all – after all they have the heir and the spare – so there really should be no point in having the youngest married off – even if to seal an alliance with another noble house. As far as she knows, the youngest and unruliest were sent off to the Chantry to be kept out of the way, but still close at hand to serve the family and show their faith to the world.
There were rumours circulating, of course, that the youngest Vael had been sent away from Starkhaven in order for someone to try and calm him down before he ruined his family's reputation for good.
And they had to think of my family, Arabella thinks grimly, wondering if she'll have time for another drink before she goes home to the inevitable scolding. She means well, but how can she expect me to do what she did not?
That Leandra had run away with Malcolm, betrothed as she had been to the Comte de Launcet, and still expected her eldest daughter to marry someone she had never met and barely heard of seems odd to Arabella.
To think her mother almost became a Comtesse, and instead ran off with an apostate and thought herself forever isolated from the life she had grown up with and the benefits that came with it.
Still, there is no guarantee that financial stability would have made her mother happier, despite hard years trying to raise three children and having to watch out for Templars who might come after her husband and youngest daughter as soon as Bethany had started showing signs of the gift their father had.
She gets up from her seat at the counter and grabs her sword to leave – can't be too careful being a noble in Lowtown – and she's almost out the door when she slams into something. Big, hard, leather her mind registers before she looks up into the bluest eyes she's ever seen. I could drown in those and bless the Maker for my death, she thinks.
"You alright lass?" the man with the eyes asks, and she's too gone to register his accent at first or what it was he asked her.
"Huh?" Bravo, Hawke, you sound so eloquent.
"Sure you didn't have too much to drink?"
"Oh. I'm fine, just lost…" She trails off, eyes never moving from those impossibly blue eyes; eyes that now crinkle, surrounded by laugh lines and framed by dark lashes.
There's a mischievous light in those eyes now, but not the bad kind, not the kind that used to appear in the eyes of the male patrons of the pub when they looked at her. Well, at least before she drew her sword and proved she was not one you'd trifle with.
She finds she quite like those eyes, wouldn't mind staring into them forever.
"You don't seem very lost to me, my dear." Oh. He smirks, and then his accents catches up to her muddied brain, and she curses herself under her breath for her own mix of accents.
Don't stop talking. Don't stop looking at me.
"You want me to keep talking?"
Oh shit. She'd said that aloud.
"You don't happen to know if there's a wall somewhere that I can bang my head against? Repeatedly?"
He laughs at that, and it's the most wonderful sound she's ever heard in her life. So open and wholehearted, so warm, so different from the polite, unfeeling laughs amongst the nobles.
"Well, there doesn't seem to be a lack of walls, but wouldn't you prefer to bang it against a headboard? Or your whole body against a mattress?"
It takes her every ounce of willpower left not to let her jaw drop open at his words, to not gawk at him or drop her sword in surprise and attract the attention of everyone in the room.
Blue Eyes' tone is teasing, but there's a deep warmth too, a dark warmth that lets her know he's serious, that he'd take her upstairs and have his way with her, if she want to, if she lets him.
And oh, isn't that just what she needs right now. A man between her thighs, her nails on his back, her eyes staring into his and his voice at her ear, speaking filthy things to her… A chance to get her mind off of things, just for an hour. Or five.
"There are rooms upstairs," she manages to get out, her voice low and raspy.
There is a slight surprise on his face, quickly hidden. Didn't think I would agree this quickly?
Arabella gets a key from Corff and almost not quite runs up the stairs, the stranger's had in hers, guiding him to the room.
His mouth is on hers before the door is properly shut, and her mind works just enough to make her lock it. Oh. That tongue of his. She's not lacked for kisses and partners of either gender, but this man, this stranger she doesn't even know the name of… She moans, knees weak, sword discarded on the ground, only standing because of his arms holding her tight against him.
He turns then, slams her into the wall, and she jumps and hooks her legs around his waist. His hands move to bury themselves in her hair, pulling, and oh so good, more please don't stop!
It's only when he moves his mouth to kiss and nip at her neck that she realises she needs to breathe, tries to will her body to breathe, to work, to not let her pass out under that clever tongue.
"Taste so good. So responsive, so warm, such pretty sounds." You're the one making the pretty sounds, not me. Talk more, please, never stop.
"Bed," she somehow manages to growl out.
He grins at her, so naughty, those blue eyes so dark and heavy lidded and she feels proud that she did this.
He throws her down on the bed and strips out of his black leather clothing in an instant and oh Maker, he's not wearing any smallclothes!
Arabella admires the view of his body – tan, long panes of muscle, his arms that of an archer, and his cock, standing almost straight up and to the left and look at that he's shaved.
But then he's on top of her, almost tearing her clothes to pieces in his haste and she tries to help him as best ask she can, unfastening clasps barely enough to be able to take it off.
And then she's naked and his head is between her legs, his hands are on her inner thighs, then her hips, moving stroking, tickling, pinching. His mouth teases her, never quite where she wants it to be, needs it to be and she's moaning and panting and Maker please!
"Please what?" He asks, hot breath fanning over her, making her hips buck up to chase the sensation.
"Take me! Eat me, have your way with me, now!" She might have been ashamed of herself if not for the alcohol, but she's too far gone, too hot, too wet, and too needy to give a shit.
"As the lady commands," he replies and before she has time to wonder if he knows she's a Lady, his tongue is at her mound, licking up, and then his entire mouth is on her, a finger inside her and she tries to buck up, but one of his arms is across her waist, holding her down, restricting her movements.
Then the tongue joins the finger inside her and she moans and writhes on her bed and "don't stop, never stop!"
It feels so good, that tongue of his, and the now two fingers inside her that she almost cries from sheer pleasure. She's only had one other person go down on her before, but nothing can compare to this, to that tongue. And Maker, she might just perish from this alone but she can't find it in her to care, because what a way to go.
She's so wet and warm, and the heat is sinking low in her stomach and she's moment way from cresting, when the mouth disappears, replaced by three fingers inside her and the mouth is now on hers and she can taste herself, mixed with his taste and alcohol and spices.
And then his fingers find the perfect angle inside her, stroking against her inside while his thumb stokes her clit and his mouth moves from hers so they can breathe, and then she moves her head so she can bite down on his shoulder as she comes, her walls clenching around his fingers, still moving inside her.
She suspects she might have blacked out for a moment, and when she opens her eyes, the man is kneeling on the bed beside her, stroking himself with the hand that was inside her moments ago, using her fluids to wet himself. His head is thrown back, mouth open, and she just looks at him, at the marvel of a man so at ease in her company, even after exchanging almost no words and only having laid eyes on the other person less than an hour ago.
Since he can't see her, Arabella reaches out to place a hand on his thigh, and then she turns so she's in front of him on her hands and knees. Her tongue darts out and licks at his tip, and the strangled sound that escapes his mouth sounds like heaven to her.
Arabella moves his hand out of the way, and takes almost his whole length down in one slide, tasting herself on him. Another low, guttural sound escapes him, his head dropping forward, eyes open, locking with hers.
She moans around him, and then swallows.
Before she has time to react, he's pulled his dick out of her mouth and pushed her down on the bed on her stomach.
He grabs a pillow and put in under her waist, grabs her shirt and ties her hands to the bedpost and oh yes I like this.
He's back on top of her in no time, cock lined up against her, the tip teasing her, not quite at her entrance.
"Get. In. Me."
"Don't tell me I'll have to gag you as well? Because I so do like hearing those sounds of yours." That shuts her up, until a moan escapes her when he pushes in to the hilt in one motion. He pulls almost all the way out again, then in, until he finds a rhythm, his hand holding her hips, bruising her, not that I mind, I love this feeling, love him claiming me. A voice in the back of her head tells her she shouldn't think like that about a man she only just met and might never see again, but she ignores it.
He feels so good inside her, so perfect, filling her up and making her feel like something else, not a tool to secure her family's future or a shadow looming over her brother. Tonight, with him, she's just Bella, not Hawke or Arabella or Arabella Ardelia; tonight she's just a woman like any other.
His movements get rougher, more erratic, the sound now filled with the slap of sweaty skin against sweaty skin, filled with broken off moans and curses in her own tongue and one she doesn't understand.
She shifts her hips slightly, and then he hits her right there two times, three, and then she's crying out for the second time that night, biting into the bedcovers to muffle her sounds, straining against her restraints, and then he slams into her, five, six, seven times and he too screams out, in a language she doesn't know, doesn't understand, mixed with "oh Maker, yes!"
Blue Eyes barely manages not to collapse on top of her, instead pulling out and lying on his side beside her, freeing her hands from the restraints, rubbing at the red skin caused by chafing.
"Are you okay, my dear?" I'll be okay forever if you keep calling me that.
She tries to answer but find her voice fails her, so she just smiles at him in the way only a person well spent after sex can do.
"Like the cat that ate the canary," he says, voice filled with laughter, eyes twinkling. Stay here and laugh with me forever.
"I should probably go. Mother must be getting worried," she says, realising the truth of her words, that Leandra is probably sitting awake at the estate, wondering if she'll be home safe or not come home at all. Ask me to stay and I shall.
"You're quite right, you should not leave you mother worrying. I'm sure she's waiting for you to return safely."
She tries to pretend she's not disappointed, that it's all for the best that she leaves before she makes a fool of herself and asks him if they'll meet again. Pull yourself together, Bella. You're not some lovesick puppy, not like that mabari of yours when you first found him.
She tries to not make anything of the strange sound of his voice that she can't quite understand. Is he as disappointed as me? Did he hope I would stay longer?
Arabella gets dressed and grabs her sword, throwing some money on the bed as she's about to turn around to leave, not quite sure how to say goodbye.
He saves her from worrying though, taking her hand in his, hot breath ghosting over her knuckled before he brings it to his lips for a brief kiss that looks chaste but feels like anything but.
She run home to her mother, apologising over and over again, her mother's wrinkled hand stroking her cheek, telling her it's okay "but don't do it again, Lia."
"I won't."
Arabella knows it's not a promise she can keep, already making plans for how she can leave the house the next night to go back to the Hanged Man in hopes of seeing the blue eyed man with the warmest laugh and most enticing voice she's ever met.
It goes on for over a week, every night, almost from dusk 'til dawn. They never talk, never exchange full names, anything that might reveal who they are. He calls her Bella, but gives no name in return, so she calls him Blue Eyes in her mind.
They never sleep together, at least not more than a couple hours to get some rest between the sex, and both have to sneak back to their respective dwellings before anyone notices they're gone.
Some nights they're more rushed, using the other to take out frustration, bruising one another, but never in places that are visible, not after the bite-mark Arabella left on him the first night. Others are slower, where they take care of the other person, drawing it out until it seems more like love-making than anything else. Others yet again are both; the sweet following the harsh once they've taken out the frustration.
Arabella knows it will happen, of course, but when he's not showed up for three nights in a row, she accepts that she'll never see her blue eyed Prince Charming again.
If she only knew how wrong she was.