Look, I swear my muse didn't come up with this, it's all the fault of Josie Lange and Shakespira, they're corrupting me. Honest. Really.
Anyway, this is posted here months after I originally wrote it, simply because I didn't have the nerve to publish it :). Now it's becoming the first of a set of snippets of Loghain and Muirnara's married life, mostly things that just don't fit anywhere else, and must of it M rated (what a surprise). Call it one for everyone who speculated about Muirnara and Loghain's married life, post "The Art of War". Also one for the people who always reckoned he was having far too much fun cutting her hair (and there were quite a few of you who thought that too) Nods to Shakespira's "Conspirators", Josie Lange's "Saarebas" and Lkltanon's "A Start" (now sadly gone from the Internet) Warnings for sex, BDSM, and a highly inventive married couple having a lot of fun. If any of the above is likely to upset you, please stop reading now. Thank you. :)
Practical
When Muirnara decided that a year after the Blight ended, it was indeed time to start thinking about regrowing her hair, Loghain voiced no dissent, though he had that little glint in his eyes that suggested he had all sorts of ideas running through his head. After all, as Anders pointed out, they were coming into the winter at Vigil's Keep, wearing one's hair long enough to keep the back of the neck warm was an immensely practical decision.
The trouble was that she had actually got used to keeping it cropped short. It was comfortable, Loghain had been right when he said all that time ago that most people would consider it suited her, and all the interim stages when one is growing out curly hair tend to be both less than flattering, and very hard to manage. She tried Dalish style short braids which looked terrible. Well, nobody actually told her they looked terrible, but people's expressions were just a little too guarded when they looked at her. The braid idea died an early death.
Ribbons weren't a good solution either. Headbands just looked - ridiculous. She persevered for several months to see if things improved. Since hair grows at half an inch a month at most, things certainly didn't improve fast.
And if she was being honest, there were other things she missed. She and Loghain had got used, in the months after the Archdemon fell, to turning her haircuts into a sort of game. He had discovered early how sensitive the back of her neck was, and had taken advantage of the fact. Once a month, he would trim her curls for her, then take his razor to the back of her neck. It had become a running joke between them - how slow he could do it, and how much of a frenzy the tiny, short strokes of the razor would have driven her into before he finally washed off her neck and...took advantage of the situation. And oh, did he take advantage. Frequently. Repeatedly. At length. In every sense of the word.
It wasn't that their bedroom life was lacking - not with a man like that, blessed with a pleasantly dark imagination and endless inventiveness. But she didn't trust that glint. Loghain was planning something, and when the General had a plan in his mind, Muirnara knew he rarely lost the battle. The only question was when the plan would be executed. And how badly she would lose.
The answer came late one night in the middle of another game. She might have known this one was a feint to hide a deeper plan. After all, it wasn't the first time that he had tied her down - as he had pointed out, a bedroom like the one they shared at the Vigil, with a heavy four poster bed, was just begging to be used for all sorts of inventive play. As long as the ropes were carefully tucked away in the morning so they didn't upset the servants. Muirnara suspected the servants both knew very well what went on within the keep, and weren't in the least upset anyway. There was the night she went up to their chamber to find that the belt that held certain...memories for her, and which had been delightfully employed the night before, had been carefully laid out beside her nightshift. Along with a silk scarf that had certainly not been used the night before. Loghain had just laughed, and immediately improvised a blindfold with it. After all, one could not upset the servants by ignoring their polite assistance.
So at present, Muirnara was...well, not in any position to object to anything that Loghain might have in mind, being spreadeagled on their feather bed, arms and legs firmly tied to the bedposts, silk scarf binding her eyes. She had already been driven once by his able tongue to a frenzied climax that had her shrieking into the silken darkness and grateful with what little rational thought remained to her for the thick stone walls which hopefully should prevent any well meaning Wardens coming to see if their Warden Commander had been assassinated. Though of course Loghain had barred the door. Well, she thought he had barred the door. The blindfold made it slightly difficult to check.
And now, as far as she could tell, he was seated beside her, with one hand lightly trailing up and down her body, chuckling softly as she wriggled and her back arched to push her body up towards his caressing hand. Then suddenly the hand wasn't there, and she whimpered slightly. She could hear him walking over to the washstand and the trickling sound of water being poured into a basin, then a more ominous silence, then his footsteps coming back across the room and the slight give of the mattress as his weight settled back down on the bed beside her.
When the towel was tucked under her hips, she was puzzled. When the first handful of cold, slippery, soapy foam was generously spread over her mound, she nearly screamed.
"Loghain, what are you doing?"
"Tsk tsk, my love. Do you not remember me telling you earlier in this evening that speech was not going to be permitted?"
Well, yes, he had. Screaming had apparently been allowed though. Just as well, really.
Her mouth was opened, and a damp cloth firmly inserted. Another cloth bound the makeshift gag in place. Another handful of soap was massaged over the lips of her sex and the cleft of her legs.
When the first stroke of the razor glided over the top of her mound, she whined piteously through the gag and almost came then, just from the intensity of sensation. His laugh, dark and rich and far more frequent than it used to be echoed in both ears. "I would advise you, my dearest, to exercise a little more self control than that. I have no wish whatsoever to cut your beautiful pale skin while doing this."
Oh, Andraste's flaming arse, this was so bloody unfair. Trying to hold herself still while the edge of a razor teased over mound and thighs, and slipped tantalisingly close to her clit so that that all the sensations were edged with quite delicious terror, and the whole thing happening so slowly that she could scream, were it not for the gag. A warm cloth eased away the soap and the shaved hair, and then more soap came, and the razor returned, scraping with a delicate precision on any shadow of stubble remaining. And then the last wash with cold water this time that left her shivering and aching with need, and then a soft cloth, far softer than a towel, gently dabbing dry the bare skin that felt like every breath of air was another caress.
No, that wasn't a breath of air, that was the warmth of Loghain's own breath as he closely inspected his handiwork, and that was his warm tongue grazing over the exposed, shaved skin and ohMakerthatwashisteethandIcan'tstaystillforthis...
And that was another orgasm, a climax like shooting stars out of a clear sky.
In the middle of his laughter that accompanied her gagged wails she felt him position himself at her bared opening, and then the impossible heat and hardness as he drove himself home in one long stroke that had her arching and opening to him, wetter than she had ever been, and those pounding thrusts that threatened to drive her through the mattress itself as he growled in her ear and bit at her neck. She bruised her own wrists on the ropes straining to be able to clutch at him and claw him, and do all the other things that he just wasn't allowing her to do, and his hot release very nearly finished her off completely.
When he slowly eased himself out of her and reached for that soft cloth to pat her gently dry, she didn't really need the gag to keep her quiet any longer. She probably couldn't have spoken if she had wanted to.
"Now, my dearest wife," Loghain's voice purred in her ear as he discarded the cloth and gently caressed her cheek with a finger. "I have made a couple of decisions here. You can either agree by nodding, or argue with me later and lose the argument. The end result will be no different."
She managed a tired nod.
One of his fingers trailed around her ear, tugging at her curls. "I have decided, selfishly, purely for my own reasons, that I preferred your hair cut short. I liked your bare neck to bite, I loved those little whimpers you gave when I slipped a finger over your nape, and I have found myself very much missing the games we used to play. And you have spent six months doing nothing but complain that you can't do anything with your hair and you think that it looks a complete mess. I take it you do not wish to disagree at this point?"
No, she wasn't about to disagree.
He pulled the curl that he was playing with taut, and then she suddenly felt it spring back, as the razor sliced through it. And then she wailed softly into the gag as he used it as a silky torment on the skin he had shaved earlier, trailing it like soft agony over mound and slit and all the other terribly exposed targets that the air was already teasing dreadfully.
"So then," he added as he took his hand away, "I am going to untie you, and take off the gag and the blindfold. You can then bring me the shears from the washstand, and beg me, nicely, to cut your hair for you again, and this is the course of action I would recommend. Because otherwise," and his voice was now full of dark amusement, "I intend to pin you down and cut it anyway, and while I have little doubt that you would also get a lot of fun from that game, the end result would probably be distinctly more of a mess when you looked in a mirror. Agreed?"
A whimper as he removed the gag that appeared to be an acceptance of the inevitable. The gag was removed and the ropes slipped off one by one, the blindfold went last of all. And it was quite amazing just how much begging was required (not to mention kisses, and licks, and caresses, and a prolonged speechless workout for lips and tongue around his cock) before he finally picked up those shears and patted the stool at the washstand for her to sit down on. And it is amazingly hard to sit still on a cold marble stool when your bare, shaved nether parts are in constant contact with the marble. And Loghain was chuckling through the whole thing. She would have liked to call him a bastard, but was already far too much of a sodden wreck to be able to cope with a spanking on top of everything else, delightful though that might have been under other circumstances. He knew her too well these days.
Nobody actually made any real comments about the fact that the Commander appeared to have decided to give up this idea of growing her hair. After all, as Anders pointed out, they were coming into the summer at Vigil's Keep, and short hair was so much cooler and more comfortable in the hot weather, it was a very practical decision. And one's helm fitted better that way. Short hair had always suited the Commander anyway.