After the barkeep had left it was only Garmr and Serana in the room. Garmr shut the door as unobtrusively as he could, but Serana still stiffened in her seat, her wary eyes scraping him for any sign of untoward intentions. He ignored this and unclipped his cloak, hanging it over the back of his chair as he said, "I need to speak with you."
She was suspicious but silent. Intelligent. In retrospect he should have known that the conversation wasn't needed, that she already knew — she could probably smell it on him — but the buzz of the drink in his veins was distracting. He'd only had one; how was it affecting him so? Or did it work differently for relapsing vampires?
"Speak," she said, when he had been silent in his thoughts for some time.
"I consider you my friend. I trust you with... secrets."
"Garmr, you're a little intoxicated."
"I know." He sat down and buried his face in his hands. Best to say it outright. "There is no cure. There's no cure. It didn't work."
"I'm the last person to judge you for being a vampire," said Serana with a soft laugh. "I don't see why this is so difficult for you to say."
"No. That's... there's something strange, it's been happening for a long time, and now I think it's happened again. Just when I think I've got the world figured out, it... changes. As if there's some god and it's toying with me, and it isn't Akatosh, none of the Aedra or the Daedra. Something bigger that none of us can fathom." His head was buzzing.
"You're making no sense, Garmr."
"I told you my parents abandoned me as a child. It isn't true."
"What do you mean? You lied?"
"No. I don't think I ever... Serana, I think I'm losing my mind." He had to close up his throat as he voiced this fear at last, because if there was one thing he didn't want to do it was cry in front of her. It seemed like it would a very un-Dragonborn thing to do. "I can't remember my parents. I can't remember anything before the day Helgen was attacked. It's like I didn't exist. It's like nothing existed..." The fire in his blood surged up, maybe because his own words were distressing him, and he stopped and winced as he waited for it to pass. His eyesight was improving, blast it. The transformation was finishing up and it had only been a day.
Serana did something wholly unexpected. She stood and came around the table and laid a hand on his shoulder. The closeness of her gaze took his breath away and he swallowed to control himself. She could probably smell that, too.
"We all have our own insanity," she said. "Take comfort in knowing I don't judge you for it. I consider you my friend as well, Dragonborn."
His newly refined senses caught something he hadn't noticed before. A scent. He had smelled it once in the Vale, before the cure, when he and Serana had waited out the day in the cramped shelter of a tunnel sunken into the mountainside. He hadn't known what it was.
He had liked it.
He liked it now.
Pain in his blood, behind his eyes. He cringed again. "This blasted curse..."
"Comes with power," Serana finished. "If there is no cure, you can only accept it." She watched his face, and unintentionally he locked eyes with her. There was a moment of tense silence before she pulled away and strode across the room, where she pretended to become very interested with a bowl of some alchemical substance lying on the bedside table.
"Serana," he said, and stopped. He hadn't thought of anything to say after her name.
"I never thanked you," she said, her back to him, "for freeing my mother."
"Oh, any time," Garmr managed hoarsely, leaning back in his chair. "Let's go again. I'll pop back into the Cairn and find your uncle. Have you got a brother? Close grandmother perhaps? Let's do them all." Now he was saying much more than he thought was necessary. His tongue was running by itself.
She graced him with a smile. "You've always been a little peculiar."
"You drink blood; I'd have thought you liked peculiar."
"I like your kind of peculiar." At these words, Garmr's heart froze for an instant, then accelerated at twice its normal speed. Had she really said that? Something like that was tantamount to flirtation. Or perhaps he was imagining. His burning blood and the drink in him had turned his mind fuzzy. For the first time he noticed an empty wine bottle on the floor beside Serana's chair and felt a flood of fresh surprise. Serana, drinking? Impossible. What was the world coming to?
"Serana, have you —"
"You know, when you first closed the door I thought you were going to try to seduce me," she said, ignoring the way he stiffened in horror at her words. "You can't hide desire around someone like myself, you know. You would know. I can smell it in your blood. One of the reasons I call you friend is because I've smelled it on you for so long, and yet you've never done anything to abate it. The mark of a trustworthy man."
"I've smelled it on you, too," Garmr found himself saying.
"You are intoxicated."
"So are you." The words were out automatically. He couldn't shut up.
She smiled again. As far as Garmr knew she had never smiled this much in a single evening. He wondered if they would be having this conversation were either one of them sober. Probably not. Almost definitely not.
"And you're still not trying to seduce me," said Serana.
"I'll be honest," said Garmr, "I'm trying very hard not to."
"But you want to. No, don't answer. You can't lie. I smell it." Her voice was a silken purr as she crossed the room toward him, step by step by oh-for-the-love-of-Akatosh-whywasshedoingthisnow? "I smell it all over you. Even through the change."
"I—"
She stopped just beyond arms' reach. "Life in Skyrim is short."
"Not for a vampire."
"Well," she whispered, bending down to eye-level, "let's just pretend."
He was drowning in her gaze and was quite unable to form a reply.
"I want you to answer me now," she said. "And answer me true. You're the first friend I've had in a thousand years, Garmr. The first man I've trusted to ask. Even though most would consider me a monster — you desire me, don't you?" She wasn't asking if he approved of her appearance, he was sure. That wasn't in her nature. As a vampire she wouldn't have cared if Talos himself had declared her ugliness. So why ask... unless it was an offer?
"I desire you," Garmr breathed. It was an out of body experience.
"I know. I told you, I smell it. It's your blood. It's so hot. It's fire." She said it with an unmistakable reverence. "Dragonborn." Tasting the words. "Garmr. I desire you as well. I want you like I've never wanted anything, but I don't want your blood. I'm not hungry for your blood. Unusual for me." She chuckled. Garmr didn't see what there was to laugh about. "I want to taste every bit of you except your blood."
This evening had taken a very unexpected turn very quickly. It made Garmr's head spin.
"I thought your pride wouldn't let you lie with anyone like myself," he admitted. "Or anyone at all. And you've been a friend to me... I wouldn't want to soil that —"
"And so you didn't ask," said Serana. "And if you had, I would have left your side."
Their heartbeats were the only sound in the room. Like hammers against cloth.
"I don't marry, you know," she said. "I find it's a waste of time. I would never marry you or anyone else."
"We are friends, though," said Garmr. It felt like those were the only words he knew.
"I would have you by my side in any peril."
She still stood out of reach, but now that they had spoken of all the things they had kept secret from each other, Garmr looked at her without shame, letting his eyes wash over her silken hair, her shoulders, the curvature of her breasts beneath her doublet and her hips and her narrow, elegant fingers and legs. She took in his gaze with a vulpine coyness, and then she was looking at him, too. Now that things had been said and she was still here, still hungry, he found his trepidation dissolving.
"I would have you right here, if you allow it," he said. His voice dropped to a hoarse growl. "Right here. Now. Hard and rough."
"What a relief," said Serana. "I was beginning to think you might not have any Nord blood in you at all, or that it was all washed away by the vampire."
"Never."
She took one small step closer. She was almost within reach. "You're a warrior."
"Born of the north." He shifted in his chair. Their eyes were locked unblinking as they slipped from the earnest conversation of trusted friends into the seductive banter of two first-time lovers, circling warily with their words like lions circled each other, feeling for the opening to pounce. "Hot blood to counter the cold winter winds."
"Mmm. I can tell, Dragonborn. Tell me, do you have the blood of dragons in you too?"
"That's what they tell me."
"That's a threefold heat. Nord, dragon, and vampire. You must be burning."
"Like the core of the world," said Garmr, as his heartbeat rose. He could barely keep still where he sat as he heard Serana's heart quicken in response. "And you, vampire maiden? Trapped for a thousand years without the touch of a man to stir you from sleep?"
"Oh, my loins are aching. It hurts for each new moment I have to wait." And yet she didn't move any closer. Garmr clutched the arms of his chair and stared openly at the loins of which she spoke, imagining with vivid intensity how they might look uncovered by the black material of her armor.
"Talos help me," he said, "if you don't come here I will get out of this chair and take you against the wall and I will fuck you so hard it will take another thousand years before you're ready to have a man again."
The frankness Serana usually displayed in her manner and conversation had gone. In its place was a look of raging desire that almost made Garmr groan aloud with anticipation.
"I think if you get out of the chair," she said softly, "you will regret it enormously." And then she came — forward — and put — her hands — on his chest. He inhaled sharply even at that unobtrusive touch. Her hands felt warm through the fabric of his shirt. Weren't vampires supposed to be cold? Or did she feel this way now because he was the same species she was? He tried to sit up but she pushed him back gently. Her face was very close, he could smell the sweetness of her breath — did she really drink blood? She smelled of nectar! — and then the gap between them closed and she touched his mouth with her soft and supple lips.
Fire raged through him at that first touch. His hands left the arms of the chair and coiled around her waist, drawing her onto his lap. The weight of her thighs against his thighs only made his blood surge. He pressed his erection into the cloth at the base of her stomach and deepened the kiss, pulling at her upper lip, dipping his tongue into the space between her lip and teeth, touching the tip of her tongue, turning his head sideways to receive the fullness of her mouth around his. She tugged his lip and when they breathed they breathed together, exhaling hotness and lust into each other's lungs. Garmr grasped her waist and bent into the crook of her neck, nipping and licking at the skin. When she stiffened beneath him, a rush of energy made him latch onto her throat and suck violently on her, not breaking the skin — it wasn't her blood that he desired. She gasped and fed her hands beneath his shirt. They rubbed up and down his back, nails scraping softly against his skin. He clutched her closer and buried his face in her chest.
And then — he couldn't wait a moment more — he snatched his hands back and pushed her back enough so he could get at the lacing on her jerkin, which he fumbled with fingers that were damnably thick with alcohol and desire. He spat out a curse when they wouldn't come loose, and she helped him. Finally the laces came undone, and Garmr fairly tore the jerkin off her and hurled it against the opposite wall.
He shoved his hands under her shirt and kneaded the soft porcelain skin of her belly fiercely, then reached up for her breasts. She let out small gasps of pleasure in the rhythm of his rubbing, her hands on his shoulders. He pulled her breastband down around her waist and, at long last, felt the hard nubs of her nipples under his palms.
She bunched her shirt and pulled it off. It pooled on the floor beside her, followed by her breastband. The sight of her froze him in his tracks for half a moment — and then he fell on her ravenously, sucking and tugging blindly at her tits with his teeth, catching one and pulling it gently, releasing, rolling his tongue over it and rubbing the other between his fingers. They stiffened under his stimulation and Serana arched against him with a long agonized sigh. He cupped her breasts, squeezed them, buried his face between them and, when he needed a breath of air, he pulled back and used his hands to roll and pinch the nipples.
"You are very good at that," breathed Serana, rocking in tempo.
"I'm out of practice," Garmr managed huskily.
"I aim to reward you all the same," she said, and kissed him long and full and hard on the mouth while she slipped her hands beneath the waistband of his trousers. Her fingernails scraped down his buttocks and slid around over his hips, and only just touched the shaft of his cock. An aching need bloomed through his groin.
"Gods damn it all, woman," he growled, gripping her waist. She smiled over him.
"Gods have no power over me, man," she whispered. "And you're wearing too much."
He eagerly assisted her with removing his shirt. But she stopped before undoing his trousers to rub her hands up the muscles of his belly, trailing her fingers across his chest and up his neck and planting small hungry kisses wherever she touched. Garmr felt himself leaking into his loincloth and whispered urgently in her ear, "If you don't hurry up I'm going to come without you, Serana."
To which she replied, "You assume you're only coming once tonight, Dragonborn."
He let out a bark of laughter.
"What?" asked Serana.
A combination of alcohol and arousal made Garmr almost double over, chuckling and snorting unintelligibly, and it was several moments before he managed to choke out, "The Dragonborn Comes."
"Another ballad I will never be able to listen to again," said Serana. She undid the fastenings on his trousers and he raised himself out of the chair a little so she could pull them down around his knees. His erection strained against his loincloth as he stared hungrily at the band of Serana's trousers, but she made no motion to take them off. Instead she slid out of his lap and kneeled before him.
Garmr forgot to breathe.
With the tips of her slender fingers, Serana peeled Garmr's loincloth away from his skin, slowly, savoring each position, each inch of new flesh that was exposed. He raised himself eagerly in his chair as she pulled the fabric down over his arse. His erection sprang free and he kicked his legs to be free of his loincloth and trousers. Naked, he leaned back in his chair and tried to control his rapid breathing.
She used her hands first, trailing her nails over his balls and tracing them down his shaft, back up again, flicking the tufts of blond hair around his groin. He was swollen and throbbing and coherent thought had pretty much fled for the night, because the soft skin of Serana's hand was around his cock and he couldn't remember being this hard in years. She saw the vacant light in his eyes as he arched his back toward the ceiling, openmouthed, breathing getting heavy. A coy smile flitted across her lips. She leaned in and ran her tongue up his shaft, then took him in her mouth, plying and sucking at the tip, rolling his folds in her mouth — a nibble here, and he pushed his hips toward her, breathing raggedly and deep. She sucked, pulled, and then back down and up again and down...
He leaked into her mouth. "Faster," he choked. "Faster..." And the feeling in his groin surged up through his stomach and chest and burst all throughout him as he spilled into her mouth and collapsed against the chair.
A moment later she slid into the space beside him and flicked his nose playfully. "And how is the mortal now?" she asked.
"Hot damn" was all he could manage. He was in a different place. It was Transcendence, Beyond Caring. He sometimes reached this place when he used the Thu'um, but it was never achieved through pleasure but the raw draining power of magic. If it felt like this every time he Shouted he would never be silent again.
Serana was still beside him, though, smelling of hot nectar and needy female skin that prickled palpably with lust. The feeling was fading now, Garmr was coming back to mundus. Serana watched him recover with her luminescent blood-orange eyes. Even that colour in these circumstances was impossibly beautiful.
"Is this what your victims feel when you seduce them?" he said quietly.
She frowned. "I drink my victims, Garmr. I don't fuck them. And I try to avoid killing when I do drink — it isn't necessary. Those vampires you hear about, living in caves, gnawing on bones... they're as murderous to me as to you. Even our species has psychos."
"I have been a vampire, remember," said Garmr, and then he frowned as well. "I haven't got long before I am one again. The cure didn't..."
She touched his lips with a long white finger. "Shhh. Are you still worried, my dear? Even that didn't make you cast aside your cares, even for a moment?"
"Definitely for a moment," he replied emphatically.
She smiled. "And now," she said, "it's my turn."
"You've still got your trousers on," observed Garmr.
"Indeed. Shall we graduate from the chair?"
"I will have fond memories of this chair," said Garmr, but stood and walked toward the bed across the room. His manhood hung heavy between his legs, aching. He was about to lie down when Serana's hand on his shoulder stopped him and he turned. He was momentarily stunned by the sight of her pale white breasts glowing in the candlelight, her nipples pointed, elegant, graceful.
"Why do we need a bed?" she said, although it seemed to be a rhetorical question. "Of all the human things I have forgotten, sex is not one of them. What is it, Dragonborn, about sex? In your culture it seems to be equally cherished and reviled. In mine it was a part of religion. In others it must be strictly between a male and a female. Why, of all things, is sex the most importantly regarded?"
Her breasts were putting him quite out of the mood for philosophical debate. "I think the climax might have something to do with it."
"Yes, but why the laws? Why the stigma? Why does nakedness embarrass people so? The more I think about it, the stranger it seems to me. Who you bed and when you bed them and why, it all has some significance I don't understand."
"In my culture," said Garmr, "it doesn't matter who you fuck so long as nobody fucks you. You've still got your trousers on."
"I'm sensing this was the wrong time to have this conversation."
"It might be, yes."
"Then let's not abide the laws," said Serana, her voice suddenly husky, and she was very close to him. "Let us say sex is sex for the sake of itself and if it turns us animals, so be it. Why must such a thing have laws? Break them. Let's fuck each other. Like animals."
He matched her whisper. "Is that what you want?"
"What good is humanity if you can't fuck like an animal?"
"None whatsoever," he said, and he seized her shoulders and spun her around and slammed her so hard against the wall that her teeth rattled, but she grinned in response. She liked it, he liked her for liking it. He liked her so much that he kissed her, hard, violently, no softness this time, thrusting his tongue into her mouth and tasting every sweet crevice, filling her up so that she had to take in air around it in small, soft gasps. The warm breath of them on his face made him hard again, and he gripped her arms as he felt himself stiffen and swell. He pressed his erection against her naked belly and she strained into it with her hips. He wanted to lift her up and slide inside her — but wait, wait, there was more of Serana to explore first.
He pulled back a little and pressed the head of his cock into her skin again, rubbing the already slippery end in tight circles around her navel. They moved that way, gasping breathlessly, rocking back and forth against each other. Their kiss deepened until it was unbearable, their lips swollen and throbbing.
Unable to wait any longer, Garmr dipped and lifted Serana by her thighs, which she coiled around his waist, and thrust toward her center and
she was still
wearing her trousers
"Gods damn it all," Garmr huffed, staggering away from the wall. He supported her with both hands under her ass — she was heavier than he expected and all at once he lost his balance and tumbled backward onto the bed. Serana was on top, but he wasn't going to let that stand, it was his turn to experience her. With a fluid movement he flipped their order, and there she was spread out beneath him, her loins frustratingly concealed but her chest gloriously unbound. He set to work there first and kissed down her neck, over her collarbone and over the slopes of each perfect white breast, leaving moisture wherever he touched. He could smell his own musk — perversely, it only made him harden more. He took her nipple in his mouth and drew at it with all the strength in his lips. She tasted, she tasted like Serana — that incredible and indescribable flavor of human skin, slicked with fragrant sweat. Driven by an impossible rushing energy, Garmr kneaded her breasts with his hands and then drew his hands down her torso, hard, pressing, desperate. She arched her back as he dipped his tongue into her navel and laid kisses there, too, and her fluttering hands gripped his waist, feeling his shaft and kneading his buttocks, rubbing her fingers between his legs and scraping her nails along the backs of his thighs.
He was trying to pace himself. He had to try harder. She had pleasured him; he owed her the same favour.
Garmr slid his tongue and teeth down her belly — she squirmed beneath him and let out a moan. He responded by nipping down her hipbone and then plunging his hands down her trousers where a whole new paradise awaited him. Her soft buttocks gave under his fingers, and he left his mark there, massaging and squeezing, and when her gasps became moans he moved his hands to her front, dug his thumbs into the creases between her thighs and groin, feeling her carefully, lingering over her center and just barely brushing her folds with a finger. She spread her legs to him and lifted her hips with a groan of agony.
He put his lips close to her ear. "It's time," he grunted, "for the trousers to come off."
He was loath to take his fingers away but he pulled his hands out of her waistband, gripped the sides of her trousers, and jerked them violently down. She let them slide over her knees and he pulled them off her feet. They met the same fate as her jerkin. Serana had not been wearing a loincloth — she must have been planning this longer than he'd thought — and so all of a sudden, there she was, naked and pristine and exposed beneath him. They were both naked, totally naked now. He was hard and swollen and there she was not a foot beneath him, right there... but he held back. There was more to do.
"Take me, Dragonborn," breathed Serana. "I want you to taste me and suck me and fuck me, good for a thousand years — that's what you promised. And then I'll fuck you. And then we'll fuck each other, in whichever order you like..."
"All sounds good to me," said Garmr. He kissed her once, tenderly, on the mouth. And then he retreated down her chest, stopped at her breasts, and took each one between his teeth in turn, rolling and nipping and pulling, and he didn't go lower yet because first he had to explore with his hands. He slid them under her arse and raised her slightly — she lifted her hips and the soft fur on her groin brushed his stomach. He shuddered and had to take a deep breath to keep himself from spilling his seed right there, all over the bed. He cupped her between her legs and rubbed upward, stroking her heavily up and down, and he found a spot that caused her to shiver violently and he returned there, holding her steady with his other hand on her buttock, his fingers dipping into her crack. He touched the spot lightly and she responded with a gasp, and he grinned and began to stroke her again, harder, faster, masturbating her until he felt a deep shudder building within her.
Then he stopped. He felt frustration surge through her every pore. Grinning, Garmr ran a finger around her folds — oh, she was wet and hot and when he pushed his finger a little ways into her opening and pulled it out again, trails of sticky, sweet-smelling wetness clung to his skin.
He had to taste it for himself. With a last tug at her nipple, Garmr moved his mouth downward and nosed at her center, then flicked out his tongue and dipped it into her, sipping at her essence, pulling at her folds with his lips and teeth. He wanted to do it longer, to explore every inch of her with his tongue, but he couldn't ignore the glorious throbbing ache pulsing through his groin and his thick swollen dick, not for a moment longer, and he slid both hands under Serana's buttocks to steady her, and she spread her legs open as wide as they would go and wrapped them around his back, raising her sex to him. He circled the tip of his cock around her entrance once, and then he lost control — clutching her closer, he plunged into her up to the hilt and reveled in the tightness of her folds around his shaft. She was hot and slippery and all his.
He pulled out a little, back in, slowly at first, but her hips strained for stimulation and her sex throbbed around him, and he sped up, thrusting in and out. They were in rhythm with each other and they were fucking so hard the bed rocked and they were clutching each other. She let out a soft moan, and then another, and then her moans built and built into a long cry, which he echoed, grunting and grunting and thrusting and he felt himself leaking into her, and he thrusted one more time and exploded within her, spilling every molecule of himself inside her, blinded, losing himself in the roaring climax that filled his ears and eyes and every sense with pleasure.
They collapsed side by side on the bed.
And after that there was not much room to exchange words. Breathing hard, recovering, Garmr turned his head to look at Serana and said, hoarsely, "Good for a thousand years?"
She nodded, dazed. "A thousand years."