MANY different shorts written between Rhovin's writer and I, from between May 6, 2015 to April 13, 2017. All of these encounters and happenings are canon, and they all happen within several other storylines, plots, events, and arcs we had running with other people, including when Halenvar and Aranya weren't together yet or when they broke up for a time because of diverging duties (she and Hal eventually ended up back together, then he divorced her at the turn of 2020). Aranya and Rhovin have also gone through some character class evolutions over the years, you'll notice!
Timeframe: Spanning across years, from the tail end of Mists of Pandaria to the middle of Legion.
July 29, 2014
The early light of the sun stretched it's golden glow over the elegant roofs and immaculately-kept gardens of the Ver'Sarn villa, sparkling on the sea and warming an already too-warm morning that had been born from a scorching summer night.
Aranya lay stretched out on the side of one of the villa's fountains, hair and skin slick and shimmering with water after seeking a cool respite in the ocean. Her fingers languidly waved trailing designs in the fresh water to the side of her, her lazy eyes watching the curling patterns with idle fascination, seeing how they rippled, gleamed, and distorted the appearance of the phoenix emblem tattooed on the inside edge of her wrist. A particular change in the distorted reflections of the water's surface prompted her to look up, and her eyes confirmed that her guest had soundlessly joined her from a direction that might have otherwise allowed him to observe or catch her unawares. Rhovin Thorne.
Aranya gave him a smile by way of greeting. "I couldn't stay asleep," she explained. "Way too hot."
May 6, 2015
The worg pawed at the leatherbound thing full of paper with enthusiastic curiosity. It belonged to his master's mistress. He liked mistress. She touched nice, barked nice, and always had interesting smells on her and her things. Some made his nose curl like sniffing fire, some smelled really good like the plants outside, and some just made his nose and eyes tingle very strangely. Her leather-and-paper things always had mixes of all those things clinging to them.
The notebook fell to the floor with a rustling clatter. "Vulrik! No!" Aranya commanded. "Down, boy, that's not yours." The worg only wagged his tail, sniffing at the journal with avid interest until the Thalassian lady approached him, whereupon his tail wagged harder and he sniffed and licked at her hand with affection.
Aranya gently petted the worg and scratched behind his ears as she knelt to pick up her possession, but as she lifted it from the floor, something else fell out of its pages. Her whiskery eyebrows furrowed with curiosity. Tucking her notebook under one arm, she picked the other thing up and saw in short order that it was an issue of Goblin Ladies' Magazine, and the picture that her eyes fell on...
Light of A'dal...
She blinked at what she saw, slack-jawed, speechless. It was Rhovin. Baring it all. Not that she hadn't seen every inch of him before now, but... that pose really did him all kinds of favors. He looked magnificent, especially his fine shoulders, the lines of his hips and torso, and that too-confident set of his head was something that Aranya couldn't help smiling at.
This had been in her notebook? Wha-? How...?
Her thoughts didn't finish forming, the sorceress became distracted by the sound of Vulrik snuffling intently at something else on the floor. She looked over and saw a small slip of paper that had fallen to the floor and escaped her notice. She picked it up. On it was written
COME BACK ALIVE
There were no more questions in her mind now as to how this had gotten into her journal. Or why. A slow grin bloomed over the elf-woman's lovely face, her eyes aglow, and not from any fel-touched luminescence. She pulled the sinful picture close to herself. She would take this with her on her next venture.
Vulrik cocked his head to one side. If there was one thing that he knew about two-leggers, it was that it was usually a very good sign when they bared their teeth. It most often meant that they were happy. Strange, but they didn't have tails to show this emotion, so he wagged his own tail. It made him happy that mistress was happy.
May 24, 2015
Aranya suddenly pulled back the arm that held the bottle of rum, despite having just extended it to the hunter after offering him a drink. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes to match the smile on her mouth, and for a moment Rhovin wondered if he was going to have to tackle the playful mage to get what he was promised.
But then she raised the bottle to her own lips, her eyes never breaking from his. After she had sipped, Aranya all but launched herself forward into the ranger's arms, taking his face in her hands and colliding her mouth with his, slipping her curled tongue inside and siphoning the coveted drink from herself to him. She kissed at the edges of his mouth while he swallowed and then caught him full on the lips after he'd finished.
The grin on her face when she pulled back to let him have a breath was absolutely wicked. "Care for another?"
She played her games. He enjoyed the moment, the dominance. But it was his turn.
Pinned against the wall, Aranya was suddenly turned to face the open window facing their beloved city. "You're going to tell me everything you see down there," said Rhovin huskily into her ear. Bent over, the mage's robes were lifted just above her lower back, legs exposed. Any garments underneath removed, as were his own. "Every detail." Each of his hands grabbed onto her hips and stepped closet. Rhovin slowly inched himself within. "If they look at you, you look back and you tell me. Don't stop. Because if you stop..." Breathless moans began to fill the air. Both losing themselves in their lust for each other as the slow and savage thrusts began. "Then I will."
June 13, 2015
Never again.
Rhovin was sprawled face down over the elaborate furniture of his family's home. The weather was fine this evening. Perfect, even. Yet the hunter lay shirtless and fatigued with a residual scorch that he felt under his skin.
"Valéria is asleep," reached Aranya's voice to his ears. The sorceress sat down beside him. He just barely cracked an eye open to look at her. "She'll be happy to see that we're back when she wakes up in the morning."
Rhovin grunted. "That is the last time that we ever spend the hottest days of summer in the Firelands."
Aranya cracked a smile. "You know, you didn't have to come with me," she pointed out.
Now the archer pushed up at the chest and turned his head to give her a look. "Don't you start that," he said. She smiled all the wider at him, and he flopped back down. "Besides," he said after a minute, his usual smirk coming back to his handsome face, "could you really have done without me?"
Aranya chuckled near-silently and shook her head. Truthfully, she could have, she was more than capable of taking care of her own business, but in these past few days that he'd been at her side through this venture... "No, you're right," she answered, trailing her fingers along the side of his face and into his hair. "I couldn't have."
After a few moments her hand left him, and Rhovin heard the words and felt the familiar tingle of a nearby spell being cast. When Aranya was done, she tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see that she held a cold glass of bourbon before him. He smiled. "I'd thank whatever gods gave you to me if I actually believed in them," he said.
That got a laugh out of her. "The gods didn't give me to you," the arcanist said, smiling broadly. "No one gave me to you. You just picked me up and carted me off like I was already yours for the taking."
"Did I?" Rhovin asked, after taking a drink of the alcohol and setting the glass aside.
"You did," replied Aranya. "I remember."
"Oh." Without warning, the ranger lifted up from the furniture as he scooped the mage into his arms, and started heading for a room that was more private with her over his shoulder. "Don't suppose you'll mind refreshing my memory?"
Aranya only laughed.
July 4, 2015
The two elves lay on the floor. Sweaty, breathless, and not quite spent, but Aranya was beginning to feel a bit sore. Still, she couldn't stop grinning. Her fel-touched eyes sparkled with an impish light. She gazed up at her dear hunter and chuckled heartily.
Rhovin panted above her. He'd come home to find his darling mage was not wearing pants under her robes and he hadn't needed any prodding whatsoever to take advantage of the fact. The tattered remains of her under-things lay discarded to one side of them and would probably just be burned later. They were beyond mending. Though the hunter had a smile of his own on his face, he couldn't help furrowing his brow in confusion at how she chuckled. Just what was so funny?
Aranya gave a meaningful look past him, at the direction of their feet. Rhovin turned to look over his shoulder and laughed loudly, grinning from ear to ear at what he saw.
One of Aranya's boots had somehow been worked free of her foot in the midst of all their enthusiastic lovemaking, right there on the carpeted floor. Rhovin had quite literally rocked her boots off! She wiggled her bared toes at him happily, and he just grinned all the wider.
January 23, 2016
"Ungh... Don't stop..." Aranya moaned breathlessly. She was lying back on the generously sized bed that Rhovin shared with her, gasping, her hips tilting as she was being voraciously devoured by the rogue. "So close," she gasped.
The room had had some mirrors strategically placed around it, so Rhovin didn't entirely lack for a view of how his attentions were affecting his lovely sorceress, as he gently sucked and firmly licked at that electric spot at her center, driving her along the edge.
He felt the tension in her legs as he heard her breaths go shallow and quiet. Aranya's jaw slackened. Her blazing green eyes closed. Her back arched like Rhovin's bow when he drew it, her whole body going taut as a bow string...
... And then the ragged, gasping groans from her mouth filled the whole room, as her eyes flew open and she went firing off into the sky. Her head and shoulders thrashed and heaved, her legs shook, and Rhovin drank her in all the more deeply. It wasn't until she reached down and grabbed for him that he stopped. "Mmmm," he purred. "Delicious." Then he attacked her mouth with kisses as he moved over her, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
Aranya carefully slid her long legs up from either side of the veteran archer and smoothed them up over the planes of his stomach and chest, ankles past his shoulders, her toes pointing up into the air on either side of his head. Rhovin smiled as he pressed his hands into the mattress on either side of her, keeping his upper body supported as her hips tipped up to meet and accommodate his.
"Go slow," she told him, the tainted magic of her eyes emitting a hazy, burning mist with her lust. "I want to feel every inch of you."
"As you wish, princess," he replied, and slowly, deeply, he pressed himself inside, inch by smooth inch. Both elves groaned, loud and lusting, and with each long thrust of Rhovin's hips the rhythm grew more savage, more wanton, as they grew more lost in the wild pleasure they found in each other.
"Deeper," rasped Aranya, and Rhovin couldn't tell if she was commanding or begging him, but he angled himself just-so and drove into her with a feral sound, granting her request.
Not too much longer passed before the mage's moans and gasps became full-throated cries, and the assassin felt her body's center rippling around him, stoking the fire that roared at his core and pulsated through his veins.
Aranya lowered her legs, locking them around her lover's waist, allowing their embrace to become closer, more intimate. She clung to him, tilting her head to the side to afford him better access when his teeth sought her slender neck as he came to his moment, and it seemed that they both roared their fulfillment for anyone in the moon-washed night to hear, like a pair of wild animals.
The sorceress felt a slight twinge of bereavement when her beloved captain finally withdrew from inside her. He pulled her close, kissed her deeply, tenderly, savoring her every sigh and every flicker of her tongue that passed his lips. Lovingly. Addictingly. She would never get tired of the taste of him. Never. He made her senses reel in so many ways.
She hoped he would do more than kiss and caress her again soon. He had already made her climax no less than three times in less than the last hour, but... she still felt aroused. It wouldn't take much to get her climbing to the stars again, just slipping his fingers through her folds would do it.
For the past couple of days, Aranya had felt insatiable. Not that Rhovin minded this in the slightest. He took every advantage and made every effort to satisfy her, and to enjoy for himself the heightened state she was in.
Perhaps it was the full moons. Perhaps it was because it was that other time of the month for her. Perhaps it was the coinciding of both.
"Mmm," hummed Rhovin. "So delicious."
Aranya bit her lip, and looked at him. Her head tilted to the side, her silky black hair falling away from her bare shoulder as she regarded the assassin with a sly look in her eyes.
"What?" Rhovin questioned.
"Oh, I was just thinking," said Aranya, "when you're hungry for seconds, keep in mind that I'd like to feast on you as well, next time." Rhovin gave a hearty chuckle and a devilish smirk at that. "Unless you finish me before I can finish you, then I may just change direction, pin you down and watch you writhe under me," she continued with a playful smirk of her own. She brought her lips to hover tantalizingly close to his, her breath so warm and present that it teased his skin. "It feels far too good to feel how snug you are, deep inside me, once I hit ecstasy; no matter how you finish me," she murmured. "Just so damn good to grip you."
"So I notice," replied Rhovin, not holding against restraint and catching her lips with his.
February 14, 2016 - Strictly what-if. Not intended for canon.
Please, stop doing this to yourself.
Aranya wished so much that Rhovin could hear her. She hoped that somehow he could feel her. The ex-captain sat by the fire, brooding. There was only an ounce or so left in the bottle in his hand.
No sooner had Aranya thought the words when he hurled the near-empty bottle into the fire with an angry sound, breaking it in a blazing smash, and then burying his head in his hands.
He'd been mourning her for several weeks now. Ever since she bled out as he held her in his arms, pleading with her to fight just a little harder, hold on just a little longer, and they would fix this.
People wrote stories about deaths like that. Romanticized and idealized them, as if they were beautiful.
There was nothing beautiful about watching the heart of the one you love most break before your fading eyes, while your own heart erratically tried to keep pace with what little was left in your veins, until you couldn't think, could barely feel, and then the next thing you knew, you wake up to the shock of your eternal sleep.
I could tell you it wasn't anyone's fault, she told him. I could tell you it wasn't your fault. But it doesn't matter. Words don't fix anything. They don't change that it still hurts, I know. Aranya wanted to reach out and touch him. So badly. But it gets better, if you'll let it. It does.
Rhovin scoffed harshly and lifted his head up, glassy-eyed, looking at nothing, with a cynical expression on his haggard-looking but still handsome face.
Aranya would've sighed, if she had any breath. It made her ache, to be so present with him and yet so utterly removed from him. I love you.
Rhovin closed his eyes, a strained kind of straight-faced look coming over him, his limbs and spine holding themselves stiffly, as if he were trying to endure some kind of intense physical pain without flinching. A tear still escaped to roll from the corner of his eye.
"I love you, too," he whispered too softly.
February 14, 2016
Most people who have ever had mages for lovers would all agree that the advantages of arcane magic in the bedroom were undeniable. Rhovin Thorne would have probably been among the first to put his arm around whoever had an inquiring mind about it and tell them as much as they could stand to hear.
Or that's what it seemed like, given the time that his mage was treating him to this evening.
It started with a massage.
The Ver'Sarn heiress simply walked right over to where Rhovin had been sitting, tipped his face up by delicately twining her fingers through the hair on his chin, and gave him a few sweet kisses before settling herself down next to him and rubbing his shoulders. After a while she said, "This would actually be easier with your shirt off."
Rhovin gave her a smirk over his shoulder. He obliged her, nevertheless, and made a comment about her request that made Aranya chuckle (and was that a light blush that he saw?) as he discarded his shirt to the floor and moved his hair aside for her.
The sorceress continued, massaging at the muscles of his bare shoulders, his strong back, and his neck. She took the time to appreciate his form, so handsome, yet he had a more feral elegance than the refinement of typical Thalassian men. Like a wild force of nature. Was it any wonder that she was so drawn to him, as much as she was drawn to stars and storms and fire?
She leaned forward, softly trailing the tip of her nose along the curves of his back, over muscle and bone. She loved the way that his skin smelled, the warmth and maleness of his scent.
Rhovin felt a sudden absence of warmth as her touch left him, and then he heard the slight shush of cloth moving behind him. Then he felt her hands on him again, the touch of her nose tracing over his skin as her lips pressed soft kisses along his spine, his shoulders, the back of his collarbone and his neck. What made him grin, though, was the silky smooth feeling of her breasts pressing at his back.
Things escalated to where Aranya had gotten Rhovin out of the rest of his clothes and reclining back on a divan, enjoying the attentions of four beautifully identical dark-haired women. Yet three of them were only gorgeously lifelike imitations of Aranya, made of magic and illusion. It was a common game for him to have to guess which one was the real woman and which were just images of her.
Two worked on massaging and caressing his head, neck, and shoulders - as Aranya had begun - kissing and nibbling all over these pieces of him and sometimes biting gently at his ears. The other two were kneeling by his hips, and their actions were what Rhovin became fixated on.
One would be licking and kissing up and down his shaft while the other sucked slowly at the tip, running her tongue up and over it and back in soft twirls inside her mouth. Then they would trade, the one breathing and teasing at the tip with her lips and tongue while the other nuzzled and licked at the Thorne family jewels in long, wet strokes. Then the two of them would start at the base, and in unison they would deliberately drag their long tongues and flushed lips little-by-little up his shaft, licking and kissing their way to the tip, and then their mouths would converge there - looking like they were passionately kissing each other, with the end of his cock caught right in the warm, wet middle of it.
Rhovin practically growled all the things he was gonna do to her when he figured out which one was really she.
"Noted," said one of the Aranyas at his ears. "But I don't believe you really want to figure it out just yet," said another at his hips, and so saying, she took his whole cock into her mouth, working on it rhythmically for a minute or so, and then went right back to giving him those long, teasing licks with her partner in torturing him.
March 1, 2017
The black rose had arrived by general courier to Dalaran.
Of course it did.
All roads lead to Dalaran these days, what better place to assume someone in the thick of things would frequent?
Upon seeing the midnight-colored flower, Aranya rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Cute," she said aloud. "Very fucking cute." Even before she commanded the note that came with it to magically hover in the air so she could read it, the arcanist already knew from whom it was sent.
We need to talk. Alone. Booty Bay. One hour. - Rho.
Aranya could only chuckle in a low voice. Too late. She had spent the whole evening in the company of Halenvar and Ryodan, in Uldaman, salvaging things of power for the Titan project. The rogue's presumptiveness was kind of amusing.
Her reply would find him one way or another, a plain letter, essentially chiding him on the folly of delegating to chance that things would follow through as he wished, if he didn't see to such matters himself. And a hint that she had been keeping busy.
My time has not been my own lately. Good luck finding me when it is.
Her last words, however, were not the cool, pragmatic words of syndicate head, or of a sought-after arcanist. They were sincere, and only Aranya.
And for the love of A'dal, stay alive, Thorne. ~A
The dark-haired sorceress turned to her curious mana wyrm. "Can you believe this, Sugarfiend? Do you see this?" Aranya gestured to the untouched rose. "Seven months he's content to just pretend that I don't exist, now he wants to talk."
The Thalassian woman scoffed and stood, disrobing for a bath before she transported herself back to Halenvar's cottage in Valdisdal. Vrykul accommodations for bathing weren't quite as relaxing as the arcane luxuries that Dalaran afforded her. "It's not a coincidence," continued Aranya, still speaking to the shimmering, slithering creature. "No sooner do I speak with the woman in his kill-sights, then this thing turns up? No. He had eyes and ears on her. He never would've glanced my way again, if it hadn't been for that."
Sinking into the steaming tub, the phoenix-mage sighed with content and closed her smoldering green eyes a moment, relaxing. "I wonder if it ever even crossed his mind once, that he can cover his eyes all he wants," she mused. "But it still doesn't make me disappear."
And indeed, disappear she had not.
She was the head of the Eclipse Syndicate now. Her daughter was top of her class in sparring with the other trainees of the Light. She had deals in Gadgetzan with the Kabal and the Jade Lotus, and beyond. Partnerships for her fleet, and prospects for her wishes to start a treasure and relic hunting corps, and sponsoring gladiators. Outland, Tanaris, Dalaran, Quel'thalas, she had the world behind her now.
"The wolf let me out of his sight too long. The phoenix out-wings him now," she murmured. "He wants to talk, he'll have to get up to speed." A smirk played over her lips at her own pun. "But I doubt he will," she said, opening her eyes, turning the embers of her gaze to her chittering wyrmling, twirling in the air through the bath steam. "Just you watch, I'll bet you whatever's left in the sugar-bowl that this gift was a one-off."
An elegant wave of her arm sent the rose flying out the window, far out over the ocean below Dalaran. A graceful twist of her wrist rendered the black flower to a puff of ashes and smoke. Harmless now, whether he poisoned it or not, too far away to have been touched or inhaled.
March 6, 2017
The sensation of Rhovin's hand on her hip roused Aranya from sleep, her tainted eyes fluttering as she stirred in the soft sheets and luxurious mattress. A smile came to her lips as she felt the rogue's hand slide up from her hip across her stomach, his decorously inked arm locking over her, holding her closer to him. Some might have thought of it as a male gesture of possession or dominance... and maybe part of it was that, in some primal way. But Aranya had known this man too long to see it as being entirely that way. He knew full well that he couldn't possess her, he even LIKED that her independence and free spirit matched his own. He liked her presence, her company, and the ways in which they matched, and saw a twin spirit in her even with their various differences in the details. He liked being close to her.
And she to him. Very much.
After all, they were here, weren't they?
They'd spent the night together in Halfhill, and perhaps the entire Valley of the Four Winds had now heard and knew the fact. Oh, what a night it had been. Aranya never thought Pandaria would suit her. The most alien realms of Outland had always seemed less strange to her than this land and its creatures and customs. Strange but undeniably beautiful. Rhovin loved this place, and so for him she had given it a chance.
The sorceress felt the charming rogue's lips on her shoulder, and she bit her lip. She loved how it felt when he did that. A soft hum of pleasure left her as he continued it.
Rhovin brought his hips sidling closer, spooning her, pressing at her backside... Oh... Oh my...
His hand that had rested around the front of her body slowly slid up from her stomach, over her ribs, to her breast - cupping, grasping, caressing - and Aranya's hips unconsciously went arching back into him in response as she quietly moaned. It left her open for him to touch elsewhere, and down his hand went. She could feel the smile on his ever-smirking mouth as her breaths got thicker with the strokes of his fingers.
She was slick when Rhovin finally grasped for her hip, keeping that part of her body steady as he pressed smoothly into her from behind, both of them groaning as he did so. The rhythm started easy, slow and savoring, but grew wilder with each fluid thrust as they fell further into the sweet electricity between them.
With just a little effort, the assassin brought his other arm up from underneath him and gently slid his fingers into the she-elf's silken black hair, grasping a fistful of it and tilting her head just-so on the pillow, leaving her slender neck open to him. His teeth caught at her soft skin as he nipped at her, and her eyes rolled up with a loud gasp, it was exciting.
Faster, harder.
Rhovin's one hand clutched at the mage's hip while the fingers of his other hand curled and flexed in her hair, and both of Aranya's hands clutched and clawed at the sheets. His teeth bit harder as that height was reached and Aranya's voice carried through all the walls.
He was extremely gentle as they came down, licking and kissing at her neck and shoulders, stroking his hands through her hair, and up and down her side.
It was heavenly...
At length, one strong, extensively tattooed arm reached over Aranya across the bed to a side table, grabbing for a smoke as she giggled at the slight awkwardness of this. Once the rogue had his prize, he propped himself up, and then held it before the arcanist's face. "Do you mind?" Rhovin asked.
"Not at all," answered Aranya. So saying, she sat up and held up her hand between their faces. With a snap of her fingers, a small flame sprang to life at the end of her thumb, and once he was done with it, she doused the little flame in her fist.
April 12, 2017
A crow has taken flight across the endless lands of Azeroth. It would meet with one crow, and that crow would meet with the next. All passed a small leather satchel holding a folded parchment. These feathery creatures would nudge and peck to finally place the loose strings around their necks before taking flight.
The last crow had finally reached its destination. It did not wait for an appearance from the arcanist, knowing there was that possibility that she wouldn't appear. Instead, the satchel was dropped, and the crow made its way.
Aranya,
I hold these lock boxes in my quarters and wonder just what's inside, yet I dare not open them. They're a reminder of your endless path to your glory and if each box was picked and exposed, then these small chapters of your life would close.
Every day I think of them and what's inside helps me think about you more than I already do.
The Legion has taken its toll on business. Constant attacks to my ship has left me with a rather high turnover in crewmates. However, the Black Rose refuses to go down. I swear, this ship was enchanted.
I miss you. These gaps are becoming longer and more painful with each. But every reunion makes it all worth it, though I hope one day we may settle and live an actual life in each other's arms.
I love you, Ver'Sarn.
-Thorne
P. S. - Send some rum flavored chocolate of sorts. I'm all out of sweets.
April 13, 2017
The rogue slipped away from the speakeasy party through the shadows.
Hardly anyone noticed, but Aranya's eye had ever lingered on him the whole night. She very discreetly followed, making it appear as though she simply meandered outside away from the crowd a bit.
A hand from the Lower City shadows grabbed the elf woman's arm and pulled her into an obscured corner between the shanties and stalls, pressing her back against the city's wall while the other hand came up to briefly cover her mouth. Rhovin's eyes glittered in the dimness as he brought his hand away from her mouth to hold up a finger to his wickedly smirking lips, and the sorceress grinned.
Lips, tongues, and teeth clashed, and Aranya couldn't have said if it was how his body pressed into hers so fiercely, or how his mouth worked magic on her that truly took her breath away. The taste of his lips, the warmth of his skin under her tongue, left her dizzy and craving for more. His teeth found her neck and her head fell back with a gasp, her arms clutching him.
Rhovin's hands traveled up Aranya's arms and shoulders into her hair, kissing her so deeply that she forgot why she'd even come to Shattrath tonight, and then down her neck to the front of her blouse, almost snapping the silvery laces as he tore it open to bare her breasts. His mouth was on them in an instant, nibbling at the tender skin and his tongue working the rosy buds. It made Aranya groan deep in her throat and her hips went arching forward into his.
The phoenix-mage's slender hands slipped under the assassin's shirt, caressing up the skin of his back and then clawing back down to his belt. Her fingers teasingly tugged at it oh-so-lightly as they slid around that leather band from the back to meet at the front. Then one hand slid down to rub at him through his pants, delicate tendrils of unseen magic humming from her palm to pulse where she touched him, penetrating through the leather.
Rhovin's growls in response and his hand finding its way beneath Aranya's skirt to bring moans and gasps from her as his touch sent delicious lightning up through her moist center was better music than anything that had been played at the party that night.
April 13, 2017
Rhovin carefully, lightly trailed his knuckles over the strands of a dark blonde mop of hair, not wanting to wake the young girl he looked upon. She looked so peaceful. "I missed her," he whispered.
Aranya nodded silently in reply. "She asked about you a lot... at first."
Rhovin looked at her, an edge of pain and apprehension creeping into his eyes. He hadn't missed how she hesitated to add those last two words. "Does she still?"
Aranya bit her lip, unable to speak right away, and shook her head with a deep sadness in her gaze that mirrored his. "Too rarely," she finally answered. "And her father..." She trailed off at the look of seething contempt that came over the pirate at the mention of the merc, and raised one hand to gently lay on his finely chiseled cheek. "You were her father when she needed one most," she reminded him. "She'll remember that again one day, I promise." Her lips pressed to his, her other hand winding around the back of his waist, holding him close. She loved this man so much.
Even when she had wanted to hate him, she never stopped loving him with all her soul. She couldn't. She'd tried and failed, it was beyond her and impossible.
"Come see something," whispered Aranya, breaking the kiss. She lead Rhovin by the hands from Valéria's room through the main room of the cozy nook that she lived in to her own bedroom. She stopped once they came to a small table with a lockable drawer, and reached inside.
The sorceress withdrew a pendant on a fine chain, its glossy green emblem showing its magic, matching her eyes. It was the necklace Rhovin had given her for her birthday, that second summer that they knew each other, enchanted so that she could re-live her best memories while she slept or was lost in thought.
"I kept it," confessed Aranya. "I thought so many times of getting rid of it. I thought of casting it away, dropping it into the ocean, but every time I lifted it in my hand to do just that..." She let out a shaking breath. "I just couldn't bear to," she whispered, the echoes of her heartache shining in her eyes, gazing at Rhovin's. "I kept it, shut it away. It was too painful to wear it, to remember you, but I couldn't bear to get rid of it."
Aranya stepped closer to Rhovin, grasped both of his hands in hers, and slipped the necklace in his fingers. "Please," she whispered, and lifted her midnight hair to one side with a twist, exposing her fair slender neck, waiting for him to place his gift to her back where it belonged.
April 13, 2017
"Can't believe I never took you to see this before," murmured Aranya.
The pirate and the arcanist lay naked and entangled in a mess of soft sheets and tattooed limbs, in the quarters of the Hound of Neptulon, one of the Ver'Sarn ships now used by the Eclipse Syndicate since Aranya's ascension as head. The sorceress told her lover the story of how her father had served on this ship, centuries ago, until an injury to his spine forced him to retire. The proud priestess who tended to him was the woman Valtheras Ver'Sarn would marry and beget his only daughter with, Aranya's mother. Sometime after the wedding, he had bought the ship and kept it seaworthy ever since. It was the one out of all twelve ships belonging to the Ver'Sarn name that Aranya valued most.
Rhovin lazily caressed up and down her backside and along the glowing red of her mana-ink tattoo on her arm, the volatile power of it tingling softly in his fingertips.
Aranya turned her head, resting on his elaborately inked shoulder, to catch his burning green eyes with hers. "When do I get to see yours, hm?" She asked playfully.
Rhovin's mouth split into a wide smile, pulling up at one corner, but before he could even answer, Aranya hushed him with a lingering kiss, the tip of her tongue silently asking for more at lips. Which he gave. He started to turn over, turning their embrace to put his mate on her back.
But Aranya was in a different mood at the moment. She lifted up and brought one long leg over Rhovin's hips, turning them so she could straddle him. She started curling her hips like the waves the pair sailed on, rolling up and back, loving how firm and hot he felt between her folds.
Rhovin grasped at her ass and her breasts and moaned his encouragement, but rather than let her take him inside her, he kept rolling his hips with her, sliding, teasing, watching her eyes smolder and her teeth bite into her soft rosy lip, noting how she grew all the more wet and slick, how her motions became more fluid, more and more by instinct than by any conscious choice. Until she was writhing on him without any thought but how good he felt, groaning and nipping at his neck and the line of his jaw.
That was when he pushed up into her and rocked her until it seemed the ocean itself surged from between her thighs.