98… 99… 100.
Kalya sprang up from the damp earth where she had been doing her arm exercises. Alistair didn't so much spring as slowly curl himself upward, looking very much like he was regretting his heavy breakfast.
The rest of the group was still eating inside Redcliffe Castle, save for Elissa and Eamon who were in the War Room to discuss the Landsmeet.
Upon their arrival at Redcliffe, Alistair informed Eamon that Elissa could only stay fighting alongside their party if relegated to following his instruction and participating in the politics he couldn't stand. She was to meet and strategize on his behalf, and propose solutions that Alistair would carry out if he agreed. The old man stammered at his false nephew suddenly coming into his own, but asked no further questions.
Any excuse for Elissa to be locked in a room for hours was fine by Kalya, and it seemed the others in the party shared her sentiment.
Arms finished, Kalya transitioned the two of them into a jumping circuit that kept the heartbeat nearly as engaged as sparring.
The last several days on the road had been mercifully quiet. Just a handful of weak bandits; no darkspawn or shambling undead, as Redcliffe was wont to have. It was times like these when morning training was the most necessary, lest you pull a muscle due to inactivity, as Kalya had done killing that Templar weeks ago.
The trek from the Brecilian Forest had been awkward. Elissa hadn't spoken a word to anyone since her demotion. It reminded Kalya morbidly of the weeks just before she was… involuntarily turned Warden. But this time, there were no withheld water canteens, no breakneck pace, no goading one another across the fire.
The mood wasn't light, with the haze of Elissa's decision against the Dalish still hanging over them all. But there was definitely a palpable weight lifted with the shift in leadership.
A throaty chuckle announced the assassin's arrival as he made his way to the training ground behind the castle. Finding a mossy stone to lean against, Zevran folded his arms with an appraising smirk as he watched steam rising off Kalya and Alistair while they bounced around in the chilly morning air.
Kalya switched their exercises to deep lunges, with a high leap in between, to alternate her feet. Alistair groaned loudly, but kept the pace, his armor squealing as he went.
Zevran nodded along to the cadence of their moves in hungry appreciation.
"My Warden," he drawled. "Glistening like this, you would put a Desire Demon out of work."
Alistair stilled a moment, then went back to his lunges. "Maker, I thought you meant me . Though I'm not sure what sort of person would desire all this sweat."
"Who says I didn't?" Zev flashed his teeth. "Some of my favorite things in the world involve such a sweat."
When Kalya called time, Alistair bent over with his hands on his knees. His breath huffed out in curling clouds of mist.
"Remind me that I'm leading morning exercises tomorrow." He wrapped a hand around his cramping abdomen. "Not the rogue half my size and twice my... bendiness."
Zevran clucked his tongue with a shake of his head. "I'll never understand why you do that in full armor."
Kalya was onto the next exercise. She fell against the damp earth, then tucked her hands behind her head, curling up towards the sky.
"Riordan always had me train in full leathers, with no practice weapons."
"Duncan too," Alistair wheezed as he joined her on the ground. "Whoever trained the both of them didn't get hugged enough as a child."
Courtesy of an unfortunate bandit outside Redcliffe, Kalya had new leathers to break in.
While the intensity that came with being a New Warden was tapering off, all the extra training brought with it bolstered muscles that began tightening her old leathers. It was a new experience to undress at night and find momentary solace from the shame of her scars with new shadows of muscle beneath her skin.
"Care to join us, Zevran?" Kalya asked.
"Ah, no, mia cara. As much as I love dabbling in humiliation play, I trained before breakfast." He flexed for them. "I prefer to work up an appetite rather than jostle a full stomach."
Alistair laid back in the cold mud, looking a bit green. "You may be onto something there." As he lay, he stretched sore arms across his great chest.
"How many days' walk will it be to Teagan's Denerim estate?" Zevran asked.
Alistair jerked his head like a mabari catching something on the wind.
Kalya froze. Her stomach soured.
"You mean Eamon?" Alistair chuckled. "Maker, anyone could get my family tree mixed up. Especially when… well, it's a few different trees."
Kalya searched Zevran's eyes, noting the moment his mask descended.
"Yes, of course." He smiled wide. "Arl Eamon, how silly of me."
"Less than a week at this pace." Alistair scratched his cheek absently. "Maybe sooner. I really want to get this Landsmeet over with."
"Zev -"
The elf held up a hand with an embarrassed chuckle. "It's all right, Kalya. It's nothing."
Alistair squinted between them, too polite to ask what they were talking about. But Kalya knew Zevran was hiding the same thought she had. That the mage Anders had warned of permanent memory loss from the lyrium poisoning.
Kalya suddenly didn't want to finish her exercises.
Cauthrien was watching Taliesen saunter into her rented room, when she shut the door behind them, engaging the lock with a dull click.
Taliesen spun on his heel, studying her carefully, one eyebrow raised.
"I'm told you're a noble lieutenant," he said. "It would be an awful shame to bring me all the way back here just to slit my throat."
"A shame for who?" Cauthrien crossed her arms, leaning back against the door with a smirk.
"Antiva. Ferelden." Taliesen stalked towards her. "And you."
"I didn't bring you here to kill you." She kicked off the door, bringing them face-to-face. "I now have a proposition for you."
Taliesen scrunched his nose. "Love those." It was difficult to tell whether he was wincing or excited. Both?
Ser Cauthrien cupped his crotch, and he jumped, sucking in a breath of air.
"You're going to show me how badly you want this favor," she said. "Tonight."
"Oh, I was hoping you'd say that." Taliesen leaned towards her, mouth open. Cauthrien caught him against the chest.
"Here's what I'm hoping." She studied him. "If you come, we're going with my plan."
Taliesen's jaw dropped, eyes searching hers as he gaped.
"I capture the Wardens Alistair and Elissa at Arl Howe's estate. And anyone they're traveling with goes free for all I care."
"Ah." A wry smile spread across his features. "And if I don't come?"
"We do it your way. Your Crows and my Wardens are captured later in the Alienage."
Taliesen waved a hand in the air. "I know this… game of denial. I'm not good at this game."
"Pity." Cauthrien shrugged and began unlacing her boots.
Taliesen bent quickly to unbuckle his own. "Oh, I didn't say I wouldn't try. Just, a beautiful, powerful woman such as yourself, ordering me around…" He ran a tongue across his lips with a shiver.
"Are the stories of Antivan lovers untrue?" She gingerly stepped out of her boots and put them against the door. "Or do you just make a habit of finishing quickly?"
He grasped his chest as if wounded. "Well, now I just want to prove you wrong."
"Oh?" She snapped back up. "Do it."
Taliesen crossed the room to Cauthrien, grasping her by the shoulders and pushing her hard against the door. His mouth crushed into hers as he expertly slid his hands down her leathers, unbuckling her as quickly as she could unbuckle him. Neither soldier needed to see what they were doing.
Cauthrien lived for taking the lead, ordering her lovers as thoroughly as she ordered the recruits under her. But when Taliesen's skilled fingers shucked a hand inside her unlaced breeches, a groan escaped her mouth that she feared would compromise her position as the dominant partner.
His smile widened against her lips, and he teased a moment more between her legs before sliding the leathers down her muscular thighs. Her pauldrons were the last to go. She turned to dutifully set them on the floor as her nipples pebbled in the cool air.
When Cauthrien spun back around, the Antivan rogue was completely undressed and cocksure, hands on his hips and otherwise quite ready for her. She pursed her lips with a nod of appreciation to his eagerness as he fell upon her again. Taliesen's stiff length brushed off her thigh while his mouth nipped down her throat, down her chest, stopping only to pop one of her nipples inside. After circling it with his warm tongue, he resumed peppering a rough trail of kisses down her navel until the man was on his knees in front of her, taking her hips in his calloused hands.
Cauthrien arched her back against the wooden door, already anticipating an explosive release. Domming was no fun when the men she usually lay with were genuinely intimidated by her. Having this skilled assassin kneeling before her was so thickly arousing, she began to feel light-headed.
Taliesen leaned forward to inhale her scent, then let out a hungry groan as he grasped her backside in a way that threatened to weaken her knees. Their game had already aroused her enough that she was positively soaking. He slipped a slim finger between her folds and drew it out quickly, popping it into his mouth. The moan he emitted stole the breath from her lungs.
In the dim lantern light of the room, Cauthrien watched him lean forward to tease her with his tongue, flicking her pearl playfully as his entirely-too-slim finger entered her again.
He chuckled against her. He apparently could feel how the cut of his nose sent shockwaves through her body. When the shudder reached Cauthrien's shoulders, she instinctively bucked harder against his mouth.
"Tell me more about your rules," he purred against her. " You get to come, clearly?"
"Clearly," she sighed, a register higher than she'd intended.
"And I get to come…"
"Later." She raked her fingers through his dark hair.
This perked him up. He sat back on his heels, looking up at her like an excited mabari. "Later tonight?"
"Later, when the Wardens are in the Alienage."
His shadowy face grew pale. "You're joking."
"I don't joke." Cauthrien clenched a handful of hair into her fist and pulled him back between her legs. He lapped hungrily for a moment or two, but then leaned back a second time.
"Not that I'd ever lie to you, Lieutenant, but unless we spend every moment together, how would you know for certain I didn't come the moment you left my sight?"
She chuckled low. "Well, I was going to save that for later, but if you insist on skipping ahead."
Taliesen squinted at her with an odd smile as she kicked herself off the wall and strode naked across the room, with as much confidence as if she were strolling across the battlefield.
After a moment of rooting around in the pack next to her bed, she held up a small device - two thick rings held together by a curved length of metal.
She watched Talisen gulp when he saw it, but the smile never left his face.
He rose to his feet. His erection perked up the longer he looked at the device. Perhaps he wasn't as new at this game as he claimed to be. "I'm afraid that won't fit as I am right now, Lieutenant."
"Not for now," she purred. "It's for between our visits."
"'Visits'?" He arched an eyebrow. "Plural."
She nodded.
Taliesen crossed to the bed, grasping her elbows where she stood and drawing her closer to him. His rakish smile melted her insides as he slowly slid a trail of wetness from his thick length against her thigh. "You would continue to torture me like this on multiple occassions?"
"I'll make it worth your while, Crow."
His cock twitched, and she instinctively grasped his muscular ass, slamming his hips to hers.
This was the moment Cauthrien relished. That pupils-blown-wide look of shock and arousal that she would demand what they both wanted.
Taliesen blew out a breath as his eyes struggled to focus. Then, with a shake of his head, he hoisted her solid frame into the air. Cauthrien instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist.
"If I'm going to do this we should get to it," he said, carrying her to the top of the bed. " Someone should finish tonight."
Like a gentleman, he pulled back the woolen blanket before gingerly setting her down. His hand went to tug himself on instinct, but he groaned with a roll of his eyes and jerked his hand away.
In an instant, Taliesen had dropped to his knees again at the edge of the bed, grabbed Cauthrien's legs, and pulled her toward him.
What started as gentle, teasing nips at her center suddenly became wild, unabandoned lapping. Cauthrien writhed under his warm tongue, moaning and rutting against his frenetic movements. Two fingers plunged in, and Cauthrien squeezed around him, wrenching her back off the bed.
"Ho, Maker," he breathed against her. "I can't… I have to…" He rose to his feet, with heavy-lidded want clouding his eyes.
"Just for a moment, I promise," he panted. "I need to be inside you. Is that okay?"
"It's your lost bet," she shrugged, nearly breathless. His losing certainly made it easier to deal with Loghain, catching the Wardens at the Howe estate as ordered. Cauthrien would come out on top either way.
"Is that a yes?"
"Fuck me, Crow," she growled.
Taliesen wrapped his hand around his rock-hard erection, and his breath shuddered at his own touch. He rolled his head as if getting ready for a great battle. Then he crawled over Cauthrien, gripped her securely on the shoulder, and pistoned in and out of her sex exactly two times, grunting loudly with each thrust.
Then, with a discipline missing from her other nightly lovers, Taliesen dutifully dropped back to his knees with a frustrated moan and took out his pent-up desires with his mouth upon her slick opening. His moans of pleasure reverberating through her core coiled up the want tighter inside Cauthrien's stomach, drawing her ever closer to the edge.
She grabbed the sides of his head and helped rock his mouth into her at an intoxicating rhythm.
Taliesen managed to pull back just a bit. "Maker, yes," he said, nipping at her sensitive nerves. "Fuck my mouth, lieutanant."
That was what did it for her. Cauthrien's mind went blank and ecstasy flooded over her. Taliesen's movement was becoming more frantic, building, mounting, until Cauthrien let the pleasure crash into her and wash over her body.
White light exploded behind her eyes. She squeezed tight as Taliesen kept dutifully pistoning his fingers inside of her. For a moment, the thick sensation of friction was all she could comprehend as the roiling waves of euphoria slam into her over and over again.
Then, when he sensed her bones were puddled within, he slowed his thrusts before finally withdrawing his slick fingers.
"Ho." He wiped sweat from his brow with his bicep. "Ho, that was…" He squeezed his eyes and shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts, before collapsing on the bed next to her. "Oh, this is gonna be tough." He trailed off into quiet chuckling.
"If you'd like to give up now, I could go again," Cauthrien drawled sleepily. "Just give me a few minutes." It was a bluff, of course. She was too spent to even crawl up to the pillows. She'd get there eventually.
Taliesen propped himself on one elbow and drew a finger lazily up and down Cauthrien's navel. "Oh, I'm gonna win this thing. And when I do, you're in trouble."
"I'll count on it, Crow," she smirked, before allowing her heavy eyes to close.