2.

I can't help but sulk a little when I see how handsome the mark is. Finding him is easily done. He snores like a bear. Before I've come halfway down the hall toward his room I've already heard him. Amusingly enough, his door isn't locked. Poor dear...how trusting. I know his type, and I can tell from experience that he isn't expecting company. In fact, in all likelihood he probably believes that he's safe here in the Sunken Flagon. He deserves the education that I'm about to give him. Not that it will do him any good considering how it will end.

Cloaking myself within the shadows, and making certain that my veil is in place, I step inside of the paladin's room. As soon as I look down at him, I'm very, very sorry that he has to die. He doesn't have the raw sensuality that I generally go for. But his lips are full, beautifully shaped, inviting. I watch his chest rising and falling. Broad and firm, and touched by dark, silky hair. A blanket loosely covers him below the navel. Of course, I don't mind seeing all of that black hair narrowing to the place where I lose it down below his covering. Once again I can't believe my good fortune. The mark is unarmed. The mark is asleep. And he sleeps naked.

I don't know what his dream involves, but it must be a good one. He puts on quite a show for me. First he starts to twist and writhe in his sleep. His lips part with a gentle moan as if I had already reached a hand down below the blanket to caress him. He is most pleasingly rising to the occasion. It would be a lie to say I'm not already fixated on the way the shape of his cock becomes more defined in response to whoever is stroking him in his deepest nocturnal fantasies.

But I've miscalculated. In the heat of my interest, I've neglected to see the jagged points of a knife on his nightstand. A nice idea, but not close enough to him to be of any use. Into my pack it goes. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, I do a visual sweep of the room. The blanket that covers the paladin has no unnatural outlines where something else could be concealed.

I could kill you, I whisper. I could. And I probably will.

But first...

It's a truly good thing that I've brought along my favorite things. One of them is this lovely fan-tipped wand of paralyzation.

His palms, face up on the pillow, tie easily once the green glow envelopes him. I bring a finger to my lips. "Shhhh! Quiet, or I'll cut you. And that's not what I want to do. Do you understand? Yes, of course you do."

His eyes, a striking blue, flash open in panic. He can see me. He can feel everything that I do. But that's all that he can do.

I don't want him too vexed with me. Not yet. "Right now I don't want your gold, and I don't care about who you are. All that I want from you is this." I'm using my most persuasive of voices. He starts trembling the instant that I take hold of him. It's clear that some part of him likes being straddled. He grows even thicker in my palm when I catch him there and hold him tightly in my fist, and my thighs fit snugly over his hipbones. He is straining against the spell, trying to fight it, as some misplaced sense of attempting to salvage his dignity mars his features.

"Listen to me, paladin. I have two terribly sharp daggers on me. And I can tell you what they want. But at this moment, what I'd rather have is you. So you can either struggle against me and make this hard for yourself..." I grin at the foolish pun. "Or you can lie back, close your eyes and pretend I'm the one you've been riding in your sleep. Seems a clear choice to me." For emphasis, I reach down with my hand to guide him closer to where I want him. The excitement of the moment has my body more than ready to receive his eager flesh. Oh, Bishop would be so annoyed with me.

How ironic is that humorless trick of the gods that makes men so vulnerable to the weaker sex. No doubt our evening of fun together will leave the paladin with endless guilt that will weigh upon his soul. At this instant, he may hate me, but his body most certainly does not. He is so easy to capture. In his eyes I can see his unspoken words... don't do this. Don't. They are pleading. So insistent upon holding onto his virtue. For this, I hate him. I hate him, and so I take him. I wring pleasure from him with hard, merciless vigor, and his perspiration soaks the sheet below him. He tenses. When I can just make out the feeling of a butterfly's wings within me, and know that I have won, I hover above him, then fight to concentrate on the panicked pleasure that springs forth from my own body. He glares at me, dark, ashamed, angry.

Fine, then. That's what I wanted. I'll make this painless. It's the least I can do.

But there's a flash of blue from behind me. Someone has caught me at the hunt. How could I lose myself in the moment so easily? The woman is coming at me with her mace, and she is not at all happy.

So someone does care for you after all, paladin. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.

The woman is stronger than I would have supposed. And yes, she does look a bit like me. She fights valiantly for the one she was apparently coming to tuck in this evening. It takes all of my strength to break free of her hold long enough to give the wand another play. And then I'm down the hall as quietly and quickly as possible. Not today, paladin, I'm telling myself. But soon. Soon.