a/n: So armor, right? Yeah, I did a minimal amount of research about medieval armor, but in all honesty, I have no idea what Cullen's wearing. It's really only relevant very briefly in this chapter, so as a result, I might have taken some shots in the dark. I feel bad for taking shortcuts - usually I'd go out of my way to study medieval armor, compare it to the characters, find the right terms, make sure I talk about it all correctly - but this story isn't about armor (as interesting of a topic as that may be). This is about Hawke. And in my mind, Hawke could give two shits about what kind of armor Cullen is wearing. I mean, honestly? I think she's got some more important things to be worrying about in this scene. -wink-

PS, this chapter might be one of the reasons for the M-rating. So if you aren't into sex and stuff, you can skip right on over this.

f i v e

Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.
Benedictions 4:11

The sun had set, and everything was winding down. Hawke had appeared in Cullen's office very briefly just before sundown, just long enough to give him a quick kiss on the cheek and to let him know she would be back that evening and that they should talk. Cullen had started to ask her "about what?", and what should he be preparing himself for, but Hawke had just smiled brightly and waved as she left.

The woman was maddening in the best way.

Cullen had finished reading the reports that had been delivered to him from one of Leliana's men that morning, and had drafted enough responses that he could stand back from his desk and watch the sun set over the mountains through his window. Hawke said she'd be back that evening and he had no idea what to expect. "We should talk," she had said cheerfully. Cheerfully? After Varric's advice earlier that afternoon, Cullen found himself wondering what they could possibly have to talk about that could make her so happy.

He heard the door open and close quietly. "Evening, Commander," Hawke's voice floated to him from the other side of the room.

"Hawke," Cullen started, turning around to face her. She was right next to him when he turned, standing too close, smiling, moving closer still. She was quick, quiet, betraying her recent months of combat-stealth training. Cullen started to speak again, but Hawke's hands were snaking up around his shoulders, one of her hands weaving into his hair.

"How was your day?" she asked in a low voice, raising herself onto her toes to lean closer and tilt her head, almost kissing him but instead letting her words spill over his lips. "You seemed to be working hard every time I glanced in."

She wasn't making this easy. Cullen wanted to lift her up and ravish her on his desk, to hold her close and kiss her until she couldn't breathe. She was practically asking for it with the way her hand was now tickling and tracing his jaw, her thumb gently running over his cheek. He sighed, wrapping his arms around her but adjusting slightly to kiss her forehead. "You said we need to talk," he told her quietly.

She giggled, though. "Oh, so I did. Mostly I just wanted to ask you if you're really okay with me being a mage and all, but honestly, I didn't mean the kind of 'talk' that has so many words."

Cullen considered her for a moment. She was smiling serenely - if teasingly - up at him. "Really?"

"Really," Hawke assured him. "I still haven't made good on my promise to attempt to seduce you. But let's get my question out of the way first. I'm a mage, and you are a Templar."

"Was a Templar," he corrected.

"Was, are-" She dismissed the grammatical slip with an airy gesture. "Regardless, you're supposed to hunt mages, or at the very least, keep them under lock and key. And while I certainly have no problems with you locking me up-"

"Hawke-"

"-I'm still curious how you feel about the whole thing," she continued, ignoring his interruption.

He looked at her for a very long moment, then leaned down to kiss her. "I honestly don't think of you as a mage anymore," he admitted. "You were always out of reach for the Templars, so really, you were just a nuisance to us more than a threat." She laughed, and he smiled. "I should probably be asking you how you feel about me having been a Templar."

Hawke giggled brightly. "How about this: I won't use any blood magic on you, and you won't have to use your fancy magic-blocking skillset on me. Deal?"

"I think we can work with that," he agreed.

"Very good. So. This is the part where I try to seduce you, right?" she asked, pulling a little closer, putting her arms over his shoulders and kissing his jaw lightly.

"I suppose it is." He glanced around the office as her hands slid back around in between them, touching every bit of skin they could. Cullen briefly wondered where this affection of hers had come from. She was already working on removing his pauldrons, murmuring something about armor or duty, or some kind of innuendo regarding working hard all day. They had had very few moments alone since their chat on the battlements many days prior - little more than succinct chats about what they had been up to recently, along with some stolen kisses - and her eagerness to get them both out of their clothes was perhaps a little surprising. Then again, she had never worried about speaking her mind; this was likely just an extension of that: ignoring societal standards and proceeding simply as desired, regardless of consequences.

"Commander," she broke through his musing, slipping the fur from his shoulders, "if your armor is not off in ten seconds, I am going to rip it off without regard to potential damages."

He looked down at her. Her cheeks were pink, her lips flushed and smirking, her eyes bright and expectant. "Hawke-"

"Nine," she said, slipping her own pauldrons off; "eight."

For all her brashness, the color in her cheeks betrayed her hesitancy and doubts. Cullen felt a surge of affection for the woman in front of him. Well, a surge of the kind of affection that would explain what he was about to do. She had barely unbuttoned the top button of her tunic when Cullen had managed to shed his breastplate, couters, and gauntlets; he lifted her in his arms, kissing her deeply enough to elicit a small squeak of surprise, moving back towards his desk and setting her on top.

She responded eagerly - perhaps even over-eagerly, nearly knocking a stack of papers off of his desk - pulling his thin tunic over his head in between kisses, tossing it towards the chair. Or window. Or whatever was to her left. He did the same to hers, but stopped before leaning in to kiss her again.

She sat on the edge of his desk, wearing only her leather leggings - when had she taken her boots or greaves off? - and an expression that made it very difficult not to rip off her remaining clothing and defile her across his desk. Her cheeks were still flushed bright pink, and her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. She whined his name, reaching out to close the space between them when his stillness stretched. Her skin was marble, her breasts soft and perky, her stomach taut and finely lined. But what made him stop wasn't the beauty of the woman in front of him - no, Hawke's body was more than enough to make him continue without thought - it was the small locket that had bounced onto her chest when he had removed her shirt and settled between her delicately rounded breasts that made him pause.

"Cullen," Hawke said again, more firmly, tugging him forward. "You can do more than stare, y'know."

He reached out, resisting the urge to caress her smooth, pale skin, and instead gently touched the locket. Just like that, Hawke froze. He had never seen Hawke as one for jewelry or flashy accessories; her reaction showed that he was right to think this necklace was more than a pretty trinket.

"Ah," she said. "Oh, this- this is-" She looked down at it, and picked it up off her chest. "Right. I've gotten so used to wearing it, I'd forgotten all about it."

"It's from Anders," Cullen guessed.

"It… is," Hawke confirmed, looking at it, fingering it lightly. "But, y'know, it is also just a necklace."

"Is it?" Cullen asked doubtfully. Her reaction to it was not one of "just a necklace".

Hawke sighed, and carefully, gently, took the small chain over her head and held it in her hand. "It's a necklace," she said pointedly, closing her fingers around it. "It was silly of me to hold on to it for this long."

"It's all right," Cullen said tenderly, touching her cheek. "I understand."

Hawke chuckled, tucking the locket into a pouch on her pants. "Amazing how a simple piece of jewelry completely ruined that mood."

"It isn't just a 'simple piece of jewelry' to you, though," Cullen said. "If you need to-"

"Sh," she cut him off abruptly with a finger over his lips. "No. Whatever you were going to say, swallow it. Because here's the deal:

"You're worried about me, right? Because Varric had some words with you earlier. Sh," she said again when he started to speak, pressing her finger against his lips. "No, I know he did; I'm not an idiot. I know he told you that I'm hurt or in pain or whatever, and I know he implied that I'm a fragile flower that could shatter at your very touch." Even Cullen had to smile at that, around her finger. "But here's the thing: I am not. All I've been through has taught me strength, if nothing else. So what you are going to do right now," she continued, lowering her voice and pulling him closer, sliding her finger off of his lips, down his chin, and tracing down his bare chest as she spoke, "is get rid of whatever sympathy you might have for me, just for right now, and you are going to completely ravage me on your desk while I do my very best to not entirely alert anyone nearby what we're up to."

"No you won't," he cut in.

"You're right, I won't," she agreed as her finger landed on his belt. "I am going to do everything in my power to make sure anyone nearby knows exactly what you're doing to me. And you and I are going to have a very good time of it all. And then, when we're done, if you still want to know what happened with Anders that makes you all think that you have to walk on eggshells around me, I will tell you. But only after you have satisfied me so fully that I might not be able to walk tomorrow.

"Deal?"

Cullen considered, but when she started undoing his belt, he knew there really wasn't much to consider. Hawke was, if anything, a woman of her word. And besides that, it was very difficult to ignore a rather attractive mostly-naked woman sitting on his desk. "Just one condition," he said.

"And what would that be?"

He smirked, leaning forward. "My desk might not be the only place I want to …ravage you."

She giggled as he kissed her. "I'm sure we can work something out."

The pace picked up once again, right where they left off. Hawke pulled out Cullen's belt with an unnecessary flourish, letting it fly from her hand and land in one of the bookshelves. Gentleness, carefulness, were not things she was very concerned with at the moment. Cullen tugged at her leggings, and she lifted herself up so he could pull them off, and when he went in for another kiss, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and slid her other hand into his pants.

The sheer assertiveness of her action made him break away with a gasp. She giggled, tugging him closer again. "Too sudden for you?" she asked against his lips, stroking her hand along his cock with great care. When she received only a moan and fierce, passionate kiss in response, she took this as an indication that it was indeed just the right level of sudden. Trying not to laugh through the kiss at his insistent response, she pushed and tugged at his pants to get them down around his hips.

She was still stroking with deliberation, and turned her head slightly to break off the kissing. Instead, Cullen trailed kisses along her cheek, down to her neck. "I think," she breathed into his ear, "that I would very much like this - " a playful tug, " - inside me."

"I think," Cullen said, leaning forward to make her lean back; she kept herself up with the arm on his shoulders, "we can arrange something." He pulled her forward so she was on the very edge of his desk and pressed his cock against her pussy. She said something he didn't quite catch - or, more likely, ignored because it was a stupid and/or smart-ass remark about sheathing a sword or polishing a staff or something; he had already figured out that a good portion of what Hawke had to say could be entirely ignored - and pushed into her painstakingly gradually. Partly to enjoy every inch, but mostly because it elicited a rather delicious moan from her.

"MmmmmmCullen," Hawke whined, wrapping a leg around him to push him forward. "You'd better fuck me harder than that."

"Anxious?" he asked, surprised to hear his voice sounded breathless. He kissed her, letting one of his hands slide down her side to settle on her hip. "You should learn some patience."

"Maybe when you're not buried inside me to the hilt?" she suggested with a smirk. "Because right now, I'm not going to be very patient."

He slid out a little, equally slowly, holding her hip to steady her, and then went back in. He kissed her, and did it again, just to feel her moan through their lips. He sped up, little by little, enjoying the little noises Hawke made. She was indeed making good on her pledge to make sure anyone nearby knew what they were doing, making absolutely no effort to be quiet. Luckily, it was late enough that there was likely no one out for a stroll up this way. Though Cullen was finding it harder and harder to care if there was as he fell into a steady rhythm. He moved both hands to her hips to gain more leverage. One of Hawke's hands was weaving through his hair, pulling him down to kiss her; the other was clawing at whatever skin she could reach: his stomach, his chest, his back, his arms.

"Harder," she managed through what had become short, wet, desperately passionate kisses. "Fuck me like you mean it," she insisted when his nominal increase in speed was clearly insufficient.

"Like I mean it?" he repeated. He pushed her onto her back on his desk, leaning over her. "You need to learn some manners, Champion."

She laughed. "I've heard that one before," she agreed. But her amusement was quickly dissolved and replaced with gasps and moans and very incessant noises when he sped up again. At this angle, it was rather significantly easier to give her what she was apparently looking for, and Cullen was only too happy to oblige her.

Then came a very prominent gasp. "Don't stop!" she called, grabbing one of his arms. "Ah- ah! C-Cullen-" Her words turned into a kind of half-yelled, half-whined "aaahh!" as her legs tightened around him and she writhed in pleasure, successfully knocking over the stack of papers she had only almost disturbed earlier. But Cullen couldn't care less. He leaned down and kissed her; she leaned up and met him halfway, holding his face in both hands.

He started to slow when she began coming down, but she sat up with him. "Commander," she said very seriously, her voice slightly cracked from its recent overuse, but clear and bright, just like her eyes, "keep going. Don't you dare stop. Put me against the wall, too. I want some bruises to show off."

When Cullen looked a little startled by this statement, she laughed. "Bruises. On my back. From fucking me against a stone wall? Have you never noticed them on previous conquests' backs?"

"Previous-?"

"Sh, just pick me up and put me against that wall," she said, cutting him off impatiently and pointing behind him. She wasn't really in the mood for conversation right now. "I'm not made of glass, Commander, so stop treating me like I am."

Smirking, he kissed her again and lifted her legs to wrap around his waist. "Duly noted," he said, lifting her from his desk.