"You are some wicked, wicked women," Varric said.

Hawke was modeling for him the obscenely tight trousers which Isabela had picked out for her to wear during their little game. The dwarf couldn't help noticing the way the material clung to the curves of her buttocks. She was pretty stacked for a human woman.

"Poor Broody. He doesn't have a prayer."

Hawke made a face. "Stop, I feel guilty enough."

"Oh good. You won't be surprised, then, if you end up with a fist in your chest?"

"He's a little too uptight to come anywhere near enough for that. If anything, he's going to flee the scene and I'm going to die of embarrassment."

"Hey, if it makes him loosen up, you're doing all of us a favor."

She still looked apprehensive. "Do you suppose it's too late for me to back out?"

Just then Isabela stuck her head into Varric's suite. "He's here!" She chirped excitedly, and then disappeared again into the hall.

"Been nice knowing you," Hawke said, dropping to her knees.

Varric chuckled to himself as he walked down to the tavern proper. He did hope that Broody was going to take them up on their offer. It would surely do him some good. And, of course, it would make a great story.

The lanky elf was standing just inside the door, looking typically uneasy.

Isabela was perched on a barstool nearby, looking delicious as usual. She was wearing an impossibly low-cut shirt that revealed even more cleavage than usual, exposing a vast expanse of soft brown skin and the very top of an especially tight lacey corset.

She was openly flirting with him, and Fenris was resolutely not looking in her direction. So resolutely that it was clear he had noticed the pirate's remarkable new attire.

Varric took that indication as his cue. "All right Rivani, Elf, are you ready to go to work?"

Fenris glowered a little in return. "I have brought the shipment from the docks as you requested," he said, gesturing to the crates outside. "And I will be on my way."

"Not so fast, Broody. If you want to work off your debt to me, you've got a bit more work to do."

"I think hauling your belongings here more than works off my debt from last week's Wicked Grace, dwarf."

"Last week's match, maybe. But not for the week before that."

Fenris grunted his assent, reluctantly. He gestured to Isabela without looking at her. "But what is she doing here?"

"I live here, remember?" Isabela responded cheerfully, jumping up off her seat. The motion had a satisfying effect on her prominent cleavage. "And you're not the only one in debt to Varric. I think he only plays cards to have us on the hook for times like this."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Rivani. Now get to work." Varric aimed a smack at her bottom that was just a little bit harder than they had agreed upon. Hey, he might as well have a little fun, too. "Why don't you unload the cart, and Broody here can carry the crates up to my suite?"

Fenris sighed. "All right. Let's just get this done quickly."

"What's the hurry? You have some important sulking to do?"

The elf ignored him and went outside. Isabela and Varric exchanged a meaningful look.

"Good luck with that," Varric said. "I'll be at the bar if you need me."

"Take notes," Isabela advised him, grinning. "I'm just getting started."

It was a two-pronged attack. Isabela might have been a military commander in another life, had she chosen to use her powers for good.

As Fenris waited, she pulled the crates off the cart, and appeared to sort them into varying stacks. This required a lot of bending over. Suddenly noticing him there, she said: "Here, take this one."

She bent over to the one right at his feet, giving him a very good look down her shirt. One that he could not avoid when she was handing him a heavy crate to carry.

Then she sent him walking through the Hanged Man, up to Varric's rooms. Where Isabela knew just what he was going to find.

Hawke, on all fours, digging through an open crate, with her luscious arse pointed directly at him.

(A rotten move, really, but Isabela was not inclined to fight fair.)

And indeed, when she followed up the stairs behind him, she saw Fenris startle at the door to the suite and fumble his load, dropping Varric's crate of belongings smack onto the floor.

Hawke looked over her shoulder at him, without getting up. "Are you all right?" she asked innocently.

Isabela would have said she was laying it on a bit thick. But it clearly had the desired effect on their target, who was stammering something in reply that did not, so far as she could determine, contain actual words.

Fenris dropped to his knees to retrieve the crate, and froze there, staring at Hawke as though he had been ensorceled. In this position he had an even better view of Hawke's bottom, which by now he could see was revealed entirely by her tight trousers, from the tempting swell of her hips to the enticing cleft between her buttocks.

With her looking back at him, smiling, it was almost as though she were inviting him to take her from behind. An irresistible sight, as far as Isabela was concerned.

But Fenris seemed to shake himself and recover, averting his eyes deftly. "You are in debt to Varric as well?" he asked, a bit shakily, as he stood back up.

"Yep." (They certainly were now, Isabela marveled.) "I said I would sort his books for him. You can set that down over there."

Hawke pointed to an area that would require him to walk directly past her.

Ooh, Varric was right: they were wicked, wicked girls.

Isabela was so proud of her.

She dropped off her own crate right at the door and rushed out to the street, to be in position when Fenris returned.

They sent him back and forth between them for the rest of the afternoon. He would take a crate from Isabela, who gave him a jaunty grin and a flash of cleavage, and take it to Hawke, who he constantly found bent over in various configurations all around Varric's suite. If he had any suspicions that he was being set up, he gave no indication. In fact, he had nearly nothing to say by this point. Only his perpetual blush gave him away.

By the last crate, he had still not broken down and kissed either of them. Which was fine, Isabela reasoned. Fenris knew the two of them were intimate, and he was a gentleman at heart. She would just have to make a clear invitation.

"Last one," she announced unnecessarily, as she handed the final crate to him.

She followed him silently into the suite. He had gotten a lot less observant in the last few hours, Isabela noticed. Normally he would have growled at her to keep her distance.

Hawke was now up on a ladder, propped against Varric's tall bookshelf. She let him set down the last load, and then called him over. "Could you hand me that green volume?" she requested.

Fenris didn't even try to argue at this point. He hurriedly gathered up the book and brought it to her. She took it from him and stretched herself as high as she could go, placing the book at the very top - not coincidentally demonstrating her lithe, muscular form for him. Not coincidentally with her full hips and ass right at his eye level.

With Hawke's back turned, Fenris's face took on an expression of pure, naked lust that made Isabela chew her lip. Andraste's tits, she could not wait to get him under her.

Somehow he cleared the desire off his face in an instant, when Hawke turned back to him. Which made Isabela sweat a little bit more. Who knows what else he was hiding behind that glare? She was truly eager to find out.

"Come on, elf, I'll buy you a drink," she spoke up, startling him again. He backed away from both girls several steps.

"I need to go," he told her, far less resolutely than he had told her earlier.

Isabela linked her arm through his, and he didn't shrug her off. "Just one drink. Hawke will join us, won't you love?"

"In a few minutes," Hawke demurred, seemingly absorbed in Varric's books. "I just want to finish this row first."

"Come on." She lead him back into the tavern and settled him at a table in the corner. "I'll bring us some ale."

She brought rather a lot of ale, in fact. Just in case it was needed.

"A toast," she proposed, sliding into the seat directly beside him, rather than the one opposite.

"Certainly." Fenris obediently clinked his flagon against hers.

"To Hawke's incredible arse."

He choked on his mouthful of ale, sending Isabela into a fit of laughter.

"Come on now, I saw you looking."

"I apologize -" Fenris began to say.

"Don't!" she insisted. "Everyone should appreciate that arse properly. It's magnificent. Just makes you want to stand up and salute, doesn't it?"

A line settled into Fenris's brow, making him look quite guilty indeed. "That is not a respectful way to refer to a lady, and our leader," he said, a little sternness creeping back into his voice.

"Oh, it's all right. She doesn't mind. In fact, I think she enjoys you looking."

The elf clearly had no idea what to say to that, so he took a long swallow of ale.

"If you liked the view today, you should see her without her trousers. You could die a happy man."

Fenris rose from his seat abruptly. "This is.. inappropriate. I should go."

"Don't go," Isabela entreated him. "I haven't even gotten to our offer."

The elf's eyes were huge, she noted.

"Offer?"

He remained standing over her. That was fine by Isabela; she looked better at that angle.

"Come to bed with us. Both of us. I can promise a very, very good time."

Now he just looked skeptical, relaxing a little bit. "This is another one of your amusements, isn't it? You should not drag Hawke into your depraved fantasies, wench."

"Ooh, call me that again. That was delightful."

Fenris might have fled at that point, had Hawke not slid into the seat on the other side of the table.

"Is that mine?" she inquired, stealing Isabela's ale. "Did I hear my name? My ears are burning."

"Oh Hawke," Isabela purred before Fenris could come up with a way to change the subject. "We were just discussing your idea about taking Fenris here to bed with us."

Marian blushed furiously and looked down at the table. "Oh. That."

Fenris audibly gasped. He was clearly utterly flummoxed by the notion that Hawke, not Isabela, had proposed to invite him to their bed. His eyes actually started to dart around the room as he considered this revelation.

Meanwhile, Hawke slunk up next to him, shyly, and slid her hand up to his shoulder. "I just thought," she said softly, "well - you're very attractive, you know. Isabela and I would love to have you. If you wanted to."

She closed the space between them, subtly, and stared into his eyes, waiting for a reply.

For a minute there, Isabela was sure they had him.

But then it all turned around.

With a shaky breath, he pushed her away. Not roughly, but firmly. Then, backing the other way, he shook his head and repeated, "I need to go," for the sixth or seventh time that day, and rushed out of the room. Practically ran, in fact.

"Damn it," she cursed under her breath.

Hawke sank back down into the chair and put her head between her arms. "So much for that," she groaned. "Oh, this is going to be so awkward."

Varric, seated unobtrusively at the bar where he had been watching the action, threw up his arms and shouted to them. Though they could not hear him in the crowded tavern, clearly he was saying, "What the hell happened? You had him! What went wrong?"

Isabela's arms crossed in front of her practically of their own accord.

"We're not through yet, kitten," she insisted resolutely. "That was just Phase One."