Chapter Two

She would never run into his open arms or cover his face with the kisses long missed along with the stumbling and stuttered words of lost love. She would never tell him that she missed him or admonish him for the time between then and now. It was always this, the strange dance of two predators waiting to see who would make the first move. They both knew it would be him of course, her patience was like an unmoving boulder, while his own patience twanged with the urge to snap violently when he saw her, highlighted in flame and breathing hard through her nose while her lips pressed into a tight line. That sun darkened skin shone like gold under the fire lights influence, and part of him wanted to simply stride through the flames and take what was inevitably his.

But he stalled, because that cold, cold place that had snuffed out the rest of his more humane tendencies, simply loved to watch the mingled fear and want in those steadfast eyes. She had been a rock, unmoving, unphased and practical, a tightly wrapped enigma…until he had shredded away all those layers and found out what was hiding beneath. She would clutch those broken layers to herself now, force him to tear them away again, and something dark stirred in his gut at the thought of doing so in both a metaphorical and very literal sense.

He watched her shrug free of the furred tunic that hid most of her away beneath its thick, insulating bulk, bearing strong shoulders and arms littered with bites, scratches and burns that he'd traced over and over again in the quiet times when raw passion was done with them both and there was nothing else but her steady breath warming his cold flesh. She tossed it aside, never taking her eyes away from him, trapped in both awe and warines. He could see the shape of her now, though the thinner sleeveless shirt beneath still hid much of that glorious skin from him for a while longer. There was no mistaking all that well honed muscle, no forgetting the way that muscle moved once she finally let go of that blasted stoic nature that hid so much glory he believed the rest of the world had sorely missed out.

The rest of the world could go hang! While his eyes narrowed to the curve that joined her shoulder and throat, a hot, possessive wind rolled through him. Fuck the rest of the world, her secrets were his. Every roll of hips, every stuttering whisper of his name, every pained cry. They all came into being from his hands, his mouth, his words. The thought of any other possessing even a fraction of it called upon murderous urges and thoughts darker than the Underdarks depths. If only for tonight, she was completely and utterly his.

There would be no other feet wandering into this camp tonight, no errant fo or curious wolf to interrupt, no chattering friends all vying for attention as they sang their triumphs and griefs to her. She was all his, and the only thing that stood between him and the undeniably sweet taste of her flesh, were a few pieces of cloth, leather, and her constant and unfailing ability to challenge him every step of the way.

He'd moved close enough now that the breeze brought her scent, the true scent beneath all her layers and the dirt that still clung to the fingertips. It was the scent of a soft pelt brushing against the pleasure centers of his brain, the lingering odor of light sweat and the hand cured soap she washed with. He'd smelled some of the finest perfumes along the most elegant of necks in his time, but nothing lit the touchpaper of the true beast that lingered in his body. There was a raw, feral scent, one that invited you in but promised pain in payment of your pleasure and he made no move to hide his deep inhale of her musk as he took that final step closer.

A low, curling and gutteral growl met the approach of his fingers to her upturned face, and his smile grew wide….voracious even. For most, that sound would reach into the puerile monkey brain and all primal instincts would tell them to run or freeze. To him, it was almost a dinner bell, an ascent that while tonight would probably not be gentle, it would be…memorable. It also told him that her defenses were shot to the hells if her wildshape was trying to set the tone already.

Good. They had so much time to make up for.

~o0O0o~

He'd realized his mistake perhaps a few miles too late. His was a body designed to prowl through alleyways and over rooftops, slipping into the secret spaces hardly any other soul would ever know about. It was not meant for the dense and occasionally punishing foliage that seemed to crowd the center of this blasted forest! Every root seemed to be reaching for his feet, while branches swung and clawed at his face as he tried to force his way through them. Nothing about this was dignified, and he could feel his frustration dialing up to anger step by step.

Why in the hells was he so determined to follow her here?

Because her behavior had invited it, he told himself. She had been odd the past few days, most of the others were putting it down to nerves at the lead up to the goblin camp excursion, but that didn't sit well with him. Her agitation had a different flavor to it, one that he couldn't quite pin down, but it called to him all the same.

She paced, her words bit with impatience and her eyes would dart from the sky, to the forest and then to the rest of them. Fingers flexed and the dark of her eyes seemed to roll with something expectant. He half expected her to go tearing away from the rest of them at any given moment, maybe fleeing to some godforsaken druidic haven or just fleeing this whole situation entirely.

He found himself to be at least a little right about that, but not until the dreadful party the Tiefling Zevlor had practically forced upon them in lieu of any significant reward beyond their gratitude. She'd made the barest of attempts to do the rounds, waving off invitations for further conversations, even his own, her eyes strangely wild and darting. Then she'd slipped away into the forest with an air of desperation that he could again taste.

This had left him both curious and…well…annoyed, because he'd had absolutely every intention of using this evening and the haze of its alcoholic swill, to truly get under little Miss calm and stoic's skin, and possibly under all those layers she persisted in wearing as well. There had been plans, carefully thought out plans that involved securing his shield against the oncoming threat of a returning Master, not to mention the far more enjoyable plans of making the stone walling little bitch scream, one way or another.

It was a bit anticlimactic to see her back retreating into the gloom while he stood there drinking what could only be politely described as dishwater. The sensible thing to do of course, was to wait for another opportunity, one that didn't involve the rest of their companions watching him stalk into the forest after her. He actually expected a hand to lay upon his shoulder to stop him when his feet seemed to move of their own accord. Perhaps Gale, masquerading his not quite so subtle obsession as chivalry, or Wyll, who's presence around the Druid made second hand embarrassment a national bloody passtime. But it seemed that they were all otherwise occupied with their own doings at this celebration, because nobody stopped him from striding into the gloom of the forest, and no voice called him back as his night time eyes sought out the tracks she had left behind.

His mind was buzzing with all sorts of ideas about what she could possibly be doing that would take her so far from camp, something she had never done before. A secret lover? An embarrassing ailment? Did she dance naked under the moonlight or commune with great daddy oak or something? Anything was possible, because this wasn't like the her they all knew. She was almost fastidious about keeping them all together, knowing that they faced enemies from all angles. So why was she breaking her own rules?

Astarion really hoped that the answer was forthcoming soon, because this little excursion into the woods was starting to prove more trouble than it was worth. Plus it was getting harder and harder to pick up her trail as the undergrowth grew thicker and thicker.

He'd almost resigned himself to turning around and finding his way back when the background sounds of a forest at night, was split apart by a hoarse scream mingling with a wildcat howl that rolled and echoed under the canopy. That sound…it told anything that could possibly be considered as prey, to run and hide. But to Astarion it was almost an unknowing invitation and his feet found new purchase as he began to sprint towards it.

The moment he broke through to a clearing, he knew he had just encroached upon something insanely private, and that cold, calculating curiosity inside him decided that it didn't care. What he saw was a thousand times more breathtaking than anything he could have conjured on his way here.

A tall and ancient oak stood proudly on a grassy island in the middle of a small but deep pond, its branches spreading further than the night time would allow him to see, leaves blotting out the stars, their undersides highlighted in gold by the fire that burned beneath them.

She was gloriously naked, on her knees, with both hands planted in the dirt. Her body heaved and sweated with something monumental that appeared to be happening inside her, her muscles roiling under taught skin, head twisting from side to side as though she were tearing meat from a bone. Low guttural choking sounds burst from her throat, building and building until she threw her head back in a primal scream. The taut line of her throat made his mouth cramp with want and he foolishly took a few steps further into the clearing.

Her head snapped towards the movement and lips pulled back into a snarl that could not be mistaken for anything else than a warning. It was here, while bathed in the complete fury of her stare, that he could see and somewhat guess why she had come here, so far out from the others. The shape of her jaw wasn't quite right, it had elongated somewhat to accommodate a set of teeth that rivaled his own piercing fangs. Another careful step forward and her head lowered between her shoulders, and now he could see the faint ringed glow about her eyes. The sinuous way one shoulder blade jutted upwards as one of her stiffened arms moved forward….it captivated and undid him in ways he couldn't explain.

He watched dark spots roll across her skin, disappearing and reappearing, trying to gain a hold on her flesh until her eyes closed in a visible effort to calm whatever the hell was happening to her. She didn't smell like a lycan, but the scent that did reach him on the next breeze called again to something inside him that didn't have the same cut glass swagger as the rest of him did. It was the part of him that would keep on feeding long after it was time to stop. The part that rutted and clawed at anything helpless in its grasp. He would have loathed to hear it described as his 'beast', but in the deep down of his subconscious he knew it didn't have the intelligence to be anything else. It could only want, and oh hells it wanted whatever this beastly little creature was.

He didn't understand the body language of animals as she did, but he didn't need the knowledge of a druid to see the way her hips moved from side to side in the time old motion of a cat about to pounce. Those teeth and the claws that scraped the dirt in front of her alerted him to the possibility that he was not dealing with a little tabby cat here, but something bigger and far more viscous than a milk fed feline.

"Leave"

That one word stopped him in his tracks for a moment, because it had to be spat out on the tail of a low growl as whatever control she was holding onto began to waver.

"Not a chance, little beastling. I don't know whether you intend to kill me or just ravage me but I'm positively aching to find out"

"Fuck….You!"

"A distinct possibility, though you remember our agreement yes?…We ask before we bite!"

He was delirious as her scent filled his head and flipped every switch in his body except for self preservation. She snarled at him again, trying to prevent some invisible force that seemed to be propelling her towards him inch by inch. He snarled back, baring his own fangs and making it clear he had no intentions of going anywhere, not now. Not when she smelled of fury, fire and…what in the hells? Another scent had joined the glorious array, thick, primal and unmistakable. By the very gods…was the stone hearted maiden in heat?

He'd heard tales of Druids who had spent too much time in their wildshapes. Sometimes, under certain circumstances the change could be forced, or the Druid picked up certain traits, like the way that giant walking tree trunk seemed to lumber as he walked, or lift his head to scent the air. He'd seen no indication of that from Verlaine, but then she made no show of hiding how closely she kept herself in check. Everything she did was with a stoic and straightforward purchase, the rest of herself bound beneath a layer of stone and logic. How long had it been since she last let loose?

She had made it to the waterline now, and her body rocked back and forth with the need to crawl closer and the desire not to come completely undone at the seams in front him. She watched him, panting, her eyes a solid dark core surrounded by a corona of gold, thick jet hair hanging like a frame around her contorted features. Closing those eyes, she made a visible effort to swallow down those beastial characteristics, and for a moment she succeeded. Her jaw was receding, the glow of her eyes dimming as claws slid away.

"Astarion…please…don't….It'll hurt worse than you think it's going to"

"Darling, I would like to see you try"

The glow poured back into those eyes and she made a sound, halfway between a snarl and a scream of absolute frustration.

"You fucking….stubborn idiot…get away from here, run…hide…get OUT!"

He answered her demand in the only way he could…the most unfair way possible give the state she was in and the scent that filled him more than her blood ever had. Cool agile fingers working at fabric, his eyes never leaving hers as he pulled the stained and somewhat tree savaged shirt over his head. In lieu of ever seeing his face, he knew every sculpted line of his own body. He was acutely aware of how he looked and how it all but invited someone to touch, even if it were just to see if he was real.

Her response was to finally slip into the water that separated her little island from the rest of the forest floor and for a moment there was only the faint sound of ripples and the crackling campfire to accompany the night song. Astarion found himself breathing hard, those scarlet eyes trained upon the water, hands flexing at his sides as if he meant to grasp at weapons that were not there. The world seemed to hold its breath for them in those few quiet seconds, only to exhale harshly as she burst up onto the grass, clawing and growling for purchase until she gained it, and started running at him.

He welcomed her oncoming onslaught, feeling more alive than he had in quite a long time since he had been turned. His body bent slightly at the waist, feet widening and planting themselves as she leapt at him, claws once more extended, lips pulled back into a lunatic snarl. She hit him hard, and it was the work of every one of his muscles working in tandem to catch her about the waist, jerking his head back from a swipe that would have certainly bloodied his eyes if he didn't twist his torso and bring her body down in a slam that planted her firmly on the floor.

She took another swipe at him then, as he pinned her waist down, delighted at the way her own muscle writhed beneath her skin. The barest edges of her claw tips scored scalding lines down the front of his chest and he laughed in an almost giddy way, leaving one had to do the job of pinning her waist while the other grasped at those flailing, lethal hands. Had he been a mortal man she would have torn him to shreds already, but his strength was supernatural while her body was likely producing more adrenaline than it ever did, giving her the momentum to keep fighting him. He had no real plan with what to do with her once he had her secured, he would not take her unwillingly, what happened next would be entirely up to her and the forces that caused her to smell like sex and impending, snarling death. But the sensation of holding all that raw power in both his hands was exquisite. She could kill him later, he was having far too much fun getting all that writhing fury under his control.

He'd finally managed to gather both wrists in one hand, only sustaining minor injuries on his forearms. He was now half hunched over her form, panting with the effort of keeping her still while his eyes roamed the gleaming nakedness beneath him. Her arms and shoulders might have told stories of her wild past, but the ones that patterned her torso wrote fucking sagas. So many of them, the largest being at her hip where something big had obviously tried to take a chunk out of her. His mouth watered with the overwhelming desire to explore that spot with his tongue, to feel the texture change happen under his mouth. He kept still however, glaring down at her with bright, feverish eyes as she lurched her head upwards to scream in his face again.

But it was weaker this time, and when she flopped back into the grass he couldn't help but chuckle, still delirious with the adrenaline that coarse through his veins.

"Where were you hiding this glorious little beastie all this time darling. You're positively glowing with suppressed rage and arousal…it's incredible….You are a work of delicious art!"

She was breathing heavily through clenched teeth, staring up at him with a reproachful expression, her toned chest heaving steadily. She really was a work of art like this in his eyes, and he'd seen his fair share of macabre images hung upon the castle walls. He had no intentions of invading her body without some kind of consent from her own body if not her word. It was almost enough to have all that raw, feral power under the control of his own hands. It was the draught of a 1000 year old brandy that he never knew that he needed.

He was so enamored of having both of her lethal hands restrained in his own, he wasn't paying attention to those long legs splayed beneath him, not until they wrapped around his waist and locked around the small of his back like a vice. Her momentum was not lost, and she had not given up. With a buck and a roll of her hips she had flipped them, and it was the work of seconds to keep her wrists in his hand while the other slipped about her throat before she could even try darting her head down to reach his.

She hissed at him. She actually fucking hissed at him and it was endearing enough that he tipped his head back to laugh long and hard at her audacity while still trapped in his hands. They were of course, at an impasse now, a very tense impasse that was thick with the promise of violence and sex. He knew she could feel him, already half hard and fitting snugly to the place where she straddled him, and yet she hadn't moved, in fact she seemed perfectly unphased with the way her spreading warmth rubbed against smooth leather.

He tested the waters, deep and unfathomable as they were, moving his hips just once and barely perceptible, stroking the long line of her pulse point delicately with his thumb. Yet she shuddered, hard, the fury in those gold ringed eyes clouding with something far more recognizable, though you had to see it to believe it when it came to Verlaine De'Carro, the great stone maiden of calm and infuriating practicality. Did she know she was beautiful like this? Did her obvious shame pertaining to this most delightful of predicaments keep her from knowing this was how she should -always- be?

She bent her head again, and this time he allowed it, that restraining hand still at her throat, just in case she got any more murderous ideas. She was close enough to kiss now, but her breath fell upon the place just behind his ear, where she inhaled deeply. Whatever she smelled there, it was enough to cause a stronger, answering roll of her hips against him, and when she spoke this time, her voice was softer, trembling on the edge of a growl and a groan.

"You are going to pay dearly for this in the morning"

It was a threat. An admission, a promise and the invitation he had been waiting for since the moment she'd almost broken his nose while he tried to force information out of her as they tustled next to the burning wreckage of the nautaloid.

Given some distance and yes, some sanity, he might have questioned whether this was worth whatever might happen in the morning, which may well include his expulsion from their camp. But sanity had bid him adieu the moment he'd stepped into her clearing. All those years of careful seduction, of reading people like books and skipping to the inevitable end. Nobody aside from his cursed Master had ever put up a real fight. His conquests had been perfunctory, a forgone conclusion. In almost 200 years, nobody had ever made him earn it before.

He forced her to sit up again, the hand around her throat not pressing too hard, just enough to get her moving so that he could see her expression. Her gaze was half lidded, lips parted enough to see that her own canines had extended again

"If i let go of your hands, do you promise not to claw me into beautiful but bloody ribbons?"

She opened her mouth as if to speak. Then firmly closed it and slowly shook her head from side to side, another roll of her hips indicating that this question should already be a moot point by now. He'd ignored her warnings and dared to further than either of them might have believed. The consequences were firmly on his head.

"Wonderful" The word came out in its own bestial growl and they were once again trading positions as he flipped them both, keeping the hand at her throat while the other released her hands to do as they pleased. He watched the sheer effort in her face while she held her hands between them, and after a few seconds, the claws retracted. Despite that little shake of her head, it seemed as though she didn't actually want to claw him, and when she finally did lay her tended fingers on his chest, they were trembling. He felt her draw a line from his clavicle to navel, before restless digits tugged at his leathers while her eyes fixed upon his, not looking at what she was doing, trying to disassociate herself from what must have been embarrassing beneath all that feral bravado. A soft chuckle exhaled through his nose and he brushed those hands away with an admonishing tut that brought a little of the fury back into her eyes.

"Sear me with those beautiful eyes of yours all you want darling beastie, you've made me wait an awfully long time for this, and i'll see you come undone before you get what you want"

He was toying with something dangerous, and it was exhilarating. What he might have to pay out in return the next day was a distant issue and definitely a tomorrow Asterion's problem. Likely not the most sensible choice he'd ever made in his long lifetime, but by the gods he was going to make it worth it.

He kept that light grip on her throat, fingers ready to clamp down if she decided to misbehave in a lethal fashion when he bent his head to that alluring scar and ran his scalding tongue along the strange and interchangeable surface that stretched from the lower half of her ribcage to the curve of her hip, tasting the salt of her sweat and feeling her body convulse under him. She made a low, rumbling sound in the back of her throat and his eyes darted up the length of her body, one brow raised in surprise and delight.

"Did you…did you just purr, little beastie?"

The way she tightened her jaw and jerked her gaze away from his confirmed it and laughter rolled out of him, rich and vibrant. He reared up and pressed his lips to the shell of her ear, buried amongst all that glorious disarray of hair and poured in a dark little whisper.

"Do it again"

Fingers slid down her sweat slickened belly and dove between her jutted thighs. She was all heat and flowing juices, offering no resistance to digits that didn't aim to tease, but devastate her. She bore the tightness of one who did not offer their body up all too regularly, and yet she was so wet that he didn't have to fight to push two fingers in to the hilt, his palm pressing lightly against that most sensitive bundle of strained and swollen nerve endings. He jerked that hand upwards three times, watching her squirm and tilt buck her hips up into his restraining palm. She didn't purr, but she did roar, whatever lethal feline that was trying to take over now crawling out of her throat in a sound that reverberated around the clearing along with the obscene slick sounds of those fingers settling into a smoother rhythm.

The claws had come out again, but now they were digging furrows into the earth above her head as she bucked and chased the calculated thrust of his fingers. He let her, she was so incredibly not herself like this. Legs splayed wide, unconcerned of his gaze while the pleasure he gave with just a simple twist and curl of his fingers. Another rough thrust and he ground his palm against her clit with little mercy. Those rolling hips became frenzied, urging him to continue, pressing herself as tightly to that friction as she possibly could.

He didn't make her work for it, answering her struggling body with another succession of quick jolting thrusts, his knuckles brushing those tight, contracting walls until the smell of her was thick upon both of them. He found his own hips faintly mimicking the movement of hers and when one of those sinuous thighs suddenly slipped between his own, he couldn't help but grind against its supple length as he brutalized her obscenely needy little cunt until she couldn't breathe without it coming out in rough, raw snarls and incredibly endearing little mewls.

A few more punishing jerks of his fingers and he pressed hard against her mound until she finally screamed in pure pleasure. She contracted around him, a soft, but scalding vice, pouring into his hand like a running stream. He groaned and the sheer abandonment and beauty of her then. She was as her precious nature intended, though it seemed as though nature had a dark sense of humor in giving a woman like her, a gift like this. He let her ride out the aftershocks of that first climax, while he studied her body and all its little contractions of muscle.

When her hips finally touched the earth beneath them again, she finally looked at him. Her eyes all defiance and fury again, but still coated by that film of lust that asked for no apology for its existence. She was all in now, come what may tomorrow she had decided to roll with what nature intended for her this night.

Restless claws still churned the dirt above her as she watched him with that feline stare, waiting to see what he would do next. That one golden length of thigh still pressed firmly between his legs now shifting restlessly. The flittering spots of black were blooming over her skin again, fading in and out with each breath, and now that he was closer, he could recognize their rosette pattern.

He'd seen her change from bird to bear to owlbear in their time traveling together, but never a leopard. Was this why? Did that form contain something far more dangerous than the intent to maul anybody who opposed them?

Did it really matter?

"Are you going to fuck me, or do you intend to paint a picture later Astarion?"

His name. God's even filtered through a low and lumbering growl, that sound from her lips made his cock twitch and the tendons of his arms stand out. He laughed hard at her audacity and pressed his mouth to her throat, shifting his thumb to run his tongue over the length of her pulse as fingers squeezed just a little harder. Her answering moan told him everything he needed to know in the length of a second, and he pressed his words against that fluttering pulse.

"Is that what you want my darling little beastie, to rut against me as a bitch in heat?...or does this end with you pinned and screaming into the dark?"

The answering trill from her restricted throat told him that both options were appealing to her addled mind right now, but for him the choice was easy.

Option two. Always option two. Power over something so rare, so primal was just too irresistible for him to pass up. To utterly own her, if only just for a single night, the opportunity was just too good to ignore.

His hand finally released her throat to join its twin in sliding beneath her shoulders and hauling her up so that she straddled his lap and they were finally eye to eye. His fascination with her was utterly obvious and he didn't care. This scarred, twisted, feral creature was a far cry from what she presented in the camp, and yet it seemed the most natural of her guises so far. She couldn't hide most of herself away from him like this, and if he were ever to pick a protector…well what could outmach this charming bundle of muscle and fury. To see her in battle like this, would have been breathtaking.

Beast matched the gaze of beast and found nothing but the honesty of their collective conditions. He was a calculating bastard, willing to take every advantage he could get if it meant staying alive, and she was a lie hidden beneath a layer of strict moral temperance designed to bury that lie deeper. It was as if some insane and wholly cruel god had made them for each other.

~o0O0o~

The fire popped with a sharp whip crack sound, and when her eyes darted towards it, he took the opportunity to grip her throat, sliding up its sublime column until his fingers met the shelf of her jaw, forcing her to look up at him and only him at this moment. Nothing else should matter but his presence, and if the very hells came down upon them for vengeance in the middle of this campground, she should still see nothing else but him.

"Little love, is it that time of the year already. Such a shame that you got better at repressing it over the years"

He didn't mean that of course, and she knew it, and he knew that she was well aware he was lying through his teeth. Her gaining better control over that particular wildshape merely meant that he had to work harder at pushing all the right buttons, and after 50 years of this he hadn't gotten tired of finding new ways to ignite the leopard rolling around inside her muscled frame.

"One of these days im going to end up killing you while you attempt to poke at the damn cat Astarion"

Her words were laboured while his hands squeezed at her vulnerable windpipe and nodded almost sadly.

"Darling, we have an eternity to test that theory"

Something in what he said caused an almost instant reaction, her hand rearing back to strike him, caught by his own and forced behind her back as he tugged her flush against his body, ignoring her bared teeth and furious gaze.

"There's the little beastie I know and love, peeking through the shadows"

"Fucking bastard!"

"Hedge witch!"

"Bloodsucking asshole!"

He laughed hard and loud at that one, almost losing his grip on her for a moment before it tightened all the harder and his mouth descended onto hers all bruising lips and scoring teeth, pulling them both into a killing darkness of their own making.