CHAPTER THREE

In every moment of waking, there are a few blissfully ignorant seconds of peace. A small, crafted moment of time where you were unburdened by memory and any duty that might wait for you. Verlaine had cherished these moments ever since she awoke, bound and violated by the Illithid Tadpole. It was vile to think of that thing, squirming in her skull, corrupting and possibly changing parts of herself she might never get back. So in those few, precious seconds before she fully woke, there was no tadpole, and no mission. The druid merely found herself appreciating the few spots of warmth on her body where the sun had found purchase through the canopied leaves.

The air was cool and fragrant, and she could hear the gentle lap of water not far away. It was serene…right up until she had gathered enough momentum in her brain to wonder why she was naked. Contrary to some rumors about druids, she rarely slept unclothed even when traveling alone, and certainly not when sharing a camp with strangers that had only started to become real friends.

Just a few blissfully ignorant seconds. And then memory came flooding back in, playing the previous night's events in a long stream of flashing images that made her body curl inward until she was hugging her knees, half of her furious, the other half simply too humiliated to even open her eyes.

Oak Father, I've never asked you for more than your blessing over a dubious tavern meal before, please, please, please…let him be gone when I open my eyes. Let him be the type to have slipped away in the night…let him be a true bastard.

This silent prayer was whispered in her head, as much of her internal dialogue tended to be, better to say it in your head before you open your mouth. A fathers advice she had taken to heart considering her condition. Far better for her to keep her own counsel than risk a reaction from that other part of her. Of course that very part of her refused to be ignored at this time of year, which was why she had sought solitude out here, because the idea of letting it loose inside the camp, or anywhere near the Druids grove was unthinkable. It had been bad enough to have Halsin at the camp, where his scent had overpowered everybody else's and made the leopard want to do things that made her both cringe and want to climb him like a damn tree!

She'd broken off into the forest to escape that scent, knowing that she couldn't put it off any longer. And though it made her ears burn at the thought, she trusted that Halsin would cover for her absence, the old bear had smelled her just as keenly as she had smelled him. He'd known enough to give her a sad smile and stayed the hell away from her.

In her panic to get away from the Arch Druid, she had forgotten all about the damn vampire.

Please?

Verlaine opened her eyes.

Shit.

The smile she opened her eyes to was almost serene, the eyes told her that they hadn't missed a damn thing that had happened the previous night. He was sitting, calmly, cross legged beneath a tree, presumably waiting for her to wake from her feverish trance. Verlaine wanted to get up and punch him till she stopped feeling so fucking mortified. The leopard wanted to roll in the grass and throw its hindquarters to the air as if in invitation. Since her elven half had the reins for now, she absolutely wasn't doing that, instead she sat up, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs and the deep, telling ache in her belly.

She didn't dare throw more than a cursory glance at Astarion, mostly because she refused to risk actually blushing right now. His injuries seemed superficial, which meant he'd been more adept at handling her feral form than she would have thought. Something in her subconscious purred in agreement and it took digging her nails into the meat of her palm to stop the sound from translating its way through her own mouth.

A further glance down at herself told her that she now had a choice, because currently she was covered in mud, blood and various substances she did not need to take a flying guess at. She could let this become all the more awkward than it was already going to be, or she could remember who she damn well was.

Verlaine De'Carro had fought dire wolves and cockatrices tooth and claw, she'd dived from the tallest waterfalls and chased curses from ailing forests and she was not going to cower and cringe like a pathetic child on her home turf. She made herself stand. Every muscle in her body protested. She made herself look at the vampire again, and when he opened his mouth to say whatever he had lined up on that silver tongue, she simply shook her head.

"No"

She didn't elaborate, instead she hoisted up spite and pride and used both to walk over to the pond without limping. Elaborating on that one word was not necessary, not if the vampire was halfway as intelligent as she believed him to be. There would be time to talk, and oh yes, there would be plenty of words. But she needed to be clean, to feel herself again and gather her thoughts, all of which were scattered to the winds after last night.

Slipping under the cooled water was a reprieve, and for a few moments she found herself wishing she'd learned to turn herself into a fish so that she might stay down here forever. But again, that was the wish of a child who wants to run and hide, and the wilds were hers, she would not be shamed in them now. It was still hard to climb out of the water when she was eventually free of all evidence but for the scratches and few bruises here and there. The origins of which she didn't have to guess at.

The image of her body, bent at the waist, forehead pressed to the dirt as she screamed and clawed at rapidly deepening furrows in the earth, played behind her eyes in exquisite detail. She had kept asking for more, and he had been delighted to oblige.

Shame tried to grip her, but for once the tenuous nature of her wildhshape provided adequate distraction as her fingers once again ached to turn into claws. Again, it took effort to hold it back, but there was a better command of it during the day. The leopard would never fully sleep until her time was up however.

Soberly she dressed in her leathers and sleeveless shirt, turning over the current dilemma in her mind, while said dilemma watched her patiently. She could feel his eyes, like a finger delicately running up her spine as she made herself as decent as she could given all that he had seen. When she felt that she had done all that she could to prepare herself to face him, she found Astarion exactly where she had left him, he hadn't moved, perhaps being smart enough to understand the delicacy of the situation. Or perhaps he was just patient. And still not wearing a shirt.

She carefully sat herself down in front of him, a good few arms lengths away because she trusted neither of them right now. The patient and expectant look he had painted on that sculpted face somehow still managed to leer, she ignored it, pulling that rough cloak of pragmatism around her once more.

"Why?"

There was a small triumph in the fact that she saw the briefest moment of confusion on his face, as if this was not what he was expecting. Anger, shame and embarrassment perhaps, but not that one, calm word and her steady, dark eyed gaze. He seemed to recover magnificently however, and she didn't need to know the ins and outs of his past to know that this was a man used to thinking on his feet.

"I was concerned. Here we are, beset by enemies on all side and our fearless leader goes wandering into the forest alone"

"Bullshit"

Again, just one word, this time accompanied by the faintest of smiles that didn't quite reach those eyes. She didn't elaborate, they both knew that this excuse was flimsy at best, and only an idiot girl with stars in her eyes would ever allow themselves to believe it if they had met the man for five minutes.

"Why does it matter, you can't deny we both had fun"

He dropped his voice to that low, inviting level again. She ignored him, the leopard did not, but her own mental hand now had it grasped by its metaphorical scruff just so that she could get through this. At this point she could either deny or confirm, and in this instance, the truth seemed to be surprisingly effective.

"Yes, we fucked. It was amazing. That doesn't explain why you would take it upon yourself to come here after me in the first place. You had to know from the moment you walked into this clearing that this was something….not meant for others"

He seemed perturbed in her lack of shame or embarrassment, a deflecting tactic he no doubt used on others to great effect.

"And please, when you answer this time, please respect me enough to imagine i posses more intelligence than the last drunk socialite you lured out of a decrepit bar"

She watched his eyes narrow and realized a little too late that she had pressed upon a nerve. He was already halfway to her when she'd opened her mouth to apologize, and by the time she closed it again he was looming over her, fists planted on the grass either side of her. The sudden surge of his scent made the leopard twist and spit in her grasp, but she held on tightly, forcing herself to face his scorching indignation.

"Because I wanted to. Because i wanted you, writing, screaming and begging for more, and that exactly what you gave me little beastling"

Once again he sought to throw her off balance, but it was also the truth, and that was technically what she had asked for. She could admonish him for it, but he would never really understand why it bothered her so much, nobody beyond perhaps a few learned druids could explain to him the crux of her issue.

"All right. Good enough for now I suppose. Now you have a choice, because the cycle lasts for two days and I'm stuck here another night. You can leave, on the understanding that discussing last night's activities in camp will lead to you waking up with a viper in your bedroll, or….you may stay, on the understanding that there is work to be done before the night draws in"

This seemed to utterly stump him, and she suppressed a small smile because the druid got the distinct impression that this didn't happen to him too often. He'd been ready to press buttons and ignite fuses in order to deflect answering a simple question in anything else but an artful lie, but she hadn't given him the desired effect and once again she was being reasonable. He didn't seem to know what to do with reasonable.

He seemed to consider his choices carefully, before brows drew together and he eyed her with half amused suspicion.

"What kind of work?"

"The kind that involves some walking….and wearing a shirt"

That curved smile was back and she had invited it in while the leopard purred smugly. She let him have it. He might have been a bastard of the highest order. But he was a magnificent bastard whether she liked to admit it or not.

~o0O0o~

He had swallowed her anger before she truly had any chance to let it fully ignite, his words reverberating in her skull while he poured a red and hazy river of lust into her mouth. She drank it down greedily, eager to blot out all the things they should be saying and never did. She let him drown her in it, feeling the sharp nip of a canine at her lip, her mouth opening in with a hiss, allowing that silver tongue to invade her fully. The force of his presence and his indomitable hunger was undeniable. You couldn't fight it, you couldn't protest, because every part of your body cried out for it, like the pores of the driest earth called for rainwater to wash away the dust and reinvigorate the soil.

She could not deny a kiss that was a year in the making.

The arm held firmly at the small of her back was beginning to ache, but it was a sweet ache, a dark ache that spoke of the way he could make everything he did an eroticism. She tasted the copper salt of her own blood on his tongue and felt the tell tale feline brush of fur along her bones. For once she felt no need or desire to fight it, let it come. Let it rage against the walls of her flesh until he found the right way to grasp it by the scruff and pull it to the forefront. The pain was nothing in the blaze of his very existence at this moment.

Eventually, the need to breathe forced her to tear her mouth away, earning a sound of descent from the vampire who tightened his grip both on her arm and her throat. She closed her eyes to the sensation, letting it wash over her, not letting her body panic as that one stolen breath became even more restrictive. She gave him no fear, and he rewarded her with the slow return of her breath and lips that were almost tender now, brushing against hers like an enamored ghost, sucking at the lower and engaging her tongue in a more delicate and artful chase.

With the clearing being in near silence, she could hear every small sound he made in the back of his throat, his want translated into an auditory hand that slipped into her belly and tugged on all the right strings to make her hips roll into his.

His voice had always been one of his most devastating weapons and her obsession with wringing out every single one of them was almost as large as his own. He proved this theory right there and then by setting his teeth to her throat without warning, not peircing the flesh but biting hard enough to jerk a harsh groan from her throat that was entirely human.

Her fingers brushed fabric that probably cost more than the house she had grown up in. It also covered most of him all to entirely and by this simple denial alone she found herself craving to feel all that cool flesh against her own. He knew it too, he always knew, which is precisley why he had come to her in garments that were complicated and fiddly, denying her what she wanted before she even knew that she wanted it.

She felt the smirk against her throat and might have cursed the fact that he could still read her so well without the damn tadpole, if that same knowledge of her body and thoughts didn't come with some impressive advantages. It moved up to her ear and breathed his wicked thoughts into it.

"Get on your knees"

It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't a compulsion. He'd simply had long enough to find that string in her body that wanted to obey, and plucked it. Just a few barely breathed words and her knees felt like they had lost all strength. She slid down the front of his body like a marionette cut from her strings, her cheeck resting against the the supply leather of his groin where her cheek rubbed like a cat marking its scent, which was not far off the mark.

She was rapidly losing ground between herself and the wildshape, but it wasn't as violent as the first time, between them they had learned how to bring the two together until it became hard to define what need, desire and sensation came from what part of her. The ultimate, glorious and frightening truth turning out to be that it didn't matter, both parts of her loved him.

He towered above her now, pale, strange and beautiful. As god like as he always wished to be. This comparison should have frightened her, and it had many years back. But the time for that was long past and her only options when looking upon this walking, living sculpture, was to weep or feed her desire for him.

She chose the latter, her quick fingers working at lacings that were mercifully easier than the embroidered jacket and undershirt. He didn't stop her, but set his back to the rock behind him, pale fingers pushing dark hair away from her face to better facilitate his view. She freed him, already half hard from that leather prison, the heady scent of him causing a painful twitch in her jaw, those canines wanting to lengthen in response. She bit back the desire and ignored his low chuckle, chasing it away abruptly when her lips sealed around the head of his cock, her hot tongue lazily circling that oh so sensitive flesh.

Vampire lord he might be, he was still a man, and the ragged half breath she forced from him lit a match up the length of her spine. Time be damned, she took him slowly, relishing in the texture of him sliding over her tongue, the bitter salt taste of his arousal coating it as she refused to take him further than a couple of inches, the hand in her hair tightening every sweep of her tongue. Looking up at the length of his body, she caught him with his eyes closed, head thrown back, canines exposed as a series of strained sounds forced from his throat.

Her own eyes rolled almost to the back of her head at this vision and she took him suddenly and deeply, almost hitting the back of her throat. She held him there, sucking mercilessly, until he growled and shifted his hips, burying himself the rest of the way. She opened her throat to him, in a practiced gesture, letting him reside there for a moment before beginning the slow and torturous drag of lips back along the thickening length.

Her fingers clutched at his thighs when he rolled his hips again, but she was ready enough for such an invasion and in a matter of seconds they had began a slow but mutual rhythm between them, his cock gliding into her throat while her tongue worked at mapping every vein and ridge. She could hear his low, shallow pants and only doubled her efforts, causing him to skip a beat and curl his fingers in her hair hard enough to sting.

She allowed him to guide her now, content in the sensation of him moving in her mouth while the hand in her hair controlled her pace. There were fewer things more glorious than the sound of a man caught in the furnace trap of a willing throat, and he did not hold back. He growled, sighed and groaned into the night air, desecrating the night beauty with the sounds of a monster in lust.

When he finally pulled her away, it was with an obvious amount of effort, the both of them knowing that she could have kept him in that state of incandescent pleasure for hours. The look in her eyes was one he would have recognized if he could ever see himself in a mirror again. Predatory satisfaction. The knowing of anothers desire and the ability to wreak it upon them with both talent and utterly diabolical dedication.

"You always have the most wonderful way of saying that you miss me Darling. Now, take off those rags, let me see all of you"

It was the work of a few gestures to pull a shirt over her head and the leathers over her hips to be kicked off to one side, thankfully with no embarrassing hopping about on her part. She stood just out of reach of him now, the scant wind brushing over the bronzed curves of a body that had not lost its muscle tone. The ebb and flow of his gaze told her that he hand not lost his appreciation of that fact either and for a moment she was almost amused enough to see that he didn't know where to start first.

Deciding to give him time and a little incentive, she moved around the fire, letting it highlight curves and paint shadows over her face. With the flames separating them she allowed the softest of rumbles from her throat, the inhumane sound reaching out to him. If she were closer, she might well have been able to see his pupils dilate, but she did catch the barest twitch of his upper lip in response. Verlaine closed her eyes and tipped her head to the sky, calling upon that velveteen feeling in her subconscious, welcoming it and giving it space to stretch and fill her.

This time her call was louder, and when her jaw clenched again she let it, bracing against the pain as magic and nature intertwined and forced her mouth to accomodate those impressive canines. Likewise, her fingers spasmed and flexed, the claws sliding out almost eagerly. It had taken a long time to come to terms with her wildshape. She'd been fighting it for so long that she hadn't even considered a different course. One where she could be both, where both could be she.

There was no time for hiding now, no time for pretending. He knew all that she was, and she knew that he revelled in it. She waited for him now, out of reach but utterly his for the taking, the light of the campfire flames licking her body while the shadows made the gold ringed glow of her eyes burn like coals.

She had control over herself for now, but she could quickly see it disappearing like a stone down a well when agile fingers began their slow and oh so deliberate movements over tiny little silver hooks and buttons of the worlds most fiddliest fucking doublet! If she had a tail it would have been twitching in agitation as one of too many fastenings was let loose with practiced ease. She couldn't take her eyes off those hands and their work, her own flexing with the desire to just tear into all that expensive fabric.

When his fingers momentarily paused for a few seconds, she coughed out a frustrated growl and took a step forward, wanting to fulfil that instinct badly. One claw had barely traced a thin line over all that silver and gold brocade before he vanished, his form disappearing into a cloud of crimson mist that flowed away from her. She turned to follow it with her eyes but he'd learned to master his abilities far more readily and quickly than she could have ever mastered her wildshape.

Dark hair fanned about her face as she tried to spot the faintly heated mist that brushed briefly along her hips, calves and the small of her back, drifting away from her every time she moved to strike out at it. Finally, her frustration was giving away to the less than reasonable feline rage and she roared into the clearing, canines bared and eyes wild.

Fingers bit into the flesh of her upper arms and jerked her back into the cool, smooth marble of a bare chest. Her body sang in response, drinking in the sensation of him cooling her own heat hectic skin, the press of his cock fitting neatly against the curve over her rear as if by design. She fit against him perfectly, and when his cheek nudged against hers she tipped her head back on his shoulder, giving him the access he wanted to breath in the scent they were already making between them.

With a sigh of contentment, Verlaine managed to lift one of her hands enough to score a thin line along the top of her shouldert. She both felt and heard the quick catch in his throat as the thin white line of parted flesh began to fill with blood. She felt his cock jerk in appreciation between them as his tongue wasted no time in capturing that precious essence, though he gripped her arms tighter, knowing that she would add a river of scars to her collection until he spilled upon her backside if he let her.

"Do that again and I'll bite you in places you never dreamed of beastie"

If prior experience didn't tell him that his threat was a terrible incentive, the answering push of her hips back into his did. His laughter was thick and full of promise and it ended when he bit into her throat without warning, letting her know how well he had been holding his hunger in check until now.

She might have been envious of that control if she wasn't utterly awash in the sensation of her life ebbing into him. He brought them both down to their knees as his mouth and throat worked convulsivly at her pulse. Hands left her shoulders to grip both breasts almost possesively, the nature of his own beast slowly uncoiling as he kneaded at soft, pliant flesh, expert fingers working at her nipples with firm but not unkind pinches.

She practically felt the effort it took to force his mouth away from her throat, his breathless voice a scalding, ragged whisper in her ear.

"You still taste like a storm on my tongue little beastie. Now….lets see if you can still purr"