A/N: *makes I-don't-know-sound*

There are so many adverbs please forgive me.

With no more than her thoughts for company, Sabine took a breath of the crisp evening air that wafted through the tent flaps, carrying with it the whispers of a dawning autumn. She then stilled. Seized by a rush of girlish anticipation, as the smell that greeted her next breath was laden with familiarity, and infinitely more thrilling.

The first of her senses to get but a taste of the full feast. Her nose tickled by the aroma of honeyed brandy and bergamot, and a bouquet of spices that gave it all more warmth than he had any right to boast. Like how the scent of the air precedes a rainstorm, damp and pungent with fresh earth, his presence announced by his lush fragrance.

Her back to him, Sabine's lips worked into a small smile.

Astarion had slunk inside her tent like an alley-cat, unbeholden to the boundaries afforded to most by privacy, or courtesy alike. He was just in time to watch as she freed her hair from it's ponytail. The bounds glossy, and cinnamon rich, cascaded down the slope of her back like a waterfall.

"Hungry, are you?"

She meant to stall him longer. Only a little. Just until he was good and riled from the unimaginable offense of being made to wait. To wait for a privilege he was gifted so freely and so frequently, it had since been stripped of it's prestigious weight. Though his intrusion was expected, it surprised even her with how soon.

"Famished."

His usual flowery embellishment dropped in favor of brusque inflection, it was all the proof she needed of her success.

The dance had resumed.

A delicate, exhaustive choreography wherein only one of them possessed true ascendancy. This dance of theirs, requiring only her cooperation, despite her inexperience. He lead as he always did, as he had from the very start. Every time she felt as though she had performed sufficiently; assemblé to split grande jeté, he was quick to reveal the reality of her inelegance.

Though it never deterred him, nor did it ripple the air of his patience. He preferred it this way. Continuing to glide her along, puppeting her like his prized ballerina, however uncoordinated her demonstration. Stumbling with missteps, and intimidation over his grace, she was all the more determined to match him.

Her flesh pebbling, it only worsened as she felt him come upon her, uncharacteristically express and plain with his wants. One arm snaked across her middle, tugging her back to connect with his front. Her breath hitched as the fingers of his other hand, sinewy as they were dexterous, found her velvet ribbon. Pinching one tail, he plucked, unraveling it from the pretty bow around her throat. Baring her neck for him, and wasting not a moment in doing so.

"I've been more than patient, little sorceress. You should know better than to keep me waiting."

"I was in dire need of freshening up." Lifting to her toes, she leaned against the rigidity of his front, craning her neck in invitation. "A small price to pay, I think you'll concede."

Astarion bent his nose to her neck, brows furrowed as he inhaled her deep. Ushering her into his lungs, and mulling her around as if about to imbibe on an exorbitant vintage. His mood eased, she felt his chest hum in appreciation. "That's new."

Her pulse dressed with a new perfume, it was a gift from Komira. As thanks for negotiating the safe surrender of their daughter, the small citrine bottle was simple, but lovely all the same. A sensually exotic blend of cyclamen and ginger, she had been saving it for just the right occasion. "I had hoped you would like it."

"How sweet you are, always so eager to please." Still nuzzled beneath her ear, he dropped lower still to thrum the points of his fangs over the taut tendons in her neck. "Why, I could just eat you up."

She arched in his grasp as a means to test the strength of his hold. Finding it just lenient enough, her little body wriggled free, and spun around to press flush against him.

"Wait - I want it this way." She insisted. "I want us facing one another."

At first startled, his recovery was just as swift. He pursed his lips in mock contemplation. "I thought you preferred it when I took you from behind."

She scorned his velvet innuendo as it knotted her stomach.

"I do." She admitted, her freckled cheeks bursting rosy, a reaction she could never quite curve. "But I thought you might enjoy something new." Her tone had a decided silken edge, and it alerted his suspicions. "Wouldn't you like to have me in your lap? To hold me tight, and keep me still?"

She must have sensed this, for next he felt her manicured finger tips begin a lazy trail up his chest, towards his face. Reaching up for the wild curls at his temples, her nails sunk through them to scratch at his scalp behind the ears. Tingles radiated throughout his body at her touch, a low groan bubbling in his throat.

"Such shameless exploits of my weaknesses have me hesitant to introduce you to anymore." He purred, rewarding her efforts with shut eyes, relishing her attention openly.

She gazed at him with a fondness he couldn't see. "I'm unable to help myself. You are such an excellent teacher, after all."

"And you a frighteningly quick study."

Gathering her up in his arms, careful not to pull her hair, he waited for her to lock her legs around his waist before carrying her away. Stride inflamed with virility, he brought her to the corner of her tent occupied by a simple trundle, flat and sturdy enough for their combined weight.

Sitting down square in its center, he helped her in straddling his lap. Unhooking her ankles from the small of his back, she folded her legs beneath her as daintily as she could, arms wrapped around his neck for balance.

The position afforded her the upper hand, the leverage to push up and away from him. When the time was right.

Astarion's beauty was daunting, doubly so up close. He was all smooth, pale skin over exceptional bone structure. If he was impervious to one thing, it would be imperfection. The faintest emergence of crows feet webbed from the corners of his hubristic leer, and even that only made him look all the more distinguished.

His expression ever haughty, he allowed himself the luxury to bask in her obvious admiration. It was as if he had been deliberately sculpted to beautiful devastation. And he knew it.

Pushing her skirts to the crook of her hips, his palms swept back over her exposed thighs, kneading the musculature like a cat. She had played her hand well in quelling his initial irritation, but he softened even more once she combed her loose hair from her neck, and offered her vein.

"Aren't you oh so very accommodating all of a sudden?" He lowered his voice to a rumbling croon. "Good girl."

Her heart slammed against it's cage at his praise. She cursed herself. In part for the knowledge that he could hear, and for how weak with infatuation she was. Even when she was two steps ahead of him, their dynamic was steadfast. And that's what she sought to challenge.

The tip of his nose, sharp in it's elegance, nudged at her fluttering pulse through her skin. Warm and brisk, it pumped to the steady beat of her little heart, eliciting a soft, pining groan from him at the intensity of its scent. Heightened at the behest of his proximity, such as body heat lends to the activation of perfume.

With a snarl rippling his lips, he sunk in, and she swallowed her sounds. They might have been pleasurable, encouraging, and she wanted to afford him no such satisfaction.

Settling into the lean arms that coiled around her like a snake, a gentle exhale through her nose was all she allowed herself to verbalize. Her ringed fingers found his curls, and buried in to the knuckle.

Her mismatched eyes shutting with vigilance against the frigid sting, she began to count;

one, two, three, four

He swallowed once per second. His suction airtight, his gulping was disarming in it's force. Dizzying. As was typical in the beginning, his voracity got the better of him, and he feasted like every time might be his last. As if she might change her mind, and revoke the privilege.

As she eased herself through his intrusion, and the accompanying build-up of pressure in her core, glimpses of their last moment of stolen privacy teased behind her shut lids.

At first discordant and hazy, the picture grew clearer as it strengthened. Her mind invaded by his memory, while his fangs claimed her fragile being.

His breath, hot against her prickled neck, near ragged with impatience.

His expert hands all over her body. Everywhere all at once.

They roamed her petite figure opposite one another, one making for her neck, his long fingers slipping upward her dainty chin. Her pout parted for him before he even brushed her lower lip.

He was quiet in his appreciation as she sucked and nipped at his knuckles. Easing his finger-tips further along the flat of her tongue, she didn't flinch to that limit being tested. Lolling her head back against his shoulder instead, she mewled around them for more. For him to go deeper. Giving in to reckless abandon at his continued abstinence from filling her.

The other continued its descent downward, darting between her thighs. Sneaking under her skirts, he found her clothed nethers, warm and soaked all for him.

"Wider, love." Even his rasping was smooth as satin. He cupped her there, tender and aching, in specification that he meant her legs. "Open wider for me."

The bulge pressed against the small of her back began to twitch.

"I caught your staring as I cracked open that chest." His lips formed a smile into her hair. "You always manage to look so impressed, for someone so well acquainted with my deft hand." Sabine arched back into him with a strangled gasp, as his middle finger dragged along the length of her slick seam. Once he reached the swollen tissue of her pearl, he teased it in tight circles. Just barely grazing her. "My touch can coax a great many things apart."

Five, six, seven, eight

The memory lurched forward.

"I want to see you. All of you." The demand oozed from him like liquid smoke, heady and enveloping in suffocation. "Piece by piece."

His lean frame lounged back amongst her pillows in a languid display. Once comfortable, he made an equally deliberate show of spreading his thighs, one knee bent, while the other stretched out along her blankets. The crystalline crimson of his gaze smeared by lust as she stripped before him, he beckoned her with a pat of his thigh.

She took a step towards him, and his hand rose sharply to halt her. "No, you precious thing, that simply won't do." His fingers curled inward, all except one, which he then pointed down to the ground. "I expect you know better than that."

Holding his eye contact, she lowered to her knees, and then to her palms. His gratification was audible.

"So beautiful, and so very obedient." His praise unspooled from the seat of his chest, tight and silvery, as she slunk towards him on all fours. "Oh, how I just adore you."

It occurred to her how intoxicating it must be for him, to hold such control over her, after a tortured existence where his was relinquished to another. To a monster.

Her heart throbbed for him in so many ways.

Astarion had slowed, but only some. Harsh breaths flared his nostrils, his swallows turned rhythmic, and were now once every other second. Her body attuned to their routine, she cradled him through the subtle shakes that rocketed through his tense form. Petting his lustrous locks, while his claws flexed against her back and shoulder.

He'd be catching his breath, soon.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve

His kiss was decadent, satiating in its own right. Yet it only seemed to worsen her desperation now. Reaching for his groin, her nimble fingers palpated him through the leather of his trousers, finding him agonizingly plump. Feeling her way along, before she could reach the end of his length, he took her hand away.

Swept up in the moment, she got ahead of herself. Too quick too attempt the pas de bourrée for her skill to realistically articulate. Her ankles caught one another, and it disintegrated just like that.

Crumpling, he was there to catch her. He always was. Expecting her to trip herself up. Anticipating her tumble.

Sabine whimpered against his tongue at his persistent cruelty, and he inhaled it with greed.

"Ah ah - there will be plenty time enough for that." He flicked his eyes across her bare body expectantly. "I do believe I was clear on what I want from you right now."

Her naked cunt on his clothed thigh, she grasped at the wrist that still gripped her other for purchase, and began to rub herself against him.

She felt raw to the sensation. The sensitive bundle of nerves exposed to harsh over stimulation, the small half-elf stuttered and jerked over his leg. Her whines kitten-like.

"Slow." He dictated, his brows arched in condescending guidance. "Slowly, darling."

Doing as she was told, she relaxed her hips. Tilting her pelvis forward and back, Sabine rocked against him in an erotic motion. Fighting the natural urge to grind down fast and furious in chasing her release. The release she hadn't yet earned from him.

"Yes, there you are." He cooed. "That's it."

Slow, slow, slow. Wait. Not yet. All in good time.

She was becoming so restless.

His sigh pulled her out of her reverie, as it ghosted against her fluttering pulse. Warmth misting against damp flesh, it sent a ripple up her spine, the way his breath seemed to kiss away the sting of his wound. She furrowed her brow in defiance against the sensation, no matter how lovely.

Thirteen... fourteen... fifteen

Now he was settled in. The insistence of his hunger appeased, he could take his time with her. Savor the notes, coax the full-body of her flavor like he was critiquing a fine Cabernet.

It would almost be time.

Another fragmented flash across her mind.

Dazed beyond cognizance, and bright burning pink. Her quivering body gleamed with perspiration in the dimmed candlelight, the wicks melted down to minuscule stumps. All while not a stitch of his clothing was out of place. Not even the buttons of his blouse were undone, as they often were when he meandered around camp.

Astarion remained cool and unruffled. Slouched back, and smirking like a spoiled prince with her perched naked atop his thigh. Though she revered him more like a king, and from that his ego only metastasized.

"Come now, sweetness. I know you have just one more for me."

His thumb traced lazy circles against her bud, feeling the spasmodic twitches of her womanhood spent against his leg. A damp patch soaking his trousers beneath, the result of more than one orgasm, now turning forced.

The scarlet of his gaze glowed with approval from half-lidded eyes, hushing and cooing when appropriate. Each sound he made served to rekindle the flicker in her core.

Her thighs sore from holding herself upright, and working herself against him, each subsequent release that found her was blessedly quicker than the last. The waves that undulated throughout her trembling body weaker and weaker each time.

She gave him all she had to give.

"There we are." He all but moaned with satisfaction. "You're ravishing like this."

Though her toes still curled to his voice. Her channel tightening pathetically around empty space. Emptiness, that she would have sacrificed herself to all the devils of all nine hells, to finally yet have filled with him.

It was as if he could hear the frenetic semblace of prayer from her euphoria-addled mind. Taking advantage of her distraction to hook his fingers around her swollen folds, he slid a single one inside. She pulsed around his intrusion with neglect. Breath hitching as she choked on a gasp of relief, tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

"Still so nice and tight for me." He hummed, holding his middle finger still against her clenching. "You did so well for me, my dear."

Sixteen... seventeen... eighteen

Astarion was getting truly lost in her now. She could feel the tell-tale numbness begin to radiate out from his bite. Spidering throughout her limbs in a delicious heaviness that weighed her down.

She was alerted to a gentle, yet insistent throbbing beneath her. A burgeoning physical need sprouting in the satiation of his other. The way he continued to pull from her vein was out of sheer rapacity, his practical need for sustenance long since met.

She closed her eyes again.

For a long while there was only darkness, the memory receded, and shrouded in black. As she waited for it to materialize, she was first reached by his voice. Echoing from the deepest recesses of her, it slithered around her mind, tickling one ear, and then the next. Caressing her. Pulling at her with the neediness of a lover.

"You are a vision when you come for me, little sorceress. Especially by the fourth time around."

The memory returned, shifting into focus with the sinful declarations through his wicked smile.

"You will touch yourself tonight, and think about me, won't you?" He chuckled, the tip of his tongue flicking the blushed tip of her pointed ear. "Surely you will. Now that you have my permission, of course."

Her face had blotched such a vibrant hue for so long she feared it might be permanently stained. A tear from her left eye broke free of the rim and rolled down her cheek. Not of sadness from his loss, but of frustration.

"Still you make me wait?"

The sweet song of desperation he so proficiently composed from her tender, quivering chords.

"Little love," he admonished with an indulgent grin, "the knowledge of just how desperately you need me is the greatest pleasure I've ever known." He stroked her hair behind one ear, tracing across her jaw before arriving to pinch her chin. "Why spoil something so exceptional by conducting ourselves with such impetuousness?"

She matched his steps, followed his lead, mirrored his prowess. Yet their pace didn't budge. She remained suspended in his vicious adagio, and that drove her mad.

She kept rushing ahead of the tempo, faltering as she telegraphed her eagerness. And he allowed it, time and time again, with no motion to change it.

Astarion continued their dance as if it was progressing without a hitch.

He leaned back in, and stole the errant tear from her cheek with a kiss.

Nineteen... twenty.

Her fingers tightening in the sweat-dampened hair at his nape with as much firmness as she could muster, she yanked. Prying him from the slender column of her neck like a leech.

And Astarion yelped. Startled, wet with her blood and thick with aggravation, his cloudy pupils blown wide with feral bewilderment.

"That's enough of that for tonight, I think." So pleased with herself at managing to sound calm, she even punctuated her statement with a sigh. Untangling from his grasp, and up on her feet, she smoothed her skirts back into place. His bite stung in the absence of his mouth, exposed to the chilly autumnal air. His last laugh. It pulsed thin rivulets down to pool along her clavicle.

She smeared his lower lip, sticky and glistening. His hair now more than a tad disheveled from her stern handling. He felt like an unruly pup that had been scruffed by his master. The scarlet of his glare radiated like molten embers. He roiled.

"Darling," he began, the name taught and strained as he swallowed. His hot breath tinged with iron. "I'm still hungry."

"Yes, well, I do believe there are some wild boar near by for you to top off."

How precious, my kitten is finding her bite.

They stared one another down for a moment. Until a sly grin played across her pouty lips, and gave her away. His eye-sockets housed active brimstone one minute, and were snuffed out by a blink the next. Astarion regarded her with hooded conceit while he waited. With pristine cadence and sharp recollection, she then quoted him.

"The knowledge of just how desperately you need me is the greatest pleasure I've ever known." Cockiness seemed bulky on her, ill-fitting. She wielded it nonetheless, with a brow arched and her arms crossed. "Why spoil something so exceptional by conducting ourselves with such impetuousness?

Raising to his feet, he called upon his towering height to aid his dominance. "You are aware of what they say about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I trust?" His vexation at having been stopped, at being toyed with, was second only to his pride in her. "Only by way of an amateur, to their master."

"Naturally. You wouldn't make for such an accomplished teacher, otherwise." She was untouchable, a fact in which they were both aware. Her being resplendent with confidence.

Synchronicity was achieved. She fell in line with the tempo, her coltish movements now fluid. Practiced. The little sorceress's insinuation that she was a competent partner in their duet.

Poised in victory, the simper she angled at him was sugared with mollification, as she dismissed him. "Happy hunting."