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The note he had sent her had been plain and unadorned. He had left a fingerprint on the page, a black stain smeared with oiled, inky hands. It was a meagre show – the letter passed along by the bony hands of her skeletal follower. The progress he reported was scant, and he found it just as wanting as his words. Why had she asked him to write in the first place? Wanting to at least offer something – to put alms at her feet and feed her the barren rocks of his body, mouth and life – he ended it with more candour than he’d been taught to allow. I am well, he wrote. I trust you are too. We deserve it, after all, don't we?
The letter he got in return was flowery and ornate. The pink parchment bore scribbled pictures of peonies, and when he broke the seal of shimmering wax he was met with the pleasant whiff of perfumed paper, and rows upon rows of coloured ink. Her words were flourishing and wide, with branching lines that dared to spread across the page. Barcus, my dear friend, it read. How glad I am to hear from you, and to hear that you are well. You really do deserve anything good that comes your way. His mind could not help but conjure her face when he read the words. She would have smiled when she said them, he knew. A playful curve on her small mouth. He’d follow the movements of her tongue as it darted out to wet generous lips, parted pink with the sound of her dancing voice – a bard’s tone, made to sing but deigning to instead speak sweetness into his unworthy ears. I am returning to Baldur’s Gate, the letter continued. If you have time to call on me I would treasure the company.
The letter now lays safely tucked into his pack, and the door to her home towers above him. Her words have beckoned him, and Barcus balances on the balls of his feet. His mouth is dry. An invitation to meet an acquaintance should not rattle him in such a way, and yet the hand he raises to knock is a trembling clutch around his sweaty palm. The knock rings sharp against the thick wood, the sting to his knuckles a welcome wake up for the fog of his mind. The street at his back is bustling, with soaring voices bouncing between the tall house walls. Just as he begins to wonder if his knock will get drowned out in the cacophony of such a big city, the door swings open by itself. The glittering trace of her magic lingers on the hinges – a sparkling air of blinking lights that he knows well by now. It tingles on his skin as he steps through it, and the door that swings closed behind him feels simultaneously a blessing and a curse.
Barcus has never been to her house before – would have no reason to, really. It is no surprise to find it filled with light, colour and blossoms. Filtered sun from the windows fall on adorned walls and overflowing pots of lively, verdant filigree. Her world is one of ornate beauty; art and life flourishing in a symbiotic space. He hears the sound of her harp. Its plucking strings call him forth, making him step deeper into the hallway of draped fabrics. He passes painted scenes of grass carpet revelry in gilded frames, and sculptures of nymphs and hopeful feywild wanderers. And then he rounds a corner, and the sight of her stops him in his tracks.
In the middle of a sunken seating arrangement, like a large bed in line with the floor, sits the Hero of Baldur’s Gate. The bounty of the sunlit surface is displayed in the elf’s form: a full figure fed on golden grains, and sweet things paired with thick cream. She had been beautiful in the field too, but he thinks leisure suits her particularly well. Her soft shape looks at home among the plentiful pillows, and the plush velvet giving rest to pale legs. The dress she wears is fanciful, in a way that matches her better than any armours or leathers ever could. The iridescent fabric shimmers like a mussel’s shell, or with the lightness of gleaming dragonfly wings. She spills from it, abundant and overflowing, with thick arms and hints of a leg, and breasts he does not dare glance at.
The harp is magic in her hands; both in the sense of minstrels’ mincing words, and in the dry observations of a simple gnome. For a skilled bard, an instrument is just as powerful as a fighter’s weapon or a wizard’s wand, and she is skilled indeed, evident even in meandering melodies played without crowds. She must know he is there – must at least know someone is, since her magic opened the door for him – but she has not yet looked up from her music. Barcus takes the opportunity to watch her play. How ridiculous of him, to have missed her face. With debts to fill scrolls of parchment, and the added length of her too-kind letter, he should be the epitome of appropriate respect, and yet there is nothing appropriate about his heart’s swell. He watches, with a yearning far surpassing their familiarity, as her delicate hands dance across the strings.
Barcus learned long ago that being in love had little to do with anyone outside of him. This feeling – the unmooring buoyancy of up and down waves – was felt and contained completely within his frame, and he did not expect anyone else to share it, or float at the speed of the same sea. No, he should be glad for feeling it at all. Be in love, and be content with that. It was the same emotion he had held like a torch for Wulbren, all those years. A guiding light that lit up the Underdark, and only ever burned if he let it get too close. It was with frightened anticipation that he now felt his focus shift. If there had been any doubt about the flame he carried for her, then it evaporated with the way her hair tumbles across her shoulders as she plays. Stroking the embers of hidden light are her full cheeks, blushing and round like ripening peaches. He finds kindling in seafoam eyes, and fair eyelashes of the same flaxen that frames her face.
Her beauty encircles his throat, and makes his first words a croaked stutter of her name: “Elohri,” he manages meekly. She looks up, and her eyes on him makes her face light up with a wave of joy. Her hands on the harp seize their playing. The song dies, but her laughter takes its place; melodic and happy like a flute's trilling tones. Is everything she makes music? He immediately gets his answer. “Barcus!” she says, surprised. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” and yes; his name on her tongue, spoken artless and unaccompanied, is music to his ears too.
Elohri puts the harp to the side, and beckons him forth with thrown out arms. It is an awkward thing, to hug her when he is so much slighter than she is. His arms cannot reach around her in a way that allows for the barely there press of a professional greeting. Even with her sitting down, he disappears into the embrace. In the warm surround of silky skin and flowing fabric he mumbles; “I thank you, for the invitation to your lodgings. It's… cosy, as your camp before it.”
“I try,” she says giddily. A good natured smile breaks her face as she releases him from the hug. With her hands still on his shoulders, she is close enough to kiss – a welcoming tug of white teeth and wetted lips. It would be so easy for him to lean in, to capture her rosy mouth with stony grey, and find out if her surprised sound would be musical, too. Would she sigh, if he deepened such a meeting? If his tongue brushed hers? Would she moan, if a hand left unaccompanied on her leg travelled upwards, grasping her thigh, and– By all the Lords of the Golden Hills, was he thinking?
Barcus straightens, and takes a step back. He has already cleared his throat, shaken his head, and began smoothing his tunic into place when he starts to wonder about the diminishing return on pacifying gestures, and their ability to make him seem in control of himself.
“Wait here,” Elohri says. “And allow me to fetch us some refreshments.” She stands, and Barcus is still surprised by the heights she reaches as she suddenly towers over him. The sight of her from below, so big and grand, is even sweeter when she is wearing such a flimsy dress. Her breasts billow above him, an impossible distraction in his eyeline as he blinks up at her, and nods. “Very well,” he croaks.
While she fetches food and drink, Barcus takes the time to look around the room. Its details had so far been lost to him, as his eyes have been occupied by the elf. If someone had asked him in jest to describe the parlour of an accomplished elven maid, this would not be a far shot from what he’d imagined. An indoor fountain lends the space the calming sound of a dancing spring. There is a lazy air – a sleepy comfort felt through floating dots of light, and the rich collection of pillows and blankets that tickle his feet. The art on the walls, however, lends nothing to this cosy quality. It stirs, rather than soothes, with images of bare-chested sirens and well-hung minotaurs. His eyes trail upwards, and finds the ceiling painted in a sprawling vista of naked bodies. Entwined in passion, they curl around each other; actors in an erotic play whose script one need not read to know their next actions. He stares open mouthed at the display. At pendulous breasts and a puzzle of skin. Gripping hands and waiting laps. A sentiment shared in the curve of a hard cock, and–
She places the tray in front of him with a soft thud. It's almost as big as he is – an exuberant offering of densely displayed foodstuff. He sees sugared plums, and cherries dipped in dark chocolate. Passionfruit and pomegranates sit in bowls of yogurt so thick you could stand your spoon in it. Next are plates of mango over sticky rice that smells of coconut and roasted sesame. At her insistence, he tries as much as he can manage. He tests himself on grapes with bursting cores, and sparkling cider that bubbles against the roof of his mouth. The flavours are unfamiliar to his tongue. They are so different from the salted meat, diced mushrooms, and soft-bellied fish of the Underdark, or the hearty fare he found on the road. At first the sweetness is too much for him. Overwhelmed, he lets it tickle the tip of his tongue, and watches in wonder as she partakes in the saccharine servings. Elohri leaves impressions of her mouth upon blushing peaches and candied orange slices. She bites into frozen honey bars and stuffed dates, and licks her fingers afterwards. Slowly, his senses warm to new-found tastes, and he picks up her spoils to match his mouthfuls with the shape of her teeth imprinted into the ripe treats. She awards him with a smile, and with sing-songy notes she says: “The last time I took the moment to celebrate with you, you declared the victory to be all mine. I thought now, perhaps… we could celebrate together.”
Her words conjure memories. A year passed, and a party at her camp. She had freed him from the hopeless toil of underground slave labour – plucked him up and put him down beneath a starry night sky like it was nothing, not even a stop on her journey. Her hands had been busied by harp strings for most of the night. The tieflings had danced late into the night, and she had raised her voice with them in jubilant victory songs. He had stared – first at her, and then at the sky. While she played and danced and sang and laughed, he bided his time for her inevitable approach, and the chance to rival the stars and hang jewels of fire in the sky for her to see.
“I hope this is not all on my account,” he says with a gesture to her lavish feast. It draws a hum from her.
“So what if it is?” she wonders.
“It’s more than I…”
More than I what? Can handle? May ask for? Feel that I deserve? He swallows his insecurities with a gulp of apple cider, but she finds them still – fished from his gullet she pulls the silent word from the bubbling tide, and lays them bare between them.
“And here I thought your letter was quite clear,” she says. “We both deserve to live well, do we not?”
Barcus sits silent. It had been a dangerous thought when written in splattered ink by his trembling hand, but the danger is greater still when it's spoken by her, as they sit close under a canopy of undressed rapture, with alcohol making a home in their mouths. Staring straight ahead, he deprives his eyes of her face, and his body supplies him with new ways of perceiving her. It notices her scent, a rich perfume of flowers and berries that he has not spent enough time on the surface to be able to name, but knows now to be his new favourites. He'll find them, he thinks, in this world where no roof is his awning. He'll smell her on summer wind and pluck her from swaying fields. Perhaps a part of her scent can live inside a vase in his lonely room, and dilute its smells of metal and smoke through fresh wildflowers. He breathes deeply, and fills his nose with her notes. There are layers to her bouquet, and he wishes he could smell her closer; pick apart the scents she lathers her hair in, from the perfume at her wrists, and the oils she rubs into her shimmering skin. In just her body, he could kiss myriad landscapes, and close his eyes to new joys.
Elohri has harped upon his earlier slip-ups. “Deserve,” she says thoughtfully, and he hears her taste the word in her mouth, as if it was a new wine with notes to decipher. “You like that word. I remember once you said you’d kiss me, if not for the fact that none of us deserved it.”
Braving a look at her, he finds her eyes alight with a playful glint.
“Do you think we deserve it now?” she asks.
A slip. A lurch. The world soars past; he feels as when he first stepped outside of the Underdark, and feared the sky would fall away above him. Stomach sinking, blood rushing, heart racing; Barcus swallows. She is having a go at him. He is an easy target for teasing, he knows, and yet she has withheld until now. She has bided her time, until she had him lovelorn and longing, and one word from her could break his spirit.
“I’m not sure it’s prudent,” he says, hoping his clipped tone will be enough to put an end to it. By some miracle, her returning smile is neither cruel nor humoured, but lovely, and so very hopeful.
“Good,” she purrs. “I am not looking for a prudent kind of kiss.”
Afraid to meet her face his gaze falls, through eyes foolish enough to be stuck to her ample breasts. He follows their swelling shape, every breath she makes threatening to have her spill across the low cut of her white dress as she leans towards him. With a watering mouth he wets his lips.
“If this is some sort of jest,” he says, “I’ll make it known that it is not one I much appreciate.”
Elohri’s voice becomes unbearably soft. “It is not a jest, Barcus.” He tears his eyes from her chest, and finds her face open and earnest. “I want you,” she says.
“But–” In the moment of a gathered breaths and shifting hands, his objections fall away, until only the anxious doubts of an often spurned man remains. “Will we be a… good fit?” he whispers.
“In some ways, perhaps not,” she allows. “But in so many others, I am sure. There are endless ways for us to fit together, my dear. On any given day, I am sure to think of at least three of them before lunch.”
And… oh. Has he not also thought about it? Enough, at least, to answer his own question. He has not imagined her lips closing around his cock, or tried to conjure the taste of her cunt upon his tongue? Has he not thought, while taking himself in hand, of labouring between her legs, and sinking sweetly into her beautiful body? Yes, he thinks; for every way they are unmatched, there are countless others in which they could come together.
“No brilliant retort this time?” she teases. It shakes him from his fantasies. With the weight and shape of a man enraptured he huffs, and laughs, and peers up at her.
“Only… Why me?” he wonders with a gesture to his entirety.
“Oh Barcus…” The elf shakes her head. A fond smile spreads across her lips, and she says: “Why question it at all, my sweet? If my ship has a home in your port, simply let it sail to its destination.”
“Because it's what I do! I worry. I find fault. A curmudgeon, through and through. I told you myself, did I not? The first time we met.”
“And yet, I have seen you be its opposite! You have proven yourself to be quite an idealist, Barcus. When it counts, you are heroic, romantic and hopeful – almost to a fault. All traits I adore.”
She is so close now. Close enough to captivate him completely; he nearly doesn’t notice her hand coming up to cradle his cheek. “All traits I find attractive,” she adds.
To hear her, of all people, call him heroic, is a balm for whatever part of him his adventures have left crinkled and cracked. On a normal day he would have quarrelled with her description. Called himself foolhardy, instead. But there is something emboldening in the bard’s words. The same inspiration that sends her friends into battle, or acts as a guiding hand as they cast their spells, sits comfortably in his chest and tells him that, yes, maybe he is attractive and brave, and maybe his hopeful romanticism deserves to be realized and shared. And so, he does as she asks. Leaning in, he doesn’t question anything. The first brush of their lips is enough to send heat into his hands, and make him hold his breath. It takes conscious effort to not keep himself taut against her – to relax his lips for a meeting as soft and yielding as her mouth offers him. The kiss is silken, and sufficiently warm to melt him and make him mingle with the wetness he finds in her mouth. His tongue moves against hers, eager to share in her tastes and take part of her body.
Bit by bit, he becomes aware of her questing hands. They rake across the slate and shale of his body, boring a path through him. Every movement of her hands is the tunnelling trip of a mining excavation, drilling deep to find molten veins beneath the stoney surface of his skin. There are palms that press against his chest. Grips along his shoulders and arms. Fingers that trail a path past his buttons. By the time she starts moving downwards, he is brimming with anticipation, and bounding with energy that makes him want to bounce on his feet and move his hands and throw off his clothes, so that he can sense those same fingers on his skin instead.
When she reaches his cock his composure breaks. He is already hard against her fingertips – ready and willing beneath the cloth of his pants. She cups him through the fabric, and hums happily as he moves closer to press himself into her hand. A stroke of her thumb has him working his shirt buttons hecticly, and a tightening caress sees him chucking the outer layer from his shoulders. By the time she starts undoing the buttons on his trousers he is already pulling his undershirt over his head.
Barcus knows himself to be a well-dressed gnome. While he seldom splurges, he is a stickler for good craftsmanship, and sees no reason to indulge in anything that doesn’t meet his exacting standards. He has made a name for himself in Baldur’s Gate, even before Wulbren’s damned amulet, and the Clan Ironhand affair. Status and respectability lines his coat, and there are golden threads sewn into his clothes. They grant him some of the grace the world has otherwise robbed from him, and make him feel safe, even in unfamiliar smallness on the surface. And now, before he knows it, he is out of them. Naked before her he fights against insecurities, and the instinctual urge to cover himself, and hide from her eyes.
Her fingers tickle as they move down his chest, and touch the shock white hair gathered at his groin.
“I hadn't realised it would be white,” she says. “Since you don't have any hair on your head.”
“We shave it,” he needlessly explains, the topic an excellent opportunity to distract him from some of his nervousness. “It's a cultural practice. And practical to boot. But it ranges from grey to white, otherwise.”
“Like a drow’s,” she says absentmindedly. There is no judgement in her tone. In truth, there is little direction at all. Instead, she seems completely preoccupied with what lies at its centre. Her hand closes the gap, and finally, blessedly, she brushes against his cock. A shuddering breath presses it way out of his lungs. Looking down, his cock stands stiff from his body, it's dark purple stark against her fair hand, and his even fairer body hair.
His cock is a humble thing, the same length as the longest of her fingers, and only about thrice as thick. Yet, she seems to delight at the discovery. “How wonderful, “ she says, “to have you hard for me already. Tell me – have you thought of me like this, Barcus?”
He slots easily into her warm palm. When she closes her hand around him he disappears completely from sight, hidden in the wonderful hold of her firm grasp. He doesn’t have time to stop and worry if he’ll be big enough to please her, not before her hand starts to move around him, and her touch closes his eyelids, and makes him lean his head back with a happy sigh.
“I have,” he lets slip. “I’ve wanted you too. For some time.”
“Oh?”
When she speeds up he lets himself lean against her. His hands grip her sides, and help him hide his face against her neck. He stutters and groans into her skin as her hand continues. “Y-yes,” he forces out, his breaths warm bursts of air against her throat.
“For how long?”
The option to hide the truth does not even occur to him, not when she has him so entirely enveloped with nothing but her hand. “Since I saw you in Grymforge,” he says between raspy inhales. “My saviour, golden in the glow of the mountain. I wanted to lick the sweat from your face, and then– Ah – in your camp…” He trails off, lost to the increasing urgency her fingers awaken in his hot blood.
Elohri’s thumb is a gentle, continuous stroke to his underside as she holds him in her palm. It draws shivers along his back, and makes his hips stutter and jerk against her hand. His clinging hands catch on the thin fabric of her dress. He is far enough along for his eyes to be wrought close against the crook of her neck, and she isn’t even undressed yet. With a prayer to Segojan for strength, he pulls back, and lifts her hand from his cock to his mouth, where he kisses the blessed skin. There is precum gathered on her fingertips, and driven by instincts he himself is a stranger to, he sucks them into his mouth and licks her clean.
The dress looks easy enough. A flimsy curtain of shimmering fabric, draped in a white that houses hidden rainbows. And yet the clasp that gathers it around her shoulders, and fastens it to her hands through glimmering rings, gives him pause. Lust has made his artificer’s hands clumsy. He fumbles, with damp palms, an aching cock and a racing heart. In the end Elohri has to assist him. She stands, and starts undoing the gilded fasteners. Before dropping them she sends him a look that is the very opposite of bashful, and then, one by one, she lets them fall away. The clasps clink as the dress pools around her feet. She stands naked, with no underwear blocking his sight of her, and Barcus draws a sharp breath through his shuddering lips.
If he had thought her bountiful before, it is nothing against the generous curves and gentle rolls of her body unveiled and uncovered. She is beautiful, with wide hips, thick thighs, and a sumptuous stomach that swells with her expectant breaths. Unbound by her dress, her breasts come down to face him. Pink-tipped, with nipples whose borders fade into her pale skin, they hang heavy above his head. In line with his eyes lies her cunt, hidden by a bush of hair that looks soft to the touch. He feels himself colour, no doubt drenched in what he knows to be a deep red hidden behind his dark grey.
Stupidly, Barcus checks his hands for dirt before he touches her, scared of finding oil in his fingerprints, or fine powder under his nails. Stupidly, because he spent the afternoon scrubbing his hands and soaping his skin on the off chance that he might get to hold her hand tonight. He is clean, and he is trembling. Having Elohri undressed in front of him – how long has he longed for such a sight? How long has it filled his dreams, and driven his fantasies? So close to his wish it seems almost unreal, and he desperately needs to feel her beneath his hands – needs the irrefutable proof of her leafless proximity.
There is so much of her, and he doesn’t quite know where to begin. Barcus first finds her hips; round and full, her stomach; soft and silky, and her breasts; perfect, like pearls large enough to line a dragon’s neck. If he cranes his head, he can kiss them. His lips close around already aroused skin. She is flushed; somehow made into a bawdy, breathy scene by nothing more than the sight and feel of him. His voice makes pleased sounds around her pink nipple, and her skin rises against his tongue tip, peaks and bumps of pert flesh that makes her moan when his mouth sucks and nips at them.
When his eyes meet hers she looks down at him with joy unbound.
“Can I lift you?” she asks, her voice flatteringly breathless. “I want to kiss you again.”
His mouth leaves her breast with a wet sound. “You can certainly try,” he says cheerily. Elohri is not one to back down from a challenge, especially not one given with such glee. She braces herself and bends down. With arms under his arms she tries to lift him. He hears her grunt – feels her arms tense and her grip tighten. Her legs shake with the effort.
“Oof,” she says, clearly surprised by his weight.
“We deep gnomes are not like our surface counterparts,” he explains. “Our bodies are dense like the cliffs in which we live. We may not look it, but we weigh a great deal.”
If he thought the challenge over, he thought wrong. Amused, but unfazed, Elohri bids him to give her a moment. Curious, he watches as she closes her eyes and finds her voice. Magic floods into her hands, with glowing fingers and quiet words in a whispered song. When she opens her eyes they shine with new strength. She has no issue lifting him now. In an unbalancing rush of dangling feet and airflow around his ears, he finds himself scooped into her arms, pushed flush to her naked skin. She lets him lock his legs around her waist before she leans in to capture his lips. Through a life of hardships in the Underdark, to the cruelness of harsh sun and large hands, Barcus has been taught the dangers of being small. He had been tossed and trampled and bound and beaten. Despite this, there is no fear to be found in her hold. Her gentle hands hoist him with a surprising firmness that makes him feel safe rather than threatened.
He clings to her with her breasts pressed against his chest. Their kiss is more insistent this time around. The movements of their mouths are an impassioned dance, each taste giving way to even more hunger. He sups on her, like he would a marinated mushroom taken alone after a long night of scouting. The wet sounds of a dripping, Underdark cave, where his teeth would sink into chunks of airy mushroom meat, and he’d feel it fill his mouth with his juices. Nothing tastes better than fare taken into a body made barren by labour and time. Likewise, his appetite for her is stoked by too long an absence. For him, love has been a land of famine. Far surpassing the rumbling of a stomach left empty due to long gone scouting, is the hunger that has been awakened in his heart and hands and tongue and lap. He craves her in the way an animal might wish for something; mindlessly, and with his whole body. With desperate movements he bucks into her, gasping and grasping to get closer still. It doesn’t matter that he is grinding his cock against her stomach – everywhere on her wondrous body is supple and smooth. He doubts he could find a place where she would not feel good to touch, or where she would not be heavenly to rub against.
Elohri’s mouth is also demanding. Her movements are wanton enough to make him believe her earlier words – to make him truly think that she has wanted this too. Her tongue touches his teeth with unrefined flurry – an endearing clumsiness from the otherwise so affable bard. Her grip on his ass tightens as she holds him close. While her hands are planted in place, holding him up, he makes up for it with the movement of his own. He touches everywhere he can reach. His fingers tangle into the wavy, sweet-smelling swell of her hair, and finds the delicate, pointy ears hidden beneath. He traces their shape down to her neck, and then fills his palms with her breasts. A shaky moan breaks their kiss as it falls from her lips. She rolls her head to the side, and he takes the opportunity to nudge his nose against her throat, and kiss the quick pulse that jumps just beneath her skin.
Still holding him to her, Elohri relaxes her arms, allowing him to kiss her further down. He is lips and teeth to her collarbones and the tops of her breasts.
“Lower,” he urges, and gently, she puts him down. As soon as he feels the mattress beneath his feet he falls forward, like a creature to his burrow. With hands gripping her hips he buries his nose in the golden curls between her legs, and licks. Her response is immediately – a throaty gasp followed by a quake of her legs as he nestles closer. For all the sweetness that surrounds her – her syrupy perfume, the scent of her hair, and the things she fills her mouth with – her cunt is full-bodied and salty. It's a taste that fills him completely, and he knows instinctively that he could make a meal out of her – stay between her legs and sup on her while she takes her other meals. With such rich flavour blessing his tongue, he would need no other sustenance. He could live beneath her skirts.
Elohri shifts above him. She grabs at his head, and keeps herself steady with his anchoring weight. He feels the caress of a rising thigh, and helps her along with a hand to the back of her knee. Hoisting it over his shoulder, he opens his mouth wider against her exposed sex. His hands, on her leg and on her ass, tightens into nails to her pearly skin, inadvertently leaving crescent impressions where he holds her. Her noises build and morph, from lofty sighs to something with a much clearer direction.
“Would you like me to lay back?” she asks, her intonation broken by panting breaths.
It's a test of his fortitude to part with her cunt. He pulls back, the tip of his nose wet with her. Resting his chin in the damp hair between her legs, he gazes up at her. “I’d rather be the one to lay back,” he says, “and have you above me, if you would.”
Her eyes widens with the suggestion – a spark of interest that plays on her face like an enfolding spell.
“I’ll crush you,” she says. Her words are lined with laughter, but she pairs them with a tender touch to the side of his head – her fingers ghosting across his scalp, and lingering around the shape of a pointed ear.
“You will not,” he assures her. “I am made of hardier stuff than the men you are used to. What easily survives the Underdark will not be undone by a pair of pretty thighs.”
“In that case…” The sentence hangs unfinished. Its suggestive conclusion is plain in its lull, and Elohri falls to her knees.
The bedding of the sunken seating arrangement dips with the weight, and he stumbles forwards, into waiting arms and a face too loving for a third kiss. First comes a peck to the side of his mouth; playful and sweet, and then a loose press against his lips. She holds her sensitive mouth slack, like a door left ajar for fledgling breaths and a sliver of light. In a moment full of such electric expectancy, he appreciates the moment of stillness for its unexpected intimacy. If he closes his eyes could almost imagine them as young sweethearts, sharing innocent kisses by the edge of his old granitehome.
The spell is broken by Elohri’s groping hands as she clears a place for him among the pillows. She follows him keenly as he lays his body down. Held up by strong legs she sits astride him, and he feels the warm clasp of her thighs as she settles around his ears. There he is finally graced by the full sight of her cunt up close. It is the best view he could have possibly wished for. Presented on a pillow of pink-tinted flesh and blonde crowns sits her cunt; puffy and delicate like gently folded dough. He already knows her taste, but her scent is stronger like this, when he is enveloped by the shelter of her silky thighs. He inhales deeply, and draws in breaths of loamy soil, fresh with the earthy scent of ramstalk shoots in spring, and the metal notes of copper sublimated by many hands. It reminds him of the gulp of air as you break the surface of a brackish lake, and he finds himself drawn upwards, inching towards her as much as his position allows.
“You’ll let me know if it becomes too much, won’t you?” she asks.
“It won’t,” he maintains. His smile reaches the inside of her thigh. The quirk of his lips seem to tickle her skin, and she squirms and giggles against his mouth, but keeps her hovering position in the air above him. He tries to coax her closer with hands around her legs, but she stays fixed.
“But if it does, you will tell me,” she repeats.
“I will,” he says – not without some impatience. Her cunt sits wet and welcoming just out of reach. He imagines the give of her – the biddable fat pliant and plush, like a satin cushion padded by fluffy down. She looks like something he could lose himself in. Her cunt is a call to all his senses. For his eyes, it is the corrugated flowers of an apricot-coloured foxglove still wet with dew. For his lips, it is soft like the marbled surface of a sponge cake paired with heavy cream. And for his tongue, it houses the same smooth heat he’d find in a mug of hot buttered rum. His heart hammers in his chest, roused to accommodate the growing need of his aching appetite. The beat overtakes his ears, easy in a world already muted by the press of her legs. He is moments away from begging by the time she finally sinks down, and the taste of her returns to him.
He has already had her against him – even if just for a moment, he has felt her labia grace his lips and had his tongue delve inside of her. To have her like this ought not to be all that different, and yet, he finds unparalleled excitement in her placement above him. There is something arousing in the feigned possibility of her suffocating presence, and also in her trust that he can take all that she offers up. Beneath her legs, he becomes someone she can depend on. It is on his back that he knows for sure that he’s an equal in her eyes. She slides against his mouth as a warm brush that leaves his face soaked with her wetness. Her cunt is like an oven above him. He parts her with the tip of his nose, and opens his mouth to the sweltering heat of her hot flesh. The full press of her weight is dizzying – a grounding thrust that has his hands itching to touch himself to the rhythm her hips set.
Barcus’ own enjoyment grows with the increase of hers. He senses her pleasure before he hears it. Her hips stutter and quicken long before sighs start fading into moaning cries, and he hears his name spoken through the muffle of her thick thighs. When she cums, it is with a contracting shiver that shakes her body above him, and makes her erupt in noises more dear to him than any song she has ever played. There is a pause, a break where all he hears is her elated heaves as she struggles to keep herself upright. She looks right at home as the foreground of the provocative painting in the ceiling. Even when framed by the exquisitely captured scene behind her, his eyes go only to her face, somehow made even more sublime by her expression of elevating pleasure. Barcus makes his hands gentle strokes to her thighs, a tickling caress against hair to faint to see. A light squeeze draws her eyes to him, and she looks down, pretty mouth hung open in broken breaths and happy smiles.
“Thank you,” she mouths. He speaks his own gratitude with one last kiss to her curly hair, now wet with her slick, and slips from his place under her.
Without the need to hold herself up, Elohri falls forward against the mattress. She catches herself on quivering hands, and looks back at him with an indecent smile – no doubt aware of her effect on him. She makes for a wonderful display, with her hair tumbling around her, and her ass in the air. The position plays well with the fantasies of his past nights. When he raises his hands to her backside, she encourages him by backing up into his grip. Even with flat palms and fingers spread wide, his hands look small and dark against the expanse of her ass. He grips as much as he can manage – handfuls of her, soft enough for his fingers to sink into. His cock throbs between his legs, incensed into an aching length. There are beads of precum present on his wine red tip, and he moves closer until he can rub himself against her body. On his feet, he is at the perfect height for her, easily aligned into the grove of her body. Elohri is eager. Full of lewd sounds, she turns her head towards him and holds his gaze while she nods.
Her ass makes a wonderful cushion for his cock. He sinks between her cheeks, already whimpering at the feel of her against him. Her rounded cheeks are a firm press around him, but they also act as a buffer between them. He doesn’t quite have the length to reach all the way inside of her. Every movement has him dipping into her cunt – a teasing touch to the head of his cock, half-way through the door to her warm embrace. It’s like a tentative toe to the edge of a watercourse before you allow yourself to dive in. He could cum like this, could rub himself into completion between her lovely cheeks, and coat her cunt through shallow thrusts, but feeling her fully around him has become a need for him.
“Down,” he says, more forcefully than he had planned to. “Put your head on the bed.” The “Please,” is an afterthought, and not a needed one. She is already folding her arms under her, and laying her head flat upon the bedding. The new position has her curving her back, and the next time he rocks into her it is with a new angle that allows for a much deeper fit. In the blink of an eye he finds himself submerged in a pool of her, fully floating in wet, silken warmth that laps at his length.
“Oh, Barcus, that feels so good,” she says. He can’t see her face. She is turned away from him, her face pushed into the mattress and hidden by her hair. Her voice, however, is yet another melody out of her mouth – a lush necklace of strung together sighs and raptured sounds. It takes a few tries for him to get a good angle – to find a slant that has him drag against her walls with euphoric friction and an accelerating bliss. It isn’t long until he’s panting. The sounds add to hers, and together they make a choir.
Elohri is vivid against him – a scintillating host of opalescent, pearly skin and hair that catches the glow of the lamps twinkling overhead. Every thrust he makes has her jiggling, like the ripples of a pond. An appreciative drag of his finger along her spine makes an ocean of her body. Waves of water represented in the up-and-down expanse of her back, and he – he is flotsam and jetsam on her vast sea, bobbing on the surface like driftwood. Or perhaps he might be a jumping fish in the stream of her rolling shape, dipping back and forth from across its tumbling surface. There is so much of her to frolic in for a dart of slippery, silver grey. Let him dash from head to toe, crash against her waves, and fly through her shape. It is more buoyancy than has ever before been granted to a finned creature of cold depths, and he makes the most of it; animated into a hurried pace, he fucks her as hard as he can.
His lover sighs and moans. Falling from her lips are pleasurable noises, but it's the pleasure of a healing spell, a good drink or a deep massage, and not something likely to get her off. Barcus, who had thought himself content, instead finds himself driven forwards by dual desires. He wants to make her cum again, and he wants to watch her face and kiss her lips while she does so.
“Would you turn around for me?” he asks gruffly.
“Anything for you,” she says.
Pulling out is an exercise in self-flagellation. Inside her lives ecstasy, and outside it is cold and null. He waits shivering while she turns on the bedding. His cock throbs. The glistening glow of her moisture adds colours to his weeping tip. He feels bursting and overfull, aching to empty himself inside of her.
The small wait becomes worth it with her settled in front of him. There is not a world where this woman would not have been art of some kind, Barcus thinks. Were she not herself a musician, she would have inevitably inspired another minstrel’s devout verses. He could not imagine a person she would walk past, and not inspire inside of them a deep wish to paint, sketch, sculpt, or compose – to find a way to express the emotions she awoke within them. A beauty such as her’s was bound to be treasured wherever she went. He was a moth to her flame, drawn to her embrace by her sunny smile, and the darling blush upon the apples of her cheeks.
First he sinks to his knees, and then he sinks into her.
“Perfect,” she says, and he is struck by the strangeness of it; that he could be too little for Wulbren, but enough for someone so many times his size. Barcus is not a man of great sexual conquests. His encounters are few and far between. The little he does know, he puts to great use now. He makes sure he thrusts upwards, curving into her in a way that has her gasping. He makes sure he rubs against her outside, his pubic bone flush with hers through slow movements that draws her eyes close and puts a drawn out moan into each and every one of her exhales. And he makes sure he encourages her, through unstraying eyes, worshipping hands and dirty words.
The people of the Deep are a hardened folk, worn rough by ages of hardships and darkness. What was once made by stone had been made even harsher – sharpened into jagged edges and unforgiving hands. For most of his life, enjoyment had been seen as a frivolous thing – a weakness not often afforded to them, the smallest of the Underdark denizens. In stark contrast, Elohri is yielding, plentiful and soft in front of him. There is an unashamed excess to her, a mesmerising allure of someone so full of life's luxuries. Where he is hard, she is soft. Where he is paltry, she is prodigious. And yet, where he is yearning, she is the same.
Her climax is like everything about her – abounding, beautiful and unrestrained. She keens and cries and clenches her muscles, and as with everything else, he is not far behind her. It is with a grunt, and a last shuddering thrust, that he empties himself inside of her. The pleasure grips him, like a great calamity upon the earth of his being. It is a deep set quake that sends his hands into rumbling shakes, and upends him completely, until he is left a shivering, panting wreck upon the shore of her body. Elohri draws him into her arms, her entire being a bed in and of itself. She kisses his head and sighs happily against his grey skin, and Barcus stops trying to keep the shivers from his skin; he lies trembling with the aftershocks of their tremulous conclusion.
“That was wonderful,” she says, and he is thankful for her for being the first to speak, for he would not have dared lest she had gone first.
“It was,” he mumbles against her. “It is.” And then stupidly, he asks: “Are you– Was it– That is to say, did you enjoy yourself?”
Elohri’s eyes are closed. She hums – the sound content, like that of a cooing pigeon perched in its nest.
“I am well,” she says, and then, with a quirk of her lip, she adds: “I trust you are too. We deserve that, after all, don’t we?”
Drunk on the sort of pleasure that puts light behind his eyes, Barcus laughs with her. With a tired sigh he snuggles closer, unwilling to part with her just yet.
Her cleaning spell is a simple and quick thing; a warm dip in a spring that doesn’t leave him wet. He tries to tell himself that it is not a bid for him to leave – that she simply wants to lie close to him a while, holding him without the sensation of his seed drying upon her legs. He kisses the no longer damp skin of her exposed throat, and puts chaste kisses to her nose, and chin, and cheeks. All the while his heart sings discordant memories, for while they fit together perfectly in flesh, he knows from experience that this will be another thing entirely. Where he is slow-flowing tar, and ancient cliffs of wet stone and ore-shot veins, she is dappled sun over fleet streams, and the captivating sound of running water. Quick and young; she will have taken many lovers before the taste of her fades from his mouth, and he is able to think of anyone else. To be in love is wonderful, especially naked and sated in Elohri’s arms, but he knows that his affections tend to overstay their welcomes. This is the one taste he’ll get, before he becomes a hound at her heels just as he had been for Wulbren.
The worry eats at him, which is why her next words mean so much to him.
“I’m here for good,” she says. “In the city. If you’d ever like to do this again.”
Barcus has seen Elohri talk their foes into the most convoluted lies. He has seen her break the will of a man with a well-aimed insult, and send a woman into uncontrollable fits of laughter with a whispered word. If she wanted to let him down easily, or wrap him around her fingers like an unspooled string, she could. Despite this, he doesn’t think her tone to be fake. The slight tremble – a hiccup in her otherwise smooth façade, feels just as real as the hopeful rise at the end of the sentence.
“I would like nothing more,” he tells her.
The smile she gives him is full of joy and relief, and perhaps others things too, that he is more hesitant to attempt to name. In the light of all that, his answer feels insufficient. “You must know,” he stammers. “You have not only earned my affection, my respect, my–” He clears his throat “– my lust. You have also gained my loyalty. It is a long lived thing, and you ought not fear losing it anytime soon.”
She takes his hand, and despite everything they have just done, the small act sends heat into his cheeks and ears.
“I have seen your loyalty up close,” she tells him. “And Barcus, I… I hope to be more deserving of it than its last recipient.”
It is a good thing that the evening’s activities have left him playful and elated. “Deserves, huh?” he says, and pokes her side, and when she giggles he does the same – love drunk and in disbelief.
“Perhaps next time I could visit you?” she suggests when their laughter has died down.
“Ah,” he says. “Yes,” and then, tentatively: “I might have to get a bigger bed first.”