"I believe you were onto something... wolf... something, something... weaving and charming? Handsome? A great lover, although, you cannot make comment on that yet."

She tilted her head as if considering his words, eyes glinting.

“Well, it would be irresponsible of me as an artist not to verify such claims.” She smoothed her skirts as she stood, reached for his hand again. “After all, I’ve already written half the ballad. It’d be a terrible shame to leave the ending unresolved.” She said, while a tugging of her fingers invited him to follow.

"Good gods, Lady Lark. You're a dangerous sort."

“Dangerous,” she repeated softly, this time without her usual bravado. No one had ever called her dangerous before. It settled over her like a thin layer of dust, familiar and unwelcome. Charming, yes. Delightful, certainly. A menace, occasionally, but always in jest.

Her smile faltered, just a flicker, as she glanced down at her hands, still loosely wrapped around his. Her hands that had never wielded any steel or spilled any blood. She had no dagger tucked into her boot, no battlefield scars to speak of. Her hands had never stolen anything from someone who could not afford to lose it.

It was the same word they’d used for her father. Dangerous. Not in the swashbuckling, sword-flashing sense, but in the way a person might charm you out of house, coin, and loyalty. And by the moons, hadn't she promised herself she would never be him?

"Usually men call me a flirt, a scandal or a bad idea."

But dangerous? That word made something twist inside her. That word was reserved for people who broke things and people on purpose. Not a bard who flirted too much.
 
Duscan rose to his feet the moment she made to move, knowing the pity party happening on the floor of her home had come to an end. He could see that his word for her triggered some thoughts, her mind wrapping around the idea.

He offered a smile, meant to be sweet but with a mug like his, it always turned out to be something along the lines of a mischievous smirk. "Dangerous because you don't need anything but your charm to disarm just anyone. Your flirting got me here, Anira. Haven't figured out what makes you a bad idea... but at least I was your scandal in the end." Caught in her bedroom, trousers halfway up his arse before he could figure out to hide from her noble patron.

The bastard squeezed her hands and guided them up to his bare chest. He pulled her in closer with one hand resting at her lower back, his other hand lifting her head by placing two fingers below her chin. "I like danger. I like my heart being played with. Not afraid to admit that when the company always ends up being fun." Duscan moved his hand to brush her hair back from her face.

She was pretty, very pretty. The kind of beauty that would have Duscan sneaking glances in order to admire from afar, but Anira had been charming and outgoing at the inn. She possessed and energy that was bright as a flame, and he was a poor bastard that was drawn to her like a moth. Granted, he was a moth with many lives, since he had survived many flames in the past.

"This is the part where you say something charming that makes me take you back to your bed." He stage whispered to her, fighting his smile to remain small and subdued.
 
I like danger. I like my heart being played with.

Anira's fingers curled slightly against his chest. Light though they sounded, his words landed like stones in her gut. Words wrapping themselves around her spine like a noose. Just... true, in the way things sometimes are. He smiled at her, so open and unbothered. He thought he was playing with fire, but Anira was the one who always walked away singed.

He meant it kindly. As though she hadn’t seen people love her for what she gave them in a moment, then hate her for what she couldn’t give after. It was easy to forget you were juggling hearts when trying to keep your own out of reach.

“You should be angry with me...” she said. “And maybe you will be, in time." Lips curling in something between guilt and gall. It was a delicate kind of alchemy, this art of distraction. Guilt, heavy and unwelcome, could loom like a shadow, and the bard just let herself sink into the warmth of another, the press of skin, the brush of lips, the steady rhythm of hands tracing and teasing. Let the heat of another body and the cleverness of a sharp mind drown out the echoes of remorse. The momentary thrill, pulled her away from herself, from the questions she couldn’t answer, from the ledger of broken trust.

"Who says we must return to the bed?" she breathed. With that, she gracefully sank to her knees in front of him, her hands trailing down his chest and over the planes of his stomach as she went. Anira looked up at him. "Do tell me..." she said, voice soft like honey and milk. Her fingers went to work on the fastenings of his trousers. "...when all this persuasion is no longer required."
 
"I've got anger, darlin', but you haven't done anything as bad as what I have seen back home." He held anger closer than he did a lover most days. He had his triggers, his reminders, all without needed to weave through the memories that the past had to show him. Duscan came to Crorefell to escape Veya, but Veya followed him in it's own form of escape.

He needed her to distract him from that anger. It was a dark cloud that wanted to drag it's claws all over him before sinking into his flesh. Hooks that wanted to embed into him and stay there for the short eternity that would be called his life.

Soft hands, warm hands, not claws or hooks, fell down the ripples of muscle and flesh. Anira kneeled before him, and the echo of her words were pulling him back to reality before his own deep dark pulled him into it's spiral. Those hands that held the hardening presence before they had been interrupted now coaxed his hastily tightened trousers to loosen.

"Fuck." Came the charming and intelligent answer.

Duscan ran a hand down his face, hand resting above his mouth as he watched the bard stare up at him. He dropped it, using it to cup the side of her face. "Bed? Who needs a bed?" The bastard didn't even have a proper one. "You have convinced me enough already, Lady Lark." Why protest when fun and song could be made just about anywhere?
 
Two souls, each bearing their own ghosts. Maybe they had recognized the cracks in each other, the way broken glass still catches light. It felt like they shared an unspoken pact. To hold the weight of the world at bay with teasing smiles and roving hands. To pretend, for one night, that pleasure could drown memory and banish pain.

“Oh, good,” she said, voice light as lace and twice as frayed, “... then I’ll just tuck that compliment between ‘you’re dangerous’ and ‘you haven’t yet pissed me off me entirely.’" In one smooth motion, she freed him from his trousers, pulled them down over his hips, and nudged them over his cheeks.

She started by running her fingers lightly up and down his shaft, as she had done before they got interrupted. Fingertips trailing along his length, tracing the veins, circling the head teasingly. She leaned in, letting her breath ghost over his sensitive skin. Letting her lips barely brush against him as she spoke.

“...though the acoustics in here are terrible."

Pressed a soft, reverent kiss to the tip of his manhood before she slowly, almost shyly, took more of him into her mouth. Her tongue darted out to swirl in gentle, worshipful circles over the head, savoring the heat and taste of him. Lips a tender against his flesh. Her hand stroked the silken skin, making room for her lips and guiding him deeper into the slick warmth of her mouth.
 
Duscan gave her a soft chuckle, the slow rumble of it could be felt in his chest as the feeling of being freed from his trousers yet again flooded to another area of him. The bastard stood above her, looking down at the kneeling bard. Blue eyes were usually bright, but with his down turned gaze, whatever ambient light Anira had in her home eluded from catching the angles of his face. His eyes appeared darkly, the smear of his ashen markings only adding to the brooding.

Yet the bard stole any word he wanted to say. Took him slowly and gently, and met his gaze once or twice. She provided him warmth in her hand, her hot breaths causing him to shift his weight to either leg.

"How can anyone be angry with you, Lady Lark?" He could pretend to if that was what she was into, but Duscan a bastard, not an actor. He cleared his throat to hide a moan, but he was only a man. His lips parted, and with the exhale of breath came the sound elicited from pleasure. How could anything think of anything when the length of him was disappearing into the unsung song of the bard?

The hand that was cupping her face shifted, where his thumb began to gently brush her cheekbone. "Do you wish for me to be? Are you looking for... a more firmer hand to handle you?" Carefully, he stepped around the idea. Duscan would hate to overstep in any way, had wanted this experience to be freeing and satisfying for them both. Communication was good, and he would encourage her so.

He was used to other ladies telling him what to do, or leaving it all up to him to use them and be on his way. Anira Versheart was not a woman paid for this, nor was she a noble or rich woman climbing into his bed to simply sate their desire of bedding someone of a lower class. Dusc wasn't after love, affection, and a happily ever after. Not when he still wore ashen tears on his face.

The bard was something new, someone more sure of themselves in his eyes. He wondered if she too pulled up the thinnest sheet up to her chin at night, trying to be convinced that the blanket of security and comfort was enough.
 
Anira let out a soft, amused hum around him, she flicked a look up at him. How could anyone be angry with you, Lady Lark, he asked? Many had reason to be angry with her, she thought as she took inch by inch of him in her mouth. But angry hearts never stayed. They stormed off, fists raised and hearts bruised. The tip of his cock bumped against the back of her throat with every bob of her head.

She swallowed around his length before she leaned back. A dangling wet strand, much like a thread of spiderweb covered in morning dew, still connected her lips with him. However, it snapped quickly when his rigid flesh twitched. Watching it bob before her face, she blew softly on it before turning her eyes back up to him.

“I want you. Just you, Duscan" No more, no less. She said, slightly out of breath. "The hand you offer, rough or gentle, is the only one I want on me.” She paused, a laugh dancing at the edge of her breath, not mocking but soft. “I’m not looking for a performance or a character. I want you.” He was wanted just as he was.

She reached up to him, her hand gliding slowly over the curve of his hips, the dip of his waist, the ladder of his ribs. Down again across the warm stretch of his chest, his stomach, pausing where the lines grew harder, tighter, her fingers curling over the coarse hairs as if memorizing the terrain of him by touch alone. She wasn't rushing. No hurried groping or careless heat.

Anira touched like she listened to music, with patience and intent, as if his body held notes she hadn’t heard before. Every inch of him was new, and she wanted to trail all of it. The hills and valleys of him. The strength beneath skin. The way his breath hitched when she mapped the hard line below his navel with strokes and pumps. “If you are asking for permission to be rough,” she added, almost a whisper now, “you have it..."

She leaned in and let her kisses explore the gentle curve of his hip, the hollow just above his pelvis, then the slope of his side where flesh met bone. “But, I don’t need that of you, though,” she said softly. Tender as a lullaby against his inner thigh. “Not unless it's what you want." She was not seeking domination nor abandon. She sought presence, his presence, in this fragile now.
 
Every inhale and exhalation he gave came in breathy rasps when Anira stated she wanted him.

He knew which version, the one beneath the many masks he wore in his life. Duscan wanted to say he wore this new one the moment he left Veya without turning back, but only now was he realising none of the things he did was an act, a persona. He had changed, and for the first time, he was hearing someone take note of it.

Perhaps he was drunk on lust, the way she looked up at him with her sweet face and her lips glistening from wetting his cock. More susceptible to things he had longed to hear after so long.

"Nah..." His hand found her head again, swept some of her hair around his fingers so that he could curl it into his fist. Duscan kept a loose hold of her, allowing her to continue her exploration via kisses. "I don't want to be rough. I don't want..." He paused, not wishing to speak about what he didn't want.

His hand released her hair, reached down so guide the bard back to her feet, but he would not let them fall flat onto the wooden floor. With swiftness, Duscan lifted her and encouraged her legs to wrap around him. He took her back to her bed, where she had delayed their return when she had taken his entire length into her mouth. That she could do again.

Duscan lowered himself to seat himself on the edge of the bed, Anira atop his lap.

"I want to be greedy." He declared. His hands, large and calloused and smelling of spilled mead, came to rest at the curve of her hips and kept a firm hold of her there. If anyone knocked on that front door again tonight, Duscan was going to look into their past and spoil their entire life. It was these moments left of this dark night that he wanted to take his time.

She had stolen his shirt during the panic of getting dressed when they were interrupted. Looking at her now, it was far too obvious it looked more of a scandalously short dress on her than a clean shirt with beer staining one sleeve. Duscan had already mourned the fact this was his last clean one, and after the sun rises on this day, he would see to it that he washed the rest.

"Thief." He grinned, pulling it up and off her form. The moment she was free from it, Duscan placed soft kisses to her neck, teasing the graze of his teeth there too. He wanted to learn the smoothness of her body. How one part curved down, and others were soft and fell into quick valleys. Duscan didn't bother kissing the entire trail down her sternum, the presence of her breasts derailing him. His hand filled with it, holding the hardened peak to his waiting mouth.
 
Greedy. The word fell from him.
Greedy. The word should have chilled her, but instead, it hummed through her like a plucked string, low and resonant.
It wasn’t a word that was flattering or delicate. Not something a usually whispered against your skin, nor something sung of in verse. And yet… it fell now.. from his mouth.

Greed, in so many corners of her life, had always worn an ugly mask. Greed was the ruin of kingdoms and of hearts. It was the sharp-toothed whisper behind every love song that ended in silence. It was what made people keep holding even when their hands were full. She didn’t know what he meant, not really. It could mean anything. It didn’t sound like a man about to take what wasn’t offered. It wasn’t said with shame or hesitation. No mockery either. Just the plain, open hunger of a man not pretending to want less.

“Then be greedy. Take all the verses I haven’t sung.” She smiled, lips brushing the shell of his ear. It must be close to a bastard's nature to be ravenous, to take with both hands, drink deep, leave fingerprints. But a bard could match it. Let the ink run. Let the lines blur.

Her fingers wove into his hair, sinking into the tousled strands, and she tugged, just enough to tilt his head back and catch his mouth with hers in a kiss. Her chest rose and fell in a rhythm that matched his. She tilted her head back to give him better access. Gooseflesh rose in the wake of his lips. Her body pressed into his. “Thief!?” she echoed, “You tore that shirt off me and I’m the criminal?!”

“That shirt never looked better,” she murmured. Breath catching at the graze of lips against her nipple.
 
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Hands made sure to keep her upright, kept her tethered to him as she leaned back to better angle herself for him. Duscan pressed in, gave her teasingly light flicks and circles before putting the same attention on the other. "I do not doubt that, Lady Lark." He murmured over bare skin. "But wearing it hides a lot of the things I want to see of you." Duscan lifted his head, leaned in to kiss the underside of her jaw.

"Just like your skirts. Terrible. Will only get in my way." He placed a mock frown on his face as his fingers came to the button and loosened it from her waist. Fingertips roved at the skin that peeked from the loosened skirt, pushing the material down, down, down, until he could not go any further. One hand moved to grasp at her arse, gently pulling her up from his lap so the other hand could guide it further down. Duscan leaned back, holding with his core, and watched as that garment lowered some more.


"What makes the better muse?" He asked the bard seriously. Duscan leaned right back, falling into the plush sheets and blankets. Both hands now helped the skirt descend down her thighs, and his eyes seared into every morsel of skin revealed to him. "A person or an experience?" Perhaps it was some bastardly need to hear that he was wanted, whether it be genuine or for select company, Duscan would never tire of feeling wanted. Experience... there was only one thing he wanted her to experience before he was to make his way home eventually.

What was bared to him, Duscan helped himself to. His fingers reacquainted with her heat, crooking in a way to tease the line of pleasure. He liked seeing her above him, unashamedly staring up at her and the beauty she wielded in her own right. "Before you say both, I want to hear which one you favour."
 
She was compliant, soon the skirt was thrown aside, and she didn't have a thread left on her body. There wasn't a single scar on her skin. Not even the faded memories of childhood scrapes or careless tumbles. Unmarred, as though the world had never laid rough hands upon her.

Anira tilted her head as she looked down at him, golden hair falling like the last light of day over one bare shoulder. She could see what he wanted to hear. "A muse is more than flesh." Her fingers walked lazily up his chest, one by one.

The word muse danced lightly on her tongue, but in Anira’s mind, it never quite meant what people thought it did. A muse wasn’t just a man or woman stretched out on soft sheets, whispering sweet nonsense into the night. No. They were wild things. Divine, yes, but not tame. They did not settle down with artists and feed them soft inspiration over tea. They did not sit prettily and waited to be painted. They were forces of longing, of madness, of creation so sharp it could bleed.

A muse was never the lover. Never the face in the soft candlelight. It was a god's breath at your ear, not their body in your bed. It was the hand you couldn’t hold. It was the absence.

"A person fades. Beauty fades. A person can be beaded. Sent to war. Married off. Forget your name entirely. But an experience…" Her voice trailed as fingertips grazed the edge of the sheet, his arm, the curve of his jaw. "An experience lives on, etched into memory."

She leaned in close, a mischievous glint in her eye. “You can romanticize a memory far more than a man who snores and farts in his sleep. And if the memory tries to escape?” A sweet smile. “You simply set it to music and trap it there forever.” She knew this world. It wasn’t built for things that lasted. Not in Crorefell, where blood was cheap and boons cheaper. A word could gut your career. A lover could vanish like mist. A song... well, a song might last. If the melody was good enough.

Anira drew a lazy finger over his collarbone. “Now don’t get me wrong. People are lovely. Warm, sweaty, occasionally lovely… but...” She met his eyes then. “If you want to live forever, be a moment. Not a man.” The man would never truly be the muse. The muse was the fire he lit inside her and the silence that followed when he would leave.
 
Anira Verseheart said:
"...be a moment. Not a man."
Click to expand...

Had that not been what Duscan wanted all along? Granted, he wanted to make a name for himself, but it wasn't just for him. He wanted to change things properly this time. It had started all great and right when the Brotherhood formed, and Duscan at it's lead, but now he knew it was left in shambles. When the binding agent for relationships and alliances was taken down... who was left to follow?

Duscan wanted to make it right again.

"You are inspiring me." He grinned lazily up at her. His hand reached for his own hardened length and nudged it towards the apex between Anira's legs. "Reminding me to refocus."

Strange that every time he thought about leaving, to go elsewhere and find his brothers... he found himself staying. As if an invisible hand was keeping him here, even if his one and only connection to Veya was giving him off the book jobs to leave this city and return. Perhaps the bard would instill the right confidence and focus in him. They would be inspiration and muse for one another.

His other hand guided her hips, pulling her to sit above him. Up and slowly down upon his cock. Duscan loosed a slow release of breath, eyes flicking to watch his cock disappear so fucking slowly. It felt better being an inch inside her than her mouth made it out to be. Where the image of her lips wrapped around him had been one he would not forget, perhaps thinking about it in the future many times, the feeling of finally having the bard take him left him with the urge to rush into this.

"Oh fuck, forget trying to be a moment... this moment... is just...fuck." All the right pleasures were being felt. Duscan could feel her softness, the beg of her tightening around him. It was a type of bliss, the kind that you wouldn't want to rush in and just savour the moment. He chuckled.

Ah... the moment.
 
Anira tilted her head, a teasing smile tugging at her lips. “Me? Inspiring you?” Maybe she was. Or maybe she was just another storm him run into. "Here I thought I was just distracting you..." A muse, inspiration was something adamant. Something that pulls and push you whether you will it or not. She saw in his gaze that there was something like that within him, for a while, when his gaze became distant, his thoughts left their moment and curled into his mind. "What are you thin.." she bit back her words when she felt him against her sensitive and wet folds.

As he guided her hips, Anira obliged eagerly, easing her down onto his cock, a breathless moan escaped her parted lips. "Yes..." she gasped. She let her hand rest briefly on his chest, warm and light. She rolled her hips with every downward glide, slow and deep. There was no frantic bucking. Instead, a profound savoring. Inch by inch. The slowness wasn't indecision, it was a slow descent into sensation. It was immersion. Feeling him, every millimeter, the heat, the solid heat of him inside her. Her head tilted back slightly, the column of her throat a pale line in the warm candlelight.

Her fingers splayed against Duscan's chest, fingertips pressing lightly into muscle. Every lift of her hips was liquid grace, a slow withdrawal until just the swollen head remained snug at her entrance. Every descent was an eternity, hot and tight, as she took him back to the hilt.

She leaned forward slightly, supporting herself on her free hand on the mattress, just next to his head. Her unbound hair fell like a golden curtain around them. Her eyes stayed locked on his, hazy and heavy-lidded, breathing soft and deep. "You feel…" Her voice frayed, raw and close to shuddering. She held still for a heartbeat, sticky skin-to-skin.

"... so good. Like you were carved just for me."
 
Duscan had bedded very pretty ladies before, but nothing could compare to the beauty and wit Anira had. Even atop him, looking down at him as if she were an angelic witness to his devilish descent. Her halo of golden hair blocked out the rest of the room, the glow of candles adding gilded warmth to her tresses.

All he could do was focus on her and feel the way she took him within her. His brows furrowed with effort, with the feeling of pleasure begging to release the moment she sank down to his hilt. "You feel like silk , Anira." Silk was luxury, something he used to be able to have, but he was a bastard. He knew where to source the rare finds for himself without the privilege of coin. A dangerous crook to his smile, Duscan smoothed his hands to her hips where he kept her in place. His own hips lifted slowly, deepening inside her to feel exactly as he had said. Duscan parted his lips to loose the quiver in his breath.

"I want to take my time with you..." He whispered, eyes dropping to her breasts just shy of his mouth. A hand roved upwards, traveling along her side until he cupped one. Gave it a good squeeze before thumb and forefinger sought out the nipple to tease. "But despite my patience, despite my whispered promises of ravaging you slowly in order to savour you... I just want to turn you over..." His other hand left her hip, holding her other breast and angling it towards his mouth. His breath warmed over her flesh, tongue flicking out before circling around the pebbled skin around her nipple. "Place you on your knees..."

His teeth grazed, playing with her with words and teasing pleasure. Duscan wanted to feel her constrict around him, to suffocate his cock in silken walls. "Those unsung verses... I want to hear to hear them."
 
"Silk, am I?" she murmured. Anira's laughter bubbled low and throaty, a sound that vibrated through her chest and down to where her silky walls clenched around him. She rolled her hips in a slow, deliberate grind, taking him deeper until her ass pressed flush against his thighs and their shared nectar was trickling down over his balls.

Her breath hitched from the tease of his fingers on her nipple. Her hands pressed flat against his chest, pinning him down as she leaned in close, pushing her breast further into his grasp. She could feel his impatience in the way he bucked his hips to meet her, the way his fingers dug into her hips a fraction too hard, begging for more friction, more speed. His furrowed brows and parted lips told her everything about his need to thrust up hard, to flip her and pound into her until they both shattered, all before his mouth told her the words.

His words ignited something in her, like throwing a fistful of embers into dry spring grass. But she was set ablaze by the sight of him. That faint flush along his cheeks, the way his eyes darkened into a haze both wild and fragile. The slight quiver of his lips, the shallow catches of breath, the tension in his hands.

"You’re feral, you know that?”

All teeth, claws, and hot blood, barely tamed. She had seen that earlier, a wolf. His teeth lightly squeezed around the sensitive bud of her breast, the sensation sent sparks straight to her clit. A whimper escaped her lips, soft and ragged, caught somewhere between surprise and surrender. It trembled with pleasure and an instinctive caution. Her hips lost their rhythm, only to sink down hard on him.

Her breath rose and fell in uneven waves. Every shiver, every curve of her spine pressing closer, was a quiet negotiation between wanting more and fearing too much. She reached down, her fingers trailing over his abs to where they joined, circling her clit while she rode him. Teasing them both.

"Oh, bastard, try asking like someone with manners, say please, and who knows? I might just find myself at your mercy… on my knees, no less.”
 
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