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Cullen was upset. Worse than that; he was furious. Ophelia could see it in his eyes as she judged the man he’d once called a friend; they burned, so bright she swore she could feel it, his anger radiating from him in waves. And more than that. There was a repulsion, a hatred, barely-contained and simmering under his skin, evident in every strained syllable he directed towards Samson; he was a man she barely recognised, hands she’d only ever known to be gentle balled into fists, soft mouth which worshipped her body each night contorted into a snarl.
She thought mercy would help. She was wrong.
He disappeared after, storming from the Throne Room before she could reach out to him, her path to him blocked by Josephine and a list of tasks which meant nothing whilst he was in pain. And she knew she should leave him, allow him time to cool and for rationality to prevail, but it seemed to go against every instinct within her; every fibre of her being yearned for him, and though she didn’t know how to help she knew needed to be beside him. To be there for him, as he had been for her.
Ophelia expected to find him in his office, or hunched over the War Table, overworking himself in the vain hopes of distraction; when they proved fruitless she sought out less-frequent haunts, finally finding him by the stables. Still overworking himself, but in an entirely different way. Axe in hand, a pile of cleaved logs to his left and armour to his right; he’d shed his layers in the afternoon sun and now he stood bare-chested and flushed, skin glistening from exertion and damp curls clinging to his still-furrowed brow.
Cullen was beautiful. Imperfect, and beautiful. She knew his body so well by now she could close her eyes and pinpoint each scar with a kiss, but still his form transfixed her, just like it had their first night; his broad shoulders and powerful arms holding the promise of dominance, of primal lust. But he’d never touched her like that. He was passionate yes, and determined, his unremitting need to bring her to completion driving him far past his own desires, but never rough; when those arms held her each night in the hazy wake of their lovemaking she felt nothing but cherished, and safe. But now to see them used to their full potential - to watch the flex and ripple of hard muscles as he used his strength without hesitation – awoke a raw desire in her, an ache deep in her gut for him to pin her with his full force and demand of her, just once.
She was staring, and he hadn’t noticed her yet. Though she could have quite happily watched him forever, her less-than-subtle appreciation was beginning to feel like an intrusion; she cleared her throat and he looked up, his frown softening a fraction as his gaze landed on her.
“Samson took everything from those Templars,” he bit out, his sentence punctuated by another swing of his axe. “He corrupted their souls, twisted them into everything they stood against. Everything they would have hated.”
She sighed, taking a step closer to him. “You’re letting Samson get to you.”
“And what if I am?” he snapped, surprising her with the sharp edge to his voice; he seemed to surprise himself too because with a defeated exhale of air he softened, his eyes falling morosely to his pile of wood. “The red lyrium left Samson’s mind unaltered,” he muttered, quieter now but with no less venom. “He knew what he was doing. He dares speak as though it were a mercy — the man’s a monster. I pray his information is useful; his life is good for little else.”
He grimaced, positioning a fresh log in front of him and glaring at it as though it were Samson, and perhaps he would have preferred that; perhaps he would have preferred her to execute him, to end the life of a man who’d fallen so far and so violently. A man, she knew, in whom Cullen saw his own reflection, even if he would never acknowledge the twisting path that had sent them in starkly opposing directions.
“Samson is everything you say,” she began slowly. “But it’s over. You have to let this go.”
With another groan he let his axe fall again, with less energy this time; it embedded halfway through the wood, and his golden eyes sparked with fire at the sight of his failure. With a growl he cast his axe aside, and she watched in awe as he picked up the half-cleaved log, wrenching it asunder with his bare hands; she gasped before she could stop herself, too overcome by the sheer power of him to contain her reaction. He winced as the wood clattered to the ground, his expression almost ashamed as he met her eyes once more.
“Forgive me,” he murmured, misreading her captivation for something else entirely. “I did not mean—did not wish to frighten you.”
“You didn’t,” she said, taking another step towards him a placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. The tension in his taut muscles seemed to evaporate under her touch; with one rough hand he captured hers, raising it to his lips for a kiss, and his tender mouth sent sparks of desire crackling under her skin. “Come with me,” she told him before she could think better of it. “Let me help… take your mind off it.”
“Take my—oh.” His gaze darkened as he grasped her meaning, his hold on her tightening almost imperceptibly. “My love, as much as I want…” he trailed off, dropping her hand to instead cup her cheek. “You,” he completed, tucking a lock of platinum hair behind her ear. “I am not in a particularly gentle mood.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
His amber eyes turned almost black at that, a wildness in them with which he’d never observed her before. “Are you sure?” he asked, voice low and husky; she swallowed, then nodded, and one corner of his mouth twitched upwards in an near-feral smirk. “Inquisitor, I think you may be the death of me,” he told her, but he was already leading her back to his quarters, grip tight on her waist in what she hoped was a promise for what was yet to come.
“And if you insist on chopping wood half-naked, my sweet, you may be the death of half of Skyhold,” she retorted, adding for fairness; “myself included.”
---
She’d barely set foot in Cullen’s office before his mouth was on her, hot and demanding against her neck; he enveloped her, consumed her, as he pinned her against the wall, calloused fingers grasping at the buttons of her shirt.
“Cullen, the door—” Ophelia began, fumbling for the lock just out of her reach.
“Leave it.”
“But—”
He grabbed her hand, interlocking their fingers as he pinned it above her head. “Leave it,” he growled, pressing a scorching kiss to her lips before she could protest further. It was a harder kiss than she was used to, all urge and tongue and heat; she yielded to him with a weak whimper, fire diffusing through her though he’d barely touched her yet, her free hand clawing at bare shoulders in a desperate attempt to pull him closer.
Navigating her buttons was a much tougher task with only one hand, though Cullen was nothing if not stubborn. He successfully undid the first, and then the second, but it wasn’t long before he grew impatient; with a rough tug at her shirt he ripped the rest away, the sound of buttons skittering across the floor drowned out by his guttural snarl.
“Cull-ah!”
Her moan of pleasure morphed into a strangled cry as Cullen’s hold on her shifted, hooking a hand under her buttocks and lifting her clean off the floor; she locked her legs around his waist as he pressed against her, skin on skin, crushing her between broad chest and hard stone. She rolled her hips, but the friction in no way satisfied the all-consuming ache inside her; Cullen chuckled at her frustrated whine, his roughness easing for a moment as he playfully tugged at her earlobe with his teeth.
“You are eager today, Inquisitor,” he murmured, hot breath fanning across her cheek.
She didn’t have the presence of mind to point out the hypocrisy of that comment, his own arousal patently obvious by the insistent jut of his cock against her core; she could only moan as she tried to rock against him, urging him on with a desperate, broken, “please.”
His hips twitched at the sound of her begging, reflexively answering her near-frantic plea, and it was nowhere near enough; she needed him to take her, to fuck her, against the wall or on his desk or wherever he wanted so long as it was now. But instead he relinquished her hand to tangle his fingers in her hair, tugging to expose the column of her neck as his mouth worked down her throat, his usual soft kisses replaced by raking teeth and sending shivers along her spine.
Cullen always took his time with her. Always. Her previous lovers had been few and far between, quick trysts that satisfied their desires but left her wanting; Cullen made a point of drawing out her pleasure, teasing her to heights she could barely stand before bringing her gloriously to her end. Even now, as she spurred him on with ineloquent utterances and tightening thighs, he was deliberate in his actions, targeting sensitive patches of skin with nipping teeth and scraping stubble, and she hoped it marked her; she wanted others to see, to know, that she was his and his alone, and that the Herald of Andraste was happiest when being thoroughly fucked by her Commander.
Ophelia cried out as he bit down on one exposed shoulder, soothing the sting with a swipe of his tongue; she returned the favour, teeth clamping down on a flawlessly sculpted deltoid as she reached for the laces of his breeches. Realising her intentions, he grabbed her wrist, holding it between them as he leaned back to fix her with a steely glare.
“I am in charge here, Ophelia,” he scolded, punctuating his reprimand with a now-deliberate jerk of his hips.
“Cullen, please,” she whined. “I need you inside me.”
She thought she sounded too desperate to be seductive, but apparently it worked; his eyes flashed possessively, and with a squeeze of her buttocks he prompted her to loosen her grip on him. His hands were all over her again as soon as her feet touched the floor, roughly pulling her free from her breastband and ruined tunic, the garments falling to the ground as he kissed her again no less fiercely than before. One strong thigh pressed between hers as he turned his attention to her breeches, forcing her legs apart; she ground down against him with a soft moan, the pressure providing just enough relief from the nigh-intolerable throb of her desire.
She was already soaking, and she was sure Cullen could feel it as she rubbed shamelessly against him; she could feel his lips twist into a smirk as he kissed her, fingernails scoring her hips as he finally, mercifully, pushed her breeches and smalls down her thighs. Without ceremony, he pushed one thick finger inside her; she keened, back arching at the sudden invasion, needing both more and less of that almost-overwhelming sensation all at once.
He clamped down on her shoulder with his free hand, anchoring her in place as she writhed against his grinding palm; he pushed a second finger inside before she was entirely accustomed to one, and she wailed, her pleasure just the right side of painful.
“All of Skyhold will hear you,” he murmured against her lips.
“Good,” she replied.
She attempted to spread her legs further as flames licked low in her belly, but found herself restricted by her knee-high boots and the fabric bunched around her thighs; when no amount of subtle shimmying would free her she enlisted Cullen’s help. “Boots,” she muttered between kisses.
“What?”
“My boots, they’re—”
He spotted the problem for himself, growling as he glanced down. He withdrew his fingers from her, and before she could bemoan just how awfully empty she was the room spun; he twisted her, firm hands gripping tightly as he pinned her once more, her bare chest pressed hard against cold stone.
Ophelia felt exposed like this, and sinful, and completely at Cullen’s mercy, her wrists captured in one large hand and held fast in the small of her back; she jerked her hips backwards, near-mad at the tease of his rigid yet still-clothed cock against her backside, and with another throaty chuckle she felt Cullen move to unlace his own breeches.
“Cullen,” she beseeched him, begged him, when he didn’t take her right away. “Cullen, please—”
He surged forward, sheathing himself inside her with one powerful thrust; she howled, the force of him reverberating through her body and slamming her harder against the wall, and once he’d hilted he took a ragged breath, bracing himself with a tight grasp on her hip.
“Ophelia…”
She could barely move with how tightly he held her, but she managed a small wiggle of her hips, a silent encouragement that she wanted more; he answered her call with another hard thrust, and then another, the debauched sound of flesh hitting flesh filling his office with every movement. And still he pushed further into her, looming over her, sweat-soaked brow pressed against her temple as he drove her ever closer to the edge.
Cullen was a litany of contradictions. Hard yet gentle, tough yet vulnerable, each sharp snap of his hips soothed by sweet utterances in her ear; she loved each and every part of him, and wished he could accept that without questioning why. Because she knew it in the way he held her each night, in his quiet reverence as he watched her each day; that he believed himself to be unworthy, undeserving, when in truth she’d never felt so alive as when she was with him. Love was something she’d never dared hope for in the Circle, but he gave it unreservedly, offering the future of her most bittersweet dreams yet somehow doubting whether she wanted it. As if she wouldn't want him. Even if it took a lifetime, she’d convince him one day he was worthy, and everything.
Their breathing grew shallower as Ophelia became unable to hold back her whimpers of pleasure, Cullen’s grunts and strangled moans to the Maker more insistent with every thrust. He let go of her wrists to circle his arm around her waist, holding her even harder against him as practiced fingers sought out her clit; she braced her arms against the wall as he deftly circled that spot, her hips losing their rhythm as she bucked against him, heat flaring up her body from his fingers all the way to her cheeks. He kept circling, pounding into her relentlessly now, and her head dropped back against his shoulder as his stubble scraped over her neck, jaw, cheek, completely overwhelmed by all the sensations of him.
“Say my name,” she said, and though it was little more of whisper he heard it and knew why; because outside that room she was the Inquisitor, the Herald, the hero, but in his arms she was just her.
“Ophelia,” he murmured into her ear as he nibbled the lobe. “Ophelia,” he repeated as his grasp on her hip tightened, nails biting into her flesh, her skin on fire underneath his touch. “Ophelia,” he groaned, and with another flick of his fingers and fierce roll of his hips she shattered, quivering and whimpering beneath him as she rode out the waves of her orgasm. Somewhere in the distance she heard Cullen roar with his own release, dimly aware of the shudder and twitch of his cock deep inside her as she came down from own impossible high.
She felt him slump against her as by inches his grip on her loosened, and reluctantly she separated from him, legs trembling as she twisted in his grasp to stand unsupported once more. She looked up at him, and she could see the trepidation in his eyes; he seemed nervous, unsure of himself, as though somehow he still wasn’t sure whether he’d just done something terrible.
“Ophelia—” he began, but she quietened him with a brush of her lips against his; he kissed her back, softly now, almost repentant as he plied her with languid caresses of both mouth and hands. “I hurt you,” he muttered as he broke away from her, frowning at the imprint of teeth on her shoulder.
“A little,” she admitted, tilting his jaw with two fingers so he looked her in the eyes again. “But it was nothing I didn’t want. And… and I would very much like to do it again.”
His brow puckered in surprise as a warm, beautiful smile spread across his face, and her heart swelled with adoration at the sight of him happy and at peace. “As would I,” Cullen said, bringing her palm to his lips and pressing a tender kiss there. “As long as you promise to tell me if it’s ever—if you don’t want—”
“I promise,” she told him, though she doubted there would ever be a day when she didn’t want him. “We do have one problem, though.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Your armour is still by the stables. And my shirt…” she trailed off, indicating to the ruined garment on the floor.
“Ah,” he said, his eyes falling to her shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“No, I’m not,” he agreed, lips twisting up into that devious, self-assured smirk of his, and even after what they’d just done it still sent a fresh pang of want through her. “We can’t have you trailing back to your quarters in ripped clothes. I suppose you’ll just have to stay here forever.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, a playful smile on her lips as she leaned into him, for support more than anything else, her shaking limbs threatening to give out on her at any moment; he circled his arms around her, encasing her in muscle and strength and love. “What a terrible shame.”