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It all started because of that damnable side-detour to the beach. It had been hot, their journey drawing to a close and Selithia had wanted a few hours to sit and reflect on the trip that had taken them half-way around the world only to discover that the treasure they’d hunted for had been floating around in R’oadan’s swiving water skin the entire time.
She’d nearly throttled him for that revelation alone, but the relief of getting her father’s coin back trumped any other frustration she would have felt at the time. She reckoned she might get it set into a piece of jewellery in the future – something that would be harder to have slip through her fingers or get spent at a café for a cup of tea and half a sandwich.
Dad. Dad. She’d held it to her lips like that, silvery and still wet with miqo’te backwash, probably. You and Mum are still with me. I know it to be true.
So that was a relieving bit of closure for them both. After giving back the coin she had no reason to hold R’oadan against his will anymore. She unlatched Nald’s Price from around his neck right away and found herself surprised he didn’t bolt for the hills the very moment his breath was his own again. Sure, he’d sulked like a coeurl made to wear silly pink mittens when the weather had turned chilly but that was the extent of his petulance.
Even if it hadn’t been by his choice they’d still made acquaintances of one another. He’d said he’d stick around until they came upon the next settlement and then the ginger-haired cat bastard would be off on his own journey once again.
And yet here they were, at Costa del Sol, on the most beautiful pale white beach Selithia had seen in many a year and R’oadan was still there with her, lurking in her periphery. He was having a paddle while she sat back on a roll of cloth and soaked up the tempered glow of the sun.
A dip did sound sort of nice but she decided against it for the moment. She hadn’t really jumped into the ocean ever since that trouble with her sponsor and the ill-fated marriage proposal. She wasn’t afraid, per se, just… put off. For now.
And then it happened. Fate, she guessed.
A shame she couldn’t strangle it like she could with him.
He finished his beachside swim and emerged from the waves and the spray just as the sun began to set behind the horizon, dyeing everything before it in ruddy shades of rose gold. He glistened in the light reflected off the water droplets running down his wonderfully tanned skin, along the contoured muscles of his arms and shoulders.
How long had he been so… so muscly? The cat had been all skin and bones when she’d beaten his sorry arse in the desert moons prior. Since then he’d been her incorrigible shadow, eating what she ate, toiling where she toiled and walked following her footprints in the dust.
R’oadan bent an arm back behind his head, shaking the water from his hair and fuzzy ears and stretching as his toes sunk back down into the wet sand. His mouth curled into a (dumbstupidfrustratinglyendearing) big grin; enjoying the fruits of his freedom for the first time in many moons. How odd to smile at his former captor in such a way.
Selithia lowered her sunglasses to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. By Rhalgr’s fist, it wasn’t just an illusion conjured up by her fashion accessory, she felt a thrill of undeniable fascination at watching him laugh and bask dripping in the sunlight of twilight’s edge. A sun seeker in his element, quite literally.
An incriminating blush spread across her cheeks as he turned slightly and affixed his gaze upon her once again, coeurl-like pupils slitted in the light. Gods, not good. Not good at all.
As he jogged back up the slope of the beach to reach the little shaded bower she’d made with her pack and her gear Selithia hid the redness of her face right away with her sunglasses again, certain that she would let no evidence of attraction let slip to her travelling companion lest he get the wrong idea about her. He would, she knew this.
She weathered the storm of his questions in this way, pointedly fixating on her book instead of him standing over her, peppering her with unnecessary questions like; where are they staying tonight? When can they eat? What can they eat? He’s hungry. Does she think the ale wenches in this town would go abed with him?
Selithia groaned as she discreetly rolled her eyes at him.
She wondered if he’d even noticed the change in himself, from when he’d gone from a feral creature to a domesticated, honest-to-goodness normal man. A perverted man, but a man nonetheless.
The cooling wind and distant sound of the waves breaking against the shoreline did little to lull Selithia to sleep that night. There’d been a room at the inn, thankfully. Even one of the nicer rooms that her coin could afford (and no that that coin, never that coin again) built over the boardwalk so the average discerning adventurer would only be a few short paces from the end of a pier for fishing, or diving, or whatever crazy escapade lay available to them that day.
And, to Selithia’s great relief, it had two beds. Two beds. No longer would she have to listen to R’oadan whine about sleeping on the floor, although even if that had been the case at least it would have been a whining session for the very last time.
He lay curled up on his side of the room facing the wall, bundled up in the thin sheets. The air felt balmy and there was no need for proper blankets, but he still clung to them with a vengeance anyway, his long ears angled back in the direction of Selithia’s cot a modest distance away from him.
“I reckon I'm leaving in the morning, then.” He mumbled after a good bell of the two of them failing to drift off to sleep. “Get off this island and head back to the mainland. There's a boat at first light that can take me to Crescent Cove.”
She did not answer him, lying on her back with her arms folded behind her head, blankets tucked up to tit-level and staring at the ceiling. A shadow in the corner of the dark room looked like either water damage, mould or some kind of spider’s nest and she couldn’t quite figure out which. His announcement did not surprise her. He had no reason left to stay.
“It weren't all bad though, we made some good coin along the way. Saw some pretty interesting things in our travels.” R’oadan continued softly, still talking to the wall. A part of his sheet would wiggle just a little every so often; likely his fluffy tail emoting what the rest of him seemed reticent about.
Selithia made a non-committal grunt at that, thinking about what she would do next. Now that she had what she’d sought after, what was there to do now? It was honestly the first time in her life that all opportunity stretched out before her like a flat and featureless plain. After Ala Mhigo, there had been the shepherding hand of the Resistance. Once she’d found herself a woman grown, the Bloodsands had beckoned. After that, there was R’oadan and his ridiculous excuse for thievery. Whither now?
She heard the miqo’te sigh and ball himself up a little more. “It was nice not going to bed hungry each night, too.”
“Mm.” She grunted once more.
A rustle of fabric indicated that R’oadan had flipped over in his bed but it was the reflection of his pale green eyes catching the light of the moon in the darkness that let her know he was staring right at her. He propped himself up on an elbow, the shadows doing little to hide the fact that he was clearly shirtless.
“... Hey, Selithia? Think we'll ever see each other again?” He ventured, almost hopefully.
She turned her head to stare back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Why does that matter? I put a collar around your scraggly throat; I would've thought you'd never want to see my face again.” Selithia replied, a mite baffled at the inquiry.
R’oadan scrunched his nose up a little at the comment, like a child being reminded he’d shit on the floor a few bells earlier after asking for treats. Rather than the hellslander he glanced down at the wooden planks between them instead. “I- I like your face though. It's pretty when it’s not scowling at me.” He said, all quiet-like.
The blush from earlier in the evening crept back with a vengeance. She hated how there was no way to stop its encroachment but also struggled to recall why it was such a problem that sometimes R’oadan said nice things to her, like just now. She guessed that for the longest time she’d kept him like a prisoner or a pest, like some kind of antagonist that she had to ‘win’ over in order to come out on top.
But at some point he’d ceased being such a means to an end and had become… well. Sort of like a travelling buddy. Someone to talk to at night, just like they were doing now. Someone who’d catch dinner or scrounge firewood, who’d held gauze to an open wound while she sterilized the mending needle.
Who’d told people to fuck off when she clearly wasn’t interested. Who’d held her hair out of her face that one time when the well-water had been bad and she’d spent the night emptying her guts from both ends.
A man who had, once the treasure was found and his bindings were released, hadn’t bolted for the hills upon the very whiff of freedom in the air. He’d stuck around at least for a while.
It occurred to her now that he was still around for her sake, to make sure that she was going to be alright without him. But he couldn’t wait around forever.
She felt an unfamiliar tightness in her throat and banished the sensation as best she could by chuckling, giving the ginger miqo’te a rare smile. “Huh. Well... you're not so bad yourself. Maybe next time rather than robbing me I can buy you a beer.”
His glowing eyes seemed to dilate a little further, drinking in the slim amount of light the moon provided. “What if… uh. What if I bought you a beer instead?”
“Hm. Yeah. I might like that.” Selithia agreed, nodding.
A long, warm silence stretched out between the both of them. It wasn’t unwanted nor even unpleasant, merely something transient and unexpected that would vanish ere morn by the time she knew he’d leave her. Even so, she watched R’oadan slink out from under his covers and pad onto the floor, utterly silent in the manner common to his people, gaze still fixed unblinking in her direction.
He crept on his hands and bare feet to pop up at her bedside, crouching in that catlike manner that had his bushy tail sweeping the floor back and forth as though he were trying to cleanse it of dust. Moonlight silvered his skin and highlighted the tribal markings on his face and damn it; he really did have to be shirtless, didn’t he?
Selithia reached out wordlessly and wrapped a finger and thumb around the length of one of his long ears, dragging the pads of her digits down along the impossibly soft orange fur. She’d wanted to do that for ages, she guessed, but hadn’t the finality of their parting to drive her until now. Plus, she’d never wanted him to get the wrong idea about her either.
Her hand stalled when R’oadan tilted his head near imperceptibly in her direction and emitted a soft, rumbly sound she could only identify as a stilted purr, something that he took physical pains to stutter as she watched his throat bob hard to swallow around his own vibrations. Despite this he rocked into her hand further, brushing his bed-head ginger hair streaked with white against her palm and butting against it in a manner he couldn’t seem to control. He seemed embarrassed. So silly.
They’d known each other for half a year, at the least. Had slept next to each other for so long, but never… never…
The silence was broken by a sudden, startled yelp when Selithia surged forward and seized the miqo’te under the arms, dragging R’oadan up off the floor and into the bed alongside her. He’d bulked up a lot after so much time adventuring but she had no difficulty whatsoever yoinking him onto the mattress beside her and capturing his lips in a bruising kiss, sliding a hand around the back of his neck and feeling his hackles raise in real-time as she tasted the faint echo of the tuna fish sandwich he’d eaten for tea.
He was completely rigid against her, shocked by the abrupt change in her demeanour for him, his fur standing straight on end and ears up in surprise but he also didn’t pull away either. He’d made overtures towards wanting to get with her in the past, after the two of them had gotten over the initial hurdle of them loathing each other and moving on to an easier kind of friendship, but it had always felt more like he was joking rather than any real seriousness on his part. Plus, Selithia had always known she could do much, much better.
It wasn’t like her standards had slipped, though. He had just become a better guy over time, though she wouldn’t outwardly admit that to him. She knew that sort of reinforcement would go directly to his head if left unchecked.
But he also seemed the sort of man who wouldn’t look a gift chocobo in the beak if he could help it and soon enough he was kissing her back just as fervently as she, even if there was a tinge of tentativeness to his lips. She felt his hands come up and finally grasp at her sides, at what he would have been a fool to attempt so much as even a few days ago. He’d tried to pickpocket her a second time once, desperate to get at her keys and escape the mess he’d gotten himself into. Selithia had caught him, had twisted his wrist as though it were going to break in simple, savage punishment.
She was glad she’d ultimately decided not to go through with it when his hands came up under her shirt to cup at her breasts, palms scarce enough to even hold what he found there but warm and gentle, kneading them with his thumbs to feel their weight. His fingertips were calloused from years of bending the bow in the wastes of Gyr Abania in service of his tribe but they provided a compelling frisson whenever they grazed against her skin, making her gasp between kisses unimpeded.
‘Twas a dangerous game they played with one another right now, the likelihood of such a dalliance something she never would have anticipated from the Spinner’s Wheel. She wrapped them both in her sheets and at some point R’oadan’s white smalls somehow ended up thrown to the far corner of the inn room – a ghost sailing through the night, unheeded and unnecessary.
Selithia made an embarrassingly breathy noise when he ducked his head down beneath the covers and she felt the tickling rasp of his tongue tentatively against a nipple, digging her nails against the skin of his shoulders and unsure if it felt good or just too nerve-jangling to endure without making goofy little sounds like that. She leaned down and buried her nose against the ruffle of his hair at the top of his head, feeling an ear twitch at the juncture of her neck and jaw.
He smelled like the beach and the road and that odd faint miqo’te musk that most seekers and keepers had but was considered a faux pas to ever bring up in polite company. She had gotten used to it while having R’oadan around and figured she must have gone nose blind to it after a time, never really certain if it was a scent she liked or not, but now felt strangely comforting. Compelling. It was hard to describe.
That paired with the insistent purring distracted her enough that she hardly noticed when R’oa hooked his thumbs between her hips and her undergarments and rolled them down to her knees, where she felt annoyingly tangled like that and tried to kick them off of her own volition, fighting against the covers and trying not to kick R’oadan in the process as well.
Once she was freed his hand moved to the bony joint of her knees but he didn’t try to pry them apart or anything like that, he used them mostly as an anchor point as he lay over her body and layered her with kisses from ribcage to collarbone, the unmistakeable heat of his bare manhood laying hot and heavy against her upper thigh. She felt the scrape of his canines (or was it felines?) against her smooth skin when he lingered a moment too long and it felt, gods, it felt just right.
He must have known somehow that he wouldn’t have been able to spread her open under his own power, such was the nature of their relationship thus far, but such subtle ministrations and closeness, the kisses and kitty licks and gentle bites did much to grease the gears of ingress. It sort of mirrored how it had always been between them right from the very start, with R’oadan as the gradual force of erosion that wore down the barriers between them until it felt like, when he left tomorrow, she wouldn’t just be losing a sapient noise that demanded to be fed; she would be saying goodbye to a friend.
Selithia was not prepared for the twinge of pain that thought brought to her. She must have reacted outwardly to it too, for she felt R’oadan still in process of trailing his affection against her jugular and pulled back, peering up at her in concern. “You okay?” He asked softly, as though he were afraid speaking aloud would shatter the illusion of reality they were in.
Talking about it was the very last thing on her mind at the moment but it was sweet of him to draw back enough from his fixation to check in on her. She didn’t deign to provide him with a response (thinking up one would be too hard anyway) and instead let out a long sigh, reaching around to press a palm against the curve of his lower back and coax him to lie more firmly against her, opening her thighs to wrap around him without any further dawdling.
It brought Selithia great satisfaction to hear him whimper at the subtle roll of her hips against his pelvis to guide his member against her pussy, taking him in with minimal resistance. She was already slick from the twisted tangle of her thoughts and all the attention he’d lavished upon her thus far and didn’t need to worry much about resistance or pain, this was hardly her first rodeo and there was something about the, er ‘naughtiness’ of it (for lack of a better word, she thought) of allowing R’oadan to finally prove his mettle that did it just perfectly for her.
And oh, how he'd moaned for her after slipping inside, like a man tasting ripe fruit for the very first time after subsisting on a lifetime of water and stale bread. She felt his shoulders tremble beneath her fingertips and was surprised at just how responsive he was simply from putting his cock in her, ears lying flat against his skull. It almost seemed like…
Oh, fuck. That was something she hadn’t even considered before. She’d just assumed by the way he’d swagger and posture to others with all the unfounded confidence in the world, but all pretence of himself had drained out of him the moment she’d bent him to his will.
“R’oadan.” She interjected, reaching out to take the miqo’te by the chin and tilt his head up just slightly to meet the clearness of her gaze. His slitted eyes struggled to affix on hers and the moment they did and she started speaking again he immediately glanced away in embarrassment. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”
It was hard to tell in the moonlight but his blush seemed to darken on his cheeks at the statement and his tail thumped the thin mattress a few times in annoyance. “Well… I was a Tia until not very long ago, you know.” He muttered, struggling to respond and not just focus on the indescribably hot sensation of being inside his friend. “I didn’t have the means to- I mean, you’re not supposed to, and they all said that-”
Selithia could feel his erection begin to die a little inside her so she slid her hand around to cup his cheek gently and rub a thumb against the soft bristle of his beard. “Hey. Hey, it’s alright. I was just curious. You’re doing fine.” She replied, squeezing his waist reassuringly with her legs.
R’oadan’s head dropped down and he emitted a staggered gasp at the sensation, pressing in further at the encouragement. “Bloody hells.” He mumbled under his breath, heating up at the unexpected praise.
So he responded well to positive reinforcement. That was something she’d have to keep in mind for later. Not that there would be a next time, an intrusive thought blew through her like a cold wind for scant moments but she pushed it back, had no choice really when R’oadan bucked his hips hard and wrested an unusually high moan from her throat.
He seemed to find his courage then, spurred on by her warm words as he fucked into her and kept on going, forging ahead with a self-indulgent pace that wrung surprised gasps from her lips. Truly he was on the smaller side of men she’d bedded down with over the years, used to the stature of fellow highlanders and roegadyn when it came to hollowing out her more intimate places, but what he lacked in cock-related length and girth he more than made up for in sheer levels of ardour and a desire to prove his worth. Really, the old related adage was like as not more true to life than she’d ever known.
And ‘twas hard to really find the right words for it while being shagged out of her mind, but his miqo’te prick had some kind of textural distinction to it that felt different to other members she’d sampled over her time as a gladiator and adventurer, almost as though it had little vestigial bumps on the surface of his length that scraped against her inner walls and choked soft moans in her throat at the exquisite sensation. Was… was that a cat thing? Did cats do that? She’d have to look into it sometime, later on.
But as nice as it was, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t quite feel like enough, as though the way he jerked his hips against hers for her pleasure brought her within reaching distance of brushing the firmament before it took her away again. Unable to do much more than cant her hips up to meet him Selithia worried the plump swell of her lower lip for a moment before seizing R’oadan suddenly by the shoulders.
His skin was slick with a thin sheen of sweat and so very hot to the touch. He stilled in his rut immediately at her interjection and peered down at her with the green corona of his lust-blown eyes, fluffy ears quivering in restrained desperation. The non-verbal ‘mrrp?’ he emitted at her handling near broke the fog of their tryst and almost had Selithia giggling in silly delight at him.
Almost.
His cock briefly slipped from her wet cunt as she took matters into her own hands and flipped him against her bed, ripping away the blankets that did nothing but get in the way to slam him down against the mattress. He made a surprised ‘whooph’ sound as Selithia manhandled him, as though he weighed nothing at all and sprawled him underneath her, the glistening length of his member bouncing as it slapped against the plane of his bare stomach and left pearly beads of moonlight behind.
She had to have it back. She was bereft without him. Selithia swung a leg over his body and straddled his hips before he could begin to whine for her fire again, grasping his cock by the base and pressing it firm against her pussy, deliciously swiping it hard against the swell of her clit before pressing it back to the pull of her hole again. Her body drank him back in like cool water on a hot summer’s day – though the only heat that mattered to her now was the pulse of his dick as ardent need flooded in tandem through their veins.
He growled like an animal when she bore down on him and ground him against the bed with the full force of her bulk and the flex of her muscles; a sound that would have normally concerned her but there seemed an appreciative timbre to his rumbles that felt like it wanted to become a purr but he hadn’t enough breath left in his lungs to do so.
Gods, yes. This was it. This was the scant few ilms she needed to reach the stars. Selithia braced a hand by his head and mashed the miqo’te into the mattress with the flex of her arse and her thighs against him, bracketing his pelvis and pinning him like a trapped, half-mad beast that could not get away. He snarled and clawed at her, his sharp nails clinging to her skin and leaving white trails in their wake but she did not mind it and it wasn’t because he wanted her to shove off of him, quite the contrary actually. He clung to her like a life boat in a storm.
Her gasps and insistent rocking met with his writhing, endearingly inexperienced keening. She could feel the frantic slap of his fluffy tail against her crack as she rode him, thumping the bed repeatedly and whipping her down there like the softest cat-o-nine-tails on the surface of the star. In near made her giggle again at the absurdity of it all, were she not already half-drunk with pleasure wrung out of him to the last few drops.
Wrung out indeed, for the very moment Selithia started to worry that her limbs were going to leave visible bruises on his hips R’oadan let out a strangled yowl and she felt heat flood between her thighs and well up deep within her. Ooh. That had been abrupt; perhaps she should have pulled off him before- and…
No. No. She was overthinking things. She glanced down at her companion beneath the weight of her body, dragging in lungfuls of breath and wrecked by the experience, bleary and teary-eyed and somehow still rather fetching in the low light. After she helped ride out the rest of his orgasm Selithia stilled, proffering him a sweaty yet gentle smile.
“Mmh… was that alright?” She asked of him, quite breathless herself.
“Y-y-yeah, m’ think so…” He mumbled, his chest heaving as Selithia angled herself back a little to give more space to his lungs. “Thal’s friggin’ balls. Next time I’ll put my cock in a forger’s press and save some time.”
At that comment the corner of Selithia’s mouth quirked up into a grin. “Oh really?” She teased, his cock still very much wedged inside her and her knees trying to squeeze R’oadan’s muscled midsection. “Can’t say it’ll help with the girth but it might buy you a little more length.”
He tried to chuckle alongside her but her legs accordioning the breath from his body made things difficult. “Did you finish?”
She paused for a moment but rather than answer him properly she merely shook her head. She’d been getting there but, well… it had been his first time. She knew it wouldn’t be fair to expect so much of him considering their differing level of experience.
The miqo’te looked back up at her and sighed, but he did not seem to be completely discouraged. On the contrary he seemed to take his shortcoming in stride and blinked back up at her with mirthful eyes. “Okay, no worries. Swap places with me, Seli. I got this.”
Before she could commit to a proper response he was already wriggling underneath her like an excitable eel and trying to push her off of him. Selithia hesitated for a few seconds, reluctant to part with the nice feeling of his softening dick plugging her up and having to deal with the resultant mess that may or may not spill out of her, but she also just couldn’t sit on him forever. That would be rude.
They exchanged places as best as they could considering they were two people sharing a bed sized for an average midlander hyur. Selithia pressed herself back against her pillow and got comfy again, much like how she’d been trying to sleep earlier only this time she had R’oadan scooting his way between her legs again to pry them apart, his sharp nails gently lying parallel against her skin.
Admittedly she hadn’t expected much when he dipped his head down between her legs and left a line of wet kisses along the inside of her upper thigh, other than a bit of laughter that escaped unbidden at the sight of him trying so very hard. As he’d said, he’d never done this before so she did not expect the seeker to bring her the moon and stars on a silver platter. She was a practical sort of woman, after all.
His arms slipped under and then around her upper legs, anchoring onto them for support. R’oadan knelt head down, arse right up in the air with his catlike brush sticking straight out like a flag waving in the early morning breeze – flying straight and true in honour of his sexual conquest. It almost felt wrong to not give it a proper Ala Mhigan salute.
But his continued purrs vibrated the sensitive skin at the fork of her crotch and she felt him weasel in a little further, needing to restrain the urge to wrap around and crush the poor guy like a melon with her thighs. She felt his tongue, pink and small, dip in to taste the musky tang of her arousal and the mixture of their sweat and his seed. Exploratory and unsure, but willing.
Felt good. Odd. Interesting, and then…
Selithia near squealed in surprise at the arch of his tongue swiping upwards and over her clit, laving it with the same measure of affection he’d shown to her throat minutes earlier. There was no opportunity to really tell if it brought pleasure or not; he’d just gone from 1 to 100 immediately and she couldn’t help the embarrassing scream.
Hopefully the guests in the rooms next to theirs hadn’t heard. She patted him hastily on the shoulder to get his attention, though her outcry seemed to be enough. “Sandpaper tongue, R’oa! Sandpaper tongue!”
“Oh f- sorry! Sorry!” He mumbled; his breath hot and moist against her flesh. Rather than brush his tongue against her again without thought or delicacy he pursed his lips and kissed where he had scourged her, gently and softly in apology.
That already felt a whole lot better than cat hooks on her clit, pressing in with those lips already kiss swollen from before, dipping down a little lower to press in with his little button kitty nose and reverently suck the salt from the folds of her dripping cunt.
And fuck, when he started purring again… fuck fuck fuckity fuck. It took Selithia a while to realize that the moans she was hearing were actually hers, loud and shuddering and no doubt keeping the residents of Costa del Sol up at night. She had to force herself to tightly fist the sheets and mattress beneath her to keep herself from bucking up into R’oadan’s mouth and risk breaking the cartilage in his nose.
He must have sensed this then as he drew away a little and reintroduced his tongue, but this time more tentatively, angling to hit her with the side of the muscle or the very, teeniest tip of it to avoid hurting her again. Her legs trembled around his ribs and back at the exploration, throwing her head back into the pillow to avoid balling up around him instead – already driven halfway there by his cock and then coasting the rest of the way riding luxuriantly on the seat of his tongue.
Ahh, stars, just like before, reaching her hands for the height of the firmament. She could hardly imagine R’oadan had come so far. She’d been halfway to throwing him to the Brass Blades once upon a time and now, now if this was what he was capable of she didn’t think she’d be able to let him go.
“Ohhhhh you damn cat, how dare you be good at this, I th-thought you were supposed to be a-aaaah-!”
The roar of blood in her ears became near deafening and her senses faltered as all focus wound down to the way her body throbbed against the surface of R’oadan’s worshipping mouth, spiralling levin from the liquefaction of her brain to the very tips of her curling toes. She vaguely heard the miqo’te wheeze from between the iron-wrought tension of her thighs against his neck but that didn’t matter now, not when she chased her orgasm the same way flame would follow in the wake of a meteor shower.
But alas, she had to return to solid ground again eventually. By the time she found herself breathing heavily to get air back into her lungs she realized that R’oadan was rapidly slapping the side of her leg not to get the softness of her thigh meat to jiggle a little but rather in a desperate bid for post-coital freedom.
He popped up from her crotch and sucked in a huge gulp of air, his complexion totally flushed, mouth a bright red from overuse – wet and sticky with strands of his hair pasted to his face by… well, it could be multiple different fluids, really.
“I… I did it, I think? I did, right? Is that better?” He babbled, affixing her with an eager desperation to hear the right words from her, that he’d done good and well and he was awesome and also the king of sex, maybe.
Bugger it, though. She was too jelly-boned to even give him a proper reply, simply raising a hand to give him a silent but also very difficult to misinterpret thumbs-up.
Selithia regretted the decision immediately though when R’oa’s ears shot up in pure joy and pride and he crawled in for another big sloppy smoochy kiss – something that she had to nip in the bud by palming a hand right into his gross sticky face. “Uh-uh. Not a chance, cat man. No more kisses until you wash that dirty face of yours.” She intoned.
“Wh- but it’s sticky because of you!”
“Even so, no dice. Sorry.”
R’oadan wrinkled his nose at her but he couldn’t fully hide the mischievous, self-satisfied grin trying to break free of his annoyed façade. It burst free like water escaping from a dam and soon enough he was laughing heartily at the foot of her bed, something that made him so handsome and carefree that the hellslander woman couldn’t help but be swept up alongside him.
She’d watched him leave the bed long enough to walk outside of the ocean-side inn room completely naked and kneel at the end of the pier, washing up his depravity with naught else but unfiltered sea water. Once he was done he returned to bed again but this time his cot lay abandoned and empty. Selithia made a much better mattress when compared to sleeping alone.
And she was fine with that. The sun seeker more than deserved a cuddle after all that, anyway.
She did not wake again until it was well past the dawn, blinking her eyes groggily only because an errant sunbeam shot in through the open window for the sole purpose of hitting her square in the face. Selithia groaned and recoiled back further into her pillow, shifting stiffly under the blankets in an attempt to wend free from the direction of the laser.
Her wiggling bothered the animate blanket draped over her and it grumbled at the too-early wake-up call, clenching its arms and legs around the thick trunk of her torso in lazy defiance. She wouldn’t ever admit it to his face at this point, but he’d felt a lot comfier than the provided sheet had been.
“Muhh.” He said thickly, his ears pinned back in staunch, incoherent denial. “Blegh. Wh… wha’ time is it?”
He’d asked her that because he refused to open his eyes and check for himself. She guessed she couldn’t begrudge him that – he did look pretty comfortable right there, lodged between the gentle curve of Selithia’s breasts as gravity coaxed them to list towards the sides of her ribcage.
Her hand came up and around him to ruffle at the messy strands of his hair; the ridiculous rat tail he always braided near completely undone. “Uuhm. Some bells past first light, I’m afraid. It seems you missed your boat.” She told him.
R’oadan sighed and nuzzled into her breast again, letting out a little huff. “S’fine. Don’t worry about it.” He mumbled.
“Oh? Did I accidentally convince you to hang around?”
The miqo’te huffed again, but not derisively. She felt the beginnings of a soft little purr start up in his chest. “No, but there’s no hurry. I can leave whenever. I can tail you as long as I want. I’m a free man; I can do what I like.”
“Provided I want you around.” She teased him, but Selithia guessed the fact that she hadn’t bumped him off of her by now probably spoke volumes more than her actions. Her fingers found the spot behind his ear where his hair was baby-soft and idly played with the decibel of his purrs depending on how she scritched him. “Hey, R’oa? Do you remember that gorget I put on you moons ago?”
He yawned a bit before responding to her, stretching out with his arms and legs enough to have his feet near hanging off the edge of the bed. She could feel the tremble of his muscles as he carefully worked out the tensions from the night before. “Nald's Price? Yeah. Bloody thing was a pain in the neck.” He said.
Selithia glanced across to the other side of the inn room, to where R’oadan’s smalls had ended up draped across the wide leafage of a potted jungle plant placed there to bring a certain ambiance to the space. It certainly wasn’t doing that now, beclothed as it was. She stifled the beginnings of a laugh, ‘lest her companion think she was giggling over him and the secret she had kept from him for months.
“Yeah I sort of... made that whole thing up. There's no such thing as a neck piece that can choke you from afar, at least nothing outside of the Garlean Empire.” She explained.
He’d been draped languidly across her front before but soon she felt his fingers tighten a little across the muscle of her biceps. The purr stopped abruptly and he lifted his head from her chest to glance up at her. The only real thing she could define R’oadan’s expression as was ‘incredulous’, his green eyes wide.
“Wh-what? But I felt it! I felt it squeezing my throat all the time whenever I thought about scarpering off in the night!”
She patted him on the back, relinquishing truth as payment for the night she owed him. “That was an old trinket from my time in the Bloodsands. I'm sure it seemed tighter whenever you felt anxious and your breathing picked up, but that's all it was.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
R’oadan narrowed his eyes at her, trying to pierce the barrier of her soul with his mind. It didn’t work, of course, but it would have been nice if such things were possible.
Then, he suddenly rolled himself off of her and out of their shared bed; like many a cat before him landing precisely on his feet. Now that she was no longer pinned down Selithia sat herself up in bed, watching R’oa as he began to gather up all his clothes from the floor, the pot plant – really anywhere he’d thrown him before crawling into bed the night before.
“... I wonder if that next boat is still available.” He grumbled as he struggled to find his other sock, only for Selithia to emit a dramatic ‘nooooooo’ and reach over to pull him back into her arms once more.
-fin
