Chapter Text
Three’s a Crowd
Gale thought this looming sense of dread that sat heavy on his shoulders was simply anxiety over the invasion of the goblin camp. It was understandable. They were taking on a hoard of bloodthirsty monsters with only their wits, gumption, and a few tag-along passengers via their tadpoles.
RThe lady of fortune smiled upon them though when they found a bear imprisoned and, once freed, that bear transformed into a...man.
Man would perhaps be too simple of a word. In the way that fish to describe a whale was technically accurate but also was not.
Gale had to crane his head back as he looked up...and up...and up. Good gods.
While Gale’s proclivities leaned more towards the female persuasion, he was not above noticing the male form and this man (Gale stuck on the word man as he could not think of a more accurate substitute) had much to admire.
Gale felt very small as he stared up. Very small indeed.
“I’m the druid, Halsin,” the man introduced, his voice a booming thing that seemed to rattle the walls. (Of course he should be a key character in their narrative and not some passer-by they could leave on the road, just Gale’s luck.)
A sizzling pop of magic had Gale snapping his gaze to their de facto leader. Freya was staring up, a gobsmacked look on her face, flushed the prettiest of red. A squeak of air left her as the druid engulfed her hand in a boisterous shake. “My thanks for the rescue. And such a lovely sight you are.”
“W-Welcome, are, y-you,” Freya stammered.
Something hot and ugly wormed its way into Gale’s gut.
Astarion chuckled at his side. “Well,” he murmured, “looks like you’ve got some competition.”
X
Gale already knew he had his work cut out for him if he hoped to win Freya’s favor. She seemed to dazzle and enrapture anyone that fell into her orbit. Not that Gale could blame them. Even discounting the extras they stumbled across, he had stiff competition just amongst their merry little band.
“She is just the cutest thing,” Karlach gushed. “And when she turns into a cat? Hells, makes me want to just pick her up and squeeze her.”
“There is a certain...charm about her,” Shadowheart admitted, her cheeks lightly flushed but her tone speaking as if she were above it all.
“She has a lovely neck,” Astarion admired with a certain purr to his tone.
Gale’s only foothold was the hours they spent away from camp, toiling over magic lessons. It was very clear that Freya had no such proper training. In fact, until reaching the grove, she had been flinging her magic wildly about, no structure to it, just a lashing of magic, wielded as if it were a blade.
It was dazzling, as well as alarming.
Gale hadn’t had any motives when offering the lessons. (Well, perhaps that was disingenuous; he had been looking after his own hide as an unstructured spell from Freya had nearly singed his eyebrows off earlier in the day.) Under his tutelage, she learned basic spells, became less chaotic with her magic, even if she couldn’t stop the occasional wild magic surge, and they all came out of battles with less caution for friendly fire. He could’ve stopped there. His goal had been achieved. It was clear Freya was powerful and she could continue her lessons alone with the help of scrolls.
But...he hadn’t.
For he had become bewitched.
Those hours spent in the forest, his hands cradling hers as he walked her through the motions of a spell, close enough to share breaths, had become something of a drug to Gale. To watch her weave a spell was something to behold. To feel it as she took it on and made it her own, her magic surging along, raw and wild and addictive.
Gale found himself notating things in a mental journal. Gold simmered in her blue eyes after a spell cast. She rose onto her toes in a little half-hop of excitement when he found her in the forest for their nightly lessons. She sat, chin propped up in the cradle of her hands, a rapt audience as he prattled for too long or devolved into conjecture, but she never stopped him. Her hands fit perfectly in his, fingers shorter than his so he could curl his over hers. Her smile, exuberant when she successfully cast something as small as a light spell, her joy something palpable. It took him back, to his own wonder as he discovered his powers, before he reached too far and flew too high.
He realized his conundrum lying awake one night in the coldness of his own tent, memories of Freya playing over in his head to keep himself warm.
Do you know what you’ve done to me? he wanted to ask her at their next lesson, half accusing and half beseeching.
He had no right. No right to be feeling these things. No right to want for more, to dream of her lips and to wonder if she made love as passionately as she wielded magic. He knew this story, had played a part in it once before.
He had to watch as, slowly, the others also fell under her spell. He took comfort from it, as he ignored the prickling barbs of jealousy brewing in his gut. He was not just a simple and deprived man. Truly there was something enrapturing about her.
He lied and told himself that he would be elated for more company here, in this hole he had dug himself. Yes, yes, he would encourage, fall in love with her and join me here. It’s nothing short of splendid. He didn’t know the depths to how wrong he was. Not until Halsin.
X
“You know just staring at him hard enough is not going to make him burst into flames,” Astarion warned. “You actually have to do your little magic thing.”
Somehow, Gale tore his gaze away from Halsin. (Really, who needed to be that tall?) “I wasn’t—.”
“Oh, spare me your lies.” Astarion offered him a full to the brim silver chalice, the pool of red showing him a glimpse of his own forlorn expression. “You want to eviscerate the man. And why not? He’s ensnared your girl.”
Gale’s chest gave a lurch when he heard Freya’s laugh. His gaze snapped back to the pair.
Freya stood before the man, the top of her head only coming up to his pecs. She was rocking up onto her toes in that little nervous sway of hers (he thought she only did that around him). Her hands were behind her so Halsin couldn’t see the anxious twitch of her fingers as they knitted and unknitted. A flush seemed to sit permanently in her cheeks.
“She’s not mine,” Gale said, ignoring the painful lurch in his chest. He had his tower, his books, and his mistakes. That was all he was allowed to claim.
“Oh, really? Can I have her then?”
Gale’s gaze cut to Astarion. It wasn’t nice to incinerate traveling companions, he reminded himself. “She’s not a loaf of bread, to be passed around and divvied up.”
Astarion took a sip from his cup. “Says you. Maybe that’s what she wants.”
The thought sent something hot rushing through Gale. Freya deserved to be cherished, to be spoiled, to be someone’s whole world, not a corner in multiple’s.
A sneeze and a surging pop of magic had him looking back, as painful as it was.
A peach cat sat where Freya had once stood, dazed as it blinked, embers of gold fading around it. Halsin knelt, that big body of his creating a shadow over her now tiny form. A collection of tiefling children approached, drawn by the sudden appearance of an animal. Another sneeze took the creature and between blinks Freya reformed...her head now nestled right between Halsin’s pecs from her emerging size. Her red flush traveled downwards across her neck to the pillows of breasts, also pressed snugly to Halsin’s form—.
“Your chalice is melting,” Astarion warned.
The blistering heat of his palm registered. The wine in his cup was bubbling, the silver stem wilting under his hot palm. He downed the hot liquid in one gulp—scorching his tongue, his throat as he swallowed—then dropped the half-deformed cup, his hand still searing as he tucked it to his side.
When he next looked, Halsin and Freya were thankfully in more respectable positions. The tiefling children were a ring around her, clamoring for her, chanting “Again! Again!” He saw it then, a glimpse of the future: Freya, Halsin, and a gaggle of children (because of course he would be fertile), some with Freya’s peach hair, others with Halsin’s brown. A future, bright and brilliant and infinite when Gale’s very breaths were counted and he was angry at the image, though he had no right to be—.
“Word of advice.” Astarion jolted him out of his reverie. “If you don’t claim her, someone will. And don’t expect me to tolerate you when they do.”
X
“You would not believe the conversation I just had with Halsin.”
Gale had been anticipating this. No, he had been dreading it.
He looked to where Freya laid on their bedrolls. They had given up the pretense of separate tents some time ago in their journey to Baldur’s Gate. Going through the motions of pretending to retire to their own tents and waiting for the others to lie down had become a waste of precious time. And it wasn’t like the others weren’t aware of them. Freya had left hickeys high enough for his robe not to cover and his hand always seemed to drift until it found the curve of her hip to rest in while walking.
They weren’t subtle.
Gale had maybe felt a bit too smug that first night. Their bellies full, sleep dragging at their heels, Freya had turned to their tent, walked to it wearing his tunic, laid down on their combined bedrolls, let his arms cradle her as they slept.
He was perhaps a bit too hung up on the pronouns usage here. But he couldn’t deny a primal part of him liked it, liked the claim it left unspoken, liked that they didn’t have to bother with the subterfuge.
Mine, he thought as he held her. He had his tower and his books and his mistakes and Freya. It was all so much more than he had ever hoped.
He had thought, naively, it would put to rest some wandering eyes.
But, apparently, Gale had no such luck.
As Freya recounted the tale, Gale, objectively, knew the hot, searing lance of anger rushing through him was unwarranted. Halsin had crossed no lines simply by asking. He couldn’t very well hide her away in a glass box, only allowing others a passing look, never a touch. No matter how much he wanted to.
“And you…” He tried to keep his voice steady, keep the emotion out of it even as it crawled up his throat, “were tempted?”
Freya tilted her head to look up at him. He got a bit lost in her eyes, as deep and as blue as the waters in Waterdeep. “Well, no, not really. Would make things a bit awkward around here. I just… Well.” Her cheeks heated and Gale watched as the blush traveled down her neck. “He offered to, ah, participate with us and…” Her gaze unfocused, her pupils dilating.
“If you want…” Gale started to say, the admittance tearing at him. It would break something vital in him to share her, to let another learn the secrets of her body. But if that was what it took to keep her...
Upon hearing his tone, Freya sat up. She pressed a soothing hand to his chest. Gale caught it and held it there, fingertips just shy of where the orb rested. “No. No! I’m not—. I just—.” She bent forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I didn’t know that was actually something people did.”
A chuckle left him. Something warm unfurled in him and he had to fight back the instinct to crawl over and kiss her. “Orgies?”
She swatted at him. “Yes!” Her words came frenzied. “I thought it was something romance novels exaggerated. I mean, it sounds ridiculous. Where would all the limbs go? Who would do what? Wouldn’t someone be left out at some point? How do you keep track of the hands? The logistics of it—. It seems maddening!”
The feverish gleam in her eyes belied the caustic cut of her words.
And an idea began to bloom in his mind.
This time Gale did give into the need and kissed her. He tasted her bottom lip, relearned the shape of her mouth. She went limp under him, leaning back onto their bedrolls. The edge of his tunic rode up on her legs as she lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. He pressed a hand to the new stretch of skin offered to him, inching upwards. A sound left him when he found her bare underneath. A scandalous thrill went through him as he thought about her in camp, his tunic cladding her body being the only thing to preserve her modesty.
His little nymph.
He had plans for when they eventually went back to Waterdeep (assuming everything went well). There was an endless list of things he wanted to do to her, of things he wanted her to do to him, things he wanted to show her, the pleasures one’s body was capable of. They could be sequestered in his tower for a month and he feared it wouldn’t be long enough.
But why wait until Waterdeep to start on a few?
As he got lost in her and put all thoughts of Halsin to rest, he schemed over that inkling of an idea, liking it more and more the longer it brewed.
X
This seemed like a poor time for a date. An elder brain plotted to subjugate the world. Two psychopaths were trying to coax them to their sides. The founder of the city was, apparently, a mindflayer. They had countless tasks to complete, none of which called for something as benign as a date.
Yet that didn’t stop Freya. She was a romantic at heart, after all.
She followed the instructions left on a folded piece of parchment by her pillow, recognizing Gale’s handwriting. She laced up the dress he had left her, flushing when she realized how it presented her breasts. Then, she ascended the stairs. She counted the doors as she reached the third floor, finding the fourth, and entered.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting. That was a lie. She had expected to find him naked and for them to deteriorate into writhing need, the dress an ornament to be ripped off as quickly as it had been donned.
But instead she was met with this.
The room was a private quarters, awash in candlelight. The bed was a grand thing, taking up the majority of the room. Her gaze lingered too long on the rose petals strewn over the velvet comforter. There was a small balcony and the doors to it were thrown open, allowing the night air to funnel in, the view of Baldur’s Gate sprawling out into the horizon. On the balcony, a tiny table was set for dinner, clear glasses filled with wine, the smell of duck reaching her with a stray breeze.
Gale, dressed in a fine doublet of rich plum, bowed from his stance beside the table. “My lady.”
Freya found herself frozen in the doorway. She could feel her heart swelling in her chest, was surprised when it didn’t burst out from amongst her rib cage. Not too long ago, she couldn’t envision anyone holding her hand, much less all this. “What is this?”
Gale grasped her hand and led her further into the room, closing the door behind her. “Aren’t we owed a little moment of respite?” He pulled out her chair, waited until she was seated to push it in. He took his own seat across from her. “We did just assemble a dead clown’s body parts.”
“I think the ‘dead’ adjective isn’t really needed as you did refer to him as parts.”
“Ah, quite right.” Gale took up his glass, raising it. The moon behind him submerged the world in a cool, blue glow, save for the tiny flickers of their stubborn, many candles. “To tonight. And many, many more.”
“Gale…” She was unable to speak, a tangle of emotions blocking her throat. She took up her glass, meeting his toast.
“You look lovely by the way,” Gale said as he cut into his meal. His gaze lingered over her bared shoulders, the obscene cleavage the corseted waist offered. “I can’t take full credit for it, though. Karlach did help.”
“Is that why she wanted to measure my breasts?” The piece to a bizarre puzzle snapped into place.
Gale frowned. “I did ask her to be a bit more subtle than that.”
“It’s Karlach, Gale.”
“Fair point.”
She cut into her duck. The flavor of honey bloomed on her tongue as she took a bite. “Does Astarion know one of his doublets is missing?” The piece looked better on him, the deep, saturated color of it bringing out the warmth to his skin, but she was biased.
“As much as I would like to say I pulled a fast one on him, it was forced on me. Somehow he got wind of my scheme and I think his exact words were, ‘You can’t woo her in your dirt-streaked wizardy robes, you dolt.’”
“Well, I mean, you could.” She arched a brow as she took a sip of her wine, richly sweet. “You did.”
“Still not quite sure how I managed that, but I’m glad I did. I admit, you were owed this”—he gestured around them, to the ambiance—“long before we tumbled into bed together. I’m merely trying to rectify some wrongs.”
While she wanted nothing more to crawl across the table at that moment—forgoing the meal and her hunger to sate another, more burning one—she held herself back. They had time, she realized. Time to look and savor and talk. She wasn’t used to that. Usually their moments were stolen in their tent, fast and frenetic, running against morning light. Here, Gale had crafted them a little interruption in their usual chaos. She would go at his pace, then.
Even though she desired nothing more than to tear that doublet from him and rake her hands through his carefully coiffed hair.
Gods, losing her virginity had really done a number on her restraint.
The burning wicks of countless candles provided a contrasting warmth as the night breathed its cold air on them. They talked and laughed and sipped and ate as the moon crawled a slow path across the sky.
Freya was feeling just shy of tipsy by the time her cup ran dry, her last bite of duck chased down with the last bit of wine. She sat, rapt, as Gale recounted a tale, his hands gesturing along. (Gods, she loved it when he gestured.)
Gale was leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed over at the knee, easy and relaxed. “And then Tara comes barreling in, her tail on fire—.”
Freya jolted when she felt arms around her, skimming through the bars in the back of her chair.She looked to Gale, the only man allowed to touch her in such a way, still sitting across from her, not blinking an eye as the hands cradled low on her belly...familiar in a way.
“—so my mother starts casting water but Tara’s still running about, setting the curtains on fire in her wake—”
“Gale—.” Freya’s voice left her as she felt lips on her bare shoulder, the familiar scratch of a beard. She looked from Gale to see...Gale. A picture perfect copy of her lover leaned over her chair, giving her a smirk as he continued a chaste path up her shoulder, ending with a bite to her neck. She had felt his touch long enough to discern it from others and this was no impostor's.
Her mind went blank for a few seconds.
“Indulge me,” the other Gale said, now crouched before her, turning her chair to face him. His hands skimmed up her calves, pushing the gauzy fabric of her skirt up. “I would like to sate a few of those fantasies of yours.”
One of the hands resting on her belly crept up to squeeze her breast.
“This…” She swallowed, hoping that the words came easier, but it was hard when there were so many hands on her. “This isn’t because of Halsin?”
A sharp bite of teeth on her knee. The hands on her thighs gaze a squeeze. He drew them apart, bending forward into the space he had created. His gaze seared her as he looked up at her. “No, simply putting to rest any possible doubts.” His expression fell, no longer coy. “I can satisfy any desire you have.” His fingers crept upwards, pressing against the heat of her, feeling her wetness. She hadn’t bothered with underclothes. (The instructions on the note had made that very clear.) “So there’s no need to look elsewhere.”
Freya didn’t get the chance to assure him she hadn’t been when she was simultaneously pulled and pushed from her chair.
The laces on the back of her dress were loosened. The neckline sagged, baring her breasts. The corseted waist still pushed them up high to present. Hands gripped under her ass, lifting her, and her feet left the ground as they were hooked around a waist. A body braced itself against her back to provide her with better support. Another crowded against her, teeth meeting her breasts, hands massaging her ass, lips met hers and she felt the rough texture of a beard beneath her palm—.
She could not keep track of whose hands were where.
But it turned out she didn’t care.
X
When conjuring, a wizard usually didn’t give them the sensation to feel. Admittedly, since most were used for combat, feeling every blow given to your conjuration would be counterproductive.
But here Gale wanted to feel everything.
It was a bit strange. He felt his image’s sensations like they were muted, as if being pressed to his skin through cloth. But he still felt them.
He felt the hardened peak of her nipple grate against his palm even as his hands were clenched on the globes of her ass. He felt her lips as they kissed even as he licked along the column of her throat. He felt the teasing brush of her fingers against the shell of his ear even as he nipped a path along her own.
It was...enthralling. Fascinating. Maybe if he hadn’t been ragingly hard, he would’ve pondered over this, see if he could heighten the sensation or dull it.
But he had other concerns currently.
He buried into the heat of her as his copy held her up, held her open. Gravity tried to work against them but with two hands, two bodies, it was easy to outwit it. He fucked into her, groaning as her inner walls gripped him.
His copy’s hand worked tirelessly at her clit, lips occupied at her neck. She writhed, her breasts thrust forward as an offering that Gale all too happily took as he laved his tongue over them. “Oh… Oh! Gale!”
“Yes?” he said, along with his copy, providing a strange echo. A flash of annoyance crossed her features right before he replaced it by biting at her nipple.
It took considerable concentration, maintaining this copy, even as he chased his own release. It moved by his will. He had to think about where he wanted its hands, had to remind himself of the shape and bulk of his own body to keep it corporal. He could feel it straining his control, his power.
But it was worth it. Anything he did for her was worth it.
“Y-You have to know,” she stammered and his brows scrunched. He must’ve not been doing a good job if she was capable of words. He dug in deeper, ground his fingers against her clit harder, but still she continued. “I-I wasn’t even considering anything with Halsin—.”
At the mention of that druid’s name, a hot surge of anger welled within Gale. He wasn’t mad at her, not really. She was effervescent. Asking her not to be was like asking the sun not to shine or the moon not to pull at the tides.
But the druid had the audacity to ask. He had watched as she retired with him every night, had to have heard her cries as Gale sometimes forgot to cast silence over their tent, had to have seen the marks Gale sometimes left when his pettiness got the best of him and still he had asked.
He had seen this wondrous, beautiful thing that was Gale’s and no one else’s. He had coveted her and then he had the audacity to make his desires known instead of suffering in silence as Gale had willed.
If their roles had been reversed…
Well, best not think on that.
Gale had such few things to call his. His tower. His books. His mistakes.
Don’t take this from me, he thought as his hands seized around her, as if she were about to be snatched from him. Don’t. Please.
Gale tore from her, to both of their dismays. The air seemed to sting him, the memory of warm, wet muscles a poor consolation. Her hands were claws on his back as she tried to urge him back. He willed his copy to pick her up, carry her towards the bed, following. His erection flopped against the bunched fabric of his trousers and he wasted seconds shoving them off. His copy pillowed her head on its lap while he batted her legs apart and knelt between them. He shoved her dress up to get to her core, glistening with wetness caused by his hands.
She’s here with you, he reminded himself. Not him. You. She comes by your fingers, under your tongue. Not his.
And yet he couldn’t help but feel that this was a fragile thing.
His mouth sealed over her, tasting the tang of his own precum as he licked between her folds, sucked on her clit. Her wail reached him, satisfied something deep within his core.
While he lapped at this sacred part of her, his copy held her still under his ministrations, hands unspeakably gentle even while his own bit deep in her thighs. It petted through her hair, ran soothingly along her cheek as she panted. One of its hands cupped her breast, massaging it rather than playing with it.
He didn’t let up until she came on his tongue and, even then, he stayed there licking at her wetness, feeling her tremors, her seething magic.
Freya’s hands tugged at him, trying to pull him away. “Gale? Gale, I-I need you.”
“You have me,” he said against her cunt. “Never doubt that.”
Her hands stayed at his hair, insistent. “No, in me. I-I need you in me.”
He reluctantly moved away from his prize, looking up at her.
She looked debauched. Her head was reclined against his copy’s thigh, her hair rivulets around her. Her blue eyes were glazed with need. The remainder of her dress was bunched together on her torso. Areas of her creamy skin had been chafed from his beard. One of her breasts bore the imprint of his teeth, though he didn’t remember leaving it. The other was cradled in his copy’s hand.
His copy’s hands were still gentle where they touched her, its expression one of neutral pleasure.
He willed its hand down, watched in fascination as its fingers buried up to its knuckle in her cunt, as she had commanded.
She thrashed, hands fisting on the bed, rose petals wrinkling beneath her. She jerked her hips as if to try to escape him, reaching down to grasp his copy’s wrist to still it. “No. No! Gale, I need you!” She reached for him, as if he were somewhere far away, not kneeling there, watching his copy’s fingers stretch her.
He crawled up towards her, heeding her call. Her look of distress vanished as he settled over her, her hand cupping his cheek. She jerked his copy’s hand from her only to replace it with his own, a sigh of relief leaving her. “I only want you.”
The candor in her voice broke his concentration. His copy vanished from his peripherals, the sensations leaving him until he was a lone man in his own skin once more. Freya didn’t even blink twice at its departure, riveted as she stared up at him. He didn’t realize until it was gone how much effort it had cost him, his muscles suddenly weak beneath him, his vision wavering. The urge struck him, to lay down and curve his body around hers in a dead, deep sleep, to feel her fingers playing in his hair—such humble, modest desires—but he had a woman to please.
“Are you sure?” he asked, a warble to his voice. He didn’t feel like he had much magic in him, but for her he would scour into the darkest dregs of himself. “I can make anything. Bring your every fantasy to life, sate your every whim—.”
Her hands on his cheeks stopped him. “Gale, you are my fantasy. Just you. Just as you are.”
Something in him broke. Something in him was restored in the same breath.
The power she had over him. It should frighten him.
This time, when he entered her, it was gentler, slower. They rutted like that, her on her back, he above her, locking gazes with her, trading chaste kisses and whispered demands. “Faster.” “Slower.” “Deeper.” The bed creaked with their movements. Gale pressed apologies into her skin. Freya carded reassuring fingers though his hair.
Perhaps some would describe it as dull, even tedious, when they had an arsenal of magic and a wellspring of creativity at their hands.
For Gale, though, it felt tender, raw like an exposed nerve, and all the more intimate for it. Her gaze left him shaking. Her body, under his attentions, yielded its secrets, but only to his hands. His name and only his name fell from her lips, a chant, a plea. The boldest thing he did was let his hand drift down to feel where they were joined, quietly marveling.
When he came, he swore he saw stars.
X
Knocking roused them.
Gale tucked himself deeper under the covers, greedy hands clutching Freya’s naked form closer to him, burying his face into the hollow of her neck. “Not yet,” he groaned, licking at her skin, feeling her shiver. He felt her stir as she worked her fingers through his hair, massaging at his scalp.
Couldn’t he stay here? Was that such a big request, to be forever left alone with her?
Apparently it was.
The knocking continued, strong enough to rattle the door in its front. He had a vision of it blowing open, piercing their little bubble. He checked that the blankets covered every inch of Freya, tucking them tighter around her to assuage the itching of his mind.
“Gale, my boy?”
Gale jolted upright, staring at the door in disbelief. “What, does he hide under the floorboards and just wait until it’s the least convenient time to pop out?”
Surely Elminster had better things to do.
“Gale? I know you’re there Gale.” More of that grating knocking. “We need to talk.”
Freya sat up, pulling the blanket with her to keep her breasts covered. She yawned, her eyes heavy with sleep. “We better see what he wants.”
The sight of her there—hair rumbled, all of that skin bared for him and him alone, the morning light bathing her in an unearthly glow, marks dotting her neck, telling all where his lips had been—hit him like a punch. He got a vision then, like he was a prophet. Her, waking in his tower, the light from the glass-stained window leaving her with prisms of color painted on her lovely skin, his pillow with a permanent indent where her head rested, the neckline of one of his stretched out nightshirts slipping from his shoulder, Tara’s stubborn fur clinging to the fabric, though he had washed it thrice already.
He bent over her, claiming a kiss. She let him, arching up into him. Even with the orb stabilized, silenced, he had always felt himself yearning for something, as if hosting the orb had left him in a permanent state of dissatisfaction.
But with her, that hunger stopped. He was sated. Completely. Wholly.
What a wonder you are.
More of that gods’ damn knocking. “Gale? I can hear you. I’m respecting your privacy by knocking but can exert my authority as your mentor—.”
“In a minute!” Gale barked at the door. A giggle left Freya and he chased the sound.
Surely the world could wait until he stole one more kiss.
And it did.