Marcellus

You will have memories, Because of what we did back then.

When we were new at this.

Yes, we did many things, then...

All of them beautiful. ― Sappho, Come Close.

BUT. Hear me out!!! 👀 We’ve been adventuring ourselves a wee bit, right? Here’s a small event from one of our adventures under the cut 👇

For a creature so intense, bolstering brutality as though that was the only language he’d known in decades worth of living, there was this remarkable display of courtship to how Marcellus took the initiative to gently pry Astaria’s hand away from those tight knots around her wingspan so he could knead them into relief himself. Every press of those impressive fingers seemed to comb straight through her muscles. Heat surged within her, bright and nauseating in its pleasure, and the sound that spilled out of Astaria’s lips didn’t belong to anyone civilised.

How unusual it was, to be handled with such reverence. 

Men who delighted in pain, she’d learnt, often did so the way fire consumes: greedily, thoughtlessly, reducing beauty to ash just to watch it burn. But his attention… his touch… it had the intoxicating focus of a ritual, the kind you weren’t sure if you were about to be worshipped or sacrificed.

And gods, she she was addicted to it already.

“Fuck, Marcellus…” Astaria’s voice poured out in a winded exhale, all the air in her lungs fine-tuned to surrender. “You’re not one for small mercies, are you?” 

Teeth, pointed and dangerous, soon took to toying with those sensitive elven ears, and before Astaria could hope to stop herself, her breath had already scattered out in tiny, winded fragments.

“Blood—” She tried to speak, canting her head sideways to expose the graceful arch of her neck to him. “It would make me whole again, yes.” 

It always did.

Old wounds mended, hymen restored depending on the amount of blood consumed.

With her body still tingling pleasantly in the wake of the tiefling’s touches, so oversensitised now, all pert nipples and clenching inner muscles, the absence of Marcellus set Astaria herself into motion. It wasn’t until the tiefling abandoned her skin that she followed suit. A sharp sting immediately rewarded her for the attempt, halting all motion just after she’d swung her legs off the mattress and grasped tightly around its edge with one hand. The other one tried to rid her temples of a migraine’s assault, feeling her skin throb unpleasantly under the press of icy fingers. 

“Ugh…” 

Getting up took effort. Not doing so would have been like open fire on her pride. She hauled herself up and used the wall as a conspirator, dragging her way toward the tub with the stubbornness of someone who refused to look weak even when her body was still cataloguing every recent violence.

Each step was a fresh little shock: ah, yes, there. And there. Especially there.

“I wouldn’t be terribly offended if you helped me climb into this thing, you know?”

The scented water smoothed out in steaming ripples. He was no stranger to luxury as the baths of the noble houses were often granted with the same blessings as the concoction this tavern had provided, albeit the resources here stood a little more crude. Still, he stood by like a chastened judge, unsure of his own place to decide the quality, and yet with the knowledge that yes - things could be better, and things could be worse.

"These roses, they'd been pruned from their stems over a tenday ago," he observed, idly, flicking his fingers through the bloodspot petals, dry like sun washed herbs. He'd seen fairer selections, fresh from their bouquets that lavished the Upper City washtubs. His status only got him so far to grant them some minor indulgences. At least there were petals.

Turning now, and eyeing her as she rose, gingerly, pain-swept and weathered like a training post that had seen too many beatings, he strode over to guide her from the bed, taking her hand into his to support her teetering weight.

"Lean on me, you won't fall," he coaxed her with the irony of smiles. Even as her lone assailant, deathly guilty of her bruises and the slick trickle that painted the slope of her spider-thin legs, he was adamant to offer the courtesy of a saint - a pantomime that did not match the black of his devil eyes, the spire of his horns so crooked in the shadow of a sinner.

"Of course," he amused over her request. "You're so light. I could hold you upon my back for a day and still, I could keep walking."

As if to illustrate, he swiftly hoisted her up by the grapple beneath her legs, her spine, lowering her into the tub as easily as he would to a newborn.

It was here he took a step back to assess the fruits of his labour. There, swimming in the haze of lamplight was a moon glowed vixen, the nubile contours of her breasts flushed against the littered petals; a forbidden elegance that eclipsed even the masterwork paintings he had witnessed of the goddess Sune.

She was, admittedly, a beautiful little creature. It had occurred to him then that he did not yet know her name.