#post-veilguard

His right hand leaves her breast, setting a course downwards over soft flesh, lingering on scars and the uneven texture of the skin that swells below her navel - evidence of her pregnancy that lingers over a year later - a record of her body’s strength and resilience.

The left remains in place, carefully massaging tender, inflamed tissue the way the midwife had shown them how; imparting just enough pressure to express the buildup of milk that was troubling her, but gently enough so as not to cause pain or worsen the inflammation further. She sagged deeper into him, sighing shakily, her fingernails digging into his skin - an action based in pleasure rather than pain.

Content with the reaction of her familiar body, and well-versed in the wordless language that they had become fluent in as lovers, he reaches further downwards, feeling her soft pubic hair, then slick, wanting heat.

“You’ll tell me if you would like me to stop, yes?” He murmurs against the side of her neck, knowing the answer already from the wetness that has greeted him.

“Don't stop...” she whispers, “Please keep going…”

So he traces the small, delicate shape of her clitoris, follows the lines of her folds, slowly spreading the evidence of her arousal over her. He feels it joined by the sweet rivulets he’s eased from her breasts that have followed gravity’s pull downwards.

Her hand cups his cheek and he nuzzles into her palm, kissing the callused skin formed by so many years of toil and violence. These days the same hands are tools of love and affection. They bring comfort and succor with the same deft competence with which they once shed blood and razed would-be gods.

They are marvelous in their capacity, her hands, and he worships them with the same ardent enthusiasm with which he worships the rest of her - has worshiped the rest of her since the night of their first kiss in the Gardens: a memory that feels like a lifetime ago, yet yesterday.

They were formally betrothed shortly after the fall of the Evanuris, then soon married, for waiting seemed brazen and foolish. To stand on traditional dogma and societal expectations when they had seen so much… lived through so much - it seemed all too feckless to under-appreciate that exceedingly simple luxury so often taken for granted by even the wisest and most learned: time.

Now there exists family - he has a family. She has a family. Two halves made whole, alloyed permanently by the babe sleeping across the hallway, Manfred sitting in a rocking chair by the cradle in dedicated nightly vigil: he and Rook have both tried to explain to Manfred that he needn't to monitor the baby all night every night, but from the very day the child was born, they have been shadowed by their keratinous sibling who has taken to his duty with the sense of solemn diligence that only an older brother is capable of.

As unconventional as their current circumstance may be to anyone else, he finds himself brimming with desire: an encapsulating, proud need to show her for what may be the thousandth time exactly what she means to him: how stalwartly his soul yearns to join with hers... how grateful he is that he even has the opportunity to do so.

They are well past embarrassment and uncertainty in their approach to one another: long gone is the awkward fumbling of words as they each sought to glean what the other likes and what the other doesn’t with the confidence of an experienced Antivan fortune teller determining what might be palatable from tea leaves that smell of cinnamon and sweat.

A finger slips past her entrance, and her toes curl into the blankets at their feet. She arches subtly into his touch, an amorous purr rumbling in her chest.

“Yes?” He breathes, head spinning at the sensation of her exquisite walls - the feeling as they shudder at his languid exploration.

“Yes…” she echoes, left hand crossing his arm. He feels something warm drip against the inside of his thigh; feels another dainty spray collide with his forearm as she massages her other breast.

“You are intoxicating, do you know that?” He confides, surprised to find that his tongue still works. “Do you have any idea how hopelessly entranced I am by you?”

She rolls her hips back slightly, the small of her back pressing against the eager thrum of his hard cock and urging a soft intake of breath from him.

“I think I might have some idea…”

Something in the way she says it: the sly coquettishness, the note of sleepiness that clings to her words - and the harmonious whisper of lust that effuses through each of them, her voice a conduit directly to his loins. He withdraws, aligns his ring finger with his middle, and sinks them both deeper into her, stroking her clit with each roll of his wrist, the quiet crack of his bones serving as a morbid but reliable metronome.

His lips drag over the corded muscle at the side of her neck, unable to help himself any longer as he laves his tongue against the spaces he can reach, indulging in her taste… her scent… her sweat.

“My beautiful Rook…” he takes care not to hurt her when he squeezes her breast again, groaning pleasantly at the hot spurt that drenches his fingers and palm anew, small beads collecting and dripping from his many rings as he continues to ravish her neck while emptying her. “My awe-inspiring wife… my breathtaking companion... how I love you…”

— and how he meant it. Could something as banal and pedestrian as language ever serve to exact how deeply he felt for her?

“Maker Emmrich… I love you too,” she manages between heady sighs and pitched breaths as she continues to come undone cradled between his thighs. Her fingers twitch against his face and make their way down his nose, his moustache, and over his lips, then vanish from him altogether. When they return, they are accompanied by her coveted ambrosia, the same temperature as the blood that courses through her veins.

He collects the gift she has seen fit to bequeath upon him, drawing her fingertips past his lips and coating his tongue with this small, but appreciated indulgence, reveling in the fragile but unmistakably sweet taste of her: so powerful by virtue of its association with her criminally undercelebrated ability to create bonafide life.

“Again… please...” His fingertips stroke the pleasurable place that dwells in her core, and he urges more milk from her nipple with another practiced squeeze. He’s of half a mind to taste his own fingers - lick them clean like a lazy old tomcat in a sunbeam, but ultimately decides to wait for her blessing first.

Rook moans - quieter than she used to before their child was born, but with an accompanying shiver that indicates without a doubt that he’s found the right spot - and she wants more too.

“Anything for you, my love,” she says, shifting, unwinding herself from him to position herself more intimately, straddling his lap so he can feel the heat of her cunt against his cock. Her breasts hover inches from his lips now: ripe fruit within his reach. She sinks down on him and his fingers tighten in the sheets.

“Rook…” he breathes, stroking her long, soft hair, tears springing unwarranted to his eyes for the simple fact that she is that formidable - even after all this time; so many nights of passion and love... so much life already lived together, and yet every intimate moment with her is as disarmingly meaningful as the first. “Ohhh… my darling Rook…”

She shushes him gently, fingers carding through his hair, and he places his mouth over her breast, feeling the taut firmness of the skin there: the source of her discomfort. Flattening his tongue against the underside of the warm mound, he flexes the bridge of it upwards towards the roof of his mouth, and even if he had cared to, he wouldn’t have been able to conceal the moan that slips from him when she floods his mouth.

He swallows, feeling dizzy from the chemical rush that accompanies the taste of her: the gravity of their bond, and the slight taboo of this activity. Rook rolls her hips against him, taking him to the hilt and peppering his brow with kisses.

He repeats the motion of his tongue, urging another decadent mouthful of milk past his lips, feeling it spray against the back of his throat while Rook writhes slowly atop his lap. He cups her breast, his hand once more joining his efforts, and in his fervor he is distantly aware that milk is dripping off his chin… his wrist…

He switches breasts and Rook swears softly, her hair tickling the hand he’s placed at the small of her back, which is arching, her head thrown back in ecstasy as the head of his cock scrapes against that divine spot within her.

She whines: Keens. Whimpers - all between utterances of encouragement and praise - she thanks him for this blessed relief as he drinks her down with the thirst of a man lost at sea, lost in her ephemeral sweetness - the love that courses down his throat as they are conjoined in the most intimate and sacred of ways.

“Are you going to give me another?” She pants, then tilts his face from her breast and kisses him deeply, continuing to drip steadily onto his chest.

“Of course,” he rasps, mind mired in a haze, but well aware that she clearly means another child. He holds her tight to him and places the tenderest of kisses to her wet, thickened nipple. He is afraid to let go, lest he float away. “Of course, darling."

Diligent and disciplined in his determination to complete the task at hand, he grips her again: her breasts are softer now - no longer firm and hot - but instead malleable and warm. He coaxes another spray into his mouth and drinks from her until they find simultaneous release.

So, this will be part of a bigger thing eventually but here's some context for this snippet:

Illario and Nera have been involved with each other for many years but they've been together in a more “traditional” sense, since events that occurred after Murder of Crows (but before Tearstone).

Their relationship has been developing in a certain direction and as such, Nera decides that he should meet her family. So, Nera takes Illario through the eluvian to visit her family, one summer day. The Aldwir clan has already met Lucanis (he and my canon Rook, Kiore, are together and they visited the clan during the events of Veilguard) but this is the first time they've met Illario.

To say Illario is a bit out of his element would be an understatement.

The summer sun had set behind the foothills to the west, pulling with it the vibrant hues of what had been a spectacular sunset. Its brilliance had made the canopy ringing the glade above them glow gold then copper then finally a deep crimson. As the last of the warmth in the sky faded into rich indigo and violet black, twilight settled upon the Dalish camp.  Several bonfires burned across the clearing, keeping the encroaching night at bay. Near the center of camp, a group of livelier, younger elves were still playing music and swapping stories. Their intermittent laughter and excited clapping carried across the settlement, while others went about their evening routines, clearing the common areas or setting up for the next day's tasks.  Illario observed Nera's clan with interest as he leaned against the railing of the aravel offered to them for their visit. He sipped at a steaming mug of something like tea. Nera's grandmother, the Keeper of the clan he learned earlier that day, had pressed it into his hands on his way back from the central fire.  He had yet to finish it. Sweetened with honey and something else he couldn't quite name, it was pleasant but odd to his palate. All of the food he’d had so far was but he was trying to follow Nera’s advice and “be adventurous”. Illario had bristled when she’d first said it, before they’d left Treviso, had retorted that it wasn’t like he was unadventurous. Nera had leveled one of her serene but unimpressed expressions at him, patted his arm, and then continued packing without further comment.  He’d bristled at that, too.  So, he’d tried everything he’d been offered: hand-pies stuffed with slow-roasted meat that had been rubbed with herbs and spices in combinations he’d never had before; a salad of sorts made from fresh summer greens, flowers, and slices of something like pear; little cake things made from dried fruits, nuts, and some kind of grains and brushed with honey; and now the tea, that somehow tasted like a flowering glade, still steaming in the mug in his hand. He gently rocked the mug to swirl the liquid inside as his thoughts wandered. Illario appreciated how welcoming of him they'd been so far, even though he felt out of place in a way that reminded him of when his first growth spurt hit him in his youth. Unbalanced, all elbows and knees, and somehow too big and too small. It left him feeling faintly nauseous most of the day. If he were being uncharitable, he would attribute some of that to the food that was so different from his usual fare. A few years ago, he probably would have. But he knew it wasn’t that.  Even being so far out of his element, he at least had his training and experience to fall back on. He may have been floundering internally but he was ever the picture of charm and graciousness to his hosts. Even when Nera’s little cousins had tried to pull pranks on him, much to her annoyance. But Illario had taken it in stride. He was a younger sibling of sorts. It may have been many years since he and Lucanis had been as free with their affection and tricksome ways but he was not unfamiliar with the rhythm of it.  It was a veneer, but a believable one. Inside, though, he felt he was one swell away from being unmoored.  Nera’s family, the clan as a whole… there was just an ease, a level of comfort unknown to him in his adulthood, that permeated the entire group. The Crows could have camaraderie – there were alliances – but there was always the threat of a blade in the dark, poised to strike at an opportune moment.  But this? The Crows didn’t have this. His own family didn’t have this. Not anymore. It dredged up half-forgotten memories: of playing with his cousins in the gardens of the Villa; of hearing the laughter of his aunts and uncles, carried through the halls during dinner parties that ran late into the night; of summers at the vineyard estate where the sunsets painted the sky with such colors to make one’s eyes water.  Ghosts, all of it. Phantoms of things lost.  Illario’s stomach twisted.