Noone's favorite person.

Gale knows Deia will never be timid.

He suspects he knew it before she ever kissed him. Before the first night she climbed over every careful boundary he had built and made him realize just how fragile a thing restraint could be when placed in the wrong hands. Or the right ones.

Deia is too alive to be timid. Too fierce in battle. Too sharp in laughter. Too intense in the simple act of looking at him, as if she has never learned how to want anything by halves. There is nothing faint or ornamental about her desire. It does not arrive on polite feet. It comes with heat in its mouth and purpose in its hands, and Gale, despite every scrap of wisdom he has gathered over the years, finds himself only pulled closer for knowing it. That is, all things considered, entirely his own fault.

Deia takes what she wants. That is one of the simplest truths about her, and one of the most dangerous. She has always been hungry for life, for chances, for beauty, for the things denied to her so long that wanting them became its own kind of defiance. She wants music. She wants wine. She wants silk against scarred skin and moonlight on a blade and the laugh stolen from someone’s mouth before grief can close over it.

Tonight, what she wants is him. Gods help him, what a strange gift that is.

She does not want him cruelly. Never that. Not crudely either, though there is nothing fragile in the way she touches him. She is still herself. Still too attentive. Too clever. Too Deia. But when she kisses him, she does it fiercely, as if the kiss is an answer she refuses to soften for the sake of elegance. When she pulls him close, there is no hesitation in it. No apology. Her hands move over him with a certainty that makes his breath catch, claiming each part of him she reaches as though she is speaking in a language older and more honest than words. Perfect or imperfect. Cursed or otherwise. She touches him as though none of it frightens her.

Gale is not certain he has ever been wanted quite so completely before. Not adored from a distance. Not admired for brilliance, nor desired for novelty, nor held up like some glittering thing expected to remain beautiful under glass. Wanted. Here. In his body. In all the warm, mortal, flawed immediacy of it. It makes him feel almost dangerously alive.

He had, at some point, sacrificed the simplicity of physical pleasure for something grander. So he had told himself. For transcendence. For magic. For devotion shaped into something vast enough to eclipse the ordinary needs of flesh and breath. What a foolish idea that seems now.

Now, with Deia’s fingers in his hair and her mouth against his. With her heat under his hands and her pulse answering the frantic rhythm of his own. With her teeth sinking into the skin of his shoulder, sharp enough to send a jolt through him that has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the fact that of course she bites. Of course she does.

Deia has never been something one could tame easily. Gale discovers, with a clarity that should alarm him more than it does, that he has no wish to try.

“Gods,” he murmurs, voice low and hoarse against her mouth. “You are exceptionally bad for my restraint.”

There is humor in his voice. Of course there is. Some battered fragment of wit still attempting to preserve dignity amid the wreckage. Deia, perceptive and terrible thing that she is, hears what lives beneath it. She draws back just enough to look at him. Her eyes are half-lidded, darkened by pleasure and focus, the silver of them gone cloudy at the edges. Her mouth is swollen from his, curved faintly as if she knows exactly what he is trying not to say.

“How tragic,” she whispers, “that you still hold onto it around me.”

He does not get to answer. She kisses him again. Her grip in his hair tightens, not to hurt him, never to hurt him, but to hold him where she wants him. To keep him close. To draw from him that sharp, unguarded breath she has apparently decided belongs to her now. Her tongue brushes his lower lip, seeking entrance with a confidence that makes his thoughts scatter, and the rough sound that escapes him is swallowed by her mouth before he can pretend he meant to make it.

His hands are no longer idle. He has learned her permission by now. Learned the shape of her yes in the way she leans closer, the way her breath changes, the way her body answers before pride can dress the answer in wit. His fingers, less steady than he would prefer and far less hesitant than they once might have been, have already undone most of the clasps and laces that keep her fabric in place. He draws it away from her torso by degrees, baring her to the low light and to his hands and to the reverent hunger that rises in him every time he sees her like this.

The scars first. Always the scars. Not because they are all he sees, but because he refuses to let them remain untouched as though they are places shame has made forbidden. His fingers trace them with a gentleness that is almost worship and a fascination that is not pity. Then the scales, faint where they catch the light, dark and lovely beneath his touch. He follows both with the same devotion, scar and scale alike, each part of her another truth he is allowed to learn.

Deia watches him for a moment, and the sharpness in her face flickers into something quieter. Then his hand finds the place he knows makes her shiver. Her reaction is immediate. A breath breaks from her. Her spine draws taut. One hand grips his shoulder harder while the other remains in his hair, and when his thumb brushes the tender peak of her breast, her hips roll against him with such instinctive heat that Gale’s next breath leaves him broken at the edges.

Gods, this woman. This impossible, brilliant woman.

The thought flashes through him, bright and useless, and vanishes just as quickly when she rolls her hips again. Deliberate this time. Wickedly so. Her fingers glide down his chest, nails grazing his skin lightly enough to leave gooseflesh in their wake, and Gale finds, with mounting concern, that his patience is becoming more theoretical by the moment. Deia notices. Of course she notices. Her smile says she has found another weakness and intends to keep it.

A sharp exhale leaves him. The last delicate thread of restraint in him snaps, not wildly, not carelessly, but cleanly enough that he can feel the break. He catches her at the waist and turns them over in one smooth motion, lowering her onto her back against the soft spread of the bedroll beneath them. Deia lands with a breathless sound that turns almost immediately into a grin.

There it is. Trouble and pleasure alike. That bright, wicked curve of her mouth that makes him want to kiss it from her and earn it back again in the same breath.

“There’s my wizard,” she murmurs.

The words move over his skin like a touch. Gale’s eyes close for one brief, treacherous moment as he fights the shudder her tone draws from him. It is absurd, how easily she can undo him with so little. A phrase. A look. The smallest curl of approval in her voice. Then he opens his eyes again, and what remains in him is no longer caution. Only intent.

He leans down and kisses her, firmer now, deeper, more deliberate. One hand braces near her shoulder while the other glides from her knee up along her thigh, disappearing beneath the loosened fall of her skirt. He feels the hitch in her breath before his fingers reach their destination. Feels the way her body prepares for him, the way she is already warm and wanting, the way anticipation tightens through her like a drawn bow.

When his touch finally finds where she aches for him most, the sound tears from her throat before she can shape it into anything clever. Gale nearly smiles against her mouth. Nearly.

“There’s my sorceress,” he murmurs back, his lips brushing hers with the words.

He knows there is a remark building in her. Several, likely. Some sharp little retort, some clever jab about arrogance or wizardly self-satisfaction. Deia always has something to say. He knows her too well by now not to recognize the gathering of it in her eyes, the slight lift of her brow, the faint parting of her mouth. So he does not give her time.

His fingers press deeper, slow and sure, and whatever line she had sharpened against him dissolves into a gasp. Her body arches beneath him, hips lifting into his hand, one thigh tightening against his side as sensation overtakes language. The sight of it, the sound of it, the way she loses the sentence entirely because of him, sends a hot, almost savage satisfaction through him. Not cruel. Never cruel. But undeniably pleased.

Deia’s hand flies to his shoulder, nails biting lightly through the fabric of his robe as she shudders under his touch. Her head tips back, baring her throat, and Gale lowers his mouth there at once, because he is only a man and apparently a very doomed one. He kisses the line of her pulse while his hand moves with growing confidence beneath her skirt, each slow motion drawing another sound from her, each sound loosening something more dangerous inside him.

It is a strange game they play, this shifting of power between them.

The tug and yield. The challenge and answer. The way she takes and then lets him take in return. The way neither surrender nor control ever belongs wholly to one of them for long. It passes back and forth like flame, and perhaps that is why it excites him so profoundly. Because Deia does not become smaller under his hands. She becomes more herself. Sharper. Warmer. Alive in every line.

Tonight, she lets him keep the lead. He knows she lets him. There is a difference, and it matters.

Her eyes find his through the haze of pleasure, dark and daring even now, and Gale feels the truth of it settle deep in his bones. She is not helpless beneath him. Not conquered. Not quieted. She is choosing to give him this moment, choosing to let his hands set the pace, choosing to trust him with the heat he has helped summon in her. He has no intention of wasting such a gift.

His mouth returns to hers, swallowing the next broken sound she gives him, and his fingers move with a precision that makes her whole body tremble. Deia grips him harder, pulls him closer, and for once there is no cleverness in the way she says his name. Only need. That is what finally destroys the last of his composure.

Gale kisses her again, deeper, almost fierce with the force of his own want, and lets himself become exactly what she has called him.

Her wizard.

Hers, at least in this breath. In this dark. In this beautifully ruinous moment where all his learning, all his eloquence, all his grand ideas of restraint and transcendence have narrowed to the exquisite fact of Deia beneath his hands, trusting him, wanting him, coming apart because he knows where to touch.

And gods, he thinks, as she arches against him again.

What magic could possibly compare to this?

The tressym chirped, hovering behind the tiefling's back and observing the growing vegetables alongside her companion. Lately, she had been spending more time with her than with Gale in his study, much to Tavanna's delight.

It warmed her heart whenever her new four-legged friend chose her company, as she was keenly aware of the fact that Tara was very protective of her pet, as she called him.

"Tara, how many times do I need to tell you? You can call me Tavanna." Her brow furrowed as she pondered how to make the greenhouse more organized and less chaotic, disorder being one of her foibles. The golden light of the setting sun made her cheeks redder and the clutter around her more obvious.

"Oh dear, I shall never get used to this." The tressym grumbled, yet despite her grousing, perched on Tavanna's shoulder.

The wizard smiled brightly, reaching out to scratch her under the chin. "Thank you for lending me a hand," she said, nodding towards the second conjured mage hand helping her water the crops.

A year ago, she would not have believed she might experience something so close to domestic bliss. Yet what else could this warm feeling be, when she caught herself smiling wider, and not merely because of the bountiful harvest of tomatoes?

~~

I was inspired to make these pictures when I first visited the Sunvale cottage from Lenorebutsad. The greenhouse is beautiful! I merely added a little bit more of scattered light and a lot of scattered tools, vegetable plants, planters, mushrooms, you name it... 😁 I'd like to imagine that a year after the defeat of the Netherbrain, things have finally somewhat settled down in Waterdeep, and Tavanna couldn't be happier that Tara seems to warm up to her – so they can hang out together, planting veggies and gossiping about the other wizard 😁