It only takes a single taste.

One sample of how her body feels on his, and suddenly it's all Quilleran can think about. Suddenly it's easier to bare himself for her another time, and another after that. Suddenly humanity's unspoken yet ubiquitous obsession with sex, covert in its discussion but undeniable in its existence, makes sense.

A boldness born out of newly acquired practice gradually strengthens its hold on both of them, such that some days they tumble into each other just past Saruya's threshold without so much as a “hello.” Many of their adventures outdoors they trade for evenings swathed in skin and body heat, saliva and sweat. Against the temperature and humidity of late-summer weather, the hot air they exchange is smothering. In any other situation it would be oppressive to the senses, but with Saruya, he is more than willing to succumb to the mugginess that lingers in his skull and weighs down his limbs. Together, they melt into one sanguine, sticky puddle, belonging no less to the season than cicada husks on cragged oak tree bark.

She is an addiction. Her skin is a delicacy of maple shavings and petrichor that lives permanently on the tip of his tongue. It is the first thing he tastes in the morning regardless of where he wakes up, regardless of how long it has been since last he was buried in the tight lines of her neck. He's not sure how many times he's covered the markings across her body with his lips anymore, but his mental image solidifies impeccably with each additional pass. Something as simple as a single exhale can now conjure the memory of her ears as they twitch and flicker like an animal's, reacting frantically whenever his ragged breaths find them. They're sensitive, Saruya has warned him more than once, but he gets a rise out of the sounds she makes the closer he gets to them. Just once, he wishes to close his lips around them—to drag the wetness of his inner lip across the length, to nibble at the lobe until she jumps, or keens, or whatever it is that the sensation makes her do—but with patience, he feels he could earn the privilege. It would be better than taking it for himself, even if the thought of the surprise brings a separate type of enjoyment. In the meantime he abides by whispering impropriety into them, holding her in place with the breadth of his hand threaded into her hair, until the shiver up her spine jolts through her shoulders and threatens to knock their heads together. He's fairly certain her fingernails have dug trenches in his shoulders in the process. Her pleasure is loud, and palpable, and his alone. Before, such thoughts of her were a concept existing only in the corners of Quilleran's mind as an intangible fantasy, something he could never be allowed, but from here on they were merely potential.

He still does not feel worthy of her, in truth. It gets easier to nudge the feeling aside the more times he makes her come.

Quill thinks little of his self-perceived boorishness when next their legs tangle into knots, when he can smell her musk on himself and his name gets caught in her throat. Instead, he drinks in the sight of her hips melding with his in waning sunlight, the details only visible on the brightest highlights of the slick smeared across their abdomens. When Saruya is fully aroused, the folds between her legs are so much smoother and so much wetter than he had fantasized before ever touching her; clearly, even his imagination had showcased his inexperience of the time. They are truly silken, plush, softer than any other part of her (even the slope of her breast or her waist, the sights of which he has also committed to memory,) and when he slides inside the texture is beyond the capacity of words. The guilt of his own indecorum only weighs on him when they are apart, anyway—when he returns to the indecorum of the Sordid populace, his cravings for her feel less like the manifestations of his own desire and more like the product of the condensed depravity of the entire realm. This perspective is false, of course, but in the Sordid's presence the line blurs beyond the point of logic. Saruya, however, is endlessly welcoming of him at every turn, a fact of which he is reminded each time they reunite. Her eyes gleam once she intertwines his fingers with hers. She listens eagerly when he recounts the events of his day, or the most recent topic of his research. She awards him every ounce of her affection, breathing loving words into his hair or his chest amidst post-coital embrace. If he's being truly honest, there are days when that alone is better than the sex.

His days spent among the Sordid have developed rapidly into punishing work. As a declaration of war looms closer on Fyros's agenda, and Quilleran's dread regarding it tinges the edge of every single other thought he has, he finds himself turning more often to Saruya for comfort. He knows she is powerless to alter his predicament on her own, and goodness knows he's doing everything he can to delay the inevitable, but he can at least be granted reprieve for a few hours at a time in her presence, a few afternoons or evenings spent away from the very mouth of evil. He vents about what he feels he feasibly can—enough to keep her informed of any development without thrusting her entire outlook into gloom—but beyond that, words become of little use, and the soothing brush of her palms across his back is all he finds himself wanting.

He's found himself underneath her thumb again this evening. His cheek is pressed against the bare hollow of her sternum (though it would be more apt to say their combined sweat has glued him to the spot) and he can hear her heart rate abating to its usual rhythm with each passing minute. His weight is heavy on her lap, he knows, but she has never once complained. Even still, he has propped himself up the faintest amount onto his elbows, just enough so that her lungs can expand comfortably with each languid inhale. Saruya has preoccupied herself with an invisible pattern which she traces and re-traces over him, starting at his temple, caressing the outer shell of his ear, down his jawline, and rounding out at the shoulder before making its way back up the base of his skull. When the pattern is completed with one finger, she starts again with the next, going back and forth down the line until the distinctions between each digit fade away and his nerves prickle like twinkling starlight. It's intoxicating.

He's adorable, Saruya thinks to herself, in the way that he sighs like a tired puppy and deflates atop her. She knows this type of attention is foreign to him—she doesn't need to know his personal history as intimately as she does to see the tension in the dips of his scapulae, the tendons that shift in his jaw and his temple whilst he compares one critical decision against another. Even inconsequential choices hold the same level of gravity, as though his body is unable to differentiate between frivolity and the weight of the world. It truly is a pity. 

"Does that feel good, darling?" Her voice drifts across the silence hanging over them like a rustle of leaves. Her throat is dry, and the first word cracks a little as it emerges before her vocal cords build up the momentum to project clearly again.

Quill makes a sound in response that has no form, which is exactly the caliber of reply she had expected.

She thinks not even he is aware of the stress his body is under, not consciously. Moments together like these are the only time she sees him come close to relaxing fully, but underneath a calm exterior lie years of muscle memory that refuse to acquiesce. He's so uptight, all of the time, like he's bracing for impact, and that's failing to mention the ways he also keeps his personality under chains. Despite the fact that he's opened up a great deal for her, she knows that the way he presents himself is calculated and exact, premeditated. She knows he still holds his tongue often, not out of reservation or politeness, but because it is safe.

"Can I get you anything?" Comes the next question, though she is in no actual position to escape the man nearly twice her size pinning her to her spot. It's her own fault for tuckering him out so, but there is nary a regret in her mind for it.

Quilleran shakes his head. His day-old stubble scratches delightfully at the skin between her breasts, the subtle sensation of each prick spreading outward into her body through her arteries. After a moment, he amends in a voice similarly parched, "More of this."

His statement is followed by a small hum of amusement from Saruya. "It's nice, isn't it? To be touched," she murmurs, swirling the ends of his hair around her fingertips, "with kindness. I don't think we get to enjoy it nearly enough. I don't think we allow ourselves the opportunity."

With his ear pressed against her sternum, he can hear the soft rumble under Saruya’s skin whenever she speaks. “‘We’ being whom?”

“Umm, a collective ‘we’, I suppose, not just you and me." Her fingernails sweep daintily past the back of his neck, following the bumps of his spine as far as her arm can reach. "We certainly couldn't control the hands we were dealt, but it would be unrealistic to assume we're the only ones living in such isolation. I’m sure there are others out there who are similarly deprived.”

He grunts acknowledgement into her chest, breath warm as the summer air itself and spilling across her torso in the same way mist rolls over the still surface of a lake. Her touches are light enough that they barely register, but beyond their delicate, deliberate delivery is a resonance profound enough to soothe the most anxious of hearts. It stirs a sort of pining within him that has for years laid dormant, sleeping deeply beneath blood and muscle and bone. His senses respond without conscious thought or prompting, so impacted by the subtle gesture that the hairs on his nape stand on end.

Saruya is quick to observe the rising gooseflesh, accompanied by a shift in his arms and shoulders as his muscles relinquish another modicum of their steadfast clenching, and a hushed tut-tut escapes her lips. “You poor thing. Your body is so unaccustomed to tenderness.”

"There is not much to be found on Talon Hill." This response, too, is structured, conveyed on a tone of detached nonchalance that uncouples itself from the nature of the cruelty and betrays the humanity of his that the Sordid strive so fiercely to bury.

"I wouldn't expect there to be, but the very idea still makes my heart ache." She mulls over her thoughts before continuing, "You deserve so much more than this."

She needs to be more careful with that word, 'deserve'. Fresh off the heels of the mention of Talon Hill, he is not inclined to agree with her, as his thoughts trail briefly to memories of his own misconducts committed there under Sordid rule. This time, at least, he has such luck that the haze of coitus slows his thoughts like footsteps in a bog and carries them no further.

"I am fortunate to have known it from you," is the response that emerges, instead. It's progress.

She lets her head drop and breathes a sigh into his hair. She alone cannot undo the years of burdensome guilt under which he is yoked. That will be a journey all his own, beginning with a forgiveness of himself and his circumstances and (hopefully) ending with a better future than his current reality can rightly promise. Until then, his poor shoulders remain taut.

“Your body has to learn the meaning somehow. It’s like someone should hold you down and show you how good a kind touch feels until it understands.”

Moments after the words leave her lips, the notion strikes her.

She could be that person. In fact, she's the only one who could be that person. For as long as she is graced to have him in her life, she should be that person.

The corners of her mouth tick daintily upward.

Quilleran, acutely aware of the sudden spreading of silence between them, lifts his head to investigate. Just barely from his angle, he can spot the tip of her tongue at the corner of her mouth, pressed against her teeth in thought, or rather, mischievous intrigue. "I am unsure how I feel about the expression you are wearing at the moment."

The smile widens. Her eye is dotted with an undeniable twinkle. “How much do you trust me?”

His brows draw cautiously closer together, the mote of hesitation in his voice deepening. “I am equally unsure how I feel about that question, given the current context.”

“Oh, relax! I’m not planning anything devious, just…different.”

“Different,” he parrots back to her.

“Different," she reaffirms, "but it will be good, I promise! Only good things. And if you don’t like it, you can tell me and we’ll stop.”

It's tough enough to resist her infectious enthusiasm, but to deny her anything with her bare chest at his eye level is a meaningless effort. She had never given him any reason to distrust her, that much is certain. She's genuine to a fault, and cheeky though she may be, her spontaneity could never be described as malicious.

“You'll just have to close your eyes and hold still.”

Following a statement such as that, however, his certainty regarding the prior anecdote is cast suddenly into playful suspicion.

Nonetheless, by the time she squirms out from beneath him and repositions herself across his lap, his willingness to allow his eyelids to rest shut outweighs the apprehension and he complies. Even with his eyes closed, he can still identify the delightful warmth of her thighs straddled atop his lap, can still notice the way the mattress shifts below them if she adjusts her balance—and if he really focuses, he can just faintly track her shadow in the blur beneath his eyelids. In this way he isn’t truly clueless as to the happenings around him, but if she were to move slowly enough she would likely maintain her element of surprise.

“Without your eyes, you have to rely on your other senses,” she begins, introducing her concept. “After a long enough time, you might find that you hear things better, or that your sense of touch seems more defined. When I was younger, I did a lot of exercises to teach me about my senses—you could say this is similar, but this will be much more intimate with just the two of us.” She moves one hand, beginning with the simple motion of pushing a loose lock of hair behind his ear. “So all you have to do is keep your eyes closed and focus on your body. Can you do that for me?”

Quilleran envisions the way her face may have softened at the question by the way her tone changes from straightforward and informative to caring and quiet. He can even fabricate in his mind how her expression might match her voice: eyes, bright and gentle, peering down at him through long eyelashes, the late afternoon sun casting golden light on the dark, mask-like pattern of skin across both lids.

“I can."

Obedience comes easily to him.

He can hear her smile widening, a particular and very nuanced set of sounds made when lips pull across teeth, barely audible anywhere other than a quiet bedroom. It is the first among many noises to catch his attention in lieu of visuals, such as the creaking of the bedframe beneath their combined weight or the bristling of the follicles on his scalp as her fingernails scrape through them.

Saruya’s hands return to their former mission of passing over skin and hair with focused precision, from the crown of his skull to his browbone, from eyelids to cheeks to jaw. The pads of her fingertips, slightly oily in the way hands naturally are, drag ever so slightly against the softer points of his skin, a feeling stark in contrast to the firm glide of her nails, applied with pressure no greater than feather-light. The balmy feeling spreads as his jaw is cupped in her sturdy palms, and then accessorized by the scrape of dry lips (parched from the hours they have already spent talking and kissing and mouthing at each other) against the crease of his forehead. And then another. She scatters her affection like dandelion seeds on a clement breeze, layering them across his forehead, the tip of his nose, each cheek, his lips and onward past his jaw, the last of which generates the most response from him. Perhaps it is the way she tilts his chin to position him exactly where she wants, perhaps it is the adjacency to the tantalizingly exposed carotid artery, perhaps it is the way she opens her mouth just slightly so that he might feel the tack of her inner lip. Whichever the reason, it is enough to cause a stir in the pit of his stomach and a dry rumble at the back of his throat.

“Not so bad, I hope?”

Her voice has grown quieter than when they had started, floating the question just above a murmur, haloing his ear. It occurs to him briefly that it should be him in her place, pressing his cheek to hers while he whispers on heavy breath just to spark her nerves. Alas, though the air that leaves her lungs is pleasurable and soothing in its temperature, he lacks the involuntary, flitting response she possesses that fascinates him so greatly.

"Not at all." One eye cracks open. In his mind, the intent is that by meeting her gaze he can assure her of his genuine wellbeing, but the logic is merely a ruse, as beneath the excuse lies his desire to see her again.

She catches him immediately. From her lips she pushes out a curt sound, like how one scolds a pet, and barks the simple command: "Eyes closed!"

The severity of her commitment is admittedly amusing, another of her qualities which endears him to her. "My apologies," he concedes, though he cannot hide the upturn at the corners of his mouth, "I see this exercise is stricter than I had initially imagined."

"You shouldn't see anything," she teases, playing on his choice of phrasing. "The effect isn't the same if you cheat. This is an exercise for your body, not your mind."

He nods sheepishly, surrendering to her wishes once again. "Very well."

He is rewarded with a kiss on each eyelid, and without looking at her, Quilleran can sense the air of satisfaction that has returned to her attitude. Next, he feels the draw of one finger across the bony points of his jaw, hears the pricking of her nail against each short strand of facial hair. A gentle nudge against his chin from her thumb, and he loosens his neck to allow her to angle him to and fro, in what he presumes is either admiration or a plan of attack.

Saruya's voice enters his awareness again. "You're not planning on wearing anything less than formal anytime soon, are you?"

The question, and its wording therein, piques Quilleran's intrigue. "Not for any reason I can conjure."

"That's good." 

From the nothingness behind his eyelids, there appears suddenly a flash of color as she sinks her teeth into the furthest edge of his clavicle, seals her lips over his skin, and sucks firmly. He jolts, eyes rocketing open again from the shock. A gasp dissolves into a groan as the sting eases, and he melts into the heat of the endorphin rush that pulses through his body and sparks his arousal.

She hums, smoothing over the bite with her tongue. "That should be hidden enough beneath your collar, right? It'll stay secret there just for you." Then, after pushing herself upright again, she shakes her head dismayed. "...You're looking again."

"You surprised me," Quill contests innocently. He can feel the blush spreading across his features with each passing second, and the rapid thumping of his heartbeat.

"You're terrible at following instructions."

A scoff. He's offended, despite himself. As if he had not spent his entire life in servitude! "I would beg to differ."

“I gave you the one simple task of keeping your eyes closed and you keep opening them! You're giving me little choice but to take matters into my own hands.”

In one swift motion, she lifts herself from her perch atop him and swings her feet to the floor. They pad gently against its wooden surface before she plants herself in front of a storage cupboard. After rummaging about for a moment, she returns to his side and motions for him to shut his eyes again.

As his eyes drift shut once more, a hand on his shoulder is all he has to inform him of her presence. It's gone a moment later, replaced by the distinct feeling of fabric across his face, and he startles, his head jerking backwards away from the object.

“Easy, don't move,” she soothes, in a tone more hushed than the one from her prior chastising.

When he obeys, a strip of cloth is pulled taut across his brow and fastened at the back of his head.

“You had a blindfold at the ready?”

“For sensory development, like I said before!" It's her turn to feel the heat of embarrassment prickle at the ends of her ears. "Don’t get the wrong idea about me.”

“I believe the stakes have, for me, changed to some degree.” He's baffled, to say the least. The reality of the situation solidifies, however, the more the fabric presses back against his eyelashes in his attempts to blink and look around. Her placement of the blindfold is sound—save but for thin slivers of light from where the cloth tents at the bridge of his nose, his surroundings have verily disappeared.

“You still have the power to stop this, should you wish. But I'm hoping this little addition will make this exercise easier for you. Do I need to remind you of your task here?"

He shakes his head. "I am to focus on my senses beyond sight."

"Mm, not quite. Not inaccurate, but oversimplified." The mattress below dips and rolls slightly as she brings herself more upright onto her knees, and the spot left behind in Quilleran's lap grows subtly cooler without her. Her palms connect softly with the sides of his skull, drifting down his neck and over his shoulders, and her tone levels in kind when she speaks again. "Your type of focus is too cerebral—I've been watching it in you this whole time. I need you to try to let all of that go and just feel. So that when my hand touches your chest, here," she narrates, the statement accompanied by a press of her palm against his sternum, "you're not just registering that touch is happening. Maybe you notice my body heat, or the texture of my skin, or maybe you feel your own heartbeat pushing back against it. And it's in this way that touch becomes more than just touch. Your sense becomes an experience, all by itself."

Saruya's explanation is punctuated by a delicate kiss brushing only against the surface of his lips, but the way Quilleran can detect her presence in front of him in the invisible space adds weight to the gesture. She raises an excellent point, that he processes most everything through an informative lens. For him, it's second nature. His observations have the habit of itemizing themselves subconsciously into layers of priority, each line a step or factor in at least three different approaches to any given situation, such that preparedness and vigilance blend together in a proverbial stormcloud of decision-making. So as she speaks, as the artfulness of her language punctures the structure of his methodology, he works to expand his perception: to the strands of her hair, previously tucked behind the ear, that fall loose and dance across his skin with each direction she moves, to the still-lingering pang in his shoulder from her bite, to the pressure of the knotted fabric at the back of his head. When he takes a centering breath, the air that fills his lungs is a different temperature than the air that departs upon exhalation, warmed by his body and changing the atmosphere particle by particle.

She makes a satisfied noise that exudes comfort, even without words. "Very good. Nice deep breath. In fact, let's take one more together."

She leans in again, and Quilleran can feel every increment of her approach through her hand on his chest, through the subtle tension of every connected muscle and tendon as she supports herself against him. She initiates the breath in one ear, circles his head slowly, and exhales in the other, and he allows his chest to swell and fall in time with her. It's the only sound that fills his ears, now, and sharing the breath contributes to a growing heaviness in him, as if tree resin were seeping into his joints and sealing him in place. He does move slightly, the fingers of one hand tentatively wrapping around her other wrist where it's planted for balance nearby, then tracing up the back of her arm. So far, the contact has not elicited any further admonishment.

"One more," the words drag leisurely, each consonant hanging loose in the air and emphasizing the slowing of the pace.

The next breath begins on the opposite side this time and returns to the first on the release. It sends a bright shiver up the length of his spine and through his shoulders, prominent enough for her to notice, and shocking enough that it manages to draw a bashful laugh out of him. The sound is as relieving to make as it is to hear, and he feels his posture relax just a bit more.

She laughs with him, little honeyed vibrations emerging from her chest and her throat. "Perfect." She praises him in a soft-spoken tone and awards him with a kiss.

The kiss starts as one, then a second, pressing deeper, then a third requesting even more. Quilleran lets his jaw open further, lets his neck pull forward to find her, until their foreheads press against each other and he feels her hair curtain around the two of them. It evokes the sense of an intimate privacy, enclosing them as lips meet and part and pull around each other, shrouding them where they join together. 

Saruya teases him now, utilizing the pressure where their skulls meet to keep her lips tantalizingly out of the range of his. His neck elongates farther, reaching for her, his mind's eye telling him that she was only an inch away, if he could just get a bit closer—until she pulls back again, makes him work for it. Her mouth is hanging open like his, he can tell by the puffs of her breath on his lips, how their exhales combine in the space that hangs between them, and she's smiling, damn her, he just knows it. His fingers tighten around her arm in frustration, willing her to just stay still, and as the frisson reawakens in his abdomen it adds to his impatience.

She's surely noticed, but comments not, instead extricating her wrist from his grasp and finally granting the kiss she had withdrawn from him. Both hands return to the sides of his head, now, pinky fingers below his jaw angling him into her in the way he loves. Even as her tongue finds its way into his mouth, still, they breathe together, each gentle sigh another thread in a dizzying, saccharine cocoon.

Quill capitulates when she tilts his jaw higher still, noting the stretch in the muscles around his own throat, and how, with them, the skin overtop pulls taut with every additional degree. Her lips move again, towards his lower lip and further down the front of his chin, to his jaw, to his neck, her tongue hot against his pulse. Anticipation grows with each moment, and skyrockets when her hands drop to his hips, smoothing up the sides of his body with prudent, exacting pressure. It's as if the very blood in his veins follows them, a ghosting of peripheral heat spreading in their wake.

He wants to touch her, too, wants to feel the cushion of her thighs and the curve of her waist beneath the slope of his thumbs, wants to pull her against him and crush her in his embrace. She hadn't explicitly forbidden him from interacting with her, but with how strict she had been already about the rules of this little game he knows such permission is unlikely. His tolerance to resist her, however, withers rapidly enough to justify the risk. He lets both hands drift inward, where the feeling of her knees against his sides tell him her legs are, and slide up towards her haunches. The oils of their skin cling to each other and solidify the grip of his fingertips, like biology itself wants them to maintain their hold, but when he attempts to draw her closer she refuses to comply, hamstrings tightening under his grasp as she leverages her weight backwards.

Despite her resistance, the sound that next emerges from her is almost delighted. "I think I've pinpointed our next dilemma."

Dreaded words for the desperate.

"You really can't handle uncertainty, can you?"

Her question is posed through grinning teeth; Quilleran can tell through small subtleties in the vowel shapes. He feels her fingertips picking at his, prying them loose from her one by one.

"It is my job to be certain of most everything," he replies, unable to disguise a mote of annoyance, "so I cannot call myself particularly fond of it, no."

"You want to control this situation so badly," she chirps, pressing a kiss to his temple, "but I'm not going to let you~"

The fabric of the blindfold drags against the furrow in his brow as a sigh rumbles from the back of his throat. "And just how do you intend to do that, to disallow my so-called control?"

"To make you trust in anything other than yourself? That's a steep endeavor. At this point, the best shot I have is just asking." With another couple of adjustments, Saruya dismounts. "So, do you trust me to alter the stakes one more time?"

Weighing the potential outcomes through the fog left by heavy petting creates a unique challenge. Visualizations of individual doors of possibility present themselves within his mind, but it's as though each one is jammed, the train of thought halting upon touching the handles. Feeling fully blocked from further contention, he resigns, "Very well."

Footsteps resound across the treehouse floor once again. He is alerted to her return by a graze of her fingers against his thigh, then a pull at the crook of his knee and the back of his shoulder that angles him away from her. 

"You know," she muses, "when I said you should be held down earlier I didn't really think I'd have to enforce it..."

Her hands position both of his shoulders, pulling them upright and back. Once she's situated him satisfactorily, another texture is added to the mix: a texture which can belong to nothing other than braided rope, pulling straight across his upper chest before being threaded into a lark's head knot. When Saruya pulls at the rope's tails, the loop tightens, bringing his shoulderblades together with much more effectiveness than her own strength, and she sets her work in place with two more wraps of the rope tails and an additional, more secure knot.

"...but here we are."

The rope's introduction is shocking, without a doubt, and Quill's posture stiffens involuntarily. But what else could she have meant by such words? For her to hold him down with her own weight seemed like an impossibility, a fact of which he considered them both well aware. Before he can dwell on his thoughts any longer, however, he realizes she's begun talking again.

"I have a few things I need you to do for me, alright?"

A task sounds much easier to focus on than the rope, which Saruya now guides downward with steady tension and weaves around his wrists. He turns his head to look at her purely out of habit, absentminded of the blindfold preventing him from doing so, and instead chooses a nod as indication of his attention.

"Most critically, I need you to tell me the instant you notice any unordinary sensations in your arms or hands at any point while I have this on you, like if they get cold or numb. This is very much not the time to tough it out. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

The gravity in her tone sets Quilleran's heart fluttering in a manner he can't ever have anticipated. His pulse seemingly skips each time the strands are pulled taut, the friction of fibers tugged against skin lighting up his nerves and reminding him of his own bloodstream as his body adjusts. The sound of it, too, is sharp on the senses, quick tugs followed by slower drags as the ends are fed the rest of the way through each new layer. The focus of her efforts has traveled a bit by now, connecting the tie at his wrists back to her prior binding around his shoulders for stability before beginning anew with another set of woven loops just above his elbows. It's strangely meditative.

"I want to remind you that you can put a stop to this whenever you please, even if you aren't in any discomfort at all. I promise you won't be hurting my feelings—in fact, I would be more offended if you didn't tell me you weren't having a good time. Is that clear?"

"Alright."

Yes, 'meditative' is an apt descriptor, despite his position as her victim. Even her words of warning draw him deeper into his own bodily awareness, as he monitors each addition by how much pressure is added when next he takes a breath. His chest is spread wide by the central system of ties forcing his arms behind him, and as her reinforcements bring his elbows as close together as his anatomy will comfortably allow, the expansion of each inhale pulls not only against his ribs, but also along every braid keeping him in place. Any flex of his muscles, voluntary or involuntary, sends a rush through his limbs as the binds constringe. Peculiarly, the sensation of his own resistance makes him feel not trapped, but rather somehow more powerful, like the Minotaurs raring for a fight in Phenomina's arena.

In the meantime, Saruya has set about her final set of wrappings around his forearms. She's long since established the majority of the tension, so at this point, the final weaves seem more like decoration, a means to the end of using up the remainder of the rope's length. "Do you need anything before we go any further?"

"I don't think so."

If anything, he's ardently anticipating whatever comes next. 

"Okay." She quiets for a moment while she finishes the binding, the two ends of the rope splitting and crossing a few times for security before finishing with a final tug. "Try that out." 

Quilleran gives a deliberate pull at his constraints, a wholehearted attempt to separate each section one by one—wrists, forearms, elbows, shoulders—but all remain perfectly undisturbed, with only a meager amount of give in any direction before the lines of rope catch and dig into his skin and he stops. By all accounts, her handiwork is perfect. He lets out his breath from the effort, and with it the admission: "This is quite the knot."

There's a sheepishness to her voice when she responds. "I would be a pretty shoddy elf if I couldn’t tie a halfway decent one. But it's not too tight, is it?" She begins feeding a couple of fingers beneath the bands of rope along various points, her fingertips soft (despite their usual array of callouses) in contrast to the braided fiber. "You know, you've been shockingly calm about this whole ordeal so far."

His handling of the situation is a surprise to him, also. For as calm as his demeanor appears on the outside, internally, his heart is pounding, in his chest, his throat, and every artery along the length of his arms. "The pressure is fine," he manages, "and I suppose there is a part of me that believes you incapable of causing me any real harm."

"Well, considering this bruise I've left on your shoulder, you may want to reconsider that stance," she retorts, accompanying the statement with a firm squeeze of his clavicle as she encourages him back into his former reclined position.

He hadn't even seen it develop yet, and frankly had almost forgotten all about it, even though it had been the very thing responsible for his current predicament. All other thoughts of his are swiftly erased when she reintroduces a gentle brush of her palm over his scalp, and just like that he's willing to melt for her again.

"Are you comfortable? Or comfortable enough, under the circumstances?" She's checking him over one more time, prodding here and there and fussing over the cushions and fabrics they've scattered over the course of the afternoon. "You'll tell me if that ever changes, right?"

"I am, and I will, I promise," he insists, with as much authenticity as he can conjure without eye contact. It again occurs to him how much he would like to be able to see her, the look on her face—is she satisfied? Concerned? Is the blush on her face as bright as he senses his own to be? Does she enjoy this look on him?

His words are as clear of a reassurance as Saruya can possibly accept, and he picks up on the movements around him as she reclaims her place: a brush of skin here, a dip in the mattress there. What follows next is the return of her hands, her thumbs specifically, tracing him from his temples, over his browbones and atop the blindfold, past cheeks, neck, chest, and sides. It elicits a deep exhale from him, a release that blends the relief of her touch with the intensity of his anticipation.

He can feel her watching.

What is she thinking?

His heartbeat thrums in his ears.

At last, Quilleran can hear the sound of her lips parting as she opens her mouth, thinks of what she wants to say first. 

Her body is warm.

She finally musters words:

"Oh, you beautiful thing."

The first statement is a marvel. She seems breathless, taking in a deep inhale that rattles her ribcage upon entry. There's a tremble present in the next touch she places upon him, a caress of the back of her knuckles against the sharp cut of his jaw. "I can't believe I get to have this sight all to myself. I can hardly help how much I want to touch you—I want to show you all of the pleasures you've never had the opportunity to know."

The subtleties in her demeanor, the tremors and loss of composure, are the greatest compliment he has ever been given. He strives often in his daily life to avoid pridefulness, but right now, in the safety of her home, he cannot stifle the veritable surge of his ego.

"I am ready," is his response, and he means it fervently. For as strange the situation is in which he's found himself, limbs bound following a promise of tenderness, he feels cradled by her handiwork, like the pressure of the rope around his chest is an extension of her embrace.

"Yeah?" She responds too quickly, earnest excitement overtly present in her tone as if that's all she's ever wanted to hear. 

In the next moment, she's upon him again, leaning against him more heavily as she crushes him beneath her kiss. Her mouth is so wet she must have been salivating over him, and there's an audible smacking sound when their lips meet and part, yet her fingers still manage kindness as she traces his cheekbone with a single fingertip. It is a kindness that hangs by a thread of conscious maintenance, the reminder of her promise, but without that there is no telling what Saruya would do to him.

It seems she is aware of that notion, as well, as she soon takes her hands off of him, perhaps unable to trust herself with the responsibility. The only trace of her is her lips and the trailing ends of her hair falling out of place yet again, both sensations brushing lightly and traveling everywhere that had been left previously untouched. She kisses his shoulders, sucks and licks at him in any place she knows will remain unnoticed, catches her breath between small sections. The feeling of her teeth returns, smoother this time, on his chest, just a nibble, her mouth searing hot as it pulls at his skin. The affections are never-ending, spotting to and fro in various levels of intensity, from tiny suckles and nips to full-mouthed bites. Nonetheless, she is careful, even if only just barely, and follows any harsh sensations with the pleasant smoothness of her lips and tongue.

Not even the rope across his chest is spared from her attention: as she descends lower, it, too, receives a light tug from her teeth. It snaps back into place upon release, making a snagging sound against her canines as she lets go.

Quilleran, all the while, assigns himself the duty of basking beneath her affect. Somehow, someway, it is easier to do so without the allowance of sight or movement. There is no other task but be devoured by her, and devour she does, metaphorically tearing away his body to levy her loving concentration directly upon his spirit. He can feel his thoughts leaving him, the internal din replaced by the cloud of Saruya's breathing and the pleased sounds she makes as she drinks him in. Details float to the surface of his perception one by one. She's hovering over him, close enough that her nipples drag against the hair on his body and firm up the longer the contact persists. The distinctions between the shapes of her teeth become clearer as she bites with varying levels of severity. Still audible, of course, are the wet sounds of her mouth, but new sounds join the mélange soon after. It takes him a moment to place them, to determine their origin within his mental image of the space, but as he shifts his focus to pick out each layer from his surroundings he can gradually paint the picture.

No, the sound is not only from her lips. There is the smearing of skin against skin, a rustle of hair, a motion like lapping or petting. A plunge—subtle, repeating, thrusting, accompanied by a sigh from the woman hanging over him.

She's touching herself.

Shit.

From the sight of him, the desire for him, the loving of him, he knows not the reason, but he is certain of what he is hearing, and hot blood hurriedly spreads throughout his body in response. For as much as he would love to witness her in the act, the secrecy of her self-pleasure without his observation is almost more compelling. The very thought of it drags an echoed sigh from his own chest, and when Saruya replies in kind, it feels as though they're speaking in a nonsensical language, indiscernible to the rest of the world.

"Oh my," she interjects, in the common language this time, her voice puncturing the heavy air between the two of them. "You're a mess."

He knows. He's known for a while, cognizant of the dampness dribbling down the length of him and the minute cooling sensations coinciding with any movement that breaks the stillness. Despite having laid together once already that day, her prolonged provocation has called forth the further reaches of his energy—but, lacking in any other attention, his shaft has had no other choice but to remain dripping, leaking, and still smelling strongly of her.

The final of those details does not seem to deter her for even a second. She speaks no more, puts her lips on him again, his abdomen this time, descends lower and lower. The closer she gets to his hips, the harder it is for his muscles to remain relaxed beneath her influence, tensing and stiffening with every graze of her tongue, which feels hotter than the fiercest blazes by now. And then, finally, she splays herself between his legs and swirls her tongue over the crown to clean him up.

He gasps, willing himself not to crush her head between his thighs, and digs his heels into the bed below. The heat is like a shock (though simultaneously an all-encompassing relief,) but there is little time to process before she continues her efforts and laps at him all over, following every trail of precum until he's spotless.

Spotless, however, is far from enough. Quilleran can hear her take in a deep breath before closing her lips around him, her tongue still flicking and pulsing beyond them. Her hands close around the base of his member for assistance with both the length and angle, enveloping him further in a blanket of her body's internal temperature. His chest feels positively empty; she robs him of breath every time she pushes the glans against her soft palate, but he's deaf to his own panting and moaning, uncaring of any further forethought. He's had enough of that for a lifetime, already. Controlling his focus now is the cacophony of sucking, churning, gulping racket coming from below, hauling him deeper and deeper into the throes of mind-numbing euphoria.

In his hands, he feels the temptation to reach for her, to thread his fingers into her hair, to grip down and direct her to the locations most pleasurable that he could never coherently articulate in his current state. The moment he makes an actual attempt, however, is the instant he is reminded of his place, as his bindings sink further into his skin with the effort and his pulse surges beneath. The action does not go unnoticed—Saruya takes her mouth off of him and giggles at his endeavor, her breath cool in contrast to the immeasurable heat radiating from the both of them, and pairs the rush he feels with a squeeze of her palms. The sensations combined cause him to throw his head back, an involuntary thrash, a failure to contain himself. Stars flash and disappear in quick succession behind his eyelids.

She does her best to keep her lips sealed around him. Her technique is clunky and lacking in skill, a fact which he could never fault her for, especially as she improves little by little. Still, when she detects she's made contact with her teeth one too many times, she eases her grip, toys at him with her tongue using a few delicate swipes, and gently releases him.

He can feel his head spinning even without sight, a dizziness more akin to vertigo, in the brief interim without her stimulus. It's nigh impossible to truly catch his breath, not while his cheeks and ears are still burning and the pounding in his chest is more akin to the thrumming of a hummingbird's wings. The hand that Saruya then places on his sternum feels sudden without any visual warning, but as her palm plants itself in place it brings about a powerful grounding that quiets his senses. It's a check-in, chaste and delicate, functioning as a reminder of her care and watchful eye over him in his compromised position.

A moment later, the tone shifts drastically. The hand rotates, fingers hook underneath the binds across his pecs, and a tug pulls both his body and alertness forward. She coaxes his panting lips into a kiss, something sweet to catch his attention and juxtapose the intensity, and all the while inches herself closer to him, begins working her way back into his lap.

"Still hanging in there?" 

She sounds like she's still close-by following their kiss, and Quilleran lets his head hang until his forehead meets hers. "I am," he replies, comforted by her presence though wary of her grip, "though I haven't a clue what it is I am hanging onto anymore, exactly."

Saruya laughs brightly. "Lost it with your sight?"

"Likely." 

"That's okay. I'll hang onto you, instead." She gives the wrappings another pull to illustrate her point.

He's so stripped of willpower by now that he rocks forward limply with the motion, completely compliant. To find any words worth speaking is to fish from the bottom of the murky lake of his consciousness, a feat requiring more focus than he can reasonably allot at present. He is beyond the threshold of decorum, nearly mute except for hazy, nonverbal utterances, reduced to the barest remnants of his being.

Right as he dares to think that he cannot take any further escalation, Quill feels one of her hands snaking between them, reaching between his legs and gripping his length to keep it in place. The contact is tackier than it was before, like her skin is melding to his, but the stickiness is quickly replaced by the heavenly moisture between her thighs as she joins their hips together for the second time that day.

His attention flies from sensation to sensation—the sound, the texture, the temperature—all indescribable, overpowering, and nothing short of erotic. Like plunging into a pool of liquid velvet, he's surrounded by the consistency of her excretions mixed with his own from earlier, and there's leaking happening somewhere spilling down his scrotum and the inside of his leg. Saruya builds her movements slowly, lifts and descends back down upon him with measured precision, and their limbs stick together and peel apart audibly with every pass. It seems as though she's detected the displacement of fluid caused by his insertion, the dripping, glistening wetness spreading between the both of them, and her walls carefully squeeze down around his girth in an effort to keep both every inch and every drop contained at once. The pressure is so great he feels like he might choke.

Just then, she pulls at the rope against his chest again, uses it as leverage, drags the mass of his torso towards her on the rise and releases with the fall. The heat coming off of his face and the back of his neck feel like a fever, and every scrape of the rope fibers licks like flames, but the sweet lilting of Saruya's voice as he sinks inside of her remains as the one force he can cling to, a life preserver in a tsunami. The comparison is appropriate, as the more she pulls him back and forth the more it feels like he's being tossed by waves, but his throat is so dry and cracked from his own heaving that it's clear he isn't drowning.

He focuses on her scent now that she's worked herself up again, the musk of her body mixed with whatever soaps she uses in her hair, and his nostrils flare as he clambers for his next breath. It is the incense of sex, the only fitting descriptor, heavy with salt and sweat, and serves only to drive his excitement higher. Behind his back, his hands draw into tight, white-knuckled fists, incapable of grabbing at her but desperate to take hold of something. He can feel a rumbling somewhere in his chest or throat, the loudest nothing he's ever uttered, clarity dissolving into chaos in the heights of impassioned thrusting. Saruya is at least slightly more aware of their surroundings than he, rushing to grab his chin and press his face to hers, drinking in the eruption of sounds coming from him until the only way the noise can escape is through a hum. With his mouth captured, his own breathing and the wordless whining of his need enter a fierce competition for the real estate of his airways, such that he has to choose which is more important in any given millisecond. The hollow, dizzy emptiness in Quilleran's skull begs him to favor the one that keeps him alive.

In a breathless high, he believes he has evolved beyond sight. The sensual inputs from the rest of his body control all: the push and pull of their combined hip movements, the taste of her tongue, the scorching warmth between them, the pressure of her fingertips against the hollow of his cheeks, the trailing of sweat down his spine, the rushing of sounds from vocal cords and bodily contact rapidly becoming indistinguishable from each other. Oddly enough, it's not his arms that feel numb, but rather his legs, like all the blood has been withdrawn from his extremities and redirected solely into his twitching cock. It feels like glowing iron, and her insides are somehow both cavernous and engorged at the same time, and the longer that he pulses through the swill of sweet liquid spilling from her the tighter his own skin feels, like it could burst at any moment. He lacks the capacity to concern himself with lasting any particular duration of time; she's weakened him, having teased him so severely after already fucking him once.

She had told him at the start of all this that his body needed to learn the meaning of kindness—conversely, she needed to learn the meaning of the term "refractory period." That would be a lecture for another day.

There's an ache in his groin as she coaxes him closer to release, soothed only by the immaculate silkiness of her folds. Each thrust inward is its own relief, but the withdrawal sends him right back to the edge, her grip around him milking any last traces of restraint. Without warning, Saruya relinquishes her hold on the layers of rope around his chest and peels her fingers from his jaw. Using the same softness with which she had been petting him earlier, she cards her fingers into his hair just above his ears and glides slowly to the back of his skull, then allows her fingernails to brush down his spine and outward over his shoulders.

The delicacy of her touch paired with the flood of sensation coursing through his veins is the final straw, and he melts for her one last time. His orgasm begins with a shudder, rocketing through his nervous system before dissipating into a tingling that feels like fireworks all across his scalp. Next, the spilling of whatever spend he has left in his system, pumping into her in rapid waves and being pushed out just as quickly when there's no more room left to hold him in. And finally, finally, true relaxation, as the last of his energy is ejected from him and he crumples, barely held up by her grasp upon him. He's not sure what sound emerges from him in the process, unable to parse through the ringing in his ears, but the satisfaction in his chest is enough of a signal that he got something out of his system.

Saruya begins acting immediately, catching him as he folds over and cradling his head in her arm. She presses her cheek to the crown of his head and shooshes him calmly, guiding him back down to earth, and resumes her petting with her other hand.

"Shhh, shh. Breathe for me, okay? I've got you." Her words gradually seep through the gaps in his perception, quiet and tender. "I'm going to take the blindfold off, are you ready?"

Quilleran nods into her neck, double-checks that his eyes are actually closed before she re-exposes him to the world. The fabric slides past his forehead and away from him, and the base of his skull rejoices when the knot that had been boring into him is finally removed. He doesn't open his eyes right away, first allowing himself a moment to acclimate to the colors behind his eyelids, then squinting and blinking until the brown marking on Saruya's clavicle before him comes into focus. He's surprised by how disoriented he feels—it's darker now outside than it had been when the blindfold was applied, the evening having progressed just fine without him watching. There's still a tingling sensation scattering itself across his face, and his whole body still shakes, but the soothing pass of her palm over the back of his head regulates his body little by little.

"There we are. You did so great."

Even her voice is warm.

"I'm going to get you out of these ties next, alright? Are your arms okay?" She's moving quickly, prioritizing his comfort and safety before stillness and decompression. There would be plenty of time for that shortly.

He nods again, takes a deep breath through his nose. Buried into her shoulder like this, her scent once again fills his lungs. It's comforting beyond words.

"Would you like some water first?"

"That would be lovely." This time, it's his voice that cracks as it emerges, and he attempts to clear his throat afterward.

"Right away, darling." She presses a kiss to his forehead and lowers him to a comfortable position before removing herself from his lap.

His eyes drift shut in the meantime while she prepares him a cup, though he can faintly pick out the clattering of utensils both wood and ceramic in the background. He can feel himself slowly cooling off—and once again, the chilling damp of the mess they've caused between his legs. He's at least managed to catch his breath, even if he is beyond parched.

Her footsteps return to the bedside. The warmth of her palm slinks behind his neck to support his head before he feels the rim of the cup against his lips, tilting carefully, followed by the cool touch of the water's surface. He drinks as cautiously as he can but still dribbles a little down his chin and onto his chest, which Saruya smears away with her thumb. The water, at least, helps return some clarity to his mind, and his eyes blink open again, focusing on the woman hovering over him. To see her again after all this time brings great solace, and Quill can't stifle the dumb smile he feels spreading across his features. She's as beautiful as ever, even with the furrow of concern across her brow, with her skin flushed and pink and her hair frizzy and out of place. Her eyes still shine even as the world surrounding has grown dimmer.

"Better?"

"Yes, thank you." His words feel more like a drifting breeze than deliberate speech.

"Come here, let's get you out of there."

She helps him adjust his position so that she can access his arms and starts undoing her work one section at a time. His skin prickles slightly every time a band of rope is peeled away, a relief similar to that of letting out a tight hairstyle, and he can already feel the indents left behind in places where his thrashing created extra strain. The more layers Saruya unravels, the further apart his arms and shoulders are able to loosen, until the final loop falls away from his chest and he can move freely again. Just as he begins the process of smoothing out the red marks on his wrists, Saruya seats herself across from him and holds a hand out.

"Allow me?"

She brings herself right next to him, cuddling into his side, and takes one arm at a time, supporting his limbs with gentle fingers and massaging his skin in small circles with her thumbs. There's little other sound but his heartbeat in his ears and the tree frogs outside, but even the near-silence is refreshing after the commotion from just minutes ago. With the way exhaustion now seeps into his joints, he's more than happy to let her care for him, to bask in the shared oxytocin of her body pressed against his.

In the meantime while she works, he can at last take a look at himself, see firsthand the decorations she has left upon him. He spots the first bruise on his shoulder, the one that started it all, then another, then another still, and impressions from her teeth, too—by the gods, he's going to have to be mindful of what he wears in the coming days. Despite his initial scandalized reaction, he can't quite pull his eyes away from them, instead finding their presence unexpectedly titillating. A secret, Saruya had called them, and a secret they would remain until their inevitable disappearance. Yet another example of art's impermanence.

She had prepared something else when she had stepped away before: a simple washcloth dampened with clean water, which she gently dabs over his face, the back of his neck, his chest, and between his thighs. Once she has him cleaned to an acceptable level, she re-takes her place lounged atop the cushions and pulls him back into the slope of her chest. Following the dizziness he had just recovered from, he can't shake the subtle feeling of déjà vu as they resume their prior position. A simple glance downward at himself, at the still lingering impressions in his arms and marks on his body, is all the confirmation required to solidify the reality of everything that had just happened.

Nonetheless, the tension in his shoulders is nonexistent. His weight is positively heavier as he lays upon her again, but just like before, she will never once complain.

She rubs her thumbs over various points along his neck and back, massaging in lingering strokes as she tests the effects of her hard work. "I think your body learned a little bit from all of that, don't you?"

Quilleran takes in a long, slow breath, gathering the energy to string words together. "Many things were learned," he begins, "yet, further questions remain."

"Such as?"

"Where on earth—"

"I'm not telling you where I learned any of that."

He laughs in response, something akin to laughter at least, more like a series of exhalations that cause his torso to bounce up and down, and snakes his arms around her waist. "That hardly seems fair."

"If there is anything I can say or do to surprise the man who knows everything, I'm keeping it close to my chest." Following her statement, she regards him where he lays against her bosom. "Maybe you'll find the answer if you lay there long enough."

"Is that a challenge?"

The daring in his tone is empty, as even the words are barely discernable through his fatigued mumbling.

The only audible sounds are that of Saruya's lips spreading into a smile and her fingernails through his hair. "Sure. Another time, maybe."