Recovery (Astarion BG3 Fan Fiction)

4: A Little Closer, So to Speak

"I've been waiting," he says, stepping into the light with his shirt unbuttoned. She might roll her eyes if he didn't actually look so fucking stunning. The moonlight gleams on his skin with a ridiculous effervescence like he's some kind of sexy pearl. He looks like he knows what he's doing. She wills herself not to ogle, thinking how it must have been a breeze for him to entrap unwitting victims. She thinks she probably wouldn't mind if that's how she went out, too.

"Waiting," he continues, his crooked smile twisting the knife, "since the moment I set eyes on you. Waiting to have you."

Aysla cocks an eyebrow. "Since the very moment you set eyes on me, hmm? You could have fooled me. I've had to eat my own heart out whilst you and Wyll eye-fuck each other all day."

A cackle breaks through his seductive facade. "Oh darling, don't play coy. I've been the one tortured with longing. You're cruel. Flitting around, breaking hearts flirting with devils right before my eyes."

"Jealous? You?" She holds a hand over her heart.

His eyes un-crinkle, turning hypnotic and sultry. "I needn't be, now. You're here, after all, aren't you? And I don't think you just want to talk."

He steps closer to her, closing the gap, and his arms encircle her lower back.

"There are better things I can think to do with my mouth." She flutters her eyelashes. "What do you want?"

She waits for the unimaginative answer, her cue to kiss him and begin the old routine: 'you.' But instead, he hits her with a line. "What do any of us want? Pleasure. Yours, mine. That's what you want, isn't it? To lose yourself in me?"

Aysla is taken aback, a little. Does he expect her to 'lose herself' - in the biblical sense? She's never known a man who could make her come. Sex, to Aysla, is and has always been a service she provided. She portrays her best impression of avid enthusiasm, and in exchange, she receives approval, forgiveness or otherwise favor. The lovers she had known had always been satisfied with their own pleasure, never pretending to care for hers. She always assumed it was an open secret. She assumed that it was written on her forehead. Use me.

She barely likes most of the people she beds, but she does it anyway for the cheap thrill of approval it grants her, and the small false semblance of control over her own body. She can't be a victim, after all, if she's an active participant in her own desecration.

Don't know what to say to that, she thinks.

So she leans in closer, tilting her head. He meets her halfway and crushes his lips against hers. His kiss is cool and steady. His tongue flashes against hers, just enough to tease, before it is gone. His smell makes her head swirl - citrusy, boozy, familiar. Like bergamot, she realizes - a note in her own fragrance, too. Underneath it, there is a light note of something sick-smelling and rotten, though she doesn't dislike it. It suits him, heady and sweet, with just enough of a note of wrongness to make it interesting.

He hums into her mouth. Against the toxic and sickly sweet note of alcohol that she can never rid herself of completely, her amber scent mixes with his, their kiss a bouquet of ambrosial undeath.

He lifts her deftly, pulling her thighs up around his waist. When he walks her forward to press her back against the bark of a nearby tree, she can feel his hardness through his pants. She smiles and rolls her head to give him access to her neck - whether he'd like to kiss it, or bite it, she leaves to him. She thinks to herself that she'd like him to leave a trail of hickeys, evidence of her night together. A mark of affection, a ward of protection; a sign that says 'I belong to someone.'

He seems to approve. He laughs darkly, nuzzling her neck, and slowly lowers her to the soft grass of the clearing beneath her. He looks up once, asking permission with his eyes, and she simply tilts her head to give him access.