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Maria can’t remember the last time she slept the whole night through. You think she’d be used to it those first few months of her daughter’s life. But this is different.
Peace had always been a fragile thing after her confrontation with Solas, but Charter’s raven destroyed it like a rock through a mirror.
She knows Solas’s power grows daily, that his magic is capable of things not even mages today could comprehend, much less a dwarf like her. But death in sleep? In dwarves?
The one advantage she had going for her was that she didn’t have a natural connection to the Fade. Even though strange fragments of dreams still follow her in sleep, they can’t compare to what she used to have with the Anchor.
Now that doesn’t matter. Now, Solas can slip inside her head while she sleeps and end her life and there is nothing, not one goddamn thing, she can do to stop him.
Why he hasn’t before she has no idea. But whatever has stopped him can’t last forever and the closer she gets to spoiling his end goal, the less reason he has to keep her alive.
Thank the Ancestors Varric and Mags didn’t come with her to this trip to Skyhold. If she’s to die in her bed, she’d rather not have either of them witness it or its bloody aftermath.
“Inquisitor?”
Mother Gisele greets her on the steps in the courtyard and her joy shifts immediately to concern.
“Maria, you look dead on your feet!” she says, hurrying down the stairs to meet her.
She feels dead on her feet. She feels her sanity is held together by the barest scraps. Sometimes she catches something moving from the corner of her eye only to find nothing there. God, if Varric could see her now he’d drug her and tie her to the bed. She’d get an earful three days later when she woke up.
“It’s fine,” says Maria. “Travel’s just . . .difficult.”
“You should rest, then” says Mother Gisele. “Get some sleep –”
“No!”
It comes out sharper than Maria intends, causing her friend’s brow to furrow suspiciously.
“Sorry,” she says, giving Gisele a weak smile. “I’m just hungry. And I have a lot of letters to catch up on. I’ll rest later, I promise.”
Is it a sin to lie to a Chantry Mother? Probably. But Maria has sinned enough for three lifetimes and doesn’t really care that much anymore.
“I will send something up to your rooms,” says Mother Gisele, giving her a knowing look.
“Thank you,” says Maria. “I appreciate it.”
The Fade looks as strange and eerie as she remembers. It’s sudden presence sends her stumbling, confused, for a moment down green tinged paths that lead to nowhere.
How did she even get here? She was reading letters at her desk, the candle burning low, she was thinking of fetching the lamp and then –
Here. Green, misty sky, crumbling cliffs, twisty paths.
Solas must have tired of her at last. Perhaps those Carta men were merely an experiment, a test of his power, to see if it would work on her.
Or a message, to send her running scared until she collapses in exhaustion, completely vulnerable, and she did exactly that, didn’t she? She’s so fucking stupid .
“Maria.”
The sound of her name strikes her through the chest like an arrow.
Solas.
Death has come for her at last. This is his domain – a god in his temple – and she has no hope to fight him.
She does not turn around to face him. How could she? How could she look at him and think of all those times in the rotunda, across the watch fire, in tents and ruins, right before he brutally murders her?
No. He does not get to look at her face. He does not get to see her fear. And she’s not going to make it easy for him, shaking like a rabbit waiting for the wolf to snap its neck.
Maria takes off down a random, spindly path. Water has seeped up from the ground, making puddles that she can’t help but splash in. The direction doesn’t matter. The path doesn’t matter. It’s just as pointless, she knows, but the thought of submitting to death without at least an attempt to stave it off is unbearable.
“Maria, wait!”
His shout echoes after her and how dare her – how dare he – use her name like this, as if they’re friends? As if they had ever been friends.
Rocks fly up from the ground, blocking her path. She veers sharply to the left, but that becomes blocked too. Eventually towering cliffs surround her on three sides, leaving her only her back exposed.
The puddles grow and fill and connect to each other.
“Stop running, Maria,” says Solas’s voice behind her. “It’s futile.”
Water laps at her boots. Her heart pounds in her chest. For a dream, everything feels so real.
She wonders how much it will hurt and then shoves the thought violently away from herself as the water rushes and swirls around her ankles.
“No!” she shouts, whirling around. “ No ! You do not get to do this to me, not here.”
He looks at her, expression as impenetrable as always. “What am I doing, Maria?”
Oh how easily her name falls from his lips, as if she hadn’t been Herald and then Inquisitor, whatever friendship they could have had hidden away behind walls of needless formality.
“I am not dying here, Solas. I’m dying out there , in my world, with the illusion that I have a fighting chance! You owe that to me, goddamn it!”
Her voice, tight with fury and tears, rings out between them. His inscrutable gaze morphs into one of confusion and horror.
“Maria, I did not bring you here to die,” he says, brow furrowed, as if deeply wounded at the accusation and the audacity of that nearly takes her breath away. “I wanted to talk to you. My reports tell me you haven’t slept in days, your presence flickers in and out of the Fade, you’ve been running yourself ragged –”
“Of course I haven’t been sleeping, Solas,” she shouts, voice cracking. She sounds half mad. She feels half mad. “You kill people in their sleep . Dwarves! With no connection to the Fade! And every night I have to wonder if this is the moment whatever paltry sentiment you have for me finally runs out and I’m the one bleeding from my eyes in my own bed next to my husband and child !”
“ Paltry sentiment ?” His voice thunders in his outrage. She almost flinches from it. “Is that what you think I feel?”
“How else do you explain it? You and your walls and your masks and your Inquisitor. You made sure to keep everyone at arm's length so that no one could love you.”
So that I couldn’t love you .
The words she did not say echo loudly in her head, the truth of them too bright to even think about. It's a realization she has buried and avoided ever since he disappeared without a trace, back when she thought he simply discarded his companions once his service was done. As if they weren’t friends, as if he was some common mercenary moving on to better things.
Varric knew the reason why it hurt so much, why finally knowing the truth about Solas felt like twisted relief, but she shut him down each time.
His eyes flash for a moment, gaze sharpening as he hears what she did not say.
“I kept you at length for your own protection,” he says. “There is much I hid from you and still do.”
She laughs bitterly, the echo of it ringing against the stone. “What else could you have left to hide from me?”
“How deeply I love you.”
The words fall in soft contrast to her sharp tone. Yet they sting like a slap. She can only stare at him, hold his steady gaze, her own eyes burning.
“That’s your cruelest lie yet,” she says, swallowing.
“It’s not a lie.”
“Then you have a funny way of showing it.”
“Do I?” he asks sharply, gaze narrowing.
He takes one step closer to her and she takes one back, her instincts screaming at her to run even with her back cornered. She knows that look, she’s seen it the few times he couldn’t hold back.
Solas is angry.
“When I kept myself from deepening a relationship I knew would only hurt you? When I stopped the Qunari from ruining your chance at happiness with Varric?”
He steps closer and closer to her until the stone sits at her back.
“When I kept my anchor from killing you for three years? When I have continued to spare your life despite knowing you’re the biggest threat to my plans?”
He stops, inches away from her. Water swirls between them, flooding the earth, rising at her shins. She can see it and hear it but it feels little more than air. The idea of water. The harder her pulse roars in her eyes, the higher the water gushes.
“When I have brought you here, to talk, to find out what is causing you to waste away in fear of sleep,” he finishes softly, his earlier anger gone. “I did not know it was me .”
He looks so distraught, eyes full of pain, that she almost feels guilty about it.
“When Charter told me I almost didn’t believe it,” she says, her voice tight. “I didn’t think it was possible and I didn’t think you . . .would do something like that. Solas, they were bleeding out of their eyes .”
She wraps her arms around her frame, blinking stinging tears from her eyes.
His gaze darts away for the briefest moment. “I did what needed to be done. They were harsh measures and I did not enjoy them. But you are safe in your dreams. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“I have plenty to fear from you,” she points out, glaring at him.
“True,” he acknowledges. “But not in your sleep. I would never do such a thing to you.”
“You do it to other people !”
“Other people are not you !”
She swallows. “Neither is Varric. Or Dorian. Or Cole. Or Cassandra. Or the rest of our companions.”
He flinches, every so slightly, at their names. It gives her the slightest taste of hope.
“They are not other people either,” he says softly.
She relaxes, just a little, at this admission. That they are safe in this one thing, at least.
If he’s not lying to her.
Again.
As if he could read her mind – and who knows if he could here, in his domain – his expression softens.
“What would it take for you to believe me?”
Maria stares into his strange colored eyes, so heavy with the sorrow she’s seen lurking in the corners those rare moments he let his guard down. He believes what he’s saying – she can tell that much.
This man thinks he loves her. No, not a man. A god. A being of unimaginable, terrifying power. A being so far beyond her reach she might as well be an ant. A flower crushed under his boot. Insignificant.
It sounds unbelievable, that such a person could love her ragged, broken edges. Perhaps Solas the bookworm, the hermit who slept in ruins and had paint stains on his fingers, could love her. But not Fen’harel, creator of the veil itself, starter of a rebellion that permanently shaped Thedas, and the one who plans to rip it all asunder.
He would never debase himself with such a thing. When push came to shove, he would kill her or slip through her fingers.
"You could prove it to me."
Solas goes very still at her words, as if he turned himself to stone.
"And how would you suggest I do so?" he asks slowly, watching her carefully.
The implication is too obvious for him to miss it. He's trying to give her an out.
Her heart thuds wildly as she considers her next words, her next reckless, daring words. She's a cornered animal and there is no other way out. Panic rises in her like the tide, the water swirling at her knees.
"Show me what you would do if you had one night with me --" she swallows against her roaring heart beat "-- and no restrictions."
Solas lets out one shuddering breath. "Maria," he breathes."You don't know what you're asking for."
She juts her chin up. As if she would ever back down from her own offering.
"Yes, I do."
If she focuses on his eyes, the slope of his nose, the sharp cheekbones and blocks out the armor, Maria can almost pretend this is her Solas. Careful, quiet, contained Solas. She used to idly wonder what he would be like when he didn't have to hold himself in check with his own formality. Of course, she had no idea she would find out like this .
What would it feel like if he took that drive and applied it to another purpose?
The thought nearly thrills her as it does terrify her.
" Maria ," he groans, clearly at war with himself and it stings, how close he is to rejecting her.
She's literally throwing herself at him and he still won't have her? Is she too broken for anything but a fantasy? Unworthy of any effort?
Or is it simply that he’s too much a gentleman to fuck someone before he murders them?
"Please?" The word tumbles, a tiny, broken plea for her life.
He closes her eyes and she braces herself for his rejection, half hoping it comes despite the threat it implies.
"Not here," he murmurs.
The world around her goes hazy, the colors running, the rocks melting, the water gushing like a dam broken –
And reforms, solidifying into a room she has not set foot in for over two years.
The rotunda.
Every detail is recreated immaculately. Every mural he painted brightens the walls around her, even the one he left unfinished. The desk sits beneath her, books and a shard and scattered notes flung haphazardly around her to make room. The scaffolding that never did go away, the couch where Solas slept.
Maria swallows against the tightness of her throat. It looks so real – none of the green tinged atmosphere of the Fade that she knows. She could almost pretend that the last three years didn’t happen, that she’s just bounced in here on a sleepless night to hop up on his desk and watch him paint.
Solas stands before her, in front of his chair, closer to her than he ever would allow in their Inquisition days. Even with her propped up on his desk he still looms over her. He wears not the strange leather armor he appeared in, but his old cream sweater and leggings.
She flinches at the sight of it, her heart twisting.
“Why are we here?” she asks, trying to find something in the room that does not bring painfully happy memories.
“I often imagined having you here,” he says softly. “Like this, sitting before me.”
“I did that anyway,” she points out, the memory of it a needle in her heart.
“Yes, but I did not allow myself to touch you.”
She braces herself, her fingers tightening their grip on the edge of the desk, as water swirls back around the chair legs. Solas hasn’t been laid in probably a thousand years. He’s supposedly pined for her from afar all this time. No way he’s going to take this golden opportunity to finally have what he wants from her and not take it for everything she’s got.
But the rough grip on her hips does not come, or the shove of her breeches down. Instead, his fingertips fall softly on her cheek and begin mapping out her face, as if he’s learning her blindly. They follow the path of her cheekbones, swipe over her brow, the backs of his knuckles trailing down her cheek to trace over her jawline. His thumb brushes over her bottom lip.
It’s achingly tender and not at all what she expected.
“What are you doing?” she asks, eyes fluttering open. “Aren’t you going to – to fuck me?”
“Is that what you think this is going to be?” he asks softly. “I take you roughly on this desk while you grit your teeth?”
She purses her lips rather than answer, her gaze darting away.
“You do not need to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” she hisses, lying through her teeth.
“And yet the floor is starting to flood again.”
“So? It’s the Fade. Weird shit happens all the time.”
“The water is a manifestation of your fear,” Solas explains, sending an ache through her heart at the familiar cadence when he teaches her something. “It rises with your terror.”
So he knows she’s been terrified out of her mind this whole time.
“I’ve always imagined it like this,” he continues, cradling her face in his hands, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Savoring you. Worshiping you.”
Her pulse jumps in her throat for a reason other than fear.
“Worship me? Aren’t you the god here?” she tries to joke.
His lips ghost across her cheek to the hinge of her jaw, planting kisses as fragile as spun glass on the way. It’s making her heart flutter traitorously in her chest.
“And yet I would get on my knees for you,” he whispers against her ear.
She shivers, biting her lip against a gasp as he drags his mouth down her neck. This should not be turning her on, that was not part of the plan. His hands fall softly to rest on top of her thighs as he pulls back. They caress her, running lightly from her knee to her hip. The look in his eyes, dark and burning and unlike any she’s ever seen on him, sends something hot and shivery down her spine as he parts her thighs and slowly lowers himself on his knees before her.
As promised.
Her trousers melt and dissolve underneath his fingertips as if they had never been there, leaving her bare from the waist down.
“Solas –“ She doesn’t even know what to say. It feels unreal, what’s unfolding before her.
“Maria,” he responds, pressing his lips against her knee.
The way her name falls from his lips, a lush obscenity, a hushed prayer, makes something in her start to ache. He trails feather light kisses up her thigh, his eyes never leaving hers, until he reaches her center. For a single, frozen moment, she waits in breathless anticipation, teeth tugging at her lip, and then his mouth descends upon her.
Her sharp gasps echo against the walls, fingers digging into the desk. Solas swirls his tongue around her, tasting her, as if she were one of Josephine’s imported chocolates. He delves into every inch of her folds, lapping up her growing arousal, until her thighs shake underneath him from the urge to clamp them around his face.
Maria couldn’t close her eyes and pretend it’s Varric, even if she wanted to. His lips and mouth are too smooth, no stubble to scrape across the thin flesh of her thighs, his fingers too long and span too widely across her knees, as his tongue explores her, testing what makes her gasp and what makes her go still.
Even without Varric’s experience, Solas needs little time before he has systematically conquered what makes her cunt flutter and ache to be filled, what sends pleasure humming through her, what gets her dangerously close to begging.
Soon her hands have abandoned their white knuckled grip on the desk, moving to grab fistfuls of his tunic. His hand drifts from her knee up her leg until his fingers brush against her entrance and it takes all her self control not to beg him to touch her.
Not that she would need to. He slides one long, elegant finger inside and her body welcomes him, clenches in sobbing relief at the feel of it.
Maria tries so hard to hold it in, to hang on to the last shreds of her dignity while being used by her ex friend and greatest enemy for this fantasy that existed only in his head.
But Solas slips in a second finger and crooks them inside her, sucking down on her clit like a fucking expert , and she can’t stop the moan that drags from her throat, or the way her upper body curls over him, hand scrabbling for purchase against the back of his neck.
Or the way her hips stutter and grind up against his mouth more and more desperately until he yanks her further down the desk by her ankles.
She comes hard, her cries thundering around them, while her body shakes in his grip. Solas does not stop his assault until she’s gasping his name and trying to wrench his mouth from her. She looks down her heaving chest at him in disbelief.
How does he know how to do this so well? Fade spirits? Ancient elves? Could he really remember how to make a woman cum after a thousand year dry spell? Has he really dreamed so much about her that he’s got this down to a science?
“Where did you learn that?” she demands, gasping.
His tongue darts out to lick her slick from his lips and merciful fucking Ancestors.
“There are tales of my youth that would even make Varric’s ears burn,” he says cryptically, standing up.
Tales from his youth . . .Ancestors only know how long ago that was. A joke rises to her lips and dies. She had called him grandpa so many times . . . .A stab of grief hits her at the memory, at the easy camaraderie that feels lost forever.
She tries to shake it away, bury back where she stuck it when he disappeared. Instead she focuses on him, on what’s coming next. No way he would be satisfied with just that, not when she’s offering him everything.
The floor is dry around them.
To her surprise he starts to turn away. Her breeches appear back over her legs, modesty returned.
He isn’t going to leave her here?!
Her hand darts out to grab the front of his shirt.
“Wait!”
This can’t be it. They haven’t done anything, nothing more than back alley fumbles she had as a teenager. Is this all he’s willing to give her?
He takes her hand and tries to gently detangle it from his sweater but she holds on tenaciously.
(When he leaves they will be enemies again. When he leaves, Stone only knows what he’s going to go do .)
“It’s alright, Maria.” He leans forward to press a kiss to her temple. Then he whispers in her ear, “It’s time for you to wake up.”
Her eyes snap open in the dark. It takes a long moment for her mind to catch up, still clinging to the warm candle glow of the rotunda, that this is her room in Skyhold.
Something stirs to her right, by the balcony doors – her hand slides under her for her knife – Footsteps coming closer, slowly –
Her fingers wrap around the hilt, icy cold in her grip. She strikes out just as the mattress gives under the weight of them –
And freezes, immobile as stone, held still with magic.
Then flames burst to life in the grate, a strange blue that gives no warmth, serves no purpose other than to illuminate the figure on her bed.
Solas.
Her breath stutters and stops in her lungs as the knife she holds dissolves like sand through her fingers and disappears, leaving her utterly defenseless. Or at least without the illusion of a defense.
“Relax, Maria,” he says, sounding rather bemused. “It’s just me.”
Solas is here . In her physical room, mere inches away.
He promised nothing would happen to her in the Fade.
But this is not the Fade.
Fight or flight instincts war inside her, rendering her completely immobile. Not that it matters. No weapon, no way to run. She’s trapped, as much at his mercy here, in her world, as she was in his. If she was still in the Fade, water would be spilling from the cracks in the mortar like a dam broken.
The only thing she can do is berate herself for being so stupid , for believing that his confession and his affections were anything more than tools to lower her guard before he took her out like the threat she should be.
She juts her chin up and glares at him as he considers her. Let him look her in the eye before he kills her, let that image haunt him long after she’s gone, let it –
Solas leans forward, captures her chin in his hand, and kisses her.
The Fade feels real when you’re in it. It’s easy to get lost in the mockery of sensation, a memory of an interpretation of what’s real. It’s only after you’ve left that you can feel the vast divide between a dream and the reality of it.
Solas’s hands are cold on her skin, chapped and calloused from his staff. His lips are cool and soft against hers and he smells like pine and snow.
He’s real. This is real . Solas has slipped inside her fortress, inside her bedroom , with nothing to stop him. How did he get here? How long has he been here, while she was sleeping, while he had her trapped in the Fade ?
Her mind races with all the implications to the answers to these questions – if Skyhold isn’t secure, Kirlwall sure as fuck isn’t secure. And how did he know she would be here? Can he find her any time he wishes? Does he not even need the Fade to track her every whereabouts, what has she already given away –
The entire time her gut clenches at her sickening thoughts, Solas is kissing her, kneeling closer to her, delicately cupping her face in both his hands. She kisses back on instinct, but it's hesitant, distracted. Her heart roars dizzily in her ears as his hand drifts lower, brushes the backs of his knuckles down her cheek, the column of her throat.
She shudders at the initial contact – her neck has always been sensitive – but her body doesn’t stop shaking. Panic floods her. He could snap her neck, he could dissolve her to sand like her knife, he could do a hundred horrible things to her the second after he’s played out his dirty fantasies and she has not one defense against him.
His hand curls around her shoulder, thumb stroking the thin skin over her collarbone and she shivers uncontrollably in his arms.
His lips still against hers and he pulls away.
“Maria,” he murmurs, drifting his hand down the side of her torso. “You’re trembling.”
“It’s cold,” she says shortly.
Solas’s eyes look haunting in the strange firelight. “No, it's not.”
No, it’s not. In Skyhold it’s a perpetually mild spring day and the nights aren’t much cooler.
“You’re still afraid,” he says, his gaze deep with sorrow. “I thought bringing you to the Fade to talk would be less frightening, but you were terrified. And now we’re here and you’re shaking at my touch.”
She swallows and clenches her fists tightly in the covers.
“How long have you been in here?” she demands, voice wavering despite her best efforts. “How did you get in here? How do you know where I am?”
Solas sits back, giving her precious inches of space, and regards her carefully. She knows he’s weighing how much truth to tell her and it infuriates her.
“I’m the one who put you to sleep,” he says finally. “I built Skyhold. It’s my home and its wards still welcome me. I always know when you’re here.”
“You put me to sleep ?” Her voice cracks.
She thinks frantically through the evening – nothing remiss, nothing strange as she wrote a letter to Varric, checked over some requests for the safe house Skyhold had turned into in her absence, read through reports from Leliana –
(her gut clenches painfully at the thought of those reports laying on the desk for him to see)
She spent the evening busy, pointedly ignoring the bed even as her eyes drooped and grew heavier and the letters blur under her vision and –
And Solas had put her to sleep and she didn’t even see him. She didn’t hear him. He had been there, somehow, slippery as a Crow and infinitely more deadly. Fuck, he had even carried her to bed and she hadn’t stirred.
“You’ve only slept a handful of hours in a week,” he says sharply. “You are dead on your feet, Maria. You cannot go on like this. I thought something else had happened. I had no idea the source of it was me.”
He sounds guilty enough that she actually wants to believe him.
“And if it was something else, why would that matter?” she demands. “What were you going to do – help me?”
“Maria,” he says, sounding nearly exasperated. “You are the love of my life. I cannot help but be the source of your suffering but nothing else will. Not if I can stop it.”
Tears prick suddenly at the corner of her eyes. She shouldn’t fall for it. She shouldn’t want to believe it. It should not bring her any comfort or warmth to know he would protect her from anything except himself. Ancestors above, she should not miss him. It’s an ache she thought she had finally rid herself of once she learned the truth.
Instead she had only buried it just so this night could drag it back out again.
Solas gives her one long, searching look. As if memorizing her face. Then he leans forward and presses his lips to her forehead.
“I have tormented you and terrorized you enough for one night,” he says softly. “For a lifetime, even. I will treasure for eternity what you have given me tonight. Sleep, vhenan, and do not fear your dreams.”
He pulls away and her hand shoots out and grabs a fistful of his tunic for the second time that night. It happens without thought. Solas goes very still under her touch, giving her a wary look. As if she’s the one to be feared.
Maria takes one deep, rattled breath. “That can’t be all you wanted.”
“It is all I will ask for,” he says slowly.
She toes at the edge of an abyss. “What about what I ask for?”
“And what would that be?” his voice carries barely above a whisper.
“For you to give me the rest of it. You have me for tonight – what else do you want?”
“ . . . Why ?” he asks brokenly. “You’ve spent this entire evening desperate and afraid, expecting me to murder you. What do you get out of this?”
“I want to see what it would have been like,” she admits quietly, a truth she probably shouldn’t allow.
Solas breathes sharply out, as if she just sucker punched him. He looks at her with such deep, unguarded yearning that her heart flips in her chest. Maria pulls him to her and slots their mouths together before she can second guess this reckless insanity.
His hesitation melts in the face of her boldness, but the tenderness remains, as if she might break in his hands. As if he still fears her fear. Maria deepens the kiss, her tongue darting against his lips insistently until he opens his mouth for her to slip inside. A deep groan vibrates in his chest and it sends a bolt of lust straight down to the center of her.
She always thought Solas was handsome but untouchable -- but now all bets are off. She could do literally anything to him and he’d probably let her. And that thought, of him under her hands, willing and pliant and ready to worship her as he keeps saying he wants to, burns so bright and sudden that her fear dissolves like fog in the sun.
The kiss turns decidedly filthy after that. Maria leans up on her knees and presses herself against him, exploring his mouth with the hot slide of her tongue. His fingers slide across her cheek and dig into her hair, anchoring them together. For someone who has not kissed anyone in centuries, Solas does not embarrass himself. He kisses her with such expert ease that there must be some truth to his comment about the exploits of his youth.
Maria can tell, though, from the tightly coiled muscles under her fingers, that he still holds himself back. She starts an unmerciful assault on his self control. Fingers trail up his neck to cup the back of his head, her thumb brushing over the long line of his ear until he shudders slightly underneath her. Her teeth nip and tug lightly at his lower lip, treasuring his sharp intake of breath.
His mouth chases hers as she tears her lips reluctantly away to press kisses down the sharp, beautiful line of his jaw. Her teeth catch on the delicate lobe of his ear, pulling another deep groan from his lips.
“What do you want, Solas?” she asks, letting her lower lip brush against the shell of his ears. He shivers again, fingers tightening in her hair.
“I want you,” he whispers raggedly.
“You have me.” She kisses him just beneath his ear, darting her tongue out to taste him. “Right here. Ready and willing to give you anything.”
“That alone is enough.”
Oh bless him, he is going to make this difficult, isn’t he? She scratches her nails lightly down the long line of his neck and his breath catches in his throat.
“Oh really? This is enough for you?” She pulls back and watches the agony flit over his face.
Her hand travels down his chest, over the taut muscles of his stomach, to cup his hard length through his pants.
All the breath leaves him, as if she had sucker punched him.
She drags the heel of her palm over him, marveling at the length of him – thinner than Varric but so much longer. A shiver wracks his body at her explorations. This is probably the first time someone has dared touched him like this in a thousand years or more. The thought humbles her.
“This is all you need?” she says wickedly. “To cum in your pants like a teenager? Or are you going to fuck me like a man?”
“ Maria ,” he says warningly and that tone should frighten her more than anything else tonight. Instead it sends another shiver of desire through her.
Fear has left her and only reckless abandon remains in its wake.
“I asked you a question, Solas.”
She wraps her fingers around him through the soft fabric of his pants, stroking him, watching his adam’s apple bob as he swallows.
Then his jerks down to hers, his long fingers wrapping tightly around her wrist in an iron grip and pulls her away.
“I am not a teenager, Maria,” he says, eyes flashing. “And I’m not going to take you like one either.”
She leans in close again, until their noses brush. “Then stand up and take your clothes off.”
For a moment Solas stares at her with such a burning gaze she wonders if this crossed a line. Would he hate the reminder of having once followed her every order? But before she can walk it back, he pulls swiftly away from her and stands up.
He did not come to her dressed in armor, only in a soft black tunic and breeches. Either he didn’t think Maria would fight him or he knew it wouldn’t matter if she did. The shirt gets tossed on the ground with uncharacteristic carelessness. Maria swallows thickly at the sight of his long, lean torso and the way it gleams in the firelight. His breeches and smalls follow in short order, until he stands like the glowing god he is before her.
He looks made of marble and almost unreal. Maria wants to sink her teeth in him.
“Come here,” he says softly, holding out his hand.
She crawls from bed to meet him, any smart retort dead on arrival as she drinks in his form with greedy eyes.
“This is what you’re hiding under all that bland clothing?” she says, brushing her fingertips down his stomach, watching his muscles clench in their wake. “Dorian would have a heart attack if he knew.”
Solas snorts. “Dorian made many unsuccessful attempts to find out.”
Then he lowers himself to his knees before her, putting them close in height. His fingers dip underneath the hem of her shirt, an old favorite of Varric’s he’d long since given up to her. She shivers slightly at the feel of his cool hands on her sleep-warmed skin. Then he tugs the shirt gracefully over her head and arms and drops it on the floor.
His eyes duck down to look their fill and Maria fights the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. Solas had probably never looked twice at a dwarf before her, and he certainly has only ever fucked tall, lithe elves like him.
And yet, soft, reverent hands glide over her form, mapping out the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips.
“Oh Maria,” he breathes, “you are more beautiful than even my imagination could conjure.”
Her pulse flutters traitorously.
“Flatterer,” she says, swallowing. “ Liar .”
Ancestors, how is he looking at her – all the scars, the tummy and hips softened from childbirth, the missing hand – and thinking such a thing? She’s a mess and nothing like the bombshell she used to be when Solas first saw her.
“Not about this,” he says with the shake of his head. “Never about this.”
His hands drift down to the laces of her breeches. They unfasten the laces with suspicious efficiency before tugging them down over hips and thighs. She pulls away and braces a hand on his shoulder as he helps her step out of them and then they are both bare before each other – in more ways than one.
Once again they lock gazes, his hands running soothing tracks up and down her upper thighs.
This is it. This is the edge of the abyss. She could tell him to stop and he would. No matter what else he does, Maria could never think him capable of hurting her in that particular way. He would kiss her, with aching sweetness, and he would disappear with just a word from her, as he had tried to do earlier.
And this is that moment for such a word. There is no stopping after this.
Judging from the look in his eyes, he’s waiting for her to make that decision.
Maria cups the back of his neck and captures his mouth in a deep, hungry kiss. . He returns it in equal fervor, boldly coaxing her mouth open, plundering it with greedy slides of his tongue. His hands glide up her torso to cup her breasts, thumbs brushing over her nipples, swallowing the sharp gasp that bursts from her lips.
Always studious, Solas plays with her breasts, kneading them softly, tweaking her nipples sharply, exploring what makes her moan in his mouth, her hips jerking instinctively towards him. Soon he’s pulling his lips from hers to press sucking kisses down her neck and she gasps, fingernails digging into skin when his teeth scrape against her pulse.
“S-Solas,” she whines.
“Yes, vhenan ?” he murmurs and she can tell the bastard is smirking. His tongue swipes out soothingly against the place he just bit.
“Bed.” He pinches her nipples, ripping another gasp from her. “ No w. Right now.”
He licks a stripe up to her ear. “As you wish,” he rumbles, sending goosebumps down her arm.
Then he stands, towering over her again before walking back to the bed. She follows quickly after him, barely giving him time to settle against her pillows before she climbs on top of him. The tip of his cock brushes tantalizingly against the swell of her ass. He’s so much longer than her – she will not be able to kiss him and fuck him at the same time, not like she does with Varric.
Giving him one more lingering kiss, Maria slides down until her lips press at his collarbones and his cock slips between her soaking folds. They both groan simultaneously at the hot slide of him against her. Pleasure bursts and thrums at her center and she can’t help but chase it, rolling her hips against him, hand braced on his chest. Solas’ hands grip her waist, his hips bucking up to meet hers and fucking goddamn it feels good.
He’s not even inside her yet.
She almost has to be reminded of that fact in the face of the dizzying pleasure building rapidly inside her. Maria tries to lift herself up so she can ease back down on his cock, but Solas’s hands dig into her waist and hold her down.
“No,” he says, eyes dark. “I want you to cum like this.”
“But – you –”
“Hush, aranel .”
He holds her firm, fingers digging into her waist, and slides the head of his cock back and forth against her clit. She sobs at the pressure of it, the way pleasure dances and buzzes until she’s aching from it, until she think she might explode –
And then she does explode, fingers digging into his chest, as her orgasm sweeps her away. She cums so hard she nearly sees stars, all the breath stolen from her, Solas’s gaze a dark and heavy weight on her.
When she finally comes down, her body shakes and his thumbs rub soft circles in the divots of her hips. Solas sits up, supporting her back with the wide span of his hands, and kisses her sweetly on the mouth.
“You are glorious, aranel ,” he murmurs.
Her stomach flips at the unadulterated devotion in his voice.
“Your turn,” she says shakily. “And Solas? Don’t hold back.”
A veil of hesitation drops over his gaze. “Maria, you don’t –”
She grips his chin in her hand. “Do not hold back with me, Solas. You’ve been doing that the entire time I’ve known you. For once I want you to give me everything you have. All of it.”
Her thumb brushes against his lower lip. “I’m not going to break,” she adds softly.
Once again conflict wars in his gaze. She keeps her own steady, fierce, allows no hesitation to show. Then he closes his eyes and leans his forehead against hers.
“You need to hold on,” he whispers shakily.
Pulse thundering, Maria wraps her arms around his neck. His hand skate down her spine to cup her under her ass and lift her up. Her heels dig into the mattress on either side of his hips as he slowly lowers her down on his cock.
A sharp moan tears from her throat as he fills her, going deeper than Varric ever has. She buries her face in the crook of his neck, fingernails scratching at the back of his neck.
“Fucking Ancestors,” she gasps when he finally hilts inside her. “Holy shit , Solas.”
He slides one hand back up to stroke her hair soothingly. “Are you sure you don’t want me holding back?”
She bites the side of his neck as an answer, loving the way his hips jerk against her, how tight the tendons in his neck get. “I swear to the Ancestors if you don’t fuck me –”
Her threat cuts off, sharp and sudden, as he slides out and snaps his hips back into her. The fingers in her hair tighten their grip, almost painfully so, as his arm becomes an iron band around her back. She’s crushed against him, almost completely immobile, as he drives into her with reckless, forceful strokes. Indeed, all she can do is hold onto him, her cries echoing against the stone walls.
Something white flashes in his eyes, a burst of light, and then he bends down and sinks his teeth into her throat until she sobs.
It’s one of the hardest, most intense fucks in her life . She’s a rag doll for him and never before has she felt so small trapped against the wide span of his chest, the deep drives of his cock, his long legs tensing on either side of her.
She can’t even tell if he’s getting close until he stiffens suddenly, crying out something in Elvish before sinking his teeth into her shoulder. His hips spasm against her, cumming deep inside of her, for a long moment before he goes still and pliant.
They are both out of breath, chests heaving against each other. Every part of her feels deliciously sore, her neck and shoulder throbbing from his teeth marks. Suddenly Maria is exhausted . She slumps against him and he cradles her, kissing her bite marks softly, as if in apology.
Eventually Solas picks her up and lowers her back down on the pillows before joining her, laying on his side to face her. A magelight springs up beside his head, casting its warm glow on her body, her pale skin illuminated like a star beneath it.
He glides his hands over her body, magic erupting underneath him, and she’s too fucked out of her mind to feel anything more than a prick of unease. The throbbing on her neck and shoulder disappear as his hands travel down to hover over her abdomen. She feels nothing under his magic, but he wears a look of intense concentration.
“What are you doing?” she finally asks.
He gives her a look of tender sorrow. “Ridding any trace of me from inside you. You will have nothing to worry about.”
No child to worry about, he means. Wouldn’t that be a twist – what the hell would Solas do to this world, knowing his child lives in it? His dwarven child. Would he even love it?
“Would you even consider them a child of yours, knowing they would look like me and not like you,” she wonders idly, her thoughts spilling to her mouth.
He gives her a sharp look. “Do you really think that would matter to me, knowing they were a part of you and of me? Such a child should not exist, not because I couldn’t love them, but because no child deserves the curse of me as a father, not especially yours. I couldn’t bear it.”
She’s starting to wonder if she could. If a child of his would not be his ultimate weakness, if it would snap him out of this deranged plan. Varric would understand and Mags would have a sibling . . .
Maria shakes the wild fantasy from her head before it can take root. She already has her family and it’s complicated enough as it is.
“And the child I do have,” she asks. “Is she safe? Is my family safe?”
He reaches out and tucks a lock of sweaty hair behind her ear. “I would rather cut off my hand than lay a finger on your daughter, Maria. Nor Varric. Even when I bring ruin and destruction, I will do my best to protect them. And you.”
“You don’t have to bring ruin and destruction,” she points out.
“I wish that were true,” he sighs. “I would give anything for that to be true.”
“I’ll make it true,” she promises.
He takes her hand and kisses her fingers. “Will you sleep now, Maria?”
“I’ll try, but I make no promises,” she says.
Her eyes blink slow and heavy and she forces them open again.
“You’re fighting sleep even now,” he points out.
“I don’t want you to go,” she admits. “I hate that it's you. Why did it have to be you?”
“I’m sorry.” He sounds deeply pained. It’s almost enough. “In another world perhaps things would have been different.”
They still can be different. Maria will find a way. She’s tenacious and fierce and her heart is on the line.
“Sleep well, vhenan .” Solas cups her chin and presses a soft, lingering kiss to her lips.
A kiss goodbye. She tries to reach out and grab him but her limbs feel so heavy and her eyes cannot stay open.
“ Ar lath ma .”
Sleep takes her.