Chapter Text
Vivian stared at Rolan, waiting for him to speak.
The timing was admittedly a little cruel. In an ideal world, she would have waited until after he’d had a chance to process all that had happened — the confrontation with his master, breaking free from his clutches and then taking over his tower. But her coach was leaving in the morning. And she was not going to get on there without knowing what she’d come here to find out.
The sun was rapidly disappearing behind the harbor, bathing the market square in front of Sorcerous Sundries in hazy hues of orange and gold. Vendors were packing up their wares for the day, chucking them into wooden crates and stacking them up high on their horse-drawn carts, folding tables and umbrellas and occasionally yelling at each other to get out of the way. There was altogether quite a lot of noise around them, the confident hustle and bustle of people going about their daily work, just as they always did.
A stark contrast to Rolan who looked like he would have rather faced a horde of bloodthirsty goblins than Vivian's expectant glare.
“I thought you might … stay,” he said, wringing his hands as if he was squeezing the words out of thin air and getting a particularly unlucky pick.
“Stay for what?” she asked.
“A celebratory beer? To start with?” He laughed nervously, a brittle, high-pitched sound that trailed off as soon as he saw her frown.
An unpleasant silence followed in its wake, interrupted only by one of the fruit vendors cursing at a whole crate full of moldy blueberries.
“We have beer in Silverymoon,” Vivian explained. “Really good one. Much stronger than the stuff here.”
“Oh,” Rolan said, his hands clenching and unclenching. His tail was curling itself into a rather impressive knot. “Well, when I said beer, I didn’t mean beer. I meant …”
“Yes?” Vivian prompted. She didn’t exactly relish seeing him squirm, at least not this time. But she had to know.
She liked Rolan. He was cute and smart and he had a great cock and his own wizarding tower — which, at his age, was a really fucking big deal. But he was also an absolute pain in the ass, and she was not going to build a relationship centered around her making up for that.
“I meant this,” Rolan said. “Here. Me.”
Vivian folded her arms in front of her chest and said nothing. Giving him a chance to hear for himself how goddamn stupid he sounded.
He groaned in exasperation when it hit him. Closed his eyes and shifted his weight, the heel of his boot scuffing against the ground a few times, whirling up sand.
Then he opened his eyes and said, “Stay.”
At least she thought that’s what he’d said — it was a little difficult to tell with the fruit vendor dropping a crate full of wares at the same time and falling into a screaming fit that boomed all across the square.
Rolan’s head whipped around, his lips pulled back into a snarl. “Hell’s Teeth, will you people shut up?”
He raised his hand and cast Silence over the vendors and their efforts to pack up for the day. Several of them paused in what they were doing, trying to evaluate whether this was just one of the usual quirks of setting up shop in front of a wizarding tower or cause for actual alarm. Whatever they ultimately settled on, Vivian didn’t know. Her attention was focused on Rolan.
“I am sorry for how I treated you when you first came to the shop,” he said sharply, the words clipped like he really, really just wanted to get them out. “I do not have much to say in the way of explanation, other than the fact that I was in pain and I did not want to risk anything else contributing to that. But I see now how foolish that was. Because I’d rather spend an eternity wallowing in the depths of misery than letting you leave without at least asking you to stay with me.”
He came a step closer, his nose still scrunched up in annoyance. “I want you to stay with me, Vivian. Here in Baldur’s Gate. Not necessarily in Ramazith’s Tower — I understand if you’d rather work with someone else. Dekarios, maybe, or one of the other archmages. They have more experience and can probably offer you better pay. Although, should you be interested, I can guarantee that you’ll always have a position here waiting for you. No matter when. You say the word and it’s yours. But that’s not what I meant. What I meant is … Ugh!” An exasperated snort, followed by a frustrated shake of his head. “The way I feel for you — it’s embarrassing. Irrational, laughable, utterly nonsensical …”
His gaze, which had been drifting aimlessly between the buttons of her blouse and her right earlobe, finally settled on her face.
And something seemed to shift in him. All the annoyed little crinkles on his face smoothing out one by one, fading away into an expression that was soft and vulnerable in a way she’d never seen on him.
“You have bewitched me, body and soul.” His voice was quiet now. So earnest, it punched the air out of Vivian’s lungs, leaving her breathless, speechless, thoughtless.
“You swear too much,” he continued, clearly not realizing that sometimes, it was better to stop while you were ahead. “You are loud and vulgar and bossy and quite frankly, you have the table manners of a juvenile tarrasque. Every other word of yours drives me further to the brink of madness and I love, I love, I love you!”
Vivian’s mouth opened. Her arms fell to her sides limply.
“I love you,” Rolan repeated as if he wasn’t sure whether she’d been able to pick this out from his rant. “Most ardently.”
Vivian did not respond. Could not respond because for all the many firsts she’d given him, this was a first for her.
A true, genuine I love you.
Not I love your body, or I love your tits, or I love fucking you.
Just I love you.
And whatever the Hells “ardently” meant. Maybe that was Infernal, but she figured she could ask him later. After she’d pulled him back into the tower and done a whole bunch of very inappropriate things with him.
“I apologize if this is abrupt,” Rolan said. “Or too fast or too much. But if it’s my feelings you wish to know about, I must tell you that I never want to be parted from you from this day on. You don’t have to answer me now. Take all the time you need. Pack your things and return to Silverymoon, but please … please do me the honor of considering it.”
“I have considered it,” Vivian said.
“You have?”
“Yes.” She nodded, very seriously. “I think I’m going to take my chances with the hot, grumpy archmage.”
“I’m not actually a—”
She silenced him with a kiss. Brief and hard, just enough to keep herself from imploding on the spot. “First,” she said, “I’m going back to Silverymoon to finish my research project. I’m almost done with it and I will have no one say that I got my titles from my boyfriend who just so happens to have his own wizarding tower.”
“Fair.” Rolan nodded, a hesitant look in his golden eyes. “And afterward?”
“Afterward I’m taking the first coach back here. And when I do, I expect a goddamn laboratory somewhere in this dusty, old tower because I’m not endangering all those books with my experiments.”
“Yes,” he promised, his mouth already crushing into hers. Scattering words in between kisses as he pulled her against himself. “You’ll have your laboratory. Anything you want, Vivian. Anything at all. You send a list of what you need, and I’ll make sure it’s here. We can work together. I might not be an archmage, but maybe the two of us can do Ramazith’s Tower justice.”
“Deal.” Vivian grinned and slung her arms around his neck.
He kissed her like he’d never been that shy, insecure boy at the conference. His mouth was hot and eager, his hands traveling down her figure with purpose, clutching her like he was claiming her. Like he couldn’t care less that they were still very much in public because this was his tower and she was his girlfriend and every curve of her body was his to admire whenever he felt like it.
And then he switched over to that other language, the one that sounded like a crackling fireplace and rustling silk sheets and the faint simmering of freshly-brewed coffee, and Vivian’s head fell back with a moan.
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?” he whispered, his lips ghosting over her exposed pulse point.
“You speaking Infernal. You could recite geometry rules or fucking nursery rhymes, and I’d be standing here, dripping through my underwear.”
He lifted his head and grinned down at her, one finger dancing along the line of her jaw as he spoke. A stream of low, gravelly words, like smoke trailing out of a well-stoked chimney and enveloping her, dark and thick and hazy.
Vivian was fairly certain she could feel herself clench around nothing.
“Fucking Hells.” She grabbed a handful of his robes. “Tell me where you want me and how you want me.”
Rolan sat on what used to be Lorroakan’s book throne.
When he’d first come to Baldur’s Gate three years ago, he’d been a refugee straight from Avernus, a grand total of five copper pieces in his pockets and nothing but hope and aspirations to keep him going. Now he was the master of his own wizarding tower. A mage in charge of his own domain, seated atop a collection of books worth more than many men could hope to earn over the course of their lives.
In front of him, Vivian stepped out of her underthings and kicked them aside.
“You didn’t need to—”
“You said everything,” she reminded him. She released her hair from the claw clip that had held it in the back of her neck, shook it out and approached his throne with slow, measured steps.
Gods, she was stunning. The kind of beauty generations of sculptors had tried and failed to capture in their work, never quite managing to translate the soft fullness of her figure into cold, unyielding stone. From the curve of her hips to the weight of her breasts, the dark, thick hair spilling past her shoulders in unruly curls — every part of her betrayed the bold, generous strokes of a true master. A body made to be as confident and unapologetic as the rest of her.
Vivian placed one knee next to him on the throne and leaned forward until her bare center touched against his trousers. “Is this what you had in mind?” she asked sweetly. “You in your robes and me butt-naked on your lap?”
“If you don’t mind …”
“Ah-ah.” She pressed a finger to his lips and shook her head. “You are the master of Ramazith’s Tower now. You only get to say what you want.”
Rolan swallowed heavily. He could feel her warmth through his trousers as she gently rocked against his leg. Teasing him as much as herself because that’s who she was.
Hells, if he wasn’t so lucky as to call her his own, this woman would surely be his ruin.
“I want you naked on my lap,” he whispered.
It was a fantasy he’d indulged in more times than he cared to admit. Towering here on his master’s throne with her straddling him, all bare skin and inviting curves. He’d been a little concerned about her reaction, worried she’d misunderstand and take offense. But there was a coy, playful smile on her face as she settled down on him.
“Oh my,” she said, resting her arms around his neck and making a point of looking him up and down. “I believe it’s fair to say Ramazith’s Tower has never seen a master as dashing as this one.”
“Not too much competition there,” Rolan said. His hands were at her sides, greedy to feel the shape of her, perched on top of him. “At least not in recent history.”
“Maybe.” She leaned forward and started kissing up his neck. “But I’m sure people will be talking about you in no time at all.”
She felt so, so good on him. Rolan had to close his eyes to truly take it all in. Her abdominal muscles contracting under her skin as she kept rocking into him, her breasts pushing against his chest with each roll of her hips. The little gasp she gave when he squeezed her butt and pulled her closer, really dragged her over his thigh.
His trousers were damp with her arousal. He could picture it gushing out of her, the sight of her slick and wet and wanton from nothing but his thigh alone.
“People will be talking about you,” she whispered. “All of your many accomplishments — magical and otherwise. They’ll be talking about the master of Ramazith’s Tower, the most powerful wizard in all of the Realms. The great …” — her lips grazed the shell of his ear — “… Master Rolan.”
The words were like oil into fire. Instant. Inevitable. Devastating. Burning through centuries of evolution and civilization in the blink of an eye, stripping him down to his most primal instincts. He yanked her away from his leg, his claws leaving red marks on the soft flesh of her rear as he ground her directly over his aching cock. Using her like a toy, like a tool to provide some much-needed relief, releasing the most obscene sound as he did so.
Vivian arched into his manhandling beautifully, her lids fluttering shut as if she'd been waiting for this. Wanting this, maybe even pushing for it. “Does that feel good, Master?” she asked, a wicked smile on her lips.
Rolan wanted to scream at her. Fuck, yes, it does!
But her hands were moving to the drawstrings of his trousers and there was something brazen about it that woke another one of those long-forgotten instincts. “Master, may I—”
“No,” he said. He didn’t really know where that tone came from; it was just suddenly there. Strong and commanding. “First, you will come on my thigh. Then maybe I’ll think about letting you have the rest.”
He could see the flicker in her eyes, equal parts surprise and glee, before she lowered her head in a gesture of reverence. “Yes, Master.”
She readjusted her position, dutifully scooting away from his throbbing length and settling against his leg instead. It was a sight Rolan hadn’t known he needed to see: Vivian chasing her pleasure on his clothed thigh. Her bottom lip disappearing behind her teeth, her breasts bouncing uncontrollably, her face contorted with ecstasy as if this was a privilege, something she’d earned and now couldn’t wait to enjoy to the fullest.
It was the most erotic thing he’d seen in his entire life. And when she tumbled over the edge, moaning his name — his title — he almost thought he might come as well, just from how goddamn sexy she was. He captured her mouth in a kiss, not giving her time to catch her breath. Feasting on the sound of her panting before he descended onto her breast and continued there, trailing his forked tongue around her full, hard nipple.
“Master,” Vivian breathed, writhing against him. Fucked-out and deliciously needy. “Master, please. May I undo your trousers now?”
Rolan looked up at her sternly. Letting her dangle for a moment or two before he said, “You may.”
She worked him out of his trousers and trailed her hand over him a few times, sighing at the feel of the Infernal ridges scattered all over his length. Hells, he would give them to her so hard, they’d be etched into her insides. The shape of his cock permanently engraved in her.
She lined him up at her entrance and paused there, looking down at him through thick lashes. “Master, can I really …?”
Rolan pulled her down with a growl, burying himself inside of her in one triumphant thrust. There was a cacophony of lewd sounds, the likes of which he was pretty certain had never echoed in these halls. Her wetness parting for his length as he yanked her down, her desperate wail of pleasure paired with his animalistic growl of relief, and then, finally, the mournful creak of the book throne struggling to maintain its structural integrity underneath them.
Clearly, Lorroakan had not built it with this kind of usage in mind.
Vivian took him all at once, effortlessly stretching to accommodate the full length of him, shoved inside of her so rudely. Rolan couldn’t resist the urge to arch her a little further, bend her backward with his hands, just to admire the way she tightened around him. Her mouth fell open into a moan.
She was so utterly full of him. Dripping onto his lap with her desire for him, yet holding herself still just for his enjoyment. Rolan had never felt this powerful. Her pleasure — her need — his to command.
“Ride me,” he told her. He said it in Infernal, the words spilling out of him as easily as they always did in his mother tongue, and yet, it was all the encouragement she needed.
Vivian gripped his shoulders, using him for support as she lifted herself up and then plunged down again. Her thighs must be aching from her previous climax, but you never would have known from the unrestrained ferocity with which she was riding his cock.
“Yes, Viv,” Rolan said, his head falling against her shoulder. His mouth trying to make contact with her neck, her jaw, anything that happened to be in reach. “Take whatever you want. Take it all. Ride me. Use me. Do whatever you will with me.”
She clenched around him and gasped out a curse. “Fuck!”
The creaking underneath them was getting more insistent, but Rolan couldn’t have cared less. All he cared about was her, how wet she was for him, how impossibly tight. Her walls fluttering every time he thrust up and into her, deep and hard and still, she was begging for just that tiny bit more. He reached a hand between them, effortlessly finding the spot she’d shown him that first night, and she cried out his name like a prayer.
That, too, was power. The power to make her unravel, to feel her come apart right here under his fingers and on his huge, throbbing cock.
“You are a miracle.” The words were flying out of him in his mother tongue. Bypassing his brain and all the very important safety mechanisms he had installed there, streaming into her hands, raw and unfiltered. “You are a goddess of beauty and sensuality and I worship at your altar. I love you. I adore you. I swear myself to you, for as long as you’ll have me.”
He meant it. Gods, he meant every word of it.
As the pleasure wound tighter and tighter, he saw her with her hair tied back and safety goggles on, bent over a lab bench, begging him to fuck her harder.
He saw her in an elegant, floor-length dress floating down a staircase to join him for one of those boring university galas.
He saw her at the marketplace, shoving a basket full of groceries at him as she haggled with the vendor about the appropriate price for a bunch of peaches.
He saw her in his bed in the morning, grumbling into his pillow when he kissed the tip of her nose and whispered something silly that would hopefully be lost in the tides of sleep.
Everything he saw was her.
Maybe that was why he didn’t even really notice when the books gave way underneath them, toppling over in a flurry of pages and delivering them both onto the floor. All he saw was her, still holding on to him, her nails digging into his biceps as she cried out her peak. And he reached up his arms and clutched her against himself, and then he was spiraling, too. Writhing with bliss as he was lodged in between her and several dozen books prodding against his back.
Rolan did not give a shit. He stayed there just like that. Sprawled out among the ruins of Lorroakan’s throne with Vivian snug against his chest, both of them panting and kissing and giggling as he slowly softened inside of her.
Rolan wasn’t sure if he’d ever made a noise that would have qualified as a giggle.
But he did now.
Nine months later, Rolan stood in the center of his shop, tugging on his robes.
“Be careful with those scrolls, Arabella,” he said, his eyes glued to the magical artifact he was pretending to inspect while secretly using it as a mirror.
“I’m always careful!” Arabella said. She was balancing atop a ladder, her thin arm outstretched in an attempt at reaching a scroll on the shelf to her right. The ladder creaked under the increasing displacement of her weight and Rolan turned just in time to cast Entangle, fixing the wobbly ladder to the shelf.
“Arabella!” he hissed. “How many times have we talked about work safety?”
“I’m perfectly safe, Master!” she said, using one of the vines as a stepping stone to reach the desired scroll. “See?” She touched a hand to the vines, making them grow higher and lifting her up to where she wanted to reach next.
Rolan raised a hand to his forehead with a groan. No one had told him that the most difficult part of having an apprentice would be to keep them from killing themselves with their own insufficient command of magic.
“A little stressed, hm?” Lia looked up from her anatomy textbook, grinning from ear to ear. “You know, I really think today is the day.”
“There’s no telling, what with the disastrous condition of the roads out there,” Rolan grumbled.
According to his own detailed and practically failproof calculations, she should have arrived yesterday. Which had been the day when he’d donned his finest robes and paced up and down the shop all day long like a caged mountain lion, all for nothing. He was, of course, trying not to let these things get to him quite as much anymore. He was trying to rely a little less on theory and formulas, see them as an important part of the truth, rather than the whole entire picture.
It was pretty darn frustrating though.
“Oh, so you’re sure she’s not coming today?” Lia said. “Is that why you’re wearing those robes?”
“What do you mean, those robes?” Rolan glared down on himself in silent outrage. Sure, this set wasn’t as fine as yesterday’s, but it was a perfectly representable choice for a junior archmage.
The only junior archmage, seeing as how that was a title that had to be created just for him.
Lia broke into laughter. She was laughing so hard that the book toppled off her stomach and onto the floor, her feet shaking on the shop counter where she insisted on placing them, no matter how often Rolan had told her how unsanitary that was.
Before he could reprimand her, the front door opened with a jingle of bells.
Lia jumped up and practically leaped over the counter. “Viv! You made it!”
Rolan felt as if he was struck by lightning. A single bolt of unrestrainable energy blasting through him, head to toe. He turned around, very carefully, and there she was. A suitcase by her feet, Cal and Lia wrapped around her from both sides, welcoming her with their signature four-armed twin embrace. They released her as soon as they noticed Rolan’s approach. In all likelihood, they were sporting those insufferable grins again, but Rolan didn’t care to look. His eyes were focused on her and her alone.
“Vivian,” he said, her name the only thing he could get out.
And then she was in his arms and he was kissing her — kissing her like a man starving, drowning, dying and being reborn, all in the span of sixty seconds or however long she allowed him to hold her flush against himself.
“Hello to you, too,” she said.
“Hello.” It came out choked and breathy, his chest so tight with elation, there wasn’t a whole lot of space for oxygen. “You … you are here.”
“I am indeed. Someone’s offered me a killer position as junior archmage, would you believe it?”
“You can still back out if you’ve changed your mind.”
“And turn down my chance to gloat at all these old farts who keep saying you’re not a real archmage until you’ve lived a century or two? Nah.”
She grinned up at him, beautiful and feisty as ever, and he was just about to kiss her again when he heard Arabella’s voice from the shelves. “Master Rolan? I’m all done with the scrolls — can I go practice my spells now?”
“Only the ones we’ve talked about. You know what happened last time.”
“Ya, ya.” She hopped off the vines, somehow managing to roll her eyes as she did so. “Boring spells only, I got it.”
“Arabella, this is Vivian,” Rolan said. “She will be junior archmage of this tower, same as me.”
“Great,” Arabella huffed. “One more despot ordering me around!” She skulked off to her practice room, both hands stuffed into the pockets of her slightly oversized robes.
“Apologies.” He turned back to face Vivian. “She doesn’t mean it, she’s just—”
“Master Rolan, hm?” Vivian repeated pointedly. She cocked her head to the side, shooting him a look that pierced straight through his second-best set of robes. “Is that what they call you now?”
Rolan grinned. He glanced over to where Cal and Lia were pretending to read her anatomy book while very clearly staring at them, and leaned in close to Vivian’s ear. “Would you like to be the only one who calls me that?” he whispered.
“What makes you think I’d call you anything like that, now that we’re holding the same title?”
Oh, I’ll show you, he thought. I’ll show you just as soon as this tower has emptied out for the night.
What he said was, “Would you like to see your new laboratory?”
“With pleasure.” She ran her hand up his chest, a pleasant tingle following in its wake, then sidestepped him and made for the staircase. “Don’t forget my suitcase, will you?”
I love you, but I will remember this when you start begging for mercy after your third orgasm.
Rolan murmured a Telekinesis spell, making sure her suitcase followed them up the stairs and through the portal into what used to be Lorroakan’s office.
It was different now, nearly unrecognizable from the lavishly oversized space full of unread books and unused artifacts. First of all, it had been turned into two spaces, perfectly equal in size — Rolan had checked and checked and triple-checked, unwilling to rely on the competence of anyone else when it came to the setup of his tower.
The wall separating the two rooms was made of a special material designed to withstand fire, explosions, floods as well as minor gas leakages. It was his first time equipping an empirical laboratory, so he’d wanted to be on the safe side. As for the rest of it, he’d followed Vivian’s written instructions to a tee. All the many gadgets she’d wanted, the reagents in their little safety cabinets, even the frankly obscene number of glass beakers she’d asked for — seriously, how many glass beakers did one woman need?
In any case, he’d gotten it all for her. There was no investment he wasn’t willing to make for his vision of the two of them working side by side. Empirical and theoretical research coming together to forge a brand-new future for Ramazith’s Tower and its scientific legacy.
“What do you think?” Rolan asked.
Vivian looked up from a particularly odd-looking beaker she was inspecting. “I love it.”
Rolan felt his tail wag against a box full of forceps and pliers and other things that looked a lot like torturing devices. He quickly stepped away from it, in case any of it was fragile. “We can make any changes you’d like,” he assured her. “This is your space and your space only. It is my hope that we’ll collaborate, of course, but you will have your own experiments, your own apprentices, your own funding.”
“Rolan?”
“Yes?” He blinked. Something had been wrong with her voice, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It was lower somehow, a familiar sense of warmth to it that tugged on a deep, deep part of him that lay very nearly buried.
Vivian hesitated, an uncharacteristically nervous edge to her smile. “I love you,” she said in Infernal.
Her accent was wobbly, almost childlike. She didn’t get the hissing sounds right, possibly on account of her decidedly unforked tongue, and the emphasis on that last word was off, leaving it to hang in the air like a question. But it was without a doubt the language of the Hells. The language of Rolan’s childhood, a time so far away, all he had left of it were a few hazy memories.
A hand on the back of his head, gently guiding his gaze down to the scuffed floor.
A tiny, soot-stained stove top that just barely fit the cast-iron pan where all their meals were cooked.
A quilted blanket with hand-stitched yellow ducks on it, carelessly being trampled into the dirt as someone pulled him away, told him they had to go, had to go right now.
“Oh, fuck,” Vivian said. “Did I say it wrong? Did I say something stupid?”
Only then did he realize he was just standing there, staring at her with his mouth agape and his head full of memories.
“N-no.” He cleared his throat, which failed to do anything about the massive clump back there. “It’s just …”
“What?” She looked up at him, concern furrowing her brow.
And, gods, the last thing he wanted was for her to feel bad when he was quite possibly the happiest he’d ever been since that blanket had been clean and whole and his.
He pulled her into his arms and held her there, the crown of her head tucked underneath his chin. “You have to work on your enunciation,” he managed at last.
She chuckled. “Oh, do I?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s not your fault, really. Infernal is notoriously difficult to learn. How about you try that again. I’ll give you feedback.”
Vivian reached her arms around his waist and leaned her face into the little dip just above his collarbones. “I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“Rolan!” Giggling, she tried to wriggle out of his grip, but he did not let go.
“It’s alright.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her, generous as ever. “I’ll teach you.”