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Virelan’s seduction of Solas began days before she ever touched him.
After returning to Skyhold after a rousing dragon hunt, she met Solas’s eyes in the courtyard and smiled, slowly. From the flush beneath his collar, she could tell that he was excited just at the sight of her — her armor spattered with dried gore, a still-healing cut on her cheek. His eyes traced every bit of secret ferocity that her body offered.
That night, when he came to her chambers as he usually did, she merely cracked the door and gazed placidly through the opening. He fidgeted on the other side, but stilled at the sight of her.
“May I?” he asked, tugging experimentally at the door latch.
She smiled warmly, lovingly, and slid her fingers along the jamb. A flash of something hopeful crossed his eyes.
“Not yet,” she finally murmured, and closed the door.
The next day, an edge of nervous energy hung in the air around the mage. Virelan visited him briefly in the rotunda with a slew of questions about the elven artifact they’d retrieved from Crestwood, her notes and Dagna’s sketches in hand. He drifted around his desk, picking up notebooks and setting them back down. If he had hair, Virelan thought with fondness, he would run his fingers through it to set it on end.
He answered her questions with terse words in a lowered, tremulous tone. He could hardly meet her eyes — when his pacing path carried him behind her, he lingered there longer than he did elsewhere. She suspected that his orbit was carrying him closer to her with every subsequent loop, and when he nearly brushed her with his hand she stepped away.
“Thank you, Solas,” she told him as she turned, forcing him to meet her eyes by ducking her head and drawing closer once more. His pupils dilated slightly as she gazed into them. “I believe that is more than enough to get through the next stage of disassembly. I only hope I can put it back together with any measure of accuracy.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “If you like, I would be more than willing to take notes during the process. I am sure your own hands would be put to better use dissembling the artifact itself.”
Virelan blessed him with her rare smile — one that, these days, she saved only for teasing him with. She drew closer still, until he clasped his hands behind him and stood straight and tall, as if to give himself some measure of control. The tremble of his lashes betrayed him.
“Are you thinking of my hands, vhenan?” she murmured, so low that no one in the library above could hear.
A muscle tensed in his jaw as he gazed down at her. “And the clever way in which they can take things apart, certainly,” he murmured back.
She huffed a single, silent laugh. “How long has it been since you had any measure of relief from… such thoughts?”
His plush lips pressed together briefly. “Since last you touched me.”
She raised an eyebrow, satisfied. “That long? Well… a bit longer shouldn’t hurt.”
Virelan then turned on her heel, sharp and confident, and let her measured stride carry her from the room. She took intense pleasure in the sound of the sharp, almost angry breaths of the man she left behind.
The next day, she encountered Solas coming up the stairwell from the kitchen as she descended. He halted at the sight of her, one foot on the next stair, his hand braced on the wall. She held his gaze and shifted, slowly, until she leaned against the wall on the right side, leaving him plenty of room to pass.
“Good morning,” she said sweetly.
His jaw tightened. “On dhea, lethallan.”
“Oh!” she chuckled. “Only lethallan today, hmm? Whatever happened to me being your heart?”
He shook his head incrementally, as if scolding himself and her at the same time, then carefully ascended the remaining stairs between them. The warmth of his body washed over her as he came near — and yet she did not lean into him, as she sorely wished to do. She simply looked up at the tightening lines of his face with a growing sense of satisfaction.
He leaned forward, a lapse in control causing him to give in to habit, but corrected his course just before she corrected it for him. His searing gaze caused heat to build between her thighs.
“Would you like a good morning kiss?” she asked coyly. “Is that what I must do to be called your beloved?”
She reached out, finally, and blessed him with a light touch on the taper of his waist. She drew her fingers down the outside of his thigh until her grazing touch moved from soft linen to supple leather. He swallowed what sounded, suspiciously, like a whimper. She drew her hand away.
“Despite your love of vexing me,” he whispered, a sneer on his mouth but a shining twinkle in his eyes, “you remain my beloved. You know this.”
“Hmm.” She raised her hand and traced her thumb over the bottom line of his lip, her dark skin in sharp contrast to the paleness of his cleft chin. His eyes fluttered shut, and his lips pressed together as if to hold back betraying sounds or words.
“I haven’t decided if you are strong or proud, or some combination of the two, ma’lath,” she murmured. “It’s been days since I came home, and you have yet to beg.”
The line of his brow hardened as she pressed her thumb on his lip, then broke when she inched it forward — he took it into his mouth with a tiny moan. She allowed him to swirl his tongue around her knuckle before drawing it out and away again. He followed her retreat with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open, cheeks flushed.
“Tonight,” she said, descending the stairs with determined footsteps.
He looked as if he’d like to reach for her, but clenched his hand into a fist instead.
Throughout the course of the day, she purposefully avoided the rotunda and any of Solas’s other haunts. She poured herself into work in the undercroft with Dagna, then into meetings with Josephine and a visiting dignitary from the newly reinstated lands of Serault. While discussing import fees and handling requirements of the famous Serault glass, Virelan felt her thoughts drifting towards the evening ahead of her, and how exactly she would like it to unfold.
She smiled at the Marquis, taking pleasure in the thinly disguised threat of baring her teeth, and allowed Josephine to do the talking as she thought of more pleasant things. She sipped absentmindedly from her cup of tea, all while she pondered exactly how long she would allow Solas to wait.
Until well after dinner, of course, she considered. He’ll be there, waiting, for when I finally decide to come to bed. Perhaps he’ll already have stretched himself across the covers, bare and beautiful and impatient. Always so impatient.
The memory of the last time she’d done this to him flashed across her mind’s eye — his knee hooked in the crook of her arm, her lips sucking marks into the inside of his thigh, the lines of his bared throat as he threw his head back on the pillows. His reedy, keening cry as he came in spurts all over his flushed, freckled chest, pent up after days and days of waiting for her touch.
And this time he had waited even longer. Lust curled in her pelvis at the thought of it.
“Does that seem satisfactory, Inquisitor?” the Marquis of Serault said. His eyes glinted through the sapphire-ringed holes in his mask — it was a glorious thing, its antlers glinting with soldered fragments of green glass and jewels. Virelan briefly recalled that its wearer was a scholar, once, not a hunter, and chuckled inwardly at the thought of such a man wearing a prey animal’s face.
Virelan glanced at Josephine, who nodded. “It does indeed, Marquis,” she said. “And I invite you to join me for supper. I understand that the former Grand Duchess Florianne has a report for me tonight, and I believe that you, of all people, would enjoy seeing such a grand lady brought low.”
The Marquis’s mouth twitched into a smile beneath the mask. “I would indeed.”
Josephine led the way into the great hall, chatting easily with the Marquis in a way that made Virelan both jealous and grateful. With such a reprieve, she let her gaze wander over those gathering for dinner — her friends, her guests, her servants. It was odd, yet comforting, to see them all in one place for once, rather than scattered to the four winds.
Iron Bull raised a glass to her from his seat near the fire, then turned back to his conversation with a gesticulating Varric. Cullen’s golden head bowed to listen to Blackwall whisper something in his ear, then both men rocked back, guffawing in the way that only two soldiers could. Dorian and Vivienne flanked Solas — the poor man, she thought fondly — and the three of them seemed deeply embroiled in an argument of some sort. Solas met her eyes across the breadth of the table and made a show of shaking his head and sighing.
She made her way to her usual seat — an unassuming one on the long side of the table rather than at the head — and Josephine took her cue. She settled the Marquis into place beside Virelan and sat opposite them both, then gestured for Maryden to play. The bard began plucking out a pleasant tune, and her voice washed over the hall.
Over the course of the night, Josephine entertained the Marquis and plied Virelan with questions of her own homeland and habits, as if to show this strange Orlesian that their Dalish Inquisitor was no wild thing after all. By Josephine’s reactions, she wasn’t entirely pleased with her terse, blunt responses. But, to his credit, the Marquis was easy enough to please — she even found herself laughing at one of his more crass jokes about oranges and their uses in bed.
Even when Florianne made her brief appearance at the table, a report on her findings in hand, the energy of the night did not ebb. Virelan took special pleasure in the Marquis’s sniping jabs at the former Grand Duchess — when she spotted Solas sending a questioning, amused glare her way, she simply smiled and laid a friendly hand on the Marquis’s elbow. She laughed a little harder, a little more gregariously, than she would have otherwise. Solas was watching, after all.
As the night grew old, the groups of people within the great hall began to thin as their members took to their beds. Iron Bull and Varric remained engaged in roaring bouts of laughter near the fire, where Cole had joined them — the boy knelt near Varric’s feet, playing with a little orange cat he’d found in the stables. When Virelan glanced to where Solas had sat, she found only Dorian — her friend grinned, then motioned with his chin towards the door to her quarters. His cheeky smile made his mustache twitch.
She gave him a knowing look, then turned back to the Marquis and Josephine. If Solas had already headed to bed, then she would give him time to grow tired of waiting — even if her own mounting excitement was pooling uncomfortably in her smallclothes.
As the Marquis raised a glass to one of Josephine’s more witty comments, Virelan pictured Solas in her bed. Perhaps he wouldn’t even turn down the covers before disrobing — he could be quick when he wanted to be — laying back on the covers in her chilly room with the entirety of his body on display. She took a deep draught of her wine, gazing at a point just left of Josephine’s ear with glazed eyes.
Maybe he would grow tired of waiting, and begin without her. Maybe she would return and catch him in the act, frustration written in the lines of his face, pleas in his eyes, his fingers clutched in the covers. Maybe he would be hard and eager for her at the mere sound of her hand on the latch, ready for her to finally touch him and tip him over the edge —
She shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. The Marquis and Josephine paused in what seemed like mid-conversation, glancing at her with questions in their eyes. The Marquis of Serault’s mask glittered in the low candlelight.
“I think it is time I bid you both goodnight,” she said, overly formal, as she smoothed the front of her vest and rose to her feet.
The Marquis rose quickly to match her, as did Josephine. He put out a hand to touch her elbow. “It was a pleasure to spend the afternoon and evening with you, Inquisitor,” he said in a low, familiar tone that put her teeth on edge. “I hope to repeat the pleasure soon. Perhaps a visit to Serault itself would prove worthy of your time? I would be privileged to… entertain you.”
Virelan all but grimaced at the lascivious note in the Marquis’s final comment, but managed to turn it into a smile with one glance at Josephine’s concerned face. “I thank you, Marquis,” she replied shortly. “I will take it under advisement. Good evening.”
As she made her determined retreat, very conscious of her stooped shoulders and rolling warrior’s gait, she felt as if the Marquis’s gaze burned into the back of her shaved head. But, soon enough, the door to her quarters closed safely behind her, muffling the sound of silverware on plates and the Iron Bull’s booming laugh.
That is the last time I flirt with anyone just to unnerve Solas, she thought, leaning back against the door with a sigh. It isn’t worth it.
She glanced up the stairs ahead of her, considering. The thought of Solas waiting for her — just a few moments away — warmed her from head to toe. Well… perhaps a little worth it.
Virelan finally began scaling the stairs, anticipation building with each step. When her hand fell on the final door latch, her heart was all but pounding in her ears. When she creaked her door open and locked it behind her, she thought she imagined the tiny, breathless sigh from above.
Surely it was just the wind.
Her room was cold, just as she liked it. Dragon blood burned in her veins now, lighting her every cell on fire, and it was difficult to sleep unless chilled through and through. She was struck with gratitude that Solas put up with it — at least he had her to curl up against most nights, her body burning like a furnace. She kept her eyes trained on the softly flowing curtains at her windows as she scaled the final steps.
“Ma’lath,” her beloved’s voice called, filled with both need and admonition. “It is late.”
She smiled with a hum, her eyes skating along the floor towards the bed. “Did I ever tell you what time I would come?”
His clothes were in a heap beside the bed. He usually folded them neatly — it was satisfying to see them cast aside so recklessly. “You did not,” he affirmed with a petulant sigh.
She raised her eyes finally to the bed, her lips parting and heart pounding at what she saw there. Solas reclined against the pillows, one knee propped up and the other long leg extending beneath the sheets. He had draped the covers, artfully, over his groin while leaving his lean chest and arms exposed in an uninterrupted map of lines and planes. She raked her eyes over him hungrily, ending on the cheeky expression on his oddly beautiful face.
“Did you wait for me?” she murmured, crossing the floor to the bedside.
His features changed only incrementally, but it was enough — he had taken deep offense. “After waiting for weeks? I could not deny myself the pleasure of release at your hands. Denial of the self will make this all the sweeter.”
Virelan hummed, sinking one knee into the bed and crawling forward, fully clothed. His expression changed again into one of breathless anticipation — eyes wide, lips parted, nostrils flaring. He looked for all the world like a prey animal, only frozen with need instead of fear. She leaned forward until her warm breath washed over his pulse — it leaped beneath her lips.
“Are you ready for me to touch you?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“However I’d like?”
A tiny, eager nod. “Yes.”
“Until you come undone under my hands and mouth? Until you beg me to stop?”
He shuddered — a tendon bounced in his neck. “Yes.”
She finally leaned forward and kissed his throat — a soft, barely-there kiss that still had him twisting beneath her. She huffed a laugh against his skin, then snatched at his wrist and pinned it to the covers when he raised his hand to touch her.
“Not yet,” she chuckled. “I’m the one doing the touching.”
“Just like you touched the Marquis?” Solas snarked. His tone weakened as she kissed his throat again mid-sentence.
She sucked, hard, at his skin before moving along the line of his jaw, leaving open-mouthed kisses in her wake. “That was simply to fire you up,” she whispered. “I like it when visitors stoke the fires of your jealousy.”
He whimpered beautifully as she dipped to kiss the divot at the base of his throat. “Jealousy? No, I know my place.”
Virelan dragged her hand, light but trembling with the effort, up the covered surface of his thigh. “Your place, hmm? Do tell.”
Solas’s breath hitched as she dragged her tongue along the curve of his clavicle. She inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of his clean, soft skin — notes of anise, astringent herbs, and beneath it all a heady musk that was all his own.
“My place by your side,” he hissed, trembling. “My place in your bed.”
She grazed her teeth along the line of his pectoral muscle — his fine, greying auburn chest hair tickled her nose. “Only there?”
“Beside you in battle,” he snorted, as if at some joke, “in order to keep you alive. My glass cannon.”
She circled her tongue around his nipple, grinning when he arched his back instinctively to meet her mouth. She nipped at him and made him curse. “And you know where else, don’t you?”
Virelan wrapped her lips around his nipple then and sucked, leaving him temporarily struck dumb. He twisted, overwhelmed, under her mouth, gasping for breath. Finally, she released him with a pop of her lips and surged forward, hungry and suddenly raging with impatience, to fiercely kiss his mouth. His lips were so soft against her own, and his gasp — his tiny, huffing whine — sent energy crackling across her skin.
She brought both gloved hands up to clasp his face, deepening the kiss with urgency that was equal parts lust and adoration. The emotions were impossible to detangle for now, so she reveled in it — kissing him with needy pants, desperate whines through her nose, eager swipes of her tongue and nips of her teeth. He melted into her.
She pulled away after a drunken moment, hands still cupping his face, and looked into his eyes. They were blown wide, dark with want, shining with trust.
“Your other place, my love,” she whispered, suddenly self-conscious but pushing against it all the same, “it’s in my heart. Always.”
His beautiful face crumpled, and he leaned back into her to steal a soft, treasuring kiss. He raised his hands as if to embrace her — but even now he remembered her command, and dropped his hands back to the covers to fist within them, grappling for self control.
She pulled away, chuckling, and kissed a wet line down his throat, onto his chest, then over his belly, muttering between kisses, “Alright, enough of that. It’s time to actually give you what I promised.”
He twisted, whimpering, beneath her. “You promised me nothing. I accept only what you will give.”
She gazed up at him from where she crouched, mouth hovering over his navel, and smiled as she tugged her gloves free from her hands and cast them aside. Her burgundy scarf followed suit — she was heating up unbearably, even in the drafty air — and she kicked at her boots until they fell with twin thumps to the floor. Then, finally, she nosed the edge of the blanket covering his groin away.
He groaned as she bared him to the cold air. His cock stood free, finally, but she didn’t touch it yet. Instead she kissed languidly down the strap of muscle that wrapped around his hip and led into his groin, savoring the clean scent of his freshly-washed skin. Muscles twitched and trembled as he desperately held back.
She moved to kneel between his knees, then rolled up her sleeves. He watched her with rapt attention, his eyes following the tendons jumping in the backs of her hands, the muscles moving in her forearms as she exposed them. She loved how viscerally he reacted to the strength and form of her body — as if he had never seen one of its like before. Sometimes she felt as if her skin — her touch — her rolling muscles were all that kept him tethered to this waking world, and if not for them he’d spend the rest of his days dreaming.
Finally, her sleeves secured, she dragged gentle fingertips along the insides of his thighs. He trembled beneath her, staring up into her eyes so imploringly, and parted his legs at the slightest press of her hands. She slid down until she was on her belly, her hands pressing his thighs to the covers, her face hovering just to the side of his twitching cock. She held his desperate gaze as she lowered her mouth to the inside of his thigh, just below his pelvis, and sucked long and hard at the soft skin there.
He broke eye contact first, throwing his head back against the pillow with a deep, tremulous sob. “Yes, vhenan, please —”
She laved her tongue along the crease of his thigh, eagerly tasting him. The scent of musk grew as sweat began to rise on his skin. “As before? As you like it?”
A shaking, disbelieving laugh. “Anything, however you want, just… sathan, ma’lath —”
His beautiful voice cut off with an even more beautiful groan as she licked lower, underneath his balls and along the sensitive skin there. She dipped her tongue lower, and he bucked against her face.
“Ir abelas,” he panted, half panicked when she stilled. He swallowed, as if collecting himself — as if remembering how to speak in a way she would understand. “Don’t stop, please.”
She chuckled against his skin, her mouth poised over his most vulnerable spot. “What will you do if I do stop? I could ask you to leave, to get dressed right now and go back to your little room off the rotunda.”
He reached down and hooked a hand into the crook of his knee, as if by hauling his leg back she would press her tongue where he wanted it. “No, please vhenan —”
“You want to stay?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to make you come?”
He let out a sobbing gasp. “Yes. Please —”
“You want my mouth on your ass, Solas?”
His pathetic whimper was so beautiful. She looked him over in the span of time that he deliberated — her proud, beautiful man, open and trusting beneath her, submitting desperately to her will.
Virelan blew a soft breath over his flesh, laughing to herself when his pelvic floor visibly clenched. “Come on, love, talk to me. Tell me what you want. Beg me for it.”
It was as if he had forgotten the common tongue. When he spoke it was in desperate, low-pitched Elvhen, rolling and ancient and odd in the way that only the dialect he used was. She only understood every other word — please and ass and fuck among them — but the sentiment was clear.
Solas was unraveling.
With a self-satisfied laugh, she leaned forward and finally, indulgently, closed her mouth over his opening. He gasped, deep and shaking, and twisted under her touch as she licked into his rim. He encouraged her in words only he knew, the roll of his desperate voice bringing heat springing between her legs. His musky scent grew as his desperation mounted, and she savored it all — the sweat on his skin, the clean, heady scent and taste of him, his voice filling her ears. He was probably saying the most filthy, depraved, desperate of things, but they were beautiful because he said them.
She worried at his flesh, licking and sucking until a milky drop wept from his cock onto her face. She pressed her tongue into him, fucking him gently with it, and his words melted into a formless cry.
Only when he bucked against her face, nearly at the cusp, did she kiss her way up over his perineum, his balls, to lick up his shaft. She met his eyes with a hungry expression before plunging two fingers into her mouth to wet them.
His face was slack and imploring — beautiful in its need. She held his gaze as she drew her wet, dripping fingers from her mouth, off of her extended tongue, and lowered it to his ass. She carefully circled his hole, mixing her saliva with what was already there.
“Shall I?” she teased.
The V-shaped muscles framing his groin tensed and rolled as he resisted the urge to thrust down on her hand. His mouth worked, wordless for once, as she continued to tease at his entrance.
“Hmm,” she sighed indulgently. “I think I will.”
And she slid her two fingers into his ass.
Solas’s head fell back against the pillows, a deep groan ripping from his chest. He rolled his hips, riding her hand, until she pressed her free hand against his hip to hold him down. His hands clenched in the covers.
Virelan curved her fingers inside him, searching, until she felt the tense knot of need just inside. She pressed it, rolled her calloused fingers along it, and grinned when Solas cried out again, twisting beautifully in her grasp. Another translucent bead of come at his tip rolled down his shaft as she massaged him.
“There, my heart?” she cooed, delighting in his wordlessness. A tendon stood out on his neck as he clenched his teeth. “Right there?”
A soft whimper was his only answer. He turned and buried his face in the blanket. She sped her curling strokes, insistently pressing at that sensitive spot, until muffled moans met her ear. His chest began to heave like a great bellows as he rode the tremulous edge between mounting pleasure and absolution — the freckles sprinkled across his pale skin seemed darker in the moonlight.
“You’re so beautiful, ma’lath,” she told him, voice cracking. She realized with a start that her smalls were soaked through. “So good for me. Are you close?”
A hoarse, “Yes,” then a groan.
His muscles began to tense around her fingers. His cock pulsed, once, twice — but she pulled her hands free of him, depriving him of all touch and pressure. He cried out, hips jerking, and clenched his teeth.
“Fenedhis lasa, Virelan,” he gasped.
She hummed, smiling self-indulgently, and rose to lay a kiss on his cheek. He tensed, trembling, on the bedcovers, and refused to meet her eyes.
“Aww,” she murmured, “my petulant man. Are you disappointed?”
His breathing still hadn’t slowed, and his legs were still spread. His cock, hard and angrily red, stood tall and neglected. She traced a lazy fingertip around it, through his fine, sparse pubic hair, then away and down his thigh.
“You are cruel,” he rasped. “Heartless.”
She tutted with disapproval. “Now now. That’s no way to treat the woman who can make you come the way you like, is it? Don’t you want me to start again?”
He grunted, still facing away. The lines of his neck and jaw were taut and proud.
Virelan traced her hand along the muscled lines of his stomach, then his chest. “This is no way to get what you want, vhenan. Try begging again. I like it when you do that.”
He finally snapped, twisting to meet her gaze with a flash of defiance in his eyes. But, upon seeing her indulgent smile — the one she saved only for him — he melted, just a bit.
“You are a fiendish thing,” he sighed, a reluctant fondness entering his tone. “A barbaric, brutal mistress. I cannot believe I let you do this to me.”
Virelan snorted. “Do you want my fingers back inside you or not?”
Desperation flashed, despite the defiance still written on his face. He ground his teeth, considering, weighing his need against his pride, and finally hissed, “Please.”
She held his gaze and lowered her mouth to spit on his hole again, then slowly, languidly, pressed her fingers back inside him. He stared right back at her, lips parted, and uttered a long, breathless groan that only ended when she was fully seated inside him. His eyes finally fluttered shut when she found that knot again and stroked it with her fingertips.
Virelan built him back up into a tensing, sobbing mess. Before a minute had passed he was already trembling again, the same Elvhen tangle of nonsense bubbling from his mouth. She pressed down on his hip with her spare hand to keep him from thrusting down on her fingers — she kept her pace slow, measured, luxurious. His hands twitched where they knotted in the covers, as if yearning to grip his cock and stroke it to completion.
“There you are,” Virelan sighed, feeling his muscles tensing around her fingers again. “So close, love, so close. Can you come like this? The way you want?”
He whimpered, every muscle in his glorious body tensed and taut. His neglected cock wept another drop.
She sped her strokes, her own need mounting between her legs at the sight of him. “You can, ma’lath, you’re almost there. Talk to me.”
His words were low, strangled, soft. “Please, vhenan, may I —”
Her heart swelled in her chest. She never instructed him to ask, and yet he did anyway. His trust in her warmed her more than she expected it could.
“Yes, love,” she murmured, her deep voice encouraging, loving. “Come for me.”
A sob, then a hitching gasp — a long, wailing cry, and his body tensed around her hand. As she watched, his pelvic floor clamped down even as his cock twitched, and the first spurt of come hit his chest — the second his belly, then the third dribbled to his pelvis. His ragged breaths paused, just for a moment, as she withdrew her fingers from his body. Then every muscle, every tensed joint, relaxed until he was lax and languid on the covers. He stared up at her, disbelieving, naked adoration on his face.
“There,” she sighed, tracing her finger through the come on his pelvis. “Now wasn’t that nice?”
He laughed, throwing an arm over his eyes as if to hide. His smile still appeared beneath the crook of his elbow, however — broad and dopey and tired.
She retrieved her scarf with a shrug, then used it to mop up his come and her own saliva from both their bodies. Once clean, he grunted plaintively and drew her close — she started to protest, claiming that her clothes would pinch him, but he just burrowed his face into the crook of her neck until she softened against him. She threw the scarf aside with a laugh.
“I shall make it up to you,” he whispered, already on the brink of sleep.
She kissed his forehead, then his cheeks. “No. I don’t keep score. The pleasure is mine.”
Before she had even finished her sentence, Solas was asleep in her arms. She shrugged, content, and settled in for the night in his embrace, fully clothed.