Chapter Text
It was a particularly hot day on Arrakis. Not that any day was particularly not hot on the scorching desert planet. Nevertheless, you felt your skin clinging to the inside of your stillsuit, body tacky with a film of sweat. You weren’t even moving all that much, the blazing sands and radiant sun halting your progress back towards human civilization. You sat on an outcropping of stone in the midst of the desert, trying your best to keep yourself in as much of the shade as possible. Normally, it wouldn’t have been all that hard to shimmy into the cool shadows cast behind the rock, but you had company. And of course, it had to be him.
Before you found yourself in this predicament, you had been having a spectacular day. A spectacular field day to be precise. Studying the natural flora and fauna of Arrakis to update archives that had not been updated in decades—if not centuries, was what you had been brought to this planet to do—by House Atreides itself, no less.
There were a few…hiccups that hampered your progress, namely the attack made by the Harkonnen and Sardaukar forces, subsequent death of Duke Leto Atreides, and loss of all of your collected work made up until that point. You counted yourself lucky to have been one of only a handful of people to have escaped the massacre, having been found by Duncan Idaho and escorted safely away from the carnage. The two of you managed to rendezvous with the newly appointed Duke Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica. Speaking of Duke Atreides, your mind returned to the predicament at hand.
Sitting beside you was none other than the Duke Paul Atreides himself. You weren’t sure why or when he had decided to tag along on your little expedition. It was meant to be a standard day of work for you. Earlier, your studies had led you to a colony of Maud’Dib, which you had been carefully observing for weeks now. You meticulously jot down every action and interaction you could of the little desert mice. You had been attempting to draw a more comprehensive anatomical sketch of the Maud’Dib flicking perspired water off its ears to retain moisture, as it was an action that you couldn’t recall being documented anywhere in the archives about the Maud’Dib. A hand pressed down on your shoulder, and you flinched involuntarily, scaring off the little desert mice to skitter away into the dunes. You flicked your head around, coming face-to-face with Duke Atreides.
“Sorry,” he looked at you in a manner that seemed almost sheepish, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine, Lord Atreides,” you said, glancing briefly at your unfinished diagram, “I just wasn’t expecting you on this little excursion. I usually go alone.”
“Well, you’ll forgive my intrusion then. I thought you could use the company, but I’ll try not to disturb you as you work.” He paused to smile at you. “And please, call me Paul, there’s no need to be so formal when it’s just us.”
“Oh. Well, thank you, Lord Atrei—” you faltered, “um, Paul.”
His name felt foreign on your tongue. Before your escape from the Harkonnen attack, you had hardly spoken a word to each other. In fact, when you thought about it, you were quite certain that you hadn’t spoken to him prior, only ever having even seen him a handful of times in the halls of the palace in Arrakeen. Even now, though it had been several years since the massacre, the two of you rarely interacted—you being preoccupied with your observations, and him with his machinations for vengeance.
“Don’t move.” Paul’s gaze became stern as he surveyed the shimmering horizon. He knelt and placed his hand into the sand, brows furrowed in concentration. He looked over to you. “Sandworm. It’s heading this way.”
You both stood, scanning the desert for solid rock to hide from the sandworm. That’s when your eyes caught on to the shifting mound of sand barreling towards you. You froze for a moment, awestruck by the sheer size of the dune, knowing that underneath lie an even larger sandworm. Paul grabbed your arm and started sprinting in the other direction, snapping you out of your stupor. You stumbled after him down the treacherous slope of shifting sands and he released your arm to let you regain some semblance of balance. About a two-hundred meters in front of you was a small outcropping of stone. Paul practically glid across the desert sands in front of you. Your breath came out in ragged gasps as you ran to catch up with him and reach the safety of the solid platform ahead. Fifty meters to go. The ground beneath you shook and you could see the sands dance wildly as the sandworm drew closer. Paul had made it to the stone projection already and had turned to watch you with bated breath. Ten meters. You felt the sands begin to dip behind you and you took two more bounding leaps before crashing into Paul
You weren’t sure if it was the trembling of your own legs, or the rumbling of the burrowing sandworm, but all you could focus on were the vibrations snaking their way up your body. You realized that you had latched onto Paul—and he onto you, and you pried yourself off of him as you regained control of your limbs. You dropped your arms and felt Paul do the same. While you weren’t sure, you thought he hesitated a moment, his lean arms holding you close, clutching your waist before loosening their grip, fingers brushing your sides before coming to rest at his.
You turned and watched the telltale ripple of the sandworm shift across the sands. It circled a few times, likely realizing its prey had disappeared before slinking further beneath the sands where you couldn’t track its movements. You knew better than to think it had just disappeared, knowing it was more than likely still circling beneath you, hoping to catch the prey it had just barely missed. You shuddered at the thought of sinking into the cavernous maw of the sandworm and turned back to Paul.
The two of you headed further into the rock formation and found a nice boulder to rest beneath. You decided to wait until nightfall when sandworm activity was lower to try and head back towards the nearest sietch, where Lady Jessica, Paul’s younger sister Alia, and your Fremen allies were sure to be wondering about your absence.
And here you were now, back in the present moment, sitting in the sweltering heat and waiting for the sun to set. That blazing ball of fire seemed to be doing its absolute best to crawl as leisurely across the sky as it could. Every time you glanced towards the sky the sun seemed pinned to its place in the firmament, an unmoving eye glaring down at you with all the menace of a Harkonnen soldier. The sparse shade offered by the rock at your back, cooler though it was, could hardly counteract the radiant heat bouncing off all the other rocks around you. You glanced back at the sun, which sat despotically at its zenith, gleefully pouring heat down upon Arrakis to watch you suffer. You dropped your gaze and spoke, not turning to look at Paul as you did so.
“It’s too hot here. We need to find better shelter.”
“Agreed.”
You heard Paul stir and saw him rise to his feet out of the corner of your eye. A hand outstretched in front of you. You let out a huffy sigh before taking it. Paul pulled you to your feet and you stood swooning slightly as the blood rushed to your head. The two of you surveyed the area around you and began fanning out, searching within the rocks for better shade. You picked your way across the rubble, looking for anything that could shield you and Paul from the sun. You had been searching for perhaps a half an hour when you noticed a sheer shelf of stone overhanging a steep slope of more stone. You looked in and saw that it opened up into some sort of cave blanketed in shadow. You squat down to stick a hand in and felt the temperature drop immediately.
“Paul!” You stood and waved him over, some semblance of energy finding its way back to you. “I found a cave! Loo—” Paul came closer, and you stepped back towards the shelf, gesticulating excitedly towards the opening when your foot caught on some loose sand near the opening. You felt your leg slip underneath you and then the rest of your body slamming after it as you sped down the slope of the opening. Gracelessly, you tumbled down into the cave, rolling to a stop when the ground leveled out again.
You heard Paul call to you above and groaned in response. Then the sound of him sliding down the slope met your ears. You sat up and propped yourself up with your hands behind you as he came to stoop beside you. Your eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim light of the cave. It wasn’t pitch black in here, but there was enough shade that the rock beneath you was actually cool to the touch and the air seemed almost crisp, if dry, in your lungs.
“Are you alright?” You felt more than saw Paul’s hand brush against your cheek before it came to rest on your shoulder.
“I’m fine. A little scuffed up but otherwise alright.” His face came into focus slowly and you came to realize that he was alarmingly close to you. It was too dark to see the telltale green of his eyes, but you could see them glimmering only inches from your own. You felt the heat of a blush rise into your cheeks and suddenly felt grateful for the cover of shadow the cave provided. He hovered like this in front of you for a while and you watched as his eyes flickered across your form, no doubt checking you for injury. Despite your reassurances, Paul was not one to leave things up to chance. He finally leaned back, seemingly satisfied with his assessment of you and dropped his hand. “Well, I think you’re alright. Once we get back to the sietch I want you to get checked by a professional, but for now I don’t see any cause for immediate concern. Let’s focus on getting our bearing and finding somewhere to wait out the day.” You nodded in agreement and groaned as you hoisted yourself up. As you stood, you heard a pop and felt a small pool of liquid begin to seep out across the nape of your neck.
“Paul?” Your voice trembled and you froze in place, realization dawning on you. “My stillsuit. I think—I think it’s broken.”
“Don’t panic. Let’s find somewhere brighter to check out the damage.” He took your hand and led you further into the cave. The worry over your suit seemed to dull, partly from his reassuring words and partly from the way he had interlaced his fingers into yours. Your blush from earlier began to return, but you did your best to shake it off and focus on following Paul. “I think I see an area with more light up ahead.”
Before you the cave widened out and up. A vaulted ceiling of polished black stone rose up to a sliver of an opening far above the two of you. Small though the opening was, the bright sun and nearly reflective quality of the smooth stone around you provided ample light to see everything around you. The ground in front of you shifted from the brownish sandstone into the same polished stone above. Beyond the stone, a pocket of sand stretched across the rest of the cavern, intermittently broken up by more of the strange stone. You had never seen something like this on Arrakis and for a moment you forgot about your stillsuit’s malfunction, marveling at the novel geology around you.
A moment passed and you looked over to see Paul also admiring the cave walls, his brows furrowed slightly, and a small purse in his lips. His gaze snapped downwards to the rock beneath your feet, and he knelt, running his hands across the smooth surface. He turned to look up at you.
“I’ve seen stone like this before—back on my old home world, Caladan.” He stood, gaze returning again to the far wall. “Not the same exactly, but the way it’s been carved out is just like the caverns on the cliffside beaches. I think that this cave used to be full of—”
“Water.” You shared a look, acknowledging your newfound revelation. “But then, how did it get so full of it? And why does the stone in here look so much different from the stone everywhere else on the planet?”
Paul shook his head. “I’m not sure. We can try and figure it out after we fix your stillsuit. Go ahead and take it off.”
“I—” You balked for a moment, and that telltale heat of blush rose again as you stuttered out a response. “Do I—do I need to—um… take it all off?”
Paul looked at you head cocked slightly to the side, as if confused by your sudden timidness. “Well, we need to check the whole suit to find out where it’s been damaged.” A soft smile spread across his lips, but the same quizzical look was still plastered across his sharp features.
“It’s just—” You started, but then realized you weren’t sure what lame excuse you could even offer as to your hesitation to strip in front of him. “Never mind.”
You sat and began unclasping and unstrapping the various components of your stillsuit. You started by removing your boots, then peeled out of the rest of it starting from the shoulders. As you slipped out of the suit into your undergarments, you glanced up at Paul briefly. For a moment you swore you saw a dusting of a faint pink blush across his cheekbones but dropped your gaze immediately after you accidentally made eye contact.
You finished removing the suit and held it out at arm’s length towards Paul. He took it and began wordlessly inspecting it. You watched him concentrate while simultaneously doing your best to casually cover more of your half-naked form with your arms. He frowned and let out a sigh, gently dropping the suit into a crumpled heap.
“I take it that’s not a sigh of contentment?”
“No. The thing is completely busted for now. We’d need to take it back to the sietch for repair. I’m not even sure if it’s salvageable. You could always share mine for the water.”
“Thanks, Paul, but I’m not exactly keen on drinking your recycled…fluids if I can help it.”
He let out a chuckle. “It was more a joke; besides, I might have a better alternative anyways.”
“Oh? What kind of alternative could be better than the reclaimed sweat and tears of the great Duke Atreides himself?”
He rolled his eyes at your playful jab, picked up your broken stillsuit, and walked towards the sand at the edge of the rock. He reached into the suit and pulled out a small reservoir that you knew was full of water. He popped open the top and held it over the sand, pausing for a moment to look back at you. Then he dumped the water onto the sand. You watched, puzzled, as the parched sand soaked up the water greedily. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, a small circle of ripples in the sand bubbled up where the water had been poured. Paul’s hand flashed out and when he drew it back, he held a strange, tuber shaped creature aloft between you.
“It’s a sandtrout.” He smiled at you, proud of his little catch
“I know that. Why though?”
“Something the Fremen taught me in case of emergencies.” He held out a cupped hand beneath the sandtrout and squeezed it with the other. A small trickle of pinkish liquid dribbled into his palm. Once it was full he handed you the sandtrout. “In cases of emergency, you can drink this to sustain yourself.”
You looked at the weird pink ooze, then back up at Paul. “You want me to drink that?”
“Unless you want to drink my ‘fluids,’ yeah.” He smirked at you. “Don’t worry, I’ll drink it first if that makes you feel better. Besides, I’ve been sort of curious about how it would taste anyways.” Paul brought his cupped hand to his lips and drank. When he finished, a strange expression came across his face, as though confused by the flavor.
“So, what does it taste like?”
“It tastes like…” he paused for a moment, and you noticed his face begin to flush, “like saffron—sweet saffron. Spice usually tastes more like cinnamon, so I guess I wasn’t expecting it to taste different is all. Wow that feels—” As he spoke, you noticed a sheen of sweat begin to build across his brow, and the blush had spread even further. His eyes flickered around wildly until they came to rest on you. The way his eyes raked across your form made you feel as though he were sizing up a meal after weeks of starvation.
“Paul?” You set the sandtrout aside, watching it wriggle on the black stone out of the corner of your eye, but your gaze remained fixed on Paul. “Are you alright?”
He didn’t respond for a moment, but when he did you were compelled to listen.
“Come here.”
The same soft purr of his voice was there, but so was something else. A desperate, yearning growl. And then you felt it. It wasn’t a thing you could hear, no, but you knew it was carried in his words. A resonance like crystal that rattled your bones and filled your mind with cotton. Suddenly there was nothing more important in the world than heeding his every command. You found yourself standing in front of him, not remembering how, but not caring, as long as you did what he wanted you were satisfied.
“Kneel.”
You knelt.
“I’ve seen the way you look at me.” His voice returned to normal, and you felt the dullness begin to seep out of your mind, an ounce of clarity returning. “You act like I don’t notice—or maybe you don’t, but I see it.”
“On your hands and knees.”
You dropped your hands to the ground, coming to all fours. The dulling, cottony sensation returned to your mind, but you felt it lift momentarily.
“There’s that spark in your eyes that’s just so—” he let out a panting sigh, head lolling a bit to the side before returning to center to stare into your very soul, “needy. But I need you now. So, I need to know.” His voice softened and so did his gaze. The cotton disappeared entirely, and you could see now that he looked…scared. You could tell that he had no intention of hurting you or forcing you into this situation. But you could also tell by the way he sat there, panting and twitching, coupled with the large, pulsating bulge at his groin, that he desperately wanted to fuck you.
“Is this alright?” He asked. All traces of the strange resonance gone from his voice. When you answered, you knew it was your own.
“Yes.” Your response came out as a whisper. Not because you weren’t sure of your conviction, but because it was strange to admit your desire to him out loud.
“I won’t be able to hold back once we start.”
“I know—I don’t want you to.”
“Good.”
“Then beg.”
And so, you begged.
“I need you, Paul. Please, please, won’t you fuck me like a good little whore?”
And he complied, stripping his stillsuit off with dexterous, practiced ease.
“Good girl.” He laced his fingers into your hair at the nape of your neck and pulled your head down towards his throbbing cock.
“Open your mouth.”
You opened your mouth, and he drew you in closer until your lips brushed against the tip of his head, where a small bead of precum had welled up.
“Now, why don’t you show me how much you want this?”
You flicked your tongue out and caught his precum on it. Expecting it to be bitter, you were surprised to find that it had a sweet, warm earthen flavor to it—like saffron. You drew your tongue down his shaft, then back up, once, twice, then finally rising once more to catch his head in your mouth. He let out a stifled moan and you made it your goal to make him moan again. You began bobbing your head in earnest, taking care to stop and suckle harder whenever he made any pleasured noise. Your hands came to rest in the crease of his hips, and you used the leverage to push his cock further down your throat. He groaned and curled his fingers even tighter into your hair pushing you down as far as you could go before gagging slightly as he rammed his cock into the back of your throat and came. You continued your ministrations, enjoying every shudder and shake as his hips bucked uncontrollably into your mouth. He let out a throaty groan as he orgasmed, and you guzzled down his sweet, saffron tasting cum until he finished twitching. You lifted your mouth from his cock and swallowed the remainder of the load he had left in it, licking the corners of your lips to catch every last drop.
Paul’s head had rolled back when he came, and you watched his chest rise and fall a few times until he lifted his head to catch your gaze. You were surprised to see that his eyes were still glazed over with that same insatiable lust as before. If anything, he looked even more flustered than before.
He pulled you in for a kiss with the hand still tightly balled at the back of your neck. His other hand came to grip your thigh, pressing roughly into your flesh, sure to leave a bruise in the morning. He flipped you onto your back and you readied yourself to take his still throbbing cock. Instead, he drew back and rose to his feet and for a moment you wondered if something was wrong.
“Stand up.”
You stood.
“Come here.”
You found yourself standing in front of him. He pulled you in for another kiss, wrapping his arms around your waist. He peppered your mouth and jaw with sloppy kisses and began backing you up until you were firmly pressed against one of the smooth walls of the cave. The kisses began trailing lower, across your collarbones, down your chest. He stopped briefly to swirl his tongue around your nipple and suckle at it as his hand came to grasp and knead at your other breast. He continued moving down your body, pressing kisses against your stomach until his lips reached the top of your mound. He stood on his knees before you and caught your gaze again. You felt your breath hitch in your throat as those pale green eyes bore into your own and he began kissing and lapping at your folds.
Unsatisfied with the angle, he flipped one of your legs onto his shoulder, clamping your thigh in place with his arm, fingers gripping the same spot where you were sure you would be bruised in the morning. His other hand gripped your hip and kept you firmly planted against the wall. He buried his face into your dripping cunt and his tongue flicked across and around every fold, settling on your clit. His tongue swirled around it, eliciting soft moans and sighs from you. He readjusted his grip, holding your thigh up with his shoulder and bicep and holding you against the wall with the hand on that same arm. His other hand dropped from your hip, brushing against the inside of your thigh before tracing the lips of your outer labia. He continued suckling your clit and slowly inserted a finger inside of you. You moaned again as he started contorting his finger inside of you. He swiped his finger across your sweet spot, and you let out a hum in pleasure. He inserted another finger and they undulated inside you in tandem, bringing you closer to orgasm. Another finger and even more earnest tongue flickering and suckling and you felt the knot that had built in your stomach suddenly release as you came. You shuddered and let out a breathy, sighing cry. Paul plunged his fingers in deeper and pressed his tongue flat against your clit, eyes fluttering as he felt you writhe onto him.
He removed his fingers after you stopped twitching so much, though your walls continued to pulse inside from the aftershocks. He stood again and began rubbing his cock with your slick juices.
“Come here and get on your knees.”
You found yourself bowing beneath him on your knees again. He circled around behind you, and you could hear him drop to his knees. His free hand clamped around the back of your neck and pushed you down until your cheek pressed against the smooth ground, arms sprawled out in front of you for support. You felt the tip of his cock line up against your entrance and hover there. You mewled in protest and tried to shimmy up against him, but he pushed you further against the ground.
“Don’t move.”
You sat there aching for him, but that resonance in his voice kept you nearly paralyzed. He traced his cock against your lips slowly, agonizingly, but you couldn’t do anything about it. Suddenly he plunged his full length into your waiting depths. You cried out as he filled you to the brim, his girth stretching you wider than you knew you could. He held himself inside you for just a moment before gripping your hips and violently fucking you to your core. Every stroke seemed to rub against new flesh, and he managed to fuck you hardest against your sweet spot, bringing you to orgasm twice in quick succession. He reached around and began playing with your clit then pounded into you harder until you both came again. You felt his hot cum spill into you and out onto the polished ground as he continued to buck inside of you. He shuddered once more, and you felt his cock pulse and twitch inside of you.
You stayed there with your hips locked together as you waited for him to pull out, but his cock remained hard as ever, and he let out a rumbling growl. It was then that you realized that he still wasn’t satisfied, and you steeled yourself for a long day ahead. By the end of it, you were quite sure Paul had fucked you on and against every solid surface in the cave, in every position you could think of.
You weren’t exactly sure what you would say to explain your absence from the sietch, but you figured you would omit yours and Paul’s activities from the report. You would, however, be needing an excuse to come back to the cave sometime for…research. All these things you decided you would figure out when the time came, but for now you decided you needed to take a nap.