#i really gave this fic the rockstar treatment considering im highkey worried its garbage aha

[caffeinatedmunchkin]

La Petite Mort

Emmrich Volkarin x Fem!Rook ✦ Rating: M (MDNI!) ✦ 7.8k words

The moment for discomfiture had come to pass. The obligation of responsibility to quell her suffering too great to ignore, he inspected her as a hunter might a downed prey. One his misplaced strike fell short of fatal, she bleated and wriggled much like a wounded animal. She was in pain. She needed him to put her down. "You poor thing. You are struggling, aren't you..." Spoken softly, more so to himself in observation, than acknowledgement of her plight. Wrought with sympathy. "Please." Holding herself propped up by the elbow, her body stretched out languid and malleable before him. Ripe for his indulgence. "It's just been so long, and I've h-had maybe... a bit too much to drink." The admittance airing on sheepish, she then gave her best purr of seduction. "I'm finding myself... distracted." The rich mocha of his eyes glimmered with something wicked. A shift in the gentleman Watcher, something she had yet to witness. "Allow me, then, my darling, to realign your focus."

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Crossposted to AO3!

*pspspsps at the Emmrich brats* come get tamed!

I told myself I wasn't going to write for Emmrich but I guess that was a big fat lie. Ya'll keep saying how he'd talk you through it, writing this filth was the only way I was gonna exorcise that demon. Writing characters OOC is my worst nightmare, I did my best. Let me know your thoughts on whether I was successful or not. Enjoy 😘

Rook floundered as she regarded her circle of companions, struggling to uplift those around her as her spirit was the lowest of them all. To her credit she wore her bravest face, and commended each and every one of them for their displayed strengths in their respective roles. A reluctant heroine who found leadership ill-suited and cumbrous.

Weisshaupt had yet to retract its claws. Emmrich noticed her energy waning, the tension in her thin shoulders festering. Her posture heavy with fatigue.

They were all on edge, but none shouldered a greater burden than her. The wayward little Watcher that held too much regret in the delicate lines of her young face.

Hazarding just a few glances her way during the meeting, each time displayed the same weariness she failed to hide. He wracked his brain for possible solutions to help ease her strain, but he kept falling short.

He would have known just how obvious his course of action should be, if only he knew where to look.

If he had given proper credence to her coy remarks, and coquettish body language. If he accepted that her freely given touch - nimble fingers grazing his elbow, the small of his back - were held longer with him, than the others.

If he hadn't been so consumed by his strict notions of gallantry, in accordance with his branding of her as the proverbial forbidden fruit. Securely out of reach, it was a pedestal he placed her on before he joined The Veilguard. Well before they had even been formally introduced.

Emmrich had suggested, with enough vagueness to spare himself from too much guilt, that he hadn't remembered seeing her before. To his relief, she corroborated his version of their story in kind.

A delicious discrepancy. A secret they each believed they held over the other.

"Have we really never met around the Necropolis before? Even in passing?"

"I don't remember everything from my scholar days."

Not an outright lie; those days were a blur. Rigorous and all-consuming academics with not much time for herself, except of course for the moments she slipped away, or stole. All instances that were still fresh in her history.

When the sun dropped from the sky, and the lights of the city beckoned her with it's promised anonymity, and its proffered escape. Getting herself into the sort of trouble that was otherwise irresistible to a teenager who felt she didn't belong. Who bore the associated pressures and expectations of a path more or less chosen for her.

Trouble that followed her even into young adulthood.

Scrapes and scuffles on the streets of Nevarra that inexorably found it's way back to the ears of her elders. Awaiting her with exasperated spiels, and stern words. And heftier measures of containing her the next time.

Though she had seen him plenty around the Necropolis. She knew who he was. More so than her flippant dismissal let on.

Professor Volkarin; the tall, handsome academician whose lectures she'd made a habit of crashing. Keeping to the back with one of her friends, one who actually held the right to attend, she'd watch him with a covetous gleam to her eye and a withheld breath. A luxury rarely afforded, her heart whirred like a hummingbird in the cage of her ribs whenever she could sneak off to sit in.

Confident, eloquent, experienced. He'd captured the attention of the entire lecture hall with the flourish he wielded in spell-casts, and final preparations alike. He was impassioned about his work. The full-breadth of his proficiency - and kindness - shining through as he expounded on the necessity of ceremonial tradition, and the importance of regarding the dead with the same reverence one would the living.

And Maker, his hands.

They had never been introduced. Not a word, or glance, exchanged between them in all their shared years. She was certain that she could admire from afar. That he hadn't taken stock of the vivacious, diminutive elven interloper that invited herself to his seminars.

Oh how wrong she was.

The professor was more familiar with Ariadne Ingellvar then he'd ever dare confess.

Catching glimpses of her around the halls. The vibrant little mage that radiated the fertile warmth and liveliness of a dawning springtime, with her rosy cheeks and bright shock of blonde hair. She evoked images of fresh bloomed honey-suckle dotting a verdant meadow, a herald of the seasons approach.

Who crept into his audience, and observed from the cover of shadow, as far back as their discretion would extend.

Like a voyeur, he'd sense her presence amongst his fold of usual suspects, making him feel exposed. The lecture hall too public a setting for the sudden feverish indecency that infected an otherwise appropriate, and strictly educational demonstration.

At times she looked out of place against the backdrop of the Necropolis. A beaming smile with a lot of teeth. An infectious cackle of laughter he had come to recognize as hers, as she maneuvered the halls with a gaggle of peers around her. A distinct bouquet of raspberry, gardenia and amber wafting in her wake. Little, pleasant pockets of fragrance left like breadcrumbs to follow her trail, should he ever be so inclined.

Or so bold.

The smells of the Necropolis were dominant, and familiar. Of myrr, clove, and Bitumen. The bitter cold. Her scent somehow refused to be suffocated by her surroundings. Her reputation, that he was only able to gleam fractions at a time, suggested that she refused to blend in. And in that, she was successful.

He was equally familiar with the whispers and disapproving remarks from colleagues over the years. They shadowed all conversations at which her found her at the center. Where she was mentioned, criticism was sure to follow.

Her raising esteem among the ranks made for all the more intriguing a contrast.

She was restless, it seemed. Headstrong. Spirited. But oh, was she alluring. And lovely.

Lovely enough to both coax his gaze, and forbid him from looking any further. Digging any deeper.

Emmrich was both ecstatic - and slightly sick - to see her traipsing up alongside Bellara when they arrived for his recruitment. It had been some time since he had last seen her flitting through the halls of the Necropolis. Though she had been absent from its structure, her memory very much still haunted his musings.

She didn't look much different from how he remembered. She seemed grounded; sated by the experiences she received in her time away from home. And yet, a flicker of despondency remained. Homesickness, perhaps? Dejection at being sent away?

After the meeting had disbanded, she remained in her seat. Eyes cast downward, as she studied her nails, and twisted her fingers. He found himself pausing, with brows lifted in concern.

In a gentle croon, he maintained the safe distance away from behind the other end of the table. "Rook, dear, are you alright?"

Lifting her chin to gaze up at him, he saw the same lost look he sometimes caught sight of around the Necropolis. He now knew it's origin, of course, or at least a likely theory.

During their jaunt at the memorial gardens, Ariadne revealed that she had been the babe that was found abandoned in the crypt. He hadn't been among the Watchers who recovered her, but he had seen her then. All those years ago when he was a much younger man.

Her impossibly tiny body swaddled and cooing from the crook of Myrna's arm. All pink cheeks and bright eyes. With elongated, pointy ears not yet grown into, even with how new to the world she was.

And then there she stood; an accomplished necromancer, and grown woman. Her ears now as proportionate as the rest of her.

The same grown woman who had caught his eye around the Necropolis, much to his dismay. It took everything in him not to react upon that revelation. Maker willing she hadn't noticed the falter of his tight smile, or the twitch in his left eye.

More reason to keep her at arms length.

Yet there he was. Alone with her. Lingering, like a besotted fool.

"Never better." She lied with a sidelong look, casting away the brief flicker of melancholy just as it breached. "I'm tired, but no more so than anyone else."

"Tremendous pressure often leads to tremendous physical stress on the body." His tone erudite, he straightened to a more erect posture. "I fear you're not heeding the tells of your own."

"I'm fine, really." With an exaggerated simper in effort to make it more believable, she rolled her shoulders as if their tension released with that declaration. "Thank you, Emmrich."

Fearful of coming off too strong, he nodded in surrender and cleared his throat. "I'll see you at dinner, then?"

She rose from her seat, smiling at him from across the table. "Yes." She affirmed. "See you then."

During dinner Ariadne was silent. Poignant as it was uncharacteristic, it was an observation that worsened his concern. She no more than picked at her meal like a bird, flashing brief smiles, or nodding only when appropriate. But the fiery Watcher he knew was miles away from the young woman who sat across from him. Her disassociation betrayed by the sad, brown eyes that had dulled from their radiant luster.

He knew she was in there somewhere, and yearned for her return.

With dinners unceremonious conclusion, he watched as she excused herself from the table without a word, and disappeared into the pantry. Returning after a curious length of time, the stem of a goblet was twisted in her fingers. That same small hand also clutched what he assumed to be a wine bottle by it's neck.

Her eyes darted among those closest to her before proceeding, hoping to avoid potential entanglement with someone who might think to join her.

Or worse, notice the specific vintage she was smuggling.

The only others left in the dining hall now were himself, Taash and Davrin. Too engrossed in a debate over whether or not an axe was more effective than a long sword against a Hurlock, to pay any mind to her suspicious behavior.

It only took him a few lengthened strides to catch up to her. Believing herself to be in the clear, Emmrich noticed how tense her back stiffened upon hearing him advance. She halted, before spinning on a heel to face him, brows quirked and her lips pouting in what could only be describe as anxiousness.

"Rook- I do hope I'll receive your pardon if this comes across as overbearing, but I must caution against such a libation on an empty stomach."

Unable to curve his curiosity before it took the lead, his gaze flickered down to the bottles label. A lump formed in his throat as he read it.

Carnal, 8:69 Blessed.

The good professor was well acquainted. It's sultry description reared from the depths of his psyche, and crashed over him like a sheet of glass.

An Orlesian liqueur for the daring, or those who wish to seem so. Said to enhance sensation.

He clasped his hands in front of him with a soft clatter of his bracelets and bangles. Hoping beyond hope he hadn't played his hand. That she didn't notice the climb his brows made to his hairline upon noting her scandalous choice in drink.

If she did catch his prying, she had the decency not to acknowledge it. Her smile was tired, but genuine all the same.

Emmrich felt her palm slip around his elbow. The young mage was most unrestrained with her expressions through physical touch - it was just her way - and at times he fell prey to the rot of wishful thinking that he received more of it than the rest.

"And I hope it's not too much trouble to ask that you call me Ariadne. Or Ari, if you prefer." The fleeting contact pulled back to then give a dismissive wave, she planted a step behind her, poised to take off. It wasn't like her to look to flee his company with such haste, and that appealed to his morbid intrigue. "And trust me when I say, I only want one drink, just to help me sleep." The melody of her voice lilted in amusement. "Though if you do get worried, I think you know where to find me."

Call me Ariadne. His chest pulled in on itself. Pressing his tongue against his clenched teeth, it felt heavy and cotton thick at the mere thought of addressing her as such. Addressing her by name.

Rook was easy, and safe. Rook was a moniker for the explicit use of her associates. Referring to her that way maintained his professionalism, and staved his guilt.

Swallowing with a weak smile, Emmrich offered an acquiescent bow of his head. Neither indulging, nor denying her request.

She peered up at him in thought for but an extra moment, her exhaustion clouded gaze glimmering with contemplation. Abandoning whatever seemed to hold her attention, she gave him a final, small smile, before exiting the dining hall.

Though if you do get worried, I think you know where to find me.

And worry he did.

The hour was late, and the thought of disturbing her nagged with apprehension. Surely she didn't require his company, nor his consolation, when she had such a treasured, sororal bond with Neve. Yet he found himself taking the long walk down the corridor to her quarters nonetheless.

Perhaps reminiscing of home will offer a welcome distraction, if only for a short while. He assured himself. A comfort that I am uniquely disposed to provide.

All thoughts of Neverran eccentricities and their hopeful nostalgia halted as he arrived at her door. It greeted him with an alarming sound.

Though muffled through the thick, ornamented wood, she cried out his name - weak, and panted - as if in great pain. His chest tightened, seized by the gelidity of dread. It trickled down his lofty figure like he had plunged headfirst into a lake on the cusp of winter.

He pictured the worst. The Lighthouse infiltrated by a Venatori assassin, regardless of how improbable. He saw her crumpled on the ground and sticky with her own sanguine as it pooled beneath her. Her beautiful, flaxen locks turned to ink from coagulation.

That swell of panic was all it took.

Forgetting himself, and all prior etiquette he once held steadfast, Emmrich burst into her room.

His ferocity mirroring the pounding of his heart, he conducted a quick sweep of the space from left to right - intent to find the fabricated, surmised assailant. But none was to be found. Her room was blissfully free of the threat of imminent danger.

No Ventaroi. No blood. No need for his chivalry.

That relief was staggering, though short-lived. Emmrich next sought her out, rounding the lounge at the center, knowing there was no where else left in the space for her to be, except for there.

What he found dried his mouth, and spiked his blood to run frigid in suddenly too-tight of veins all the same.

Ariadne was draped prone on the chaise, in naught but her ivory blouse, and half unbuttoned at that. The loose, silken fabric shifted down her blushed shoulder, flashing him a peak of flesh as she writhed and twisted in pleasure.

Flesh pinched rosy and glistening. And far too much of it, more than he least of all had any right to spy.

The senior necromancer simply stood there aghast, gawping like an un-initiated adolescent - of which, he was neither - unable to come to terms with the fact that what he stumbled upon was indeed transpiring.

And she had moaned his name in her throes. Called out for him to come to her aid.

Swirling iridescence filtered through the glass across from where she laid, bathing her in a luminous, surreal glow. The waters reflection streaked her in vivid hues of chartreuse and turquoise that slithered over her flushed, half-naked body. As if guiding his appreciative leer, leading to where he should aim it next.

It drew his eye to the toned length of bare legs, her petite calves flexed and toes curling. The roll of her pelvis against the furious rubbing of her fingers was hypnotic. A faint, lewd squelch echoed her frustrated whimpers.

He watched tormented as her lithe body arched; shapely hips lifting, the base of her spine bowed in a provocative display, pressing her face down into the fabric, muffling her moans. Attacking herself from a deeper angle, the sinuous dip and curve of her silhouette alone was enough to drop him to his knees.

The bottle sat uncorked on the dresser, while her goblet dangled from her finger-tips, precarious as it hadn't been emptied. It impressed him how she managed not to spill as she then ground down. Humping the hand she pinned between her nethers, and the cushion that cradled her.

He had only ever seen her hair combed back and twisted in a bun, but now it was pulled free and hung loose. Glowing almost silver in the shimmer, a veil of ashen blond that streaked messily over her face. So removed from himself as he stared, it hadn't even occured to him that yes, he was still there watching, until her uncovered eye drifted to him at last. Only then had she realized his intrusion.

The soft hazelnut eye was almost eclipsed in full by her pupils dilatation. Glossy with lust, she peered up at him from beneath a heavy lid. Utterly unabashed at his presence.

If she was even a hint mortified to be discovered by him in such a predicament, nothing about her demeanor suggested it.

"Oh! Professor Volkarin... good." Her tone rich with intoxication, it spread a wide, lazy grin against her colored cheeks. "I-I'm in rather... desperate need of your masterful instruction."

As quiet and still as death itself, Emmrich's entire body locked in place, with a stoicism that presented much more severe than he meant. A strangled mewl forced it's way from her throat, one that lured him back out from his inward retreat.

The moment for discomfiture had come to pass. The obligation of responsibility to quell her suffering too great to ignore, he inspected her as a hunter might a downed prey. One his misplaced strike fell short of fatal, she bleated and wriggled much like a wounded animal. She was in pain. She needed him to put her down.

"You poor thing. You are struggling, aren't you..." Spoken softly, more to himself in observation, than acknowledgement of her plight. Wrought with sympathy.

"Please." She whined, having given up on the erected pearl, rubbed raw and twitching. Holding herself propped up by the elbow, her body stretched out languid and malleable before him. Ripe for his indulgence. "It's just been so long, and I've h-had maybe... a bit too much to drink." The admittance airing on sheepish, she then gave her best purr of seduction. "I'm finding myself... distracted."

The rich mocha of his eyes glimmered with something wicked. A shift in the gentleman Watcher, something she had yet to witness.

"Allow me, then, my darling, to realign your focus."

He stepped towards the chaise with a tall posture, and leisured gait, as if he very much believed propriety could be maintained despite the circumstance. She scrambled to allow him space beside her, curling her knees and swaying in place as she watched him sink into the upholstery.

She brought the goblet back to her lips, relying on that sweet bite of liquid, candied peach to fuel her shamelessness. But it stopped just shy of her pout.

Held in place by a firm hand, her glassy eyes floated over the rim to see Emmrich angling a look of disapproval her way. The lines of his handsome, angular face deepened in exasperation, like an austere parent about to reprimand an unruly brat.

"Dear girl, I should think you have had enough."

Her already wild heart-beat took off at a reckless gallop, at how he managed to wrap the rich velvet of his voice around such sharp scolding. Her weakened fingers broke away from the stem of the goblet with laughably pathetic submission, waiting with bated breath as he discarded it to the credenza behind them.

Settling the length of his tapered frame more comfortably against the cushions, he turned to address her once more. Ensnaring her eye-contact, he refused its release while he pat his thigh. Motioning her to him like he would a skittish kitten.

The cut of his jaw lifted, he stared down the bridge of his nose at her as she crawled the rest of the way towards his lap.

"Face away from me, so your back is flush with my front." The weight of her settling over him, the heat radiating from the naked thighs that then straddled him - sensations that were enough to break him on the spot. A reprehensible fantasy that now spilled into his reality.

He failed to swallow a groan as the curve of her bottom slotted against his groin.

"Good. Are we comfortable?"

The little she-devil that she was, her hips gave a playful wriggle against his bulge. She got more than she bargained for, tripping over her tongue in reply at the imposing mass that greeted her. One not yet swelled to full mast. "O-oh, yes."

Emmrich fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and count. She wasn't going to make this easy.

Sinewy, bejeweled hands slid over the tops of her thighs, the metal of his bracelets clinking and cool and against her feverish skin. Stopping at her knees, he slipped his thumbs between them, and peeled them apart unhurried.

"That's it... spread yourself for me, nice and wide." His smooth palms glided back up the inside, feeling how supple the more delicate, inner muscle quivered to his slow exploration. The skin burned beneath his finger-tips, the heat emanating from her grew the closer to her womanhood he traveled.

Deliberate in avoiding that area, he instead drew up to clutch her about the hips, giving them an encouraging squeeze before he stilled. "We'll want as much room as possible, yes?"

When she drew her legs over his knees to dangle alongside the anterior of his own, a rumbling croon of "good girl" ghosted against the shell of her ear. The whimper he earned for it couldn't have been any sweeter.

"I gather you are most receptive to a hands-on approach?" Unable to give him a verbal response, all she could do was squirm in his lap and nod. An unending wealth of smart remarks, he preened at having already rendered her beyond speech. "Very good. You're going to show me how you touch yourself - exactly as you were before my interruption. We'll see if I can't refine your methods."

With a shaky exhale, she leaned back against him, while her fumbling fingers set to work.

She did well at first, all things considered. The young Watcher was reeling from his closeness; his infectious body-heat, the infuriating steadiness of his breaths. The overwhelming aroma of smoked potash, cedar and oakmoss, and an indistinct floral note layered in between.

He kept her anchored to him by her hips, thumb strokes absent-minded and rhythmic, while he observed her performance. Any time she teased herself just so, and gasped out for him, he'd reward her with a throaty; "stunning", "yes, that's a good girl", "you're doing quite well." Incentivizing her to maintain her pace with his praise.

The final nail in her coffin to it all was the strength of alcohol that coursed through her, pumping her blood so hot it made her feel smothered by her own skin, too tight and confining. Weighing down her limbs with rueful sluggishness that fought against her pursuit of release.

Her head swam laps against the lurching of the room, while his hummed approval only heightened her wooziness. All that kept her steady, were the eyes she held shut, and Emmrich's embrace.

He stared down the front of her body with enraptured attention, feeling himself pulse with a lazy heft against her rear. Knowing she could feel him while he stiffened to attention at her little mewls, and stifled rocking. But he couldn't find it within himself to care. His attentiveness a willing prisoner to the sight of her dainty index finger swirling over her clitoris, as her middle digit strained to edge inside herself.

The little elf would get so close to the release that continued to taunt her. It warped the edges of her bleary vision, and shook the sweat-dampened, tensed thighs that his knees held open. He'd feel her body seize, joints lock, and head snapped back, as she arched in prelude.

And then she'd lose it. Slipping from her trembling fingers, the white-hot, coiling tension ebbed in cruel absence. Like trapped steam set free from beneath the lid of a pot as it roiled. A defeated whine bubbled from her throat, and he swept in to console while easing her back to the precipice.

"Oh, my dear girl." He clicked his tongue, ever punctilious. His silken voice dropped an octave from its depth in his chest. "You need only concentrate."

Ariadne lulled her head back against his shoulder with an infantile huff that matched her pout. "I am."

He chuckled low in tantalization. So low she more felt it against her back than heard it, her blood roaring in her ears as loud as it was.

"Then you're still holding on." He kept his admonishing gentle. "And I need you to let go."

He watched as she twerked her wrist, working herself up and down in a blur of erratic, frantic strokes.

"Slow, slower." He instructed. "I can only imagine how you must ache... quiet your mind. Steady your breaths. Follow my voice." Every syllable pronounced in that assertive baritone had her walls spasm against themselves. "I'll help you, darling girl, if you'll listen."

An unintelligible moan was all the response he received.

She switched to tease her weeping entrance with one hand, while the other busied by hopeless strokes at her clit in irregular, clockwise circles. Her shoulder blades dug into his chest, they tingled against his mused susurration as it thrummed through him.

No doubt poised to deliver constructive criticism, he was nothing if not a stickler for proper form.

"You're much too rough with yourself. Too impatient." He tsked, his own hands kept occupied by massaging the firm swell of her glutes. More than a little sure that her piriformis was screaming at the prolonged tension it was suspended in. "Only to give up just as you're right about to crest."

"I'm not giving up," she insisted, her face screwed in aggravation as she brought herself back, only to then lose it again faster than before. To this loss, she growled. "I can't.. I can't-!"

His tone low, and contemplative, he then interjected in a display of his authority. "Hmm, I see now."

Emmrich fished the the end of his crimson binding from around his waist, and tugged the long end to unravel to a more generous length in his palm.

Bringing it between her legs, he began to wipe away the excess wetness. Tending to her with paternal affection, it made for an obscene contrast against his words. "Pardon my crude tongue, but you're much too wet, dearest. You'll not get the necessary friction otherwise."

Her body shuddered at his words, dripping from the tip of his tongue against the shell of her ear like liquid smoke. His chest was warm and sturdy against her back, a broadness to him that his lank mislead. His sheltering firmness curved around her as he continued to guide her with forbearance.

"P-professor please-," she nearly sobbed, hips stuttering up into his fingers as they rubbed her throbbing cunt through the satin. "I need your touch."

He fought the visceral reactions to the way she mewled his title like some revered perversion, for fear that if she realized its effects on him, she'd become merciless in its exploit.

"But of course, my girl." Voice slinking and sultry, he brought his lips closer to her ear. "I've never been known to shun a pupil in need."

His hands slid over the tops of her thighs to find her fluttered heat, and did so with the practiced ease of a body known to him. She shivered at his finesse, at how assured he was in her handling, though it was the first time they were ever intimate.

Velvet smooth and puffy from her abuse, his touch felt like a salve that granted instant relief to her neglect. A loud, shuddering sigh dragged from her by the trace of his finger-tips over her petals. First with his bare hand, the dainty gold chain that connected the ring of his thumb to the bracelet on his wrist dragged against her folds. While he continued, his ornaments played against one another in a dissonant jingle with each and every purposeful manipulation. Just as they did during his casts.

She wondered if she'd ever be able to hear those otherwise mundane sounds again without becoming aroused.

His gloved hand, equal in dexterity to the one that stroked her bud, joined in to lend additional prowess. Both hands a flurry of expertise betwixt her thighs, Emmrich massaged and rubbed, his glove sticky with her honey as he spread it around her tender lips. Pressing them apart to slot his middle finger between, he began to glide back and forth over her weeping slit with an agonizing pace.

His pressure efficient, yet patient. Only giving her what was needed, refusing to indulge.

Sagging back against his chest, she dared to look down at the sight of his hands splaying her apart, as if in appraisal. She couldn't help but recall one particular demonstration he held for advanced techniques on relieving rigor mortis.

His grace, the fluidity of his manipulation. Long, limber fingers aglow with magic, as they palpated the tissue before him. He narrated his precise movements in the genteel inflection she had come to recognize, and adore.

However as she watched him work, hands gliding over the limbs that melted to desired pliability at the behest of his deft touch, she didn't hear a word of it.

All she could do was stare at those hands, and stew in the blatant envy she felt towards the corpse beneath them.

She was wrenched from the clutches of her reverie by a sharp, yet delicious sting to her cunt.

With his gloved hand and a quick flick of his wrist, Emmrich had demanded her straying attention with slap.

It was solid, but affectionate. No where near harsh enough to be unbearable. Just exacting enough to corral her back in line.

Ariadne yelped, jolting in his grasp as his gloved palm cupped her hurt. Soothing the sting with a gentle pet.

"I'll not tolerate you daydreaming." For all his chiding, it still held the warmth and patience she'd expected from him. "If my instruction is desired in earnest then your complete and undivided attention is expected, Miss Ingellvar."

" 'M sorry! I c-can't help-,"

"You can and you will, young lady." His interjection was laced with amusement despite his steeliness. "Unless of course, you aim to provoke my cruelty."

Professor Emmrich Volkarin cold and cruel. A thought that twisted her insides into a throbbing, tangled mass. Had she not been so helpless to the maddening of an out-of-reach orgasm, one now threatened by his denial, she would have delighted in goading such a side of him.

"I mind you to pay attention. I know you won't take kindly to the consequences if I'm made to repeat myself." The warning dripped from his tongue deliberate and restrained.

A gloved finger turned it's attention to her aching bead, Emmrich worked it in diligent circles. His feathered pressure serving as kindling to the wild fire that raged beneath her skin, the feeling of suffocation returned with a vengeance.

"The tissue here is most sensitive." His explanation cool as it was dignified, his knees continued to hold her legs open as she quivered to his stimulation. "All that's needed is a little leniency, and a light touch."

She could feel the prickling burn simmer at the soles of her feet. The promise of a full-body blaze lapping it's way through her, staring from the bottom, and working it's way up. His index finger continued to circle with rhythmic, borderline merciless insistence.

The more she writhed and arched in his lap, the tighter his circles became. The satin leather pressing down with measured pressure to her swollen sex.

"Do you feel the difference?" He urged, the bridge of his nose brushing at her temple as he nuzzled her, inhaling the combination of her perfume while he had her this close. And the heady musk of her arousal, as it drooled from her to his coaxing. "That pressure in your abdomen, it feels more reliable, does it not?"

He brought her so close, so gloriously close and sooner than she thought possible, given her struggles. Struggles that were worsened by the inebriation she now cursed.

Yet, somewhere through the foggy recesses of her rationale, her core clenched around its emptiness in indignation.

She yearned for his fullness, for the stretch of him to come down around. The raw desperation of her keening plea surprised even her.

"Please, I-I need-,"

"What do you need, my dear?" Emmrich didn't stop nor slow his expert ministrations.

She groaned. "Maker, please! I need you- need you inside me!"

He shut his eyes, drawing a deep, quiet breath to keep himself grounded. The girth in his trousers twitched in compliance, but he ignored it.

"Easy, easy now." He hushed, pushing her slick petals apart with his bare hand to first dip in his gloved middle finger. Almost too long, too much of him to take, and ribbed from his rings. The force in which she clamped around him nearly popped his joint from the socket. A shrill, breathy moan tumbled out of her and into the stifling air.

Allowing her a moment to savor his fullness, he then crooked the slender digit inside her heat, rolling her eyes back, and twitching her ears. "There, does that feel better?"

"Yes, oh yes." She sobbed, the plushness of her sex throbbing around his leather-bound intrusion. "T-thank you, Professor."

"You're most welcome, little darling." Intoned with the same dignified composure as if she were no more than a pupil in his lecture hall, he pumped steadily within her. His free hand toyed with her clit in complimentary persuasion. "Dare I say obedience is rather becoming on you."

The slightest condescension in his praise, it caused the entirety of her body to flush with a heat. Her center tightened in wordless request for more, though he merely chuckled. The deep rumbling brought a vibrant pink to smear the bridge of her nose. The faint striped scar there nearly disappearing in the stain, as it spilled across both cheekbones.

Emmrich had never taken an elven lover before, though he had once come across an excerpt pertaining to a certain weakness of the species. The salacious triviality now at the forefront of his mind.

Ever studious, the professor couldn't resist the temptation of putting the theory to practice.

Dropping his chin, he reached for the blushed tip of her ear with his tongue. Tracing the pink ridge of cartilage, his lips curled in a grin once he had the tine pinched between his teeth in a gentle nip.

A sharp gasp ripped from her as her body rocketed in his lap; tossing her head back hard to his chest while her hips bucked forward. A violence to her fervor, as if her lower half moved independent from the rest of her.

"E-Emmrich!" A hoarse plea, any of the conviction it might have held was stolen along with her breath.

"Miss Ingellvar, am I to assume I've dissolved your decorum, or is that how you address your superiors?"

She couldn't find it within herself to fire back with something witty. Becoming so strict with her in that intimate, hushed crooning had her walls clench against him firmer. A gush of her arousal soaked against his finger, only to leak out over his palm and seep into the cotton of his slacks underneath. A throaty groan sounded from behind her, like the purr of a panther.

"Professor Volkarin," her amendment shaky, she sucked in breath and called on it for strength, "h-how do you expect me to concentrate when you-you-,"

"Are your ears quite sensitive, darling?" His level tone feigned innocence with such a degree of effortless deception that it shocked her. "You'll have to forgive me, I hadn't a clue."

Whether or not that profession was sincere, he swept back in to once more suck the tip between his teeth. Sealing his lips to create suction, he pulled. Harder than her newfound sensitivity could withstand.

Hips stuttering and rutting into his hands like a woman possessed, she felt herself quite literally melt all over him. Painfully aware of just how much of the mess she had made of his groin pinned beneath her splayed legs.

The limber tip of his tongue laved at the point of her ear, growing just as swollen from his attention as the depths of her he continued to penetrate. Offering the gloved heel of his palm so as to not abandon her stinging clit. He seemed unphased by his soiled trouser, his sole attention on drawing out more of her melodic chirps and gasps.

"You're a bastard." For all the strength of such a word, it lacked the necessary bite. More curious still, was the fact that it wasn't spat - but moaned. He tsked through a smirk she couldn't see.

"My my, you've a filthy mouth on you." Her ear released from the heat of his mouth, he pursed his lips to blow against the damp, suckled skin. "Very well. Since there isn't a bar of soap handy, I shall just have to correct your insolence another way."

A shameless giggle bubbled up from her throat and spilled through her lips. Her words tinged with slurring, their softened points still managed to pierce him. "Had they sent me to you for disciplinary action back in those days, I can only imagine how much more insufferable I would have been."

He swallowed a pained groan, furrowing a sharp brow to the sinful, debauched images that notion conjured. "I shudder to think." The hoarseness lurking in his words sparked her to grind back against his roused bulge. "Glutton for punishment, are we?"

She beamed as he choked an another breath at the motion. "Most assuredly for yours, Professor."

His voice plummeted further down to the seat of his chest. His instruction stern, it left no room for negotiation. "Open your mouth."

She did as she was told, only to feel his spidery fingers slip up the velvet flat of her tongue, crowding her small mouth with warm flesh, and the metallic tang of his rings. Able to lift the traces of her own slick against the wet muscle, she curled it around his digits to begin suckling them, his cock perking to her eagerness.

He eased them deeper at a gradual pace, until they were in well over past the first knuckle. A few choked gags had him hushing encouragement into her damp temple.

"Good, very good." His voice then seemed thicker as he intoned. "Breathe through your nose, love. Nice and slow."

Emmrich had only just gotten his hands on her, and she was very nearly reduced to tears. An orgasm still dangled just beyond her reach, the tension coiled to a knot low in her stomach that his thorough, and methodical drilling inside of her only stoked. With two fingers invading her mouth, he thought it only fair to give her swollen sex the same treatment.

Without warning, another of his gloved fingers plunged inside her. Even with her lubrication, her slick walls twitched and stretched to accommodate him. She lifted from his lap as a strangled cry ripped from her, muffled around the fingers that tickled the back of her throat. He locked against the points of his contact and forced her still, hushing against her ear.

"There, there, little one." He regarded her with the utmost patience, and adoration. Crooning into her mussed hair as he dragged them out of her, and then curled them back inside. "You're taking me magnificently, my dear."

She was so desperate to come around them, and give him a show of just how erotic she found those hands of his to be. The smooth, bulbous gems inlaid in his rings added to the stinging pinch of his intrusion, the leather of his glove slick and satiny within her tight confines.

Her arms flew upwards and to wrap around his neck, clumsily clawing at the crisp starch of his collar, knotting at soft hair at his nape. Her feet slid back to hook around his calves. A little slip of a thing captive to violent shimmers, bewitched to the way his expert fingers dissected her need, she coiled around him like a garden snake.

"Relax, darling, don't hold to the tension. It will not serve you now." He purred, feeling her body warring with itself in his lap. Hips stuttering to try and goad him to quicken, while still not yet adjusted to him two-fingers deep inside. "Take a nice, deep breath for me... There you are. Close your eyes. Give yourself to me."

Withdrawing his fingers from her whimpering mouth, slick with saliva, he slipped his hold around her throat. Flexing with benign pressure, he squeezed ever so slightly against her untamed pulse, just beneath her jaw.

Quieting her frenetic mind and choking her to distraction, the act was as tender as it was merciful. He lead her to the edge of consciousness, introducing the intimacy of dipping a toe in each side, just as he began to work his fingers inside her sex. Just as she was about to come for him.

"P-please...Professor Volkarin-," a rasping moan that clued him in to just how close she was indeed. "- let me come."

The insinuation that he, ultimately, controlled her orgasm was not one he took lightly.

"Ariadne." Murmured low in warning, silken and smoky, like vanilla bourbon. Her name on his lips held a slight chastised edge, his habits from being a professor not so easily shirked. The first time he'd ever called her by name.

Every bit as provocative as she'd expected, and even more intimate than she ever could have imagined. "I believe the instruction I provided was quite clear; let go for me."

Her name on his tongue proved to be a trigger, and a powerful one at that. Her walls fluttered in tight pulsations around his digits, sucking them in deeper as a full-body eruption detonated outwards from her molten core.

Tears welling in the corners of her soft, hazelnut eyes, they broke free from the lash lines, and rolled down her flushed cheeks. She rode herself out on the long fingers that continued to knead her plush heat. Soothing her through the wrenching of a long-overdue, and arduous release.

The gradual thrumming outward from the root of his cock ascended to full-fledged throbs, painful in their insistence. He had now familiarized himself with her depths; knew how velvety, and narrow, and oh so very wet.

His heavy sigh fanned against her temple, before he pressed a kiss to the sweat that trickled down the vein.

As he licked his lips, he could then taste the ambrosia that teased him back to his memories of her strutting around the Necropolis, wholly unaware of the older, venerated professor she had beguiled. Frosted berry and white amber. He never wanted to be rid of it.

As if they were amongst of crowd of nobility at a gala, and he was about to impart something truly scandalous meant solely for his lovers ears, he then drawled; "I must express my gratitude for having granted this senior Watcher the pleasure of assisting you in this little death."

His length twitched in retaliation to the confines of his slacks, more than anxious to feel the pinch of her channel as he worked his way inside. To feel those same flutters of release wrapped snug around him, kneading him until he spilled himself inside her.

Yet he possessed more patience than that. She needed time, hit little Watcher.

He had only just begun.

"Now, dear girl, since you're well acquainted with the more... mechanical route, shall I introduce you to my oral technique?"

He shut the door behind him with care, mindful not to jostle the latch. As if trying to keep from waking a babe he had just gotten to sleep.

Creeping back around gave him a start, the color draining from his face.

Davrin, Lucanis, - even Varric, up and out of bed - were gathered just outside her door. The three now looking more startled than he.

Though he had taken the time to right himself before exiting her quarters - leaving her to a much deserved and rigorously earned slumber - the steel locks of his hair, disheveled from their typical neat coif to fall into his eyes, were quick to humble him.

The wild young Watcher hadn't let him slink away from their tryst unscathed.

A beat of awkward silence coalesced between the men. Though coming as a surprise to none, Varric was the first to piece things together, with an amused smirk working it's way crookedly across his face. Emmrich took the initiative to break it, tipping his head in as much politeness as he could muster.

"Gentlemen." The nonchalance of his greeting earned a raised brow and a stifled chortle from Davrin, who otherwise remained quiet.

"We just... heard Rook scream and we...," Lucanis began and then surrendered, clearing his throat.

"Ah, yes..." Emmrich gave a tight-lipped smile, brushing his vest for nonexistent lint, just to busy his hands. The joints now achy and creaking. "Well, there's no need for concern, she's just fine. However I do ask that you leave her undisturbed for the time being, she's... quite spent, you understand."