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"I'm not remarkable," you grumble, fighting the blush threatening to creep up. |
"You are to me." Her fingers absentmindedly draw circles on the back of your neck. "I can't even begin to imagine a life without you now. You have my heart cradled in your arms and it's—" |
"Yes. Very much so. But...I don't think I'd have it any other way. Small comfort to know that if anything's going to be my undoing, it's you." |
You laugh, because sometimes it's easy to forget you aren't the only one in love. "You sound an awful lot like me." |
Shadowheart joins you, light laughter filling the air. "Well, you are a terrible influence." |
"It's a good thing only you will suffer for it then." |
"You have my word—and everything else besides." |
A problem shared is a problem halved, after all. |
Dear and beautiful lady. |
Catti-Brie shifted. A soft sigh sagged her strong, lean shoulders. Her head tilted back until it leaned against the tunnel wall. The auburn, sunset fall of her hair cascaded down her front, over her collarbone. She stared at the stalactites overhead, passively scanning for threats to their little band. Truly, though, t... |
Her fingers reached up and traced through her own hair, following the same trail of Jarlaxle’s kisses across her skin. They lingered where he had bitten her, slowly clenching. Catti-Brie dropped her hand to her lap. It hit the taut string of Taulmaril and she sighed again. |
Three days since they had left Menzoberranzan, escaped into the wilds of the Underdark and run from the fury of House Baenre; her, Drizzt, and Artemis Entreri. |
Catti-Brie looked over at her sleeping companions. Exhausted by their trials, worn to the bone with their hurried flight, both men slept soundly. Trusting her to protect them, in this world she knew not at all. Drizzt could not guard them all the way, and, truth be told, they both felt uneasy with Entreri guarding thei... |
It was Catti-Brie’s turn on watch. The hours dragged by, with nothing to mark them. Nothing to distract her from her own thoughts. She had already seen to the care of her equipment, so practiced now that it had taken her barely any time at all. |
Why had the mercenary called her that? |
Dear and beautiful lady. |
One night, they had agreed. Their joining had been a single instance, one borne of mutual passion and a nameless relief that had come from deep within Catti-Brie’s heart. One night. And yet she could not stop thinking of it. Could not stop thinking of how Jarlaxle had aided them, for without the cunning mercenary’s mac... |
Did Jarlaxle seek to make her uncomfortable now in the presence of her dear friend and her enemy? Is that why he had come out, following them all the way from Menzoberranzan? |
He had come to say his farewells, or so he had said. Of course, there was the matter of recovering the spider mask from Entreri, but she had known it was more than that. It had to have been more than that. |
Because she wanted it to be? |
That thought stopped her. It was a girlish notion, to want more from the man she had made love to. To want what he could not provide, just because she had bedded him: affection. |
Dear and beautiful lady. |
If the mercenary could only tell her straight what he wanted, perhaps then... |
But he had been straight with her, she knew. His loyalty was to Bregan D’aerthe, not to some human woman from the surface, however lovely and strong she might be. And yet, for those few, brief moments...Jarlaxle had been hers. He had been hers and she had been his, and the choice had been hers, too. |
The mercenary had reached in, deft with his ashen fingers, to pluck at the very core of herself. Her heart, her thoughts. He had seen her, seen her true. Jarlaxle had done what Wulfgar could not; given Catti-Brie back to herself. He had made her body quiet, strengthening her resolve, bringing her peace and upending her... |
Catti-Brie wore a scowl of concentration, one her father Bruenor would well have recognized, for he often wore it himself. |
She could not think of the sly mercenary without some measure of heat. Without reminding herself what he had looked like without his customary eyepatch, without thinking of the smoothness of his skin, warm under her touch. |
Her hand drifted farther south in her lap, off its ready position on Taulmaril the Heartseeker. One glance told her that her companions were sound asleep, oblivious to the world unless danger should arise. Madness, she thought again. To be feeling such heat here of all places. To struggle with thoughts of a man who had... |
Jarlaxle made it all so simple. |
So simple, and so complicated, all at the same time. |
One night, no tricks. No tricks and yet what was this feeling she wrestled with in her heart? One night and yet it was the memory of Jarlaxle’s devouring kisses that accompanied her to sleep; the memory a cradle against the dark. There was the hard stone and the road ahead, and the dangerous assassin besides, but Jarla... |
Catti-Brie sat up suddenly. Her hand left her lap and jumped to her bowstring, though she did not yet give it tension. All breathing ceased as she strained her ears and her eyes under the silver moonlight of the cat’s eye agate that allowed her to see in the lightless night of the Underdark. |
Some noise had come to her, but it had stopped, and her thoughts had been too wrapped in on themselves for her to discern what it had been. Catti-Brie forced herself to draw silent breaths, to tense her body and move by careful degrees until she was standing. Another glance at her companions told her that it had not be... |
Catti-Brie waited for many long minutes, straining all her senses. Nothing. The hunter in her told her to have patience, for the Underdark was rarely so straightforward. Time slipped by, unmeasured until she began to count in her head, to track the minutes. Or, rather, she thought of a dwarven working song meant to mea... |
There, again, a soft sound came whispering down the corridors. Something she could not identify, but a sound that nonetheless had not come from her. With careful steps, Catti-Brie moved off down the tunnel. No sense alerting her companions, not yet. It might be nothing, but it was better to check. If she were lucky, pe... |
Catti-Brie crept through the low tunnel until it split, one fork heading left and down, down back the way they had come, she knew. The other curved upward. Earlier that same day--or whatever "day’ might be said to be in the Underdark--Drizzt had quickly scouted the side passage to assure them that no danger lay behind ... |
She turned toward the upper cavern on some instinct. Figuring, perhaps, that if there was any danger of a passing monster or dozing creature, that it would likely choose the place with the most diverse terrain, rather than the singular long and twisting tunnel she and her party had come from. Only Drizzt had come down ... |
There is no darkness like darkness underground. The eyes, try as they might to compensate, simply cannot adjust. And so it was that Catti-Brie relied upon her circlet to guide her, listening for danger but unused to tracking subterranean echoes. The farther she got from her companions, the more nervous she became. What... |
With no warning the cave ceiling above rose away from her and Catti-Brie’s only indication that she had entered the larger cavern was the fact that her cat’s eye agate could no longer lend her a view of what lay above her. It was too far out of reach of the enchantment, and so, above ground level, her vision simply mel... |
Catti-Brie felt horribly exposed then. Whatever might be in this cave would surely spot her, if it had not already. If she journeyed out into the cavern, well, there was no telling how big the space beyond her really was. Drizzt had not elaborated. She might mistake a side passage for more of the cavern structure, and ... |
She had just resolved that if she counted out two full rounds of the forge song in her head, and heard nothing more, that she would return and check the downward passage, when she caught sight of something--something glowing far above her. It was so small that for a moment Catti-Brie wondered if her own eyes might not ... |
Then she saw it descend, that single point of light. It shed no true glow, and so she could only see that scarlet mote. |
Remembering that a red glow was an indication of a creature using infravision, Catti-Brie held her breath. Perhaps it would pass her by, perhaps her entrance had roused it, and, if she was very lucky indeed, it would climb away somewhere else. Or perhaps it was not hostile at all. She had heard of the pech from Drizzt,... |
A pair of ruby eyes, burning into her from the darkness. A pair of ruby eyes, coming ever closer, as silent as death. |
Catti-Brie drew back Taulmaril, but did not raise the bow. Its silver light spilled across the cavern floor, revealing first the black boots, and next the lean form of Jarlaxle, stepping out of the starless, Underdark night and into the glow of the Heartseeker. |
"Ye! What are ye doing--" she began, suddenly flushed all over with unexpected heat. |
"Is it so difficult to believe that I came to see you?" The mercenary’s resonant, handsome voice complimented his lean, angular features perfectly. He spoke low, as though he were well aware of the exact volume needed to keep sound from carrying down to her sleeping companions. |
Her companions! At once Catti-Brie drew up her bow. The electric feeling of danger, of danger and of shouldn’t coursed through her. "If yer men be set for an ambush, then ye best be ready for the fight o’ yer life." |
Jarlaxle chuckled. The sound of it nearly made Catti-Brie go weak at the knees. "My dear and beautiful lady," he said to her again, "if I wished to bring you and your friends back to Menzoberranzan in chains, believe me when I say it would already be done. No, I came for you." |
Catti-Brie could hardly breathe. A swell of warmth had choked her throat, had grasped her chest so that her heart beat all the harder for it. "Ye wish to be taking me back to the City of Spiders," she reasoned. |
The sly mercenary strode forward boldly until the mere presence of his confidence forced her to lower her bow. How could she put an arrow through his heart after all they had shared? After he had helped them escape? |
"Perhaps," Jarlaxle answered with a shrug. Ever was it difficult to get a true read on the man, and this moment was no exception. |
"Ye won’t be taking me," Catti-Brie said, perhaps more forcefully than she meant to. |
Jarlaxle raised a single white brow. "No?" |
That one statement, made with his customary grin, set Catti-Brie back on her heels. He had not come to fetch her away, she realized, but to... |
Jarlaxle completed the thought for her. With Taulmaril safely out of the way, he stepped in quick, quicker than she would have guessed that he could move. One arm slipped around her waist, pressing the young archer to his warm chest. "But do you not want me to take you?" he purred, dark lips against her ear. |
Before she could form anything resembling a coherent answer, Jarlaxle dove in and covered her mouth with his in a possessive and hungry kiss. |
Catti-Brie practically melted against him. Out of necessity, being so near, her breasts pressed soft against his crimson vest, and she let Taulmaril fall to hang around her wrist. Without looking, Jarlaxle caught the string in his hand, balancing it perfectly so that the end of the bow did not clatter to the ground, or... |
They parted, Catti-Brie breathless from the kiss. "Jarlaxle..." she began, unsure of where to start. One night, they had agreed. One night...unless she wanted more. But he had come to her here, had purred to her in front of Drizzt and Entreri, and Catti-Brie had not yet resolved how she felt about that. Had the man mer... |
Jarlaxle’s free hand trailed up, his fingers disappearing into her waterfall of auburn hair. He wrapped her hair in his hand and closed his fist, tilting her head back. "You were brilliant," the mercenary whispered fiercely to her, and it seemed to Catti-Brie that there was no small amount of hunger in his tone. "I wat... |
Those ruby eyes were like twin stars in the darkness, the rest of him bathed in, to her, silver moonlight. Without her pulling back on Taulmaril, the Heartseeker’s light had faded once more. |
Jarlaxle’s lips brushed her cheek as he spoke. "--you put a heat in me." |
Her body ached still from that fight. As Catti-Brie looked up at the cunning mercenary, she came to realize that he had enjoyed their tryst just as much as she had. That it, too, had given him something wild and free, and wordlessly necessary. It did not escape her notice that he had complimented her prowess, either. R... |
And that knowledge, in turn, banished the last of her worry and sent a riptide of shivering running through her. She knew, without really even consciously acknowledging it, what would happen next. |
Bolder now, and aching to feel a release--and a celebration--from her escape, Catti-Brie encircled Jarlaxle with her arms. She tilted her head a little, inviting him. It took only that little gesture for him to press his hot mouth to her neck and trail a line of sharp kisses up to her ear. Catti-Brie let out an unexpec... |
"Oh, I will," Jarlaxle replied in between kisses. "I simply had to taste you, have you, hold you--" |
Catti-Brie shivered as he nibbled and bit his way across her shoulder, pressing her, hard, to his chest. "No, I be meaning--" |
"My darling," Jarlaxle rumbled, "my little kitten, if your ferocity had not captured me, I would not be here." It was more than that, for the mercenary. He drank in the taste of her sweat, her worry and her determination. It was her heart that had led her here, and it was her courage alone that had saved her companions... |
Heat sprang to life between Catti-Brie’s legs and she moaned softly to feel the ache of it as Jarlaxle kissed her. She still felt fumbling and rough around the edges compared to his smooth seduction. But she could not deny her desire for the man--nor his for her. |
The sly mercenary returned to her lips, biting, devouring. As if he could drink all of her down and never be sated. "Do you trust me?" he asked between kisses. |
"I..." Catti-Brie found herself overwhelmed. In truth, she wasn’t certain how much longer her legs could hold her up. Something about Jarlaxle, his smoothness, his strength, his sharp wit, it called to her powerfully. It called with a voice she could not deny, telling her to give in and damn the consequences. "But what... |
Jarlaxle chuckled, the sound like a distant roll of thunder in his chest. "Forget tomorrow," he said softly. "We have this moment. Let us share it." |
Catti-Brie’s hands moved up his chest to cup his face, to bring him in for more bold a kiss. She had been raised in unforgiving Icewind Dale. If anyone knew how to capture a single moment of happiness and hold it to her chest, it was the daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer. |
"Yes," she said. |
Jarlaxle, ever deft and cunning, slipped the cat’s eye circlet from her forehead. For a moment, Catti-Brie stiffened. That is, until she felt him placing gentle kisses where the circlet had left a crease in her skin. Now, truly, all she saw of her lover were his ruby eyes like twin stars in an otherwise empty sky. |
He wrapped his arms around her waist and, as flawlessly as he ever did anything, flicked the toe of his boot under hers, so that she might stand on his feet. With that, he enacted his levitation spell. Catti-Brie clung to him as they unexpectedly began to rise. |
"Wh-Where is it ye be taking me?" |
"Away from the floor of a well-traveled tunnel," he replied, smirking mischievously although she could not see it, "and from potential prying eyes. No one will bother us where I am taking you." |
True to his word, they rose quietly in the air for several minutes until Catti-Brie felt Jarlaxle reach out his hand and touch a rock face. With that as a guidance point for his levitation, he was able to propel them upward to his chosen destination. In short order they touched down on a stone ledge; high, high above t... |
Jarlaxle led Catti-Brie away from the ledge. She counted each wide pace. Though she had no idea how high they truly were, she had no desire to find out by accident. The gentle hands of her lover--her lover!--guided her to sitting. Her backside met something plush and soft, and as her hands explored around her, they dis... |
"I always come prepared," the mercenary purred in her ear. "Comfort on the road is paramount. One cannot fight well or make love if one is not well-rested." |
"Do ye often bed women ye find out in the wild?" Catti-Brie asked drily. Again, sharper than she meant to. |
Jarlaxle, however, only chuckled. "Jealous?" he said, moving to sit beside her. One arm slipped around her waist and pulled her close, until the line of their thighs touched and her hands were splayed on his warm chest. |
Catti-Brie did not answer. In truth, she was not so certain of her feelings. Why on earth should she be jealous of the other lovers of a man such as Jarlaxle? She was only a moment in his long life, and yet he had made her feel undeniably special. Unique. And besides, to think of jealousy was...complicated. Wulfgar had... |
Perhaps due to her pause, Jarlaxle took up her hands in his. He dipped his head, kissing his way slowly and deliberately across the backs of her knuckles, the skin long roughened from her life in the chapping northern wind of Icewind Dale. "I have no wife or mistress," he told her honestly, so candidly and in line with... |
Reading others--not by thought, but by empathy--was ever the talent of Jarlaxle. He could feel the tension in her body, see the flush of heat to her cheeks and the grimace of her expression. The mercenary dipped his head to kiss his young lover, to reassure her. |
When they parted, Catti-Brie said softly, "...me experience is not like to yer...other...lovers, to be sure." |
Jarlaxle tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear with such care and tenderness that Catti-Brie could not help but lean against his palm when he was done. "All you need offer me is yourself as you are, my Catti-Brie. I want nothing more." |
Her hands gripped his vest, though she did not draw him closer. "--and anyone else?" |
"Incomparable." Jarlaxle placed a hot kiss on her neck, below her ear. His hands held her with barely-in-check passion. In their hold she could feel his restraint. "When you return to the surface, I shall dream of you." |
"Surely yer not meaning that?" she murmured. "...Truly?" |
He moved her hand to his chest, splayed her palm over his heart. Somehow, it made his next words even more intimate. Even more soothing and special. "I shall remember you as a soldier remembers his last glimpse of home, and his last sunset before battle is joined." |
Catti-Brie swallowed something warm, suddenly, in her throat. He saw her. This man had reached in, somehow, past the warrior shell she was slowly building for herself, past the rough exterior of Bruenor’s daughter, and deftly caressed the sweetness and the womanhood inside her. When Alustriel Silverhand had spoken kind... |
His words were mortal and gentle, as only a kind man could have spoken them. As only a man who was both soldier and poet could have known to say them in the first place. |
This time, Catti-Brie drew him down to the settee. She wrapped her arms tightly around her lover, their breath tangling together in the darkness. Jarlaxle’s knee again went between her legs, and the warmth in her only grew as she moved her body in a wave against it. |
She could be herself. She need not make love as an elf, or try to inhabit a grace that was as alien to her as sunlight was to a sightless man. She need only be herself. |
A low moan hummed behind her lips as Jarlaxle kissed and nipped his way down her collarbone. His hands made short work of her shirt, her bindings. So deft and so sure that she barely felt him undressing her until the clothing slid off her body. His warm mouth caught her breast and Catti-Brie would have cried aloud if t... |
"Quiet now, my sweetness," he whispered. "I love your cries, but you must suppress them. The Underdark is a wild place. We are safe here, but with too much commotion we may soon not be." |
He captured her breast again without waiting for affirmation and Catti-Brie slapped a hand over her own mouth to hold back the sound. A strained moan filtered between her lips. Jarlaxle hummed, lapping at her pale, soft skin. He circled her breast, nibbling along the crease of the underside. |
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