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Amadea still lie curled up against him where she’d rolled off him the night before, leg still slung over his hip, hand resting against his chest, forehead tucked between between his chin and shoulder. There would be no getting out from under her without waking her.
Truth told, he wasn’t eager to get up at all. Her bed was comfortable, and warm, and though he couldn’t quite admit it to himself, even now, even close as they had grown... there were few things he enjoyed more than holding her. Few things he found a greater comfort than feeling her chest rise and fall, not unlike the steady ocean ebb, against his.
And he wasn’t, at the moment, bound up in the phenomenal foolishness of sleeping with her nor wracked with guilt for having taken advantage of her. It was easy to berate himself for his poor choices when he was alone with them; harder when the root of those choices was still asleep beside him.
All to say it was not a desire to flee in shame that forced him to attempt to ease her arm from his chest, her thigh from his hips. It was, rather, a desire not to get caught.
Because gossip bred like mice do, especially in Skyhold. Servants would be coming in soon, to bring her breakfast and the morning’s correspondence. And if he were there, they would take that news back to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the delivery boys, from the delivery boys back to market -- and on, and on.
And even in these moments when adoration filled up so much of his chest, he was never so lovesick as to forget that it would not (could not -- must not) last. No matter how she dreamed of a long future together, of a wedding, of far-off sights, of a little family; no matter how he dreamed of it, either. And it would be kinder to her not to let the fact of their relationship spread, if only to curtail the subsequent gossip regarding its end.
His retreat went as expected: he slipped his hand between his hip and her knee, and, the very moment he lifted it, her steady breathing hitched, and she groaned. She protested having been woken by wrapping her arm around him and pulling herself close, burying her face fully against his neck as though the light had woken her and not his jostling.
A few seconds ticked by. He watched the sheer curtains bob in what breeze eked through an unlatched window. The sun hadn’t yet gotten over the mountains, sky all orange and pink, night darkness at the edges burning away into day blue. She inhaled sharply again, and he dropped his hand from her waist in anticipation of her sliding away from him and stretching. How frighteningly intimate, that he knew the innate routine of her morning waking. Both arms above her head, bending her back this way and that until she got the pops she wanted. Beneath the blankets, he saw her legs uncurl, tense, feet flexed. She was back against him just as quickly, and she tilted her face up to him.
She blinked once, and recognized him. Blinked again, and graced him with a soft smile, full of such absolute affection. He meant to murmur a ‘good morning,’ but found himself distracted as Amadea brushed her fingers against his jaw, inviting him down more than guiding, and the words never left his throat, becoming a quiet groan as he kissed her.
His anxieties were smoke, at that. Sucked out the open window and into the cold mountain air, distant and irrelevant. Replaced with neediness, with a simmering hunger that was not foreign to him these days. It came in different levels -- bathwater to roiling boil -- varying day to day. At times, the soft kisses she set at his temple as she passed while going about her business were enough. At times, they were not. This morning, they were not.
And his instinct was, as ever, to take over. To lay her back and pin her between himself and the mattress and take what desire bid him take -- to touch and taste and revel in all her little gasps and cries, in how she clung to him or how her hands caught up the sheets and balled into fists. She let him have her that way, often: let him have her in whatever way, as long and as much as he wanted.
But not always, and not, evidently, right now. Because the very moment he moved to lean over her, to deepen the kiss, her hand slid to the middle of his chest. She pulled back, and he chased her lips until he ran into resistance. And when he propped himself up on his elbow to give her a questioning look, she toppled him, pushed him back against the pile of pillows hoarded on her bed. In the same movement, she climbed atop him, straddling his hips.
She was always beautiful. She possessed that elegant, classically elvhen profile and an otherwise appealing arrangement of features. Her gaze was at once soft and flaying, and always, in the most cliche sense of the word, truly captivating. But both of them drowsy in the red light of the early morning, where the first beams of daylight that broke over the mountaintops caught in the loose strands of her hair like copper thread -- it was breathtaking, in the truest sense. Her hair flowed over her shoulder as she bent down over him and cupped his jaw and kissed him, gently. Had he not known better, not known her better, he would have thought she were teasing in her gentleness.
Her lips migrated from his to the corner of his mouth, then the middle of his jaw. She seemed set to continue before she pulled back an inch or so. “I meant to say earlier,” she began.
“Hm?”
“I meant to say earlier: good morning.”
His small smile was uncontainable, and he very nearly laughed -- perhaps more out of giddiness than actual amusement. “Fortunately, of all possible morning greetings --”
“I prefer sex, too.” And she returned her lips to his neck, peppering gentle, wet kisses there before sucking unexpectedly hard at the pulse point just behind his jaw.
He’d just started to speak when she did, and whatever words he was trying to form melted in his mouth. He managed only an open-mouthed ah, and his hands dug into the soft skin of her thighs, and he had to concentrate particularly hard to murmur: “Is that what we’re doing?”
Her voice came close at his ear. “I rather hoped we’d get there.”
He chuckled and smoothed his hands up from her thighs to her hips, and then, upon settling around her waist, guided her to sit up, that he could duck his head down and lay open-mouthed kisses on her breasts, close his mouth around a nipple just long enough to wet it, then pull back and let it pebble in the cool air. And then, satisfied with having tasted them, he trailed his lips down her sternum -- and then lower, to her stomach.
Amadea tensed as he did, and he glanced up at her, eyebrow raised in question. And he witnessed her face and neck all in pretty flush, and her lips parted, and saw her nod eagerly.
It took a few seconds of shuffling to get him where he wanted to be -- arms around her thighs and his face between them. He had learned her body as well from this angle as from any -- and that is to say, well. He could hardly remember ever having been fumbling with a woman, but found, as with any endeavor, that he only got better with practice.
It took only a few more seconds to work out the first of her soft gasps, caught in her throat and half-way to a moan -- tongue flat against her, and then circling her clit. When he closed his mouth around it and sucked, he earned himself a proper cry of pleasure and heard the rustling of the sheets that suggested her fingers knotting in them to keep from squeezing her thighs around him. And when, after a few short moments, the sensation began to grow too intense, when she neared the edge and tried to lift herself off him, his arms, wrapped around her thighs, held her in place. Until she began to tremble, until every single breath brought a whimper or moan.
And until they heard, from the top of the stairs, an unexpected gasp and an, “Oh!”
One of Skyhold’s servants stood there, silver tray loaded with breakfast and hefty stack of letters under her arm. Face beet-red, eyes the size of saucers, staring at the two of them and simultaneously looking like she knew she oughtn’t be.
Amadea was off him in an instant, scrambling to catch up the sheets and cover herself. Solas did the same, up over his stomach, mostly to spare the poor girl a view of the effects their activities had had on him.
Amadea cleared her throat, and he watched in real time as she shifted from Amadea to Inquisitor Lavellan. She wore no flush, save for the uncontrollable reddening of the tips of her ears. “Good morning. Evie,” she said, polite and conversational.
The servant swallowed visibly and looked between them. “Er -- good morning, your Worship.” A few seconds of excruciating silence passed. “I’m sorry for... um, interrupting. I thought you’d still be asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s quite alright,” Amadea said, and he could tell from the sound of her voice that she’d graced the girl with one of her soothing smiles. “Could you just leave it on my desk, please?”
An order, even an indirect and polite one, seemed to shake her out of her mortification, and she fairly scurried across the room, committed to avoiding eye contact with either of them. She set the tray on Amadea’s desk and piled the correspondence neatly on one end, and then scurried back.
“I’ll, erm --” She glanced up at Amadea, and then immediately ducked her head back down.
“Thank you, Evie. You can go.”
Evie bowed quickly, and was down the stairs and out not a second later.
Amadea exhaled and relaxed as soon as she heard the door close, and turned to let her head rest against his forearm. “Creators,” she murmured. And for a moment, they sat in mortified silence, before she fell back against her pillows and covered her face, and laughed.
He fell back beside her, propped up on his elbow. Her excision of anxiety was infectious, and he found himself laughing, too.
“Poor girl,” he said.
“Poor girl! She’s going to tell every servant in Skyhold. Poor girl? Poor me.”
“Ah, yes.” He leaned over her “Poor you. To have such embarrassing rumors --”
“Oh, hush.” She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss her, and for a moment, he was prepared to get lost in it again. But he was never quite beyond teasing.
When they pulled apart to breathe, she began dusting soft, lazy kisses down his collar bones. And it took no small amount of focus to murmur out, “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Starving,” she responded, breath cooling the kiss marks she left.
He pulled back more fully, propping himself up again, earning a few confused blinks from her. “Eat, then.”
She glared up at him in theatrical distaste. “You’re cruel to me, do you know that? A really horrible man.” She did, however, get up. She pushed herself up and slid out of bed, pulling on a dressing gown hung over the bed post and tying its sash loosely around her waist.
She pretended, when she crossed to her desk, to first sort through her correspondence, flipping through letters and skimming the names on them, but gave up after three or four when the breakfast spread caught her attention. She picked up a piece of pastry and propped herself against the edge of the desk, and remained there, out of his reach, expression mostly unreadable except for mild petulance, mock or genuine.
“You are right, my love,” he said, resting his chin in his hand. “It was cruel of me to suggest you get out of bed.” And he raised his hand, gesturing for her to come to him.
“I detect insincerity. I think you’re just hungry.”
“Starving. Would you have me beg?”
The corner of her mouth quirked, and she pushed herself off the edge of the desk and picked up another piece of pastry on her way back to him. She climbed back in bed first, and into his lap, before she offered it to him. Flaky Orlesian pastry with raspberries and icing. More dessert than breakfast. He ate it from her hands, using his own to hold her, and then to hold her wrist in place while he sucked the icing from her finger tips.
She flushed, lips parted, at that -- but recovered quite quickly. “I only wish I’d known she was coming,” she said.
“The servant? Why is that?”
Amadea shifted, the silk of her dressing gown brushing against his chest as she moved to straddle his hips once again. “I would’ve been louder. If rumors abound, I’d at least like them to --” The sentence broke with a giggle. “-- accurately capture your prowess.”