Archive of Our Own

It’s after a meeting in the Ocular, after a particularly melodramatic speech on Emet-Selch’s part, that you take the time to give him a meaningful enough look and gesture that he follows you outside. The doors close behind you, the area deserted as the Scions traverse the winding spiral staircase some distance away.

As he approaches you, a meaningful arch to his brow, you waste no time getting to your point. “You can’t talk to them like that. Can’t talk to me like that. I don’t care if you don’t think we’re alive – I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

Emet-Selch looks utterly unimpressed, lips tilting ironically at the corners, arms crossing as he opens his mouth to reply, but you continue. “You can’t possibly imagine that we’re going to believe you, saying such things to our faces. It serves no purpose other than to put us further at odds – which you claim not to want.”

“’Tis no fault of mine that you are unable to understand the emptiness of your being. Your entire existence is defined by your sundered status – fragmented, lacking, unable even to perceive the shallowness of your experiences.” His voice raises high as if in mocking, hooded eyes staring down at you, lazily, as if in reclined judgement.

The provocation is so painfully obvious, so irreverent and completely dismissive of everything you’ve had to say, so obnoxious, you’re struck wordless. And here you had been wondering why Elidibus had been made the emissary – Emet-Selch, for all his proclaimed desire to pursue understanding, is clearly wanting.

You offer him honest encouragement and advice about how to pursue his goals – the very goals he’d claimed to have in mind while interacting with you – and he merely re-iterates his point, smacking you in the face with that utterly useless rhetoric, faintly smirking at you all the while.

Does he expect you to get into an argument? Attack him? Is this his open declaration that he no longer cares for any alliance, and means instead to mock you freely as he wished – no, he’d done that from the beginning.

A farce of a man, haughty, crossing his arms at you, looking down at you all the while. This Ascian who thought himself so much better for merely a want of knowledge, on your part, who traveled with you and dispensed information and declared himself superior at every turn.

Calling your perception into question, deriding your existence and the validity of your consciousness and awareness; what does he want? The man is caustic, biting, at best he is bearable as he mourns an obvious loss – and then turns his bitterness immediately towards individuals who had no part in it at all.

You stare at him, then, for a long moment. Emet-Selch returns your gaze; doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away, doesn’t teleport off into the shadows claiming you’ve bored him yet again; merely standing there infuriatingly, looking faintly smug. He looks at you and you spy his tongue darting out between his lips.

Those golden eyes gleam, metallic in the cool lighting, mouth set vaguely into something like a sneer, brows barely drawn together as though he couldn’t muster up the strength to look disappointed.

The silence of the Tower is almost serene – something special, scintillant, in the fractal blue surroundings. You wonder if the Exarch can hear you. He stands there in much more silence, arms crossed, looking at you as if expectant, waiting for something.

Why is he still here? It hits you when the dark pink of his tongue flicks out again, wetting his lips. Fingers tapping in an erratic wave over his elbow. Shoulders shifting to hunch at a different angle.

He’s waiting on you. Emet-Selch followed you out because he wants to hear what you have to say. He spoke to you because he wanted a response. He goaded you because he wants –

That tongue licking over his lips again. Faintly purple, perfectly curved, a smooth fullness, lush and ripe for the biting.

“Have you no words for me?” Those beautiful lips say, tantalizing pink shadowed between them. The Adam’s apple of his neck bobs as he swallows.

What else could he be made to swallow? That intent gaze certainly reveals an inclination. It really did warrant investigation, now, didn’t it?

“Why should I? You seem to have all yours picked out in advance.” You say, and you notice your change of tone shift something in him immediately; his slouch does not quite dissipate but it he seems to straighten, the casual hold of his arms and shoulders tightens, his stare blinks into alertness and narrows onto you, jumping onto the perceived slight with great vitriol.

A step closer, he takes, “And do you ever pause to wonder why that is?” His head tilts back ever so slightly, eyes gazing down his aquiline nose at you, “You mortals are a broken record. Constantly falling prey to the same flaws, the same pitfalls, the same mistakes. And even if you did not, you’re still not enough, too weak to accomplish anything of worth.”

“Anything of worth, like killing a few Ascians?” Something changes in his eyes at that, a brightness, or perhaps a shadow, that passes over them, pupils dilating and refusing as you continue. “The only broken record stands before me now. You never have anything else to say, do you? Mortals have failed you this way, they’re too weak in that way – more and more excuses. You know what I think, Emet-Selch?”

You take a step that mirrors his, bodies fulms away as you close in on him, wetting your mouth as you feel yourself grin. “I think you’re the one who’s weak. I think you’re too weak, too tired, too lazy to put any effort in – I think it’s too hard for you to believe in humanity, even sundered. But don’t worry.”

A sudden burst of inspiration has you grinning wickedly and settling your palm on his shoulder; he doesn’t move an ilm in response, almost frozen in place as you pat him, “I do. I’ll do all the hard work for you, and you can just sit back and whine like you do best.”

Gloved and smooth, a hand settles hard on yours, all pressure smashing your fingers against a tense shoulder, as if to crush you for daring to challenge.

“You presume much,” Emet-Selch’s voice grows deep, rough in your ears even as his eyes smolder hot against you, breath warming your cheeks as surely as shocked embarrassment from how he learns in, lips curling, “You think this, you think that. What can you possibly know that would outmatch my wisdom? I have seen the march of the ages, I have watched your precious humanity rise and fall and stumble helplessly about, thrashing blindly at one another like untamed animals.”

“What,” He breathes against your lips, “Could you possibly think you know, that I have not already seen a hundred times over, and still concluded that the Ardor was the truest solution? For all you think you know, my experience tells me otherwise, and you have precious little to call your own, girl.”

Outrage cuts through you, sharp and biting, your features contorting into a snarl as you whip back, “All you do is deny me – you refuse to engage, brook no argument, steadfastly deny any counterpoint. Say what you want about experiences, but I’m not the one who can’t stand to look at my opponents as equals, boy.”

A shudder rips through him at your final word and suddenly, in an instant – you know what he wants.

Those eyes that look at you, hungry and expectant. The hand pressing yours clumsily into his shoulder. This close proximity, which he initiated, and the heated conversation which he’d gladly fueled.

Emet-Selch is not particularly concerned with your place. He just wants to be put in his.

Your arm flings out to his other shoulder, and in a heartbeat you let yourself press down on them with your true strength. How quickly his knees buckle beneath it, crumpling beneath the weight you place on him. His head whips up, eyes on you, never leaving your face.

You shove him onto his back, walking forward to straddle his torso, sitting down against his chest. Keeping your hands by his shoulders, ripping open his ridiculous little overcoat, shoving it off and onto his upper arms, locking them at his sides as you bear down on him.

That satisfied smirk on his face, those brows raised as if to say ‘What now?’, his hands that just lazily drift over to your thighs, fingers curling and stroking. You snatch one wandering hand up, lifting it as high as you can with his arms so restrained.

You make a show of examining it, feeling those golden eyes lay heavy on you, dripping with anticipation. Unfolding it, spreading it out, fingers splaying wide before you, gloves taut with the flex. Carefully you trace between his fingers, up to the tips, pinching where his nails would be and drawing the glove up, and up, and up again, for each fingertip, until the base of the glove is well onto his palm.

You meet his eyes, lean in, and catch one of the tips in your teeth, yanking it off to reveal long, slender fingers, well-manicured and clean. As soft against your face as you lean into it as you would expect, with them having been covered.

He watches, he does, the bright eagerness never leaving his eyes, fingers twitching against your cheek, curling to cup your jaw. Turning, you meet his fingers with lips – not quite kissing, but drawing your mouth against it, up and up the line of his fingertip until you get to a black-lacquered nail.

There, you open your mouth, taking it in, slipping tongue against the side, feeling him flex at the squirming against him, the rest of his hand brushing gently over your chin. Without taking your eyes from his you suck on it, opening your mouth wider, pulling his hand closer, taking in more fingers, deeper into your mouth. Tongue flattening beneath the soft pads of his hands, carefully still as you take them, as if not to break you from your spell.

In the moment you see his eyes dilate, his fingers curl into your tongue within your mouth, you know it’s time. Ripping his hand away – throwing it to the side, you catch his shocked, beautiful face in your own hands, digging fingers between his lips with ease, sticking straight past teeth and along his tongue in sinuous ease, delighting at the fluid, slick feel on your fingertips.

Emet-Selch doesn’t try to close his mouth, merely stares up at you with a fire in his eyes, reaching his hands up as much as he can; with his coat behind him, binding his arms, he can’t reach quite so far.

“Boy,” You say, hooking your thumb into the meat just past his chin, curling your fingers in his mouth. “Suck me off.”

Air rushes past your fingers, into his throat, cool on the wet where he’d begun to drool over you. His eyes, enflamed, stay exactly on yours while his lips purse around the top of your palm, while his jaw spreads to accommodate you, his tongue glides over digits to coat them in his saliva as he rises to the task you’ve given.

Mouth sealed about your fingers, teeth carefully out of the way, his cheeks hollow as he draws in, applying pressure. You feel the vague tingling of emptiness about your fingers, then the places where the insides of his cheeks press against you, the vacuum amplified by roaming tongue.

Surrounded by wet heat, your fingers warm and then buzz, pulse with sensation, sparks stroked by the wet slip of flesh against them, slickness and fluidity engulfing each and every nerve as you twitch and probe them inside him.

When he seems a bit acclimated you shove harder – more – into his mouth and surprisingly he takes it without hesitation. Swallowing as much of you as you’ll offer, sucking you in with greedy lips and tongue, lathing and lathering you as if starving.

All the while lying beneath you, motionless, bound in a way he could easily escape but doing naught about it. Pinned by your powerful – but still very mortal, very physical and easily displaced – body and lying there and taking it.

Oh, it’s not anger you see in his eyes. It’s desire. This is what he’s wanted. The entire time, it looks like.

Just a shift of yourself (you let him keep your hand to suck on), slow and deliberate that he cannot possibly miss, you nudge your ass backwards to where his crotch should be. A distinct hardness presses into you, perfectly aligned between your legs, unmistakably shaped and prominent through the fabric of his robes.

“Like it that much, do you,” You say, clutching his jaw between curved fingers and thumb, yanking him painfully up to watch your spread legs over his well-covered erection. He can’t answer with your fingers in his mouth, of course – so it’s up to him to take some initiative.

There’s a glare from him that might be his first sign of true fire – he does not pull away from your hand nor yank out one of his arms from his overcoat, but instead bucks his hips up, impatiently, right into your waiting crotch. There’s a heat to the contact you hadn’t expected, a feeling of moisture in your undergarments you couldn’t recall having been there even minutes before.

Somehow, your mouth feels dry. You swallow lightly. “You want your cock on me? You could at least get it out, yourself.”

With his arms stuck in his coat and his body pinned, he’s little choice but to snap his clothes off. With how he tenses beneath you in challenge, you wonder if he’s about to bring out a knife somewhere… but instead he kicks his legs up in the air, hilariously undignified, but the robes pool by his hips, stuck where his cock strained against his pants.

With an unmistakable satisfaction he meets your widening eyes – tongue teasing a swipe beneath your fingertips – as he bucks his hips in further squirming indignity, catching his own curled up robes between his hips and your torso. He bucks and grinds his hips down along you, pulling the fabric up his own body until his pants lay bare beneath him.

You let out a laugh; he’s squirmed and writhed his way into having his robes bunched up at his waist, the emperor. Digging your hand out of his mouth (his tongue curls around your fingers, lips purse tight), shaking off the thread of saliva that strings from it, you shift your legs back to pin his thighs beneath your shins lifting yourself up so there can be no possible contact between your crotch and his. Not without you moving, anyways.

“For an Emperor, you’re quite inventive when it comes to taking off your clothes,” You purr, returning your hand to his face, but not where he wants it – cupping his jaw to face him towards you. As though he had ever looked away. “Do this often, do you, Ascian? Wriggling out of your clothes for the first person to put you on your back?”

A snarl confirms his impatience and his impertinence, “When you shoved me down and mounted me like a beast I was under the impression you’d meant to fuck me, hero.” His hips buck up hard in time with his taunt, meeting naught but air – you have him well and truly pinned.

Tsking, you settle your fingers around his face, stroking fine, angled cheekbones, “Is that what you want, boy?” He trembles again, just for the briefest of moments, at that word, a primal flash of need that goes through him, a want that claws its way onto his face for just a moment until he schools it back into indignant insistence. “You want me to fuck you?”

That sweet, tender tongue you’d just enjoyed licks right over his lips. “Are you going to, or not? You think I’ve time for your petty games?”

“You do,” You say, lazily brushing a fingertip just beneath his eyes, feeling the flutter of lashes as he struggles to maintain eye contact, “You love games, don’t you, Emet-Selch? You want to play them with me. That’s why you’re here – because it’s exactly where you want to be.”

His face tightens in your hands. Desire warring with pride, with that spiteful tone that dances along his voice, at the corner of his eyes. You see his lower lip dent ever so slightly where he must take it between his teeth for a moment.

Cute.

“Congratulations, hero,” Emet-Selch seemingly settles on a sarcastic confession, hands splayed open at the sides of his head, lifting his chin up as if to bare his neck for ravishing. “You’ve discovered my grand secret. I. want. you.”

His eyes burn, gold and gleaming, “Now take me. Before I change my mind. You think you’ll find a better lay somewhere else? With your Scion accomplices, mayhap? You think you’ll find a cleverer tongue – a more willing mouth? Filthier words, if it please you? More length, girth, a finer face – I told you, I may shape this vessel as easily as lumpen clay. I’ve the experience of lifetimes and the knowledge of every sort of body imaginable. You could hardly ask for a finer partner – and dropped right in your lap, as well.”

“But of course,” You hum, leaning in to rest your hands at the sides of his head – pinning his wrists entirely as you hang your face over his. “I’ll be happy to take you, Emet-Selch. You are so very pretty, and I can certainly think of better uses for that clever tongue of yours.”

That earns you a scoff, and you think it’s genuine. Of all the things for him to be put out by –

Oh, he is cute.

“Just tell me how.”

Golden eyes blink at you in surprise. Emet-Selch, it seems, had not been expecting this. Before he can say something to make him look even cuter – or more like a fool – you clarify. “You want me to take you. Tell me how.”

Emet-Selch looks at you as if you’ve asked him to disrobe in public. Hm, well. Considering the circumstances… “Unless you’d rather retreat to a more private venue…?”

“No!” He snaps, indignant, but even if his cheeks stay pale you can feel the heat radiating off them. “Just get on with it, hero. Utilize my generous offer, here and now, before I rescind it!”

“I don’t mind if you rescind it. In fact, you can do it right now if you want to.” You lean back, as though to push yourself off him.

With a snarl of teeth and fingers that twist and grasp at your wrist, his hand worming out from under yours in an instant as he proves he was never really trapped. He locks your wrists over his, gloved and bare fingers alike digging into bone.

“Do you want me, or not?” Emet-Selch doesn’t wait for you to answer the question, “Take me! Fuck me on the floor! Ride me here and now, grab my cock in your hands and jerk me while you seat yourself on my face. It’s an open invitation, hero,” His voice lowers in mockery that is quite clearly trying not to sound desperate, “And pinning me down like this, one could be forgiven for thinking you mean to accept it.”

His tirade doesn’t faze you in the least. “Good boy,” You coo, leaning back in. “What else?”

Hollowed, angular cheekbones catch shadows in the cool blue lighting, along with a touch of darkness that you might mistake for shade instead of a blush. Eyes wide, lips pursing and twisting at every word, nose pinching and brows drawn high; he is the very image of the beautiful, blasé bastard you’d known since he introduced himself – struggling to maintain his composure.

You’ve never seen a man so attractive in your life. The way his lip trembles with the pressure of admittance, how his nose scrunches in disdain even as his pupils dilate in lust; he’s absolutely delectable.

“If you wanted me,” The way his tone deepens, acquiring almost a faint echo in its velvet timbre, does prize a pang of wanting in your chest, “You would be on me right now. None of this farce about undressing. Open my pants and take what you want. Grind into me, even – unless my little talk has you more wet than you’d like to admit, girl.”

“That’s a trick that only works once,” Smoothly, you draw your hips up, just enough to make the distance clear to him, and you snatch one of your hands back to trace it along his neck. “If you prefer for your mouth to be filled with my fingers instead of my cunt – and for your erection to stay in your trousers – you’re doing a remarkable job of getting it.”

That strikes him, and you see him blanch at the reprisal… but the shudder that runs through his form is unmistakable. His lips part in what might have been a gasp were he not still relatively composed, eyes darting down to where your hand reaches at his neck, to where his cock strains in his pants.

“You can tell me all the filthy, dirty, naughty, undignified things you want me to do to you,” You say, curling a finger up his neck and over his jaw, “And you can get them. Or, you can stay quiet and get nothing. Be a good boy and pick one already, will you?”

Oh, his pride rankles at that. You can see the retort catch in his throat, teeth just barely not bared, tension coursing through him and a – an indescribable hang in the air. The feeling of waiting to exhale, watching an object tumble off an edge, feeling a bowstring ready to snap, pulled too far back, too much –

An electric, nebulous energy that must be his aether, winding and stormy and building up behind a dam of vast control. You had wondered, all this time you’d wondered, just how much was he holding back, not showing you. Just what had he been hiding?

Eyes bore into you, molten gold seething and smoldering, burning its way through your chest, your restraint –

“Grab my dick,” Emet-Selch snarls, “And twist it. Squeeze it, yank it, pull it off for all I care! Step on it! Step on me! Tear my regalia off and leave me bare on the ground for anyone to see, crystal pressed into my skin as you bear down on me. Shove your cunt in my face and bid me bring you to completion! Use me like a whore, hero. It’s what I’ve been offering this whole time, what your insipid mortal mind seems too stupid to comprehend! Fuck me like you own me! Take! Me!”

“My, my,” You say to the gathered heat of his panted breaths and yours between you, “What an impassioned request. And you are so pretty beneath me, so welcoming and wanting…”

Shifting your legs, you lower a knee between his thighs, rising it up, up, brushing against his legs in a way he can’t possibly fail to notice. Stopping just short of his groin.

There’s a look that you think might be betrayal in his eyes at your wicked grin. It makes your heart flutter. “But I am a stupid mortal. I think I shall need a bit more convincing. Tell me, how does one fuck an Ascian like she owns him, hm?”

A sharp inhale, a look of rage passes over him, but you see, you see – his eyes gleam in a strange way that reminds you of delirium, bright and delighted and utterly mad all the same.

“This would be the moment where I clarify – do not make promises you cannot keep.”

You lick your lips. “I don’t.”

Something lets loose in him, flowing free as he exhales onto your cheek. A power that settles against you, weightless but present, tactile, almost, against your back. Like a lover’s embrace as they positioned themselves against you for the night.

“Then,” His voice seems to rise in pitch – it’s almost like, “I suppose if you are in such desperate need of instruction, I might be persuaded to pass on a bit of my knowledge. You had better be a quick study – I expect these techniques to be put into practice right away.”

There’s the tone you know. Arrogant, self-assured, smooth but faintly obnoxious. The only one desperate here is him, and still he speaks to you like this.

His face has settled back into smug insistence now that he knows he’ll get what he wants. You kind of want to slap it. It could do with being a bit more red, and a bit more shocked.

“First and foremost – ” The tone of his sounds like the beginning of a lecture and you don’t care at all for it, so you interrupt.

“You’re annoying me a bit. Would you mind if I hit you?” The look on Emet’s face at that, you imagine, is much the same as if you had. You imagine he’s not had that question asked to him, in sincerity, very often. “In the face,” You add, for further clarity.

His mouth opens. Gapes, if only slightly. He blinks at you, at a loss for words. Had he not been so utterly aggravating this entire time, you might be tempted to lean in and steal a kiss.

Finally, his eyes narrow into composed condescension. “If you’re going to fuck me like you own me,” He nearly drawls – the arrogance! “You should at least not deign to ask.”

Having secured permission, you summarily sit back wind your arm away, and slap him. His cheekbone is a bit hard beneath your fingertips, but there’s a lovely sound of his cheek giving in to your strike that echoes almost loudly in the crystalline surroundings, along which the much quieter gasp he lets out with a tremble in his throat you can hear.

You’re suddenly painfully aware of just how public this is – well, not many were permitted inside the Crystal Tower, but your closest allies and companions were among them. The Crystal Exarch lived in a room connected to the Ocular, even – he is surely still inside there somewhere.

The two of you could be found at any moment. And the (former) emperor of Garlemald would be found lying beneath you, the bulge in his trousers quite visible from his hiked-up skirts.

You lie your palm flat on his throat and press, gauging his expression as you press down just casually enough to seem careless; the way his breath catches is not due to the pressure. His tongue darting out again as his mouth parts in what he might have wanted to be a scoff, but emerges shakily as you rest your weight on it fully.

Bringing your other hand down – you notice his eyes dart down to try to watch – till you reach his pants. There’s no fastening or buttons – annoying Garlean frippery – so you merely snatch a knife off yourself and dig it under his waistband.

The way his eyes widen, pupils dilating at the press of the blunt edge into his skin tells you much and more about the sagely Ascian’s preferences. You waste no time freeing his cock from his trousers, cutting far down enough that you nearly cleave his pants and undergarments in two.

He stays stock-still beneath you, and as a treat for his obedient behavior you let the flat side of the blade rest on his cock. You catch his breath in his throat, rasping, shivering beneath you at the weapon’s harmless touch.

Slowly, carefully, you drag it up along the length of him, just barely allowing the tip to nearly scrape into him, scratching without scoring flesh. His legs twitch and tense at your sides, the urge to kick and jerk quite clearly building in his lean form.

You don’t stop as his base, instead allowing the point to trace up and up, tilting it dangerously so that the sharp edge tore through his robes, drawing up a red line of unbroken skin straight up his figure. Up, and up, and up, over soft and yielding flesh, past his navel and over the lean muscle of his abdomen, against the rise and fall of his chest, the center of his ribs, down into the dip of his collarbone and the seat of his throat.

His regalia wasn’t quite tight enough to fall apart beneath you but he’s suitably prepared for unwrapping. As you lay aside the knife, letting your hand on his throat fall to the side to caress his cheek again, he scoffs in true.

“Had that difficult a time, did you?” Emet-Selch’s tone, naturally, is nothing short of mocking. “Forgoing all sense of dignity to cut me open like a savage?”

The way he looks at you does not suggest he would take issue with that. You lean in, sliding one hand beneath the gap you’ve made in his robes, brushing it off as you slip your hand lower, lower…

“You’re mouthy, for a man speaking to his owner,” You purr, stopping your hand just short of where you know he wants it. Ghosting your fingers against the sensitive skin nearby. “Do you talk to all your owners like that, Ascian? Or is it just me who gets this back talk?”

“And you ask a lot of questions for someone talking to her property,” His words come out as nothing short of a hiss. “I told you to do as you pleased with me.”

“Maybe this savage enjoys a bit of conversation before she fucks someone.”

“Yet somehow,” Drawling, the annoyance is clear in his voice as he raises his eyes defiantly, “Despite your many questions you’ve neglected to ask my input on that particular topic.”

Your fingers dance towards the inside of his delectable, trembling thighs. “You don’t make a compelling case for the contrary. Anyone would think you like to use your mouth, the way you acted earlier. The way you act in general.”

At your point he glares, and a flutter of delight rises in your chest when you realize he has no rebuttal. Stroking your thumb over the tender, delicate skin, you search out his pulse in laziness, feeling how he twitches and tenses in anticipation for a relief you don’t intend to grant.

Yet. At all. You’ll see. His attitude may improve.

“You want me to put you in your place, is that it?” You lean in, face to face, eyes lining right up with his as your hair hangs to brush against his cheeks. Lashes flutter in an attempt not to break his gaze. “The wise and mighty Ascian wants this savage brute of a mortal warrior to raw him on the floor?”

His breath hangs in the air, expression tightening to combat the lust that claws at his face – jaw clenching, lips pursing, muscles in his neck straining in what you recognize giddily as him fighting the urge to lean up and mate his lips to yours.

“The Ascian who is older and more experienced than you,” Emet-Selch bites out; you feel your hands clenching at the words because now his speech feels different, his rebuttal colored without contempt but with genuine objection, “Wants you to keep your promise.”

You smile in his face. “Perhaps you should have investigated further into the matter before you goaded me into taking you on the floor.” You don’t miss the way his brows draw together in frustration, no doubt to complain that you haven’t taken him, even with him practically throwing himself at your feet. “Wisdom can only remedy so much when your knowledge is lacking.”

When his mouth parts your heart jumps for a moment in realization – though he quickly shuts himself to silence – that Emet-Selch most certainly has snooped into your love life and summarily concluded that this should be his angle of attack.

Well, considering the look of utter indignant frustration on his face, his strategies were more likely informed mostly by his own pride and reservations. But he’d clearly expected to be met with more success.

Drawing your hand across to his other thigh, just barely, barely missing grazing against surely aching erection – oh, he is enjoying himself, and whining all the while. You stroke over it, letting him grunt at you in an attempt to sound forceful, and you draw your hand up, along the other side of his robes you’d split vertically, opening them right up to leave his torso entire bare, throbbing erection twitching in the open air.

Thusly opened, you draw circles over his chest with your finger, swipe carelessly over rapidly hardening nipples, delicately feeling out the ridges and planes of his bare musculature. He groans, pitched higher in his need, and while his knees unbend and his legs turn flat, you see his fingers curl as he fights not to reach out.

“If you find my attentions a bore,” You casually suggest, leaning back to survey your prize, “You can always teleport away.”

“I would not have to if you would just get on with it – ” He is surely about to say further fool things so you cut him off.

“But otherwise,” You sit back, carefully removing your leg from between his thighs, letting him just feel the warmth radiating from your limb as it passes over his cock. Resting yourself on his lower abdomen as you settle comfortably to sit on him. “I should like to hear more about what you’d like me to do to you. In detail, if you please.”

He meets your eyes like a challenge, raising his chin. “I was given to understand you would do them, hero.”

“If you’re good.” Adjusting your collar – making him all the more aware of his own nakedness, with how you were clothed. “Anyone could tell how bad you want it now. It’d take no effort to get you off as you are. Just a stroke and a twist, maybe a good two or three pumps and you’d be coming all over that pale handsome body of yours.”

Rising to the defense of his own stamina, Emet-Selch fixes you with a scowl, but you cut him off, “Don’t bother, we both know it’s true. Any fool could get you off now. You’re too easy.”

A snort, and the feeling somewhat passed creeps up against you, a gentle weight you’d barely noticed since it rested itself upon you making itself known in an unplaceable curling pressure. An embrace tightening, squeezing briefly to remind, to nudge. It’s light enough that it makes your chest feel tight, a strange nostalgia that you shake off with your next few words.

“Certainly I could give you your release now and you could be on your way. But you wouldn’t be satisfied with that, would you?” He catches your gaze and for once doesn’t look like he’s about to protest, expression indistinct, unreadable, “And nether would I. It’d be no fun.”

You lay your hands on his shoulders and lean in, letting your weight bear down on jutting collarbones as you meet him with a grin. “I want to see just how close I can get you without doing anything – make you come with as little as I can. Any fool can shove a man down and take him. I want to fuck you, own you, bring you right to the edge without even touching.”

Something in your words lights a spark in his eyes. Not like the lust or anger you’d seen. You don’t have the words for it, and unlike the others it’s neither swallowed back nor unleashed; an ember allowed to smolder deep within him. That pressure that you had only described as an embrace simply growing around you, seemingly coiling and curling as he gazes at you with those bright, beautiful eyes.

It’s strange. Warm. You’re not sure you’re entirely comfortable with how comfortable it makes you feel. It’s like he can see straight through you, and he likes what he’s found. You wet your lips and let the coolness of the sensation ground you, tightening your hands against his shoulders.

“You don’t mind that, do you?” For a moment your own voice sounds foreign to your ears, but that moment passes and you are back in reality, sitting on an Ascian who’s begged your dominance and offered his submission. “My little whore emperor.”

Emet-Selch blinks, his features returning to their usual arrogant dismissal, even as you feel his heart race at your words.

“If it means you’ll finally get to it,” His own timbre is unsteady for a moment, almost distant before it returns to the cadence of utterly obnoxious bored acceptance, “By all means.”

You tut in response, catching his chin in your fingers, “Silly boy,” He does rankle again, more fire drawn forth instead of that strange calm, “You think I’m going to do all the work here? You’re sorely mistaken. I want to hear every single thing you want me to do to you.”

His eyes widen, catch, caught by the same demand you’d thrown at him over and over. Lips curling and twisting into a snarl before something in your eyes cows him into acceptance. Emet-Selch licks his lips, and in low tones much richer than he’s any right to, beneath you, so prone and vulnerable.

“I want your hands inside me,” He says, and it sounds abrupt, almost, even though you knew these words were coming, but the way he takes your gaze and holds it, steadier than a man cornered by a Warrior of Light, “Touch every ilm of skin you can find, map every part of my being and then plunge in wherever you can and claim me there. I assure you, I can – and I will – take it all.”

You try to tut at him again but your tongue wedges between your lips and you end up smacking them. Amusement flickers on his face in response.

“Take me in your hands and hold me, tightly, I care not where. My throat, my cock, my wrist or arm – I want your hands wrapped around me, I want to feel your fingerprints digging into my skin. I want you to be able to feel my pulse in your hands. I want marks to remember you by, hero.”

Bright eyes darken indiscernibly before he continues, “I want them in the shape of your hands. I’d be partial to them in the shape of your feet, too, if you were amenable to kicking. I want to feel it, I want to feel it all, I want every part of you touching every part of me with the greatest force you can muster.”

Leaning in, you let a sigh ghost over his cheek; his lashes flutter and he can’t hide how the tremors that run through him.

“How unfortunate for you, then, to be caught wanting. But don’t stop there,” You gaze down at him, holding your head so that you looked down at him from above, “Touch is only one of the senses. If all you want is to feel – well, I’d question which of us is looking to satisfy brute, carnal desires.”

Emet-Selch makes a face. “I would list a desire to see you on high – towering, above me – but I suppose that’s one part you’ve performed adequately in.” You nearly roll your eyes, but you’re too interested in hearing what’s next. “I want to see you as bare as you’ve seen me. Breasts unbound, free to bounce as you ride me, or your cunt in my face, close enough to taste. I want my mouth on it. All of it.”

You almost laugh – to think you’d be alike in this way. He seems to note your amusement with something almost approaching wariness.

“If you could be bothered,” He hangs on the last word with deliberate intent, “I should like to see your hand between your legs. I want to see how you touch yourself, how you enjoy yourself, show me where to touch with my tongue and even snatch it from my mouth so I know your flavor.”

“Like being pulled around, do you,” There’s a gleam in his eyes in response, an imperceptible dart to your clothes that baffles you for a moment.

“If you would deign to do so,” Stubbornly he clings to his pride, adding indignant phrases before each and every lukewarm suggestion, but he grows more heated by the moment, more fervent with every second that passes where you don’t touch him, “I would have you pull me around even further. Bind me with collar and leash, tug me by the throat as you guide me to fulfill your every instruction. If you had the will for it.”

You pat his cheek. “Cute. Goad me harder.” Just for a moment, you allow yourself to slip lower on his abdomen, brushing the tip of his erection with your ass before you tug yourself back forward. “Goad yourself harder.”

With a look that is almost a glare, he answers, “Bind me – all of me. Tie me up, to a bed, to a chair, naked and bared while you let me imagine what your hand is doing beneath your pants. Lay a rod upon my body, a feather, a whip, whatever you please, as hard as you like – so that I can feel and feel and still not feel you.”

There’s a hunger in his gaze now, one that makes you want to dive in and taste his lips. “Levy so much upon me that I strain against my restraints even if it means pressing myself into a knife.”

An image flashes in your mind, of how that knife you’d dragged so carefully upon him might have looked against his pale, gault form. Skin laced with red, the cries he’d hold back until he could no longer, the way he’d lean into the blade instead of away from it, how he’d beg for it, even, and perhaps could even be coerced to thank you for it.

“Make me struggle futile against bindings – I would show you how to make them right. There’s naught you can do about my aether, of course, being as you are now.”

“But you’d be good for me, wouldn’t you?” You lower your voice and savor how he leans forward imperceptibly to hear you, how his breath hitches at your tone, “You’d be good, you would stay still and do exactly as I said. You would do that for me, wouldn’t you?”

Emet-Selch’s gaze warms with heat, with lust unbridled, “I am capable of much and more, the likes of which you’ve never imagined in your dreary mortal life.”

“That so?” Conversationally, you trace his jaw upwards until your fingers card into his hair, “Tell me, boy, have you ever imagined in your many long years that you’d be this hard underneath a mortal? Spilling your deepest fantasies and desires to a shell of a person? Telling her how you’d dreamed of her commanding you, hurting you, denying you and using you?”

His mouth opens, wordless, for a moment. “You,” He says, “Surely you can do better than that.”

“What?”

There’s an amusement, a bitter smugness that is only barely not infuriating, creeping on his face. “Surely you know by now my tastes, what I like to hear from you. That was the whole point of this little exchange, no?”

What he likes to hear from… Oh. Oh.

“If you want it,” You drag your fingers through his hair, “You shall certainly have to say it. You must know that by now.”

Will his pride outweigh his desire in this? His breathing hadn’t slowed, his lust still plainly creeping up inside him, tensing through him. You haven’t deigned to look back at his erection but you’re sure it’s even more impressive than it originally was.

“Come now, you’re clever,” Emet-Selch taunts – pride, then, still weighs heavy for him. Or perhaps, you begin to realize, he just likes to make things difficult. For himself and for you. “Surely you can figure it out without more assistance on my part.”

“If you want me to call you a whore again,” The way he twitches at the word tells you you’re quite on the right track, “You’re going to have to say so. In as many words, even.”

A snarl of frustration – after everything, this is what makes him buck against you from below; you hear his cock slap against his groin and give him a scathing look. He’s aggravated enough to glare back.

“What, I’ve done it already and still it is not enough? I told you to use me like one!” His indignation does not pause as your fingers tighten in his hair, “Put the pieces together, hero, you can’t be that much a fool.”

You yank his head up, baring his throat to you as you lean in, stroking vulnerable skin, feeling the air pass through his windpipe in staccato breaths.

“You did call me stupid. Spell it out for me, Ascian.” Dragging your fingers up his throat, you let your fingertip hook beneath his chin, nail just scratching beneath him. “I want to hear it.”

Gently – so, so gently – and faster than you can see, a gloved hand lays on your wrist, fingers draped over in a curl. “You test my patience.”

“I’ll test what I please. Or did you think it would only be you testing me? Stay beneath me and tell me what you want to hear from me, like a good boy, or find someone else to fuck you senseless.”

“I remain in woeful possession of my senses, hero.”

“As demonstrated by your disobedience. A little compliance goes a long way, you know.” The gold of his eyes – the challenge – comes back to your mind, gleaming and defiant. “A man of your so-called experience should know what he likes. Are you too embarrassed to say it, after all your little fantasies? Is it that bad, Ascian?”

For a moment, you allow yourself the luxury of considering – what could he want you to say to him that he would be so embarrassed to admit? After admitting to wanting a knife on him, to be whipped, to have a collar and be made a pet…

The red that blooms on his face – and more, his expression going slack – tells you that he, too, has been thinking about what he might like to hear.

“Yes,” Emet-Selch says, catching your gaze, “Perhaps it is. Do you take issue with that?”

Any other time, you’d press him. He’s blushing almost cutely, red plain along pale and shadowed cheeks, so out of place on that angular and elegant face. Eyes wide enough to offset the sarcastic tilt to his brow.

This look on his face… you don’t like it. You don’t like it at all.

Swatting his hand aside while you hoist yourself up, you watch his eyes snap over you, arms falling to his sides as he raises his head from the floor, leaning up.

Emet-Selch makes a soft noise of annoyance when you remove yourself from him, but he leans forward, pushing up on his arms, and turns his head in an admittedly adorable display of confusion while you settle yourself behind him, resting his head in your lap.

You weave your arms under and through his, locking them in place as you position yourself to tilt his head just so. Have him looking down to his nearly naked form, the scraps of his robes fanned out at his sides, just hanging on his upper arms.

His cock, red and erect between his legs, jutting up against the landscape of stark musculature and pale skin. 

“Well, if you don’t want to say,” You lean down to purr in his ear, nuzzling soft hair, “You can always just imagine.”

You can feel him swallow, caught in your grasp. “Imagine what, pray tell, hero? More than I’ve had to imagine this whole time, what with your little interrogation?”

Hands clasp at his sides, drawing downwards as you lean further in. Breasts bearing softly behind his head, propping him up and positioning him to look down at himself while fingers trickled over his flesh like streams of water. Cooling, flowing, leaving behind an aching heat as soon as the sensation passed from one ilm of skin to the next.

“Imagine what you want me to do to you,” Unaffected by his pointed questions, you let your fingertips close in, close, close, so close to where he so dearly wants them, his cock a hair’s breadth away from your soothing, enflaming touch. “I’m sure this provides more than enough inspiration.”

That is must, for there’s a groan he makes against his own restraint, the jut of his hip wavering in the corner of your sight as he struggles not to simply buck himself into you.

For a moment, Emet-Selch, stuffed to the brim with frustration and need, indignance burning away under the weight of his want, permits himself to imagine. Staring down at your hand that drifted just by his arousal, so close that you are surely prepared to snatch it away at the slightest twitch.

Those hands that have traced over him, tickled at him, no different from any other. Just another set of mortal paws that he’s allowed on his person, wriggling and writhing and worming their wretched way into his flesh as if they will by some miracle dig their way into his heart.

The feel of them on him is pleasant, but not unique, he’s felt it all before, done it all before, there’s nothing novel left in this for him. If you would only – if you would only - !

Reality blurs as he indulges himself, dreaming of how those fingertips might stray closer, the touch of bare skin against his sex he’d longed for since you set foot in that damnable room. Your hands surrounding him, squeezing him, the press on hot and swollen flesh, fingers that bear in bands around his length, enclosing tightly –

Your voice in his ears, Be a good boy for me, his heart fluttering as he snarls at the appellation, even as the pulse of blood grows and grows, pounding in his chest, in his cock, in his ears where your breath brushes like wingbeats, Be a good boy, come for me, you can do that, can’t you, Sorcerer of Eld? You can be good for me?

Of course he could, who did you think you were talking to – you should be worried about whether you could deliver, do your worst already, hero, he knows you can do better than that –

A tsk brings him back to reality, as cool and grounding in his ear as the empty space between your fingers and his sex, throbbing in the air, beading at the tip as delicious fantasy dilutes into harsh reality. The drip from his head, slowly drooling down his length in a mockery of the contact he craves – inconceivable.

Hovering over him, just close enough for him to feel the heat of hands just barely not touching him, you whisper. “You want me to touch you?”

He doesn’t see red, but only because his length is deepening to purple at this point, pulsing hot and desperate so much that his thighs feel the need to tremble. “No, I would prefer for you to stand and walk away, leaving me here to my misery.”

Feeling you stiffen and knowing you would actually do it, you wicked, petty creature, he continues, “Of course I do! ‘Tis only what I’ve been seeking for this entire little encounter of ours. Every exchange I affirm my desire, urge you to continue – one would think, hero, that you are the one who harbors doubts – ”

Emet-Selch is skilled enough, just enough, to cut himself off without quite sounding like he has, but the way you blink down at him tells him you caught it none the less.

His lips purse. Curl. Inside his mouth, where you could not see, he nips at one, chewing and worrying the flesh for a heartbeat in a vain distraction, a lazy mortal habit he’d never bothered to break.

Eyes meet his gaze, not wavering but – distant. Weary? Guarded in a way they hadn’t been, before. You push him further forward into sitting, pulling his half-naked form into your lap, cock flopping uselessly above his groin, once more, without contact.

There’s a noise from nearby. Like the step of sandals on a crystal floor pacing in worry for a hero who could certainly look after herself. Walking not straight to the door, but close to it.

It would be no great feat to teleport away. To disappear in a wisp of violet aether and leave you… sitting on the floor outside the Ocular, completely clothed. Not remotely ruffled or flustered. The only evidence of your debauchery having fled.

Once more, he’s torn from his thoughts when hands clamp against his sides, lift him up, and turn him around to face you, his legs bent in a messy kneel beneath him as your thighs part around his torso, chest to chest.

It’s a rather uncomfortable reminder of his state of undress – his chest having long since grown cold, bared to the air, gooseflesh forming all the way down to his neglected cock that bobs as he settles. Emet-Selch scowls at your fully clad form – the buckles and straps and laces of adventuring gear he cannot even begin to imagine unwrapping. His own loose sheets of garb hanging at his sides, exposing nearly everything up front.

The indignity. It heats him even now, in this cool blue tower, but not nearly as much as the look on your face as he sees your eyes drift down unmistakably, reaching at last for his –

Hands?

For a moment there’s naught to do but stare as you tug off his other glove and guide his hands forward, undoing the front of your hands with nimble fingers as he pauses dumbly. Stupefied. “You…”

You must be able to tell that he has no more to say because you continue shoving aside your garments until your underthings are bared. From there you take his hand in yours and place it, mistakeably, on your abdomen, fingers pointed down, making no doubt of your intentions.

“Show me,” He hears, eyes still fixed on his hands, burning at the touch of your heated skin. “Show me how you want it, Emet-Selch. Go on, don’t be shy.” Fingers thread into his for a moment, cool but squeezing tightly. “We’ll see what your performance earns you.”

His breath escapes him. Eyes raising just in time to catch the brightness, how your soul gleams for him in challenge –

He threads his fingers beneath your waistband to meet your sex. Exploring gingerly the folds of your flesh, pressing in a fingertip and drawing it down along your arousal without catching, following a line until glancing over your hole, catching on moisture there.

Just a dip, the lightest of probes, he wets his middle finger and draws it back up, parting your folds with fingers on either side. Splaying you like you’d splayed your legs, and his entire regalia, opening him up for your perusal.

Stroking, sensing, letting his fingertip glide over you, delicately seeking out the hood of your clit, working over it in smooth movements meant to coax out arousal.

There’s no silence while he works, no – you don’t even afford him the luxury of space. Leaning in close, the heat overwhelming by simple proximity, you whisper hot in his ear, “Is that how you want me to touch you, hm? Those gentle traces? All this time begging and pleading and you want my fingers dancing on your cock?”

A snarl catches in his throat, fingers hooking at wetness between your wide-spread legs; if more is what you want, then more, you shall receive, someone needs to show you how to do this, clearly.

Glancing at his face he sees no change in your expression but there’s a press on his fingers against your sex that has to be your bucking into him – flesh delicate and swollen bearing into his touch. Hands sliding down, he lets his fingers hook into you while his thumb settles just next to your clit, working you open with his fingertips, one after another squeezing in as you leak out your desire.

“You want my hand in you?” The voice in his ears murmurs, above where he is focused, “That makes sense. How hungrily you swallowed it. You’d want me to fuck right into you, hm? Or would you do it to yourself if I asked you to? Stick your fingers in and move them when I said you could.”

His fingers twitch inside you, jerking as if in some imaginary grip, and the way you tense around him is nothing short of delicious. The wet envelopment of flesh that practically sucks him in, hungrily – oh, how hungry he is for you, he’ll take so much more of you than you can imagine, mortal thing, he’ll have all of you he can take and he can take it all, now, with you being as you are – and his cock twitches in response, throbbing with the slow thrum of lust he hadn’t noticed building up.

Fingers surrounded by warmth and heat and the slickness oozing freely from your sex and the breath on his ear is still hotter, wetter, “You said you wanted a lot of things. Would it help if I gave you some fingers in your mouth now, Emet-Selch? For you to suck on while I ride your hand?”

For a sinful, terrible, delirious moment, a yes builds in his throat, until it is beaten down like the heat on his cheeks by a raging insistence that if you were going to do that you should at least ride his cock.

There’s a slight recoil of horror at the chain of thought, but where else could it have gone? A throb between the legs reminds him of exactly what he wanted out of this, and even better the eager squeeze of your walls along his fingertips, your hands gripping his shoulders as if to urge him on.

Before you can whisper any further filth to him his mouth moves in its own protest, “I would hardly call this riding, hero. If you truly wish to show me your skill – ”

He tastes your hand before he can finish, pinching his tongue in his own mouth with a glare. A quick breath out through his nose, sucking air back in through his mouth, chilling his lips – pants that build until he can just barely hear them above the pulse in his ears, throbbing in time with his fingers inside you.

“I made my intentions clear, Ascian,” You whisper hotly and Emet-Selch is pleased to hear the touch of breathlessness in your own tone, his lips tugging up despite himself as you flatten your fingers on his tongue, letting his mouth close once more around them, “You waste my attention with your snark, you lose the privilege of making those snide little remarks.”

The privilege –

Oh, how it burns and pulls in equal measure, blood pounding in time with your words. His fingers move with their own purpose, now, all considerations of taunting discarded as you tilt your hips to guide his thumb directly on your clit, shove yourself forward to further his reach into you, squeezing tightly, almost sucking him in as he sucks on your hand.

Heat blossoms below as you tremble around him, rutting hard into his hands, close and closer, “There, there, go on boy, I know you can do it, you can do this,” Of course he can, he’s done this a thousand times before, he knows exactly how hard to press when you have him in the deepest, just how to swipe his thumb over your clit when you think he’s drawing back, “Give it to me,” He’ll give you this, everything and more –

“Give it to me! Fuck – ” Faintly in the back of his mind the idea of mocking your language stirs but it’s nothing compared to the sweet swell of aether that draws his blood downwards, how yours tugs at him in a primal way no mortal could consciously manage, “Give it to me, Ascian, fucking make me come,” strokes your clit in those long fast brushes that work you right up –  

And you clench around him, breath catching as your body tenses and trembles, releasing air in short pants as you settle, airy release filling your lungs. High notes almost like whines humming through you as your hold on his loosens, then tenses. He works his fingers against you, slowly, catching the twitches of your climax as he pulls out and away, one last cursory stroke that you preen into for but a moment in satisfied release.

As if there was ever any doubt. Make me come, indeed.

Your fingers slide from his mouth, strands of saliva threading between your fingers and his lips as you take your hand back. The hand on his shoulder pushing you back and away as you stumble to your feet, wiping your hand on his ruined robes. It’s still annoying – but then again, it is his own saliva.

With a breath he didn’t recall having found, leaning back on his wetted hands, he finds it in himself to drawl, “And – what about me, hero?” Outside his notice, his heart skips a beat, breath pausing as he tenses in anticipation of your words.

For a moment you look at him, strangely, and smile in a small, secret way he hadn’t seen before. “Come.”

He’s just about to ask what you mean but heat rises, blossoms on his cheeks; there’s a sudden awareness of just how bare he is before you, once again, just how hard and needy, flushed mouth wide and drooling, hand wet with your release, how you’d used him just like he’d asked you to and now you looked down on and expected him to come on command –

Liquid heat flows down to his cock and the sore, long-neglected sting busts into flames, spurting over himself. His robes are spared a mess only because you’d torn them apart, and he’s left hot and dripping over his own pale abdomen, droplets quickly cooling as he pants in sudden release.

It's the most and the least satisfying orgasm of his life.

Whether the Exarch opening the door at that very moment made it more or less so is impossible to say.

Well. You did keep your promise. However painful it was to extract your cooperation.

(He'd do it again in a heartbeat - and he does plan to.)