Bloodbang Chronicles - Chapter 18 - Therapy
Chapter summary: When couple's counselling isn't an option but relationship issues must be resolved - a.k.a. 'fucking it out'
Chapter word count: 4.5k
Chapter CW: Smut
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Series summary:
Five years have passed since the confrontation with the Netherbrain. Astarion and his warlock lover, Asmodea, are living it up in Baldur’s Gate, running a cabaret. Their life of decadence and debauchery seems idyllic, until Asmodea’s patron disrupts it with a proposal. One that seems too good to be true. One they cannot refuse.
Pairing: Astarion x Original Female Character
Genre: Humor / adventure / smut
Rating: Explicit
Asmodea dreamt about Halsin that night. A memory, of climbing beneath the covers in the pre-dawn, Astarion still out enjoying the quiet of the night. The druid stirred awake, roused by her movements.
“How is it possible your feet are colder than Astarion’s..?” he grumbled, still half-asleep, turning and gathering her in his arms. Asmodea chuckled, perhaps somewhat wickedly, perhaps making an effort to press her offending icy appendages against the druid’s warm skin, and buried her face in his chest, enjoying the warmth.
Warmth.
Her eyes snapped open.
The sun was up. The arms around her were Astarion’s, and the warmth was emanating from him. Astarion hummed with discontent as she shifted in his arms and sat up. Scrunched his nose and blinked sleep from his eyes, glaring with contempt at the canopy of their tent. The material could have been more perfectly opaque.
“Do you want me to cast darkness?”
“It’s fine,” he shook his head. “I’d much rather be able to see you.”
He drew her back down, until they lay side by side, facing each other.
They looked into each other’s eyes, each trying to silently convey things they couldn’t put into words yet. Too many thoughts and feelings with too much murky depth and nuance, without sufficient words to capture them. Instead he stroked her cheek with a feather-light touch. She smiled back at him.
As though agreeing to give up, at least for now, they held each other in a tight embrace, in lieu of any words.
“I love you,” Asmodea whispered, releasing a relieved sigh.
“I love you too,” murmured Astarion.
“And I’ll always keep a spare fireball up my sleeve, I promise,” she added, mumbled into his chest.
“Why does that promise sound like a threat..?” he frowned, before they both broke into a laugh.
“You’re still warm,” Asmodea murmured after a while, running her fingers over his skin where she had slipped her hands beneath his shirt. It was a warmth from within, not merely one he had borrowed from her own body heat, a bath or an open flame. “How much blood did you have last night..?”
“You don’t want to know,” Astarion said lazily. “And I wasn’t keeping a tally.”
“How does it feel..? When you gorge.”
“Hmm,” Astarion deliberated. “At first it’s like pins and needles. Your flesh coming to life. You begin to feel things that you haven’t felt in so long, you think you’re dying. When my heart beat for the first time in two centuries, I was sure I drank something poisoned and was finally done for... Then that feeling melts and turns to warmth. But there is a wrongness to it. You feel displaced in your own body. Yet at the same time you are desperate for that feeling to never go away, but it slips like sand through your fingers with each passing second...”
“Is that how you feel now..?”
“I know I can get more,” he shook his head. “Though even now, knowing and understanding isn’t always believing... But never mind all that.” He lay back, propping himself up on an elbow. “Are you okay..? Truly?”
“What are you asking?”
“Did anything happen to you yesterday..?”
“Such as..?”
“Oh don’t play daft.”
“I told you, I was fine,” she sighed. “Got slapped around a bit. Wouldn’t be the first time. Shitbag who did it got an arrow through his eye. And what would it matter now, anyway..?”
“It never stops to ‘matter’,” said Astarion. “Whatever you tell yourself, however you sweep it beneath a rug and flatten it, once it’s there, it stays. And believe me, I know talking about it may be the last thing you want to do, but… You can’t leave a rothe in a porcelain shop. And no, I couldn’t do anything short of going back in time, but-”
“Astarion…” she interrupted with a finger pressed against his lips. “I’m fine. Thank you, but… I’m fine. Truly.”
He took her hand, turning it over, and kissed her knuckles, looking into her eyes. “I’m glad,” he whispered, concern melting into a relieved acceptance. “What did happen?” he asked. “You looked ill.”
“I poisoned myself,” Asmodea shrugged. “Just enough to make the prospect of being anywhere near me unappealing,” she added as Astarion quirked a brow in question. “I don’t know if it was really necessary - Jaxxon later told me they all knew better than to touch me,” she said. “Though I don’t know if I believe that. He’ll tell any lie just to throw you off-balance. Or just for the fun of it.”
“But poisoning yourself..? How… unconventional,” he remarked. “When did you become an aspiring alchemist?”
“Girl’s got to pick up some tricks living alone on the road.”
“Self-sabotaging tricks..?”
“Ideally, I would be sabotaging someone else…” If she told him that she had been following Fuckface’s reluctant instructions, she would never hear the end of it, she knew. Instead Astarion chuckled, accepting his explanation. “But sometimes one has to improvise, you know?”
“Darling you deliberately poisoned yourself in self-defence!” They were both laughing, an inane, tittering, relieved giggle, now that everything seemed to be fine again. “What’s next, you’ll see danger and pretend to drop dead so it passes you by?”
“It works with some bears!” she protested, but Astarion only held her close again, covering her face in kisses.
“Astarion…” she said, continuing to titter. “Astarion, there is something between us that needs to be addressed,” she added, lightly grinding her hips against his.
“Hmm, is it a problem?” he asked between kisses, trailing one hand down her back to her ass to squeeze and hold her tighter, encouraging her to throw a leg over and around his hips.
“It’s a big problem,” she said deadpan, before they both broke into laughter again. “But now, really? Was it the thought of poison, or of me dropping dead?”
“It’s all the recent murder, darling,” he said, making her snort. “You know being full of borrowed blood makes everything more sensitive.”
“Borrowed,” she snickered. “Are you going to give any of it back?”
“Stolen,” he shrugged. “Actually, no, not stolen. Just taken.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, palming his big problem. “I like when you just take things.”
The hand and the increasingly lustful look in her eyes were a clear enough invitation, but... the recent captivity would have left her shaken, Astarion knew. Perturbed. Left a mark on her, no matter what had or hadn’t occurred. Perhaps leaning into and painting over it was better than skirting the edges. In any event, if there was any hesitation or recoil, he would know.
“I saw you there, you know,” he murmured. “All bound and helpless.”
“Oh?” said Asmodea. She might have sounded somewhat surprised, but didn’t stop what she was doing with his cock through the fabric of his trousers.
“I haven’t been able to get that thought out of my mind since,” he breathed against the shell of her ear.
She huffed then, in mock outrage. “Since when does seeing me ‘bound and helpless’ around other men turn you on?!”
Astarion clicked his tongue. “You’ve got it all back to front, darling. It’s having other men seeing you restrained around me that turns me on.”
To his relief, she laughed and rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips. “Why? What would you do? Tell me,” she said with an encouraging roll of her hips against his.
“Kept you tied and taken you right there in the middle of camp, with that half-elf stuck kneeling in the dirt, watching. Made him understand who you truly belong to.”
Asmodea released a low, throaty chuckle, but continued to grind against him. “Just the three of us, surrounded by blood and corpses? And the bard playing his flute in the bushes, I guess.”
“Could’ve hung the others up by their balls and had them watch as well - put on a little show as a gift before ending them.” Asmodea laughed again. It was absurd, but he could her pulse quicken. She did always like the idea of having an audience. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Them seeing that I can do anything I want to you? Seeing how eager you are to let me..?” he whispered in her ear, his hands kneading her ass, pulling her ever closer and tighter against him.
A rugged breath tore from her throat, her voice husky with want. “Wouldn’t you untie me..?”
“Eventually.”
“Jaxxon would be the type to provide running commentary, you know.”
“Not once I cut his tongue out. I would make sure your cries drowned him out anyway.”
“And how would you lay your claim on me, exactly..? You’d want them all to have a good view, no?”
“Hmm,” hummed Astarion. “We’d want them to see, wouldn’t we? Maybe I’d throw you over some of the crates. Or maybe I would just hold you up while I fucked you. Or maybe, just maybe, I’d leave you on top, just like this, so they’d all see just how needy you are for me.”
She continued to grind against his cock as he spoke, still separated from it by the thin fabric of his pants and her dampening smallclothes. One of her fingertips glided, tortuously slowly, along the helix of his ear, until it reached its sensitive - alarmingly sensitive - tip, and started anew. Gods, if this is how sensitive his ear had become, then how sensitive-
“You need to stop that,” he growled, his words accentuated by an involuntary jolt of his hips.
“Make me,” she whispered with her lips brushing the shell of his ear, then dragged her teeth along his earlobe.
Astarion twisted her arms behind her back, pulling the sleeves of the shirt she had been sleeping in down until he could tie them, keeping her wrists together, trapping her arms restrained behind her back. He pulled back on her arms until she was sitting up, straddling him.
“That’s much better,” he murmured. His hand slid between her legs and stroked through the fabric, eliciting a moan from her. He’d wanted to draw this out longer, but when faced with that sound, his favourite sound in the world… He leaned forward to sit up, reaching behind her with one hand, holding her back by her tied arms, the other pulling aside the fabric of her panties, trying to conceal his own impatience. “Completely soaked,” he groaned against her neck where he kissed it. “You like being helpless, don’t you?”
“I’m not helpless,” she said breathlessly.
“Oh? And just how are you going to get what you want..?” he plunged a single digit inside her, shallowly.
“Please…” she moaned, rolling her hips, trying to get more friction against his hand.
“Ah, by begging then?” he laughed, removing his hand from between her legs and falling back against the bedroll. She did not answer, aside from making a frustrated noise, and rolling her hips, grinding against his cock. His cock, which, to both their detriment, was still confined in his pants. “Please what..?”
“Please don’t stop,” she moaned, sighing with relief when the hand returned, a second finger joining the first. She fell against him. “Keep stroking me like that,” she whispered in his ear. Somewhere in the back of his very much preoccupied mind, Astarion reflected on the irony - he was supposed to be the one teasing her, and yet he was the one about to lose his mind from the way her warm body writhed against his, from her sighs of pleasure, from the scent of her building arousal filling the confines of their tent, while he had naught but the slightest bit of frustrating friction, and that still through fabric. And then, whether involuntarily, or by deliberately flexing her muscles, she twitched, deliciously, around his fingers.
“You’re really going to settle for that tight, hot hole quivering around your fingers, when it could be around your cock instead..?” she breathed huskily against his ear.
“You shameless, dirty brat,” he murmured. How did she always manage to get her way..? But she was right, he needed to be inside her. …On his own terms.
Taking as much time and restraint as the compromise between his dignity and pure animalistic need would allow - in other words rushing and all but growling - he undid the clasps and ties of his pants, shimmying out of them and kicking them off. Asmodea’s panties had remained simply shoved to the side. He caught her smirking knowingly where she had collapsed against his chest. Her hands were still tangled in the sleeves of her shirt, behind her back. Very conveniently so.
Astarion forced her back up into a sitting position, not that she objected in the least. Another roll of her hips against his finally freed cock, spreading her slick over the shaft, making his toes curl from the sensation, and then he finally thrust inside her, to both of their relief.
He wanted nothing more than to flip her over on her back and take her, roughly. Which was precisely why she had better stay on top - he was having trouble enough as it was holding back, with so much blood still hot in his veins.
Astarion looked in her eyes to find her pupils completely blown with lust. He took some satisfaction in that - she was further gone than he, barely holding on to control. Lustful gaze holding his, lips parted, hair more dishevelled than usual, she began to ride him. Torturously slowly, rolling and rubbing her clit against him. If it were up to her, she would grind against him to completion, he knew. Which was sensuous and rewarding enough - you can hardly complain when someone is coming on your cock. Besides, after her initial orgasm he would be welcome, encouraged even, to do anything he liked to her, in her debauched state.
He wasn’t convinced she had earned it yet, though.
Her shirt had slipped off her shoulders and barely held on. Astarion undid the few remaining buttons to better enjoy the view. Perky breasts, perhaps on the petite side by human standards. Swaying, almost hypnotically, with her movements. Her pert nipples were begging to be played with. It would be a crime not to, really.
“Not like that,” he said, with a pinch. She gasped, her intake of breath punctuated by her squeezing tighter around his cock. She looked at him questioningly. “Bounce,” he said, with an upward thrust of his hips. Just one, he wasn’t about to do the work for her. “You’re not getting anything until you’ve earned it.”
A fleeting whine, as though she wasn’t pleased with the prospect, and she complied, bearing down on him in earnest. He reached behind her and pulled back on the shirt secured around her wrists, making her lean backwards as she continued to straddle and ride him, arching her back. She set a relentless pace. Enjoying the view of his cock disappearing, rhythmically, into her weeping, hot, tight, pink- Fuck, he thought, tearing his eyes from the sight between her legs before he got carried away.
Every time she tried to guide the motion to a more rolling movement of her hips and press into him, she was cautioned with a cautionary pinch of her nipple.
“Star,” she moaned, finally. “Please…”
The hand that had been playing with one of her nipples snaked up along her chest and neck, stroked along her jaw, until Astarion’s thumb made it to her mouth. She bit, hard, resulting in a jolt of his hips. A knowing chuckle rose from her throat.
“Behave now,” he warned. “You want to be rewarded, don’t you?” She hummed then, sucking on his thumb and playing with the pad of the digit with her tongue, the same way she might with his- Godsdamnit, he thought again, trying to distract himself from getting too carried away too fast, again. But this all needed to come to a conclusion sooner rather than later. “Good girl,” he purred. “See, good things happen when you listen…” His hand came down between her legs, his wet thumb pressing down onto her clit. “Now take what you want.”
She rubbed against his hand - the motion almost reminiscent of a cat nudging against its human, demanding attention. And still, he made her do all the work, grinding against him, wanton moans escaping from her lips.
“Look at you…” he murmured with admiration. “Have you always been such a needy whore?”
She had the decency to look him in the eye and colour, however slightly. “Only for you and your cock,” she breathed, giving him a sultry look.
“Now don’t lie,” he tutted. “We both know how much you enjoyed Halsin’s.”
“Yours is harder,” she said with a treacherous twist of her hips and a glint in her eyes.
It was only fair that he retaliate - which he did, bucking his hips and beginning to trace tight circles around her clit. She met his motions, mewling moans spilling from her lips, her eyes shut tight, an expression of ecstasy blooming on her face.
“Yes that’s exactly what I’d want them all to see,” Astarion purred.
“Hmm?” her eyes fluttered open to momentary confusion, before the dazed lust gave way to comprehension. “The band?”
“Anyone,” he said. “I’d have the whole world know how eager you are to take my cock.”
She laughed but not before squeezing tighter around him, again. He couldn’t take it anymore - though he would, as long as he had to.
Astarion sat up, leaning forward. The hand that had been holding on to the shirt that kept Asmodea’s hands tied behind her back instead grabbed hold of a handful of tresses of hair, pulling her backwards. The other continued to rub and circle her swollen, exposed clit, with intent now. He thrust into her, as much as the position would allow, while she whimpered and met his movements with her own. The sight of her, her tits bounding in his face, was mesmerising. He leaned further forward, until he could graze her neck with his fangs. She gasped, though he did not break the skin, only rested his lips on her racing pulse beneath his marks he’d made on her, which stopped fully going away long ago. It was enough, her movements becoming choppy, the telltale tightening of her muscles around him becoming more intense, her moans now keening.
“Come for me,” he growled against her neck.
She spasmed around him, her hips jerking erratically against his. He’d released her hair, both his hands digging into the plump flesh of her ass, squeezing and trying to keep her as close as he could, even as he continued to try to thrust. Until her moans were replaced by quiet, shuddering breaths, easing into sighs, and she fell slack against him.
Astarion too fell back until he was lying on the bedroll again, Asmodea collapsing on top of him, his cock still buried inside her. The look on her face was of unabashed euphoria. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, tracing her jaw with kisses as she hummed with pleasure. Perfect. She was perfect. Angelic in her pure ecstasy, or at least she had been for some brief moments - until he glimpsed the rapture on her face being quickly replaced by something mischievous, again.
She buried her face in his neck, giggling as he attempted to untie the shirt that had been tied around her forearms - it was tighter than Astarion had realised. The giggling gave way to her nibbling on and tonguing his neck, while he continued to struggle with the shirt.
“Behave,” he warned. He was answered with another laugh and a more persistent bite. “Then I’ll put that naughty mouth to better use,” he said, finally managing to get the shirt off and flinging it aside.
He rolled both of them over, so that Asmodea was now on her back, Astarion leaning over her. Shifted forward until he hovered over her, sitting up with his knees on either side of her head, the thick head of his cock - flushed, glistening with her juices and well-overdue for its own release - poised at her lips. Roguish look still on her face, she began to lick herself off him, down the length of his shaft, meticulously, as though savouring the taste - she’s always been eager to lick pussy off his cock, Astarion reflected, the thought further antagonising him and making his breath catch in his throat. How he had managed not to spill into her earlier, he did not know, but he wasn’t about to continue his heroics.
Fingers tangled in her hair, he slid, impatiently, inside her hot, willing mouth. He immediately hissed, his cock twitching, from how oversensitive he had gotten. As though expressing concern over his aching member, Asmodea hummed consolingly, lips wrapped tightly around the shaft - the ministrations making him twitch again. Her eyes, locked onto his, showed absolutely no remorse. Astarion cursed softly and squeezed his eyes shut, bucking his hips in time with the bobbing of her head. He felt her fingertips wandering along the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, one hand sneaking further between his legs until it cupped his balls. A whimper escaped him as she caressed the tender skin. They tightened in her hand, which now played with them in an unconcerned yet possessive manner, alternating between squeezing, lightly, and idly tracing the seam that ran down their middle.
Astarion groaned at the drag of her hot mouth along his length. Encouraged by the sound, she picked up the pace, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough to sate the craving that was tormenting his body. He couldn’t take it any longer. He began fucking her mouth in earnest.
His hips thrust faster. The noises coming from Asmodea had turned from sultry self-satisfied moans to alarmed whimpers, fringed by filthy, sloppy wet sounds. Her hands had abandoned his sack, instead desperately grasping at his hips.
Better. Much better, though still not enough. He needed to claim and fill that insolent, impudent, mocking mouth. He looked down at her head between his thighs - saliva spilling from the edge of her lips, eyes watering as she continued to try to take him deeper and deeper. The sight was almost as lewd as the sound she made when he pulled most of the way out of her.
He reached down to wipe a tear that had spilled from the corner of her eye. “Are you going to be a good girl for me?” he whispered hoarsely, thrusting shallowly. She moaned what could only be interpreted as a ‘yes’ around him.
He picked up the pace again, thrusting deeper and deeper into her mouth, until she took him to the root, the tip of her nose pressing into his abdomen.
His whole body thrummed with each thrust, heat blazing and coiling in his abdomen, until it was intolerable. A few more stuttering jolts of his hips as she made obscene noises beneath him, and he couldn’t hold on any longer. He erupted as she swallowed obediently around him, the orgasm pulsing through his body. Drawing breath in tattered gasp, his thighs trembling, Astarion thrust into her mouth one final time, before the sensation became too much, and he pulled out her mouth, leaving her to sputter and gasp for air.
His vision swimming, his head light, he didn’t make out what she said when she spoke to him.
Her hand returned between his legs. Her lips lingering on the tip of his cock,
“What?” he asked, looking down to once again find his dick in a precarious position, being held hostage.
“I said, was I good for you?” Her smile was alarmingly sweet. Her tongue circled around his still throbbing glans.
“Hmm,” he inclined his head thoughtfully. He was nothing if not a taker of admittedly stupid risks. “Passable, but there’s much room for improvement. We’ll give you more lessons. And discipline.” He could also move much faster than she, when he needed to.
“You know…” Asmodea said some time later, when they were getting ready to get a move on. “It’s probably a good thing you came where you did.”
“…Hmm?” hummed Astarion.
“It ah… was warmer than usual. Seemed more… virile. We should probably be careful if your bandit diet is to continue.”
Astarion responded with something between a grunt and a chuckle. Not just for decoration after all, perhaps… Were these the circumstances which led to the conception of dhampir..? Over two centuries as a vampire, and he still was about as knowledgeable about his kind’s reproduction as a virgin maiden raised by a priest sworn to chastity, he thought bitterly.
This thought rapidly reminded him of another, which he had pushed to the back of his mind.
“Listen…” began Astarion. “Not to keep beating a dead… horse… And I promise I will not bring this name up again - frankly I don’t want to hear it myself either, but…” he stalled, until Asmodea raised an eyebrow at him where she sat lacing up her boots. “I just want to ask. Was there… something that tied you to Jaxxon?”
“Something that tied me to him?” she frowned.
“Some… connection. Something that made you stay as long as you did? That prevented you from leaving sooner..?”
“Still wondering if I had an excuse..? Hah… Sorry to disappoint, but all I have to blame for that is my own stupidity,” Asmodea said, her gaze softening. “But worry not, I’m an old and wizened woman now,” she smiled and leaned toward Astarion to kiss him, but paused just before their lips touched. “Wait, are you worried I might have married him in the past and not told you?” She leaned back away from him, grinning. “Is that what this is about? Were the legal cogs in your brain spinning, making you wonder whether I’m a bigamist?”
Truth be told, the thought had not crossed Astarion’s mind at all, but now he was curious. “Are you?”
“No,” she laughed, returning to her boots.
That seemed to be the end of that conversation, and the stifling of any admissions that may have been made in its course, and Astarion returned to gathering his own equipment.
“I wonder if he made it,” Asmodea said, her tone too off-handed to be anything but the very opposite. Astarion glanced at her. A sombreness seemed to cast a shadow over her expression. He took a steadying breath. If he was going to tell her about anything that had transpired after their argument yesterday - it was then or never.
“…Who knows,” he said, finally. “…but I certainly hope not,” he added with a toothy grin. Asmodea looked up at him and nodded, whether in agreement or acknowledgement - it was unclear.
They finished gathering their things.
It was time to move on.
~~~~~
Thank you for reading!
Find the fic on AO3 as well.
Oh my fucking god
It was so hot
