cont [x] @rivenrose
In all her years giving herself to men, Astaria learned a private truth: she was never more exposed than when her clothes were gone, and never more in control either. Nudity was a language she spoke fluently. A dialect of conquest, where her body did the talking and she only reaped its benefits.
A little bit of her, for a little bit of them.
Finding herself at the pointy end of someone else’s spear wasn’t exactly a novelty, but it was fun nonetheless. It made her lift both hands, not in surrender so much as performance, and help herself to a deep intake of breath.
So this is how he wanted things to play out, huh?
“Persuasive.” She said, feeling the cold kiss of his spear dig into her skin, enough to sting… not enough to puncture. There was this soft, singsong hum of appreciation at the distinction.
Still, Astaria didn’t rush the process. There was no joy to be found in haste, no theatrics either.
And the pale elf was nothing if not theatrical.
The stockings came first, not because they had to, but because anticipation was its own form of cruelty. She propped one foot on the low stool and peeled the fabric down inch by inch, unveiling a thigh pale as carved stone, more marble than flesh. A beauty preserved by bastardising death the only way someone like her knew how.
After the first flimsy layer landed on the floor, the second one followed after and Astaria’s smile widened to a fault, tongue pressed to the back of her teeth—mischief made woman with the way she looked at him… Studied him, ravenous in her stare and never quite breaking eye contact.
“You look hungry.” She said.
So did she.
The lace of her chemise came next, loosening with each pull of a string until the fabric gave and slid off from her shoulders, pooling around her ankles. Her body was designed in aphrodisiac excess, as if carved by a god during a fever dream. Breasts too perfect, wide hips thinning into a waist so slender that it simply begged to be seized. She looked beautiful, stunning really.
But in nature, beauty of this kind was often tied to unimaginable horrors.
Before the stranger’s stare could harden into action, before he could claim her, Astaria caught his spear at the base where blade met shaft, and stilled it—or tried to—canting her head to the side so she could let her tongue lightly trace the spear’s cutting edge. Pain bloomed briefly, bright and metallic when the blade cut a shallow slit on her tongue.
When she withdrew, the pale elf let out a finger and beckoned him near in the low, honeyed cadence of a naughty little purr. Blood lined her smile.
“Come, boy...” Scarlet welled and trailed from her mouth, running down her chin and over her collarbone, tracing vivid rivulets over the swell of her breasts. “Don't big bad hounds like yourself enjoy chasing pussy?” The ambiguity was intentional.
And she savoured every moment of it.
He watched her eyes.
They were the colour of an open vein. A deep, arterial red that flowed only in the hollow of a pulse - like the darkened night beneath a blood moon, starless in its ancient anger, a chasm that stilled in its wait.
"Naturally," a line of ivory flashed through his lips. "A primal instinct." He elucidated, courteously, voice but a lilt of coy and dance as to complement her cadence. He was trained for restraint, but only to such an extent.
Hunger was often too frail of a word describe the barbed thorn that twisted into his gut. Every instinct had been amplified by the shadow of his past chains. The echo of shackles were never too far. Even now, years on from his release, every tug of breath, a light turn of his head, he would feel the wisp of a phantom grasp, bound intimately to the line of scars that mutilated his throat where the spiked collar had once held.
The mark of a former slave did not ever, truly fade. She could test his patience as they had done - a mistake, perhaps, if pressed too far.
Fortunately, he had learned to contain this wrath, for it had aged far beyond its primitive hold.
And so she obliged - unravelling before him like petals from an autumn flower. The molten eyes that had fixed on her neck travelled down; a flow of marble that flawlessly imitated the sluice of life, the fluidity of movement as she flexed and slipped from silk and garter.
The steel glinted once more as it followed the shape of her diamond-cut jaw, pausing only as she had dared to take claim on the weapon; tongue, like liquid-fire, gliding up the edge of the blade as if it were a lover.
Her beckoning roused a lurid smile.
"You tempt me. As I'm sure you had with many others," he wavered in his gaze, "But do you deem me as prey, I wonder?"
The creak of the bed answered to her last words as he slowly shifted his weight to his feet, letting the spear anchor his focal point as he held it true to the tip of her chin.
The tiefling stood as a titan in the room; the discrepancy of their height drew to sharper contrast he closed the gap with a solid step, allowing the spear to tilt her head back, locking her under his infernal watch.
"... How many men had you killed in this way?"