The Commission (Althesia)

[anhydrous]

Althesia was not exactly impressed with J’fel’s show of dominance, his wolfish stare calculating while he languidly withheld his answer. She was beginning to cross her arms by the time he finally replied, the slight frown she had adopted vanishing with his abrupt proximity.

Suddenly his breath was at her neck, hands content to settle themselves in safe territory while his purr violated her. What delightful fun. “Me?” Althesia replied innocently, her head turned ever so slightly to one side as her previous irritation dissipated. The woman couldn't blame J'fel for his unnecessary dramatics. He was beautiful and could get away with such things. Letting her chest expand to fight off the gasp his breath was attempting to procure, Althesia could just barely make out the curve of his nose in her peripheral vision.

That certainly was not enough. The woman wanted to see all of him. She shifted under his touch accordingly, turning so that she might face him and catch a glimpse of the expression that matched his hungry words. With each slight movement she was shrugging out of her shirt, the unbuttoned fabric only still clinging to her body by some miraculous act of chance. Althesia, of course, ignored such happenings, her hand sliding across J’fel’s hip and tugging at his beltloop, closing the distance between their bodies.

“That could be arranged,” she said suggestively, her chin upturned so that she might look into the weyrleader’s lovely eyes. For once she wasn’t searching for anything, J’fel’s true intentions clear enough by other detective means. With a sidelong glance towards the bed, Althesia arched an eyebrow and let her mouth twitch into a sultry smile.

[Omnia Munda]

If Althesia found the dramatics irritating, J'fel wasn't taking note. What he saw was a woman starting to close him out - and opening right back up as soon as his hands and his breath were upon her.

When the harper turned, the expression waiting for her was one of unshielded desire: his eyes were dark reflections of his body's intentions and his mouth was a series of sensual curves only flirting, now, with the idea of a smile. It was a look that threatened to consume whatever came into the bronzerider's line of sight.

His hands were light upon her, letting her shift within his grasp; they performed careless assistance in the shrugging free of her shirt. As Althesia pulled him close by the beltloop, however, his hands' help became less innocent. Soft, smooth fingers stroked bared arms and shoulders; with one fingertip he traced a collarbone. Then his hand descended, that fingertip describing slow scrollwork over her breast.

"Then let's make arrangements," murmured the weyrleader, voice full of smoke.

The bed waited, but it would wait a moment more. J'fel's hands slid 'round the artist's increasingly nude waist and, drawing his palms up her back, he bent to land his mouth upon her lips.

[anhydrous]

Althesia almost threatened to blush under the weyrleader’s intense stare, her mind struggling to provide her with some sense of self-consciousness. It was futile, really. The woman had never been one to care, her fluid thoughts drifting too far into the unknown to bother with ties like reserve or reticence. Perhaps that what made her so desirable, her standard features overpowered by the glint in her eye which spoke volumes of her apathy.

The harper slid her eager fingertips up J’fel’s forearms as he spoke, letting them rest lightly across the sensitive inner crease of his elbow while reached around the curves of her waist. It was an encouraging touch, lips parted to meet his without hesitation. They seemed to fit perfectly, mouth to mouth, their bodies touching carelessly while Althesia’s hair fell to cover her now exposed chest.

Her shirt hung uselessly around her waist, the neckline having slid down from her delicately sloping shoulders. It would have fallen off completely if it had been sleeveless, but instead the slack fabric hung near her navel, held up by the sleeves that bunched at her elbows. Nudity was her first nature, clothing nothing more than a necessary hindrance. The woman was comfortable in her skin, and didn’t make any efforts to hide herself from J’fel. If anything, she made her body more accessible to his intrepid caresses.

Everywhere the weyrleader’s hands touched was warm, the heat spreading in ripples across Althesia’s skin and gathering in a knot in her stomach. She resisted the urge to shiver, the passionate temperature change inching through body and mind. With each passing second his kiss was stronger, more commanding, and she couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t get enough of him. Hungry, she pressed herself against him gently, her skin against the fabric of his shirt.

Not wishing to break the coupling of their mouths, her hands explored down his strong chest, pausing briefly near his belt. After a concise second of consideration she turned those skillful hands up under his shirt, fingertips searching across the muscles of his abdomen as she sought to strip him of the fabric. She didn’t waste any more precious words on her desires, letting her actions speak instead.

[Omnia Munda]

It should be noted that Althesia did not seem apathetic, just then, to J'fel. He felt her giving in to each caress of his lips, and for every increment she gave he took another, as though his possession of her mouth could never be quite complete.

So his hands took up the cause, the need to claim her urging the spread of his heated palms across her back. He held her tightly thus for a moment, his impassioned kiss almost violent, but then her hands were sneaking into his shirt and the young weyrleader straightened to make room for their welcome work. His chest swelled with a caught breath, skin alive with tingling beneath her touch, but he refused to leave off the kiss just yet.

Instead he took advantage of some of the space between them to slide a hand of his own beneath the drape of her shirt, over her stomach and upward. This time his touch was no droll, fingertip artwork, but the commanding cup of a palm and bold stroke of a thumb.

But if he'd let her undress him, the kiss must be broken. He sealed it with a few longing, desirous nips of her lip, then raised his head and straightened his shoulders. Mouth now rouged from heat, lips fuller than ever, the bronzerider's expression was even more fiery and dark than before. He stretched his shoulders, willing the fabric off of them - or preparing his next move.

He grinned, toothy as a tiger, and made the quick stoop to lower the circle of the arm that had been around her back to a more secure location around her hips; the other arm joined in. All Althesia had to do was let J'fel's shirt wait for a moment, to ring his neck with her arms and his hips with her legs, and the bed would not need to wait longer.

[anhydrous]

Every touch was more than welcome, Althesia’s spine responding on its own accord as the weyrleader’s hands dominated her body. She arched, catching his sly grin and reciprocating with one of her own. What he was attempting was as clear as if she had been reading his mind. She withdrew her hands from his shirt, wrapping her arms around his neck and knotting her fingers in his perfectly disheveled hair.

The weyrleader’s slim hips were soon flanked by the whiteness of Althesia’s thighs, her skirt hiked up around her waist uselessly. For the most part she supported her own weight, ankles hooked behind him while she bent to steal another taste of his lips. He was irresistible, and Althesia left whatever guilt she had of this inappropriate interaction tucked in the pages of her sketchbook. She wanted him, wanted him to have her, and consequences be damned.

Nothing made this more apparent than the way her mouth fought his, his bold command challenged at every turn. Althesia was not one to simply go along without ideas of her own. She would twist in his grip, arch against him, fingernails drawn across skin, leaving an electrical storm of nerves firing in her path. The harper wasn’t against being dominated, but there was always a perfect time to seize control. She thought, no, knew that J’fel would enjoy it.

[Omnia Munda]

Most likely, he could not have carried a taller woman like so - and so many women were taller. But with Althesia in his arms, J'fel broadened his stance to make himself stable and surrendered to her kiss. That surrender was fleeting, a taste of the give-and-take nature of the battle to come; it was followed by brutal lips and tongue questing for the desires that had ravished their mouths seconds before.

He carried her toward the bed without letting go of the kiss. The harper's use of legs and hips to carry her own weight upon him left him free to let one hand roam up her leg, pushing the rumpled drape of her skirt higher to her hip. His fingers dipped beneath the pool of cloth and curved along the inside of her thigh just as his knees hit the inviting curve of the mattress. He was still engaged fully in the clash of their mouths when the kiss was broken. The weyrleader spilled the harper and himself after her onto the bed, grinning.

After that his hands were anywhere he could put them and remaining clothes were quickly shed. He gripped her, growled for her, bit and wrestled her, making heated tangles of his beautifully prepared bedding and of their limbs, and when she turned the tables on him he was surprised for only a moment; then he fought her as she'd fought him - willingly.

There were more passions than those the harper had inspired that fueled J'fel's sport, but for the time Althesia spent in his bed there was no sign of any of his other devotions, rumored or real. After, as he lay languid in the humid disarray that was the result of their play, he did not doze so much as luxuriate in the quiet that filled both his weyr and his head. His lashes were long; they disguised the narrow openness of his eyes and made him seem, if not sleeping, certainly drowsy enough, as though he dreamed.

[anhydrous]

Althesia’s mind was blank, her skin finally cooling after an impassioned dance across J’fel’s carefully made bed. The weyrleader could have been sleeping for all the harper knew, his long lashes splayed across the tops of his cheeks. She didn’t much care, her previously heated stare regarding him indifferently as she slid past him. The harper wore the smallest hint of a satisfied smile as she stood by his bed, unabashedly naked as the day she was born.

Quickly she recovered her clothes, pulling them on as she meandered back towards the table that held her sketchbook. With that tucked under one arm and her hair swept back off her face, Althesia picked up the glass that she had left on the table and threw back her head, effectively empting it.

The sting of the wine brought back a glimmer of clarity, her smile fading as she realized just what she had done. With fingertips still tingling from the mind-blowing romp in the sheets, it was hard to believe that this was wrong. J’fel certainly didn’t seem to be experiencing any guilt, his beautiful body resting on display atop his furs. She waggled her fingers lazily at him, just in case he might have still been watching.

With that she was gone, out the door and down the hall, leaving the weyrleader to the rest of his day. It was always like that with Althesia, rough them up then leave them, no glances over her shoulder. She had taken what she wanted, tasted his beautiful lips and rocked against his perfect hips. With a stomach full of wine and an increasing unwanted sense of responsibility, Althesia headed for the lower caverns. Surely there was a storeroom somewhere that wouldn’t miss a bottle of bourbon. She needed it if she was going to be meeting up with J’rad later.

[Omnia Munda]

Alerted to the sound of fabric moving, J'fel opened his eyes briefly to confirm with sight what his hearing told him: that Althesia was preparing to leave without a word. Suppose I won't be calling you up for a sketch, Jordeth, he mused from the pleasantly hazy reaches of his mind, watching the curve of the artist's back change as she dressed, then drank.

By the time she was done, J'fel's lashes were lazing on his cheeks once more, though a smile had stretched wide upon his mouth. There was no shame offered there, but of course the youthful weyrleader had no knowledge that the pleasure he'd taken with the harper might be considered stolen pleasure, in the mind of another bronzerider elsewhere in the Weyr.

Only when she'd left his chambers and he'd heard the door slide shut behind her did J'fel bestir himself from the bed. His stride was luxuriant, like a panther in his den. He prowled toward his desk. He'd write the invitation for her to come begin the work now, while his blood still sang and the scent of her was still rich in his nose; it would make the words come more readily.

But he'd not send it, he decided before even unstoppering the ink, for two days or three. Whatever it was that had made the harper leave him so swiftly, J'fel felt sure it would benefit from a little time apart.

What was it he'd heard said about absence? It might not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood.

[[fin]]