When Fray and Karlach return from wherever it is they had gone, Karlach has two new things to show the motley party: first, an elaborate collection of elegant, sweeping braids in her normally haphazard hair; second, as she demonstrates with a decided giddiness by grabbing Shadowheart in a bear hug the moment she sees her, a repaired infernal engine.
There’s a small uproar. It’s impossible to dislike Karlach, and so the entire group (as far as Right has been able to tell) is pleased for her triumph in one way or another. Wyll shakes her hand the way he had wanted to when her true nature first became clear; she hauls Astarion to his feet and dips him like a dancer, and though he complains he smiles through it. Alfira, the bard, takes this as her cue, and soon the Last Light Inn is filled with music and laughter. Karlach’s joy is infectious. She dances with anyone who will let her, which is half the party and
half the refugee tieflings, and even a few of the Harpers. Even Fray lets himself be dragged in, Right notes with some amusement, and when they finish their steps Karlach proudly informs everyone he is the one responsible for her hair. He demures at the smatter of applause.
Right escapes the dancing, albeit narrowly. They’re as happy as anyone for Karlach’s good fortune, of course, and they cheer and drink with the rest. But when Karlach claps a hand on their shoulder and asks, “Got much lift in those hooves of yours, scout?”, they laugh and shake their head. “Fair enough,” Karlach says with a grin, but does not let go. Instead her smile softens, and she squeezes their shoulder. “Maybe later, hm?”
“Later,” Right agrees.
“Seemed to me you were even quieter than usual,” Karlach says. “Quieter than Fray, I think! Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
This comes late, late in the evening, though in truth Right hasn’t the slightest idea of what time it is. Night is permanent here, and the moon above unwavering. The small crowd has thinned out, and save for where Shadowheart and Lae’zel sit engaged in a vicious match of three dragon ante in the corner, their companions have retired to their beds of choice. It feels close and quiet. Part of Right, in truth, wants to go straight to sleep. But then Karlach shifts where she’s sat beside them, her arm draped carelessly over their shoulder, and her heated smoke scent hits them again. Invigorating. “No,” Right tells her. “Just … a lot in a short time.”
Which is true, of course.
“You’re telling me. Underdark and slavers and curses! Shit. I expect we’re all wiped out.” Karlach exhales, tucking one of her flock of tiny new braids behind her ear. “At least it ain’t all bad. Nothing ever is.”
“Mm.”
“Anyway,” she goes on, “figure I’ll head for my room here shortly.” Her fingers play idly along their arm, warm through the fabric. “Got my hands on one of the big beds, too.”
This is unsurprising. Right can’t imagine anyone arguing with Karlach about that, she’s head and shoulders above the rest of them. Well—except maybe for one person. “Didn’t have to wrestle Halsin for it?”
“Nah, I think he’s staying by that sleep-talking fella.”
“Would you wrestle Halsin?”
“I could take Halsin,” says Karlach with total confidence. “Elf or bear. He doesn’t guard his flank, and I think he’s deaf in his right ear.”
Right considers this, loathe to let her leave. “You’ve got an eye for that sort of thing,” they say. “What about me? Leaving any flanks unguarded? Gods know I’m no soldier.”
“You’re usually behind me, so I’m not sure, truth be told. I can tell you Fray favors his left side, though. My bet is it’s all that scar tissue limiting his range of motion.”
She rises, leaving Right feeling dreadfully cold where she had been. There’s a huge stretch and a big shake, a sigh, and she turns to look at them with a hesitancy they’re unused to from her. “Guess I’ll turn in,” she says.
That hesitancy makes Right’s neck itch. It’s not like Karlach. And it’s not just her, either, so many other of the people in their gang seem to be having change come over them. Not that that’s bad, mostly; it’s a relief to not worry about Fray knifing them in their sleep. What it is, though, is different, and thusly leaves Right to figure out how they themselves are supposed to respond to these changes. Right’s strong suits are, in order, sneaking, lockpicking, and lie detecting. Most other things—especially involving people—are a mystery to them.
Like now, here, sitting on the bench feeling too cold across their shoulders while Karlach studies them. They feel like some kind of bug, trapped under glass, perhaps expected to do tricks. She wants a response. She wants them to say or do something, but— what? How are they supposed to know? What secret language is she using that they can’t identify?
More importantly, how bad will the fallout be if Right gets it wrong?
They don’t know. They don’t know, so they fumble for a smile they hope will help. It’s like a blow to the stomach when she exhales and folds her arms over her chest. “Come on, Right,” she says, almost pleadingly. (Another change that makes the hair on their nape stand on end in discomfort.) “I didn’t think I was that bad last time, was I?”
Right looks at her helplessly. Last time could be anything. The fact they’d declined to dance with her earlier? The fight with the shadow creatures on their way here? Right is so tired. Even that morning feels like it happened weeks ago. “Sorry,” they say, and wonder what the face they feel themselves making says to Karlach. If it’s anything at all like what they mean. They dig their claws into the meat of their thighs and take a risk. “I’m not sure if I … what time are you talking about?”
There’s a flicker of confusion over her face. Right’s claws sink deeper. They’ve spoiled the game, they’ve tipped their hand, their mask has slipped. They’ve lost something and aren’t even sure what it is.
Karlach cocks her head to the side. Right braces for the verbal blow they know is coming. “Sorry,” they add hastily. “Sometimes I lose the subject.”
“You do, don’t you?” Karlach says with a dawning kind of thoughtfulness. Her tail flicks behind her, contemplative. She smirks. “No worries. Always liked being straightforward better anyway. I’m trying to get you to come to bed with me, give the new hardware a test run. What d’you say?”
Right’s ears, which had folded back on themselves, leap bolt upright.
“I can’t imagine,” Right says, dryly, “that this can go any worse than last time. So at least we’ve got that behind us.”
These words do not, unfortunately, serve to cover the flighty buzzing in their brain. They sit perched on the bed—the very big bed, certainly intended for the largest of humanoids and more than spacious enough to permit two tieflings. Their hands alternate between fiddling with the fastenings on their shirt and kneading the end of their own tail, lacking much else to do. They’ve already done their washing up, but Karlach is taking a while. She does tend to get coated in gore, not that they can see any. She stands just visible in the reflection of the mirror stashed in the little closet and its water basin, half undressed. At Right’s comment, she scoffs. “That was all on me, jumping the gun,” she says.
“I mean, I still had a good time.”
“’Course you did. I don’t half-arse things.” She throws them a smirk in the mirror. “Even if it does require the use of a hairbrush handle.”
The memory makes Right flush at once: sprawled on pillows in Karlach’s tent, legs wide, sweating both from exertion and Karlach’s ambient temperature. Even through the leather gloves she wore to prevent any accidental burns, they could feel the immense heat. This—the round, fat handle of a hairbrush, instead of her fingers—had been a consolation prize. Even with a potion that promised to make fire tolerable cooling Right’s insides, attempts at intimacy proper had left them with a scalded palm. To add insult to injury, they both made the maddening discovery that Karlach, running sufficiently hot, loses sensation. Right remembers this more vividly than anything else from that night, the way she had cursed Zariel’s name, wild with frustration. Right had borne the brunt of that frustration via the hairbrush. They hadn’t minded.
In the present, before Right can formulate a reply, Karlach adds, “Wait, but I don’t even think you finished, did you?”
“No,” Right says. “But it was still nice.”
“Generous,” she laughs, and steps out into view.
If Halsin is an elf with the presence of a bear, Karlach is a tiefling with the presence of a dragon. Broad-shouldered, vivid red, muscles fit to tear off limbs. Sharp teeth that line her smile and that one spiral of a horn. Right feels smaller just looking at where she towers over them. It leaves them feeling calmer. Safe. “I’ll just have to try harder then,” she says, and sits down beside them. Her hand comes to rest on their thigh immediately. She’s had her hands on people all evening, drinking up skin contact. Right can hardly blame her. She seems as though about to say something, but it passes.
Another change, though Right is not quite so frightened of this one: she’s slowed. At the tiefling refugees’ celebration she had hauled them into her tent the moment they arrived, and inside three minutes they were stripped of their clothes and downing that useless potion. Now there’s hesitation again. Right braces themself. They will try to be brave. “Okay up there?”
Karlach hums. “Very,” she says, absently. “Just—well—a lot in a short time, hey?” Her thumb rubs circles into Right’s leg. “Scared I’ll wake up and realize it was all a dream. I don’t know if I really thought I’d get to properly touch people again, let alone do this.”
There’s something unsaid behind her words. Right can’t pinpoint it, too tired and nervy. “Want me to pinch you?” they ask, and Karlach laughs, cuffing them lightly over the head. Her fingers brush their horns. Right shivers pleasantly. “I don’t think it’s a dream, at least,” they say, and put their hand atop hers. Her smile unfurls like a victory banner. “How do you want to do this? It’s your night.”
“I want everything,” she says, laughing again. “Everything you’re willing to give me. No hairbrushes this time, either. I’ve been—uh—let’s say I’ve been prepping. Just in case.”
Right blinks up at her, but she does not elaborate. Instead she takes their hand in both of hers, running her fingers over every inch of skin. Her fascination is plain. Her smile swallows her whole face.
Still, she hesitates.
Right tries to move with it, be part of the moment instead of simply an observer. What might help? “If you’d like,” they say, extricating their other hand from its tangle in their own shirt, “I’m told I give a good massage. Clever fingers and that. Seems like a nice place to start.”
They actually see the moment Karlach realizes this too is now a possibility. Her eyes light up.
The next thing Right knows is they have a mostly-naked Karlach before them, lying stomach-down on the enormous bed with her folded arms propping her upright. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one of these,” she tells them cheerfully, as they hurriedly pick the last of the dirt from their hooves before pulling their legs on the bed. “Back rubs, maybe, when I was younger? Hells if I know. Watch the metal bits, I think those might still burn you.”
The “metal bits,” the heat vents plugged directly into her shoulders like an idiot’s idea of ventilation, do not seem heated enough to cause harm. Yet, at least. Still, Right is mindful of them as they sidle up beside her. Their eyes slide appreciatively over her bared chest, over breasts pillowed comfortably against her folded arms. Her head dips and she catches their gaze, smiling. “Go on, then,” she says. “Show me those clever fingers.”
“Gladly,” murmurs Right.
It takes some maneuvering, but eventually Right straddles her waist and flattens their hands against her shoulder blades. Warmth seeps through them at every point of contact: their palms, their thighs, between their legs. Her tail flicks up against theirs, whip-like, curling and coiling to entwine them both; this sends heat from their core to their ears and their nethers. It’s an intimate motion, to tangle tails. It’s grounding. It soothes something in Right’s hindbrain, and they take a moment to relax their constantly tensed body. Even that is a trial.
“Tell me if it starts to hurt,” Right says, and again Karlach laughs, like the idea is ridiculous. It might be. The laugh melts into a gratified sigh as they lean their weight into their arms. They knead the heel of their hands into the expanse of skin and scar before them, slow and deep. They’ve been at it for all of ten seconds before Karlach shudders and shifts to lay her head on her arms. Right asks, “Okay?”
“Gods.” It’s almost a moan, and it sends an electric thrill down Right’s spine. “Fantastic.”
Encouraged, they redouble their efforts. Karlach’s back is striped with scars old and new, burns and punctures and teeth marks. Below that they can feel the generous muscle, tightly wound and unyielding when they first press into it. It makes for a kaleidoscope of texture under their hands, all of it warm, all of it enrapturing. How lucky they are, to be here, to be who she chose for something as monumental as this.
Once or twice they glimpse her face as they work, whenever they must shift or when she tilts her head the right way. Each time Right catches it they see the same thing: eyes shut or lidded and caught in the middle distance, expression set in a relief so intense it almost looks like pain. “It’s not too much, is it?” they ask, pausing.
Karlach is sluggish in answering. Instead her tail squeezes tighter around Right’s own. Dizziness born of wanting, of being wanted, sweeps over them. “No, no,” she finally says. Her tail loosens, and then uncoils. Anxiety flickers in the pit of their stomach, only for it to lurch with surprise when Karlach pushes herself up and rolls beneath them, using one hand to brace them. She sits up fully, and by sitting in her lap Right finds their faces are perfectly level. “Sorry,” she says in a voice tighter than Right has ever heard from her. She grips them by the upper arms, fingers sliding slow over their goose-pimpled skin, and pulls them closer. “I’m not—I—I don’t mind foreplay but I just, I can’t wait any longer—”
Of course. Right leans in, offering themselves. Karlach’s breath hitches, though they do not flatter themselves that this comes from anything other Karlach’s longtime celibacy. Still, when she grabs them by the back of the head and crushes her lips to theirs, the hunger plain in her every motion soothes their exhausted nerves like little else has managed. Her fingers twist through their loosening bun and already Right’s lower lip feels sensitive and tender under her teeth and tongue. “Touch me,” she says in the half-moments between kisses. “Please. Anywhere. Everywhere.”
Right can’t answer; she’s stolen their mouth again. They are a slave to her desires, though, and so now their hands cup her face and trace the pointed lines of her ears. They drag their hands down her shoulders, down her sides (“More pressure, you won’t hurt me,” she says into their mouth). When their hands come back up it’s to slide along her stomach; with delight they find a trail of hair leading from beneath her smallclothes to her navel. Further northern exploration finds their hand cupping her breast, the perfect size to fill it. When they thumb the nipple Karlach growls appreciatively and pulls them closer.
Right thinks they may pass out from lack of oxygen by the time Karlach lets them go. Her breathing, too, is labored and loud. Her lips gleam with the mix of their saliva. Right swallows, trying to get their mouth working again. “What do you want to do?” they ask, panting.
“Everything,” Karlach says raggedly. “All at once. Can I take your shirt off?”
She certainly can, and does, and in a moment it is in a heap on the floor. Their undershirt and support follow shortly after, and—
Right yelps in surprise as Karlach rolls them over. It’s muffled by more kissing, or it is until she moves lower. She presses kiss after kiss to their jaw, their throat, she pays special attention to the divot in the center of their collarbone. When she reaches their breast she all but attacks, fixing her mouth around their nipple and assaulting it with her tongue. Right’s back arches with it, and their teeth nearly pierce their lip. They fumble for a hold and find one: one hand on the arm she braces herself with, and the other gripping her lone remaining horn.
Right wields no magic, or at least no more than that small amount inherent to most tieflings. In their experience, which is neither modest nor remarkable but somewhere in between, grabbing a horn is akin to groping a breast or nibbling a lip: pleasant but not earth-shattering. This is part of why Fray’s egregious breach of common etiquette had been such a shock to them. Rather than an errant squeeze, it had been more like he had somehow taken hold of nerves with a direct line to their cunt. Between a talk with Gale and a neglected scroll of detect magic, which had shown Fray lit up like he was composed of the stuff, they determined the reason was likely his connection to his patron.
Right, without a patron, imparts only the normal amount of magic with their touch. They’re glad, really, for by the way Karlach responds they may as well have pumped a spell directly into her horn. She swears a blue streak, pushing her head as far against their hand as it will go. Right does their best to meet her need. They run their hand along the ridges and curves, feeling the damaged places that have not yet been worn smooth with time. Above them, Karlach has lost any focus she had. She’s muttering, though: gods, fuck, fuck yes fuck yes, come on come on come ON—
Emboldened, Right lifts their other hand and presses their fingers to the dull stump of her missing horn. For good measure they wrap their legs around her waist, bracing against her. Her muttering turns into a strangled gasp; her claws dig into their side. She all but collapses atop them, which knocks the breath out of Right but feels too good to do anything about.
Almost a minute later, she’s gingerly pulling their hands away. She does not rise, for which Right is grateful. For long seconds she lies motionless on them, ear pressed to a heart Right is certain must sound like a drum. When she finally does stir, it’s to groan and shift just enough to meet their eyes with her own, which struggle to focus. Right, awed by her, can find nothing to say.
When she speaks it is ragged and throaty, and tinged with a smile. “Magic fingers, huh?” she says, groggy. “Gods. Oh, fuck.”
Her eyes flutter closed. Right gathers themselves best they can, cupping the side of her face. “Are you okay?” they ask.
“I’m amazing. Hoo, boy. Heard of people coming from just horn stuff, but didn’t think that was in my playbook.” Right’s eyes widen tremendously; Karlach manages a hoarse chuckle. “What? Not your specialty? It should be. Fuck me, that was nice.”
Right says, “I don’t think I knew that could happen.”
“Mmmn. Surprise. Give me a second here, sorry. You’re soft and my limbs ain’t working.”
The two of them stay that way for a time. Right spends part of it examining their own hands, wondering what on earth had moved through them to cause such a reaction. The tadpole, maybe. Gods, but they hate to think such a fun discovery is owed to the parasite. Perhaps their own magic has grown more than they know, or perhaps the amount of damage Karlach’s horns have suffered makes them more susceptible to magic.
Whatever the reason, their focus is disrupted when Karlach sighs contentedly and pushes herself up again. She’s beaming, though it’s sleepy and slow. “Okay,” she says, and sits back on her calves. Her hands gather on Right’s belly, gently squeezing what’s there. “Let’s see …”
With a deliberate slowness, Karlach gets them to lean back in a nest of pillows, half-upright, and starts to unbutton their trousers. Right lets her ease those and their undergarment off in one motion; they’re bare before her now. It can’t have been more than a month since they were last like this, but some piece of Right feels shy all the same. Karlach, though, does not play at propriety or modesty: she stares with open eagerness as Right shifts to lift their hips up for better access. “No more fucking hairbrushes,” she mutters with a single-minded intensity. It would almost be frightening, were Right not so eager to see where it will lead.
Now she’s scooting back on hands and knees. She wraps her arms under their thighs as support and presses her mouth to their navel. The sensation of her tongue makes them kick a little in surprise. There’s a breath of laughter, and Karlach presses her lips to where their leg meets their body, sucking hard. She keeps it up, forming a small trail of green bruises on their inner thighs. As she does she frees a hand to knead and tease at the edges of their sex. It provides no real stimulation, but it certainly riles them up. With one hand they find a tentative hold on Karlach’s horn again (she hums in approval). The other they press against their mouth, knuckles white. This lasts only a few moments before Karlach lifts her eyes and notices. “Oh, don’t rob me,” she says, playful, and peels their hand back from their face. Right feels spotlighted, exposed. Their instincts thrash against it, but they hold for a moment, letting Karlach get a look at their face. It’s not so bad, they decide, though they are still only able to make the briefest of eye contact. She tells them it’s alright by squeezing their hand in hers. “Gods, but you’re handsome,” she says, and keeps her eyes on their face as she dips her head again to mold her lips against their slit. Right’s breath seethes out of them at the compliment as much as the touch, and Karlach rumbles low in her throat.
She takes her time. She uses tongue and teeth and lips, and eventually it is all just indistinguishable sensation to Right, nerves lighting up inside them like flame down a trail of gunpowder. It erases thought and worry. Right luxuriates in it. Their hand pulls tighter against hers, as tight as they can without their claws cutting skin. She returns it. Her immense strength makes their grip seem feeble.
Right isn’t sure how much time passes, how long all they can see of Karlach is her eyes and brow and horns. She’s a little clumsy, clearly trying to remember how this works, but more than makes up for it with enthusiasm. When it slows and then stops, Right has to struggle for a moment to remember how to focus their eyes. Between their thighs Karlach licks slick from her lips. It’s with keen satisfaction that she runs her tongue along her teeth, and for a moment her eyes linger on her work. (This causes in Right an involuntary twitch that sweeps her mouth into a smile.) When she meets Right’s eyes that smile grows wide and wolfish. “Best meal I ever had,” she says in a low voice, and Right has to cover their whole face in both hands to bear it. Karlach laughs. “You’re perfect. Stay like that, hang on.”
Right feels the mattress shift, and footsteps across the floor. Something is rummaged in, and Karlach returns. “What do you think about this?” she asks, and Right takes their hands away.
The first thing that greets them is simply Karlach, or rather, a Karlach lacking any clothing she’d had on a moment ago. New arrangements of surprisingly ornamented leather wrap around her otherwise bare hips, securing a kind of harness, and in the harness is —
“Where did you get that?” Right can’t help but hoot. They of course refer to the toy strapped to her, a modestly sized specimen in the rough shape of a cock. If Right’s eyes don’t fool them, it looks as if it’s made of solidified magic. “Not the goblins?!”
“No, gross!” Karlach fires back, clapping her hand against their thigh. “Found it digging through the busted houses. Perfect condition once I oiled the leather. Well, had to make room for the tail,” she adds, twisting her hips to show them the haphazard work with needle and thread she’s done to allow for her anatomy. Right is more distracted by the tempting curves of her ass, and suspects this was intentional.
Their attention is brought back as she runs her fingers along the shaft of the toy. “So, this alright, then?” she says, gesturing to her hips. “Wasn’t sure if you’d like it.”
It’s more communication than Right’s really used to in these things. They make themselves take a moment to really try to find the answer, imagining what it would be like. In answer, their scalp prickles, a jolt of anticipation washing over them. “I think I’ll like it a lot,” they say, and hook their heels around the backs of her thighs.
Karlach lets herself be pulled forward, grinning. She clambers back onto the bed, this time pulling Right down far enough that only their head still lays on the pillows. “I’ve wanted,” she’s saying as she bends their legs upward and outward, leaving them fully exposed for her enjoyment, “to do this to you since my second week in camp.”
Right scoffs, thrashing their tail up between her legs. Karlach yelps in an uncharacteristically high voice, and then they both fall into laughing. “Second week?” Right demands, and gives a squeak of their own when Karlach drags her fingers between their thighs to collect enough slick to wet the toy. “You didn’t want me day one?”
“Had my eye on that blond half-elf,” Karlach admits with an exaggerated toss of her head. “Took me a few days to figure out that wasn’t happening.”
“He is very pretty,” Right says with an exaggerated sigh of their own. “Taken with you, too. I think you’re his type.”
“He won’t be my type unless that attitude of his changes,” says Karlach. She scoots them toward her by the hips, pressing the tip of the toy against their slit. It’s warmer than Right expected, nearly as warm as Karlach herself. Her expression softens as she teases the head against them, being rewarded with squirming. “Or, I don’t know. He was awful sweet tonight. I thought he was the sort that couldn’t change, but maybe he’ll prove me wrong.”
Right does not want to think about Fray and his baggage just now; does not want to think about the vow that now ties him to them or the complicated way their chest feels when they watch him practice his sword forms. “Could do,” they allow in answer, and thump the end of their tail against their partner’s ass. “More interested in you than him right now, though.”
“Damn straight, scout,” Karlach grins. She lines herself up with one hand, using the other to spread them open, tugging apart one lip with her thumb. Right’s leg jerks. “You need a break, just pull the reins,” she instructs, tugging demonstratively on her own hair and its new braids. Before Right can answer, she’s pushed inside.
Pleasant shivers course through them. Right relaxes into it, canting their legs a little further apart. Karlach’s reaction is a bit more interesting. “Oi, fuck,” she says raggedly, staring down at the join between their hips. “That’s—you’re soft.” At Right’s amused stare, she hastens to add, “I can feel it, like, you know, like it’s a real cock? Gods, that’s good. Oh, you’ll have to try this later. And tight—”
She rolls her hips and sinks deeper. Already sensitive from the oral treatment earlier, Right hisses their breath out through their teeth. The moan they were trying to hold in escapes as their hips pull flush, as the curve of Karlach’s body grinds against their clit. Karlach growls low in her throat, eyes shut, and when she opens them again it’s to lean all the way forward. She folds Right double on themselves, her arms on the outside of their legs, their hooves dangerously close to her face. Her cock hits new places in them; they buck; Karlach makes a hoarse snarl of a noise. She freezes. “Karlach?” Right asks vaguely, their brain still sparkling with pleasure.
At first she does not answer, head bowed. She shakes herself and makes a sound Right can only describe as feral. “I need,” she starts, growls again, stops; she takes a moment to compose herself. When she lifts her head the raw, predatory lust in her face sends a new wave of shivers along Right’s spine. “I am,” she says, focusing carefully on each individual word, “going to fuck you very, very hard now.”
It’s unromantic, it’s unimaginative, and it makes Right’s cunt clench so tight that the strain on their muscles almost hurts. Karlach clearly feels it by the way her back arches and she groans from somewhere deep in her chest. She levers herself back up until she is in the right position to grab hold of their thighs and lean her weight on them, the better to move her hips. And does she move them! It’s not the abrupt hard fucking her words would have implied. It’s slow to start, an enjoyable, steady sawing punctuated with the occasional hard buck. Right feels themself start to melt under her heat. Every puff of her breath rolls over their bared breasts like heat from an oven, and they can hear the bed’s sturdy old frame creak gently with every thrust. All they can smell is the sharp musk of her sweat with the building notes of sex. Right’s never chatty, but it’s voice something or risk piercing their own lip with their teeth. “Sure it’s been ten years?” they ask breathlessly, and let their tail flit up to snake the tip between her legs. “Could’ve—hah—fooled me.”
Karlach laughs, pausing in her fucking to adjust how the strap sits on her body. Right takes it as an invitation. They press and seek with their tail until they find the hottest, softest place, slick threatening to drench the first thing to get close. There’s so much that when they slip the pointed tip between her lips they feel it run down their tail in warm rivulets. They twitch in surprise, and the motion makes Karlach whine and freeze where she’s buried halfway in them. If Right didn’t know better they would swear they felt the toy twitch, too. “More,” she says, hoarse, husky. “Deep. Please.”
Right is happy to oblige. They feed their tail further into her, in where it is so hot they almost fear a burn, until the flaring shape is a clear strain on her entrance. They are just wondering how on earth they’ll hold this position without cramping when Karlach sits back on her thighs. The toy pulls free of Right with a lewd sucking sound that sends shockwaves through them. “Like that,” she says, mouth hungry around each syllable. Her eyes are closed. “Just like that. Keep it there. Ah—c’mere, I’m nowhere near done with you …”
With her help, Right shortly finds themselves on their knees over her lap, bracing themself against her shoulder with one hand while the other fumbles to guide the toy back inside them. They keep feeling her through the tadpole, just notes of her: her want, her need, her satisfaction. Begrudging as they are to admit it, it adds a delicious extra layer to the intimacy. It doesn’t even occur to them it might go both ways until they’re once more impaled on the toy, hips crushed together again. No, Right is too distracted by her breasts. They’re a wonderful shape and size, ever so slightly too big for them to hold in their palm, but they try anyway. Her nipples are pierced, they realize with not-unwelcome surprise. Jewelry is of little interest to them past its worth in coin, but between Karlach and Fray, the sight of metal carefully hooked into skin has been doing a lot for them lately. They wonder, briefly, if Fray’s fondness for piercings extends past his head. They catch themselves, annoyed to be thinking about him during their time with Karlach.
“I’d bet he does,” Karlach says with a satisfactory exhale, her hands reaching around to squeeze Right’s ass. “But nobody here’s got more metal than me, babe. Count on it.”
“Sorry,” Right fumbles after a moment to catch up with the thread of conversation. “The mind—wanders—” They cut themselves off with a whimper. Karlach has begun to rock her hips again, a subtle motion aided by her hands on their ass.
“No offense taken,” Karlach says, and seems like she means it. “But I think that means my only option at this point is to rail you until you forget about him.”
She punctuates this with a particularly hard stroke, one that makes Right gasp. “Sounds good,” they squeak, breathless. The words are barely out of their mouth before Karlach has pulled them back up, onto their knees, and let them drop back down again. They’re fumbling for something more to say, more as a way to avoid whining aloud than anything, but they’re spared by Karlach’s mouth seizing their own. Her mouth is leagues hotter than it was ten minutes ago, and if there were any reservations in her consumption of them before, they are vanished now. She nips and nibbles, licking at their mouth, sucking their bottom lip between hers only to let it spring back. All the while she keeps them in that steady, mechanical motion. Hazy with pleasure, they wrap their arms around her neck to better brace themselves. She carries on, regular and powerful, like a piston, and every time Right thinks they might be getting numb or bored she throws in a new trick: tilting back their head to suck and kiss their neck; pulling their hair, just enough to ache; a thumb toying against their other hole, wet with their own slick. It fast overwhelms them. They fight to get a hand between them and Karlach, searching out their clit where it strains out from its usual hiding place, displaced with Karlach inside them. Right makes a high whining sound when they find it, slippery and hugely sensitive. “That feel good?” Karlach is mumbling in their ear, and they can’t get the words out. They nod. “Yeah? Good. Good scout.” She is so, so hot against them; they can just whiff sulphur, just spy the steam whirling out of the vents on her shoulders. The magical flame that radiates out of her has taken a blue tone, casting wild shadows around the room. Right is covered in sweat, the effort and heat leaving them a bedraggled, wet mess under this furnace of a woman. They welcome the burn. “You’re so wet for me,” Karlach says into their neck, her voice shallow but not winded. Not even close to winded. How long can she go for? The question lurches wildly through their imagination, summoning half a dozen scenarios around Karlach’s stamina, each one more obscene than the last. Dazed by these visions, they do not notice until it’s too late that their tadpole has decided to share.
Right looks back at her in time to see the glazed look in her dilated pupils, just after the psionic connection breaks. When she stirs from it she looks them over with new eyes. There’s a new bestial quality in her voice, a gutteralness. It reminds Right of nothing so much as a dragon. “Oh, scout,” she growls, “I can go all night. I can go until you can’t walk,” and she punctuates this with another thrust. Right moans, stupid with want. “—holes all stretched and dripping—tie you down in the middle of camp and let everyone have a turn, after me—fuck, I could ruin you—”
There’s a moment after that, just briefly; the mask of carnality falls for a moment as she realizes what she’s said and seems to worry at it. Right does not notice. They are grinding themselves as hard as they can against her, panting. Karlach’s words had pulled from one of the last scenes that escaped their mind, something they’ve entertained as a fun fantasy on particularly boring evenings: the camp entire closing in on a single member, strung helplessly with leather and rope. The individual changes, of course, from one night to the next: in truth Fray is the most common target, followed by Gale. But in their current state, thoughts consumed with how good it feels to be filled, seeing sparks every time Karlach moves, there is only one option of who in that glimpse was tied to the pillory. “Yes,” they say, breathless. “Please, please—”
“Tell me,” Karlach says, her hands closing vise-tight around their waist.
“Take me, ruin me—Ka—Karlach—!”
They falter into a startled little shriek as Karlach all but throws them back to the bed. They’re empty, and it almost hurts. With shaking thighs and hazy confusion they allow themselves to be rolled over, onto their side, then stomach. Something drags their hips upward until their knees bend under to support them, and a great hand bears down on the middle of their back. They’re crushed into the mattress. It’s overwhelming. It’s just what they wanted, needed, a chance to stop struggling and thinking and worrying. “You want that?” she says by their ear, like she can read their mind, and almost keeps the lustful shudder from her voice. “Stake you down? Hike back your tail, let ’em at you?”
Right groans, delirious with the fantasy. They clench and clench on nothing. Karlach leans further, further over them, until they can feel the hot kiss of her cock against the base of their tail. There’s a long moment of silence, and it nearly draws Right from their hazy reverie. When Karlach does speak, it’s strained with hunger. “But I don’t want to share right now,” she says, her breath hot where it flutters by their neck. There’s something raw to it, and through the fog of arousal they manage to direct enough of their thoughts toward it to determine its source. Ten years, they remember. A long time for anyone, but someone like Karlach? A person as physical and passionate as she is?
Karlach says, in their ear, “You want me to fuck you?” and Right whines, pushing their hips up and back toward her. “What was that?”
“Please, yes …”
“Yeah?” she says, and the toy’s underside presses flat against their cunt. Their claws are going to tear the sheets. “You want me to make you cum?”
Another squeak (Right does not squeak and does not know what to do about this) and then all is lost as Karlach forgets the last of her patience and grabs their hips. The toy breaches their well-used hole in a single form stroke, and Right’s natural quiet crumbles. They are consumed by the moment, their world reduced to the feeling of their body against her body, and it is a divine world.
Her strokes angle differently, the curved shaft rubbing insistently over something within them. It dizzies them, puts them out of their senses altogether. They become dimly aware that their tail has acquired a death grip around Karlach’s arm only when she pulls it free, to better lean forward. Right’s hips are forced downward as she fucks them into the mattress as if she intends to break both it and Right. They shudder and groan, high-pitched and needy. Karlach notices. She bites at their ear to get their attention. “You close?”
“Mm—mm-hm—”
Nothing about her rhythm changes, but her hands snake under Right’s chest to grope and toy with their nipples. “Good,” she says, husky. “Tell me when you do. You feel so good. Keep breathing, I got you. Just focus on h-how it feels …”
She falls silent, focused on her motions. Soon she gives up any semblance of supporting her own weight, flattening Right to the bed. The blue heat that burns in her floods over them. Right breathes, stunned by the weight and warmth and pleasure, by the steady snap of Karlach’s hips colliding with their ass. It builds, builds, builds—falls—climbs—
The noise Right makes upon finishing is slightly humiliating, another squeak that turns into a squall and then a moan. Karlach grips one of their horns and they shriek a little. “Remember to tell me,” she pants in their ear, motion unchanging, and Right cries out yes, coming, yes. Karlach’s attention becomes further concentrated, a grinding motion instead of a thrust, and Right feels themselves clench and flutter around her cock. They would swear they can feel it throb, and that thought finally puts them all the way over. Their climax crashes through them like a wave, leaving them shivering, breathless, and soaked.
Karlach fucks them through it, relentless and focused. Right can’t think. Their world is a tangle of their own fallen hair and the smell of sex, and the old dents and knots in the wood of the headboard they grab in a desperate bid to grab themselves. And Karlach, a heat that spans their entire world.
“Okay,” Right says in a fragile sort of voice after the hurricane within them has settled. “Okay, let—let me up—” Karlach allows this, rolling onto her side to allow them to move. They make a wobbly attempt to get to all fours, give up, and drop back to the mattress.
They’ve lain there with closed eyes for a time, panting, when a new sound hits their ear. Cracking one eye they find Karlach watching them with predatory hunger, her hand wrapped around her slick-soaked cock and steadily stroking it. From the way she’s rolled onto her side and how they’ve curled up, they can glimpse her neglected cunt, and how her thighs sheen with quickly evaporating sweat and lubricant. Right wets their lips, suddenly greedy. “Do you want,” they start, realize what they are asking, and then must steel themselves to finish. “You said I should try that thing.”
Karlach pauses in her touching, blinking at them. “Oh, yeah. I did, didn’t I? Right now?”
Karlach riding them, Karlach squirming under their touch, Karlach falling apart beneath them. Right’s eyes are wide and unblinking. “If you want.”
“Well, shit,” says Karlach, and starts unbuckling the straps of the harness.
There’s something of a kerfuffle in transferring the toy, mainly to do with Right’s considerable hips and the base of their tail. But things are managed, and in short order Right is pulling tight the final strap. Magic prickles around their hips, and to their pleased surprise when they wrap their hand around the magic shaft it does feel like part of them. Karlach, appraising, hums low in her throat. “Mmmmm. You look damn good like that,” she says, and makes a show of licking her lips.
Right smiles, for once unguarded. They feel fuzzy and comfortable. It’s a pleasant change. “It’s what I prefer,” they admit, to which Karlach gives them a sly grin. “I might see a wizard about it sometime. I don’t know.”
“Oh, a permanent change?”
“Maybe.”
“You’d look delicious with a cock of your own,” Karlach says, one hand drifting to her breast to squeeze it. “Could Gale—? No, wait, that’s a horrible idea. He’d be insufferable.”
Right pulls a face—she’s correct. “He could probably do it,” they say, “but, yeah, he would be. Mm. How do you want to … ?”
At once Karlach returns to her grinning enthusiasm. “Ooh, I’m feeling daring. How about missionary?” she says.
Missionary it is. Right, ever the student of body language, takes interested note in their partner’s shifts and minute movements. Lying back on the bed Karlach keeps her limbs close to her body, her legs fallen mostly shut. Her tail wraps tight around her calf, which for Karlach means she feels uncertain. Uncertain about what, exactly, Right can only surmise—but it doesn’t take a scholar to guess. “Say something, if you change your mind,” Right says from where they stand on their knees by her feet. (Their hand is still on the toy; they really do like it.) “Or if it hurts. Since it’s been a while.”
“Hurts?” Karlach scoffs, and hooks her heel around their thigh to tug them closer. “Like I care if it hurts.”
“I care.”
Her face softens, and as Right shifts and positions themself to align their hips with hers, she exhales heavily. “You’re a sweetheart,” she says, and as this is the first time in their life Right can remember being called such a thing, they simply look at her blankly. In answer, she just ruffles their hair.
Right smiles—they’re not quite sure if it’s the right response, but it feels right, and Karlach’s expression gentles further. Her arms pull further to her ribs as she lifts them to catch Right’s her in her fingers. “I really like you, you know,” she says quietly, too quiet for all but Right’s sensitive ears. “Might be my favorite thing about being back in the Material, you.”
What do you say to that? It’s so far from the types of things Right is used to hearing that it sort of skips off their brain and leaves nothing of use behind. A smile creeps out, bashful, small. Under them, Karlach stretches further to run her fingers at the bases of their ears. They shiver, leaning into it; Karlach hums, smiling still. “Alright, Right,” she says with quiet authority. “I’d like you to fuck me now, if you would.”
“Oh, well, it would be my honor.”
“Very good,” says Karlach. “Get on, then!”
Right does not need told twice. They lean into Karlach’s hard stomach and soft breasts and gentle lips. They cant their hips and grind the toy down against her, and her breath catches beautifully.