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Humming happily to herself, Gwendolyn cradled a bowl full of cookie dough in one arm. She spun about the large table at the center of the kitchen on nimble toes as she mixed the dough, and her humming gave way to singing. Her voice was passable for bawdy tavern songs and raucous marching chants, and even if it wasn’t, when she was alone in the kitchens at night, nothing could keep her silent.
She swayed as she mixed and sang lyrics that would even redden the ears of the world’s most prolific whores, a smile on her face.
Naturally, that was when the door to the kitchens opened. She broke off in the middle of singing about a Knight-Commander’s knob (and where it was going and what it was doing) and froze, spoon poised over the bowl. She stared at the door. Cullen stared back, a faint blush on his cheeks, amusement in his eyes.
After a moment’s awkward silence, he cleared his throat. “I see you’re familiar with that particular… ah… tune.”
She gave him a broad grin, more embarrassed that she’d been caught dancing about the kitchens than by the song. “And so are you,” she teased, traipsing over to him. Rising on her toes, she pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose. Then she spun away, returning to her mixing.
He followed her across the kitchen floor, leaning his hip against the table as she continued to spin about. His eyes followed her, and it would be a lie to say she didn’t put on something of a show. Exaggerating the swing of her hips, she brushed close every time she passed him. In the vibrant light thrown from the great hearths, she watched his pupils dilate, his lips part.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked.
“Baking,” she replied cheerfully, setting her mixing bowl down and tipping it forward so he could see. “Morrigan said that Kieran was having bad dreams after everything that’s happened, so I thought I might make some treats for him.”
Outside of beating things to death on a battlefield, baking was Gwendolyn’s truest passion. She had swept into Skyhold’s kitchens the day after they arrived and promptly went to work helping clean it, all so that she could bake at the end of long, exhausting missions in the field. There was something soothing about the work, and being able to give one of her companions cookies or cakes brightened her dreariest of days. After Adamant, she’d spent almost a week in the kitchens, baking pies, cakes, flans. Anything sweet.
“That’s exceptionally kind of you,” Cullen said gently, setting his hand on her hip.
She smiled softly, lifting her face toward his. “When I was little, Mother and I used to bake together. It was so very scandalous, of course. Maker forbid, a noblewoman in the kitchens. But we would spend hours together.” She dipped her finger into the cookie dough, collecting a sticky dollop on her fingertip, and held it out to him. “Try some.”
Slowly, he leaned toward her. His fingers curled loosely around her wrist, holding her as his lips parted and his tongue stroked the length of her finger. Shivering, she stepped closer to him, watching his lips close. He sucked the cookie dough off her finger, his eyes never leaving hers, his tongue swirling over her skin. A little gasp escaped her, then a moan, and she pressed her fingers against his breastplate.
His teeth dragged over her finger when he drew back, his lips curling into a smile. “Delicious,” he said, his voice a low rumble, and she couldn’t fathom whether he meant the cookie dough or the taste of her skin.
Feeling heat creep across her face, a flush of heat and warmth that had everything to do with him and nothing to do with the roaring ovens, she glanced away from him. “Anyway,” she said, stuttering just a bit, “Mother and I used to bake together. So I bake now.” Her expression softened into one of yearning. “And one day, I’ll bake with my children, too.”
Cullen’s hand slid over her cheek, turning her face so their gazes met. Naked want smoldered in his eyes. “You want children?” he asked.
“Scads,” she admitted, feeling strangely vulnerable. So many people saw her as a warrior, hard and unyielding. Others saw her as the Herald, as some holy relic to be worshipped. Few looked past those two things to see her as a woman. The woman she was wanted children, a family, a home filled with warmth and the scent of bread or cookies baking. “I always liked having siblings. Even if we rarely got to see my youngest sibling.”
Cullen shifted closer to her, his other hand settling on her hip. “You want a family, then.” He turned her with a subtle pressure, and she moved against him, into his embrace.
“Yes,” she whispered as he tipped her head back. She wasn’t entirely sure she was agreeing with him or telling him that, yes, she wanted this, wanted him, wanted more.
“Maker’s breath.” His words caressed her lips. He was so close that she could have erased the distance between them easily, but there was something fragile in the air around them. Instead, she waited, her heart pounding, her eyes searching his. “The idea of you with child…”
In his words, she heard him saying with my child.
“Fuck me,” she breathed, twining her arms around his neck. “Fuck me, Cullen, fill me with your seed. I want to have your children.”
He spun her, pinning her between his body and the table, and he kissed her. It was a hard kiss, a passionate kiss, the kind of kiss you gave someone when you wanted to drown in them. He kissed her like that when he ached from lyrium withdrawal, when the nightmares woke him in the middle of the night, when she’d been gone too long and he whispered that he’d forgotten her scent, the feel of her in his arms, the softness of her body as he slid into her. He kissed her like that when he was at his most broken and his most strong. He kissed her like that because he loved her, and she was swept away by the currents of his love. All the titles vanished, all the pretensions were discarded. She was a woman, he was a man, and she wanted him in the most primal way a woman could want a man.
Pressing between her legs, his fingers dropped to her tunic, making quick work of the fastenings. They had done this dance so many times that she knew precisely where to touch him to make his armor fall away, too. She pushed his lion-like cloak from his shoulders. It hit the floor with a quiet hiss as his tongue swept into her mouth and tangled with her own.
He swallowed her moans only to coax more from her, his knuckled grazing over the exposed flesh of her chest. Wrapping one leg around his hips, she ground herself against him as her fingers worked to free him of his armor. Not all of it, though, because she burned too much for him, needed him too much. So when his breastplate fell away, she tore at his shirt.
Laughter spilled from his mouth to hers. “Want me?” he asked with that charming, breathless wonder he always had, as if loving her was something he’d never tire of.
“Desperately,” she replied, kissing his neck, his collarbone. “I want you to fuck me, Cullen.” Her tongue found one of his nipples, and she flicked it. To her satisfaction, he let out a choked moan, his fingers delving into her hair.
“Maker preserve me,” he groaned, trying to pull her away from his chest.
She let him, sinking into another kiss that left her shaking to her bones.
He tore at the laces of her breeches, slipped his hand inside, cupped the wet heat of her. With a cry, she broke away from his kiss. Her back arched, her hips rolling against his hand as he delved first one finger and then another into her.
“Do you know what it does to me?” he asked, a rough edge in his voice. “The thought of you pregnant?” He caught her wrist in his free hand and brought it to his trousers. She grasped the hard ridge of his cock through the fabric, catching her lip with her teeth. The feel of him was incredible, hard and hot and aching for her. She loved that she could make a man like him tremble for her, that she could make him lose control.
“I can feel what it does to you,” she said coyly, giving him an inviting look from beneath her lashes. Her fingers snagged in the laces of his trousers, pulling them free as his fingers pressed into her, thrust into her, curled against her.
Moaning softly, she grasped his cock, hot and heavy in her hand, and stroked it from base to tip. A bead of liquid had formed on the tip, and she smeared it over him, shuddering.
“Will you still want me when I’m the size of a druffalo?”
“You’ll be beautiful,” he rasped, cupping the back of her head and drawing her to him for another rough, eager kiss. His nipped at her lips, catching the bottom one between his teeth and worrying it gently. “Ripe and full.” Then his tongue was in her mouth again, making demands of her. Demands she was only too happy to meet.
She squeezed him gently as she stroked him, and he jerked away from her mouth. His hands were suddenly everywhere, yanking at her breeches and her smalls, pulling them down to the tops of her boots. He had a wild look in his eyes, desperate and needy, and he stepped between her legs, leaving her trapped in her breeches and boots.
Hands on her hips, he dragged her to the very edge of the table. “I need to be inside you,” he groaned, bending his head to her chest. He caught one of her nipples in his mouth, sucking it deep, and she cried out. Her fingers buried in his hair, holding him to her as he shifted her, rubbed against her, pressed inside her.
The slick slide of him was sweeter than sugar. He didn’t bothered with finesse, didn’t tease or tantalize her. Instead, he drove into her, straight to the hilt, and then pulled back out to thrust back in. She threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him as he fucked her, as he took her without inhibition or gentleness.
“Need to fill you with my seed,” he murmured against her ear. “Maker, Gwen, I want—” He broke off with a groan, driving deep into her. His rhythm was rough, erratic, as though he couldn’t control himself enough to make the pace even. She didn’t care. Because every time his lips brushed her ear, he whispered how beautiful she would look when she swelled with his child, how he would worship her body, cherishing her and their child.
Gasping, she pressed her mouth to his neck, rolling her hips against him, taking him as hard as he took her, letting him as deeply into her body as possible. “You know,” she said, voice ragged and breaking on her moans, “it usually doesn’t take the first time.”
His own laugh was as broken as her voice. “Every day,” he promised her. “Every day until your body grows ripe and lush.”
She shuddered, the tremor wracking her whole body with heat and desire and need, and she caught his mouth with hers, drinking in his moans as he took her. His hands held her hips, but they were still so gentle. When he stroked them up her back, curling them over her shoulders and clutching her to him, she whimpered. When he dropped one hand between them to thumb her clit, she moaned. And when he whispered how much he loved her, how much he wanted to see her body big with their child, something twisted and broke inside her.
Crying out, the sound swallowed by his kiss, she came in a ripple of pleasure. Her body clenched around his, and he cursed against her mouth in that gentle, innocent way of his.
“Come in me,” she whispered, her words soft and sweet against his lips. “I need you, Cullen, please, fill me.”
He groaned, his eyes squeezing shut, and jerked into her. She felt him fill her with his seed, felt it splash inside her in hot jets, and he held her firmly, tightly, not giving a single inch.
Gasping, slick with sweat, he dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “Maker’s breath.”
She nuzzled his ear, nipping it lightly as she stroked her hands down his back. “That,” she declared, still panting, “was the best sex we’ve ever had.”
“Was it?” He pulled back to smile at her, but he didn’t pull out of her. She felt him softening inside her, but he made no move to withdraw. Something about that, about the fact that his body was keeping his seed sealed in her, made her shiver with heat.
“Doubtlessly.”
“Good.” He sounded relieved. “I was worried, for a minute, that I may have been… that some of the things I said…”
She dragged his lips to hers, devouring his mouth in an eager kiss. “Say them whenever you want,” she told him when she finally broke the kiss what felt like hours later.
Laughing, he peppered her cheeks with light, chaste kisses. “I’ll consider it,” he said, and he eased out of her. She sighed softly, taking pleasure in even that. A heavy groan escaped him, and she smiled at the sight of him. He was staring at her, at her cunt. He pressed a finger into her, and she gasped, arching, so sensitive that such a simple touch had her nerves frayed with fire in an instant. “Beautiful,” he murmured, drawing his finger out and smearing his seed and her wetness on her thigh. He brushed a light kiss over her lips. “Let’s get you cleaned up, then, before the cooks find us like this.”
They dressed quickly, their hands lingering, and when they were finally decent, Cullen laced his fingers with her. Together, they ran across the bailey to his tower, the bowl of cookie dough forgotten for the night.
She returned to the task in the morning, humming even more than usual, and Cullen… well. Cullen spent the next four months telling her how beautiful she was going to be when she swelled with his babe, how perfect a mother she would be.