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“Now on your knees.”
“This is blasphemy, Trevelyan, of the highest order.”
“Blasphemy you inspired, putting these ideas in my head in the first place.” Hieronyma tossed her head and eyed the Chancellor skeptically where he stood: bare from the waist up, his dark hair uncovered, his hands clasped in front of him in a position of anxious prayer.
She continued, “Roderick, I’ll admit, this is a somewhat inopportune time to decide you’re having second thoughts…” She offered him an amenable shrug. “But if you are having them, we have a few hours yet to sneak back out before Elan comes to tend the garden.”
She watched Roderick’s expression closely as it twisted in indecision for a moment. He finally settled on a long, frustrated sigh, slumping his shoulders. “I didn’t say exactly that. But really, Hieronyma, the Skyhold chantry itself?”
“What can’t be improved with a little authenticity?” Hieronyma sat back on the stairs, grinning beatifically. She’d styled herself as the living replica of the infamous Andraste In Nude Repose statue, lounging in nakedness save for the white linen shawl draped around her hips. A crown of dawn lotus adorned her head, and her long, loosely-worn hair shone beneath the light of Andraste’s more modest, Chantry-approved stone likeness’s bowl of fire. Roderick’s gaze clung guiltily to each breath she took, every slight shift of posture. Of course he winced and flushed apologetically all the while, for the sins of both looking and being looked upon. Meanwhile, Hieronyma practically gleamed.
Roderick pursed his lips. “I believe the word better suited would be audacity.”
Hieronyma’s candid smile only grew more proud, and she watched the indignant puff of his chest deflate a bit as he sighed. This moral performance starring his grievances and her irreverence was a ritual between them by now. They’d reached the part of the act where he began to run out of points of contention to crossly raise in hopes of downplaying his own shameful eagerness--and so, reluctantly, he dropped to his knees on the sunburst-embroidered floor tapestry.
The familiar words came to him naturally enough at first. “Blessed Andraste forgive me, for I have--I…” He stopped himself, shaking his head while keeping his eyes fixed on the bottommost stair of the altar. “Maker’s tears, Hieronyma, what am I supposed to say here?”
Hieronyma exhaled loudly through her nose and looked up at the firelight above her as if saying a petulant prayer of her own for patience. “You can start with ‘taking the Maker’s name in vain’ and go from there,” she huffed, but a note of amusement kept her voice light when she added, “You make it very hard for me to act the patient and righteous Prophet when you can’t even finish one sentence without nitpicking, you know.”
“I--Ah.” He’d started to protest on some technicality, but thought better of it and dipped his chin. “My apologies, Herald, I…” Hieronyma watched as something seemed to dawn on him, and he bowed further into a pose of proper penitence. His dark curls tumbled messily over his forehead; his soft stomach creased over the top of his waistband without the benefit of a stiff cassock to conceal the sight. She tried not to let her gaze linger on the angry, jagged scar that marred his flesh from solar plexus to flank. Memories of the disaster at Haven would intrude on her mind like an icy Frostbacks wind.
But Roderick’s next words put an excited flutter in Hieronyma’s chest: “I can only humbly pray that you’ll forgive such a disgraceful man as me.”
Better… Not breaking her role, Hieronyma lifted an absolving hand. “Forgiveness is offered to all who repent with humility in their hearts, dear Chancellor.” She slowly shifted so that one of her knees was bared by the edge of her shawl. Roderick’s hands twitched nervously in his lap. “Tell me what troubles you so.”
“I suppose,” he took a breath, “the first sin I must confess to is covetousness. No, desire. For a mage of the Circle, no less.” His head stayed bowed, but Hieronyma could see blotchy color rushing to his cheeks and neck. “A woman who exemplified everything I stand against, who was devout only when it suited her and partook in all manner of vainglorious displays.”
She hadn’t expected him to find his bearings so quickly. “And this mage sought to wield power over others?”
There was a glint of what could have been slyness in Roderick’s eye when he answered, “No less than the Magisters of old.” Oh, Hieronyma would get him for that later; she could see in his face that he was counting on it. He continued, “She pedestaled herself as a false idol and raised an army for her own glory. Someone had to oppose her, be the voice of reason, but Maker…I was weak. I cursed her name to the world but cried it out when I was alone.”
“You’re confessing that you gave in to her idolatry, Chancellor?” Hieronyma allowed a touch of chilly disapproval to seep into her voice as she stared down at him.
He nearly flinched. “N-no, no, I--Not all at once,” he finally admitted in a defeated voice. “Then I suppose the second sin I must confess to is pride, for believing I would be the one to stand against her. I believed myself to be righteous and temperate. But my resolve against temptation…I don’t know when it happened, but I began to feel disgusting things for her. I wanted her to take me beneath her, to force me--to make me believe.” His voice caught; the heaviness of his breath echoed in the serenity of the empty chantry. “Forgive me, my Lady.”
“An elder of the Chantry should not be so helpless to the lust in his heart,” Hieronyma softly chided, her face alight, and she moved so that the spread of her thighs was loosely outlined in the drape of her shawl. With barely-contained glee, she pressed, “What else did you want her to do to you, Chancellor?”
Roderick shot her a weak look, the faintest noise of unprepared shock carrying on his breath, and fumbled on his words. “I-I always feared that somehow, she knew--that she knew I was faltering. As if through some wretched enchantment, she could see my thoughts when I looked at her.” He hunched as if trying to disappear into the very shadows cast by the torchlight, his clasped hands nervously twitching. “Or, worse, that she needed no special intuition at all, and my weakness was unmistakable, in defiance of all my attempts to hide it.”
“Your weakness to vice is unmistakable, Chancellor, that much is clear,” Hieronyma murmured. She still managed to hold the measured tone she’d tried on for the role of the Prophet despite the spark of wryness that sprung to life in her face as she eyed Roderick, taking note - how his skin was so deeply flushed that the color had found its way down to his sternum; of the fleshiness softening his arms and chest, and the contrastingly hard outline straining below.
She’d set Roderick to stammering again, but she cut him off sharply. “What were you so afraid of her doing if she suspected? She was only one heretic, after all--did you forget that your faith protects you?”
The look in his eyes was truly, disarmingly pleading and it took him a moment of dizzily gathering his thoughts to finally speak. “The worry gripped me that one day, she’d corner me alone and turn my own thoughts against me. And then…the worry turned to thoughts of her telling me I was a fraud, a disgusting lecher, while she opened my robes and touched me in ways that made me break and beg her not to stop.” The hitch in his voice was there to stay; he squirmed, adjusting to accommodate the strain of his arousal. “You can’t go on telling yourself that you’re the only one who sees her for what she really is after that.”
Maker, it was foolish of me to underestimate a Chantry cleric’s way with words. Hieronyma chewed the inside of her lip, reeling in her struggle to keep to her role when she knew he’d submit if she were to push him back onto the rug and take him right then. But then the charade would be over so soon. She wasn’t so lacking in self-control that she’d waste savoring him like this; ‘utterly marinated in shame’ was turning out to be a captivating look on Roderick.
“And did you ever seek release when those thoughts came to you?” she asked, her quiet gaze piercing down upon him.
He nodded, though it was scarcely a movement at all, and his voice was small. “Yes, Maker forgive me, I couldn’t help myself.”
The word they’d decided on, if she took things too far, was ‘Genitivi,’ Hieronyma reminded herself. She’d made him repeat it back to her many times in practice, and she trusted him to use it if he needed to. Maker knew nothing snuffed out a sultry atmosphere quite like remembering droning passages from The Studious Theologian. She felt she could safely run with the crueler impulses that were creeping into her mind.
She let the edge of her shawl bare her hip and thigh, making it look at least somewhat unintentional, and she saw Roderick unconsciously wet his lips, a swept-away look in his eye. It took everything in her not to give him a knowing smirk in response. “Your fantasies told you one truth, Chancellor: you are a disgusting lecher. Just look at you, barely able to contain yourself even as you confess in the sanctity of my shrine. Perhaps I should bind your hands before you leave this holy place, lest they wander again as soon as you’re left alone.”
“Blessed Andraste, please, I’ll--” Roderick stopped with a slight grunt, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m terribly sorry, Hieronyma, this is…exhilarating, but my knees are not what they used to be. Is there any other way…?”
Hieronyma made an understanding sound and gestured hither. “By me, but on a lower stair. You’re taller than me, and that won’t do for our purposes here.”
He settled beside her, two stairs below just as she’d instructed, and she took a momentary break from character while he got comfortable again to direct a playful smile his way. “What kind of Chantry cleric is one who can’t kneel?”
“One who has been a cleric far longer than you’ve been the Herald,” he answered haughtily, but the deep blush in his complexion didn’t lighten even a single shade. She could feel the heat radiating from him against her own skin at close quarters. He gave her a wry sidelong look. “Now, you were saying, Oh Blessed Lady of Restitution?”
Damn, it’s going to be a trial not to touch you overtly throughout this, Hieronyma thought, eying his bare chest and stomach, then up to his throat and to the slight permanent pout that his mouth formed. She could tell from the guilty flicker of his eyes across her body, lingering on her breasts and hips, that he was adrift in the same struggle.
“On the contrary, Chancellor, you were preparing to make excuses for yourself,” she tilted her gaze coolly down at him, finding her voice as Andraste once again, “for how you longed for this heretic’s touch; how even the thought of her reproach became obscene in your mind.”
Roderick’s gaze snapped obediently down to his hands once more. “I have no excuse, my Lady. Every day spent in her court is another virtue weathered away.” His voice lowered in hushed, shameful confession. “There are times, when she’s seated on that ostentatious throne of hers in the great hall…I’ve thought of prostrating myself before her and--Oh, flames take me, I can’t say it in this place.”
Hieronyma reached out and took Roderick’s chin, his stubble scratching against her fingertips as she lifted his face. For this, she wanted to see every quiver of hesitation in his expression while he spoke. “Flames can’t cleanse impurities they can’t reach, Chancellor. Confess.”
He sucked in a shuddering breath, his hazel eyes dewy and helpless as he looked up at her. “I’ve thought of kneeling to her while she lifts her skirts and allows me to kiss her thighs and…deeper between. I’ve yearned to worship her in that way.”
Oh, that was an idea Hieronyma would have to store away for later, for a quiet night when they were both feeling too daring for their own good. As for present matters… “You’ve fallen further than I’d ever imagined, Chancellor Roderick. The Maker graced you with a tongue so you could join the Faithful in song, and you think of using it instead for the pleasure of some heretic.”
“Blessed Andraste, I--I couldn’t help my--” Roderick’s cloying protests cut off with a gasp when Hieronyma’s grip tightened on his jaw, and she pulled him in closer. She looked down at him coolly, imperiously, even as she struggled not to let her eyelids flutter or her breath hitch.
“You claim you had no excuses, and yet you make them anyway. Are you a liar as well as a pervert?”
Maker’s breath, Roderick audibly whimpered as he gazed up at her. Hieronyma could have dragged him closer still and claimed him right there, if he’d just give her the right lead in…
“Merely a weak man, my Lady,” he whined, his eyes squeezed shut in shame. “One who has…strayed from his vows. Please, I beg of you, I will repent in any manner you deem worthy of my sins. What must I do?”
Hieronyma rose from her graceful recline and her shawl slipped from her hips, baring her to him. Her hand slid from Roderick’s jaw to seize a fistful of his curly hair, making him look at her as she slowly spread her legs. Maker, she was wet, and she knew he’d notice. That was only confirmed when a quick glance downward made his breath stutter.
“You must repent, Chancellor, for your corruption.” She leaned back against the statue above them and carefully slung one knee over Roderick’s shoulder. “Exalt me, put that sybaritic mouth to use, and you shall be forgiven.”
With an appetent groan, Roderick leaned in, his hands grasping her hips. Hieronyma couldn’t suppress the electrified gasp she took when his lips greedily met her sex. She leaned her back against the statue behind her, one hand still tangled in his hair while the other braced against the stone; her bare skin felt burningly hot even as it prickled into goosebumps in the chill of the nighttime air. His tongue circled her clit, deliberately and agonizingly slow, and the sound came from deep in her throat.
“Roderick…Maker’s tears.”
Roderick was such a fastidious man in all other matters, but having his head buried between her thighs never failed to make him loud and sloppy and ravenous. He held her hips fast against the ministrations of his mouth and Hieronyma realized how easily she was poised to come undone in his reverent grasp. She felt no consternation about it; she always came too quickly when she’d been exercising any kind of restraint. That made her a bit of a hypocrite here, she realized gleefully.
Her voice was raspy to her own ears when she moaned out his name again as she rode out the waves of her orgasm. She wanted him to hear and feel the elation he could bring her to, the softness she allowed him to see in her when she was nothing but frost and cold metal to anyone else.
The tide of sensation became overstimulating shortly afterward, the pleasure diminishing into small electrical shudders that coursed through her body involuntarily, and Hieronyma nudged Roderick away with a gentle push of her foot - “Ah, fuck…That’s enough, love.”
He made an understanding sound and sat back on the stairs to catch his breath and push his hair back from his forehead. She caught his eye as he wiped the glisten of her from his mouth, seeking sanction to continue. He granted it with a quick, breathless nod.
“You did well for me, Chancellor.” She trailed her fingertips down the slope of his belly until she palmed his erection through the fabric of his trousers, feeling a slight damp spot left from the spilling of precum. Maker, but the Chantry’s doctrines of repression were such self-defeating things. He groaned, hips giving an involuntary jolt into her touch; she gently squeezed through the cloth and it made him whine.
“Maker’s sake, Hieronyma, don’t make me grovel again. My dignity can only take so much in one night.” His expression was somewhere between grimace and bliss, and even the slightest shift of her touch made his breath hitch a little. Even Hieronyma couldn’t find it in her heart to deny him any longer.
She slipped her hand under his fly and he moaned, low and full of anticipation, as her deft fingers curled around his cock.
“I’m nowhere near so cruel,” she responded, smirking hazily down at him, and he arched up with a gasp as she stroked the length of him. “At least, not when I’ve been shown proper deference for so long. You docile thing.” Upkeep of their initial roleplay had fallen away, evidently, though Hieronyma didn’t mind no longer needing to remember to stay in-character. Much as she’d enjoyed their scene, she spent her waking hours pretending to be pious enough as it was. Andraste’s Herald Hieronyma had her uses, but Hieronyma the Charlatan was the far more exhilarating truth.
“You know I’ve wanted you ever since that day we met in the war room at Haven?”
“We met at the forward c--Ah!” His correction was swallowed by a heady cry as Hieronyma’s free hand went to the swell of his right breast and she gave his nipple a sharp pinch.
“When we formally met. Watching you wag your finger at Nevarran royalty on a freezing bridge hardly counts.” She angled her wrist to tug his waistband down, freeing his arousal and making space for the motion of her hand. “You were all blustering and contrary and abjectly terrified of me despite the fronts you were putting up. And so round and pretty. You should know that I left that meeting frustrated with unfulfilled visions of shoving you against that table, biting your neck and caressing you through those Chantry robes, and watching that pompous air melt away like snow.”
She’d found a rhythm, one he was unraveling to; the steady motion of her hand on his cock coupled with the teasing graze of her nails over his chest and the guiding ambience of her voice. The sounds he made were weak, pleading even, and they spurred her on.
“In front of all our advisors. Can you imagine what they would’ve thought of that?” She was speaking from pure stream-of-consciousness now as she touched him, her mind feeling languid in the warm aftermath of climaxing.
He quivered below her, his flesh slightly sweaty and practically molten to the touch, and Hieronyma went on. “Can you imagine word of that getting back to Val Royeaux? I know you certainly wouldn’t have put up much of a fight. I shudder to think of the damage that might have done to your reputation.” It was transparent from her tone that there was no such shudder; Hieronyma in any phase of her life would have relished the power and chaos of wrecking a Chantry elder’s good name. “The things your fellow clerics would say about you, Roderick.”
“Hieronyma…”
“A weak, nasty old pervert, dragged to pitiful lows by the first heretic who’d deign to touch him. Does that sound more or less like their words?” She felt him throb in her hand, the whine in his voice more brazen than she’d ever heard it. “Though let’s not lie to ourselves, even our allies can’t help but see you as my spoiled little pet who fancies himself a proper advisor. You’re just -” She cut off with a gasp as he came with a helpless, quavering moan, his back arching as he spilled into her hand, and Hieronyma let her touch become more gentle as the sudden surge of sensation for him ebbed away into a thrum.
He relaxed against the stone, breath heaving. Hieronyma lowered to press a kiss to his forehead before she drew back once more to give him air. She reached over and grabbed her cast aside shawl to wipe her hands. With that done, she rested a gentle hand on his knee, waiting for him to give her a word or a signal.
“Maker’s tears…” he rasped finally, and it was Hieronyma’s turn to be caught off-guard when he sat up onto one elbow and pulled her into a soft, feeling kiss. He smelled of sweat and candle smoke and her. Reluctantly, he broke the kiss, his face still a bit awed as he looked at her.
“Did I take it too far?” she asked in a slightly wincing tone. Contrition from Hieronyma was a rare sight, but she was all too familiar with her own tendency to get carried away with her words.
“You’re an outrageous profaner and almost certainly a madwoman, Trevelyan,” he declared, “and I am, as ever, in love with you.”
With a sympathetic smile, Hieronyma offered him her shawl to clean himself up with. “And you must be the most unfortunate man in Thedas that I love you as much in turn.”
He scoffed fondly. “And to think, the first time I told you that, I didn’t expect you to return the sentiment. I’d only thought you had the right to know.” Re-buttoning the waist of his trousers, he started to stand. “But we should continue this conversation somewhere less…” He looked around, seeming to recall with mild chagrin where they were and what they’d been doing. “Well, not half-dressed in a chantry.”
Hieronyma snorted and shook her head as she began to get dressed as well. “Relax. At this hour of the morning, the only ones awake will be Solas scowling into his first cup of bitter tea of the day, and the soldiers Cullen put on night watch duty. We’ve plenty of time to reach my quarters largely unnoticed and freshen up before sunrise. And I owe you a healing spell for your poor bruised knees. Perks of sneaking around with a mage.” She chuckled, pulling her shirt over her head and buttoning it.