Work Text:
On one particularly cold winter evening, Balor had retired early to his room in the Sleeping Dragon Inn. Winter had a way of weighing in his ribs. The laughter he’d been sharing with Hayden and Valen and Hemlock downstairs had started to feel hollow and frayed at the edges sometimes after eleven in the evening, and he’d excused himself back to his room.
His ledger was due soon, he’d told them. Adeline had been paying closer and closer attention to the details as he became more and more enmeshed in the town. It wasn't as if her suspicion was entirely unwarranted. He’d have to be a bit more meticulous about record-keeping, it seemed.
Which was how Balor ended up slumped at the small desk in his room. He'd put on his warmest pajamas, but it still felt like the cold was biting through him. He was a patient man — horribly patient, depending on who you asked — but there was nothing so deeply testing as the cold.
For a moment, as he stared at the paper in front of him, he allowed his mind to drift to Ari. She was always so warm, her body a beam of sunlight in wretched darkness. They hadn’t been dating long, and Balor still hadn’t gotten used to the intimacy of it all. He’d never entertained the same person for so long, or at least not with the care and attentiveness he gave her. She was more precious than any gem — though he hadn’t found a way to say that out loud yet. And even if he did, she would probably call him a flatterer and make a show of sticking her tongue out at him.
All the beads on his abacus shifted to the left with a satisfying crackle when he picked it up, chuckling to himself with thoughts of how he could fluster her.
On the other hand…
He knew better than to let his mind wander too far. Especially on nights when she was probably chopping down trees or fighting monsters or any number of other dangerous activities that rattled his bones with a protective sort of distress. Still, he couldn’t stop it. Something about the winter, maybe.
If she were there, she’d be in his lap, pressed against him. He was learning that she liked being on top, and more than that, he was learning that he liked it when she was, too. The rapid rise and fall of her chest was intoxicating. Almost as intoxicating as it was when he ended up with his face pressed into her breasts, when she’d ask him to come inside her and he would so dutifully oblige.
It was all so pleasant that, for a moment, Balor felt the chill seep out of him.
He shifted in his seat. His cock twitched against the thick fabric of his wool sleep pants, and he debated between taking care of his desire and finishing his ledger before the night was through.
Responsibility won out.
There would be time later, if he still felt cold beneath the sheets of his bed where he could replay even sweeter memories of their time together.
Time passed in a slow trickle as he worked, the beads of the abacus shifting slowly from the left to the right as he straightened up the previous month’s transactions. The numbers were beginning to run together on the page when a familiar voice brought him back from his math-induced haze.
“Hey, darling,” Ari said cheerfully, standing next to his desk awkwardly, peering at his open journal and ledger sheet.
He forced himself not to close the journal — she could look if she so desired, though she often chose to respect his privacy. Instead, he focused on taking her in, his mind scrambling to say something back. It was well past midnight, and he decided that the reason his voice was caught had everything to do with the late hour, and not the way she looked standing in his room.
Her long curls were still damp at the ends. She had on a sweater and a pair of short-shorts, which seemed horribly inadequate for the snow outside, but when he looked down he could see the wool socks he’d gotten her peeking out over the top of a pair of bright yellow rain boots. When she stepped closer, he could feel the warmth radiating off of her.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked, a wry smile growing on her face. She put her hands on her hips, and the movement drew his gaze to the place where her nipples pressed against the fabric of her sweater.
He tried to laugh. It didn’t work. “Something like that,” he said, pushing his chair back enough to reach for her. It was nice to have someone with whom touch felt so… safe. He couldn’t recall a time that he’d had that. “Just surprised to see you, is all."
She hummed, resting her hands on his shoulders, her fingers digging into the muscles beneath. “I got done a little early tonight, thought I would come by. I didn’t feel like seeing anybody but you.”
For as special as he thought she was, there was something so special about being wanted in return.
“You’re stroking my ego, you know,” he teased, rather weakly.
“I think it’ll be okay, just this once,” she said, letting one of her hands travel up and through long strands of his hair. Ari glanced at the paperwork sitting on his desk, and then back to him. “But if this isn’t a good time, I can always wait in bed, or come back tomor—”
“No, stay,” he said quickly, catching one of her hands in his. He already felt warmer. He couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving now.
Without much further thought, Ari settled herself on his lap, warmth spreading through him at an almost alarming pace. Up close, he could see the charming little crows feet by her eyes. He’d long found his own crows feet to be an ugly representation of aging he couldn’t hide, but seeing them on her had made him grow fond of them. Now, he saw them on everybody.
Ari wiggled her hips in a way that only served to spread more warmth through him, and dissolve his sentimentality. She bit her lip. “Were you thinking about me before I got here…?”
Balor’s voice came strained. He was never so good at being teased as he was with doing the teasing. “This winter has just been so cold, my star."
She pressed a kiss to his jaw, and then another, closer to his ear, still smiling. “That wasn’t a no. Can I tell you a secret?”
The words were sure to come whether he answered or not, but he whispered out “Yes,” appreciating the feel of her thighs against his, the curve of her bottom beneath his nimble fingers.
“I was thinking of you. Before I came here.” She pressed a kiss to the spot beneath his ear that always made pleasant goosebumps crawl over his skin.
Balor groaned. He couldn’t help it.
“I was thinking about how good it feels when you’re inside me,” she continued, breath hot against him. “And I made myself come, but it wasn’t the same as when you do it.”
His eyes screwed shut. She was grinding lightly against him, her breathing heavy and unsteady in his ear.
All at once she stood up, taking her warmth with her. It was all he could do not to whine loudly. He felt almost feverish — an approximation of warmth that somehow also made him shiver.
“Not fair,” he managed, though it sounded remarkably whiny.
She grinned, her cheeks tinged pink. This was a bit bolder than she usually was. He hoped this wasn’t something Elsie and Juniper had told her to do, though his logical brain seemed incapable of stringing that thought together, caught instead on the way her fingers hooked in the loops of her shorts.
Ari kicked her rain boots off with some measure of grace, before turning around to look at his ledger laid out. It left him eye-level with the curve of her hip. He ran his hands up the length of her thighs, admiring the strength there. He was never one to deny himself the finer things, and he pressed kisses through the fabric of her shorts.
Ari tsked, pressing herself back against his wandering lips. “This won’t do—you haven’t finished your ledger yet! It looks like there’s just a little more to do, and—ah!—then we can play as much as you want.”
“Need you now,” he managed, nimble fingers sliding just under the waistband of her shorts. Just enough to tease.
“You’re not being very patient,” she retorted.
Balor sighed heavily, leaning back in his chair. His body was throbbing with unfulfilled desire. He’d been right in the middle of a calculation when she’d come in, and he wasn’t sure he remembered all the variables he’d started with, which would set him back at least another ten minutes. In this state, ten minutes seemed entirely unbearable.
Ari looked back at him over her shoulder. “Tell you what,” she said, shimmying out of her shorts and underwear and tossing them towards the bed with little ceremony. “I’ll keep you warm until you finish your ledger.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes glued to her center, to all the freckles that seemed to spiral right to the place he wanted to go.
“Pull your pants down.”
“It’s cold, and I thought you wanted me to be patient—”
She turned around and kissed him, hands coming to rest on either of his thighs. Despite the little game they were playing, Balor submitted easily. He kissed her back with the same intensity, tracing the seam of her mouth with his tongue and relishing the taste of her lips. Ari palmed him through his trousers and he gasped into her mouth, feeling the way her mouth curled into a smile in turn.
“Please?” she whispered, so sweetly Balor almost couldn’t believe it. “I just want to hold you inside me. Just until you’re done.”
“You just want to… hold it inside?” He’d never considered this before, but then again, most of the encounters he’d had in the past were little more than business.
“Yes,” she said, and something in her voice almost sounded self-conscious. Her hand traced down his stomach, making his muscles clench as she hooked two fingers in the front of his pajama pants. “I think it could feel nice… intimate. I don’t know." She paused, biting her lip. "If you don’t want to, I can just wait until you’re done, I’m—”
Balor silenced her with another kiss, his hand joining hers at the waistband of his pants. “I’ll try anything with you. I… I think you’re magnificent.”
Ari gave another little laugh, though notably she didn’t accuse him of flattery. Instead, they both worked his pajama pants and underwear down over his hips, freeing him from the near painful confines.
Warm laughter of the last few people still avoiding walking home in the snow drifted up the stairs. It seemed to blend with their shaky breaths perfectly.
“Did you lock the door?” Balor whispered, nuzzling into her cheek as she ran her hand over one of his thighs again, groping the muscle greedily.
“Obviously,” she said, her hand slipping lower between his thighs to tease the sensitive skin there.
Balor tried to relax beneath her ministrations, but he felt even colder now that she was teasing him without giving in. One of his arms was curled around her strong thigh. When he traced his hand upwards, she was wet even on the inside of her thigh, and she moaned at the teasing touch.
The sounds. The sounds she made were the other thing that replayed in his brain whenever he let his mind wander. It was wonder he didn’t bend her over the desk then and there.
But he could be patient. He was a patient man.
He scooted the chair forward when she told him too, supported her thighs when she slowly lowered herself onto his lap again, her eyes locked onto his. With a roll of her hips, she pressed the head of his cock against her achingly warm and welcoming body.
He'd been aching long enough that his body had begun to weep for her. She had a way of bringing this out in him, and he wondered how he could possibly sit here and finish his ledger when she was squirming so much against him.
Their lips met again, and almost achingly slowly, she welcomed him into her tight heat. Her whine was high pitched and heady and all his. As she took him in further, she pulled back just enough so he could see what he was doing to her. Ari’s eyes were half-lidded, lips parted in ecstasy as if even just having him like this was the best thing she’d ever felt. Balor was sure his own face looked much the same, fighting to keep his eyes open as she leaned back until her elbows were against the desk, finally taking him to the hilt.
His eyes really did close then, hands sliding up into her sweater as if he could be entirely consumed by her warmth. He thumbed at her nipples, groped at the long lines of her torso, willing himself not to thrust up into her. After a moment of shared bliss, Ari leaned forward in his lap, the movement making her clench around him.
“Ari,” he groaned, voice hoarse with pleasure. “I don’t know if I can just…” his words broke on a moan when she kissed his neck.
“You can. I won’t move so much,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her head to the side of his, as if to illustrate how easy it would be for him.
She had far too much faith in him. But he tried anyway, eyes barely landing on the last three lines of his ledger. He definitely didn’t remember the calculation he was doing. Gods — he wanted to make Ari happy. The intimacy of feeling their hearts beat together was pleasant, but it was also making the numbers blur together on the page. He rewrote the same figure twice. The ink smudged under his palm. It would be easy to just make up the last numbers he needed…
He inhaled slowly through his nose, longing for patience.
As if she could read his mind, Ari shifted slightly, the sensation pulling him further into the haze of desire rather than away from it. “Do it the right way,” she murmured. “Adeline gets worried when you don’t.”
He scoffed, but it was brittle. “No reason for her to worry.”
Ari didn’t have a playful retort, no reminder for him to be good. She only giggled, nuzzling his cheek and inadvertently shifting their bodies together again, seemingly uninhibited even when Balor grasped her thighs to still her.
The math that followed was possibly some of the most difficult Balor had ever done, and the whole time he made promises to himself not to let his bookkeeping pile up like this again. The ledger, his journal entries… he would do all of them in a timely manner, for this was torture worse than that he’d endured when he was a younger man, stuck on the streets in the wrong crowd.
At the very least, the chill of winter was gone now. The feverish warmth settled slightly, though he felt sweat still forming at his brow and where their thighs were touching. She adjusted again.
“Arietta, please,” he said, voice almost a whine, dropping his pen to stop her movements. “You said you’d be still.”
“I said I wouldn’t move so much. That’s not the same thing.”
Balor’s head fell forward against her shoulder. He was painfully aware of every place their bodies were touching, his own body screaming for something more. This wasn’t as relaxing as she’d made it seem it would be. “Is this sex act normally so… so…”
Ari laughed, the sound reverberating through him. “What, are you going to lose control?” she teased, scratching the back of his scalp aimlessly. She shifted her hips a little more purposefully, the sound of their bodies loud in the otherwise quiet room. “Gonna take me over the desk?”
For whatever reason, he hadn’t considered this an option. He hadn’t thought that she’d been leading him anywhere other than the intimacy of being held — something they both often wanted more often than either would admit. Now, he wondered if she was playing at something.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said, trailing his fingers under her sweater once again, pulling her down onto him a little harder next time she slid up his length.
She moaned louder, biting his shoulder through his sweater to stifle the sound. “I’d like it,” she whispered, voice wavering with pleasure, “if you’d finish your ledger.”
In the times that they’d tested each other’s patience so far, she was always the one to break first. But not tonight.
The groan that tore from him was less surrender than verdict. He stood, lifting her with a decisiveness that startled even him. She laughed in surprise, bright and delighted, and the sound alone nearly undid him.
He set her on the edge of the desk harder than he meant to. The ledger slid. The abacus rattled. He didn't notice.
Ari stared back at him, breathless and flushed, a daring twinkle in her eyes and a little smile still playing on her lips. The look was what finally pushed him past whatever breaking point she'd finally found in him.
Balor's hands closed around her thighs — not to restrain her, but because she was already pulling him closer with her heels digging into his back. She wanted him impatient. Needy.
He slid inside of her all at once, not with measured respectability but in reaction to the way her fingers dug into his shoulders, the way her back arched. Ari gasped, and he felt the sound of it shoot through his spine.
He paused only long enough to make absolutely sure this had been what she wanted before driving into her again. Deeper, because she met him halfway.
The room filled with the sounds of their labored breathing and the wet, slick noises of their bodies joining together with an urgency that belied the quiet evening. In the last month, they had gotten better at being quiet when they were doing this at the inn. Thin walls tended to breed gossip. He only wished they were at her farmhouse, that he could hear her voice break on his name and echo back to them when it hit the walls.
Ari made a soft, desperate sound when he pressed her back further against the desk, less gently than he'd meant to. Her curls were still damp when he ran his fingers through them, pulling slightly in the way he 'd learned she liked when she let him take the lead.
Ari’s hand slipped between their bodies, touching the place where they were joined before circling her clit. Every time he was fully sheathed inside her she made that same, desperate sound, and he could feel the pleasure pooling at the base of his spine.
“I’m close,” she whimpered, her hand locking around his bicep like she needed something solid to hold onto.
"Stay quiet," he breathed against her skin, half plea, half warning — not for her sake, but for the thin inn walls.
The desperate, keening moan she made was anything but.
Somewhere below them, a burst of laughter drifted up once again, though neither of them heard it. Or cared.
She came apart with his name caught in her throat, barely muffled in time by her hand. Her thighs clamped around him, pulling him in like she could anchor him there. Her body fluttered and clenched in a way that made his vision blur at the edges, the hand that she’d used to touch herself now wrenching into the front of his sweater.
His own movements stuttered for a moment, lost in the overwhelming sensation of her.
Balor tried, truly tried to slow himself, to keep from slamming into her again with single-minded intensity. But she was still moving against him, still riding out the last tremors of her release, and every small, helpless shift of her hips dragged him closer to joining her.
"You're—" he started, though he hadn't the foggiest idea what he'd meant to say.
Ari squeezed him tighter in answer.
The sound he made then was low and broken and unbecoming and far too loud for the thin inn walls. His breathing came in short sharp gasps as the last half-hour of build up finally overwhelmed him.
Her name tore out of him without permission. His hips jerked helplessly as pleasure overtook his carefully-woven discipline and patience. Each pulse of his release wrung another rough breath from his lungs and he buried his face against her shoulder in a poor attempt at quiet. But the desk was still creaking, and the abacus still rattling, and beyond their room it had gone quiet.
Ari laughed breathlessly against his temple even as she held him through it, her fingers digging into his back as if she'd won something.
In truth, she had.
Slowly, Balor's lips trailed from her ear to her cheek, then to her crows feet and her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly, though there was no real regret in it. Only wonder. He brushed a strand of hair away from her flushed face. “Perhaps I got… carried away.”
Ari cupped his face in her hands, still laughing and looking rather pleased with herself. Their hearts raced in tandem against each other as she drew a little pattern on his cheekbones. “No, that was exactly what I wanted.”
She stretched, the desk groaning as she practically laid back on his ledger. Her hair fanned out in firey tendrils, sweater riding up enough to reveal the soft curve of her stomach. The abacus sat crooked, beads scattered unevenly along its frame. “You always know just what I need,” she said, voice gone warm and happy.
After a long moment of both of them giving each other dopey grins, she propped herself up on her elbows and regarded him with renewed mischief. "Think we were quiet enough?"
Balor glanced toward the door at last, as though only just remembering the rest of the inn existed. He was having a hard time making his mouth form around any teasing words, try as he might. As best as he could without pulling out, he reached for the desk drawer, procuring a neatly folded kerchief. "Would anyone actually tell us if we weren't?"
"Elsie, maybe," Ari said, wincing when he finally pulled away.
His eyebrows pinched together as he tended to her gently. "So long as she doesn't tell Juniper. You wouldn't believe the potions she's tried to sell me since we've been—"
Ari wrapped her arms around him rather suddenly, pulling him down for another consuming kiss so delightful he wouldn't have minded living there for a while.
When they finally pulled apart, she sighed, patting her hands against him absently. She made no move to get off the desk, though Balor was sure the position wasn't entirely comfortable.
“Long day?” he managed to ask, when his brain still couldn't find anything lighter to say.
She nodded. “It’s so dark out. I like winter, but…” she stopped, then fixed him with a look, her smile growing. “I like it better when I’m with you.”
That warmed him even more than being inside of her did. Sometimes, when both of their defenses were low in moments like this, his heart physically ached. Valen had assured him that this was normal.
“I like it better when I’m with you, too,” he murmured, voice low and sincere. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say, but the words he wanted would come in time.
Until then, Balor would cherish these cold nights. In no time they were cuddled up beneath the covers of the Sleeping Dragon's slightly-too-small bed, with more than one dramatic vow on Balor's part to wake up and finish the ledger in the early hours of the morning, and more than a little teasing on Ari's part. The world didn't seem so cold — or so hard — when she was there to keep him warm.