this is all of me for all the world to see; leliana

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

He ignited things in her she didn’t know were possible, bringing things to life in her chest—animating them with his touch. A soft moan escaped her as his mouth found her throat, as he tasted her there, and it was all she could do to stand, her heart pounding, pulse racing beneath her skin. This was dangerous, and she knew it; this was going to end poorly, and she knew that too. There was no other option for them. There was no way for this ship to be righted, the course corrected. This would go down in flames.

And she still handed herself over to the inferno.

But then—then—he stumbled backward out of it, and she was cooled by it, the space akin to throwing water over the flames. “Oh,” she said softly, the air whooshing out of her, her mind crawling back to her in bits and pieces. Reason returned, albeit unsteadily, and she clawed for some semblance of control, fighting to get a grip on the edges of her sanity. He had ripped that from her so cleanly, the edges of her fraying beneath the tsunami of his touch, the seams pulling apart from the gentlest of encouragements.

Still, the space afforded her a moment to breathe, to draw in a gulp of air, to steady herself—and although there was a part of her that fought against the way he pulled her back above water, there was another part of her that was grateful for it. That was glad to have control over her mind again. Even just a little.

His words should have made her happy, but instead, they made her cold. He hadn’t told her of his own accord. They had been words forced from him at her prompting, at her questioning. Shame flooded her belly. She shook her pretty head but still, went to curl into his chest, held by him. She could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat and for a moment, she lost herself in it, wondering why, despite the fact that she was cocooned in his warmth, and he had said the words she had longed to hear, she still felt so sad.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow