Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 10

A crackle of lightning reveals his refuge in this deluge. Amongst the pitch black clouds and rain pounding against his body, Cullen spots a rickety old barn. The same one where he gave Caroline his first ever kiss all those years ago. Scrabbling in the mud, his boots sinking to his ankles, he moves to pull on the door.

"Cullen..." her voice echoes all around him.

He whips his head around, calling, "Caroline," in fear she's trapped outside in this storm same as him.

"Cullen..." the voice sings from inside the barn. Smart. She always was the smartest of their group.

Tugging on the handle, Cullen hefts the wheeled door open and steps out of the storm and mud into a world of hay. It clings to his filthy boots, his eyes skipping about the looming shadows above. By the darkened skies and sudden shafts of lightning, the beams take on a sinister air. Instead of the familiar barn, it feels of the gallows, where many a deserter hanged by his neck until he was dead. Another thunderstrike highlights a rope dangling off a beam, the end coiled up as if it's a noose waiting for its next victim.

"Caroline?" he places a hand to his mouth calling for her, a shudder wracking his body.

"In here," she calls, sounding no worse from the wear. She seems almost delighted by the unexpected turn of weather which forced the pair into the barn together.

Cullen turns around a stall and stumbles into a nest of crates. Piles and piles of wooden boxes rise up towards the dark ceiling in a confounding maze. It feels less like a barn and more the belly of a...of a ship.

The moment the memory strikes him, he catches movement. A finger strikes a match, the tiny flame placed to a candle. Cullen holds his breath when a spring green dress rises from the darkness.

"Gwen?" he whispers, confounded by the woman left shivering in the barn alone. Her deep green eyes widen, the candle perched before her flickering in the winds.

As he steps closer, the light aiding his path, Cullen glances at the dress. Rains suckered it to her body, brown sections of skin rising from below the satiny depths as the poor woman shivers.

"God, you must be freezing," Cullen begins, tugging off his coat and wrapping it around her shoulders. He fingers the lapel, the piping belonging to a naval man's uniform, not a Duke's.

Her sweet face tips up to his, a smile blooming across her lips and into his heart. Raindrops glisten across her cheeks, Cullen transfixed by the light dancing over her glowing skin. "Thank you," she whispers.

Without pause, Cullen sweeps his hands around her jaw, tips her head back and plunges for a kiss. Heat fills his belly, her succulent lips pursing and folding to his. She raises her arms, his jacket scattering to the wooden planks as Gwen wraps her hands around his back.

Their tongues taste of the other, this verdant woman baring notes of summer clover and apples baked in the sun. How tenderly she presses her lips to his sends Cullen's heart soaring. His thumbs glide over her cheeks, removing every trace of rain from her skin as he dives deeper and deeper into her mouth.

Her scintillating body presses to his, Cullen's shirt sopping as her wet breasts glide across him. He aches to rip his clothing off, to touch her, taste her, know her in the nude. But duty lingers in his mind, even with his lips upon hers, even with his hips bounding into hers with a wild hunger.

It is Gwen who draws off his belt, who unbuttons the fly of his trousers. Cullen's hands yank at the hem of her dress, lifting it higher and higher as she leaps back onto a crate. Bent over her, her skirts resting in her naked lap, Cullen sweeps his body between her thighs. They cup around him, cling to him, need him, want him.

As he approaches the crate, a folded knuckle pressing into the wood, his forehead grazes Gwen's. The heat of a woman cries its siren song for his manhood, not even a thrust away. But he gasps down at her, a shiver of the grave crawling up his spine. Her tender fingers draw up her cheeks, tugging on the scruff of a wild man of the sea. As both palms cup against his face, she whispers, "Take me."

"Good morning, Sir."

Sweet Lord!

Cullen bolts upright, his head screaming in confusion as the dark, lusty barn gives way to a chipper dawn. Wincing, he glares at his steward, already preparing the basin for his daily shave. Because he is the Duke of Honnleath now.

And that...that was all a dream. A dream that boiled his blood with a want he thought expunged ages back. Was it all Caroline's doing? Did her temptation revive it? If so then why did he wish to...to...?

"James?"

"Yes, Sir."

Cullen tries to clamp down on the rock hard erection springing between his thighs. "May I have a few minutes alone?" To try and corral my shame back into its stall.

____________________________

The countryside rattles by, Cullen with cane in hand glaring out the west window. It was a frosty breakfast for the Duke doing his best to not glance at the woman who pressed her advances upon him awake, or the woman he pressed upon in his dreams. Whether Gwen is aware of his sudden bitter turn is difficult to surmise. She seems in good sorts despite the weather, cross-stitch laying across her lap as she embroiders a clipper crossing the ocean waves.

He should have known it was a dream from the start. A cocktail of heady emotions and past memories bubbling to a peak from the storm outside. For starters, his leg didn't bother him once while the ability of him to sweep a woman off her feet and attempt to...

That is not a thought to be trailing to fruition.

"Look, a cow!" the reason for this trip pipes up from the east window, his nose pressed to the door as he stares across the verdant fields.

"Did you enjoy yourself, Branson?" Cullen asks.

Eyes the same color as his brother's turn back to him, the boy's exuberant face fading at the dour uncle speaking to him. "Yes, Sir."

It was how Cullen spoke to his father, how the servants treated him. He despised it. Leaning forward, Cullen roughed a hand over the boy's hair, causing Branson to laugh. He hears a shared quiet chuckle from the Governess, her cheeks ripening as if she's pleased. The dream's tendrils refuse to leave his body, her scent and taste suckered to his soul.

Cullen leans back, focusing on the window to avoid her.

"Can we come back?" Branson pipes up, wide eyes staring from the Duke to his teacher.

"I will..." Cullen gulps, trying to steady the rush of blood through his desiccating veins, "We'll have to see."