Chapter 7: Afternoon Delight
The world returned in fragments. The scent of crushed thyme. The rough weave of the blanket beneath her cheek. The solid, radiating heat of Ralg’s sleeping form beside her. Sunlight, thick and golden, cut across the floorboards, revealing dancing motes of dust. Sabrina lay still, listening to the deep, even rumble of his breath. The hollow terror of the previous day was gone, not erased, but packed down under a layer of spent passion and profound exhaustion. Her body was a map of sensations—the pleasant burn in her muscles, the tender ache between her legs, the ghost of his hands on her skin.
She shifted, and he stirred. One eye opened, a sliver of sharp blue regarding her in the morning light. He didn’t smile. He simply looked. Then his arm, which had been draped over her waist, pulled her closer, tucking her back against the solid wall of his chest. His face buried in her hair. They lay like that as the cabin warmed, a silent communion.
Finally, he spoke, his voice gravelly with sleep. “You’ll be moving on.”
It wasn’t a question. She nodded, her hair rustling against his beard. “High Hrothgar. The Greybeards.”
“Aye.” He released her and sat up, the furs falling to his waist. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’ll need supplies. The pass is bitter this time of year.”
He rose, naked and unselfconscious, and began moving around the small space, building up the fire, pulling out a cloth sack. The domesticity of it, after everything, felt surreal. Sabrina watched him, this man who had been both sanctuary and storm. She got up, her body protesting, and dressed in her own clothes, now clean and dry. She felt his eyes on her as she laced her leathers, but the gaze was different. Sober. Assessing.
“Come,” he said, once she was booted and armed. He led her out the back door, into a small, fiercely cultivated garden hidden behind the cabin. It was a riot of green against the grey rock and pine, protected by a low stone wall. The air was rich with the scent of soil, blooming mountain flowers, and pungent herbs. “You’ll know these,” he said, pointing to clusters of lavender and thyme. “This is bleeding crown. Good for poultices. And this,” he said, squatting by a plant with vibrant red flowers, “is dragon’s tongue. Rare. Burns hot. Useful.”
He began to harvest, his big hands careful and precise. Sabrina knelt beside him, helping. The sun was warm on her back. The simple, purposeful act was a balm.
“You know a lot for a hunter,” she said, brushing dirt from a root.
“Wasn’t always a hunter,” he said, not looking up. His voice was flat. “Was a soldier. Imperial Legion. Saw enough wounded to learn what keeps a man alive when the priests aren’t around.”
The admission hung in the air. It explained the disciplined strength, the strategic mind, the solitude. She remembered the brutal efficiency of his combat the day they’d met. A soldier’s efficiency.
“Why did you leave?” she asked quietly.
He paused, a knife hovering over a stem. His jaw worked. “Got tired of dying for colors on a map. Got tired of taking orders from fools in polished steel.” He sliced the stem with a sharp snick. “The forest makes more sense. A wolf acts like a wolf. A bear acts like a bear. Men pretend.”
She understood that. The Thalmor with their civilized rape. The political puppets in Solitude and Windhelm. The dragons, at least, were honest in their fury.
They worked in silence for a time, filling the sack with useful plants, some dried meats from his cache, a waterskin. The tension from the morning began to dissipate, replaced by a calm, companionable rhythm. The scent of the thyme was overwhelming here, spicy and clean.
As she reached for another bunch, bending at the waist, she felt him go still behind her. She knew that stillness now. It was a prelude. A current of awareness crackled through the sun-dappled air. The memory of the previous night, of being taken before the fire, bled into the present moment. Her skin prickled.
His shadow fell over her. He didn’t touch her at first. She heard the soft rustle of his clothes, the quiet intake of breath.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice low.
She did, slowly, rising to face him. His expression was intense, focused. The look of a man seeing a thing he intends to claim.
“Last lesson,” he said, closing the distance between them. His hands came up to cup her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. “The land provides. Strength. Sustenance.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Pleasure.”
He kissed her, but it wasn’t like the tender kisses by the hearth. This was hunger, reawakened. It was the sun-warmed promise of the garden colliding with the raw truth of their parting. She met it with equal fervor, her hands grasping the front of his tunic.
He broke the kiss, his breath hot on her lips. “Bend over,” he growled, his voice rough. “The table.”
A thrill, sharp and electric, shot through her. There was no tenderness here, only need. She turned, bracing her hands on the rough-hewn wooden table used for sorting herbs. The sun beat down on the back of her neck. She heard him spit, once, into his palm.
He didn’t bother with her laces. He simply gathered the leather of her trousers and her smallclothes in one fist and yanked them down to her knees. The cool mountain air kissed her exposed skin, followed a heartbeat later by the blistering heat of his touch. His calloused palm smoothed over the curve of her ass, a possessive stroke. Then his fingers dipped between her legs from behind, finding her already slick, her body anticipating what was to come.
“So fucking ready,” he muttered, dragging his fingers through her wetness. “This cunt knows what it needs.”
He positioned himself. The broad, blunt head of his cock pressed against her entrance. He pushed forward, not with a slow invasion, but with a single, insistent, deep thrust that buried him inside her in one stroke.
Sabrina cried out, a sharp, unfiltered sound that scattered birds from a nearby pine. The fullness was staggering, a breathtaking claim. Her inner muscles fluttered around him, clutching at the sudden, delicious stretch.
“Gods, yes,” she hissed, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the wood.
He gave her no time to adjust. He withdrew and slammed back in, setting a relentless, driving pace. Each powerful thrust rocked her whole body forward on the table. The wood groaned. Bunches of drying herbs trembled. The scent of crushed thyme and lavender mingled with the musk of their coupling.
His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, holding her immobile for his use. The sounds were obscene and glorious—the wet, rhythmic slap of his flesh against hers, his grunts of effort, her choked moans.
“This is what you’ll remember,” he gritted out, pounding into her. “Not that Thalmor prick. This. My cock splitting you open in the sunlight. Your pretty elf ass in the air, taking every fucking inch.”
His words, filthy and direct, stoked the fire in her belly. She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, wanting to be filled even more completely. “Harder,” she demanded, the word torn from her. “Don’t you dare hold back.”
With a snarl, he obeyed. His pace became brutal, punishing. One hand left her hip and fisted in the intricate braid he’d woven for her, pulling her head back sharply, arching her spine. The mix of pain and pleasure was intoxicating. He owned her in this moment, utterly, and she reveled in the surrender.
“You feel that?” he growled in her ear, his breath coming in hot gusts. “That’s me. Planted deep. You’ll walk to your fucking mountain with my seed swimming inside you. A reminder.”
The crude promise, the primal claim, pushed her to the edge. The coil in her abdomen tightened to a screaming point. The world narrowed to the slam of his body into hers, the rough wood under her palms, the blinding sun.
“Ralg!” she screamed as the orgasm shattered through her. It wracked her, violent and consuming, her channel convulsing around his driving length.
Her climax triggered his. With a final, deep roar, he drove home and held, his body stiffening against hers. She felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release fill her, just as he’d promised. Wave after wave, a searing intimacy that left them both trembling and spent.
He collapsed over her back, his weight pressing her into the table, his face buried in her shoulder. They stayed like that, joined, breathing in ragged unison, sweat-slicked skin cooling in the breeze.
They stayed like that, joined, breathing in ragged unison, sweat-slicked skin cooling in the breeze. He softened inside her, a slow, intimate retreat. Finally, he straightened with a low groan, his hands gentle now on her hips as he helped her stand. Her legs trembled. The proof of their union dripped down her inner thigh.
Wordlessly, he retrieved a clean cloth from a nearby bucket, moistened it, and handed it to her. Their fingers brushed. She cleaned herself as he righted his own clothes, the silence stretching but not uncomfortably. It was a silence of shared weight. The garden was wrecked where they’d stood; crushed thyme and overturned soil.
“Come inside,” he said, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. “I’ll make tea.”
She followed him, the soreness between her legs a persistent echo. Inside, the fire crackled. He moved with a familiar, deliberate pace, filling a kettle, fetching two chipped clay mugs. She sat on the hearthstone, watching him. The soldier. The hunter. The man who had just taken her with such purposeful ownership against the herb table. Her skin still smelled of him and of the earth.
He handed her a steaming mug of mint tea and sat beside her, not touching. They drank. The warmth spread through her chest. Outside, a bird called. The ordinary world was reasserting itself, painting over the raw, brilliant colors of their passion with softer grays.
He stared into the fire, the flames reflecting in his blue eyes. His profile was grim, carved from the same stone as the mountains. He swallowed. The quiet deepened, growing heavy, until it was a tangible thing in the room.
“Sabrina.”
She turned to him. His jaw was tight, a muscle flickering.
“It would be… selfish of me,” he began, the words emerging slowly, as if dragged from a deep place. “To ask you to stay.”
He looked at her then, and the mask was gone. The grim hunter, the fierce lover, was absent. In his eyes was a stark, vulnerable need that stole the air from her lungs. He set his mug down with a soft click.
“But I am a selfish man.” He reached for her, his big hand curling around the back of her neck, pulling her forehead to touch his. He closed his eyes. “Stay,” he whispered, the word rough with emotion. “Don’t go to your damned mountain. Stay here. With me.”
He held her tighter, his breath hot against her cheek. His next words were a low confession, fractured and true. “I love you.”
Sabrina froze. The shock was a physical jolt, colder than any Skyrim stream. It stopped her heart for a full, suspended beat. Love. It was a word that had no place here, in this cabin of rough passion and survival. It belonged to ballads, to soft things. Not to them. Not to the Dragonborn and the deserter who met in violence and fucked in gardens.
She pulled back just enough to see his face. The raw hope there, mixed with the certainty of rejection, was devastating. Her mind, so quick with a cutting retort or a lustful command, went blank. Then it filled with a cascade of images. The hot spring. The terror of the Thalmor’s touch. The safe, solid darkness of Ralg’s cabin that night. His hands, weaving her hair. His body, moving in hers with a possession that felt, now, like a language.
Her shock melted, not into grand passion, but into a profound, settling clarity.
She touched his cheek, feeling the coarse texture of his beard. “Selfish,” she echoed, her voice quiet but steady. A faint, unexpected smile touched her lips. “I’ve just learned I can shout dragons from the sky, Ralg. The whole world is pulling at me.” She paused, letting her thumb stroke his skin. “But right now, in this place, with you?” She shrugged, a small, casual gesture. “I wouldn’t mind staying.”
The tension in his shoulders unraveled all at once. He let out a breath, a shuddering thing, and pulled her into a crushing embrace. He didn’t kiss her. He just held her, his face buried in the silver hair he’d braided, his arms like bands of iron around her. She felt the frantic hammering of his heart against her own.