This man, who she now thought had had her almost from the moment she first pulled him out of that crevasse, and he'd smiled at her like that. Who, on some days, had made her think he was making her fall more in love with him with every word he said. Who at one point she thought she'd never have, unable to believe that a man who'd had a literal goddess could truly want a woman like her, who couldn't even get through a simple magic lesson without mangling the words hopelessly. Who'd refuted those fears with words upon words, even as he'd kept her waiting, even after he could've had her without exploding, and she sort of understood why, but she'd still been so afraid. But now...
She'd been worried, at the start of this, that she might overwhelm or scare him, with the intensity of her passion for him. But he'd met it with a passion for her to match. Things had been a bit awkward at first, his hands clumsy and shaking. But the fervour of his kisses, his unabashed eagerness, the way he'd groaned with his head between her legs, his words, oh, his words; Sara had never been showered by so many words of praise and adoration in her entire life. To say nothing of the way he gazed up at her, awe giving way to heat, when she'd first lowered herself down and taken him inside her, how he'd struggled to keep looking into her eyes even as she'd taken him to pieces.
He had made her feel more loved than anyone she else she had bedded in a very long time. Maybe since her wife had died, now over thirty years ago.
It was all still rushing through her. It was almost too much. Sara felt a couple of tears slip down her face and onto his skin.
The touch of them to his skin seemed to bring Gale out of the daze she'd left him in. A hand took her chin and gently nudge it upward to look up into his worried face. "Sara? Are you all right? Have I done something wrong?"
"Oh, Gale," she sighed, and pulled herself back up to kiss his mouth again. He pulled her down as he kissed back, the two of them trying to wrap themselves back around each other.
"You are exquisite," he gasped up at her, when they finally came back up for breath. "I could spend all of eternity making love to you." But then he groaned, and this one was clearly a noise of discomfort. "I think I might have even overdone it."
That made it her turn to be anxious, as she asked, "Did I hurt you?" She could see already the marks she'd left on him, with her mouth and her nails, ones she'd wanted to put on him, honestly, and he'd happily consented in the moment, but maybe she had gone too far.
"Oh, I imagine we'll both be a little sore in the morning." He actually chuckled. "But I'd do it all again. Besides," he added, his voice dropping a little, "I suspect when we get back to camp, we'll both be drinking a bit. I'm just glad I got you here before you drunk too much."
That was true. They'd all arrived back at camp without appetites and with the need to chug some alcohol. A few hours trying to impersonate followers of the Absolute at Moonrise Towers would do that. Sara was feeling much better at the moment, obviously, but she wasn't entirely sure how long that would last.
Gale shifted under her, and Sara carefully pulled herself off him. "Hope you don't mind the mess," she felt the need to comment, when she saw the mix of their fluids she'd left behind.
"I would make us some towels," he said. "Except I kind of feel like that's admitting we're done for tonight, and I know we probably should be, but..."
She looked his body over, even as he moved back into her arms to cuddle. "If you don't have any more in you..." she started.
"I have more I want to do."
"So do I," she rejoined. "And while you certainly ate your fill of me, I haven't even gotten a taste of you yet. So if you can't get it up again tonight, well, that just means we're going to have to do this again."
Gale's eyes went a little wide at that, and his cheeks turned very red. Sara gave in to the urge, leaning in and giving his lips another light kiss. It had been a long time for her here, too, to have a sweet little moment like this, and immediately understand, underneath it, how precious a moment it was.
She wrapped them up in the blanket, reminding herself that it probably didn't matter if it got dirty, and waited until they were settled down before continuing, "And while this was what I wanted for tonight, I would be willing to try what you suggested, with the Weave, I mean." Had she been more certain there would be a second time, she might have even agreed to it that night. But even the whole thing the orb aside, she was determined to at least try to free the prisoners in Moonrise the next day, which would put them in the most dangerous position they'd been in yet. It had felt more important, for what might very well be their only night together, to have what she'd known would be real, what she'd known would give her what she'd craved with Gale.
"If we reach another time when I can, certainly," Gale agreed. "If I'd been more confident of having more time, I might not even have proposed it yet. I certainly understand why that might not have been the most comfortable prospect for you. It wasn't for me, the first time, and it was much smaller a leap for me than it would've been for you."
"Wait, what?" It was Sara's turn, now, to turn Gale's face to her own, to show her alarm. "Gale, were you...pushed...like that?"
"Not like that," he said, maybe a touch too quickly. "Or at least, I suppose, not any more than any student of the Weave is typically pushed; I'd already done things that had unnerved me far more."
Sara wasn't even sure what she thought of that. "Well," she said, "I hope you weren't too disappointed. I'm sure it's..."
But before she could find the right word to finish that, Gale said, oh so quietly, "But that's just it. You know, Mystra used to disparage this sort of thing. 'Crude mortal rutting,' she called it, which means I called it that, too, because who was I to disagree with her? But....well, someone help me, because I feel like I'm committing blasphemy saying this, but...I think this, here? Was the best lovemaking I've ever experienced in my life."
"The best?" Sara repeated dumbly, her mind already reeling from the implications of what else he'd just said. "But...but you said...sensations beyond..."
"Oh, the actual pleasure...well, it's more different than anything else. Enough so that it's harder to make a direct comparison to this than you might think. But that's not...I mean...I meant..." She watched him grope for words, which was something in itself, that he needed to do that, to explain this.
"It's just..." he finally managed, "...you were more here. You were so passionate. You gave so much of yourself to me. And how it made me feel, what it made me do....you know, if you'd have asked me an hour ago if I'd ever felt like I had to hold back with Mystra, I would've said no, of course not. But now? I don't think I could've ever dared unleash with her like that. I didn't even know I had that in me. I suppose maybe we both could've done the same in the Weave, but, well, I certainly wouldn't have blamed you if you found that harder. I think it probably was better to do it this way."
Sara thought of her wife, and also of a couple of the lovers she'd had before her, and how much she'd taken for granted every single time she'd lain with them. Of course sex didn't always have that kind of intimacy, that kind of freedom, and you didn't always need it, but the thought that Gale had truly *never* had it, not even with the one he'd devoted himself to...
How many things in life had Gale never had? She didn't even know, really. And what he had had, the Weave that he had loved the most about his life, she was starting to think he'd often not had on his own terms.
That was enough to make her seize his head with both her hands, and hiss at him, "Gale, you have to live. You can't die now. Not like this. Not when there's so much for you to have, so much for you to do. So many choices you can finally make, because I'm betting you've never really made them, have you? You can't give that all up now, not when you're so close to having it." Then, because she feared it would sway him more than what she'd just said, she added, "And also, I can't stand the thought of losing you like that!"
For a moment she thought he might insist she was wrong, or even get angry at her. But he just looked at her, all too sad and not a little incredulous, and just asked, "Oh, Sara, how can you possibly love me this much?"
Such a pathetic man. Z'rell's words from earlier that day involuntarily ran through Sara's head. She didn't know what she was talking about, Sara reminded herself. There wasn't any need to heed the words of someone who would kill a loyal guard just to demonstrate her power.
Sara doubted even all the alcohol she'd be drinking when they got back to camp would erase the memory of seeing that ogre fall dead, the victim of she herself asking Z'rell to demonstrate her power. No fight, no honor, no chance. And she couldn't even be sorry for what she'd done, any more than she could regret killing those unfortunate minions in front of Thorm, because they were all minions they now wouldn't have to worry about tomorrow, or after that.
They hadn't really stood a chance either, those she had told to fight her for their lives. Sara had already been noticing that she and her companions had been steadily getting stronger, and more powerful. And she had also been getting harder, and more ruthless.
And now, she looked at Gale, felt so much tenderness fill her, bathed in the warmth in his eyes, and simply replied, "How could I possibly not love you this much, when I look at you, and find you like this?"
For a moment those eyes closed, and she didn't know if he was going to say something further or not. Then he murmured, almost to himself, "Have I been so blind? All these years..."
And then he was kissing her again, fiercely on the mouth, and then all around her face, and when he rolled her onto her back she felt the heat rise up in her loins again; apparently she did have at least one more round in her. "You are..." he said, "I need to say...I don't know..."
"We'll talk about it in the morning," she managed to get out, because she didn't think she'd get any more words together at all right now, especially since she was feeling his body stir again against hers.
"Good idea," he agreed, before nipping against her ear, with "You were wrong, you know, when you said I'd eaten my fill of you. I could never get my fill of you."
He made no protest though, when she pushed forward to flip them over, and once again hovered over him. "Be that as it may," she said to him, "it's my turn first," and she began kissing her way down his chest.