"Temper"

It is on her way to the library to share a glass of wine or two with Dorian (or five, given the day's events) that Varric calls her over. With only the weight of his heavy stare he draws Evelyn through the stone arch of the doorway and into the stairwell beyond.

"Watch out for Curly," he warns, after the latch of the door has clicked softly behind him and they are partway up the stairs. "I don't know what happened with your most recent 'acquisition', but he's like a drunken Qunari possessed by a rage demon and surrounded by Tevinter magisters."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, Varric, but are you trying to tell me the Commander of the Inquisition's forces is angry with the way I handled Samson?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it, Inquisitor, but he's hotter than the Hissing Wastes."

Evelyn sighs heavily. She knew, of course, that her decision to let the Commander of the Red Templars continue his wretched existence, albeit in the grip of the Inquisition, might not sit well with any number of her companions. Sera wanted him covered in honey and laid out for the birds and bugs, and Iron Bull had volunteered to arrange a meeting between Samson's head and his warhammer. But the only opinion she sought as she sat in judgement that afternoon had been Cullen's. She met his golden eyes where he stood solid and tall beside her throne, as that man (her tongue tasted like ashes against her teeth at the word) knelt before her. With his sweat-drenched, stringy hair, and teeth twisted yellow against sallow lips, her skin crawled as he spoke of his hopes, his obedience, his duty.

But what could she have done? What other choices did she have, in a world which already seemed to have so few after the birth of the Rift, after the capture of Samson? Killed him, as if she were him?

"Thank you, Varric," she manages through her frustration, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I will go and speak with him."

"Yeah, yeah. Try not to break too much of the furniture. It's costing me more money than you think to get it shipped from Denerim."

As Evelyn stalks across the bridge to Cullen's office, she doesn't feel the cold through her growing anger. Let him make the next decision, then, if he has such a problem with hers! Let him sentence the next man or woman to have their head upon the block, or their remaining years in the dungeon, if her choices were so poor! Let their faces be behind his lids at night, their voices in his ears.

She wrenches the heavy door of the tower open with one hand, so bright and burning is her anger, and she is ready to snap. Really snap, for maybe the first time since Haven. But in the moment that she teeters between unleashing her anger or tamping it down, Cullen's voice rings out hollowly across the flagstones of the tower.

"You let him live."

Evelyn doesn't speak, not yet, but her body is tight as a bowstring and the tension between them crackles like red lyrium. As if the decision to let Samson live was easy? As if she enjoyed it? She was at the Shrine of Dumat, just as he was. She, too, saw Maddox's lips froth with blood-flecked spittle as the poison took its' dire toll. She has seen their soldiers lie like broken dolls on dozens of battlefields. For a moment she imagines with grim satisfaction the sensation of her closed fist connecting with the solid plane of Cullen's jaw.

She slams the door shut behind her.

"What would you have had me do? Turn him over to Dagna, where he would be without supervision? Send him into the woods where he could rejoin Corypheus?"

"Kill him, damn it!"

"And what would that have accomplished but made him a martyr to their cause? At least with you questioning him we might gain secrets, intelligence, something! At least this way it won't be a waste."

She can almost see her words, her reasons, bouncing off of his plate mail. Turning from the window, Cullen stalks towards her, his movements lithe and predatory.

"He made a mockery of the Templars, of being a commanding officer! And you let him live! How many of his soldiers are dead, or will die because of him? How many of our soldiers?"

"You say that as if I don't know, Cullen!"

His nostrils flare and color rises high on his cheeks. "You don't! I am the one who trains them, the one who sends them out. I am the one who writes to their families, to their husbands, wives, and children to tell them that their loved one isn't coming home! And because you let him live, one day I might have to write to yours!"

His fist arcs hard against the stone wall, and a smattering of dust drifts down from the loft above. She is still livid, but it is swiftly becoming tempered by something else, something pressing hard against her ribs even as her heart clenches in fury. Not disagreement, then, or even true anger, but fear.

Stepping forward, until she can feel the anger rolling off of his skin as if he is a blast furnace, Evelyn reaches for his hand where it remains planted against the flagstones. Even now, even angry, she resists the temptation to squeeze the rapidly blooming bruise across his fingers. Blood is beginning to ooze from the split skin of his knuckles. Evelyn shakes her head.

"Fool," she whispers.

And then his hand is out of her loose grip and pushing against her belly, driving her against one of the large oak bookshelves. The wood digs in at her calves, at her waist, just below her shoulder blades, but Cullen keeps pushing, and his breath fans hot over her prickling skin before his mouth is suddenly on hers, bruisingly hard. He has kissed her with passion before, but this isn't that: this is fear and fury as he thrusts his tongue past the barrier of her mouth, as his teeth edge none too gently along her lower lip. Cullen is invading, conquering, forcing his advantage and her surrender. One of his large hands covers her breast, and even through her breastband and tunic the heat of him burns like a brand, brighter and hotter as his fingers somehow manage to find her nipple beneath layers of fabric and pull, and she gasps. Again, he is kissing her, and Cullen's lips work against hers in a punishing press, his stubble rasping against the smooth skin of her chin and cheeks as his teeth work along her lower lip.

She should be angry, incandescently furious even, and while the heat of her anger is still there, in the clench of the fist at her side and the roiling heat in her belly, something else is there, too. Something sparking hard and hot, shivering up her back in electric tendrils; Evelyn swears she can feel his heartbeat echoing her own in his lips against hers.

But surrender has never come particularly easy to her.

Evelyn bites down on his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood, and Cullen rears back like he's been slapped. The haze of anger and lust clears as his eyes, their dark pupils blown wide, slowly come to focus on her, on her white knuckled hand gripping the bookshelf above her head to support herself, on her bruised lips, on her pulse fluttering, hummingbird fast in the arc of her throat.

Cullen freezes, arm flexing against her waist where he has her pinned against the bookcase, his hand against her breast now still. The horror in his eyes forms like a storm cloud, and in their depths she sees the thoughts as clearly as if they are etched there in blood-red ink: Maker help me, I've lost control again, I've hurt her, I am the most wretched worm to have ever crawled Thedas.

Cullen drops both of his hands to her waist and moves to turn his head away, ashamed, before Evelyn grips his stubbled chin in her free hand and snarls, "Andraste's flaming ass, don't you dare stop now."

Tightening her legs around his waist she pulls him against her arcing body, hard, and she can't stop the high, tight gasp that escapes her throat when the ridge of his cock presses against the seam of her leggings. And then Cullen's mouth is on hers again, at the corner of her lips and down, teeth and stubble rasping on her skin. Growling, he bites and she gasps, and suddenly she is wrenched from the bookshelf, her fingers scrabbling for purchase and finding only empty air.
Stomach-tiltingly fast she is pressed over the surface of Cullen's desk, and the edge of the wood bites into her belly. Cullen's big, calloused palm wraps against the back of her neck, pressing her cheek against the reports which lie strewn over the top.

"Tell me to stop," he commands, his voice dark against the shell of her ear as the weight of his chest pushes her harder into the desktop.

"Fuck you," she hisses, digging her nails into the wood.

His hand cups the curve of her rear and squeezes. "That's the plan."

"Less talking. I'm still mad at you."

"Likewise," he says, wrapping a hand around her hipbone. Diving beneath the laces of her leathers without ceremony, she feels the tips of his fingers sweep through the slick arousal between her thighs. Cullen murmurs throatily, "Maker's Breath, you're wet" as he presses two fingers inside her, just barely, an inch or so, just enough that she aches for more. Evelyn gasps and hates the way he chuckles, a hand between her legs and the other slipping from her neck to between her shoulder blades.

"Someone seems to be enjoying themselves," Cullen murmurs, thumb pressing against her clit.

She thrusts back against him, and finds to her delight that his rigid cock, still in his trousers, fits wonderfully in the cleft of her rear. As she rocks, as much as she can, Evelyn replies tartly, "you mean you? Ah!"

His fingers, thick and long and wonderful thrust inside her fully as his thumb is unrelenting against the bundle of nerves at the jointure of her legs. Maybe it is the anger which, despite this, is still sparking hot, but she is wound so tight that she feels close to finishing already, and Evelyn bites her lip against the sensation of his callused thumb rasping over her clit. The heat coiled in her belly licks up her spine and down, down to where his fingers ply her skin, where his thumb moves in rapid, unrelenting circles. Thank the Maker…

He must have felt her tighten around his fingers in anticipation, because suddenly she is empty and he is grinning.

"Not yet, love. Remember, you're still angry."

"Furious," she hisses, and at this point she isn't sure if she means for his anger about Samson or the way he's denied her completion. The warm air of the tower is torturous against her overheated skin as he yanks her leggings and smalls down to her knees. With a booted foot he kicks her legs apart, and she marks the metallic clang of his swordbelt as it falls to the floor.

"Now, Evelyn, what way should I-"

"Cullen, I swear to the Maker, Andraste, and her pet Mabari that if you don't stop talking I will – fuck"

He is sheathed within her, and Evelyn's gasp at his sudden intrusion turns swiftly into a moan, stifled against her shoulder. She'll be damned if he gets the satisfaction, though the pain of their rough coupling is so swiftly tempered by hot desire that her head spins.

She squeezes the full length of him within her, and Cullen's hand against her shoulder slides to tighten around the nape of her neck in warning. He sets a punishing rhythm, his hips snapping against hers hard enough that the desk inches forward, screeching against the stone floor. The rigid length of his cock is so perfect, so hard and hot as he withdraws and returns, and though she cannot see him with her cheek pressed to the desk, she knows the look on his face, the determined set of his jaw as he seeks her peak and his own, the taste of his sweat as it pools in the divots of his collarbones and falls down the ridges of his abdomen.

Her fury and her desire are coupled now, and she needs the full force of him as if the ire is a wound which needs lancing.

"Harder, Cullen," she gasps. Her fingertips leave scratches in the wood as he assents, pulling her back roughly until she is only leaning against the desk instead of on top of it. He grips her neck in one hand, fingers grazing the edge of her jaw as he turns her head to his, and her lips part to his kiss, to his tongue plundering her mouth. His fingertips rest lightly as they fall, down the valley between her breasts, down the plane of her stomach, and he grips her hips and begins his pace afresh, but deeper.

"Yes," she moans, "yes, Cullen," and in the space between one moment and the next, she is lost, lost to the blazing heat suffusing her limbs, to the breathy gasps she makes as she quakes, to the hot length of him which has brought her end.

He groans her name as he pistons, once, twice, and again, until Evelyn feels a sudden rush of warmth within and a substantial weight above as he crumples, pressing them both to the desk anew.

As her breathing slows, she becomes aware of his lips working against her nape, of his tongue darting out to taste her skin as he still lies within her.

"My love," she manages, "as much I enjoy being below you, I am having quite an issue of breathing at present."

He huffs out a laugh, and slips from her as he stands fully upright again. She turns, and kisses him.

When they part, he is still laughing.

"What, pray tell, is so funny, Commander?"

He tucks a sweaty lock of hair behind her ear.

"Well, I was just thinking…I'm not angry anymore."

Running a fingertip over his split lip, courtesy of her own bite, she smiles.

"Actually, I'm not either."

-FIN-

A/N: Comments and constructive criticism always welcome!