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She could have easily alerted the camp by now. He watched as she considered it, eyes flashing briefly to Wyll, then Lae'zel, who slept but a few yards away. The monster hunter, and the githyanki a hair's breadth from gutting all of them anyway. He couldn't begrudge her choices.
But she just waited, and the teetering on the edge of ruin made him bold.
"Consider it a friendly exchange, or, uh- An investment! In our mutual survival."
He knew he was probably pushing it, but then again, the tiefling was hard to predict. She brushed away "helpless innocents" with a bluntness he came to admire, yet somehow managed to put herself between them and danger regardless. He was half expecting it - and half in shock - when she said yes. Gruffly, with a sharp alertness in her eyes, and yet…
Astarion muttered some assurances as he knelt down, feeling a little outside of himself. He brushed the rough material of Hol's sleeping shirt aside, fingers alighting gently on the smooth, thrumming skin of her neck.
He could barely remember anything after the moment his teeth sank into her.
The warmth - like a bud bursting suddenly into blossom - hit him first. And then, a weightlessness, a relief replacing the dregs of whatever mangy animal had been coursing through his system. Each pump of her heart made stars burst behind his closed eyes, cementing his craving deeper and deeper between each beat.
Astarion felt something on the edge of his hearing, which seemed irrelevant at the moment.
Then he sputtered, coughing up precious blood as a hand pushed firmly under his adam’s apple. Right, he was- he recalled where he was.
The tiefling was staring up at him, nonplussed. It was hard to arrange himself into someone that could pretend to care, but he managed.
That was… much easier than wrangling a boar. And there's significantly less hair to pick out of his teeth afterwards. An understated but very welcome benefit to top off the shimmering, almost ticklish energy that was running through him now. It was as if all of him was asleep and the pressure was lifted, suddenly, to be replaced by full-body static. No wonder Cazador had forbidden this, the bastard.
He could feel the crackle of life in the woods skirting their encampment. A blurred picture resolved itself: the sharp curve of each leaf, the snapping of branches under the feet of some clumsy beasts. Power snapped through him, pulling him taught, more alert than he could ever remember being. He couldn’t wait to taste it all, brand-new.
A part of him was a little curious about why the tiefling had allowed all this, but Astarion was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Other people's intentions were flighty things, pointing this way or that like a weather vane - not something to concern himself with. After clawing his way through the last 200 years, it was only just that he be given some good fortune.
Still, that didn’t mean he should forget his manners. Especially not if he wanted this to happen again.
He half turned, inclining his head at her generous gift, and stepped into the shawl of night.