Chapter 62 - Aerin
AERIN
Theoden drops Aerin unceremoniously on the bed but wastes no time finding her lips again.
Kissing Theo is a relief, like a piece of a puzzle long absent now put back into place.
His lips are slightly salty, and Aerin can smell the ocean on him.
His hands roam her body, feeling her over her clothes, like he too can’t believe she’s real.
Like he too felt as if their years apart might never actually end.
Aerin grabs at his shirt, pulling it free from his hair and tossing it aside. Theo does the same to her, shedding her of both her shirt and bra hastily. He moves down her torso, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses.
“Gods, I’ve missed you,” he finally says, catching his breath and leaning back on his knees between Aerin’s legs. Aerin brings a foot to his bare chest. Theo undoes her laces with care before tossing the shoe over his shoulder. It clatters somewhere on the floor.
Theo is gorgeous kneeling there. His skin tan from the sun, his abdominal muscles rippling. His tangle of red hair is a mess of braids, shells and seaweed intertwined throughout.
“I am going to make you cum,” he declares, untying her other shoe. “Then you are going to tell me everything that is making you worry.” He tosses the second shoe.
“How do you know I’m worried?”
Leaning his body over hers again, Theo kisses her briefly. Then his thumb comes up and rubs the space between her eyebrows.
“Because of this,” he says softly. Tension she hadn’t noticed melts under his touch. He leans back, undoing the button of her jeans.
“That group of males is not treating you well enough if you’re forming wrinkles at the age of thirty-eight,” Theo mocks, pulling her jeans down in one swift motion.
He doesn’t bother pulling off her panties, he simply grips them in both his hands and yanks.
The fabric shreds with the bulge of his biceps. He smirks.
“They are treating me just fine, thank you,” Aerin says with a bit of attitude. Theo grabs an ankle and kisses up her leg, looking at her with a half-smile already on his face.
“I don’t see any cum dripping out of you,” he tsks, “Not well enough indeed.”
“Theo!” Aerin chastises, grabbing the nearest pillow and smacking him with it.
Theo grins. He has the kind of bright smile that makes Aerin feel like the only girl in the world.
“Don’t worry, we’ll change that.”
Before Aerin can reply, his head is between her thighs, his mouth on her body, and moans replace any coherent thoughts she has.
Theo reaches up her body, his hand shifting from Fae-like to Mer, translucent webbing and fingers claw-tipped. He rakes those claws down her stomach, not enough to pierce her skin but harsh enough to leave a trail of red welts in his wake. Aerin shudders on his tongue.
“I remember exactly what you like Pretty Girl,” he says with another smile between bouts of sucking on her clit.
Aerin has been with Theo a number of times, back when she was fumbling and inexperienced.
But they grew together. A lot of her sexual preferences now had been discovered at the hands of Theoden Marrow.
As such, he can play her like a fiddle. Aerin finds his hair with her hands, feeling the need to touch him.
To reassure herself that he is real, that he is here.
“You gonna cum for me?” Theo coos at her as her pussy pulses. Aerin is on the edge but not quite there, the thing she wants just out of reach.
“That’s okay,” Theo says, pulling back. Aerin whines in annoyance as he adjusts his position, now on his knees between her legs. He lays one of her legs on his shoulder and grips the other calf in his hand.
“You can cum on my cock instead.” He smiles at her that same way. It takes up his entire face, like sunlight shining out of him.
The smile opens in pure pleasure when he pushes inside of Aerin in one hard go. Aerin cries out in shock and pleasure. Theo, thrusting in earnest, causes Aerin to orgasm almost immediately, clenching hard around his cock as she rides the waves of pleasure.
“There it is, I knew you could do it,” he says. He looks down at her, his hair hanging around his shoulders, his smile on full display. “Now, do it again,” he orders.
Aerin laughs, so happy she could bottle it.
She thinks, all these years, she stuffed Theo into a box in her brain. If only to survive the loss of him. But now, with him inside of her, Aerin remembers. She remembers everything. And it’s glorious.
Theo sets a brutal pace, and Aerin comes around him again and again. After the fourth orgasm Aerin is limp, wrung out.
“That,” he says, slowing down, “that is the expression I was looking for.” He spreads her thighs and leans down to kiss her. Aerin grips him closer, wrapping her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, holding her to him as he lazily thrusts in and out.
She lets him pull back, only enough to look into his bright green eyes.
“I will never let them separate us again, Theo. Never again.”
Aerin promises both herself and him.
Theo trembles, his lips crashing to hers as he loses his carefully crafted control. He cums inside of her with their bodies pressed as close as possible, their lips interlocked, and Aerin’s heart full.
Aerin listens to Theo draw the bath from her comfortable spot on the bed. She doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to shatter the bubble she finds herself in.
Theo comes back into the room, leaning against the doorframe to the bathroom in all his naked glory. He smiles and Aerin swears it warms her. Like he is her own personal sun. She takes him in, takes in eight years of subtle changes.
Theoden is older than her, nearing a hundred now.
Fae, Mer, and Shifter age is always hard to discern, considering they age so slowly, but Aerin can see the years in small things.
In a small silver scar just over his hip bone.
In the start of creases in his smile line.
In the way his mass of muscles has increased, falling somewhere between Khortland and Malice.
Theo’s hair is braided back away from his face on one side, the braid intertwined with evidence of the ocean. The other side has small braids throughout, the ends of his hair hitting mid-peck. Aerin has always loved his auburn-colored hair and the way he styles it so proudly Mer.
“Come on Pretty Girl, time to get cleaned up.” Theo breaks the spell between them, moving to her side. Aerin lets him help her up and before her feet can touch the floor, he sweeps her into his arms.
Aerin doesn’t protest, planting a kiss on him instead, allowing the floaty after-sex feeling to last a bit longer. Theo takes her to the bathroom, the large tub filled to the top with bubbles. The room smells like the ocean: salt and seaweed. Aerin smiles, warmth filling her chest once more.
Gently, Theo sets her down near the tub, holding her hand as she steps inside.
The water is the perfect temperature, and the salts clear her head and relax her muscles.
Theo gets in as well, water sloshing on the floor.
He sits at the other end, settling in before his tail forms, so long the end tips out of the water and over the edge of the tub near Aerin’s shoulder.
Theoden’s tail is the most beautiful Mer tail Aerin has ever seen.
It always has been. It’s multiple colors: copper, iron, cerulean, and deep-sea green.
Each scale is different, with varying colors and textures.
Some have raised stripes, like a scallop shell.
Others have raised dots. Some have raised borders, and others are perfectly flat.
The scales are hard to the touch and rough, like a metal, but they move seamlessly and soundlessly with one another.
Each scale is as much a part of Theo as a fingernail.
At the end of his tail sits a massive, translucent, fin.
The thicker parts of the fin are the same mix of copper and blue-green as his scales, and despite looking fragile, the fin is strong.
The scales rise high up his hip bones, lining the V-cut of his abdomen.
The weight of his tail along her leg and up her side is a comforting pressure.
Breaking the silence, Theo says, “Are you ready to talk about it?”
Aerin sighs. She is, but she isn’t. She desperately wants to speak to Theo, to hear his thoughts. He’s the only one who truly understands everything: Fae culture, being royalty, her. He knows her better than anyone. All the things she’s hidden, all the things she’s done.
“What do you want to know?” Aerin finally concedes.
“Everything. Tell me everything,” he requests.
So, she does.
When Aerin reveals she cut Malice’s throat, Theo belts out a laugh so infectious it sets the room alight with joy. When he settles again, he looks at her and says, “A bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?”
Aerin smiles, and it isn’t forced, isn’t a part of any mask. She shrugs. “I was angry. At my father. At Malice. At the world.” His fin brushes intentionally against her shoulder.
“Is that what all the partying has been then? Rebellion against your father?” he questions.
“Yes and no. It’s one of the only freedoms I have. After a while, I saw what it could become: an illusion. If you tell them what to think of you, they don’t consider perhaps they should look further,” Aerin explains.
“And the Vipers, you trust them?”
Aerin nods. “I trust Vyx and Quinn implicitly.”
Vyx and Quinn may have had their own reasons for befriending her at first, but now, Aerin trusts them wholly.
Aerin continues on. Some things Theo knows, others he doesn’t. Every sentence she speaks feels like a bit of weight lifted off her shoulders and carried between them, lighter now that it’s been shared. From the weight of a brick to the weight of the bubbles around them.
“You’re still fighting with Bruin?” Theo asks. Aerin nods, playing with the foam in the water. “Are you still upset with him?”
Aerin’s eyes flash up to Theo’s green ones, curiosity filling them as he looks at her.
“Of course I am,” Aerin asserts.
Theo strums his fingers against the edge of the tub. When she doesn’t speak, he prompts her: “But?”
“But…” Aerin trails off, “But I miss him too. He’s my brother, my best friend.
” Aerin tries not to let the cavernous space inside of her where Bruin should be echo as she speaks.
Theo gives her a look that tells Aerin she’s being foolish.
“I can’t just forgive him. And I can’t let him know what I’m planning.
He'll never go along with it; he’d tell Father. ”
Theo shrugs. “All I’m pointing out is that you don’t have to stay upset with him if you don’t want to. You don’t have to tell him everything, but you don’t have to exile him from your life either.”
Aerin pushes the bubbles around again.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe I was too harsh.”
“He brought you one of your bonded-mates. He helped break your contract,” Theo says, raising two knowledgeable eyebrows at her.
She’s silent for a moment, reflecting. Never once has she considered the fact that in his betrayal Bruin freed her. Perhaps she does owe him a conversation.
“I’ll take it into consideration,” Aerin says with a smirk.
“So pragmatic,” Theo mocks with a grin. Aerin rolls her eyes and continues with the story.
They talk and talk. Until the bath grows cold. Until the bubbles fade. Until Theo is grabbing their takeout from the front door after wrapping her in one of her fluffy robes, perching her on her bed. They share the food while Aerin talks.
Eventually she tells him about the Witch and her final words to Aerin.
Unlike most of his commentary, which revolves around supporting her decisions and subtle jabs at Emrys, Malice, and Khortland, Theo says something that truly shocks her around a mouthful of food.
“I know a way for us to become bonded-mates.”
Aerin freezes. “You do?”
“There is a Mer binding ceremony. Old Mer magic. It can be dangerous, but I’m sure we could get through it fine.” He smiles. “It has to be done at a specific archway in the Mer waters. We could go tomorrow.”
Theo says it like it’s nothing.
“You’d do that? After all this time?” Aerin asks, letting her insecurities show. Theo puts down his utensils, his green eyes burrowing into her.
“Aerin Tolvare, I chose you. Every day, since the moment I met you. Even when it was painful. Even when you couldn’t choose me back.
” He inhales sharply through his nose. “I will continue to choose you. Every day. For the rest of our very, very long lives. I’ve waited eight years to tell you that and not a single day has it rang less true.
” Theo speaks with such conviction that tears spring to Aerin’s eyes.
He moves the food off the bed and pulls her to him. They stay like that for a long time.