Eseld
The tension has been building for days since the kiss.
Every accidental touch. His hand on my back when I pass him near the fire.
His fingers brushing mine when he hands me a plate.
The shrinking distance between us in the night, his breathing on one side of the dark and mine on the other, the space between us measured in inches that neither of us is trying to widen.
I've been lying awake. Listening to him not sleep. Feeling the heat of him radiating from his furs beside my platform, warming the air between us.
I decide on the morning I wake up and find his hand on the edge of my platform. Palm up. Fingers open. Resting on the fur an inch from where my hand was while I slept. He’s still asleep. He doesn't know he reached for me in the dark.
I look at his hand. The size of it. The scars on his knuckles. The way his fingers are curled slightly open, like he was holding something that wasn't there.
I put my hand in his. His hand tightens on mine without waking.
That evening, he’s sitting by the fire, his back against the base of his chair. I cross the hall and stand between his knees. Even sitting on the floor, his head is level with my chest. The scale of him fills the space between us.
“I want this,” I say. “I want you.”
His mouth opens. Closes. His hands are flat on the stone at his sides. His fingers pressing into the rock. His whole body still. Locked.
I know this posture. It’s not reluctance. It’s control.
I reach for his shirt. Work the laces with steady hands. My hands are always steady. The fabric parts. Gray skin underneath. I push the shirt off his shoulders.
I put my palms flat on his chest.
He’s warm. Warmer than usual. Under my hands, his temperature climbs. A surge, not a slow build. The air between us shifts.
“Eseld.” His voice is tight. A warning.
“I know.” I leave my hands where they are. “I can feel it.”
I spread my fingers across his chest. Where his ribs sit. Where the muscles layer. Where the ridges of old scars change the texture of his skin. The heat of him presses into my palms, up through my wrists. Not pain. Something my body leans into instead of pulling away from.
I pull my shirt over my head.
His hands grip the stone floor. I hear grit shift under his nails. His throat works. No sound comes out.
I take his wrists. Lift his hands. Place them on my waist.
His fingers span my midsection. The heat of his palms against my bare skin soaks through to muscle and bone. Like pressing against the stones around a fire pit. Warmth that doesn't stop at the surface.
“Eseld.” My name again. Rougher now.
“Touch me.”
I guide his hands up. Over my ribs. When his palms cover my breasts I gasp — the heat flooding through my chest, down my stomach. His hands freeze.
“Don't stop.”
His thumbs move. Slow. Testing. The heat of them against my nipples makes my hips jerk forward. I lean into his hands and his breath comes out shaking.
I push him back against the chair and straddle his lap. His hands catch my hips. Grip. I can feel every finger printing heat into my skin.
“Tell me if—”
“I will. Stop talking.”
He makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. Then his mouth finds my throat and thinking stops.
His lips are hot. His tongue is hotter. He drags his mouth down my neck and the heat leaves a trail that cools to warmth and craves more. My hands fist in his hair and I pull and the sound he makes is low, and raw, and I want to hear it again.
“Again,” I say, and pull harder, and he makes it again, and his hips shift under me.
I climb off his lap. Reach for his trousers. He lifts his hips and helps me drag them down.
I look at him.
The massive scale of him is everywhere else, so I shouldn't be surprised. But I am. Thick. Heavy. The skin darker gray than the rest of him, flushed with heat. He’s hard and the heat radiating off him is different here. Hotter. I can feel it against my thighs without touching.
I wrap my hand around him and the heat pulses against my palm, almost too much, and he groans and his head falls back against the chair and the tendons in his neck pull tight.
I stroke. Slow. Learning the shape of him. The ridges I can feel under the skin, subtle, textured in a way that’s not human. He’s slick at the tip. Hot. My thumb finds it and he hisses through his teeth and his hips buck.
“Look at me,” I say.
He opens his eyes. They're bright. Almost desperate.
I hold his gaze and stroke again and his breathing goes ragged and he reaches for me, hands tightening on my hips hard enough that I'll bruise and I don't care as he pulls me closer. Across the hall, the fire flares. Neither of us looks at it.
“I need—” His voice breaks. His hips push up into my hand. I've been wet since I took his shirt off, since his hands found my hips, and every shift of my body against him is a reminder. The ache between my legs has gone from want to need to something that has its own pulse.
“Eseld. V?khi. I need—”
“I know.”
I cross to the storage alcove. The jar from the back shelf.
The herb-infused one. The one I put back weeks ago with a hot face and no excuse for why I was thinking about it.
When I come back to the fire he’s watching me with an expression that makes my stomach drop.
Not heat. Not want. Something past both.
Something that has been locked in a chair for seven years and is not in the chair anymore.
I kneel between his legs. Pour the oil into my palms. It warms instantly against my skin — his heat is in the air around him now, everything close to his body running hot.
I wrap both hands around him. Slick. Slow.
The oil catches the firelight and his cock is hot in my hands, almost too hot, and I feel every ridge and every texture as I slide my grip from base to tip.
He’s big enough that the logistics part of my brain does a brief sharp calculation and the rest of my brain tells it to shut up.
He groans. Deep. His hips jerk and his hand comes up and wraps around the back of my neck and he says something in Jotunn — “Rauei, k?lthu” — low and guttural and I don't understand the words but I understand the sound a man makes when he’s losing a fight with himself.
“Come here,” he says. Not a request.
He pulls me up. Hooks his fingers in my trousers and drags them down.
I kick them off and he lifts me with one arm, effortless, his hand spanning my entire thigh.
I straddle his lap again. Bare skin on bare skin.
The heat of his cock pressed between us, against my stomach, and I can feel every degree of him.
His mouth finds my collarbone. His hand slides between my thighs. One finger. Thick. Hot. Careful, even now. He finds me wet and his breath catches against my skin.
“Hj?rtakh,” he whispers. His finger moves. Slow. I grip his shoulders and my breathing goes uneven. He learns what I need. He pays attention. He adjusts.
“More,” I say.
He gives me more. His thumb finds the right place and presses and the heat of it is something I have no frame of reference for. Hot as a stone from the fire pit, and the contrast between the cool air and his hand nearly undoes me.
“Now,” I say. “Thyran. Now.”
He lifts me. Positions me over him. I feel him at my entrance. Hot. Hotter than his hands, hotter than his mouth.
“Slow,” I say. “Let me.”
He holds still. Every muscle locked. Shaking with the effort of not moving.
I lower myself onto him. The first inch is heat and stretch and my body resisting and then not resisting.
I breathe. Take more. The ridges I felt under my hand, I can feel them inside me now, textured and hot, each one a point of pressure that lights up nerves I didn't know I had.
The heat of him radiates outward from where we're joined, spreading through my hips, my stomach, deeper.
More. Slow. He’s watching my face. Reading me for pain. I don't give him any.
“Solkha,” he breathes. His hands are shaking on my hips.
I take all of him. Settle. Full in a way that pushes breath out of my lungs. The heat reaches places that have never been warm. Deep. Radiating. I can feel his pulse inside me.
The warmth spreads through my hips, into my stomach, up through my chest. The cool air on my skin and the fire inside me and the contrast makes every nerve sing.
I put my hand on the back of his neck. Hold him there. His forehead drops against my chest.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
He lifts his head. Looks at me. I start to move.
Slow. Rocking. Feeling every ridge, every degree of him. The friction is heat on heat, his body stoking mine, and every movement pushes the temperature higher. His teeth scrape the ridge of my collarbone and I pull his hair and his hips buck and the rhythm breaks.
“Harder,” I say.
He stops holding back.
His hands grip my hips and he drives up into me and the force of it lifts me off his lap and I grab his shoulders to anchor myself. The sound I make surprises me.
Not quiet. Not controlled. The ridges inside me drag against every nerve and the heat builds with every thrust and I hear my own voice and don't recognize it.
He speaks Jotunn against my throat. “Min?n. Rauei vétkha.” I feel the vibration before I register the sound. The bass of it sinking through me, dropping lower, reaching the place where he’s inside me.
“How are you doing that?” I manage.
He lifts his head. Eyes glazed. “What?”
“What does it mean? Never mind. Don't stop.”
He puts his mouth against my neck and speaks Jotunn and the vibration goes through my whole body and my fingers twist into his hair and I say something that isn't a word.
“Again,” I say. “Again.”
He talks. He talks against my skin, against my throat, against the hollow behind my ear, and every word vibrates through me and his hips don't stop and the heat is building in both of us.
The fire across the hall has climbed to twice its height. The ice on the windows is gone. Rivulets of meltwater running down the glass.
I grab his face. Make him look at me.
“Stay with me,” I say.
His eyes lock on mine. Open. Wrecked.
“Min?n,” he says. His voice cracks. “Min?n. Min?n.”
His hips stutter. My body clenches. I feel the crest hit and I don't go quiet this time.
His name comes out of me, rough and loud, and his arms crush me against his chest and he follows me over and his roar fills the hall and the stone walls take it and send it back and the fire flares white-hot and settles.
He stays inside me. Neither of us moves to separate.
His arms around me. My face against his neck. His heart hammering. Mine hammering. Both of us shaking.
After a long time, he stands. Lifts me with him, still holding me against his chest, to the platform. Lays me down in the furs. Pulls them over both of us. Settles behind me, his chest against my back, his arm around my waist, his hand spread across my stomach.
The hall is warm. The stone walls have absorbed the heat. The air itself is soft.
I lift my head. Look around. Look at the windows, the meltwater still running. Look at the fire, burning higher than it should.
“Did you do that?”
“I think so.”
“You heated the whole hall.”
“I think so.”
I put my head back against his chest. His arm draws me closer. I'm small against him. Small and warm.
“Don't let me dream,” I say.
“I'll wake you if you start.”
I sleep against him. His arms around me. His heat surrounding me. The fire doesn't need tending and neither do I.