16 #4
He felt a surge of goodness at having done this, thinking of the conversations of the scullery maids outside the kitchens, the jeer of their laughter about the men they spoke of, and that he had definitely pleasured her, and he felt very good and the goodness went right to the root of his cock.
He was on his feet again, pulling her against him, hand on her breast, moving one of her small hands to find him where he was still sticking straight out of his breeches.
He made her wrap her hand around the base of him, and he made her tighten her grip the way he liked and he made her rub him and he kissed her breast and then her mouth and then back to the little nipple of hers and he was spurting all over her fingers in moments.
She had not been expecting that. She let out a noise of dismay, and he couldn’t help but laugh at her, and she lifted her hand in front of her face and gaped at the thick liquid clinging to her palm. “Does it always do that?” she said in a tiny voice.
“Mmm,” he said.
“It’s the seed,” she said in resignation. “That’s the part that makes the babe in me.”
He wasn’t amused anymore. He looked around in the barn for something to clean her with. There. He spied a rag hanging on a hook on the wall. He seized it and began to mop it off her hand, vigorous in his movements.
“You don’t have to…” she trailed off.
He didn’t know what to do with this rag now. He’d have to get rid of it, maybe? He balled it up in his fist and then tucked himself back into his breeches and laced them up.
She was putting her breasts away when he looked up. He was disappointed. He liked looking at them. “Good, that was good,” she said to him. “Now, the plan.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The plan? What plan?” Actually, wait, he did remember her saying something about a plan not to marry Celedin, but that she needed his help with this first.
“It’s not exactly my plan,” she said. “It’s Flaihir’s plan, but I think it will work. I am going to make some other elf lord fall in love with me and buy my bride price from Celedin.”
He gaped at her. She was going to what?
“And I’ll convince him to take you, too, somehow, though I do not have a plan for how I will do that, I admit. Maybe you’ll have an idea about that. Sometimes, you do have ideas, I think. Or do you? Maybe all of your ideas have actually been terrible.” She mused over this.
“Why did you need me to do this if you’re not planning on marrying Celedin?” he said in a tight voice. “You went on and on about how you’d be left to him, and how he would be the only person to touch you—”
“Right,” she said. “I should have thought that through better.”
“Why did you come to me? Why did you want this?”
“I thought if we…” She closed the distance between them and she put a hand to his cheek. “You felt it, didn’t you, the way it feels when we touch? I needed you to touch me again. I need you to feel it, too, because the only way that we can—”
“I don’t want you to marry some other elf lord,” he said. “And you will not be successful in convincing some man to bring me along when you get married. Don’t be daft.”
“I think I could,” she said. “But that is why I need your help. There was a time when you would have done anything for me. I need to know what it was that I did to kindle such a thing within you, so that I can kindle it in someone else.”
He stepped backwards, astonished.
She waited, looking at him innocently.
“You want to make some man fall in love with you, you mean?”
“Do you love me, Dathor?” she whispered, her voice gentle.
He wanted to hit her. He didn’t. He clenched both of his hands into fists.
“Because I love you,” she said. “And I think you do love me, but you’ve convinced yourself that I do not need you or something, that you have nothing to offer me, and you think there cannot be anything between us if that is the case, but it is foolish, don’t you see, because when we touch, all of that fades away, and it is about—”
“Stop,” he said, shaking his head. “Please stop.”
“I cannot.” She came closer, reaching for him.
He backed away. “You absolutely can.”
“I want us to be together. We can never do it here, because Celedin would kill you if he discovered us together, but if I can find some other lord, one who I can make desperate for me, so desperate that he will allow me anything I wish—”
“No,” he said. “You’re mad. There is no man on earth who allows a woman to have another man.”
She hesitated. “Are you certain?” she whispered.
“I won’t go and watch you with your elf lord,” he said. “I don’t wish to be your servant, little fair elf, no matter how much you wish it. You want to keep me in your chamber, take me out when you want to look at me, have me parade around half-naked and follow you around—”
“I think this is your fantasy, not mine,” she cut him off.
He hung his head. Did he sometimes stroke his cock and think of being hers in that way, some oiled and silent slave whose job it was to see only to her comfort and pleasure? He had to admit that he did. But just because it made him hard, it didn’t mean he actually wanted a life like that.
“Obviously, if I marry another elf lord, he won’t let me keep you in my chambers,” she said, her voice going scoured at the edges.
“But we could find somewhere for you, perhaps somewhere in the house. You can read and write and do figures. You could assist with the books. You could serve at a table. You could—”
“Stop,” he said. “I would much rather be outside, looking up at the sky, seeing the cliffs in the distance. I can’t be trapped in a suit, with a tie tied tight round my neck. It would not suit me. Anyway, I do not wish to be a servant at all. I will not live that way.”
“It won’t be forever. The plan is to find someone who is a bit older, someone who will die ere long, leaving us years and years together.”
He lifted his gaze to hers.
“We must wait, of course, until I have borne him an heir,” she said. “But then I will be secure, and we’ll have nothing in our way.”
“Wait,” he breathed. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? “You want me to murder your husband?”
“No,” she said. “I have just said he will be old and will die because of that. I may be able to do it myself, you know.”
He turned away from her, shaking his head. “You’re a fiend, then, are you not?”
“If I am a fiend, then so are you,” she said. “Do you have some other idea?”
He turned back around. “If we’re going to kill someone, why not Celedin?”
“Because in that scenario, I have to have Celedin’s heir first, and that means I have to… with Celedin, and—”
“But in this scenario, you have to be with some other elf lord, so what is the difference?”
“The difference is that the other elf lord I will be able to influence and mold and convince to do my bidding, and you are going to help me figure out how to make sure I can do that.”
“Because you can also influence and mold me?” he said, his nostrils flaring. “I’ll share with you how it is you’re moving me about like a puppet, is that it? So, then you can go and control some other poor sod of a man?”
“No, with us it is real. I want him to believe it’s real, and you can help me understand what makes men feel that way.”
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t be part of this.”
“No?” she said.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Because you’re jealous?” she said. “Now you’re jealous and being pigheaded and not helping me, when all these months when my ankle was not healed, you simply submitted to it all and accepted that I belonged to Celedin? Now?”
“It’s different,” he said. It was different, but he wasn’t sure why he had given up so easily, and he did not wish to give up anymore.
“I think you want me to be with Celedin. I think you are insecure, and you know that I will never love him, but you worry I might actually fall in love with someone else.”
He shook his head. That was not it.
“I think you know that you are horrible, and that no self-respecting woman would fall for you, anyway,” she said.
Why was he in love with this woman? He gazed at her and he could not fathom it anymore.
When had it started? What had triggered it?
It was because she had been kind to him when they were children.
He knew it was because of that. But she had always taken him for granted, considered herself above him, and she was always and forever using him, and…
“The farm across the channel,” he said. “What if we try to run away together again and get our own land?”
“We don’t know if we can do that.”
“If I can find out we can, will you drop this scheme?”
“What about cooking?”
“If I can solve that problem, too, will you come with me? Will you run away with me and start a life with me, the two of us as equals, not me as your perpetual servant?”
“What about children?” she said.
He buried his face in his hands.
“What if I want to have your children?” she whispered.
He dragged his hands down his face. “We can’t do that if you are married to an elf lord.”
“Do you want to?” she said. “Do you want to get me with child and see me round and heavy with your babe? Do you?”
Shadows of the forest save him, he did.
He went to her and roughly pulled her into his arms.
She melted into him.
He kissed her. “Do not let anyone else touch you, please, Aerhril? Wait for me. Wait until I find some way to win you?”
“To earn me,” she said, touching his face.
He furrowed his brow.
“Something Flaihir said,” she breathed. “She understands men.”
“When do you earn me?” he said, searching her gaze. “Hmm? When does that happen?”