26
NOW, AERHRIL AWOKE in the night to the sound of her bedchamber door opening. She stirred, trying to stir herself to wakefulness, and then there was a shadow falling over her, and she knew it was him, even before she was able to open her eyes and focus on his features.
She smiled up at him, yawning.
He sat down on the bed next to her. “I had already thought it, you know? That we must have an alliance between the orcs and the Valaedor. But you have the right of it, the wrinkle I was not seeing, which is to go directly to the revolutionaries. We will go tomorrow to see Elrion. You will convince him that we are going to build a brave new world together and that he must help us.”
“I will convince him?” she said. “With you? I don’t think the sight of us together is going to make him particularly pleased.”
“Oh, does he know? About us?”
“Why do you think he called off the engagement?”
“Well, because he knew that you sent his beloved orc foundling across the pass,” he said. “I did not realize he had any notion of you and me.”
“I had to explain it to him. He would not stop harping on why. He said that if he understood why, perhaps he could forgive me or ‘correct’ me, make me over into his proper wife.”
He smirked. “I would have liked to see his face.”
She sat up in the bed. “It was the worst day of my life.”
“Oh, was it?”
“Well, one of them, anyway. I seem to have had a number of very bad days in my life, actually.”
He held her gaze. “You don’t think it will work, then? You don’t think you can convince him? You used to be quite able to sway him.”
“Yes, because he thought he could rescue me. But once he knew I was so thoroughly tainted, I was past the point of rescue.”
“What did you tell him I did to you?” Dathor was chuckling.
“Oh, I denied everything, of course.”
“So, he thought the worst. He thought I fucked you?”
She sighed. “And there you are, so proud of the idea of it.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m here because I want to.”
“Oh, is that how you choose to broach the subject? ‘Hello, Aerhril, I want you to go and convince your ex-fiancé to help us create an impossible alliance. Will you lift your nightdress for me?’”
He smirked. “Well? Will you?”
She groaned, flopping down, pulling the covers up over her head.
He pulled them back down, but gently. He bent down to kiss her.
She tangled her hands in his long black hair. “Dathor, you do not deserve this from me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you forced yourself on me and I can’t simply allow the man who raped me to be… you are not the hero of this story. You are not good.”
“No, but neither are you the heroine. Neither are you good,” he said. “Besides, you want me. And I want you. And I can do it much better than what I did in the chapel.” He was tugging on her covers, gently pulling on them.
She clutched them for a moment, and then sighed and gave way.
The blankets slid down to uncover her long, white shift.
He lay a large, thick hand on her belly. He dragged it up over her nightdress and let it settle between her breasts. “I used to think, when I was lying awake at night in Arzakh, about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did. Lay there and stroked yourself and imagined—”
“You thought of me?”
She groaned. “You were likely over there bedding orc women.”
“Oh, yes, hundreds of them,” he said, moving over to cup one of her breasts through her nightdress.
“Hundreds,” she repeated. “They likely found you impossibly handsome, with your elfin features.”
“Mmm,” he agreed. “Yes, they would line up outside my hovel.”
“Your hovel?”
“Obviously. We all live in hovels in Arzakh.” He teased her nipple through her nightdress.
It had been a very long time since he’d done that to her, and she had forgotten how nice it could be to have another person’s fingers on her sensitive places. She sighed. “Lines of hundreds of orc women, just waiting for the chance to feel the stretch of you in them?”
“I could only make it through five a day before I was entirely spent.” He touched her other nipple.
She opened her eyes. “So, you have not touched anyone either, then?”
“No,” he said. “But you have been kissing Celedin, I warrant.”
She shut her eyes again, letting out a groan. “Oh, more than kissing, really, but I didn’t want to.”
His fingers stilled. “What are you saying?”
“After you left, he made me use my hands on him. If I tried to resist, he hit me until I complied.”
He stopped touching her.
She opened her eyes to see he had clenched his hands into fists.
Celedin had sort of protected her from the steward while the steward was still alive.
He had been firm with his father, unwilling to sell her to some other man for money, to force her to play games for other men, though she did not know if it would have been worse—that life—or the life with Celedin.
Celedin did not force her to stroke him after that.
Indeed, he was a well-behaved elf lord, who did not come to her alone without a chaperone.
He was amenable to all of her excuses to put off the wedding, even after the steward died, even after they were past the ages that they had been meant to be when the marriage was to occur.
He would shrug at her and say, “Who do you belong to, Aerhril?”
She would have to choke out that she was his.
And then he would say, “We can put off the wedding as long as you like.”
It wasn’t about sex for him. It was about possession, she supposed.
He had used his cock to take possession of her that day, but it had only been a tool.
He didn’t much care about sex with her beyond that, though sometimes, he would say to her, “If you keep putting off the wedding, I’m going to have to take you by force and get an heir on you, I suppose, and then we’ll have to be wed if you wish to avoid shame. ”
But he never did.
“I want to kill him again,” Dathor growled.
“Yes, but Dathor, you used me as fodder in your invasion. You sacrificed our first time together to your revenge and this war, and you are not really better than he is.”
Dathor looked down at her, his nostrils flaring. “Of course I am. Celedin is a miserable wretch. Was. He was a miserable wretch.”
Yes, here she was talking about him in present tense. She scolded herself.
Celedin had accepted Raclahad when her mother sent her sister to live with them at Foxglove Peak.
And he liked going places with her, to events like dances and other social functions.
He liked to buy her pretty dresses and parade around with her on his arm.
He would be nearly affectionate with her in those sorts of situations.
She remembered once, sitting in the carriage as they came home from a dinner party and he smiled at her in the scant light and breathed out that she was a vision, the most beautiful woman in the entire room that night, that he didn’t deserve to have a woman like her on his arm.
He did not. He had her there by coercion and force and by her own misfortunes.
But it still warmed her.
Maybe if she was honest, there was some affection on her part for Celedin, only because of there having been so much time with them together, having known each other since they were children, having been engaged to be married for nearly half of their lives.
Sometimes, she had to admit, when he kissed her, she kissed him back.
Now, she said to Dathor, “You are a miserable wretch, too.”
“So, if there’s no difference between us, why didn’t you marry him when you were meant to, when he turned twenty years old instead of four years later?”
“Because I love you,” she said. “Because I tried not to love you, but I couldn’t. Even though loving you is likely the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I cannot seem to stop.”
He bent down to rest his forehead against hers. He sighed a ragged sigh. And then he sat up and stripped off his shirt. He climbed into the bed next to her and pulled her into his arms.
She melted into him, thinking that they’d been sleeping next to each other for so many nights and on any one of those nights, they could have been doing this, and she felt a pang at the loss of all those nights.
He reached down and slid his hand under her nightdress.
He traced his fingertips over her thighs and her hips and her belly and then back to cover one of her breasts again.
“As I was saying, when I was lying awake in Arzakh, I used to think about how often it was I had seen you entirely bare, how often I’d had you nude in my arms, without a stitch on. ”
She sighed. “It wasn’t that often, not for either of us. We were always desperately worried of being caught or we were in the cavern and it was often cold there, even with the fire you would make.”
“Yes,” he said. “I would remember you, then, in just parts. I’d think of the way I’d loosen your corset and ease it down and there your bare bosom would be, all round and pert and rosy tipped.
I would think of how soft and sweet it was to squeeze one of them.
” He squeezed her breast. “I would think of the way your stiff little nipples tasted when I suckled them.”
She groaned.
He moved his hand to her other breast and ran his thumb over her nipple.
“I’d think of your skirts bunched up, your legs bare for me, the juncture between your thighs on display, the way it felt to touch you there when we started, to find you dry and tucked away, and then to go back and find you wet and swollen and engorged.
I loved the power to affect you in that way. ”
She squirmed.
“How will I find you now if I touch you there?”
She gasped. “More. Suckle me first please, as you spoke of?”
He laughed a fond chuckle. “Then take this nightdress off and be bare for me?”
She smiled up at him, shy. “Are we really going to do this? Is this the time?”
“The time was a long time ago, I think,” he murmured. “We are simply catching up.”
She sat up and pulled the nightdress over her head and tossed it, and he made an approving sort of noise low in this throat, and then he was on top of her, kissing her, gathering up her breasts with both of his hands, gently kneading them in ways that stretched her stiff nipples in pleasant ways.
He put his mouth to her, and she bowed up, arching her back, trying to get herself into his mouth better.
Pleasure gusted into her, like winds on the cliffs, like a coming storm over the mountains.
He left his fingers to tease her nipples, wet from his mouth, and he slid his way down her body to put his lips and tongue to her between her thighs.
It was like a gathering thunderstorm, lightning dancing through the sky, little tremors working their way through her as she prepared to rise to her pinnacle.
“So slick here, are you not?” He licked her.
“Yes, I get that way with you,” she gasped.
“Just from looking at my scarred back,” he teased.
She crested. “Yes,” she breathed.
He fastened his lips around her clitoris and sucked it.
She sobbed. She had forgotten what it felt like when he did that.
“Oh, Dathor, that’s too good, that’s far too good,” she moaned.
It had been a long time since she’d pleasured herself.
Her climax was coming for her like the rush of encroaching dark clouds, like the gales of the wind, like the rumble of thunder.
He was relentless, sucking in just the same rhythm, not varying, staying right where he was.
And she climbed and climbed and burst like a sunbeam breaking through gray clouds, burning away the rain.
In the wake of it, he kissed her mouth, and she tasted herself on him, and that made her feel a forbidden sort of joy as their tongues tangled. “I missed you,” she moaned. “I missed everything about you.”
He groaned. “I missed you, too.”
“You missed my cunt.”
“I did, I did, very much,” he breathed. “You missed my cock?”
“Yes,” she panted. “And you have not shown it to me. You are wearing your trousers, even now, though I am bare for you.”
He kissed her once more, a thorough kiss, and then he moved off to shed the rest of his clothes.
She sat up and put her hands on him as soon as he was free. She sighed over the length of him. She planted a little kiss on the tip of him.
He shoved her back on the bed playfully. “Mmm, no. I am finally going to feel you, and I want your quim, not your mouth.”
“Finally?” she said. “You have felt it before.”
“I have not. It felt like nothing,” he said, covering her body with his own. “You know I did not come.”
“Yes,” she said. She traced her fingers over his chest. “Will you now? Inside me, I mean?”
He reached between them and rubbed the head of him against her sensitive, freshly climaxed clitoris and she moaned. “I would like to,” he breathed.
“Are you asking if I want it?” she said. “Because I do.”
“You mean that?” He pressed lower, his voice barely substantial as he slipped the tip of him into her slippery opening.
“Yes,” she gasped. “I want us together. I want you to get children on me. I want to be your wife.”
He let out a mangled noise and he made a thrust, rolling his hips, and he was suddenly taking up every bit of space inside her, just like before, just like in the chapel, when she had thought about how impossibly large he was.
She gasped.
He was kissing her, moving inside her, groaning that she felt so good, so very, very good.
She felt pinned down, stretched open, crammed full of him. She gripped his shoulders and let go and gripped them again.
He kissed her jaw, her chin. “My wife,” he repeated, his voice deep. “And you will take my seed.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I want it, I want your seed.”
“I want to give it to you. I want a world where orcs and elves can live together, where we can have offspring. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Come inside me, Dathor.”
“I will,” he wheezed. “Soon. I cannot last. You feel far too good.” He kissed her neck. “Beg me for it. Beg for my orc seed.”
“Please come inside me. Please fill me up. Plant your orc seed deep in my womb. Please… husband.”
He let out a strangled cry, and thrust deep into her, and then suddenly yanked himself out and spilled all over her belly.
She let out a little yelp of surprise.
He grunted. He kissed her shoulder. “I don’t want you with child yet, Aerhril. I just got you back.”
She laughed.
He kissed her mouth. “All right?”
“All right,” she said, clutching his face.
He rested his forehead against hers. “All right,” he said again, softly, as if it settled something.
She shut her eyes and felt the heft of his body settling against her own, felt his hot release cooling on her skin, and she felt, for the first time in perhaps her entire life, that things were exactly the way they were meant to be.