Chapter 35 Bloom Lady #2
“The trade ambassador,” he went on in the absence of reactions, “has to ensure the travel of humans and the exchange of mutually beneficial products by going back and forth between the underground and the clouds. As the head of the carrier unit, Emissary Ris,” Karim’s tone was laced with warning now, “I expect you to be personally responsible for the transportation and safety of my very close friend.”
Ris’ reply? One deep grunt and a single flap of wings. Deidre’s reaction? A gaping mouth.
“As the Queen’s chosen ambassador, Deidre, you’re expected to use your light-tolerant eyes in the clouds to ensure the Kingdom is getting the best fruit and vegetables our ally has to offer.
Since your delicate skin should be shielded from the unforgiving rays of the sun, you are also expected to have housing there for in between trips.
I’m sure Emissary Ris will be able to find you a place to stay. ”
Finally, Deidre’s slack expression morphed into an ecstatic look. Ris issued an ever deeper grunt than before.
Karim was amazing. Under the pretext of implementing the alliance’s provisions, he’d made sure his friend would get exactly what she wanted. And judging by the excited flutter of wings, so would Ris. I was so happy for them, though I would miss having Deidre constantly around.
Soon after, Karim, Tisvali, and I were watching Deidre’s attempt to involve the gargoyles’ emissary into a cultural tour of the dance floor.
Compared to the elves on there with their willowy sways to the soothing music, Deidre was being rather progressive with her hip shakes.
But her efforts seemed fruitless at first, with Ris just standing behind her like… Well, like a stone statue.
“If he disappoints her in any way,” Karim declared, “on the moss or otherwise, I’m turning him into target practice.”
“And I,” Tisvali said, “am turning his tail into a souvenir for the Lake Lady.”
Seeing how big Deidre’s smile was and how the gargoyle’s tail slid sensually around her ankle, I was sure these two would be just fine.
“Don’t rip it, Karim!”
“Should I wait for winter to come and make all the leaves fall on their own?”
“Gosh, no! I will self-combust if I have to wait much longer.” Waiting until it was polite for us to leave the feast had been excruciating enough.
No touching, not even an exchange of loaded glances because of our linked braids–this had been the most demure wedding I had ever attended.
But now the ceremonialities were over, the ribbon linking our braids was off, and nothing stood in our way of celebrating properly on our moss.
Nothing but my dress, that was.
“Turn around, my flower.” Karim had me with my hands on the wall by the bed. “Stay still. Or I’ll be tempted to tear these maddening leaves off you.”
Yes! “Did you imagine doing that during the feast?” I asked breathily, since his lips were tracing the seam down my back.
“The second I laid my eyes on you in the Great Cavern,” he whispered over the small of my back, sending a shiver across my heated skin. “One day,” he took in my scent audibly, and his fingers dig in my hips possessively, “I will have you under the Cherry Tree, in the ways of old.”
“Mmm. I will ride you under its blossoms.” He made me feel just as possessive. I was starting to understand she-elves.
I gasped when in a single expert move, Karim flipped me, pressing my back against the cool rock, his fingers tangling in my hair. “Temptress.”
His lips captured mine with a hunger that matched my own. His tongue tasted me with barely restrained desire. Then his fingers slid down my back and… my dress pooled on the floor at my feet. Leaving me completely bare to his lustful gaze.
“How?”
“You’re easily distracted.” He drank me in while his hair was tracing my curves as if learning the shape of a goddess he was worshiping.
And worship me he had–every single day since we’d joined for the first time. But now it was my turn. “You’re always in control of your needs,” I said with a feigned pout. My hands wrapped around his fully erect cock, drawing a needy grunt out of him. “It’s time you let go. Completely.”
“Jasmine.” It was a protest and a plea wrapped in one.
“Yes, my Prince.” I guided him until it was his back against the wall and me, ready to worship at his feet. “Relinquish all control, for once. Be mine.”
“I am yours.” He was looking at me as if I were the center of his universe, and my heart skipped a beat. I could only hope that I wouldn’t disappoint. For my Karim had never been taken like this, and I wanted our wedding night to be unforgettable.
I gave the underside of his silvery length an experimental lick, and his whole body jolted, muscles going taut.
“Hands on the wall,” I commanded.
And just as well, because as I wrapped my lips around him, Karim’s claws scraped against the wall.
“Marvesinem,” spilled from his lips, then other lyrical words in Elvish as he unraveled under my touch, English now beyond him.
That wouldn’t do. I took him deeper in my mouth, hollowed my cheeks and sucked until only unintelligible sounds were coming from my Prince. Even the locks of hair he’d been teasing me with faltered in their movement.
“Jasmine…”
“Yes, Karim! Let go for me. I’ve got you.”
He came with a growl, spilling hot into my mouth. I took every single drop he gave me while I took in the magnificent sight of Karim coming undone. No tight-leashed emotions, just him and me in a perfect moment of pure abandon.
“Happy braid linkage.” I smiled up at him and licked my lips. I’d thought being flirtatious and daring was not my thing, but I’d simply needed the right guy to inspire me. I couldn’t wait to play with dirty talk and bold moves so I could watch Karim come with my name on his lips.
His dark eyes regained focus, and his fingers brushed my chin tenderly. “Happy braid linkage, my flower.” Then a dangerous smile spread across his beautiful features, and I knew I was in trouble. Of the kind that would have me coming, over and over again on his cock, screaming his name.
He pulled me up to his lips, tasting himself and me, and the next thing I knew, I was pinned under him on the moss. “My turn to drive you wild,” he said through a smile, and slid down my body.
Hours later, I was lying happy and languorous in the arms of my braid partner. I still couldn’t believe it. I was married to the finest male both underground and on the surface.
“Where are you, my flower?” His hand caressing my unbraided hair paused.
I smiled and resumed tracing his perfectly shaped backside with my fingertips. “Here.”
Here was also on the sofa and under his loose hair, which was covering me from chest to mid-hip, lying on my left side as I was.
Karim smiled. “Nai. Your body is here.” He put an emphasis on that by bringing me closer with an arm around my waist, lying on his right side as he was.
Pressed against the decadent length of his body, I couldn’t help but notice he was ready for yet another round. I was a sweaty, spent mess, and he was as full of stamina as ever. Mr. Insatiable.
“Your mind, however,” he continued, “is somewhere else. Are you thinking about the eggs?”
I chortled. A half-elf guest from another kingdom where keeping laying hens was not outlawed, had given us a dozen eggs as a gift. I had later discovered he was the person secretly supplying Karim, Tisvali, and Deidre with an egg each month. In other words, he was their egg dealer.
Karim’s fingertips moved soothingly along my back. “Are you thinking about your mother?”
I kissed him tenderly. I appreciated his genuine attempt to understand how human families worked. In his world, it was unheard of for children to stay very close with their parents as adults.
As usual, he turned the kiss into a deep one, but reigned himself in to let me answer his question.
“It wasn’t my mom that I was thinking about. It’s better to keep the thoughts about her at bay. Otherwise I’ll go crazy with worry by the time that gargoyle scout reports back.”
After all, it had taken the first scout sent by Sue to my mother’s last known address a whole week to return with news.
Since the second scout was from another homecloud–an ally to Sue’s kingdom flying over Asia–the diplomacy behind it all and the greater distance would undoubtedly take longer than a week.
“However,” I continued, “I should really find a way to repay Sue for her braid linkage gift. Seeing my mother’s handwriting, be it just on a sticky note letting me know where she was headed, means the world.”
“If she has made it to that human stronghold with your father and his wife, the gargoyles will find her. Even if she is no longer there, they are excellent trackers. You will not remain unknowing, my flower.”
Karim brushed an unruly curl off my cheek. “As for Queen Sue, it is I who should find a way to repay her. She took upon herself a task I should have undertaken the moment you told me about your parents’ unknown fate.”
I placed my hand over his heart, which beat faster than a human’s. “Don’t you dare feel guilty about it, Karim. Elves don’t have wings to travel that far, and you have done so much for me.”
He shook his head and placed his hand over mine. “Queen Sue’s gift put tears of happiness in your eyes, Jasmine. My surprise filled them with concern.”
I winced. “You’ve given me back the job that I love, and I’m so grateful. It’s just that the responsibility is big.”
Head Flower Gardener of the Kingdom–who wouldn’t gape at the title and sweat at the task?
And I was already in charge of helping newly brought human women settle here.
They were now free to choose whether to stay with the elves and work normal hours in exchange for food, shelter, and safety, to be flown to a homecloud, or to try their luck at surviving on their own back where the elves had found them.
The majority actually chose to stay here, now that the working conditions were fair and the humans had their own area of the cave system to call home.
The changes Karim and I had pitched to the Queen and she had begrudgingly accepted, were already resulting in higher yields in the gardens, making other kingdoms consider adopting our model.
Karim’s soft smile and tender caress of my cheek brought me back to the present moment.
“You have supervised people before, again in a garden setting. You are closely familiar with the flower gardens. You’ve proven you can preserve my people’s floral treasures.
Worry not, Jasmine. You will excel as Head Flower Gardener the way you do at everything else.
” The last words were coupled with his thumb brushing over my swollen lips.
I blushed at the vivid memory of our lovemaking. I had lost count of how many times we’d made each other come tonight.
Karim’s smile grew, but he did not get sidetracked. “You’re yet to tell me what has you lost in thought. I’m right here, ready for anything you wish of me. Just share it, and I’ll make it happen… Unless I’m the problem? Did I hurt you?”
“No, absolutely not! You have nothing to worry about. In fact,” I bit my lip, “what I’ve been meaning to share with you since this morning is that… you’re going to be a daddy.”
His eyes went wide. “What? When? How? The tea… Didn’t you have your first bleed for the month days ago?”
“Firstly, Mr. Elf,” I said through a giggle, “human women suffer through that only once a month, thank heavens.” His lips formed an ‘o’, but I put a finger on them before he could say anything. “Secondly, unlike me, the edelweiss was not drinking morning-after tea.”
He searched my face for a confirmation that this was, indeed, a joke. Then he laughed.
Karim had the most lyrical yet sexy male laugh that I’d ever heard.
In the two weeks that we’d been moss partners, I’d gotten him to smile a lot.
But to laugh? I’d achieved the feat only a handful of times.
So I knew it took a lot to get him to relax to that extent.
He was simply too used to being guarded in front of others, him being the Prince and having to meet impossibly high standards and all.
Well, I’d once promised to get him to smile, lost in a dream of mine at the time. But look at him now, laughing at my stupid joke with me in his arms and under his hair.
I swooped in and kissed him, his laughter pouring into me.
Karim nipped my lower lip. “So, we’re having a second baby?”
I grinned. “Make that second and third. It makes no sense, Karim. That first edelweiss shouldn’t have survived the transplantation, let alone be multiplying. What’s with the crystals and soil in your world, seriously now? Does magic exist?”
“Asi. In your hair,” was his evasive answer. “I think that in this case, it’s not the environment to blame. It’s the edelweiss.”
“How so?”
“I told you it was a miracle, a sign from Nature herself.” He tilted my chin up with the brush of a finger. “I simply didn’t understand its purpose at the time.”
“Oh?”
“It was all aimed at leading me to you.”
My heart sped up at his words, pronounced with utter conviction. “I thought it was the sight of my feet that did the trick.”
He let out an appreciative mmm and ran his fingers through my hair. “The most muddy yet seductive gardener’s feet I’d ever seen. And this pretty hair–it defies all laws.”
I giggled. “O-kay?”
His lips, full and silvery, were almost upon mine now. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you and refrain from a touch. Now I know that resistance was futile. I was yours from that very moment.”
His mouth finally took mine. By the time we broke our kiss, I was so dizzy from arousal that I barely noticed he was carrying me away from the sofa.
“Where?”
“Our garden. To cherish what Nature has created: the edelweiss and the whole of you.”
I put my hand on his chest as he carried me, just like I had done on the day he’d first held me like this. When he stopped and met my eyes, I said tentatively, “Maybe we, too, could create life? The two of us together?”
A smile of pure, boundless joy lit his face up. He nodded.
I smiled back and rested my head on his shoulder, leaving myself in his embrace.
For the planting of this type of seed, I knew he wouldn’t need guidance from me. And the only gardening tool we required was now between us. Big, pulsing and ready to overcome any obstacle on its way to complete fulfillment.
Love.
THE END