Claimed by the Elven King: Part Three (4 page)

His lips moved to the skin beneath my chin
and sucked hard. The sensation went straight to my groin, making me throb and
gasp. I arched up in an attempt to connect with the full length of his body for
some much needed friction.

“Please Sethian…” I pleaded when I felt him
immediately push my hips down with a firm hand.

“Not yet,” he said against my neck, and I
nearly groaned in frustration.

He had barely touched me at all, and my
whole body was already tightening and throbbing with a painful arousal that had
me writhing beneath him just as fervently as all the other times when he had
taken me with little to no foreplay. Hell, just the smell of him was like an
aphrodisiac, an indescribable musk that defined the very essence of what it
meant to be male and powerful.

Sethian moved his hand from my hip over to
my groin, his fingers sliding through my already damp pubic hair to the very
center of my pleasure where he began to slowly, maddeningly massage my clit
with two fingers in a light, barely there stroke as his mouth moved down from
my neck to latch onto one of my aching nipples. I entangled the fingers of one
hand in his hair along the crown, absently tugging in time to the circular
motions of his fingers teasing me towards completion while I crammed the other
into my mouth and bit down hard in order to keep from screaming.

Being masturbated by Sethian felt
inordinately different than pleasuring myself. The utter lack of control over
the rising tide of my approaching orgasm had somehow amplified that pleasurable
tension by at least a factor of three. For all I knew, his intensions could be to
bring me to the brink of ecstasy and then at the last second leave me hanging
and begging him to let me come just to tease me. I never knew that uncertainty
could be so stimulating…

I cried out and nearly yanked his hair out
by the roots when I abruptly felt him bite down on my nipple with enough force
that the sensation crossed the pleasure threshold into pain. I shuddered as his
tongue immediately began to caress the sting away and his hand between my legs
began to rub my sex more quickly and aggressively. I gripped the sheets tightly
in my hands and arched into both sensations, his name spilling from my lips
over and over as if that alone would push me closer to the climax I was now so
desperate to achieve.

Sethian pulled on my nipple with his teeth
as a parting tease that broke my litany of his name and made me squeal before
moving his head down my body. Then suddenly his hand was gone from between my
legs, and I groaned in utter dismay at the loss of stimulation just as I was
nearing the peak.

I arched up, trying to find something,
anything
to rub myself against to relieve the maddening throbbing and pressure in my
groin, but Sethian once again firmly pushed my hips down. He proceeded to
spread my legs a little before I could voice my displeasure, and then I nearly
swallowed my tongue when I felt the first wet, utterly
fantastic
swipe
of his tongue across my clit.

I had always thought that I would be too
embarrassed to ever allow anyone to perform cunnilingus on me, but it had never
occurred to me that the very act would short-circuit my brain to the point
where I couldn’t have formed a thought to save my life, much less felt anything
like shame. My whole existence had shrunk down to only the feel of that tongue
vigorously caressing the most intimate part of me until my toes were curling
into the sheets and I was pushing myself into his mouth, literally begging him
to give me release before I went insane with overstimulation.

Then my entire being seemed to explode with
an ecstasy that turned my already hazy vision completely white and tore
Sethian’s name from my throat in a drawn-out scream that was also a half-sob.
Even still, Sethian kept up his relentless oral stimulation as my body
shuttered and was racked with spasm after spasm of pleasure.

An eternity later, Sethian lifted his head,
and my whole body just sunk bonelessly into the mattress, exhausted and totally
wrecked, but still tingling like mad. Breathing heavily, I looked down the
length of my body at him with half-closed eyes that felt as though they were
weighted down with boulders and was not really surprised to see that he was no
longer wearing anything but a sexy smile.

Apparently, it was his turn now.

Lariel deserves my eternal gratitude
,
I thought as Sethian crawled between my legs and moved up my body as fluidly as
a panther advancing on its prey, making me shiver as his warm silkiness slid
over my sweaty and still-hypersensitive skin. If she had not decided to let me
sleep the day away, I doubted I would have still been conscious. To have missed
such an erotic sight would have been a travesty.

I held out my arms and embraced him as soon
as he was within reach, somehow finding the energy to lift my head off the bed
to kiss him. I felt him smile against my lips before he opened his mouth to
reciprocate. For a long moment, we merely sucked on each other’s lips and
tongue, and I finally got to feel that satisfying heaviness of his body when he
settled on top of me.

I squeezed my thighs more tightly against
his sides, wanting to feel him against as much of my body as possible, but I
didn’t try to rub myself against the cock that was currently a firm, hot bar
against my groin. Before I jumpstarted that particular engine, I needed time to
recuperate from that mind-melting orgasm, or else I feared that my body and
mind would give out before he was satisfied. Engaging Sethian in a bit of
enthusiastic tonsil-tickling was definitely the perfect way to accomplish this,
especially when he was in such a—giving mood. I could lie here in his arms
feeling him suck the breath from me forever.

It was Sethian who finally began our
sensuous dance, rolling his hips in a slow, deep grind against my groin that
immediately had my sex throbbing with need again. I released his mouth with an
appreciative moan and arched my head back, offering him my neck to be devoured.
His tongue painted a wet line from my chin to the hollow of my throat and back
up to the junction of my neck and shoulder before I felt his teeth against my
skin.

I drew in a sharp breath in anticipation,
but the expected sting of pleasure/pain didn’t come. Instead, he slowly scraped
his teeth lightly along my shoulder, making me twitch in reaction to the
different intensities of his increasing thrusts and the barely there rasp of
his teeth. I kept expecting him to bite down when I once again felt the
moistness of his lips at my neck. He alternated between those teasing scrapes
of his teeth and the occasional tug as he sucked firmly on my skin. However,
the bite never came, and that uncertainty, like before, served to only heighten
my arousal.

My hands slide down his back, loving the
silky feel of his skin beneath my fingertips, and followed the curve of his ass
to grab each mound tightly. I dug my fingers into the firm muscles, encouraging
his hips to move faster just as his mouth moved in for another kiss. He made a
small sound of appreciation when I flexed my fingers again, so I couldn’t help
but try to make him do it again.

I arched up into his thrusts, trying to
match his rhythm in order to increase the friction, but he abruptly stilled his
hips and pulled away from the kiss. For a split-second, I froze, scared that I
had done something wrong, hurt him somehow; then he grinned down at me, and I
could breathe again.

“Sethian?” I said, letting my uncertainty
bleed into his name.

His grin melted into a gentle smile that
seemed to temper some of the lust in his eyes. He bent down and gave me a soft
kiss.

“You will have me climax before my cock can
taste what my tongue has already savored,” he scolded playfully.

Hearing him say the word “cock” was so jolting
and out of place that the rest of his lewd comment went right over my head. It
was almost like hearing your grandma cuss for the first time. There was just
something so inherently
wrong
about such a crude word coming from
someone who could very easily be mistaken for an angel if he only had wings.

Luckily, Sethian’s next kiss saved me from both
embarrassment and having to reply. I wrapped my arms around him in something
like desperation and pulled him closer, hoping that we were done talking for
the night. Although my ardor had cooled somewhat thanks to his
out-from-left-field remark, my yearning for his touch was as strong as ever.

After kissing me breathless again, he bent
his head to whisper in my ear, “Turn on your side.”

I shivered at that low tone and immediately
moved to obey once he had lifted himself off my body. He grabbed my uppermost
leg behind the knee and pushed it up until my knee was touching my chest.

“Hold this here,” he commanded, and once
again, I rushed to comply.

Opening myself to him like this felt
inordinately naughty even though I knew there wasn’t anything particularly
special about the position, but to someone who had only lost their virginity a
month ago, any position other than missionary felt kinky. I was eager to see
what he had in mind, and he didn’t make me wait long to find out.

I watched with hooded eyes and heat in my
cheeks as Sethian settled on his knees halfway behind my ass and straddling my
other leg. He then positioned himself at my opening, his cock rubbing teasingly
against the length of my vagina a few times until it was slick with my juices.
His eyes met mine has he did this, piercing and just plain hot.

Then without warning, his entire member
entered me in one powerful thrust, making me almost lose my grip on my knee as
I jerked and let out a surprised moan. One hand clutched the top of my hip
while the other fondled my clit as he slid himself in and out of me in deep,
undulating strokes that seemed to reach more deeply inside me than ever before.

My nails dug into the skin of the leg I
held while my other hand had begun to mindlessly tug at my own hair in time to
his thrusts. The room quickly became filled with the sounds of my moans and the
slap of flesh hitting flesh as Sethian pushed into my passage with increasing
speed.

I almost screamed in frustration when I
felt him slow just when I was nearly at the pinnacle, but his change of pace
was only so he could sink into the bed behind me until we were more or less
spooning. As his hips resumed their vigorous pace and the hand rubbing my clit
began to jerk me with more determination, Sethian curled his left arm beneath
my body and began caressing and pinching my boobs as well until I was
practically going out of my mind with overstimulation.

A split-second before I started to orgasm,
I felt Sethian bite down hard on my right shoulder, the shock of
finally
feeling the pain I had been unconsciously anticipating since I first felt his
teeth scrape along my skin made me come so hard that I couldn’t even draw
enough breath to scream. My passage clamped down tightly around his cock,
making him moan and sink his teeth even deeper into my flesh. He then pushed
into me with one final, heavy thrust and spilled his seed deep within me.

Panting, I released my leg, letting it
stretch out on top of my other. Sethian immediately swung his own leg over it,
entangling our limbs and pulling me back more snuggly against his body. I was
keenly aware of his member deep within me, pulsating and somehow still hard
despite his climax, but he made no move to withdraw it from my body.

I squirmed a bit as the wound he had bitten
into my shoulder began to throb. I wondered if it, too, would be mysteriously
healed by morning like that bite wound on my breast, then decided that it didn’t
matter.

The only thing that did matter was that
Sethian was with me, he was holding me, and it didn’t look like he planned to
leave anytime soon.

It was somewhat disturbing how at peace and
safe I felt wrapped tightly in Sethian’s arms with his body solid and warm
against my back. This is something I had never experienced back home, and for
it to elicit such strong feelings of security for me when Sethian and I were
still practically strangers was something I just couldn’t wrap my head around.
With nothing to compare it to, even our previous couplings as I had either
passed out during the act or soon after, there was no way to know if this was
just something everyone normally felt when cuddling with a partner after sex.

We had not spoken once afterwards, not even
when he had finally withdrawn his cock from my body and had once again settled
me back against him for what I presumed was sleep, but no matter how sated and
drowsy I had felt, I just couldn’t shut down my racing thoughts enough to drift
off. Judging by the quiet, even breaths I felt at the back of my neck, Sethian
was already well into sleep.

I had a strong urge to look at his sleeping
face, wondering if sleep had softened that intimidating air of power he always
seemed to carry, but I didn’t want to risk waking him and losing my current
cocoon of warmth. I could only hope that I would get countless other chances to
watch him sleep in the future.

For the next few moments, I closed my eyes
and simply listened to him breathe, trying not to think about anything at all,
least of all the secret I stubbornly insisted on keeping and the problems doing
so would likely cause. I just wanted to enjoy this moment where for the first
time since my mother had passed away, I felt cherished.

When Sethian suddenly shifted behind me, I
didn’t react, thinking he had done so in his sleep.

“So—do you want to tell me why you still
have not told me that you are carrying our child within you?” he then abruptly
said into my ear, and I swore my heart stopped beating for a couple of seconds.

He
knew
.

My eyes instantly welled up with tears as a
wave of anguish thundered through my entire being. It all made sense now. Of
course his attentiveness tonight would have a reason. I had screwed up majorly,
allowed myself to believe that the kind of relationship I wished with him was
within the realm of possibility after all. Now the hammer was about to fall,
and I was completely unprepared for it.

I curled in on myself and clamped my mouth
shut tightly to hold back the sobs that were threatening to burst from my
throat, but I was unable to keep the tears from falling. Unfortunately, once
the waterworks had started, it was like I had opened a floodgate, the tears
pouring from my eyes in hot streams of hurt and fear that I had no hopes of
stymieing. I’m sure my out-of-whack hormones weren’t helping matters much,
either.

What would become of us now?

“It’s all right. You must not think that I
am angry with you. You can tell me,” he coaxed gently, but I barely heard him,
already lost too deeply in the mourning of my shattered dreams.

When I remained silent, Sethian tried to
turn my face to him, making a distressed sound deep in his throat when his hand
encountered the wetness on my face, but I refused to budge. I didn’t want to
show him such a pathetic face, and I especially didn’t want him to be kind or
to feel guilty because of his strong sense of duty. In a way, that was even
worse than if he had been indifferent from the beginning.

I wanted him to love me.

“I am
not
angry,” he repeated
firmly, wiping at the tears that were still streaming down my cheek. “You were
terrified at the thought of having a child before. If you are still just as
conflicted, then it’s completely understandable. There is no shame in that.”

Those words meant to comfort only served to
make me cry harder, to the point where I could no longer keep my sobs behind my
teeth. He really was too kind for my piece of mind.

He let me cry myself out without another
word, stroking my back soothingly and planting soft kisses to the back of my
neck and shoulder while I trembled uncontrollably, and to my shame, I drank up
that comfort like a woman dying of thirst in a desert. It was this that finally
allowed me to pull myself together enough to speak.

“I didn’t want to lose this.” My whispered confession
sounded as loud as a shout in the silence of the bedroom.

I felt Sethian still completely, his hand
freezing on my upper arm mid-stroke.

“‘This’?” he asked finally after a tense
moment of silence. His confusion was so palpable that I could practically taste
it in the air.

I sniffled and swallowed thickly against
the huge knot that was still lodged in my throat. The damage had already been
done, so I supposed anything else I said wouldn’t make much difference either
way. It was time to lay out all my cards, no matter how embarrassing or
painful.

“You brought me here because you wanted a
child,” I began in a small voice.

I was glad that I was facing away from him
or else I don’t think I could have gotten out more than a couple words before
chickening out. It was hard enough to meet his gaze normally without the added
difficulties of telling him my deepest fears about our relationship.

“Although you say that I am your wife,” I
pressed on, “I’ve only been able to see you on the days that I’ve been fertile.
I understand that you have duties way more important than me, but I had at
least hoped that you would spend some evenings with me, maybe even share a conversation
with me over a meal or two. Even though our marriage was as far from
conventional as you could get, I’ve accepted that fact, but at the same time
had hoped that it could eventually
mean
something more than just an act
of convenience for the sake of your laws of succession.

“I didn’t want my pregnancy to signal the
end of even those visits. I thought, maybe if we could spend more time
together, then maybe you would come to enjoy my company enough to keep coming
back regardless of not needing to try for a baby anymore. Life is short for a
human, so I really don’t want to spend the most important parts of it existing
in a constant limbo of waiting and yearning for just a few moments here and
there of real living.”

There it was, words I could never take
back, and I held my breath, terrified of his reaction. The rest of my life
depended on this one moment, and I prayed desperately that I wouldn’t have to
regret the power over my fate I had so willingly, stupidly, given him on that
first night.

“Emily—please look at me.”

The tone of his voice was strange,
something I couldn’t readily identify, so it was with a large dose of
apprehension that I scrubbed the remaining tears from my eyes and slowly rolled
my body to finally face him. The look in his eyes was every bit as intense, piercing,
and utterly unreadable as I had feared, and it took every last ounce of my
courage to not look away in panic.

Then Sethian suddenly leaned forward, and
for a moment, my mind couldn’t understand what he was doing until I felt the
soft press of his lips against mine and everything instantly stuttered to a
stop. A fleeting caress, then he was pulling back before I could unfreeze my
mind enough to react.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the absolute
sincerity in his voice hitting me like a knife to the chest. The
last
thing I had expected was an apology. “To make you feel such abandonment and
uncertainty—it was unbelievably thoughtless of me to forget that humans do not
experience the flow of time in the same manner as the
Sidhe
, but it is
downright unforgivable of me to have forgotten to tell you a very crucial
detail of the process that has allowed you to enter and remain in the elven
realm. I have done a very cruel thing to you in allowing you to believe
something that is no longer true, and even a thousand years of apologies is not
enough.”

I—don’t understand—” I began, but he cut me
off with a finger against my lips.

“You were greatly changed when you were
brought here. In truth, your physical body now has more in common with an elven
body than a human’s—and that includes an elf’s longevity. One year, fifty
years, or five hundred. They are but a blink of an eye within the existence you
now have before you.”

For a long moment, I was too shocked to do
anything but stare back at him in utter disbelief. To live for thousands of
years just like an elf…the idea was as alien to me as the concept of aging must
be to Sethian. How could a living being even have the natural ability to change
something so fundamental about another?

“I—I—how can that even be possible?” I stuttered.

Sethian shrugged. “Transmutation is not an
ability that I possess, so it is not something I can explain with any
authority. My abilities, as you have already witnessed, deal with the
manipulation of the fabric of space as well as the energies associated with
healing. Only a handful of my people possess the ability to transmute, it is so
rare.”

He began to absently thread his fingers
through my hair as he spoke, and the sensation relaxed me enough that I was
able to calm down significantly. I had gone into this conversation expecting to
have my world crushed beyond repair, but instead, Sethian had opened up a whole
new one. I had been so emotionally rung out in the last hour or so that I
didn’t know what to think or feel anymore.

However, he wasn’t finished yet. “What was
done to you is not something that is done often, and never on a whim. Only the
most skilled mage is ever allowed to perform a transmutation on the living. The
mage that performed your transmutation is one who has lived for nearly six thousand
years, old enough to have performed the transmutations of the human brides
during the last Plague of Infertility.”

Sethian suddenly cupped my face in both
hands. “I would never have given permission otherwise. Never think that you
mean nothing to me. The passion you have stirred within me in just the short
time you have been here is incomparable to what I feel when I am bedding Limira.
With her, it is an act as mechanical as walking. There is no passion, no joy,
just rutting in the name of our royal duty to continue the royal bloodline.”

I made a face before I could stop myself.
The last thing I wanted to hear about was my
husband’s
sexcapades with
the queen, never mind that she was his wife as well.

“Is that where you were last night?” I
asked, proud that I managed to keep the jealousy I was feeling from my tone.

He frowned, and I suddenly kicked myself.
Crap! Had I just overstepped my bounds? But dammit, I really wanted to know the
answer. I had just spent the past two days in a constant state of hell because
I knew so little about what he did beyond these walls that it had driven me to
desperate acts of stupidity, so didn’t I deserve some kind of answer now?

“Limira has been distraught since I took
you as my wife,” he said, and the tone of his voice when he said the queen’s
name made me realize that it wasn’t me that he was currently upset with. “After
meeting you in the royal baths and seeing us together in my bed, she suddenly
demanded that we try once again for a child.” He shrugged and continued rather
matter-of-factly, “It is her right as queen, no matter that the entire exercise
was useless. If she has not conceived in a thousand years, then the chances of
it happening now are fairly nonexistent. Although I already knew you were
pregnant when I received her summons yesterday, I gave her one last night out
of respect for our years together and the sadness of her fate.”

There was no way I could continue to feel
jealous after hearing all that. If it were me, I would have been desperate to
conceive, too. Knowing the history of various royal families back in my world,
she was probably under tremendous pressure from her family. Whether human or
Sidhe
,
the continuation of bloodlines was always important.

Not wanting to think about the elven queen
anymore, I quickly asked before Sethian could continue, “How did you know I was
pregnant anyway? Did Lariel tell you? They were all pretty suspicious from the
very beginning.”

“No, nothing like that,” he replied. “From
the moment I appeared in your bedroom yesterday, our child’s soul spoke to me.”

“What!” I cried, half-rising on my elbows
in my shock and nearly causing us to bump heads.

“It is not as extraordinary as you may
think,” he insisted, chuckling at what was probably a very dumb look on my
face. “All elven women can hear their child’s voice soon after conception, but
according to the old texts, the changed humans were different. It seems only
when the elven child had developed the ability to form clear thoughts that they
were able to connect mentally with their human mothers.”

“That’s—that’s—amazing!” I exclaimed lamely,
unable to find the right words to describe the sense of wonder I was feeling.

Sethian smiled. “Unlike humans, elven
babies do not cry. The connection is necessary for communication. It is not so
much words, but a sense of intent or emotion. That is why I am also able to
hear our child. Had we any other children, they would be able to hear their
sibling’s voice as well. It is our genetic ties that allow this.”

It was becoming abundantly clear that I was
still laughingly ignorant about the
Sidhe
. A few days ago, I had thought
that I was finally starting to grasp my new adoptive culture, and had said as
much to the girls. Now I’m surprised that they hadn’t laughed in my face.

“If you knew from the start, then why did
you let me go on thinking that you had no clue about me being pregnant?” I
said, trying not to sound resentful.

“I wanted to give you the pleasure of
telling me this joyous news, but…even when we were alone in the garden and you
still had not told me, I thought that perhaps you had a specific place and time
in mind. It seems I completely misread you and the situation. Forgive me.”