After bathing, she directed me to one of the smaller pools towards the back of the chamber just like the one the queen had been soaking in. I wasted no time in getting in, extremely uncomfortable with even walking that short distance while completely naked even if the only one to see me was Lariel. The pool was a bit hotter than the one I just left but not quite hot enough to count as a hot tub.
“Relax your body here within this pool for a time while I go alert the kitchens about having your midday meal brought to your personal rooms,” she said. “If you need anything before I return, you need only call out to the guard at the entrance and he will send one of the bath servants immediately.”
Bath servants? It had never even occurred to me that there were other elves around! I quickly scanned the room, but except for us, the large chamber appeared empty. “Where—”
“Don’t worry,” Lariel said quickly. “They would not dare intrude on the Royal Wife unless called.”
Never mind Lariel calling me “My Lady,” I really didn’t like this newest form of address, for more than the obvious reasons. For me, titles had always seemed to dehumanize the person being called them, building walls between them and the person speaking, no matter how necessary they may seem. Lariel was certainly friendly, but as long as she insisted on calling me by honorifics, I would always be the “Royal Wife” and she the “lady-in-waiting.” If the elven realm was where I would be spending the rest of my life, then I would at least want to have a few real friends.
However, now was definitely not the time to bring it up, not when I still had very little clue as to what was in store for me.
“Thank you,” I said with as sincere a smile as I could muster.
Alone again, my thoughts couldn’t help but wander back to the new title the young elf had just called me—Royal Wife. It reminded me once again of why Sethian had stolen me to the elven realm.
“You will bear my heirs.”
A baby was utterly the last thing I wanted right now, especially when I was still so confused about my feelings for Sethian. We hardly knew each other, never mind what my stupid, sex-muddled brain thought of the matter. Hardly the ideal situation to raise a child, especially if my new elven husband only saw me as a baby factory, a pleasurable means to an end. The thought of the elven king only tolerating my company just for the sake of—breeding made something deep inside my core twist painfully, leaving me feeling cold despite the warmth of the surrounding water.
But then there was that weird—incident—that had happened the second time we were having sex that Sethian had yet to explain properly to me. Not that he’d really had the time to explain even if he had wanted to, I suddenly realized. We had started making love again almost right after, then—
I made a face. Then the queen had walked in on us and instead of saying something, gasping in shock, anything, she had just stood there and watched us go at it like some kind of damned voyeur! That I apparently had passed out just when I was about to say something to Sethian about her was probably no coincidence.
The only question was which of the two royals had been the culprit?
CHAPTER THREE
A pair of arms abruptly slid over my shoulders from behind and hugged my neck, and I yelped in sudden shock until the familiar laugh next to my right ear had me falling completely still instead of fighting against the unexpected hold. I couldn’t believe that I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t even heard him step up behind me!
My cheeks flaming in embarrassment, they got even worse when Sethian slipped into the pool beside me, and I was treated to a full-frontal sideshow of hot, wet muscles and a thick cock that was already at half-mast. My eyes frantically darted towards the entryway, afraid that Lariel had accompanied the king inside, but not a soul was in sight, not even the guard that had accompanied us here. No one would have ever accused me of being an exhibitionist back home, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why Sethian had sought me out here. I sure as hell wasn’t about to prove them wrong.
My eyes turned back to Sethian with some trepidation, but other than slipping an arm around my waist and drawing me closer against his side, the elf didn’t try to initiate anything sexual at all. I ruthlessly squashed the tiny part of me that was just a little bit disappointed. This was a truth that I had been better off not knowing about myself.
“You are still afraid,” he said. I could hear the frown in his tone.
“I’m just unsettled,” I clarified. “This has all happened so fast, and I really didn’t expect to have to meet the queen so soon—”
“You met the queen?” he interrupted sharply, his eyes flashing with an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher.
I nodded hesitantly, suddenly unsure if I should have told him about it at all. Even if the queen had acted like a bitch, I didn’t want to make trouble for her.
“She was soaking in one of the pools when I got here.”
Sethian narrowed his eyes angrily, and I suddenly wished I could go back in time and tell myself to keep my big mouth shut because the being sitting next to me was suddenly the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. His whole body seemed to radiate power, and it was in that moment that I finally understood what he had meant when he told me his role as the elven king embodied much more than that of the human kings I was familiar with.
I instinctively shrunk away from him, and when he saw that, he instantly clamped down on the fireworks until he no longer looked or felt so scary.
“I am sorry,” he said, actually sounding contrite as he gave my body a squeeze of comfort. “It wasn’t my intention to frighten you. I was merely displeased that Limira ignored what was custom. It is rare that a queen and a Royal Wife should meet, and it never should be done out of the presence of the king. Taking a human wife is a delicate enough situation, as it is often painful for the elven wife to know that her husband will have the child she could not give him with another woman.”
“Is that why I keep waking up in a different bedroom than yours?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, and I suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the heart even though it was an answer I had expected. “Keeping both wives in separate households tempers the pain, somewhat.”
I guess I shouldn’t tell you about her calling both of us mongrels, I thought uncomfortably. Instead, I said with a bit of embarrassment, “Then she must’ve been pretty upset about walking in on us earlier…”
“She was told to keep her distance for the time being,” he replied, sounding unapologetic, “something that she normally does on her own on any given day. She had been quite dismissive when I initially brought up the idea of me taking a human wife, like she could not be bothered at all with it. I should have known better. Did she say anything to you?”
Crap. I really didn’t want to tell him about the mongrel thing, but I also wasn’t sure if Lariel would rat me out if pressed by her king. “She made a comment about me being the one to bear the next king. That’s all,” I lied, deciding at the last second to take a chance on a lie of omission.
The queen obviously already hated me enough as it was, so why open that explosive can of worms if I didn’t absolutely have to? I could always just apologize later if caught out, anyway. I was quickly becoming the Queen of Later, it seemed.
I let out a cry of surprise as I was suddenly pulled onto his lap. The feel of both the warm water and his silky member simultaneously gliding against my naked sex as I turned to straddle him properly was utterly indecent. I grabbed onto his shoulders tightly and looked at him with wide eyes. Apparently, that conversation was over.
He grinned mischievously and lowered his head until his face was buried into my neck. I felt him take a deep breath through his nose before planting a soft kiss against my damp skin.
“I never knew that humans could smell so good,” he murmured before taking another deep whiff of me. “Where elven women are sunlight and air, you are rain and flowers and earth. It is quite intoxicating.”
He slowly
slid his cheek along the skin of my collarbone, and I gasped when he playfully nipped at my shoulder.
“Do elves like to bite?” I asked a bit breathlessly even though we hadn’t even kissed yet.
“This one does,” he said with a growl as he lowered his head farther down and bit down a little harder into the softer flesh of my breast before moving to take my nipple into his mouth.
Sethian’s tongue quickly had my already hardened nub aching almost painfully with sensory overload as I closed my eyes and began to rub myself slowly against his swelling cock, wanting to pleasure him, too. He hummed in encouragement and cupped my buttocks to pull me tighter against him, allowing for more friction as the sensual rocking of my hips automatically began to speed up to match my rising excitement.
He released my breast with a wet pop and roughly claimed my lips, seemingly trying to suck out all the breath from my lungs while his fingers playfully kneaded my ass cheeks. I eagerly sucked on his tongue as my thrusts against his sex became more erratic and firm.
Then his hands suddenly seized my hips, forcing me to still my movements. He lifted me up slightly from his lap and abruptly thrust his cock up into me all the way to the hilt, swallowing my sharp gasp of surprise.
I pulled away from the kiss as he began to thrust and breathed urgently, “Wait…!”
I saw concern flash briefly in his eyes as he immediately stilled, but I smiled and brushed my lips gently against his. “Let me,” I said, my voice low and soft, and sounding completely unlike me.
His answering smile was so beautiful that I think I lost myself in the sheer magnitude of it for a moment, but a soft caress of his fingers against my cheek brought me back to the here and now. The elven king was making me fall hard for him, and at that point in time, I really wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
Our last coupling had been somewhat frenzied and rudely interrupted. If this incredible being was to be my one and only husband, then I wanted to take my time getting to know his body, to watch his expressions. I wanted to experience something akin to the glow of excitement a newlywed couple experienced because I didn’t know how long I could have him. I didn’t know how he really felt about me. That strange window to his emotions I had experienced before was conspicuously absent right now, so I only had my eyes to rely on.
Once I was pregnant, would he still want to spend time with me?
I slowly rolled my hips while impaling myself on his hard cock over and over again, forcing myself to look into his rather intense eyes before he half-closed them in an expression of pleasure and leaned over to taste my lips once again. I slipped my fingers through the hair spilling over his shoulder, following the long strands down his back and then teasingly tracing the curves and valleys of his muscles back up to his shoulders with the pads of my fingertips. He shivered, and something within me seemed to tighten with a tangle of complicated emotions.
Even at this slower, more tender pace, I came rather quickly, squeezing his member tightly in reaction to the pleasurable spasms of my orgasm and making him groan. I swallowed that sound greedily as if it were ambrosia. However, I didn’t feel the expected flood of warmth from his release, and for a moment, I was upset that I hadn’t managed to make him climax as I had intended. But then he suddenly stood up with his arms still wrapped tightly around me, and all thoughts fled as I hastily wrapped my legs around his waist and grabbed onto his neck to keep from sliding off both his lap and his member.
With his cock still a hot iron bar within me, Sethian waded over to the center of the pool where the water was a little deeper, reaching up to the top of his shoulders. His hands lowered down to grab my ass again, and my eyes widened at his first, powerful thrust. The water around us began to slosh and splash noisily with each forceful plunge into my tight warmth, and I threw my head back and cried out with abandon, the buoyancy of the water making me feel like I was literally floating on cloud nine.
His huge cock seemed to reach even deeper into me in this position, hitting and rubbing against sensitive areas I had never known I possessed. Shock after shock of pleasure zipped through my body like an electric current with every thrust, making me inadvertently dig my fingernails into his back until he winced—something I would feel guilty about later when my entire being wasn’t so drunk on pleasure. When I could think…
I soon climaxed again with a shout that I would definitely be embarrassed about later, but even at such a brutal pace, I marveled that my elven lover still hadn’t been satisfied, that he still hadn’t had enough of my body as he continued to plow into my passage with a rather intense look on his face as if suddenly determined to make me cry out like that again.
Even as my body was still shuddering in the aftermaths of my orgasm, a pointed ear caught my attention while Sethian sucked hard on my neck, and I couldn’t resist reaching my mouth up to nip the tip.
As before, the elf jerked as if he had suddenly been tasered. The look in his eyes when he lifted his head was almost scary, his pupils so dilated with lust that only a sliver of green was still visible. The next thing I knew, Sethian was moving us over to the nearest edge of the pool. He pulled me off his cock, turned me around, and bent me over until the hard rim pressed a bit uncomfortably into my stomach, my arms splayed out in front of me.
He wasted no time in roughly thrusting back into me from behind before I could even really secure my footing, his fingers digging into my hips so strongly that I was positive I would have bruises later, and proceeded to pound into me as if he was suddenly desperate for release and had lost all reason. My fingers scrambled frantically over the slick marble trying to find something to hold onto as my body was pushed forward over and over with each deep, powerful thrust.
The elf’s behavior should have scared me to death, but once again, my traitorous body decided his sudden loss of control was hot as hell, and I felt my arousal building towards an explosion for a third time. When that explosion finally did happen as Sethian gave one last, brutal thrust, I’m pretty sure I blacked out for a minute or two because the resulting spasms had gone beyond pleasure into the realm of something very close to pain. I suddenly found myself gasping for air that didn’t seem to be there anymore and crying while Sethian had already withdrawn his member from me and was in the process of pulling me up and back into his arms.
I immediately turned around and buried my face into his wet chest, scrunching my eyes tightly in an attempt to stop my tears and gain control of myself. I was trembling so hard, it was almost as if the water surrounding us had abruptly turned ice cold.
His arms tightened around me. “Come,” he said softly. “Let us sit and talk for a moment.”
I nodded and allowed him to lead me back towards the underwater bench we had started out on.
“I apologize,” he said as he cuddled me against his chest.
I had calmed down considerably now that I was sitting comfortably sideways on his lap, and with both his warm, silky arms and the warmth of the water enveloping me, I was feeling drowsy and pleasant.
I shook my head, and looked up to see him frowning down at me, his eyes almost glowing in their intensity. “But it was my fault, wasn’t it? Because I touched your ear?”
“It was my fault alone for not explaining the—consequences of touching them.”
“But it’s not like you hurt me!” I protested.
He raised an eyebrow. “You were crying,” he said pointedly, his frown deepening.
“I was just—overwhelmed,” I insisted, feeling my cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “Before you, I’ve never experienced anything close to…” I trailed off with a shrug, still shy even after everything we had done.
He sighed. “Once aroused, it is very easy for me to forget that I am bedding a human, more so if my ears are involved. A Sidhe’s ears are extremely sensitive when we are already sexually aroused, even more so than our sexual organs. Touching my ear with your mouth was very much like taking my cock into your mouth, only doubly so. The instinct to mate becomes
overpowering.”
I covered my face with a moan. I knew I shouldn’t have touched his ears.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out through my fingers.
Sethian gently pulled my hands away from my face and kissed me softly, a sweet, closed-mouth press of his lips. “You mustn’t think I am angry.” He grinned mischievously. “In fact, I am flattered that you find my ears so fascinating that you could not resist touching them. Limira, well, it is not something she has ever done for me.”
Once again, I felt my chest tighten with a surge of jealousy. I really didn’t want to think about Sethian sleeping with the queen—ever—but especially not right now after Sethian and I had just finished having the most incredible sex ever.
He sighed again, and absently rubbed his hand gently over my abdomen. “I should have been more careful. You could very well already be with child, and taking you so roughly could have endangered you both.”
I stiffened, reminded once more of the very large, neon-pink elephant in the room. “Do you really think it’s going to happen so soon?” I asked quietly.
“I certainly hope so,” he replied, his sincerity and excitement stabbing into me like twin knives to the heart.
That he rubbed his hand affectionately across my stomach again was just the sour icing on the cake. I closed my eyes tightly, wondering for the thousandth time how my life had ended up so convoluted and out of my control.
Perhaps sensing my turmoil—maybe even quite literally—he seemed content to just sit there cuddling me in the pool as a peaceful silence fell over us, and despite all the questions I had wanted to ask from the moment I had awakened alone in that huge bed, I was content to just leave things as they were for the moment.
Claimed by the Elven King: Part Two Page 2
