“You don’t have to do that…”
“Draevan,” she gave him a firm-lipped smile. “I want to taste you.” Based on his raised eyebrow, he looked like he really doubted that. She smirked. “Fine,” she said, about to raise back up. “Maybe Taric would like to give me something I desire—”
He stood up quickly and put his hands her shoulders, easing her back down to the ground. As soon as she was back down, he rustled quickly to open his trousers.
His rod, if it was at all possible, was even harder than she remembered it being. It popped excitedly up against his lower belly, large, swollen, and red-headed. “Remember,” he told her in a heated grumble when she reached up to grab his length, “Be careful, you devilish little thing.”
She could feel him actually quivering with anticipation, even though she had done it just the night before. She wondered if he would try to aggressively thrust into her mouth, and if he did, how long it would take for him to take over.
“Oh gods, have mercy!” he groaned, and she pulled back, thinking she’d done something wrong when she put his hardened crown into her mouth.
“What?” she fretted.
“Don’t stop, woman!” he demanded firmly, grabbing the back of her head and launching her mouth further down his length. Apparently, she had misread him—he was groaning because he was enjoying himself that much. “That’s a good girl,” he hummed, running his fingers through her hair. “You’re so good at this, baby. Suck my cock for me…”
“That’s a good girl,” he said again, thrusting himself into her mouth with more vigor, his hands on the back of her head. “You know how to drive me crazy. Does my baby love sucking my cock, hmm?”
Draevan did still taste surprisingly good; good enough that she didn’t mind him taking control of his thrusts into her mouth. He wasn’t hurting her, although she came close to gagging by reflex a couple of times, which caused her eyes to tear. She stuck it out, egged on and encouraged by his moans and compliments, as dirty as they were.
“I’m going to come, elfling,” Draevan suddenly warned. “Open wide for Poppa now, because I don’t want it to get on your dress.” He didn’t let her pull her mouth off of the engorged head at the end of his cock; he grabbed her hair and melted her to him.
She felt his bullocks tighten before he even started to grit out a pain-laden moan, followed by his veins pulsing violently against her tongue, all before the creamy heat invaded her mouth. As before, she liked the taste and lapped at him eagerly, swallowing every drop of his seed and then carefully licking her lips clean when he eventually let go of her hair.
He seemed weak in the knees and fell back onto his chair as soon as he tucked his manhood back into his trousers. She used his knees to help herself back to her feet, after which he promptly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back onto his lap and cradled her tightly to his chest, kissing the top of her ear-point.
She knew she probably should have felt dirty or embarrassed about being so anxious to bring a man to pleasure… But the longer he held her against his body, the more her shame melted away. Draevan was a brute, but he was trying to do good by her. She had a feeling that if something had happened to her, he would be genuinely distraught. She didn’t even try to get his affection; he was aching to give it to her freely.
The loving moment only ended when Taric stomped into the room, pulling his tunic over his head and sneering at Draevan in their puzzling language.
Whatever was said lit a fuse, because Draevan pulled her gently off of his legs so he could stand up, growling back at Taric.
They rounded about each other, snarling and growling, looking like two dogs fighting over a bone. In the next moment, they were pointing at each other, as if assigning some sort of blame.
She stood there, stupefied by their behavior. She had followed them around for three days in the forest, mostly unbeknownst to them, and she had seen plenty of bickering but never anything like this, nothing that seemed to constitute fighting!
It wasn’t long before Draevan shoved Taric threateningly backwards, and Taric came back with a harder shove. She scurried promptly over to them—she didn’t want to know how much pain two warriors could deal out to each other. With all the strength in her body, she tried to pry them apart. She barely made them budge , but as they continued to amp up the fight into heavier blows there was suddenly enough space to stand between them. “Stop!” she demanded as loudly as she could.
She was quickly realizing that it didn’t even dawn on them that she was there, or at least they figured she could be avoided while they grabbed each other’s shirts, snapping at each other. She was getting squished by these hard, violently-moving bodies!
She didn’t know how, it all happened so quickly, but an elbow collided with her cheek. She immediately hit the floor, grabbing her face, thinking that something had been broken.
The men stood still, still with each other’s shirts grasped in their fists, all anger from them quickly dissolving into horrified worry. At once, suddenly gaining movement, they released each other in the same moment and rushed to her side on the ground. “Gods, Kyra!” Draevan fretted. “I’m so sorry, baby! I didn’t mean to! It just slipped…”
Taric was already gently trying to pull her hands from her face. “Come on, let me see, honey…” he urged her softly. Hesitantly, not wanting to release her hand with some unexplainable and unreasonable fear that it would get worse if she didn’t protect it, she lowered her hands a little and Taric immediately took her face as if it was made of thin glass and turned it so that he could see her face better.
“Nothing’s broken,” he assured Draevan. “Let’s get her something cold to put on this until supper.”
She heard Draevan swear, mostly to himself, as he got up to move around.
Taric’s thumb stroked across her better cheek. “Poor thing. I’m sorry about this… This was my fault, too. I shouldn’t have said anything…”
“Why were you even fighting?” she snipped.
Taric sighed, picked her up from the floor, and guided her carefully to a seat. “I was jealous because you went to him so willingly, while I felt that I had to try so hard to get your attention. I accused him of trying to buy your affection… He accused me of trying to get you to think of him as some cold, bumbling lout, and one thing led to another…”
She snorted. As she suspected, the cause of the argument seemed so childish. “Me doing things with him doesn’t have anything to do with you, Taric,” she said, meaning it in the nicest way.
He frowned, a grimace forming on his face. She had never seen someone look so struck and heart-broken. It was simply unfair that he wanted her to actually like him after he’d made it so clear that she was only good for two things: pleasuring him and eventually having babies, only half of which she believed she could ever really do.
She didn’t want to tell them and allowed them to have the fantasy, but she still didn’t honestly think she could have their children. Humans were too different than elves, and there certainly hadn’t been a cross-breed before that she’d ever heard about. Chances were that she could have their children as much as a dog could ever have a kitten.
She simply didn’t say anything because there were those moments of tenderness she didn’t want to miss. She knew human men treated the mother of their children far differently than they’d treat a whore they only wanted for sex… And that’s what she’d become. She was so close to being seen that way, already…
Taric grumbled, and Draevan passed him a kerchief full of ice he had just chipped right out of the window—it must have frozen over during the night. Taric carefully pressed the lumpy coldness against her cheek. She took over for his hand, pressing it to herself. He brushed back a loose strand of hair behind her ear, stood up quietly, and walked away, leaving her with Draevan.
“Oh, Kyra…” Draevan breathed, kneeling on the floor to be more level with her. “I’m really—”
“Nah,” she grumbled, feeling preoccupi
ed. “I’m fine. At least I got you to stop fighting.”
He snorted. “We’re used to bruises,” he assured her. “It would have meant nothing to us. We’ve fought wars, Kyra. We could probably lose a leg and not notice.”
She raised her eyebrow at his exaggeration, and he smirked at himself. “We’ll be more careful next time,” he promised. “We’re not used to anyone getting between us.”
“I really wish I didn’t have to,” she said with a sigh.
* * *
“Stop touching it!” Kyra snapped at Draevan when he reached over and petted her long, thick braid once again. He didn’t know why he liked doing it; it was just as soft as rabbit fur, and the hair felt good against his fingers. “It’s not easy to style now that it’s all clean,” she pouted, as if being clean was such a troublesome thing. She pulled her hair away protectively, letting it fall over the shoulder farthest from them as they walked.
Draevan grinned mischievously to himself and reached over to offer his arm as they walked.
She smirked, bit her lip, and curled her arm around his bicep, letting him play with her fingers when she did.
He took a breath. Everything was finally right with the world—he and Taric were rich, they killed the giant, wed their elf-wife, and if they were lucky she might be already with child. And there she was—a pretty little petite thing that just sparkled whenever he was the slightest bit nice to her.
The only thing cramping the evening right now was Taric, who wasn’t himself. Taric was normally the wide-eyed smart, resourceful one with an open mind. He normally didn’t allow himself to get depressed or foul-tempered, but right now he was the spitting image of an ominous thundercloud as he marched behind them, his hands in his pockets, his eyes pursed into a stony glare.
He didn’t understand how the man could spend the afternoon fucking their goddess of a wife to the point that the servants were talking about it and still be in such a rotten mood. He had accused Draevan of trying to buy Kyra’s love, but Draevan hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t thought about trying to get her to like him above Taric at all… The necklace was just shiny, and Draevan had heard that women liked shiny things. He only wanted to make the poor thing happy, since she seemed so awkward and saddened when he’d left that morning.
Taric normally wasn’t one to try to spur Draevan’s anger, either. Draevan could be a violent man, and Taric knew it. Yet when Taric had come in and boasted in their secret tongue, ‘You can enjoy her mouth, Cousin, because I took her tight little ass today until she was begging for it,” Draevan was overcome with the urge to thump his skull for him. Taric had never said anything of that sort to him before; it was completely out of character.
Draevan wasn’t stupid enough to wonder what had made the change in Taric. They were fighting over possession of their own wife. One they were both married to, both lawfully and even magically, and that wasn’t going to change.
When they were boys, they’d known they would share a wife and had never thought they would bicker with each other over her. They’d certainly never competed over women or whores, even though Taric would allow himself to like a woman much more than Draevan ever allowed himself to, and despite the gruffness with which Draevan would normally be fucking those same women eventually.
Kyra’s fingers were as cold as ice before they made it to the dinner hall. Before they were announced, Draevan nipped the top of her pointy ear. “Don’t be nervous,” he said into her ear. “It’s just an elf-king.”
She eyed him and blinked at him until he grinned at her teasingly. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, since you married us, you’re actually wealthier than the king.”
That made her dark little eyebrows shoot up with surprise. He felt warmth go back into her hands, and he straightened his shoulders as the king’s servant announced them as the “Honored guests of the Giantsbane family.”
He was never going to tire of being called Giantsbane, even if it was the elves that named them that.
The room was packed full of red-toothed, noble elves, and Kyra began to quickly wilt as they regarded all of them with unkind-yet-interested eyes, particularly towards her. The men stood, including the king, and the women sat. The servant led them to their seats, pulling out the chair in the middle for Kyra. She didn’t notice, he hoped, how the servant immediately removed his white gloves from his hands when her back brushed up against the man’s knuckle as she sat down and tossed them onto a tray filled with dirty glasses, apparently to be disposed of.
“There were not enough seats for all of the members of the court who wanted to come see you off this evening,” the king told them with a laugh, sitting down. “It’s as if they fear never seeing another human again!”
Fear wasn’t the word Draevan would have used, judging from the crowd. Curiously eager would have been a better word for it. Trying to manage polite smiles, Draevan and Taric sat down, following the king’s example, and then there was a rustle as all the other men took suit.
“Your wife certainly looks better now than last I saw her,” the king said with a smug grin.
“It’s amazing what not being locked in a dungeon can do,” Taric was quick to reply back with sarcastic flippancy.
“Not to mention food,” Draevan seethed. He felt Kyra put her hand over his knee and squeeze it to get his attention and apparently to warn him not to make a deal out of her experiences.
He picked up her hand from her knee, brought it all the way up to his lips, and kissed along the knuckle. She looked pleased by this, and even blushed girlishly, but then when her eyes darted to the side, she pulled her hand back as if he’d bitten her and put it back under the table. When he glanced to see what she’d been looking at, he saw that a few elves across the table were shuddering at the display of affection.
Even the king said, “Uck,” but he didn’t comment any further. He hung back in his chair as servants served soup. “You can’t blame me for not feeding a felon right before we tied her up to the noose,” the king told Draevan. “Besides—her kind doesn’t need to eat as much as we do.”
Draevan growled and Kyra squeezed his knee again.
Luckily, the king started making conversation with his queen, and then with the other guests.
Draevan could see Taric, on the other side of Kyra, grab so tightly onto his wineglass that he was surprised it wasn’t broken. Taric turned his head at Kyra and said, “Aren’t you going to eat, wife?”
She glanced at the other elves sipping on their spoons with their overly-pierced lips and shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she whispered, looking miserable.
“Yes, you are,” Taric argued quietly. “You slept through noonday. You’ve got to be famished, so eat.”
Kyra nervously picked up the spoon, glancing at the object nervously.
Suddenly the king snorted with laughter. “Look at her! She doesn’t even know how to use a spoon!” Draevan didn’t realize the king was noticing them again, but apparently he was still watching Kyra out of the side of his eye.
The whole room began to chortle with laughter, except for the three of them, and Kyra looked like she was set to melt underneath the table. Her skin burned a deep red as she eyed the tablecloth, embarrassed.
Draevan ground his teeth in the king’s direction. If he wasn’t royalty, he would have busted his face for him already.
“Drink from your bowl,” Taric advised her calmly, turning his shoulder to the rest of the company. “You don’t have to use these; I should have realized you don’t use them. You’ve never had a reason to.”
She put down her spoon and, amongst the laughter, she picked up her bowl with her hands. Draevan and Taric followed suit, until the laughter died slightly. “Our wife could teach lessons in practicality. Her needs are delightfully few,” Draevan told the king, putting up his spoon and then putting it down. “It makes it all the better when we spoil her with the wealth of a whole kingdom.”
That made the king stop laughing, and he even pursed his lips.
“Yes,” he said. “Killing the giant has done you well. If you were higher born, you could be a king,” he added aloofly.
“If we wanted kingship, My Lord, then kings we’d be,” Draevan responded, straightening his shoulders. “Who would stop us?”
For a moment, the words sat in the air like the threat they were. There was silence for a while after that, and Kyra sat up straighter in her chair. She was still blushing, but honestly so was Draevan. He wasn’t used to attention.
Taric sat back in his seat, his body language relaxed, yet threatening, like a man-eating dragon that was merely digesting his last large meal of village-folk. He looked thoughtfully at Draevan, then at Kyra, not saying a word. The only thing that broke his still movements was when he leaned forward, took Kyra’s chin in his hand, and kissed the side of her nose, right where her small bruise ended.
Kyra didn’t bite her lip or respond to Taric at all like she had done with Draevan, he noticed. She didn’t melt back in his direction. Instead, she turned her knees in Draevan’s direction afterwards, as if she didn’t want Taric to touch her again.
Draevan frowned, wondering what the devil Taric did to her. If his taking her bottom created this much disdain, then Draevan was thankful indeed that he wasn’t the one to have done it. After all, his girth was even thicker than Taric’s… She might have never forgiven him.
Supper moved slowly, and making conversation with the people around them hadn’t made it pass any more quickly. Kyra refused to say anything at all to anyone, making sure her eyes stayed on her food at all times.
Her differences in comparison to the other elves had never been so evident. Kyra looked stronger than these people around her, even though she had lost so much weight since they’d met her in the forest. Her skin was pinker, probably because she had been outside all of her life and actually saw the sun, whereas the elven royals’ skin was a pale white, nearly translucent; they would look veiny and sickly if it wasn’t for their tattoos. Her white hair was even shinier, her eyes a shiny gold instead of a pale yellow.
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