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“Hello,” is the one she repeats, instead of practising a phrase that in any tongue she already speaks is not one that comes to her naturally- and in doing so lilting the suggestion back to him, stepping out of her slippers as she moves at a lazy saunter toward his beckoning, hands behind her back pulling loose the ties of her gown. It is perhaps not an accident that this dress, particularly, she had designed with an eye to being a little easier to slip in and out of than much of what comprises her wardrobe.

(His Satinalia gift is more of a piece with it than the gowns to which she's accustomed, though it's unlikely he'll see her in that for months, the weather in Kirkwall being what it is.)

She sweeps her hair over her shoulder, turning at the last to present her back and the loosened fastenings to his hands; “Help me?”

Edited (clarity) 2017-12-03 10:57 (UTC)

Oh, how could he refuse? He kisses her neck, first, mouths along the curve of her shoulder, teeth rasping gently over her skin, just a reminder—his, now, and he hers.

His fingers pull at the ties, loosen them enough that the bodice relents under his hands as he peels it away from her skin, holds it in place so that she can extract her arms. He leaves it at her waist—she can shimmy free later, but he keeps his attention and hands on her newly exposed skin—

—so much better than the oil painting—

—one hand cupping her breast and the other smoothing over the bottom of her ribs as he continues to kiss her neck, moving to her throat, then tipping his head to he can kiss her, taking full advantage of his height to do so.

Teeth and hands and that sense of finally, finally; like she's been holding her breath for a terribly long time and can't quite catch it, pleasantly alien in her own skin. Scar tissue raises texture under the passage of his hands, and it's strange how little strange it is - how easy not to think of it, how little it matters. A thing that altered and did not destroy her, and here she is, altered again.

Only mortal, only young, constantly changing. She tilts her face up to him and pulls her hand free of cuff and sleeve to slide behind her into his hair, finds the nape of his neck and twists it silken around her fingers in a fist.

(She is neither gentle nor patient by nature.)

Maker, this is better than arguing about fucking elves. (Just. Fuck this one elf.)

He moans into her mouth, startled into opening his eyes, watching her, and then diving back in for more. Off her waist, then, and crumpled onto the moss, the back of his knee pressing against her thigh, so they can get onto the blanket and he can lay her down.

It was such a pretty dress, he thinks, and he’ll see her in it again, likely in a few hours when he’ll bundle her back up in it and they’ll return to Nevarra. He loathes it immediately, and distracts himself with delighting in noting she bothered with nothing beyond the dress and more skin to map with his exploring hands.

“Lay back,” he says, and oh, she is so small, he could maybe span the smallest section of her waist with his hands—she will be the ruin of him. “I want to—”

Spend hours here, but he can’t. Attend to his lady. At least they aren’t going into this blind, either of them. He dips his head to kiss along the line of her scar, despite the dulled nerves. “What do you like? Tell me.”

One day, she promises herself, one day they will have the leisure to do exactly as they please, when and where and how and there will be no one to say you can't, you mustn't. Rifters come and go, Jehan had been so angry - she can't think of him going, she can't think of it and pass up what they can have for the thought of losing it. He's here now, and every day he's still here, and perhaps her future won't look as she'd once imagined but she hadn't wanted what she imagined and now she can think maybe we will and maybe is enough.

Maybe is - more than enough to grasp in her hands, hands that find his hair again when her back finds the blanket, a lissom thing spread out upon it and lifting beneath his mouth.

“I don't want to be handled like I'm delicate,” she says, exhaling, eyes closed and chin tilted up toward the sky breaking between leaves above them. “I want to look in the mirror tomorrow and see where you've been.”

His teeth return to her neck at that, and bite a little harder. Not hard enough to break skin—he has no desire to learn the taste of human blood—but enough to see if she will bruise, if it is too much. Learning her body will not always be elegant and beautiful.

“You favor such bold necklines,” he notes, “Shall I keep my attentions below them?”

Or does she wish to look in the mirror and at other’s faces, see their reactions to the unmistakable marks of a lover?

He works his way down her body, harder than he was before, nails digging in a bit sharper, tongue lifting the salt off her skin when he pauses to attend to whatever catches his fancy—her collarbone, the dip below her breast, her navel, the inside of her thigh—he is half off the blanket and onto the moss by the time he reaches her cunt and smiles up at her. He had been here before, in the library, and he is not one to leave things unfinished.

Reminding her of his strength is not done intentionally, but his hands grip into her thighs and hold her spread and open to his mouth as he dips down to taste her, a wide swipe of his tongue while listening to her breathing before turning his attention wholly to her clit. Shivers or twitches have him refocusing—finding a pressure she likes, a pattern—and generally enjoying himself as well, if the noises catching in his throat and vibrating against her cunt are any indication. His nails dig into the flesh of her thigh, holding her in place.

“Do what you like,” in arch murmur, the sort of thing that sounds trite at first and then slightly terrifying when it becomes apparent how much she means it, how exceptionally reckless she can be and has been in the past.

Indeed, perhaps it's wise to marry her just for safekeeping.

Kept in place for the time being by his hands - her thighs spread easy and strain under his grip, hips that would lift to him prevented and her back arching instead, one hand pulling taut in his hair and the other scrambling for purchase in the blanket, the moss - thank the Maker they're so far from being overheard by anyone but the elk, because he needn't rely only on shivers when she is so vocal. The way she reacts to his touch - hands mouth tongue - is nothing if not unabashed.

It's not as if he'd been unaware she's not a subtle woman.

Not subtle at all, he finds, and to one who is hardly afraid of feedback, of redirection, it is a blessing. And using his hair as a leash hardly hurts—he is easily redirected, and goes with a smile against her skin.

He applies himself to wedding her with the sort of enthusiasm he’s reserved for the most important tasks in Thedas—teaching himself to read, Cassandra Pentaghast, his job as Division Head—and if they run up against a few walls or miscommunications, they have the ready-made excuse of several thousand years of chastity.

He is a gentleman throughout, up until the point of completion—shuddering pants with his head presses into the curve where neck meets shoulder, his hands fisted in the blanket, Sindarin he doesn’t pause to translate—and then he is just a very big elf with all his weight on top of her for as long as it takes him to remember himself and roll off her, ribs moving as he breathes deeply to gather himself. His hand finds hers, curls around it, and he turns his head to look at her. The nature of his glamour is such that no expression is projected errantly. It is chosen-- though that is not a truth he will admit to, ever, but the smile he gives her now (soft, unguarded, devoted) is clearly private.

“Hervess,” he says, and after a moment: “Wife.”

He moves and she does, too, in the space of a breath; trading places, Gwenaëlle doing the rest of her finding composure curled lazily to the shape of him, draped over his body and making herself quite at home there, tucking her head so she can commit that smile to memory and treasure it without feeling quite so immediately vulnerable looking back at him. There's all these -

She's got lots of practise at meaningless sex. And she likes the alternative, but it's new and strange and permanent in a way that has to be processed.

On top of him. It's comfortable there, she's going to do loads of her processing in this position in the future.

“There'll be no getting rid of you now,” murmured into his collarbone, warmly affectionate in a way she rarely is.

He wraps his arm around her waist once she’s curled herself against him, holds her close. She’s real, and here—and he knows that, as sure as he knows there is a stream, and trees, and the elk grazing nearby. He simply—did not account for this to happen, ever again, secure in his widowed state, not so much celibacy as a lack of desire, but—

Here he is. Here she is. Both of them with shard and he with the weight of what he might be behind his heart but locked away. Thranduil tucks it all side, and kisses the top of her head. It’s a good position. A shame they cannot share a bed every night.

“Oh, no, not at all.” He smirks, strokes a hand down her hair, fingers threading into it. “I have my teeth in you. Weren't you warned?"

“As it happens, I was.”

Guenievre perhaps did not have this in mind, particularly, when she had warned her daughter not to get her heart broken or her reputation ruined; Gwenaëlle is relatively sure the first one isn't going to happen and that the second...will be survivable, when it comes. Probably. There are many choices that will need to be made, in the future, but even before kissing him in the library it had seemed less and less likely that that future would be in Orlais.

Certainly unlikely it would look as any of her parents had imagined it. It's hard to reconcile, sometimes-

but she isn't second-guessing herself, doesn't regret. She is quite sure of where she is, and where she's meant to be.

“Specifically,” he says, breath hot but brief at her ear, pulling her just a little bit closer, so they can lie chest-to-chest. “About large Rifter elves?”

More dangerous than the garden variety of elf, less tame, more dangerous.

“You are precious to me,” he says. “I would have no secrets between us. You know you can tell me whatever you like, and I will still love you, no matter what it is. I will not think less of you.”

His will test her, when she asks after them or when they are no longer secrets, but he is not speaking of those. Instead, he considers her ‘I am afraid’s, her ‘I need you’s. The help he has not yet pulled a promise to agree to ask for.

Her sigh is slow and more air than sound, breathed out against his collarbones, her body fit lissome to the line of his, her foot sliding up his leg like they're interlocking parts of some clever dwarven contraption, or, no - no, like rose vines cultivated to grow together, blooming different colours. Lovely things that don't keep secrets, except,

“You'll peel everything back from me and find there's nothing left underneath,” and it rings hollow where it should have been a joke.

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