The meal finally came to a close when the last scrap was finished, and the moment hung between them when Nua knew she had to stay or go. “Leave us.” Rasgen said to his attending maids, and with a swift curtsey, they made their exit.
He was the one to break the silence when he felt the rising tension in the air. “Duchessa Nua Calen Aiwenor… Nua,” His voice was soft, patient, and he rose to his feet, “I won’t pretend to know your mind right now. I don’t know your life, your past, your dreams or hopes. I don’t know what thoughts are running through your mind right now, it’s your choice to keep those private. If you want to stay with me tonight, I would like that very much. If you want to wait, I won’t hold that against you. But the choice, that is yours, all I can say, is that you’re not alone in offering yourself. I’m offering myself too, it’s up to you if you’ll accept or not.”
He approached where she still sat, unmoving. “But if you would… if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you to stay tonight.” He held out his right hand to the elven assassin.
Nua felt a part of herself crack, ‘I laughed with Kaiji in the bath when we spoke of how we will take this land… and he says a thing like that to me? A human… says something like that to ‘me’. He deserves a better life… but I will not abandon my dreams. Still, if only for awhile, I can make him happy, it’s the least I can do, for all that he is giving me.’ Nua reached up with a slow moving hand, and rested her palm in his.
“I’ll stay.” Nua replied with a smaller voice than she intended. He raised the hand she’d put herself into, and she rose to her feet with it.
They left the dining room together, and to Nua’s mind, every step was like the clap of thunder. She felt her right hand squeezing his, and didn’t notice until he winced. “I’m sorry!” She answered with a hasty burst of words and relaxed her grip before she blushed.
“It’s alright.” Rasgen said with a faintly pained expression, “We both have things to get used to, but we have time…” He stopped, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. The beard was a little scratchy. She briefly stiffened when he came close, but relaxed herself quickly, such that before his touch began, she’d softened.
They resumed the short walk and they were at his chambers.
He opened the door outward, and allowed her to pass through.
It was as she remembered it, and she went to where his bed was, and laid her hand on the spot where Sobella had been the last time she saw it. He closed the door behind her, turned, and saw where her hand was and where her eyes were.
“I never expected you two to grow so close. If you want the truth…” Rasgen said and paused for a moment, going to a rack where wine lay handy, he quickly poured a silver cup for them both and handed one to Nua, “part of me feels overwhelming guilt.”
“Guilt? You’re not forcing me, Rasgen. I realize I seem a little on edge, but I made this choice.” Nua said graciously while she accepted the wine.
“No. Not like that.” He said and went to stand beside Nua, his hand rested over hers, which itself lay where Sobella’s belly had been touched by Nua’s curse. He took a long drink from the silver cup before swallowing and saying, “I loved her very much, more than I was ever capable of saying. I thought we’d have my whole life before we parted ways. Instead, she’s gone. Avenged. But gone. And now I’m at the bed where she and I spent so many nights, where Tir… Lodira, and Sobella and I had such happiness… and I’m going to consummate a union with you, over the warm bones of the life we had before. I didn’t make this happen. I didn’t choose it. But… this makes no sense, does it?” He snorted with derision at his own statement, but Nua put her left hand on his cheek and drank briefly from her cup before she put it aside and answered.
“It makes more sense than you can possibly realize. We didn’t choose this end for ourselves, neither of us, not the way things happened. Not the lives that were lost or ruined to bring us to this point… guilt, guilt I know a great deal about.” Her shimmering blue eyes held his, “Maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it can only make sense if you live it yourself. And maybe that’s how it should be.” She said, and kissed him.
Her lips pressed to his and they parted immediately, delving her tongue to taste him, to her surprise, when his arms engulfed her, she clung to him. It was a surprising impulse, one wholly unlooked for in her own mind.
To be naked with her servants was nothing, a simple and even inevitable part of life. But her pulse raced far more than she anticipated as she was right now. It was Rasgen who took the first step, when their embrace broke apart, he reached up and began to undo his shirt. ‘It’s easier to have a slave do it, or a lover, but he doesn’t summon one, or ask me…’ She drew her own conclusions about that, and part of her told her to go and help him with the hidden buttons behind the ruffled center.
However she didn’t move, and he didn’t ask, instead he undid it himself, slowly, but surely, until he took it off and set it aside. His boots came off easily, having a single buckle at the top, and he placed them beneath the same chair where he’d set his shirt.
Then came his pants, and finally his undergarments. For just a moment, Nua closed her eyes and heard her own scream from years long before the birth of the man who stood in front of her, a cry for mercy she hadn’t gotten, and then it slipped away into memory’s abyss, and her eyes opened. She half expected Rasgen to leap at her with savage hunger, but to her relief, and a welling sense of gratitude, he did nothing.
He simply stood and patiently let her look him over. He was not the sort of heroic warrior figure that Sado was. Not rippling with muscle, not exuding tremendous power. Though his body had more hair than the body of any elf Nua had ever seen, it was fine and soft looking.
Finally, after what might have been a moment too long, she bent down to undo the laces of her boots. “Do you want me to help?” He asked as her fingers fumbled through it. She didn’t look up when she answered with a nervous…
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“No… no, I can do it.” She quietly answered.
The boots came off and she set them next to his beneath the chair, then reaching behind her, she began to play at the knot. The laces behind began to loosen and fall away, though not without difficulty.
Finally she reached to her belt, it came undone easily at least, and fell to the floor, her knife landing with a thud at her feet. “You brought your knife? You didn’t think you’d need it, did you?” Rasgen raised a brow and looked from it to her and back again.
Nua gave him a winsome smile as she began to peel off her garment, “No, I didn’t, but it’s rarely far from me. I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. People who come to hurt you, rarely stop just because you say, “Wait, I’m not ready!””
Nua’s clothing fell away from her, with her arms out at her side and palms facing him, she stepped not back, but toward Rasgen, allowing him to look her over as well. His eyes went up and down her body, and she saw his manhood begin to rise. She almost reached up with her left hand, then paused, withdrew it, and brought her right hand up to rest on his chest.
“Thank you. And I’m sorry.” She said softly as she came close to him.
“For what?” He asked, cocking his head slightly and raising a brow at the statement.
“For your enduring patience.” She replied, her blue eyes never leaving his, “If I’m being honest, I didn’t expect it, and I should have. Once again my old way of thinking stands in the way. I really am hopeless.” She managed a frustrated smile and then she cut off further questions when she looked up at him, and brought her lips up to his in a kiss.
She took his hands and brought them around her body, “It’s OK, you were patient enough… touch me.” She broke the kiss to say, and he did.
Rasgen was far from virginal, he knew the rough hewn ways of whores and courtesans aplenty who sought to bring men to climax as swiftly as possible. He’d known women who sought his bed only to get the chance to have a child by his line that would earn them silver, and he’d had women whom he truly loved… but they too were experienced in their own right.
Innocence other than his own, was utterly new, and he could think of no other word for how this felt. The way her skin tingled at his touch, the way her body responded with tiny sudden motions as if she wasn’t quite sure, or wasn’t quite comfortable yet.
Wholly unexpected… given who she was, the Prince of Pas’en felt a protective impulse, as if she might break if he touched her the wrong way. ‘Hold her… warm her… comfort her…’ Impulses he never expected would be the norm when with a woman who had so boldly declared that she would bend her knees only to her god or her lover rose naturally within his heart.
He began to trace his lips over her body, breaking from the kiss they shared to do so, he touched her sensitive ears, and felt the first raw shudders of unbridled pleasure run through her body. She clung to him again, letting out a moan. She could crush him with ease, and yet it was as if he was the only thing holding her up as his teeth caressed the sensitive skin and he moved over their length.
He kissed at her neck, and she cocked her head with her eyes closed with blissful mewlings, allowing him better access.
Down her body he went, to her supple breasts, while not the mountains of the busty Lodira, her soft hills and the valley between, were pert and beautiful. He kissed them, and brought his mouth to her hard little nipple, she moaned again as he plied his skills to her pleasure.
He spared her nothing that he knew to do. His tongue said volumes without ever forming a word, and her blissful state was proven by her shudders.
Finally she demanded, “No, wait… W-wait.” Nua managed to gasp. ‘Did I do something wrong…?’ He wondered and looked up.
Nua looked down at him, he had a gifted tongue, ‘Practice makes perfect.’ The mocking taunts of her Teacher returned to her mind only briefly, and his beard added things to the experience that a smooth face couldn’t, “I want you to enjoy this too…” She said and waved a hand toward the bed.
“I am… I promise.” He winked at her, but she nonetheless shook her head in sharp denial.
“No, I insist.” She urged, and unwilling to argue, he rose to his feet, and they lay on the bed together.
His protective impulse toward her slowed him down greatly, as if his body synced itself to her own ability to move forward, they took their time.
The welling gratitude toward him that Nua felt, and her own self recrimination at herself, were only a fragment of what kept her slow to move, but it didn’t keep her back. Though she knew herself not to be innocent, it was almost a new experience, exploring the Prince as a lover. His salty skin was oh so slightly different than she expected. He moaned when her right hand engulfed and explored his manhood, and little by little…
They found their way, until she rocked atop him and cut off his moans with a kiss while placing his hands where she wished, and tightening her body around him in an embrace that threatened to crush him.
Her own climax had come and gone several times, and she felt him growing close, the way his sliding flesh, slick with her body’s desires, thrust in and out over and over again, told her it was near. She arched her back with a sudden cry, her hands going to his shoulders and pinning him down while he arched his hips and pressed himself into her as far as he could go, a desperate gasping groan of his own was followed by the feel of his spasming manhood as well as the full shudder of his body.
They came together, and she collapsed atop him, her head falling to one side in the now steaming sheets of silk.
Their bodies were slick with sweat, and she asked quietly, “I wasn’t too rough with you, was I?”
“That is usually the man’s question.” Rasgen teased, and Nua pushed herself up over him.
“Maybe so, maybe so, Rasgen. But then, there aren’t many women who can snap an orichalcum blade like a twig, are there?” She smirked down at him, and he laughed deeply.
“True, but…” His hand went up to caress her left breast, and he looked at her tenderly, “this was different, I know it was, I don’t know how I know that. But it was, and I hope I pleased you, and made you happy.”
It was enough to rend Nua’s heart to hear a question like that from human lips, and she did her damndest to suppress the tears behind her smile. “You were wonderful. Not what I expected, in the best possible way.”
“Will you stay the night?” He asked and ran his fingers over her back. She had no doubt he’d felt her scars, even seen them in their writhing, if not well. The way they traced over them, reflexively following the lines, would have been off putting if his eyes hadn’t so obviously been lost in hers.
‘No. I have to go. I want…’ She almost said the first, then stopped at the second when she realized she had no idea why, and when she spoke, she did so by lowering herself over him with legs still open and outside his own.
“Yes. Yes I’ll stay. Send a servant to my estate to let Kaiji and the others know not to worry, but I’ll stay with you till morning, then I have to go, I have work to do… a slave to set free, and everything has to be ready for us to reclaim Komestra.” Nua said, acknowledging his conclusion about her intentions.
“It will be strange, not sharing a bed with my own mate on a nightly basis…” Rasgen admitted.
“It will be safer if I’m not here, I have no doubt that the Starwatcher’s Questioners will put you in an uncomfortable position if I am in reach, plus it will be safer for your city if Komestra is restored with an ally.” Nua replied, tracing her fingers over his arms until her hands closed into each of his. The soft and sensitive palms of a prince on the throne were so unlike her own, one hand of metal and magic, the other calloused and harder than steel to the touch, and yet she felt like he was holding himself back.
“Go to sleep, Rasgen… we can think about all these things tomorrow, for now… we can relax, and I think we both need to do that. Plus… this feels good… so good…” She sighed and rested her cheek on his chest and drifted off to a restful sleep with his hand caressing her from the top of her head, down to her lower back, until he fell asleep himself.
They remained that way, until the half-elf twins shook them both awake. “Prince Rasgen, Master, My Lady…” They said in haste to the bleary eyed pair. “Please hurry, it’s important!”