"Tauriel, would you like to kiss me?"
For the past few minutes, she had been regarding him with a look of tender curiosity, and Kíli wondered if her thoughts had taken the same direction as his own. In truth, he had wanted to kiss her these two months since he had first met her, but he didn't want to suggest such a thing until he thought she would accept.
And now his patience (and it had taken a very great deal) was rewarded: Tauriel said nothing, but she laid her hand on his cheek, closed her eyes, and set her lips to his.
This was the best first kiss Kíli had ever shared with someone: not at all clumsy or uncertain, yet still as tentative and sweet as befitted an initial overture of affection. Kíli had always considered himself rather good at kissing—he'd certainly had practice enough—but he was sure he'd never been able to kiss as she showed him now. The way her lips moved was somehow so elegant, and he felt as if she led him in a dance whose steps he did not quite know after all.
When she drew back, she was smiling, so Kíli supposed he had done all right. Yet that curious look was still not gone from her eyes. She traced her fingers down his whiskered cheek, and then beginning at the very corner of his mouth, trailed exploratory kisses up the side of his face, over the corner of his jaw, into the hollow of his throat. Her manner was no longer exactly elegant, but she was sweet and eager, and that was just as good.
Kíli returned her kisses wherever his own lips fell, on her cheekbone, her ear, her brow. Her skin was soft and smelled lightly of some flower Kíli could not name or place.
This time, after they finished, Kíli found her cheeks flamed as deep as her hair. Brushing a thumb over her velvet skin, he felt how warm she was.
"I've never kissed anyone with a rough face like yours," she confessed, and Kíli could not be sure if she was more embarrassed by her ignorance or her boldness or just his strangeness.
"Well, I've never kissed anyone with a face as smooth as yours," he said, to make her feel better. "I liked it."
Her expression went blank with astonishment."You mean you've only kissed men?"
"What? I haven't—" Kíli could not understand where this question had come from.
"Well, you told me there aren't many dwarf women, so I thought maybe instead— Kíli, it wouldn't have mattered to me. I just didn't know."
Kíli laughed then, and Tauriel started.
"You know dwarf girls have beards, right?" She had not yet, Kíli realized, seen any female dwarves. The first families would not arrive in Erebor for months yet.
"Oh. Of course." Her colored deepened. "I forgot."
"Nah, it's fine." He caressed her cheek. "You're sweet, Tauriel. You don't know anything about dwarves, and I don't know anything about elves. But I still think this can work; us, I mean. Do you?"
She smiled, her awkward expression from before softening into something hopeful and tender.
"Yes, Kíli, I do."
And she kissed him again.