"Good night!" Celeborn shouted after the slamming door, receiving no reply from his wife. Maybe she hadn't heard him. Maybe she had. Maybe she hadn't slammed the door after all, or maybe she had, or maybe she had just shut it harder than intended.
He clenched his fists, feeling the urge to hit something again, but his knuckles still ached from the tree he had punched earlier. He had never before worried himself over whether or not a woman replied to him when he wished her good night, and he had certainly never pondered the thought of whether or not a woman had accidentally or intentionally slammed a door when leaving his presence.
But now, with Artanis he felt as if he was reading into every little sign, every action, every word, the very inflection of her voice, all trying to find some possible glimmer of hope that she might love him. Sometimes he thought he saw it in the light of her eyes, in a glimpse of her smile, but there was always some reservation in her gaze that made him think twice, that made him sure that all of the little signs he thought he had seen were nothing more than figments of his imagination.
He had tried to read for a bit, but all he could imagine was her poking fun at him, acting surprised that he could read after all. When they had first married she hadn't meant it as a joke, but as genuine scorn, and he had responded with anger and vitriol against Noldorin pride and false superiority. But now she did it only in jest and he replied with laugher, playing along, turning his books upside down and squinting at them.
"These squiggles are too difficult for my Moriquendi eyes to read," he would say, sometimes adopting a silly voice.
"Stop it!" She would gasp, laughing and blushing furiously, slapping him lightly on the arm or else tugging on his braid. "Don't call yourself that!" But those thoughts only made him melancholy as he contemplated what he must do tomorrow, how he must tell Thingol that they had never consummated the marriage and then how she would be sent back to her brothers and he would likely never see her again. He wanted her more than anything except her freedom.
Hoping to find refuge in sleep, he had adjourned to his bedchamber but that had provided no relief. His memory still burned with the heat of her lips, of her body, his fingers were seared with the indelible feel of her flesh, and yet he had tried as hard as he could to purge himself of the memories. His heart ached with guilt. He knew that she thought he was angry with her when truly he was furious with himself for taking advantage of her situation. It had been such a damnably stupid thing to do.
He didn't know what had caused him to kiss her, except yes, yes he did know. There was some magic about her when she smiled that lit up her eyes like a thousand suns. And the arguing…well he enjoyed the arguing now. It had almost become a form of banter, a sort of verbal foreplay that made him feel things he had never expected to feel for her. And she had looked so unbelievably beautiful that his baser instincts had completely overwhelmed him.
And she… why else would she have gone along with it if it weren't for the pressure from her cousins? He knew she didn't like this plan of telling Thingol that they had never consummated the marriage. He knew she feared the anger of her cousins, feared the ridicule that he would face in response, feared the possibility of war erupting between their peoples, and yet he would rather face all of that than bind her to this marriage she did not want. Even today he had been reminded of how happy she was when she was free and then he, like a blithering idiot, had taken advantage of her happiness, had forced himself on her simply because he could not resist.
Here he had told her he was not that sort of man, that he wanted her freedom for her, that he would never bind her to this marriage she despised, but then his actions had proven what a liar he was, that he would have ruined her life all for the sake of a few moments of pleasure. He was unable to eviscerate the thoughts from his mind, and even more impossible to quench was the desire for her that still burned so strongly within him, but at last he fell into a shallow sleep, a sleep filled with dreams where she was ready and willing and in love with him.
It was the soft flickering of candlelight that woke him, slowly at first, a faint glow, and he blinked his eyes open, struggling for a moment to make sense of why it was not yet day and what was in front of him, or rather who. And when his eyes cleared of sleep at last, he thought for a moment that he was still dreaming. For there, sitting at his side, was Artanis, and she was wearing nothing but a very thin silk robe. Wordlessly, she pushed the candle onto the nearby table and then stood.
"We don't need to keep up this façade any longer," he said, sitting up, his throat dry, wondering what on earth she was doing here. "We're going to Thingol tomorrow…." But he got no further before with trembling fingers she reached for the silken cord about her waist and pulled it, causing the robe to slide from her shoulders to pool about her feet.
She said nothing, merely staring at him with wide eyes as if she feared his rejection while he watched the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, the way the gold of the candlelight slid over her skin, caught in the light of her hair. Her body was perfect and he wanted to explore every inch of it with his mouth, to taste the gentle swell of her breasts, her slender waist, the soft curves of her hips. His fingers still retained the heat of the tender skin between her legs and now his hands hungered to finish what he had begun in the forest.
He could not now recall what his objections to her had been all of those years ago, why he had been repelled by her faults yet unable to see the seeds of good within her, and why… why oh why he had ever thought her anything other than perfectly, gorgeously, ethereally, magnificent. He knew he was staring and yet he found that he did not care, not at all.
Her eyes met his for a nervous instant as she reached for the blankets, pulling them aside, and he made room for her, inviting her into his bed though he knew he shouldn't, even though he knew how this would end, and she climbed in, bringing one long elegant leg over him so that she was straddling his lap now. He reached out, mesmerized, not knowing what to say, half believing that he was still dreaming. His fingers seemed to act over their own accord as they pulled free the ivory silk ribbon that had bound her braid. Her golden hair spilled about her shoulders, falling to her hips, and the pearls that she had bound in the silken strands came loose, flying free, glimmering in the candlelight midflight and bouncing across the floor of his bedchamber until their echoes slowly faded.
"Artanis," he gasped, his chest rising and falling in ragged breaths.
"Celeborn," she whispered, half a question, her eyes still wide, hands trembling, and whatever self-control he had retained seemed to snap in an instant at the sound of his name on her lips. Her hands were shaking but he caught them in his own, gathering her in his arms and tumbling her gently to the soft sheets beneath him. Need was pulsing through him now, a wail of want in his veins, with even greater intensity that the desire he had felt in the forest.
His hands were shaking not with fear but with anticipation long deferred as his fingers returned to that same place they had abandoned in the forest, sliding slowly up the smooth skin of her inner thigh. She trembled beneath his touch, a soft gasp escaping her, and he felt a trail of goose bumps blossom beneath his fingertips. Then, as his fingers reached their destination she stifled her gasp by reaching up to cradle his face in her hands, pressing her lips to his. He eagerly obliged, tongue mimicking the slow but steady movements of his fingers, and she tasted of honey in the springtime: fresh and clean.
Celeborn wished he could say that he was a better man, that he had not done it, but even the strictest ascetic would have been sorely tempted and Celeborn had never had the makings of a monk. All he knew was the heat of her soft skin against him, the taste of her lips, the feel of her fingers that fumbled to free him of his breeches and her gentle hands that stroked him to readiness. As he had predicted, she did not bleed, not that he cared or could even think of such a trivial detail when he felt as if the whole world lay before him in the depths of her blue eyes that brimmed with some strange emotion mixed with pleasure.
She was magnificent as only she could be, her golden hair spread across the pillows, glimmering like a river of sunlight, her skin glowing gold in the candlelight, pink from the flush of excitement, and their eyes met in startled awe but no words passed between them. It almost seemed as if there was so much to say that they were not able to find the words. And yet they did not need them, for the movements of their bodies spoke volumes that mere syllables could express.
There was some sort of power to her, in the way that noises he had never thought to hear her make slipped past her lips unabated, in the set of her hips against his own, in the alluring pride that seemed to be captured in every curve of her body, in the way that she traced his spine, fingers starting at his neck, moving slowly downward, exploring every little crevice until she came to his waist, and further down still until she grasped his hip, rolling her own hips up and pulling him deeper.
He would have thought that she would be more reserved, shy almost about this, prudish, as he had expected, and yet it seemed that she luxuriated in it, seeming to have lost herself in a way, or perhaps she had found herself after all, the look in her eyes so reminiscent of the spark of freedom that had lit them as they raced towards the river.
And whatever light it was grew, filling her until it seemed as if she glowed with it. A brief moment of confusion flickered through her eyes, as if she wasn't sure what was about to happen, but in the next instant she had surrendered to it and then he felt some almighty force surround him, as if he had been caught in a tide and was being drawn into the ocean, filled not with a feeling of terror, but with the fantastic, as if he were going home, surrounded by the silence of the depths of the sea, just the two of them as time slowed to a halt for the span of a moment and then, slowly, like the tide, that moment began to ebb and they collapsed, sweating and trembling from the force of mutual destruction, into each other's arms.
They said nothing for a long while, foreheads pressed together, gazes gently resting on each other, his hands cradling her face as hers cradled his, looking at each other as though they could not believe what they had just done. Then she kissed him again, slowly this time, and joy curled in his stomach at the fullness of her lips against his, the feel of the edge of her tongue against his own, her hands tangled in his hair. They did not tire of kissing for a while, and yet whatever it was that had happened, the formation of the bond or the rest of it, had caused him to feel more exhausted than he had ever felt, not the painful exhaustion that accompanies battle, but the pleasant comfort that comes just before a long rest.
"You didn't turn out to be a prude either," he murmured, losing the battle to keep his eyes open. Nothing in the world seemed to matter except her golden head resting on his chest and the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. She laughed, and he felt her mouth stretching into a smile against his bare skin. "Won't you let me maintain even one of my misconceptions?" He asked her.
"Not a single one," she whispered back, her eyes fluttering shut as well, and if she said anything else then he didn't hear it, for the world of dreams had claimed him at last.
