Chapter 28

It started as a small gesture. As the tentative notes of a sonata. The touch of his lips on her neck, the warm and wet kiss on her collarbone, the slight pull of her sweater by the shoulder. Nuada enwrapped her with his presence, impossible to ignore. Loreto let herself be embraced by his warmth and musk. He searched her mouth with agonizing thirst and hunger. He attracted her by her waist and raised her to his level. He took her in his arms. Loreto felt like flying and hanging from his neck merged to his insatiable mouth. They landed on the bed blended as one in the darkness behind their completely sealed eyes. The music of his agitated breath, his hands exploring her skin, undressing her. She untied his silk belt, the brooch of his chest piece, the buttons of his coat. There was time and simultaneously, their patience was not enough to wait to extinguish the fire in her loins for him. Loreto moaned at the delicious tickle that attacked her sex like a lashing of pleasure. Every pore in her skin stood at attention. Every cell in her body was in tune with him. He opened his way down her abdomen and kissed her skin as he opened her jeans. His calmness was torturing her. Loreto pulled him to her. She turned him on the mattress and mounted him. She opened his coat and took it off, throwing it to the floor. She kissed his neck, licked his chest and abdomen at the music of the choked groaning of Nuada. Loreto noticed the big scars crossing his chest and biceps. She brushed them with the tip of her fingers, fearing to hurt him, and questioned him with her eyes. Nuada grabbed her by the nape and ate her mouth eagerly. She allowed her hands to wander through the chiseling geography of his muscles until she reached his trousers. His erection pulsed hard against her abdomen and through the fabric. She ventured to caress it through his pants and made him moan at such a simple touch. He turned her on her back and skillfully got rid of the rest of her clothing and his. To feel his naked body on her finished melting her away completely. The river between her legs ran now out of its bed. He ventured a hand into her depths with his amber pupils focused on her. His dilated iris penetrating her soul, his forehead supported on hers, his long bleached hair closing the way to the outer world around. His intrusion took her by surprise, and yet a humongous hunger for him invaded her. She begged him with her greedy mouth, tangling her tongue with his in a frenzied swaying. He separated from her for a moment, looked her piercingly under his prominent frown like a predator about to devour his prey. He sunk himself in her slowly until she felt him filling her in completely. Loreto arched her back towards the sky and groaned away. She embraced him tight by his back and buttocks with her arms and legs and her entire soul swollen with love for him. She received him within her with all she had to give him. She kissed his dark mouth in between guttural moaning and with her heart beating wildly. His charges were tentative and torturous at first to soon allow a merciless debauchery. His weight on her suffocated her, she panted for air and groaned in his ear every time louder, unable to stop the overwhelming pressure his deep thrusts were provoking. She clung to his strong shoulders like a ship wrecked in the middle of the ocean. Nuada moaned rusty and faltered to her ear, the drops of his sweat landed on her forehead. Their bodies well lubricated by sweat continued their tight dance like a single being battling against itself. Nuada licked her salty neck, went down to her breasts and attacked her hard nipples with teeth and tongue. His rhythm intensified even more, in her core the countdown began about to boil. The whole universe ceased to exist, the Earth to turn, the clock to tick. The waves of orgasm paralyzed her in an apnea suspended between exquisite pain and excruciating quiver. Three thrusts later Nuada came caught in delicious agony written on his features. He panted loud inside her mouth. Inside his eyes, in the abyss of his dilated iris, Loreto saw her reflection. Tousled hair, blushed, irritated mouth, the pearly sweat glow on her skin. She laughed. She laughed like venting. Nuada imitated her. He still shivered very deep inside her. He moved out of her and collapsed on his back on the mattress.

"Since when do you have these scars? What happened to you?," Loreto whispered against his skin clung to his chest.

She kissed the marks, barely brushing with her lips. They seemed like the result of deep cuts. Her heart shrunk for him and the pain he might have felt.

"Too old to remember," Nuada whispered with a deep raspy voice. "That was not the first time humans captured me, I told you," he added as he caressed her hairs and back.

His voice resounded deeply inside his torso. His heart beat slowly. Too slow. She rose to face him and caressed the scars.

"Did humans do this to you?"

Nuada nodded slightly and blinked once. He caressed her face and drew a quick smile at the corners of his black mouth.

"Why didn't they heal like my bullet wound then?," Loreto asked, still focused on the prominent scars on his pale grayish skin.

Nuada smiled with empathy. He caressed her face with his knuckles as he ran his golden eyes over her features. His pupils dilated, opening his iris to the maximum.

"I was away from Bethmoora when it happened," he said in a low voice. "I abandoned the kingdom after my father offered the truce to the humans. It wasn't long for them to recognize me and take me as a prisoner. They healed on their own."

He spoke with a kind of resignation and acceptance that froze her bones. They had tortured him, and in that opportunity, nobody had helped him, Loreto supposed. Her eyes clouded with tears and the crying bumped violently against her throat.

She hugged him tight and enwrapped him with all her body. Nuada embraced her back. He breathed out on her ear with a tired sigh. Loreto clung back to his chest and remained like that for a long while. The pulse of his chest was slow and constant, like a delayed clock.

"Why does your heart beat so slow?," Loreto asked and placed her hand on his left pectoral. "Are you all right?"

Nuada smiled.

"Our bodies function differently than yours. Everything in our organisms advances slowly. I'm fine," he said in a low voice and brushed Loreto's irritated mouth with his thumb.

Suddenly he turned her on her back and clung to her chest. He hugged her by the waist and curled up against her as if begging for her embrace. Loreto tangled her fingers in his long hairs and scratched his scalp, and with the other hand she caressed his strong arm on her abdomen.

"Yours is a war drum," Nuada said with fascination in his voice and his ear pressed to her chest.

He kissed her breasts like tiny caresses and went down to her abdomen.

"Soon the fruit of our love will grow within you," he whispered against her skin.

He went up on her, licking and brushing everything on his way until he reached her mouth. They kissed with a flavor of excessive, naïve and new hope. She looked into his eyes. She loved him with all her soul. She had never loved a man this much. Nuada was not a man and perhaps for that reason she felt the overwhelming imperative to protect him with her life if necessary. Suddenly the memory of her miscarriage tightened her chest with anxiety. Then the doubt planted a seed in her mind and darkened the moment. He noticed.

"What if the children I can give you do not inherit your immortality? What's the use of a mortal heir for the throne of an elven kingdom?," Loreto whispered inside his mouth with a thin thread of voice. She cupped his face. "What if my body cannot create life?," she said, reduced to the dread of losing him.

Nuada embraced her tightly against his shoulder.

"Then it will be Nuala who will have to become the mother of an heir," he whispered in her ear. He separated a bit to face her. "If I only searched for an heir, I would have taken any elf of the kingdom as my wife and they wouldn't have refused. I love you and it is with you with whom I want to start over. With or without the throne, with or without the crown, with or without an heir, I'm already unable to imagine my life without you, Loreto."