His roughened fingers ran through her hair as she knelt before him, tracing their way gently to her jaw and reverently turning her face to meet his gaze. If not for his dark garments, she would forget who he truly was, as Halbrand's warm grin fairly shown down upon her. His touch was feather-light, as if her skin was the most delicate and precious object he could hold. One hand reaching for her arm, he led her to her feet once more. "Such fealty must be rewarded," he rasped, his voice gentle as he placed a kiss on her lips again. "Name your prize."
"To be your queen," Galadriel breathed her reply against his mouth, pulling him closer against her as she did so.
"You already will have that honor, Galadriel," he said, taking her lower lip between the hard edges of his teeth gently. "Name something else."
She feigned a pause, bracing her hands against his chest and pulling away to meet the almost reddening lights in his eyes. "I wish you to trust me more, my lord. Allow me to leave this room at the very least," she whispered, her touch dancing across the stitching of his black collar and carefully brushing against the heated skin of his neck from time to time.
The lines about his eyes smoothed, a dark flash hardened his smile. "Trust is earned, not granted as favor," his voice chilled.
"Then grant me the opportunity to earn it. If I am to bind myself to you, it cannot only be behind our bedroom doors can it?" Her words hung in the air, the blue pools of her eyes pleading, tapping into the tears of aching loneliness she had tamped down for the rest of this world's age. "Do not lock me up alone, I beg of you," her voice barely more than a whimper.
He saw it there, her true emotion, a lost She-elf without kin or kith. And beyond his biting darkness's better judgment, he nodded his assent. His voice came with an unbidden shudder, "I have been adrift for longer than you found me on that raft. For ages of this world, I have looked for one to match my soul, my power, and my devotion. Once you found me, you ordered me to bind myself to you, and now I will obey that command, with pleasure. My kingdom will be yours. My power will be yours. And your light, you and your light will be mine."
His words pierced right through her armored heart. Her mission could burn, she decided as her stomach dropped to her toes as he leaned in to place the softest, most reverent kiss on her waiting lips. Every word he spoke was truth. The truth her heart had longed for, unspoken, since her brother's death. Since her husband's disappearance. This was the twin flame of her very being. And like a flame, her veins flooded with fiery heat. Her desire coursed through every inch of her skin, the pull of her fabric too much to bear against her flesh. Mine, he had purred. The thrumming repeat of his claim upon her deadened all other sounds but his breath in her mouth and the scratch of his touch on her dress from where he gripped it with force.
Fabric tore, pooling at their feet. A swirl of white dress and black cloak and robes. Maybe it was brute force of his hands, strengthened from the forge, maybe it was a smoke of magic that clung in the air, but each of them shared one intent. His hands ran along the skin of her back, bare to the air and dim light. A grunt of pure power, and he grabbed her by the thighs, wrapping her bare legs around him and heaving her into his arms. Finally, her face met his at equal height, her eyes flared open as he paused the work of his mouth on her own. He smiled softly at her, but the glow of his eyes spoke of a barely bridled power. One that would surely dominate and consume her body and soul. And most hauntingly, he stared at her through his green eyes, now thin slits with the swirl of his power that boiled beneath human skin.
Galadriel's breath froze in her chest as he moved towards the lush expanse of the bed. Slowly, he sat them down on the edge of the mattress. Just as they had been before. As a breeze blew against her skin, she became painfully aware of her nakedness, straddling his still trousered lap but feeling the pressure of his arousal all the same between her legs. Bound in light and power or in body, it was all the same to her now. And this was a battle line she would cross one way or another.
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