A King of Ash and Fire

by Lady of Arda

"And though... love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps the greater." Thorin Oakenshield has survived the Battle of the Five Armies, but at a grievous cost. A second chance at life, and a first at love, will stand against the changing tides of Middle Earth. Thorin/OC. Dwalin/OC. Post BOFTA AU.

27. AND DRANK FROM YET UNTESTED WELLS

A/N: Chapter title "And Drank From Yet Untested Wells" is an excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Song of Durin's Awakening." All credit and ownership is his. To my lovely readers, if the chapter title (and its predecessor) seemed opaque in meaning, I assure you it will all make FAR more sense by the end of this one *devilish grin*

For making you guys wait longer than usual for a chapter, let this stand as my gift to you :)

By the time all of the dwarves were rounded up from on and off the campsite, it was late in the morning, or so they supposed.

Eventually, and with little memory of the night's happenings after the disruption, Meisar slipped out from beneath the bedroll, her head pounding. She made a disappointed grumble to find that Thorin was not by her side. A bump marred her forehead darkly, but the purplish marks at her throat were from a different, and quite obvious source. She sat up and looked about; that source was nowhere to be seen.

"Up, up!" she clapped her hands. Bedrolls stirred languidly. She was about to tug Nori out of his bedroll when Siv crawled out of it.

"Heard Bifur put a stop to yer fun last night," she cackled.

"Heard Emli put a stop to yours," retorted Meisar. She eyed the dwarf whose bedroll she was now in, accusingly.

Siv looked up at her smartly. "Shh… I'm just hiding in here. Emli's rearing to murder me."

Meisar trod to the edge of the camp where it met the road. Within moments Tauriel was barreling through. "Come now, all of you! There are elven guards prowling about!"

The dwarves were roused well and quick enough but Emli was frantically indifferent to the new urgency. A messy blot of dried… something streaked Gimli's beard. Emli dissolved the last of her soap into a basin and scrubbed at Gimli's face and beard. She looked up and Meisar and Tauriel and keened lamentably. "Siv! Siv! Dreadful girl! Look what she has done to my son's beard, his fine beard!"

"Siv came about to him as he slept," Thorin whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Meisar.

"Sat on him like he was a pony when we know it's her being ridden like one all the day and the night!" Emli thundered up at them, causing Thorin to jump. "I pushed her off! I hurled her like a stone!"

Emli went on pecking about Gimli in hysterics. "Emli, we must get on our way," Meisar told her firmly. "But…!" Emli protested.

"Up mistress dwarf! Unless you wish to be the Elvenking's guest," Tauriel urged, her hand on Emli's shoulder pulling firmly at her cloak. Emli snapped a bejeweled hand up at Tauriel's and slapped her away priggishly. "Off of me, she-elf! If you'd seen what that hussy was about in the night!"

"Saw more than I wanted to, my lady," Tauriel half-smiled through her weary visage. Finally Gimli stood and lifted and all but tossed his mother onto the front seat of their wagon, seizing the reins and rattling on. Emli scolded him so firmly all the way down the narrow path all were certain she would bring a cadre of elves straight to them. "Nobody tosses a dwarf, not even another dwarf! Your own mother!" she preached in a fist-rattling fury while Gimli ignored her with a purposeful petulance about him, soap bubbles flying from his beard and flecking like snow against the dwarves that rode behind them. "By The Creator's name your father shall hear of this Gimli!"

Tauriel helped the daughters of Bombur to load up and mount at the rear of the caravan. "Wait!" a little voice called to her. Yrsa came waddling out to the back door of the wagon. She shoved two jars of marmalade and a string of wurst at Tauriel. "You're far too skinny elf-maid. Eat this and you'll be good and fat. Works for us!"

Tauriel smiled through her teeth at the five dwarven butterballs huffing around the wagon, and toward a trio of dread-eyed ponies. All her family, the elf-maid thought heavily, this precious dwarven child, as wide as she was tall and merry as a jester. The tail end of the caravan started to disappear up the road. "Best you go, child and quick. I thank you with all my heart."

Two more dwarves on ponies swooped by her. Flanked by the king and the shepherdess, she bowed her head to each. She hugged Meisar achingly, in spite of her warning. "Fare thee well, mistress dwarf. It cannot be more than a few months before another of your caravans comes rolling through. I pray to see you then."

Meisar looked at her wordlessly and with trepidation, the faint glimmer of hope in eyes that retained an ember of something fiercer. "I ask the Creator ever humbly… that we shall meet again."

"Come now!" Thorin ordered impatiently. They went on and Tauriel seemed to be standing in the same spot until they were out of sight.

They had reached the edge of the forest and staggered out of its midst, into the bitter sun of an autumn's afternoon. The dwarves blinked into the harsh light and rejoiced. But when she turned back to have a look at the forest that was behind, she thought she could still hear the sound of a woman crying.

.

They rode awhile longer. Dori had been given Elvish swill with his tea, enough to knock him out entirely. Slumping, he sat unconscious before Nori on a pony, while Ori trailed behind, seeming to recall as little of the night as his brother did at the moment. He and Gyda had shared a brief snack on the backs of their respective ponies and conversed gently as if nothing had happened at all. The dwarves all hoped the impression might stay that way.

When they stopped, several of the dwarrowdams whispered indignantly of their small-clothes being thieved upon during the night. They were found in Nori's pack, naturally.

Eda spread the clothes and trinkets and let the dwarrowdams reclaim theirs. The singular remaining drawers, with the ostentatious pink lace trim, she tossed at Siv disdainfully. "I believe these are yours."

"Sure enough," said Siv. She hiked her skirt and pulled them on, never breaking a sparkling, defiant eye contact with Eda.

"That's on you, cousin. You're the one who left 'em there in his bedroll. Didn't even have to bother thieving 'em," scolded Eda. "Magic tree or no magic tree makin' em all rut with each other like common farm animals, you're a brazen, sordid girl you are. Belong with a thief you do."

Eda tried to tug her up and away but Nori stepped between them with an unusual gentleness. "Dinna do nothin' wrong, Eda. Drank too much of the Elvish swill with the magic dust. Swear it wasn't her fault she tripped and landed on Master Gimli without 'er undies!"

"So says one who stores those of multiple ladies in his personal collection," seethed Eda. Siv sat obstinately on the ground beside Nori. Eda stormed off in a huff.

"Ye know that was a lie, Nori," Siv murmured edged in guilt.

"I'm a thief. It's my second nature, sweets. Professional level liar. Occasionally for a good cause." He smiled at her.

"Ought not pretend you care about me," Siv muttered.

"Think you're an agreeable lass for company, with a merry way about'cha." He grinned with his crooked nose and teeth in that knavish way.

"Don't ye butter me up like I'm some simple-minded trollop. Think of me like that like the lot of 'em do, think I don't see it. Got no dwarf to like me for what I am agreeable company or no." She smiled self-deprecatingly.

"But…" Nori stammered. "But… I do like you Siv."

II

The next day brought a morning of hunting wild hare and quail on the part of the dwarves, and given way to an afternoon of the Urdlaug and her sisters cooking up the fare and deliciously so.

Tasks were delegated; build fires, tend to animals, replenish water stores. Meisar went with Freyda to the nearest stream.

A miffed Freyda sat back on her haunches and fixed her hair over the reflection of the water. "Reckon I'm not as pretty outside that wretched forest."

"He has not courted you yet?" Meisar came beside her and sat cautiously.

"Courting? What's he know about courting?" Freyda drew back and sat with her arms crossed and her eyes clouded over with loathing.

"The yellow tree dropped that wicked dust all over you. Don't know that's much for a proper courting gesture but…"

"What happened in that forest, it wasn't courting," Freyda said abruptly.

"Freyda, did something… unwise…? Between you and Dwalin I mean."

"Well… can't say nothing happened," she smiled finally. "Got a sense of direction like the king it's likely he won't find where to put it on his own. Think he don't know his way too well 'round a lass. Got to use his hands first to find the crucial bits."

"Oh…"

"Aye, but the way he ripped off that knuckle duster and tossed it I knew he was rearin' for a bit o' something. Maybe more than that. Guess I won't know now."

"More than that?"

"Nay. Ahh… it wasn't… well not with the… dangling part. And not quite… like that. Not enough time for that before the likes of you and the king come staggering back like you've had a bit yerself. Bark in yer hair and the waist of yer skirt all twisted 'round. Think I dinna see?"

"No. And Bifur clobbered him in the night or perhaps…"

"Hegi tried to mount him like a wee pony. Don't know the mounting works the other way around I reckon. Madwoman. Poor Bifur ran off into the woods he did."

"He didn't hurt you, did he Freyda?"

"Nah. Feel ashamed of myself now for it. But I liked it. Liked it a lot. Wanted more. So much more." The iron-smith's flushed, her breath rolling over every syllable as it were a sweetness on her tongue.

"Aye." Meisar agreed. Her head swam.

"Ye want to know what I think?" Freyda said suddenly and with a pensive expression.

"What?"

"I think that tree was full of dark magic. Like a potion ye take and it makes ye all… well… ye know. Heard the womenfolk of the tall-kind take all kinds of 'em potions when their husbands don't care for 'em like they used to…"

"Tauriel said it draws the most forbidden desires from all it touches. Perhaps it makes us as we truly are, for the worst, or perhaps not the worst. I do not know anything anymore."

"Is it wrong then?"

"I don't know. It doesn't quite feel that way, but perhaps that's how we're supposed to feel. Feel, not think. Is it always so bad to put your heart above your head? Does it always hurt us when we do so?"

"If it is… I shan't be surprised nor offended should Dwalin never want to see the sight of me again. A pity though. All I've ever wanted was a kind man all me life, to share it with. Always wanted a fine dwarf to put his hands on me. Always wanted to be kissed proper…"

"Then perchance you are still meant to find that One. After all, a kind man and Dwalin are not-"

"But he is kind!" Freyda protested. "Well, in his way. I shan't take too kindly to a dwarf who brings me diamonds and pens me songs of romance. Best for a daintier lass. I want one like him. Bit rough but not in the cruel way. Told me I had lovely shoulders he did."

"So what did he… do?"

"A bit o' touch is all but Mahal knows what woulda happened we had a bit more time."

"Touch?"

"Took 'em knuckle dusters off for a good reason, lass," was all Freyda said and devilishly. Then she frowned in a tight line. "Wish he woulda kissed me…"

.

When all was complete, the dwarves came back to an early camp to partake of the 'Urs' spur of the moment feast. Rabbit cooked and sprinkled in thyme and sage with Donbur's signature mustard sauce offered in jars for the dipping, accompanied quail with clove pepper and fennel prepared by Urdlaug. She had made also a delectable stir-fry of the feet and less palatable parts that no one noticed were the feet and less palatable parts, with wild onions, leeks and potato fried and crackled to perfection in the last of her good cooking oil.

The air scented with grilled meat and wood-smoke, Meisar laid an adequate spread to soften the ground, cloaks and bedrolls and furs all laid out in a roomy square. Thorin laid on his back and curled his arm about her waist, her cheek rested on the back of her hand. Her opposite he clasped tight over his chest. She could feel his heart through his layers of clothes, placidly beating.

He could not have found himself any more placated than at that moment, in the peace of the afternoon east of the forest, and the way she looked down on him with a pensiveness in her face, a sudden insecurity seeming to bloom in spite of how lovingly she had cast her gaze, relaxed her body under his touch.

He brushed the stray flyaway hair back from her forehead, studied the purple mark with its sickly yellowing border with his lip draw out in dissatisfaction. "Does your head hurt?"

"Not really." There was a coyness about her fluttery-eyed smile.

She felt his hand curl and rest at the back of her neck and draw her down tenderly to offer a on her cheek, fumbling to find his way with her long braids landing with a thump on his face and trailing about him. "Oh?" He turned upright and laid her face up across his lap. He rubbed at her sore temples gently. She clutched around his knee close. "Yes, that is very good. Thorin, my darling…"

"You care for me as none have before," she sighed against his knee. The opposite hand drifted down over her heavily-padded back, finding the curve in spite of it, resting at the small part of it again. His fingertip made little careful shy circles there.

"Aye, and I care for you as I have cared for none before, save my kin."

She sat up and laid her head against his shoulder, arm draped about him, with a weightiness about her touch. "Would that I… become to you all things, Thorin. And protect you, as I gave you my promise to do so."

"And I to you."

"I ask only for honor in all things."

"And you have it."

She smiled, that smile once so rare now delightfully frequent. "Your turn," she said. She took her soft pack and plumped it once, setting it against the tree. She leaned her back into it, slightly reclined.

His elbow brushed her clothed thigh before it settled on the ground, his arm draping itself around her leg, spreading fingers to squeeze at the strong form of her calf, moving from the plate of her kneecap to rest just below. She leaned down and kissed his smarting forehead placidly, before rubbing his sore head with fingertips applying just the right amount of pressure, half a careful caress half a massage, to his smarting temple. He wrinkled his brows and nose as his hair brushed across them, her hands soothing the strands out of the way. He gathered her head in his hands and bent her head forward to kiss him, her nose at his chin, his nestled into the hollow of her cheek as he took of her mouth its warm, spiced nectar. She tasted of quail and smoke and he of thyme and a separate drier smoke; he had never cared much for her sweet Frogmorton weed.

The heavy food had settled him. Before she knew it he was asleep across her, in the height of the afternoon beginning to darken as it was in the autumn chill. A sense of that urgency she had known but once, in the cursed forest they had now left far behind. She had desired him and still desired him. For the moment though, all she ached for was the weight of him not upon all inches of her, but on her torso alone, sleeping like a kitten, a sleep which she too felt eager to join.

To stay here conscious but another moment though, she pleaded silently inside. He needed this, she reasoned, with even greater urgency than did her body desire him. To grasp for any moment of peace in this dark, dark world. And she to witness this most sacred sight, her king, her Thorin, untroubled in his rest.

.

"Are you awake?" Her eyes opened slowly feeling his fingertips reach back and brush over her own, cheek buried in his hair, fingers even in her slumber caressing the ends of his mane. He was half-reclined on his back laying against her, her upright against the tree trunk, unchanged in position since they had fallen asleep when it was still light. Only now his fur surcoat was draped about her shoulders, tucked about her in a protective, intentional way.

"Aye." She kissed his head and moved and kindled a lantern in the dark to sit beside them. She wanted to see him. All of him.

They sat across from each other for a moment before she felt his lips meet hers, her body surrendering, boneless in her skin, laying back, taking him atop her. They kissed furiously on the spread.

Thorin's head tilted to the side, at the rumpus echoing out of the camp that seemed to slingshot far too close to their secreted nest, here at the edge of the grove. There was stomping and hooting and drunken hollering.

He made a deliberate, annoyed pause at them. "Let us save our energies then, for a better time?" He kissed her on both cheeks, hair fanning over them.

She let out a thick breath, relieved but not really. Her Thorin, her tender Thorin in spite of all his hardship. And Mirkwood? That forest had made them all weak in their way, out of their character. Expressing those things better left dormant and hidden or that which was, in its own way, meant to be?

So these are the tricks it plays? The uncertainties it plants to make us weak when we cannot be. This dark magic…

How greedily he had kissed and touched her all over. How pliantly she had melted, opened for him. She squirmed where she lay, now, beneath him, all the same.

"Do you wish to-" he asked her, as he had in Mirkwood, timider though. No less intense.

"Thorin, in Mirkwood I feared…"

"We are beyond that place," he assured quietly.

"It brought about a darker aspect of our natures. A madness…"

"You think my adoration of you madness?" He backed off and gave her a wounded glare.

"I don't know what to think. I am confused. What happened in that forest, Thorin is…" She felt his hands grip the rigidity of her shoulders.

"And do the tales of my conquest tell you of the war we could have fought? For a thing the size of my fist." He made a fist to enunciate his point. "A rock. A nothing. When an army of elves had their arrows pointed at my kin, I chose it. Perhaps you should be afraid. Rightfully so."

"I am not afraid! Such is my adoration of you, my king, Thorin!"

"A strain of madness has poisoned generous of my forefathers. It ends! I shall be enslaved by none of it!" His hands moved up to her face, cupping her tight. "Swear to me you would slay me with my own sword should I become as my grandfather was."

"You know I cannot. I vowed to protect you, and I would never break that oath, not even if you begged me on your knees."

He smiled cryptically. "An honorable woman. For my sins, how dare I think to deserve you?" His eyes clouded.

"Because we were meant for each other. Would the Creator have spared your life and given you to your people anew but to inflict more grief upon the both of us?"

When he tried to nod no, she realized she had been holding his face so firmly he could not. Slacked hands eased and moved down to stroke his hair against his face and neck. She smoothed the straying silver strands that had plastered themselves to his forehead.

"Swear to me one thing?"

"Anything," he murmured.

"Swear that you do not look upon me with blind lust in your eyes. Swear to me I do not make you feel as the Arkenstone did. That when you look upon me you do not stir inside as you did for the treasure of your forebears. That I am more than that to you."

"Do you not think I entertain some physical attraction toward you though my dear?" A wanting smile even with his terse posture crossed his lips toward her. He adored her, the full cheeks and hard hooded eyes and heart-shaped mouth with the pink plump slightly chapped lips. When she smiled there was a cherubic quality about her that made her seem, even for a moment, unsullied, innocent even, as if her years were of no consequence, and there was, stubbornly holding on, her maidenly beauty, untouched by the harshness of life. But no, he thought; her timeworn features, her premature lines, her beardlessness, were her beauty and her strength, and her strength was his own.

"Do you?"

"Your beauty astounds me every time I look upon you, and more so each day."

"As yours does to me" she answered swiftly, blushing. "When I look at you my heart and my body are quite… happy."

She gave him a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth, daring not more at that moment for the heat of her own wanting. Her nipples had become taut within her shirt and jerkin and panged in a pinching sort of way as it screwed and screwed of their own mysterious accord into what felt like tiny, shriveled points.

"An easy promise," he avowed finally. "One I could not make with more surety." He kissed her hands, beard dusting trembling knuckles, making her knees weak beneath her, his forehead rested weightily to hers as he did so. "I know it. For when I see you, whether you make a fire in my heart or in my… elsewhere… there is only light."

.

"He's gone out his mind thinking he'll bring her to Erebor with him. Dress her in jewels and sit her by his side," Dori remarked. Dwarves sat about the fire in the night nearby, listening to the breathing and groans from the king and shepherdess, and their voices fighting to contain themselves in some tense exchange or another. At the camp the commentary always endless, and with drink made more so. Dori went on, wobbling on his perch of a log about the fire. "Not sure he's recovered from that madness he thinks it'll be the way of things." He drank more tea and seemed to struggle further to stay upright.

"Unlike that dread thing the Arkenstone, she is sentient. And of far better use to the king's cause," insisted Balin.

"Use? So that's all the shepherdess is. Use? I should think she's in for something greater than that, her and the king," Emli hastened to remark, half a scold in Balin's direction.

Balin got a pang of regret in his eyes, unused to being scolded by the likes of Emli but feeling strangely intimidated by it nonetheless. Alas, she was right (as always). "I suppose that was the wrong word. Not of use, but of purpose, and I think to be by his side-"

"You don't think-?" Dori hiccuped half-exasperated.

Emli turned around. "Can you not see it plainly? What else could possibly coming of it?"

"There is nothing I can see plainly anymore," Dwalin sighed. He looked over at Freyda but she did not look back at him.

"Regardless of the implications of a courtship, it simply wouldn't be… feasible," Dori countered, a wavering finger wobbling midair. His whole body swayed sidewards into the ground.

"Oh leave them be. It will be as it is," Dwalin growled as Dori landed square across his lap face-down.

"I yield," Dori sighed, as Dwalin hauled him upright again with less tenderness.

Balin patted Dori's shoulder, gave his brother a gracious smile. "It is a strange and most unexpected time to fall in love. But it is, for the sake of all things, profound, and somehow so perfect, it is as if it was always meant to be. A light at the end of a long darkness."

.

He had laid her back again and pressed his weight all to her, kisses that had been tender pecks dotted across her face and neck now concentrated at her mouth and with such intensity she could barely breathe. But she devoured him in return with equal fervor. Bliss had sprung to life in her uncontrolled as nature itself.

She made a petulant sighing sound at the sudden absence of contact when he rolled over again. "Hold me. I would have you all around me this night." Thorin's cloak covered them both then, the weight of its fur and leather seeming to press him down closer against her. She undulated to him, pulled toward the desperate, possessive ministrations of his touch. She wanted them to take their clothes off so they could touch each other's bare skin. As if he could read that brazen thought, his hand had fisted at the hem of his tunic while he kissed her.

He unclasped the fastenings at his outer clothes and did the same with hers.

"Thorin I…" Her breath hitched, pulling the laces taut again to close her tunic against him. Thick hair covered her like a blanket, trapping their heat, their nose-to-nose forehead-to-forehead claustrophobic lust. He kissed her headily.

His knees slid out from under him and sent him to land cumbersomely and with dense weight upon her. She gasped at the sudden heaviness of all of him pressed atop her sans leverage.

And in her head the word rang louder. Hurmul. She pulled back, however reluctantly, from Thorin's lips. He stopped entirely his indulging of her, when he had seen the sweetened orbs of light that were her eyes dim beneath him. She squirmed breathlessly beneath his body, his fingers at her pulse points.

"Are you alright?" There was a barely-concealed irritation in his voice. She shuddered at it.

A small nod was all she gave, neither yes nor no. She tried to say something but only a distressed sigh came out. The ember of her desire had kindled all too deep. Anchored to sturdy hips that twitched deep inside the worn leather for her, he relented, rolled on his back off of her.

"No…" she put up her arms for him. "Stay… lay here beside me."

"I can read your doubts plain as day, my lady. We should not."

"My doubts?" She was, for once, in the mood for playing at coy.

He sighed heavily. "You are a maid. I would do better to honor that. This is no place."

"A maid but a woman as well. Here beside my One, my king…"

"Your mad king..." he grumbled with a self-loathing that flinted over her very soul. She wrapped her arms around him, kissed his head.

"You know full well if your madness eclipsed your honor you could have me. I am… smaller than you, after all."

He smirked darkly against her breast, maneuvering himself to hover over her once again. His eyes were obsidian. "And have the Creator take from me my sword and jewels before my forebears in his Halls. Nay. I value my honor more than that. And yours a thousand times that."

"Then you are not mad, and if you are and I am wrong, then I am also." She stroked his arm, scooted up a little higher to meet his eyes in full.

Are you mad for me, Thorin? She issued that question wordlessly, like a knife offered blade-first. A challenge?

She was trembling, and for once, he could not tell whether it was for fear of him or fear of her own lust. Her own madness.

Lust? Yes, it is lust. It kindles and takes my body as its prisoner. No! But she is not hollow flesh and bone to take, no lifeless jewel for which I have forsaken my kin. She is my comfort and my light, my strength, my peace, for which her absence is the absence of all these. Weak where I am weak, a shell of steel with a core soft as silk and breakable as glass. She is my refuge, all of her. Beloved to all of me. My every inch. In her. I wish to be. I ache for it…

"I desire you! Woman, you are my own."

Hungry, desperate to take her flesh with his he pressed her back in a controlled simmer, before seizing her again in a storming kiss, hips pounding and thrusting against hers furiously in a dry-run. Through his breeches she could feel him hard, grinding up against her, as he hissed into her neck. She could feel him cursing inside the way his chest rumbled from deep within. A place where all that anger and hurt and betrayal and grief lay trapped within him just as hers lay both burning and necrotizing within her.

He pressed her head back, growling into her mouth when he plundered it with his own. With all of his weight pressed ferociously onto her, he left a trail of harsh, smoldering bites from her throat to the exposed bridge of skin at her shoulder. Did he intend to hurt her? She was not sure whose pleasure this act served, if either of theirs. But hurt in true? Dishonor was not in his blood was hurt… Thorin Oakenshield was schooled in hurt. To learn cruelty and anger and betrayal was to also know how to inflict it (she knew all too well).

If that was his intention, he could have ravished her easily, leaving her with only the night to absorb her tears. He did no such thing.

She touched his cheek and he flinched away, his silence thick and condemning.

It was not going to end like this, with the line drawn between them in the night. Meisar turned back and kissed his head with shy determination, and sadness. "Goodnight, Thorin." She turned away from him to sleep.

When Thorin woke in the mid-hours of the night, she was gone.

.

He went quietly toward the lake-shore, stepping along its forested banks with the full moon casting an accusatory eye at him. What are you searching for? It asked him silently. Are you ashamed of your intent that you hide in darkness?

A stirring in him had pulled him here, without cause or rationale, this slim forest, these shores. There was the moon again eyeing him through the grove of trees. A figure rustled in the dark and Thorin raised his ax.

"What are you doing out here so late? With the beasts that prowl these lands?" Thorin asked lowly in the dark.

Meisar raised her lantern and shined it on him. "Having a wash by the moon's light without you boys leering. No more dangerous than you having a piss in the dark, my lord," she replied smartly.

They stared each other down for a brief moment across the grove, each daring the other to move, his gaze harsh and gleaming.

A thick desirous growl rose again in Thorin's chest. This was his game now.

At once he had strode to her, pushing her back against the tree with her wrists pinned above her in just one of his hands, his lips crushed to hers just as roughly.

"Thorin!" she gasped as his kiss broke, and pulling away from her lips he began to plunder at her neck. Gasping, moaning, wanting him to release her so she could have her arms around him, pulling him tight to her, tangling her fingers in his hair.

Something about the hunger in his eyes thrilled her, his desperation laid bare. His grip tightened around her wrists, when she pushed at him, daring him, daring him to-

A hand dug into her hair and mussed the top, fingers anchoring themselves to her scalp. He found her upper lift with a grasping kiss. The outer rims of her nostrils twitched at the coarse tickling sensation of his beard's contact there, savagely rubbing. He moved swiftly and plundering wildly in his manner, to her neck, and a fold of taut skin caught in his teeth at once. She hissed quietly, resisting the urge to bay deep into the night. Pressing kisses to the crook of her neck was punctuated by savage nips and the burn of his beard as he hissed into her skin. He pursued the smarting flesh with his mouth mercilessly for what seemed an eternity.

Another kiss then laid itself hard upon her mouth, and he pulled back again to face her, pupils dilated washing away the cold sapphire entirely.

That indelicate yearning that had rendered her blissful and helpless was not her weakness, no. No, her head swam, dizzy with want. I am his and he is mine. She pressed her mouth savagely to his again and nipped at his lower lip, tugging him toward her, her eyes aflame even in the dark. He bit against her bottom lip in response, a hum becoming a growl. He followed the line and warmth of her neck fumbling in the dark with an uneven path of bites along the quavering skin.

"You say none would have you, beardless dwarrowdam? Child of the wilds? Lone as a wolf?" his voice dripped into her ear, its barely-contained kindling about to burst.

"None but you." She wrapped her fingers into his hair and pulled. He contained what she knew might have emerged a roar, stared into his eyes determinedly with her fingers knotted in his hair. "You are mine alone then. Meisar. Blessing. Jewel of Mine..."

She felt him heavy against her, his lips at her throat again and placing wild kisses across the bow of her collarbone and lower still he kissed. She could feel his knees buckling as they bent so he might access her, continue this decadent exploration wherever it may lead. Wherever it may lead. Yes, yes. My king. My own.

Lower still she felt the fervent and heated breath journey, his head coming into the valley between her breasts. Kissing and kissing his way down, his teeth clasped at her through the thin fabric of her tunic, until he was on his knees before her. There was a lump swelling up in her throat that stymied any sound she deigned to make, and all that emerged were little gasps. She could barely breathe.

His grip moved from the dips at her strong waist to her hips where he anchored with a fierceness and held on, solid and scorching and commanding. He took the hem of her tunic and pulls its laces open at the bottom, so that her moon-white, lightly freckled belly was bared. He kissed her there, dipping his tongue into the indent of her navel, sucking the skin into the heat of his mouth.

"Thorin!" Whether she had uttered it aloud or no she could not even be certain. Her throat felt the size of a reed.

Thorin breathed into her skin. "I should like to kiss you everywhere, Meisar."

With a single motion of his hand her over-skirt was undone and fell to the ground, leaving her thin calico undergarment the only barrier between them. She was not wearing her braies, only the underskirt. Was this luck or destiny? His fingers slipped under the stubborn waistband, ghosting over the peak of her pubic bone. He started to tug downward at it, but her small-clothing remained stubbornly hilted over the voluptuous curve of her hips, her pretty rounded belly. He cupped her mound, rubbing against it with only the thin layer of her under-skirt separating his rough, seeking hand from her. He felt the slender culvert where the lips parted, and her breathed hitched when he touched her there. He rubbed her until the fabric beneath his fingers was soaked.

"Say no and I will cease I swear it," he half-gasped, when he felt the vibration of her moans above him. He tugged at the stubborn waistband of her under-skirt, found it fastened neither by button or lace.

"No! I want… you. Thorin... I want you. I trust you. Oh my king... my... Thorin." She writhed half-heartedly in his grasp. Again he fisted at the stubborn undergarment in his hands, and when it would not give he then took the hem and gave it a mighty tear. The sound of the calico tearing split through the night. Meisar's breath heaved in the dark, as he tore her skirt up the other side, and down again, again and again so that it was soon left in tatters hanging from the stubborn unbreakable band at her waist. "O milord, what in Durin's name are you-?"

He stood again and ceased her protest with a hard kiss. He kissed her mouth with such force she was nearly choked by the thrust of his tongue. "Not another word… just… let… feel," his breath came in heaves strong and impassioned.

Her ax was well in her reach in spite of her fingers gone numb. She could have taken it, threatened him with it, even buried in his skull if she so fancied. She did not wish to. She wanted him to, she wanted him-

He knelt again and rubbed his beard fervently over her soft skin from her belly and ghosting down over the pale glow of thick, freckled thighs, so supple and generous in form from her belly to her hips to her thighs he desired the entirety of a night, nay, a lifetime, just to devour, to worship every inch.

And even in these moments so indelicate, so raw memories came flooding back. As he had emerged into his early years as a dwarf of adult status, he thought of his Firebeard princess in the west with curiosity, as the time of his marriageable age drew nearer. Yes, oh yes he remembered that. How he begged Mahal grant him one aesthetic favor, and let her be of a thicker constitution…

"I have found you…"

"Thorin, my blessing…" Her voice trembled on a razor's-edge.

"I would find you… all of you." His entire body was quaking.

The hanging tatters of her small-clothes he pushed aside like curtains to a sacred space, and unveiling her found she had a lovely thatch of red hair between her legs. And it was as mouth-wateringly autumnal in color as her crowning glories. If Meisar had no beard upon her face, then surely this delectable burning bush was her redemption.

"So this is where your beard has been hiding," he whispered lustily close to her, parsing rough fingertips through the soft fiery down of hair that covered her womanhood. It was a truly delectable thing, so full and red. She trembled at the thought of her bared intimacy being of such intrigue to him. Her belly softly curved, rotund and feminine, though in her appealing stoutness there was durability and rugged strength, and she was as deeply dwarven in her form as any of the most beautiful dwarrowdams in Erebor. His eyes trailed downward to her bareness again with curiosity both ravenous and in utter adoration. He found the lustrous full red bush being of an uncanny and exquisite delight. The beard upon the face of any dwarven lady could not rival her in the place of her intimacy.

Yes, yes, oh I have found you, my princess (MY QUEEN) and your fire-beard.

"Thorin?"

"Hush, mizimel." He pressed his face against her belly, rasp of beard migrating downward following the line of fire that led from her navel to her mound, and sent harsh, hot plumes of breath to tickle at her sex. She felt his mouth jump to the soft skin of her inner thigh, suckling and kneading at her with his lips, and then his teeth. She squirmed and cried out a strangled keen when he bit harder. A sensation more intense than she had felt in all her life seized every inch of her body and set her to trembling and squirming, either with anticipation or fear she did not know. From his own lips he had whispered of that finding, and finding what she did not know, but ceded, as willingly as she would in all her life, madness or no madness, cursed tree or none, to his exploration, wherever he may go.

"Don't move," he growled intently, his beard rubbing on her inner thighs rough and determined, his teeth on her soft flesh, his mouth… his mouth…

Thorin stifled the rapacious growl that was caught in his throat. The tickle of a bearded kiss came to settle in the sensitive juncture where her hip and thigh and quim were joined.

"Âzyungâl…" her lips and tongue could barely move to form the word. Her fragrance, the cool, earthy scent of the stream tinged with a hint of her musk, elicited hard growls from him, desire so angst-ridden his teeth were gnashing together.

"Mine…" He sprang into her with lips and tongue. A stunned gulp of air swelled in her lungs, her bucking and squirming met with a fiercer grip about the backs of her thighs. He opened her and tasted the inner folds, circling in a frenzy across untouched flesh. She was cool water and tangy-sweet skin. The pressure of his tongue darting into her disarmed her of all resistance entirely. He steadied the quavering of her thighs with strong, assured hands. What was he doing? How could he-? There of all places. Ohhhh…..

His tongue found that spot and her thoughts ceased altogether. That tongue, that impetuous explorer, and this harsh foreboding king made so, there. This kiss between her legs was blunt and hungry, and it was relentless. Her startling joy was leaving her utterly defenseless against his ravenous, seeking mouth, tonguing darted between the delicate lips to assail her. The delicious contrast of his cool hands holding her thighs apart just so, as her knees threatened to give out beneath her each time his tongue circled back and gave her a harsh lick, seeking rifts and valleys, peaks and precipices. One lonely mount in particular drew such gasps from her when he met it.

The bud tightened at the contact and seemed to engorge again, and again, with every wet hungry touch of his tongue's frenzied tip and each touch seemed bolder than the next, fattening the entirety of her sex with what seemed every drop of blood in her body- the furred outer lips and the soft knurls of flesh-petals within and even the opening of her contracting and quickening and dripping.

She could find no words in her lexicon to describe the exquisite pleasure of it, as his tongue plundered and explored her sex, mouth and nose together finding their way however haphazardly. His hands moved slowly from the apex at the back of her thighs around to their sides, grasping handfuls of her flesh, guiding her to and from him. The callused fingers would leave bruises she was sure. He traced along the little slope of skin that was just inside her cleft, and found that spot near its apex, with its blushing veil laying over her centrifuge. A tense exploration with his tongue found for him what he was searching for, that little raw bundle of nerves and its slender pink stem, throbbing from root to tip. Involuntarily her arm flung itself backward, and she caught a face-full of the back of her own hand. She pressed it to her face and bit into it against the blinding bliss.

His tongue stopped briefly and was replaced by a cooler, rougher digit, opening her there, where he found again the little bump tucked beneath inner lips that were rather like rose petals themselves, so soft and pink. She let out stifled cries as indulged of her again with his mouth, probing tongue pushed against her where nary she had been touched, scarcely with her own hand much less a man's mouth. Her breath was ragged, a high, hot flush inflaming her nethers and buoying upward to color her cheeks. The tongue that circled her nub rolled over it in a fast stroke. And when she gasped and squirmed with her eyes half-open and lolling, his grip only tightened on her.

How wild he was. How greedy.

His beard rubbed over the tender skin within those lips, ardently, the sensation causing her skin to jump as it shot through her. She bucked against his mouth with such force she was afraid for a moment she'd hurt him, but he only grasped her hips more firmly and carried on. Her mouth gaped open as he devoured her, with all the hunger and roughness he took her lips with in one of his moods. He licked her erratically, with primal need. His tongue was supple and incandescent. I have found you. His husky pronouncement echoed still in her head, inflaming her. Yes, he had found her. Made this overland journey on a map of skin and hair to arrive at this, this mysterious bundle of nerves she had touched so often with a careful fingertip all during these long, lonely nights in her many years. It was his to command now.

She made a startled sound when his tongue flicked at its little hood again. Her half-covered bottom was scraping up against the tree and smarting. The nervous panting suddenly gave way to a gentle mew of pleasure. Yes, he could be insistent and demanding, and he took her now with the manner of an imprudent child devouring a sweet. His tongue lapped at her as if she were a hunk of ice doomed to melt- and he was so very thirsty. She stifled a fervid cry with a handful of his hair wound into her fist and her blunt nails burrowed into his scalp.

"Thorin!"

"Hush," he growled. "I am not finished with you yet." A flicker of hot, prodding tongue reclaimed her folds, played with one of the inner lips on teeth and tongue together. And the hands that had gripped and bruised her thighs now came around, his thumbs spread her open to further his ministration, against her surprised gasp. She was pink and ripe like a little fruit.

He sighed into her nose making vibrations against the dripping inner lips and soaked springy orange hair, and then his tongue dipped inside of her, finding itself to wresting suddenly against the grasp of her untasted, untested womanhood on the prodding tip of his tongue. He tasted her juices and growled, pushed his tongue against the opening and the tight passageway, warm wet imprudent daring tongue opening her and steeling his will against his desire to see her no longer a maid, by his tongue made so.

"Jewel of all jewels!" His nose grazed and then pushed tight to aroused flesh while his tongue continued with diligence, letting her wetness guide him back to its source again, circling its outer edges, rising again along the soaked pink rift to part the swollen lips again with a flick of tongue, one and then the other suckled until his teeth made contact and she let a controlled aching squeal. Her nails dug furiously into the tree and caught thick reams of bark residue beneath them. She bucked against him and away again, only to have her thighs gripped tight in his big, rough hands and pulled back. "I will honor your maidenhood," he avowed with a unwavering stoutness in spite of the way his voice shook along with his whole body, the heat of his breath between her thighs weakening her knees beneath her. Hands that had maintained a firm grip on her were suddenly gentle, reassuring, caressing thick thighs with a tender rhythm that seemed to meet the pattern of his ragged breaths so exquisitely on her flesh. But to claim her with his tongue… the very thought caused his whole body to shudder and harden painfully in that place of his own against his breeches.

Nay. Nay. Mahal give me strength and prudence; to have her first in a warm bed with the honor due her.

Lips and then the coarse line of mustache and the twitching tip of his nose made the journey again and in haste, from belly to her womanhood. Uninterrupted, and with thick but unexpectedly learned fingers prodding their way along her arousal-fattened channel to find his destination, again his tongue was teasing up against her, tasting her. She could feel her face afire at what he was imbibing of there, as brows and the black crown of his head macked against her belly and he moved his head ever so slightly side to side, up and down, nose and tongue and beard finding every spot. The static his ministrations made felt as if it would make sparks and she would explode wholly. She would break if he did not cease, and for once, she had no fear of being thrown into a thousand little pieces, so far gone in that depth she would never recognize herself again. A king on his knees before a poor and unremarkable woman, in worshipful lust.

A finger pried apart the lips so he could pursue the nervous bud again with his tongue. He ran his hands over her thighs and felt them buckle.

Her pleasure was becoming agony, and his tongue, that demanding tongue demanding of her a finale to this act that she could already feel, a blast furnace in her from ribs to the base of her stomach working at full heat, ready to give way altogether. It was more than just the urge not to scream out in ecstasy and bring all the company to the grove to find their king's tongue buried in her pretty red muff. Surrendered to this act utterly, her dripping opening clenched in pleasure against his tongue, swirling about with ever more care the closer he brought her to the precipice. When he came again to her swollen little button and lashed his tongue against it, a dense tingle ignited from her scalp to the very tips of her toes, and flooded her core with unbearable heat. Into the very centrifuge of her he crashed. Fire unto stone. As if a dam had been torn apart within, she burst in great heaves, jerking, writhing against him. Her bones were dust inside of her. He plowed his tongue roughly against her, tasting the nectar that poured from her like rain. It spilled onto his tongue like honey, sweeter and sharper than the stoutest mead.

The pleasure consumed her so consummately, the trembling and the spilling of heat and the writhing silent and open-mouthed unable to choke out anything, not even his name.

He gave her no rest to recover. Rising from his knees swiftly he hauled her up by the handfuls of her ample hind globes, her back hitting the tree, her legs shaking and slack then wrapped tight about his waist for support. Coated in her essence his face was hot and fragrant against hers. She tasted herself on his lips when they kissed, her arousal on his beard and soaked thoroughly in it. "Did you enjoy that?" he breathed, in a voice so intense and so deep it bordered on a growl.

She nodded wanly, crushed against him so tightly she could barely breathe.

She knew that a woman's spaces were there for pleasure but she had never imagined that a man could pleasure a woman in this manner. Then she remembered Brynja's face, when Bofur was-

Suddenly Thorin stopped kissing her and there was the sound of rustling twigs snapping underfoot.

"Thorin!"

It was Dwalin, waving a torch in the dark. "Go!" she hissed through her teeth. He left Meisar on the forest floor a quivering puddle. She waited in the underbrush until he was gone, peeled away her irreparable small-clothes, in shreds as they were.

She reached between her legs and felt herself slick with moisture, from his tongue but from her own depths also. The fluid was slick and clear and congealing quickly in the night air against her skin. She had not bled and recognized quickly that he had held true to his word about that honor. What a silly concept she thought to herself briefly on the matter, when she could at last collect her thoughts. Alas, a dwarf woman protects what is hers.

She pulled the over-skirt back on over her bare skin, crossed the encampment lightly as she could manage on trembling legs. A soft sleepy groan and a fingertip circling her ankle brought her to her destination aptly, and there she collapsed beside him, to her knees first and then flattened on her back beside him as if she had the wind knocked from her. She had, albeit in a more blissful manner. He leaned over and kissed her, flavored with the soft musk she knew was her own- without ever having imbibed of it on another. It gave her a feeling of utter bliss inside.

"Your beard. It is… stiff." Meisar rolled over took the end of her cloak again and wetted it from her water skin. She washed his face as a mother would a dirt-caked child, and nuzzled into his wet bristles. Her dusky scent lingered, the taste of her stubborn on his lips. "I wish to taste you always upon my lips. It is divine." Even in the dark she could feel the burn of that smile, devilish utterly, but of a sweet, satisfied, hazy contentment more than anything else.

She swallowed a little, her face still on fire. "I did not know a man… liked putting his mouth… there."

"I enjoyed it very much."

How could he have taken pleasure in such a thing, she pondered, delirious and half suspended in disbelief what they had experienced there in the darkened grove. To lick her as if she were a chunk of ice? And to taste her there of all places. And it was even stranger to imagine yet that a man could desire to impart such an act, much less enjoy it. She was not ignorant the ways a man and a woman could please each other in the physical, fleshly way. That way… had been an exquisite lesson. It overwhelmed her so that she felt keen to die in his arms right then and there.

Hurmul- Honor

Âzyungâl- Lover