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.

41. TURNS TO NIGHT

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hello all! I am so sorry for the long wait for the chapter. It has been a crazy few weeks here in the real world (great timing, right?) And, naturally, I wanted to ensure that this particular one was absolutely perfect, so I hope the wait was worth it :)

She passed through the arched door to the bedchamber. The dwarrowdams all trailing behind rattled, clinquant in their jewels, the swish of their skirts all eager and their shoes like the hooves of small animals on the stone. Thorin's quarters were dark but intimate, lit by braziers on the walls and a fire crackling richly in the stone hearth on the opposite side of the room. His bed had four heavy posts carved with runes and dark velvet drapes tacked back by thick tassels at its head. By the fire sat a pair of large velvet covered chairs with high pointed backs, also draped in furs. Tapestries, of simple geometric patterns, warmed the stone walls with a bit of color, and she saw that a vanity and armoire and several trunks for her things had been brought for her and arranged along the wall across from the bed.

The dwarrowdams stood giggling about like small girls as they helped her out of her wedding clothes. Petticoats, stiff linen under-skirts bodice and finally her lace-edged shift were shed, and stored in the armoire that had been brought for her. They fussed about her, bringing sensuous oils in tiny black-tipped urns to rub into her skin, adorning her in more gold and jewels as she was arranged upon his bed. They left her braided hair and bridal crown intact. "That is for Thorin to remove," Emli explained. "Only when we are as unadorned as when the Creator forged us has the time come in true for what you are about to endeavor. Tonight you must realize it is of the utmost importance-"

"Emli, Meisar is a woman grown. I don't think-" protested Eda, chuckling. Her cheeks were pink from at least several tankards of mead, leaning on Siv, whose bosom had swelled up several inches above her bodice.

"Pish-posh. I will council a bride on her duties whether you like it or not!" retorted Emli.

"Oh you make it sound like such a chore, Emli," cackled Brynja.

"Mashâmel!" retorted Emli. "It is indeed, and for a queen no less. Now..." The dwarrowdams gathered around the mother-hen, seated daintily upon the king's bed as if it were her own, at Meisar's feet. "The legends of men say that we dwarves are sprung from stone. Well, it is true that our little ones are sprung from something… as hard." The women laughed and Emli silenced them all with a stony glare. "The male dwarf is not like the female. The Fasl is suitable to touch but mind your grip. It is like a nipple, sensitive and ever-morphing. But do not let your hand give all the pleasure. Neither you nor Thorin are so young as to have the luxury of wasting away the seed in unproductive pleasures of the skin. See that is expelled into you and not onto the carpets or the good furs. Getting it cleaned from furs, or your hair... is a right mess..."

Brynja giggled aloud again, ducking her head in agreement, and Emli finally let a laugh trickle out in a short, languid chuckle. "There are," continued Emli. "Many ways to love. More than one unopened hall to explore... plains and mountains and lots of little caverns."

"Little caverns full of gems aye," purred Siv between hiccups. "Fair ye get the uncut stone of yers well polished before there's a delving ax a'coming down. Flood the mine, the love's divine." She laughed a bombastic laugh at herself and Eda smacked her arm, but the old healer was laughing too.

"Your gem has been so polished it's lost a carat in weight," jabbed Emli back at her. "Alas you speak true, for once. There is, my queen, a wee acorn that grows and swells as a man does, if it is tended to properly and nourished with a special rain. A dripping cavern is much nicer than a dry one to try and meld. And a dwarf's ax is not the only instrument he can use to encourage it."

Dis stood fanning herself awkwardly in the corner.

Emli pulled a set face then. "Fair it be you see to it that the ax which opens the untapped mine does not get ahead of itself. By its nature it is always ready to go delving." Emli then took her hands in her characteristic maternal manner and mustered a far sterner face. "Ready as it is it does enjoy all manner of touch. If you use your mouth on it at any time, never use your teeth."

"Shall we leave the bride to have a moment for herself?" Dis suggested, adenoidal and red-faced.

"Shall we go, my lady?" asked Brynja, her brown eyes kind.

Meisar nodded a coy yes. A flock of tittering hens, proud and glad, they left her.

Sighing, she turned to the bed, adorned in many luxuriant furs and pelts and velvets. Come the night that it was fully and consummately made between them made her to prickle intensely with trepidation and want, their dueling sentiments making a tingling in her limbs. It was not that she did not desire him; she did, so fervently it made her knees weak. Long had she imagined just how this time would come. When he came to her she would come also. And hoped it would be just like this- by the light of a fire, she and Thorin in his bed…

And that he would be gentle and loving, and un-burdened if only for this night.

The bed was not such an imposing piece of furniture when she came to it, richly adorned and draped in midnight-blue velvets and soft furs. She lay into the bed coverings and waited for Thorin.

.

"Another ale!" boomed Dwalin, the echo of his voice on the stone walls flush with merriment.

"Aye, another, before we send our bridegroom off to complete his duties," concurred Balin, red-faced with several empty tankards before him. The dwarves that remained in the hall were nearly to the bottom of the spirits, empty barrels stacked in the corners by the stewards one after the next. There was laughter and more feasting, a young sentry's sick putting out one of the hearth fires for good. Gandalf's pipe weed floated on the air, heavy and fragrant. The wizard himself was making little rings of it, amusing Bombur's young ones, who were all gathered up at his feet.

"Though it may be better suitable to ask you in the morning, how does the king under the mountain find his married life so far?" Gandalf finally queried. On the other side of Thorin, Dwalin was keenly surveying him.

"I find it of pure good." Thorin leaned quietly to the wizard's side. "I find, Gandalf, that I may live again after all."

Thorin rose from his seat and raised his empty glass to the gathered dwarves as Dwalin banged a knife against the side of a gold chalice to seize their attentions. He looked at Dwalin graciously and then to the rest. "I thank each of you for your company this night. Alas, it is time I retire for the evening, and be with my bride."

He raised his glass one more time and so did they, all together and whispering, whistling in his direction, calling out the bawdiest of encouragements. "Naintiti! Naintiti! Naintiti!" they finally came to chant as one boisterous chorus as he departed into the night.

.

She listened to her heart thump in the soft, sparse light illuminating the bedchamber. Footsteps came and went in the corridor outside and above and below, celebrants drifting off to bed- their own or someone else's.

Meisar was naked. Save for a collar of gold and jeweled necklaces draped down across her chest, feeling like a luxurious armor over her bosom. Her fingers were adorned in rings of gold and jewels of every hue, and the bridal crown sat heavy and awkward over her forehead. She had not been a woman accustomed to the fripperies in life, even the small ones. She had not been protected within the mountain halls as the daughters of Erebor once were.

She was now a queen. His queen.

But no, she was not to be adorned in jewels, not tonight.

She rose from bed and removed the jewels, the gold and crown and stored them away. She was flouting a revered tradition, she knew. When a dwarrowdam of Erebor was wed, she was laid out in the marital bed, arrayed in only precious stones and bands of gold. It seemed so cold a ritual now. She opened the armoire and the drawer at its base and slipped on the long pale peignoir with its frilly tiered sleeves and gossamer-and-lace trim over the bosom, where tiny lace bows fastened it in a line from neck to abdomen. Thorin would have yet another treasure to unwrap, she reasoned, finding a reflection of herself all pink and white and orange, and fire-lit in the mirror on the inside of the armoire door. She hugged herself and worried if he would find her beautiful. She was plump; perhaps too plump for his liking? Dwarf women were not supposed to be reeds, but she was quite fat, she thought. And her breasts lagged a bit with her age and their heaviness. And when they had shed their clothes both he would see that she was neither the youngest nor the fairest of maidens. And her hair might be in knots from her elaborate coiffure and prove intrepid to their purpose. Stop. She sighed with deep resistance toward her own racing thoughts. They slowed, to her relief, and she looked at herself again in the long mirror.

"Oh Yavanna, bless me your daughter, this night," she whispered breathlessly to herself, the chamber so quiet even the sussurous plea seemed to echo off the walls.

There was a sudden knock at the door that startled her nearly off her feet. She smoothed her nightclothes, her crowned hair. "Do come, my husband," she mustered herself.

"Only me," a cheery female voice answered. Meisar felt suddenly deflated, but even so, allayed in the slightest way. Elsa pushed open the door and rambled in with an armful of linens. "Making the weekly rounds with the bedclothes is all." Elsa set the bundle of linens down on shelf carved into the wall. "Imagine you'll be in need of an unsullied set by the morning, milady," the dwarf-maid grinned, eyeing the king's velvet and fur covered bed, still immaculately set. "Shouldn't you be laying there, all covered in jewels and gold?"

"Not for this king," she murmured.

Elsa smiled, a sheepish grin that seemed reminded all to suddenly and looking mildly ashamed of herself. "You alone are more than enough," she assured. "A bride is any dwarf's greatest treasure. Even if you and the king are in the state of Naikhmî, do best to remember that the Creator has made you for each other, and all will be well."

Meisar nodded, a coy concurring motion.

"Anyway," Elsa hastened to add, rising busily again. "Even if you find it's a hard sensation to get used to, the first never lasts long. At least that is what the married ladies of this kingdom whisper behind their hands. An aged maid I might be, but in such matters I have the wisdom of a thousand wives."

"I wish it would last forever."

When Elsa had departed she crossed the room to sit by the fire again. There were soft rugs on the stone floors, around the bed and making a soft path to the hearth where the stone fireplace was set, alighting the chamber. The pelt of a pure white Gundabard warg lay before the crackling fireplace. Now the wedding ceremony seemed distant to her, and cloudy. Faces all blended together, coming and going, their well-wishes as distant as a long forgotten past.

She worried if he would be gentle with her, wondering if she should have let him break her in before, just a little…

The past was past. Nothing could be done of it. The future was all they had now.

The door opened and closed again with a soft creak. "Meisar?"

"I am here, adyum.""

"I thought I would find you in bed," he remarked slyly. She had broken with an honored dwarven custom and blushed slightly under Thorin's intense gaze.

"I did not mean, I…"

He stepped over to her expeditiously and he pressed his palm to hers and his forehead to hers; she could feel the cold smooth metal of his crown where it sat over his forehead press in and make a little indent into her temple. "No. No, you will not apologize to me, my bride. It is all a beautiful and brilliant and empty mask. The true jewel he will find is that beneath the cold stones. They are not really necessary. You are alone that which I desire, in all this life."

The firelight softened his edgy visage, and she could read the kindness plainly in his eyes, so lovingly expressed though with ferocious heat waiting behind them. "Do not be afraid, mizimel. I swore I would care for you this night, and I intend to honor it. Now and for all times."

She brought the hand that came to stroke her face around in her hand, and kissed his palm. "I have longed for you Thorin. I fear for nothing."

"Meisar," Thorin said softly. "You bring me to my knees, ulkhudel." He brought their lips together and kissed her with tongue running astride her bottom lip, tasting the ale on her mouth. "Athune," he whispered. "My queen." They took each other in a passionate, heated, tongue-wresting kiss, relieved to share such a kiss now that they were alone, beyond the brief custom-bound taste of each other's lips, under the all-observant eyes of their witnesses. A kiss no longer heeded by the bounds of chastity or honor or the cumbersomeness of company, but a journey that had only just begun.

He put his hands up to his head and gently removed the raven crown, setting it upon the vanity where a few of Meisar's things had been painstakingly arranged. To see the crown there of all places sent an intensity coiling and tightening in her chest. She felt careful fingers brush at the tips of her ears, loosening the bridal crown from her scalp. "May I?" he asked softly. "It looks heavy."

She nodded yes toward him, the tip of her nose brushing the heavy velvet and fur at his shoulder; he could feel the heat of her breath against his skin, through his clothes. He set her bridal crown beside his own on the vanity. "It belonged to my mother, and my grandmother before her," Thorin sighed. "To see you crowned by it is a joy to my heart."

"Yes, and I have thought oft for those who came before me in this... position," Meisar exhaled quickly, "and called upon Yavanna, to bless this union."

"The Giver of Fruits," Thorin smiled down at her, touching her cheek, feeling her tense just a little. "Aye, let us be blessed then, and if none tonight are seeded, let me be blessed with you alone."

"And I with you," she palmed at the soft velvet of the jerkin beneath his inner coat, up to the soft black fur of his mantle, which he shed then and laid across the back of the chair. The sur-coat was also trimmed in black fur, and the velvet of it was coarser and embossed down its back with the geometric seal of Durin. She clung to him and stroked the grooved velvet down his back. His layers, all his layers, were too cumbersome, but his regality in his wedding attire for the moment simply took her breath away.

I am your wife. I am your queen.

"You are my king, my king, my husband, my One..." she let the words fall from her tongue like a mantra, a dream. "When I first saw you that day upon the road..." Fingertips trailed down his arms and over his fingers, bringing them to her lips to kiss, to worship. The texture of them was rougher at the tips and the knuckles, softer at the back of his hand, all of the sparse, coarse black hairs that straggled there standing up on end. "How could I have imagined it would come to this?" She pressed his palm to her cheek again. "You were once a stranger to me, Thorin. Now I come to you still ever a stranger…"

She watched his eyes flicker in silent contemplation, dark lashes drawn down, smoothing the heaviness at his brow that had seemed impermeable once. He lifted her chin with one finger, the tip of it running from one side of her jawline to the other. For her lack of beard, he was beholden to every fluctuation of the heat in her. "You are no stranger. Yea, though if this day were the first I lay eyes upon you, I would treat you with the same adoration. I would care for you... as gently as anyone could."

"Aye, and I trust you."

"Now," he said. "Help me with these wretched ornaments. I would know your touch less adorned than more."

She unbuckled the aforesaid heavy vambraces from his forearms and slid them off. "Will you require my assistance to undress?" she queried with a definitive mystification, remembering the process of her own denudation from the day's formal clothing.

"I would find it... most helpful."

She acquiesced with an ebullient blossom of scarlet about her cheeks. The mithril and silver belt with its subtle studding of sapphires was next; his hands over her own helped her to seek out the place that it buckled at the waist. She felt her fingers had always been somewhat ungainly and in her current task, the inexpertness of her movement seemed to endear him. She focused on the task to stop herself from looking into his eyes, recognizing the crease of a forming smile, the small wrinkles around his eyes deepening with his raptness. The belt itself was so heavy it hit the floor with a resounding thud when it was undone. Against the silver clasps of his inner coat, her fingers did not tremble as they had with the belt, progressing swiftly from one to the next, until she came to the last and he shrugged the heavy garment off, setting it atop his fur mantle on the back of the chair. Layer after layer shed from him and he cast his clothes aside on the floor or on one of the large velvet lined chairs by the fire. She supposed she could tear through him like a child assaulting a gift, but no. Not tonight. She took her time with him, with his furs and his inner coat and then the jerkin beneath.

"I have lost myself a hundred nights to discover you beneath all of these layers," she breathed, unfastening the jerkin, spreading it open over his chest to find the tunic beneath a welcome finality. He wriggled his shoulders free of the jerkin, let it fall to the floor. She palmed at the ornate tunic from his hard, broad chest to where it laced at the neck with silver thread. Pulling open the collar revealed a patch of skin below the base of his throat where a hair's-breadth of chest uncovered itself, a whisper of dark hair peeking out from the edges of the dark linen. The high collar and cuffs and hem were similarly embroidered in silver and gave off a sharp glint in the fire's light. He looked so regal she hesitated for a moment to remove the tunic, instead pressing a hand to the fabric over his chest. He opened her palm and pressed it against him, over the spot where his heart was thundering. "I swore to you that it still beat. Now you can feel it for yourself."

She strained on the tips of her toes to pull it over his head and he helped tug it away at the last, shedding the garment and placing it on the back of the chair with the rest of his finery. He shook his mussed long hair loose over his bare shoulders, left in just the breeches of black doeskin and leather belt that held them snugly at his waist. The burden of exile and grief and war were worn upon those shoulders which were yet strong and broad. His proximity had never been so real, or so intoxicating. The strength and pride that was laid bare to see in his lightly scarred skin, the rough musculature that even the coarse pelt of black hair over the expanse of his skin did little to conceal. In spite of the savage intimacy by which he had known her own body she had not beheld him absent the fullest of his dwarvish layers, and remembered, with wistfulness, many long nights of wanting to push her hands beneath his clothes and touch his skin, or pleasure him with her mouth in the same places where he had made her weak. She studied his bare chest, the nipples pink like hers beneath a dense veil of hair, and let her eyes be drawn downward,from the dark hair that blanketed his chest to where it tapered low in his belly and disappeared into his breeches, a trail that seemed to summon her into that secret place. There was only that small barrier now.

There was a scar on his belly, long moon-white and hairless where it grooved into the skin. She touched it lightly, as if it would still hurt him after all these many months. "But a mild evisceration, my blessing," he grinned gently. Her hand pressed forth again to touch and then withdrew. A fool, she thought, seeking permission to touch the dwarf whose tongue had already journeyed far deeper into the intimate parts of her than even her own touch had been privy to. She placed hands flat against his chest and fanned out her fingers over the coarse textured hair that covered him.

"Do you like what you see, adyum?" He took her hands in his and kissed her knuckles.

"I do."

He tugged her close to him and against him. He smelled warm and musky with a hint of smoke. Years at the anvil had muscled his chest and shoulders, his arms, all the lines of him hard and proud. The sight of him made her tremble, an electricity that coursed down her spine and slingshot into her belly, settling in a low, dense spot there and panging at her in the wellspring of her arousal. That heavy heartbeat long muffled by layers of clothing and mail, was bare, and his heart… kurdu. How it thundered. When she first nuzzled her face to his sternum it raggedly skipped a beat. The dark hair felt thick and dense when she buried her face against him and let his warm, pure scent fill her nostrils. As she began to loosen the belt, she felt without warning Thorin's hand cup her neck and jaw together and raise up her head to kiss with arduous intent. Her fingertips still playing on his beltline and in the soft leather that divided him from her. She surrendered her efforts to cling both hands to his shoulders and threw her head into a deepening kiss. "Let me take your hair down," his breath into her throat ran hot.

He considered her coiffure intently for a moment and moved haltingly then to unravel the crown of thick braids. After removing what seemed a forge's worth of long silver pins he let her hair all at last fall in a great fiery cascade down to her knees. He took handfuls of and kissed the lightly perfumed locks standing behind her until a short, desirous gasp from her adjourned his efforts instinctively. A hand on her shoulder gently prodded her to face him again. Her skin, which had once seemed so ruddy and nature-worn, looked positively alabaster in the glow of the fireplace. He reached and offered a tender squeeze, heavy hands more like a breath of air over the gossamer at her bosom. "As I would feel your own heart, my queen..."

That dull, sensitive ache which she had felt between her legs and in her belly, had been like an itch, as meaningless as to alleviate it by scratching. When she was a young dwarrowdam in the prime of her womanhood, she had not understood it. She had never looked upon another and become inflamed by him; the ache would just happen, the want of some touch to soothe it. Now that Thorin was naked from the waist up before her, his hand on her breast, she understood.

Thorin gave a gentle expression, a sparse if knowing grin at her coming blush and the champagne-pink of her peignoir in the light. He peeled the gossamer off her shoulder, kissed the bare, warm skin. "Will you show yourself to me?"

It was more of a command than a request but the dwarf in Meisar was eager to remain obstinate, even if it would result in a harder ravishment than she was entirely prepared for.

She smiled at him coyly. "A king should open his own gifts."

"Aye," he agreed no more than a whisper, and laid his broad hand at the crest of the garment where the fabric curved and bowed just below her collarbone. His thick fingers hooked and pulled loose the fastening bows of her peignoir, leaving them in many loose, creased ribbons, and at last gave it a light tug from her shoulders. The soft, unworn fabric fell from her shoulders, opened to her hips, and as quickly, was pooled on the floor about her feet.

Lightly blushed and clad only in firelight she stood under Thorin's intense, gleaming gaze. She was so very small, this tiny, tiny woman and her goodly stout frame. Though her shoulders were proud and strong they were graceful, almost demure in the way they slacked forward, and they were peppered with little freckles the same orange as her hair. Her hips were wide and cushioned by the denseness of dwarven womanhood and hard living both, yet in her own way she retained a softness, a distinctly female rotundity about her midsection. She was thick about the thighs, her bottom exquisitely plump. Her breasts too were heavy and lush, the nipples blushing a pale strawberry wine.

"Mahal, you are beautiful," he breathed.

In the firelight he looked content, exhilarated even, if such a thing could be read in him, beholden as he was, the first time, to a dwarrowdam, nude and blushing, and his. "Meisar…" His small, smooth white teeth showed themselves. He had once seemed immovably grim, with all the hardness of stone and the chill of ice. And he was ice still, but melting now, after a long winter, swelling up with spring rains to come and breathe life into the world again.

And they would. She was too exquisite, so welcoming of form. Fat-bottomed and big-breasted, strong and stout and voluptuous together, her dwarven womanhood that could not be any more exquisite to his eye, whether her face bore a fine beard or not. He cupped her bare arms at the elbow and let let fingers leap over and ghost down her naked sides, cupping soft flesh with the reverence of a smith to his craft. Thorin had already partaken of her most intimate spaces. He had put his tongue inside her. But he had never seen her bared as simply or as beautifully as this, unclad and untouched as new snow. His eyes fell to her luxuriant, full red bush, veiling the spot where her pearl lay, uncorrupted. She was vestal, and she was his.

The immovability of his gaze had not yet unnerved her but filled her with want. She knew what he must have seen in the moment: a dwarrowdam who had once been so solid in her solemnity, a figure like stone, trembling before him like a leaf in a storm. "You are beautiful. The most beautiful sight I have ever known," he repeated. Meisar's head dipped smoothly once and rose again in a coy, if mirthful, agreement. Not so disquieted by her own vulnerability anymore, or his, but glad, and proud, to let Thorin look upon her full breasts and her round belly, the soft thick sumptuous curves of her thighs and fleshy dip of waist. He let his fingers trail downward from her cheek to the ridge of her collarbone. And there, unbidden, had the ghost of that first touch risen and surged into the narrow space between them. Her tunic stained in orc-blood hunched forward on a low camp bed, her head swimming; she had given him the same frightened look when his hand met the skin of her cheek then, as she did now, nightgown in a pale swirl at her feet.

His boots were long shucked off; only his breeches now remained clothing him. Meisar gave the thin leather belt a swift, impatient tug. But Thorin took her hands and kissed them gently, purposefully delaying her from this mission. "Thorin… please." I need you as I am.

He had never been so content to hear her beg. It was such a pretty sound, sweet music to his ears, the voice that was so commanding reduced to small pleading whimpers. But that even that which seemed solid and unbending as stone had many faces, many layers. For now, at least, all of the layers that hindered this long-awaited consummation were shed and scattered no more solid than leaves on the stone floor of their bedchamber. Meisar was bare, and he would be also in short time.

Something in the moment seemed to soften the rush of ardor in him, a gentler mirth for the gravity of the occasion. She had half-expected to see unbridled lust, or nervousness as palatable as her own.

He kissed her again and brought her closer to the warmth of the fire again, his hands in the crooks of her elbow tightened when she swayed. The harshness from her eyes had all abated and her heavy lids were drawn up, wide eyes a strange shade of chartreuse in the fire-light. He could see the pupils were coming open, shrinking again, with every stroke of his thumbs in the soft skin just above her elbow. "Let us drink once more before we bed."

"Aye, I would like that," she answered. Thorin dropped a trio of thick velvet pillows on the warg skin before fetching a pair of chalices and a small cask of wine. They settled by the fire together and she was warm. "Azog's mutt," Thorin grinned. He breathed in her scent and was trembling.

"It would help to soothe your mind, if you are nervous," he offered.

She put the cup up to her lips and smiled over it. "I am not." It was only half a mistruth. He sat behind her and circled a roughened tip of forefinger about the dents in her shoulder, the small bump where the edge of her collarbone was visible above the skin. Her ivory skin with its splattering of freckles. All of her hair spread around her in an autumnal veil. Shivering, she felt his fingertips brush at her neck, the tip of her ear, as he moved a heavy sheaf of it off of her shoulder, baring her neck, her back.

"We will take our time. I will make certain of your happiness before we are joined. I could not bear for you to be hurt."

Meisar leaned her head back, the weight of her hair pulling her, neck twisted to kiss him on the un-bearded peak of his cheekbone, eyelashes fanned to meet his own in response. "Then you are a good husband, and my happiness is... it is," she offered. He felt the sinews of her throat tense against his mouth. Thorin put down the cup on the floor by the fireside and leaned in to kiss her from the curvature of her neck and downward over the neglected spot just under her jaw-line. The tip of his nose traced the seam of cartilage at the side of her neck, and rubbed in soft circles at the indents of her collarbones. He breathed in the light scent at the crook of her neck, a soft milky soap and some sweet exotic oil.

"You have not known a woman for some time, have you my liege?" Meisar whispered low and slightly amused. "How is it then, you are able to take your time, as you say? I have heard that males are more urgent in their desires than females."

"I have not had such intimate company in many years, it is true, if ever at all. No, I have not had the company of one so beloved to me... thus I wish to worship every inch of you, and hence, take my time." An arm circled her snugly about her abdomen and it drew inward, her sinews on edge. "Relax, adyum. I promise I will not entreat to anything prematurely."

She reached for his hand and took it to her mouth, kissed him on the taut, hard web of skin between thumb and forefinger on his left. His fingers, and his whole body, seemed to contract, then convulse with want, even shyness. After all, it had been many years...

"I am quite ready to be yours, Thorin."

She cocked her head sideways to rest on the upper part of the arm of his that was anchoring her firmly to him, his lips on her neck again and hers grasping to kiss at the inside of his arm, the folded crook of his elbow. Rough hewn muscle under skin coiled at her touch, and flexed with the drawing of his arm down to cup the soft fullness of her breast in his rough hand. It made him sigh deep and hot into her neck, unused to something so tender to their touch; the urge to grasp, like he had grasped hammers, swords, axes, was strong, but she was pillowy, and yielding. He drew his thumb lightly over her nipple, and felt the sweltering shiver of her at the sensation.

"Thorin…"

"Shhh... I have you." The hairs on his arm stood on end and made tiny pinpricks of electricity as her fingertip slid along it. He could revel in no touch but hers. She returned to grasp his hand, weaving her fingers between his own and holding fast, the way she had so many moons ago, comforting him after a bad dream, always taciturn then, but sad for his burden. He had wanted to comfort her then; now he turned her hand over in his own and pressed his palm flat against her torso, calloused skin sliding upward along the soft layer above her ribs, finding the dense underside of a breast.

"I hold you with every fiber of my being and I will never let you go. My queen..." His palm stroking the heavy outer swell of her bosom became a firm grasp in his whole hand. So soft and warm in his handle, fingers fanning over the extent of it to grasp harder, to give the tender flesh a squeeze that grew more indelicate with each passing moment. He ran a thumb over her left nipple from behind. The rosy point curled dramatically. "Mahal…!"

The warmth of him at her back, his thick heartbeat, the ephemeral musk of his skin and his breath, was withdrawn from her suddenly, and Thorin scooted lightly across the rug to move the pillows he had arranged there, his skin on fire, beginning to prickle in the armpits with the beginnings of perspiration. "Lay down," he breathed, an imperious plea.

Sweeping her hair up from around her she lay flat back with the pillow beneath the nape of her neck and let his own hair trail over her skin while he leaned and kissed his way down her throat and over her collarbone. His hair on her skin was silk not like his hands, the roughness of his palms and at the tips of his fingers, which were tentatively exploring; it fell on her, densely. Drawing back and dusting his locks of hair over her skin he surveyed the heavy, sumptuous bosom with ever more satisfaction, freckles like the little fiery ones on her shoulders hiding in the well between them. Her breasts were lightly freckled the same, and the weight of their soft flesh in his palms again were their half-moon undersides, such ample, pretty things they were, two mountains, not Lonely like this one but twinned together at her chest. And it rose up and down, up and down, and he could not tell whether it was nervousness or anticipation that quickened her breath.

"I trust you. I give you all of me..."

Asudden his mouth was on her there, kissing at the tender mound, then grasping her nipple with patient lips, rolling his tongue over it. A log settled and cracked, against her heaving breath, and he drew his lips away, seeing the wetness from his mouth gleaming on the rosy, peaked bud. Fingers tangled and fisted in his hair, the heat of his mouth finding her nipple again, encircling it greedily. Meisar gasped helplessly against him, arching her chest against the wet, hungry heat of his kiss suckling her into his mouth one at a time. She felt teeth graze over and test the sensitive nub with a soft bite. The burn of his beard over the tender points pulled rush of breath from her lips, as he drew them into the furnace of his mouth again to suckle. She wanted so much to touch him, but he would not allow it, not yet. Her hand slid into his hair and held tight as he continued his relentless plundering, his fingers on one breast mimicking the motion of his mouth on the other, each circling the nipple then flicking against it. Finally he took the nipple between thumb and forefinger and squeezed while his teeth closed in about the other.

"THORIN!" This foreplay could not last or he would surely take her with animal need.

No. He had promised to be gentle. She trusted him.

The unease in her belly had been tenderly soothed by his efforts, on her prone body, and the attentions to her breasts seemed but a lingering inauguration, to what she could not be entirely sure, but openly, if wordlessly, craved. He was through with them for the time; mountains were beautiful indeed but the passageways that lay below them craved exploration also, to be opened, their treasures adored. He kissed her rounded, supple belly to her furred mound. The hair there curled enviable of shade, ever ample for the woman they called Meisar the Beardless. Dense and in many flaming tendrils it lay over her mound, her sweet forest in flames.

"My bride, I have eaten well on my wedding day, yes. Meat off the bone and cold ale aplenty. And what more could a dwarf want, than to be well-imbibed?" he exuded in a thick low baritone that pebbled against her skin before he had met it with his rumbling lips. There he kissed the side of her tiny white foot, tickling the sole with his beard. Hot breath trailed up her ankle, and over the strong calves he rasped his beard and kissed, kissed, kissed, while his desire thickened in the confines of his breeches and she could feel it by the time he reached her juncture and let his groin brush lightly at the inside of her leg as he encapsulated himself within hers. His lips and tongue lingered in the hollow at the back of her knee, tracing upward along the soft skin with kisses, making himself a little path, one he would know like a well-traveled road after this night. His mouth worshipped the length of her from her knee to the apex where her thigh dipped into the gentle valley of her womanhood. It was spring in that valley, a very damp spring of warm, nourishing rains, alight with the prospect of new life.

"To imbibe of my queen again, though; I would have no greater pleasure than that." He stroked the silken folds that were drenched in her heat for him. "You will enjoy this, I promise."

"I already have once before," she reminded him playfully. As her thigh draped over his shoulder he kissed her there, and rubbed his beard deftly along the sensitive skin. "This is true, but it is one thing to be ravished scraping up against a tree, and quite another here. Where I have time to properly enjoy you." He clasped his teeth lightly over the supple skin just below her navel. "You are my refuge. All of you." He pressed kisses against her shielding lips and parted the channel lightly with the tip of his tongue; the scent of her was not like the sharp spice of the oils rubbed about the inner parts of her thighs, but her. Yes, he desired this part of her more than anything. The cushion of her mons under the soft down of her bush, outer lips plump without touch, and made unbearably swollen by it. A flick of tongue, that skillful muscle of his, opened her, so that she was spread for his appraisal. There was a little slope of pink skin glistening over the bulb, so delicate a thing as to be sheltered by rose-petal folds. His lips and tongue touched her there in the rosy crevice between her nether lips. Palm clasped tight to the heaving chest, he took her with gentle, lapping strokes. Her back arched in a natural and irresistible response, thrusting her hips up toward his wanting mouth. How abrasive his beard was on that sensitive flesh.

"My jewel. My everything… if I must eat you all night like a sweet candy, I will with pleasure." His warm breath was whispering against the fragrant curls, minor lips swelling to coax the great-lips further apart. He drew his tongue lightly over the little slope of skin and thrummed into her with a quick dart of tongue. "Until you are dripping and begging."

"An easy task, love," she sighed mischievously.

"Hmm? We shall see…" He drew his finger lightly along the delicate border of soft, springy hair and slick inner skin. To seek it out without appearing some stumbling lad, and relieved at last to find it was little different in its geography than that of the tall-woman all those years ago. The memory of dwarves. There were the valleys, then the foothills of wet, curled skin that made another set of lips, and there within them the crown jewel of all the fleshly range. He let his tongue seek it lightly. Her legs curled up around him as it slid over it again, this time with more reticent force. Eyes that were black with need looked up at her as he flickered his tongue into her core. It shifted and came down again to the soft petals that formed her inner lips, parting them to find the little nub swollen and blushing. "Ah," he sighed, pushing back the veil of skin that lay over her uncut gem. She bucked and twitched to his delight, against the unbearable sensation when he touched it unsheathed. "The most precious of all stones… A rose diamond. Shall I soften the edges?"

Her rose-diamond was in need of a proper setting, a wonderful jewel to be cradled in warm flesh, ringed and held in place by a perfect molding touch. It was like mining really. To chisel away methodically so the walls would not come apart in his hands and flood the tight spaces of this wonderful cavern. He opened her with care, as one would a beautifully-packaged gift, and that she was. He eased his ministrations. As a mattock would at a wall of uncertain depth he paused and took measure. A job for another time and another place, swiftly as it would come, to find here beyond a secreted chamber walled in velvet.

A sudden and foreign sensation against her sex that she quickly realized were his fingers, tracing, edging the heat-swelled borderlands of her intimacy. A thick finger parted her, fingered at the delicate opening. She had touched herself there sometimes but never too boldly, and not the inner passageway to her womb, only the little bud buried near its apex. Suddenly the finger was inside her and it was thick, much thicker than her own, and it burned though only the tip was pushed past the slender entryway. She clenched around the intruding digit, drawing a soft moan from Thorin at her tightness.

He would not hurt her. He would not, if Mahal's own voice commanded him, to tear her open and draw tears to her eyes, for the sake of his own pleasure. She would be ready. He would make sure she was ready, and he trusted his tongue to prepare her aptly.

Shortly he had her writhing sideways, mouth open in great caterwauls that emerged as no more than faint, mewing whimper. Licking, and licking, again and again, tasting her exquisite peaks and valleys of heated flesh, rousing and inflaming. His tongue was flat against her hooded nub and devouring her still. She rolled her hips again, her hands through his hair as his tongue slid inside her.

"My blessing, you will have me come undone before…" His tongue slipped out of her and went to suckling at the hooded pearl, when her moans signaled that primal, oncoming peak. He would not let her. It was not that he couldn't resist tasting her but a few moments longer, her exquisite flavor, flesh that melted on his tongue like fire to ice. Her core heated, fast approaching critical mass, and he found her rose-diamond again and closed his lips greedily about it, tongue wicking away the hot liquid that left her opening pink and wetted for him now. Thorin laying between her parted legs, tamed the writhing limbs with firm hands and a tongue that rendered her utterly helpless. He found the most vulnerable parts, plunging his tongue inside her, summoning her core to heat. A whispered cry of ecstasy rose in her throat, to accompany the music of the crackling fire, as he enveloped her centrifuge, drawing her into his mouth.

Her knees buckled on his shoulders. The precipice drew so close she felt her toes dancing over it, for they were tingling indeed. No, when he was betwixt her thighs she was his to command. Shuddering feverishly against the oncoming peak, the coarseness of his beard brushed over her pearl and sent her over the edge. The waves of pleasure fanned out from her sex to engulf her entire body, from her toes to the hairline of her scalp, which was tingling madly, and her face so flushed and feverish she could feel the beads of sweat begin to form.

That fire would burst and consume everything around it. And yet it was more of a rain than a burst of flame. He laid up on her belly and rode the shock-wave that made her belly roll in starts and fits. "Mahal…"

He kissed her lips so she could taste herself, her scent on his beard. "How divine you are. My jewel." Her sensitivity too raw to bear at the moment. If he took her now, they would both be undone in seconds. The aching to prolong the act struck him as necessary, and urgent, in spite of his need.

An urgency had made itself known in her fingertips for all the textures of him. She mimicked the exploration he had just endeavored with the tips of her fingers, all along his chest and down into the firm dips of skin just above his hips, and she knew, without the previous experience of it, the nature of what was wanting and straining underneath it all. She flung her head upward to capture his lips in hers. His abdomen was quavering, her palm on his cheek, the shy eyes ever intent gazing up into his, though his own were ephemerally closed. With that he drew back with ardent determination against the urgency of his body to hers. "No, we cannot go on like this. Not on a warg-skin on the ground like common wildlngs," he insisted, his voice bereft of all breath or its usual profundo depth.

At once she was in his hold and lifted as easily as a traveling pack, elbows slung and clung over his shoulders with fingers raking at the dense silk of his hair the way the quivering flanks of her calves slid and braced over the slight, carved dip of his waist. Cheek pressed firm to the flank of his neck through a thick veil of hair she could feel the blood hasten in his veins, pulsating, rushing down all at once.

Broad shoulders flexed as he set her down in the center of the bed; they were seasoned and well-used, not at all youth and brawn. She scooted a bit closer to the edge of the bed as he went about lighting several more candles. There was only a small dip in the dark velvet top-cover where he had laid her on the otherwise undisturbed bed, so dark it was like a sea by night, except for the brindle fur lining of the top-cover, the pelt thrown down at the foot of the bed. It had all looked so immaculate. If the bedclothes were to be rustled, they would so together. The warg skin had felt slightly ragged and thin over the stone beneath her by the fire; the bed was welcoming and comfortable. "Thorin?" she breathed out in a high whine.

"A little more light, my blessing." He pulled a long match stem from the brazier on the wall, lit the seven candles in the iron candelabra to the right of the bed. "I wish to look upon you."

"Aye, and I you, and a queen will open her gift as well," Meisar insisted in a low hum, reaching for him from a distance. She went clumsily to him on her knees, with the soft coverings of the bed swallowing her movements. Her fingertips ran over his chest and brushed at the very lowest part of his belly; there her eyes quickly shifted to take in the rough-carved, sinewy lines of his lower belly, the place where the thin line of hair met the waist-line of his breeches. The stripe of hair at his belly was rather like a long un-traveled road, a jagged line without trim, or touch. She placed her hands firmly at the small of his back and drawing a quiver, a feral sigh, began to kiss him ardently there. He was not soft like she was on the belly but muscled and broad, scarred. She felt animal in her sudden lust, and not the chaste bride that lay beneath in true. The innocuous patch of hair had suddenly sparked a primal yen, a hunger she could not satiate except by putting her mouth to the lightly-furred skin, tasting a hint of brine underneath on the hard, muscled skin. It was a hunger not like the wanting of a hearty bread or strong ale at the end of a long day; it was in her stomach but lower. She took in the feral, musky scent of his skin, the quintessence of his arousal stirring.

"Thorin, husband… I desire you with all my heart."

The thin belt that held his breeches she eased out of its loops, and he sought no further delay. Then the laces. She opened them slowly and slid the doeskin off, leaving his small-clothes a flimsy layer between Meisar and her treasure. At the waist-band of his smallclothes, the line between belly and maleness was demarcated by a thicker, darker razor of hair trailing dangerously over the breadth of his pubic bone. She could see the shape of him hard and wanting under the thin layer, and squeezed the jewels lightly over his braies, teasing him, parsing a fingertip across the little divide she could feel between them. He twitched hard inside of his clothes and making an unintelligible sound of desperation all but flung Meisar's hand away. "Before I am consumed, Meisar, free me!"

"Patience my king. I know it is not one of your… better qualities. But for now I shall indulge your imperfections."

Thorin groaned again, more of a hiss, as she loosed the drawstring of his braies and finally drew them off. The fully erect, swollen manhood was sprung from his small-clothes, now discarded. "Oh…" Meisar gasped softly laying eyes upon it for the first time. It was generous in size and thick of girth. The crown of it stood throbbing and delectably flush with arousal. He was quite hairy between the legs, and Meisar savored the size of him.

She took a moment to drink in the sight of Thorin's nakedness resplendent before her. He was beautiful, magnificently beautiful. It was not a word one easily applied to Thorin Oakenshield, in spite of his obvious handsomeness, too dark, too un-eased to be bothered with such a thing as beauty. But exquisite he was, rampantly beautiful, the raw masculinity of his form, thick and well-muscled all over. Corded thighs that could break a man's neck between them, the rough sinewy lines of his abdomen beneath a fine layer of dark hair, and a round, very firm bottom. She took in the strong musculature of his chest and his back, his ligaments being thick and even for the rough-hewn quality of his body. His falling loose over his shoulders covered him to just below his collarbone, all swept in front to frame his face. From the luxuriant chest hair a dark thin column trailed down across the hard lines of his belly and pooled at the thick down of hair between his legs. Her eyes fell to and studied again with heated curiosity the shape and size of his manhood, the fine girth of it, standing a proud length.

Meisar smiled. "A dwarf you may be, but I see that not all of you is small in size." For a moment, he thought he saw her blush. It was a prickling blush, of desire and nerves together, and wondered secretly if her body could accommodate all of his supple, rigid flesh. She felt a pang of trepidation and curious desire together wrench at her between her legs, to know that this was the means by which he would claim her; she feared it could tear her apart. She put her hand up to the lower slope of his belly, in tentative longing, fingertips brushed against his hardening length at its base. He laughed softly and lifted her chin. "Yes my queen, you can touch," he said, and guided her fingers to wrap sturdily about his length. He felt so thick and heavy in her hand, and she pumped at it timidly feeling the density of his flesh, hardened against her touch, his small, satisfied moans. "It's… big," she sighed. She stroked him slowly, thumb dragging at the groove between the head and column. He bucked slightly into her hand, with his flesh so long un-commanded by another's touch. The veins along the peachy skin of his manhood studded and ripened. A few timid pumps left him twitching restlessly for more, his sighs becoming moans. She remembered what Emli had said about touch.

She realized that nothing would allay her curiosity, and her yearning, except to touch, to kiss, to take him into her consummately. They were naked, their hair undone, and now, there was nothing more to wait for, no more ritual to perform.

Her face in the dim glow of the firelight tilted to the side, toward him, gazing at him quietly, studying his every breath. His left knee drew up and bent, showing the shapely strength and brawn of his bottom in the low light, his hand still on the lower part of her belly not knowing quite where to go next. That uncertain tremble of it, her own knees bending upward. Where first to touch, to kiss, and warm her and show her how to receive. She reached out and took his hand and put it on her breast again. Thorin let a surrendering sigh and lay down beside her, facing her. She drew her fingertips over his bicep, hard to the touch, haired more finely and more sparsely there than a great deal of the rest of his body. His skin felt taut under her touch but surprisingly soft compared to the hispid touch of his chest. At the moment she could not decide which she liked better. Her thumb pressed into him in the small dip just below his collarbone and the touch made a drake within him rise to life and breathe fire.

He returned the gesture with ardor, pressing to her collarbones, but with his mouth, pressing her beneath him without warning. She had always been a hardy woman, rugged and well-conditioned for her plumpness and smallness of stature, but in his hands she was clay, not stone, feeling all too small, twig-like, beneath his powerful body. Shirking back, he framed her face in gentle rasping kisses, her body with hands that disbelieved the warmth and softness and undulation of the flesh they moved over. She clutched his hand on her thigh, entrusting these well-formed hands with their short, clean nails and rough tips to treat her as carefully as he might have a delicate craft. Strong hands years absent from a woman's flesh never faltering or clumsy, traced the fleshy curve of hip and thigh, all of the soft, bowing valleys of her body, the rolling plain of belly and sudden, soft-swelling hills. Accustomed to wielding rougher things they slid over her breasts and belly, trailed his lips over every sumptuous curve of her. Three endearing little rolls of flesh crinkled at her flank when she lay upwards on her side, big roomy, strong hips and fat bottom aptly displayed toward him. She was no Urdlaug or Bira, mountains of lard they were, barely able to move for their corpulence; she was dwarven womanhood, every curve of her sumptuous and exhilarating, her softness like a song. Not like him, his body so hard and scarred. He had fascinated and made her weak. The realization of his strength when all his layers were shed and it was him in his purest form, skin warmth with mirth. She watched the way every breath made Thorin's chest rise up and down, the way the exhalations squeezed hard flesh to the outline of his ribs, which she could see the faint rungs of in spite of his stockiness and the luxuriant pelt of hair that peppered him all over.

Her hands mapped out broad shoulders, the cliffs of them hard and jagged and lightly scarred, and his black-haired chest, a much flatter plain than her own. As a man would a new land, she traced his undiscovered places, noting his features, the topography of his skin, over densely muscled thighs, grasping the firmness of his bottom with light, eager fingers. His left breast was lightly scarred, another cut of angry white through the generous pelt of hair that covered him. She touched the scar, its texture alarmingly smooth, and found his nipple with deepening curiosity, for his own were like hers, pebbled and dusty-pink, but ever more subtle in their contraction when met with the lightest of touches. He possessed many scars, battle-wounds and great clawing streaks of white, razed skin around his ribcage, even ruder-looking than the sword-wound at his belly or the scar on his chest. "Warg…" she whispered earnestly, her fingers caressing the little groves, knowing the teeth just by the shape and length of the scars, forcing herself not to imagine the clamping of the jaws around him, piercing bone and spilling marrow like fire in the blood. "Provided me a pleasant cushioning whilst my tongue was buried inside you," he smiled in that earnest, slight way he did.

He deserved to be caressed now, loved with an ardent physical tenderness and want. She scraped her teeth lightly along his collarbone. He felt his skin tighten against her touch, as if it could not fathom it and simply shied away. A hand grasped and kneaded tentatively at one of his globes. Following the tight curve of his hip and his bare thigh, the muscles tense with anticipation just beneath the skin. Once she had only imagined being wrapped in them, her own thighs soft and thick and yielding however he would like them, entwined tightly around his or…

He parted them suddenly and dipped his head to kiss, rumbled a long, low, resonant laugh into her skin at her writhing in the prolonged pleasure of his touch . "Sangazil," he whispered, beard pressing into her belly. Thumbs anchored to the tiny bumps of bone at the edge of stout, strong hips, stroking them in circles, making her jump. The ineffable want of something too intimate to bear out in words in times before was real now, and as they were learning together, had little need of a spoken language.

"No blade could pierce it," she sighed. The very particular rosiness of that arousal had spread from her cheeks to cover her chest and well to her belly in its fine flush and little bumps of raised gooseflesh, every hair on end. "But I have shed my armor, my king. I wish... Thorin... will you have me, now?"

He tugged her knee up at the dimpled crook behind it, separating one from the other. Her own heat gave her the reassurance she needed, and Thorin's. From the time the tip of him had tasted for the first time the soaked veils of flesh just within the outer lips, gathered her wetness it, hand fumbling to guide the spasming head there along that soft, wet vale, and made certain of his destination, desiring the contact so wretchedly it made his streams of blood pulsate in his head, struggling to escape all other parts of him and contribute to the tumescence of him below. An army at the gates.

He had plundered the Riddermark peasant so ignorantly, shoving himself wholly into her as if he were packing one last sack into a wagon already full, thrusting and beating madly at it. And she had writhed and groaned all too surprised at his girth but he had been relentless, un-yielding in the face of her gasps. He had not learned then what a woman's body was wont to take and what it wasn't; sighing, he harbored an overbearing anxiety that he still hadn't an idea. He withdrew, brought a finger to her entrance and hummed a little wordless plea for permission. His rough hand willing itself not to quiver, his eyes fell to the pink slit and fixed there at it, glistening under its soft halo of red curls, vestal and crying out for him to further soften it, and open her with a defter touch than he had mustered with a female before. Meisar squirmed in anticipation feeling a thick finger delve into the culvert, test the un-tempered longing that her wetness betrayed. His fingers suddenly felt sharp in the soft folds of her there.

"Does that hurt?"

"No!"

"Shall I go on?"

Her answer came in a sudden relaxation of all of her limbs, a yes that he needn't hear from her lips to know. Of all the things that had sat unspoken in him, for her, or for any, this one seemed of the most welcome, and the most liberating. "Dwarven fingers, they are skilled, and not just in molding precious stone," she murmured, guiding his fingers down again, unsure of their direction but comforted by a sudden notion that their bodies might naturally guide themselves toward what would inevitably follow. She was opening and closing herself with the muscles there, pressing over his finger, encouraging it in. The hard tip of another finger joined the first in due time, no more than a few tentative prods and strokes but it seemed a lifetime. They proceeded carefully, but drew back suddenly in haste, as if bitten. It made her heat there sting suddenly; it clamped about her own emptiness there like gnashing teeth. "I beg you, ravish me!" She shivered into the the heat of his naked skin, the desperation of his flesh to join with hers, to take her and make her his, to learn all of his hard, intimate contours and take them as part of her.

"No! I will take my time with you," Thorin insisted breathily. He could not, no matter the intensity of the want that coursed through him, to feel her around every inch of him, delve in haste. His hand on the soft plain of her torso contracted, the fingers all drawing in, lowering. "You are solid," she sighed. "You are made of something so much stronger than stone." Her eyes trailed downward to find his manhood dense and impatient against her, the pillar of him pressed upward on her thigh with the slickened eye exhaling a clearish thick fluid, and the blunt head of it, for a lack of better term, looking rather… angry. She hoped, for her sake, that this part of him shared his overall hardened and fierce appearance at the outset, but being capable of surprising tenderness.

She sighed into his fragrant skin and at once sensed in the fixed timorousness of his gaze that he had caught her studying the full turgid length with furrowed brows and recognizing it, kissed her again. "My jewel, do not be afraid. I will be gentle."

Her body answered his, never once fearing the prurient essence of her desire. Gentle, he thought. How? His desire pounded at him as a hammer in a forge. Relentless, drumming. His blood quickened and his heart… his heart he felt urging to burst from the pressure. Alas the blood was elsewhere. To find that she was wet and swollen and convulsing around the finger that prodded shallowly into her gave him what assurance he was determined of. Pale, supple thighs indistinguishable from the cream-colored sheets parted taking Thorin generously between them. The thick slats beneath the feather mattress groaned long and low with the undulation of hips beneath the heavy fur-lined blanket. Her breath took on a shaky quality as she felt him shift, press her beneath him with his arms rested at either side of her. The muscles of his broad frame were all taut, heavy of breath and strong of limb over her, A new and pronounced thrumming of flesh and blood found her with a few fumbling oscillations that most tender and unyielding place which was now his alone to traverse. The journey of him along the swollen channel was a different sensation than the roughness and eager precision of his fingers had been, so pointedly ready.

"Meisar…" He kissed her along her jaw-line to her earlobe. Hot breath ghosted against her ear, the skin along her hairline tingling.

He fumbled a hand down to grasp himself, and found and nested dense and heated against her opening again, begging for entrance. "Please…" she begged, her words carried away from her as if to some astral plane, begging to receive him, making him as much her own as she would be his. "Malur," he whispered. With pleasure, and he never stopped kissing her.

Mahal, it hurt. The first he entered and she felt the low burn of her body expanding against him, a rush of breath came sudden and heated to push past his parted lips. Adamantine flesh opening her where she had ne'er been opened, she swallowed against a raw, deep, breathless cry. He was thick and stretched her. The pain was… not really pain at all, not at least in the way it was thought of. She felt as if she could be torn apart but it did not frighten her. It was new and stimulating and burning as she stretched against his girth, the sudden intensity of tight skin and the intimate fibers of her opening for him and making him a part of her and one with her. Her belly tightened at the intrusion, letting a soft whelp and tremor flit past her lips. She could feel the tears coming from the thick, hard heat of him expanding the untested walls, but she welcomed it, craved it even, in spite of the pain. It was a curious feeling, of a dark, sealed room flooded with light for the first time. He was all slow reverent movements and whispered prayers over her, but a very different kind of worship. She finally yielded to the soft whimper that was caught in her throat. All manner of trepidation had fled her, and Thorin's eyes were colored black and desperate. "Mahal help me," he whispered,

Her moans rose to a sudden sharp keening as hot pain flooded through her with the tearing of that effervescent thumbnail-moon, the Athrâkh she had been told to endeavor heedfully. She had maintained her virtue all these years; how quickly it was undone, in one small thrust. The tight pulsation of him ebbed momentarily with the cry of shock she had issued, and quickened again, from the desire-whetted head, to the narrower sensation of the throbbing, rushing blood beneath his turgid skin, perhaps from the thick vein she had observed on the underside of his column dividing him like a smooth ridge, against her pelvic floor. Her belly tightened, experimental squeezing at first, testing her own spaces. Her arm outstretched and slid firmly over the warmed sheets, clutching, against the shock of his masculinity. But it only hurt for one blissful moment.

When she looked up at him, into his eyes, all she could see was stars.

Wrapping her legs around him, muscles instinctually clenched around the intruding flesh, all hardness and want. She was warm there, She must have felt the intensity of his breath when he pressed forth, slow for her sake, hiding just behind that stilled breath, grasping and squeezing him in her walls and bearing down against him inflamed every nerve in his being, and he could still himself no longer. The first slow movement inside her made her squirm vigorously, a rush of breath at the friction and the sudden perfect angle of his solid flesh against her walls. Her heart turned to liquid in her chest. "Oh my dear Thorin. You will overcome me." This exquisite pleasure had once been no more than a physical release, much like scratching an itch, no more personal or meaningful, and she had never been touched like this before, not even by her own hand. Now the onslaught of sensation had drawn all of her blood away and left her veins thrumming with want of it all over. Her fingertips felt numb when she tried to grasp the sheets for leverage against it, against the strange feeling of fullness when he was all the way inside her, and she set her arms around him instead. Her grasp on his shoulders deepened, then stiffened, feeling his virility so acutely there it started to burn and flood at the same time. Her eyes flickered open and held his gaze.

"How is that?" the soft thrum of his voice soothed all and any uncertainty that impatience would get the better of him the first night, when it came to the act itself which was said to be a quick, chaotic thing, this lovemaking.

"Much better." She felt as if she were being carried, tossed on the waves of a sea that was hot. His hair she loved the most, how it fell over her, tickled her face, made a curtain about them and how he let her tug and grip at it without complaint when he thrust again and again into the very centrifuge of her. Kisses rested hot and wet and clumsy with lust on her mouth, his own tasting lightly of ale still with a sharper overtone of hot wine. "If I hurt you… I swear I will go no more." She took him by the hips and guided him as firmly against her as she could command, for her lack of experience, and he began to pump himself slowly in and out once more. It was like mining after all, a vein of the most precious substance opened just beyond a wall of stone, by a careful hammer. He reached down and swirled a fingertip around the engorged bud, to ease the pain of his passage, pressed in until he was hilted again, her yielding body a long-awaited sheathe for his sword. A welcoming vessel which embraced him and sheltered him from all the ills of the world past and present, if only for a night.

His hands slid under her to lift her hips gently into him and coax a wholly different angle, uncertain if it would be pleasing to her, willing, in a haze of lust, to endeavor the risk nonetheless. With it he found her core and found the abrasive bead of her inner sanctum, and began to pump slowly to a fro from it, the imbrication of his thrusting coming swiftly. The abrading movement of his furred chest over her skin as he moved scratched at and further twisted her nipples into tiny, raisin-like points. She bit her lip but it was of no use. The moans came, harsh and ragged, deep, husky, baying moans that ignited in Thorin an animal passion he had fought so hard to tame, for her sake. The sparse lips, the two sharp creases of his mouth and his bearded chin were on her again and pressing the tip of his tongue to the inside of her lips in rhythm with another sharp but heedful stroke inside her. Elsa said it would not last for the nature of males in their own heat, but it had prolonged itself, somehow, the consummation, and for it to end suddenly felt like the oncoming shadow of death. The heat spread and peaked in her belly, coiling every muscle down there, sent the primal warmth of her womanhood contracting around him. She could feel every muscle in him, from his quavering thighs to his backside, tightening in deliberate self-restraint. Thorin's arm extended above her head to himself close a fist about the fur lining of one of the pillows and groan into her, directing a pointed thrust toward her womb.

Each exhalation was finally less harsh than the last, the once cautious caresses with fingertips becoming blunt nails raking into his flesh, leaving red marks down his broad, muscled back. The dense pulsating heat that pooled in the pit of her stomach began to ache for release. She ran her hands through his hair and down his back, feeling the flex of musculature from his shoulders and all along his spine down to his bottom. The entirety of her pelvis it seemed bore in and clenched around him, her inner walls not nearly as inert or obstinate as she had imagined, expanding, as if reaching toward that untasted pinnacle.

His heart was beginning to thunder over her spiraling toward that inevitable climax. His musculature rolling and ripping all over her body, flexing, summoning and pooling the inertia of his desire to-

His whole body quaked suddenly, a warmth filling her, yielding to the urgency of his desire, the years of passion pent-up and diverted and recklessly, lovelessly spilled. It was a wave that crashed upon her like a storm unto the rocks. And this act of consecration, of consummation, his sudden heat spilling into her and filling her. It poured from his body like molten lead. She welcomed every drop of him into her body, exhilarated by a feeling of virility, of her own body as a sacred vessel, a bearer of kings. Like liquid metal it would take and forge and shape in her. As the autumn moon ceded, a ragged thrust struck her sweet spot. As her cries reverberated deep inside the shelter of stone, the sky was also breached by the first of winter's sun. It was so much like mining. Like the discovery of the Arkenstone itself, this particular axe had struck the heart of her womanhood, the momentary suspension of all things and the beauty of it, her coming undone into a wrenching quake of utter surrender that left her caring not for anything in this world or the next.

"Thorin…"

She whispered his name through the feverish wave that came and carried her, writhing, into a new world.

And the quaking and heaving that was the intensity of his desire running its course, if only for a night, shook her, and then rocked her gently. His elbows eased down and all of his weight seemed to yield and sink into her when he had culminated and spilled, and the density and heat of his flesh receded from the core of her. He tucked his head against the side of her neck and exhaled long and low and full of heat, abrading beard and breath a gentle thrum against her moistened skin. For a moment she could not even bring herself to look toward Thorin, for fear of being consumed, drowned entirely in something she could not explain. She felt, beyond all measure, ravished. Possessed and loved all the same. It burned and ached there where he had claimed her afterward but the faint metallic hint of blood on her thigh and on the bedclothes did not perturb her. Claimed by him, made blissful by him, their oneness at last tangible. There would be mornings and more long nights after.

Pressing aside the lock of his hair that had flung itself up over her forehead she smoothed it and kissed the top of his head. His heady scent made her swim inside, his clean hair and his redolent musk and the salted, earthy fragrance of their joining in its residuum, the lingering of spirits on their lips, sharp mead and the softer spice of mulled wine. His face still rested against her neck, rough fingertips came and stroked her cheeks, raising her eyes to meet his. She found his eyes curious and tender toward her, and he found that she was not hurt, but filled with bliss. She slid lightly to the side of him and lay on her back, shoulder to his; her forehead was lightly sheened by their efforts, cheeks all pink and lovely. Taking her hand he exhaled heatedly through his nostrils as he kissed her knuckles, dragging sparse lips over the length of each finger. "How could I rest another night without you beside me?"

"You shouldn't worry for that. I am not going anywhere."

"I have pleased you then, my jewel?" There was no more of the melancholy that had once sat like pebbles in his throat, lacing his voice with pain. The rumbling of his chest came upward through his sternum, his throat, and he exhaled contentedly, snuggling to her once again. They were fused, in a chaotic cocoon of velvets and fur, their perspiration on the sheets and their sharing of breath and sharing of life; the latter lingered on her, viscous, clinging still thick with heat.

She smiled, genially, Thorin's heart drumming against her cheek again as he pulled her back to rest against his chest again. "I do believe you have completed me." He made her so intoxicated on the aching bliss of their togetherness that she forgot the time and day, and time was marked only by the thump of his heart- slowing and quick-pulsing again with every breath he took.

"Would you sing to me, my nightingale? I may sleep more soundly if you do."

He wanted to see her smile, to feel her limbs grow slack with repose, her eyes to grow heavy unburdened by another thought, and sleep, sleep peacefully and curl into him utterly surrendering to that plain need of another by her side. "Aye, I will," he murmured, kissing her head. stroking languid handfuls of hair.

The breath trailed from her body and settled into his skin, with a deep contemplative sigh embodied a vague, if stubborn hope that their union, as husband and wife, would make this broken king whole again. But it was too much to bear at the moment, this part of their lives together still too raw in its incipience to consider anything else except the scent of his skin, the dull lancination between her thighs.

He sang slowly and contemplatively, in his deep baritone lilt. His voice caressed the harsh consonants of the Khuzdul, like a diamond from the rough, all of its edges heedfully smoothed away. She let his deep voice resonate through her, a rumbling that came from deep in his chest, as he sang her a ballad of long-forgotten gold and burning pines.

.

Brynja and Gyda, Siv and Freyda sat by the far wall stifling giggles as they strained to hear every creak, and moan, and drawn-out cry of the king and queen's joining. They were in Dis's chambers, where the celebration continued.

"I told him to be gentle with her," Balin shook his head, and the women blushed a bit at how brazen their curiosity had become, even if it was something of a bawdy tradition among dwarves when there was a wedding.

"I'm sure it is not for lack of trying," Dis said, flustered, gathering the empty ales from Balin and Dwalin. She shuddered awkwardly as another ragged moan that sounded like Meisar carried through the stone. Gandalf, that strange tall fellow, raised an eyebrow and Dis studied him with a standoffish, if un-hostile, curiosity, relieved to see he was smiling with an enigmatic serenity under his beard.

"...some are just expressive about it, loud... a dwarf's girth ye know..."

Dis was half-relieved at the grating sound of the rattling and creaking of wheels, Dori coming about with the tea tray, long after the ales had been exhausted. "Your highness, a spot of chamomile perhaps?"

Dis grinned impishly at him. "No, Dori, I rather think red wine is in order."

.

Ulkhudel- Light of All Lights

Mizimel- Jewel of all Jewels

Mashamel- Duty of All Duties

Fasl- Male Genital Organ

Naintiti- Finalize Together!

Naikhmî- Lack Experience With Each Other

Malur- With Pleasure

Athrâkh- Refers to initial clearing or delving made in rock, so to allow further delving activities or hall-building