A/N: While I attempt to sort out a slight dilemma I'm having with the plotline of the immediate future, have some gratuitous dwarf loving.

Meisar slid underneath the warmth of the sheets beside Thorin, a puff of cold air rushing beneath quickly replaced by her familiar warmth. Winters under the mountain never wanted for warmth, even when in the cold confines of stone. There was always a fire burning somewhere. Especially now. His battle-wearied body still struggled to comprehend how she could lay beside him at night and give him only perfect joy. In her ivory nightdress with the little puckers of crocheted lace she looked of a virginal quality beside him, even for the yen with which her gaze fell upon him at the moment.

She drew the cover down to enfold them both again and he could feel the furnace heat of her radiate out beneath the blankets to envelop him, a warmth that had kept his fire kindling upon the road even when she was afraid to sleep beside him still.

"I was fortunate enough to bid Gandalf farewell, as he was departing upon his steed," Meisar related quietly. He looked over at her, one pale freckled shoulder bare in the loose night-shift. The determined paws of her hounds on the other side of the chamber door ebbed and went quiet as they capitulated to sleeping by the fire in the antechamber. Or bothering Oliada.

"Up early then, I see. My queen should have the privilege of rest," he teased. "Aroin relays a nagging concern about your duties."

"It was near the afternoon when I saw him off," Meisar said, staying on the subject for a reason she was not entirely certain of, only that Gandalf's attentions had nagged her as incessantly, all the talk of tombs not quite empty and wolves in her flock. She wanted nothing of politics or intrigue or wandering wizards; her senses were on edge, ready to prickle at every sensation. The scent of the pillows freshly laundered, the nap of the fur, Thorin's sur-coat flung across the bed at their feet, still fragrant with the thin, cold scent of the winter air. And Thorin. When he turned his head she welcomed a wafture of smoke and pine-soap and his clean skin. He wore only a blue sleeping shirt and loose breeches, garments of an easy nature to overcome.

"Oh?" Thorin's brow lowered a bit at her.

She nodded. The bed made a light creak as she shifted over to lay on her side and face him. Thorin was still propped up against a thick cushioning of pillows, holding some parchment up toward the light coming from the sconces on the wall, the bed curtains pressed back to let the light in. She could smell the ink of it, barely dry. His dark silhouette in the light pointedly elegant, thick strong lines and heavy forearms raised in concentration, sleeves of his loose sleep-shirt rolled to the elbow.

"My queen proves herself useful once again," Thorin commended with a knowing half-smile after a quick read. His eyes met hers and seemed all the more clearer, more vibrant to her, their blue shifting a shiver from her heart to the secret spot in her belly. She had felt tender all day there, even the fleshly bite of her stomacher making her calescent inside with need every time it moved against her skin.

"Here he writes a parting message telling of his travels to the west in the coming days. Unless he told you something differently." Thorin put the parchment aside and settled down in the bed next to her. She sighed against the warmth of his palm through the slight fabric of her nightgown when he touched her, covering her with tenderness with the blanket as goose pimples appeared on her skin.

"He said to go to Rivendell, perhaps to the libraries at Isengard where the white wizard dwells. The Shire then he says. I suppose Bilbo Baggins will welcome him if he promises no more adventures," Meisar grinned. She had entertained such curiosity about that fussy Mister Baggins since the road home.

Thorin returned the smile, but pensive and distant his. "May he bide his time well then."

"Does he offer us worse things than he lets on?" Meisar inquired, not really interested in the answer at the moment, only Thorin's broad chest under the light sleeping shirt, the crescent that offered itself under the undone top lace of its neckline, letting the springy borderlands of his chest glimpse out.

"I should think not," Thorin shrugged. The column stirred in his thin trousers against a ragged breath.

"Then worry not for it. Not now. Not here," Meisar counseled, intently as ever. She took Thorin's hand toward her, holding it in both of hers, coaxing the fingers out from their usual clench to take them one at a time to her lips. She held his gaze while she slid the roughened tip of the forefinger past her lips and steadied it lightly in her teeth, applied the warm, wet pressure of a light suckling, and buried it to the knuckle. His fingers tasted of ink and metal and the simmer of venison.

"Never, my queen."

When she withdrew from her ministrations, his fingertip stayed and traced the little scallops of lace on the neckline of her nightdress. She could feel the wetness of her own mouth on them trace over the sliver of her collarbone. A hand sliding in and tracing the heavy arc of the top of her bosom withdrew and pulled open the laces fastening her shift in front, slipped it away from her chest and over her shoulders.

"My queen's generosity was well-received by the wandering wizard."

She touched his chest at the opening of his tunic. "The wine proved only to loosen his tongue enough to say what others have said before."

"And what might that be?"

"A shepherdess's work is never done," she answered, and leaned to kiss him. The yen in her veins grew hotter, her womanhood flush with its tenderness. "Nor is a queen's."

She loosened the laces of his sleep-shirt in front and pulled the dense weight of him upward so he could shuck the garment. Lying on his back again, he gazed upward at her and made a quick study of her face, the rosy enthusiasm on her cheeks, the heat of her fingertips on his cheek, lying over him to stroke his beard with her forefinger, under his chin and down in an eager line to his sternum.

Blush arced at her chest and her shoulders slacked forward over him, braided hair pulled away from her face to show the rutilant cheeks, the tightening points below.

"You are looking especially lovely, my queen." The hazel topaz of her eyes had gone black, the heavy lids not so sleepy but completely alert, and hungry. "You are… heightened, my love. I cannot fathom the chemistry but alas…" He breathed in the heat of her skin when she leaned over him to unfasten his breeches, aid his wresting himself from them. Fingertips found the scar on his chest and traced it.

She lay her head into the warm, fragrant curve of his neck, so solid there, the sinews relaxing beneath the soft pattering of her breath. Her arms curled upward and were then cradling the back of his head in her palms, tugging him upward to meet her lips again, press her fingers into the nape of his neck at the hairline and deepen her tongue into the space of his own. Her thumb found the groove and stroked behind his ear, a spot he had not entertained as giving such acute satisfaction from another's touch.

The blood all came away from his head at once, leaving him dizzy, slack lips taken up by the enthusiasm of her own. Thorin rested his hand on her arm and stroked down the soft skin to the crook of her elbow, where he pressed his palm and grasped her in a firm anchoring of her body to his, now that she was draped over him wholly, desiring him beneath her.

"Thorin… Thorin I feel it in me to draw life into my body this night. I desire it so… and you..."

Her fingertips still played on the nape of his neck, steadying him against the warmth and softness of her belly pressed over the top of his thigh and rubbing upward as she came to drape herself over him. Her hair, in a single plait, was folded in half and cinched at the small of her back, fell over her side and onto him, grazing at his belly with its thick bronze cinch and tickling him enough to make him quiver hard there and rise his torso against hers. His length pressed into the shallow divot of her skin just between the ribs as she rocked the length of her body against his, a rhythm like a ancient dance of life, throbbing, thrumming toward its ritual frenzy. He felt the underside of her breast against his tip, her belly undulating over him again as she moved, rocking undulating torso over his pointed hardness, stuck on his belly as it was between their bodies gently sandwiched. He moved his hand from the small of her back where it was anchored, quivering, to survey with his palm the pale plump curve of her backside, and guide her with as much urgency as his decorousness would allow.

The pulsation of his length against her ribcage, finding her heart with its steady throb. The tip touched the underside of one breast, a weeping offering leaving its mark there, making her groan. She slid up further to cover him, press his thighs between hers. Her own wetness left a saturated line on his thigh, a mark he would have liked to wear as one of his scars had it not been so pleasantly earned.

"How does my queen beleaguer me now?" he implored, breathless beneath her.

"Ikhrêb," she crooned.

She pinned his arms backward at the elbow to rest beside his head, and moved, lower and again until she felt the touch of Thorin's familiar hot, hard skin on the inside of her thigh, and guided him into the waiting channel In her lower lips the bud had bloomed into a zealous spring, plump and firm with arousal, not merely for touch but for every single small sensation that any of her five keened on. The sight of Thorin's hair splayed across the pillow underneath, hair she gathered in handfuls like reins. Her knees stayed pressed on the bed on either side of him as she rode upward, and down again, never taking the touch of her torso, her breasts, from his own. He could feel her nipples hardening, chafing, from the touch of his hispid frame against her skin, but she went on, relentless.

He moved up her back with the flat of his palms, stroking the skin in gentle rhythm as she rippled and swelled over him, leaning forward to angle herself to press down upon him, withdrawing, taking him in in long fluid strokes, clenching with every envelopment and giving every inch of him a tight heated embrace. The slow movements let him hold against spasming and heat all around him, the tightening and tingling of himself from the tops of his thighs to the lower part of his belly, surging in want of release. It coaxed the most unexpected of sounds from him, deep in his throat, thick with pleading. He leaned upward, keeping her torso pressed to his, took her neck above his in hard, suckling kisses that would leave marks in the morning light. His mouth ripened the skin and brought all of the blood to the surface, hot with need. With it she quickened her hips over his, steadying the solid curve of his length in her. The nipples pointed upward from heavy bosoms, flushed in their joy, the little darkened points seeming to invite his mouth. He drew her deeper onto him by pressing at the back of her thigh with one hand, holding the tip of a breast in his lips, until the friction of his beard had rendered them from mahogany to pink again.

It went on, one stroke after another, ardent with her own peculiar hunger, until she was using one arm to brace on the headboard in front of her for leverage, rolling over and over again back and forth against him. She arched and sat straight, trying to anchor herself by holding to his abdomen but the skin there was too hard, too muscular to be so pliant, so she held the hard dips of his waist instead, angling him toward a reckless zenith, of whom the first victor was uncertain yet. Hair half loosened from its braid fell upward over the top of her head to shelter him when he pulled her forward by the zaftig globes and up her back again, buried so deep inside her when he finally roared into his apex. There was a surety in the way that he burst, she thought. Dared to hope.

Afterward she lay awake beside him, still thrumming with desire. It made her stir relentlessly, against the sheets, against him. Her bare back was bent in a supple curve that allowed them to fit together, two links in a chain perfectly joined. His snoring on the back of her neck reverberated down her spine and spread from hips to loins again. Over the arm that was tucked close to her body he had laid his own, and the strength and the density of it cleaving to her seemed not to allow a semblance of sleep, even with the tenderness of her chest, the pounding of worked flesh in her intimacy.

"Restless are we?" a low, sleepy voice inquired into the nape of her neck. The abrasive texture of his beard made a hotter fire than the one already kindling from its once-dying ember.

"I think so," she murmured.

The sated maleness came to nest against the crest of her buttocks when he moved again to draw himself nearer against her.

"Is this where he likes to sleep when he is tired?" Meisar sighed jestingly, her voice low, like the purr of a tomcat.

"His sleep can be fitful, just like yours my queen," Thorin replied.

"He has a name?" Meisar purred amusedly.

"All dwarves have secret names, do we not?"

"I wasn't sure that's what that meant."

"It's not," he said. "But this shall our secret alone, no?"

She laughed and rubbed her bottom against him so she would feel his moans rumble against her skin. His beard tickled her ear around its border and then her cheek, a pointed abrasive sensation that made her head jerk into the pillow with a gentle laugh. "Scratchy beard," she garbled away from him.

He rolled over to gaze down upon her in the near opaque dark. Only a low-burning sconce gave him sight of her rosy, sleepless visage, her stubborn arc of flushed skin; he pulled the blanket down to leave her breast bare, grasping it while he answered her wordless plea to be kissed ravenously once again. The corner of his lip quirked up uncannily, a lusty playfulness he was still unused to. Happy and pointedly desirous. Rolling, she held him flush to her, her pillowy chest to his hard one, kisses falling on the crease of his nose where it met his cheek, the dense heat of breath making them wanton again. He stroked the soft, thick thighs that were wrapped over his tightly again.

"I will require some time to rest and regain myself, if you understand my meaning, ghivishel."

"Our secret," she whispered in the low light. "Might the process be quickened by any means?" She traced a fingertip up his length beneath the blanket that was twisted over his hips, feeling the vein at its underside ripen and the flesh begin to grow hard again.

"Aye, it may be," he offered, breathlessly.

Parallel over the edges of his chest her hands stroked, before she bent forward to nuzzle the tip of her nose over the sternum of his well-furred chest, tracing a line down his center with her nose, and then the shy tip of tongue emerging to join. "May I?" her eyes flashed up at him with the question, as timorous in manner as if she were still the shepherdess, the first hints of her tenderness struggling through.

"You may."

Her eyes had indicated a place lower when she asked, an act which still bemused him for all the lessons of dwarven intimacy that had been relayed over years of exile and precious few babes coming into the world. Whatever had seemed once indecent or mannish in its tawdriness was all lost on him, with her circling the tight half-moon of his navel before dipping her tongue into its hollow, lingering on his flesh with warm lips and tender teeth. The hard, defined creases on either side of his lower belly where it met powerful thighs, flanked the harder flesh in their center, nested in the dark thatch of hair that ringed his base. Her fingers playing in small, ragged lines on Thorin's stomach as she took the tip once again between her lips. He placed his hand on her wrist and squeezed into it against the sensation. Her tongue crossed the taut band under the head of his maleness, traced it. Swiping her tongue over that spot and hearing his moan break apart in his throat, she smiled; her touch was the all-consuming force that left this hard, stubborn dwarf king at her mercy. Thorin raised his forearm to his face and bit against the skin to keep himself from exploding. She stilled him with a hand flinging upward to press against his torso, and Thorin with bated breath wrapped the sheets in his fists.

A hand slid about and held with light fingers the round sacs of his jewels, being heavy now with his seed, felt hot to the touch and dense. The blunt tips of her fingers, rough but not as much as his, found the enigmatic borderline between them and his shaft, ran a delicate line across it with one, holding the column steady in the opposite hand to trace the plump vein of it on its underside with her mouth again, find the tip once more, smarting and deep-rose with self-restraint, which could last but a hair's breadth of a moment longer. The velvety head and to its saturated eye she tended with a curious studiousness of the task, a dwarrowdam who had been so briefly a wife, going to the act so brazenly, but as gentle to the touch as he had once seen kittens lick themselves clean in the barns and stables of the West. It was a strange and mesmerizing sort of torment, holding his hips buckling against the sheets in resistance of thrusting upward into her throat too quick and deep.

When it was inevitable he seized and turned her over as easily as if she were a pillow onto her back, held his weight over her. He kissed her in a frenzy from breast to collarbone to her neck and her lips again, and Meisar drank as greedily of his mouth as he had once drunk of treasure-filled halls, his taste intoxicating and sharp. The closeness of his brush of chest hair sending the kindling into full flame within her, enough to demand all of his weight on her, pulling him down in a tangle of limbs, locking arms and legs around his sturdy frame, his weight on top of her, his fingertips on her thighs. He stroked the length of her from the curve of waist to her knee that was grasped over his hips, hair tossed forward onto her cheeks, her knees bent upward, lifting her hips into his. She felt like a feather under his rough hands, arching her into his need, rough and utterly primal.

In the chamber of stone the bed was wood, a very sturdy but pliant wood that creaked and moaned with the pressure of two bodies on its frame but felt strong and solid, in no danger of breaking from their activities. The sound of the thick slats beneath the mattress groaning with every ministration was a sound they had both grown fond of, knowing its source. In the dark the language of their bed's moans was fluent in its own right. One that keened and wailed for the intensity of her own desire that Oliada on her lounger two stone walls and heavy wooden doors might be woken, spear in hand to the sound. It was a quick conversation by the time he had entered and came and rested on her without withdrawing, letting the ebb and pulse of their togetherness take its time.

"Mizimel," he whispered into the shelter of her hair, when he was holding her again with sleep imminent at last. "You are my only happiness."

.

-Ikhrêb- Riding (act of)