Chapter Four: The Wicked Seduction of Miss Bella Baggins

Breeland Midsummer Fair, Five Years Before the Quest For Erebor

Thorin took four gold pieces out of the small drawstring sack he handed to his nephews, and then put it back on his belt.

"That's all you lads will get out of me, to go and have your beards shorn at a yokel fair."

"You're not coming, Uncle? Kili asked.

"Certainly not! I'm too old to be that fookin' stupid! Besides, I'm sure you boys have a little money between you. Now, I have work to do. And as for you, Fili lad, I'll be expectin' you on Monday morning, sharp, at eight, in the smithy. And the huntsman expects you at six, Kili. I don't care what you get yourselves into or who, you lads be at work, on time, on Monday. Or it's back to the Blue Mountains with you, and your mother's apron strings."

"But this isn't enough fookin' money to pay to get in the front gate!" Fili protested.

"What? Pay to get in? You're a Dwarf, lad. We never pay at the front gate! Sneak in. And if you run out of money, find some lassie to pay for you. And not one of those barmaids from the Prancing Pony. What you need to do, my boy, is find a better class of girl to live off of." Thorin suggested.

"Isn't that beneath our dignity, Uncle?" Kili asked.

"It was when we had a kingdom. How do you think Uncle Thorin got the money to rebuild in the Blue Mountains? He was always on top of everything. Right, Uncle Thorin?" Fili joked

Thorin tried to scowl, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Women are me weakness, it's true. But it's a damn good thing I'm theirs, as well. Now, off with both of you. And look after your brother, Fili. Don't let him get rooked by some inbred yokel carny."

Fili and Kili climbed through a thicket of thorn bushes and over a fence to get into the fair.

They were immediately assailed by the smells of many delicious kinds of food.

Thinking about what their Uncle always told them, about saving money, and living by their wits, the brothers loitered around the tables in the courtyard next to the food vendors, and waited for someone to get finicky about their meal.

About twenty minutes later, a fat man in expensive clothes and his skinny wife turned up their nose at both their plates.

No sooner had they got up than did Kili and Fili sit down in front of two turkey legs and two mugs of ale and commence feasting.

While they were eating, they overheard two yeomen talking about cash prizes for axe-throwing, archery, and fencing.

They said as to how the archery contest was up for grabs, but expressed the opinion that someone named Baggins was going to win the axe-throwing contest, and probably the fencing match, too.

"Baggins? That's' a Hobbit's name." Fili said.

"A Hobbit? They're even shorter than us! I can beat anybody at archery. And I'm sure you can beat a Hobbit, at axe-throwing."

They went and signed up for all three contests, spending six of the eight gold pieces that they had for the next three days, sure that the investment would pay off.

Kili had neglected to recall that the one-eyed huntsman his Uncle had him intermittently apprenticed to was a better archer than he was.

The huntsman won the archery competition, but not by much.

Fili and Kili were both disqualified from the Fencing competition, on the grounds of not having the right swords.

And the money they paid to sign up was non-refundable, of course.

So, the brothers were betting the farm, as it were, on the axe-throwing competition.

There were four entrants.

The huntsman, the brothers, and the Hobbit called Baggins.

The Hobbit called Baggins, however, was not what they had expected.

She was a pretty girl, with long, dark curly hair, bright green eyes, with a pretty little face like a mischevious pixie and a curvy but strong little body, buxom and wide-hipped, in a waistcoat with the sleeves of her shirt rolled up, barelegged, in a plaid kilt.

"Fili! It's a girl!" Kili gasped.

"I can see that."

The hunstman's axe was barely in the bullseye.

Kili's axe landed close to the center, and Fili's right beside his.

"Well! You Dwarrows certainly know how to throw an axe! That's good! It's nice to have a bit of competition."

Miss Baggins straightened her kilt, adjusted the crooked lace at the front of her shirt, then adjusted her short stays and moved her bosom around.

She took a drink from the canteen hanging from her belt, squinted at the target, hefted her axe in her right hand, then her left.

After that, she assumed a throwing stance, legs apart, and, with a yell, she threw her axe.

It sang through the air like an Elvish lady's trilling soprano, and slammed into the target in the little space between Fili's axe and Kili's, dislodging both their axes with the fore of the blow.

"Fook!" Kili opined.

"Shite!" Fili agreed.

The crowd, who were all rooting for Miss Baggins, went wild.

The brothers watched her retrieve her money and her axe, looking quite sad, indeed.

But then, she picked up both their axes and walked over to them, smiling merrily.

Miss Baggins was about a foot shorter than both Fili and Kili, but she wasn't all that much smaller, in build.

Both brothers had begun to see while in Bree why their Uncle had so many good things to say about the women of the Shirefolk.

But, even aside from ther looks, he had nothing but praise for the Hobbit ladies' character.

"You lads took that a bit hard. Did you sink all your money into the competitions, then?"

"We've got two gold pieces for the next three days!" Kili waited.

"What kind of hard, miserable, unfeeling skinflint gives two lads eight gold pieces for a three-day festival? You must be the Blackmsith's nephews. I'm Belladonna Baggins. But my mother, she was Belladonna Took. You Dwarrows, you've heard of us Tooks, right?"

"You're a Took? Of course you are, that's a Tookish plaid. Well, if I knew you were a Took, I would have bet money on you, not pitted meself against you!" Fili laughed.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Master Dwarf. But I'll tell you a secret. These fairs aren't as fun as they used to be, since my father died and most of my cousins got married and had a whole pile of children. They spend the whole fair at the kiddie events, and I have to go around alone. I'll tell you what. If you lads will be my chaperones, and keep me company over the next three days, I'll use this sack of gold to pay all our ways." Bella announced.

"We couldn't do that." Kili insisted.

"Sure you can! My father wasn't a poor man, and it's a very good job, mine is, as the Shire's resident historian and archivist. I never get to see anybody, anymore, or do anything fun. Everyone I used to run with, they've all gotten respectable the minute they hit 33, and it's a long walk to Buckland to visit the rest of the Tooks. So I am short on friends who like to have a good time, and short on company, in general. I don't mind if I have to spend a little gold on making the acquaintance of some new friends. Mind, we're not all piling into the same bed, and all."

"We'd have to become better friends of yours, for that." Fili said.

Bella laughed.

"I like you, Master Dwarf. You're a scoundrel. Would you be Fili, or Kili?"

"I'm Fili. He's Kili. He's the one with no beard."

"And he's the one with no brains."

"Well, I haven't a beard, either, have I? I'm starving! Come on, let's go and eat, before the first show in the main tent. I hear they're going to have a real live oliphaunt, and everything, this year!"

Thorin was at the Prancing Pony, having his dinner, when his nephews burst in quite merrily, in the company of a Tookish lass.

Thorin laughed into his mug.

"Mahal save you both." He muttered.

Fili rather unsteadily heaved himself onto a barstool and called for a pitcher of dark Gondorian stout.

"I think you've had enough." Kili told him, laughing as he spoke.

"Let him get drunk, for it's all he's going to get, tonight. Your brother is a freeloader and a gigolo, me old son, and he's awfully free with other people's money."

Said the Tookish lass.

She was about to hop up onto a barstool when Kili took her hand, and let her use his bent knee as a step.

He sat on the barstool beside her.

"Does that mean you don't like me, Bella? Because if you didn't like me, I don't think I could bear it?" Fili slurred.

"I don't blame it on you, Fili, you've had a bad upbringing, is all. My Mum says your Uncle, for all the fine, noble and kingly things he is, he's also a freeloader and a whoremaster, who hasn't pulled his purse rather than his plonker out of his trousers to pay a landlady's bill in almost a hundred and fifty years. So that's where you've learnt it. And good evening, Master Blacksmith. Nice of you to have sent your nephews to the fair with nothing, so I've had to foot the bill!"

"You seem to be having a fine time, Little Miss Took."

"Little Miss Baggins, Bella Baggins, thank you. I am a Took on my mother's side. "

The Tookish lass, Bella Baggins, she turned to the innkeeper.

"Have you a room for my new friends, Barnaby?"

"I'm all full up because of the fair, Miss Bella."

"Well, could you have two beds moved into my room, then?"

"That I could do. Mind you, make sure you put Kili's bed between yours and Fili's. The younger brother, he's something of a gentleman, but not Fili. He's lived here all summer and if a woman had her bread and board the way young Master Fili does, well, they'd call her a very nasty name."

"True. But when a man does it, well, he's a clever fellow." Bella observed.

"I'm a very clever fellow!" Fili announced.

He drank the dregs of his pitcher of stout, much of which ran out of the sides of his mouth and into his beard.

Then he slung his arm around Bella Baggins' shoulder.

"I may be a whoremaster, but I'm no freeloader. I intend to pay you back for your generosity, Bella, my lass. In full. And not with my purse, either."

And, laughing lustily, he reached a little further over the Tookish lass' shoulder, and grabbed her breast.

"As a Baggins, Fili, me old son, I will ask you, nicely, to move your hand."

"And as a Took?"

The girl kicked Fili's barstool out from under him.

He crashed to the ground and everyone in the whole tavern laughed.

Including Fili.

In fact, only Kili was laughing harder.

"I keep telling you, Fili, you and I, we are to be friends. Friends don't have to pay each other for their generosity with anything but their friendship. As for your kind offer of a rather more serious friendship, well, I don't know you that well, do I?"

Fili righted his barstool, and got back up on it.

"We are understood, Bella, my friend."

"And furthermore?"

The Tookish lass turned Kili's head towards hers and kissed him, full on the mouth.

Thorin was close enough to them both to hear her whisper to Kili that she'd been wanting to do that, all day.

"See here! He's never kissed a girl, before!" Fili protested.

"Well, I've never kissed a man before, either, have I? But that's as far as I'll go, at my first meeting with a fella."

"My little brother? A man?"

Fili laughed and called for another pitcher.

"Do you really think so, Bella? That I'm a man?" Kili asked.

"Well, you've got whiskers, haven't you? And I can see hair curling out from where your shirt is open. You look like a man to me, Kili, nephew of Thorin."

Kili's face turned bright red, and the Tookish lass blushed, too.

"I can't believe that no one else ever wanted to kiss you. You're a beautiful girl." Kili stammered.

"They have. Not many, but, they have. But, you know, I just couldn't imagine ever kissing a fella who was shorter than me. Or one with no whiskers. And all the Hobbit lads who answer to that description are my relatives."

"Did I do alright?"

"Well it wasn't much of a kiss. Wait until we're alone. And your brother is asleep. Mind you, I'm only promising a kiss."

"I wouldn't expect anything more from you, Bella. I will pay you back, every penny you've spent on me."

"With your friendship, Kili, I hope."

Thorin thought that it was very sweet, the way the two of them blushed, breathlessly, and just barely touched their fingertips together.

Thorin thought of when he was a young man, younger than Kili, even, and, a lithe, petite little strawberry-blond Elvin girl named Anorloth, who wasn't tall or blond enough to attract the attention of any lads of her own race, but who won the heart of Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror.

Anorloth.

Sindarin for Sunflower.

Thorin wondered where she and her son were, now.

That, of course, was when Fili did a nose dive onto the floor.

"And that means it is time for us to retire. You get his feet, Kili, and I'll get his arms." Bella suggested.

"I'll take care of the lad, Miss Baggins."

Thorin picked Fili up, and heaved him over his shoulder.

"You lead the way. Kili, be a gentleman now, with your new friend. And keep an eye on your brother."

"Yes, Uncle Thorin."

Kili was all the sudden nervous after his Uncle had taken off Fili's boots, his belt, and his weapons and surcoat and put him to bed in his tunic and breeches.

He almost asked him to stay, but that's what a boy would have done.

It was a very nice room, even with a bathroom, attached to it, and Bella came out of it, with her thick curly hair in two lopsided ponytails, wearing a nightshirt that came down to her knees.

It looked like it was just a man's tunic.

"I know I look a fright. But I don't usually wear clothes to bed. Just my, erm, my drawers." Bella explained.

"Me too. So, I'll just, erm, sleep in me breeches, then." Kili decided.

"Alright."

He was thinking how Bella's kilt came down to just above her knee, and when she took a big stride, where it wrapped around separated from the bit under it.

He had seen a flash of something cream colored gathered together in the middle of her thigh with a purple velvet drawstring tied in a sloppy bow.

Those must have been her drawers.

Oh, Mahal, her drawers!

"Well, I'll take my turn with the khazi, I mean, in the bog, I mean, the w.c."

"Call it what you want to, Kili. I don't mind. I'm not some little girl made out of glass." Bella laughed.

She sounded nervous, too.

Kili washed up in cold water, all the time thinking about kissing Bella, and putting his hand under her nightshirt and untying that little bow of purple velvet ribbon.

It gave him a cockstand he could have used for a maypole, and Kili fumbled with his loincloth and the laces at the front of his breeches to disguise it as he left the bathroom.

Bella was already in her bed, with the covers pulled up, despite the warmth of the night, and Kili rushed to his.

He tried to sleep, but he started sweating like a pig, under the covers, and Fili was snoring like a goat, the way he always did, when he was drunk.

In the dark, Kili figured it would be safe to lie down on top of the covers.

The night was very warm and humid, and very still.

Bella walked across the room in the dark, and opened all of the windows.

"Odin's eye, it's so hot, tonight!"

Kili didn't know that Hobbits swore by the gods of the Aesir, as well as the Valar, but he supposed that maybe only Tooks did.

She came and sat on the end of his bed.

"What about that kiss goodnight?"

Kili sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Well…alright."

They turned towards each other, and Bella put her arms around his neck, and Kili put his arms around her waist.

He could feel the swell of her bosom through the nightshirt, pressing up against his bare chest.

He tightened his arms around her and pulled her just a little closer.

She gasped, just a little bit, and Kili pressed a kiss on her parted lips.

He was completely at a lost for what to do with his tongue, but Bella's darted out, a little, over his lips, so he did what she had done.

She gasped a little, again, and so did Kili.

Now he could feel her nipples, scraping against his chest, almost like she wasn't wearing the shirt at all.

Kili lurched towards Bella, holding her tightly against him, and almost instinctually, he thrust his tongue between her lips.

She swirled her tongue around his, and sucked it into her mouth.

Poor Kili utterly lost control of himself.

He pressed Bella down into his bed, kissed her deeply, and rolled his body on top of hers.

"Oh…oh, gods, Kili, I can feel your…your…against my…my…"

"I know. Oh, I know! You feel so…so warm…so hot…"

"…kiss me again…"

And Kili was still thinking about that little purple velvet ribbon, and her creamy white thigh.

But, they both sat up, almost at the same time.

"I'm sorry! You must think I'm a terrible whore!" Bella said.

"No! No, I don't. We just…we got carried away. We both had a little too much to drink and…and you had better go back to your bed, Bella."

Kili waited awhile, until he thought she was asleep and then he went back to the w.c., and locked the door behind him.

He but his lip, when he was through, to keep the groan in.

Thinking about that purple velvet ribbon.

Going back to the Blue Mountains in their Uncle's wagon, Fili and Kili couldn't talk of anything except for Bella Baggins.

"You don't understand, Uncle! Bella's not like most girls. She's, you know. Fun. Even If I didn't get me hands, me head, or me cock under her kilt. Even if I never so much as got to kiss her. I still like her. We're going to all meet again in October, for the Harvest Festival. This time I'm betting on Bella to win the Axe-Throwing. I'll make a fortune!"

"What about you, Kili?"

"I think I'm in love with her, Uncle. No, I know I am."

Fili laughed at him, and Uncle Thorin smacked him upside the head.

"Dinna laugh, you little bastard! I wasn't always the mean old son of an orc's warg I am, now. When I was Kili's age, I fell in love with a girl! You and your Heart of Stone, Fili! Some bitch will come along and break it, that's what happens to men like you, my lad." Thorin chided him.

"Then you can marry her, little brother. And I will, too. You can love her, and I'll fook her brains out." Fili teased his brother.

"Go fook yourself, why don't you!" Kili retorted.

Making a rude hand gesture.

"That's not a bad idea, Fili, lad. Marriage. The girl's all alone in the world. No father. No brothers. Her grandfather's dead, and her mother has gone back to live with her clan. She's from a fine family, and she's got money, and smarts and guts. A nice piece of property, too. I hear. There are no women your age in the Blue Mountains, after all. I would be agreeable to the match." Thorin schemed.

"Typical. Uncle smells money and he's all over it." Fili commented.

"Well? At least my intentions are honorable. I smell money and a good marriage for my boys, and your brother's in love. But as usual, lad, all you've got in your nose is the smell of pussy! Not every girl's a whore, who's got her drawers down and her legs up from the minute you meet her. Not that I'm complaining about those kind of women. They don't say I'm a whoremaster, for nothing. But this Tookish lass, she's a good girl, and she's trying to give you something you've never had before, you dumb boy. Friendship. Trust. Maybe love, even. Keep your cock in your pants long enough to take it!"

Thorin continued lecturing Fili, but Kili wasn't listening.

His mind was on three things.

Love.

October.

Purple velvet ribbon.

That October came, and went, and so did the Yuletide Festival that followed it, and then the Midsummer Fair.

And it was October, again.

Bella had the balance of the winter, and spring, and half of the summer to think about her dear friends Fili and Kili.

Because they were her dear friends, and Bella had never really had any friends that she wasn't related to, and there was no one she knew other than the two Dwarven brothers who wanted anything more out of life than to be engaged at twenty-eight, married at 33 and up to their armpits in babies by 40.

Bella was considered respectable, for all her bookishness, but a bit odd, in that Tookish way, and there wasn't anyone , other than her own mother, who she could talk to about her yearnings to go places and meet people and do things, but yet, the very real concerns she had about what would befall her, and become of her property and her livelihood if she was to leave Bag End.

And the brothers, they understood both her aspirations and her fears and her need to find some way to live up to the great deeds of her relatives.

But.

Because, there is always a 'but', in any situation.

Even though they were both older than Bella, Kili and Fili were both thirty or forty years from being considered by their people as being of age.

They were in the midst of their tweens, and Bella, in her late 20's, was coming to the end of hers.

Indeed, Fili was Thorin's apprentice and Kili did something or the other for the one-eyed huntsman in Bree, but they only left the Blue Mountains with their Uncle Thorin, and he very much still looked after them like a father.

He worked hard to put the clothes on their backs and the food in their mouths, and did his best to bring them up to be men the best way he could.

Bella had a completely different life.

Her beloved father, Bungo, had died when she was 25, and her mother had found herself unable to cope with living in Bungo's house, for Bag End was very much Bungo's house, without him.

Belladonna expected her daughter to move back to Long Cleeve with her, but the thing that Bella's mother never understood was that she was just as much a Baggins as a Took.

Solid, practical, and dependable.

Bella was determined to continue to be the Baggins of Bag End, and she took over her father's property and his estate, and the management of both.

And she also had a position as an archivist and a historian, which required her to regularly travel from Hobbiton to Michael Delving, to the library and the museum.

She liked to have a good time and the simple pleasures of life as much as the next Hobbit, but she was a woman with a piece of property and a job and responsibilities, and these were notions you couldn't explain to Fili and Kili.

That while Fili slept late and had himself serviced and his braids done by some merry Dwarven widow in the Blue Mountains, and Kili fretted over her purple ribbons and his love for her and a poem he was writing, she was at Bag End scrubbing the floors and beating the rugs and washing the windows and thinking of hiring the Gaffer's brother to repair the roof after a recent hailstorm.

And when it was raining or snowing or too hot, Fili and Kili, they could practice drilling or fencing or archery and look out the widow.

But Bella had a job, and if she had to go to Michael Delving she had to go, and get on her pony and slog through it.

Bella was thinking of same while she was on her way through a terrible snowstorm just after Fili and Kili left Bag End after the 12 days of Yuletide.

Between Michael Delving and Hobbiton she came upon a fellow traveler in the dark stormy night, seeing a wagon lit inside by a lantern, off to the side of the road.

Bella led her pony to the makeshift shelter the traveler's cart-horse was under and after she made sure her pony was secure, she floundered through the snow to the wagon, and tugged on the flap.

Hoping it's occupant wasn't some kind of maniac.

"Sir? Excuse me, sir? I'm not a robber, or a prozzie soliciting you, sir. I'm just a fellow traveler and I think if my pony and I don't get out of this storm we will freeze to death. I can pay you for whatever food I might eat, and I hope you don't find me forward, but this is a life or death situation, if you could please find it in your heart to help a poor Hobbit, kind sir."

Bella found herself pulled into the wagon and she was afraid of what would befall her before she saw that her rescuer was Thorin.

She was shivering, both from the cold and her sudden fear.

Thorin pulled his fur cape around both of them, and wrapped them in blankets and held Bella against his body, for quite some time, trying to impart some of his warmth to her.

"What are you doing out on a night like this, girl, all alone and begging a stranger for sanctuary?"

"I am on my way from the library in Michael Delving. I have a position there as a historian and archivist. And translator. My father didn't leave me so much money that I don't need to work to keep up a place like Bag End, all on my own. This storm came up out of nowhere. I'm glad you did, too. What brings you out of your Halls in the Blue Mountains, in January?"

"My Halls! You say that like I'm a proper king, Little Miss Bella. What little me and some of my kin have built out of the ruins of the city of our ancestors. With hard labor and sweat. And it's our hard labor and sweat that keeps the settlement going. We all have to eat, so I have to work, and so do all of the other grown men. The women work, too, but we don't have them travelling the roads, where they might be robbed and raped and murdered! I'm on my way to Bree. I've been commissioned to fashion a new gate for the mayor's estate. He agreed to pay me triple the usual price if I could have it finished come Spring."

"And Fili and Kili fritter the hours away, thinking about the drawstrings of my drawers and what I keep under them while you work your fingers to the bone. It doesn't seem fair."

Thorin shrugged.

"They are boys. Both of them. And make no mistake, they will be content to let you work your fingers to the bone for them, as well. You're a woman grown, Bella Baggins, with the responsibilities of a woman grown. Don't let yourself get too serious about my boys. Not until they become men. And that will be awhile."

Bella spent that night and the next with Thorin in his wagon, and although he made no advances to her, they slept huddled together, for the sake of warmth.

In the night, both nights, while he was sleeping, Thorin put his arms around Bella, and held her close against his chest, protectively, almost as a matter of instinct.

He startled awake, once, at a noise in the night, and sat up, reaching for his sword, throwing his body in front of hers in the event of an impending attack.

It was only the wind.

Bella did the cooking, but Thorin gave her the stewpot first, to eat, and though she was hungry, she would only eat half the food.

He cleaned up after himself and picked up after himself and took his share of responsibility.

And he didn't go trying to fuck her, either.

Because he was a man, wasn't he, a grown man, a man with responsibilities in the real world who knew enough about life and about women to know that now was not a good time to press a suit.

And Bella had an odd feeling, those two nights in the tent, that she thought on, over the winter.

One that she hadn't felt, even in her own house, since her father died.

Thorin's presence made her feel peaceful and safe.

She didn't feel as though the world rested on her shoulders, she didn't startle at every sound, and she didn't feel alone and up against it.

And there was something deeply comforting about nestling against Thorin's broad chest and going to sleep, a security of home and hearth that she never felt, waking up alone in her empty house.

Or even when she had Fili and Kili over.

She had to look after them, they were both boys.

And they were both romantic fools, Kili in the more usual way, but as crude and carnal as Fili was, he was a romantic fool, too, because instead of putting womankind on a pedestal he put sex there; he really did see himself as Fili the Terrible, The Cruel Corsair of the Western Seas.

Some kind of bodice-ripping, swashbuckling Don Juan, with a cruel smile who was a swordsman and a cocksman.

And she was the spirited and depraved princess that he had carried off from her father's house.

As he was fond of telling her, his Princess of Perversions, his Madonna of Whores.

But, whether it was Kili rhapsodizing about having seen a hint of her drawers, or Fili gloating over the dirty things she said when they fooled around with each other, they were both living in a boy's world.

In a boy's dreams.

And Bella realised that she envied them because she'd had to grow up too soon and too fast and that one of the reasons she liked them so well was because being with them meant fun and carefree good times, and getting to just be a girl larking about with the boys.

But Thorin was no boy, he was a man, and he was man enough that when she was around him, she didn't have to put on the big boots and act like she was Big Daddy.

It was a thing that worried Bella, all that winter long, and after.

In October, at the fair, Bella wore bright burgundy woolen leggings that stopped at her ankles under her blue and green plaid kilt, and over her blue and green plaid waistcoat and her cream colored shirt she wore a corduroy jacket of deep royal purple.

In this colorful Hobbit outfit, she won the axe-throwing competition again, with flying colors, and Kili and Fili cheering her on.

The huntsman was deep in the wood, at his work, and so Kili won the Archery competition and a purse heavy with gold coins.

He tried to pay Bella for their food and their drinks, and their entrance fee to the fair, but she wouldn't let him pay.

Fili brought a rapier with him, this time and won the Fencing Championship.

He disappeared for the rest of the day with the girl who presented him with his prize and trophy, but he was back in the room he shared with Bella and Kili, the next morning.

"I hope you forgive me, Bella. I spent as little time with the girl as I could. But I am just a man, aren't I?"

Thorin's smithy was shut up, and he stayed in Bella's room with them, in a third extra bed.

And he and Fili both snored like goats all the next two nights.

Since Kili and Bella couldn't sleep, they stayed up all night, walking in the crisp, cool, colorful autumn wood.

Kili held Bella's hand when they walked, and he took several opportunities to kiss her.

She didn't seem to want him to stop.

On the night it rained, they stayed in the room, and talked about books and stories and legends, and Kili sang one of the poems he had written, to Bella, in a rich baritone voice.

In the Hall of the mighty Mountain King

A sunflower once bloomed

And of every Dwarrow 'neath the peak

Only the young prince knew

In youth and strength your love for him

Fired passion in your heart

Without a thought you gave yourself

Thinking from you he'd never part

O, Anorloth, daughter of Danu

In summer did you brightly bloom

O, Anorloth, what befell you

Befalls the sunflower with winter's gloom

In secret places did you lie

In your Dwarven lover's arms

And in his mighty warrior's heart

He cherished all your charms

Did you dream of wedding braids

And mithril clips for you red gold hair

Did he promise both to you

In his arms lying there

O, Anorloth, daughter of Danu

In summer did you brightly bloom

O, Anorloth, what befell you

Befalls the sunflower with winter's gloom

But with the first cry of your babe

Golden hair on his little head

Your prince saw he was betrayed

And all your dreams were dead

Deaf to his ears were your pleas

Now lost in the wurm's fire

Anorloth the king still dreams of you

His heart's last true desire

O, Anorloth, daughter of Danu

In summer did you brightly bloom

O, Anorloth, what befell you

Befalls the sunflower with winter's gloom

"Kili, that was beautiful! I can scarcely believe it's about that miserable old whoremaster snoring away on the far side of the room." Bella told him.

"Do you really think so little of my Uncle, Bella?"

"I hardly know him. But no, I don't. He seems to be a very complicated fellow. As generous as he is stingy and money-grubbing, as low and crude and profane as he is kingly, and as much of an officious prick as he is a fine and fair leader. But, I always got the feeling that it was a broken heart that started him on his way to being, as Mum says, a whoremaster and a heartbreaker."

"I like to think that he could love again. That there's a second act, a happy ending for Uncle Thorin, where he meets the right woman, and falls in love, and Smaug dies and he gets his gold and his throne back. He deserves it. All his life, he has given and given, and both fate and the people he has given to have only taken from him. It is no wonder he can be a bitter man. But you don't know Uncle the way I do. I get my gift, for song and poetry, from my father, my mother says. And Kili, he says my father was a good man, he doesn't remember him well, but he remembers him fondly. But I never knew him. He died when I was a baby. Uncle Thorin is the only father I know. Fili, too. And he has been a very good father to us. Kind and wise and funny, but stern when he has to be. He's just…well, he can't help but be the man he is. And he's not always the best man he could be."

Bella looked confused, and Kili knew why.

"Yes, Fili and I have different fathers. My mother was married to two men. Brothers. Princes of the Iron Hills. They both died when Fili was ten and I was just a baby, and Mum returned home to the Blue Mountains, and Uncle Thorin raised us. You see, there aren't very many Dwarf women. So two men who are closely related, you know, brothers, or cousins, or an uncle and a nephew, they can marry the same woman. Not father and son, though, they can't marry the same girl. That's too closely related. And two men who aren't related, they can't marry the same girl. Too much trouble about who's line the children would be of." Kili explained.

"That explains why you and Fili are both courting me."

"Fili isn't courting you. He just wants to get under your kilt, and untie the purple ribbons of your drawers." Kili snorted, derisively.

As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn't.

"Do you watch me so closely, Kili, that you know that my drawers have purple drawstrings?"

Kili's face turned red as a boiled beet.

"I couldn't help but notice." Kili said.

Trying to make it sound less important to him than it was.

"I'm sorry, Bella. I know that I shouldn't think of you that way. But I can't help it. I love you. I mean, it's only natural that if I love you, I would want to make love to you."

Bella looked quite unhappy, for a moment.

"You don't want me?"

"You're going to think I'm a terrible whore, Kili. But that rogue of a brother of yours, he got his hands and his head under my kilt last year at Yuletide, and the rest of it at the Midsummer Fair. In a hay wagon, no less. I didn't think love had anything to do with it, but I did it anyway. It was just...you know. The heat of the moment. I'm sorry."

"Fili should be sorry! Not you! He had no right to take advantage of you like that! You, a maiden! But I'm sure he isn't. But I 'm sorry for it, on his behalf. You don't understand my brother. He thinks he's one of those heroes from one of those dirty Elvish books. But you shouldn't look so upset about it. Because Fili seems to think you're one of the heroines. I've never seen him go back to the same woman more than once, unless he does it for his bread. But it's different with you. You do mean something to him, Bella. He talks about you all the time we're not here. We both do. And I don't think you're a whore, and I'm not angry with you. My brother, he could seduce a celibate priestess on the very altar of Mahal, himself! And, besides, I mean, a woman doesn't want her first lover to be a man who doesn't know what he's doing, does she?"

Kili fished for something else to say, but he had fallen silent.

"I do wish it had been you, Kili. And I think you're the one who knows what you're doing, when it comes to matters of the heart. Why don't you and I go and take another walk?"

"But, it's pouring!"

"Then we'll make it a short walk. Out to your Uncle's wagon."

"Alright." Kili agreed.

Bella wasn't sure how you really went about seducing a man, and Kili seemed oblivious to the fact that she hadn't brought him out to Thorin's wagon for no reason at all.

They had, however, got drenched in the pouring rain, so it gave Bella an excuse to start taking things off.

Kili took off his surcoat and his boots and his belt and his weapons, and rummaged around, until he found the fur blankets, and arranged them.

Bella thought about having slept in them, once, with Thorin.

It was a funny thing to think, just then.

"I hate being cold and wet. Come on, Bella, let's get under the blankets. Before we freeze."

Kili's eyes grew wide as dinner plates when Bella took off everything but her short stays and drawers, with their purple velvet ribbons, and got under the blankets with him.

He got up and looked out the flap of the wagon, and then secured it.

Then, he pulled off his tunic and unlaced his breeches.

He stood up in the wagon, and took a stride forward, with his hands on his hips, looking down at Bella with his most majestic Uncle Thorin look.

Fili could never manage majesty, but Kili could.

Even though he was only wearing his loincloth.

"Let's get one thing straight, Bella. I love you. I'm not going to be satisfied with being your dear friend, or your dirty-minded overlord! I mean to be your lover, a proper lover, and if you won't have me that way, then you won't have me at all!" he insisted.

And just for good measure, Kili hauled Bella to her feet and then kissed her back down into the sleeping furs.

"I do love you, Bella! I want you to know what it's like to be made love to by a man who loves you. Hopelessly, madly and desperately. I've never touched another woman, and I never will. I burn for you Bella! The way saints and mystics burn for their gods. I don't even see other women. I only see you. I only want you."

Kili kissed Bella again, and as he did, he unlaced her short stays at the front and they fell open. He moaned like a man dying of thirst in the desert who comes upon an oasis, and Bella found herself thinking that even if there wasn't a lot of what you call technique in the way he had his hands on her tits, or his lips around her nipple, he made up for lack of technique with an excess of ardor.

Bella started moaning, too.

"Please, Bella, please, even if you don't love me, let me love you! If you don't, my heart will burst and I'll just pine away and die!" Kili gasped.

"By all that's holy in Asgard and the Undying Lands, Kili, you can love me to distraction! Just don't stop, again!" Bella panted.

"What if I do something wrong? What if I don't know what to do next?"

"You're doing fine. When you're not, I'll let you know."

He was an adventurous lad, love-struck Kili, because he didn't stop at her tits and move on to getting bang on top of her, the way you'd expect a man who didn't know what he was doing to do.

He kept right on going.

He kissed her navel, put his tongue in it, something Fili had never done.

And Bella was surprised at the way it gave her a jolt of pleasure.

Kili's hands were visibly shaking, as he undid the purple velvet ribbons on her drawers, pulling the laces slowly, savoring the moment he had dreamed of for so long.

Then he slid them out from under her and looking up at Bella, gave her this wicked, mischievous little look and ran his tongue from her belly button all the way down to the other button.

He had some idea where that was, too, and if he wasn't as expert as his brother, what of it, if Kili had to nose around a little, looking for it, that didn't do Bella any harm, either.

She was surprised he did it, too, he nearly made her jump out of her skin and Bella shouted his name so loudly she thought they must have heard her in Michael Delving.

"Oh Bella, my little love, your taste is as sweet as a ginger peach…"

And she was getting dirty words of love, too, out of a raw virgin?

"There, Kili. Right there..."

"Like this?"

"Just like that…no that's the wrong one, put your hand here…"

"Oooh, Bella! If you hold my cock with your lovely velveteen glove the way you're holding my hand, I'll die from pleasure! Come here closer to me, my queen, I want to wear you like a crown."

Kili beckoned to Bella with his fingers still inside her, and the feeling it gave Bella poleaxed her to the spot.

Then, he got at talking to the button, again.

He was a natural, she thought, he really was.

"By Loki, the god of my Tookish forefather's, Kili, don't you dare stop, or I'll be the one to die!"
Fireworks didn't go off like Bella did, and Kili took that as his cue to get bang on top of her.

He started to unwind his loincloth.

When he did, Bella gasped, audibly.

"Thor's mighty hammer!" she exclaimed.

And she had thought Fili was well endowed!

Kili blushed red to the roots of his hair.

"Am I too big for you. my little love?"

Bella almost didn't realize he said anything, as she reached for Kili's mighty hammer with something like awe, running her hand up and down his unexpecetedly considerable length and girth.

"And you worry you haven't got a beard! You're so big, Kili! I can't hardly get my hand around your mighty hammer! By Aule's forge, your cock is beautiful! You're…beautiful!" Bella stammered.

Was this it?

This feeling?

At long last, love?

Bella wasn't sure, but she felt herself being swept up in something quite different from what she felt when she was with Fili.

"So are you! More beautiful than I ever imagined! And I'm yours, Bella, my love. Yours and yours alone." Kili told her.

Bella pulled Kili down into her hair for a kiss.

He was a marvelous kisser, that was one thing about him, Kili could just kiss your breath away.

It almost made her forget his inexperience, but as she recalled this was his first time, Bella reached her hand between them and guided him along.

Kili froze, for just a moment, and then, he slowly and gently pressed his rather massive cock into her.

Bella gasped as loudly as Kili did.

His eyelids fluttered closed, and he moaned.

He looked manly, and handsome and held her hard against his chest.

"Oh, Bella! By the gods, Bella!" he cried out.

Bella tried to feel the absolute fulfillment and bliss that Kili was feeling, but what she was feeling was impatience, and she wriggled against Kili's trying to be such a gentleman, and take it easy on her.

But that wasn't what Bella wanted.

"I want all of you, Kili!" she gasped.

"But Bella, I'm so big, and…"

"You're the virgin, Kili, not me! You're not going to hurt me. Please! Please Kili, I want, no, no I need all of your big, beautiful cock."

"Bella…"

Damn the man, Bella thought, as he drove it home so very slowly the first time.

Still, her toes curled up, and the hair on her toes curled up, too.

The second he was more sure of himself.

"Like that?"

"No! More!" Bella moaned.

She squirmed around, trying to arch her hips up, a little, and Kili he put one hand under her arse and braced his other hand on the main support of the wagon.

Bella wriggled around a little more, trying to get into what she thought would be just the right way to get Kili into just the right spot and…

…and he really let her have it.

Stars?

Bella saw a whole galaxy.

Definitely absolute fulfillment and bliss.

"Ooo, that's the spot, Kili! That's the way, by all the fire in Aule's forge! God damn, I don't know why you're not a better blacksmith, because that's the way to bring your hammer down!" she yelled.

By this time Bella had her legs and her arms around Kili, and they both started to sweat.

"Bella! Oh, Bella!" Kili moaned.

She started to think that he was about to get to the finish without her.

"Don't, Kili, by the gods, be a good lad, and wait for me! If you love me, Kili, as you love me, by the gods, not yet! Not yet!"

Bella didn't know how she didn't kill him, it being his first time and all, because she was far less in control of herself than Kili was, pushing back against him harder and faster than he was giving it to her, in a veritable fugue of lust.

"Bella!" he bellowed.

"Not yet…not yet…"

Bella devolved into a whole lot of hooting and yelling and swearing as she violently came her lot until she thought that she was going to pass out.

Kili remembered enough of what he had learned at his Uncle's knee to pull out, and he probably thought he did a horrible thing, popping his cork all over her breasts, but Fili had her right, she was quite like one of the dirty girls in the dirty books, it drove Bella absolutely wild and she went off again.

They both collapsed in a heap, side by side in the blankets.

"Did I do it right?" Kili asked her.

Bella giggled.

And she wasn't the giggly type.

"You're a natural, Kili, son of Lothinwaen. But if you want to become an expert, you're going to need practice. Lots and lots of practice. And I'm going to see to it that you get it."

Time passed.

For awhile after Thorin, in all his raw, manly majesty, muscled his way into Bella's cheerfully complicated relationship with his nephews, things went well.

Kili was still serious and devoted, and Bella considered his talk of marriage seriously, and when Fili rarely said anything about it, she laughed.

But, indeed, such was the force of Thorin's personality that it all seemed perfectly normal to Bella, Fili, and even Kili that Thorin had the primary place on Bella's dance card.

After all, he was King Under the Mountain, and the brothers' beloved uncle and foster father, and the Dwarf with whom Bella had fallen madly in love.

What were they supposed to do?

Tell Thorin he had no business meddling in their affairs?

But Bella woke up to just that truth in the wake of the Goatsfoot Affair.

Thorin sold her because he was a cold, ruthless, damaged man, hardened by a life of battle and bitterness.

Not to mention that Bella's mother had not idly used the term whoremaster.

Thorin's usual women, if not outright ladies of the evening were women who were not unfamilar with making the occasional necessary business transactions on their backs.

Then again, neither was Thorin, who bragged about never settling a bill at an inn for cash in more than 100 years.

After all, he had sold himself, his soul, his labor, his dreams, and his love, or, less romantically, his cock, since he was a boy of 25, just so he and his could survive, as a people.

Why then, would he not pimp her, if he had taught Fili to pay his bills on his back, too?

And then there was the business of Kili and Fili as a matched set.

Any woman who married Fili would have been mad, or a fool, because even if you could be graceful and overlook a mistress, it would be difficult to overlook a husband who wouldn't think anything of screwing ten women on a fortnight's trip and coming home and laughing about it while expecting you to wash their cheap perfume and other scents out of his clothes.

The claims of paternity, alone, would bankrupt the whole Shire.

And then there was Kili.

Who was a dutiful nephew and younger brother, and who loved and was faithful to her, and in the winter of Bella's discontent, following Thorin's attempt to trade her bodily integrity for some odds and ends, Kili steadfastly glued himself to Bella Baggins' side in the wake of the grievous wrong that his Uncle had done her.

Bella mustered up the courage to talk to him.

"Kili, I want you to stay here with me. In the Shire, at Bag End, as my one and only husband. I will be faithful to you, as you are to me. I'll be civil to your uncle on holidays, and Fili will always be welcome. But this is my home, and while I'm not adverse to having a second home in the Blue Mountains, I will not leave my home and my friends and my family so my arse can be be the door prize in your Uncle's fundraising road show to kill his bloody great dragon! "

"Bella, don't do this to me!"

"I have to, Kili! I'm a grown woman, damn it! I have a life of my own, I can't be your Uncle's pretty little queen he sells to sightseers for tenpence, or your brother's dirty little whore until we're both grey haired old perverts! You can take the winter to decide."

Kili didn't argue with her.

He returned to the Blue Mountains, a broken dwarf.

And he was surprised to find that his brother, and especially his uncle, weren't the least bit affected.

"Dinna take the girl seriously, Kili, my lad. Give her the long, cold winter, to sit alone and brood, and ride through snowstorms back and forth from Michael Delving. Bella's a practical girl. She'll think better of telling you and Fili to push off. And when she does, you lads put in a good word for me." Thorin told him.

Fili also shrugged it off.

"She doesn't mean it, little brother. And even if she does, we can change her mind. All we have to do is prove to her that we're far more serious than Uncle Thorin is."

Kili wasn't so sure.

And it infuriated him to see his Uncle and his brother laughing together over Bella.

As if she really was the whore that Fili liked to think she was and that Thorin had tried to make her.

"Go ahead and laugh, whoremasters, both of you! Well let me tell you something, you can't both rest on your laurels and think you'll save the day with the hammer you've got between your legs and not in your smithy! Because I'm bigger than both of you, and Bella's thrown me to the wargs, too! And I've never been anything but good to her, and I do love her! Unlike the two of you!" he howled.

Kili brooded that night, and he was melancholy and broody all winter.

Even as spring came, and Thorin mustered his company for his quest, Kili had a great feeling of foreboding.

Which proved to be right, from the news he heard as soon as he and his Uncle and brother reached Bree.

Bella had not been pining away for the Heirs of Durin all winter long.

Not at all.

Kili burst into the bedroom at the Prancing Pony he shared with his brother and his uncle, quite without knocking, and the jolly matron who was the headmistress of the barmaids and the cleaners cried out, holding her hands over her sizeable breasts, standing by the bed in just her drawers.

Fili was sitting on the end of the bed, putting his boots on.

"Never mind, Gudrun. It's just my little brother."

Gudrun let out her breath in a gasp.

"You ought to learn how to knock, Kili lad! Now that your brother's bill is settled, you take him downstairs for a drink. I've got to dress and change the linens. The gods only know you and your Uncle wouldn't want to sleep in this bed, as it is."

Kili followed Fili downstairs, trying to get his attention.

But Fili wasn't paying any attention.

Uncle Thorin didn't pay any attention, either.

Finally Kili got tired of being ignored, grabbed his Uncle's axe from where it leaned against the wall, and with a great shout, drove it into the table.

Fili leapt up, but Thorin hardly flinched.

"Alright, Kili, lad. We're listening." He laughed.

"You won't be smiling for long, Uncle! You either, big brother! You two were both completely full of warg shite! Bella's engaged to be married! To an Elf!"

Fili, who had been leaning back on his chair, crashed to the floor.

And Thorin plucked his axe up out of the table, in a white-hot fury.

"I'll kill him! I'll murder the fookin' bastard, the cock-licking son of an orc's warg! No, that'd be too good for him! Fili, get up off the floor. Go and find something in the wagon that blood won't seep through. We'll torture the bastard, first!"

Fili got up off the floor.

"Wait a minute, Uncle. Bella's quite good with her axe. And I like my head right where it is, in it's pristine and un-maimed condition. How do we even know this is true?"

Thorin sat down, and Fili righted his chair and sat in it.

"Well, Fili, while you were up there putting the boots to that slatternly old bag, and Uncle was drowning his sorrows in a vat of dark Gondorain ale, I was talking to Filbert Gamgee." Kili explained.

"The chimney sweep? The Gaffer's brother?"

"The very same. He lives in Bagshot Row, with the Gaffer and he tells me that sometime in the end January, Bella came out of a terrible storm, with this half-frozen Elf in the back of her wagon. She nursed him back to health, and one thing leading to another, she's going to marry him. He's supposed to be some kind of royalty, related closely to Lord Elrond, and all, and he's going to marry Bella at the Harvest Fair in the Shire and then present her at Rivendell."

"Shite! Until Smaug's dead, Uncle, we can't top that." Fili commented.

"Fookin' Rivendell's nothing compared to Erebor, my lads! But comparing the last homely house with our meager lodgings in exile in the ruins of Belegost and we've nothing to offer Bella but our cocks. There's nothing for it. We'll have to kill the Bastard Elf. Of course, Fili's right. We can't just do it in front of her. One of us, probably me, would end up with her mithril axe through his skull. We'll have to waylay him along the road. He can't sit there at Bag End with his feet up and Bella doing for his Elvish arse, day and night."

"Oh yes he can, and pardon me for cutting in on you, Thorin Your Majesty, but that's just what the uppity no-good blighter does do! And it's a sin and a crime, against poor little Bella, with her Took mother leaving her alone to shift for herself, and poor Bungo gone so soon to his reward. It's a bad business, lads, and you'll have to so do something for it!"

Filbert Gamgee pulled up a chair, filled up his mug, and joined the conspiracy.

"That lazy good-for-nothing, he's royalty like I'm the King of the Pixies! Elf or no, that fellow's a no-good, four-flushing flimflam man, I says! Not grateful at all for Bella saving his life. And out for all he can get his grubbing fingers on! Oh no, he woke up at Bag End and saw bags of gold before his eyes! Never goes anywhere, or lifts one little finger, does this Coruadan! He has Bella stepping and fetching for him like she's his bought and paid for slave, like the Easterlings have, with an iron collar around her neck! You'll not catch him along the road. And three heavily-armed Dwarves intent on murder would stick out on the Shire like sore thumbs. Not that any Took or Baggins or Brandybuck or Gamgee would stop you. But Bella would know what you were up to before you even got to Hobbiton."

Thorin looked thoughtful.

Then he drained his glass, and slammed it down, with a great finality.

"Well, lads, all I've been hearing from the two of you is that you're both men now, man enough to go on this great quest. Well, now's your chance to prove it. I've got to stay here and catch up with the Grey Wizard. You run that bastard Elf off, sharpish, and then report back to me. We'll get the son of an orc's warg on the run, towards home, and then we'll quietly and painfully slaughter him as we catch up to him when we pass close to the Valley of the Elves, on our quest."

Thorin poured himself another drink.

"Well? Why are ye both still fookin' sittin' here! Get your kit together and go, then!" he ordered.

Camped the next night, on their way to the Shire, Fili and Kili sat around a fire on the chilly March night and tried to think of what they should do.

"I don't see what Uncle expects us to do. I can't force Bella to love me. But I can't imagine living without her."

"What about me?"

"What about you, Fili? Between you and Uncle, you've seen to every reasonably good-looking woman of every race from here to the Gap of Rohan! But Bella was all I had. She was all I ever wanted. And now I've lost her…"

"Don't talk like that! Bella's not going to marry any Elf. If Bella's going to marry anybody, she's going to marry us! I have to think of something. Don't worry, Kili. I'll think of something."

Kili started to cry.

Fili hugged his brother; the way he had when Kili was a little boy.

He had not seen Kili cry since he was a little boy.

"Why doesn't Bella love us, anymore?" he sobbed.

"She still does, Kili. It's just that Uncle has done a terrible, wicked, awful fookin' thing to her, and she's ashamed and heartbroken and angry. We happen to be related to him so we get painted with the same brush. I ought to've known he'd fit himself into the picture, somehow, the old whoremaster. And the Old Took, he always told Bella about how fookin' wonderful Elves were. And you an' Bella, you're both a couple of babes in the woods, when it comes to anything to do with love, or anything like it. I can fix this. We can fix this. You believe me, don't you? I've never lied to you before, have I?"

"No. But what are we going to do?" Kili sniffed.

"What we do best. You're going to get dressed up in your finest and go see Bella's Mum, and ask for her hand in marriage. See if you can get Mrs. Baggins to introduce you to her brother. He's the Thain of the Shire. Plead our case. Tell him that you have every intention of making an honest woman of Bella. Don't mention me. My reputation precedes me."

"What about Uncle Thorin?"

"What about him? Everything was going along fine, until he had to make a cock up of everything. If someone has to be thrown to the wargs, let it be him. Not us. Besides, once Bella's married some Elf, he's for it, too. And Uncle knows he can't go and save her, or get into the family's good graces. Why do you think he's sent us? It's for his good, too, for you and I to get rid of this son of an orc Elf."

"What are you going to do, Fili?"

"Me? I am going to get myself into a tight pair of breeches, and wear a short coat and tuck me tunic in and leave it unlaced, and go and evict this bastard Elf from Bag End. And I'm not too worried about Uncle Thorin's end of it. He once told me that we had his blessing to marry Bella. Both of us. It's his own fookin' fault if his words get stuck in his throat now that he has to eat them."

Bella Baggins was beginning to think of that rat bastard Thorin's words about Elf men.

Beautiful, cold, and completely fucking useless, for all practical purposes.

If she thought it was work looking after Fili and Kili, that was nothing.

Because nothing was the sum total of what Coruadan did.

That and Elves, quite strictly, did not practice sex outside of marriage, he said.

Well, technically, no race was supposed to, but pretty much everybody did, anyway.

But Bella hadn't even had so much as a kiss from her fiancé.

Coruadan was beautiful, though, and wise and gentle and kind, even if he was a little cold, and a bit aloof, and if he was as highborn as he said he was, then it was no wonder he couldn't shift for himself.

Especially after how ill he had been.

If he wasn't going to fling her across some surface at Bag End and ravish her, it might have been because he had very nearly died, first from freezing, then from lung fever, and Elves did seem to be delicate creatures.

Coru had been looking a bit more robust as spring dawned; maybe he'd completely recover his strength.

She had been trying to encourage him, a little, leaving the door to her bedroom or the bathroom ajar when she was bathing or dressing, and as recently as recently he had walked in on her while she was having a bath, and his face got red and he started to breathe heavily, and she really thought he was going to do something, but then he just turned around and left.

Later that night, he came to her bedroom, and, there in the dark he got into bed with her and said some rather nasty things in her ear, things that were right out of one of his people's dirty books, but he left without doing anything and acted like it hadn't happened in the morning.

Bella decided to be patient.

He was an Elf, and royalty, Coru was probably just a bit…high-strung.

And he was beautiful, breathtakingly so, tall with long legs and long arms.

Coruadan had the face of an angel singing in the choirs of the Valar in the Undying Lands, with pale blue eyes and long silvery-blond hair the color of expensive white wine and cold winter moonbeams.

Everything about him was regal and lordly and Elvin, right down to the musical tone of his voice when he spoke, and the high, clear, ringing tenor in which he sang all those Elvin songs that the Old Took had taught to Bella.

To hear that musical voice whispering breathy obscenities in her ear reduced Bella to a desperate state of thundering anticipation.

Even if his nasty words had a nastier tone than when Fili said them, and there was an undercurrent of venom in his voice.

But, even if spring and summer promised the revelation of the blinding sunshine of an Elf's love, as promised by all those lovely filthy books, or maybe even just a little bit of hugs, kisses and affection, Bella was secretly not sure of it was all worth it.

When you put the responsibility of having to cook for him, and clean up after him, and do his washing, and make his bed and clean up his room, and pay for everything?

It was a bit much, even for a small Hobbit to be loved by a High Elf of Rivendell.

Not to mention that she knew how, as soon as the nights warmed a bit above freezing how Thorin would load up his wagon and herd his nephews out of their long winter's nap, and with it being only a week until it was officially Spring, they were all probably in Bree, right now.

It made Bella think fondly on Kili, who would have written her a very long poem about a very interesting subject, and how he and Fili would have clubbed together to buy her a lot of fancy drawers and stays and stockings and garters for them to take off, and Fili would have a whole box of books that he'd collected for her as Thorin's people delved deeper into what had been Belegost.

She even thought kindly on Thorin, the miserable old prick.

He would arrive after the Midsummer Fair, shouting at Fili and Kili to get off their arses and mend the broken fences and the places where the snow and wind had ripped shingles from the roof, and when he had them working like dogs in the hot July sun, he'd give her some little beautiful and yet practical something he had made for her, and then take her to bed.

Cheap bastard though he was, Thorin always gave her some money towards food and expenses, and Fili and Kili had been brought up well enough to put their dirty clothes in the basket, change the sheets, and take their turns doing the dishes.

Not to mention that if there was wood to be chopped, or tree limbs in the yard, or snow to be shovelled, they would always see to it, they wouldn't even let the Gaffer do it.

But it wasn't even the work that was the worst.

It was the cold and aloof part.

Bella missed Fili and Kili, now, more than ever.

"Bella, my dear, why do you work so hard in the garden? I hate to see you always working. Once we are married, and we go to Rivendell, you'll never have to work, again. We shall do nothing, my darling, but lie around in bed all day, and be beautiful."

"You keep telling me things like that, Coru, but I don't see why we have to wait until we get to Rivendell."

"Patience, my dove. After your vicar has said his words over us, I will make you forget how you were spoiled and ruined at the rough hands of those crude Dwarves. I shall redeem you, with the sunshine of my love."

"They weren't rough or crude when it counted the most, were they? And they did use to help me with the yard work." Bella grouched

"But why do you do it? Your man will do something with those leaves, and that sack." Coruadan said.

Bella put the rake down.

"I may have always wanted to see Rivendell, but Bag End is my home, Coruadan. I'll not abandon it, permanently. And the Gaffer is not my man. Hobbits aren't like that. He's my gardener, but he's my neighbor and my friend. I can't just leave every little thing there is for him to do. He's got a family of his own, you know. If you don't like to see me working so hard, well there's nothing for learning how to do something like trying it. And you might get your strength back, faster, if you were to take a little exercise."

"Oh, Bella, my dear, you know I couldn't do yard work. The little walks we've been taking to the market have just about exhausted me. But I feel I am getting stronger, every day. But I'm just not strong enough. I'm still so very unwell."

"I understand, Coru. Well then, you can just sit there on the bench, and keep me company. That's just as good."

"I'd love to. But, darling, could you go inside and get my cloak? It's a bit chilly, in the shade."

"You poncy bastard, why don't you get off your Elvish arse, and get it, yourself!"

And just like he was the Black Pirate, the Cruel Corsair of the Western Sea, there was Fili, on his pony, with his jerkin unfastened and his tunic unlaced, and his honey-blond chest hair curling thickly in the breeze.

If he meant to make an impression, he had done it.

Fili opened the gate, rode in, and dismounted from his pony.

There was Bella, with her unwashed hair in two frizzy, lopsided ponytails, and an old pair of work pants that had belonged to her father, rolled up at the ankles with holes in the knees and a patch on the arse, wearing an old tunic of Thorin's, meant for the rag pile, patched, threadbare and baggy on her, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the collar coming down her shoulder so you could see one of the straps on her short stays.

And there was stubborn cold mud on her bare feet and her hands, and probably a smudge or two on her face, as well.

"Did you have to show up, uninvited, when I look such a bloody fright?" Bella asked Fili.

He took the rake from Bella's hands.

He tossed it aside.

"You're the one who seems to be unwell, Bella. There are dark circles under your eyes, and blisters on your toes and fingers, and you look drawn and tired. Like you've labored long and hard for a son of an orc's warg who's taking advantage of your good nature, and your family's respect for his race."

"What are you about, Fili?" Bella asked.

"I am rescuing you, my little love." Fili explained.

"You are?"

"Yes."

"I've never been rescued before."

"You've never needed rescuing. Until now."

Then he turned his attention to the suddenly nervous Elf, sitting on the bench in Bella's garden.

Fili pointed his finger at Coruadan, as he walked over to the bench.

"You're in a lot of trouble, yer fookin' fop! See here, what do you mean, playing out this little comedy of yours, laddie, with my brother's and my girl? Making her work until she's dirty and drawn and blistered, while you sit on your pampered, pompous, hairless arse! I ought to beat you within an inch of your miserable poncy life! But I'm a Dwarf of honor, and I don't fancy beating on something weak and puny. So I'll give you a chance to bloody well leave in a nice way. And if you don't take it, I'll pick you up over me head and shake you until your teeth champ together, then throw you over that fookin' gate, you son of an orc!"

Bella expected Coruadan would at least appeal to her, or protest, but quite before she could speak, he jumped up, ran into the house, and came running out with his cloak.

He was in the barn and on his horse and over the gate very quickly for a delicate fellow in poor health.

All of Bella's neighbors came out to applaud Fili.

Who stood at the garden gate, shaking his fist.

"And don't you dare come back, or I'll put you in a dress before I wring your scrawny neck, you poovy fop of a son of an orc's warg!" he shouted.

Bella seemed a bit overwhelmed.

"Didn't I tell you that I wanted nothing more to do with any of you Dwarves?" she asked Fili.

"You did. But I was hoping that you might think better of it."

"I have. But still, did I ask you to run my fiancé off, as if he was a thief in the night?"

'He probably is, Bella. Some fortune hunter, who sees a nice piece of land and a lot of money tucked away, somewhere, for him to get his hands on."

"Like your bastard Uncle."

"Don't paint me with the same brush. I don't want you for your money, Bella."

"I know what you want me for, Fili."

"Then ask me to stay. You go and have a bath, and I'll take off me jerkin and me shirt and finish up your yard work, and split those logs for you. And when I'm all finished, and I'm good and sweaty, I'll come in and fook you into next week. In every room. In every position that I've ever had you in, and a few I've just thought up while I was on me way here. And then I'll see to dinner."

"What makes you think I want that?"

"Because I know what a dirty little whore you are, Bella. I know the way your body aches for a man to stroke you and lick you and screw you, and I suspect that Elf has neglected you. He probably has nothing but contempt for you, because he thinks you're a panting, heaving, cock-struck little slut. But I know you are. You're the Madonna of all Whores, Bella. You're the dirtiest girl I've ever had. The day I let some Elf take my Princess of Perversions away, is the day I'll die."

Bella blushed, and laughed, a little.

"That was entirely filthy and touchingly romantic at the same time?"

"I'll say anything to you, girl, just to get my head under your kilt, again. Both 'of 'em."

"Now that was just filthy. Maybe you ought to worry about the yard work, later, Fili."

"Oh no, I'll worry about it now. Just for trying to throw Kili and I to the wargs with Uncle Thorin, I'm going to make you wait. And you can go ahead and start without me. I'll catch up."

"You are not going to make me wait."

"Oh yes I am."

"Oh no you're not!"

Bella unlaced Fili's codpiece just enough to get her hand inside it, stood on tiptoe, and licked his earlobe, before whispering into his ear.

"But Fili, I can't wait. I thought if I had an Elf, he'd be filthy and wanton and lusty, like the Elves in the books. I wanted to find my Crimson Corsair, my Easterling Sultan, my Black Pirate of the Western Sea. But I should have known I already found him. You're such a wicked Dwarf, my Prince, so lordly and wicked and cruel, to come here and run Coruadan off the way you did. You don't know what you do to me, how hot I feel in my tight, wet little quim, when you are lordly and wicked. Don't make me wait. Take your prize, Fili. Fuck the notion out of my mind that I will ever meet a man more wicked and wanton and lusty as you."

Then she licked his earlobe, again.

"That's not fair." Fili gasped, his eyes darkening with lust.

"Screw fair, Fili me old son! I haven't had it for months." Bella snarled.

Fili picked her up, carried her behind the green door of Bag End, and they did not come back out for at least two days.

Sometimes, when he was at his crudest, Uncle had quite a way with words.

"You know what your brother's trouble is, Kili? He thinks that he can screw his way out of anything he can't laugh off or fight out. Fili's got many admirable traits for you to take after, but you want to leave that one. A man who tries to push his way through life with his big, swinging cock ends up with a lot of children he didn't intend on having to pay for, and a bad case of the pants rabbits."

Their Uncle had summoned them, and Kili intended to return to the Blue Mountains.

He stopped along the way at the Prancing Pony, and he was surprised to find Fili there, resuming his acquaintance with the merry widow who managed the barmaids and chambermaids.

Fili didn't see him, and, for the first time he could remember, Kili didn't immediately run to his brother.

He thought about what Uncle Thorin had said.

And he got back on his pony and rode back to Long Cleeve.

Where he promised Belladonna Took and her kin that he would stay, until he had freed Bella from the parasite who had chewed his way into her home and her heart.

If it was typical of Fili to run Coruadan off, then carry Bella to bed, stay long enough to do a few odd jobs, have a few good nights sleep and then ride off into the sunset, convinced that the job was done, it was typical of Kili to come knocking at Bella's door, doffing his hood and formally offering his service to her and the Elf who hovered over her.

He even apologized for Fili's behavior.

He didn't announce himself as having come to upset the apple cart.

He came as what he had always been, from the time they first met.

Bella's loyal and devoted friend.

Kili even had an excuse, a very good one, for staying in the Shire.

He was going to sell his pelts from the winter, to make money, for Thorin's impending quest.

"You don't have to stay with Mum, Kili. You can stay here. There's another bedroom that I'm not even using." Bella offered.

"Oh no, Bella. I shouldn't. Not when you're engaged to another man."

Kili wasn't trying to unfold any master plan or float any scheme.

If Bella's kin were wrong, and she was really happy with this Elf, and he had her best interests at heart, he would not interfere in their match.

But it seemed wrong to him right away that Bella and the Elf didn't share a bedroom.

Bella didn't just want a man's company, and his love, she needed it, Kili knew her well enough to know that.

And even if the Elf had some objection to making love to Bella before they were formally married, he could have still been affectionate with her; he could have been good enough to hold her while she slept at night, and keep her warm while winter howled at the door.

Bella invited Kili to stay for dinner, and though the Elf peppered his speech to Bella with a lot of darlings and dearest, they sounded insincere to Kili.

The Elf never so much as touched Bella's hand.

He seemed to be a very cold fellow, and calculating, and he kept giving Kili these very nasty looks.

Bella kept Kili there, after dinner and she didn't talk with him so much as at him, as if she was starved for the company of a man who had more warmth and was less brittle and sharp than an icicle.

Kili could see why his brother had angrily run the Elf off.

He didn't want to leave Bella with the man, at all, but he did, just the same.

Kili came back the very next day and found Bella sitting on the rug in front of the fire, with her clothes all in disorder, drinking wine, in the middle of the day.

He took the bottle away from her.

"Bella, I'm not trying to tell you your own business, but you seem desperately unhappy with this Elf. And he seems so cold and distant. When he speaks to you, his tone is condescending. Mean, even. I think your mother might be right. If you weren't an heiress, he wouldn't be here."

"You don't understand Coru, Kili."

"Nor do I wish to. Bella, the man's a pompous twit. He's everything bad you always hear about Elves, rolled into one cold, unpleasant, nasty fellow. I still love you, Bella. I hate to see you like this. Neglected and overworked and underappreciated, through a long cold winter where he's got his strength back by battening onto you and sucking the life out of you like a leech sucks blood. No to mention how you've been made to feel ill at ease in your own home, by some ponce who won't even lower himself to be kind to you, let alone put a hand on you."

Bella took the bottle back and had another drink.

"He never has. He's never even held my hand."

Kili took the bottle away, again.

"Bella, it's not even noon! And you're no drinker! You shouldn't be sitting by the fire, getting potted!"

"Why not? It's the only warmth I'm likely to get in this house!"

Impulsively, Kili threw the bottle aside and put his arms around Bella and hugged her close to his chest.

"It wasn't like that when I came to stay with you." He said.

Bella hugged Kili almost tight enough to take his breath away.

"I love you still, Bella. I'm sorry that Uncle hurt you so badly. And that Fili is such an arse. And that I did not come to you before this. No matter what you said to me."

Bella turned her face towards his.

"I don't know what to do, Kili. Or what to think. I feel as though I have lost myself, and that is very unlike me. All I know is I'm glad that you still love me. And that you're here with me."

"I could never leave you Bella. Only if death took me."

Bella reached for Kili, and he kissed her.

His only thought really was to comfort her, but the way Bella pressed her body against his made the nature of their embrace turn, quickly.

Kili's trousers were all of the sudden laced too tightly.

Bella rolled her hips to meet his, so that Kili could feel the heat of her forge through his trousers and his loincloth as if they were naked and skin to skin.

She moaned low in her throat, a hungry, suffering sound.

"Kili, oh gods, Kili, I need you…"

Fumbling with the laces of his trousers.

"I'm yours, Bella. All yours…"

Untying the velveteen ribbons of her drawers.

Bella was the only woman that Kili wanted, the only woman he'd ever had, and other than Fili's brief appearance in her bed, it had been just as long for her as it had been for Kili.

Lost in the throes of an especially heated and torrid go at the 69th page of the book of love, neither Bella nor Kili noticed that Coruadan had returned until he was standing over them, shouting his disapproval.

He went right back out the door again, but it hardly even fazed the lovers on the rug in front of the fire.

At the end of hours of lovemaking, they fell asleep on the rug, and when they woke up, Bella made a huge meal, and after, they had a bath, and sat by the fire for awhile talking about nothing in particular.

The Elf didn't return, so Bella asked Kili to spend the night.

He slept with her in her bed, and held her in his arms as they slept.

In the morning, Kili didn't press Bella to make a choice.

He just told her that he was staying at her mother's house in Long Cleeve.

She came to see him every day, slipping into his room, in the early morning, while His Lordship the Elf slept until noon.

And after they made love Bella would make breakfast for Kili, and then go home.

Frequently, he went with her, to help her out with some of the extra work the Elf made for her, and by the time His Majesty arose from his beauty sleep, Kili was on his way.

When Bella didn't show up at all, for a whole day, Kili went to Bag End.

He found poor Bella sick from drinking too much and crying too hard and the humiliation of it all.

She told the Elf that they were going to have to have a serious talk about things, and he knew the game was up.

While Bella was at the farmer's market, the Elf took everything he could carry, and with the food for the wedding feast in the pantry and Bella's dress hanging up in the closet, he robbed her and left her.

Kili found Bella sick in bed, and the remains of the dress in the hearth and the usually tidy Hobbit hole was a shambles.

He sent the gaffer to Long Cleeve, to get Bella's Mum, and they both took cleaned up and took care of her until she had gone from being sad and sick to being well and furious.

That was around the time that word had got to Fili, and he came to Bag End set on revenge.

Fili proposed that they hunt the Elf down, and get back what they could of Bella's, and whatever he had too, by way of compensation, and give him the beating of his life.

Although when the three found him, in Bree, Fili and Kili stood by and let Bella administer said beating.

She did far better of a job of it than they would have thought she could.

She wasn't slapping him or yanking his hair, or crying.

She laid into him with her fists and her feet and she was kicking the Elf and swearing at him in a stream of profanity and oaths that would have made their Uncle blush.

It occurred to Fili, first that if they didn't do something about it, Bella was going to beat the son of an orc to death right there in the street.

Kili dragged her away, kicking and fighting and screaming, and Fili cheerfully robbed the Elf of everything he had, including his clothes and his horse, because Bella had bought them for him.

As he had threatened to do, he put an old dress on the Elf, and with a few more kicks and cuffs, sent him down the road.

Bella went back to Bag End and Fili and Kili to the Blue Mountains.

To privately make their report to their Uncle.

Thorin flew into a wild rage when he heard how Bella had been treated.

He was angrier than Fili or Kili had ever seen him.

His eyes bulged and the veins in his neck and at his temples stood out, as his face turned a boiling angry red.

The oaths and curses he shouted and sputtered didn't even make sense, they were just long streams of indignation, rage, and profanity.

Finally, he found wit to draw his axe and cut the table they sat at in two.

"Uncle Thorin, get hold of yourself. You'll drop dead!" Fili told him.

"Get hold of mesellf! I'll get hold of meself when I've crushed that Elf's hands with a hot iron! When I've gouged out his fookin' eyes and pissed in the sockets! I'll get hold of meself when I've tied the bastard's wrists together and hoisted him to the roof of my great hall and let him hang there long enough to get a tub of scalding water and drop him into it! I'll cut off his cock and stuff it down his throat! By Mahal who made me and Odin who made him and Eru Illuvatar who made the Aesir and the Valar, I won't rest until I see that Elf dead! I'll drink his blood from my boot and bathe my beard in his tears! With these hands, boys, with the axe I will take his bastard head, and while his eyes are still blinking I'll rip the heart out of that miserable, poncy, cock-licking bastard who has bent over for trolls and orcs to shove their knobbly cocks up his hairless arse! I'll tear his beating heart from his headless body with me bare fookin' hands! With me bare hands. And roast it and eat it and and shit it down his maggot-infested neck whole he swings from a gibbet in the cold wind! Then, then I'll fookin' well settle down!"

Thorin reached, in his mind, for a more horrible and profane threat, but he could scarcely find one.

He sat back in his chair, and took a deep breath.

"By Durin's beard, lads, if I was the kind of Dwarf who liked a bit of both, I'd fuck him half to death and cut his throat when I came!"

That seemed to Thorin to be the ultimate in both horror and obscenity, so he rested upon it.

"Well, I didn't mean the last of it. But the rest? I wish I could, boys. But I will take his head with my axe! I swore to it on my gods and I'll swear to it on Thrain my father and Thror my grandfather! And that's the end of it! "

Thorin poured himself a mug of ale, and drank.

"So, just how much does Bella hate me?"

"Very much." Kili told him.

"Good. That means she loves me very much, as well. You know what I will do before I cut his head off, lads? I'll give Bella a damn good screwing, right in front of the bastard Elf. That'll show him."

Kili smashed his stein, and angrily left the table and his Uncle's rooms, slamming every door on his way to the staircase.

"What's the matter with him?" Thorin asked

"He probably thinks that would be a bit much for Bella." Fili replied.

"A bit much? I'd bet you a purse of gold coins as big as my cock that Bella had enough of getting the high hat from that Elf at least once and she probably held him down and told him to take it like a man, and had him whether he wanted her, or not."

"And knowing Elves, he probably laid there the rest of the winter, wondering when she was going to do it again, and, if this time, he might not be able to convince her to tie him up with the ribbons from her drawers."

"It's not funny, lad. You think she wouldn't. I had a fight with the girl, once, over my not holding up my end enough, for your keep or for mine. So I shouted at her, well I haven't got any fookin' money, Bella , you'll have to take it out of me old arse. She took me at me word, too. Knocked me over on the ground, ripped open me tunic, yanked the laces out of me breeches. And she told me to shut up and take it like a man."

"What did you do?"

"I rolled her over and gave Bella Baggins all our fookin' money's worth. Kili's in for a rude awakening with that girl, and so are you, Fili my lad. He's got all his pretty words of love for her and you've got all your filthy ones, but words aren't what Bella's looking for. What she wants is a strong man with a barrel chest, a big cock, and a broad back who can pull his weight and earn his keep, with a brain between his ears and a fat purse on his belt. And if you can do your share of the dishes any pay your part of the bills and give her a good shagging morning and night, well that's what she'll love you for. Bella's a practical, sensible, level-headed girl. She dinna want to hear a load of a beardless boy's bollocks. So it's a damn good thing you and Kili have me around to keep her busy until the two of you grow up to be men."

Thorin closed his soliloquy about the girl he loved with a deep belch, and sent Fili back to his and his brother's rooms.

And, every bit the king in his castle, Thorin slept well, that night.

Author's Note: Well, now that we've had an accounting of the past, we'll press on into the future. And let's hope for the sake of the Quest that Coruadan is not at Rivendell when Thorin and Co. arrive there. Or else Gandalf will have a bit more to explain than Thorin simply being a little rude!