a note: I've been writing this fic on and off for years but have only recently started publishing some of the more mature content I've written on this profile (if you know me, no you don't). If you go back far enough on my account, you'll see I've been writing fanfiction for a long time. I've removed some of my more cringeworthy fics from my early adolescent days but have decided to let the less offensive ones remain, if only for a laugh and because they have follows and reviews, so clearly someone enjoyed them way back when. Feel free to leave a review on this one, or don't - but thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

shadows walk with me

elain

Elain was content with her immortal life. Despite the trauma she still bore from her abrupt transition to Fae, and the strangeness of the Cauldron's occasional sweet-whispered tidings into her dreams, things were seemingly bearable. She had lost family, but she had gained a new family. She did not mourn the loss of her great house in the human lands, nor did she mourn the loss of her betrothed – a cruel man who had hurt and humiliated her unforgivably. She had access to gardens far grander than she had ever imagined as a human, and wonderful friends in the form of the wraiths that had held her hand and sat with her when she had lain in the dark for so long – the friends who had fought for her to emerge from the darkness of her loss, and walked with her into the light. Her sisters were by her side, immortal and thriving and happy.

There was one facet she would change. It came in the form of a towering and brooding, cold and quiet Illyrian warrior who equally aroused and frustrated her. He had been a steady presence in her life for over a year. His constant, quiet support had allowed her to feel safe enough to emerge from a cocoon of grief, pain, and rage and face the world. He had made her want to nurture life in a garden again. Bake again. Smile again. It was his face, fierce and scowling and somehow both rugged and beautiful, that had stopped her from hurling herself from the tallest terrace of the House of Wind.

It was an event that had never been spoken of – not to Feyre, to Rhysand, and certainly not to Nesta; the incident that had changed her relationship with Azriel forever.

She and Nesta had been living – surviving – in the House of Wind for three months. She had not eaten, nor spoken a word beyond the incoherent ramblings that used her head as a resting place, her mouth as a vessel for delivery. Her body had already been stolen from her and used for another's purposes without her consent – this 'gift' of Sight was yet another violation as far as Elain was concerned. She had known in some far away part of herself that one of her sisters was terrified for her, and the other sister was putting her life on the line as a spy in her former lover's court.

But she could not bring herself to care very much about anything, certainly not her own life. The world appeared as a worn tapestry in shades of impenetrable grey, distant and dark; disassociation was crucial to survival because lifting the tapestry meant pain, anger, and fear of what dismal things the future held. Everything had been taken from her. The life she had so wanted for herself, with Grayson. Her very humanity. No one could possibly understand, except perhaps Nesta, who was dealing with her trauma in the only way she knew how, the way in which their mother had honed her – to rage and claw and wall herself into an impenetrable fortress of steel, pride, and hate.

Elain had never felt more isolated from herself and her loved ones, and if not for the shadowsinger who cared enough to sit in the sunshine with her for hours, she knew she would have wasted away from the force of her depression, nothing but a long-lived corpse in an absurd pink dress. She liked his company. He did not try to talk to her. He did not gaze at her worriedly. He did not try to force her to eat, understanding, somehow, that forcing her into one more thing, even one that would supposedly be for her own good, would see her fall over the flimsy edge of her sanity. She recognised the feel of another soul who had perhaps suffered as she was suffering, who also heard things that no one else could, and she was grateful for his quiet presence in her life.

As the days wore on and they sat and sat in silence, she found herself beginning to look at him in a way that she had not dared to look at the other male. The red haired one who was responsible, in some ways, for her human death and her subsequent painful transition to Fae. The one who stared at her with a longing and sadness she could feel from across rooms. He had touched her once – touched the bond that stretched between them like they were islands linked by a single, frail hair – and it had filled her with a fear unlike any other she had ever experienced, incomparable to even the terrifying eternity she had delved within the Cauldron's icy depths. His gentle caress against the innermost barriers of her mind had been even more intimate than the night she had once spent with Grayson when they had thought they would be wed soon. It had felt like rape, because she did not consent to his touch, nor to his conceived notions that he owned her in some foreign, Fae way.

Azriel was different, perhaps because he was not the male that the Cauldron had thrust upon her, but one that she had chosen to allow into her life. So she looked at him. She looked at his scars, and they did not disgust her. By the Mother, she knew the scars on her mind might just well be nearly as horrific. She admired the tall, infinitely strong body she could see beneath the sinfully tight fighting leathers of his people. She was riveted by the strength of his wings, and often found herself wondering what it would be like to touch them. Were they as soft as they looked? She knew, of course, that to touch an Illyrian's wings was as intimate as perhaps grasping a woman's breast. It made her flush all over her body to think of touching Azriel's wings. She also knew somehow, as she knew that her hair was brown and her name was Elain, that if she asked, he would not say no.

She saw the way he sometimes looked back. She saw the expression in his face when he scented the mating bond between herself and the Autumn Court male. And she understood that though the word mate meant nothing to herself, it meant everything to Fae males. And it was sadness that bloomed in her at the fact that fate, or the Mother, whatever they called it, had taken her choices away.

So, she had found herself, after three months of silence and sadness, standing on the roof of the House of Wind in the dead of the night. How Nesta had not heard her emerge from her room was not something Elain wanted to ponder. Had the Cauldron decided that tonight was the night that it would not interfere in Elain's heartbroken decision to leave this world for good?

There was emptiness inside her where once there had been such life, and she could not live another day with it. Deep in the South of the continent, far from this dark, cold, and foreign land, her little garden she had once lovingly tended lay sparse and dead, trampled and ravaged and broken. Her heart was in no better condition. Life was a mortal, fragile thing, she had decided. No wonder immortals were often cold and cruel, dispossessed of the bright spark of humanity that set mortals so far apart from the long-lived Fae.

Elain was a shattered reflection of the girl she used to be, and the darkness that seeped from the gaping cracks in her soul was tearing itself up on the jagged edges of her remaining humanity. She gazed down at her Fae hands, beautiful and unlined with the imperfections of being human. She hated them. As she looked down at the glimmering City of Starlight, the world seemed endless. With her Fae sight, she could see all the way to the coastline, where fishers brought in freshly caught seafood for the city's fine restaurants to serve to the wealthiest Fae in Velaris. With her Fae hearing, she could hear her sister's heartbeat three floors below. She could hear Cassian snoring in his sleep. Not so much as a whisper escaped from Azriel's room, but that was normal. His shadows hid all, and even she, with her strange, shifting, knowing powers that dozed in the space behind her eyes, could not penetrate them to hear if his heart still beat.

Without warning, Elain found herself sobbing. Her weak, thin legs failed her and she collapsed onto her knees hard, hard enough to bruise her perfect creamy skin. She hoped it bruised. She wanted pain. She wanted to feel anything. She thought to feel physical pain would be a relief, if only to remind herself what it was to feel, though more than anything she thought it would be a mercy to be ended.

In just her night gown, the night air peaked her nipples painfully and sent gooseflesh down her prominent spine. She could not feel her fingers. Elain knelt by the edge and gazed into the face of eternity.

The three brightest stars that crowned Velaris watched from their celestial perches, distant and dispassionate. These stars, they were so very different from the familiar stars that had watched Elain grow from a chubby babe into a flourishing young woman. They had not seen her struggles and her triumphs, her sadness and her love and her heartbreak. They did not know her, and they did not care.

A gush of wind and a sharp flap of wings did not take her attention away from the sprawl of Velaris, nor from the thousand-foot drop into the valley that she knelt at the threshold of.

She realised it was the shadowsinger that had returned in the dead of the night, probably from performing a mission for Rhysand. She could not smell blood on him, but nonetheless images crowded her head of the poor, doomed soul he had likely been with, and what he had likely done to them. She could not bring herself to care enough to cringe away from the feel of him, as common sense and propriety demanded she should. This was a male who countless souls had quaked at the thought of for centuries, but she did not fear him. She could not. She'd seen and experienced evidence of the shadowsinger's tenderness, his soft care for the people in his Inner Circle. She'd seen the way he looked at her, sometimes, like he was dying and she was ambrosia. She'd seen him too, in her dreams, waking and sleeping, and had never dared to cross the golden bridge that lay dormant between their souls for fear of toppling over the edge into the lurking mists beyond.

"Elain," Azriel said, his voice emerging from shadows somewhere behind her. His voice did not contain the usual coldness he addressed others with. No, with her, he was never cold. There was emotion in his voice, and warmth, and she could not think about why, because she was another male's property. The sound of her name from his lips - a prayer, a curse, a plea - caused tears to start leaking from beneath her lashes again. He never said her name, and she wondered if it was because he could not bear to. "Elain, come away from the edge." He knelt by her side and gently gripped her elbow, as if to restrain her from making any quick escape attempts.

"Will this body bruise if I want it to?" she whispered, unsure of what she was saying, sure only of the fact that his hand was dry and warm, his grip strong and steady, his dark eyes burning with naked emotion. "Will I bleed if I am cut?" He opened his mouth to say something, but Elain felt more hopeless words bubbling over, seeping recklessly from between useless lips. "What will it take to end me, Azriel?"

azriel

The sound of his name on her lips nearly undid him. She was the most beautiful female he had ever laid eyes on, bar Mor, whose beauty was like that of a star in the night sky — deadly and distant. Her sheer nightgown did not hide her small, pretty breasts and it took every one of his 500 years of practice in propriety not to stare. Her eyes were large and brown and heartbreakingly filled with tears. Azriel understood every thought that was going through her head and why she had come to be on the roof, so close to throwing herself over the edge to stop the despairing thoughts that came unbidden to claw at her consciousness. He, himself, had stood at this gateway to peace many times throughout his immortal existence. He had felt the deadly wind in his hair, tugging him to his demise; he had heard the blackest of shadows in his ears, whispering that he was worth nothing, nothing at all. Always, it was thoughts of his brothers that stopped him from taking that final step into star-speckled eternity.

Was it her sisters that held Elain back? What was the depthless emotion seeping wetly from those heartbreaking eyes? Azriel could see the starlit crown of Velaris reflected at him from those depthless orbs, the brown soft like the precious wings of an Illyrian child.

His whole body tightened in fear at the thought of this gifted female ending her life before she had even lived it, or attempted to live it. He knew it had something to do with the iron wedding ring that still adorned her finger, and the piece of shit human man who had shattered her heart. Rage, tangible and hot, pulsed in him at the thought. By the Mother, he knew he had no claim whatsoever on Elain. She loved a human man and had a mating bond with another male, and he would never think to take advantage of her current state, anyway. And even if her circumstances were different — he did not deserve any female with all the terrible things he had done, let alone one as lovely as Elain.

Still, he could not bring himself to remove his hold on her arm. Her skin was soft and milk-white, her arm thin and fragile as a branch of the scarce Illyrian mountain pines that stand tall and dead for eleven months of the year only to bloom with vibrant, passing colours for the single warm month. The rage rose up again at the sight of her, withered and drawn compared to the healthy human girl he'd first laid eyes on in Hybern. It was none of his business. But he could not seem to keep away, nor could he keep himself from caring.

"This body is much stronger than your human body. But you can still break it easily, Elain," he said softly in response to her question, her name escaping his cursed lips easier every time he said it.

He gently pulled her up onto her feet and when she threatened to collapse again on those thin legs, he picked her up into his arms and cradled her against his chest as gently as he would something breakable and unspeakably precious. She gazed up at him with unerring trust in those large brown fawn eyes, and he could not meet her unwavering gaze that Saw too much as he walked her through the house, entered her bedroom, and gently deposited her into her bed. He tucked her blankets around her with care, trying to be as thoroughly business-like as he could when she was looking at him like he held the world in his hands.

He quickly backed away before he did something he would regret, but stopped in her doorway and said before making a hasty departure, "If you will not live for yourself, Elain, live for those that care for you enough to see you well again."

That had been over a year ago. Azriel had taken to avoiding Elain more and more since the Winter Solstice where he had nearly kissed her but changed his mind after a heart-pounding moment of closeness. Hurt and sad, she had left his beautiful gift to her with his pile from everyone else, and locked herself in her room where she cried silently for an hour before falling into an unsettled sleep.

Things were complicated by Lucien's presence in Velaris. She wanted nothing to do with him, for the sight of him still made her positively throb with rage and revulsion, and his presence meant that Azriel avoided her even more to keep the peace between Rhysand and the Autumn Court. For the length of more than a year, she had exchanged long, meaningful looks with the shadowsinger who had saved her life not just once, but twice, and she was done with pretending that there was nothing between them to please Rhysand, who was desperate to maintain his alliance with the Autumn Court – an alliance that had the potential to crumble should Lucien discover that his property was mingling with an Illyrian warrior of Rhysand's court.

So a week after the Solstice, after crying herself to sleep every night from hopelessness while surrounded by so much mated happiness that it made her sick, she went looking for Azriel. Well, more like she made him come to her. She knew it was desperate, and disgusting, and everyone would disapprove if they found out, but she went to one of Nesta's former seedy taverns in clothes that would have made her mother faint from disapproval because of the sinful tightness of the pants and the plunging neckline of the form fitting blouse, and waited.

High Fae and lesser faery males ogled her from across the room. None dared to approach her because even here, in one of the seediest backstreets Velaris had to offer, these males knew that she was claimed by a son of the High Lord of Autumn, and guarded by the High Lord of Night's feared shadowsinger.

It did not take him long to storm through the door, shadows in tow, and a look of fury in his eyes. Every male in the room who had been ogling Elain, sitting by herself with an untouched tankard of ale, immediately looked away for fear of sparking the shadowsinger's ire. She allowed herself a small smile.

He approached her table and said in a low voice, fury barely checked, "Are you intentionally trying to provoke me?"

She looked up at him as steadily as she could, heart pounding, and managed to say without a wobble in her voice, "You've been avoiding me. As I see it, I had no choice. Now, please take me out of here so that we can talk."

His face shuttered and he did not look happy about being manoeuvred into a position where he could not say no. Regardless, he took her hand, paid for her untouched ale, and they left together. Elain was not a manipulative person by nature, but she was proud of herself nonetheless, for her plan had worked, and a reckoning with Azriel was on the horizon. The tavern exploded into excited whispers after their departure, but Elain did not mind. She wanted nothing more than to scream to the world that Azriel was hers and she was his and she did not care what the Mother had to say about it, or Lucien, or Rhysand, or anybody.

The look in Azriel's eyes echoed her thoughts on the matter as he took in her supple body and ample curves, on display in these clothes as they were not in the dresses she favoured. She knew she had long foregone the ill, starved look she had worn when they had first known each other in the months when Feyre was gone. Her healthy Fae form had emerged in rounded breasts, sinful hips, and long expanses of smooth, creamy skin. She had caught him staring more than once at snatches of her exposed legs, long and plush, the delicate wing of her collarbones, and the way her full breasts spilled over some of the more daring gowns she chose to wear, preferably when he was nearby to admire the way she looked in them. Nesta had been the one trained in the art of using her body to seduce willing and unwilling men, but Elain knew a thing or two about the power of the female body as well. Was she playing a game that could end with both of them in a deep pile of shit? Yes. But were the ends worth the means? One look at Azriel's body and the burning emotion in his dark eyes and Elain knew she'd stoop to any behaviour to have him.

Elain held up a hand against the unspoken words she could read in his eyes. "Before you lecture me on being daft enough to visit a place like that, I want you to know that I only did it to talk to you. You run away every time we are alone. I just want to know what I have done to make you terrified to even look me in the eye!" She could not hide the hurt in her voice. They had very nearly shared a kiss, and before that, many heated glances and almost-touches. Before he had teased her, aroused her, flirted with her feelings, and then fled into the night after an abrupt dismissal. She had retreated to her room and took care of her arousal by herself, and then cried relentlessly at having been so rejected. For the second time in just two years. If she were a person with more pride and less security in her worth, she probably would have given up on him even before the incident in the hallway the night of the Solstice. Unfortunately for her battered little heart, she was both tenacious and obstinate when it came to love.

He stood close enough to her that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. If she took a single step closer, her breasts would be pressed against his chest. She wondered if he could scent her growing arousal. He was doing a very impressive job of avoiding looking down, where vast expanses of her cleavage were on display. She could tell by the slightest twitch in his left eye how hard he was working to stay outwardly calm. She recognised that twitch from when she'd observed him around Lucien. "I have responsibilities outside of what I feel for you, Elain," Azriel said coolly, though she could see his pulse fluttering in his throat. He was not taking this as coolly as he might portray externally, she thought with satisfaction.

"So you do feel for me," she said breathlessly, monitoring his pulse with a Fae intensity.

His eyes shuttered. "I made an oath to protect you for the sake of my High Lord and Lady's alliance with the Autumn Court. Your bond with Lucien Vanserra is of upmost importance in maintaining this alliance and I will not do anything to jeopardise that."

"Is that why you left me in the corridor on the Solstice?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Azriel closed his eyes and inhaled, as if preparing to speak honestly, at last. "Leaving you… it was the last thing I wanted to do. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to leave you, knowing what could have happened. Elain…" he raised his hand as if he would bring it to her cheek, but seemed to remember his scars in contrast to her creamy, perfect skin and dropped his hands. He clenched his fists, as if he wanted to touch her desperately. "You must know how much I have wanted you since I have first laid eyes on you. But we can never be together. You don't know… the things I've done. Terrible things. If you knew… they would horrify you. I would horrify you. And I find that I can't live with that. With you hating me." His voice had dropped to a whisper in the last sentence.

"I could never hate you!" she cried, shaking her head vehemently. She went to grab his hand, but he stepped back from her.

"It's beside the point," he said heavily. "Even if… even if you could still want me after everything… I will not jeopardise the fragile alliance this court has worked to build with the Autumn Court. Even for you."

Rage bubbled up inside Elain and boiled over into low, furious words. "If this alliance rests solely on a mating bond that has not been accepted, then I would say it's a piss-poor alliance in the first place."

Azriel let out a sharp laugh. "I would not say that to my brother."

"Rhysand can go to hell on this matter of my personal choice," Elain spat. "I have not accepted the mating bond that I share with — with him. I abhor its existence." He swallowed thickly at her words, and she took a step towards him, tilting her face pleadingly up to his. "Azriel," she whispered, and he closed his eyes at the sound of his name on her lips. "I want you. I did not choose my bond with Lucien, but I do choose the bond between you and I. It may not be the mating bond, but it does not matter to me." She took one of his hands, clenched by his side, and brought it to her mouth, where she gently brushed her lips against his scarred knuckles. "I see you, Azriel, and you do not frighten me," she continued softly against his knuckles. Slowly, his fist loosened from her ministrations, and she brought his hand, now loose, to cup her cheek. His eyes were wide with wonder as she kissed his palm and then placed his hand on her neck, where he had caressed her so softly a week ago before leaving her aroused and frustrated in the hallway. He did not seem to be able to fight it as he brought his other hand to her waist.

She closed her eyes and stepped forward so that her breasts were touching his chest and sighed. Electric currents zipped from her toes to her finger tips, lingering longer in certain places that seemed to rush with warmth. "Please, Azriel," she whispered. "Please."

azriel

"Please," she whispered, and it was enough to undo the will of iron he had kept himself bound by for over a year. How could he resist the sweet offer of those pink lips, plump as a spring cherry, held up to receive his kiss? He did not have the strength to refuse her a second time. His hands tightened on her body, he tilted her face to where he wanted it, and damned all consequences to hell and brought his mouth to hers. She tasted as sweet as a spring cherry, too, and the softness of her body perfectly moulded to the hardness of his. His hand twisted in her hair without the permission of his mind, and he found himself pressing her body against him so that his straining, aching cock could find some relief.

Elain was no longer a distant picture in his mind, a jagged, misshapen recollection of scents and images and moments, snatches of stolen glances and fleeting touches, that he had pleasured himself to a hundred times; the way the sunlight caressed the hints of gold in her hair, the way her gowns dripped off her curves to pool at dainty feet, the scent of jasmine and freshly toiled earth that always drifted in her wake. She was a real female, who responded to his kiss more passionately than he had ever dreamed she would. Her hands twined into his hair and tugged. She whimpered softly as he held her in place and devoured her mouth, imaging it was her wetness he was feasting on, and moaned as he dragged his lips and teeth down to the soft, sweet spot in the junction of her jaw and neck that he had thought about tasting for so long. It had been an effort not to look at those sweet breasts on display as she begged him to touch her, but by the Cauldron, he couldn't stop his eyes from feasting on the delicious sight anymore.

Her pulse raced against his lips and he sucked it into his mouth. He couldn't stop his hands from going down to grip her ass and pull her into him hard as he stumbled them over to a wall, any wall that was nearby would do for his purposes. Her back hit the wall and she hooked a leg around his hips to allow him to press further into her, and the sounds she was making were enough to undo him where he stood.

"Elain," he groaned as she reached down to touch him softly through his pants, her face ravenous at the thick hardness she found waiting for her. "Gods, Elain, you have no idea how much I—" he sucked in a sharp breath in as her hand drifted down to feel him. He was so close to taking her where they stood, and that wouldn't do for a thousand reasons, number one being that he had planned where he would take her first so thoroughly and it did not include anyway seedy, dark alleyways, and number two because – shit. Lucien. Autumn Court. Alliance. Rhys's order to stay away from her.

Azriel let go of her abruptly and stared at her with horror in his eyes. She was panting, and her long, curling braid was mussed, and the sweet scent of her arousal was all over them both. She had never looked more becoming, nor more damning, to him.

"What is it?" she breathed.

"We can't," he whispered, even as his eyes darkened with want as they stared at each other.

"Why?" she cried softly, her eyes filling with tears. She reached for him and he allowed her to take his hand and hold it to her face. "I want this. I have wanted this for a long time, Azriel."

"As have I."

"Is it Lucien? Has he… said something to you?"

The shadowsinger scoffed. "No male would keep me from your side if you wished me there."

"Then, what?"

"Rhysand has forbidden me from pursuing you in the interest of maintaining an alliance with the Autumn Court. Your – mate" he spat the vile word out, "would have permission to challenge me to the death for you and it would not look good for Rhysand if I wiped him off the face of the earth in a single blow."

Elain looked slightly sick at the thought of a fight to the death over her, and Azriel felt ashamed for having brought it up.

Azriel took her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. "Elain," he murmured into her thick curls, "You must know how I feel about you. But this — between us — will not work. Not now, at least. I can't stand the thought of leaving you, but for both our sakes, I must."

He held onto her tightly and closed his eyes, breathing in her beguiling scent as she gripped him back with surprising strength. Her chestnut head fit perfectly under his chin, he thought.

"Please just… give me one night with you," Elain whispered. "Just one night. I promise… if you still want to leave, I won't fight you. I won't beg you to stay as I want to. Just one night, Azriel."

Azriel was in no position to deny her pleading. Every part of his body except for his mind wanted nothing more than to lower her pants, spin her round, and fuck her against the nearest wall. But if it was a single night with him she wanted… he would make sure it was the best damn night of her life.

"One night," he rasped, holding her back from him as he ran an assessing, dark, bedroom gaze up and down her body before locking with hers as it had so many times before. "And then this is over."

Elain smiled coyly up into his face as he lifted her effortlessly into his arms and tucked her against his chest. "We'll see about that when the time comes."

elain

Azriel flew them to a building across the city, far enough away from their family that their dangerous secret could remain a secret.

"I didn't know you kept your own quarters outside of the House of Wind," Elain remarked as he carried her over the threshold and summoned the faelights to turn on, then gently set her on her feet by the window as he went about shrugging off his jacket and shoes.

"I keep it as a base between coming home from missions and going up to the House," he said gravely. He watched her closely as he said, "I sometimes need time to… cool down or reflect on the things I do for Rhys by myself. Here I have that opportunity," he gestured to the space. "Also," he continued shyly, not looking at her, "I never wanted to frighten you or your sister by coming back unfit for company."

Elain pondered his words for a moment as she took in the place, small but homely. A bed large enough for a winged warrior sat by the window in the corner that overlooked one of the city's numerous public gardens, lit dimly by bobbing faelights. A flutter of excitement sparked in Elain's chest at the thought of bringing something that beautiful to her own future home, wherever that might end up being. A single chest of drawers sat beside the bed, which Elain imagined contained multiple sets of the shadowsinger's favoured black uniforms. A wash tub, a small array of toiletries, and a pantry containing bread, cheese, and dried fruit. That was all. It was not grand nor richly decorated, as would befit one of Azriel's status within Rhysand's court. For their needs tonight, however, it was enough.

"Do you often find yourself unfit for company after you've complete missions for Rhysand?" Elain asked in response to his words from before, curious about the life he lived outside of what little she witnessed of it in the House of Wind.

Azriel came closer to her, shoes and jacket disposed of neatly. "Would it scare you if I said yes?" His voice was low and husky, his eyes shadowed with a meaning she could not decipher.

"No," she breathed, her heart beginning to pound at his sudden closeness. She had come here for one reason and one reason only, and now that he was close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off his skin was she starting to feel nervous and insecure about the choices that had led her to this moment.

"I know when you lie to me, Elain."

He was close enough to share a breath with her, and her name on his lips just about undid her where she stood, albeit a bit unsteadily.

Elain lifted her face up to kiss the shadowsinger and found him ready. His mouth was hot and he tasted like night-swept wind. The heat of him was in stark contrast to the coolness of his usual demeanour; there was nothing cool about the way he held her ass, pressing her to his growing hardness as he kissed her slowly, tenderly, deeply. His tongue was demanding, claiming, rough, and worked her mouth in a way that she could tell he knew exactly how to use every part of his body to please a woman. One of his large hands left her ass and reached to cup her face, tilt her head to accommodate his claiming. He gently began to unwind her braid so that her hair fell down her back in tangles and waves and frames her face. She slipped a hand between them to begin exploring for the buttons on his leathers, and pulled back in confusion when she couldn't find any.

He chuckled deep in his throat, eyes scorching, and pulled back slightly. "It's done up with a zipper. Easier than buttons."

Elain found herself asking what a zipper was, though she found she didn't quite care, as long as his shirt came off soon.

Azriel placed her fingers around a metal tab and guided her to pull it down. The halves of his leathers came apart and she wasted no time in stripping them off him, discovering that there were multiple slats around his wings that had to be unzipped.

"This must be annoying to, um, zip every day," she remarked.

"I usually use magic to do it up. I enjoyed watching you undress me too much to stop you though," he added when she shot him an irritated look, which quickly morphed into one of carnal appreciation and hunger when he shrugged the rest of his leathers off. His body was a work of art, honed from five centuries of battle and training and death. Scars, nicks, and blemishes adorned every tanned inch of his back, chest, and shoulders. She gently placed her hands on his broad chest and slid them up over his shoulders, the unblemished creaminess of her skin in stark contrast to his sun-baked ruggedness. She leaned forward to place a tender kiss on a scar directly at her eye level, a faint, straight white line approximately two inches long.

"Courtesy of an old family member," he said, his voice soft and hoarse. She looked up at him to find his eyes tightly closed. She kissed the scar again, and ran one hand down his arm from his shoulder to grip his scarred hand. She brought it fearlessly to her mouth and gave him another kiss on his palm, as tender as the one before. He tracked the movement silently, hungrily.

"They are not ugly to me," she whispered. "They are testament to your strength. And your courage. That you are still good, and kind, despite what they did to you."

Azriel bowed his head, his silky hair falling into his eyes. Elain reached up to grip his face and bring it to hers for another kiss. It started slow, a gentle surrender and acknowledgement, but quickly their rough edges tangled and warped and forged something new and wild and beautiful.

The kiss became something uncontrollable and intangible and Azriel couldn't hold her tight enough, hard enough, close enough. She opened for him as his tongue swept in and sought to claim every untouched part of her. He lifted her by her ass and wrapped her legs around his waist to gain deeper access for his hips to nestle between her legs. She groaned, long and breathless, as he drove into her, walking them backwards towards the bed.

She was very inclined to let him just take her on the kitchen bench, but Azriel, having other ideas, laid her gently down on the bed, planting light, teasing kisses down her neck, on her ear, working his way to the open V of her shirt. He raised shaking hands to the leather ties and she could not stand how much time he took to undo them one by one. She did not want to play – she wanted his length filling her aching core, pounding until they both found release.

"I need you," she ground out, and he huffed a deep chuckle against her navel. Everything below her navel went molten at the sight of his dark head above the creamy skin of her torso. His strong hands deftly pulled the borrowed pants down, and then she was bare for him, and he descended upon her with a low noise from his throat that she found inexplicably and irrevocably sexy.

azriel

Countless times he had pumped himself dry imagining Elain climaxing on his tongue, and the reality of it was so much better. Her eyes rolled back into her head as he teased her clit with his tongue and his fingers worked her entrance. Her hips instinctively thrust up off the bed, forcing his tongue deeper, and she gripped his hair hard, holding him in place as her climax approached. Another brush of his tongue against her and a twist of his fingers had her core pulsing around his tongue, her wordless, soft sounds of pleasure enough to nearly make him go over the edge with her.

"I've never… experienced it like that before," Elain murmured, her gasps fading as she recovered from finding her pleasure. Her eyes fluttered and her cheeks were becomingly flushed, her hair a riotous curly mess. Azriel sat back, giving her space to recover, and surveyed her with a raw expression on his face. He'd taken lovers over his centuries of life, but never had they touched him like this. He was not an easy person by nature, and though many females had thrown themselves at him over the centuries – wanting to get close to Rhysand's court, or maybe the High Lord himself; wanting a chance to tame the brutal shadowsinger; wanting him for the face and body he wore but never him – he'd taken few lovers. Always, they had shared features with the female who had played with his feelings and led him on for far too long. He had no recollections of names, of the hows and whys and wherefores of his tristes; only that they were always her as he pleasured them and fucked them and left them. They would beg him to stay the night when he would begin to shrug on his clothes immediately after release found them both, and always, he would refuse. He had no interest in sharing his cold and lonely, often brutal and violent, life with a female who was not her.

Until Elain. Perhaps it was her proximity and similarities to her powerful, fearsome sisters that allowed him to look past her delicate exterior and see the potential for great power that boiled a hairsbreadth beneath that decadent skin. Perhaps because she shared gifts similar to his own and his shadows instinctually felt that she was perfectly capable of handling his jagged edges. Perhaps because of their shared experiences within such a turbulent court, or perhaps he simply enjoyed how very much she was like him in personality. Perhaps he simply found her beautiful, inside and out, and wanted to enjoy her. He did not know. His feelings were a confused tangle when Mor and Elain existed within the same chain of thoughts, but what he did know was that seeing Elain in his bed wrought in him feelings that no female bar Mor had ever stirred in his head and heart. Every instinct of his roared to take her again and again. Without consciously deciding, Azriel found himself fisting his cock, watching her recover from the pleasure he'd wrung in her perfect body.

"I have thought about making you moan for a long time now, Elain," he whispered, eyes not leaving her face. "I've thought about how and where I want you very thoroughly."

Elain's eyes crinkled with mirth. "As long as it ends with you inside me, shadowsinger, I'm happy to let you take control."

"Don't worry," Azriel growled. "It starts with me inside you and that's all you need to worry about right now." He smiled wickedly, pinned her wrists in one large hand, and climbed over her.

elain

Hours later, when the lingering Velaris moon had reluctantly sunk far beyond the horizon and the faelights in the garden outside the window had long dimmed to blackness, Elain lay contentedly in Azriel's arms, flushed, silent, and happy. She breathed in his strangely pleasant scent of sweat, leather, and her, and sighed.

He had taken her slowly and thoroughly over the course of hours, given her pleasure she had never imagined could occur during the coupling of a man and a woman. Perhaps her Fae body had more capacity to feel pleasure, she mused, or perhaps Azriel was just particularly skilled in the art of lovemaking. Watching his broad, scarred, tanned chest rise and fall evenly, and the way his inky hair fell over his closed eyes, lashes long and luscious against his lightly stubbled cheeks, she could imagine that he had had many lovers in his long life to practice, all of them likely beautiful and educated and refined. The thought did not sit well with Elain, who felt her remaining humanity, plain and dull and self-conscious, sit heavily within her chest.

She could not help but compare this night to the intimate night she had shared with Graysen; the memories came unbidden to her mind. It had hurt, and it had been over very quickly. He had lain on her with all his weight, the rough hair on his legs and chest abrasive against her delicate human skin. He had touched her, roughly and fleetingly, and only enough that he could ascertain where exactly to place his manhood. She had not found release; had not even known that such pleasure could be found with a man. The village ladies had always said that a man's pleasure was a woman's responsibility, and her burden, and Elain had willingly believed that, even wanted that, if it meant she and her sisters would be safe and protected within the high walls of Lord Graysen's estate.

She might have been inclined to think of her human self as naïve and foolish, but she remembered the dire reality that human women faced in a world as brutal as the one below the wall, where mortality was all too real and girlhood all too vulnerable. Graysen's love, however selfish and brutal, had been a blessing and a mercy. But her femininity was no longer a weakness, and she was no longer capable of looking at a prison and seeing a safe haven; nor was she capable of remembering her human lover with anything but disgust and relief, especially lying next to a male as beautiful, kind, and thoughtful as Azriel. The thought of giving up what she had found tonight was appalling, terrible, devastating.

"I do not wish this to end tonight," she said so softly she was not sure if he heard. He was silent for the space of ten heartbeats before his chest rose and fell with a sad sigh.

"I do not wish that, either," he murmured. "But it must."

Despair rose in Elain at the thought of having to endure his distance after having shared such intimacy that the last few hours had yielded.

"I will take you back to the townhouse, and then I will leave you for a while."

azriel

"How long is a while?" she stared up at him with those large brown eyes and Azriel fought the urge to take her again, slow and tender, and make her moan his name as she had earlier again and again.

"As long as it takes for you to forget me."

"That would be forever."

"Then forever will have to do."