Page 7 of The Ivory King

“I am not regressing. I simply found a willing partner to fuck.”

His cheek twitched. “It is beneath you to speak like a common dock worker.”

“I shall speak as I wish! I wanted to fuck. The twins told me he was—”

“Ah, of course, the Mossbell twins. Two of the most ignoble and lecherous high-bred fools in the whole of Melowynn. And you took their word that some tryst in the woods with a rutting jackass was what you required to ease the ache in your balls? I thought you were more intelligent than that.”

His words cut deeply. I jerked myself from the tree, leveled my chin, and met his irate gaze.

“Perhaps if the man whom I longed to hold me would do so, I would not be driven to sloppy assignations with a smithy in the woods. Perhaps if the man who I admired and adored would stop pushing me away as if I carried a pox, I would not be driven to act like an ass in order to try to win your attention. Perhaps if the man who I lo—”

“Aelir, you should not be saying such things out loud,” he said, the anger that he’d been filled with now gone. “If someone should overhear you speaking about me that way, they would—”

“I do not care what they would do, V’alor. No one cares about who beds whom. The twins have slept with the entire staff of Castle Moonsweald as well as the entirety of the village serfs under the age of seventy.”

“Seventy?” His shock was clear.

I shrugged. “They say snow on the roof does not mean the fire in the hearth has gone out or some such thing. They say much. It is hard to sort.”

“And yet you let them talk you into allowing a strange man to seduce you beside a fetid pond?”

“Yes, and I would have done that and more if it meant that you would gaze upon me as the man whom you hold dearest!”

His mouth opened just slightly and then closed. Atriel knickered. A greeting to his gelding as it ambled past us to meet up with my mare resting under a fat tree. A pine squirrel with red stripes chattered at us from the canopy. A marsh wren sang his song over by the pond. The air was rich with the smell of mineral water, loam, and the scent of V’alor’s soap.

“You and I…” he choked out, cupped my chin in his scarred hand, and kissed me. Hard, deep, wet. His tongue slipped between my lips. As I grabbed his head, tiny bits of dead leaf and sticks from his mad ride through the forest to get to mecrumbled under my palms as I tried to climb him, much like the pine squirrel had clambered up the plump pine it sat in. Joy burst to life inside me. I shimmied up him, mad from the taste of him, longing for more of his mouth on mine. “Ihdos forgive me. My desires for you are too strong to bear, Aelir.”

“Then do not fight them. Come to my room this evening.” I linked my legs around his waist, my lips moving over his, as he nuzzled his face into my hair. “Come to my room. Slide into my bed. Be my lover. I want no other, V’alor. It has been your name scribed onto my heart since it first beat.”

He inhaled, like a stag scenting the air for a hot doe, and let my hair coat his face. And then the sound of horns floated by, the shouts of men, and the thunder of hooves. V’alor peeled me from him, staggered back, and stared at me as if my face was unfamiliar to him.

I reached for him with a shaking hand. A gorse bush filled with ripe yellow berries shuddered, then parted to allow a huge ironwood stag to thunder through. Antlers with tines as long as my forearm swung this way and that as the panicked beast sighted us. Foam flecked, its mighty chest heaving. Its slate-gray pelt was wet with sweat. Its nostrils flared and its eyes went wide.

“Go,” I said, unsure of who I spoke to—the stag or V’alor.

Both left the pond. The man to the north. The stag to the west. Hounds arrived within seconds, keen noses catching the scent of the stag, howls bouncing off the trees, thin tails whipping in joy. The pack ran by me as the first hunter on a lathered white horse raced by, his horn to his lips. I skittered back to the ill-fated tree to let the horde move past. Not a one spared me a glance which I was grateful for. I was too recently kissed to be presentable to my peers. Nor did I wish to see them. I slipped away, around the tree, and made my way to the pond. There I sat for the longest time, hoping against hope the stagwould lose the hounds in the marsh and V’alor would come to my room that night. My lips still tingled from his kiss. I sat on a mossy log until my ass was numb and my horse was ready for her oats and a good brush. I, too, was ready for the night to come. If only I knew of a way to speed up the sands in the hourglass.

THE SOUNDS OF DRUNKEN REVELRY FLOATED UPto my balcony as I stood in the waning moon’s light, waiting.

Still waiting. The church tower bells had just rung out thrice. V’alor had not come yet. Sorrow sat upon my shoulders like a buzzard seated on a craggy bough, waiting for the final gasp to leave a dying beast.

“Foolish ass,” I chided myself as a woman far below laughed at something someone had said. A lute song carried up and into my face, the smell of the peat bogs always on the wind here. Even the small braziers of scented herbs and flowers that were lit in each chamber could not hide the odor completely. Perhaps it was a fitting aroma. For my hopes that the man I loved would come to me and now lie dead in the peat, rotting just like the plants and small beasts. “So foolish…”

Inebriated elves, still feeling the pinch of no stag killed in the hunt, were spread out on the grounds below. Many were fucking, some were sleeping on stone benches, and a few were dancing in the grand fountain. I watched it all with no emotion. Yes, the snub had left me dead inside. Yet, I was not wholly surprised. A kiss shared in a moment that was rife with panic, anger, and relief was not exactly binding. V’alor was a man of integrity. And I was a fool—

A soft rap on the door pulled me back. If it were Joralf seeking entry to my bed, the valet was going to receive a firm reprimand.

“Come!” I barked, spinning from the lovers and drunkards. The door opened on silent hinges. “I shall warn you ahead that I am in a mood most foul, so if you think that I shall brook your advances, Joralf, you are sorely mistaken.”

V’alor filled the doorway clad in simple clothes. A white shirt loose at the neck, plain brown breeches, and soft slippers of tanned leather. I felt as if someone had ridden into me at a full gallop. “I know not who this Joralf is, but I shall find out and when I do I shall—”

“You came,” I stammered. He closed the door, his feet seemingly unable to come into my suite more than a step or two.

“I came, but I am here only to speak with you.” He talked quietly, despite the thickness of the stone walls and the revelry taking place outside. “My lord Aelir.”

“No, do not start using titles to place a barrier between us,” I said, striding closer to him, my heart thundering in my chest. “I will not brook it. We have been familiar for years, the best of friends.”

“Yes, friends. And that is how it shall remain, Aelir. I am older than you.” I nodded as I reached for the hem of my sleep gown. He was older. That was true. By a mere ten seasons. Kenton and Beirich had a much larger gap in their ages and both were as contented as lambs napping in a warm spring meadow. His deep brown eyes flared as I pulled my nightshirt off to stand in front of him, bare as the day I had been birthed. My cock stood at attention, weeping just from the sight and sound of him. “Aelir, by Ihdos, you must not tempt me so when I am trying to be…”

---