An Elf's Rose

CHAPTER 22


Orli lay face down on the bed, sobs slowly subsiding, his breath hitching in his throat and sides aching. He moved his hands to wipe down his face and touched someone’s leg next to him. He turned his head to look, thinking it was his father, and was stunned to see Rose sitting there.

He flipped over and pressed himsel the the headboard, mouth hanging open in shock. They stared at each other for a bit and Orli realized his face must be covered in tears and snot. He pulled up on his bloody shirt and wiped his face with what clean spots he could find.

“Wh – what are you doing here?” he croaked, frightened of the answer. He couldn’t tell from her face if she was here tve hve him more hell or – what. He couldn’t dare hope…

“I did that every night for a long time after you left,” she whispered, ignoring his question. “You ripped my heart out, Orlando.”

Orli dropped his eyes, shuddering. He wrapped his arms around himself to stop it. “I’m s – sorry. I know that’s not enough. But I – I was so fucked up. If it’s any consolation to you, I was in hell pretty much for the past year, reliving those horrible months, believing he’d won, believing that I was good for nothing but someone else’s pleasure…”

Rose looked away and hugged herself as well, breathing heavily. “Why couldn’t you trust me to –“

“It wasn’t you I didn’t trust Rose! It was myself!” Orli yelled, making her flinch. “After what – what I’d done to other women – not just Victoria. There were others. I was terrified I’d hurt you in the same way! Terrified I’d do to you what was done to me!” His head slumped into his hands. “Rosie, you are more dear to me than my own heart. I couldn’t live with myself if I’d hurt you. That’s why I left. I really believed you would be better off with someone else,” he whispered hoarsely, looking up at her with all the longing and hurt he felt showing in his eyes.

Rose’s breathing quickened and her eyes overflowed. “I tried to hate you.”

Orli swallowed and looked away. “I don’t blame you if you do.”

She wiped her face with her hands. “Sean – he’s been so good to me. I love him and he loves me and wants to take care of me.”

Orli felt a sharp twisting pain in his gut. He drew his knees up to his chest to try and contain it. “Why are you here then, Rose?” he gasped. “Go back to him.”

Her fathomless eyes bored into his, not letting him turn away. “I tried to hate you and forget you. Sean tried to help me forget you but I just -- couldn’t .” Her eyes filled with infinite sadness. “I’ve deeply wounded a good man by coming here, Orlando.”

Orli’s heart pounded excruciatingly in his chest, a Molotov cocktail of guilt, regret, and hope surging through his bloodstream, making his breath come short.

Rose climbed up onto the bed, coming closer to him and kneeling back. “When I saw you sitting there – dear God how it hurt! You were so – beautiful – and I wanted to kill you, I was so angry. But Sean, he knew what I didn’t. He fought it – fought you – but he’s always known. If you came to claim me, I would go. I love you Orlando, I always will.”

Orli felt hot tears on his face, and he shook his head, not really believing his ears. Then his eyes widened in shock as he watched Rose sit back on her heels and remove her tee top in one swift jerk.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough with astonishment. He could not tear his gaze away from her bared breasts.

“I’ve come to give you what I would have given Sean tonight. I would bind you to me, Orlando Bloom, so that you don’t leave me again.” She took his hands and put them on her warm breasts and Orli felt faint. He shook his head and with an agonized moan, pulled his hands away.

“No,” he whispered, turning away to press his heated cheek against the headboard. “No, I would not have you like that, for that reason. After all I’ve put you through – if you’ve chosen to stay with me – “ his voice broke for a moment. He took a deep shaky breath and continued. “I am mindful of the honor, the gift you offer. But you cannot, Rose. It’s too precious to me to squander it in lust.”

“It’s mine to give to whom I choose…” she protested, misunderstanding him and upset at his refusal.

“And I accept it, my love,” Orli replied, turning back to her and taking her hands in his. He kissed her fingertips and then leaned to kiss her mouth gently. “You have no need to bind me to you with your body. My heart and soul are yours already. I will not leave you again. Never again.”

Rose threw her arms around his neck, pressing herself to him and covered his mouth with hers in a bruising, breath-stealing kiss. Orli tasted blood from his cut-up lip and had the oddest sensation of feeling both weak as a kitten and hard as iron. Her sweet eager lips and tongue devouring his and her blood-warm velvet skin underneath his hands were likely the most excellent brain and body rush he had ever experienced.

Their mouths pulled apart for a moment to catch their breaths and in the second before he took her lips again in a sucking bite, she whispered, “I am yours. Take me.”

He pulled away, panting. She moaned at the loss of him. “God, Orlando, no one makes me feel the way you do…” She tried to recapture his mouth but he held her back with his hands gripping her upper arms. He turned his face away so as to not look at her breasts.

“A year and a day, Rose. Give me that. Let me earn it – I want to feel worthy of your offer.”

Rose laughed mirthlessly. “I’m going to have to wait another year for you?”

Orli shook his head and got off the bed. He headed out to the sitting room and went to the fireplace where he selected a long Scottish dirk from the wall. Rose followed him, picking up her discarded top and putting it on again.

“What are you doing?” she asked, bewildered.

He pulled the knife out of it’s simple worn leather scabbard. “This dirk is my favorite in the collection. The handle is made of the antler of a red deer, carved with love and skill by a simple crofter, passed down from father to son and kept hidden for over two hundred years from the English who would have taken it away.” He hefted the knife, enjoying the feel of the smooth pale hilt, handled and cared for by generations of Scots. “It is more beautiful to me than if it were encrusted with jewels.” He looked up at her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “A fitting symbol, I think, of how I feel about you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come.” He put the knife back in its scabbard and grabbed her hand, tugging her out of the room and down the hall to his father’s study.

~~~

Rose was in a turmoil of emotions. What did he have in mind to do with the knife? Was he really asking her to wait another year? Why? God help her, she wanted him so badly. She didn’t care anymore about propriety or her parent’s disappointment or what she’d have to confess to Father Kirk.

Her thoughts were cut off as they reached Robert’s rooms.

“Dad?” Orlando called, knocking on the door.

“Come,” was his muffled reply.

Orlando opened the door and dragged her in with him. to the middle of the room.

Robert looked up from the work on his desk at each of them in turn, curiosity evident on his tired features. “Yes? Is there something wrong?”

“No, only right. I ask you to bear witness, Father.”

Robert stood up and rounded the desk, walking the few paces to them. “To what, son?” he asked softly.

Orlando didn’t respond to the question with words. He turned to Rose and pulled the dirk from the scabbard, holding it by the blade in both hands and fell on his knees before her. Her heart began to knock against her ribs and she pressed her hands against her legs to stop them trembling. He began to recite as if from memory, his storm-cloud eyes locked to hers:

"Rose, my lovely one,
Accept my pledge of love for thee.
I pledge my sword, as I pledge my soul,
ever to be in your service.
Like this blade shall my love be strong,
Like this steel shall my love be enduring.
Accept it, beloved one,
For that which is mine, shall also be yours.

“A year and a day,
I ask thee to hold me in your heart,
A year and a day,
I pledge thee my troth.
Where at the end of that time,
I shall ask thee to bind thyself to me for all our lives."

Rose panted in sobbing gasps, tears coursing down her face. She stood transfixed by his gaze for long moments, mind gone completely blank, the knife steady between them.

She took the knife from him with a trembling hand and raised it up, kissed the juncture of haft and tang and words flooded into her mind. In a soft, steady voice she spoke:

"Beloved, I accept thy pledge of love.
As I do accept the pledge of thy blade.
Thou knowest what is in my heart,
As I know what is in thine.
The strength of my will, and of my love
Shall ever be thine.

“A year and a day,
I will hold thee in my heart,
A year and a day,
I pledge thee my troth.
Where at the end of that time,
I shall bind myself to thee for all our lives.”

Orlando stood up and with a look of inexpressible joy, took Rose in his arms and kissed her deeply. She didn’t even realize it when Robert took the dirk from her hand.


EPILOGUE

~Four years later~

The birds were chirping in hysterical joy in the tree outside the flat. Rose snuggled deeper into the bedding, chasing the fleeting shreds of sleep, but it was not to be. Cocoa Chanel, the chocolate Persian cat that Orlando had given her for her birthday last year, decided at that moment to start nesting in her hair, purring loudly.

“Oh! Stop that, you rotten cat! I need more sleep!” she whined, pushing the furry bundle away. Cocoa jumped down to the foot of the bed and glared at her in reproach with her huge green eyes. “It’s all Orlando’s fault, keeping me up all night.”

Rose sighed in contentment, remembering exactly how Orlando had kept her awake. She buried her face again in the bedding and the musky scents of their lovemaking wafted up, bringing back vivid memories of his sweet hot mouth and long-fingered hands on her body, the warm smoothness of his alabaster skin, the silky tickle of his long honey-colored hair, the power of his velvet-covered steel moving inside her. Her body started to tingle with arousal. Even after three years of having him whenever she wanted, he still made her feel like it was the first time. Just like that stupid Madonna song. She turned over to look at the clock on her night table.

Ugh. Six thirty. She flopped back onto the pillows, stretching her arms above her head. He was probably still in the middle of his daily morning jog. Rose chuckled, thinking about the reactions of the neighbors in the beginning to his weird “American” habits. There was no pool close by where he go without getting in the car, so he’d taken up jogging around the neighborhood, drawing stares and commentary from the locals. But in the year that they’d lived in Bath, England, Orlando had become something of a neighborhood icon, a returned lost son, albeit with odd foreign habits and an American wife.

Rose had fallen in love with the town as soon as she saw it, visiting with Orlando’s family on their month-long honeymoon to Britain, finding it impossibly romantic and beautiful, surrounded by lovely countryside. It had been her idea to live there for a while and continue her graduate studies at Bath University. Orlando had acquiesced, not able to deny her anything. He’d found employment in Bristol at a company that set up computer networks for businesses and started teaching Aikido classes for children and adults at the neighborhood middle school. Money was tight but they were deliriously happy.

Rose looked at her wedding ring, with the elvish inscription round the outside that Orlando had had made for her, still getting that odd little jolt of pleasure at the sight of it. “Forever and a day shall my heart be yours,” she recited, the words burned on her heart like the words on the One Ring. He’d told her she commanded him completely with this ring when he’d placed it on her finger. And he said he had no poetry in his soul…

Yesterday had been their third wedding anniversary and they had celebrated with a terribly romantic dinner at a tiny Italian bistro across from the beautifully lit Roman baths, going back to their flat to look at wedding photos and drink champagne. One thing had quickly led to another and Rose suddenly found herself naked in the bed, Orlando devouring her, with no memory of how it happened.

Not that I minded, she thought, eyes closed and smiling slowly, stroking her breast idly with one hand, making the nipple stand up.

“Starting without me?” a soft voice asked, amused.

Rose snapped her eyes open to see a sweating, grinning, gorgeous Orlando wiping his face with a towel, his shoulder length blond hair pulled back in a damp pony tail. My husband, she thought, still with awe.

“You’re welcome to join in any time, sweetheart,” she purred, desire flushing her skin.

His eyes dilated with his own fierce rush of desire and stepped lightly to the bed, leaning on it with arms outstretched to kiss her lips and going lower to take the proffered nipple deeply into his mouth. Rose arched her back and moaned, pulling on his neck to encourage him to suckle harder.

He let go and she whimpered in anguish at the loss of his mouth. “Don’t you want me to shower first?” he asked, grinning at her.

“Why bother? You’ll just have to take another.” She shifted to grab him and felt the insistence of a full bladder. And she remembered. “Darling, I have to use the toilet first, then I have a gift for you. I couldn’t give it to you last night. It had to wait for the morning.”

“Oh?” Orlando’s puzzled expression followed her to the bathroom.

~~~

Orli removed his damp jogging sweats and wiped himself down as best he could then got into their bed. He smelled last nights lovemaking as well, hardening him further in anticipatof tof the immediate future. He stretched out on his back and pulled the bed sheet over himself, amused by the tent shape his erection created. Rose would surely make a scathing comment about it.

What the hell is she doing in there anyway? he grumbled to himself, the anticipation sharpening his desire.

She walked in, still stark naked, taking his breath away with her beauty; the long curly fall of her hair down her back, the creamy skin sprinkled with tiny brown freckles that he loved to play ‘connect the dots’ with using his tongue, the devastating pools of her eyes. He didn’t notice her hands held behind her back, diverted as he was by other things.

“Come here to me, my sloe-eyed dove,” he told her huskily, hand outstretched.

She grinned, looking at the tented sheet. “Oooh! Are we going camping? Are we gonna roast marshmallows?”

“I’ve got a campfire roaring right here, love,” he whispered, sitting up and beckoning to her.

“Don’t you want your gift?” she teased, still out of arm’s reach.

He sucked on his bottom lip and stared at the dark arrowhead shape of curls pointing in the direction of their mutual bliss. As if he needed guidance…

“Yes, right now, damn you. Don’t make me go get you. I swear I’ll make you regret it,” he growled.

She held out her hand to him, with something in it. He took it reflexively, looking at it in confusion. It was a white plastic stick, about four inches long, wider in the middle than the ends, a blue mark in a squared indentation.

He looked up. “What the hell is this?”

She took his other hand and placed it on the small swelling of her belly.

“Hi Daddy,” she whispered. Tears filled her eyes as comprehension swept across his features and, whooping in joy, jumped from the bed, picked her up and twirled her around the room until they collapsed back on the bed laughing and crying.

“Hullo yourself, Mum,” he whispered in her ear, voice choked with emotion.


~FIN~