Killing Beauty

Author's note: no real reason for the scene...just something to do with my hands.
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Ashva, bundled in a heavy fur, walked through the deep snow towards the hut that she shared with Etta, a new hide wrapped carefully in her arms. She had tanned it herself and had worked it until it was as soft as a second skin. It along with three others that she had were destined to be a pair of leggings for a certain elf she knew.

Seven hunters called the north camp home, including Atluf, his brother Hargen, the cousins, and a pair of hunters named Lethin and Kertuck. Mostly they were fur trappers although some did hunt for meat and hides. Ashva knew of hunters who wasted their kills, but these men utilized everything, or she would not have stayed with them. Pausing at the hut door, she looked up and wondered if it was every going to stop snowing. Late winter snows were often quite brutal, although this one acted as if the worst of it was over.

"Get in here and close the door," Etta growled from her place in front of the hearth.

Ashva closed the door, set the hide down on a less than steady table and then threw her hood back. "I think it's breaking," she said and sat on the bench beside Etta and held her hands out to the flame.

Etta glanced back at the pale skin on the table and said, "You'll be able to dress him from head to foot."

Ashva smiled. "I hope so. I'm really beginning to miss him."

"Beginning?" Etta mused.

Ashva grinned and confessed, "Yes, I've been missing him a long time. Hopefully he'll want me back."

"He's a fool if he doesn't," Etta replied, remembering how possessive of her the elf had been the two times that she had seen him.

Ashva pulled off the heavy coat and laid it on her bunk near the fire. Of late it seemed that all she did was think of Haldir, of the way he smelled, tasted and felt. And there was a particular blue that sometimes appeared in the sky that reminded her of his eyes. Hearing a scratch at the door, she got up and let Max and Mani in. From the looks of their muzzles they had been out hunting as well.

"I hope you didn't steal your supper," she said as Etta dipped into the black kettle over the fire with a wooden spoon and dug around a minute before serving Ashva a goodly portion of stew on a wooden plate. She always gave Ashva more than she could eat because the wolves would invariably help her eat it.

When it got dark and Ashva lay on her cot under the heavy fur coat, she really let her thoughts drift back to her lover. How was it she could remember every detail about him simply by closing her eyes? She could see the curve of his throat and the soft area below his throat where the pulse was closest to the skin. She could almost taste the metallic sweat, male sweat on her tongue. How his pulse beat faster when she let her lips and tongue caress that throbbing hollow. And in her mind's eye she could see the way his beautiful body looked stretched out before her the night before she left. Was she remembering what happened or adding more to the picture? Did she really kiss her way down his body to take him into her mouth and then tease him so long and slow he even cursed her for stopping and starting? Making him want to come so bad but then not letting him. Oh he had made her pay for that. Made her taste his frustration repeatedly before he released her on the tip of his tongue.

AShva desperately wanted him and seriously regretted not leaving the mountains before the deep snow fell. She was trapped here until the spring melt. She knew he would not be missing her as much. He had warm bodies to enjoy, soft lips to thrill him, and she was burning with jealousy, but all she had to do was remember him when it was just them. The ache in her dark places agreed. As long as she could remember him, the ache would be satisfied. If only she didn't go crazy thinking about him.