The Price of Pride

Elvish translations

Cuaren – my archer
Díhena nin – I’m sorry
Pen-velui – beautiful one
Yrch – orcs

Chapter 34

Aragorn greeted my proposal, when I returned to camp, with surprise and eagerness. He agreed immediately, leaving the cooking in the hands of his brothers. When they started to protest, he said, “You can cook well enough when you want to. You just do not like it so you make me do it. You will not ruin it.”

He gathered his bedroll and his weapons, as did I. Climbing was a little more precarious with the extra gear, but we managed to make it to the top of the ridge. We retraced our trail from two days ago and soon found ourselves back on the point. We gathered pine needles from under the nearby trees to soften our bed for the night, then reclined together on our bedrolls as we watched the sky darken.

I pulled him into my arms, enjoying having his body pressed against mine. It was a sensation I never grew tired of. I brushed my lips across his hair, then across his lips when he tipped his head up. He reached up for anothess wss when I did not continue. I gave him what he wanted, but then tucked his head under my chin, holding him as darkness settled and the first stars appeared overhead. He relaxed willingly enough into my embrace, not breaking the comfortable silence between us.

Out of habit, I had put back on the bracers that I wore to protect my forearms from the sting of the bowstring before we had made our climb. As we lay in the deepening twilight, Aragorn fiddled with the buckles holding the bracers in place. Eventually, he loosened the buckles and removed one of the bracers, fingers trailing lightly across the inside of my wrist as he set the leather aside. I trembled at the soft caress on the incredibly sensitive skin. Aragorn caught my reaction and sent me a delighted grin before taking a firmer grip on my hand and raising it to his mouth. I steeled myself for what was sure to come.

He kissed my palm first, as I had done to him by the stream in the mist. That, I could handle. My palm was sufficiently hardened from years of fighting with swords and knives to withstand his tenderaultault. At least, I thought it was. Until his tongue flicked out to caress the calluses at the base of my fingers. Then I discovered that I could not handle much at all where Aragorn was concerned. And when his lips found their way to the inside of my wrist, I thought I had arrived in Valinor. Nothing could have been more perfectly arousing than that moment, lying in the near-darkness, Aragorn in my arms, his lips caressing my wrist. I determinedly ignored my growing arousal, though that did not stop it from pressing into Aragorn’s back. He shifted, just a little, rubbing against me, intentionally or not. I could feel my breath coming more rapidly as he continued his ministrations, but I forced myself to stillness. I did not want to do anything to discourage him from his tender explorations.

Even with desire coursing through me, I could still sense his innocence. He had no real idea of what he was doing to me, or if he did now, it had not been premeditated. This was the kind of torment I was going to have to endure for weeks, I realized, maybe more, because I wanted him to explore. At his own speed.

When he had tortured that wrist to his satisfaction, he pulled the bracer off my other wrist and started on it. I had always known my wrists were sensitive. I had never before realized that they were directly connected to my groin. He was wreaking havoc on my control and did not have any idea how close he was to being pulled beneath me and thoroughly ravished.

When I could no longer sit still, I pulled my wrist away from his mouth and turned his lips to mine. The kiss I gave him was by far the most passionate we had shared to date, though not the most passionate we ever shared. He responded with all the passion his own daring had evoked. When we drew apart, finally, we were both panting. I sat up enough that his head rested against my shoulder. “Look up,” I whispered, pointing to the stars. “There is Earendil’s star.” We sat like that until it was fully dark. I made vague remarks about sitting on watch, but Aragorn pulled me down into his embrace. I slipped into reverie at his side, dreaming about all the things I wanted to do to his delicious young body.

I awoke once during the night to find that Aragorn’s hand had insinuated itself inside my tunic and was resting against the smooth skin of my chest. That hand against bare skin was all together too distracting, but when I tried to remove it, Aragorn murmured in his sleep and burrowed more closely against me. I gave up and resigned myself to suffering the delicious torment until morning.

When I awoke again, the sky in the east was just beginning to lighten, not pink or blue yet, barely even gray, but I wanted to watch the entire spectrum of change with Aragorn. I roused him from his sleep as I had done before, kissing him, gently at first, then more insistently. I had not considered the hand inside my tunic when I did so. His fingers tightened against my skin, an unintentional caress that was almost more than I could bear in the pre-dawn stillness. He was tempting me, without even knowing it, far beyond endurance. We were alone, the last time we were likely to have this much privacy for weeks, maybe even months. His lips were willing beneath mine and his body had long since responded to my nearness. It seemed the perfect opportunity to give us both what we so obviously wanted.

His eyes opened, and even in the pre-dawn darkness, I could see the trust that shimmered in his eyes. Ai, Elbereth, I could not betray that trust. I had promised him a proper courtship and a proper bedding, even if I had not used those words. Taking him now, only five days after we had met, could hardly count.

“Wake up, pen-velui. You would not want to miss the show.”

In just the time it had taken for me to wake Aragorn, the sky had already changed from gray to a deep purple behind the ridge across the valley to our left. The stars overhead were going out for another day. As we watched, the colors changed again, becoming first a lighter purple, then pink. The colors had faded almost to white when Arien finally came out from behind the ridge, clothed in all its glory. The trees behind us whispered their delight to me. Delight in a new day. Delight in the lovers who had slept beneath their boughs. I smiled. I did not often hear the trees outside of Mirkwood, at least not without concentrating on them.

With the sunrise finished, we turned our thoughts to breakfast. We were just about to eat when the murmur of the trees behind us changed. “Yrch!” I shouted to Aragorn as I understood the warning of the trees. Aragorn grabbed his weapons as I reached for my bow and swung the quiver to my back. As I nocked an arrow and drew, waiting for a target to present itself, a distant corner of my mind pointed out that I was going to be bruised when this battle was done. My bracers lay with our packs, where Aragorn had abandoned them last night. It was too late to get them now. It was the price I would have to pay.

Seconds later, I could see the Orcs through the trees. I fired as soon as I could make out a specific target, and kept firing. Aragorn’s arrows flew almost as quickly. Fortunately, the pack was small enough that we were able to finish them off before they reached us. Their appearance, however, had taken the joy out of the morning. When the trees whispered again only of squirrels and birds, we lowered our weapons. I rubbed my forearm, trying to soothe the sting. Aragorn noticed.

“Where are…?” Then he remembered, his eyes darting to our packs. “Díhena nin, cuaren. I should have known better than to remove them.”

“Do not worry, pen-velui. They are just bruises. They will heal.” I reached for the bracers and strapped them back on. “We should head back. My hand, as we both know, is long since healed. With Orcs in the woods, we should stay together and move on.”

He agreed and we began the return trip to our base camp. I glanced back at the little outcropping of rock as we left. I was sorry to leave it. It had proved to be the perfect place for the beginning of our relationship. I would have enjoyed fulfilling it there as well, but that was not to be.