The Price of Pride

Elvish translations

Melethron – lover

Chapter 38

Fortunately for everyone’s sanity, we found a town the next day. It was not much of a town, more like a village, really, but it had an inn. Aragorn insisted that we stop for a few days. The twins teased him about being a weak Man. He bore their teasing with ill grace, but he did not relent. I stood beside him in silent support when he repeated his desire to spend a few days at the inn. We must have been a shock to the innkeeper, three Elven princes and a Man, arriving unexpectedly at his little establishment, but he recovered quickly.

“Rooms for ye, good masters?” he asked obsequiously.

“Four,” Elladan said.

“Three will be plenty,” Aragorn countered, steel in his voice. “We only need three rooms, Master Innkeeper.”

“Three rooms, it is. If ye’ll just follow me, good sirs, I’ll show ye to yer rooms.”

We followed him up the stairs to the landing where he showed us three rooms. Two were next to each other with the third farther down the hall. Aragorn claimed the distant one for us before his brothers could say anything. The innkeeper was obviously surprised, presumably having expected the twins to share a room, not Aragorn and me. I gave him one of my father’s regal stares and he backed down. The twins, however, were not so easily cowed. They had not stopped us from sharing a room, but Elrohir stood very deliberately at the door as we set down our packs. He was patently not leaving until we did. The thought of spending the remainder of the day in the smoky tavern was not at all appealing, but I did not know what else we could do.

We settled at the cleanest table in the tavern, but even that was not very clean. Fortunately, the innkeeper seemed to take better care of the bedchambers than of the tavern. They at least had been clean. The twins and Aragorn ordered the local ale, but I had never developed a taste for the drink Men Men, so I sat with them, eyeing the other patrons with carefully veiled suspicion. It was relatively early in the day, but the tavern was already half-full, the room hot from the fire and ripe with the stench of unwashed flesh. I endured the heat, the smoke, the smell, but I could not so easily ignore the leers that one of the uncouth drunkards was casting at Aragorn. I glowered back at the man, but he was so far in his cups that he did not read my warning glare.

“Whatcha doin’ wi’ them Elves?” he asked Aragorn when he approached our table. I could smell the liquor on his breath from where I was sitting. How Aragorn managed not to recoil, I truly do not know.

“They are my brothers and my… friend,” Aragorn answered calmly, indicating first the twins, then me.

“Brothers?” the man scoffed. “Y’ain’t no Elf.”

“Yet they are my brothers,” he replied.

“Doan ye want more friendly company? Iffin ye get m’meaning?”

I did not stop to ask if Aragorn got his meaning or not. I certainly had and I was not about to sit still while the boor propositioned my Estel. The legs of the chair scraped across the floor as I rose from my seat. The twins did not rise, but the knives that they wore discreetly at their waists suddenly appeared on the table, sheathed still but visible. My hand settled proprietarily on Aragorn’s shoulder. “The company he is keeping is quite friendly enough.” The menace in my voice should have been clear to the meanest mind. The villager was oblivious. He started to touch Aragorn’s arm. I caught his wrist in an iron grip, twisting cruelly. I refused, absolutely refused to let him sully my love with his disgusting caress.

The man’s face spasmed in pain. “He is mine, Man,” and the race was an insult. “Keep your dirty hands and your dirtier thoughts away from him.” I twisted his wrist one more time and then threw him away from us. I probably would have gone after him, because I certainly wanted to beat him bloody for daring to defile Aragorn that way, but Aragorn’s hand on my chest turned my attention to him instead. That hand, by itself, was not enough to stop me. The look in Aragorn’s eyes was.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, his words as cold now as mine had been a few moments earlier. “Alone,” he continued with a glare for his brothers. He stalked out of the inn and kept going. He was muttering fiercely under his breath as he made his way for the edge of the village. My hearing was acute as any Elf’s, but Aragorn had lived all his life with Elves. He knew exactly how well I could hear and was keeping the volume down just enough that I could not pick out his words, only his anger.

When we cleared the edge of the town and he kept walking, I began to worry. Neither of us were armed well enough to defend ourselves should we come across Orcs or other enemies but Aragorn continued on and I was not going to let him out of my sight. We followed the river that ran through the town into the treeline until we reached the base of the cliffs behind the village.

“What is wrong, Estel?” I asked when he finally slowed his pace.

His shriek of frustration scattered every bird within hearing. “Do you think me so incapable that I cannot deal with one, half-drunk Man? Have I not proved to you, over and over, that I can handle myself? What do you mean stepping in that way?”

“Estel,” I said, trying to calm him, “I was just trying to help.”

“Help? You call almost starting a fight helping? I could have brushed him off, refused his invitation without creating a scene. We have to go back there at some point and every man in that room heard you insult their fellow villager. You are supposed to be the son of a King, a diplomat in your own right. You should know better.”

“You are right,” I answered, embarrassed now by the scene I had created. “I have no excuse. I was jealous.”

“Of that lout? Legolas, what could I possibly want with someone like him when I am with you? But that does not give you the right to interfere. And just when did I become yours? I do not recall agreeing to that.” That cold tone was back.

Apparently, I had made more than one mistake in the crowded tavern. “Last night…” I did not get the chance to finish my sentence.

“Last night was about ownership? Is that what you are telling me? Because I am no one’s property, Prince Legolas. I am my own man, and I intend to stay that way.”

He probably would have continued his rant for as long as I stood there listening, and he was not going to hear anything I said to counter his assumptions. So I kissed him. That startled him enough for me to tell him, “It goes both ways, Estel. I am yours as well.”

I really did not expect that to end the argument. Aragorn was obviously very upset by what I had done and what I had implied. I honestly expected to continue the discussion. What I got was an armful of Aragorn kissing me as if he never intended to let me go. “As long as it goes both ways,” he whispered when he came up for air.

Not releasing him, I looked around. We were hidden from the road and the village by the trees. The twins were nowhere in sight or even within shouting distance. The grass beside the river was thick and soft. The waterfall where the river tumbled down the cliffs looked refreshing. It appeared to me to be the perfect setting for seduction. The only thing missing was a bed, but we were both used to being in the wild. We would not miss the bed, wrapped up in each other.

We were both sweaty and dirty from our travel and the water was enticing. I kissed Aragorn lightly as I reached for the laces on his tunic. “Shall we bathe, melethron?” I said, indicating the waterfall.

He pouted. “Is that all you can think of to do when we are here, alone for the first time in weeks?”

That pout looked too delicious to pass up. I leaned in and kissed him again. “Not all I can think of, melethron, only the first thing. I would not come to you smelling of travel. We have time. Arien will not set for hours yet.”

“And my brothers?”

“Will mind their own business for once. I do not think they could find us now even if they looked. There were too many people in town for them to track us out of it. We can afford to take our time, Estel.”

Now that the moment had finally arrived, I was back in control. I did not have to worry about being interrupted and left frustrated again. All I had to do was turn all my passions, all my desires into making this the perfect experience for my love. And that gave me a degree of patience I had never before possessed. Even at Arwen’s Cuivië.

I returned my attention to his tunic. When we had bathed with the twins, we had never undressed each other. That was too intimate to share with others. Now, I unlaced first the tunic, then the undertunic, revealing the skin beneath and the line where tanned flesh gave way to pale. My fingers traced the line from the side of his neck to the sensitive indentation where neck joined chest and back up the other side. He shivered at my touch, as I loosened the belt and let it fall to the ground. The tunic parted all the way to his waist. I undid the rest of the laces and pushed it off his shoulders, letting it fall around his hips to land with the belt at his feet, rather than pulling it over his head. My hands teased his chest through the thin cotton undertunic, tweaking his taut nipples that I could just see pressed against the fabric. He moaned, just a little, as I tugged at the sensitive flesh. I undid the second set of laces, opening the shirt more, revealing the muscled expanse of chest to my eyes and my hands. That contact, skin to skin, brought a deeper moan to his lips. He trembled as I explored again the territory I had discovered two nights before. I traced his breastbone, between the firm muscles of his chest, down to the third set of laces holding his shirt still in place. Rarely did we ever take the time to unlace undertunics fully. It was so much faster just to pull them over our heads, but this was not about fast. This was about anticipation.

I separated the final set of laces, parting the shirt completely so it hung at his sides. I kissed him, then, pulling him against my still-clothed chest, letting the rough cloth of my tunic caress him for me as my hands ran up his back, fingers digging into taut muscle and satiny skin. He buried his hands in my hair, pulling me deeper into the kiss, trying to assert some control of the situation. I let him.

He took full advantage of my stillness to nibble at my lips as one hand began attacking the laces on my clothes. He had not the patience to remove them slowly, breaking the kiss to strip tunic and shirt over my head as soon as the laces were loose enough to permit it. Then his fingers started on the laces of my leggings.

“Boots,” I managed to say between kisses. If he got my leggings around my knees without removing my boots first, I was going to land on the ground in an undignified heap, and that I did not want. He let me break away long enough for me to remove my boots while he did the same, then his hands were back on my leggings, pushing them down over my hips and off.

I moved behind him before his hands could start exploring my newly revealed flesh. I would let him indulge his curiosity later. When the possibility of my losing control was less important. In the meantime, he was just going to have to keep his hands to himself. My hands were the ones that were going o exo exploring. He leaned back into my arms, almost bracing himself against me, pressing temptingly against my arousal, as I slid one hand inside the waistband of his leggings. My fingers curled around his erection, stroking him gently, soothingly. At least, I had intended it to be soothing. He convulsed against me, covering my hand with his seed.