The Fountains of Lorien

The Fountains of Lórien

Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.R.R. Tolkien. I intend no infringement of copyright and am making no money by this.

Rating: NC-17.

Summary: Elrond and Celebrían argue and have a little incident with a fountain. Fluffiness.

A/N: This is a re-written and hopefully improved version of a ficlet I wrote for the DG list.

Thanks to Nemis for betaing this.

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“Coward!” Celebrían stormed as she paced the paths of Lothlórien at the side of the Noldorin lord. “You are nothing but a coward if you abandon your people thus.”

“We are passing West; there is no need for a High King,” Elrond tried to explain, to no avail.

“We need not pass beyond Middle-earth yet.” Celebrían’s eyes flashed, and he looked away, abashed by the incandescent rage he read there. Yet there was something which drew him back, which always drew him back, as it had drawn him out of his grief to the Golden Wood. “But by your wilful obstinacy you hasten this. If you would but take up Gil-galad’s crown…”

“You are but a child,” Elrond sighed. “I am not surprised that you cannot see why I must do this.”

As he spoke the words, he winced, knowing how ill they had to sound. Celebrían’s hands curled into fists by her sides and her blue eyes blazed.

Not a child. Children are but simple creatures, and simply pleased. And I fear that I shall never know what pleases her, and thus shall ever incur her wrath…

“Were you always so pompous?” she accused, “or is this an unwelcome new departure?”

“I did not mean it like that … I … I …” he stuttered, watching her fluid angry strides, entranced by the flow of her body under the flimsy gown. Shaking himself, he firmly quashed the sudden desire which flared within him. His stubborn body protested, but he had long years of practice in this, and his will was mastering. The Eldar do not wed or bear children in time of war, and so he had not asked her. And he feared that the time for asking had long since passed like the summer breeze on a meadow.

They came to a halt beside an ornately carved fountain, and Celebrían studied the flow of water into the deep basin intently. Elrond moved nearer and nearer to her, resting one hand on the night-chilled stone. As she turned back from her contemplation of the steady trickle, the unnerved peredhel found himself so close to her warm body, vibrating with anger, that he could feel her breath on her face and smell her floral scent coiling around him.

“I cannot follow in the footsteps of Ereinion Gil-galad.” Sorrow washing through him at the mention of his foster-father’s name. “It would be impudence.”

“This is mere fear of the burdens which you would take upon yourself, and it is self-indulgence,” Celebrían raged. “You must not shy away from the responsibilities which are yours alone simply because you are scared. You are being selfish.”

“Would it not be more selfish to take up a throne I do not deserve?” Elrond inquired, quivering at the memory of that fateful day when Gil-galad had perished. Bitter had been that parting, one to a trust he had never dreamed of, the other to the Halls of Awaiting, and there were few he could trust now with the freedom of his speech. “Would I not dishonour his memory?”

Completely exasperated, Celebrían took a step forward and pushed the melancholy elf-lord into the fountain. He surfaced spluttering frantically, a stray golden leaf accenting the shadows of his hair and drooping rather absurdly over one ear.

She stood over his drenched form.

“When will you understand?”

As she uttered the words, Elrond reached up and, before he could question the wisdom of his actions, caught her wrist, dragging her into the water.

She re-emerged, flicking her hair back with a smooth gesture. Only then did she realise that she had come to rest in his lap. Breathing heavily they sat in the pool, staring intently at each other.

“You are not a lesser ruler than Gil-galad,” she continued, restraining the instinct to smooth the lines of worry from his face. “You have wisdom and insight and might. What more does the High King need?”

“My Atani blood…” Elrond gulped. “The same blood which destroyed Isildur, which doomed Middle-earth, flows in my veins. I cannot risk destroying my own people because of my own weakness and hubris.”

To Celebrían’s eyes Elrond had never looked more adorable, fiddling incessantly with his ring, soaking clothes clinging to his lithe frame, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Acting on an impulse she leant forward and kissed him sweetly, drawing one hand comfortingly across his sopping midnight hair, capturing the stray leaf between her fingers. After a moment’s hesitation he opened his mouth to her, deepening thss, ss, his hand roaming ceaselessly over the curves of her body. She shivered, and he pulled back instantly.

“Are you cold?”

“No…” she trailed off.

Brushing her lips against his, she murmured, “The way you touch me…”

He retreated once more, fear dawning in his storm-laden eyes.

“I apologise for the offence I have given my lady. I … I…”

She looked at him in confusion, but then her laughter rang musically through the clearing. Crumbling the leaf between her fingers, she reached up and scattered the fragments over his head.

“You can be so foolish, Elrond Peredhil,” she chuckled. “I meant that as a compliment.”

His hands finding hers, he smiled hopefully, a scarce seen dimple appearing at the corner of his mouth.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Reverently he brushed water from her face, tucking her hair behind her ears. She shuddered as he wiped a stray droplet from the sensitive tip.

“Please, El-nîn.”

Encouraged by her response, he bent his head to suckle her ear. She groaned and locked her ankles around his waist, her arms encircling his neck. He held her closer still, pulling her taut against his frame, and she shivered to feel his obvious reaction pressing into her.

With the hand trapped between their bodies he teased her nipples until they were sore and stiff with longing.

She ran one hand along his spine, reaching under the water to cup his buttocks. He juddered and stretched like a cat beneath her touch, the caresses his tongue bestowed upon her frantic and tender at once.

With a thrill she felt him growing harder still against her, pressing into her willing flesh.

Releasing her ear he kissed her again firmly, feeling her lips part beneath his in delight. Their tongues darted together and then fluttered away, still uncertain, exploring each other’s mouths. Not their first kiss, but all the others appeared palely chaste mockeries of what might be beside this.

Regretfully she broke the kiss.

“We cannot continue this here.”

Interlocking his fingers with hers, Elrond disentangled his limbs and rose, pulling her with him. Celebrían leaned against him, enjoying the sensation of his body against hers, the rhythmic furling and unfurling of his muscles.

They clambered out of the fountain and left a dripping path behind them, clear in the moonlight, as they stumbled to her rooms. They climbed the stairs, only breaking their progress to kiss heatedly, their sodden garments swirling around their feet and catching on the risers.

Reaching their destination, Celebrían pulled the curtain shut over the entrance, and turned back to face her new lover, only to discover that he was staring at her with a horror-struck expression on his fair face.

“We cannot do this,” he whispered.

She extended one hand to him.

“Why not?”

“We are not wed and I would not despoil you!” He buried his head in his hands.

“Who said that you would despoil me?” she rejoined, resolutely peeling his hands away He peered out at her with one sceptical grey eye, and she giggled, leaning closer to press a kiss to the backs of his fingers. “I would bind your body to mine this night, Elrond son of Eärendil, if you will let me.”

“But your father … Oh dear Eru, Lord Celeborn would see me dead before the dawn!” Elrond worried, absent-mindedly wringing water from his sopping robe with his free hand. “I shall never be able to set foot in Lórien again, and I shall be hounded to the ends of the earth by packs of Galadhrim. Ai … even Mandos would not be safe, for fear that Elu Thingol might join the quest for vengeance upon me…”

“Can you think of no other things than propriety and the wrath of my father?” she inquired, giggling at his exclamations, entwining him in her embrace.

Moving deliberately closer, she brushed her body against his, rejoicing in the tremor which ran through him at the contact. Very slowly she traced the path of a single droplet which trickled down his neck and disappeared under the high collar with her mouth.

“Be mine, Elrond of Imladris,” she whispered against his skin. He sighed under the languorous touch of her tongue and all other considerations faded away.

“I should not…” he attempted forlornly, but his will was not in it.

Celebrían moved backwards until she sat on the curtained bed, her damp gown clinging to every curve of her body. With hot eyes Elrond memorised each sweeping line before sinking down beside her.

“Know that I come to you now not from lust alone but because I gave my heart to you long ago,” he murmured, trailing his hand over her hair, curling a single damp strand around his finger.

Celebrían smiled tremulously. “I know. You have had my heart these many years.”

“Have I? I thought that…”

“You think altogether too much, Elrond Peredhil. Let it be.”

Drawing his burning hand to her lips, she kissed it passionately, lavishing attention on the broad palm. Although her heart fluttered in anticipatory fear, she pressed open-mouthed kisses to his fingers, swirling her tongue over the sensitive skin. Freeing his hand almost regretfully, Elrond stroked it along one of her legs, teasing her remorselessly through the fabric, and Celebrían sighed as sensation coursed through her. Sitting upright, she pushed the sodden velvet robe from his shoulders, letting it slip to the floor, falling into the gathering puddle.

“Melethron-nîn,” she whispered into his damp locks, following the curve of his ear with the tip of her tongue, “you are more beautiful to me than the sunset on the sea in the morning of the world.”

Elrond felt his already aroused body respond to her sweet words and sweeter caresses.

“I am named anew by your mouth, and from this day forth I shall be yours,” he gasped.

Finally finding some will in his limbs, he stilled her relentless explorations and, inch by tortuously slow inch, began to free Celebrían from her garments. As he finished, a pair of slim hands reached for the intricate buttons of his under-tunic, slipping on the slick fabric so that they brushed his nipples. Barely restraining a higise ise of pleasure, he admired the pale beauty before him, her hair draped over her face as she concentrated on her task. Eventually he sat with his arms pinned behind him by the dripping sleeves, gazing up worshipfully into a pair of glazed eyes as blue as the sea.

“What is your desire, my lover, my lord?” Celebrían inquired huskily, bending over his bared chest and stroking the damp flesh with nimble fingers. Her hands travelled lower, following the path of the last of the water from the fountain. “What would you have me do?”

Elrond was hard pressed to keep control of his wilful body at her innocent yet wanton touch as her fingers strayed to the breeches which clung to his aching erection.

“Do you want this from me?”

The tantalising digits wandered across the straining bulge, tormenting him effortlessly, and Elrond’s hips bucked as waves of pleasure overtook him. With the greatest effort of his self-control he struggled out of pinipinioning garments and imprisoned her hand in his own, yet still Celebrían pressed down, massaging his swelling need.

“Be still, my silver queen, be still,” he rasped. Fighting his own instincts which begged him to submit helplessly, he bowled Celebrían onto her back.

“Will we not dampen the bed after our little adventure in the fountain?” she mocked him affectionately, her hands struggling to free themselves from his pinioning restraint. “Would it not be better to misuse the floor?”

“Nay. Not this time. The bed, I think, is much preferable, as it is not so hard.” He paused, releasing her, and stared at the maiden beneath him cloaked only in her silvery hair and his eyes closed abruptly. At the sight of a single pale tear leaking from one tightly shut eye, she was consumed with fear.

“What is it, Elrond-nîn, what troubles you so?” she asked, gathering him close.

The stormy grey eyes flickered open to fasten on her concerned face.

“I am not troubled, meleth-nîn,” he replied, “but I am amazed that you would give yourself to me so freely, and I am sorely afraid that you may regret your gift.”

Following the artistic lines of his strong jaw with quaking fingers she answered him, her words breathy with emotion, “I shall never regret this, no matter what befalls us, for I surrender myself freely to the fairest elf-lord Arda has ever seen.”

Leaning up, resting on her elbows, she smoothed his frowning eyebrows with butterfly kisses, stroking his hairline with delicate fingers.

“You are my life,” she murmured. “I am nothing without you.”

Elrond felt as if he was rent asunder and yet made whole again by her words. With a final sigh, he stroked his fingers across her ivory skin, warming the cold flesh with each soft touch until a rosy flush began to spread across her body.

“You will be mine, and I yours, if you permit me,” he lilted. At Celebrían’s nod, he abandoned all restraint. Enveloping her body with his own, he kissed a path from her jaw line down between her breasts. Moving sideways, he flickered his tongue over one nipple, nipping it between his teeth.

“At least so many years so speaking in councils has had a purpose,” she teased between ragged breaths. Raising his head for an instant, Elrond smiled at her before turning his attention to the other nipple, rolling the first between his agile fingers. Celebrían became aware of searing heat pooling between her thighs. Every nerve seemed awake as never before, every last part of her being desiring the same thing… She writhed as she felt her slick wetness increase, and she arched against Elrond’s touch, yearning for more. The cool water still shimmering on her skin scarcely mattered as she was burning with a great fire as Elrond slipped lower and lower still. As one hand crept between her thighs, parting them tenderly, she stiffened, her eyes springing open. Elrond looked up, his eyes filled with questioning concern.

“Do I hurt you, meleth-nîn?” he asked in a fearful voice, desperately trying to stop his hand from shaking.

Celebrían clasped his water-slicked body to her midriff.

“It is … it is … I cannot speak of it … I am afraid…” she halted.

Sliding up beside her, Elrond wound warm arms around her shoulders. Breathing softly into her sensitive ear, he said, “What is it? What do you fear? Please tell me.”

Fixing her gaze on Elrond’s striking features, Celebrían replied almost inaudibly, her face scarlet with nervousness, “I have never … I have never shared my bed before, and I am filled with trepidation.”

She made to bury her head in the pillows, but slim fingers crept under her chin, staying her. At her confession, Elrond’s face lit with an inexpressible joy which he knew he had no right to feel.

“You have never…”

“No.”

“And you have never…”

“No!” Celebrían responded indignantly.

“Will you let me … Do you still want me to do this?” Elrond tried to ignore the impatient surge of his own body. “Are you sure that you will not regret this?”

“Of course,” she answered promptly although her voice still trembled. “Are you not he whom I waited for all these long years?”

Elrond smiled brilliantly, as his hands began to travel down her body with infinite care. He paused to dip his tongue in her belly button, but her hands tangled in his hair, tugging him impatiently downwards.

When his mouth joined his questing hands, and he lapped gently at her dampness, she groaned, gripping his mussed hair to herself, watching the dark strands mingle with her own silvery curls.

As Elrond carefully nipped her clitoris between his teeth she arched her back, and, in that glorious instant, one finger penetrated her, and then another joined its companion. Her body pulsing in time with the delicious friction of Elrond’s movements, she strained against his hands, wishing that the sensation would never end.

Almost tentatively, a third finger slipped inside her as the Half-elf’s tongue danced over her skin, sometimes catching the centre of her need, sometimes shying away. Elrond, feeling the increasing slipperiness coating his fingers, became more and more aware of the tightness of his breeches, and moved both tongue and fingers even more vigorously. With a final gasp, Celebrían reached her climax and clenched around the deft digits, her head thrown back into the soft pillows in ecstasy.

They collapsed together, his head resting against her stomach for a fleeting moment. Slithering down the bed to join him, Celebrían exhaled contentedly, and began to unfasten the buttons if his breeches. He moaned at the fleeting touch of her fingers on his fiery skin as she slid the leggings from his body, tossing them to the floor. The tip of her tongue protruding from her lips, Celebrían grasped his weeping member in her hands, spreading the sticky fluid over the whole responsive length with swift movements. Her hands glided over him, strangely cool against his skin, at first feather-light, then gently squeezing him until he cried out in desire.

“If … if you have not done this before …” Elrond whimpered, feeling his need become harder and harder with every passing instant, swimming in a sea of sensation so delicious it was almost painful, “how do you know how to torment me so?”

Celebrían tried to look haughty, an effect rather spoiled by the passion in her eyes and the sly smile curving her lips. Uncertainly, she trailed one finger along the underside of his erection, unsure of his response. He could no more control the hissed breath that escaped him than he could the passing of the long years.

“Lord Elrond,” she said, caressing him until he ached with need and he thought he would weep from waiting. “You are not the only one who gathers knowledge as the years pass. I do not deny that I … I am afraid and that I was innocent of the pleasures of the flesh until tonight, but I have suffered long years without you, and in that time I have thought much and I have learnt much... If you had come to me long years ago… But you did not… I wanted to please you, to captivate you, and that drove me to listen to even the most foolish of conversations…”

Elrond passed his hands over her back, revelling in the touch of his sword-callused hands on her satiny skin.

“You captivated me the first time I saw you, your head in a book, and if you had no knowledge,” he sighed, “you would still excite me…”

He paused.

“Yet … yet you are truly mine alone?” he asked, knowing all too well that the question was both foolish and dangerous, sucking in his breath sharply as her hands skimmed across his hips and tensed thighs.

“Yours and no other’s,” she promised sincerely. A brief flicker of displeasure coursed across her face. “When will you believe that? I have waited long years for you, and I have neither given pleasure nor received it except with you, dearest Elrond, but I shall hold nothing in reserve from you tonight.”

“I apologise. I am a jealous fool.” On the very cusp of losing himself, Elrond read the truth and love in her open features. He pulled her up to face him, and flipped her onto her back. She stretched beneath him, yearning for his touch. He looked at her, begging for consent, knowing that in this there could be no deference to pride. She nodded slightly, her lip caught nervously between her teeth.

Moving swiftly and surely, desperate that her hurt should soon be lost, he propped himself up on his elbows and buried himself in her. At first Celebrían winced with the pain of penetration, but then as her lover’s skilled fingers glided over her breasts, teasing the already stiff nipples, and then trailed down her stomach to rest just above his erection, sliding with an elusive touch around her clitoris, she relaxed into the most intimate embrace.

“Do I hurt you, meleth-nîn?”

“Only a little… ai, do not cease, Elrond…”

He cupped her face with one hand, and lowered himself once more into her, touching his lips lightly to hers. When he lifted away almost regretfully, she sighed and rose with him, her hand pressing into the small of his back, urging him closer again. It took all his self-restraint to continue in his steady rhythm, to keep himself from simply sinking into her.

He watched Celebrían’s face until her eyes fluttered shut and as her body tightened around him he lost himself to indescribable pleasure, more than he had ever experienced before, more even than he had imagined in dreams from which he had awakened to sticky sheets and fading hopes.

“Ai, Celebrían!” he shuddered as spasms of release wracked him.

When the last paroxysm faded away, Elrond collapsed on top of her, revelling in the soft body trapped beneath his own. Sighing, he moved to roll away, but she restrained him with one graceful hand placed on the small of his back, her long fingers lavishing attention on the top of the crease between his buttocks.

“Stay,” she mumbled drowsily. “While you stay, I know that this is indeed real and not a dream.”

Joyously he accepted her invitation and cradled her close, one hand slipping under her head, completed by her loving presence beneath him.

“I am yours,” he whispered.

“And I yours,” Celebrían replied, luxuriating in his muscled body pinning her to the downy mattress. “Who would have thought that tossing you in a fountain would have had such wondrous consequences?”

Giggling, she clutched her lover close.

Elrond looked down at her, suddenly sombre.

“I believe we need silver rings,” he rumbled, and Celebrían shivered in delight to feel the vibrations of his voice pass through her body, exhilarated by the thought that she could make him hers for the rest of time.

“Hmmm … I believe that is customary,” she paused, “especially if you wish to bind yourself to me yet avoid any nasty incidents with my father wielding a broadsword. I much prefer you intact, meleth-nîn.”

Elrond laughed uproariously, and, gathering her to him, tangling his hands in her mithril hair, pressed a kiss to her lips.

“I shall endeavour to please my lady.” He smiled down at her gently. “To the best of my ability, and to the ending of days - and beyond.”

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Finis.


Translations:

El-nîn – my star.

Melethron-nîn – my lover (male).

Meleth-nîn – my love.