We Kiss in a Shadow by Narya

Chapter 1

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It only needed a curl of the mouth and a glance from the grass-green eyes.

Voronwë dropped his gaze. He heard Elemmakil's murmured message to the King, felt his own breath quicken, bit his lip against the aching heat that pooled in his belly.

“Thank you.” Turgon's voice was as cool as rainwater. 

Light steps crossed the room. Voronwë risked looking up, and he caught Elemmakil's smile. One dark brow arched lightly – an invitation, a challenge, a tantalising whisper of, well, then?

He swallowed burning air and let Elemmakil leave. Ten heartbeats...twenty...how many were enough, how many too long? Thirty...forty...he curled one hand into a fist, felt the delicate throb of his pulse. Fifty...his father leaned across the King, pointed at something on a map, his tone steady and low. Sixty...

Quietly, he slipped away.

The corridor was cool and shaded, sliced at intervals by shafts of summer light. Great marble statues stood proudly in carven alcoves – cold images of the Ainur, and of the kin they had left behind in Aman.

“I'd begun to give up on you.”

The voice curled into him like sun through a mountain rill. The yearning heat deepened, and it bled through his hips and into his thighs. His joints felt light and loose. “I had not looked for you here. Not today.”

Elemmakil stepped out of the shadows. “A brief respite only.” He tilted his head, lips curved, eyes dark. “You missed me?”

Voronwë's answering laugh was ragged; he crossed the gap between them on legs full of fevered air. Strong arms pulled him close, and his eyes flickered shut. “Yes.” 

Calloused fingers brushed the sweep of his brow, the tips of his ears, the curve of his mouth, and his lips throbbed in response. He cupped Elemmakil's jaw and kissed his cheek, then grazed the corner of his mouth, and felt a whisper of hot breath against his neck. Elemmakil covered his hand with his own, and with the tip of his thumb drew circles on the inside of Voronwë's wrist – lightly, gently, and yet his blood burned and sang beneath the touch. 

“Oh...”

Fingers traced a trail across his waist and down to his groin. Flesh stiffened. A moan rose through him and died in his throat as his breath caught fast and his head tipped back. “Please.”

Elemmakil kissed the arc of his neck and drew him behind a great sculpture of a thick-limbed god running alongside a stag and a doe. Slim, deft hands unlaced his tunic and untucked his shirt. The shadows lay cool against their skin, cloaking them from view, and Voronwë pressed his back into the hard smooth chill of the wall. His calf muscles shook and his breath came in shallow snatches as Elemmakil unfastened his leggings, stroked the tip of his erection, teased his nipples into aching hardness. Heat seared between the two points like lightning racing to ground. His heart seemed to pound in his throat. He tried to undo Elemmakil's laces but fumbled, his fingers thick and clumsy and unresponsive.

“It's alright.” Elemmakil kissed the sensitive hollow beneath his earlobe. “Let me do this for you.”

Voronwë let his arms fall as Elemmakil went to his knees and took him in his mouth. Strong, swift strokes set the fire in his groin rolling like thunder and pouring in waves through his limbs, and in its wake his bones dissolved. Motes of light danced across his vision. His chest tightened; gasping, light-headed, he closed his eyes. He pressed one hand flat against the wall and curled the other into silky black hair, and then yipped as teeth caught burning skin. He looked down, flushing, embarrassed by the high-pitched sound, but there was no mockery in Elemmakil's green eyes, only a laughing kindness as the older Elf whispered, “Hush, beauty,” and kissed the curve of his hip. 

Voronwë shivered. The teasing pleasure of it was like a shard edged under his skin. “Elemmakil...”

A lifted eyebrow, a wicked smile, and he fastened his mouth around the hot flesh. Voronwë folded his lips over his desperate whimper. Light darts of breath came jagged and taut with each touch of Elemmakil's tongue. Ecstasy coiled inside him, and he gave himself up to it, losing himself in the building storm. His thighs trembled as his muscles tensed; white heat flared, a glorious agony that he could hardly bear – and when orgasm shot through him it was shattering, fierce, all-consuming, heady in its joyful inevitability. His hips jerked as the echoes of it pulsed along every nerve. Elemmakil's thumb stroked his pelvic bone, drawing out the tremors with a dizzying sweet warmth, and then gently withdrew his mouth.

Voronwë gasped at the shock of the cool air. He took a staggering half-step forward, and folded, boneless, into the waiting embrace. 

Soft lips brushed his brow. He let his breath settle, relaxing into the rise and fall of Elemmakil's chest against his own, then he opened his eyes and half-laughed, “Hells. Are we mad?”

Elemmakil lifted one shoulder. “Perhaps.”

Voronwë's smile widened, and he pressed a kiss against Elemmakil's mouth, tasting salt and musk on the tender skin. “Now you.”

But a door opened down the passageway, and a solemn susurrous stole through the hall. Voronwë held his breath as they passed their hiding place – but no-one glanced into the shadows, and with a rustle of robes and the faint scent of ink and parchment, the King's Council were gone, dispersing to attend to other duties.

Elemmakil sighed. “I should return – as should you.” He stroked Voronwë's hair and tucked it back behind his ears. “They will want to know why you left. Your father, at least, will come looking.”

True enough, Voronwë thought – but the breath of summer crept in through the window, and with it a whisper of wild green abandon, of long hot evenings under a lilac sky, of song and fire and freedom, sharp and intoxicating like old wine. 

His fingers found the laces of Elemmakil's tunic. With one hand he undid them, and he curved his other arm around the slender waist, fitting their bodies together, smiling at the smothered moan, and he murmured, “Let him look.”