A Chance Enchantment by polutropos

Chapter 1

"An extraordinary feature of the A-version [of the Lay of Leithian] is the name Celegorm given to the King of the woodland Elves (Thingol); moreover in the next Canto the rôle of Beren is in A played by Maglor, son of Egnor. The only possible conclusion, strange as it is, is that my father was prepared to abandon Thingol for Celegorm and (even more astonishingly) Beren for Maglor."

- Christopher Tolkien, commentary to Canto I of the Lay of Leithian in HoMe III.

Read Chapter 1

Sunlight filters through the butterfly’s wings. They are deep blue with a saffron burst at the base and topped by translucent tips, criss-crossed by webs of white. Maglor does not take his eyes away as his pencil sweeps over the page to capture the way its wings slowly fan through the air. In this moment, it is the only movement on the still landscape of Dor Dínen; the only sound, the soft scritch of pencil against paper.

Maglor can feel the pulse of the land intensifying as he draws nearer to the borders of Doriath. ‘There is nothing there,’ Celegorm had said. ‘Only deathly silence and an angry forest.’

In his journey down the banks of the Aros, Maglor has found that there is life here, and movement – but it unfolds almost imperceptibly, as if the heartbeat of the place does not follow the normal rhythms of time. It is slow and subtle and full of mystery. It tempts him towards the woods.

The butterfly takes flight. Maglor wets his paints and fills the sketch in with impressions of colour while the memory is sharp. He lets the paint dry under the last rays of Anar as it sinks behind the distant peaks Ered Wethrin, a blaze of crimson and gold.

Rána does not rise that night. Maglor rolls out his bed and sleeps under undimmed starlight. His dreams are of sweet nectar on midnight blossoms, the full notes of a wooden pipe, and billowing blue silk.

*

Lúthien’s spirit swells. She feels her divine blood coursing hotly through her veins and seeping from her pores. She barely grazes the earth as she whirls and leaps through the clearing ringed by tall elms. The stars, the wings of glowing moths, and the blooms of niphredil that burst beneath her feet blur together. Points of shining white in all directions.

Daeron’s music is potent tonight. This far from Menegroth, he plays more freely, as if on the fringes of the forest he is released from the usual constraints he places upon his art. Melian’s magic is also strongest here. The trees thrum with her Song. For those who resist, it seizes them with fear and freezes their blood. But for those who invite that Timeless Music into their souls, it awakens their deepest passions. Tonight, it has ensnared Lúthien in a web of desire that she will not resist.

She harnesses her power, gathering its breath inside her lungs and letting it spill from her throat in song. Her singing wraps around the branches, climbs to the canopy, and finds Daeron perched upon a branch.

*

The shiver begins in Daeron’s fingers as they flutter over his flute, then travels up to brush his lips. His heart hammers against his ribs, but he draws the instrument away from his mouth calmly and smiles. His dearest friend, his sometime lover, has cast her net. He watches her dance. The play of light and shadow where her dress dips down between her breasts; the shimmer of her thighs as the silk shifts and glides over them; the bright white of her teeth when she catches his gaze and grins. He lets her voice enter into him.

The breath in his throat catches with longing, but he brings the flute back to his lips all the same and plays a different song. One that is intended to wash over her like a caress. She shudders and her singing slides into a gasp of pleasure.

Her mind opens, a flush of fuchsia, and the image she shows him is of her bared body rising from a dark pool, thick black hair clinging to the full mounds of her breasts and the curve of her waist. His imagination follows the lines of her stomach, sloping like a ‘v’ towards the water’s surface, but he is stopped where it laps against a glimpse of her curling hairs, the rest obscured by the reflection of the constellations in the pool’s black mirror.

She laughs brightly and snatches the vision away, even as she suddenly stops her dance, arms thrown to the sky and panting with the bliss of exertion. Removed though he is, Daeron can almost feel her breaths against his collarbone.

*

A flutter of rapid notes spills down from the tree and Lúthien feels a rush of warm wetness between her thighs. In the blurred space between body and music, she becomes Daeron’s instrument. His mouth is on her, his tongue pushing inside her, his fingers gripping her thighs. She moans at her companion’s boldness tonight, a match for her own, and swallows hungrily as she locks onto his eyes in the branches.

She walks towards him and begins to circle the thick tree trunk, murmuring her encouragement and need as he continues to play her until she is weak and gasping against the tree.

“Come down,” she commands in a low voice.

The music stops and he lands noiselessly on the ground before her.

*

Maglor suddenly wakes with an aching need such as he has not felt in many years. Panting and damp with sweat, he is powerless against it. He seeks to relieve himself with the touch of his own hands, looking up at the tree cover and the glowing light of fireflies. As he strokes himself, he can almost feel another’s lips on his own and the touch of skilled fingers ghosting over his skin. It is as though the forest itself caresses him. His release is sudden and intense, and in the moment of his climax, the music of a pipe accompanied by melodious moans of pleasure fill his mind.

Even as he wets his parched throat from his waterskin, lying with eyes pinched shut and panting, a vision comes to him of a woman standing waist deep in a dark pool. He follows the shape of her body to full, red lips curled into an inscrutable smile. It seems as though she beckons him with her glittering grey irises and wide black pupils.

His eyes fly open and he is straining again against the tightness of his breeches. He lifts a hand to his neck and draws careful breaths, waiting for his frantic pulse to slow. Is this the spell of Doriath’s Queen? To drive intruders mad with insatiable lust? He laughs aloud as he sits up on the bedroll. Small wonder his brother warned him against the place.

A tawny nightingale flits through the air and comes to land on a low branch before him. She twitters and trills, cocking her head.

“What is it?” he asks the bird, and she bounces towards him.

He holds out a finger. With a flutter of wings she has landed on it and examines him with one beady black eye. She seems confused by his presence, uncertain. Perhaps a spy of the Queen? No, the bird is friendly. He smiles and gently strokes the downy feathers of her neck with a fingertip. Then she suddenly bursts into flight and lands upon a higher branch, where she is joined by dozens of her companions. They chatter to one another and flit in circles through the air. He stands, entranced by their song and dance, scarcely aware of his feet moving over the ground. He follows them deeper into the forest.

*

Daeron plays and Lúthien sings as she opens the ties of his light robe to expose his chest. The flowering vines there were painted beneath his skin by Melian herself, before Lúthien came into the world. Melian guided him in reshaping himself into a form that more closely resembles his spirit. Lúthien caresses her mother’s artistry, admiring the way each flower shifts and flushes with colour under the touch of her fingers.

With one hand, she ghosts over his throat and under his sheet of silver hair to clasp his neck. The other slowly draws the flute away from his lips.

“Tonight I want more than can be had through thought and music,” she whispers into the narrowing space between them. She leans her forehead against his and sings as he inhales the breath of her voice. The flute is cast on the ground beside them.

Daeron’s longing hum finds the shell of her ear, outlining it with his tongue. He nips at its point and slides off her shawl, caressing the sensitive skin of her inner arms before lacing their fingers together. “Anything,” he says, burying himself in her hair. “Tell me what you want.”

She guides his hand beneath her skirt to where she has tucked a finely-sculpted wooden phallus into straps around her waist and thighs.

He pulls his head back with a surprised laugh. “Mhm! Where did you find that, my Lúthien?”

“In your rooms, when you were away.” She chuckles and bites her lip. “Why would you keep such a thing hidden from me?” Rolling her hips into his touch, she encourages him to stroke the carved cock. “I know you want more than anything to be filled and taken.” She bares her teeth playfully and pulls him against her by the hems of his open robe. “Let me take you like a man.”

Daeron’s amusement sparkles in his eyes as he uses his free hand to grope at her breast. “Certainly you may take me, princess, but I would not have you be anything other than you are.” He is toying with her hardening nipple through the fabric and she swats him away. Pleasant as it is to be touched by those skilled fingers, he won’t find her so easily distracted. She has a game to play.

“Not even Fëanor’s minstrel son?” she asks with a defiant thrust of her chin, relishing the disdained name of the Golodhrim’s dead king on her tongue. Nudging his legs apart with a knee, she presses her thigh against him. Since Daeron returned from the feast at Ivrin, she has seen the way his neck flushes and his heartbeat quickens when anyone speaks of Maglor Fëanorion. “He left you wanting, did he not?”

Daeron only groans and kisses her neck, clutching at her waist with both hands

She tugs on the ends of his unbound hair, inviting him to lower himself before her. “I know you too well, my Daeron. You cannot keep a secret from me.”

Her head falls back against the tree and he begins pleasuring her with his mouth, just as he had promised with his music. His hands are busy removing the phallus from where it is strapped to her thigh.

He moves his mouth away to place the wooden cock against her hot and swollen arousal. She sighs longingly as the currents she wove through it with a spell begin to unfurl inside her.

*

The tangle of roots and ferns seems to part before Maglor as he follows after the nightingales. He does not know how long he has been walking when he stumbles out into a clearing amid a grove of elms. The birds soar towards the sky and swoop back down, circling the open space.

*

Kneeling on the grass before Lúthien, Daeron straps the phallus into its harness. She moans deeply as the polished wood presses down against her. The wood comes alive when it meets her body, and his hands, normally so steady and sure, shake with anticipation. A dizziness takes him and he has to rest his head against her leg and close his eyes to regain his wavering sight.

When he has found himself again, he takes one plump buttock in each hand and circles her cock with his tongue before wrapping his lips around it. She gasps and gently rocks her hips each time he slides down its length.

“I can feel you,” she says, and indeed he can feel her, too. The wooden shaft warms and throbs. Then he knows she has laced the wood with some magic beyond his skill. He quickens his motions and she begins to cry out and thrust against the back of his throat.

When he closes his eyes, Daeron easily conjures the voice of that bright-eyed Golodh in Lúthien’s cries, as rich and intoxicating as the night he first heard Maglor sing by the pools of Ivrin and nearly drowned in untameable desire. He is flooded with the memory of frantic, bruising kisses behind a curtain, a hard shaft pressed against his stomach – and then the burning ache of that promise withdrawn as Maglor staggered back with guilt in his eyes and hastened away without a word. Lúthien is right. In the year since, he has often longed to know how it would feel to have that shaft fill him, to have that voice ripple through him.

Now he rocks against his own hand between his thighs, the other splayed out against the small of Lúthien’s back. She is singing when she comes, a fearless song of ecstasy, and Daeron pops his mouth from her cock, carrying himself through his own release by pulsing his fingers through his clothing, bracing against the damp soil with the heel of his other hand.

*

The couple across the clearing climax in a crescendo of sound. Maglor’s thick, dry tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth as he tries to stifle any reaction. He is painfully hard, hips rolling involuntarily to seek friction against the tightness of his breeches.

As soon as he had set eyes on the lovers, he dashed behind an elm and slumped down against its trunk to avoid being noticed, but the sounds that the woman made in her pleasure stirred him to a lust he did not think himself capable of. Yet he has dared not tend to it, for he is certain he would not be able to keep his own cries from joining with hers.

He startles and freezes at the voice that does join her now, for it is all too familiar to him. Daeron, minstrel of Thingol. He digs his nails into the soil. Daeron, whose breath shaped sweet, full notes as it passed through a wooden flute; whose pink, curving mouth Maglor had been too proud, too ashamed to accept when it was eagerly offered. But he has not been too proud in the time since to imagine his own hands to be those supple lips and to find release in their memory.

A twinge of guilt settles between his ribs now as he recalls how their shared music led him to mindlessly succumb to his yearning. How those hooded eyes had then narrowed in confusion and disgust when Maglor pulled away.

He was sure that more than just a fence of enchantment lay between him and ever hearing that beautiful voice again. But how could he have come here? Perhaps this is indeed the strange magic of the Girdle. Perhaps he is entrapped even now, while Melian plays upon his deepest desires. Taunting him with guilt and lust in equal measure only to spit him back out in shame, his mind stripped bare.

*

Lúthien cards her fingers through Daeron’s hair. He has collapsed against her, cheek pressed to one knee and hands idly caressing her calf. While she, divine blood surging through her veins, has already recovered and imagines how she will next take him, he still draws heavy breaths. His temple thuds steadily against her leg.

Her gaze drifts up from contemplating his pleasingly exhausted state and she catches sight of a nightingale darting through the air. Strange – she had not summoned her birds. She follows its path to the opposite side of the glade where more have gathered. They swoop and circle one of the tree trunks. Extending her thought towards them, she glimpses the world through their eyes. There is a body leaning against the tree, knees clutched to his chest, face concealed by a spill of black hair.

She straightens and nudges Daeron aside. “There is someone else here,” she says.

He hurriedly staggers to his feet, his expression sharpened with fear. “Let us leave then!” he hisses, clasping her by the wrist and tugging at her arm.

“No.” She pulls him back and glares, letting him feel her anger at his cowardice, his failure – always – to trust in their combined power. “He fears us.”

She scowls and shakes off his hand. As she steps across the glade, she rearranges her billowing skirts over her legs. Daeron’s footsteps trail behind her.

*

The sight of the elf that Lúthien yanks up by the elbow from behind the elm freezes Daeron in his steps. Maglor stares back at him with the same wide-eyed amazement.

“How…?” is all Daeron manages to say.

“I don’t know!” Maglor says. “I was journeying… outside the borders… the birds!”

Lúthien tosses back her head and laughs. She drops Maglor and extends her arm to invite the nightingales to perch along it. “Well done, my sweets,” she says to the birds.

“You brought him here?” Daeron tears his gaze away from Maglor to look at Lúthien.

She laughs again, waving her arm and sending the birds fluttering off. “No, of course not. But yet he has come through my mother’s nets! How fortuitous!”

Daeron’s gaze strays back to Maglor as he straightens and widens the space between himself and Lúthien. He cannot help but notice the bulge in Maglor’s breeches and the sheen of sweat on his skin. Though he should be disgusted and angered, his thoughts are consumed by the feathery heat spreading between his thighs.

“Your mother?” Maglor’s brows furrow over his bright eyes.

“Yes, lachend,” she replies. “My mother, Queen Melian.”

Maglor reaches for a weapon at his waist, grasping nothing but the air. He looks as if he has just risen from sleep, barefoot and wearing only travel-worn breeches and a loose tunic. Lúthien sways towards him and he seems to waver, wanting to turn and run, but remains transfixed.

*

Melian’s daughter – Maglor knows her name, he must have learned her name, but it escapes him now as she moves towards him, silks shifting over her curves, flashes of velvety skin, and a thick tumble of black hair netted with the light of the stars. He can feel Daeron’s eyes on him, also, and, in his state of prolonged, unsatisfied hunger he is rendered helpless. In this state Lúthien – her name has returned to him – could strip him bare and lead him before the King and Queen of Doriath and he would not have the strength to resist. Damn these Iathrim!

She grabs him by the hair and tilts his head back. Long, thick lashes flutter over her piercing eyes as they rake over him.

“And you, lovely lachend?” Her voice has dropped to a husky whisper. “You are a Fëanorion, are you not?” Hair still tugging at his scalp, the fingers of her other hand wrap around and dig into the muscle of his upper arm with unnatural strength. “My father has said your House is not welcome here.”

Maglor grimaces and braces himself for whatever humiliation she intends to inflict upon him, faintly hoping it might at the least slake his painful lust.

She tosses her head back and shouts, “This is the singer, is he not, Daeron?” Maglor does not see or hear Daeron’s response before Lúthien’s hot breath is in the shell of his ear. “My minstrel told me you sing beautifully. Sometimes,” she loosens her grip and kneads his muscles, “like ocean waves lapping against a pebbled shore,” she winds his hair around her fist, “sometimes like a storm tearing at the sides of cliffs.”

Maglor smirks. So that is what Daeron said of him? How poetic.

“So you agree?” Lúthien releases him suddenly and gives him a gentle push towards the centre of the glade. “Come,” she smiles and steps lightly backwards, playfully swaying her skirts, “let us hear you sing.” She falls gracefully to the ground, folding her legs beneath billowing silks.

It is impossible. It is a dream, Maglor thinks, but his scalp still smarts from the powerful elf’s grasp on his hair and he can feel bruises forming where she held it. As he stares dumbly at her, leaning back on her hands with her head cocked to one side, he does not notice the other body come up beside him. Daeron’s fingers fall lightly on his hips as he is rotated to face him. Maglor does not have a chance to speak before Daeron’s lips are on his and he is transported back to the musicians’ tent at Ivrin, pressing up against a dresser in a tangle of curtains. Desperately, Maglor presses his aching hardness against Daeron’s hips, while the other’s tongue searches deep into his mouth, running over and circling his own. Maglor moans into the kiss and, all too soon, Daeron pulls away.

Daeron wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his robe, untied and open over his chest, exposing intricate tattoos of vines and bright flowers.

“There.” Daeron’s pink mouth is twisted into a slight sneer as he quietly exults over a denial Maglor has long-deserved. “You have your voice now. The princess wants to hear you sing.” He steps back to join Lúthien on the grass.

Indeed, Maglor finds he does have his voice, and his courage. And, at least for the moment, a brief respite from his insistent arousal.

*

The Golodh’s golden voice scatters over Lúthien’s skin, raising tiny bumps of excitement everywhere she allows it to touch. She reaches between her legs to adjust the phallus that she has let drop between them, stroking its head through the thin fabric of her skirts. She can feel the light caress of her own hand where the wood meets her body.

She glances at Daeron beside her, but he is lost in the sound of Maglor’s voice, completely still but for the heavy rise and fall of his chest and the ripple of his throat when he swallows.

Growing more and more eager under the touch of her own hand, she raises her voice to join with Maglor’s song, piercing and bright where his is low and dark, and as she does she stands and goes towards him. They sing into each other’s souls, eyes locked onto eyes. The trees groan and bend towards them. They draw closer together. Lúthien begins to dance around him.

He is nearly as tall as she is, his eyes even brighter than hers, and his waves of dark hair nearly as black as hers. But his voice – his voice caresses like satin and settles inside her like wine. She runs towards him and with strong arms he lifts her from the ground to soar above him, then throws her so she spins through the air, laughing and singing and so very alive. In another time, another place, she might have fallen in love with him. He catches her effortlessly in his arms and she pants, inhaling the intoxicating scent of blackberries and salt.

*

While they dance, Daeron is burning. He shucks off his robe and runs his fingertips over his own lips, taking them in his mouth and sucking. He lowers himself onto his stomach, propped on his folded arms. His toes curl as he strains to relieve his need against the earth, muttering curses beneath his breath.

In Maglor’s arms, Lúthien is as jubilant as a flower unfolding to fullness. Maglor lets her feet fall to the ground and she draws circles over his chest with her fingers. “My mother has shown you great favour in allowing you past her web of protection.” Glancing over her shoulder, she smiles at Daeron in invitation. “And favour to her minstrel, also.”

When she turns back, Maglor swallows her in a kiss.

*

Pressed against the heat of Lúthien’s body, Maglor loses himself in the taste of her mouth – like mulling spices and ripe pears. He melts into the thrum of her Song as she opens herself to him. Guided by her hand, he pulls out the pins that fasten her dress above the shoulder, lets the fabric fall away, breaks their kiss to trail lips down her neck, over her collarbone, cups a hand beneath her breast, rolls its nipple under his thumb and passes the tip of his tongue over its exposed curve.

The memory of a rumour he’s heard, of how Elwë was ensnared in a wood by his Maia Queen, flits across his mind. The thought is forgotten as he takes their daughter’s pert nipple between his lips.

Lúthien tilts her chin back and sighs. “Daeron,” she moans, and Maglor feels another set of hands reaching around from behind him, palming his constricted erection and stretching long fingers between his thighs. Pressed between them, he groans into Lúthien’s cleavage and tugs at one full breast, gathering as much of her silken-firm flesh in his hand as he can. The fingers of the other hand lace themselves through the river of hair falling down her back, pulling her towards his devouring caresses.

Teeth scrape and bite the back of his neck while Daeron works his laces free and plunges a hand down to confidently pull up and encircle his shaft. Maglor curses and thrusts uncontrollably into his grasp.

“This was all I wanted,” Daeron whispers in Maglor’s ear before nibbling on its edges. “Why did you deny me?"

Lúthien jerks away and spins him to face Daeron, even as Daeron drops to his knees and pulls down Maglor's breeches in the same movement. His erection bobs in the cool night air. He is briefly distracted by the creak of branches and the blurred shapes of moving trees. Then Lúthien is lifting his tunic over his head from behind him. He shivers as her hands come down to trail over his ribs.

Daeron guides his feet out of his breeches and casts them aside. Dark eyes look up at him hungrily and fingers ghost over the concave curves of his buttocks before kneading and pulling at the soft flesh. Suddenly, the perfect shape of a cock slides between Maglor's thighs and Lúthien’s full breasts are against his bare back. He gasps in surprise, reaching back to feel for the leather straps around her waist, then glances down to see her blue dress is pooled at their feet. He leans back against her shoulder, panting with bliss.

“Will you have me?” Her hand is on his forehead, pulling him back, as she thrusts again. The wood of her cock grows somehow slick and warm against his skin.

“Ah, Eru!” he swears, his vision hazy as his gaze is held towards the stars. “Yes - aah! - yes!”

*

Kneeling before Maglor, Daeron admires a bead of pearly liquid glistening on the tip of his shaft where the skin is rolling back around his swollen head. Lúthien’s wooden cock is slotted between Maglor’s thighs, and Daeron reaches to palm it, pressing it up against Maglor's sack. Maglor shouts in pleasure, filling the glade with his cry. Lúthien offers a harmony while Daeron takes Maglor’s straight erection in hand again and pulls the skin back to fully expose his flush head. He drags his tongue through the slit and Maglor cries louder, bucking towards him. From the corner of his vision, Daeron can see Maglor’s fingers gripping Lúthien’s thighs as his own legs quiver beneath him.

Daeron stuffs one hand down his own trousers and his hot wetness is nearly dripping onto his fingers. He slides two into his entrance and leans forward to take Maglor in his mouth.

“No!” Lúthien cries. “No.”

She nudges the back of Maglor’s knees with hers. It is enough to send him falling forward over Daeron, who feels a shock of pain up his arms as his wrists strike the ground behind him to break his fall. Maglor is over him on all fours, looking debauched and beautiful with his long hair clinging to his naked body. He is panting and grinning wildly and, before Daeron can think, Maglor has taken him with a hungry kiss, tongue reaching down his throat. Their teeth clatter as he grins again and urgently tugs at his waistband.

“Have you no restraint, Golodh?” Lúthien shouts above them.

Daeron can barely make her out over the pounding of blood in his ears. Then Maglor is pulled off of him and his hips writhe at the sudden, unwelcome absence of his body. “Why…” he moans.

“Fëanorion, put your mouth on him.”

Someone is tugging off Daeron’s trousers and when he peers down the length of his prone body he sees Maglor staring back up at him with fiery eyes, biting down on his lip as he strips Daeron naked. Then he is taken between his lips, sucking, tongue searching out and licking at his entrance. Maglor scrapes lightly with his teeth and Daeron screams and digs his heels into the earth. A thumb plunges into him, Maglor’s mouth still working deftly at his swollen arousal, and Daeron strikes the ground with his fists, cursing, because he is soaring beyond his control now, on the brink of toppling over the edge, but the sensation of now is so exquisite that he cannot bear to let it end.

*

Lúthien comes to kneel on the grass and strokes herself to the sight of Maglor’s face pressed between Daeron’s thighs. She has never heard Daeron scream as he does now and it sets a flame of jealousy in her breast that surges down to pool in her abdomen. Daeron grimaces and clutches at the grass and she is sure he will peak at any moment. It is then that she twists her hand around Maglor’s hair and tugs him off, leaving her friend swearing and shouting with dismay.

“Agh! Why did you…!” Daeron sputters, trying vainly to lift himself up on trembling arms.

Pulling Maglor aside, Lúthien reaches around him to Daeron, wetting her palm with the slick and saliva glistening on his swollen sex. Daeron kicks and whimpers.

“You will not take him, Golodh, without me inside you,” she tells Maglor. She will have them both, together. As she slides the liquid in her palm over her wooden phallus, it becomes more viscous, thicker, responding to her needs.

Maglor has fallen to hands and knees again and she takes him by the hips to pull him flush against her stomach, sliding the cock between his buttocks. The curses that tumble from his mouth make her shudder with delight.

She slips a finger down his cleft and holds it against his opening. He falls onto his forearms with a gasp. Beyond him, Daeron is still splayed out on the ground with an arm thrown over his eyes, biting his lip while his thighs quiver uncontrollably. Her wooden cock is seeping its own slick now and her hands are dripping with it. As she prepares Maglor to take her, she starts to hum and sing softly. Her song releases heady perfumes of blooming flowers and conjures the heat of the sun even here in the midnight darkness. The tune courses through her fingers to relax and loosen him. Her phrases gain in fullness as he moans extravagant glissandos to the orchestration of her touch.

*

How Maglor has not spilled already, a dozen times, he cannot understand. Something, somehow, holds him on the brink of exploding. His erection is so full and hard that he could swear it has grown impossibly large, as if no other part of him exists. But he is reminded that he is whole by his tongue, so swollen in his throat that he might choke on it, and Lúthien's fingers opening him and sending sparks through his cock and up his spine with each thrust. He is begging her to fill him, though only wordless cries escape him.

Before him, Daeron’s flushed sex wavers in and out of his vision. He contends with the incompatible urges to drive himself back against Lúthien’s hand and to plunge forward to sink into those beautiful folds.

“I am going to take you now.” The head of Lúthien’s phallus is against him, teasing at the rim, and she is tugging his neck back by his hair. “Pull him forward,” she instructs.

Supporting himself on shaking knees, Maglor reaches for Daeron’s ankles and drags him over the ground towards him. Daeron’s arms fall back and he screams — or sings, Maglor can no longer tell the difference, all sound becomes music in times like these. (Has there ever been a time like this?) He takes hold of Daeron’s hips, not caring that his thumbs dig into the bone and his fingers bruise the flesh.

In a moment of impossible bliss, Lúthien slides her cock into him in a single movement that propels him forward and into the tight but ready ring of Daeron’s entrance. A black breathlessness overcomes him.

*

The ground under Daeron’s shoulders and feet shakes under the combined vibrations of their shouts. The rest of him floats, arched up to meet Maglor’s hips as he fucks him – as Lúthien fucks him. His breath comes in hitched moans as he tears at the grass and clenches so tightly around Maglor’s stiff erection that he can feel its pulsing veins. Even as he is thrust forward by the strength of Lúthien's hips rocking behind him, Maglor pulls Daeron tighter against him and screams. The sound of it rattles through Daeron’s body and he clamps his thighs around Maglor’s hips.

“Play with his nipples,” Lúthien says between ragged breaths. “He loves that.”

Maglor releases Daeron's hips and in place of his hands Lúthien’s long fingers take hold of him beneath the knees. Lúthien holds him close against Maglor’s body and uses him as leverage for her insistent thrusts. Despite the softness of her palms and the slenderness of her wrists, Lúthien’s strength is greater than either of theirs, Daeron observes, as his head lolls back and he groans and grins in ecstasy.

The pads of Maglor’s palms running up his torso are rough, calloused not from pressing strings against the neck of a lute but from wielding swords. With both hands, Daeron notes, and moans as they graze over his peaked and aching nipples. Then Maglor lifts his back even higher, pulling him nearly off the ground, to bend over and lave his chest with his tongue.

*

Daeron’s elegant tattoos flush and dance with colour as Maglor teases him with mouth and hands. Lúthien is nearly sent over the edge by the decadent sighs the flame-eyed Golodh draws from Daeron’s throat, the way his slender body arches back with effortless grace, and the contrast of Maglor’s taut muscles and rich, golden-hued skin against Daeron’s, glistening silver-white. They are a painting together, a soaring movement of moans and sighs. And she did that, she thinks, pounding against them, mind resolved on nothing else now besides chasing her own climax.

Her cock slides smoothly along the walls of Maglor’s opening, expanding just enough to keep him in a state of constant, gentle straining. Each time Daeron clenches around him, Maglor, too, tightens around her cock. The vibrations sent between the wood and her cunt are so intense now that she does not know where she begins and it ends. Everything is throbbing. The air itself caresses her, ghosting over her swollen breasts and her burning lips. The breath of the forest lets her experience, as if it were done to herself, what Daeron feels, what Maglor feels.

She screams and wrenches on Daeron’s calves, sending Maglor flying back up against her with the force of her thrust. There are sparks flying over her skin, consuming fire burning through her, and she slings an arm just below Maglor’s neck, clinging to him and holding him against her to keep from falling as her entire body shakes with the force of her release.

*

Maglor nearly drops Daeron when Lúthien slams against him, but Daeron clings to them both with his thighs. He is slick with sweat and Maglor’s hands scramble desperately to keep hold of him.

A surge like roaring water tumbles through Daeron’s body and he is carried inexorably towards his climax.

He squirms and slides along Maglor’s cock. “Come with me,” he pleads.

“She won’t let me!” Maglor cries, but it is too late, because Daeron is breaking against the cliffs, eyes locked onto Lúthien’s as they find their bliss together.

*

There is an explosion of white flowers on the ground, setting the whole clearing aglow, as Daeron and Lúthien shudder behind and before him. Maglor is still not spent, though, and he fucks Daeron through his orgasm. The frustration of his denied bliss makes him burn even hotter than before. But soon Lúthien is rocking against him again, slower and deeper, and murmuring a deep and sensuous melody. The niphredil sway and release a sweet perfume like rain and apple and honey.

Maglor lets his head fall back with a sigh of relief as he in turn rocks against Daeron. The nightingales are circling above them, chirping harmonies.

“Thank you,” he mutters.

Lúthien hums and makes a little laughing sound beside his ear. “For what?” She kisses his neck.

For what? He does not know, only that he trusts her completely now to guide him to a crescendo of pleasure.

They move together in contentment for long, delicious minutes. Voices build, the air around them thickens and vibrates with scent and sound. Maglor is so lost in the sensation of melting together with them, so displaced in time, that he scarcely notices the flood coursing up and through his shaft. Time stands still until the sudden, excruciating moment of bliss when he bursts in Daeron’s warmth, the gush of his seed surrounding him, drowning him and sucking him deeper into that cradle of tight, spasming heat.

*

There are three elves in the clearing, twined together. The first: nimble, curving like the arch of tree hollow, silver hair splayed out around his head like watery moonbeams, fingernails rooting him to the soil. The second, on his knees, is settled deeply between the spread limbs of the first. He is tall, dark hair spilling over his shoulders like ripples of loamy earth along a river bank; it clings in places to his damp skin. The third is radiant. Tall and slender as a birch, as elegant as a willow, as powerful as an oak; hair as thick as a bed of moss, as shimmering as a hummingbird’s velvety breast, as black as the blanket of night behind the stars.

All three throw back their necks at once. At the sound of their cries, leaves tremble on their branches and fall. The nearby creek quickens its flow, swelling in a torrent of white water. The nightingales excitedly chatter above them, swirl upwards, and then scatter into the forest in alarm.

*

“Mmm,” Lúthien sighs as her cock slips from Maglor’s opening. She unties the straps and sets it on the ground beside her. A rush of wetness trickles down her thighs. She shudders at the touch of the night air against her bared and sensitive sex. Coming onto all fours, she crawls to join her companions on their bed of dewy niphredil.

Maglor is still buried in Daeron’s body, heaving into the curve of his neck while Daeron trails his finger up and down his spine, nuzzling his hair aside to press a kiss to his shoulder.

Lúthien presses the length of her body up against them both, first kissing Daeron’s mouth, then stretching her neck over him to find Maglor’s lips, gasping for air but eager for her touch. He shivers and smiles as she pulls back, then reaches for her hand and laces their fingers together.

“I love you,” he says, addressing them both.

Lúthien laughs. “Ah, lachend.” She finds his grey-bright eyes with hers. In the glittering wells of his pupils, she perceives fate unfolding in colours unlike those that wrap tendrils around their bodies now. “We are part of the Great Theme, as are you. Our fates do not align.”

“Shh.” Daeron sets his thumb lightly against her lips. “Lúthien…” He stares at her awhile, his brows gathering in thought. He says no more, instead closing his eyes and resting his chin against Maglor’s head. They drift to sleep to the sound of distant water falling over stone.

*

The Sun is already high in the sky when Maglor wakes. He is alone, and on his bed at the borders of the forest. But an iridescent shawl of blue silk is draped over his naked body, and a wooden flute lies on the ground beside him.