“So…am I supposed to be your concubine now?” I rushed out, hating myself for asking, but I had to know the truth. Running away had never gotten anyone anywhere, after all.
His smile was all teeth. “Based on our first meeting, I know it would seem so. Concubines are for humans. For the Sidhe, there are only lovers and life-mates.”
“And I’m which?” I said quietly, pushing my book aside.
“Our relationship is a bit more complicated, I fear. I did not expect you to be so compliant, so accepting, even though your strength and spirit were the reasons why I chose you.”
I stiffened. “Chose me for what?” I demanded more harshly than I had intended.
He nodded. “Last night I promised you answers, and you will have them, but first I would wish answers from you.”
I was relieved that my earlier tone didn’t seem to have offended him in the least, but it did nothing to alleviate the enormous knot tightening in the pit of my stomach.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, swallowing against my now raging anxiety.
“What do you think of all of this?” Sethian asked, gesturing at the room, then at himself.
It was becoming increasingly more difficult to concentrate the more I looked into his eyes. Although exactly the same shade of green as my new eye color, his irises were a bit larger than a human’s, making something primal in my brain squirm uncomfortably.
“To tell you the truth, I-I wouldn’t know where to start. This could be one of my dreams, albeit one of the weirder ones, except for what happened between—” I stopped, unable to go on. I could feel my cheeks blazing again.
My embarrassment only seemed to amuse him more. “Are you expecting to wake up?” he asked curiously. “Is that why you have accepted everything so quickly?”
“Not anymore,” I admitted, to both him and myself. “I already woke up, and everything is still the same.” I paused. “Sethian—is that really your name, or did I dream it?”
“It’s my name,” he confirmed, “although you probably will rarely hear it spoken. My people address me differently. I suppose that is as good of place as any to begin. In private, you may address me as you wish. When others are present, ‘my lord’ will suffice.”
He paused suddenly and stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. I almost forgot how to breathe.
“Or, you may address me as ‘my lord husband.’” He was watching me very carefully.
“Husband,” I repeated dumbly. Then it dawned on me. “Last night—”
I couldn’t finish, but I didn’t need to.
Sethian nodded approvingly. “Our joining was more than what you humans so fondly call ‘a roll in the hay.’”
“How can you be so casual about it?” I blurted out, embarrassed to the point of tears, but I wouldn’t cry. I don’t cry. As far as I was concerned, crying last night after the elf had so thoroughly made a mess of me didn’t count.
“My dear, so innocent,” he said teasingly. He looked way more amused about it than was decent. “Perhaps last night was not enough to bond us into a state of familiarity. Perhaps there is too much table between us now.”
He pushed his chair back. “Come, have a seat,” he said, patting his lap.
I didn’t move, afraid of what I was feeling, of how much I instantly wanted to jump up and obey him. His smile deepened, and I almost lost my resolve.
“I only nip when it’s appropriate,” he assured me, making me stiffen even more when I remembered last night’s accidental bite. “Trust me; this will help matters. I do not wish to see you so conflicted.”
God, I have never been so afraid of anyone in my life. I prided myself on my control, but this being sent every ounce of my control to the four winds. I was also afraid of myself, of what I was feeling.
Sethian waited patiently, saying nothing while I struggled with myself. I didn’t want to go to him, to be so near. I did; I didn’t…
A single tear fell from my right eye as I rose from my seat and took a step closer to him. It was the only moment that I truly hated him, not for making me come to him, not even for abducting me, but for making me show him once again what I considered the ultimate weakness—tears. However, only that single tear fell.
“I’m so confused,” I whispered.
I don’t know why I said that. Even now I still don’t know. I hadn’t meant to say anything at all. That my soul felt compelled to utter such an admission felt like a betrayal.
“Come to me, Emily,” he coaxed gently, holding out his hand. “You need not be confused any longer. I will do my best to put your mind at ease.”
That was what finally decided me. I wanted to be near him, to touch him, but what I really wanted more than that was answers, for the conflict within me to end. I needed control.
My hand was shaking as I accepted that perfect hand. I honestly felt that I had sold my soul the moment I felt his hand encircle mine. I was now utterly his; I felt it down to the very marrow of my bones.
He gently pulled me towards him, his free arm moving to encircle my waist as he set me gently onto his lap. I almost lost myself completely at that moment. I felt a sensation flood through my being very much like fitting two pieces of a puzzle together. This was so right. God help me, it was so right.
“Sethian…” I said, hearing the fright in my voice, even while in such a mentally fragile state.
The elf’s arms tightened protectively around me. I turned my head and gazed at him with frightened eyes. He bent his head nearer, so slowly that I had all the time in the world to pull away—no doubt his intention. An eternity later, I felt the shock of his warm lips on mine, and all of my fear was just—gone. Forgotten. Or perhaps even banished. He was an elf, so there was no telling what he could or couldn’t do. At this point, I was ready to believe anything.
Sethian pulled away almost immediately and smiled his charming smile. “Feel better?” he asked in that maddeningly casual voice.
“Yes.” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice. My trembling had even stopped.
“You see; I told you all would be well. You are already beginning to relax, and that pleases me immensely.”
He was right. The tension had all but melted from my body. I felt strangely at ease as well. Maybe it was because the conflict within me had finally been satisfied rather than anything magical the elf had done. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
Boldly, I laid my head onto his shoulder. Not even the mind-blowing ecstasy of last night compared to the peace I felt from such a simple gesture.
“Are you ready to hear the rest?” he asked into the silence.
“Yes.” And I was.
“I should really start with who I am, my standing within the elven realm,” Sethian began, sounding thoughtful. “As I said, last night was more than a night of pleasure. When I brought you into my bed, you became my wife. I’ll explain why this was necessary in a moment. For now, I believe knowing your husband’s true identity is the most important thing.
“You knew the name of my people, the Sidhe, but we are very much different than any account you may have heard. We exist in the same multi-dimensional space as humans, just slightly a degree or two out of phase. I know you understand what I mean because of your astrophysical studies.”
I involuntarily twitched. How in the world did he know so much about me? Had he been spying on me somehow? Reading my mind? I was anxious to ask him, but I didn’t want to interrupt him when the information he was giving me was so fascinating.
“The reason humans cannot perceive our world, or even us, is that our various types of energies vibrate at a different frequency. It’s like trying to see the color ultraviolet with human eyes alone. It’s not possible. The Sidhe, on the other hand, can easily see your world as clearly as humans see it, can even reach into and interact with your world partially.”
“That’s why the elves that appeared in my apartment looked like a bunch of animated shadows,” I said with sudden realization.
“However, what my servants did to you in your apartment was only a temporary fix. The natural laws of our dimension are very different from yours, which meant even you had to be almost completely altered in order to keep the correct level of vibration. You may have noticed how much you now resemble my people. It was necessary, and could only be done because our two worlds are essentially, to borrow another human phrase, ‘two sides of the same coin.’
“But I really have strayed from my initial point. Myself, I am what you would call a ‘king’ in your world, but that word is inadequate, really. My status is so much more, but I won’t get into that right now.”
A king… It figured. Just what had I gotten myself into?
“You say I’m your wife,” I said hesitantly. “Then what does that make me?”
“Just that—my wife,” he replied simply. “Our hierarchy does not work the same as some of those in the human world. I have another wife. She is of a different race of Sidhe than I—there are four altogether in this realm—and is queen over all the elven realm just as I am its king. She has been the queen since her birth. Our marriage is only a technicality, a symbol of unity between our two peoples.”
He laughed suddenly. “Truth be told, she really does not care too much for me. As far as elves go, I am not much to look at, I’m afraid. The queen is a very vain creature, beautiful. I honestly cannot remember the last time she was in my bed. A century, perhaps, and only because it was her duty to produce heirs. However, she never did conceive, and that is where you come in.”
“Huh?” I said cleverly. I was still trying to deal with the fact that he already had a wife, never mind the utter incomprehensibility of someone as exquisite as he believing that he “wasn’t much to look at.”
“Every few centuries, we must choose human women to bear our children,” Sethian continued. “We are not a very fertile race. In contrast, humans are exceedingly fertile. We need your human genes in our children or else sooner or later, our women are born barren. This is such a time. An elven child has not been born in over five centuries.”
The fear returned again, as did the tension. “You brought me here to have your children?”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “You will bear my heirs. That’s why marriage was necessary between us. My heirs must be legitimate.”
“But—but what if I don’t want to have a baby?” I stammered, pulling away from him.
The thought terrified me. What kind of life would we create?
“You may already be with child,” Sethian said pointedly. “You were very fertile last night.”
“Oh God,” I moaned.
I wanted to jump off his lap, to run, to just get away. Instead, I collapsed against his chest and began to cry softly. It was the last straw, and I didn’t know what else to do.
Sethian said nothing, merely stroking my hair in an attempt to comfort me.
“No,” I said suddenly, pushing away from his shoulder, “I won’t cry.” I wiped at my eyes angrily. “I need to understand this. Why me, Sethian? Why choose me?”
“Let me ask you this,” he countered, raising a hand to my face and deliberately wiping a stray tear from my cheek. “If I were to allow you to return home now, would you really want to?”
His question caught me completely off-guard, and I answered before I could stop myself, “No.”
What had I done? Both the elf and I knew it was the truth. All that was waiting for me back home was an empty apartment where my best friend and roommate worked so much and at different hours than me that we might as well have been living in different apartments. Most of my friends had scattered to the ends of the earth or dropped off the edge completely after graduating college, and those that didn’t, I rarely saw anymore.
With both work and graduate school taking up the majority of my time, I hadn’t been on a date in at least a couple of years. As far as family, both my parents had died before I had even finished my sophomore year in college, and I was an only child just as both my parents had been. No aunts or uncles; no cousins my age.
I was alone.
“I did not think so,” Sethian said with a smile that was more a smirk, “and that seems to answer your question as well. It seems I chose wisely with you. You will instill good qualities into our children.”
“Our children,” I repeated dully. “I don’t know what to think or feel anymore.”
“You need not think or feel anything if that is truly what you wish,” he reminded me quietly. “That is still a choice I give you.”
I sighed and laid back against him. “That’s something I’ll never choose. So what happens now?”
“Now,” he said, turning my face towards his, “we make love.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I didn’t try to resist him. What was the point when I really didn’t want to anyway. He found my lips parted and welcoming. However, it was a quick kiss, not exactly the rough, tongue-wrestling affair I had in mind.
“Let us find our marriage bed,” Sethian said.
As I watched with astonished eyes, the room began to change—into the same bedroom I had initially been taken to last night. We were also no longer sitting in the chair. Sethian now stood in the center of the room with me cradled in his arms.
“How did you do that?’ I asked curiously.
“Always the scientist,” he laughed. “Now is not the time for explanations. We will have countless millennia for that.”
My new elf husband wasted no time in carrying me to the bed, then tumbling us both onto the coverlet. He had been calm and serious before, but now his demeanor was completely playful. That made him all the more appealing.
Feeling the entirety of his weight pressing my body into the bed was its own ecstasy. I wrapped my legs around his torso and sought his lips while my hands threaded into his hair. I would never get tired of running my fingers through that unique silkiness.
He chuckled delightfully and said, “I guess removing our clothing the usual way is out of the question.”
And in the next second, I felt his skin against mine where cloth had been earlier. More elven magic, I supposed, but I didn’t care at the moment because Sethian had chosen to forgo foreplay and had entered me to the hilt with one powerful thrust, instead. Last night, I had not experienced his initial penetration since my mind had been mush at the time, so I wasn’t prepared for it at all.
I gasped at the unexpected amount of pain. Apparently I was a lot more sore from last night than walking around earlier had revealed, but I welcomed the pain. It was my anchor to reality, the thing that told me this was all real. In all my dreams, never once had I felt any kind of physical pain.
My elven lover moved slowly within me, perhaps aware of my slight discomfort. I closed my eyes tightly, afraid that I would start crying again. Immediately, I felt his fingers lightly caressing my face. I opened my eyes, and I swear that all time stopped. His eyes weren’t just looking at me; he was looking at me, everything I am, was, and will be—the very essence of my being.
That realization was earth-shattering enough, but it was the dew on a blade of grass amidst a raging hurricane compared to what occurred next. I seemed to leave my body momentarily, and another presence filled me—Sethian—every bit of emptiness within my soul had become saturated with his essence. No—bonded. Joined, connected—our souls had somehow become one.
It could have been a second, an hour, a year, a hundred millennia; all were correct. The first thing I saw when my wits returned was the utter shock in Sethian’s eyes. It had been my thought that the experience was t
he elf’s doing. His expression was telling me I couldn’t have been more wrong.
He lay over me, all movement completely stilled, almost as if he feared he would shatter something precious with something as mundane as breathing. Even in such a short time of knowing him, I had already become so accustomed to the elven king’s seemingly unbreakable calm. To see that calm shattered completely was like leaning against a brick house and it suddenly falling over onto its side.
“What did that mean?” I asked softly.
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“I’m not certain,” Sethian admitted, his eyes staring intently at my own. “It could mean nothing—or everything.”
Slowly, he withdrew from me and rolled over to his side, pulling me into a tight embrace as if reluctant to have me even an inch away from him.
As I lay silently in his arms, a maelstrom of emotions swept through me—curiosity, puzzlement, excitement, worry, fear…
…and I realized that they were not my own. Confusion and anxiety were the only emotions I felt in any large quantity. Those other emotions seemed almost alien, except that they left the “feel” of Sethian in their wake.
I glanced at Sethian and found him looking down at me. It was apparent that he had been staring down at me for some time.
“Why are you afraid?” I asked on a whim.
“You feel that, do you?” That seemingly impenetrable calm had returned.
“I feel it,” I confirmed. “I don’t understand how, but I’m sure it isn’t my imagination. Elven magic?”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I do not wish to get into metaphysics with you at this time. You are confused enough. Plus, I do not fully understand how this happened myself. Between Sidhe and human…never mind. Perhaps the best approach is to simply allow things to continue without speculation.”
I gasped as I suddenly found myself on my back again, a grinning elf hovering above me, his forearms bearing most of his weight.
Claimed by the Elven King: Part One Page 3