marriage bed | for awordandablow

[shieldofrohan]

And so it is done, and all is done, and she does not know how to feel.

It is not that she mislikes Mercutio. She likes Mercutio very much, in fact; likes her more the more she has seen, and would gladly count her a friend. And while she is, perhaps, not quite so highly-born as Éowyn had hoped for, nobody less than a King could meet that mark.

No, the trouble is deeper, for marriage is an exile, and Éowyn cannot help but feel that she should not have allowed herself to be exiled. Not even into bright smiles and ready wit, and not even at the cost of the alliance it has brokered. She should be home, and holding fast to cold duty and colder loneliness, and she should not have allowed herself to be sent away, no matter how she loathed the cage that Edoras has become. Her mind is constantly drawn back northwards, to the Mark and its King, to all that is uncertain and all that has now been put from her reach.

It has been apparent all day, that distance and that graveness, though she has answered no questions on the subject and denied it entirely. She has taken no joy in the feasting and festivity, nor in the strange rites of marriage. She has retreated within herself, rather, become once again the graven image of a noblewoman, graceful and unimpeachable and distant.

It is only now, at the doorway of her wedding chamber, that she seems to find herself back in the immediate: back in Verona, back in this summer's evening, clad in embroidered green silk and with her hair a shining cloak around her shoulders. At the doorway, and with - she finds, on reflection - no idea at all what lies beyond.

She had expected to be married to a man, and she has at least some grasp on what that would entail. Here, she does not know at all what is expected, or how they will determine when it is done, or whether there will somehow still be blood on the sheets come morning. She has come this far, for a wonder, without considering the next steps, and now they are before her, and her fears about home are replaced by a fear much more immediate - that, in her ignorance, she will be embarrassed.

(And that it will be less than she hopes, and that it will be nothing at all. That she will gain no pleasure, despite her hopes, and be trapped to follow no other. That she will be inadequate to the task, and see Mercutio stray, and be humiliated by it. There are so many ways that this could go badly, and rob her of what makes this whole matter bearable.)

Lady Éowyn - once of Edoras, now, she supposes, of Verona - takes a deep breath and puts her hand to the door, stepping inside. As she does so, she looks at her bride, and that cold mask of distance has cracked, for a moment showing the uncertainty beneath.

"Well. So we are wedded, then." She can think, in the moment, of nothing more useful to say.

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[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn cannot help it: she laughs, and at once feels bad for laughing. But how can she help but laugh, at such a show? Stumbling to regain her footing, half-stifling her smile, she grasps Mercutio's arm, and there is genuine concern there as well as amusement.

"Another time, perhaps," she suggests, only a little sardonically, "when we are both whole and hale again?" And, to soften the blow, she leans in to kiss Mercutio again, her hand tracing down to find her bride's.

[awordandablow]

"I ought to be hale enough," Mercutio grumbles between kisses, "to carry a sweet bit o' nothing to bed!"

But she twines her fingers with Éowyn's, and tugs her over to the bed -- both of them on their feet. There, she catches Éowyn by the waist again, and in a movement more reminiscent of her usual grace, falls back onto the bed, pulling Éowyn down atop her. As soon as Éowyn lands, Mercutio's hands are busy gathering fistfuls of her skirts and pushing them out of the way, searching for the ties or loops of any undergarments.

[shieldofrohan]

"Am I nothing, then?" Her affront is not altogether feigned; being ignorant of any other meaning, it is easy to take the comment amiss. She straddles Mercutio's hips, sitting up with an arched eyebrow. "Do not wrong me, lady, I am hale enough to make myself harder to handle."

But she does not particularly want to, at this moment. Nor, while she is a little unsure of what was meant, does she genuinely think the comment was intended as a dismissive one. As Mercutio's hands work at her skirts, baring fair, toned thighs, Éowyn's own hands go to her embroidered belt, making quick work of first that and then the brooches at her shoulders, so that the heavily embroidered silk falls away and leaves her in her underdress and petticoat.

"Come," she remarks, leaning over to set the brooches down on the nearest surface, "tell me you would fain have me lighter, and less of me to carry; and I will shed a little more weight, if you ask."

[awordandablow]

Mercutio's breath catches pleasantly when Éowyn's weight settles atop her, making heat throb between her legs. It catches again when the dress finally falls away, and she can begin to see Éowyn's body, limned with firelight. Beneath her own tunic, her nipples harden.

"Oh, my lady, mistake me not." Her hands land on Éowyn's thighs, warm and nimble, and start to slide up them. "Thou and I have that thing which is like nothing else i'th'world."

Her thumb rubs over a spot high on the inside of Éowyn's thigh before her fingers creep a little higher, seeking to cup where she's warm and soft and -- Mercutio hopes -- wet.

"I'll not ask thee for mercy, for I know thou wouldst scoff." She grins up at her. "But I'll beg for thy lightness, aye, the better to bear thee up."

[shieldofrohan]

Now it is Éowyn who gasps, her breath catching sharply at the warmth of another's hand where she is joined. There is wetness there, certainly, and a furnace-heat that seems to gather higher by the moment. She bites her lip, lifting her hips a little from where she straddles Mercutio, inviting further touch.

That thing, that no-thing. She understands it now, and smiles at it, leaning in to bring their faces closer as she begins to unlace the sides of her shift. "Thou speak'st too much in riddles, lady. Hast thou been told so?"

She might hesitate more for a husband than a wife. But as she has just been reminded, they are of a kind, and what does one woman have to hide from another? She does not linger on her fastenings, loosening them as much as is needed to let the fine linen hang lighter on her lean form, and then settles back to haul it off over her head.

Beneath, she is slender and fine-boned, her breasts small and taut, her arms visibly muscled. The half-healed scar of their battle, still livid against her pale skin, stands in a rill an inch or two above the tied waistband of her petticoat, the only fault marring her skin.

[awordandablow]

"Many a time," she replies cheerfully. Her fingers creep a little further, one sliding between the folds of Éowyan's cunt, and her palm settles on the mound, so that Éowyn's clit presses against it. Not too hard, yet -- for all that Éowyn is no delicate flower, and seems to know her own mind for pleasure, Mercutio wants to feel her out for a moment. As it were.

And she wants to take a moment to admire her, too. The look on Mercutio's face when Éowyn strips off her shift and sits above her, bare, is one of naked lust and no little delight. Mercutio disentangles her other hand from beneath Éowyn's petticoat and reaches up to palm one of her breasts, rolling the nipple under her thumb.

[shieldofrohan]

It is not a look she has often seen, that open desire; and where she has seen it before, it has been unwanted and the weight of it has made her skin crawl. In this moment, on the face of her wife, she finds she is hungry for it. It thrills her, to be looked at with such naked want. She has always known herself to be fair, but she knows it in a new way, seeing how Mercutio's eyes both dance and darken.

Then again, it is not only the look that thrills her. Mercutio's hands are warm and rough and gentle, and they roam without any thought of modesty, just as she would have expected. She lets out a soft moue, pressing forward into the hand on her breast, and her breath catches again as that movement shifts her against the lower touch. For a moment, she lets her eyes flutter closed, enjoying the intensity of touch more deeply.

When she opens them, they are less grey than black. She lets out a long, uneven breath, and her hands go to Mercutio's doublet, seeking out fastenings.

[awordandablow]

She is free to undo the doublet, but God in heaven, Mercutio is loath to stop touching her to actually take off the garment. The sounds of her, the way she moves, the look on her face when she feels something she enjoys -- Mercutio could feast on it all night and into tomorrow and still want more.

Feasting, yes. That seems like a good idea. She lies still long enough for Éowyn to undo her doublet, taking advantage of the time to keep massaging between her wife's legs, and revel in the wetness coating her fingers. Once all is unfastened, though, she moves: one (slick) hand to Éowyn's hip, under her petticoat, the other up under her arm to the back of her shoulder, and a twist of hips to roll them both across the bed, flipping their positions. It isn't exactly a wrestler's move, but close.

Mercutio aims to end up with Éowyn on her back, with those long strong legs around Mercutio's hips. Once there, she braces herself with one hand so she can grin down at Éowyn.

"There, that's better. Not too heavy for thee, I wager."

[shieldofrohan]

It isn't exactly a wrestler's move, and if Éowyn wanted to keep her seat, she thinks there is a good chance that she could push back against it. She does not try, and lets herself be rolled over with only a token resistance, grunting softly as she is pushed over onto her back. This once, as she had said, she will let herself be bested.

"You are the lightest that ever pinned me," she says, truthfully enough, and smiles. She will return in time to her doubts and fears, to thoughts of what this will all lead to - but for now, she is slick and wet beneath the rumpled folds of her petticoat, and her bare skin shivers with anticipation, and Mercutio's smile is an intoxicating view. There is no time for melancholy, just at the moment. "And now that you have?"

As she speaks, her hand comes up almost unconsciously, seeking out the hem of Mercutio's shirt, trying to find her way under it to feel the skin beneath.

[awordandablow]

On impulse, Mercutio catches her by the wrist and shifts forward, pinning Éowyn's hand above her head.

"Oh, where to begin my plunder? With the bounty of thy breasts?" She leans down to ghost her lips against Éowyn's. "Or shall I feed upon thy lips?"

Her other hand slides up Éowyn's thigh, back to its earlier home. She uses her fingers to spread the folds of Éowyn's cunt, finding her clit with her thumb this time.

"But sweeter nectar there is," she continues, in a rough, husking breath, "to drink my fill. Where wouldst thou feel my mouth first, my dear? For I'll have all of thee in time."

[shieldofrohan]

The grip on her wrist is firm, and even as she pushes back experimentally against it, Éowyn finds that she does not mind it: finds, in fact, that it thrills her unexpectedly. She leans up against that grip, chasing Mercutio's too-brief kiss, her lips parted and her colour high; and at the press of Mercutio's thumb, groans aloud in pleasure and want. It is a new feeling, this; a feeling that penetrates the shadow and gloom, and that she would gladly taste more of.

Taste. It takes her a moment to understand what the taste is that Mercutio speaks of - riddles again, she thinks, with wry frustration - and a moment more to imagine it. All else, she thinks, she could imagine: but that has never occurred to her before, and she bites her lip, looking up at the face hovering so close above hers, and wonders.

"Begin at the beginning," she decides at last, aloud; "kiss me first, and follow where your thirst leads, until you drink your fill."

[awordandablow]

"A pretty answer from a pretty maid."

And she's pleased to do as she's bid. Mercutio closes the distance between their lips in another crushing kiss; more of her weight settles onto Éowyn, clothed chest against bare skin, fingers tightening on Éowyn's wrist. She shifts her hand so that her palm is cupping Éowyn's mound again, in a position better suited for rhythmic pressing and grinding.

Here she intends to stay, until she gets at least a few more of those groans out of Éowyn. Saints above, but it's a lovely sound, artless and free.

[shieldofrohan]

Actions have always suited Éowyn better than words, and answers better than prettiness. She leans up into the kiss and Mercutio's weight above her, wondering at the press of leather and linen against naked flesh, wondering more at the heat of her bride's mouth. Her tongue thrusts into Mercutio's mouth eagerly, all uncertainty of method gone in favour of exploration, and, oh! how sweet it is, how sweet the clumsiness of kissing and how much sweeter the press of the hand between her legs.

She squirms against the pressure and the pleasure it brings, moaning into Mercutio's mouth, shifting to better press her hips up into the other woman's hand, to find where that press is sweetest. The wound in her belly aches, but she pays it no mind: this is far more important. She has one hand free still, and it has found its way once more into the other woman's short-cut hair, fingers tightening against her scalp.

[awordandablow]

Mercutio groans against Éowyn's lips when she feels her hair pulled, even a little. It sends a pulse through her own core, makes her long for something to rut against the way Éowyn is grinding against her hand.

For the sake of her wife, she intends to be patient. She does! And so she leaves Éowyn's mouth and kisses her throat, instead, nudging Éowyn's chin back with her nose so that she can kiss and suck at the fair skin with open-mouthed thoroughness. She moves down to Éowyn's collarbone and traces the valleys with her tongue, as slow as she can manage. If there is any inch of Éowyn's skin from chin to breastbone that she has not touched with her mouth, let her be damned; if there's a moment where Éowyn isn't pleased, let Mercutio never see Heaven.

It isn't until one of Éowyn's breasts brushes her cheek that her patience breaks, and with another groan of need, she bends to suck a nipple into her mouth. She lets go of Éowyn's hand, though only so she can knead Éowyn's other breast, in rhythm with the rubbing hand between her legs.

[shieldofrohan]

They are neither of them patient in their nature, and it is apparent in the tension that stretches between each second, taut as the muscles that arch Éowyn's lean form upward from the bed, tight as the fingers that curl around Mercutio's until, at last, that hand is drawn away to rougher duty.

She had thought of many things, alone in the darkness of the night with her loneliness and her dreams for company. She had not thought it would be this sweet this soon: she could not have imagined the wet heat of a mouth against a breast that aches for touch, or how skin can thrill at even the slightest brush. Nor how different another hand would feel than her own, how another's fingers might explore familiar contours.

She bites her lip, habit leading her to stifle the groan of pleasure that rises to her mouth. She feels herself drawn tight as a bowstring already, caught between Mercutio's tongue and her hand, rocking from one to the other and holding her wife's head firmly against the swell of her breast. It has some of the same feeling that battle did, that one time she truly fought: that same pulsing adrenaline, the sense of being at once fully inside herself and watching at a distance, the sense of becoming. All thought of exile and arrangement and loss are gone; there is only the feeling that this is as right as anything has ever been.

"More," she whispers, and her voice is taut, too, thick and throaty and unlike her own. "Máe, máan, please."

[awordandablow]

Mercutio doesn't speak enough of Éowyn's home tongue to know exactly what she's said, which is something she should probably seek to remedy, which is something she will think about later when she can think about anything. It matters little. Mercutio knows very well what that tone means.

Grinning, she catches one of Éowyn's nipples between her teeth, hard enough to perhaps ache a little before letting go. At the same time, she slips her middle finger into Éowyn's cunt. She's more than wet enough, and she did ask for more, after all -- that word was clear enough. Why, if Éowyn reacts well, without any pain, Mercutio will make it two fingers as soon as she can.

[shieldofrohan]

The nip of teeth against flesh already pulled taut with sensitivity is enough to pull a small cry out of Éowyn - but not one of pain, or not only of pain. With her hand where it is, Mercutio will be very able to feel the nature of that cry: the way Éowyn's cunt clenches around her finger, wetness flooding her all the more.

Here is another place her own hand has been, and no other: but her own hand cannot reach at anything like as welcoming an angle, neither as deeply nor as probingly. Her cry is not stifled as the others were, and trails out into a shuddering moan. Her fingers tighten in Mercutio's hair, pulling more than a little, her other groping hand finding Mercutio's bicep and gripping there tightly.

[awordandablow]

Mercutio lets out a noise of her own, hungry, starving, mostly moan and a bit of growl. Letting go of Éowyn's breast, she uses that hand to pin Éowyn's hips to the bed instead, and curls her fingers while she fucks them deeper.

Is it wrong to think of this with a word like that? God knows, Éowyn is no flirting barmaid or guard, the sort of person Mercutio could tumble into bed with and fuck without second thought. She's a noblewoman, and she does nothing but make Mercutio think twice: about duty, and violence, and whether lovers are such fools as she's always known them to be.

But Éowyn is not a swooning maid that would have love made to her, either. Did she not say so?

Very well, then. Let action suit words. Mercutio fucks her deeper, faster, gripping Éowyn's hip tighter, harder, and groans against her breast when she feels those squeezes of pleasure around her fingers.

[shieldofrohan]

The wound in her side aches with the tensioned muscle beneath, and is duly ignored. This is more than she had imagined possible, in her limited understanding: this roughness, this need which neither asks nor offers quarter, the heat of Mercutio's breath against her skin and the heat of her own desire, the wet slap of every thrust seeming to echo through the room - or maybe just through her. Careless of anything else, she bucks helplessly against Mercutio's restraining grip, startled to find how that capturing weight sharpens, rather than dulling, her passion.

There is no pretence at silence any more. She gasps for air, moaning encouragement, both hands in Mercutio's hair now and tugging tightly enough to sting. She does not feel like a noblewoman, or like a maid at all, or like anything more than an animal, rutting with wild abandon. Animals have no need for propriety, or dignity, or silence in such times as this, and she abandons them all with a conscious relief, like cutting a chain that has been fastened about her throat. She cries out in wonder at it, at this new world where all she need be is physical, and her eyelids flutter, her chest heaving and toes curling, so perhaps there is a different wonder underway, too.

[awordandablow]

Breathing hard herself, Mercutio shifts; she slides her hand down Éowyn's thigh to curl under her knee, presses her leg up to her chest, and mouths down the tense planes of Éowyn's stomach until her head is between Éowyn's spread thighs. The scent of her wife's cunt is rich, and she waits not a moment before finding Éowyn's clit with her tongue.

All she wants is -- well, she wants it all. But in the moment, she wants to taste Éowyn, wants that wonder to overcome her, wants her to tear at Mercutio's hair in her pleasure.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn's eyes roll back behind fluttering eyelids, and the sound she makes is more animal than human, and more elemental than either. Nothing had prepared her for how it feels to have the probing slickness of a tongue meeting wet with wet and heat with heat, to feel another's breath raw and soft against aching nerves, both gentle and aggressive. She makes another low, guttural sound, wordless and thoughtless and urging, and her hips grind against Mercutio's mouth, chasing the sensation of mouth and tongue.

"Please," she groans, not knowing what she begs, scarcely knowing who she begs, knowing only that she needs. The muscle jumps in her thighs, her cunt flexing and throbbing and aching, her breath jarring through her as though winded. "Please!"

[awordandablow]

"Yes," Mercutio groans, the word a little muffled, and "Yes, love."

With one hand squeezing Éowyn's leg hard enough to leave marks, the other plunging into her cunt, and her tongue on her clit, Mercutio feels gloriously lost in the physical. Sweat has gathered under her arms and between her breasts, and eventually she'll want to attend to the throbbing heat of her own cunt. Not until Éowyn is sated, though.

Actually, she might be here between Éowyn's legs until she starves to death, if she's going to wait until the woman is sated. But so be it, if it must be so. There would be worse ways to die -- to eat oneself to starvation! A very fine end to find one's end in.

"Whatever thou wouldst have, love." A kiss, a suck. "Yes."

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn lets out a low growl, beyond words now, her fingers clenching tightly in Mercutio's hair. She is not quite so sheltered that she cannot tell what is building, what drags at her muscles and twists at her nerves; but it has never felt like this before. It has never felt so desperately, unbearably good. Before, managing her desire in lonely nights, she has always sought to banish desire as quickly as possible, to hasten herself to a shameful peak so that she can be herself again. This is different. This...

She wants to linger in it. She wants to remain in this taut, unbroken moment, with her breath caught in her chest and Mercutio's mouth hot between her thighs, discovering something she had not known she could feel. She wants to stay here forever, and never come back down to earth, never return to reality and the cold weight of duty. This is the only duty she can think of that she has found truly sweet.

But her body has its own ideas, and Mercutio knows how to ply it: it is a moment, and a moment more, and then she arches up and her eyes fly wide, and she lets out a low, strangled moan into the warm and waiting air.