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Elain doesn’t realize until the day before. She wonders if he was keeping it from her deliberately, so she wouldn’t worry, or if he just doesn’t know how to bring it up, but when she asks Alis what the frankly excessive amount of firewood being stockpiled is for, it’s a rude awakening.
Feyre had told her all about Calanmai, of course, long before Lucien ever became High Lord of the Spring Court, and before Elain had, with obvious ulterior motives, volunteered to move from the Night Court to help him with his new postwar duties. She’d been at the spring court for almost two months now. Admittedly, if anything, she made Lucien’s job harder by constantly stealing him away for picnics and rides through the forest, but he never seemed to mind—quite the opposite, if his enthusiasm kissing her is any indication. She hasn’t offered him food yet, although she has long since decided she someday will, so it feels certain, and comfortable, to learn how to fit with him. They’re enormously good at affection—she’s sure an hour doesn’t go by without him kissing her hand or her cheek or her temple, or without her curling up at his side or resting her head against his shoulder. Things like that are like breathing now, but Elain is not sure whether she’s frustrated or grateful that he consistently draws back from anything more sexual than tame fully-clothed groping. Certainly, Elain feels a little silly in the face of his three hundred odd years of experience, but she and Grayson hadn’t exactly been angels when she’d been human—she knows what she wants from Lucien. From her mate.
And she doesn’t mind waiting, until the realization of Fire Night sends the whole concept of sex with Lucien into a panicked tailspin.
She spends half a day worrying quietly about it, wondering if he’ll bring it up at dinner—she almost brings it up herself, except that one of the border guards bursts in with some damnably important news that summons Lucien away, leaving her with a fervent apology and a kiss on the cheek.
He doesn’t return from the border until the next afternoon, and she is not surprised when he comes straight to her room, before anyone even has time to tell her he’s back. The tension is obvious the moment he closes the door—he’s not stupid, Elain knows he can read her, and in any case her anxiety’s written all over the bond.
He sits down, slowly, in the desk chair, rather than on the bed next to her. Like an acknowledgment that this requires space between them, a break from their newfound intimacy, however innocent it is.
“You know, then, about… tonight.”
“Yes.”
He hesitates. “I should have brought it up sooner. I’m sorry for that. I planned to at dinner last night, but—“ He runs a hand through his hair. It’s still tangled from his journey, this conversation urgent enough he hadn’t had time to clean up. “And do you know… what fire night entails?”
Elain plays with the edge of her sleeve. “Feyre told me.”
He looks understandably relieved that he won’t have to completely explain it. “I wouldn’t… ask you to just stay home, miss the celebration,” He says carefully, like he’s been considering this, “But Elain, if you’re there, I will pick you. And I don’t think you want that.” He pauses, expression tight as he looks at her mournfully. “I don’t want that, not right now.”
Elain half-understands him, but it still feels like a rejection, hot and horrible in her throat. “What do you mean?”
Lucien puts his head in his hands, exhales long and slow. “Our first time shouldn’t be Calanmai. You deserve better than that.” He says Calanmai like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“Then…” Elain takes a shaky breath and rises. “Then have our first time be right now.” He looks up at her as she comes to stand next to him. “We have a few hours, don’t we?”
She knows it sounds desperate and silly, half-wanting to take the words back, but in equal parts she agrees with him that she shouldn’t go tonight and desperately wants to go tonight, feels an inevitable pull to it.
Lucien closes his eyes, rubs the back of his neck agitatedly. “Please don’t ask me that, Elain, I hate that I’m making you feel rushed or pressured about any of this. Is that really what you want? To… get it over with so you can come tonight?”
“No,” Elain whispers miserably. “It’s not, I’m sorry, I just…”
He shakes his head. “You have nothing to apologize for,” He says, almost as quietly.
Elain hesitates, fairly certain she does not want to know the answer to the next obvious question. “… What will happen if I don’t go?”
“If the High Lord’s first choice isn’t there—“ Lucien still does that, refers to the High Lord as an abstract, hypothetical other rather than his own position. He grimaces. “—It will make him pick someone else. I’ve seen it happen.”
That’s the natural conclusion, she supposes, but hearing it out loud still feels like a physical blow. “I don’t want you to be with someone else,” Elain says thickly, trying to stifle the possessive instincts that bloom like an angry resultant bruise.
“I don’t either. Cauldron, Elain, you know I don’t. But there’s no good option here.” He’s staring bleakly into the distance, and Elain wonders how long he’s turned this over and over in his head, how much sleep he’s lost to this. She wishes they’d talked about it sooner. “Tonight… is brutal,” Lucien goes on, voice heavy. “It won’t be me in that cave. I won’t even know who you are, only that I want you. And I won’t be kind.”
He means to terrify her, but a dark thrill runs down her spine instead.
Maybe he can sense her conflict, because he takes one of her hands in both of his as he looks up at her, still sitting in the chair, and she moves closer to him, standing between his knees. “We can do whatever you’d like. If you want to come tonight I won’t ask you not to. But you…” he pauses, running a thumb across her knuckles gently. “You are… the best thing in my life, and we have eternity to do this correctly. I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you or scared you tonight because we made a rash decision.”
Even as Elain feels a lump rise in her throat at his words, she shudders at the thought of Lucien hurting her, unsure if it’s with fear or something else. But either way, on some level, dark thrills aside, she agrees with him—the vicious ritualism of this night, the publicness of the act, even of being chosen, doesn’t seem right for them, not right now. Even if she didn’t agree, her mate is silently begging her with his mismatched eyes, and Elain feels the bond waver between them, his worry manifest.
Elain takes a moment to steel herself, to make peace with the terrible part of this decision. She squeezes his hand in hers, an acquiescence. “I’ll stay here tonight.”
Lucien exhales a sigh of relief, leaning forward and resting his forehead against her abdomen. “Thank you,” he says weakly. “I want to give you time, and space, and a choice, and tonight, even right now, won’t give you any of those things.” He presses a kiss to her stomach, and even though her dress and the bodice underneath it she can feel the heat of his lips. He pushes back the chair and stands, taking her other hand in his and kissing that as well. “I want us to be able to take our time with each other,” His voice is low, and she can feel the rumble of it in his chest as he leans in close to her. “I want—“ He kisses her on the cheek, her jaw, “—to spend hours teasing you, Elain.” She can feel his breath on her ear, and heat pools between her legs at his words. He presses a kiss to her neck, too, and when he sucks at the spot, Elain feels her whole body arch towards it, wanting more. She moves a hand from his shoulder to the back of his head, as though to guide him, and when he nips at her collarbone, her fingers dig into his thick red hair as she lets out a gasp. His own hands grip her waist, and she feels him smile against her. He kisses, open-mouthed, back up the side of her neck, and Elain feels limp against him as she whimpers, thinking helplessly that she wishes he would go lower— “And I won’t have you at all until I can have that,” he finishes, whispering. She can’t stand it and captures his lips with hers, kissing him fiercely.
He’s distracting her from being upset, and cauldron boil her, it’s working. When they break apart, she rests her forehead against his, trying to calm her heart rate and the ache between her legs.
“Are you going to end every argument we have by seducing me?” She asks eventually, unable to put any real dissatisfaction behind it.
He laughs at that, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Would it be so terrible if I did?”
A smile pulls at Elain’s lips, but she can’t help it when the levity slips through her fingers, is replaced by a teary tightness in her throat.
“Promise you’ll come back to me as soon as you can.”
He falls serious too as his gaze flickers between her eyes and her lips. “Of course, dove,” he responds softly.
Elain wraps her arms around his neck, buries her face in his hair. “This is a stupid holiday.”
—————————
She eats dinner alone as the sun sets. The drums start up in the distance, faintly at first and growing so loud that the book she tries to divert herself with becomes an impossible jumble of letters. There’s no chance she’ll fall asleep until he comes back to her, so Elain settles into the alcove near the open window and stares balefully at the distant lights of the fires. The beats dance in her blood, mingling with the mating bond as both call her, sweetly, fiercely, down to them, to him.
She turns his arguments over and over in her head, actively keeping herself from going down there and claiming her mate before the whole court—even though the thought of him choosing anyone else is making her feel progressively more ill. She wonders how many fae females wait in the cave, how many would dare knowing he has a mate. Maybe he is there already, scenting them. Maybe he isn’t even thinking of her at all, with so many other options clamoring for his attention. Maybe after this, he’ll even prefer them, part of him belonging to the feral, lustful wildness that Elain with her modest dresses and her unsure touches isn’t a part of. It occurs to her with sick clarity that she’ll probably be able to feel it through the bond when he fucks someone else, be able to feel him wanting someone who isn’t her; she’ll probably sense it like a stab of betrayal.
Tears prick her eyes and she wipes at them furiously, making sure her mental shields are up. It won’t do him any good to feel her misery. She knows, logically if not emotionally, that this is hard for him too, that he’s making a sacrifice so that their relationship can progress in the healthiest way possible. In the most human way possible.
Elain shifts, and is reminded that the ache between her legs from earlier hasn’t really gone away, even as dejected as she is. The pounding drumbeat and the magic of the night tease it, coax it just enough to make her warm and miserably squirmy as the fae instincts in her blood beg her to go and play.
She ignores it for a few minutes more, the fires and the drumbeat unchanging in the distance as more and more stars dot the sky, but her mind keeps drifting back to Lucien inside another woman. Elain would rather think about anything than that, so she puts a pillow between her thighs, clenching it there and focusing on the friction of it against her center. She rocks against it, and a moan slips out.
She almost stops—her first reaction is that it’s inappropriate to sit here masturbating while she’s waiting for him, but her blood sings with the feeling of the pillow, her body’s desperate for contact. If he’s spending tonight giving in to baser instincts, then so can she—and anything is better than letting herself spiral into desolation about her mate’s absence.
Elain sits up on her knees, the pillow underneath her, and grinds into it, the thin fabric of her panties the only barrier between it and sensitive flesh. She whimpers once, and then again, louder, realizing there is no one to hear her. Every servant and courtier alike has gone to the fires for revels of their own; she is utterly alone. She pauses to strip off her dress, discarding it on the floor. She writhes against the pillow in just panties and her bodice, relishing the wanton feeling of it, the cool night air on her thighs and the tops of her breasts, as she moans. She thinks of Lucien’s mouth on her neck earlier that day, remembers wishing it would go lower and wondering what it would feel like to have his tongue on her nipples, trailing down her stomach to her—
Suddenly the pillow isn’t enough, it’s driving her insane but she needs something stronger, she needs more, she needs something inside her. She shoves it aside and moves a hand to touch herself—cauldron, she hadn’t realized how wet she was, her panties soaked through completely as she strokes herself, hard, over them. She slips her hand inside them, going straight between her slick folds and inside herself, a cry bubbling up to her lips. “Lucien,” she groans, wanting it to be her mate’s hand, her mate’s cock she fucks herself on as she moves on her own fingers. A snarl sounds behind her, and Elain almost screams with surprise, whirling around with her heart in her throat—
It’s him, of course it’s him, Lucien is standing in the middle of the room, eyes fixed on her. He’s wearing some kind of loose trousers but most of his lean, pale body is covered in swirls and symbols done in blue paint, smudged a little along the arms. He’s trembling, Elain realizes, magic rolling off him in waves until the air around him shimmers, his breathing heavy and uneven. His good eye is so dilated it’s pure black. Even his stance is strange, everything about the way he’s holding himself and looking at her alien.
Elain’s first, stupid thought, thick with bitterness, is that he got it over with quickly; it must not have taken him any time at all to make the choice. And then she realizes that the drums are still going, that they’re at their fever pitch. The paint on his chest is intact. Elain’s eyes land lower and she sees how hard he is, his length straining obviously against the trousers. Her mouth goes dry.
She’s his choice; he’d been wrong about the magic’s ability to force him to choose someone else, and winnowed all the way here half-wild as he is. A rush, first of relief, wracks her, the raw satisfaction of the evidence that it’s her he wants, unequivocally, settling in her blood and between her thighs where she’s throbbing, her cunt lamenting the loss of her fingers.
“Lucien?” She says softly.
He doesn’t answer her, makes no sound but his heavy breathing, almost panting—Elain wonders if he can speak at all. Gently, trying not to startle him, she strokes the bond, reaches towards him through it, and he closes his eyes. Elain gets snippets of feelings and blurry images: fae women stroking his arm, tugging on his hand, the way the bond recoiled violently at every one, his mind a mess of instincts that defied articulation as the magic made him into a wild thing with one purpose, to find her.
She gapes at him, then, almost staggering backwards as the sheer force of his need for her hits her through the bond. He wants her with a feral single-mindedness that feels like standing too close to a fire, feels like storm air heavy and static with the promise of lightning, makes her ache and terrifies her in equal parts as she realizes he’s shaking because he’s exerting every scrap of remaining willpower not to lunge at her. I won’t even know who you are, only that I want you. But that can’t be completely true; some fragment of his mind must be hanging on to his memories, fighting even now to give her space, and time, and a choice. Elain’s heart lurches.
Slowly, slowly, she steps towards him, like approaching a wounded animal. He devours her with his gaze, a thing dark and hungry even as his expression is frozen in something like pain. It’s almost equally overwhelming how much she wants him as she looks from his metal eye to his brown one, his usual scent musky with earth and arousal and the tang of ancient magics, his chest heaving with the effort of remaining in place. Everything in her aches to reach out and touch him, but she’s afraid of breaking his concentration before she speaks, tells him what she needs him to hear.
“It’s alright,” she breathes. “I want you, Lucien, I want this. Do whatever you need to do.”
He moves so quickly Elain thinks maybe he winnows across the gap between them, his mouth, his body slamming into hers, propelling them backwards. Elain stumbles, gasping into his lips and feeling her back hit the wall, his tongue sweeping into her mouth at the same moment. She feels a growl, a rumble deep in his throat, as his body pushes against hers, a hand gripping her ass and another at the back of her neck.
Elain has never seen him like this, and that as much as the magic coming off him sets her on fire. He’s always articulate, deliberate—it is one of the things Elain admires about him, when she so often goes red-faced and lost for words. To have him be so unhinged and wild with her, for her, is a heady thing.
Elain can feel the paint smear between their bodies as he holds her higher. Her legs go around his waist instinctively for support as he buries his face in her neck—before Elain realizes his intention, he bites her, hard enough to leave a mark, like a dark parallel to his teasing kisses in the same spot earlier that day. Elain cries out, and the pain is a hot flash that travels down her body, makes her cunt weep for friction—
And then, in one swift movement, before she even realizes what she feels at her entrance, he’s inside her with a grunt, and Elain can’t do anything but scrabble desperately for a hold on his shoulders, mouth frozen in an “Oh,” that dies in her throat. It’s too much, it’s absolutely overwhelming, he’s thick inside of her and the feeling is so intense Elain can’t breathe, can’t even make noise. And then he moves, pulls out and thrusts back in and sets a brutal pace, snarling with satisfaction at the obscene, slick sounds of skin on skin they make together.
All Elain can do is move—she doesn’t have nearly the presence of mind to try to meet his thrusts, to fuck him back, it’s just a helpless, uncontrolled writhing, a gripping at his arms, his hair, his shoulders, as noises like sobs tear their way out of her. He growls at her again, a hand going to her throat, pinning her back against the wall. He can fuck her faster like this, and his pace increases as Elain gasps for breath. The light-headedness from his grip heightens the feeling of him inside her, every inch of skin he isn’t touching feeling needy and hot as he thrusts. She raises a shaking hand to his cheek. “Lucien,” she chokes out, a whine. And he does know his name, he must, because his eyes snap to hers, faces inches apart as they move together.
“Lucien,” she groans again, as he hits a spot inside her that makes her legs feel weak around him. “I’m glad it was me, I’m glad you chose me anyway, fuck, you’re perfect, this is perfect,” She’s barely coherent, sentences pitching into moans, not sure if her words are intelligible, and who knows if he can understand her anyway.
He’s sweating, panting, underneath her hands, chest a smear of fading blue, and Elain wants to kiss him, all of him, wants to lick the paths the swirls traced. But her helplessness, pinned as she is, is intoxicating; Elain wants everything. She wants to come. He’s shaking again, his strokes losing rhythm, and Elain reaches between them and strokes at the bundle of nerves at her apex, swearing and bucking against him. He releases her neck with a hiss, grabbing her wrist and holding it against the wall above her head cruelly. His long hair has fallen in his face, and it’s so uncharacteristic of him not to push it back it makes him look savage as he thrusts into her raggedly.
“Lucien,” she whimpers, trying to tilt her hips to get more pressure on the deprived spot, her other hand gripping his arm for support. “Lucien, let me come, please let me come, I want—“
He crushes her mouth with his, swallowing her protests. He kisses her like he means to devour her whole, his tongue hot and wet, and she doesn’t even notice he’s released her hand until his rubs between them, strokes her clit harshly, and Elain gasps, seizing up around him. “Fuck, fuck, Lucien, fuck—“
He strokes her again and again and she collapses with a strangled cry into his shoulder, convulsing with the force of her orgasm—she could swear as the waves of incapacitating pleasure wrack her that it rides through her with the same timing as the drums that still sound in the distance.
Lucien doesn’t slow to guide her through it, just snarls like an animal and fucks her deeper, plunging in to the hilt as she gasps for breath, sensitive and shaking. Elain feels his own release as it approaches both through the bond and in the very air—she wonders if the whole spring court can feel it, and when he spasms and comes inside her with something like a roar she’s certain they can, that the very ground shakes as he fills her.
The drums stop, and the absence they leave is overwhelming, the only sounds their mingled harsh breathing. She puts her arms around Lucien delicately, kisses the crown of his head.
“Elain,” he rasps, as the worst of the magic slowly looses its hold on him. She can hear him clawing for sanity behind it, fighting to speak. “Elain,” he says again, a plea. “Elain, I’m—I’m sorry, Elain, Elain—.”
“Shh,” She says in response, stroking his cheek even as she struggles to catch her breath. “It’s alright.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He babbles brokenly, head buried in the crook of her neck, “Elain, I’m sorry, I couldn’t—I didn’t—“
“Lucien, stop it, you’re fine, I’m fine, you have nothing to apologize for,” she says, voice thick as she strokes his hair, holds him even as he still holds her up against the wall. He shudders against her, and Elain feels the movement in her nipples, feels him still half-hard inside her. It seems impossible, but her body wants more, the ache for him resurrected almost immediately.
She moves, and he releases her, her legs uncertainly finding the floor. The bond still pulses wildly, equal parts magic and lust and Lucien’s anguished disorientation, and Elain pours herself into it, trying to send him calming, soothing, as she kisses him again, gently.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He tries again, breathlessly, holding her like she’s the only thing tethering him to the world.
Elain kisses his cheek, his neck, his ear. “Shh, Lucien,” she touches his face gently, intersperses kisses and comfort. He stumbles against her like he might fall over—he’s still breathing too heavily, his skin fever-hot with magic and—fuck, she thinks swiftly, as another surge of arousal sweeps through her with the realization—he’s hard again against her hip, still wet with her slick.
“Elain,” He groans, and she hears the edge in it, hears—or feels—the spike in his desire to push her right up back against the wall. She pulls back, takes his hand and kisses it, like he does so often with her.
“Did you forget we have a bed?” She asks with a tentative smile, not sure humor will get through to him, as she tugs him towards their room. They make it to the doorway before he pulls her to him again and captures her in another bruising kiss.
She can feel him get a hold of himself, draw back with a “Fuck, I’m sorry—“ and Elain doesn’t try to argue this time, she just kisses him again, bites at his lower lip until he growls. His hands travel up to her breasts, the doorframe digging into her back as his rough thumbs run over the peaked nipples.
“Lucien,” she moans, feeling her core flood with fresh wetness.
“Elain, I’m sorry that—“ He says again, more forcefully, even as he can’t seem to stop touching her, even if his voice doesn’t sound like his, darker and otherworldly. “—This isn’t—“ She reaches down, wraps a hand around his cock and strokes it with boldness she wouldn’t have known she possessed before tonight, “—what we wanted,” he manages to get out, a ragged effort traced with a groan.
Elain gets on her knees, eyes blazing as she looks up at him. “This is exactly what I want.”
“Elain,” He says again, a prayer, a benediction that turns into a hiss when she licks the head of him, hand still wrapped around his length.
“Is this what you want?” She asks, voice husky, and before he can answer she takes him in her mouth, sucks sloppily as her hand works what she can’t fit. Lucien lets out a half-coherent swear and then is gone again, gripping at the door, at her hair, at sanity, as she works out a rhythm, moaning into the feel of him.
Elain has every intention of making him come that way, but after a few moments, he pulls her up by the hair, Elain letting out a yelp as the rush of pain goes straight between her legs. He kisses her again, like it’s a compulsion, like he can’t stand to go a full minute without his tongue in her mouth as he steers them towards the bed. When they stumble into it, his weight on top of her feels right, feels satisfying, and she can’t help but angle her hips seeking his, whining a little into his mouth. He breaks the kiss to watch her face, expression feral as he slides a finger up her wet folds. Elain lets out a delicate cry, hands gripping his shoulders as he pauses at the top to rub her clit directly, fingers soaked in her juices.
She can’t believe they ever agreed not to do this. She can’t believe how good this feels. She can’t believe he’s not inside her yet, because every second she’s empty is like torture—
“Fuck me,” she begs, bucking against his hand, control over her reactions almost nonexistent.
He’s pushing into her before she even has time to arch to meet him, and this time the feeling isn’t overwhelming, it’s just right, it’s the universe as it should be, and she sweeps his hair back over his shoulders as she kisses him. He stays low over her as he thrusts, like he can’t get close enough, until Elain wiggles out from underneath him and pins him on his back. She slides back onto him slowly, savoring the feeling with a moan. He ruins it, though, snapping his hips up impatiently beneath her. Elain lets out a yelp, but yields to his unspoken request, and rides him relentlessly, a hand on his chest as she fills herself on him, again and again, hair wild and breasts bouncing with every movement. She moves her hips in a circle, grinding against him, and comes again, it almost catching her by surprise as she clings to him, kisses him as an anchor, cries out into his lips.
She feels like she’s made of liquid, but she fucks him hard until he comes again too, with a groan and curses this time instead of earth-shattering magic, and she thinks she sees some of the brown in his good eye come back as she falls weakly next to him, gasping for breath.
He holds her, stroking her shoulder, her arm, down her side. “To answer your question,” He says finally, with great effort, “Yes, yes, I want all of this.” His voice breaks. “Cauldron, I want this.” He kisses her deeply, and Elain feels the lingering magic in her blood respond to it again, and bites her lip to stifle another moan.
“We’ll be at this all night, won’t we?” She asks breathlessly. He just growls into her chest, already on his way to her breasts, and lower.
—————————
The first weak tendrils of sunlight find them entwined and half asleep, dragged there at long last by sheer exhaustion as the magic finally burnt itself out. There are no whirls of blue paint left at all, just an oily bluish tint to both of them, as well as the sheets. Neither rouses until midday—the day after Fire Night is always an informal day of recovery with a merciful lack of obligations.
Elain stirs finally, shifting in the twisted blankets, and looks up at her mate. He’s already awake, watching her.
“Good morning,” she says with a sleepy smile.
There’s a faint smile on his lips too, as he reaches over to pull her closer, arm wrapping around her waist. “Afternoon, I think,” he replies, and she can feel the faint rumble of his voice in his chest.
His eye, his voice, have gone back to normal, but still she feels she should ask: “Are you alright?”
“Perfect.” He smiles adoringly at her, and as much as Elain loved every second of last night it makes her overwhelmingly happy to have Lucien proper back. “But I’d sleep for a week if I thought I could wait so long to do that again.”
Elain laughs, and tucks herself into into his chest—warm, but not feverish anymore. Though still delightfully bare. “A bath first, I think. What’s with the paint?”
“No idea,” He says happily, leaning down to kiss her.
“Mm. Lucien?” She says dizzily into it, her sticky, sore body warming again to his touch.
He keeps kissing her, smiling into her lips, breaking only briefly to say “Yes, dove?”
“I take back what I said about this being a stupid holiday.”
He buries his face into her shoulder as he laughs.
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