Claimed by the Elven King: Part Three (3 page)

When the knock came at the bedroom door the
next morning, I was lying in much the same fetal, self-comforting position as I
had started out in, exhausted but too nauseous and upset to sleep. After crying
softly for what had felt like hours, I had actually managed to doze off sometime
in the middle of the night only to abruptly wake up an indeterminable time
later on the verge of puking. I had barely made it to the bathroom in time.
After that, I had only been able to lie in bed curled up in misery to wait for
morning and presumably Lariel to arrive as sleep had become an impossibility at
that point.

I had long since given up on the hope that
Sethian would return, which given how awful I felt, wasn’t exactly a bad thing.
The problem was convincing the part of me that yearned desperately for him.

I forced myself to sit up and lean back
against the large, wooden headboard into a semblance of composure before I
called out for my visitor to come in. Sure enough, Lariel entered the room with
a cheerful smile and a breakfast tray that immediately made me want to scream
inside.

“Good morning,” she greeted, setting the
tray over my lap.

“Morning.” I eyed the covered dishes as if
they were full of poisonous snakes. I had eaten practically nothing yesterday,
so there was no way I would get away with refusing my breakfast today. My chest
suddenly tightened painfully as another, more important reason to eat crossed
my mind.

Not eating wasn’t good for the baby.

“Did you talk with my lord husband this
morning?” I asked as I watched her lift the covers off all the various dishes.

I was relieved to see that along with the
usual fruits and cheeses I had become accustomed to eating for breakfast, a
small loaf of bread was included. If I stuck to having just the bread and tea,
then maybe I could get through this meal without raising Lariel’s suspicions
again.

“A messenger,” she replied as she sat on
the edge of the bed. “Saeria and Rinwen will be along with a change of clothes
shortly. His Majesty wishes for you to remain here in his rooms for the day.”

I wondered if Lariel knew that I had slept
alone last night. I wanted to ask, wanted to know if she knew where Sethian was
right now, but I just picked up the loaf of bread and remained silent. I wasn’t
really sure if it was proper to ask those types of questions, even if I was the
king’s wife. Prying into or blabbing about the king’s business wasn’t something
we had ever discussed in my etiquette lessons, and even though I considered the
three elven women my friends, they were still part of the king’s staff and
would be expected to follow courtly protocol.

“You didn’t sleep much last night did you?”
Lariel suddenly accused, nearly making me choke on the piece of bread I was
swallowing. My stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, but thankfully I didn’t feel
the need to gag.

I coughed and gave her a wry smile. “Do I
look that bad this morning?”

“Your cheeks are as white as those sheets.
Your eyes are shadowed and also tinged with red.” She
tsked
. “I didn’t
realize that humans had so much trouble with sleep.”

“Most don’t,” I said. “Sometimes I just
have a hard time turning my brain off.”

Lariel fixed me with a particularly deep
stare that made me want to fidget and turn away. It was almost like she was
trying to pry into my mind. With a start, I wondered if she could. So far, the
girls had been really vague about the seemingly magical abilities of the
Sidhe
I had witnessed so far. Thinking that it was a taboo subject, I hadn’t pressed
for answers, but now I wondered if I should have let the matter drop so easily.

“You are still worried that His Majesty
will reject you,” Lariel said finally.

I looked down at the tray, unable to meet
her eyes. “I’ll always worry about that. It’s not something I can help. I’m a
worrywart by nature.”

She sighed heavily. “Well, I suppose only
time will cure that particular woe. Finish your breakfast and then we shall go
to the baths. Hopefully a nice, warm soak will relax you enough for a nap
afterwards. Your lessons can wait for another day.”

I managed to eat half the bread and a
couple of slices of apple without having to make a mad dash for the bathroom,
which at that point was a small miracle. Focusing on Lariel’s steady stream of light-hearted
chatter had certainly helped.

When Saeria and Rinwen showed up, we all
headed for the royal baths.

As Lariel had predicted, once enveloped by
the pleasantly warm water coupled with the soothing feeling of Lariel’s fingers
massaging my scalp as she washed my hair, my stomach seemed to settle down
enough that it was all I could do to keep from dozing off. A nap was certainly
looking more and more possible. Maybe a nice deep sleep was all I needed to
better manage my morning sickness.

Yeah and maybe you’ll be crowned the
elven queen tomorrow
, I thought glumly.

Once back in Sethian’s rooms, I changed
into one of the nightgowns Rinwen had brought me and settled down for a nap
with a promise from Lariel to wake me for lunch. I really had to stop skipping
meals.

It felt like I had only been asleep for a
few minutes when I abruptly heard someone say “Emily” into my ear.

Hearing my name had me jerking up in bed,
looking around wildly in utter confusion and panic while my heart tried to
escape my chest. Before my eyes could properly focus, I felt a hand cup my
cheek, and the panic seemed to just melt away along the wave of warmth that
began to flow into me. I blinked, and Sethian’s face blurred into vision. He
was looking down at me with a frown and concern in his eyes.

“Sethian!” I blurted, then immediately
flushed and looked down, horribly embarrassed at how desperate my voice had
sounded.

“I did not mean to startle you,” he said,
sitting on the bed beside me.

I rubbed the remaining sleep from my eyes
and shook my head. “Sorry. I guess I was just really deep asleep. Lariel was
supposed to wake me for lunch, but…” Like my room, Sethian’s bedroom did not
have any windows, so I had no idea how long I had been out.

Sethian’s frown deepened. “It’s well into
the night.”

My eyes widened. I must have looked worse
than Lariel had let on for her to have allowed me to sleep through
two
meals. My friends were always going on and on about how I never seemed to eat
properly, so there was no way they would have let me sleep the day away unless
they thought I needed the rest even more.

I anxiously looked more closely at
Sethian’s expression, wondering if they had been worried enough about my ragged
appearance this morning to mention it to him. It was all well and good to blame
my insomnia and sickly appearance on my insecurities to my friends, but I couldn’t
use that excuse here without opening a whole new can of worms that I never
intended to open. However, I really didn’t know my own husband well enough yet
to read anything beyond his obvious concern.

Speaking of concern, I finally realized
that I was shockingly nausea-free at the moment. I could only think that this
glorious fact was his doing before he had awakened me and wished I could show
him how extremely grateful I was for his foresight.

Instead, I nervously smoothed down my hair
and said, “I wonder why she didn’t wake me up.”

“You did not sleep last night after I left,
did you?” he asked as if I hadn’t spoken.

I stiffened and tried to look away, but he immediately
grasped my chin and turned my face back towards him. I reluctantly met his eyes
again, afraid that I had made him angry, but they still reflected the same
concern. I relaxed minutely.

“Emily?” he said, his tone commanding.

“I—” I took a deep breath and forced myself
to continue, “I was worried that something bad had happened. I couldn’t get the
thought out of my head, and before I knew it, Lariel was knocking at the door
with my breakfast.”
So won’t you tell me what you were doing?
I could
only wish to be so straightforward.

I was actually surprised at how smoothly
the lie had flowed from my tongue, but to my relief, Sethian merely hummed in
acceptance and his grip on my chin turned into a soft caress against my cheek.
I closed my eyes and turned my face into his palm.

“If I had known you were going to worry to
the point of losing sleep, I would have sent word that all was well sooner,” he
said quietly.

I opened my eyes and offered him a tiny
smile. “I would’ve still been worried. Sometimes I can’t help it. It’s in my
nature.”

He leaned forward and brushed his lips briefly
against mine before I could react, as soft and fleeting as rose petals
fluttering across my sensitive flesh on their way to the ground, before pulling
back slightly until only a millimeter separated our mouths. “Then let me make
it up to you.” His warm breath ghosted over my lips with every word, making me
shiver.

I completely expected to feel his mouth
crash against mine with the wild passion of all our previous kisses, so it was almost
a shock when those silky lips pressed against mine in what almost felt like a
hesitant caress, as though he wasn’t sure his attentions would be welcome. I
closed my eyes and leaned into the kiss, clutching the front of his tunic
tightly with both hands as I opened my mouth to him in encouragement.

His tongue slowly slid against my own in a
single, teasing stroke before he pulled back completely from my mouth. I let
out a soft sound of protest before I could stop myself and instinctively tried
to recapture his retreating lips, but he ducked his head down to my neck and
planted a soft kiss along the side before pulling away from me completely.

“Take off your gown for me,” he commanded
in a voice deeper than normal that seemed to reverberate throughout my entire
body, the heated look in his eyes piercing right through me. “I want to see
you.”

That one sentence had the effect of
launching my entire blood volume straight into my face so quickly that I was
surprised that my head didn’t explode. It was one thing to be nude while we
were making love, but the thought of completely exposing myself to him while
his eyes deliberately took in every inch of my body brought out my shyness a
thousand fold. I had to fight the urge to cross my arms over my chest.

The fact that he could just use his elven
magic to make my clothes disappear like before made his command that much more
poignant. Was he testing me? Or was I just reading too much into it, and he
simply wanted a show today? It wasn’t as though I had known him near long
enough to have learned even a fraction of his kinks.

I felt awkward and utterly unsexy as I closed
my eyes and slowly lifted my nightgown up over my head, the cool air of the
bedroom against my bare and heat-inflamed skin driving the fact of my nudity
home all the more so that I couldn’t even look at him as I haphazardly tossed
the garment over the side of the bed. The urge to cover myself was now so
strong that I had actually started to lift my arms before I felt Sethian’s
scorching hands encircle both my forearms and gently, but insistently, push
them down to my sides.

“Let me see,” he repeated, releasing my
arms and pulling away from me again.

His heated tone made me glance up at him,
my cheeks now so hot that I was surprised that they weren’t glowing. I met his
intense gaze for a brief, breathless moment, before lowering my eyes and squirming
a bit in embarrassment.

Even though I did not look at him again, I
could feel his gaze on me like a physical touch as he took in the entirety of
my body. It was as if he was moving his fingertips lightly, teasingly, over my
skin, making me yearn for his actual touch but unable to make myself ask for
it. My heart was pounding so hard at that point that my chest was beginning to
ache. I wondered if Sethian could hear it and if so, if this blatant show of my
excitement pleased him.

It seemed like a small eternity before I
felt his actual hand on my skin, making me jump then gasp sharply as he slowly
moved his palm down the curve of my breast, his thumb lightly caressing my
already hardened nipple a single time, before he cupped the soft mound
completely and squeezed firmly. A small, satisfied smile stretched his lips
when I looked back at him, and I realized that his last action was merely to
make me look at him, a part of the sensual game he had begun.

I covered the hand that cupped my breast
with my own and moved to my knees, blushing and struggling to hold his gaze as
his eyes narrowed slightly with keen interest and increasing lust. I gripped
his shoulder and leaned in to lick his bottom lip with a slow, drawn-out swipe.
This close I could see his pupils dilate, and the sight gave me a tiny sense of
power that I could affect him this much.

My eyes flickered over to one of his ears.
I would have to be careful not to touch them this time. I didn’t want him to
lose control and our lovemaking to end in a rough frenzy like last time—for
more reasons than one.

I yelped as I suddenly found myself tumbled
onto my back. His still fully-clothed body loomed over me, straddling but not
quite touching yet, his weight supported by a forearm on either side of my head.
He dipped his head and took my lips hungrily, thrusting his tongue inside my
mouth aggressively in contrast to the gentle kisses earlier. I opened my mouth
wider with a hum of appreciation and sucked his tongue in deeper, sliding my
own alongside it until I could no longer differentiate the two.

Blindly, I reached up and grabbed his
shoulders, trying to pull him down farther onto my body. There was something
immensely satisfying about feeling his weight pressing me down into the
mattress, and I desperately wanted to feel that right now. However, it was as
if I was tugging on a statue for all I managed to move him. I pulled down
harder, but he stubbornly refused to budge.