Chapter 366

"I'm free. I can hardly believe it. And… of all things… I suppose I'll have to report to him soon, to arrange travel to the elf Kingdom… and…" Nua sat at the table while Raymond went about busying himself with nothing in particular at his desk.

"Yes… in a few days, you'll be bound for your old home, and I'll probably be hunted by the Agante, not that they'll have much luck." Raymond said with a smirk earned over a lifetime of victories.

Nua frowned, stood up, and approached him, she reached down and took his face into her hands. "You really did it, you set me free… if I'd told him what you almost did, Cardinal or no, if I'd… how did you know I wouldn't ask them to do anything to you."

Her sky blue eyes searched his face, and she felt the goosebumps rise beneath her fingers, "I didn't. But… if you wanted to make me pay for what I'd done, what I was going to do… I couldn't refuse. You had a right to hate me, I've never been the good man I thought I was, not until recently, and nothing done in so little a time can make up for everything before it. An end by your word or your hand… how could I have said it would have been undeserved?" Raymond asked the question just as he'd asked it of himself.

"But… your gods, your faith… even your country, not to mention your life…? Isn't that extreme? Don't you…" Nua didn't get to finish.

"Not even a little." Raymond answered. "I won't live a long life, I've always known that, even by human standards, I put myself at risk too often, tempted fates, gods, and monsters for all my life. I'm lucky I made it this far. Anything beyond the day I'm living in, that's a gift. Every day I wake up, it's a surprise to me. You're worth it… even if I never see you again after you leave… I've got no regrets."

"You realize, you know more about me than anyone ever has… I've never… never spoken of some of the things I've said to you. I needed to say some of those things. And… thank you for these, even if they weren't given back on purpose…" She said and wiggled her ears up and down. "Being cut off from my very race… it was hard. I'm finally whole again, in every way…"

"I'm… glad. I never knew they were that significant." Raymond replied and tried to look away from her. She held him fast.

"Have you never… touched one of my people before?" Nua asked.

"No, other than- no." He insisted.

"Not even… when you were younger, like… revenge?" Nua asked with care, "If you lie to me Raymond… I will know. The truth. After my people killed the woman you loved and put her mutilated corpse in a tree… what did you do?"

"Do you… really want to know?" Raymond asked.

"I do. I really do. You know everything about me now… and that's not fair… I can't promise I won't think differently of you, but before we part ways, I want to know what kind of man… what kind of man you really are…" Nua said while her heart began to thud.

"When she… died, no… when we found what was left of her… I was angry. I ran from my unit, not 'away'... but I went on the hunt. I stalked the woods and killed some of those elves who had been hunting us. I might have been killed then too, but I was rescued, pulled out of danger… then I went back to the city. And I…" Raymond swallowed the lump in his throat.

"I got drunk. I crawled into a bottle laced with black dust, and I practically lived in it for a year… maybe more." Raymond pursed his lips. "Do you know what black dust does… What makes it so dangerous?"

"I know about it, the trade is almost nonexistent in the Theocracy though… messes with the head, it creates hallucinations, feelings of pleasure… one of the lords I used to serve, about a hundred years or so ago, he baked it into cakes to enhance the pleasure of sex." Nua acknowledged, and when she slid her arms around his head, he explained…

"More than that… it… it takes away who you were, who you are. It… it can even take memories. I diluted the stuff with liquor, and drank until I- I forgot her face. I forgot her face and I still can't remember it. I remember all the things we did, all the things we shared. But the sound of her voice, her face… I erased it… her."

"So… when I leave, and we're parted, what are you going to do? Are you going to erase me?" Nua asked, his head was warm to the touch, 'No… he… he is warm…' She corrected herself.

"No… I made that mistake once, I don't want to forget this, to forget you… and I can't get lost in a bottle… I have work to do, I have to undo what we've done, I have to save your people from my country and my country from itself. When you leave… I'm going to get really… really drunk. But when I leave, when I go back to my homeland, I'll be sober and sharp as my knives, ready to work again. I can promise you that… Nua." He said with resolve and looked up, but not for long, as she crouched down.

"I've never done this before. Not even with Aalon. I loved him. But he was after all, my master's son, and though he was shy and reticent, I could see he thought of me as… as his. If I'd been less naive then, if I knew what lay in store, I would have been repulsed." Her body quivered as she took Raymond's wrists in her slender fingers. "But you're different. So different that it's hard to believe you're even human."

Raymond's mouth opened, "Nua what-"

"Shhh… I want to do this while I'm brave enough." She answered and their lips snapped shut at the same moment, her ears moved up and down once more, and she brought his hands to them.

"I've never… never offered that touch to anyone before… after they were taken, there was no way for me to give it… they were gone… so… you're my- my first." Nua whispered and lowered her eyes as blissful feelings caused her body to shiver, adding ecstasy to her tight strung nerves.

"Nua, I- I was going to-" Raymond whispered, everything in him told him to pull his hands away, to yank his fingers away like they would burn if he let them linger, but he couldn't, he didn't.

"No, you weren't, you couldn't. I thought maybe… but you couldn't. If that were all, I would have put your hands there now… but this is my choice. I'm free, and I want this before we go our separate ways…" She closed her eyes and shivered as the ecstasy built in her body. "Do they… feel good to you?"

"Yes… like silk, with the give and warmth of rising bread and yet… firm, smooth…" He couldn't stop his stroking motion, and she tittered while looking down.

"Like rising bread, you know how to make a girl feel special… I've never heard that one before…" She chuckled a little more and she could feel his blush.

"I… I don't know how to say…" Raymond started and Nua kept her ears fixed in his hands when she looked up at him.

"You don't say. You just act. Like this." Nua said, but as she brought her head towards him, he was doing the same down toward her, their lips locked in a kiss as they rose to their feet, they didn't 'remove' clothing as tender lovers, but tore it apart, her hands ripped away his fine robe as his fingers tore away the laced up shirt to expose her breasts, and he brought his lips down to feast on them, they stumbled toward the bed, and she shouted as he landed on her, "Kiss them! Kiss them!"

With a human woman he would have thought something more, but with her, he knew she meant what she counted to be far more intimate, and brought his lips to the tip of her left ear, her entire body bucked underneath him.

To his surprise, she was far stronger than he thought, and it was only being entwined with her that kept him from being cast away, he nibbled, licked, and traced his way over her left ear, and then went to the right. "M-My neck… kiss my neck…" She angled her head to expose her naked throat, and he kissed the place where her collar once lay. She moaned and roamed her hands over his body.

He was, despite his years as a human, clearly a hardened warrior still, muscle ran up and down his length, every inch of him was hard, save for his lips, which he pressed to her with loving firmness and hungry passion. Her breasts crushed against his chest as her legs hooked behind his thighs and her hands went to his broad back to dig into the skin there.

She began to tease at his shaft, her own body already prepared, slick, wet, and wanting, his beard added to the way he felt, like little bristles teasing at her sensitive skin.

He wasn't within her yet, but the promise from them both was there, the way their bodies came closer and closer to connecting… "Nua… Nua… Nua…" He gasped out her name each time he felt her nether lips press to the head of his shaft…

"Now… tell me… I know it… so tell me…" She moaned, "Say it… Please!" Whether it was a request… or a plea, or a want or a desire or an urgent need, he knew exactly what she meant the moment she said it, no matter how he denied it…

As if he was dying, every single instant from first meeting and first pity, from his first shame to his last bliss and regret, passed before his eyes, and he couldn't deny it to himself any longer.

"I love you!" He shouted it, and she drew him in, slowly at first to savor the feel, she called out…

"Again! Say it again!"

"I love you… I love you…" He cried out as he felt her body engulf him to the last.

He couldn't say it again as her lips captured his and they began to rock back and forth, driving flesh to flesh in nature's oldest dance and strongest magic…

Before her eyes, as before his, every moment passed as well, 'When did he love me… when did I love him… was it when he turned against his friends… his country… his gods… was it before… was it the moment he sold himself to set me free…' There was no answer to those questions that she'd asked herself as the memories replayed until they became only distant background in the primal dance and ecstasy drove her away, he treated her most sensitive places with both hunger and affection, drawing himself out of her to take his mouth on a journey through the valley of her breasts and down to her quivering sex, his lips parted hers and latched and his tongue teased and taunted before his lips latched onto her clit, and her back arched and her cries woke most of the hotel before she grabbed him by the hair on his head and yanked him back up to her mouth and forced him to silence her.

When at last she felt him draw near to the edge, near to a climax of his own, she slammed herself against him as hard as she could, tightened her body's hold on him, and whispered breathily into his ear, "Do it…"

He groaned, his warmth flowing into her drained him more than a hundred battles, he began to relax, resting on her chest until his manners returned and he rolled off of her.

"A gentleman to the last." She laughed and wiped her forehead clean of sweat.

"Heh…hah… is this really the time for laughter?" He asked.

"There's none better. Now… come a little closer, let's get some sleep, there's a lot to do tomorrow and we both need to be well rested for it." Nua said and inched herself closer so that he was spooning her. She pulled his arm on top of her like a blanket, and they lay that way until sleep took them both.