Claimed by the Elven King: Part One (2 page)

“It’s all right,” the elf whispered against my ear, turning to gently
lick one of the tears trailing down my cheek. It was a shock to just hear his
voice. “The pleasure will only overwhelm in the beginning. Let yourself go—set
your spirit free, and everything will balance itself out as it should.”

To this day, I can’t understand how he could have spoken so calmly
while never once losing his rhythm. He moved over and within me with all the
grace and power of a blond panther, his hips driving his cock so deep into my
passage that the force of it was almost bending me in half. That fantastic
tension was building in my sex again even as it was still tingling pleasurably
from the first explosion. I tightened my legs around him in an attempt to
increase the friction between us as I desperately ground my hips upwards
against him, feeling as if my brain would melt if I didn’t come soon.

When I finally crashed over the edge again, I came twice within seconds
of each other, the last orgasm so powerful that it bordered on painful. It was
like every nerve ending in my body just
sang
. I very nearly blacked out
as the stimulation really was more than my body and mind could handle,
especially when my elven lover was still thrusting powerfully within me while
relentlessly attacking my nipples with both tongue and those sharp teeth.

As my body shuddered and writhed with spasm after spasm of pleasure, he
gave one last, heavy thrust that seemed to almost reach into the center of me
and the warmth of his climax nearly sent me over the edge again. He lay atop me
with his full weight for a few moments, kissing my neck with more energy and
aggression than I felt should have been possible after the wild ride he had
just taken me on, then lingering on my lips with a little less alpha male and
more tenderness.

He then carefully withdrew his cock from within me, making me gasp as I
felt one last throb of arousal from my over-sensitized tissues, and rolled onto
his side, pulling me with him into a tight embrace of incredibly soft skin and
tangled limbs.

With my body tingling like mad and still overwhelmed with emotions, I
began to sob again, burrowing my face into the damp muscles of his chest. I
felt my elven lover kiss the top of my head, and then he slowly began to run
his fingers caressingly along my scalp and through my hair in an unmistakable gesture
of comfort.

“Sleep now,” he said. “Leave all your fears and questions for a time,
and tomorrow, I promise the answers will come.”

“What’s your name?” I murmured as my mind began to fog.

Before I lost consciousness, I head him whisper into my ear, “Sethian.”

Waking up, I felt as if I had been asleep for years.

My body felt heavy, stiff, and every one of my muscles seemed to
throb—and not in a good way. There was a dull ache in both my temples and the
back of my neck that spiked with pain every time I moved my head. It was like
waking up after going on a five-day bender of hard liquor and no sleep. Not
that I had any firsthand experience, mind you, but I did have a few wild
friends during my undergrad days and had often witnessed the absolute train
wreck of misery and self-hate that had always followed.

It took me a lot longer than usual to shake off the lethargy of sleep,
but once my mind had cleared a bit and my eyes had focused completely on my
surroundings, I don’t think I have ever been as wide-awake as I was at that
moment. The room I was in was
not
my own, the bed a far cry from my
twin-sized bed. I lay in the center of a bed large enough to sleep at least ten
people comfortably. I bolted upright, wincing when my head throbbed sharply in
protest, and my hands immediately went to my body.

They met silk.

Almost afraid of what I would see, I forced my eyes downward and saw
the robe-like garment the
elves
had dressed me in—the robe
he
had
removed.

Sethian
.

“Not a dream,” I said aloud, probably just to hear a voice, to hear
something so familiar.

It was no wonder I felt like I had a hangover. I
had
been drunk
last night—drunk on the type of sex that shouldn’t have been possible in the
real world.

Then I noticed my arms.

The color was wrong was my first thought, but as my mind unfroze from
that initial moment of shock, I realized it was much more than that. Not only
was my summer tan gone, but my skin was unmarred, unblemished as if I had never
exposed it to twenty-three years of the sun. I could compare it to a baby’s
skin, but it would be like comparing apples to oranges. No one’s skin was that
perfect—no one’s except Sethian’s, the other elves’…

“Oh my God,” I whispered in horror, staring at the living marble my
arms and hands had become.

I jumped out of bed, my eyes searching not for a door, but a mirror, a
window,
anything
with a reflective surface. My gaze stopped on what
looked like an ornate dressing table, except this one didn’t have the usual
mirror. However, I immediately found what I was looking for in the form of a
silver hand mirror laid out beside what looked like an old-fashioned porcelain
basin and pitcher.

One look at the stranger staring back re-convinced me that I had to be
dreaming. It was me, but at the same time completely
not
me. My hair was
still the same dark chestnut-brown, though twice as long and more glossy and
healthy than I have every seen it. My eyes were no longer the color of
milk-chocolate. They were a shade of green that had an almost preternatural
glow, filled with an inner fire I had never seen them reflect.

My face had lost its roundness; my cheekbones were much more prominent,
my eyebrows thinned and more slanted.

It was me and not me.

Then a frightening thought occurred to me, and my free hand shot to one
of my ears. Round—no, they were unchanged. Breathing a brief sigh of relief, I
tugged at the upper ties of my robe and instantly felt what little blood that
remained in my cheeks drain away once I had drawn the folds open.

My ears were the only thing unchanged, it seemed.

Although I have never been what people would consider chubby, I haven’t
been even remotely close to supermodel-thin either, and with graduate school
eating up most of my time, the gym wasn’t exactly high on my list of
priorities. Now, as I examined my body with increasing alarm, I could see that
every ounce of fat was gone. Just—gone, my boyish figure replaced by pleasing
feminine curves and a hint of muscle.

My eyes zeroed in to my breast where a certain bite mark was
conspicuously absent. I had felt the pain, seen the blood on his lips…hell, had
even
tasted
it on his tongue for God’s sake! How could it be
gone
?
No scab, no scar, just—nothing but that strange new, airbrushed-looking skin?

Feeling an invisible hand begin to squeeze my racing heart painfully, I
forced the whole disturbing thing out of my mind and turned my attention to my
legs. I raised the ankle-length robe with a sense of dread, finding that my
trepidation was indeed warranted.

I hadn’t noticed it when I had stood so close to Sethian that first
time, but now I could clearly see that the length of my legs had increased
significantly. From what I could remember, the top of my head had come to his
shoulders, so taking into account my new height, I guessed Sethian’s height to
be at least 6’5”, making me now about 5’10” or 5’11”, a far cry from my
previous 5’0”.

I now understood the cause of the excruciating pain I had suffered. I
had felt as if I was being torn apart bit by bit, atom by atom. The supporting
evidence was quite literally now staring me right in the face. The elves had
somehow
remade
me. I didn’t know whether to thank them or to be furious
and insulted.

While I had always considered myself passably pretty in a
girl-next-door kind of way, I was no where near cover model material. They had
changed a good many things that had bothered me about myself over the years as
if they had plucked the information from my mind. However my eyes—they were my
one feature that I really liked, and now the elves had taken that away without
so much as a “may I” and replaced them with something that was alien, and
honestly, scary as hell. Who the hell was this strange girl staring back at me with
wide eyes, looking a breath away from completely freaking out?

I let the mirror fall back to the dressing table. I didn’t want to see
anymore. I needed to
think
. God, I needed a chair!

Looking around, I spotted a small, square table with a couple of wooden
chairs against the far wall. I stumbled over to it and all but collapsed into
the chair facing the door. I wanted no more surprises.

For a while, I just sat there staring at the door, trying to calm my
racing heart. Questions milled around my head, so jumbled that the only
coherent thought that emerged was “why?”

There were only a few things since I was awakened by the “shadows”
within my room back in my apartment that I was fairly certain were true. One
was that I had been abducted by elves, another that they had physically changed
me. The “how” was still a mystery, though. That I was also brought for Sethian’s
pleasure was another, but I wasn’t at all sure I was seeing the whole picture
with that one. Sethian had implied as much after our—lovemaking.

I could feel my cheeks heat up at the thought of him. Dream or no
dream, I didn’t understand how I could have so willingly given to him, my
abductor, what I had never given to another man without putting up at least
some kind of fight, even if I knew it was no use. I knew I couldn’t really
blame it on his overwhelming presence, either. He had given me a choice, and I
had answered without much, if any, thought. It had just felt right, somehow.

He was a complete stranger, a man that I hadn’t even known his name,
yet I had slept with him as if I had known him all my life. The real kicker was
I knew damn well that I would still make the same decision if presented with
the same choices right now when my head was clear, even as my theory of this
all being a dream was becoming less likely by the second.

I sighed and cradled my head in my hands. It was too much to think
about. I raised my eyes wearily and scanned the room for a distraction, any
distraction. There were no windows, making me suddenly feel uncomfortably boxed
in even though the room was large and spacious, like a comfortable cage—no! I
wasn’t going to let myself go there. Not now. My eyes landed on a couple of built-in
bookcases in the wall beside the bed, filled from ceiling to floor with books.

Perfect.

I rose immediately, trying to unsuccessfully ignore the throbbing soreness
deep inside of me I had never experience before as I gingerly walked over to
the closest bookshelf. I pawed through a few, finding that most of the titles
on the spines were written in a script I had never seen, one I suspected was
unknown to all humans, all connected half-circles and random-looking squiggly
lines.

I selected one of the few with a title written in Latin that, with its
warped spine and cracked leather covers, looked old enough to have been read by
Plato. I had studied Latin for a couple of semesters as an undergrad, so I
hoped I could piece through it. I was convinced there were answers to be had
within its yellowed, ancient-looking pages.

However, after plowing through a few pages, I realized things wouldn’t
be so easy. The Latin was so archaic that it might as well have been written in
Sanskrit for all I could decipher it. Plus, the person who had transcribed it
had atrocious handwriting. It was difficult to even make out each letter, much
less a word.

I was so intent on my translation that it was a while before I sensed
that I wasn’t alone anymore. I stiffened and slowly raised my eyes to the door,
my heart suddenly in my throat.

“You do not disappoint, my Emily,” Sethian said, stepping up to the
table.

He was dressed just as I imaged an elf would dress within an elven
court, flowing navy-blue tunic-like robes of silk all embroidered in silver and
gold filament straight out of a costume designer’s wet dream.

I started to get up, to do what, I didn’t know, but he shook his head.

“There’s no need to rise,” Sethian said gently, his eyes boring into me
so intently that I could almost feel his gaze as something physical.

Even though I knew my face was probably nuclear red, I refused to look
away out of pure stubbornness as I sank back down into my chair, trying not to
wince when I accidentally irritated the soreness between my legs. I gestured to
the chair across from me.

“Will you sit?” I asked, surprised I could speak at all.

The elf bowed his head slightly in acceptance and complied. He was not
tense at all, the bastard. Where my movements were stiff and cautious, Sethian
seemed like he was performing an intricate dance, his movements so fluid and
relaxed.

“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.

“Yes, and that is also why in order to bring you here, my servants had
to change a portion of your body’s energies to match our vibration since a
purely human body cannot interact in our plane of existence at all. You would
have experienced the change as something like a cold wave flowing through your
entire body. That is also why you seemed to lose your eyesight for a time, a
‘side-effect’ is the word you would use, I believe.

“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.”