Date Night

"Ah yes," said Asper, following Elemiel past some kind of spiny, ant-like creature portrayed as erupting from a patch of sandy earth. "My condolences. I've heard he was a good man."

For a change, Asper's voice was low and respectful. Elemiel shot him a surreptitious glance, but he appeared to be absorbed in the thoughtful contemplation of a stuffed yeti.

Hm, she mused, if he knows about Erik, he's been doing a bit of research on me. She wasn't certain to be annoyed or flattered, so she decided she'd be both.

"He was, and thank you." She didn't mind talking about her late husband. The pain was long scarred over, and time had worn the sharp edges from the memory of him so that they no longer cut.

"You've never remarried?" Asper continued curiously. "Not to pry, but why not? I'm certain you haven't wanted for eligible suitors, and when we met, I do believe you declared your intention of chasing down a title." A delinquent grin spread across his face. "Perhaps," he suggested, "you managed to frighten all the eligible noblemen off?"

Elemiel snorted. "Please. I've been holding out for someone who didn't annoy me."

She had indeed wanted a title, but perhaps not for the reasons that Asper thought. It was rather difficult to get laws changed in Divony if one didn't have 'Duchess,' or 'Baroness' attached to one's name.

Asper opened his mouth to ask another question, but Elemiel cut him off. She put her hands on her hips and fixed her lavender eyes on him.

"What is this, an inquisition? Less personal questions, more focusing on the mission."

Elemiel stared down her nose at him, then her face broke into a wicked grin as she spotted something behind the knight.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, pointing, "look at the size of that chimera's cock! Do you think it just hangs like that all the time, or did they stuff it on purpose?"

After dragging a reluctant Asper along to thoroughly inspect the fourth head of the three-headed creature, Elemiel and the knight left the Hall of Fell Beasts behind and moved to the next room. This hall was far better lit, and its whitewashed walls were hung with portraits.

A few party guests, mostly pairs or trios, moved among the canvasses. They sipped wine and occasionally spoke in low voices, but mostly seemed to be transfixed by the art. When Elemiel looked at a few of the paintings, she could see why.

They mostly depicted lovely women in various states of undress, and often, the subjects were doing a great deal more than getting naked. Each work of art had been rendered with such loving, soft detail that Elemiel felt as if she might reach out and cup the sweet curve of a breast, or place her lips against a painting and feel not impasto and canvas, but the press of a warm mouth.

"Wow," Asper said, "these are... something else." He was staring at an image of a redhead woman bent over and being taken from behind by a satyr-like creature, both figures lost in the throes of passion.

"We really should be looking for Ditherington and his cronies," Elemiel said, moving to stand by Asper.

"Absolutely agree," he said, eyes still glued to the painting.

The knight shifted slightly and his shoulder brushed Elemiel's. Primed by the lasciviousness of painting's subject matter and the excitement of the evening, the slight contact felt like a lightning bolt sent directly into her veins.

She saw the apple of Asper's throat move as he swallowed hard, and intuited he was feeling much the same. A warm heat settled in the place somewhere below her stomach at the memory of his cum filling her mouth, and the moaned growls he made while he spilled.

It was only with great difficulty that the two of them managed to tear themselves away from the gallery. Elemiel's cheeks felt flushed, and Asper kept darting heated glances in her direction when he thought she wasn't looking.

The subject matter of the next room didn't help cool the passion building between them.

"Seriously," Elemiel muttered, staring in disbelief at the sign at the entrance to the room.

"Elven fertility rituals," Asper read the placard aloud. "Hm. It says here that this exhibit was sponsored by the Queen herself, in conjunction with the elven ambassador Seoid, to foster cross-cultural understanding." Asper chuckled. "Aunt Annabelle always did enjoy exploring the elven culture."

Elemiel had heard rumors about the Queen, of course, but to hear it confirmed from the lips of one of her family was another thing entirely.

"Really?" she asked, intrigued, Asper didn't reply, focused on examining the display.

The exhibit was rather eye-catching, Elemiel had to admit. Upon a circular dias at the center of the room were positioned a dazzling array of elven-made sex toys. There were false cocks of every shape and size, made out of everything from stone to polished, lacquered wood, to the flexible resin of the knobgoblin tree. She spotted jeweled butt-plugs and whips, as well as paddles and manacles lined with soft aurochs fur.

"You're people don't mess around when it comes to fertility," Asper observed.

"Hmph," sniffed Elemiel, but before she could cook up a suitably witty riposte, Asper had moved over to a plinth underlit by the warm light of glowstones. Draped on the velvet as if it were a necklace, lay a peculiar pair of metallic implements.

"Huh, it says right here that these are nipple clamps," he pointed to the flowing elven script engraved into the metal of one of the clams. "I can't quite suss out the maker's mark, though. They look ancient."

"Ancient?" Elemiel stuck out her lower lip. "Hardly. I think my grandmother has a pair of these."

She leaned towards the plinth, intent on seeing if she could discern the maker's maker for herself, when something tickled at her brain.

"Hold on a second," she said. "This engraving is in elven."

Asper clasped his hands behind his back and made a show of squinting at the clamp. "So it is," he agreed.

Elemiel felt a sense of growing dread warring with the lust in the core of her body.

"Asper. Can you read elven?"

"I was raised in the Emerald Palace, Elemiel. My tutors were very thorough."

"Wait. Hold on. Can you speak elven too?"

Asper gave his reply in heavily accented, but perfectly understandable elvish. "I've picked up a few words here and there."

Elemiel felt the blood rush to her cheeks. This whole time. He could understand her this whole time. Oh gods. She'd said some... things, hadn't she? Elemiel's mind raced, thinking back.

Oh dear. I certainly did say some things.

"Asper!" she squawked, "that's not fair! Not fair at all!"

He closed the distance between them with a stride, and with his hands on her hips he pulled her to him.

"I'm not interested in fair, Elemiel," he growled. "I'm interested in you."

Her heart fluttered, and something decidedly lower in her body gave an urgent, needy throb.

"Next room," she managed to gasp.

Although most of the partygoers didn't seem to have made it past the art gallery, a few of them lingered nearby, giggling and pointing at the display of sex toys. Elemiel knew from experience that the next room, the Hall of Gemstones, had several dark corners that might offer a little more privacy.

They managed to keep their hands off one another until they stumbled into the Hall of Gemstones. Elemiel completely ignored the enormous, storied jewels displayed behind their glass cases. She took Asper by the hand and pulled him past the infamous Despair Diamond and the glittering, aptly named 'Mountain of Lights,' towards a shadowed alcove that was lined with more glass displays.

The alcove was empty, but even if it hadn't been, Elemiel wouldn't have cared. She craved release. No, it was more than that. She needed it.

She fumbled with Asper's shirt, graceless in her desperation, then realized with indignation that he was hesitating. He stood there, looking at her, laying bare each curve and supple swell of her flesh as with his eyes, but his hands didn't reach out to touch her. Disappointingly, maddeningly, her clothes remained on.

"What the hells are you waiting for?" she snapped.

"I didn't want to mess up your dress. You look so beautiful, Elemiel."

Elemiel had dated a poet once, who'd written a sonnet describing her as 'like a sculpture, the centerpiece of an elegant fountain, carved by a craftsman with a generous hand and an eye for ample curves.'

It fell well short of the molten poetry of longing she saw then in Asper's eyes.

"Sod the dress," the elf snarled, and tugged down the off-the-shoulder straps, pulling the slinky garment lower and lower until finally, with a jiggling bounce, she had freed the creamy lushness of her chest.

Asper licked his lips. "Your breasts are very lovely," he observed.

"How can you possibly tell that from all the way over there?"

She grabbed him by the lapels of his fine blue suit jacket and pulled his face into the cradle of her bosom.

His ardent lips suckled at her skin, and his mouth sought her nipples. She felt a flash of his teeth on one of her sensitive, pink buds, not enough to hurt, but enough to send a fire-laden jolt through the core of her sex. His hands molded her generous flesh, touching, gripping, tugging. Elemiel moaned and reached out for support, leaving handprints along the glass cases that lined their trysting spot.

"I want you," she wheezed, "I want you in me now."

Asper looked up at her with those quartz-chip eyes of his, and smiled. "I thought I was supposed to be- what were the words you used? 'Melted like hot wax.'"

"Hilarious. You can melt like hot wax inside my pussy once you've fucked me properly."

The knight tisked, his hands not leaving the flesh of her breasts. "Elemiel, you have such a dirty mouth on you."

The elf rolled her eyes. "You already knew I had a dirty mouth. I showed that to you back in the fitting room. Now give me your cock."

Asper's chuckle was cruel. "No."

"What? Oh, come on. If this is about the candle thing-"

"This is about payback for the fitting room. Now lean back, elven temptress, and try not to fall over."

At first the dark-haired elf had no idea what Asper meant, but she quickly learned. He knelt in front of her in the gemstone-encrusted alcove, and ran his sword-calloused hands up her legs, from calf to thigh. As his hands slid across her skin he pushed up the black crepeworm hem of her dress.

An eyebrow rose when he saw the shorn blossom of her cunt. The lips of her vulva were swollen with desire, and a line of her honey had dripped from them, clinging to the slope of her inner thigh.

"I never wear underwear if I can help it," she said, deliberately misreading the subject of his delight. Yes, obviously I'm aroused. I'm a very horny elf, alright? Now just put me out of my misery and Stick. It. In..

But Asper did not Stick It In. He leaned forward and kissed the line of her pussy-drool, then lapped at it with his tongue. The knight followed the glistening trail up her leg until his mouth hovered above her cunt, his breath hot and humid against her sex.

The sight of him down there was thrilling, and the tension of having him so close but still not touching her built an expectation inside of her that was almost unbearable. He looked up at her from his place between her legs.

The knight was completely focused on her; on Elemiel's body, her sex, her face. She was the center of his attention, and although that was something she was rather used to, there was something different about this. It was as if she were a sweet spring bubbling in the middle of a sunlit glade, and Asper was very, very thirsty.

"Take the damn ring off," she demanded. "I want to look at your face. Your real face."

His grin was far too self-satisfied for Elemiel's liking, but Asper slid the band from his finger. Immediately the glamor fell, and she was looking at the maddening knight who had somehow managed to so thoroughly capture her attention and imagination.

The glowstone lights illuminating the jewelry cases passed through small pillars of rainbow tourmaline in one display, their colors stacked like jelly-cakes. The glow broke as it passed through the precious stone, fracturing into a kaleidoscope of light across Asper's face, his tongue, and the desire-swollen lips of her vulva.

She moaned, and he chuckled, but it seemed his cruelty only went so far. Asper leaned in, breathed deeply of her provocative, powerful scent. He kissed her lower lips almost coyly, pressing the flat of his tongue against them and dragging it first up, then down. He closed his eyes as if to savor the taste of her essence, his tongue lapping at her slowly, content for now to sample the flavor of her pussy and not slip between its folds.

"Delicious," he proclaimed. "You taste as good as you look, Elemiel, and you look as good as you smell. Vanilla and cream and sex."

"Shut up," she replied. "There are far better uses for that tongue- OH!"

He shut up, and returned his mouth to her nethers. His hands snaked around her to grip at the flesh of her ass, his fingers digging into her skin as he pulled her vulva more firmly onto his lips. He licked in long, luxurious strokes, travelling the length and breadth of her cunt, exploring, tasting, and murmuring appreciatively as he did so.

Standing there pressed against the wall in the alcove, surrounded by shining jewels, Elemiel felt deliciously, wonderfully vulnerable. There was an utter nakedness to the act, and the elf felt as if she were being watched by a whole room full of people, instead of just one infuriatingly handsome knight. His tongue stroked molten, liquid pleasure between her legs, and his eyes roved her body with grey-flecked intensity. She was being smelled, tasted, observed so intimately and thoroughly that she felt laid bare and open.

Elemiel's hands cradled Asper's head, and her fingers wove into the soft tumble of his brown hair. Her abdomen tightened and she gasped as he slowly, with tortuous leisure, slid his index finger into her. He pinched the bottom of her cunt gently between that finger and his thumb, all while pressing his gums against the swollen pearl of her clit with a steady, mind-melting pressure.

His kiss was patient, and his fingers were deft. Asper stimulated her perineum from the inside with his finger, and from the outside with his thumb. He relaxed the steady pressure on her clit occasionally to lavish attention on the lips of her pussy with his tongue, rubbing slowly, steadily, building and building the sweet, magma-hot pressure inside of her until she had no choice but to burst.

"Asper! Fuck, I'm coming! Augh!"

Elemiel deliquesced all over the knight's mouth and fingers, her ardor gushing in a river of honey down his chin and his wrist. He smiled, eager to drink her, and Elemiel felt the long series of contractions work their way through her body as the orgasm spent itself in her flesh.

The elf gasped, her nipples as hard as the necklace of diamond chips on display to her left, and her chest flushed with vigor. She made to pull him to his feet, intending to sample the taste of herself on his lips, but Asper resisted.

"We're not done yet, you wicked creature."

"Huh- oh, shiiit," Elemiel hissed. He had moved his index finger inside of her, curling it in a beckoning gesture so that he stroked the special spot inside of her. His middle finger joined it, sliding inside of her well-lubricated cunt with ease, and they worked together within her, making filthy wet noises.

"It's sensitive, hold on, wait-" she begged, but Asper was keen on his payback. He sucked the bud of her clit and fingered her until the elf felt like she was seeing stars. Just the reflection of those diamonds on the ceiling, she realized, trying to cling to some coherent thought.

Whereas Asper's cunt-kisses had been patient and perhaps coy before, they were now ravenous, and Elemiel was only too happy to meet him in his hunger. She threw one leg over his shoulder and ground her cunt against his face, squeezing her vagina around his questing fingers, working her hips to fuck his mouth and grunting all the while like some tamed beast.

While Asper pressed her into the wall and ate her pussy as if it were his last meal, she felt a blush spread up her chest and up her neck. It worked its way to the tips of her pointed ears, and the elf bit her lip to keep from crying out.

Elemiel's face felt hot; gods, everything felt hot. The room was spinning and nothing was real; nothing except the feeling of Asper's tongue on her cunt and his fingers deep inside of her body, exploring, rubbing, finding that special spot, there, right there oh gods-

"Hnnnngggh!" she stifled a scream by biting her knuckles, her body coiling and relaxing as a staccato drumblast of sweet, agonizing pleasure ripped her very soul in half. She melted on his fingers, gushing all over his lips and tongue and the stubble of his strong chin. The honey of her lust ran down his knuckles and dripped on the finely polished floor. She was making a mess, and she gave not a single whit for it.

At long last, Elemiel's eyelashes stopped fluttering and she came to her senses. She looked down to see a very pleased looking Asper gazing at her with... what? Adoration? Amusement? A mixture of both?

"You seemed to enjoy that," he observed drily, and given the soaking she'd given his chin and lips, the observation seemed to be the only dry thing about the man right then.

"I h-hardly felt it," she stammered. "You'll need to try again."

He opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of a crash followed by the delicate noise of tinkling glass interrupted him. Asper and Elemiel shared a look, frozen into inaction for a heartbeat.

But only a heartbeat.

"Shit!" the elven woman said, hurrying to fix her dress. "Ditherington's plot!" Her legs felt like jelly, but the fire of adventure joined that of carnal desire inside of her soul. She took off out of the alcove, thighs rubbing wetly together.

Asper wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ran to catch up with her. Elemiel quickly scanned the Hall of Gemstones, but didn't see anyone, nor any signs of broken glass or mayhem.

"They must be in the Hall of Ancient Wonders," she hissed, pointing at the door at the end of the long room. "Keep quiet."

Elemiel and her knight crept to the door and peered through. This particular chamber was filled with artifacts from the ancient Age of Wonders, a nearly mythical time filled with gods and demons and mysteries both terrible and magnificent.

They spotted their quarry down at the far end of the hall. Ditherington, with his golden hair and permanent sneer, was unmistakable, as was the short, round, and insouciant form of the gnome fixer, Sharky Houndstooths.

The two men, along with a pair of lackeys, were crowded around a table. Broken glass littered the floor, and although it wasn't clear exactly what they were up to, it obviously wasn't anything good.

"What are they doing?" murmured Asper. The knight's hand strayed to his side as if in search of a sword that wasn't there. When his fingers closed upon only air, he grimaced.

Elemiel couldn't see what they were all gathered around looking at, but her keen elven eyes could read the lettering on the informational placard near the table.

"Ancient medical implements from the Age of Wonder," she read aloud. "What on earth could they want with that?"

"No idea. Let's get closer and find out."

Elemiel and Asper padded forward, careful to keep out of view by using the various plinths, tables, and displays set about the room. They crept by ancient weapons, moldering books, and jewelry half-rusted away by the long aeons which had passed since the Age of Wonder.