#a fool!

Oh, she thinks. 

His lips, a soft feather light press to hers. A chaste touch but with profound promise. A precious gift. 

It’s her that leans in. It’s her that reaches for his arm, fingernails immediately digging in. It’s her that opens her mouth, and lets him in. 

The reward is instant; a surge of desire filling her, a shared delight singing too loud too bright in her mind, a hunger to open further and consume him. This man, this charming and strange and wonderful and confusing man. He chuckles against her mouth, that kind of smug joy she’s become accustomed to from him. Her heart, so fond. Her skin, alive with the urge to touch and be touched. 

“Would you claim me as yours here, in this sacred place?” he murmurs. “Would you have me kneel here and be your supplicant?” His lips and his tongue and his teeth; a sublime sweetness. She could linger here for an age. “Would you have me tell the wide world what you have given me?” His whispers move to her ear and she clings to him like a woman drowning, bound in this queer moment of affection. “Would you see yourself as I see you?” His lips touch the shell of her ear and she’s a pillar of flame. “Would you bind your heart to mine?”

Is it a spell, or am I just lost, she thinks as she bares her neck to him. His lips are against that gentle skin below her ear at once. This kiss is not a soft feather light press, this kiss is molten against her and she yet she shivers. . 

“Lady of Light,” he whispers, “let me love for all the ways that you are.”

There is protest deeply rooted in her, in the places that carry song and demand justice. It’s there; a whisper in the wind, a trail of smoke from a fire not yet dead. She hears it, and knows it. She should say, no, no, you cannot, you may not. I will not let you. I cannot trust you. 

That is what she should say, what she should do.

This is what she does:

Her eyes bright, a mirror of his. Her lips pink from his kisses. Her skin longing to drag him away from here, to some dark place, where she can learn more truths from his strange and beautiful mouth. Her mind focused and sharp, as she can see her goal achieved with this ally at her side. 

“Will you vow to slay my enemies?” she asks. 

“I swear it,” he says and he lifts her hand, presses a kiss to her open palm. She feels the heat of it like a brand. “And will you,” he adds, “vow to heal Middle Earth with me?”

There is that protest again, a nagging thought of shadow and disgust, but his eyes are on her and she feels compelled, she feels complete. 

“I swear it,” she whispers. 

His eyes close, and he breathes out as if finally released from a great torment. “You’re a fool to love me,” he teases, “dearest and loveliest Galadriel,” and he gives her the most beautiful laugh. Infectious, as she finds laughter too in the suddenness of their action, the seriousness of their words, the heat between their bodies, and the joy he brings her soul.