Four nights earlier...

"Ah, there you are."

Galadriel froze, her back to the mouth of the hidden grotto. She had just pulled the loose neckline of her chemise down below her shoulder blades; at the sound of that familiar voice, she wrapped her arms around her chest to keep the thin sheath of fabric from falling to the stone floor. The Elven woman's breath caught for a moment, her reaction to the Man behind her torn between a sinking feeling in her stomach, and a sudden frantic fluttering of her heart.

"This place is not for men," she raised her voice to be heard over the soothing rush of the nearby waterfall. She didn't dare look over her shoulder, though she did turn her head to the side, toward the voice and the powerful body to which it belonged. "Please leave."

"Not for men? Or not for me?"

She heard the whisper of his boots against the floor as he took two more bold steps into the grotto.

"Men," Galadriel repeated more firmly and turned her face away from Halbrand's approach. "This is a place for Elven women to bathe in peace."

"Is it also a place for them to hide?"

Two more steps tread heavy on her patience and Galadriel spun around, no longer caring that he'd caught her moments away from being completely bare to his uninvited gaze. She still hugged her chemise to her chest, her shoulders still gleamed pale in the shifting, soothing firelight of the nearby torches. But she straightened her spine and lifted her chin defiantly...and felt a strange, almost icy thrill when she realized he had walked much further into the grotto without her hearing him. The She-Elf blinked, uncomprehending, as Halbrand smiled slyly at her from half an arm's length away.

"Why have you been avoiding me, Galadriel?" the Man asked quietly.

Too quietly.

She stared at him, wide-eyed and suddenly wary. She and Halbrand had spent several months together now, often in close quarters. She'd had ample opportunity to observe him, to learn his facial expressions and body language.

As he stood before her, his arms and shoulders were loose, and his head was lowered slightly and tilted to the side, in that vaguely sinister half-hunch of his. She hadn't seen that particular posture in quite a while, Galadriel realized. Since returning to reclaim the Southlands, Halbrand had kept his shoulders back, his head held high, his face relaxed and open. Realization clicked into place - he stood as he did now when he was angry, when he anticipated a fight. She took an involuntary step back from him and his gaze darkened.

"If I have done something to offend you, then tell me. Do not avoid me like some blushing maiden, Commander."

The Valar curse him, she thought, as a blush did, in fact, creep down her throat and spread across her shoulders. His eyes dropped to her reddening collarbones, then slid further south. Galadriel forgot to breathe when she met his eyes on their ascent and saw the raw hunger in them.

She had spent two days avoiding him. A decision she'd known would offend him. The King of the Southlands was far too proud to feel contrition over her avoidance. No, he had too much fire in him for that. Furthermore, she knew that Halbrand knew full well how much she desired him. And therein lay the problem.

"I am an Elf. You are a Man. Our worlds are not meant to...join," Galadriel knew by the spark in his eyes that he knew full well what she was implying.

"It is not common, no," Halbrand was, as ever, mulish in his persistence. "But it would be beneath you, Galadriel, to stand here and lie. Half the nation of Numenor exists because their Elven and human ancestors joined."

He took a step and reached for her, and Galadriel blurted out in something like despair, "I am married, Halbrand."

It was his turn to freeze, his hand awkwardly outstretched. "What?" he narrowed his green eyes at her, his brow furrowing in a mixture of confusion and rising anger.

"He...he's dead, my husband," her tongue felt like lead as she continued. "And has been for nearly an Age. But without a body to prove his death," she shook her head and tendrils of her loosened hair slipped over her shoulders. "I am still considered married by the laws and customs of my people."

"Well," that single word bit the air like a whip and Galadriel dropped her eyes with a subtle flinch. "That rather relevant fact did not seem to stop you from accepting my kiss, nor prevent you from insinuating that you would welcome me into your bed."

Halbrand prowled forward and closed what distance remained between them. Everything in Galadriel begged her to step back from him, to retreat, but she held her ground. The Man pulled up short when he realized she wasn't going to budge and a rather begrudging smirk tugged at one corner of his lips. The two considered each other for a long moment before Halbrand's smirk grew wide enough to show a bit of teeth. He leaned down to whisper against her pink-tinged ear.

"Or are you just using that as an excuse? Perhaps the truth is, you've been hiding from me because you're too proud to admit that a Man left you panting in pleasure and aching for more?"

Galadriel was speechless for a moment, pinned in place by the harshness of his truth. For two whole days, she had been haunted by memories of that dinner in the garden. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was his touseled brown hair between her thighs. All she could feel was the slick, exquisite slide of his tongue against the most intimate part of her body. All she could hear were the humiliatingly wanton sounds he had dragged out of her, one languid lick at a time. All she could taste was herself, mixed with rosewater and honey, when he kissed her, his mouth still wet from her pleasure.

As if he could read her very thoughts, Halbrand brushed his lips against her ear. "Just admit you want more, Galadriel...and that it is me you want it from."

Galadriel bit her bottom lip to keep herself from moaning when he brushed her hair back and revealed the delicate tip of her ear. She found that she forgot her senses, her dignity, and her own culture when she was around Halbrand. The heat of his breath on her ear all but scrambled her brain, stirring up memories of the forbidden kisses they had already shared.

He knew the truth. Halbrand knew that the insistent thrust of his tongue into her mouth had stirred up a fierce desire in her that would not be quenched until she had welcomed the claiming thrust of his body into hers. The release he had given her on that cool and cushioned garden bench had awakened a hunger she was afraid to sate because she knew that if she shared further intimacy with Halbrand, that hunger within her would never be sated. And even if there was any possibility of it being so, it would only ever be him who could.

And the damn Man knew.

"Halbrand, I...I..." she stumbled over her words, knowing the words she wanted to speak to him, but uncertain about how, or if to say them.

He chuckled, his mouth still against her overly sensitive ear. Her body shuddered from the feel of that low laugh as if the sound of it echoed through her every bone. His name slipped again from between her lips, this time in a soft, breathy sigh.

"Tell me I'm right, Galadriel. Tell me that you want me, and I will reward you with pleasure you can only dream of."

Galadriel had the fleeting thought that she should have never promised this Man a crown and she should have never, ever kissed him. Both had clearly gone to his head.

And yet, she could not deny the truth he called out. She wanted him. Halbrand, crownless lord of the Southlands. Castaway. Troublemaker. Smith. Warrior. Friend. A foolish, mortal Man who tempted her at every turn to let him be all of that to her and even more.

Her lover.

Her King.

"Halbrand, please," she begged. "This cannot be."

"Let the dead go, Galadriel, whether your people permit it or not. You are no adultress; I've seen no ring upon your hand," he, as always, correctly surmised the meaning of her words, even when she didn't make it all that clear. "Although," something darkened in his tone, made his growl of desire harsh. "I could see that changed if you so desired."

"What?" she gasped, as surprised by the temporary shift in his tone and demeanor, as she was by his insinuation.

"But perhaps first things first," he seemed to have corrected himself, his tone normal again - albeit, husky and deep with passion. "Tell me the truth, Galadriel," teeth nipped at her neck and she remembered, for half a second, what it had felt like when he'd sucked her most sensitive flesh between those very same teeth. "Tell me what you want."

"How can you even know that I want?"

She had meant the question rhetorically, just an expression of her frustration and a last-ditch effort to withstand his unyielding pursuit of her. But Halbrand answered it anyway.

Because of course he would.

"I know because we are the same, you and I," he declared between slow, open-mouthed kisses down the length of her neck. "We have both run from the past, and we have both sought redemption, resolution, peace." Galadriel had to call upon all of her military and Elven discipline to keep from moaning as his tongue explored the dip behind her collarbones. "We have called out the darkness within each other and yet, somehow, have not turned away from one another. You have absolved me of my sins, Galadriel," Halbrand did nothing to smother the low moan he made against the curve of her bare right shoulder, reckless creature that he was. "How could I not want you?

"Do not condemn me to an existence of yearning for what I cannot have. There is no true or lasting reason why we must continue to deny the freedom we have found with one another since the moment I pulled you from the sea. You told me in that storm to take your hand, and I have. You told me to bind myself to you," Halbrand's words whispered back up along the line of her throat and over her chin, to sigh against her lips like a prayer. "Is this not how Elves bind themselves?"

"Please, Halbrand," something deep within her finally crumbled, unable to withstand the passion and power of his words. "I am yours."

As something within her gave way, so something in Halbrand opened. For a moment she felt it - a deep and yawning well of desire, an all-consuming want that could burn them both to ash if they were not careful. But as she was disciplined in her way, so the Man was in his. She trusted him to know how to coax embers and temper fire, to know how to harness a primal element so that it created rather than destroyed. Before and beyond all other titles he might bear, he was a smith - clever and controlled.

She had no idea how it happened, but in the span of a breath, Halbrand had pushed her several steps back against the grotto's smooth stone wall, one hand holding her wrists high above her head, and one thick thigh wedged between both of hers.

"Ride me." His delivery was soft, but Galadriel knew the sound of a command however it was given.

She gaped at him for several stunned seconds, not quite certain of his meaning. Halbrand grinned down at her as he rocked forward a few times, the movement shifting his thigh back and forth beneath her own spread legs. She clung to curiosity for a moment as an excuse to gather what dignity she could and glanced down to see how he'd managed such a specific movement.

He'd braced one boot on the edge of a low, narrow bench that had been carved out of the grotto's wall. The bench was meant for placing folded clothes, towels, and other items common to bathing within reach of the cool water just inches away from his other boot's heel. He had seated her on his leg as if it were a saddle. He leaned forward one more time, his knee beneath her moving forward toward the wall; the smooth fabric of her chemise dragged against her core when he then pushed back against the edge of the bench with his foot and pulled away from her. Halbrand's eyes glittered in the nearby torchlight, mischievous and intense.

"I know from personal observation how skilled of a rider you are," that insufferable smirk danced along the corner of his mouth. "So don't be shy now."

"You are not a horse," Galadriel's attempt to hide a gasp failed miserably as he rocked steadily beneath her.

"You may reconsider that statement in time," he purred, his sudden smugness bordering on the insufferable.

She didn't need to say anything. She just gave him a puzzled look, completely innocent of his meaning and utterly confused. Halbrand laughed softly, but the tone of it wasn't unkind, just a bit bemused.

"Surely you've heard the phrase, 'hung like a stallion'?"

Galadriel huffed, unimpressed, her hips pausing as she fixed the Man with a skeptical look.

"Any man who boasts of such a thing, usually possesses the exact opposite," her tone was tart.

Halbrand just shrugged, as if to say "we'll see". That infuriating, playful smile never left his lips as he leaned forward and whispered, "Keep moving."

He then rubbed his bearded jaw across her cheeks and, with a slow and tortuous gentleness, bit the tip of her left ear. Galadriel's back bowed and an involuntary cry fell from her lips. Her hips began to move with a growing, frantic instinct, as her lover focused every last bit of his skill and attention on her ear.

Her sensitive, sensitive ear. The tip of it, most especially. Within seconds, Halbrand had her writhing on his thigh, her chemise and his trouser leg growing damp with her rapidly peaking desire. Galadriel could not stop the cries of pleasure that he nibbled, licked, sucked out of her, and every inch of her body - both inside and without - burned.

"Halbrand!" she wailed, not even aware that she had done so.

She teetered on the edge of a pleasure so intense that she did not care, did not even realize, that this Man above and beneath her had so easily undone her. She did not care, nor even remember, that she was in a very public place. She was wholly, blissfully ignorant of the wanton sight she made - head thrown back and to the side so that all of her ear and neck were exposed; her thighs clenched tight around his as she rubbed herself against the hard, thick lines of muscle in his leg; her chemise threatening to fall beneath her breasts at any moment, her skin flushed, her body heavy.

"Halbrand!" Galadriel cried out again as she felt the whole world begin to tilt, as the inevitable fall from that edge he'd pushed her to threatened to overwhelm her.

"Come for me," he leaned into her so that every bucking and bowing of her body pushed her against the full, solid length of him from chest to thigh.

"I-I..." words failed her as she finally, finally began to fall.

His command rocked through her and followed her down into the sweet, obliterating darkness of complete and utter submission to her body, to pleasure, to him.

"Come to me."

~~~~~~~~~

Galadriel bolted upright, gasping for breath, her sleeping gown embarrassingly damp between her splayed and tangled legs. Pleasure sparked through her body, but the best of it had been ruined by her sudden jolt to wakefulness. She had come, as commanded, but not fully, and the sense of having been denied her right rapidly soured what euphoria she had managed to feel.

Frustrated and still achingly aroused, Galadriel fought her way out from beneath her sheets and sat on the side of her bed, her fists clenched around the edge of her mattress. The dream had felt so real that for several disorienting seconds, she didn't know where she was, or understand why Halbrand wasn't there with her. But as her breathing slowed, so her faculties returned - though the vividness of the dream, and the very real effect it had on her body, still clung to her in spidery wisps of memory.

As she caught her breath, she realized that she was staring down at her left hand.

"I've seen no ring upon your hand."

She heard Halbrand's voice as clearly in her mind as if he were in her bed. In fact, it felt so real that she glanced behind her. Her gaze lingered on the pillow next to hers - a pillow that had not had another head beside her own upon it since that fateful day Celeborn had left her.

Tears pricked her eyes, startling her, as other softer, cooler, more sacred memories returned to her.

The one night she and Celeborn had shared before he rode off into war had been beautiful. She had always treasured it, even though she had borne no child from it. While the Elves were particular in their ways, they were not raised to be ignorant of what could transpire behind bedroom doors. They were not ignorant of their own bodies, or of how to invoke pleasure. There had been a certain shyness with Celeborn at first, but no awkwardness or fumbling. He had touched her reverently, but with certainty. She had done the same to him. In the balmy dark of midsummer evenings, much like this one, she had often recalled that one beautiful night, when she had first tasted pleasure and had first been able to return it.

If Galadriel was wholly and utterly honest with herself, however, she knew that when Celeborn had left her that morning after their first and only joining, he had left her desiring more. And while she could barely put names or acts to that hungering more, Halbrand seemed the one being in all the Ages of Arda who knew what it was she desired, and was willing to experience it with her.

"Let the dead go, Galadriel, whether your people permit it or not."

She closed her eyes and did not try to stop her tears. It was time to let it all go - the pain, the grief, the anger. It was time to accept something new, something different. Something that had called to her in many dreams over the last few months. That call had only grown in intensity the longer she'd known Halbrand, and her yearning to answer it had deepened with every passing night.

What had happened with Halbrand in the garden was not what Galadriel would have called "beautiful ". The memory of it was filled with scorching heat and her body yearned for the furnace of the Man's mouth upon it once again. He had undone her in a way that she had never felt, had never been taught about, had never experienced. Elves gave each other pleasure, certainly, but never in such a base way.

Too many times over the span of too many distracted hours since that dinner, Galadriel had lifted her hand to her mouth, remembering the feel of Halbrand's teeth as he sucked on her lower lip. If he could bring her pleasure in such a carnal fashion, could she not do the same to him? What would it be like to know the feel of more than just Halbrand's tongue between her own teeth?

She blushed at the thought, but not as deeply as in times before. Galadriel took a deep and steadying breath, before rising to her feet. Her body felt her own again and her skin had cooled. And yet...

"Come to me ."

She could no longer deny the truth her subconscious had shown her. The She-Elf glided toward a nearby armchair, across which was draped a velvet dressing gown. It was a warm night, but the garment was a favorite of hers - soft and heavy enough to form to her body when she tied it tight. She did not reach for it for warmth, but for modesty.

Halbrand's wounds had healed enough that he'd been released from the healing halls. She had avoided him for two days, but that hadn't meant she'd shut out any interest in his comings and goings. She knew he'd been given his own room, though it was a bit of a walk from her own.

Galadriel glanced out of one of her room's many open windows as she finished tying her deep green gown over her thin chemise. The moon was high and full, which meant there would be plenty of light for her to walk outside without the assistance of more. It also meant, however, that she could be seen doing so if anyone was awake to do so. She stepped toward the gentle summer breeze that flowed into her room and listened for several minutes.

All was quiet and still, except for the rustle of animals and the buzz of insects that usually went about their business in the dark. The Commander took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as if she were about to march into battle.

She supposed she was in a way, she thought, as she moved toward her bedroom door. Halbrand had held the advantage over her the last few days - both in the waking world and, to her frustration, the dreaming one as well - and she knew he would not relinquish it easily. He had shown her the hedonism of Men...and while it was time for her to admit that she had enjoyed his scorching breath and filthy kisses, she felt it was also time to remind the smith that the forge was not solely about its fire.

Water, too, played a role in his craft. The two of them had certainly experienced the raging storms of that element and the equally tumultuous emotions that it symbolized. But water also cooled, tempered, and hardened. For all of water's terrifying power, it was patient and persistent, sensuous and seductive.

Water was a fitting metaphor for her intentions, she thought, as she walked briskly to Halbrand's bed chamber.

For it would always have its way, just like Galadriel herself.