Chapter 12: Pain

[Setting the scene: the events of this chapter take place after the battle of Helm’s Deep. Aragorn, the Rangers of the North, and remnants of the Fellowship have arrived at Dunharrow. Éowyn has openly declared her love for Aragorn and her desire to ride with him to the Paths of the Dead, and has been rejected on both counts. Onodrim is the Sindarin name for the Ents.]

7 March 3019 (Third Age), Dunharrow

Face down and crying into her bed, Éowyn knew she cut a pathetic figure of leadership. A young girl in the midst of a petulant tantrum she would unquestionably appear, were there not a locked door between her and anyone who might witness her humiliation.

She didn’t care.

The heart-racing thrill when she learned that he was approaching ... the momentary hope that he’d come so far out of his way just to see her ... the suffocating despair as she realized his true intentions; she felt the intensity of all those emotions to her core, but her greatest misery was something much more personal.

Does he truly not love me as I love him? He hasn’t clearly said yea or nay, yet...

Before they left Edoras, she thought she’d read signs of it in his face. But he was so elusive ... older, wiser, mysterious ... and she was still supremely naïve regarding the emotional intricacies of human relationships. Her burgeoning passion was, at the moment, an additional blindness, for it obscured any objective view of his heart from which she might discern truth. She knew this war would forever sunder families, friends, and lovers ... but for a few beautiful days, despite all that had occurred, she’d known the possibility of hope. Now...

Perhaps it was only a fool’s hope ... and I’m the fool, she scolded herself. And as for my equally foolish declaration of love...

Her fists clutched the bedsheets.

I escaped Wormtongue’s clutches, grasped for the highest cloud I could reach, but forgot that the heavens within our sight are only ephemera. There was nothing real to cling to, then or now ... and so here I am, dashed and bloodied on the razor-pinnacle of my foolishness. For no matter his lineage, no matter his strength, no matter his resolve, he will not return from the Paths of the Dead. No one will. So many warriors, so many beloved people, wasted just as foolishly as my love.

And yet, I only mourn for him. Because who I really mourn for is myself. Her despicable selfishness was the primary lens through which she viewed her mounting shame, and she wept all the more for it.

This is unquestionably a punishment for all I’ve done of late. Not for the first time, she tallied her many failures of resistance while being plied and beguiled by Wormtongue. She pondered her darkest dreams, and how their repeated themes of coercion and decadence seemed to spur her towards both while awake. She cringed at how she tempted Elfi and Théo to the edge of reason, all to satisfy her raging lust, rid herself of her troublesome virginity, and cleanse unwanted memories. And later, apparently having learned nothing, using and disposing of her trainees, then corrupting Gréor without a thought for considerations other than sexual. Nor can I forget the secret that manipulated them to my will and insulated me from consequence. And yet, even after all that insufferable self-regard, here I am, raging at being denied something — someone — I want. A reckoning was inevitable, and it appears to have arrived.

Her mind desperately searched for an insight that might elevate her from despair. Perhaps he loves me after all, but won’t admit it before confronting this dark journey? Fading hope flickered to life. It’s a possibility. But I would need to hear it from his lips. Frustration returned as she contemplated the immediate future. He stands on the precipice between life and death ... and despite my entreaties, he’s choosing death. Worse, it might mean death for both of us. For should he persist, I would fain die at his side, facing even the terror of the Cursed Ones. But if that path is denied me, and the King — as is likely upon his return — also abandons me, I shall decay in this inertial prison, watching my bound and rejected spirit wither away into nothingness. Even death while doing some worthy deed or achieving some noble end would be preferable to the intolerable waste that my life has become.

She fought back tears.

Can’t I somehow make him choose life? Life with me? Perhaps ... perhaps there’s a way.

She rose with determination but little hope, stripping off her clothes and digging through her small wardrobe for something inappropriate to her station.

It will take my most convincing argument, and I’ll have to abandon propriety. For though he may not love the Lady, he may be unable to resist the Whore.

Her teeth chattered as she quietly entered his quarters. Outside, the wind on their high plateau was bitter, and from the dark Dimholt an even more fell air seeped through the mists, as if anticipating the morrow’s journey. Her frigid nipples threatened to tear through her light dress, though in this case their prominence might serve to support her purpose. It was a necessary price to pay for her light raiment, and in any case she intended to work off the chill soon enough.

Aragorn lay on the bed before her, deep in sleep. She drew close, admiring the rugged lines of his face, the hewn features that seemed both vividly alive and immensely mature. Not for the first time, she wondered at his true age. Perhaps he considers me no more than a silly trifle of a girl. Well, I will show him otherwise.

She could hear the Dwarf’s lumbering snores through a nearby door. He’d insisted that naught but duty or an axe at his throat could wake him, and she hoped his boast held. Of the keen-eyed and keen-eared Elf, there was no sign. For that, at least, I’m grateful.

Taking a deep breath to steel her resolve, she pressed a dusty finger between his lips. With a quick, reflexive inhalation, he took the powder into his mouth and mumbled something inchoate. She froze, but he didn’t wake.

Shedding her anxiety and putting her lips close to his ear, she whispered carefully planned words. “Lord Aragorn, you will dream about us making love. When you awake it will be to the same pleasure, but it will be real. When I ask whether or not you love me, you will tell the truth. If the truth is that you don’t, you will forget that I was ever here.”

The struggle to craft such a narrow phrasing had been a mighty one, for she couldn’t deny that part of her wanted to make him love her. It was only the conviction that such a victory would be forever hollow that stayed her tongue. Knowing the truth — even if it wasn’t what she wished to hear — would have to suffice.

The dress fell to the floor. Her flawless body glowed in the flicker of a nearby lamp, her golden hair reflected waves of light and shadow, her grey eyes were gilt with flame. She trembled on the edge, aroused yet fearful of all the ways this could go wrong.

She lowered the coverlet. Aragorn was shirtless, clad only in the loose trousers their stores provided for guests’ repose. Their primary benefit was comfort, but for her purposes there was another: ease of removal.

His muscular chest she stroked with delicate fingers, tracing sinew and furrow. He was exquisite, formed from power and built for mastery. Here was a man who might, with no more than an interested glance, slake his desire for hours in any woman full-willing. Her sex flooded at the thought, and she resumed her slow examination of his body.

Kisses followed the path of her fingers. Crawling atop the bed and looming over him, she abraded her nipples with the thickets of hair lining his chest. It was immeasurably stimulating, and she found herself holding back her panting breaths, trying not to prematurely wake him.

Biting her lip, she undid the thin cord that secured his trousers, spreading the sides and tugging them down his hips. And then she reared back in shock, wide-eyed, covering her mouth to stifle a scream.

“Stop delaying me!”

“Evenstar, I wish only to savor every new experience with you.”

She looked up at him through a disheveled tangle of dark hair. One succulent breast pushed through her half-opened robe, its peak still wet where his mouth had left it, and the strikingly elegant upper expanse of her thigh remained exposed to the point where his hand had been exploring it only moments ago. A hand that, entwined with the other, now hovered protectively over his crotch. Angrily pushing his hands away, she resumed her frantic unbuttoning, desperate to lower his breeches and reach her goal.

“Savor later. You’ve toyed with my body for hours, and without satisfaction. Now I...”

“Without satisfaction?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Some satisfaction. But speak to me truly, Aragorn,” she demanded, her fingers pausing as she glared up at him. “Do you wish for a demure woman? Do you want me to wait in false shyness and feigned innocence, pretending to let you have your way with me? Or does my open desire for you enflame yours in turn? Because if it does not, you are attempting to bed the wrong Elf.” She resumed her work, struggling against the tightness of his closures, for he was quite obviously erect beneath the well-worn leather.

“It’s just ... we were progressing slowly and patiently, and I...”

“Be patient later. I am of a singular mind to do utterly perverse things to and with your cock.” His jaw dropped, for he’d never heard her speak with such bawdiness. “Should you actually contrive to stop me, I shall have to question both your sanity and your suitability as a partner. And possibly your sexuality.”

“As I would,” he muttered. “Very well. You may have your way with me, my demure and innocent Elf-maiden. If you can.”

She snorted. “Were I actually an innocent Elf-maiden, the next few hours would be far less pleasurable for you than they’re going to be. There!” With a smile of satisfaction, she undid the final button and pulled his breeches to his ankles.

And stopped, gaping.

The silence dragged on.

“You’re adopted, then? Your true father was of the Onodrim?”

“Arwen...”

“You’ve sprouted a trunk. You’re obviously the scion of an Ent. There can be no other explanation.”

“Dearest...”

“Here’s a serious question: when your desperately horny Elvish girlfriend hasn’t just removed your pants, where do you store all ... that?”

“Its current state is entirely your doing. It’s entirely manageable otherwise.”

As if magically compelled, her hand steadily moved closer, but stopped just before making contact. “I’ve never seen nor imagined its like,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Just how many have you seen?”

Raising an eyebrow, she quipped, “is that a question you truly wish answered? Should I demand to know how many damaged young women are limping around Eriador, any hope of finding satisfaction with another destroyed by a single encounter with this ... this ... this battering ram?”

He had the decency to blush before answering. “It’s not a matter of pride. I’ve done nothing to earn it, I was simply born with it. And in truth, more often it brings an abrupt end to what otherwise might occur. It’s as much...”

“Don’t you dare call it a curse.” Her delicate hand wrapped around one side ... soon joined by the other, for it took both to encompass its circumference. “Still, I see your point. It’s one thing to lust after this majestic edifice — which I am very much doing, by the way — and quite another to contemplate the physical practicalities. Which I am also doing, and plan to spend the rest of my day doing.” She looked up, a salacious twinkle in her eye. “Is this why you were so reluctant to let me see it? Did you think I’d recoil in fear?”

He nodded. “I wished to pursue all the enjoyment I could before you, too, stopped me.”

Leaning forward, she placed a lusty kiss on the tip of his glans. He gasped at the contact. “Do I appear to be stopping anything? Though it take a day, a week, a month, or even a year of patient effort, I will have this mighty pillar in all the ways you and I have dreamed, and perhaps some you have not. I hope you’ve taken sustenance, as I suspect I shall have neither time nor need for any.”

Aragorn groaned.

He was huge. Even limp, he was already much longer than Gréor and easily twice as wide. Deep within her sex blossomed a primal need to be conquered by it, and the lubrication that would surely be necessary for such an undertaking followed.

This isn’t a penis, this is an object of worship. I’ve never before believed in idolatry, but...

With feather-light touches, she brought it to life. As an enormous drake unwinding after a long slumber, it laboriously swelled, extending and stiffening. As it did, she grew bolder in her caresses; palming the head, circling its width, running teasing fingers from base to tip and back again. Soon, she was forced to use both hands, and she massaged his immensity until he was fully erect.

She was in awe. If the measure of his magnificent cock wasn’t a full foot, it was close. Nor was it slender. Even with both hands — and hers were hardly dainty — encircling its gargantuan circumference was difficult. Overwhelming waves of arousal at its towering masculinity met with counteracting tremors of fear. What can I possibly do with this behemoth? It’s inhuman. I’ve seen fully erect stallions that were smaller. I’m only days away from the loss of my virginity, only two much smaller men have been inside me ... well, two and a half ... yet none of them could have prepared me for this. How can I... ? How could anyone... ?

Well, she interrupted herself, if you’re going to be his lover, or even just his whore, you’re going to have to find a way.

Her strokes were long and tender, taking half a minute to traverse his length from top to bottom, then back again. She felt as if she was paying homage to a deity, rather than just stimulating Aragorn’s mighty rod. The juices that flowed from her sex and trailed down her thighs were a feeling to which she was already well accustomed, but liquid trickling down her chin was a new phenomenon. I’m actually salivating. Though I can’t imagine how it will be accomplished, I have to feel him in my mouth. It’s the first step towards submitting my body for his pleasure.

Bending down, she tentatively offered oral obeisance to his tumescence, licking him from base to tip, tasting and stimulating his hot flesh. She gathered one of his pendulous balls into her mouth, jaw stretched wide to encompass the massive oval, then slurped her way back up his shaft and, taking a deep breath, stretched her lips around the head, fluttering her tongue against his swollen glans. Caution fled under a haze of desire, and she opened her mouth as wide as she could and attempted to draw him inside.

For a time, it seemed pointless. Her teeth scraped against his skin, bringing all inward progress to a halt. She was afraid she’d wake him by biting down, and despaired. I must keep trying, she reminded herself ... and so she did, repeatedly wrapping her lips around him and straining until her jaw ached from the effort. To and then beyond her breaking point she pushed, trying again and again to swallow just the massive head. Finally, it popped past her lips and lodged in the hot cavity of her mouth. It hurt, but her feeling of triumph was greater still.

Unwilling to cede the ground she’d gained, she put down the urge to expel him and relaxed her jaw, redoubling her efforts, swirling her tongue around his glans, collecting the deliciously salty emissions that were already seeping into her mouth, taking advantage of every slight diminution of pain to push her face towards his crotch, no matter how fractional the gain.

It may have been minutes or it may have been an hour — her concentration obliterated all sense of duration — but eventually she felt him compressing the unyielding flesh surrounding her throat. Her sense of victory was as overwhelming as her urge to pass out. Her face was numb with effort, her tongue was sore, and even her ability to breathe was compromised.

She opened her eyes to judge her progress, and was once more confronted with the impossibility of the task before her. I’ve taken less than half his length. Much less. But how can I possibly accept more? There’s no room. I’ll choke to death. For now, I’ll have to accept temporary defeat. It’s time to dedicate myself to his pleasure.

With a groan of submission to reality — and to his unbelievable cock — she began fellating him.

Arwen sat up in frustration, rubbing her aching cheek. A long-forgotten streak of semen clung to her chin.

“Undómiel...”

“No talking,” she whispered through ravaged lips, her speech reduced to the bare minimum needed to communicate.

“But my love, I am beyond satisfied. I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve made me...”

Her hand smothered his mouth, stilling any further declamation. Her voice cracked and rasped, words coming in short declarative bursts, her throat brutalized by hours of abrasion and the salty residue of countless ejaculations. “Making you come is easy. Want you deeper. All of you. Down my throat.”

His blood raced every time she used such filthy language, for it so vividly contradicted the ethereal grace with which she surrounded herself at all other times. Yet they’d been at this for weeks, off and on, and her escalating vexation was palpable. “Evenstar, you’ve been trying for so long, and I love you for it, but I fear it’s an anatomical impossibility. I’m too big. It won’t fit.”

She shot him a wounded glance. He knew he’d upset her, but he hated to see her endure obvious pain in pursuit of what was almost certainly an unachievable goal.

Calming herself with three ritualistic breaths, she took him back into her mouth.

Pulling his massive tool back and forth through her lips, Éowyn strained to take him deeper, but the pressure every time he approached her throat was nearly unbearable. And still, the incredible ache in her jaw only increased. She brought him as much pleasure as she could with her tongue, but the struggle to keep even fraction of him inside her mouth was unfathomable. Her muscles rebelled and seized, and with a groan of failure she lifted her head, rubbing her jaw until she felt blood and sensation return.

How I’m going to fit this towering edifice into my sex I can’t imagine. But I might as well start trying. I can’t do much more with my mouth, anyway. Not tonight. Drawing her long legs astride his body, she held his heavy spear between her swollen nether lips. Back and forth she moved, coating his hard phallus with her lubricating juices, then guiding the pulsing head to the entrance of her wet hole.

Here we go. May the spirit-mare of Eorl the Stallion grant him entry.

Her aching jaw tense with fierce determination, she pushed.

Nothing happened.

Sitting up, she squeezed four fingers into her pussy and aggressively fingered herself, rotating and splaying them as she did, whimpering with the frightful urgency of her desperate need and ignoring the stinging discomfort. That she would once, not long ago, have yelped in horror at the breadth of this intrusion no longer mattered. Whether or not it hurt, her craving rendered her insensible. And she knew that worse was still to come.

On the precipice of a climax from her own hand, she made use of the distraction and tried again. Every muscle except those trying to envelop his massive rod clenched, she pressed downward ... slowly, carefully, but with as much force as she could muster. For a moment, there was naught but terrible resistance. And then he started to penetrate her.

Her mouth opened for a scream she dared not release. More than any injury from sword or spear, more than tumbling from a rearing horse onto a pile of unforgiving rocks, the introduction of Aragorn’s cock into her overstretched cunt was the most sustained expression of pain she’d ever experienced. But it was also pain-as-pleasure, like Gréor’s spanking or the bitter sting of Wormtongue’s whip, and that was what allowed her to endure it. That, and the promise of eventual triumph. Though it’s less than an inch within me, and though it might be all night before I can take him all the way inside, I have to believe my body can accept his enormity. And this isn’t about me. Even if every moment is an agony, I will offer my body to him ... as long and as often as he wishes. My own pleasure will come, eventually.

She pushed. Twisted. Screwed herself downward. She gained another inch, then two. I feel like I’m birthing a calf. Whimpering with pain and lust, she tried moving back and forth, attempting to find stimulation where there was only agony. At first, she could barely withstand the pressure, and tears flowed down her cheeks and splashed onto his chest. But with slow, patient effort, she gradually brought numbness, and even a mild form of pleasure, to her spasming pussy.

She threw her head back in relief as her juices seeped around his manhood. It wasn’t an orgasm — she was too overwhelmed to abandon herself to release — but even the slightest escalation of arousal brought her natural lubrication to full flow. Violently, she thrust downward, taking even more of him despite the searing torment. She achieved a measure of purchase, but her sharp hiss of pain deafened her to the sudden quickening of his breath.

A hand weakly gripped her thigh, and immediately her attention was wrenched away from the point of their union. His voice slowly rumbled to life, slurred and barely coherent.

“Ar ... Evens ... no, but ... but, you’re ... who ... who are you?”

“Don’t move. Ohhhhh ... please don’t move. Ever.“

Aragorn struggled to speak through heaving breaths. “Even if I wanted to — which I don’t — I’m not sure I could.”

“I mean it.” She squirmed, the motion causing his enormous cock to squelch through the ocean of ejaculate he’d repeatedly poured into her thoroughly violated sex. It was an incredibly filthy sound, and they both reveled in it. “I’ve grown used to this feeling, and would not have it end.”

A sigh. “Beloved...”

“Don’t you dare say it! Not while you’re still inside me.”

He kissed her brow, his mighty phallus throbbing deep inside her channel. “As you wish.”

“Besides, I’m not finished with you.” As if to demonstrate her point, she sensually rolled her hips against his. Though his eagerness for another bout matched hers, he groaned in mock protest.

“As has ever been true, your stamina surpasses mine. You’re going to have to continue without me.”

She stopped, lips tightened by a frown of displeasure. “Indeed, I will.”

“Evenstar, I only mean...”

“I know what you mean.” She sighed. “You’re leaving, and you’re not coming back.”

“Of course I’m coming back.”

“Oh? When is that? Next week? Next month?”

“My love...”

“Many years from now. That’s when you’re coming back. Not for years.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t know that. But there are deeds I must do, journeys I must undertake, and lessons I must learn ere I can attain the fullness of my manhood and be sufficiently prepared to win my greatest desire. One with whom you might be familiar. Every day — nay, every hour — apart will be an unimaginable sadness, but...”

She sniffed. “It’s of little consequence, of course. I’m immortal, am I not? I can wait forever. You, on the other hand...”

“Beloved Evenstar, why do you speak thus?”

“Do not spare me the bitterness of this cup, Estel. I must drink from it as often as I would drink from you, for I will be forced to grow accustomed to the one as long I am denied the other.”

Wrapping her in a comforting embrace, he attempted to stem the rising tide of her despair with humor. “How can you turn even the most tragic prose into an erotic promise?”

“I possess many gifts. Speaking of which,” she said, sliding her gripping channel back and forth along his shaft, “I have a solution to my problem.”

“Which is?”

“Leave ‘the fullness of your manhood’ here, with me. Then you can go away for as long as you wish. I probably won’t even notice that you’re gone. It’s already a superior conversationalist.”

“It doesn’t speak.”

“As I said.”

“Would that I could,” he chuckled, “for I shall have little use for it elsewhere, save in lonely and wasteful self-reverence.”

He felt her tense, and her sex clutched him even more tightly than before. But she remained silent. Eventually, he broke their conversational impasse.

“You certainly know I would not break your trust.”

Leaning away so she could look him in the eyes, she gave him a curious stare, as if trying to assess the relevance of his promise. “I have never considered that you might.”

“Then what troubles you?”

Her response was surprisingly forceful, earnest, and challenging. “Though the long years be but a trifle to my kindred — at least for those of us not heartlessly abandoned by their lovers — they pass swiftly and without return for yours. I would not deny you the fullest measure of them.”

“That is why I must go, my love.”

“You mistake my meaning.”

He stopped short, studying her face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Her lips narrowed. “You understand perfectly well. You just don’t wish to.”

With furrowed brow and an edge in his voice, he dispensed with pretense and answered honestly. “Arwen who owns my heart to and beyond the end of time, why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“Let me speak plainly, since I can already hear you mustering what are certain to be hours of noble protest. I do not mean to encourage leaping between the thighs of every trollop who passes your way. But you will be away a long time, and not all of that will be spent racing from one conflict to another in the company of sweaty men. You will have suitors both brazen and subtle, and even you are not so naïve or noble to deny that there will be those who catch your eye. I retain the utmost trust in your love and your judgment. I know your heart belongs to me. However, I also know this: if you choose to deny yourself in any and all circumstances, it is not because I have demanded it of you. Sex is not love. Nor will I hold you aught but blameless, whatever may occur, save that you turn away from our love in the end.”

Gaping and bewildered, he studied her eyes for some test or trick of meaning. Realizing that neither was forthcoming, a slow-kindled jealousy began to burn. “If you will forgive me for asking, is your sudden generosity in this matter truly about me, or does it reveal the previously unspoken intentions of the one who offers such advice?”

Though he girded himself for an angry retort, he was surprised to see her soften in response. It was with a strangely tragic wistfulness that she reproved him. “You speak as you might when you were known to me only as Estel; youthful in body, and even more so in mind. Let the older, wiser man named Aragorn hear me more clearly: have I not had thousands of years to explore any partner or act I could possibly desire? I have chosen to love you.”

Though this wasn’t the first time that, in the heat of debate, she’d felt it necessary to remind him that she’d been having sex for well over two millennia before their meeting, it was never a revelation he could bear with equanimity, for the sheer number of couplings such a life might entail was beyond his ability to face. The first time she’d done it, he’d wandered the glades of Rivendell in a humiliated daze, sure that every passing Elf had already sampled her beauty, wondering what he could possibly do to compare. He’d eventually concluded that such an attitude was akin to insanity, and slowly learned to rise above his instinct by focusing on their love and their future. Still, the assertion always made him feel like a scolded child. As a result, despite his determination to the contrary he found himself unable to resist one last petulant riposte.

“So you’re insisting that a few short years in which to sow the remainder of my previously unsown oats will counterbalance the uncountable multitudes who’ve already shared your bed?”

To his consternation, she smiled. “Of course. Though since you only have a handful of years by comparison, you had best work quickly if you wish to surpass my profligate tally. Where you’ll find the energy to pass your days leading men into battle and your nights driving women into throes of ecstasy, I can’t imagine. You can barely satisfy my needs.”

“The sense of priorities that accompanies my well-aged wisdom suggests that I should then eschew war for more pleasurable struggles.”

“Indeed! But note: by your reasoning, you have now argued yourself out of the very purpose of your departure, and logic dictates that you should stay here and attend to my unfulfilled demands for ‘pleasurable struggles.’”