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The Golden Hall was alight tonight with light and laughter, courtiers and soldiers mingling in the great mead hall, spilling out onto its porch into the unseasonably warm night. The rafters echoed with sounds: bellows of laughter, the soft singing of a pretty serving girl, the piercing cry of a fiddle ringing high and clear over the crowd.
But to Éowyn, the sounds were all a dull roar, a confused, muffled tumble barely reaching her ears. No distinct words or voices penetrated; the music was but a faint hum among the louder hum of bodies and voices and drinks.
She had taken to performing this experiment of late: sitting alone at a table with her drink before her, pressing her fingers to her ears to close out every sound. She could hear, still, a little; but not enough to converse properly, and not enough to make out distinctive noises.
What drove her to do it, none understood; not but her uncle’s counsellor, who only ever heard what it was she heard now.
It began with a discovery – a discovery, and a knock on the door.
The knock had resounded, loud and impatient, within Gríma’s study – once, twice, a third time. Éowyn banged until her knuckles nearly bled and her fingers burned, struggling to support the ledgers in her arms; but Gríma did not come.
At first she thought perhaps he was out; but the door came open in her hand, sliding open with a creak. Gríma was not a friendly man by nature, and his suspicions towards the rest of the court were well known. Éowyn doubted he would leave his door open unless he was inside his chamber.
And there he was, a frail, pale man hunched over a desk, all bony shoulders and shadowy hair and skin as bright and cold as the moon. A quill sat between his fingers, delicate and spider-like, sliding across the parchment beneath his hand like a lover’s skin. The gesture had made her catch her breath for just a moment – a small but humiliating stumble. Gríma was not a man to love. Gríma was a man to despise, a viper in the House of Eorl. And if sometimes the blueness of his eyes caught her off-guard; if sometimes the little sneer he wore in court did strange things to the beating of her heart, it was only a slip of her feelings, easily remedied and easily shunted aside and forgotten.
Angry now, she clutched the books close to her chest and called to him, her voice shaking uncomfortably in the silence. “My lord?”
He did not look up. She half expected him to motion to her like some serving girl, telling her to just put them over there, no deference and no respect. But he could not even give her that courtesy. Onward he continued, with his beautiful hands and his tender touch and the sad slope of his shoulders, sharp as folded wings beneath the thin velvet tunic he wore.
And then she was truly furious, because her heart was skipping again like it always did, like she tried to force herself to forget it did, and he was still ignoring her, like an unworthy child. She was the king’s niece; by rights he ought to bow to her. By rights he should be begging her for that flutter of her heart. But he had eyes only for his parchment and his quill, and ears only for the silence. Her voice made little difference.
In a rage she stormed up behind him and threw the ledgers onto the desk beside him, taking pleasure for a moment in the loud bang that disturbed his perfect stillness. He leapt then in a panic, stumbling to his feet with a rattling cry, fumbling for the knife in his belt. His reaction startled her almost as badly as her presence seemed to have startled him; she gasped too and jumped back, drawing a hand protectively to her chest and eyeing him like a dangerous predator.
For a moment he hardly seemed to see her, eyes dancing over her form with quick, sharp strokes; but when he realized who she was, his fear began to fade, and he drew his icy facade about him like a shroud. “My lady,” he said, through tightly gritted teeth. “I am given to understand that it is considered common courtesy to warn a man with a knock before one enters his chambers uninvited.”
She thought him rude, then, impossibly so, to speak so to his princess – to speak so to her, who had gone out of her way to deliver something for him, as a favor. “I did so,” she said, stepping towards him and glaring him down. “Amply and loudly. And then when I entered I spoke to you, but still you ignored my presence. Have you gone deaf, my lord, to miss so loud an entry?”
First he had been staring at her mouth, watching as her lips shaped the words spilling forth in her fit of rage; but at that last cruel phrase he went very pale, drawing back as though she had slapped him. He looked so stricken for a moment that Éowyn thought she must have insulted him in some form, without ever intending it. But then she began to wonder…
Éowyn, like her brother and cousin, was wary of Gríma son of Gálmód, no matter what effect he somehow managed to have on her heart. Gríma was a strange man, with a strange bloodline and stranger behaviors. He had a stare so intense it made her long for the ability to crawl out of her own skin; and his eyes had a habit of lingering on her lips, as if he was imagining what it would be like kiss her. The attraction alarmed her more than was reasonable; there were many other men who expressed a romantic interest in her who did not frighten her as Gríma did. And if she was honest, she had no reason to be frightened but that he was different.
It was no good thing to be different in Rohan.
It was the memory of his eyes upon her lips that caught her attention in particular at that moment. At first she had taken it to be a highly sexual sign, and had (rightly, she had thought) removed herself from any conversation with him that she could without seeming to be too rude. She did not need the complication of the unladylike feelings those glances towards her mouth so often caused.
But now, standing before him while he cringed and gasped at the mere mention of deafness, she realized that this was something he did to everyone – quick, sharp glances towards their mouths as they spoke, eyes narrowing a little as he concentrated on the shapes their lips made.
He had never thought to kiss her at all. He was reading her mouth.
The shock of it left her gaping before him, color rushing to her cheeks. She’d been so horrid and rude to him at every opportunity, just as her brother and cousin had always done. She had laughed about his oddities and complained about his annoying habit of sometimes ignoring particular words or phrases in a conversation; but she realized in a rush that those were only the phrases he had not heard.
At first she could only think to be impressed. He could read mouths and facial expressions so well that no one had really ever noticed. That must take considerable skill. She almost told him so; but then a wave of guilt crushed her, heavy and suffocating. “I – I had no idea – how long – how?” She almost covered her mouth in embarrassment, raising her hand to do so; but she drew it away immediately, eyes widening. “I – I’m sorry,” she stuttered. Oh lord, was she speaking too fast? Would it be easier if she slowed down? “I mean no offense – no one told me.”
A muscle in Gríma’s jaw twitched and tightened as he clenched his teeth. “Don’t do that,” he said.
She froze, startled. “I – what am I doing wrong?”
“Don’t slow your words when you speak,” he said, fingers curling into fists. “I can read your mouth just fine at its usual pace, thank you. Contrary to what you must now believe, I am perfectly capable of managing on my own.”
“Of course,” Éowyn said, blushing scarlet. “I’m sorry. I just – I only meant to help.”
Gríma smiled bitterly. “Help,” he repeated. “Help from the boisterous princess of Rohan. What a shocking change. I might have known. Pity sometimes moves even the cruelest to stay their hand from time to time. I suppose you expect me to thank you, but I have no use for pity – yours or anyone else’s. So if you’re quite finished, my lady, you may set down your burden and go. I have no further need of you.”
Éowyn drew back at the words, stiffening angrily. “I do not doubt your capabilities, sir,” she said, glaring him down. “Nor do you have my pity. I was never told, and I am the sorrier for it; I misjudged your actions because of it. But obviously you have managed quite well without my pity or my help.” She paused, frowning. “No one has ever said anything of this.”
“No one knows,” Gríma replied. He locked eyes with her, staring her down with a frigid blue glare. “And I would prefer it if it were to stay that way.”
Éowyn furrowed her brows, shaking her head. “But why?” she asked. “It would change so much for you – ”
“Oh indeed!” Gríma spat through gritted teeth. His hands were curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides, his eyes little more than slits in his pale face. “It would change everything, I imagine. Your brother and cousin would take advantage of it, I have no doubt; and others less just than they would see it as an opportunity to maim me at the least, attacking where I could neither see nor hear them. Tell me, princess, do you hate me so much that wish to sentence me to death?”
Éowyn opened her mouth to protest, but knew at once that it was futile, and moreover that it had been naïve of her not to think of this at once. Gríma had hundreds of enemies in Edoras alone; if they ever knew of his weakness, they would exploit it to the best of their ability.
Éowyn was not entirely certain she trusted Gríma; but she was not so cruel as to let that happen to him. She shook her head slowly, biting her lip and staring guiltily at the floor. “My uncle?” she asked, her voice very small.
Some of the anger went out of Gríma at that. “He is aware,” he said. “He sent one of his better healers to my father in an attempt to save my hearing. Apparently there was nothing to be done.”
So he had not always been deaf. The news just made her guilt the worse. “What happened?”
Gríma smiled thinly. “Oh, nothing unusual, according to my village. Just almost every other boy in the village beating me around the head until my ears rang and my vision blurred. Boys will be boys, as they say.”
Éowyn drew in a sharp breath. “But they were punished?”
He laughed. “Come now, princess; you can’t possibly be so naïve as to really believe that.”
Éowyn tried to picture Gríma as a young man, bloodied and bruised, crawling back to his house broken and bleeding and clutching his head to stop the ringing in his ears. The image made her shudder. “I – I’m sorry,” she said.
Gríma growled in the back of his throat and turned away. It was, Éowyn realized, his way of terminating a conversation. If he could not hear what she had to say, he would not have to respond; and eventually she would leave him and go. “Why apologize for a crime you did not commit?” he asked. “As I told you, I have no use for your pity, or anyone else’s. Now, if you’re quite finished, I have work to do.”
Éowyn was determined that things would be different after that.
Guilt consumed her – guilt, and an inexplicable longing, to be the friend that Gríma had never had among the court. He seemed to have no use for such friendship, and did everything in his power to make that clear; but Éowyn did not like to take no for an answer, and she was ever present even when he might have wished she would go away.
She took to bringing Gríma anything her uncle might require sent Gríma’sway; but no matter how hard she tried, she always seemed to startle him. Gríma’s surprise inevitably turned to anger at the sight of her. He would snatch whatever she had brought him and turn his back to her without a word, even when she tried to say something while his eyes were on her face.
She took to leaving him notes after a time, atop whatever it was she had been sent to deliver, carefully and gently worded bits of her heart wrapped in cordial, courtly tones. She hoped that the notes would prove a better means of communication, that they would soften Gríma’s resolve to ignore her at every turn; but Gríma took one look at the first one and crumpled it in his fist, tossing it aside and keeping his back to her until she left.
She took heart, though, when she returned the next day with a letter from a diplomat and a second note from herself, and saw that her first had been smoothed out and set carefully in a corner of his desk, where he could lay eyes on it at all times. When she entered, his fingertips were resting upon it, touching it as tenderly as he touched all parchment that passed beneath his hands.
He flinched and drew away at once when he realized that she was present, and refused to meet her eyes when she smiled.
She began to think that perhaps it was the method of her entrance that most annoyed him; after all, she startled him every time she brought him something. So Éowyn sought to get his attention by other means than sound, wearing a specific perfume, lighting candles on one of the smaller chests of drawers in the study, wearing white so that the fluttering fabric of her gown would catch his eye.
At first she thought her efforts had been in vain; but over time it became apparent that it was the perfume that worked the best. Each time she wore it, he seemed to know she had come into the room. He would pause in his work and glance over his shoulder at her, hardly seeming surprised to see her as he once had. Sometimes, he even spoke to her.
“If those are the accounts from the stablehands, you may place them on the table to the left,” he said once, a few weeks after she had begun to wear the perfume. He did not even bother to look up.
The ever-growing pile of notes sat on the corner of his desk, the first one’s crumpled form still throwing off the balance of the otherwise perfect stack of letters. She placed her latest note atop the pile, and left the accounts where he had asked she place them.
Then, a few days later, he spoke to her again. “An interesting choice of flower, princess, for your perfume. I had expected you to be fond of Simbelmyne.”
She had taken her time, but had come to stand where he could see her, waiting until he looked at her to speak. “Simbelmyne is the scent of death,” she said. “It only reminds me of my mother. The healer put it on her often, to mask the smell of her decay when she wasted away. It holds no happy memories for me.”
She had left the ledgers for him then and gone. Éowyn was not much for pity either, and as he had no use for hers, she had no desire for his. So she fled from the pity in his bright blue eyes, and stayed away for a long, long while.
Curiosity overcame her after a time. Her signals seemed to be effective ways to communicate her presence, but she wondered now if there was something more she might be doing to help him, since no one else would.
So at feasts she closed her ears, as she was doing now, and practiced reading lips. Sometimes she did it with her handmaidens too, closing her ears with cotton and conversing with them as best she could manage.
They told her she was getting better, but asked her constantly what was the purpose, and who it was she meant to aid. Was it her uncle’s hearing that troubled her? True, he had seemed to be growing wearier of late, but he would be healthy and hale again soon enough; and anyway his hearing at least seemed mostly intact. There was no need for such silly little exercises.
But Éowyn pressed on, her fingers in her ears and all the sounds in the world dulled to her.
She was trying to read the lips of the soldier nearest her, busily flirting with a courtier’s lovely young daughter. She could only catch a few words at best, but most of them were filthy things, the product of a drunken mouth unused to speaking to a lady. She watched the words drop from his lips in ugly puddles until the girl scampered away, blushing and shaking; and then, angered, she pushed herself free of the table and removed her fingers from her ears. Someone needed a lecturing.
The sounds of the hall crashed over her like a wave when they returned, flooding her senses and sending her reeling for a moment. She tried to imagine what Gríma would feel, if ever his hearing were repaired. It would totally overwhelm him, she thought. He would be paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of an event like this, all those distinctive voices and strains of music and clanking cups and sloshing drinks and clomping boots and the whisper of velvet gowns across stone floors. He would sit and he would listen, and he would drown in the ocean of sounds. But he would be the happier for it.
The noises resolved in her ears all at once, their distinctiveness creating some kind of shape from the muddled mass they had once been. Exhaling slowly, Éowyn gathered her skirts in her hands and started for the young drunk soldier. But before she could reach him, a bubble of raucous laughter rose above the other sounds, floating over the music and shouted stories.
Éowyn turned at once. She knew that kind of laughter. It was the laughter of drunken soldiers who had found a victim to trap – a serving girl, perhaps, or a young beardless squire just taking his first steps towards becoming one of them.
But then she caught sight of Gríma’s dark hair, and the panicked flutter of his pale hands, and she knew it was neither of these that the soldiers had trapped.
She thought of the dull roar that had been the sounds in the hall when she had covered her ears; thought of how Gríma must be hearing them, or trying to hear them, while they mocked and tormented him in a massive circle. He would not be able to read the men behind or beside him; and they would all be speaking, rough and tumble over one another, a series of voices too slurred for him to understand.
There was nothing Gríma feared and loathed more than the breaking of his facade of power. If they discovered his secret, he would be utterly destroyed.
Éowyn was running through the crowds before she had a chance to think, ducking under the wildly waving arm of one of the soldiers before he knew who she was and what she was doing. “Begging your pardon, gentlemen,” she called over their coarse voices, “But I’m afraid I must borrow the counsellor for a moment. You may speak to him at a later time, if you must.”
She caught Gríma’s wrist in her hand. For a moment he shied away like a frightened horse, jerking away from her with wide, terror-stricken eyes; but when he saw her, when he took in her face, his fingers closed around her wrist at once and clung painfully, digging into her skin.
The soldiers were saying something to her, all shouting at once, jostling and pushing; but Éowyn was not some serving wench they could cow, and they did not dare lay hands on her. They parted reluctantly as she pulled Gríma free of them, jeering and calling, “We’ll finish this conversation later,Wormtongue! We won’t forget!”
If he heard, he did not acknowledge the threat. His hand was warm and tight on Éowyn’s arm; and when she shifted to take his hand, his fingers slipped through hers like they were always meant to be there, and clutched until it hurt her to her very bones.
There were eyes on them, hundreds of them now; not just the soldiers, but courtiers and servants and other soldiers alike. But Gríma’s pulse was hammering hard near her thumb, and if he stayed in the hall a second longer he would panic and run wild like a battle-crazed horse. Éowyn had spent more time with such horses than she had with people. She knew how dangerous they could be when they were afraid – to others, and to themselves.
She took him from the hall, under the eyes of half the court, and led him into silence.
His study was a shock after the noise and light of the hall. Pitch dark and dead quiet, Éowyn had to pause for a moment when she entered to get her bearings.
Gríma, on the other hand, could not bear to stop. He slammed the door closed behind him, locking them in complete darkness. For a moment, Éowyn wondered how he would hear her in the dark, if he could not read her mouth; but it did not appear to matter to him. Words burst out of his mouth moments later, an angry torrent he could not stopper. “The bastards cornered me,” he growled, pacing rapidly back and forth in front of her. “I did nothing to them – I had not even spoken to anyone this night, not even Théoden King – all I meant to do was leave, but no, the precious soldiers could not possibly bear to let me pass without a chance to mock me – and when I tried to slip away before they were through they cornered me and circled me – I do not know half the things they said, I – why is it that these types are never punished, when they push and bring harm without cause? What is fair and just about that? I did not deserve – I have not done a thing – ”
Éowyn reached out and caught his wrist again as he made another pass in front of her, cupping his hand in both of hers. “Shhh,” she murmured, gently rubbing the center of his palm with her thumb. “I know you haven’t. I know.”
He could not hear her. He stood perfectly still, and for a moment she thought perhaps he turned towards her; but the darkness of the room was so complete that she could hardly tell what direction he was looking. She stepped closer and spoke a little louder; in some cases, he could hear a little, if the voice was clear enough. “It is unfair,” she said, keeping her tone gentle. “They were wrong to hurt you. Just… breathe deeply for a moment.”
He did not respond. Éowyn sighed, frustrated, and came even closer, expecting that her nearness would soothe him. Instead, it only seemed to increase his panic. He inhaled sharply and drew back at once, jerking his hands free of hers and hurrying away. For a moment she was alone in the dark; then a candle sputtered to life somewhere to her left. When she turned, Gríma’s face was illuminated, the candle trembling in his hand.
Éowyn hurried to him and took the candle from him, gently setting it on the small side table. “You should sit,” she said; then realized again that he likely couldn’t hear her. She ran for his chair, grabbing it and bringing it to him, gently pushing him down into it with her hands firm on his shoulders.
He sank gratefully into the chair, running a shaking hand over his eyes. “Thank you,” he finally managed, exhaling sharply. “I – what were they saying? I couldn’t – ” He paused, swallowing hard. “No matter,” he said, looking up at her at last with sad eyes. “I imagine I don’t want to hear.”
She shook her head slowly. “I shouldn’t think so,” she said.
He frowned. Shadows were hiding her face, she realized, making it hard for him to see her. She turned to grab the candle, intending to set it on his desk and kneel beside it so he might see her better; but he caught her wrist instead and gently moved her to an empty chair nearby, pulling it close enough that she was well within arm’s reach. “Don’t,” he said, very quietly. “I prefer the dark.”
“But then how will you – ” she began; but she stopped at once with a small gasp when he reached up and laid his fingers against her lips. Her traitorous heart thudded to a stop at once, and a sharp breath slipped free of her mouth and slid through his fingers like a caress. “Oh,” she whispered, her heart slowly starting to beat once more – uneven and unsteady.
He looked up sharply. “Does it bother you?” he asked. “It’s just I can read you just as well this way as if I could see your – ”
He stopped. The ghost of a smile flickered across his face. He must have seen the blood rush to her cheeks, the way her pale skin turned hot and flushed beneath his touch. “Oh,” he murmured, just as quietly as she had. Something hungry came to life in his eyes; and at its presence, Éowyn wondered how she could ever have mistaken his casual lip-reading for lust. If only she had known then what true, naked desire looked like when written on his face…
Her throat was suddenly terribly dry. She swallowed hard and tried to close her mouth, but her breath would not stop coming in hitched little gasps, no matter how desperately she attempted to control it.
She had not expected her worry to turn so fast to something else – had not expected a simple gesture to so change the very essence of her relationship with this man. She had been desperately trying, in one way or another, to get his approval – his friendship, she had told herself, time and time again – for what must have been months now. But this she had not dared to confess to herself, even when it was clear before her eyes. Nor had she ever expected him to return her overtures, and certainly not with this kind of heat.
Gríma was apparently a far better master of his emotions than she.
“Does it trouble you, princess?” he murmured, his eyes heavy with meaning. His fingers arched, long and pale in the light of the candle; and his fingertips traced the curve of her lower lip, tugging just a little, like deepening a kiss.
A shiver seared its way through her flesh, every inch of her quivering at the touch. The drinks she had consumed only made the heat inside her that much worse, an ache demanding to be satisfied, squirming at the pit of her stomach. “No,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. Her lips moved against his fingers, pressing outward and drawing back, breath tracing words against his skin. “No, it doesn’t.”
He smiled, a quirk of his lips on the right side, impish and indecent. “Good,” he all but purred, leaning closer to her. His eyes traced her face, from her wide eyes to the flush in her cheeks to her lips again, staying there as he spoke. “You were kind to pull me free of the soldiers, my lady. I am most appreciative.”
“Are you indeed,” Éowyn said. The pressure of his fingers, too light, too heavy, too much there, was killing her. Every word was a kiss to his skin, too intimate to be ignored. “I have done my best to give you aid these many months in whatever small way I may.”
“I told you I did not want your pity.” The words were spoken without malice, his eyes detached and cool. But his skin was flushing, turning rosy in the candlelight. Her lips were doing things to him. She tilted her chin up, just a little, letting his fingers slide down her mouth; his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, drawing a leg up protectively towards himself.
“I do not give you my pity,” Éowyn said, tilting her head to the side. His fingers followed, tapping over her lower lip. “Kindness does not equal pity, sir; nor do overtures of friendship equal the actions of a guilty conscience.”
He smirked, raising both brows, pale and non-present. “If not guilt, princess, then what drives you to me?” he asked. His fingers curled and pulled again, parting her lips once more. He traced the damp flesh just inside her mouth, leaving the salt taste of his skin trailing over her tongue. Subconsciously, she leaned forward into the touch, as if to take the proffered fingers into her mouth. Blushing, she jerked back almost at once; but the inherent promise in the gesture had not been lost on Gríma. The smirk was gone, replaced only with a fierce, ravenous desire.
Éowyn leaned into his hand again, lowering her head just enough that his fingers slid up over her lips once more, stroking the skin. “Call it curiosity, if you like,” she said. “You interest me. I could not give you an explanation as to why; but you intrigue me, and I wish to know more of you, if you would ever be so good as to let me in.”
He smiled again, a quick upturn of the corner of his lips. “Let you in,” he said, his voice very soft. “I am not the only one with his guard up, my lady. You have regarded me with caution and not a little fear from the day you met me. I do not humor idle curiosity; but desire to know me… if genuine… that perhaps I might consider, if you would let me know you in turn.”
He tugged again on her lower lip at this last remark, too suggestively to be coincidence. Éowyn wondered if he also had drink to excuse his boldness. She had not seen a tankard in his hand, nor did he show any of the normal signs of a man too drunk to consider the consequences of his actions. And this flirting was not the drunken overtures of the soldier in the hall; this was a calculated seduction, couched in words pretty enough to deceive and easy enough to retract if she took offense.
The gesture, though; the gesture would be most difficult to ignore. If she were not that little bit tipsy – if she were not so familiar with him now – she could have him dead in days for daring to be so bold. All she would need do is tell some soldiers how he had touched her, and he would be taken care of.
But in the moment she was not thinking of his death, or his boldness, or anything but his hand on her flesh and the heat searing its way through her veins and pooling in her lower back, coiling and throbbing between her thighs. Let me know you, she thought, vaguely and hazily, before opening her lips just enough to be an open-mouthed kiss against his fingers.
A sharp intake of breath on his part, and then his hand dropped to her wrist, circling her skin to take her pulse. Her heartbeat pounded hard against his fingers; and at the unsteady beat he caught her arm and tugged, hard, sending her stumbling into his lap.
He pressed his mouth against her neck, a hot, wet kiss that tore a moan from Éowyn, rattling in her throat. If Gríma did not hear it, he most certainly felt it, and hissed in turn against her skin, kissing against the flesh that hummed most strongly with each sound she made. “However shall I show my gratitude to you, princess,” he said, clutching at her hip and pulling her further into his lap. “I have so little with which to repay you…”
She caught his free hand and pressed it to her lips, running her tongue over both his flesh and hers before saying, “You seem already to have a perfectly clear grasp on how best to repay me…”
He growled, a low, vicious vibration against her throat, and yanked her skirts upwards, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her steady against him. “As my lady commands,” he said, kissing her throat again and again. “Such a price, I confess, I will be most glad to pay…”
A few brief fumbles with skirts and laces and the difficulty of positioning on a chair, and then he was inside her, hot and hard and eager. She rolled her hips against him with a moan that made him growl and shudder underneath her. Flushing, she bit back on her cries and tried to keep silent; after all, a passing servant might hear and know what was happening – and rumor spread fast in Edoras.
Yet if she was quiet, if her moans were muffled, Gríma could not hear them; and that was a pity indeed, to deny him what he so greatly desired to hear, even in his mostly deaf ears. Scream, and the sound reverberated loudly enough even for him to hear. He seemed to delight in tearing such cries from her, so much so that he began to pause when he withdrew, then thrust hard back inside her. He could feel her scream against his tongue, pressed against her throat; and each sound he felt made him moan and arch against her, desperate and hungry. He began to pace himself to her moans after a time, smiling like a predator standing over his kill each time a cry rattled in her throat and vibrated through her flesh to his nose or fingertips.
From time to time she pressed her face against his neck, to feel what he felt. He liked that too, and clung to her desperately when it happened, gasping and moaning her name beneath the soft press of her mouth. He drew it out like a last-ditch prayer, rolling the syllables over his tongue each time he called for her. His voice was little more than a rasp towards the end, hers a rough and broken scream.
In her moments of greatest pleasure, she pressed her mouth to his ear and hissed a string of filth so colorful it would have made the foul-mouthed soldier blush. She had not expected Gríma to hear, with her voice so muddled and hoarse; but the proximity of her mouth and the volume of her voice were enough that the words were perfectly clear to him. She didn’t realize it at first, until a particularly filthy turn of phrase sent Gríma biting into her skin to muffle a moan ripped from his very core. Where his thrusts had been controlled and steady before, they quickened to a steady, artless pace, all sense of control gone in favor of wild and pure sensation.
She had not expected him to so desire her filthy talk, even if she had thought he would hear her. But the discovery delighted her, as every other discovery about him had always thrilled her. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth more closely to his ear, spitting foul-mouthed pleas and commands until they dissolved into incoherent curses, occasionally punctuated with a scream. In a last effort to regain control, he coiled his hands around her hips and forced her down onto him, over and over, harder and faster, until he arched against her and came with a low, desperate moan.
For a moment he was perfectly still beneath her, chest rising and falling with heavy, gasping breaths; then he slipped a hand free of her waist and slid his fingers between her legs, finding and teasing her sensitive flesh. Gasping, Éowyn bucked and arched in his lap. “Oooh,” she whimpered, squirming almost as if to escape; but his arm was iron around her waist, holding her against him. She caught the arms of the chair and gripped them tightly, white-knuckled, rolling her hips with each touch. His fingers were relentless, teasing and toying, one minute slow and the next faster and harder. He responded best to eager thrusts of her hips and the tilting back of her head. His eyes were locked on her face, reading her expression like a manual. Touch here to make me moan. Stroke there and make me scream. Stroke again and I will thrust and sob and rock against you until I come.
Torturous minute after torturous minute passed, the tension within her building with an ever-increasing roar, until at last it rose, peaked, and broke in one great wave. Éowyn locked her knees around his hips, clutching at the loosened shoulders of his tunic with white knuckles and jerking her hips as though she was still riding him, muffling her sobs of delight in the crook of his neck as the wave crashed and swallowed her.
It took her far longer to come out of her bliss than it had Gríma. She clung to him so tightly that he could barely extricate himself from her grip. It took her a moment to realize he was murmuring to her like one might a troubled child, a series of soothing nonsense phrases not unlike those she had used to calm him when they had first gotten to his study. His lips brushed against her ear, a soft, tender, almost possessive gesture that warmed her heart.
Finally recovered, she released her grip on him and settled back on her knees, blushing and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
He cupped her cheek and tilted her head towards him, looking into her face with eyes full of questions. “I trust you found your payment satisfactory,” he said, smiling a nervous, fragile smile. All the confidence of his early overtures was gone, replaced with something like hope and something very much like fear.
She smiled and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his mouth. “Is once really enough of a payment for, in all likelihood, saving your life, my lord?” she said. “Do you value your life and safety at so low a price?”
For a moment, he frowned, puzzled and not a little alarmed by the remark; but then the meaning came to him, and his smile was positively dazzling. “No indeed, my lady,” he said, curling a hand around her throat and tracing his fingers down to her collarbone. “I am available to you whenever you should wish for the next installment of your payment.”
She grinned and kissed him again, warm and eager and without much grace. He returned the kiss fiercely, tightening his grip on her hips and pulling her flush against him, clinging to her waist as he had clung to her wrist maybe an hour previous.
When she paused for breath, he settled back in his chair and stroked her cheek, very softly. “You should know, princess, that I am… grateful for your kindness towards me,” he said, hesitating a little over the words. “All these months after you learned what had happened, I expected you to tell someone, or to take advantage of me yourself; but you have not. You have gone to a great deal of trouble to be of use to me.” He half-smiled, that small quirk of his lips that Éowyn was fast growing to love. “And the perfume you chose to announce yourself smells quite lovely, by the by.”
Éowyn laughed at that. “Why thank you,” she said. “I had rather hoped you would like it.” She touched his cheek gently, running her fingers over his skin. “I have no intention of ever taking advantage of you, my lord – to do so would be cruel, and you have suffered enough of that at the hands of the House of Eorl. I do not intend to add to it.”
Gríma smiled, reaching up and brushing strands of hair away from her face. “Your uncle is right when he proclaims you to be the greatest treasure in Rohan,” he said, his voice low and warm. “There is no woman in this land or in any other who could compare to you.”
Éowyn blushed darkly and slipped off of his lap, tugging some of her hair over her shoulder and twisting it between her fingers. “You are kind to say so,” she said.
Gríma frowned, pushing himself to his feet. “Would you leave so soon? The night is still young.”
The night was not, in fact, particularly young; it had been growing late when they had left the hall, and it was much later still now, if Éowyn’s sense of time was correct. “I would stay if I could,” she said, reluctantly; “But I will have servants looking for me if I do not return soon, and no one will take it kindly if they learn we have been together. I fear they will bring harm to you. Those soldiers meant you harm, and they will remember it well when the morning comes – better still if they learn you have had me when they dare not even address me as they would any other woman they desire.”
Gríma’s fingers curled into fists at his side. “Did you mean what you said, then?” he said, eyes narrowing. “About returning?”
Oh, dear. Now she’d made him angry again. She seemed to be remarkably good at doing it, a fact that she regretted greatly. She hurried forward and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his and kissing him until he was panting against her mouth. “A thousand times yes,” she said, when she finally stepped back; “But not tonight.”
He clenched his jaw, but nodded reluctantly. He did not quite seem to believe her, but he was willing to put his faith in her for now, however fragile that faith might be. “Then go if you must,” he said, the words practically ripped from his mouth. “And sleep well, sweet princess.”
“Sweet dreams, counsellor,” she said, pressing a hand to his cheek before hurrying away.
“They will be,” he said, very softly, as she reached the door. “They will all be of you.”