But If she is content for me to wrap her up against me like this, I am happy. Whatever my queen wants, my queen gets.
“What is this called?”
“This? This is hugging and cuddling,” she says, her voice muffled against my bare chest. “It relaxes me, and it builds trust. Trust is a big part of sex, especially for a twenty-something virgin like me who’s been saving herself for the right moment.”
I don’t mind it, but I don’t understand this strange feeling that builds inside my body cavity, somewhere near my sternum.
“Am I doing it right, my queen?”
Clara’s sweet face nuzzles against my skin, and she laughs softly. It is thrilling just to feel her breathing, to know she’s here with me. “Well, you’re even better than my La-Z-Boy at home, so you’ll do.”
I do not like this. “What is a Lazy Boy? Do you have someone in your house who does nothing but allows you to sit on his lap like this? Show him to me so I can send him away. He will be crying for his mother before I am through with him.”
Again, Clara makes the noise of a piglet that makes me smile. Her laughing noises warm my loins even though my anger grows the more I picture Clara sitting on someone other than myself.
“Oh, you sweet man. Elf. Whatever. It’s the name of a chair. A very nice, squishy chair. It’s not a man.”
This makes me feel better.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a lot of proper human furniture, but I can service you any way you like.”
At this, she leans back away from my chest, and I do not like that feeling. Clara looks up into my eyes and squints. “I wish Reba were here because you, sir, are something else.”
“I would like you to rest your head on my chest again. I want to see something,” I say.
Giggling, she obeys, but this time she wraps her arms around my torso and squeezes. There is a rush of warmth through my body. I am familiar with the concept of chemicals and hormones in humans. Still, the elven anatomy doesn’t work the same, or at least I hadn’t thought so.
“Why does this cuddling thing you like also make me feel things?”
She sighs, and this time her breath causes tiny bumps to appear on my skin. “That is oxytocin.”
I correct her. “Elves don’t produce that.”
“If cuddling feels good, then you most definitely do. Have you never been cuddled before? Not even as a baby?”
“I was carried at my mother’s breast until I was able to walk and talk at the age of three months. That is normal for us.”
My queen is silent for a moment. I can sense something is wrong. But instead of pulling away, she squeezes me tighter, to the point where I feel there will be an imprint of her on my torso. I would love that if it were possible.
I feel good protecting her; that much is true. I know that this rush of chemicals through my body is also equal in strength to sexual arousal. This makes the end goal confusing, but perhaps human goals are different? Maybe she and I are different from other creatures with overpowering instincts to mate. Except, no. I need to breed her as soon as possible.
Before I met Clara, I had thought protection amounted to clothing her, warming her, sheltering her, and killing predators with my arrows in the forest.
This is different, and I don’t comprehend it. But I like it. Maybe this is what it feels like when elves fall for humans? I wish I knew someone to ask. I know that half-elves, half-humans exist somewhere. But they, too, are exiled.
This strange desire to protect more than her physical being…it must fall into the realm of human emotions. Emotional safety is something I don’t quite understand as an elf. Still, I’m beginning to feel the other side of that. I feel happy knowing that I’m needed for something like this. It costs me nothing and keeps her still. She isn’t trying to run away while my arms are around her. I can smell the chemical reaction in her pheromones. Soon, she will be ready for me, both in body and spirit. But I’ve learned since meeting her that I should not say things so…clinically.
“Can you help me better understand what else you need?” I ask Clara.
Her face peers up at me. I look down at her huge hazel eyes and lose myself in the flecks of gold and green. Her skin doesn’t glow in the same way that mine does, but her luminescence of spirit gives her face a softness that entrances me.
My eyes watch her thoroughly, glossy lips as she explains. “Just be you, and tell me why you chose me.”
Her smile pierces my heart. “I have watched you from a distance for so long, but I could always feel the bigness of your heart. I watched you smile at others but never at me. I longed for that. And now, nothing compares to seeing you up close. You are warm and soft, and I feel connected to you. Even now, I can feel your human blood pumping harder in your veins. Does that also happen when you hug people, normally?”
Clara blinks up at me. “Oh. No, not especially. Usually, hugging helps to sort of settle the blood pressure.”
“I am very sorry. Then I must be doing this wrong because yours is not settled at all. In medical terms, you may be close to danger.”