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The wild desert sun clung to the very edges of the horizon when you began making your way back to the palace. It was a bloody, beautiful thing, zesty citrus and sweet amber framing the deep scarlet of day’s end, being chased away by broad strokes of dark indigo sky. The fleeting light elongated all of the shadows to grotesque proportions, and the reddish haze of quickly evaporating light greatly lowered visibility. So many faults, but the sunset was a welcome companion during your trek back after the ugly day you’d had.
It was gone by the time you arrived at the gates, eaten away by night and replaced by the much more practical and stable blaze of torches. A slight wind gave you solace instead, having taken to playing with the edges of your clothes and loose strands of hair, cooling the air and filling your nose with a bouquet of the royal garden’s rich soil and green, the chalky clay stone synonymous with any structure in the eastern parts of Almyra, and a wispy promise of sweet incense.
If anything about the gorgeous sunset, the wind, or the alluring scents that called you to the place you’d quickly taken to calling home indicated change, indicated any great shift in the cosmic scheme, you were quite unaware right then.
At the gates, disgruntled guards were quick to recognize and apprehend you, taking the horse you’d borrowed for the day and personally escorting you to the palace. Their eyes and postures were ready for the moment you tried to slip away again, but you didn’t bother with that. There was only so many rules you could break in a day without turning your disobedience to insolence, and despite all appearances, you didn’t want that.
Disproving pages already had their not-so-subtle reprimands at the ready, informing you of the effect of your absence the minute you were hurried in through the less formal kitchen door. Magicked away from open viewing surreptitiously, hidden like an embarrassment. According to them, it seemed you had missed a surprise meeting with some of the local lords. That was problematic. Your maid, her lips pursed and eyes glaring, pushed you immediately to bathe, to wash off the stink of the city from your skin. She didn’t mention your less than flashy attire, nor the scent of cigars and liquor that clung to your skin and hair, but her demeanor said it all. Sneaking around in dark clothes, your face and hands stained with filth. Skipping meetings. Reeking of cheap taverns. They still didn’t trust you, the strange girl from the east who’d managed to impress their even stranger king, and this didn’t help.
The feeling was decently mutual.
If anything could be said of them, it was that their attitudes were useful. In their agitated scowls and narrowed glances, you read something the man himself would never reveal openly. Claude had been anxious about losing track of you. Idle curiosity begged to know if it was a political concern or a personal one. It was hard to tell these days. It was even harder to tell if the difference even factored into the satisfaction you took from the knowledge. A confusing feeling for sure, mollification swirling in with guilt and the heady dark grime of your secretive actions.
After picking at a light dinner, you dressed in a nightshift made of thin enough fabric to account for the summer night’s warmth. You sat on one of your room’s plush chairs. You forced yourself to focus on the report of the day’s missed meeting. It was short, a transcript you finished quickly. Without purpose, you stood, body ticking with nerves. You opened your room’s window to allow your friend the breeze to dance inside and cool your skin.
In short, you waited for him.
As always, there was a part of you that doubted Claude would even come. A part of you that was sure you didn’t even want Claude’s company, as you could already imagine how the conversation would go. Your duty to the crown conflicted with your duty to the man, made even worse by the insane whim that had sparked this affair between the two of you. You would look in his eyes and have nothing but lies. Guilt, too, as undeserved as you knew it was. After all, it was for Claude’s sake you did what you did. He said he admired your mind and skills, but only made use of them when convenient. He said your open support of him as a noble emissary and as an individual was of great value, then restricted your ability to be either, citing that very ‘value’ as the binding chains. He disregarded the purpose you had at his side and kept you pinned in the light, under the microscope of those lovely eyes of his.
He said your way of thinking was unnecessary, you disagreed. One day you would convince him to understand, but until then, you had no choice but to lie. Tonight was worse than most, as your lies had finally come to reveal a glaring conflict of interest. Your duty to the crown, and to Claude. A dangerous line to walk. Yes, it was better if he didn’t come.
No matter how much you told yourself that, though, your heart still skipped a little upon hearing his voice. Nerves or excitement, you couldn’t tell.
“Knock knock,” Claude called. He didn’t actually knock, of course, nor did he use the actual door. You often wondered if the architects who originally built this place had known Claude would one day rule, as you couldn’t imagine anyone else being so deviously pleased with the amount of secret passages and hidden places there were scattered around. Once you got past your paranoid fear for how they impacted his security, you had come to appreciate the palace’s secrets as well, though you lacked Claude’s childlike excitement. Your appreciation was more practical. Beginning an illicit affair with a king was a bad enough decision without having your rank defined by it. At least in public your title was one that demanded respect, even if Claude had an easy passageway between his room and yours to tear that all away.
“Hello to you, too,” you replied, playing it casual. Playing it safe, not even looking up from the report you were pretending to reread.
“Gah!” Claude cried, breaking your disinterested facade with a cry loud enough to make you jump and whip around, to stare at him with wide eyes and a body tensed for trouble, hand flexing towards the nearest available weapon. A knife slotted beneath the table. But it was nothing, a trick. Claude smiled, closing the secret door behind himself with a silvery tea tray balanced on one hand. “Oh, so it is you. Not some ghost of my guilt ridden psyche,” he said in mock relief. “See, I was worried because when I looked for you earlier, it was as if you’d vanished.” Claude’s voice was warm, playful. Probing for the truth. So he probably didn’t know what you had been up to.
Probably.
Either way, you were nursing a heart racing with surprised fright and fighting off the irrational irritation of being scared.
“Why would I leave?” you finally managed, spitefully adopting an equally playful voice to present yourself unconcerned by his antics. “Where else could I get a king to bring me my tea?”
“Ah, yes. Here I am, a king reduced to nothing more than room service,” Claude said dramatically as he sat the tray down. The royal life, or perhaps it was merely his vision of the royal life, was rife with convenient surfaces to make a mess upon. In your room, there were many such surfaces, all cluttered with endless stuff of equal ownership between the two of you - books and trinkets and loose pages you meant to take care of eventually. He had to brush aside a stack of feather quills with broken nibs to set down the tray. “The maid nearly had a fit when I told her I could make it myself.”
You could imagine that. Claude’s casual approach to his own title was occasionally shocking, even to you. It made everything even harder. A pompous and self important war hungry king who craved violence and collected young, beautiful women like he did heads was what your upbringing had prepared you for. Your loyalty was to the position itself, not the man, so you would have served all the same. But this man was a far cry from that. This man, a nearly mythic figure who rubbed elbows with another country’s gods and conquered not only with weapons, but with his endlessly human unifying ideals and masterfully clever strategies. This man, who came home to claim his rightful crown already having amassed great power and hundreds of awe-inspiring fairy stories of great, heroic conquests. Claude inspired an entirely different type of loyalty. He was unexpected, unpredictable. An enigma.
Beautiful and charming, too, but you tried not to dwell on the way the golden lamplight warmed his skin or how artfully disheveled his hair looked after a day of having his fingers run through it. A losing battle, really. You could try to tell yourself that there was some strategy to having begun this affair, but you knew the truth. Claude was devastatingly attractive, and that was before you factored in his undeniable charisma.
“I assume there’s a cost for such generosity,” you said, nodding to the tea.
“Are you doubting my altruistic nature?” Claude questioned. You allowed your silent doubt to serve as an answer. He sighed a melodramatic sigh. “I’ll have you know that my intentions were completely innocent. I was hoping we could share a nice, pleasant evening together.”
“That’s all?” You quirked an eyebrow.
As far as you could figure, it seemed as if he didn’t know what you had been up to that day. As good of a liar as Claude was, he was strategic about the way he used those lies, and strategic about the way he used the truth. In that, you were quite similar. Infuriating. Inviting endless infatuation. Impossible.
“Of course!” Claude replied, sitting across from you. He paused, his head tilting and an impish expression crossing his face. “Well, mostly. As we relax and engage in one of our famously fascinating conversations, I might consider covertly working my way into into asking what was more important than attending to your duties this afternoon. Obviously it will be in such a masterful way that you might not even notice my outrageous prying until you’ve already told me everything.”
“Oh, obviously,” you said indulgently, nodding.
“But it seems you have no appreciation for my genteel nature, so I guess I have no choice but to be blunt.” He pointed the silvery teaspoon directly at you. “What were you doing this afternoon?”
An obvious question. You met his lovely eyes, answers at the ready. Doing things you wouldn’t agree with. Rebelling against your wishes. Collecting dangerous secrets. Making plans to kill people because you’re too good of a man to do it. Fulfilling my duty.
“Oh, I was here and there,” you answered noncommittally. “Shopping, thinking. I needed some time alone.”
“Which is probably why you dumped the guards the first chance you got,” Claude said with a dry play at humor, although you found yourself without any desire to laugh. He spooned sugar into one of the porcelain cups, adding nothing more to that comment. Waiting for your response. Watching for your reaction.
Lying to Claude was hard. Uncomfortable. You knew full well that he was more than capable of picking up on the slightest of tells. It wasn’t that you enjoyed lying to him, either, not really. For awhile you had fun with the game of it, but when matters of the heart became pieces at play and your blind loyalty became the genuine article, the entire construct had gone sour. Because of your weakness, your mistake in getting so close to him, the circumstances had changed, but your position had not. To serve the man and the kingdom both was impossible, but if you betrayed one you betrayed all. Worse, Claude sought the truth constantly, hungrily prying out any secrets or hidden intrigue in the same unrelenting and meticulous way he did everything else, wanting both your own personal secrets and the ones you collected on his behalf.
So, even if you’d begun to detest it, you had to lie. You had to weave this tangled and messy tapestry patterned by threads of your failure, built on a loom of the legacy left to you for the sake of Almyra, for the sake of your king. One day you’d reveal it to him. One day he would understand why your navigation of the shadows, of the dark places even he would scorn, was necessary.
“I don’t need to be protected,” you told him as you accepted your cup of tea, knowing those words were appropriate for this lie. The best lies were the truth, after all. “Or watched.” Bitterness infected your tone on that addendum. As someone who had been raised as little more than a royal spy, of course you hated being watched. It made your skin crawl on principle. You ducked into your cup to try and cover for that slight tonal slip. It was a brew you didn’t recognize, something sweet. Not the best for sleeping, but then you’d never been fond enough for tea to appreciate the complexities of dry leaves flavored with boiling water.
“It is for your own safety, you realize,” Claude said, his voice dry and passionless, a rote voice that spoke of an argument that had been had several times before. “In siding with me, you made a lot of people angry. It’s not exactly unthinkable that someone would try to use you.”
Use me, like you do?
That question beaded like dribbles of acid to the tip of your tongue in contrast to the sweetness of the tea, but you knew better than to voice it. Not only was it nasty, but it was utterly untrue and vindictive, words weaponized without purpose. To speak them to Claude was deplorable, but to speak them to your king was unforgivable. Servitude was what you were born and bred for. You knew it better than anyone else, reminded yourself so often you had no idea why you questioned it anymore. Once more; even though the circumstances had changed, your role did not. Still, you detested the idea that he’d think you wouldn’t be able to recognize reality. You often worried that he was the one who couldn’t confront the way of the world, too starry eyed and willing to believe that being the better man was always the best choice, pampered by the fact that things generally seemed to work out in line with his ideals.
“I know,” you said rather than voicing any of that, taking another drink of the tea.
Having downed half the cup, you felt it was sweeter than you normally liked, but that was a welcome flavor to combat the cutting words begging to be shaped and delivered. A welcome flavor to mash down the part of yourself that wanted to tug on the thread of conversation, point out the many ways he was stopping you from doing your duty with his restrictions. You knew the result would be the same as ever, so you said nothing more. The conversation lapsed after a heavy sigh from Claude. He hardly touched his own tea, seemingly lost in thought as he watched the gauzy curtains billow with the soft touch of gentle breeze.
The wind beckoned him, you knew. Claude’s artist friend Ignatz had memorialized the kinship between the two, one between a man as comfortable in the sky as he was on the ground and the drafting gusts that propelled him to ever twisting heights. A lovely painting, a beautiful idea.
You relented, as you so often did. For Claude or for your king, you didn’t know. Loyalty was difficult like that.
“I am sorry for missing the meeting today,” you told Claude to break the hardening crust of silence, hoping to draw him into safer conversational territory. Then, hopefully, “What did I miss?”
To your relief, it worked. The moment passed, the air lost its tension. Old arguments flared quickly, but hardly ever had the energy to be properly sustained. That was doubly true with Claude, who only really fought in battles he knew he could win.
He began regaling you with a play by play of the meeting, including the colorful details the dry reports would leave out. Odd outfit choices, petty comments, his sneaking suspicion that the elderly lord Tahan spent the entire meeting passing gas, much to his oldest son’s embarrassment.
You didn’t dare to ask it of him, but Claude began to undress himself for bed while speaking. Lies, guilt, frustration, all of those things were relatively dull compared to your relief that he was going to stay the night, little as you wanted to acknowledge that and all the impropriety it invited. You didn’t even make a joke about his audaciousness. He didn’t make a joke about your obvious staring, either. It was an oddly warm and sentimental understanding. Or maybe Claude was just a showoff.
Before long, after the third stifled yawn in as many minutes, you realized that you were more tired than you thought. It was the drooping sort of drowsiness that had you sliding down in your chair, thoughts beginning to scatter.
You didn’t think anything was wrong, at first. Fatigue crawled up your limbs and buzzed at the base of your skull. The colors of the room intensified and softened. Yes, well, it had been a long, stressful day. You never liked dealing with the underworld types, necessary as it was.
You didn’t notice Claude’s overly intent gaze while he explained to you all the dozens of new issues arisen from political games and cocky posturing from the various players. Considering the things you’d done that day, the plans you had arranged, political discussion wasn’t exactly what you wanted, but you didn’t mind it right then. You found yourself enjoying simply listening to him more and more, his words fading out in favor of a hazy focus on his voice alone.
You thought nothing of the fact that you were making inane comments which he simply laughed off, words dripping from your mouth to add vapid and unnecessary commentary that you’d usually be embarrassed of. Delirium bought by a lack of sleep, nothing more.
The movement from chair to bed was a dazed one. You nearly fell onto the neatly made surface, stretching out like a cat with your limbs reaching taunt to the very tips of your fingers and toes. It was comfortable. Comfortable, despite the fact that you felt feverish, almost. You could feel that your cheeks were abloom with color. The heat pulled like an anchor at your lower belly, blazed lovely trails across your skin and pulled the vertebrae of your spine into a languid arch. Your mind tingled, your tongue buzzed. Your nightshift rode up in the most intriguing ways, calling attention to your body’s reaction to its hot temperature pitted against the cool air.
Claude made no mention of any change or the fact that you were obviously no longer listening to him, climbing onto the bed beside you while cracking a joke about one of the lords. You laughed, but it was a dizzy sort of sound. When Claude pulled you against him, the movement felt fluid, like your body moved in an especially smooth way despite its sudden heaviness. Your bed felt nicer than usual, the soft fabrics pleasurable against your skin. You found contentment in rubbing your cheek across the pillowcase, the cooler silk’s caress suddenly feeling quite divine. Distracting, not lulling. Like shock energy building up from friction, or water being pulled to a rolling boil. Claude felt even nicer, warm and shirtless at your back, his voice rumbling against you each time he spoke.
Nice, but not in a way you liked very much right then. The sweetness of your tea lingered on your tongue, making it feel heavy and hot. You didn’t think anything was wrong, until that moment when discomfort intruded on your contentment. Having been trained to be a king’s shadowy counterpart, you had been taught the effect of many poisons. It only took you so long to notice because you were lulled into a sense of security. With a panic your dizzy head could hardly contain, you realized that something was very, very wrong.
“Claude, I feel…” He had said something, but you felt as if you couldn’t focus at all anymore. You needed to tell him, but the search for a word to describe what was happening, what you felt and what you feared, evaded you.
Frustrated, you ran your hand across your hot cheeks and squirmed against him uncomfortably. He was so close, so warm. It all washed over you at once, the intoxicating spice of his skin, the weight of the arm draped across your waist, the tickling of his breath as it displaced fine strands of your hair across your neck. Distracting from the problem at hand. Focus was out of the question in that moment, what with the way your skin buzzed with a need for stimulation, how the press of your thighs was suddenly a very much inadequate pressure, and the focus you felt on the way he was pressed against you, firm and enveloping.
“Warm?” Claude asked playfully, seemingly ignorant of your distress as he nuzzled against the back of your head, the arm around you pulling you even closer. He was so hot. “Tingly? Struck by the uncanny impulse to tell me the truth?”
“Yes.” The agreement popped out without any prior thought. The truth. Too quickly, you were distracted again, a hissing gasp leaving your mouth at the barest sensation of his fingers pulling blazing trails across your fluttering stomach, pushing the thin fabric of your shift to bunch at your waist, leaving everything below uncovered. With the touch also came doubtful dread swirling amidst the onslaught of lust. Something was wrong, and he was suspiciously unworried. More than that, he seemed pleased. You had no claim to any great wits in the state you were in, but even you could put two and two together.
You wanted to tell him how good he felt, and maybe ask if he’d bring his hand a bit lower-
“Like this?” Claude asked playfully, fingers brushing your hip bone and inwards, teasing ever closer to where you suddenly ached. You hadn’t meant at all to speak that aloud, you hadn’t even realized you’d spoken until he answered.
“What did you do?” you asked with great effort, trying to sound threatening despite the breathless quality to your voice. It was ineffective.
“Why would you assume I did something?” Claude asked, feigning a bit of righteous indignance. Feeling you tense up, he was quick to soothe you, running his hand along your side and making you shudder. “Okay, you got me,” he gave in easily, playfully. “It’s just a little something to help you relax. I’ve been experimenting. Don’t worry, it’s not gonna hurt you. Probably.”
The ‘probably’ was teasing, meant more to get a reaction than in any serious capacity. Claude wouldn’t hurt you.
Probably.
“You…” you sputtered, struggling against his hold to roll away and get your arms propped up beneath you. Claude didn’t hold you down, simply watching your uncoordinated endeavor with a look of vague amusement. Dizzy, dizzy amidst a world turning and blurring. Heavy, too, as if your limbs were filled with liquid heat. You met his eyes and felt a zing of need, but forced focus. “You poisoned me?” Yes, there was a bit of that anger you knew you should feel, but not nearly enough to drown out the burning.
You were burning, incessant need sizzling across your skin and churning the pit of your stomach. It wasn’t like the warmth of his body, which was pure and clean like the golden sweet touch of the sun, but a sweaty sort of fever heat rising from blood infected with whatever he’d slipped into your tea. The sweet aftertaste was suddenly cloying, nauseating, sticking to your teeth like the residue of waxy sweets. Even worse was the impulse to tell him how you felt, to throw yourself at him with abandon.
“No, no. Like I said, it was just something to help you relax.” Claude tucked his now freed arms beneath his head casually, comfortably. The movement of his arms was distracting to your scattered thoughts. Not the movements itself, but the way the muscles pulled and stretched and shifted. The way the lamplight warmed his complexion and draped shadows of contrast across the rich tawny tan of his skin, highlighting each line and valley, dramatically caressing each decorating line of pale scar tissue. “Something caught your eye?” he asked, raising a brow.
“You’re beautiful,” you muttered, the words coming out with the taste of sugary tea. It didn’t take long for what you had said to register, a smattering of seconds for your brain to catch up. That wasn’t at all what you wanted to say. Claude chuckled. “No, that’s not…” A whine wavered in your voice as you tore your focus away from his shirtless torso. It was all you could do to keep from grinding against the bed for just the barest taste of satisfaction. “Why? What is… Tell me why.”
“Right, fine.” Claude sat up to meet your eyes directly, the air drifting around him, pulling chills to your oversensitive skin. With that movement, the space between you curdled thick with heat and tension, arousal and anticipation suspended in the air. He wasn’t smiling. No, there was nothing playful about this Claude, that mask discarded with an unnerving ease.
“Where were you really? Not just today, mind you, but all of those other times you slipped away from the guards.”
Despite your preoccupation, or perhaps because of it, that question sent a chunk of glacial ice into the depths of your gut. It tore through your weakened defenses, ripping away all of the careful layers of deceit. Without the cognizance to maintain false pretenses, your eyes widened and breath caught. Words didn’t come, you had to bite your lip to stop them when your overeager body sought to comply.
So that was why. A conflict of interest, then, by making your mind dangerously, drunkenly unstable. If you weren’t drowning the depths of whatever poison he’d given you, you might have admired how masterfully he’d played this particular ruse.
“You can’t even deny it, can you?” Claude asked, something like amazement shone to a glisten in the emerald of his gaze.
“No,” you replied, as if in a trance. He smiled with the little victory, letting the threat of your answer with all its dripping implications settle for a beat.
“I’m sure it won’t take long for all of your secrets to come spilling out. The result of a guilty conscience, I’d say.“
What a nasty, cruel trick.
And, in spite of that acidic thought, you giggled. It simply bubbled up, sweet and dizzy. This was terrible. In an attempt to stifle it, you balled your hands into fists until the nails cut your palms, trying to steady yourself. You forced the sound back into your throat, tried to take even, measured breaths. There had to be a way to wiggle out of this, you just had to think. Anger was called upon to bring about clear thought, anger that would bolster your crumbling might, but you knew it was futile. You giggled again. The stroke of Claude’s calloused fingers against your skin remained, the press of his body against the back of yours. A tormenting and ghostly touch.
Too many things at once, too much that was distracting and disorienting.
"No,” you forced yourself to say clearly, shaking your head. Denying what? Certainly not that you were seconds away from telling him everything he wanted to hear, and probably asking him to touch you on top of it, because if you denied that, it would be a lie.
“I guess it’s your call if you aren’t interested in sharing.” Claude paused, his chin tilting slightly and eyebrows bunching towards the center. His gaze was not lascivious when he looked at you. More accurately, Claude was entirely direct in the way his eyes slowly roamed across your body, across your skin colored in the blushing hues of sunset and the awkward position you’d adopted, body contorted by lust. It would take a blind man to not see how absolutely aroused you were, and he was no blind man. As ever, Claude’s lovely eyes saw everything, knew everything. Infuriating. Beautiful. By the mercy of the gods, you were desperate to hold onto that gaze, desperate for him to look away, desperate for it to be more than just his eyes that devoured you. “Buuuut, the stuff I gave you is pretty intense. It’ll be a long night for you to wait out all by yourself.”
“By myself…?” you repeated. The idea of that, of a night feeling like this, made your eyes widen and your voice raspy with horror. It said a lot about your mental state that you hardly felt embarrassed by the pathetic tremor in your tone, or by the slow spread of a smile across his features in response. A true smile, not insidious by any means. Did he even see anything wrong with this?
No, he didn’t. What was a little poison between friends?
Claude wanted the truth. You wanted him. An easy exchange, what did any of it matter, anyway? The sane part of your mind screamed no, falling apart with a panic you were normally strong enough to stave off. Personal feelings aside, how well could Claude possibly receive hearing of your scheming to take out those who were most dangerous to you and his rule? Claude was no pacifist, but there was a reason you sneaked around and lied. Personal feelings included, you had a hard time believing he’d still want you if he knew what person you were in service to his title. There was a deeply selfish reason you kept secrets, a part of yourself that was best hidden for fear of how he’d view you afterward learning the truth.
Guilty conscience, he said.
You couldn’t think properly. The lustful confusion was suffocating, the flames of madness consuming you by the second. They urged you to push yourself onto him, to lose yourself in the mania of such distilled desire regardless of any cost.
“How about this,” Claude said when you didn’t speak, using an unabashed conversational tone. “Tell me the truth and I’ll make you come so hard you won’t be able to remember your own name. Then I’ll wrap your legs around my waist and make you scream mine… It’s a win for the both of us. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Yes,” you basically moaned. Then, quickly, “No!” Not disagreeing with your first answer, but disagreeing with the fact you’d given it aloud. With wide eyes and a hand clasped over your mouth, you shook your head, trying your very best to block out those words and the sparks of arousal they sent through you.
“Huh.” He was silently laughing at you, the emotion danced in his eyes. “I really thought that would work. Well, let me know if you change your mind.” Your breathing caught in your throat when he slid to the edge of the bed, stretching with his arms above his head. The muscles of his back rippled seductively, skin cognac in color, in how addictively alluring it looked to touch, to taste. Primally, desperately, instinctively, you reached for him. All you could think, and probably what you were saying, was no. No, no, no, no, no. Without Claude, you knew you would die. As surely as the sun rose and set, this poison would drive you mad if left unattended.
Why should you feel frightened of what consequences the truth invited if the alternative was execution? A madman’s logic.
“I was meeting with an assassin, today,” you said in a burst, your hands reaching for him thoughtlessly but coming up short, forced away to avoid temptation. “Tavi. The best. The best of the best.“ You had to force down a bout of giggles at those words and their childish rhythm.
“An assassin?” Claude repeated, turning back to you. No smile, his gaze was hard. Not angry, Claude hardly ever looked truly angry with you. This look was one of consideration. He wasn’t surprised, but that hardly registered.
"The Lord’s who oppose you… They must be brought to heel,” you said, an emphasis on the last words. They were not your own, but the ideals you had been sent here to enforce. If you felt any shame at giving up a secret you had vowed to guard as your own, any outsider would have been hard pressed to see it in the red of your flushed face and your eyes, glazed like that of someone fully lost to the throes of need. “If they won’t love you, they should at least be afraid to defy you. I tried to tell you… Explain, but…” That was all to it, really. The truth, ineloquent and messy. The edges of it were difficult to grasp, your mind easily distracted by the caress of breeze or a shift of his movement, the sly strand of hair that always fell in front of Claude’s eye.
If Claude was upset by your words, you couldn’t tell. “And why, pray tell, would you go to such lengths to keep this from me?” he asked without inflection.
“Because you disagreed.” That reason rolled out first, your tone that of a child who hadn’t gotten her way, the obstinate frustration that he’d so firmly rejected your stance on the topic. You swallowed hard, the many other arguments you had composed before that moment eluding you entirely. This was important, you needed to focus. “You didn’t need to know, it’s my duty. A king need not sully himself with such awful things.”
“Is that a fact?” Claude looked nonplussed.
Trepidation struck you. His poison had lowered all of your defenses, put you at the mercy of emotion’s ever turning tide. Drowning in that confused feeling, in the sickening yearning and heady mixture of clarity and confusion, you suddenly got the awful sinking suspicion that you were in over your head. Worse, that if you didn’t tell him what he wanted he really would leave.
“You would have stopped me,” you finally admitted. The harsh blow of betrayal struck you. Had you betrayed Claude or the crown? Both, it seemed.
Although there was little consolation in the fact, Claude didn’t look angry, evenly measuring you with a gaze of jade flickering with yellow lamplight. Finally that look broke into yet another smile, a beautiful one that left his eyes unchanged, cool despite the warm lighting of the room. A fake smile that made your stomach lurch with want.
“See?” he said after the lull. “That wasn’t so hard.”
You should have felt shame, you should have burned with regret. You didn’t. Instead, you nodded, lips parted to make way for your labored breaths. No, it hadn’t been hard at all. Selling out the secret you’d painfully kept over several long months for the sake of lust was not difficult in the slightest, just a few words given to spoil it all.
“Are you mad at me?” you asked, uncaring of consequence and too far gone to stop, desperate for his validation despite all else.
“Oh, I’m livid,“ Claude said, his tone so playful you couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. He ran a hand across his face. "The thing is, I sorta knew what you were doing before you left this morning. I’ve known something was going on for awhile, though I hoped you’d gotten past this.”
“You knew?” you cut in, shocked. Despite all else you felt, wintery shivers needled into your chest at that revelation. Not all of your mind was gone, just the parts that mattered. “How?”
“You really think I’d let you put yourself at risk? I asked a friend if mine to keep an eye on you. I didn’t say anything because I was hoping you’d fess up yourself. I was willing to forgive you all the way up until before I gave you the tea, but then you looked me in the eye and lied again.” Claude shook his head, radiating disapproval. “I didn’t know you were this far gone. You really are a little scamp, aren’t you?”
You elected to ignore that question, mainly because it was difficult to focus on more than one thing at a time. “Why wait for me to tell you if you already knew?” you asked, a sweet honey hollow feeling in your gut, a whine tightening your voice.
“I believe the truth can be therapeutic. Don’t you feel better after being honest?“
"No,” you replied, the truth destroying sensibility. Claude laughed at that, inviting an out of place grin onto your face in response.
Your head spun, your body burned desire, the depths of your mind despaired. Something had dawned on you. He could have asked you about your true intentions directly, poison or no. Maybe you would have lied, but maybe not. Doing it like this was his way of teaching you something. You couldn’t lie to Claude.
“Honestly, from what I’ve gathered, all of the plans you had orchestrated… They weren’t bad, they’d probably work.”
“Then why-”
Claude held up a finger to stop you. “But it’s not worth the amount of damage you would ultimately do. Things are fragile enough without such a sudden change in leadership. I can’t rule because those who would oppose me are dead.”
“They won’t show you the same courtesy,” you said bluntly, petulantly.
“Do you really think that’s good enough justification?” Claude held your eyes, searching for an answer. “You do, don’t you.” The sound of disappointment in his voice cut deeper than you would have thought. You wanted to apologize, not for what you had done, but for disappointing him. To appease him, somehow. “I… We have to be better. Besides, that’s not even why I’m really upset, but… Gah, I suppose there’s nothing for it when you’re like this.“
“I’m telling the truth,” you insisted plaintively.
“I know you are,” Claude said indulgently. “It’s not like you have much choice. I’ll want to know all the details, but…” He looked at you. A corner of his mouth quirked up in a smirk. “That can wait until tomorrow.”
Even tomorrow, he meant, you’d have no choice but to tell the truth. Lesson learned.
“Just one last thing,” Claude said. “Was there any point in this plan of yours where you were gonna tell me about this little scheme of yours?”
“When it worked,” you said, the truth coming all too easily in your pliant, fevered daze. “Then, even if you were angry, you’d see that I was right.”
He nodded, your answer was expected.
“That’s smart. Probably what I would have done. Asking for forgiveness, not permission.” He sighed. “This will never go beyond us, but I can’t just let you get off easy… If someone were to find out, do you know what the punishment is for these types of crimes?”
You should have felt afraid, or hurt, or disgusted, or a thousand of other emotions, but you didn’t. You didn’t feel very much at all when you answered, supplying him with the proper response simply. "Death.”
Claude nodded. “Right, and there’s not very much I could do to help you in that case. Fortunately, you haven’t done anything that can’t be undone. At most you’d get some sort of conspiracy charge, but there’s no need for anything that extreme. So now I’m faced with a dilemma. After a lifetime of being told one thing, how can I possibly convince you of another?”
He looked to you for an answer, but you were having a hard time understanding the question, let alone a response. “I dunno,” you got out, shrugging one shoulder.
“That’s a problem I’ve been trying to solve my whole life,” Claude said. “Luckily, I think you’ll be easier to convince than an entire country. My solution wound up being pretty simple, in the end.”
"Solution…” Your brain chugged to keep up. “Poisoning me?”
“Ah-ah,” Claude admonished, wagging his finger. “By showing you the benefits of being honest. And proving to you that my way works better. More honey and less vinegar.”
“Honey… and vinegar?” you asked, your sluggish mind trying to puzzle it out. You felt lost. Lost in desire, in emotion, in this conversation.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Claude said, waving it off. “If you can find it within yourself to give me a good apology, I’ll show you those aforementioned benefits of honesty.”
“I’m not sorry,“ those words came out like a child’s huffy complaint nearly the second he’d finished speaking, your eyebrows furrowed. Then you kicked yourself, because lust was killing you, enticing you to tell him whatever he wanted, and you really wanted those benefits of honesty. But that was the issue, wasn’t it? This was wrong, he was wrong, and you couldn’t lie, the words came out as the truth regardless. "So please just-”
You were shushed when Claude pushed you down into the pillows in one sinuous movement, always moving faster than you expected. He leaned over you, pinning your hands above your head with both of his. Then slowly, agonizingly slow, his calloused fingers trailed down your bare arms. The touch, as innocent as it was in a relative sense, was one of the most sexually charged sensations you’d ever been gifted.
“You’re not sorry?“ Claude asked, his face only inches from yours and half naked body hovering above your own. Erotic, painfully and disastrously. You shook you head, knowing that words would fail you. "Even like this…” he smiled fondly, ruefully. “I suppose this is your way of calling my bluff? Fine, then. Keep your hands right here, okay?”
“Why?” you asked, but you already knew. Or at least hoped. Your heart jumped at the order, your throat working hard to swallow the lingering syrupy poison as a shiver worked its way down your body. At his command, you did your very best to keep your hands where he’d put them, holding still when he grasped the edge of your linen shift to pull it off. Baring your body to the air. The cool contrast against the fever in your blood rose chills over every naked expanse of skin, your nipples stiff and aching in a plea for attention.
You held as still as you could while he took his time in working back down, ignoring your breasts to trail down the fluttering bones of your rib cage, across the chills-ridden flesh of your waist, closer and closer still to the place between your legs where you ached so intently for him. There was no hesitation in the way your legs spread apart, an obscene display that normally might have embarrassed you. There was no room for embarrassment or modesty here, not as you burned, the cruel treatment of before gone from your mind in light of this promised satisfaction.
“Gods, you’re wet,” Claude said when he was settled between your legs, his expression and tone genuinely amused. “Seeing you like this makes me want nothing more than to have my way with you. I bet you want that too, huh?” In typical Claude fashion, he didn’t speak with an attempt at seduction, but with a casual bluntness that made the indecent words that much dirtier.
“Yes,” you breathed.
“It wouldn’t take much, either,” he continued, dragging his nails lightly over the tingling softness of your inner thigh. “With the state you’re in, I could probably get you off on my fingers within a minute. Even less if I used my tongue.”
“Please,” you begged, a broken sound. Your hands dutifully remained where he’d put them, but your hips pushed forward, urging his teasing to end.
“Then again,” Claude said without any particular hurry. “I could take my time. It’d be a shame to neglect the rest of your body when it’s so obviously desperate for my attention.” He left your thighs altogether, returning to your chest to circle your nipple with one calloused finger. As soon as your back arched to press into the touch, he abandoned it to an aching peak to glide between your breasts and stomach. “Ooor I could do none of that and get straight to the part where we perform the so-called horizontal tango. It doesn’t seem like you’ll need any preparation for it.” Finally, that annoyingly teasing finger slid through your wetness, pulling a soft sound from your lips and a tremor through your body.
“I don’t care,” you gasped, fists clenching as you forced them to stay where they were, nails digging into indents left from earlier. “Anything, anything please.“
"Tell me you’re sorry,” Claude said, wiping his wet finger across the skin of your thigh. In another dramatic shift, his tone wasn’t playful. Blunt, lacking intonation, really. Jarring. “Tell me that you won’t lie to me again.”
“I’m-” you couldn’t say those things. You didn’t even want to, your brain was wired, focused only on one thing. “Claude please touch me, please.”
“You really feel no regret?” He sounded hurt. Real hurt, not the artifice he so often adopted. “Just the idea of losing you to such backwards ideals… Do you really not know what that would do to me? I can’t even imagine it.” Claude’s eyes closed, his eyebrows pushing inward.
It only hit you then that that was what he was actually upset about. Losing you. Politically? Emotionally? Physically?
It didn’t matter, your racing heart soared and clenched.
“I’m sorry,” you said, guilty truth suddenly tainting the lust.
His eyes opened, the frown leaving his face. Maybe you should have been ashamed at ultimately giving in to what he wanted, but you didn’t. That could come later, with the rest of the regrets. It was too late, anyway.
“I won’t lie again, really.” He’d find out anyway, one way or another. Not that it mattered, not that the awful idea of having your entire self exposed to him had any real traction in your slipping thoughts. “I’m sorry.”
Claude’s eyes held yours, bare gaze and bare body and bare soul. Looking into his eyes, you felt a fractured understanding of the innate power of the playful and dangerous winds when they danced destruction and chaos through the verdant forests of the east. In them, you felt the icy burn that came from brushing your fingertips across the cosmic fire of the stars watching from the skies above.
Your breath caught, your heart seized, your spine shivered. Claude grinned.
“You are sorry,” he said, ending the moment to drag his gaze over your flushed form to make the double meaning of that phrase clear. “I forgive you, of course. It’s awfully hard to stay mad when you make such a compelling case.“
“Claude,” you breathed, the attempt at a seductive tone lost in the breathlessness of genuine need, in the wake of what you’d just seen. That vision was disappearing fast, like sand slipping from your mind. You burned, you ached. The wind sang, the stars beckoned. "Kiss me.”
And he did.
Claude’s body was unyielding and stable when it enveloped yours, inescapable and safe. Arms rippling with muscle from a life of war, skin burning with heat, chest firm where it pressed to yours. He kissed you deeply, passionately. Claude was never one to do things halfway. You used to wonder if it was authentic, or if it was just an act. Right now it was impossible to wonder at anything. He tasted like chamomile and cinnamon, he smelled like spice and musk and the tangy sweet fruit that ripened in late fall. Against your own, his body was wonderfully, intoxicatingly warm. Your fingers tangled in Claude’s thick, messy hair, your back arching to push yourself again him. It was all instinctual, driven by blind desire.
He was there, everywhere. Against your bare thigh, through the thin shorts he yet retained, you could feel his arousal. Hard, solid, hot. Claude’s hand, fingers calloused from battle and and a life of use, caressed your skin. Lithe and quick. Clever, dancing down as if playing an instrument only he knew. They appreciated the sensitive skin of your breasts, your shuddering ribcage, the curve of your waist, the top of your hip bone, the trail of hair and then-
The pass of his fingers across your clit elicited a sharp whimper from your lips, one Claude pulled his mouth away far enough to make audible. You gasped heavy breaths from your freed mouth, moaned again at the second pass of his fingers where you ached most desperately for his touch. But it wasn’t enough, too slow. Your hands dropped, intending to take control, but Claude was quick to catch you, pushing your hands up and back into the pillows. Depriving you of his touch altogether.
“It seems to me that you have a problem following orders,” he said. Playfully, not even half as affected by lust as you were. “Far be it from me to take advantage of my status, but… I am your king, after all.”
“You’re being mean,” you accused pitifully. Then, with all the spite you could manage, “Your Majesty.”
“Me? Mean?” Claude asked, feigning shock as one of his hands slowly meandered back between your legs. Your response cut off with his touch, your legs opening even wider to accept him. “I’ll have you know that I’m a fair and just king. I won’t stand for such slander.”
Claude, playing into a game that was already slipping from your attention, pressed unbearably sweet, gentle kisses across your jaw, to your neck. At the same time, his fingers worked up into a steady rhythm against your clit.
It was as if you’d never been touched before, as if you’d never tasted pleasure. It was liquid heat and sparking electricity and tension tightening, it was enough to make you cry out, to make you moan. But not enough to make you shut up, because the sweet drug held your tongue just as captive as your libido.
“You are mean,” you insisted without any sort of fire, the words coming because you couldn’t stop them. “You… You’re cruel.”
“That’s a rather strong word, don’t you think?” Claude asked. He slid a finger into you, and your thoughts scattered anew, like Autumn leaves when the wind swept them away for a jaunting tumble through the air. Grasping hands, your hands, held fast to his body. His shoulders, his back, his hair, restless and trembling. Your eyes stayed closed because you knew he was looking at you, you could feel it. Claude watched your flushed face, your myriad expressions, waiting to catch your gaze when it was blown with desire, wild and lustful at the apex of pleasure.
“You’re a demon.” Now your voice was raspy, barely legible. He had been right in his appraisal before, it wasn’t long off that you’d come for him.
“Is that right?” he cooed. Condescending. You didn’t care. Claude’s voice was warmth, was poison. Sweet and syrupy, bleeding into your veins and making you tremble ever so deliciously.
“A cheat… A fiend,” you gasped, the words meaning nothing, holding no weight other than the pitched quality backing them. Your back arched, your core tightened, milking the second finger he pushed into you, holding fast to the pleasurable sensation when he curled them both with each stroke.
“You got me there,” Claude agreed, ducking his head to pull one aching nipple into his mouth, lightly grazing the skin with his teeth.
That was it. All it took. Your fingers curled like claws, one hand holding fast to his bicep and the other scratching lines into his back. If Claude minded, the only way he expressed it was by sucking especially hard, extending your throaty moan into a sharper cry as the tension in your core was stroked to a snapping release. Heat filled you, your cheeks flushed enough to make the skin burn, your hips pumping against his hand in a stuttering rhythm. A hiccuping kind of moan left your lips when he pulled off your skin with a slick pop, leaving it sore and sensitive.
All too soon, the high faded, his hand abandoned your aching flesh. It left you worse off than before, the drug he’d given you turning the sweetness of release into fuel for the ravenous desire, not satisfaction for it. Greedy, insatiably greedy. Claude’s fingers weren’t enough to fill you, as clever as they were. What was enough, what you wanted with the desperation of an addict seeking vice, was pressed against your thigh. He was hard, and you were about as ready as anyone could be.
“Take off your pants,” you urged breathlessly, pushing on Claude’s shoulder. You were dazed, heart pounding a war drum’s beat and expression dyed in the syrup of sweet poison lust. You had no idea if you were intending to fuck him or blow him, but that sort of foresight didn’t matter right then. You’d do both, ideally. The part of yourself that recognized the wrongness of the situation was gone, reason gone.
“Normally, I’d love nothing more than to comply with a request like that, especially when it’s coming from such a beautiful mouth, but I already told you how this is gonna go,” Claude didn’t budge with your insistent prompting. His voice was casual. Maybe a hint of lust hid within his warm tone, but it nothing on your maddeningly ravenous mind state.
“Claude, please,” you whined. “It’s only fair…” Your hands dropped down, intending to slip beneath the obtrusive bit of fabric that concealed his erection, but he stopped you.
“And make myself a liar?” he asked, aghast. You made a sound, a sudsy breath somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
“You are a liar,” you pointed out.
“Too true,” Claude agreed easily. He kissed your neck where your pulse bounded so rapidly, then the sharper ledge of each collarbone, moving finally to press his lips to the hollow where they met. Looking up at you, Claude grinned smugly. “But I, at least, endeavor to always be truthful with those I care about.”
To that you had no retort, but that seemed to be his intention as he moved down your body. In a vague way, you wanted to stop him so you could even out the unfair playing field by making him at least half of the mess you’d become, but your head was so dizzy and heavy. When Claude’s mouth gave you the barest hint of pleasure, laving attention to flesh still sparking with the fresh memory of release, it was all you could do to stop yourself from crying truly.
Was it better or worse that he seemed content to continue playing, teasing it out only to let the pleasure fizzle and blaze? The patterns Claude drew over your swollen clit with his tongue were more than you could handle, but not quite enough to get you off. Not yet. It was the same with the fingers he pushed into you, curling and pumping and cruel in the unsteady pace they kept.
You knew you were begging, you knew you were pulling Claude’s hair just a bit too hard. You knew your body was writhing like a woman possessed, your quivering thighs tensing dangerously tight to his head before relaxing and spreading, constantly moving in your body’s unending reach for release. Worst of all, you knew this was all his design. Cruel. Terrible man that he was, Claude was playing a game with you. You tried to tell him as such, but the way his lips closed around your clit summoned nothing but a choked cry, and the words left your mind altogether.
No matter what his intentions were in dragging this out, you could feel the swell of orgasm tightening fast in your core. It came more readily now, not only because you’d already had one, but because of how utterly sensitized your body was.
Poison! The deepest pits of your mind screamed the reminder, but no, no, the madwoman replied. Sugar. Sugar that caramelized on your tongue, gummed up your throat, thickened into a hot, gooey glaze in your center. Syrupy honey, the taste of each moan, of each stuttered cry and soft gasping breath.
Pleasure was left to drift in scattered pieces and rebuilt with ever more fervor beneath Claude’s silver tongue and clever fingers. Pleasure that became so intense it blotted out control, turned your awareness to pinpricks of tremulous focus. Your body stretched and reached for release, begging with as much desperate vigor as your mouth was. It was too much, too hot and too good. Sobbing or crying or laughing. Claude complied, finally, and that was it. Your head tossed back into the pillows. Your back arched. Your mouth opened in a silent scream.
It was the collapse of floodgates, liquid pressure bursting beyond the brink. It was the elation of flying among the puffy white clouds, viewing the world at its very apex. You were a bowstring pulled too taunt, seconds away from snapping. Your orgasm hit harder than any in memory, drawing you up in all its convulsing pleasure, stealing words from your mouth and sending them tumbling out from a tongue buzzing with sweet syrupy poison. Most were nothing more than primal sounds, moans and cries. The intensity of the orgasm scared some small, sane part of your mind. It was too much, drawn out too long as your body rolled with the liquid gold undulations of release. The majority of your mind was lost in euphoria for a crystallized second of bliss. It came down, but the world held its light softened haze, your muscles suffering little tremors and thoughts indecipherable, scattered and lost.
Things regained shape, your hammering heartbeats took count of time passing. Not nearly as much as you’d think, but more than you could comprehend. For the span of seconds, it was all you could do to breathe.
“Wow,” Claude said, pulling your disoriented gaze towards him. He looked surprised, his ocean eyes wide as he sat up from between your trembling thighs.
His face was dripping, a fact he was all too keen to display by running a thumb along his jaw, gathering up the sheen of wetness. You had done that, you realized. When you came, you had done so with a messy burst of your juices. All over his unbelievably handsome face. It happened once before, a time Claude was always gleeful to bring up to make you flush scarlet, but that had been on his hand, not his face. Claude smiled, licking his thumb clean with his eyes on yours. His was not a look of sensual seduction, but impish mischief. You weren’t sure if you were meant to be mortified or aroused, and wound up feeling some mixture of both. A confusing clash of emotion.
“I was hoping to draw this out a little longer, really make you squirm but…” He laughed, shaking his head regretfully, viridian eyes ablaze with want. “Even like this, it seems I’m no match for your wily ways.”
You lips parted. To apologize? You ask what he meant by that? To beg that he take you, because you could see the outline of his erection clearly beneath the offensive fabric and it was enough to make you salivate like you were in some sort of twisted heat?
“What, no response?” Claude said when no words managed to make their way out. “Maybe I achieved my goal after all…” he mused, finally stripping completely. Seeing Claude entirely naked reminded you of the first time he’d taken you to bed, all that want and hunger and your trepidation of such raw lust. He was undeniably gorgeous, full of golden confidence and playful words, but also bearing several easily exploitable weaknesses. You thought of a retort, but that had gone right out the window with this new distraction.
Transfixed, you watched his hand wrap around the shaft, stroking himself with something like confident showmanship. He was fully aware of your gaze, and the utter control he had over it. You swallowed hard.
“Claude…” It was a plea, a question, an appeal. At least it seemed to be what he wanted.
“Good start,” he praised you with a warm tone full of benevolent condescension. Despite his patronizing teasing, Claude wasn’t rough in the way he pulled you towards him, or in the way he wrapped your legs around his waist as promised. In fact, there was a velvety wealth of intimacy in the way he entered you, bottoming out and simply holding you for a moment, his way eased completely by how wet you were.
“Claude,” you breathed. He rewarded you with a soft groan. For all his posturing and pretending, he was still human. Flesh and bone, bound by the same instinct his poison had stoked to flaring within you.
Then he kissed you again, and that sweet moment gave way to a riot of your senses. Overstimulation from before made each thrust of his hips burst with heat, with shivering, shuddering focused attacks of pleasure. The taste of your own salty juices was thick on his lips, the musky smell of it intertwining with his own scent. To your sex-enthralled mind it was wonderful, the mingling aroma of lust, dark and filthy and taboo. Claude was warm like sunshine, it struck you again as such a strange dissonance to your own sick, feverish temperature, to the cooler air of your room cleaned and swirled by the night’s breeze.
Unthinkingly, you bit his bottom lip, eliciting a low growl from his throat, a stuttering thrust of his hips. Claude pulled away, letting out a gasp, a breathless laugh. A bid to keep control. You clung to him harder, digging in your nails, your body urging him to move, thoughtless and wild, mad with lust. Your eyes met his, and you saw something similar reflected in the endless green. Something unrestrained, the uninhibited whirling wind. You kissed him again. It was messy and rough, a desperate attempt to share with him the taste of sugary poison, to express to him something you had no idea how else to show, something you weren’t even sure was entirely real. Was this honesty, unrestrained and chaotic? Or pretend, delusion. You couldn’t concentrate on that question, couldn’t follow any particular thread of rationale farther than the increasingly tense tightening in your core, nothing beyond desire, beyond lust, beyond him.
You could feel Claude’s body winding up, the way his muscles bunched and shifted, the sounds that he never really bothered to stifle a lovely match to your own. His forehead was against yours, the harsh rasp of his breaths beating against your skin, the thumping of your hearts a perfect pair. He pushed you farther up the bed for a better angle, desperately, needfully burying himself inside of you.
Claude’s hands, hot and rough, mapped out your skin, squeezed your thighs, your waist. You propped yourself up with an arm, leaving the other free to drape around his neck so your hand could tangle in his hair, pull on his scalp until he groaned. Until he held you tighter, rougher. You were bare flesh and gasping moans and poisoned blood, crimson lust and tenderly violent intimacy.
How long this lasted didn’t matter, nothing mattered outside your broken thoughts, outside losing yourself in his embrace. Until Claude slowed, steadying himself. You shivered when he pulled out, a soft cry leaving your lips. You felt the poison pumping through you, but it had nothing on the drug-addled haze Claude had cast upon you. He managed a short, breathless laugh at your expression, but he didn’t look to be in much better shape. Swollen bottom lip, red faced, messy hair. Devastatingly beautiful.
“Cute,” he noted, pushing a strand of hair from your eye, not pausing long before taking advantage of your wobbling, weak lack of stability. You found yourself face down, somewhat confused, and reminded once more of how dizzy you were.
Calloused hands drew you up into position by your hips, your clumsy and heavy spine going concave, your back falling into a deep arch as you focused most of your attention on keeping yourself up for him. Excitement grew, everything else forgotten and forgiven when Claude pushed back into you, resumed that fast tempo that made you cry out noiselessly, mouth agape in something like surprise, like ecstasy. Nearly collapsing under the weight of pleasure, your head spinning in intoxicated circles long past dizzy.
The switch in position changed how he entered you, how he fit inside of you with each stroke. Like this, Claude could drive deeper, be a little more violent. Like this, your fractured mind could really relish in each perverse slap of skin on skin. The lewd noise created a melody with the slick sounds of your coupling, wet and unmistakable. Your poisoned blood thrummed a harmony like the great beating wings of a wyvern, the overshadowing solo being the throaty groans that let you know Claude was getting close. Raspy and desperate, helpless in the face of his mounting release. You were the same, but long since had you tuned out the things you couldn’t stop from being voiced. Probably not words, not anymore. His name, most likely.
A prayer, a wish, a desperate plea, your king, your lover. Everything, Claude was everything.
You squeaked shrilly when his fingers slipped beneath you to tease at your oversensitive clit, nearly collapsing when your arms spasmed and body trembled.
"You can do one more, right?” Claude asked. Breathless, sure, but still far more cheeky and playful than he had any right to be.
You didn’t even know how you responded, if you responded. He stroked your clit to the same fast paced beat he used to fuck you, and you swore you saw white. It felt so good it made you sick, so good you felt as if you were about to shake your very bones apart, so good it hurt.
Coming again was the agony of ardor, the price of the wind’s passion, wild and woozy and chaotic. The color of the sun, of a field of rippling wheat. Warm honey in your veins. The color of a carpet of grass mid-summer, of an overgrown forest glade. Poisoning you for the trouble. It wasn’t as intense as the one before, but Claude’s relentless fervor dragged it on, making it impossible to tell where the tail of one pleasure ended and the next began. It rolled through you, whatever vestiges of sanity you clung to departing with a fluttering draft of cool air from the window, wringing you out to the very last drop.
One of the only things that remained with any basis in reality was the slick, hot joy when you felt Claude come. Physical affection reciprocated, scales balanced, duty fulfilled. He said your name, cracking it as lust overtook his voice, breaking the sound apart like the shattering of stars, the scattering of storm. How wonderful, how overwhelming, something riotous and innate. You answered with his name, slurred and dreamily devoted, rendered in your rasping voice.
You could feel when it was over, when he’d had his fill. When he pulled out, emptiness made you shiver, the open window letting in air that felt deliciously chilling to your hot, sweaty skin and suddenly abandoned form. You toppled to your side, body finally giving out. There were things you wanted to say, least of all to complain that he was using your discarded nightgown to hastily clean both of you up, but the world didn’t stop spinning just because fulfillment had worn you out. The brush of fabric between your legs made you shudder, made your body bloom with further desire, but you had no more fuel left for that fire.
Nothing left at all.
Poison was something you’d have to sleep off, which didn’t seem like too bad of a prospect as you looked up blankly at the ceiling. Nausea twisted your insides noncommittally, your head pounded with the smallest promise of a headache. Your body ached with the lingering pulse of want. Those things faded as soon as they occurred, forgotten.
Claude yawned loudly, pulling you from despondent distraction. Your head fell to the side dispassionately to look at him, the only movement you felt capable of making. You’d scratched his back earlier, angry red marks etched into his lovely skin right over the right shoulder blade.
“I’m beat,” Claude said, worn. Content. Comfortable. “What about you?” He met your eyes, but there was something hazy about it, like a gauzy veil of fabric separated the two of you. Glassy eyes, lips swollen and red, cheeks stained with violent splotches of heat, you realized in some far off way what you probably looked like, then decided you didn’t care. Words failed, so you nodded, trance-like. He smiled fondly, leaning to turn off the light.
In the silence, in the dark, your stomach lurched when the sane piece of your mind considered what this night meant. Failure? No. Something else. Fealty to one. Not to your king, not to the crown, not to your country. Fealty to Claude. Whatever he desired of you.
Was that so bad?
Claude adjusted into place, pulling the thin top sheet over you. For a moment, you worried that he was leaving, the radiating warmth of his body pulling away. You reached out with a heavy, clumsy touch, sickly sweet bile biting your tongue. Your hand landed. His arm, his shoulder. He was right beside you.
“Don’t go,” you whispered, holding onto Claude. Your voice sounded pathetic, meek. Pleading, because in that moment you had no claim to anything else, left bare and empty of everything you’d ever been. Desperate, you attempted to hold the wind between your fingers, playful breeze and insidious tornado both. The wind that would destroy people and homes with tempest fury, leaving nothing in its wake. The wind that would pick up and twirl strands of your hair, all friendly and flirty in its twisting and mischievous flurries. Not yours, never to be restrained.
He laid down beside you, and you relaxed despite yourself. Sleep was coming, melting away the edges of your thoughts even as you fought it. It was poisoned sugar, fevered sleep, the manufactured darkness you could not control. Things had happened, had spiraled beyond your control, but it was too late to fix it. What a mess.
“Now why would I do that?” Claude asked. You had no answer to his final question, the words fading and rhetorical, but maybe later you could understand. Why would he go now that he finally had you where he wanted?