Page 6 of The Bone King and the Starling

I nod. The pressure has tightened as he’s reached an impassable point in my body. His hand massages down my back and he slows. “I’m going to seat myself fully. You’ll feel a momentary pain, but it will quickly fade.”

I bite my bottom lip and nod jerkily, pretending I’m not frightened. He leans forward and pulls my lip free of my teeth. He drops over me, blanketing my back with his scar-riddled chest. He braces his hand outside of mine to hold himself up on the tub while his other hand cradles my cheek gently.

His lips feather over my cheek, finding my nose and kissing its tip before dropping down and capturing my mouth. He sucks my bottom lip between his teeth in a way I find disorienting, and it is a calculated action, I realize in the next moment when his hips jack forward and a sharp burning sensation fills me up.

I gasp and release a wild, pained mewl, but he doesn’t retreat. He thrusts shallowly, his erection moving in and out of me slowly, until finally, after some time, the burning starts to fade even as the pressure remains. His hand on my face brushes away my tears before snaking around my hip. I feel him suddenly combing through the thatch of short curls guarding my sex until he finds that point just above my opening that feels so raw still from when he touched it earlier.

“You’re so brave, little bird. Taking my cock so well. Being such a good girl.”

He grunts in my ear as his fingers pick up speed and my legs start shaking in earnest. “Have you ever experienced pleasure before, my prize?”

I shake my head and squeeze my eyes closed.

“Look at me.”

I open them and meet his gaze. He’s far, far too close. I can see the darkness of his eyes, feel the heat of his breath. He smells like wine and sin. I imagine that this is what fucking the god Lohr himself might feel like.

“Have you ever touched…yourself to orgasm?”

he grunts on each thrust.

I shake my head. I don’t even really know what he means.

His brows come together over his once broken nose. “I am your first in all things?”

I nod.

“Gods.”

He leans in and presses his mouth to my temple. Vaguely, through the roaring wave of conflicting pains and pleasures that assail me as his fingers start to move at a perilously fast speed and his shallow thrusts, too, move faster and faster, I hear him say, “Raya, I owe you a second sacrifice for this.”

He speaks to the goddess of soft things, the one males like him are not meant to worship. Males like him speak to the gods of war and mayhem, debauchery and lust and I know that it is to Lohr, that lustful god, that I offer my thanks in this moment.

My face twists. Euphoria comes for me again. I grab for him anywhere I can, wanting to batten myself down as I prepare to wade through the storm. My hand hits his wrist. I grab onto it, clutching it for dear life as a dizzying wave of need cuts through the rougher sensations rumbling through me.

“Calai…King Calai,”

I correct in my desperation. “Please…”

“Please what, little bird? Tell me. What do you need from me?”

A warbling sound chokes my throat and I all but scream. “Let me come for you. Please…”

My head hangs in defeat. “Take me.”

He roars out a battle cry and starts to slam into my body in earnest. The feeling of my body gripping his cock is salacious and wonderful, his girth filling me up like a fist. I am so wet, his penis moves through my body easily despite my inner muscles straining around him, fighting him out no longer, but welcoming him in.

One of his hands on my breast squeezes and the other between my legs flicks wildly and roughly until I fall apart in his arms. I orgasm for the second time in my entire life, for him, the waves of pleasure something I couldn’t fathom getting used to.

The pressure zings through me, harder and longer than it did the last time. I scream — scream — the sound more animal than woman. I’m vaguely aware of a slighter, softer pain as my core clenches and releases in spasms around his length without me meaning for it too. I worry he doesn’t enjoy it when he groans and curses even louder. He leans over me and bites down onto my shoulder. I buckle and before I can regain strength enough to support my own weight, his thrusts lose their rhythm and he collapses.

We crash into the bath, water sloshing over its smooth edge. He lands on his knees with me still on top of him, my body still impaled on his erection. One of his hands clutches my hip bruisingly, the other arm still lining the front of my body, that hand wrapped around my throat.

He makes a sound twice as loud as I did and a thousand times more animalistic as his body goes tight and hard beneath me. “Mercy,”

he says, roaring the word up into the sky, “Teffina, thank you for this.”

He calls out to the goddess of pleasure and love, another goddess whose name I am surprised to hear leave his lips.

His thrusts are hard and powerful, the seat of my behind crushed against his lap as he hammers into me three, two…one final time. His hands are clenched and when I hazard a glance over my shoulder, it’s to see that his eyes have rolled back. He looks like a male possessed.

He releases one final primal cry before crushing me to his body like he wants to keep me so close I absorb into his skin. His fingers are like crude, blunted claws where they clutch me, and I know they’ll leave bruises visible tomorrow…cruel reminders that will linger days after he’s gone, taking with him all of his power, all of this magic.

“Lohr take me,”

he whispers again as he pulls me tight into his chest. His hips jerk upwards, my whole body jolting with each spasm. This goes on for some time, the king holding me tighter and tighter until I can hardly breathe.

And I don’t mind.

Tears press against my eyelids, demanding sacrifice. “Thank you,”

I say to no one, to everything. I’ve never felt like this before and it’s a terrible feeling. This fear that leaves me shaking. This hope that will leave me crushed. This brief lapse in time where the gods have decided to show me what it is like to truly be wanted is too much.

The king’s beard is rough against my cheek. “You are too exquisite for this world.”

His voice is a dark threat and an utter contrast to his words. His hand finds my breast and fondles it absently. His other hand cups my jaw, his thumb feathering gently over my lips.

“You please me so well, little bird.”

His voice is the rumble of a storm. “I’ve scant desire to leave your warmth.”

His hand hooks around my body and feels between my legs. I stiffen. “I don’t intend to.”

He begins massaging the back of my neck, his thumbs hard and powerful against my nape. It feels so good. So fucking good. I moan audibly.

“Gods,”

he groans. “The sounds you make.”

His hand tightens around my throat and his fingers between my legs start to move faster. “You make even the most inexperienced male believe himself a god to women.”

He chuckles against my cheek. “If I didn’t have your virginity smeared across my cock right now, I’d have guessed you very experienced in this.”

I shiver.

He bites my cheek, nipping at my skin hard enough to worry he truly does intend to devour me. And then he lifts his hand from my abused mound, where he’s feeling along the seam where his cock disappears inside of my body. “You’re bleeding a little, my love.”

I tense at the term of affection, feeling slightly betrayed by it. He shouldn’t call me such things. And I must remind myself that, despite what he says to me, he is the experienced one and he knows what to say to please. “Do you need a break?”

He rubs his fingers together and I see the clear liquid smeared over the whorls of his fingertips is, indeed, tinted pink. “Yes, Your Highness.”

I nod, needing a break more from his words than from the movement of his body.

His fingertips slow over my sex again and his other hand releases my throat. “Give me a moment,”

he says in a murmur, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “Eghh,”

he moans, making a deep, guttural sound in the back of his throat as he slowly lifts my body off of his lap.

I wince as his length leaves my heat, leaving behind a gaping hole inside of me. I mewl. “Shh,”

he whispers and gathers me to his chest. I’m grateful for it, for my own legs provide all the support of splinters.

“Come to me, little bird.”

He leans against the back of the tub and pulls me against his chest, my back to his front. The water comes up to cover my breasts and I sink into its warmth, and the greater warmth of the male behind me. I try not to focus entirely on the feeling of his legs parted around my lower back and the brush of his softening cock and the hair that shrouds it pressing against me, and press against me it does. He’s still…thrusting…and it’s affecting my thoughts.

“Relax. You’ve done so well, taking me like you have.”

He pulls my hair over my shoulder and coaxes me into looking up at him. He’s so close.

His lids are hooded and he smiles at me and it’s a frightening thing only because it feels so intimate. I can imagine that this is not a male who smiles often. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve him sharing one such smile with me.

I blush. My face burns and he chuckles, the sound causing his entire chest to vibrate, me along with it. “You are…”

He looks me over, eyes on my forehead, hairline, nose, lips… He rubs his face roughly and laughs and I flinch. The sound is shocking because it’s so loud, so unabashed and so pleasant. I’m embarrassed. And I’m sore. I can feel the tingling in my lower half telling me that I will see bruises when I arrive before a mirror.

“You need not cower from me. I will not hurt you.”

He seems so sincere but I don’t understand why. I am nothing more than a whore he’s paid for for the night. Maybe, a whore he won’t even pay at all.

I bite my lips between my teeth as his hands start to work over my back, massaging and kneading. I can smell soap, pine and bergamot, decadent flavors, but I still struggle to relax as his fingers work up the nape of my neck and into my hair. He adds more of the same oils he did before, combing them through my curls with his fingers.

“You have thick hair. I’ll have to ask the bonesmith to fashion a suitable comb that I can use.”

That he can use? I wonder what he means though I don’t ask. I remain tense, uncertain if I should allow myself to do as he says and relax against him, or if I should prepare to be dismissed. I do not know this male. His intentions have, thus far, been confounding and I do not trust him.

“Honey and sweet butter,”

he breathes against the shell of my ear. He hugs me to him in a way that makes me feel…warm. A warmth that has nothing to do with the temperature of the water. I don’t think anyone in my whole life has ever hugged me like this before. “I am a male reborn.”

We lie there for a while, simply basking in the water. The steam rises up like a shield against the cold that threatens to crawl in through the wooden walls as night comes for us all. He’s so calm, lazily stroking his hands up and down my arms. It’s hard not to feel like I should be falling asleep…but I am far from it.

“Can you stand?”

he whispers in my ear, voice coaxing and gentle.

I nod, though I know that’s only a partial truth and get to my feet at his prodding. My legs are shaky and weak, but I don’t dare tell him as much. Instead, when he says, “Turn,”

I do as he commands until I’m standing knee-high in the water, my sex at his eye level.

I flinch when I see the blade. Short but gleaming, it looks sharp and I’m afraid when he brings it between my legs. “Spread your legs. I’m going to remove some of the hair. I intend to feast for hours and when I do, I don’t intend to get your curls stuck between my teeth.”

His words are shocking and I don’t know what they mean. It all sounds alarming and scary, but he simply chuckles and drags his blade in easy strokes over my hair, not removing it, but trimming it short. He’s a meticulous male and I cannot help but spare several glances down at his face as he works.

He’s biting on the inside of his cheek and his gaze doesn’t stray from his task. He has a small cloth in one hand pressed beneath his area of concentration and uses it to catch all the small hairs. When he’s finished to his satisfaction, he places the blade and folded cloth outside of the bath, leans back and bites his bottom lip hard enough for the colors to change beneath his skin.

“You’re swollen here…”

His thumbs return to prod my mound, parting it, and I hiss at the shock of air against my sex. “Are you in pain?”

I shake my head, but I hesitate. I know he sees. “I am a restrained male,”

he says, though the expression on my face must convey what I’m thinking because he chuckles lightly, leans in close and licks a dangerous line through my folds. I buck, caught off guard by the sensation, and barely hear him as he whispers, “But not with you.”

He licks me again, this time cupping my entire sex with his mouth and lips, his tongue laving my swollen, bruised, wanting flesh. I gasp, my hands fisting again and again as I struggle to remain upright. I cannot do this. He asks for too much. I release a warbling cry and his head drops back. “I will need to feed this madness. Lohr will not be sated by what I have taken from you so far.”

Panic zings through me as he opens his eyes and looks up at me from between my legs. Prostrated like this beneath me, it is a frightening scene to behold. I can see the madness the king speaks of shining in his black gaze. He presses his mouth directly to the bundle of nerves he touched so vigorously earlier and I waver.

“Are you ready yet, to take me again?”

I can barely understand him over the sudden surge of blood through my temples and the whooshing in my ears. My mind knows that my body is weak, perhaps, too weak to take any more. But my body knows only the pleasure he’s shown me thus far.

I am only here for the night. The one night. I exhale. I will never be here again.

My hands fall nervously to his shoulders. To touch him without his express command could see me badly punished. But…I do it anyways, finding a small stone of bravery amidst the rubble of my virginity and clinging to it. And I am rewarded.

He leans in closer until I can only see his face by staring directly through the valley of my breasts…and it has softened. His eyes are so bright, so clear. I’d never have been able to guess that he’d had any ale or wine at all this evening and for a moment, my mind thinks of my own leader here in Winterbren. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Chief Olec’s eyes so clear or aware as this.

The urge to touch the king’s hair is so strong in me, I flex my fingers and relinquish the little honor I have left, if there is even any at all. I whisper, “My king, may I touch you?”

In a blink, his eyes round and his lips go slack before he returns to me with a grunt, “Freely.”

Surprised by his answer, and that he isn’t upset with how forward I am, I take an unfathomable liberty and gently brush my king’s red hair away from his forehead. His eyes flutter and he leans into my touch. The strands of his hair are surprisingly thick. His hair is rough and knotted around the braids. Several of them are woven throughout the loose strands, and now they’re all tangled together. I used to do my mother’s hair, and she would do mine, but I’ve never touched a man’s hair before. It’s an intimacy I never even realized existed.

Growing slightly more bold when he closes his eyes, I stroke my hand through his long locks, all the way down the back of his neck. He tips his forehead forward against the soft skin between my hips, moaning low in the back of his throat. And when I repeat the motion again, he presses his mouth against my sex.

His tongue peeks between his parted lips and flattens against my swollen nub. I shudder and whimper, gripping his hair now instead of stroking it, needing the support. He says nothing, but licks me again, the rumble in his chest wrapping itself around my knees as I waver. His mouth opens wider. His tongue draws slow circles around my soft, battered skin and then he lifts his hands and spreads my mound away from my lips, baring me entirely to his hungry gaze. He plants sweet kisses on my lower lips, my mound, over my sensitive skin that beats with its own pulse.

I wobble on my feet, but his hand presses against my lower back and holds me up against his face as two fingers of his other hand slip between my thighs, gently stroking the tender skin. I didn’t realize how raw my inner thighs were before, but I can feel now all the places his rough leg hair and skin abraded mine. It hurts a little, but his hand feels so nice. And then…

I gasp as he slips his fingers inside my body, one, maybe two… My head falls back. His tongue doesn’t increase in speed, but instead, continues to lazily taste every inch of my sex until…until…

His fingers hook in my body and he presses against a place in my core that simultaneously makes my legs tremble. A few moments more, and I’m done. I orgasm standing upright, the pressure of trying not to fall almost painful against the sudden way my head spins. The fire between my legs burns and sizzles while I ride a wave I hope never crests. I gasp, moan, shout to my king for mercy. And when I come back to reality, it’s to see him looking up at me, watching me as if hypnotized.

His fingers leave my body and his hands come to my hips. I realize only then that my hands are both tangled in his hair pulling it hard. “S-sorrry, my king,”

I say, releasing my hold.

He doesn’t seem to have heard me. He seems hardly present as he rises to his feet and lifts me up. “Here, doveling.”

He sets me down outside of the tub and picks up a towel hanging on the post in the room.

“Thank y…”

I start to say, reaching for the towel, but the king wraps it around me and dries me himself. He takes particular care when squeezing out my hair before roughly rubbing the towel over his. “Shall I…”

I try again, reaching for the towel to help him dry the rest of his body, but he doesn’t hear me again.

Instead, he steps a foot directly between my legs, knocking me off balance. When I fall, he catches me, lifts me up and carries me to the room with the bed. He tosses me onto the pillows and begins to prowl up my body, moving my splayed legs apart until they are so wide, he can fit his immense shoulders between them.

Lying on his stomach, he presses a kiss on my lower abdomen. “How many males have brought you pleasure like this?”

I know he speaks of his mouth on my mound and I feel heat ravage me thoroughly.

“N-none, my king,”

I whisper.

“And none ever will.”

I don’t know why he’d say words so cruel to me when I am already at his mercy. “When you think of pleasure from now on, I am all that you will see. My body, my cock, my seed. I plan to empty inside of you several more times before the night is through, if you can take me?”

He’s asking me? I don’t quite understand, but remember, only one night. One night is all I get. I nod. “Yes, my king.”

“Calai,”

he corrects.

I don’t respond. He closes his eyes and nuzzles his nose into my stomach. “I want your virginity in all ways tonight, little bird. I have had your mouth and your pussy. I will take your asshole next, but I will be as gentle as I’m able.”

His words rile me, as salacious as they are, and I feel a clenching in my lower abdomen, muscles working I did not know existed before. I gasp high and breathy and lock my hands on his shoulders as he comes to cover me and begins kissing me in earnest once more. I notice that he did not ask me when making his last request — no, proclamation.

I am delirious with pleasure and panicked as his body rubs over mine. His cock is hard again and slides easily inside.

“I can feel your sex clench around my cock,”

he says in between kisses up and down either side of my neck. “You may not be able to walk tomorrow, but you will not need to. I will ravage you tonight, but I will not leave you to ruin.”

His words are shaky — a warning for me or a reminder for him, I am not certain which.

Then he picks up the pace, his cock hot and hard as it slots into my body cleanly, my inner muscles shoved roughly aside to accommodate his massive girth.

The juncture of my thighs is sore and angry as he shifts his hips, picking up speed as he pounds up and into me. From this angle, looking up at him in the darkness of the candle-lit room, I watch as his face darkens to a deep red hue and the vein jumps over his forehead. His neck bulges and his burly chest flushes and I bounce beneath his cock, my front rubbing madly over the red hairs layered atop his muscled body. The friction against my lower half is so much…it’s too much…

“Are you coming?”

he says, brows drawn.

Our eyes are locked and my mouth is open, but I don’t answer. I just nod and mewl desperately as another pleasure sensation roars over me and I lose myself to it. “Fucking hell,”

he grunts, turning to steel. He jerkily slams his hips into mine, his balls slapping the underside of my body. He buckles a little as his head drops into the curve of my neck and he roars so loud it makes my ears ring.

I feel a surprising surge of wetness between us and afterwards, his body softens. He kisses me everywhere, lips slow at first before they pick up speed. He kisses and kisses me and my slow lips merely accept the offering, too drugged to keep up. “Now for your other hole,”

he says, and I don’t know what he means until he slips his cock out of my vagina, leaving his juices to leak lower between my ass cheeks.

He maneuvers his hand between us and my whole body startles when I feel the sudden press of one of his large fingertips against my rear hole. “This…” I start.

“Shh,”

the king says, sounding almost angry. “I won’t rut you fully, you’re too tight. But I will seed you here.”

His gaze flashes to my lips. “And maybe your mouth one more time.”

His finger pushes inside of me all the way and I flush with pain. I cry out. The king captures my cry with his mouth. “You’re pleasing your king so well.”

I gasp as he forces me to meet his gaze. “That’s it,”

he whispers. “Tell me who’s inside of you right now.”

Tears wet my eyes. I don’t understand how I can feel so brutalized and so treasured all at once. His finger in my…where I never ever would have thought I’d be penetrated…feels larger than his cock did in my vagina when he took my virginity. And now he’s come for the rest. “M-my king…”

“No.”

His finger starts to move inside of me, the lubrication of his seed the only thing making this possible at all. “Answer incorrectly again and I’ll add a second finger.”

“King Calai,”

I whisper in a panic.

He shakes his head and the pressure in my bottom increases two-fold when he stretches my ass hole with the addition of another digit. “Shh, little bird. Relax and it will be less painful.”

He brushes my hair back from my face. “I am sorry for this, but I need to claim all of you tonight. I will be easier on you tomorrow, should the gods allow it. But tonight, my need is too strong. Tell me who is inside of you and I will help you come.”

He sits back onto his heels suddenly and his other hand starts to gently rub the place on my body that feels like lightning. Swollen and prominent now, my spine arches the moment he touches it. And then the brute tortures me by removing that hand and sliding the fingers in my rear end all the way inside of my body up to his palm.

Burning fullness fills me and I wail, “Calai! Calai… Calai, you’re inside of me.”

“Yes, I am, my love.”

He removes his hands from my rear hole all at once, climbs over me once more and plunges his hot, hard length easily inside of my vagina. “You take me so easily now,”

he grunts on his next thrust. “Just a wet hole for my pleasure.”

His words are unkind, so why, then, does a fist in my chest clench? I feel my hips tilt up to meet his next thrust as his mouth comes down onto my own.

I kiss him back until he wrenches away from my lips and hisses, “My little virgin whore. So well used now. A bed for my cock and receptacle for my seed and mine alone. I will lie in bed with you every night and seed you a thousand times over until your belly is full with my heirs.”

Heirs, he says, not bastards.

My jaw starts to tremble. He grabs it. His touch may border on severe, yet is nowhere near as cruel as his hollow words are as he makes me promises that he has no right to make. He cannot simply claim a wife by choosing her from a crowd and fucking her. There are permissions to be obtained, doweries to be paid, ceremonies to be performed, sacrifices to be made. He offered to take me for the night and keep me for the night alone. When this is all over, I may very well be pregnant with his bastard and he will be gone, to begin this cycle anew in the next village he comes across.

That sense of betrayal washes over me again and for the first time tonight, I’m able to ignore the voice in my mind freeing up my insecurities and enabling me to enjoy this. It’s only one night, I think bitterly and I turn from him, moving my face away when he tries to kiss me again.

His touch turns rougher. He grabs me beneath the jaw and forces me to look up into his face. “You’re mine.”

He sounds upset. Angry even. Mad. “Your cries are mine, your breasts are mine, your whimpers are mine, your hot cunt is mine, your ass is mine, your future sons and daughters are mine, your skin, your hair, your hopes, your fears, your wants…desires…it’s all mine. You are mine, little bird.”

His thrusts are uneven, but that doesn’t matter. He’s rutting into me fast, at a pace my quivering thighs could never hope to match. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of my ass and I cannot…hold on…

“Every part of you is mine,”

he whispers, voice softening as he pecks at my lips while I utter little whimpers. “And I am yours. Calai belongs to you, Starling.”

He savages me and I am ashamed to be consumed by it, because the pleasure has battened me down like rope to my wrists and ankles and I cannot move except to scream and lift my hips, arch my back and release for him with tears in my eyes and wounds on my heart.

Distantly, I hear him continue to speak. “You come for me like the gods designed it so because they did. Lohr and Raya working hand in hand. I’d have combed all of Wrath in search of you if I knew you existed. My perfect…little…”

And then he says one word, one treacherous impossible word, and it skewers me like a dagger in the night. “Wife.”

My orgasm crests at the feeling of him leaving my heat and suddenly he’s lower, fingers lubricating my ass with my slick before the pressure increases a hundred-fold. His erection pushes into my body, into my impossibly tight rear end. He grunts above me, throaty and loud. “Augh! You are too tight, little one. Fuck…”

“It…hurts…”

I try to say, but my voice is starched and inaudible.

He pushes deeper, the head of his penis fully inside of me, but little more than that. He can’t come in more. He’ll split me in half.

Fortunately, he holds where he is, hips retreating on each thrust, but not edging inside of me any more than that. He holds himself up on his arms, his ribbed abdomen clenching and rippling and dripping with sweat. His forearms bracket my head and his face twists. “Ach, little bird. Would that I were sorry for this, I could stop now. But I am not…”

His hips are rocking slowly and his face is twisting in passion. He closes his eyes and presses our foreheads together. I can smell the scent of my sex on his skin. I whimper and he groans, “I’m about to release. Tell me again, tell me who owns you.”

“Calai,”

I whisper.

“Yessss,”

he moans. His body stiffens and he arches up and his shoulders bunch by his ears and the strangest sensation fills my ass hole as his erection enters into me with another little shove and the bright burst of his semen spurts into me in a blasphemous, erotic way.

I don’t like it, but cannot help crave it. I want to do more for him, anything he wants, knowing that it’s my body driving him to such destruction. But I also know, and remind myself, that this is only just this once. His words are lies, because there is no such thing as forever. There is not even tomorrow for us.

He moans and as he comes, he kisses me all over my face, rubs my body, massages my breasts. I cannot know how much time has passed. All I can do is hang on for dear life as the surge of heat pulls through my body and the king roars loud enough I’m sure they can all hear him throughout the hall — if not the entire village.

He’s panting by the time he drops onto me, slightly to the side, just enough so that I can breathe. My chest is heaving even though I was still by comparison to the heavy labor he just performed, the war he waged over my flesh.

“I have taken you everywhere, little bird,”

he moans, his cock sliding out of my ass in a way that makes me clench. I lie there in the bed, his seed decorating my body like blood on a battlefield. I am utterly spent, my lower lip trembling from exhaustion and from the mental anguish brought on by his words.

“Gods, I cannot believe I waited for so long.”

He tilts his head towards me in the bed. We lie on our backs side by side. I ache all over. My heart is beating so hard. “It was worth the wait.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners when they meet mine. “You are sensational. An exquisite being. To have had your virginity in every way it counts is the greatest honor.”

His chest moves like a wave with each of his labored breaths. I feel myself tearing up. I don’t know what to say. “Thank you, your highness.”

He flinches and then his brows crease. He reaches for my face and it is my turn to flinch. He growls and suddenly, he’s rolling closer to me. He presses his lips to my forehead and then each of my cheeks, the tip of my nose, and finally, my swollen lips.

He pulls blankets and furs up over me, but he himself slides from the bed. He’s angry again, brows drawn, and presses on my chest when I try to sit. “Sleep. You need it. I will return with water and wine, some food, too. Are you hungry?”

I… I don’t know what to say. I thought he was upset. “You must replenish yourself. I will return shortly, my princess. Don’t leave the bed unless it’s to use the bathroom. And don’t wash up. I like the sight of my seed spilling out of you.”

He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip and I watch him walk out of the room, bare-assed. I hear the whooping and hooting from the great room as he enters it and I frown, unsure of what it all means.

I try to puzzle through what he said to me at so many different points in the night, try to make sense of how I’m feeling, but it’s all too much and the moment I close my eyes, I fall asleep to a single thought.

He called me princess, not queen.