At His Majesty's Pleasure Ch. 05

When he finally released her, she fell against the back of the wardrobe, panting for breath; meanwhile, thoughts blazed through her head.

Apologize? Did he think to train her like one of his dogs? Only a few weeks had passed their initial meeting, but Alais already understood that groveling was rewarded, impertinence hammered down. She had also discovered, perhaps recently, that she could grovel - assuming the role of the plaintive waif - for only so often, within any given period of time, before the act felt too ridiculous to uphold.

And while anxious and apprehensive did seem to be her normal state around him - it was like standing before a hurricane. One might fear it all they like during its approach, but once it was there and all-encompassing and inescapable (a bit like his anger), there was little left but to gracefully surrender oneself to the imminent destruction. And groveling still tasted utterly foul in this.

But she also (sanely) lacked the hubris to banish all prospects of compliance, and so a compromise would have to suffice. She looked to him, levelly. "I'm sorry you rushed to conclusions." She was sorry for the men he'd dragged into the woods. She was sorry for the maids who might have faced the brunt of his misplaced fury. But she was not sorry for retreating from this awful, awful world.

The King stared, his eyes narrowing again, and for a moment he looked like he might make good on his threat. Instead, he laughed. "You really are intractable."

His finger shifted, almost tightening, but ultimately gave way to a stronger instinct. As if unable to help himself any longer, he leaned down, suddenly, and kissed her. It was not the soft, glancing thing from the wedding ceremony, but a passionate, relentless kiss, that demanded all of her and held back nothing. His hand shifted to cup the back of her head, mussing up her curls messily, and the whole of his body pressed up against her, hard against her gauzy slip and the soft curves beneath.

As a young girl, Alais was always too small, too light, too fragile to behold - like she belonged more so sitting within a glass case over a fireplace than out in the open. Now, her figure could still be considered petite, but there was an undeniable fullness in places one might expect, shapely for her frame and with all the grace of youth and spring. It was a body unaccustomed to wanton treatment.

She stewed in the stunned, confused, and ashamed silence of one who had never been kissed with a vigor any greater than light and chaste. Her eyes were struggling in focus, dazed, the back of her hand brushed tentatively against her lip; when he withdrew, she could see he was a little breathless himself, his eyes scanning hers as his lips curved into a wicked smile. Without warning, he took hold of her, arms moving about her waist to sling her over his shoulder, and carried her off to the bed, where he lay her across its covers like some ill-begotten prize.

The intensity of that kiss meant that her mind was still drawing blanks as her back bounded against the downy mattress, but somehow she managed to muster the remnants of her wits as she propped herself up by the elbows and (subconsciously) pressed her knees together, pointing them off to the side. So what if she had never, ever felt like that before? So what? It was just - just a physical reaction of her body, something she had no control over. She should move on as though it had never happened. Ignore. Deflect. Evade.

She shifted a little to re-right the wayward rim of the shift collar which had dipped below a shoulder, a consequence to his disarranging handling, and left the skin momentarily bare. When the gown was all well and straightened again, her increasingly frantic mind was set to delay, delay, delay, seizing onto any pinpricks of indignation it should have felt but were frustratingly missing. "I'm not - ready - "

"Unfortunate," he murmured. The smirk was back at his lips. "For you." One of his hands - rough and coarse, strong from swordplay and riding - settled about her ankle almost idly, but as she moved to draw her knees together, he made a teasing "tsk" noise and pulled her legs yet further apart - splaying her wide, so that her body took on a perverse shape.

This prompted a little gasp from her, but it was nothing compared to his next trespass: he allowed his fingers to ghost up her leg, trickling up and up past her thigh, and then down again, this time massaging and kneading as he went.

"So tense," he told her, with mock concern - going so far as to look mildly surprised. He inched her shift up (that which she had so carefully just arranged) little by little, agonizingly slow, until it was bunched up just below her hips.

She watched helplessly as he lowered his mouth then, trailing kisses along a similar path, and shivered as he lingered at that erogenous area at the back of her knee.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, her voice breathless enough to give reason for embarrassment. Why was he taking these pains, instead of forcing himself violently upon her? She doubted he was above it.

"Attending to my wife, of course," he answered, with a smile that was far too innocent to be sincere. His lips and tongue worked expertly to tease and pleasure her, all the while with a certain awful glint in his eyes. "Do you not enjoy it?"

The terrible thing was that the answer was far more ambiguous than she wanted it to be.

This was...a more subtle kind of torture than the outright brutality she had expected. Had he read her so well, to know that she actually did fear her uncontrollable reactions far more than the invasive contact itself? For if there was to be immense pain, she liked to think she had the strength of mind to write it off as a wound of the flesh, one that didn't need to be assigned more special meaning than any other. But to be made to enjoy the humiliation was to probably be her undoing. To relinquish control of her own senses, and to him - she couldn't bear it. What would be left of her if he could mold her most private responses to his desires? Where would her credibility go? How would she face her own reflection again?

She wasn't so naive to presume it couldn't happen. It was already happening, breaking minute slivers of her resolve away from the edges. That manipulative way he'd begun using her name that night, and now the obscenity he rendered upon legs. Her head fell back against the sheets out of red frustration, refusing to look at herself forced apart. The ceiling offered such a benign, indifferent view, aloft from everything - but she could still feel him drawing closer and farther, tantalizingly, from the still (barely) shrouded spot between her thighs. An obstinate lack of acknowledgment had to go a long way, right? As long as she could still her damn quivering. How tempting it was to reach down and swat him away, or better yet to kick at him; but the difference in physical strength, they were both well aware, was outright laughable.

There was something else holding her back from defending her modesty, something more subtle... but that was the very thing she was vying not to acknowledge.

"This isn't enjoyment - this is anything but enjoyment," she instructed patiently, anxiously, to the happy ceiling. The words flowed uneasily, often disjointing and taking shuddering breaks each time his mouth discovered a particularly sensitive nerve. What was he doing there? No, don't look, it's just stupid, inane tickling. "I would enjoy if we could - wait."

"I'm done waiting." He withdrew, only to lazily pull off his tunic. In the candlelight of the chambers, his muscles appeared more defined, and his lean strength more evident - the sight almost made her breath catch.

Abruptly engulfed by a frenzied panic, she slipped away from reach on the other side of the bed, dropped herself over the edge and rolled underneath it, past the curtain of bedsheets. In a different context, she might have been overindulging in some ridiculous child's play.

She heard him laughing. "Alais, Alais, Alais," he chided, each inflection more patronizing than the last, as she heard him slip from the bed. "What am I going to do with you?"

Her first order of action was, naturally, to diligently smooth out (again) the shift back over her knees, her shoulders... everywhere else where they were twisted inappropriately. Secondary was her stomach-turning watch for the sound of his steps, the way his shadows cast over the thickly hanging comforter as she lay frigid. She pressed backwards, but there was nowhere near enough space to escape him utterly.

The curtain of bedsheets was brushed aside, and the candlelight was free to trespass on her sanctuary. Then his hand had clamped back onto its familiar resting spot, her ankle, and from there he slowly but surely pulled, with easily enough strength to combat her full-bodied efforts. How many useless seconds had that bought her? Perhaps panic was subjecting her to entirely new levels of irrationality, but he made short work of pinning her down onto the bed again, and none of that mattered.

She was lowered back down, limbs spread far and wide like she was another layer over the covers. Only then did he climb over her, straddling her waist, his heaviness there swiftly putting an end to any ideas of a second escape.

"If you give me reason, I will have to tie you down," he told her.

Taking her hand - that soft, unblemished thing - he brushed his lips over her knuckles, in an imitation of a chaste greeting, his smile widening mischievously again as his attentions deepened. He brought each finger to his lips, suckling slowly and enticingly; his eyes were on her at all times, watching for a reaction or weakness to exploit, and lingering where she was most affected.

This treatment stirred no noteworthy response by its own. It was her hand. All the intimate suckling in the world would have done nothing, were it not for all these... other things. It was the sight of him delivering these (spitefully) tender affections, his closeness, the warmth of his own bare skin, and all those annoying well-sculpted things about him which rendered aloofness for even the most ludicrous gestures all but impossible. He was drawing it out on purpose; he had to be, for all the uncontrollable segments in her brain craving against the lot to sink into the feel of him.

Her eyes wandered away and focused back to a spot in the room where she could no longer see what was being done to her. Her mind forcibly replayed the imagery of Edmure rotting away in that gibbet, Ser What's-His-Face being pried apart, and of the threats he had made to her family to drag her down to this position. How could she be enjoying this?

And he was still talking, in that leisurely way of his. "Or perhaps rope would only...excite you further?" he voiced, smirking against her skin. "You did seem so fond of it last time."

She felt his lips lingering over her bandages, and could barely resist a flinch. Her arm was lavished with the same leisurely treatment, and when he reached her shoulder, he eased off the strap there and lowered his mouth to that sensitive spot where neck adjoined shoulder. There he lavished the same attentions, kissing and suckling.

It was here that her foundations began crumbling again, sending a jolt down her spine as she strangled away what had to have been the heinous sounds of frustration. What else could it be? Alais refused to even consider it. But not there, she wanted to cry, not there. Her wrists squirmed like skittish animals within his unrelenting grasp, yearning so desperately to fly down and cover her flushed face in all confusion and guilt.

For all the softness of its skin, it was never this sensitive before - never. Her legs were at liberty to come together (stubbornly) and twist and point upwards in the limited space beneath him. She tried craning herself away from him, but it wasn't as though she could burrow into the bed itself.

Conversation was still tenuously being sustained. As far as distractions went, she could no longer afford to be choosy, but now, there was definitely something far more shaky, subdued, and almost despairing in her voice than before. "Rope? Why would that possibly excite me?"

To her relief, he left off her neck, though something in his eyes told her he was more than aware now of her particular sensitivity - and would no doubt be exploiting it. He picked up her other hand, giving her fingers the same attention. "I've been told there's a certain thrill that comes with restraint." He kissed down, past her wrist. "That feeling of absolute vulnerability." His gaze remained on her, his lips traveling still further, past the crook of her elbow. "And the knowledge that another has such power over you as to take you for his pleasure...however he wishes."

The words titillated as much as insulted; she tried to ignore them. The leisurely focus on her arm would've been something of a reprieve, were it not for the gut twisting anticipation that the path would only wind up there again. Not there Not there Not again.

But of course, his mouth was at her neck once more, and now he was leaving tender bites all across her flesh, her skin caught between the wicked contours of his teeth.

"You'll leave a mark," Alais cried out between barely suppressed whimpers, as though it were something dangerous. What was that he said - about decorum and grace? Distantly, she thought that scarves would have to be an option in concealing the faint bruises which were surely to show.

"Good," was the mischievous answer.

He nosed down, still taking all the time in the world, the stubble on his chin offering a tickling scratch; when he came across cloth, he drew the slip down, further and further, until it left her chest. At once, her arms banded defensively across her chest, but he would have none of it. His hand reclaimed her wrists (feebly struggling), pinning them above her head, so that her breasts - pert and slightly pink with flush - were fully exposed for his viewing.

"Hmm," he said, with a mocking look of appraisal. He let his fingers trail over one breast and then the other, caressing them with the same slow, deliberate attention, and ending with a playful squeeze (and unabashed grin, when she inhaled sharply).

It would be so much easier if she weren't so sensitive to his touch. Therein her frustrations were fueled, not because she secretly - miserably - unhappily - desired more and to be handled with an even greater force, but because she was being played like an instrument. Overwhelmed, stricken tears were finally brimming in her eyes. It was all she could do to silence her lips from giving utterance to the tunes he probably would have been pleased to hear. And he hadn't even gotten all that far, had he?

He certainly took notice of how she squirmed and writhed beneath him, enough to prompt a self-satisfied smile. "I do believe you're becoming impatient, Alais." He lowered his mouth to her breasts, replacing the ministrations of his hands, so that his breath fell hot against her skin. "There's no need to hide your desire. It's perfectly natural."

Even his taunts did not dampen the pleasurable swirling of his tongue.

"I'm not -" She was cut off, as his teeth clamped lightly over her nipple, tugging on it enough to elicit a threshold of pain - and further stimulation.

"Stop - this isn't what I want." Maddened, she ventured a step further, "But it doesn't matter what I want, is that right?" She almost managed to sound angry.

The King withdrew, his laughter falling easily; his own manner was comfortable and at ease, in appalling contrast to her distress. "Oh, but it is what you want," he said, as he traced down, over the line of her hips. His gaze lingered on the rise and fall of her chest, and the new indentations of his teeth upon her breast. "That much should be obvious, even to yourself."

Even as he spoke, his fingers went to her shift again, drawing it yet lower, and then lower still, until he finally slipped it off altogether. Now utterly nude, she shivered under his eye; her legs crossed impulsively, one curling frightfully over the other.

"How lovely you are," he said, almost to himself. He drank in the sights of her naked form - the swell of her hips, the dark patch of hair that shrouded her virgin sex - with unhidden appreciation, and she was struck again by how he looked at her as if she were some property newly acquired. "How could I be blamed for wanting you for myself?"

Placing his hands upon her thighs, he pushed, spreading them wide again, despite her efforts, so that it gave him complete and utter access to her womanhood. And before she knew what he was doing, he extended two fingers between her legs, slipping easing through her moistened folds. Jolted by the intrusion, she squirmed, but he had already withdrawn then, his eye upon the telltale lubricant now staining his hand - his expression devilishly triumphant. "And it seems the feeling is mutual."

She felt the burn of her own flush, even as she retorted, "It means nothing."

"Does it? That sounds like a challenge." He forced her legs apart again, and this time lowered his mouth. He kissed along her sex, his stubble more ticklish than ever, and she keenly felt the new encroachment of every touch; the angle of her legs felt odd and unnatural, and at any given moment Alais struggled against the futile instinct to snap them back closed. To be touched and toyed with where no man had even laid eyes upon - how could anyone bear the shame? Was it that much easier if she were in love, whatever that meant?

He went ever deeper, undeterred by her squirms, and she stilled as he reached the opening of her lips.

Then she inhaled sharply, abruptly confronted by his tongue pushing into her, and of the butterfly sensations building over one another, into something more sinister. Her breathing took on a strange, shallow cadence, drawing a slight yet infuriatingly anticipatory burning from her lower stomach.

Her tongue was inside her, warm and wet against her walls, and there was nothing she could do to stop the cruel pleasures it was inflicting.

There was also the overbearing humiliation, the confounding aching which responded horrifically well to the invasive prodding between her folds, and some piece of her feeling as though it were dying inside. She was incredibly tense, and how could she have known of the slick heat coating the tight walls within her private flesh?

The attentions paused, only for his tongue to find the pink nub of her sex. He flicked - once, twice, each touch tantalizingly light, before his mouth closed over the nub entirely and slowly sucked around it.

"What are you doing - No. No... Please." She was rapidly losing herself to him, unable to control the advancing wave of her own pleasure. Her hand managed to stifle the worst of her whimpers; nothing could be done about the uneven trembling, the unspeakable sensations building within her. "Please... stop." It occurred to her, like a death toll, that she didn't want him to.

"Oh? Is that what you really want?" he asked, the same taunting tone coming to the fore.

He withdrew his advances, suddenly - and at her most vulnerable moment, when she had felt fit to burst, she was instead left with frustrating ache.

Of course, this was what he wanted, and Alais resisted giving him the satisfaction of showing it - but even her own breathing had betrayed her, sounding more like pants in soft and sweetly rising rhythms. She had to stifle cries of greater desire.

Only when this subsided did he resume his attentions again, his hands prying her apart and his mouth finding the sweet center of her womanhood. Again, he suckled on her sensitive little nub, and again his tongue penetrated her to wrest unwanted pleasure.