Chapter 12: Banquet Table Takedown
The air in the private dining chamber was thick with the ghosts of a hundred political meals—a haze of fine wine, slow-burning candle wax, and the cloying sweetness of overripe fruit left as decoration. Evening light, the color of old honey, streamed through the lattice windows, painting long, distorted rectangles across the Persian rug. Eris stood at the sideboard, pouring two glasses of a dark, violently red vintage. His back was to her, the line of his shoulders tense beneath the fine autumn wool of his jacket.
Lilly traced the gilded edge of the mahogany dining table, her finger coming away dustless. Everything here was pristine, curated, cold. A stage. She felt uncomfortably aware of her own dress, a simple thing of borrowed silk from this world, too delicate against the room’s heavy opulence.
“It’s quieter than I expected,” she said, her voice too loud in the silent space.
Eris turned, a glass in each hand. His eyes, the color of banked fire, swept over her. “Did you expect a retinue? Minstrels?” He approached, setting one glass before her. “My father dines with spectacle. I find it tedious.”
“So this is just… dinner.” She took the glass, her fingers brushing his. A static shock, small and sharp, jumped between them. She didn’t flinch.
“Is that a disappointment?” He didn’t sit. He stood close, using his height, the broadness of his frame, to subtly dominate the space around her. It was a trick, she knew. One he used without thinking.
She took a sip of wine. It was bitter and complex, bursting with a flavor like crushed berries and dark soil. “After this morning?” She met his gaze, held it. “Everything else is a bit of a disappointment, yeah.”
A flicker in his eyes. Something raw and hungry, quickly veiled. He took a slow drink from his own glass, his throat working. “Patience,” he said, the word a low murmur, “is a currency here. It accrues interest.”
“I’m not a patient investor.”
“I’ve noticed.” He finally sat, not at the head of the table, but in the chair directly beside hers. His knee brushed her thigh under the table. A deliberate, casual contact. “You invade baths. You ask dangerous questions. You have very little regard for the concept of personal territory.”
She swirled the wine, watching the legs streak the crystal. “Your territory seems to have expanded to include me. I’m just… exploring the new borders.”
He was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the distant whisper of the autumn wind through the lattice. “And if you find them lacking?”
The question was dangerously soft. It wasn’t about geography. It was about the space between his control and her freedom, between his isolation and her intrusion. She put her glass down with a precise click.
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
His hand came up then, not to her face, but to the nape of her neck. His fingers slid into her damp hair, possessive and warm. He pulled her forward, not into a kiss, but until their foreheads touched. His eyes were so close she could see the flecks of gold in the burnt umber. “You are.”
The kiss, when it came, was not gentle. It was a culmination. The hours of charged looks, the morning’s interrupted intimacy, the fragile understanding in the steam—it all compressed into this one, searing point of contact. He tasted of wine and something uniquely, inherently him—a taste like smoke and crisp autumn air. He took her mouth with a focused intensity that stole the breath from her lungs.
Her chair scraped loudly as he stood, pulling her up with him. Her back met the solid edge of the massive dining table. The forgotten glasses wobbled. He swept his arm across the surface in a sudden, violent arc. Crystal shattered against the far wall. Silver cutlery chimed as it hit the rug. A porcelain platter bearing uneaten fruit exploded into shards.
He didn’t look at the destruction. His eyes were locked on hers, blazing. “Since you’re so eager to serve,” he murmured, his voice a rough scrape against her lips, his hands already gripping the neckline of her dress. He didn’t bother with laces or fastenings. There was a terrible, rending sound of tearing silk. The fragile bodice gave way, baring her to the waist. The cool air of the chamber pebbled her skin, a stark contrast to the heat rolling off him.
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, setting her back onto the polished mahogany. The wood was shockingly cold against her bare back. He stepped between her thighs, his hands pushing her knees apart, widening her for him. The fine wool of his trousers scraped against her inner skin.
“Let’s see how well you can ride my cock,” he said, his words a hot, dark promise against the frantic pulse in her throat, “while keeping quiet enough not to alert the guards outside the door.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a trapped bird. The threat was real. The humiliation, the exposure—it was all here, in this sanctum of his power. But so was the wild, desperate ache he’d cultivated and left unfinished. She was past pride.
“Fuck you,” she breathed, the defiance weak but present.
A cruel, beautiful smile touched his mouth. “That’s the idea.”
He undid his own trousers with brutal efficiency. His erection sprang free, thick and rigid, the flushed head already glistening. He was immense. The sight of him, fully aroused and utterly focused on her, sent a bolt of pure, sharp fear and desire straight to her core. She was wet, she could feel the slick heat between her legs, a humiliating, eager betrayal of her own body.
He didn’t prepare her. He didn’t tease. He guided himself to her entrance, the broad tip nudging against her, a blunt, impossible pressure. He watched her face, his gaze merciless.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his voice low. It wasn’t an offer. It was a test.
She shook her head, a frantic, tiny movement. She couldn’t speak.
He thrust.
The burn was exquisite, a white-hot spear of sensation that tore a choked gasp from her throat. She arched off the table, her nails scraping the polished wood. He was everywhere, filling her, stretching her to a point just shy of pain. He buried himself to the hilt and went still, his body trembling with the effort of his own restraint. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Quiet,” he reminded her, his breath ragged in her ear.
Then he began to move.
It was a ruthless, driving rhythm. Each withdrawal was a slow, deliberate torture, each deep, grinding thrust a claiming. The table rocked with the force of it, a low, rhythmic thud against the stone floor. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity that stripped away every pretense, every carefully maintained layer of composure.
His hands gripped her hips, holding her in place, his fingers sure to leave bruises. Her breasts bounced with the force of his movements, and he dropped his head, capturing a tight nipple in his mouth. He sucked, hard, his tongue laving the peak, and the dual sensation—the deep, filling drag inside her and the sharp, pulling pleasure at her breast—unmoored her completely.
A broken sob escaped her. She clamped a hand over her own mouth, her eyes wide and streaming. The pleasure was a coiled spring, winding tighter and tighter with every brutal, perfect stroke. She could feel her own nails biting into her palm.
He reared back, pulling almost all the way out before slamming home again, a move that made her see stars. “Look at me,” he growled.
She forced her eyes open, meeting his. His control was fraying. Sweat gleamed at his temples. His pupils were blown wide with lust, leaving only a thin ring of fire. He was watching her unravel, and it was destroying him, too.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice shredded. “Now. Let me feel it.”
It was the permission she didn’t know she needed. The coil snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, seismic convulsion that locked her muscles and stole the sight from her eyes. Her inner walls clenched around him in frantic, rhythmic pulses, milking his length.
With a raw, guttural sound that was nothing like his usual voice, he followed her. He drove into her one last, deep time, his hips stuttering, and she felt the hot, sudden rush of his release filling her. He slumped over her, his forehead coming to rest on her collarbone, his entire body shuddering through the aftershocks.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the faint scent of sex and spilled wine rising in the honeyed light.
Slowly, he softened inside her. He didn’t pull away. He lifted his head, his gaze searching hers. The raw, open need she saw there, stripped of all its aristocratic armor, was more intimate than anything their bodies had just done.
From the corridor outside, there was a faint, clearing of a throat. A servant. Waiting.
Eris didn’t look away from her. He raised his voice, just enough to be heard through the door, the authority seamless once more. “Leave the tray. Do not enter.”
A muffled, “Yes, my lord,” and then retreating footsteps.
He looked down at the wreckage of her dress, at the marks on her skin, at the both of them, joined and exposed on the formal table. A faint, impossibly soft expression touched his exhausted features. It was gone in a blink.
“The borders,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheek she hadn’t realized had fallen, “are exactly where they need to be.”
He withdrew from her body slowly, the loss of him a shock in the cool air. Her spent muscles trembled against the hard wood. Without a word, he righted his trousers, his movements efficient, his face a mask of reclaimed composure. The shattered glass and scattered silver around their feet seemed like evidence from another world.
He looked down at her, bare and streaked with their mingled fluids on the grand table. His eyes, now unreadable, tracked a drop of his own release as it traced a path down her inner thigh. A possessive stillness settled over him.
“Up,” he said, his voice devoid of its earlier roughness.
Her limbs felt heavy, uncooperative. She pushed herself up, her palms slipping on the polished surface. The torn silk of her dress hung uselessly from her shoulders. She made no move to cover herself. There was no point.
He shrugged out of his own jacket, the fine wool lush and dark, and draped it around her. It swallowed her, warm from his body and smelling intensely of him—smoke, spice, and sex. The gesture was so at odds with the destruction moments before that it left her disoriented.
“Walk,” he commanded, turning toward the chamber’s interior door.
She followed, the jacket dragging on the floor, her bare feet silent on the cold stone and then the lush carpets of the corridor. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t look back. His stride was sure, leading her deeper into the private heart of his wing, past empty suites and darkened antechambers lined with austere portraits of stern-faced ancestors.
His bedroom was a study in severe elegance. A massive fireplace dominated one wall, the hearth cold and swept clean. Books lined another, their spines neat and unyielding. The bed was wide, draped in dark emerald velvet, its posts reaching like blackened trees toward the coffered ceiling. It looked more like a strategic command post than a place for rest.
He closed the door behind them. The heavy thud of wood and iron echoed in the spacious silence. He crossed to a high-backed chair of obsidian wood and leather positioned near the fire, though no fire burned.
“Come here.”
She went to him, stopping a pace away. The jacket was a weight, a symbol. He watched her, his gaze analytical.
“Remove it.”
She let the jacket slide from her shoulders. It pooled on the floor at her feet. The air was cool on her skin, raising gooseflesh. She stood before him, completely naked, marked by his hands and his mouth, the evidence of their coupling still slick between her legs.
“Now everything else,” he said, his tone flat.
A flicker of confusion crossed her face. “There’s… there’s nothing else.”
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Your bracelets. The clip in your hair. The borrowed pretense. All of it.”
She reached up with shaking fingers, unpinning the simple clasp holding her damp hair back. It joined his jacket on the floor. She slipped the thin silver bracelets from her wrists. They made tiny, hollow sounds as they landed on the fabric.
“Good.” He sat in the chair, the leather sighing under his weight. He spread his knees, creating a space. “Kneel.”
Her breath hitched. This was different. The table was animal, a frantic collision. This was ceremony. This was cold, deliberate theater. She lowered herself to the floor, the rug coarse against her knees. She settled between his spread thighs, her eyes level with the intricate fastenings of his trousers.
“Look at me.”
She lifted her gaze. His face was granite in the dim light. The fire in his eyes had banked to embers, glowing with a controlled, patient heat. He leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers steepled.
“I want to come in your mouth.” The words were clinical, delivered without inflection. “Your punishment, for your continued invasions and your defiant little mouth, is that you will obey everything I say until the sun crests the eastern ridge. Disobey me—a hesitation, a flinch, a single tear shed without my permission—and I will edge you for the rest of that time. I will take you to the brink again and again and not let you come. Do you understand?”
The threat was detailed, cruel, and unbearably specific. It coiled in her belly, a tight knot of dread and dark, unwanted thrill. She bit her lip, the blush she hated burning up her neck and flooding her cheeks. She nodded, once.
His hand shot out, tangling in the hair at the back of her head. He didn’t yank, but the grip was unbreakable. “Words.”
“Yes,” she whispered, her throat tight.
“Yes, what?”
She swallowed. “Yes, Sir.”
A low growl vibrated in his chest, a sound of pure, predatory satisfaction. With his other hand, he undid the fall of his trousers. He freed himself, his cock already stiffening again, thick and heavy in his own hand. He gave himself a slow, punishing stroke, his eyes locked on hers.
“Open.”
She parted her lips, her heart hammering against her ribs. The taste of him, salt and skin, filled her senses as he guided himself past her teeth. He didn’t thrust. He let her adjust, the head of his cock resting on her tongue, a intimate, demanding weight.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping to a dark caress, his fingers tightening in her hair, “you will learn the price of my territory.”