Chapter 2: The night before the festival
Forge stood near the foot of the bed with his back half turned, broad shoulders rolling beneath the last movement of the day as he stripped off the dark undershirt he had worn beneath his coat. Lamplight spilled over the immense architecture of him in molten gold, gliding across the long burn scar over his right pectoral, the old crescent bite in his left shoulder, and the hard ridges of muscle carved through chest, abdomen, and arms by forge work, war, and stubborn refusal to die. His back looked like something dragged out of an ancient saga and given blood, all thick lats, powerful shoulders, and pale marks left by blades, claws, sparks, and bad days that had failed to keep him down. “Tomorrow’s going to be noisy,” he said, dragging a hand through his long auburn hair before pulling the tie free and letting it fall loose around his shoulders. “Festival starts in earnest, Ozma’s top field agent comes home, and I’d bet my left hand somebody tries something stupid before noon.”
Salem’s voice came from the bed with that cool, musical composure of hers that always made him listen harder than he meant to. “On Remnant, that seems to narrow nothing,” she said, and there was already a smile in the words before he had turned enough to see it. “Still, I agree. We will have to meet the agent, decide whether the poor creature is merely competent or another half-broken weapon Ozma has mistaken for a person, and then survive a public celebration while pretending neither of us is waiting for a knife between songs.” Forge snorted as he reached down to unbuckle the last of his gear, the movement making the muscles in his back shift like something dangerous beneath skin. “Aye. Standard courtship for us at this point.” Salem laughed softly, and that sound alone had his mouth beginning to curve before he fully looked over.
Then he did look, and every disciplined thought in his skull died like a candle under a boot.
She had arranged herself against the pillows with deliberate, ruinous grace, one leg folded beneath the other and pale hair spilling over her shoulders like poured silver, while white mesh lace turned the whole bed into an act of personal sabotage. The lingerie was delicate only in the most treacherous sense, thin enough to offer him the shape of her body without mercy and fitted closely enough to make modesty look like a dead language. Lace cupped the heavy, full weight of her breasts and lifted them with such obscene elegance that the soft press of flesh over the edges looked less like clothing and more like a dare. The sheer pattern barely softened the dusky points of her nipples beneath it, and the rest of the set clung to her waist, hips, and thighs with an intimacy that made Forge feel as if some Vale seamstress had declared open war on his restraint. Salem watched his face with icy blue eyes gone bright and delighted, then said, “That is a wonderfully flattering expression, husband. I should like to preserve it.”
Forge opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and finally managed, “What in the sweet, merciless hells is that.” Salem’s smile widened into something exquisitely pleased, and she glanced down at herself with infuriating calm while one finger traced the lace where it strained over the swell of her breast. “This,” she said, lingering over the word as if she could feel his attention burning through the fabric, “is one of my purchases from a boutique in Vale. It specializes in clothing meant to be admired, removed, and remembered.” Forge stared at her as though the city itself had personally insulted him, then dragged both hands down his face and muttered, “Boutique,” like it was a curse he intended to beat into submission. Salem shifted her hips by the smallest amount, just enough to make the mesh catch the lamplight along the curve of her thigh. “I found it while out in the city,” she added with devastating innocence. “Quite by accident, of course.”
He gave her a look so disbelieving it almost circled back into reverence, and she answered it with a soft laugh that rippled through him worse than any battle cry. “How many,” he asked, because some doomed, stupid instinct in him clearly believed the number might decide whether he lived through the night. Salem crossed one leg over the other with slow deliberation, white lace shifting over the strong, lovely shape of her thighs while the narrow strip between them hid almost nothing from a man already looking too hard. “A few pairs,” she said, folding her hands over her stomach like a queen receiving a report. Forge’s eyes narrowed, and his voice dropped into warning. “Em.” She sighed as if burdened by honesty, though the gleam in her eyes betrayed her. “Fine. A few dozen. Different styles, different colors, different levels of cruelty. I was curious.”
For one stunned beat there was only the hiss of the lamps and the rough sound of Forge trying to remember how breathing worked. Salem tilted her head, letting silver hair slide over one shoulder and expose the long pale line of her throat, then asked, “What do you think.” He stood there in nothing but his smallclothes, built like a god-killer dragged fresh from the forge, and looked at her as if she had reached into his chest and squeezed until every drop of blood in him ran hot and low. “I think,” he said slowly, his voice roughening into that deep, gravel-dark sound she loved, “that if the plan was to make me speechless, you’ve done it.” His gaze dropped to her breasts again, then lower, and the hunger in his face sharpened into something that made her thighs shift against the sheets. “And if the second part of the plan was to make me want to tear that damned thing off you with my teeth, that is also dangerously close to happening.”
Salem’s laugh came soft, bright, and shamelessly pleased with itself. “Close,” she echoed, one brow lifting as she let her knees part by a slow inch beneath the lace. “Only close.” Forge took one step toward the bed, and with that single movement the great scarred shape of him became all intent, all focus, all hard male attention fixed squarely on her. “Aye,” he said, the word almost a growl. “Only because I’m trying to be decent for another breath or two.” Salem looked down the length of him, took in the way his body had answered before his mouth could, and smiled as if she had just won a war without drawing a blade. “Then stop trying so hard,” she said, and the velvet command in her voice slid straight under his skin.
“Do be careful with it,” Salem murmured, though her tone suggested she cared far more for tormenting him than preserving lace. She leaned back on one arm, drawing his eye helplessly to the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the sheer white mesh, and let one foot slide along the sheets until her ankle brushed his knee. “I would prefer you not ruin my new lingerie on the very first night.” Forge barked out a low laugh full of disbelief and hunger, then climbed onto the mattress with enough care to prove he still remembered his own strength. “Woman, you parade yourself out looking like a priest’s wet nightmare and then ask me for delicacy.” Salem reached for him, her pale hand settling on the hard line of his abdomen before gliding lower, stopping only when her fingers curled against the heat and weight of him through cloth. The little hitch that caught in his breath made her smile deepen into something wicked. “I said do not ruin it,” she corrected. “I did not say you could not take it off me properly and put your mouth wherever your manners fail.”
That snapped the last of his composure into something far more honest. Forge braced himself over her, broad hands sinking into the sheets on either side of her body while he looked down as if he still could not believe she had done this to him on a night meant for politics, war, and field agents. “You are a vicious, beautiful menace,” he said, one hand leaving the sheets to settle at her waist before sliding upward with slow, possessive greed. His palm covered her breast through the lace, thumb dragging over the stiff peak beneath until Salem arched beneath him and let out a low, approving sound that did dreadful things to his self-control. “And yet you married me,” she whispered, fingers sliding into his loose auburn hair and tightening there. Forge bent low enough that his beard brushed her throat, then opened his mouth against the tender skin just beneath her jaw. “Aye, and I’d marry you again just to hear you make that sound.”
She smiled up at him with the triumphant warmth of a woman who knew exactly what she was worth and delighted in being worshipped properly for it. “Then stop staring like some mountain-struck fool and make use of your hands,” she said, her hips lifting subtly into him as if to remind him exactly where his attention belonged. “I did not buy these for you to stand there gaping like a chastened stableboy.” Forge laughed against her neck, one hand dragging slowly down her side and over the flare of her hip while the other lingered hot and firm over her breast. “Gods, listen to you,” he murmured, thumb circling again until her breath broke softly against his ear. “You put on something this sinful and then start giving orders.” Salem’s eyes flashed, bright and cold and molten underneath. “I am your empress. Ordering you while half-naked seems well within my rights.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her again, at the pale severity of her face softened by heat, at the silver fall of her hair over white lace, at the proud weight of her breasts under his hand and the strong, gorgeous body opening beneath him by choice and command alike. Whatever he saw there made him grin like a dragon deciding the village had finally produced a worthy offering. “Aye,” he said, his palm sliding lower until his fingers hooked beneath the edge of lace at her hip. “And I am your very willing victim.” Salem’s breath caught when he tugged, not enough to tear, only enough to make the fabric bite and remind her how easily he could have ruined it if he wished. “Careful,” she warned, though the word came out warmer and less steady than she intended. Forge lowered his mouth to the lace over her breast and spoke against it, rough and amused. “I am being careful. That’s why you’re still wearing it.”
For a few breaths they forgot the festival, the field agent, Ozma, Amber, and all the ugly weight of Remnant waiting beyond the door. There was only the room, the low golden light, the hot living breadth of Forge above her, and Salem under his hands looking regal, wicked, and indecent enough to make any lonely king ruin himself gladly. He kissed down over the lace with slow, hungry reverence, teeth grazing just enough to make her fingers tighten in his hair as his other hand stroked along her thigh and settled where the mesh grew warmest. Salem exhaled his name like it was both a warning and a reward, her body answering him in small, proud betrayals of breath, arch, and pressure. He looked up at her from the line of her breast, eyes dark with devotion and appetite, and she saw the emperor, the warrior, the husband, and the man who wanted her so badly it made him look almost pained. “Tomorrow,” she said, voice softer now though no less powerful, “we return to gods, monsters, politics, and children trying to survive burdens too large for them.”
Forge stilled at that, hunger not vanishing but deepening around something fiercer and more tender. Salem traced the burn scar across his chest, then the hard ridges of his stomach, and her palm flattened there as if grounding herself in the heat of him. “Tonight I wanted one thing that was mine and yours and no one else’s,” she continued, and her gaze held his without shame as her legs shifted around him. “No relics, no crowns, no old ghosts at the foot of the bed. Just you looking at me as though the world can burn outside the door so long as I am here.” Forge lowered his forehead to hers, his breath rough against her mouth while one hand tightened with aching care at her hip. “Then it’s yours, Em. All of it. The night, me, my hands, my mouth, and every damned breath until morning drags us back into war.”
Salem smiled and drew him down to her, white lace and silver hair and wicked intent gathered beneath the weight of an emperor who had finally decided speech was no longer the best use of his mouth. His kiss took the last of her laughter and turned it into a low sound in her throat, while his hands learned every edge of the lingerie she had weaponized against him. He did not tear it, though more than once his fingers flexed with the impulse, and each time Salem felt the restraint in him like another kind of touch. “Good husband,” she murmured against his mouth, smug even as her breath came faster and her nails dragged down the scarred planes of his back. Forge gave a rough, helpless laugh and kissed lower, following the pale column of her throat back to the lace that had started all this trouble. “Cruel wife,” he answered, and then proved with slow, filthy patience that he could be delicate when properly motivated.