Chapter 4: Performance Lessons
The heavy click of the balcony door shutting behind them was like the bolt on a cage. The night air, once a relief, now felt thin and suffocating. The grandiose bed loomed, its lavender silks a mocking promise of intimacy.
Henry didn’t look at her. He strode to the hearth, poured another finger of amber liquid, and drank it in one swift, bitter swallow. The silence was a physical weight. Amara stood frozen, the clinical scenario she’d proposed now feeling absurd and terrifyingly real. A stud farm. She had reduced the act of creating a life, an heir to a throne, to animal husbandry.
“Right,” he said, his back still to her. The single word was stripped of all warmth. “We’ll need to muss the bed. And you.” He finally turned, his eyes scanning her with a dispassionate efficiency that made her shrink inside the silk robe. “That robe is too pristine. Take it off.”
It was not a request. It was a directive. Amara’s fingers trembled as she untied the sash. The silk whispered away from her skin, pooling at her feet on the cold marble. She stood in only her thin linen chemise, feeling utterly exposed under the flickering firelight.
Henry approached, and the air shifted. The thoughtful prince from the balcony was gone, replaced by a man performing a brutal, necessary task. He reached out, not for her, but for the delicate straps of her chemise. With a rough tug, he ripped the left strap. The sound of tearing linen was shockingly loud. “A struggle,” he muttered, his breath warm against her temple. “Or passion. It looks the same from a distance.”
He then grabbed a handful of her carefully styled curls and crushed them, shaking his head until tendrils loosened and fell around her face. “Better.” His hands went to the neckline of the chemise, and with another brutal pull, he tore it open to her navel, exposing the smooth brown skin of her breasts and stomach. A gasp caught in Amara’s throat, less from modesty and more from the violent practicality of it.
“Now,” he said, his voice a low growl meant for the ears at the door. He shoved her backward onto the bed. The feather mattress swallowed her, the silken canopy swirling above. He loomed over her, one knee between her legs, pressing the torn chemise up around her waist. The cool air hit her bare thighs. “Moan,” he commanded, his face inches from hers. “Moan like I’m splitting you open.”
Amara let out a choked sound, a pathetic imitation of pleasure. It was hollow, forced.
He scoffed, a flicker of genuine irritation in his eyes. “ useless. They’ll never believe that.” His hand slid down her stomach, coarse fingers brushing her pubic curls. She flinched, her body rigid. “You’re dry as dust. This won’t work.”
This won’t work.” His words were a cold verdict. He shifted off her, the loss of his weight a sudden, confusing relief. He stood beside the bed, his fingers going to the fastenings of his trousers. “We need the sound, but we also need the proof. The mess.” He pushed his trousers and smallclothes down in one rough motion, his cock springing free, already half-hard from frustration and the grim mechanics of the task.
Amara stared at the ceiling, at a painted cherub with a vapid smile. She heard the soft, slick sound of skin on skin. He was touching himself. “Just moan or soft scream into the pillow a few times,” he commanded, his voice tight with strain. His fist moved on his length, the rhythm brisk and efficient. “They need to hear you first.”
Amara turned her face into the pillow, its scent of lavender cloying. She let out a muffled sound, a stifled cry that was more fear than feigned ecstasy. It was met with the relentless, wet stroking from beside the bed. He worked himself for a minute, his breathing becoming heavier. “Nothing?” he gritted out, a note of desperation beneath the anger. “Are you ready, or—“
“Give me a minute,” she whispered, her voice fractured. She didn’t need a minute for desire, but for fortitude. She thought of the honeyed fig, of his thumb wiping her mouth as the court cooed. She thought of the Queen’s triumphant eyes. The humiliation was a live coal in her gut, and she fed it, letting the heat spread, letting it tighten her muscles and quicken her breath. It wasn’t arousal, but it was a fierce, sharp energy that felt like its cousin.
“Fuck it,” Henry hissed. He was thinking of all the women he’d fucked, the easy, willing ones in dark corners of the palace, their sighs echoing nothing of politics or poison. The memory of those anonymous, grasping bodies, their practiced moans, their hot, wet cunts, pushed him to the edge. His strokes became frantic, his knuckles white. “Now,” he snarled, a raw, guttural sound.
He moved over her, his body a dark silhouette against the firelight. He didn’t kiss her, didn’t touch her beyond what was necessary. He used his hand to guide the thick, weeping head of his cock to her entrance, which was still dry and tight with dread. He positioned himself, his hips cocked. Amara clenched the sheets, her scream already building in her throat.
Just before he came, he shoved into her to the hilt.
A hot, white pain coursed through her body, a tearing, blinding shock that stole the air from her lungs. She screamed into the pillow, a raw, ragged sound that was utterly, devastatingly real. As her inner muscles convulsed in shocked agony around his invasion, he thrust once, a final, brutal plunge, and spilled his seed into her. The pulsating heat of his release was a separate violation, deep and claiming. He collapsed atop her, his body shuddering, his sweat soaking the torn chemise between them. The deed was done. The performance was over. The heir, perhaps, was begun.
The heir, perhaps, was begun.
His weight was a solid, suffocating press, pinning her to the mattress. The pain was a bright, sharp corona radiating from her core, a throbbing ache that made her vision swim. She could feel the sticky, wet mess between her thighs, a mixture of his spend and, she realized with a distant chill, the slick warmth of her own blood.
Henry rolled off her with a grunt, the bed shifting. He didn’t look at her. He stared at the canopy, his chest heaving, his cock already softening against his thigh, glistening and smeared with red. The silence was broken only by the crackle of the fire and their ragged breathing. From the hall, there was no sound. The performance, it seemed, had been convincing.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice flat and drained. “She says in pain. Hurting.” He was quoting a report that hadn’t been written yet, the expected script. “They’ll expect you to be incapacitated. Ruined.” He finally turned his head on the pillow. In the dim light, his eyes were hollow. “Are you?”
Amara didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The clinical detachment she’d mustered was shredded, leaving raw, trembling flesh. She felt torn open, her body a foreign, violated territory. The comparison to the horses now felt like a grotesque joke; they were treated with more care, their comfort considered.
Henry sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He looked at the mess on the sheets, the dark, ruddy stain blooming on the lavender silk. “Proof,” he muttered, almost to himself. He stood, his movements stiff, and fetched a clean cloth from the washstand. He dampened it in the porcelain basin.
He returned to the bed and handed it to her, his gaze averted. “Clean yourself. I’ll… see to the rest.”
Amara took the cloth, her fingers numb. She shifted, a fresh wave of soreness making her gasp. She wiped between her legs, the cloth coming away stained pink. The act felt shameful and necessary. Henry, meanwhile, took the cloth from her when she was done. With a grim practicality, he smeared some of the blood from the sheets onto his own stomach and thighs, painting himself with the evidence of her virginity.
“There,” he said, his voice empty. “Now it looks like I took my pleasure vigorously. Now it looks real.”
He tossed the soiled cloth onto the growing stain on the bed. He pulled his trousers back on, leaving them unfastened. The silence stretched, thick with the smell of sex and iron and extinguished hope.
“Sleep,” he said, not looking at her as he moved toward the door to his dressing room. “The divan is mine. Bolt the door after I’m gone. In the morning, Mrs. Byrne will come. She will see the sheets. She will see you wince when you walk. You will play your part.”
He paused at the threshold, a shadow in the doorway. “The pain will fade,” he said, and it was the closest thing to an apology he could muster. “The rest… we learn to carry.”
He closed the door softly behind him. Amara listened to the faint sounds of him settling on the divan. Then, moving with slow, painful care, she rose. Every step was a reminder. She walked to the door and turned the key, the bolt sliding home with a final, metallic thud.
She did not return to the ruined bed. She went to the balcony, the cold stone beneath her feet, and stared out at the indifferent stars, the taste of lemon cake and honeyed figs and blood all mingling on her tongue. Inside, the fire guttered, casting long, dancing shadows over the proof of their union.