Chapter 7: After the Fall
The scent of jasmine from the night-blooming vines outside her window did nothing to cleanse her. Annelise stood before her mirror, her reflection a stranger pale in the candlelight. She could still feel the kneeler’s imprint on her skin, the phantom stretch and ache between her legs. She had scrubbed herself raw in her bath, but the violation felt ingrained, a stain on the soul no lye could touch. Her father’s ledgers lay open on her desk, their columns of figures a silent reproach. He had navigated court intrigues with clean hands, or so she’d believed. Now, she was mired in the filth of a prince’s rebellion.
The door burst open.
It didn’t open—it exploded inward, a shattering of peace. Nikolai filled the frame, backlit by the torchlight of the corridor. He still wore the dark rehearsal clothes, but his jacket was gone, his shirt unlaced at the throat. He reeked of the chapel—of cold incense, of old stone, of her.
He didn’t speak. He crossed the room in three long strides, and his hand was in her hair before she could gasp, fisting the pinned-up strands and yanking her head back. A sharp pain screamed across her scalp. His other hand clamped over her mouth, his palm smelling of leather and sweat.
“You came for me in God’s house,” he snarled, his voice a low, vicious thing. His eyes were black pools, the candlelight drowning in them. “You wept against my hand. Your cunt clenched around me like a fucking fist.”
He crushed his mouth to hers. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a punishment. His lips were hard, demanding, his tongue forcing entry. She tasted the bitter dregs of communion wine on his tongue and the salt of her own earlier tears. She tried to turn her head, to bite, but his grip in her hair was absolute. He walked her backwards, her slippers skidding on the rug, until her shoulder blades hit the cold, polished wood of the chamber wall. A small landscape painting rattled beside her.
He released her mouth only to bury his face in the crook of her neck, his teeth scraping the tender skin. “You loved it,” he breathed against her pulse, which hammered under his lips. “Don’t lie. I felt you. Your body fucking sang for it.”
One hand dropped from her hair to wrench at the fastenings of her dressing gown. Silk tore. He shoved the garment open, his hands rough on her breasts, squeezing hard enough to make her cry out. He swallowed the sound with another brutal kiss.
Then his hand was between her legs, his fingers pushing aside the thin linen of her nightdress. She was still sensitive, swollen from his earlier taking. He didn’t care. Two fingers plunged into her without preamble, a cruel, deep penetration that stole her breath.
“Still wet,” he mocked, his voice thick with a furious triumph. “Still slick with me. You’re dripping it down your thighs right now, aren’t you?”
He worked his fingers in and out, a rough, punishing rhythm. It was too much—the ache, the shame, the undeniable, traitorous slickness his fingers found. A low moan clawed its way out of her throat.
“See?” he bit out. He withdrew his fingers, glistening in the firelight, and shoved them into her mouth. “Taste it. Taste your own fucking hypocrisy.”
The salty, intimate flavor filled her senses. She gagged, but he held them there, his gaze locked on hers. When he pulled them free, they trailed a string of saliva.
His own hands went to the buttons of his trousers. They were open in seconds. He kicked them aside, his erection springing free, thick and flushed and viciously ready. He hooked a hand behind her knee, hiking her leg up around his hip. The shift in balance pressed her more firmly against the wall.
He positioned himself at her entrance, the blunt head of him nudging against tender flesh. He wasn’t asking. He was claiming.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
Her eyes, blurred with unwilling tears, focused on his. In them, she saw no pleasure, only a raging torment, a storm looking for a place to wreck itself.
He drove into her.
It was a single, devastating stroke, tearing a choked scream from her lungs. He was too big, too rough, too soon. The fullness was a shocking, brutal invasion. He didn’t pause, didn’t let her adjust. He set a relentless, pounding pace, each thrust jolting her body against the unyielding wall. The painting fell, glass shattering on the floor beside them.
“This is what you are,” he grunted, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath hot and ragged. “Not a lady. Not an advisor. A hole. My hole. To fuck when the world becomes a cage of their pretty lies.”
Each word was punctuated by a drive of his hips. The vulgarity, the sheer debasement of it, sparked a fire in her belly that had nothing to do with resistance. Her nails dug into the hard muscle of his shoulders, seeking anchor as the world dissolved into sensation—the burn of the stretch, the slap of his skin against hers, the obscene, wet sounds of their joining.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his pace quickening, becoming frantic, less controlled. “Tell me you’re my filthy secret.”
She couldn’t speak. Her climax was coiling, tight and terrible, born of pain and fury and a deep, shameful craving. She could only gasp, her head thrown back against the wood.
He read her body better than she did. One hand slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing hard, ruthless circles. It was the final detonation. Her vision whited out as her body convulsed, a silent, seizing wave of release that gripped him deep inside.
Feeling her clamp around him, milking him, shattered his last vestige of control. With a guttural roar that was pure anguish, he slammed into her one final, deep time and came. His release was hot, volcanic, pumping into her as his body shuddered violently against hers. He collapsed forward, pinning her to the wall, his weight the only thing keeping her upright.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the crackle of the dying fire. The smell of sex and sweat and broken glass filled the air.
Slowly, he softened inside her. He withdrew, a slow, slick separation that made her wince. He stepped back, looking down at himself, at her—her dressing gown hanging open, her nightdress rucked up, her legs trembling. The evidence of their coupling glistened on his skin, on hers.
He said nothing. He simply turned, retrieved his trousers, and dressed with stiff, mechanical movements. His face was a mask of empty fury, the storm spent, leaving only desolation in its wake.
At the door, he paused, his hand on the latch. He didn’t look back.
“The wedding procession begins at noon,” he said, his voice flat, hollow. “See that the Princess’s dowry documents are in order. Her family’s word is worthless. We’ll need the paper.”
Then he was gone.
Annelise slid down the wall until she sat on the floor amidst the shattered glass. She drew her knees to her chest, her body humming, sore, utterly ravaged. She looked across the room at her father’s neat ledgers on the desk, their entries precise, their secrets orderly.
Her own secret was now a physical truth, aching inside her, dripping down her thigh. She was no longer just a keeper of secrets. She was one. A living, breathing testament to a prince’s breaking point. And as the cold of the floor seeped into her bones, she understood the full weight of her complicity. She had not just advised him. She had become the venue for his ruin. And tomorrow, she would stand and watch him marry another, holding the proof of his contempt slick between her legs.