Chapter 2: The King's Claim
The oaken door to the royal bedchamber didn’t just open; it exploded inward with a crack of splintering wood, rebounding off the stone wall with a force that shook the tapestries. Alaric didn’t set Lyssandra down. He dumped her.
She landed on the vast expanse of their bed with a force that drove the air from her lungs in a soft oof, her emerald gown billowing around her like the petals of a crushed flower. Before the dizziness could settle, his weight was on her, a mountain of heat and muscle pinning her to the silk. One calloused hand tangled violently in her coppery hair, fisting it close to the scalp and yanking her head back to expose the pale line of her throat.
“You scheming, brilliant bitch,” he growled, the words hot against her ear. His other hand gripped the neckline of her gown. There was no finesse, no seeking of clasps. He simply pulled, and the costly fabric, woven with threads of silver, gave way with a sound like a scream. It tore down to her waist, baring her to the cool chamber air.
She didn’t cry out. Her gray-green eyes, wide and fierce, locked onto his stormy ones. She breathed hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her small, perfect breasts now bare and pebbling in the air. “Is this your answer to treason, you brute? Fucking me?”
“It’s my answer to you,” he corrected, his voice a low, seething rumble. He released her hair, his hand sliding down to cup her breast, his thumb roughly circling her nipple. “Plotting my death. Designing my end. You think I didn’t see the boredom in your eyes when I came to you these last months? You think I can’t smell the fucking genius on you, all bitter herbs and cold calculation?” He leaned down, his mouth hovering over hers. “Tell me you wanted me dead. Tell me you lay here at night and imagined my heart seizing in my chest from your poison.”
She twisted under him, not to escape, but to press herself more firmly against his hand. “Yes,” she hissed, the word sharp as a dagger tip.
He kissed her then, but it wasn’t a kiss of love. It was a conquest. His lips were brutal, claiming, his tongue forcing its way past her teeth. She met him with equal ferocity, biting his lip hard enough to draw the coppery tang of blood. He laughed into her mouth, the vibration feeling manic against her skin.
His free hand went to his own clothes, working belts and buckles with frantic, clumsy urgency. He didn’t bother to undress, just shoved his trousers down over his hips. His cock sprang free, already fully erect, thick and ruddy and eager. He broke the kiss, breathing ragged.
“Show me,” he demanded, shifting his weight. He ground his hardness against the damp, silken junction of her thighs, still blocked by the remnants of her torn gown and her smallclothes. “Show me how much you wanted it.”
With a surge of strength that surprised even him, she pushed at his chest, just enough to roll them. For a dizzying second, she was on top, her hair a wild cascade around her flushed face, her torn gown hanging from her shoulders. She stared down at him, her eyes blazing with a terrifying victory. She hooked her fingers into the waist of her thin undergarments and ripped them aside.
Then she sank onto him.
It was not a slow, teasing descent. It was a deliberate, punishing sheathing. She took his entire length in one smooth, fierce motion, her body stretching to accommodate him, a low, guttural groan torn from her throat. She was wet—she’d been wet since he smiled in the throne room—but the fit was tight, almost painfully so. He gasped, his hands flying to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there hard enough to bruise.
“Gods, Lyss,” he choked out.
“Is this what you wanted, you madman?” she panted, beginning to move. She rode him not with grace, but with a blunt, driving rhythm, using her thighs to lift and drop herself onto his shaft. “To see how far I’d go? I designed a poison that would stop your heart without a mark. I commissioned a dagger forged in a star-fall’s flame, something that could actually pierce that mana-thick hide of yours. I paid them, Alaric. I drew the maps.” Each declaration was punctuated by a hard, downward slam of her body.
He met every thrust with an upward jerk of his hips, driving himself deeper. The bed began to creak a frantic protest. “Why?” he groaned, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck standing taut. “Tell me why!”
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his sweat-slicked chest, her pace never faltering. Her breath was hot on his face. “Because you were fading!” she cried, the elegant queen utterly gone, replaced by something wild and raw. “You were drowning in peace! I could see it in your eyes, every day, a little less of you was here with me. You need a war. You need a fight. I gave you one!” She clenched around him internally, a vicious, milking squeeze that made him see stars. “The only enemy clever enough to ever threaten you… was me.”
The revelation, shouted into the space between their panting mouths, shattered the last of his control. With a roar that echoed off the vaulted ceiling, he rolled her again, flipping her onto her back and pinning her wrists above her head. He drove into her now, his thrusts losing all rhythm, becoming a frantic, piston-like pounding. The headboard slammed against the wall in a steady, cracking rhythm.
“You win,” he grunted, the words coming in time with his drives. “You vicious, perfect, glorious woman. You win.” He was close, teetering on the edge, the coil in his groin winding to an unbearable tension. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice ragged. “Look at me when I come inside the woman who wants me dead.”
Her eyes, glazed with her own building pleasure, snapped to his. She was close too, he could feel it in the tremors racing through her, in the tight, fluttering pulses around his cock. He fucked her harder, deeper, each stroke a brutal affirmation.
With a final, deep thrust that buried him to the hilt, he cried out, a raw, broken sound. His release erupted into her, hot and pulsing, a flood claiming its vessel. The sight of her face, of her lips parted in a silent scream as her own climax ripped through her seconds later, her back arching off the bed, was more devastating than any battlefield victory. She convulsed around him, squeezing every last drop from him until he was spent, collapsing onto her, his weight driving her into the mattress.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their heaving breaths and the smell of sex and sweat in the cool, dusty air. The amber scent from the hearth was overpowered.
Finally, he shifted, pulling out of her with a soft, wet sound. He rolled onto his back beside her, staring up at the dark canopy above the bed. Her fingers found his on the rumpled sheets, lacing with them tightly.
“The dagger,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The one in the plans. That wasn’t part of our game.”
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. The fierce light was gone from her eyes, replaced by a deep, unsettling calm. “No. It wasn’t.”
“You planted evidence for Theron to find. The poison plot was yours. The dagger… was someone else’s.” He said it not as a question, but as a realization. “You used your plot to flush out a real one.”
She nodded once, a slight movement. “The blacksmith’s notes were real. The payments were real. My cipher was on the documents, but the dagger… that was always a separate thread. I just wove them together. For Theron to find. For you to… be interested again.”
A slow, admiring smile spread across Alaric’s face. He turned to look at her, his gaze traveling from her flushed face, down her bruised, beautiful body, to the mess between her thighs—a mess he had made. “So there’s a real traitor.”
“Yes.”
“And you just used our son, broke his heart, and gave me the best fuck of my life to tell me about it.”
She met his smile with her own, a small, sharp thing. “Yes.”
He laughed, a sound of pure, undiluted joy, and pulled her against him. “I adore you,” he whispered into her hair. “My beautiful, murderous queen.”
She nestled into his side, her hand resting over the steady, powerful beat of his heart—the heart she had, technically, plotted to stop. “I know,” she said softly. Then, after a pause, “The blacksmith is dead. Found this morning. His throat was cut. Not my work.”
Alaric’s laughter faded, but the intense, lively light in his eyes only burned brighter. He stared at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, his mind already racing, chasing the new scent. “Good,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her shoulder. “That’s very good.”
The quiet that followed was dense, layered with the scent of their bodies and the quiet crackle of the dying fire. Lyssandra, spent and slick with him, felt the adrenaline seep from her muscles, leaving behind a profound weariness. She shifted, turning onto her side, and pulled a silk sheet over her bare skin, her eyes closing against the low light. The profound relief of his understanding, the catharsis of the truth, and the brutal physicality of their coupling merged into a single heavy blanket, pulling her toward sleep.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Alaric’s voice cut through the drowsy silence, not loud, but layered with a texture that froze her. It was the same tone he used on the training grounds before disarming a cocky knight, a velvet whisper over steel. Lyssandra knew that tone. Her eyes snapped open, but she didn’t have time to move.
His hand closed around her forearm, his grip like iron manacles. He hauled her out of the bed in one violent motion, the silk sheet tangling around her legs before falling away. She stumbled, naked, her feet slipping on the smooth stone floor as he dragged her, unresisting for the first few shocked steps, toward the arched entrance to their private bath.
“Alaric, stop this,” she demanded, her own voice rough with disuse and fading sleep. She dug her heels in, finding traction on the cooler tiles of the bath chamber. The humid, mineral-scented air hit her skin. She wrenched her arm with a sudden, fierce twist, breaking his grip.
She barely took a step toward freedom. His fingers dove into the thick cascade of her copper hair, fisting it at the nape of her neck. He jerked her backward, off-balance, pulling her head flush against his chest. She could feel the hard plane of his stomach, the rapid, eager beat of his heart against her temple. He walked her forward, her scalp burning, until her toes curled over the carved stone lip of the sunken hot spring pool. Steam rose in ghostly veils, obscuring the far wall.
His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “You wanted to assassinate me.” His other hand splayed on her belly, possessive and hot. “You orchestrated a plot that shattered our son’s faith, just to tickle my fucking fancy. You let me think, for one glorious moment, that my own wife was finally a worthy enemy.” His voice dropped, a conspiratorial rumble that vibrated through her skull. “Well, you know you need a punishment.”
He released her hair, but the command was absolute. “Kneel.”
She stood rigid for a heartbeat, staring into the milky, churning water. Pride flared, hot and bright. Then it guttered out, replaced by a liquid understanding that pooled low in her belly. This was part of the game only they could play. She lowered herself, the rough-hewn stone biting into her kneecaps. The steam dampened her skin, beading on her shoulders and back.
He stepped into the pool, the water swirling around his calves, then his thighs as he descended. He stood before her, a god hewn from marble and scarred oak, his cock already thick and hardening again, rising from the water’s surface. He looked down at her, his gray eyes devoid of their earlier manic joy, now pure, focused intensity.
“Open your mouth.”
She obeyed, tilting her head back. He guided himself past her lips, not with a slow push, but with a single, deliberate thrust that filled her. The taste of him, of their mingled sweat and sex, was sharp on her tongue. He held himself there, buried in the heat of her mouth, his hand returning to cradle the back of her head, not forcing, just owning.
“You will take every bit of what I give you,” he said, his voice taut. “This is the price for your genius, Lyss. For your beautiful, treasonous mind.” He began to move, a shallow, rhythmic fucking of her mouth. His grip tightened in her hair, setting the pace. “You don’t get to plot a king’s death and then just go to sleep.”
Her eyes watered, but she kept her gaze locked on his navel, on the water sluicing down the hard lines of his torso. She relaxed her throat, accepting the slow, deep push that followed. The sounds were obscene, wet and gulping, echoing softly in the steamy chamber. He watched her, mesmerized, his breath starting to hitch.
“That’s it,” he grunted. “Take it. You wanted to end me? This is where you start.” His hips pistoned faster, losing their measured control. She could feel the tension coiling in him, the pulse of the vein along his length. “Swallow it,” he commanded, his voice cracking. “Swallow every fucking drop.”
His release hit the back of her throat, hot and sudden. She did as ordered, swallowing convulsively, taking in the bitter, salty evidence of his dominion. He shuddered, his thighs trembling in the water, and finally stilled, sliding from her lips with a soft, wet pop.
She stayed on her knees, breathing hard through her nose, her mouth sore, her body trembling with a strange, submissive pride. He looked down at her, water dripping from his chin, his expression unreadable. He extended a hand, not to help her up, but to stroke a wet strand of hair from her cheek.
“Now,” he said, his voice returned to a low, casual rumble. “We can sleep. And tomorrow, you and I are going hunting for this dagger-maker’s friends.”