Chapter 5: Courting Danger
The stain on Isolde’s linen was confirmed by dawn. Nate’s man, a grizzled sergeant who knew every servant’s exit and hiding hole, found the scraps in the ash of a kitchen hearth, partially burned. The cloth was fine cambric. The stains were not wine.
Teresa stood at her window, watching the mist cling to the formal gardens below. She felt the evidence like a physical weight, a lodestone pulling her towards a reckoning she couldn’t yet see. Isolde had her scent. The game was no longer one of subtle barbs and social maneuvering. It had become a hunt, and Teresa was painfully aware she was the quarry.
The arrival of the Perkins twins from the southern maritime duchy was a welcome distraction for the court, a burst of frivolous color against the grey tension. For Teresa, it was a potential hazard of a different kind.
She received them in the royal sitting chamber, the morning sun streaming through tall windows to glitter off the gilded frames of mirrors and the crystal facets of decanters. A low fire crackled, failing to dispel the chill she carried inside. Nate stood at his post by the door, a statue of disciplined silence. She hadn’t met his eyes since the armoury.
The doors swung open.
They entered not with the measured grace of courtiers, but with the effortless, captivating sync of performers. Lucien and Maeve Perkins were mirror images in beauty: both tall and willowy, with hair the color of sun-bleached wheat and eyes like warm honey. But where Lucien’s gaze held a languid, knowing amusement, Maeve’s sparkled with unreserved delight.
“Your Highness,” they said in near unison, bowing and curtsying with a flourish that was just a hair too dramatic to be entirely proper.
“Lord Lucien, Lady Maeve,” Teresa replied, her diplomat’s smile flawless. “Welcome to Eldoria. We hope your journey was pleasant.”
“Pleasant is such a bland word,” Lucien said, his voice a smooth baritone. He took her offered hand, not kissing it, but turning it over to examine her palm with a playful smirk. “It was utterly tedious. Until now.”
Maeve laughed, a sound like bells. She looped her arm through Teresa’s with an astonishing familiarity, drawing her away from the fireplace. “Don’t mind him. He’s hopeless. But you! The portraits don’t do you justice. You’re absolutely gleaming.”
Teresa allowed herself to be led, acutely aware of Nate’s watchful presence and Isolde, seated in a corner with her embroidery, a silent spider in a web of silk thread. Isolde’s needle moved with quick, sharp jabs.
“You’re too kind,” Teresa demurred.
“Not kind, truthful,” Maeve insisted, her honey-brown eyes wide and earnest. She smelled of orange blossoms and something muskier underneath. “We’ve heard such stories. The sharp-witted princess who can out-argue trade ministers and out-shoot her own guards. It’s delicious. I’ve been desperate to meet you.”
Lucien poured three glasses of sherry without waiting for permission, handing one to Teresa, another to his sister, keeping the third for himself. “What my sister means is we’re here for entertainment. And you, Princess, look like you could use some.”
The directness was a shock, a splash of cold water. It was also, Teresa realized with a hollow pang, entirely accurate. The twins orbited her throughout the afternoon. During a stroll on the terrace, Maeve’s laughter was constant, her touch frequent—a hand on Teresa’s arm to emphasize a point, a casual brush of shoulders as they leaned over a balustrade. Her flirtation was open, unapologetic, a sun-warmed current that pulled at Teresa’s weary edges.
“Do you ever just want to shed it all?” Maeve murmured as they looked out over the labyrinth. “The title, the expectations? Just be… a body in the sunlight?”
Teresa glanced at her. “Every day.”
Maeve’s smile was slow and understanding. “I thought so.”
Lucien, meanwhile, was a more predatory presence. He watched, always from a slight distance, his gaze a physical caress that lingered on the nape of her neck, the curve of her hip beneath the gown. He spoke little, but when he did, his words were laden with double meaning.
“You have a gift for containing storms, Highness,” he said later, as musicians played in the hall. He stood close behind her, not touching, but the heat of him was palpable. “But even the strongest levees crack under enough pressure.”
The day bled into evening. A private supper was arranged in the twins’ lavish apartments, a casual affair they insisted upon. “No stuffy court etiquette,” Maeve pleaded, pouting beautifully. “Just wine and conversation.”
Nate, at the door, had stiffened. “Your Highness, my men should post inside.”
“That won’t be necessary, Captain,” Lucien had drawled, clapping a friendly hand on Nate’s shoulder that made the captain’s jaw clench. “We’re all friends here. Aren’t we?”
Alone with them, the atmosphere shifted, thickened. The room was opulent, strewn with their belongings—colorful silks, strange musical instruments, books of poetry with bawdy illustrations left open on tables. Incense smoke curled in the air, sweet and cloying.
Maeve, barefoot and having shed her overdress, refilled Teresa’s goblet again. “You’re so tense,” she cooed, settling on the divan beside her, her leg pressing against Teresa’s. “All those eyes always on you. Watching, judging. It must be exhausting.”
“It is,” Teresa admitted, the wine and the relentless, focused attention loosening her tongue. The memory of Callum’s rough hands, of Nate’s taste, of Isolde’ cold eyes, swirled in her head.
“You need to forget the eyes,” Lucien said. He stood before the fireplace, shirt unlaced, the firelight playing over the defined planes of his chest. “You need to feel something that isn’t duty or fear.”
Maeve’s hand came up, fingertips brushing Teresa’s cheek. “Let us help you forget.”
It was not a seduction. It was an immersion. Maeve’s mouth found hers first, tasting of wine and sweetmeats. Her kiss was skilled, exploring, one hand tangling in Teresa’s hair. Before Teresa could process it, Lucien was there, kneeling before the divan. His hands pushed her skirts up her thighs, his touch firm, assured.
“Just feel,” Maeve whispered against her lips, as Lucien’s mouth found the inside of her knee, his lips hot and trailing upwards.
Teresa’s head fell back, a surrender. This was different from the frantic, angry coupling with Callum, or the emotional ruin of her act with Nate. This was pure, decadent sensation. Two beautiful creatures devoting themselves to her pleasure, with no complicated history, no political strings. It was a temporary oblivion she craved.
Lucien’s tongue laved a slow, torturous path up her inner thigh. He hooked his fingers in the waist of her smallclothes and pulled them down, discarding them. The cool air hit her damp skin, followed by the scorching heat of his breath.
“Look at her, Maeve,” he muttered, his voice thick. “So perfect. So ready to be ruined.”
Maeve broke the kiss to look down, her eyes dark with hunger. She cupped Teresa’s breast through the gown, pinching the nipple until Teresa gasped. “She is. Let me.”
They moved around her with an uncanny, practiced symmetry. Maeve unfastened the front of Teresa’s gown, baring her breasts, lowering her mouth to take a nipple, sucking deeply while her hand slid between Teresa’s legs to join her brother’s. Lucien didn’t wait. He pressed Teresa’s thighs wide and buried his face in her cunt.
Teresa cried out, her hands fisting in Maeve’s hair. Lucien’s tongue was relentless, a ruthless, expert instrument. He licked broad stripes, then focused on her clit, sucking the sensitive bud into his mouth, flicking it with the very tip of his tongue. Meanwhile, Maeve’s fingers slid inside her, curling, pumping in time with her brother’s oral assault.
“That’s it,” Maeve moaned, watching Teresa’s face. “Let go. No one is watching here. No one but us.”
The pleasure was a tidal wave, building from two points of relentless contact. The twins whispered filthy encouragements, their words tangling together.
“Come on Lucien, make her scream.”
“Taste how sweet she is, brother.”
“You greedy little thing, taking us both…”
The coil snapped. Teresa shattered, her back arching off the divan, a raw, ragged scream torn from her throat as the orgasm ripped through her, wave after violent wave. Lucien lapped at her through it, drawing every last shudder from her.
Before she could even come down, they were moving her. Lucien lifted her as if she weighed nothing, carrying her to the vast, disheveled bed. Maeve was already there, shedding her remaining clothes, her body pale and lithe in the firelight.
“My turn,” Lucien growled, his breeches finally open, his cock springing free, thick and impressively hard. He pushed Teresa onto her hands and knees. Maeve lay beneath her, guiding Teresa’s mouth to her breast, while positioning her own head between Teresa’s thighs.
“Fuck her, Lucien,” Maeve breathed, already licking the sensitive, overspent flesh she found. “Fuck her while she eats me.”
Lucien needed no further invitation. He positioned himself at Teresa’s entrance and pushed in, in one deep, brutal stroke. Teresa gasped around Maeve’s nipple, the fullness a shock, a delicious stretch. He was large, and he didn’t hesitate, setting a punishing, rhythmic pace, each thrust jolting her forward against Maeve’s mouth.
The sensation was overwhelming, unbearable, exquisite. Maeve’s tongue worked magic on her throbbing clit, Lucien’s cock pistoned into her from behind, and the room filled with the sounds of slapping skin, wet, filthy noises, and guttural moans. Teresa lost all sense of time, of self, of consequence. She was a vessel for sensation, used and worshipped by two beautiful predators.
Lucien’s pace grew frantic, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “Gonna fill you up,” he grunted. “Mark you inside.”
With a final, deep roar, he slammed home and came, his release pumping into her in hot jets. He collapsed over her, his weight pressing her down onto Maeve.
The silence that followed was broken only by their labored breathing. Slowly, Lucien withdrew. Teresa rolled onto her side, spent, hollowed out, her mind blissfully blank. Maeve curled against her front, Lucien against her back, a sweaty, sated tangle of limbs.
For a long time, no one spoke. The fire popped. Somewhere in the palace, a bell tolled the hour.
It was Maeve who broke the silence, her finger tracing a lazy pattern on Teresa’s arm. “See?” she whispered, her voice soft, devoid of its earlier playful edge. “No eyes. No crown. Just this.”
Teresa closed her eyes, the oblivion complete. For a few stolen hours, it was true.
The knocking at the outer door of the apartment was abrupt, imperious. Not a servant’s polite tap.
All three of them tensed. Lucien swore softly, rising and grabbing a robe.
Teresa’s heart, so recently still, began a frantic hammering against her ribs. The world, with all its eyes and its consequences, came crashing back in.
Lucien opened the door a crack. Teresa heard the low, cold murmur of a voice she knew too well.
Isolde.
“My apologies for the intrusion at this hour,” Isolde said, her voice clear and carrying into the bedchamber. “But a matter of some urgency has arisen regarding the upcoming trade council. I must speak with Her Highness. At once.”
Teresa met Maeve’s suddenly alert eyes. The twin’s playful spark was gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating focus. The oblivion was over. The game was back on, and Teresa was naked, marked, and vulnerable, caught between the sheets of the twins’ bed with Isolde waiting at the door.