Alina is surprised when he stops in the doorway. His body blocks her chance at getting a look at how he's settling in, what fills the space of his room (and who else does). She comes up short, drawing her hand out of his arm with a little hint of surprise in her expression.
It softens into some kind of fond incredulity at his admission.
"You could start by not drawing attention to every opening I have to leave." The smile is there more solidly now, bemused if a little troubled. It reminds her of Dwight in a way—the anxiety without all the rambling. But she can see it threaded there in him. The sense that he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Only then does it occur to her that it's not that Nikolai Lantsov is an anxious person, but that she in particular makes him nervous. Not the kind of nervous that comes with being intimidated, but the earnest kind that seeks approval. The same way she had felt nervous around Aleksander.
His grin widens, stepping in and to the side, a brief sweep of his hand encompassing the entire space, the bed he’d claimed.
“Come in.”
Has there been something he auspicious about how she’d invited herself in the night of his arrival? If Nikolai believed in signs, that might have been one. As it is, he closes the door behind them.
He’d done the same for Genya, warding against prying eyes and sharp ears. It’s an old habit; Ravkan court had demanded discretion as a rule.
The closing of the door draws her eye over her shoulder. It's a comfort, in a way. She hadn't felt ready to return to her own room, now that the boots and the kefta both feel different, the space less safe, knowing who had put her there. Here, however, she isn't alone with her pencil and her thoughts, and the door feels like a shield from the troubles that plagued them the night before.
"You don't have to entertain me," she tells him, eyes sliding towards the bed. "You can sleep. I'll stay until you do."
And then what? She's not sure just yet, but she will find something to occupy her and keep her from needing to go confront her unease about her own quarters. Maybe she'd reach out to Genya about the apartment over the tailor's shop after all. It felt like a good time for it.
In which you is the operative word, shifting the meaning of the statement.
Nikolai is talented, more than capable of keeping a room of people engaged. Does he enjoy that? Sometimes. Somewhat. It is always a duty, with specific objectives that demand success.
But that simply isn’t a factor with Alina.
Crossing to the bed, Nikolai tugs the laces of his tunic loose, toes off his boots. Sits on the edge of the bed before inviting, “Would you sit? I think I can do a better job of making comfortable today than I managed yesterday.”
She gave so many little pieces of herself to Aleksander. Things she would never be able to do without remembering that she had done them with him, first. Yet they'd never laid beside one another, had they?
It's a silly thing to think now because it's not like she is planning to tangle herself in Nikolai, not when there is no paralytic holding him back, not when she is still shaky from the earlier realization. (Or maybe she needs to reaffirm this for herself because otherwise she might.) And she and Genya slept beside each other for more than a month before Alina had finally skulked over to Nile's bed, ashamed of being rejected.
But it's different. It feels different because Nikolai had not rejected her. And when he loosens his tunic and takes off his boot, she remembers that she knows what is under these and the rest of his clothes. And this is the closest she has ever been to someone, really, except for those moments lying next to Mal in the meadow when she had told herself that they would lay like that forever.
"Of course," she hears herself saying. She moves to join him on the bed, sits a little awkwardly beside him. Wets her lips, waiting for him to make himself comfortable, to lie down that she might, in fact, lie beside him.
In that miserable art gallery, Alina had made him a promise. He has to trust that, rather than second guessing her endlessly.
He makes short work of settling, stretching out on the far side of the bed against the wall. Letting arm fall across the mattress, leaving most of the pillow to her. The beds are narrow, but they’ll serve well enough for their purposes. Nikolai isn’t dismayed at the prospect of being close to her.
“Make yourself at home,” is teasing, the warmth of the invitation softened by it.
When she'd first crawled into bed beside Genya, they'd already had the familiarity and closeness that girls cultivated with one another, and it lacked any whiff of sexual intimacy (at the time).
Not so with Nikolai. When he sprawls out, Alina's mind projects a solicitation to it that makes her flush. There is no way around the intimacy of it. She turns her face from him to hide the reaction, and there's not enough room to lie flat anyway, so she puts her back to him, carefully drawing her hair over her shoulder and out of his face.
She is careful not to touch him. As if she had not laid against his nakedness the night before. Then she tells herself that she is being too awkward about it all and does, in fact, scoot back towards him, to where she can feel the heat of his body and the folds of his clothes against her.
Throughout the process, Nikolai is quiet. Waiting for Alina to settle, come to a kind of rest, make up her mind as to what the arrangement of their bodies will be while she is in his bed.
“I do,” is quiet too, a murmur of an answer as he carefully drapes an arm across her waist. “Is this alright?”
He had spent what felt like hours wanting to put his arms around her last night. An eternity more as she slept leaning against him.
If the memory of it twists in his chest, raises up some clench of anxiety in him, it is curtailed before it can gain any kind of momentum.
She can feel his breath against the back of her neck. It prickles the hairs on her arms, making her keenly aware of every inch of them that is pressed together. It will be a miracle if he can fall asleep like this. She knows she won't.
"Yeah." There's a scratchy quality to her voice that she barely recognizes. She settles closer against him, then, seeking out more of the warmth. With one arm tucked under the pillow, she moves her other on top of his, welcoming a more solid embrace.
Her breaths feel bigger, louder, with him so close. Can he tell that she's nervous? Can he hear her heart, like she can?
A murmur against her nape, as his hand cinches tighter around her waist under the slight pressure of her hand.
"Breathe," is meant to be calming, steady the rasp of her breath. They are so close, and even if he couldn't hear, he could feel the rise and fall of her chest beneath his arm. "Nothing will happen here that you don't want. We can sleep, and you can leave whenever you wish."
She is on the outside of the bed, easy enough to swing her feet down to the ground and pull away from him. What he wants is for her to feel safe. Maybe for her to decide, to choose and to be able to give her what she wishes.
The press of her back against his chest brushes fabric against the burns. But even without that reminder, Nikolai wouldn;t be thinking of anything else but Alina, her hand braced on his chest, the look on her face as she'd studied the wax on his skin.
It would be foolish and complicated to explain her nervousness. Not only would it give him a weapon, a way in which he could identify her inexperience and therefore twist it in some way if he saw the need (why would he? This is Nikolai, not Aleksander, and yet--), but it would also be silly and embarrassing.
What kind of person is afraid of a good thing? The giddy excitement shouldn't nauseate her like it does.
Some of the tension melts from her shoulder when he squeezes her closer. It's that little affirmation, more than his words, which seem to keenly anchor her in the moment instead of the abstracted anxieties that preoccupy her. She shuts her eyes, focuses on his voice.
"I'm here to comfort you," she reminds him, as she had in the castle. A task she keeps failing at because her own burdens have a way of sucking the oxygen out of the room. But there's a lilt of humor in these words. Like she knows how silly it is that they keep failing that.
"You're keeping me company," he reminds her, fingers tracing along some minor wrinkle of her tunic across her belly. Mindful of where he lays his fingers, of avoiding straying too far one way or the other.
It's a strange holding pattern to be caught in, wanting her, wanting more, and feeling the catch of his present, her future.
She'd made him a promise.
And he'd promised to repay her in kind.
The balance of that has to be a touchstone, something to guide him.
"Far from it," she admits with a laugh that's one huffed exhale.
How could she be? Not just because it's late morning, now, and she had slept peacefully with no idea of the intrusion that she'd experienced. But also her breath is so loud in her ears. And when he speaks, she can feel his mouth, the soft brushes of skin against the curve of her shoulder. The shifting of his fingers against the cloth on her tunic makes her aware of his movement there, makes her ache for his palm to flatten out and search her properly.
She uncurls her fingers, flattens her palm against the back of his to encourage him to take up more space there against her abdomen. Swallowing the lump in her throat that tells her to be nervous about his closeness, his every movement. It had been so easy when he was a frozen statue, but now?
Is the raw edge in his tone familiar? Alina could only have heard it projected directly into her head. Did it sound the same then as it might now, when it is only a quiet undertone as his hand splays across her stomach.
"I'll give you anything," is not anything new. He's given her his name, his kingdom. It must be clear to her how little he would withhold from her. "But I need to know it's what you want."
She is here, lying beside him in his bed, holding his hand against her so that she can relish the pressure of it, the warmth of it, the way it steadies her, the thing she'd lacked the night before while she searched him for the faintest hints of a reaction.
But she is also lying on Genya's bed experiencing the worst pain of her life as Genya assures that Aleksander's mistake didn't take root there, just under where Nikolai's hand settles on her abdomen now.
And she is in the war room, a smile fluttering across her lips as he asks her if she's sure and she nods her head urgently, drawing him in, because she doesn't know all of the reasons that she might not be, that it wouldn't be alright, can't begin to imagine them.
She wants to sear away any proof of him touching her. Is that fair to Nikolai, to her? For Aleksander to be so heavy in her thoughts at a time like this? They shouldn't. No, she shouldn't. But she also remembers how it stung when Genya had turned her away, and she doesn't want to turn Nikolai away.
"I want to," she tells him, and there's a steadiness in her voice that feels unearned. She turns her face, catches just a glimpse of his over her shoulder, then leans further back into him, turning flatter onto her back.
"I'm sorry." Her breath catches on the apology, throwing her uncertainty before him. "The past day has been a lot." The past six months have been a lot. Her life has been a lot. She swallows these words instead of letting them out. No one likes a downer.
Under the collar of his tunic, she can see the burn marks. She reaches up with her other hand to push aside the neckline and let her fingertips catch them, studying the shape.
If it was a lot for him, he can only imagine what it has been like for Alina. The weight of her current station, the difficulty of their present circumstances, the events of the night before, it makes for a heavy burden to bear.
They're meant to share the weight between them. That's the arrangement, the point of the understanding they've struck. Nikolai wonders if she believes in it enough to allow him to lighten the burden she's carrying. As she turns, as his hand slides from her stomach to her hip, he looks down at her and feels his breath dip shallow, hitch as her fingers touch the splotch of pink, burned skin.
"You don't have to apologize," he murmurs.
Isn't he trying to blot something away too?
His fingers catch at her tunic. Begin pulling the fabric loose slowly, eyes never leaving her face.
He handles her carefully. Like the candle is still there, between them, and the risk of getting burned with it. She can't say it isn't warranted, with how her skin crackles. But she is relieved, too, by the fact that he doesn't drop the subject, doesn't give up.
If it is a distraction, it works. If it is an effort to ease her into something, that works too. This is straightforward, piecemeal.
"Yes," she releases the collar of his tunic. Grabs a fistful of the front instead, bunching it up in a mirror of his own gesture. It feels more secure, somehow, to probe at what he is offering her instead of trying to think of what she can give to him.
She pushes his tunic up, past the waistband of his trousers, until she can see the pale expanse of his abdomen. Her gaze drops between them, searching urgently for the marks she'd left, some hallmark of her ability to control the situation.
"Can you still feel it?" asks the ache stirring within her.
Exhaustion curls at the edges of his awareness. But it only makes his movements more deliberate, considered. He handles her carefully because she is precious; not because there's risk of breaking, because she's delicate, but because his affection for her demands it, and because he has to little feel for anything else.
His knuckles skim briefly over bare skin before he lifts his hand away and leans back, balances momentarily, propped on one elbow to take the hem of his tunic and draw it up, over his head. Reaches over Alina to let it drop onto the floor.
"Yes," he tells her. "I can still feel it."
The ache rising every time he moves, Alina's handiwork flaring up. The deeper burns are still warm to the touch.
"I like it," he reminds, soft. Fingers dipping back beneath the hem of her tunic, skimming across her belly, her ribs, the curve of her waist where her trousers sit.
As he lays back down, Alina pushes up onto her elbows, shifting so she can roll onto him. She wedges his hips securely between her thighs, bunching up her skirt so that it pools around her hips and thighs instead of constricting her knees.
It feels better, up here. She feels less touchable. More settled, like she had the night before. It emboldens her enough to shift her weight in a not-so-subtle search for a reaction out of him as she settles.
Seeing the marks she'd left on him helps too, gives her something to focus her attention on, a way to crowd out other thoughts, unwelcome thoughts. She settles her hands on his abdomen first, fingers seeking out the spotty trails of pink skin so she can learn the shapes they've left. Testing the sensitivity of that spot.
"I want to know how long they last," she pleads in a rough voice. Really, if she had her way, she'd make sure they stay there, renew the claim, but it is enough to track their healing. "Will you tell me?"
There is little resistance; Alina swings a leg over his hips and it is second nature to move with her, accommodate the direction she moves in. Makes a low, punch of a noise as she rocks her weight down into him, hips moving into her as his hands come up to grip her thighs.
His fingers squeeze tighter there, for the luxury of being able to react to her, reach for her, when it pleases him.
"Yes," he reassures. "I'll tell you when they've gone."
The skin is oversensitive. Nikolai's breath has gone shallow under the light press of her fingers, feeling the spark of her touch throughout his entire body.
"You can make new ones then, if you like."
He'd already promised her this. But what would it be like? What would it be like to have Alina over him with her candle, and no venom holding Nikolai frozen in place?
Her breath grows shallow as she entertains the idea, imagining the scene. Seated across him, taking her time while she can feel every squirm and buck and twist of his body against the sensations.
It is a good thought. One to indulge at a later time, when the other marks have faded and she has to remind herself anew the extent to which he has promised himself to her.
"Is there anything you won't let me do?" She teases him, a little laugh in her voice. "That seems dangerous."
Nikolai hasn't had to consider it. What need is there? He trusts Alina. Even with a handful of missing months between them, the understanding they have now is enough to dispel any question around it.
She wouldn't do him harm.
"You know me, Alina. I prefer ill-advised enthusiasm to caution in all aspects of my life," is flippant, his palms sliding up her thighs, fingers hooking into her waistband. Sets his knuckles against her stomach, the flex of muscle there as she braces herself over him. His tone dips lower, tender, as he tells her, "I trust you."
How easy it is to tell her this. He'd already put his heart into her hands in a quiet chapel; here, he gives this to her after all that had happened to them the night before, what he had done for her, what she had given to him. It still feels earned.
Ill-advised is certainly the word for it. Alina can't help but feel like she shouldn't be doing this, that surrendering to this urge now will cost her in some way later. It doesn't stop her from wanting it, doesn't stop her from touching him.
"I've had a look at your enthusiasm, yes." This quip is to soothe the nerves twisting in her gut when she feels his fingers brush bare skin. For a brief moment, she forgets what she's doing, focuses entirely and exclusively on the soft warmth of his fingers, wanting more of that.
She can't make that happen of her own accord, the way she can touch his burned shoulder, the way she could kiss him, and wants to. Kissing him feels terribly serious, though--loaded by the fact that this is her not-husband, and to let him in like that would mean accepting that, embracing it. There can be nothing casual about intimate gestures between them.
She settles on unlacing her tunic and lifting it over her head, dropping it where he had left his. A matching pair, piled just alongside the bed.
A quip that makes Nikolai laugh in response, bright and easy in spite of the memories she tugs on with the joke.
A quip is better. If they talk about it in any real way, Nikolai would have to think about the whole of the experience. Of Kirigan, stepping out of the shadows. Of the long hours in the darkened hall that followed after. The way humiliation had come seeping through after Alina had gone, burning in him more lastingly than the way dried across his skin.
If it is only a joke, teasing between them in this little room in a shared bed, then he doesn't need to think of any other part of what came before.
Still, there is a moment where he almost stalls her as she lifts her tunic over her head. As if the order of things must always be him laid bare before her, and Alina clothed, shielded in turn.
His palm flattens against her belly once more, fingers lifting from her skirt to map this newly revealed skin. Here, his palms spread across her ribs, thumbs running beneath the swell of her breasts. Rougher palms than a prince turned king should have, by rights, but Nikolai carries callouses and scars from the First Army and from privateering and from the desperate scraping battle that followed both into this bed with him.
It occurs to her, as his hands settle over her bare breasts, that she hasn't done this properly before. That she has always been tucked into stolen moments, half or fully dressed as if she had to throw herself at the urgency of it.
She feels like she ought to apologize for her bony angles, for being just a little stick of a girl and not probably what he had hoped. But despite her own anxieties and judgments, he is reverent in his exploration, like he's appreciating some gift she's given.
Her breath grows rough, uneven. Her gaze remains fixed firmly on his face to see his reactions, to chart his gaze across the planes and divots of her body, which may not be supple but it does have a newness about it. Unmarred, soft, glowing.
She wants to wrap herself around him. Not just to hide her nakedness, but to feel his warmth and the sturdy heat of his body pressed to hers. Instead, she settles for leaning down, for tipping her forehead against his as she had in the gallery and sinking into the feeling.
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no subject
It softens into some kind of fond incredulity at his admission.
"You could start by not drawing attention to every opening I have to leave." The smile is there more solidly now, bemused if a little troubled. It reminds her of Dwight in a way—the anxiety without all the rambling. But she can see it threaded there in him. The sense that he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Only then does it occur to her that it's not that Nikolai Lantsov is an anxious person, but that she in particular makes him nervous. Not the kind of nervous that comes with being intimidated, but the earnest kind that seeks approval. The same way she had felt nervous around Aleksander.
"Or inviting me in."
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His grin widens, stepping in and to the side, a brief sweep of his hand encompassing the entire space, the bed he’d claimed.
“Come in.”
Has there been something he auspicious about how she’d invited herself in the night of his arrival? If Nikolai believed in signs, that might have been one. As it is, he closes the door behind them.
He’d done the same for Genya, warding against prying eyes and sharp ears. It’s an old habit; Ravkan court had demanded discretion as a rule.
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"You don't have to entertain me," she tells him, eyes sliding towards the bed. "You can sleep. I'll stay until you do."
And then what? She's not sure just yet, but she will find something to occupy her and keep her from needing to go confront her unease about her own quarters. Maybe she'd reach out to Genya about the apartment over the tailor's shop after all. It felt like a good time for it.
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In which you is the operative word, shifting the meaning of the statement.
Nikolai is talented, more than capable of keeping a room of people engaged. Does he enjoy that? Sometimes. Somewhat. It is always a duty, with specific objectives that demand success.
But that simply isn’t a factor with Alina.
Crossing to the bed, Nikolai tugs the laces of his tunic loose, toes off his boots. Sits on the edge of the bed before inviting, “Would you sit? I think I can do a better job of making comfortable today than I managed yesterday.”
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It's a silly thing to think now because it's not like she is planning to tangle herself in Nikolai, not when there is no paralytic holding him back, not when she is still shaky from the earlier realization. (Or maybe she needs to reaffirm this for herself because otherwise she might.) And she and Genya slept beside each other for more than a month before Alina had finally skulked over to Nile's bed, ashamed of being rejected.
But it's different. It feels different because Nikolai had not rejected her. And when he loosens his tunic and takes off his boot, she remembers that she knows what is under these and the rest of his clothes. And this is the closest she has ever been to someone, really, except for those moments lying next to Mal in the meadow when she had told herself that they would lay like that forever.
"Of course," she hears herself saying. She moves to join him on the bed, sits a little awkwardly beside him. Wets her lips, waiting for him to make himself comfortable, to lie down that she might, in fact, lie beside him.
no subject
He makes short work of settling, stretching out on the far side of the bed against the wall. Letting arm fall across the mattress, leaving most of the pillow to her. The beds are narrow, but they’ll serve well enough for their purposes. Nikolai isn’t dismayed at the prospect of being close to her.
“Make yourself at home,” is teasing, the warmth of the invitation softened by it.
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Not so with Nikolai. When he sprawls out, Alina's mind projects a solicitation to it that makes her flush. There is no way around the intimacy of it. She turns her face from him to hide the reaction, and there's not enough room to lie flat anyway, so she puts her back to him, carefully drawing her hair over her shoulder and out of his face.
She is careful not to touch him. As if she had not laid against his nakedness the night before. Then she tells herself that she is being too awkward about it all and does, in fact, scoot back towards him, to where she can feel the heat of his body and the folds of his clothes against her.
"Do you have enough room?" she asks quietly.
no subject
“I do,” is quiet too, a murmur of an answer as he carefully drapes an arm across her waist. “Is this alright?”
He had spent what felt like hours wanting to put his arms around her last night. An eternity more as she slept leaning against him.
If the memory of it twists in his chest, raises up some clench of anxiety in him, it is curtailed before it can gain any kind of momentum.
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"Yeah." There's a scratchy quality to her voice that she barely recognizes. She settles closer against him, then, seeking out more of the warmth. With one arm tucked under the pillow, she moves her other on top of his, welcoming a more solid embrace.
Her breaths feel bigger, louder, with him so close. Can he tell that she's nervous? Can he hear her heart, like she can?
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A murmur against her nape, as his hand cinches tighter around her waist under the slight pressure of her hand.
"Breathe," is meant to be calming, steady the rasp of her breath. They are so close, and even if he couldn't hear, he could feel the rise and fall of her chest beneath his arm. "Nothing will happen here that you don't want. We can sleep, and you can leave whenever you wish."
She is on the outside of the bed, easy enough to swing her feet down to the ground and pull away from him. What he wants is for her to feel safe. Maybe for her to decide, to choose and to be able to give her what she wishes.
The press of her back against his chest brushes fabric against the burns. But even without that reminder, Nikolai wouldn;t be thinking of anything else but Alina, her hand braced on his chest, the look on her face as she'd studied the wax on his skin.
no subject
What kind of person is afraid of a good thing? The giddy excitement shouldn't nauseate her like it does.
Some of the tension melts from her shoulder when he squeezes her closer. It's that little affirmation, more than his words, which seem to keenly anchor her in the moment instead of the abstracted anxieties that preoccupy her. She shuts her eyes, focuses on his voice.
"I'm here to comfort you," she reminds him, as she had in the castle. A task she keeps failing at because her own burdens have a way of sucking the oxygen out of the room. But there's a lilt of humor in these words. Like she knows how silly it is that they keep failing that.
no subject
It's a strange holding pattern to be caught in, wanting her, wanting more, and feeling the catch of his present, her future.
She'd made him a promise.
And he'd promised to repay her in kind.
The balance of that has to be a touchstone, something to guide him.
"Are you tired, Alina?"
no subject
How could she be? Not just because it's late morning, now, and she had slept peacefully with no idea of the intrusion that she'd experienced. But also her breath is so loud in her ears. And when he speaks, she can feel his mouth, the soft brushes of skin against the curve of her shoulder. The shifting of his fingers against the cloth on her tunic makes her aware of his movement there, makes her ache for his palm to flatten out and search her properly.
She uncurls her fingers, flattens her palm against the back of his to encourage him to take up more space there against her abdomen. Swallowing the lump in her throat that tells her to be nervous about his closeness, his every movement. It had been so easy when he was a frozen statue, but now?
no subject
Is the raw edge in his tone familiar? Alina could only have heard it projected directly into her head. Did it sound the same then as it might now, when it is only a quiet undertone as his hand splays across her stomach.
"I'll give you anything," is not anything new. He's given her his name, his kingdom. It must be clear to her how little he would withhold from her. "But I need to know it's what you want."
(cw: dubcon, risk of pregnancy, magic plan b)
She is here, lying beside him in his bed, holding his hand against her so that she can relish the pressure of it, the warmth of it, the way it steadies her, the thing she'd lacked the night before while she searched him for the faintest hints of a reaction.
But she is also lying on Genya's bed experiencing the worst pain of her life as Genya assures that Aleksander's mistake didn't take root there, just under where Nikolai's hand settles on her abdomen now.
And she is in the war room, a smile fluttering across her lips as he asks her if she's sure and she nods her head urgently, drawing him in, because she doesn't know all of the reasons that she might not be, that it wouldn't be alright, can't begin to imagine them.
She wants to sear away any proof of him touching her. Is that fair to Nikolai, to her? For Aleksander to be so heavy in her thoughts at a time like this? They shouldn't. No, she shouldn't. But she also remembers how it stung when Genya had turned her away, and she doesn't want to turn Nikolai away.
"I want to," she tells him, and there's a steadiness in her voice that feels unearned. She turns her face, catches just a glimpse of his over her shoulder, then leans further back into him, turning flatter onto her back.
"I'm sorry." Her breath catches on the apology, throwing her uncertainty before him. "The past day has been a lot." The past six months have been a lot. Her life has been a lot. She swallows these words instead of letting them out. No one likes a downer.
Under the collar of his tunic, she can see the burn marks. She reaches up with her other hand to push aside the neckline and let her fingertips catch them, studying the shape.
no subject
If it was a lot for him, he can only imagine what it has been like for Alina. The weight of her current station, the difficulty of their present circumstances, the events of the night before, it makes for a heavy burden to bear.
They're meant to share the weight between them. That's the arrangement, the point of the understanding they've struck. Nikolai wonders if she believes in it enough to allow him to lighten the burden she's carrying. As she turns, as his hand slides from her stomach to her hip, he looks down at her and feels his breath dip shallow, hitch as her fingers touch the splotch of pink, burned skin.
"You don't have to apologize," he murmurs.
Isn't he trying to blot something away too?
His fingers catch at her tunic. Begin pulling the fabric loose slowly, eyes never leaving her face.
"Do you want to see the marks you left?"
no subject
If it is a distraction, it works. If it is an effort to ease her into something, that works too. This is straightforward, piecemeal.
"Yes," she releases the collar of his tunic. Grabs a fistful of the front instead, bunching it up in a mirror of his own gesture. It feels more secure, somehow, to probe at what he is offering her instead of trying to think of what she can give to him.
She pushes his tunic up, past the waistband of his trousers, until she can see the pale expanse of his abdomen. Her gaze drops between them, searching urgently for the marks she'd left, some hallmark of her ability to control the situation.
"Can you still feel it?" asks the ache stirring within her.
no subject
His knuckles skim briefly over bare skin before he lifts his hand away and leans back, balances momentarily, propped on one elbow to take the hem of his tunic and draw it up, over his head. Reaches over Alina to let it drop onto the floor.
"Yes," he tells her. "I can still feel it."
The ache rising every time he moves, Alina's handiwork flaring up. The deeper burns are still warm to the touch.
"I like it," he reminds, soft. Fingers dipping back beneath the hem of her tunic, skimming across her belly, her ribs, the curve of her waist where her trousers sit.
no subject
It feels better, up here. She feels less touchable. More settled, like she had the night before. It emboldens her enough to shift her weight in a not-so-subtle search for a reaction out of him as she settles.
Seeing the marks she'd left on him helps too, gives her something to focus her attention on, a way to crowd out other thoughts, unwelcome thoughts. She settles her hands on his abdomen first, fingers seeking out the spotty trails of pink skin so she can learn the shapes they've left. Testing the sensitivity of that spot.
"I want to know how long they last," she pleads in a rough voice. Really, if she had her way, she'd make sure they stay there, renew the claim, but it is enough to track their healing. "Will you tell me?"
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His fingers squeeze tighter there, for the luxury of being able to react to her, reach for her, when it pleases him.
"Yes," he reassures. "I'll tell you when they've gone."
The skin is oversensitive. Nikolai's breath has gone shallow under the light press of her fingers, feeling the spark of her touch throughout his entire body.
"You can make new ones then, if you like."
He'd already promised her this. But what would it be like? What would it be like to have Alina over him with her candle, and no venom holding Nikolai frozen in place?
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It is a good thought. One to indulge at a later time, when the other marks have faded and she has to remind herself anew the extent to which he has promised himself to her.
"Is there anything you won't let me do?" She teases him, a little laugh in her voice. "That seems dangerous."
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Nikolai hasn't had to consider it. What need is there? He trusts Alina. Even with a handful of missing months between them, the understanding they have now is enough to dispel any question around it.
She wouldn't do him harm.
"You know me, Alina. I prefer ill-advised enthusiasm to caution in all aspects of my life," is flippant, his palms sliding up her thighs, fingers hooking into her waistband. Sets his knuckles against her stomach, the flex of muscle there as she braces herself over him. His tone dips lower, tender, as he tells her, "I trust you."
How easy it is to tell her this. He'd already put his heart into her hands in a quiet chapel; here, he gives this to her after all that had happened to them the night before, what he had done for her, what she had given to him. It still feels earned.
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"I've had a look at your enthusiasm, yes." This quip is to soothe the nerves twisting in her gut when she feels his fingers brush bare skin. For a brief moment, she forgets what she's doing, focuses entirely and exclusively on the soft warmth of his fingers, wanting more of that.
She can't make that happen of her own accord, the way she can touch his burned shoulder, the way she could kiss him, and wants to. Kissing him feels terribly serious, though--loaded by the fact that this is her not-husband, and to let him in like that would mean accepting that, embracing it. There can be nothing casual about intimate gestures between them.
She settles on unlacing her tunic and lifting it over her head, dropping it where he had left his. A matching pair, piled just alongside the bed.
cw forced restraint, humiliation
A quip is better. If they talk about it in any real way, Nikolai would have to think about the whole of the experience. Of Kirigan, stepping out of the shadows. Of the long hours in the darkened hall that followed after. The way humiliation had come seeping through after Alina had gone, burning in him more lastingly than the way dried across his skin.
If it is only a joke, teasing between them in this little room in a shared bed, then he doesn't need to think of any other part of what came before.
Still, there is a moment where he almost stalls her as she lifts her tunic over her head. As if the order of things must always be him laid bare before her, and Alina clothed, shielded in turn.
His palm flattens against her belly once more, fingers lifting from her skirt to map this newly revealed skin. Here, his palms spread across her ribs, thumbs running beneath the swell of her breasts. Rougher palms than a prince turned king should have, by rights, but Nikolai carries callouses and scars from the First Army and from privateering and from the desperate scraping battle that followed both into this bed with him.
cw: body shaming
She feels like she ought to apologize for her bony angles, for being just a little stick of a girl and not probably what he had hoped. But despite her own anxieties and judgments, he is reverent in his exploration, like he's appreciating some gift she's given.
Her breath grows rough, uneven. Her gaze remains fixed firmly on his face to see his reactions, to chart his gaze across the planes and divots of her body, which may not be supple but it does have a newness about it. Unmarred, soft, glowing.
She wants to wrap herself around him. Not just to hide her nakedness, but to feel his warmth and the sturdy heat of his body pressed to hers. Instead, she settles for leaning down, for tipping her forehead against his as she had in the gallery and sinking into the feeling.
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cw unplanned pregnancy contemplations
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(cw: refs to dubcon)
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