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.
As she bends, his hands shift to accommodate. Palms flattening against her sides, sliding to her shoulder blades. Fingers trailing down her spine as their foreheads meet, breath mingling in the space between them.
"You're beautiful," is a very plain statement. Nikolai could dress it up into something dazzling, but what use is charm now? She is beautiful. He is in love with her. He wants to give her everything she's ever desired, every passing fancy. It's overwhelming, in its way.
Their noses brush. The impulse to kiss her clenches in his chest; it would feel natural enough to tip his mouth up to her. She is so close, he could catch her lips with little effort.
He wants that. But he checks the impulse, as absurd as it feels to have doubt now, in their present position.
"Do you prefer it, having me pinned?" is a murmur, his fingers drawing patterns down her back and up to her nape.
She hesitates on her answer, wondering what he might read into that, what little pieces of herself she could be giving away without noticing. She brings one hand to the side of his face, cupping the curve of his jaw. In a way, it's not that different from him being on the pedestal, frozen — they still hold themselves back from one another.
"You look good like this," she says, instead of admitting to her own comfort. She does not need to admit that, from here, she is less nervous about the fact that he has full authority over his body. That she is less anxious about her own body when she can hover close to him and hide it, even though he says it's beautiful.
Her hand moves up. She tangles her fingers in his hair and combs it back out of his face, the kind of idle exploration that is blessedly unhurried by need, that is not overwhelmed or desperately trying to retreat into herself and out of this moment. She is here, with him, and taking him in.
She lets her eyes drift shut finally, a little indulgence, a little measure of trust as she adds, "That feels good." She is less comfortable, perhaps, with his hands roaming, but there is a trade-off to be had. "Last night, you said you wanted to touch me. Show me how."
Is it a feint, the way she offers admiration in place of a preference?
It is enough that it holds Nikolai there beneath her when he might have rolled her over into the mattress. His eyes close briefly as her fingers pull through his hair, letting the sensation wash over him before he looks up at her.
His shoulders come up off the bed. Not to put his mouth on hers, but to find her throat and lay a soft kiss there. They stay close, Alina tucked in against him even as his fingers skim over her waist, the cinch of her belted skirt.
"I want to touch you here," is a murmur. Here as his fingers return to her breasts. The nonsense patterns he'd traced across her back come into focus here, thumbs circling her nipples as his mouth moves at her collarbone.
Yes, he has been touching her. But there is intent, purpose drawing into focus as he encourages the drape of her body against his, taking patient note of her body, the shift of her weight, the hitch of her breath.
She sways like she expects him to kiss her, and turns her face into his hair when he instead goes for her throat. His mouth is warm and welcome, gentle in a way that she can barely understand. But it affirms for her that he, too, knows that there is a difference between this tentative exploration and the sealing of something more intimate between their mouths. A tacit understanding between them.
Some tension melts out of her shoulders, and she lets her hand slide around to the back of his neck, holding him tight to her as his mouth charts a course to the bony prominence of her clavicle and his hands rise like they mean to meet him in the middle.
Warmth trickles down her spine, curling wetly in her belly, making her light and malleable. A little sigh works its way out of her throat, a soft and fluttering noise that matches her minute squirming as her hips seek friction, something sturdy to rut up against, to give her the kind of counter-pressure to alleviate the ache he's stirring.
She is slipping under, she realizes. Losing herself in wanting is a good way to wind up doing something incredibly stupid, overlooking how he might use and hurt her, and yet — her other hand plants firmly beside his shoulder to hold herself up over him, a silent declaration of commitment to their course.
"More," she urges, breathless, and she is too dizzy to think twice of giving orders to the king of Ravka about how to satisfy her. "Your mouth."
Last night, balanced on that pedestal, Nikolai knows he had felt that word rattling in his bones. Wanting, formlessly, overwhelmingly. He has held all these feelings for her in check for so long; they rush to the surface, heat his skin, the marks she'd left there, so immediately when she demands more.
For a brief, jolting moment, he thinks of kissing her.
But no, Alina is asking something else of him.
His thumbs circling the peak of her breast, applying steady pressure as his heel braces at the foot of the bed. Seeks just enough leverage that he might arch back to the downward shift of her hips. It's a terrible, pleasant friction, not enough for any kind of release.
It lays him bare to her, in a way. Makes plain the effect she's had, how hard he is already. If he is self-conscious over it, there is no sign at all. The shape of his answering smile is clear, easy to feel against her skin. Nikolai presses a last kiss to the hollow of her throat where Alina's pulse beats, before one hand drops back to her belly, tips of his fingers spread across her sternum. She is so close, and he is reluctant to create even a sliver of space between them, but it's a necessity.
She'd asked, after all, for his mouth. With Alina held above him by one palm, Nikolai does as she asked: applies his mouth, the scrape of teeth, over the swell of her breast. All the while, his opposite hand maintains the same slow, circling pressure.
A whimper slips out of her as she clutches him tighter to her, holding the back of his head like she might steer him. Alina is startled by her own sensitivity—how she seems hyperaware of every movement, yet his touch melts against her skin and seems everywhere. Even the softest of touches has her stomach fluttering, her breaths coming more ragged, uneven.
And when he shifts his hips, it is not to rut blindly against her, but to give her something to rock against. She spreads her knees wider and resettles her hips over his when she feels him press against her, so that the length of his erection presses like a ridge into the whole of her cunt, and all her shifting and squirming becomes a shared pleasure, reverberating back into him.
All those soft little sighs and whines come with the twitch of her fingers tighter in his hair, the gentle buck of her hips, until finally she brings one hand down to guide his free hand to her hip, urging him to grip her tighter, as if she could without words invite him to explore as he pleases.
This is not the first time Nikolai Lantsov has shared a bed with another. It is not the first time that person has been a woman.
All of his life, he has been exceedingly careful. Not just for his reputation, what an evening guest is allowed to see of him, but of the possibility of a pregnancy. Of carelessness spinning off another line in the Lantsov family. Nikolai had never wanted to put another person in the position of navigating that situation.
He does not wish to put Alina in that situation.
But there is a blinding moment, as she sinks down more firmly against him and he can feel the heat of her over him and Nikolai briefly, desperately, wishes he had less good sense.
He values her too much. Too much to be reckless with her.
Even if there is some humor in taking this approach to his wife and queen. (Is that what they are to each other? How much do his vows matter when Alina has only barely begun to trust him, nevermind the prospect of her own?)
Having his mouth so completely occupied would put him at some disadvantage elsewhere. But he has had so much practice expressing himself otherwise that it is almost instinct to project his thoughts into her head.
One day, when you ask me to, I'm going to spread you out across a bed. Hopefully a better one than this, has the cadence of a promise, even as he bites a gentle line across her chest, relocates his mouth from one nipple to the other so slowly that it barely disturbs the clutch of her fingers in his hair. And after I've finished putting my mouth to more fulfilling use than I am now, you can have me, just like this, without anything between us.
At her hip, his fingers begin the process of navigating the fall of her skirts, tugging them up by slow increments to bare her thigh. Press his thumb to the same place here on her skin where she had dripped a pool of wax on him there on on him.
Her eyes blink open when his voice fills her head, but not her ears. A surprise, but not an unwelcome one. She had all but forgotten the possibility. Hearing him like this puts her at greater ease, in fact, reminds her of how it had felt to be utterly in control, literally untouchable.
She is the opposite of that now, letting him unravel her like this. And she has resisted slipping into that hazy state of surrender that Aleksander had dragged her into. Held him at just the right remove. Not anymore.
"The two of us in the Grand Palace," she murmurs, like she's taking the image he has already begun to build and started painting out from the edges, adding details. When the war is done and Ravka is safe enough for them to sleep easier, to hold one another without fear. That's where she imagines them, now. "And it won't just be in our bed. When I get to have you, it will be everywhere. I will be full of you always, moi tsar."
She folds her fingers into his waistband, a wringing grip that wrestles openly with herself and with him, with the fact that she is keenly aware that they shouldn't be rushing into this headlong with such characteristic recklessness. It's hard to slow down now, though.
"I want to feel you," she confesses, breathless now. Keeping one hand knotted in his hair, she drops her other to her skirt, hiking it up the rest of the way above her waist so that she can open a path along her thigh for his hand, inviting it. "Please. We don't have to—" Hiccuping on the words is a sign that she shouldn't be doing this, certainly. But she soldiers ahead. "Not inside. Not now. Just ..."
Even now, the title doesn't settle as it should. It is not second nature; the ear still anticipates tsarevich.
But to hear Alina—
Nikolai has a memory in his head of Alina turning to him in her coronation finery, lit by the sun through high windows. It provides an easy backdrop for what she describes now: the thought that there will be a time when he walks into that room to find himself welcome. That he will hike up the miles and miles of skirts, lift her onto her dressing table. That afterwards they may hold court together, side by side, with his spend slick between her thighs rather than staining the sleeve of her kefta.
And by contrast, what her voice hitches over after draws his attention. Brings his head up from where he had been applying teeth and tongue to the peak of her nipple. His thumb shifts to hold his place, reapply firm pressure back and forth across damp skin while he looks at her.
"Moya tsaritsa," is a low, aching groan of a thing, steadying as his hands lift to cup her face. "No, we don't have to. Not today."
Reassuring, so there can be no doubt. Nikolai means it, every time he offers himself up to her, every time he reminds her of her own wants. No, there is nothing she has to do now.
He knows that his own face is flushed. That Alina is raking his hair into messy curls. That the wax marks must stand out stark on his chest. (His wound too, but it is far too late to hide that from her view.) He knows that he wants what she is alluding to, so badly that it forces him to pause to examine the proposition. He is only marginally steadier than she, but steady enough to weigh what she's saying, to hold it in his mind as he runs his thumbs along her cheeks.
"Are you going to be wet for me, Alina?" he asks softly. Drops a hand from her face to her thigh, the pale, soft skin high at the bend of her leg. "Were you wet for me last night?"
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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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?
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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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"You're beautiful," is a very plain statement. Nikolai could dress it up into something dazzling, but what use is charm now? She is beautiful. He is in love with her. He wants to give her everything she's ever desired, every passing fancy. It's overwhelming, in its way.
Their noses brush. The impulse to kiss her clenches in his chest; it would feel natural enough to tip his mouth up to her. She is so close, he could catch her lips with little effort.
He wants that. But he checks the impulse, as absurd as it feels to have doubt now, in their present position.
"Do you prefer it, having me pinned?" is a murmur, his fingers drawing patterns down her back and up to her nape.
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"You look good like this," she says, instead of admitting to her own comfort. She does not need to admit that, from here, she is less nervous about the fact that he has full authority over his body. That she is less anxious about her own body when she can hover close to him and hide it, even though he says it's beautiful.
Her hand moves up. She tangles her fingers in his hair and combs it back out of his face, the kind of idle exploration that is blessedly unhurried by need, that is not overwhelmed or desperately trying to retreat into herself and out of this moment. She is here, with him, and taking him in.
She lets her eyes drift shut finally, a little indulgence, a little measure of trust as she adds, "That feels good." She is less comfortable, perhaps, with his hands roaming, but there is a trade-off to be had. "Last night, you said you wanted to touch me. Show me how."
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It is enough that it holds Nikolai there beneath her when he might have rolled her over into the mattress. His eyes close briefly as her fingers pull through his hair, letting the sensation wash over him before he looks up at her.
His shoulders come up off the bed. Not to put his mouth on hers, but to find her throat and lay a soft kiss there. They stay close, Alina tucked in against him even as his fingers skim over her waist, the cinch of her belted skirt.
"I want to touch you here," is a murmur. Here as his fingers return to her breasts. The nonsense patterns he'd traced across her back come into focus here, thumbs circling her nipples as his mouth moves at her collarbone.
Yes, he has been touching her. But there is intent, purpose drawing into focus as he encourages the drape of her body against his, taking patient note of her body, the shift of her weight, the hitch of her breath.
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Some tension melts out of her shoulders, and she lets her hand slide around to the back of his neck, holding him tight to her as his mouth charts a course to the bony prominence of her clavicle and his hands rise like they mean to meet him in the middle.
Warmth trickles down her spine, curling wetly in her belly, making her light and malleable. A little sigh works its way out of her throat, a soft and fluttering noise that matches her minute squirming as her hips seek friction, something sturdy to rut up against, to give her the kind of counter-pressure to alleviate the ache he's stirring.
She is slipping under, she realizes. Losing herself in wanting is a good way to wind up doing something incredibly stupid, overlooking how he might use and hurt her, and yet — her other hand plants firmly beside his shoulder to hold herself up over him, a silent declaration of commitment to their course.
"More," she urges, breathless, and she is too dizzy to think twice of giving orders to the king of Ravka about how to satisfy her. "Your mouth."
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Last night, balanced on that pedestal, Nikolai knows he had felt that word rattling in his bones. Wanting, formlessly, overwhelmingly. He has held all these feelings for her in check for so long; they rush to the surface, heat his skin, the marks she'd left there, so immediately when she demands more.
For a brief, jolting moment, he thinks of kissing her.
But no, Alina is asking something else of him.
His thumbs circling the peak of her breast, applying steady pressure as his heel braces at the foot of the bed. Seeks just enough leverage that he might arch back to the downward shift of her hips. It's a terrible, pleasant friction, not enough for any kind of release.
It lays him bare to her, in a way. Makes plain the effect she's had, how hard he is already. If he is self-conscious over it, there is no sign at all. The shape of his answering smile is clear, easy to feel against her skin. Nikolai presses a last kiss to the hollow of her throat where Alina's pulse beats, before one hand drops back to her belly, tips of his fingers spread across her sternum. She is so close, and he is reluctant to create even a sliver of space between them, but it's a necessity.
She'd asked, after all, for his mouth. With Alina held above him by one palm, Nikolai does as she asked: applies his mouth, the scrape of teeth, over the swell of her breast. All the while, his opposite hand maintains the same slow, circling pressure.
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And when he shifts his hips, it is not to rut blindly against her, but to give her something to rock against. She spreads her knees wider and resettles her hips over his when she feels him press against her, so that the length of his erection presses like a ridge into the whole of her cunt, and all her shifting and squirming becomes a shared pleasure, reverberating back into him.
All those soft little sighs and whines come with the twitch of her fingers tighter in his hair, the gentle buck of her hips, until finally she brings one hand down to guide his free hand to her hip, urging him to grip her tighter, as if she could without words invite him to explore as he pleases.
cw unplanned pregnancy contemplations
All of his life, he has been exceedingly careful. Not just for his reputation, what an evening guest is allowed to see of him, but of the possibility of a pregnancy. Of carelessness spinning off another line in the Lantsov family. Nikolai had never wanted to put another person in the position of navigating that situation.
He does not wish to put Alina in that situation.
But there is a blinding moment, as she sinks down more firmly against him and he can feel the heat of her over him and Nikolai briefly, desperately, wishes he had less good sense.
He values her too much. Too much to be reckless with her.
Even if there is some humor in taking this approach to his wife and queen. (Is that what they are to each other? How much do his vows matter when Alina has only barely begun to trust him, nevermind the prospect of her own?)
Having his mouth so completely occupied would put him at some disadvantage elsewhere. But he has had so much practice expressing himself otherwise that it is almost instinct to project his thoughts into her head.
One day, when you ask me to, I'm going to spread you out across a bed. Hopefully a better one than this, has the cadence of a promise, even as he bites a gentle line across her chest, relocates his mouth from one nipple to the other so slowly that it barely disturbs the clutch of her fingers in his hair. And after I've finished putting my mouth to more fulfilling use than I am now, you can have me, just like this, without anything between us.
At her hip, his fingers begin the process of navigating the fall of her skirts, tugging them up by slow increments to bare her thigh. Press his thumb to the same place here on her skin where she had dripped a pool of wax on him there on on him.
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She is the opposite of that now, letting him unravel her like this. And she has resisted slipping into that hazy state of surrender that Aleksander had dragged her into. Held him at just the right remove. Not anymore.
"The two of us in the Grand Palace," she murmurs, like she's taking the image he has already begun to build and started painting out from the edges, adding details. When the war is done and Ravka is safe enough for them to sleep easier, to hold one another without fear. That's where she imagines them, now. "And it won't just be in our bed. When I get to have you, it will be everywhere. I will be full of you always, moi tsar."
She folds her fingers into his waistband, a wringing grip that wrestles openly with herself and with him, with the fact that she is keenly aware that they shouldn't be rushing into this headlong with such characteristic recklessness. It's hard to slow down now, though.
"I want to feel you," she confesses, breathless now. Keeping one hand knotted in his hair, she drops her other to her skirt, hiking it up the rest of the way above her waist so that she can open a path along her thigh for his hand, inviting it. "Please. We don't have to—" Hiccuping on the words is a sign that she shouldn't be doing this, certainly. But she soldiers ahead. "Not inside. Not now. Just ..."
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But to hear Alina—
Nikolai has a memory in his head of Alina turning to him in her coronation finery, lit by the sun through high windows. It provides an easy backdrop for what she describes now: the thought that there will be a time when he walks into that room to find himself welcome. That he will hike up the miles and miles of skirts, lift her onto her dressing table. That afterwards they may hold court together, side by side, with his spend slick between her thighs rather than staining the sleeve of her kefta.
And by contrast, what her voice hitches over after draws his attention. Brings his head up from where he had been applying teeth and tongue to the peak of her nipple. His thumb shifts to hold his place, reapply firm pressure back and forth across damp skin while he looks at her.
"Moya tsaritsa," is a low, aching groan of a thing, steadying as his hands lift to cup her face. "No, we don't have to. Not today."
Reassuring, so there can be no doubt. Nikolai means it, every time he offers himself up to her, every time he reminds her of her own wants. No, there is nothing she has to do now.
He knows that his own face is flushed. That Alina is raking his hair into messy curls. That the wax marks must stand out stark on his chest. (His wound too, but it is far too late to hide that from her view.) He knows that he wants what she is alluding to, so badly that it forces him to pause to examine the proposition. He is only marginally steadier than she, but steady enough to weigh what she's saying, to hold it in his mind as he runs his thumbs along her cheeks.
"Are you going to be wet for me, Alina?" he asks softly. Drops a hand from her face to her thigh, the pale, soft skin high at the bend of her leg. "Were you wet for me last night?"
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