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?"
When she says "Yes," there is something wet and wobbly to the admission. Easily mistaken for a wrung-out misery, the kind wrought from humiliation. But Alina moves her hand over his, pulling aside her undergarments so that he can take his own measure of her wetness and see that her enthusiasm is as boundless as his.
She wonders, distantly, if this is something they've done before, but in the way the sky blue of his eyes has turned sea-stormy, and in the flush of his cheeks, she already knows the answer. For whatever reason, she had taken his crown and his name and his country, but not his cock.
She can't imagine what it is, here and now. All she has wanted is someone steady, someone to share the weight, someone she can trust. If she has any reason to hold herself back from Nikolai, it is the impossibility of his perfection, a brighter kind than Aleksander's, unmarred. It is the waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I dreamt of this," she admits. Her hands lift to his chest, following again the path she had blazed with the candle the night before. They both sit up fully now, tangled up in one another. She works her way down his abdomen, fast then slow, trying to convince herself that she can be satisfied with just this. "Of having you in the Duchess' gallery. Of waking in your arms and inviting you to my rooms, after."
She wants to kiss him. Her lips ache with the need. Instead, she nudges her nose at the angle of his cheekbone.
Alina's voice, the way she offers up the word Yes in answer to him—
What else can he do but follow her direction? The slight movement of her hand, laying herself bare to him, with his fingers so close, there is nothing else to do but touch her there. The drape of her skirt casts Alina all in shadow, affords her some modesty even as Nikolai draws two fingers through the damp heat of her. Finds her cunt just as promised, and feels his entire body heat in answer.
"What would we have done in your rooms?" Nikolai asks her, a breath of a question against her cheek. "Something like this?"
As he presses two fingers into her, a slow slide of pressure. His hand is so gentle where he cradles her face, listening to her breath, for the sounds he is so desperate to draw out of her.
She yields to him with little resistance, her arousal opening her up to him before his fingers ever need to. Still the blunt probing draws a little gasp out of her, and it's like sparks shooting up her spine, waking up every inch of her. Her eyes roll up before they shut, savoring the sense, but also arching into the lightness of it.
"Saints," she sputters. Her hands come to rest on his shoulders just to steady herself, nails digging in at the twice-wounded spot where her burns compete with the strange dark veins sprawling outward from an old injury. But he's asked her a question. She tries to find words through the fog of her pleasure, but it's like trying to keep above the water when she never learned to swim.
"Against the door." She lets herself imagine it now, too. His cock instead of his fingers stretching her open, filling her. His fingers are thick enough, hot enough, that it's easily done. "Over the edge of the bed. And later, too, while we're half asleep, holding each other."
She'd been left wanting, and there were a lot of hours to fill. A lot of empty spaces inside of her. It wasn't all she'd imagined, between finding him in that gallery and coming to find him this morning. Had they been alone, properly alone, she might have taken his cock in her mouth, not just her hand. She'd thought of how her lips would stretch over it, how he'd taste.
There are reasons, good reasons, reasons she now cannot hold onto except to remember that they have time, that they aren't crossing all these items off the list now. All the same, as his fingers thrust up inside of her, as she finally moans without any real restraint, it is while imagining they might do just that.
Alina recites these possibilities and Nikolai commits them to memory for some future point. He cannot say when, guided as he is by Alina and her desires, by his own tempering understanding of the tenuous boundaries between them. But he will remember that she had thought of them, had wanted them from him.
From him.
That last, that is what Nikolai lingers on.
Will her nails leave marks on him too? The wax hadn't lifted away the wound, and neither will the half-moons her nails score into him, but it feels good. Better to wear her marks than anything else.
"I like to hear you," is a departure from what they could, what they might, what they should be do in the future. The thrust of his fingers is a methodical thing, Nikolai's attention so utterly fixed on her. His thumb presses down, not circling, only pressure where she must surely want something else. "Alina, tell me. Is this what you like?"
As he puts this question to her, his hand leaves her cheek. Flattens across her back, urging her closer so he might put his mouth back to her collarbone, back to her breast. He can't kiss her; this is the nearest he can get, his mouth on her skin as he meets the shift of her hips.
The room is full of wet sounds, underscoring his words, that he might not just mean her little sighs, but the slick sounds of her cunt squeezing around his fingers. Her face feels hot, and she tries to escape his gaze — made easier when he trails his mouth back down her breastbone.
"It's good," she encourages, but even as she says this, the squirming continues, a restless effort to get more friction from his thumb. Like if she could fuck herself on his fingers, she could get that little something else that feels just out of reach.
"It's ... Oh." She sighs, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut once more as his mouth finds the curve of her breast, as his teeth scrape over her skin again. Her split attention makes all of his work feel more intense. It feels like she's babbling, but he said he'd liked to hear her, so she searches for a way to articulate it. "It's like you're everywhere."
She's going to drown in him.
"Just—" She whines. Another arch of her hips, trying to find a different angle, a little more. Enough to finish. And there, the steady push of his fingers up into her and the way she rocks to meet him has his thumb rocking like a fulcrum against her, and a tremor rumbles through her body, makes her muscles twitch, makes her cunt tighten around him. She cries out, tightening her arms around his neck just to hold on. "Yes. Oh. Saints, yes, Nikolai. Like that."
In this moment, Nikolai wants to make her wait. Not as a flex of power, or control, or anything other than she is so beautiful in this moment and he wants to stay here with her.
"You're beautiful," he tells her again; the words might find better purchase with her attention split in so many directions. A litany of other things threaten to follow, but Nikolai thinks better of it, holds his tongue. His teeth scrape along her chest, following the flush of her skin, putting his mouth back to the peak of her nipple.
I want to do this again before we sleep, is a murmur between their minds, his thumb following the squirm of her body, the way all of her weight bears down into the thrust of his fingers. A pleasant sort of fantasy, one he feels has little chance of occurring on this particular day. Still, he tells her, And then again, when we wake.
Over the center of her back, his fingers flex against the arch of her spine and he lifts his head to ask her, "Are you close?"
What a beautiful dream. To stay tangled in one another, lost to the outside world and drowning in this. Like they've carved out their own little corner of the universe, here, where Aleksander and all of Ravka's woes cannot touch them. Where just for a little while, they are unburdened, and the only weight they have to carry is each other's bodies.
She nods in earnest, over and over again against the top of his head, unable to make words, even though she tries to hold her breath and swallow a moan so that what comes out next might be even a syllable. Instead, it's a hiccup, a soft noise that is choked off as her chest tightens and tightens with the rest of her.
He must be able to feel it. The way her muscles wring tight—trying to hold him in, trying to push him out. There is something luxurious in imagining the simple ability to have each other at their leisure, the idle falling into each other. That's what does her in.
It doesn't feel violent. She doesn't fight it like she does when she's been with Aleksander. He does not sink his teeth into her and rip something free. It doesn't feel like shattering. Her release is a cool wave that a breeze stirs on a lake, something that rolls through her like a pulse, tugging at the strings of all her muscles in all her limbs, that leaves her sighing her relief when those strings snap.
Would he have liked to hear her try to say it aloud?
Certainly. Nikolai is so, so pleased by the sounds Alina makes, the way her words break apart when he applies his teeth just so or crooks his fingers just there.
But it is good too, when he feels the way she comes apart.
His head tips back; she is too compelling. She is incandescent. And there is some aspect of serenity in the way she relaxes, tips into the sensation. Nikolai stretches up to kiss along the line of her jaw as she sighs, breathes out soft sounds as her body clenches around his fingers.
"Breathe," he murmurs against the hinge of her jaw. He is still touching her, fingers drawing through the damp heat of her, seeing if he can pull a twitch or gasp from her even as he encourages her in to lean against him.
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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?"
no subject
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?
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
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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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She wonders, distantly, if this is something they've done before, but in the way the sky blue of his eyes has turned sea-stormy, and in the flush of his cheeks, she already knows the answer. For whatever reason, she had taken his crown and his name and his country, but not his cock.
She can't imagine what it is, here and now. All she has wanted is someone steady, someone to share the weight, someone she can trust. If she has any reason to hold herself back from Nikolai, it is the impossibility of his perfection, a brighter kind than Aleksander's, unmarred. It is the waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I dreamt of this," she admits. Her hands lift to his chest, following again the path she had blazed with the candle the night before. They both sit up fully now, tangled up in one another. She works her way down his abdomen, fast then slow, trying to convince herself that she can be satisfied with just this. "Of having you in the Duchess' gallery. Of waking in your arms and inviting you to my rooms, after."
She wants to kiss him. Her lips ache with the need. Instead, she nudges her nose at the angle of his cheekbone.
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What else can he do but follow her direction? The slight movement of her hand, laying herself bare to him, with his fingers so close, there is nothing else to do but touch her there. The drape of her skirt casts Alina all in shadow, affords her some modesty even as Nikolai draws two fingers through the damp heat of her. Finds her cunt just as promised, and feels his entire body heat in answer.
"What would we have done in your rooms?" Nikolai asks her, a breath of a question against her cheek. "Something like this?"
As he presses two fingers into her, a slow slide of pressure. His hand is so gentle where he cradles her face, listening to her breath, for the sounds he is so desperate to draw out of her.
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"Saints," she sputters. Her hands come to rest on his shoulders just to steady herself, nails digging in at the twice-wounded spot where her burns compete with the strange dark veins sprawling outward from an old injury. But he's asked her a question. She tries to find words through the fog of her pleasure, but it's like trying to keep above the water when she never learned to swim.
"Against the door." She lets herself imagine it now, too. His cock instead of his fingers stretching her open, filling her. His fingers are thick enough, hot enough, that it's easily done. "Over the edge of the bed. And later, too, while we're half asleep, holding each other."
She'd been left wanting, and there were a lot of hours to fill. A lot of empty spaces inside of her. It wasn't all she'd imagined, between finding him in that gallery and coming to find him this morning. Had they been alone, properly alone, she might have taken his cock in her mouth, not just her hand. She'd thought of how her lips would stretch over it, how he'd taste.
There are reasons, good reasons, reasons she now cannot hold onto except to remember that they have time, that they aren't crossing all these items off the list now. All the same, as his fingers thrust up inside of her, as she finally moans without any real restraint, it is while imagining they might do just that.
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From him.
That last, that is what Nikolai lingers on.
Will her nails leave marks on him too? The wax hadn't lifted away the wound, and neither will the half-moons her nails score into him, but it feels good. Better to wear her marks than anything else.
"I like to hear you," is a departure from what they could, what they might, what they should be do in the future. The thrust of his fingers is a methodical thing, Nikolai's attention so utterly fixed on her. His thumb presses down, not circling, only pressure where she must surely want something else. "Alina, tell me. Is this what you like?"
As he puts this question to her, his hand leaves her cheek. Flattens across her back, urging her closer so he might put his mouth back to her collarbone, back to her breast. He can't kiss her; this is the nearest he can get, his mouth on her skin as he meets the shift of her hips.
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"It's good," she encourages, but even as she says this, the squirming continues, a restless effort to get more friction from his thumb. Like if she could fuck herself on his fingers, she could get that little something else that feels just out of reach.
"It's ... Oh." She sighs, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut once more as his mouth finds the curve of her breast, as his teeth scrape over her skin again. Her split attention makes all of his work feel more intense. It feels like she's babbling, but he said he'd liked to hear her, so she searches for a way to articulate it. "It's like you're everywhere."
She's going to drown in him.
"Just—" She whines. Another arch of her hips, trying to find a different angle, a little more. Enough to finish. And there, the steady push of his fingers up into her and the way she rocks to meet him has his thumb rocking like a fulcrum against her, and a tremor rumbles through her body, makes her muscles twitch, makes her cunt tighten around him. She cries out, tightening her arms around his neck just to hold on. "Yes. Oh. Saints, yes, Nikolai. Like that."
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In this moment, Nikolai wants to make her wait. Not as a flex of power, or control, or anything other than she is so beautiful in this moment and he wants to stay here with her.
"You're beautiful," he tells her again; the words might find better purchase with her attention split in so many directions. A litany of other things threaten to follow, but Nikolai thinks better of it, holds his tongue. His teeth scrape along her chest, following the flush of her skin, putting his mouth back to the peak of her nipple.
I want to do this again before we sleep, is a murmur between their minds, his thumb following the squirm of her body, the way all of her weight bears down into the thrust of his fingers. A pleasant sort of fantasy, one he feels has little chance of occurring on this particular day. Still, he tells her, And then again, when we wake.
Over the center of her back, his fingers flex against the arch of her spine and he lifts his head to ask her, "Are you close?"
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She nods in earnest, over and over again against the top of his head, unable to make words, even though she tries to hold her breath and swallow a moan so that what comes out next might be even a syllable. Instead, it's a hiccup, a soft noise that is choked off as her chest tightens and tightens with the rest of her.
He must be able to feel it. The way her muscles wring tight—trying to hold him in, trying to push him out. There is something luxurious in imagining the simple ability to have each other at their leisure, the idle falling into each other. That's what does her in.
It doesn't feel violent. She doesn't fight it like she does when she's been with Aleksander. He does not sink his teeth into her and rip something free. It doesn't feel like shattering. Her release is a cool wave that a breeze stirs on a lake, something that rolls through her like a pulse, tugging at the strings of all her muscles in all her limbs, that leaves her sighing her relief when those strings snap.
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Certainly. Nikolai is so, so pleased by the sounds Alina makes, the way her words break apart when he applies his teeth just so or crooks his fingers just there.
But it is good too, when he feels the way she comes apart.
His head tips back; she is too compelling. She is incandescent. And there is some aspect of serenity in the way she relaxes, tips into the sensation. Nikolai stretches up to kiss along the line of her jaw as she sighs, breathes out soft sounds as her body clenches around his fingers.
"Breathe," he murmurs against the hinge of her jaw. He is still touching her, fingers drawing through the damp heat of her, seeing if he can pull a twitch or gasp from her even as he encourages her in to lean against him.
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(cw: refs to dubcon)
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