Here you go ♡ (And of course this goes for the two anons who requested number 8 as well!)
It had been thrilling, in the beginning.
She was his forbidden fruit. The one woman he wasn't only not supposed to have, the one woman he was not allowed to have. And yet somehow, inexplicably, he got away with it.
He'd been infatuated with her from the start. Sometimes he asked himself if the thrill of the secret had a play in masking the fact that this was not merely an adventure. Starting out, he had not understood that she was inevitable. That she had stolen his heart and his wit and his reason with the theft of that rose the first time he had found her in his gardens. He thought he would be able to stop.
He couldn't. He wouldn't ever. She taught him what this heart could feel and he would never be able to unlearn it.
But among these new feelings was that of it bleeding when he had to pretend she wasn't his, and he wasn't hers.
He was here on an official state visit. It was tense and hostile, and his companions, advisors and attendants spewed venom around the marble stone of the castle. A last attempt to calm the fronts to prevent the dawn of war. It seemed too late. It broke his soul, and Queen Serenity's with it, he could see it in the empress's eyes as if he'd looked into her daughter's.
Yet, there was a ball in their honor.
It was not the first time he had danced with her. It would not be the last. But for all eyes at this banquet, under the glow of the lights in this grand, domed, stone dance hall, it was both.
There used to be days when this was exciting. When seeing her and pretending not to know the soft whimper when he pressed himself against her was a playful dance, the most exciting of secrets spoken in lingering looks and careful, hidden smirks and innuendo in his words. It was a game played in dangerous fire, but it had thrummed through his veins and fueled his desire.
Now, holding her as if she was a stranger, moving her as if she was an unwelcome presence in his arms, unyielding, having her look over his shoulder into the far, impersonal distance as he kept her at arm's length and touched her as if he wasn't allowed to, not daring to say a word of intimacy to her because all eyes were on them, tense and hostile and full of the doom of war.
He felt her uneasiness. He knew it wasn't from his touch but from the situation, but the thought that his hands on her skin might ever be the cause of discomfort to her was excruciating. It made him want to jump away and free her from himself, it made him recoil from her skin and that in itself was a feeling her never wanted to associate with her.
Even the tune the harpist quartet behind them played felt stilted and oppressing, and he felt Serenity shudder in his arms, and the sensation was so repugnant because it was the first shudder from his touch that did not spring from anticipation and ecstasy, but from revolt.
She stumbled over her skirts, he tightened his hold on her hand and her hip in reflex and it startled her, frightened her, and it felt like a knife that plunged clean through his throat when fearful eyes met his in concern and alarm.
The knife twisted clean down from his throat to his heart when he realised this look of fear, born from the terror of exposure in his princess's eyes, was the first time she had looked him in the eyes tonight altogether.
Had he reacted without conscious thought he would have grabbed her and shaken her, pressed his hands against her cheeks and pressed his lips to hers to remind her that his touch was something that was meant to worship her, his touch was meant to bring her pleasure and never fear. Of course, he could not afford to loose his reason completely. And so his reaction to the look in her eyes, even if still automatic, was altogether different.
He almost jumped away from her. Recoiled as if in disgust. He was disgusted. By the situation, by the ball, by the eyes of everyone else in the room that was not his love.
But he could read the hurt in her eyes when he let go of her and jumped that step backwards and looked at her like so, and the approving stares of his advisors, and the slight stumble in the music.
He averted his eyes, couldn't bare to look at hers, and nodded his head in a slight, too slight, disrespectfully slight bow, that he thought nothing of but regretted almost instantly when it seemed to echo through the halls both in delight and affront from opposite sides.
"Your Highness," he croaked, and fled.
He spent the rest of the uncomfortable affair glaring at her hand as it touched other men who danced with her. As her hands touched others and didn't look as stiff as they had in his tonight.
Thankfully, she retired early.
Sneaking into her chambers was not new either, but had never been so reckless. Even when he waited an hour, the palace was brimming with officials from both sides, the ball still in full swing, and the whole wing that held her rooms as well as the Queen's was protected and guarded as if the opposing army was in the building - and they were.
All her Senshi were directly outside of her tall, ornate swing doors when he stole through her window, his own planet highlighting his form as he snuck inside.
He slipped beneath the covers, the mattress so big and lush he didn't move it at all when he pressed himself against her shaking backside, wrecked with sobs.
She clutched at his hands as he stroked them across her belly. The stiff, unyielding, thick fabric of his dress tunic, the hard threads of the gold embroidery of the sleeves, felt utterly wrong against the thin, thin silk of her nightgown that barely managed to cover her, and he pressed desperate, grieving, heartbroken kisses to her exposed shoulder, the back of her neck, the skin behind her ear, the tips of her spine.
Her skin came away wet where his cheeks had stroked them through the onslaught of his fevered, frantic lips. He was crying, too.
Having her to himself had been an exciting adventure. Yet, it had begun to feel like having her only in secret meant not having her at all.
She turned in his arms, sought his lips with her trembling ones, and they tore his heart to pieces even if he couldn't stop returning them in his heartbroken panic.
It had been thrilling in the beginning.
