He did not wait for her reply. His hands went to his belt. The leather slithered free with a whisper, the heavy buckle landing with a muted thud on the rug. Before she could form a word, he was upon her, driving into her with a single, unforgiving thrust.
A sharp, shattered cry tore from her throat, echoing off the silent books.
"You crave this, don't you?" he growled, his rhythm establishing itself with brutal efficiency, each movement a punctuation of ownership.
"Ha-have you," she gasped, the words fracturing with each impact, "touched her like this, too?"
He let out a low sigh, part exertion, part contempt. His hands tightened on her hips, gripping bone as he drove deeper, his own breath becoming ragged. "Gisela," he stated, the name a cold stone dropped between them, "remains a virgin queen."
The rhythm did not falter, but the words hollowed out the room.
"Vir… gin…?" The syllable was a choked moan of disbelief.
"What," she panted, her voice rising with a frantic, tearful edge, "if the Queen Mother finds out? You would be forced to take her… to consummate in front of the entire court…"
He stopped.
The sudden stillness was more violent than the motion. He turned her in the chair to face him, his hands gripping her shoulders. His eyes were no longer clouded with passion, but sharp and clear as black ice.
"That," he said, his voice dangerously quiet, "will never happen."
Then, with a brutal efficiency, he spread her legs wider, exposing the slick, glistening vulnerability of her core. He thrust in again, not with gentleness, but with a desperate hunger that tore through her defenses. She bit her lips hard, tasting the metallic tang of blood as he moved deeper, faster, harder. Her moans escalated into ragged cries, then into hollowed wails that echoed the beastly growl building within him.
"See how your body betrays you?" he hissed, his voice rough against her ear, the words meant to wound as much as they did to arouse. "Such a vibrant betrayal. It makes the claiming all the sweeter."
He held her hands, his grip iron, driving into her until he felt the shuddering climax, the release he had been claiming. He poured himself into her, a guttural roar erupting from his chest like a cornered predator finally claiming its prize. Then, he withdrew, leaving a trail of thick, white liquid that dripped slowly from her, a slow, viscous crawl down her thighs to the chair beneath.
He leaned down, his eyes still blazing with a primal fire. He captured her lips, not with tenderness, but with a desperate need, his tongue a demanding force, pushing past her teeth, not to kiss, but to possess. His mouth moved to her breast, his teeth grazing, then biting down on her nipple with a ferocity that elicited a sharp gasp, a sob that tore from her throat. Tears streamed from her eyes as the pain, sharp and white-hot, mingled with an unwilling, involuntary response that made her whimper. Her body arched involuntarily at the sharp bite, her nipples hardening further under the assault.
"Hen... Henry," she breathed, her hands finding the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in his hair, pushing him further. A sound, a hungry moan, escaped her lips – a performance she honed with desperate skill. "I... I miss you so much..." The words were lost in the rising tide of her performance, her chest arching higher, a deliberate offering for better entrance.
But he pulled away, his focus clinical. His hand, slick with her response, slid into her vagina. It was impossibly wet, a testament to her body's desperate, involuntary capitulation. "I can tell," he said, his voice cold, devoid of warmth, as his hands moved furiously, eliciting loud, frantic moans that seemed to shatter the silence. He watched her, his gaze sharp, analytical, as she drowned in the sounds she orchestrated.
Then, after a moment that seemed to stretch into an eternity of her fabricated ecstasy, everything shifted. The sounds stopped, or rather, they ceased to register for him. Only the movements remained, a mechanical rhythm. Emily's open mouth, her exaggerated moans, were now distant echoes he couldn't truly hear.
And then he remembered.
Her. Gisela.
It hadn't been long since he had merely touched her. Yet, a sudden, inexplicable ache bloomed in his chest, a desire that defied logic. Goosebumps prickled his skin, a visceral, unsettling reaction that made him keep moving his fingers deeper, his breath growing ragged, not with her pleasure, but with this new, intrusive hunger.
He stopped.
Emily lay beneath him, her body a landscape of tremors, each breath a shallow, uncertain thing. In the thick silence, her voice was a crack in the dark. "They're saying… the Queen tried to run."
Henry's gaze, which had been turned inward toward some private satisfaction, slid back to her. He let the silence stretch, a viscous, uncomfortable thing.
"You could have let her go," she whispered, the words sharp with a foolish, desperate hope.
A low, derisive exhale was his first reply. His eyes, in the dim light, lost all their false warmth. "She wasn't running," he stated, the words clean and surgical. "She was having a tantrum. A game of hide and seek in the dark." He moved to withdraw, to leave her with that dismissal.
Her hand shot out, cold fingers closing around his wrist with surprising strength. He froze, not with passion, but with the sudden, icy annoyance of being constrained.
"Promise me," she breathed, the sound raw and scraped thin. "Swear you will never stop. Never stop wanting this. Never stop wanting me."
"Emily." Her name was a sigh of pure exhaustion, a man weary of a song he'd demanded be sung too many times.
"Swear it."
He turned back. His hand came up, not to caress, but to capture her jaw, his grip firm enough to still her trembling. He searched her face, and his own expression softened into something worse than cruelty: a patient, rehearsed tenderness. "How many times will I have to carve this into you?" he murmured, his voice a dark, intimate ribbon in the stillness. "You are the only wound I enjoy tending." He leaned in, his lips a hair's breadth from hers, sharing the same suffocating air. "My hunger for you is a permanent condition."
The oath hung between them, beautiful and rotten. It was not a comfort, but a sentence. He released her jaw, his thumb tracing her lower lip in a gesture that felt like a brand. Then he pulled away, his own face smoothing into its customary mask of indifference. He rose, dressed with efficient, unfeeling motions, and left without a backward glance.
She was left alone in the cooling dark, his words clinging to her skin like a film of sweat, a vow that felt less like love and more like a life term in a beautifully appointed cell.