She threw the blankets aside and rose from the bed. Three quick steps brought her directly in front of Lorenzo.
She grabbed Lorenzo's face in both hands and kissed her.
Not soft. Not tentative. Her lips pressed hard, her whole body leaning into it.
It hit Lorenzo like stepping off solid ground. Months of silence, of sleepless nights, of forcing herself not to think, all of it collapsed at once. She kissed back without thinking, hands going to Marie's waist, pulling her in until the length of their bodies pressed together.
"I hate you," Marie breathed against her mouth.
She still didn't pull away.
Lorenzo kissed along her jaw, down to the soft skin of her throat, feeling the warmth there, tasting the trace of dried perfume and the faint salt of her skin. Her lips found the pulse point and rested there a moment, just rested, just felt it beat. The bloodthirst stirred, registered it, and Lorenzo lifted her mouth away.
*Not Today*
"Marie—"
Marie's fingers twisted in Lorenzo's hair and yanked. Not gently. She brought their mouths back together, her tongue pushing past Lorenzo's lips immediately, no preamble, demanding entrance and taking it. Lorenzo's mouth opened for her on instinct, tongue meeting hers, and for a moment they were just breathing the same air, kissing with the frantic urgency of people who have been starving and finally, furiously, given permission.
Marie's teeth caught Lorenzo's lower lip when they finally broke apart. Hard enough to sting.
Both of them were breathing roughly.
"You do not get to be gentle with me," Marie said. Her pupils had swallowed nearly all the colour from her eyes. Her lips were already swollen. "You have made me your whore in front of all of England. The least you can do is fuck me like one."
Lorenzo looked at her, this undone, furious, devastatingly beautiful version of Marie, and felt the panic and the want hit her simultaneously, indistinguishable from each other.
"What! You mean everything—" She leaned in slowly, trying to be tender, to show her,
Marie bit her lower lip. Deliberately. Drew blood.
"Stop lying."Her voice cracked on it. "If I meant everything, you would have told me the truth."
The copper bloomed across Lorenzo's tongue and the bloodthirst woke fully, turning its attention toward the heat radiating from Marie's skin. Lorenzo swallowed and kissed her harder, rougher, hands gripping her ass.
"I was protecting you—"
"From what?"Marie grabbed the front of Lorenzo's shirt with both fists and wrenched, buttons gave, fabric strained. Her palms pressed flat against Lorenzo's chest, and there was something searching for warmth in the touch even through her anger. "From the truth? You thought I was too fragile to know my own situation?"
She dragged her mouth to Lorenzo's neck and bit down.
The sensation burned straight through to Lorenzo's spine. Not pain, something that shot heat directly downward and made her breath leave her in a rush. The bloodthirst surged with it: urgent, hot, suddenly very awake.
She could smell Marie's pulse. Could feel it against her own lips when she pressed them to Marie's jaw, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, that steady, maddening drum of living warmth, so close.
*Why Now of all time.*
Lorenzo caught Marie's wrists, both of them, not crushing, just holding. Keeping those hands away from her pants, away from what she couldn't let Marie find. "And what about you?" Her voice came out lower and rougher than she intended. "He kissed you. Did you want it? Even for a moment?"
Marie looked at her with those dark pupils, her lips bruised-looking and slightly parted, and smiled like she knew exactly where the blade should go.
"Are you jealous?"
Something in Lorenzo simply snapped.
She dropped the wrists, took Marie's hips in both hands, and walked her backward—two deliberate steps—until the backs of Marie's thighs met the solid writing table near the window.
"Sit," Lorenzo said. Low. Not a request.
Marie read it in her eyes. She hesitated one breath—then placed her palms flat behind her on the table and pushed herself up. The nightgown rode up her thighs as she settled onto the edge, feet off the floor, facing Lorenzo.
Lorenzo stepped between her knees. One hand slid beneath the nightgown and up the warm bare skin of Marie's inner thigh, slow, deliberate, watching Marie's face, and stopped just short of where she wanted to touch.
"Did it feel like anything?" Lorenzo asked quietly. "When he kissed you."
"How about you find out yourself." Marie's voice already wasn't entirely steady. Her fingers curled around the table edge.
Lorenzo pushed two fingers inside her.
Marie's head snapped back with a sharp inhale, surprise and pleasure hitting at once, one hand flying behind her for balance, the other clamping around Lorenzo's wrist. Not to stop her. To hold on.
Lorenzo felt how wet she already was and something territorial and tender crashed through her simultaneously. She worked slowly at first, fingers curling forward, searching, attentive, watching every small shift in Marie's expression. The crease that appeared between her brows. The way her lips parted around a breath she couldn't quite catch. The flush rising from her chest up the column of her throat. She was trying so hard to hold onto the anger and her body was simply refusing to cooperate.
The scent of Marie was everywhere. Warm and alive and overwhelming. The bloodthirst pulsed at the edges like a second heartbeat.
Marie's free hand came up and grabbed the back of Lorenzo's neck and pulled her down into a kiss that was wetter and messier than the ones before, tongues meeting immediately, sliding together, Marie sighing into her mouth at the same moment Lorenzo added a third finger and felt her stretch around them. Lorenzo kissed her back with everything she had, unhurried now despite the urgency below, taking her time with it, tracing the inside of Marie's upper lip, feeling the small shudder that moved through her.
Marie broke away with a gasp that wasn't entirely controlled. Her head dropped back. "God—"
"Look at me,"Lorenzo said.
Marie's head came up. She looked at Lorenzo with an expression that had too many things in it to name, and she raked her nails hard down Lorenzo's shoulders.
Breaking skin.
The bloodthirst detonated.
Red swamped the edges of Lorenzo's vision. Her fangs pushed against her gums—hard, urgent, demanding—and the pulse in Marie's throat went from something she could hear to something she could *feel*, reverberating through her own chest. The scent of blood, her own from the scratches,
Lorenzo pulled her fingers free.
Marie caught her wrist.
Not to stop her.
She pulled Lorenzo's hand up, slowly, deliberately, eyes locked on Lorenzo's the entire time—and then she opened her mouth and took two of them inside. Sucked them clean with obscene, unhurried thoroughness, tongue sliding between them, cheeks hollowing.
Lorenzo went completely still.
Marie released her fingers with a soft sound and smiled, slow, filthy, knowing, and said in Italian, her voice low and liquid and absolutely shameless: "*Allora, cosa aspetti, ragazzo mio? Sono tutta bagnata per te. Vieni a prendermi.*"
*(So what are you waiting for, my big boy? I am all wet for you. Come and get it.)*
She tilted her hips forward on the table edge in unmistakable invitation, nightgown rucked up, completely unashamed, watching Lorenzo's face with those enormous dark pupils.
Lorenzo stared at her.
This was Marie. Proper, ginger-haired, book-reading, poetry-quoting Marie—who had learned Italian to wait for her, sitting on a writing table in the firelight saying things that would make anybody lose their mind.
Something feral moved through Lorenzo. The bloodthirst and the want tangled together so completely she couldn't tell them apart.
She stepped back half a pace, body angled deliberately sideways, and freed the prosthetic from her pants with one motion before stepping back between Marie's knees. Their closeness and the angle kept it hidden.
Marie's hands went straight to the remaining buttons on Lorenzo's shirt, pulling it open, her palms sliding over Lorenzo's chest and then her arms rose and hooked around Lorenzo's shoulders and neck, drawing her in, holding on. She pressed her forehead to Lorenzo's. Looked at her from an inch away.
The intimacy of it nearly undid Lorenzo entirely.
She positioned herself and pushed inside.
Marie's cry came immediately, loud, unrestrained, deliberate, echoing off stone walls. She wanted the whole castle to hear. If they had already decided what she was, she would give them the performance they expected.
Lorenzo set a hard almost thrilled she wanted to be heard getting railed,
Marie's body told its own story without asking her permission.
The flush had started somewhere below her collarbones and was climbing—up her throat, spreading across her chest, warming the skin at her temples—the kind her body produced entirely on its own, independent of any decision she made. Through the thin cotton of the nightgown, her nipples had drawn tight against the fabric, achingly sensitive to every brush and shift of it, betraying her with each shuddering breath. Small sounds kept escaping her throat that she hadn't consciously produced—half-swallowed whimpers, bitten-off gasps, a low broken exhale when Lorenzo shifted the angle and hit somewhere that made her vision blur briefly at the edges. The warmth coming off her own skin was noticeable even to herself. Her whole body was running hot.
Her arms stayed around Lorenzo's neck. Her mouth found Lorenzo's jaw, her cheek, the corner of her lips, open-mouthed, searching, less a deliberate kiss than her face simply needing to press itself against something. Lorenzo turned into it, catching her properly, kissing her with her whole body still moving, swallowing the sounds Marie made before they could reach the walls.
The base of the prosthetic ground against Lorenzo's clit with each thrust and she felt it build, slow at first, steady, a pulse of heat that grew with each movement. She focused on it. On the accumulating warmth. On the way Marie's breath stuttered against her lips. On the whimper that escaped Marie when she shifted the angle slightly.
*That.* That sound specifically.
Then Marie pulled back, just far enough to see Lorenzo's face.
She hadn't meant to look. She had been performing, building her anger into something righteous and sustaining, and then she made the mistake of actually looking.
Lorenzo's eyes were half-closed, jaw loose, breath coming in short broken grunts she didn't seem to have any control over. Her brow was furrowed, the same crease she got when working through something that genuinely mattered—except this wasn't calculation or strategy. This was pure, helpless want. Every few thrusts a sound escaped her throat—low, involuntary, entirely unguarded—the sound of someone who had lost the ability to maintain any pretence at all.
Marie felt something move through her that wasn't fury and wasn't desire exactly. Something quieter and far more frightening than either.
She had done that. She, Marie, least favoured ginger-haired daughter of Thomas Boleyn, had reduced this "Man" to this. The prince who had stared down Henry VIII in his own hall. Right now he couldn't form a sentence. Right now he was making those sounds and couldn't stop.
*No one will ever want you like this.* The thought arrived uninvited, quiet and certain.
Before she could stop herself her hand came up to Lorenzo's face. Just her palm, cupping her cheek. Thumb brushing the line of her jaw. Lorenzo was damp with exertion, her hair falling loose at her temples, and Marie pushed it back gently.
She felt the tension in Lorenzo's jaw—the muscle working, clenching, working again. The fine trembling running through her shoulders that had nothing to do with physical effort. Something held back. Something Lorenzo was carrying all the time and never put down.
Lorenzo's eyes opened. Found Marie's face immediately, as if she always knew exactly where it was.
What was in them cracked something open in Marie's chest. Just Lorenzo. Terrified and grateful and so desperately, nakedly in love it was almost unbearable to look at directly.
Marie kissed her.
Not in anger. Softly, her lips pressing carefully to Lorenzo's, her hand still cradling her face. She felt Lorenzo exhale against her mouth, a long, shuddering breath, like something finally let go after holding far too long.
Lorenzo didn't stop moving. She slowed, but she didn't stop. Each thrust came deeper and more deliberate now, long rolling movements that made Marie's toes curl against the air. She could feel the restraint in Lorenzo, the coiled effort of slowing when every instinct demanded otherwise, feel the fine trembling in Lorenzo's hips as she held herself back, kept herself measured. The jaw set, teeth slightly gritted. A sound escaping her anyway, low and involuntary, dragged out of her despite everything.
The table had stopped its violent scraping. The room had gone quiet except for their breathing and the soft rhythmic creak of wood.
Marie's thumb traced the line of Lorenzo's cheekbone. Once. Slowly.
*I love this person,* she thought, with a sudden clarity that frightened her. *I can't help but loving him*
Something in her throat ached with the weight of it.
She didn't want it to.
The tenderness swelled—warm and involuntary and terrifying—and Marie panicked.
She wrapped her hand around Lorenzo's throat.
Not hard. Just fingers curling around it, palm against the pulse. Lorenzo's breath cut short immediately, sharp inhale, pupils flooding wider,
"Don't stop! Harder,"Marie said. Low. Deliberate.
She squeezed lightly, just pressure, just enough, and rolled her hips forward in demand.
Something lit in Lorenzo's expression. The softness didn't vanish, it was still there underneath but something answered the demand, rose to meet it. A grunt escaped her throat and Marie felt it vibrate against her palm.
The rhythm deepened. Not frantic, not the punishing crash of before, but relentless now, each thrust full and measured and deep, like she was refusing to rush, like she wanted to feel every single moment of it. Marie felt her own breathing unravel entirely.
Her free hand clutched the back of Lorenzo's neck, not directing, just needing something solid.
The bloodthirst screamed and Lorenzo anchored herself in what was louder: the hitch in Marie's breathing each time she pressed deep. The small muffled whimper Marie made against her shoulder, helpless and real and entirely unperformed. The fine constant trembling in Marie's thighs against her hips that Marie almost certainly didn't know she was doing.
She kissed Marie's throat, open and soft, just her lips resting there and felt Marie's pulse hammering against her mouth and thought: *this. This furious person. I will not hurt her.*
Lorenzo felt herself getting closer. The steady pressure building with every roll of her hips. Her own breath rougher, less controlled.
"*Voglio che mi scopi fino a quando non riesco a camminare,*"Marie breathed against her ear, completely wrecked, not performing, just wanting, just needing. *(I want you to fuck me until I cannot walk.)*
She drove deeper.
Marie's head tipped back, a long-broken whimper pulling from her throat, not performed, not deliberate, the sound of someone too far gone to manage themselves. Her chest rose and fell in visible gasps. The skin at her throat was burning. Her nightgown clung to her.
"*Riempimi,*" Marie breathed against her hair, barely sound at all. *(Fill me.)*
Lorenzo felt something give way.
She drove deep—once—and felt the gasp tear from Marie's throat—twice—the trembling in Marie's thighs becoming something total, her whole body—three times—the base of the prosthetic grinding in one long, shuddering press against her own clit—
She came on the same wave as Marie—not a crash but a long, rolling swell that moved through her from the inside out—her orgasm washing through her in deep, slow pulses while Marie convulsed against her and clenched around her in waves and made sounds she would never be able to unhear.
Lorenzo held her through all of it, mouth still pressed to her neck, hands still holding her, moving through the last slow aftershocks until everything had passed.
Then silence.
Just their breathing. Just the last quiet settling of the dead fire.
Marie's arms were loose around her shoulders now, the grip entirely gone. Her forehead had dropped against Lorenzo's. Her legs hung heavy at Lorenzo's hips, not gripping, just resting there—like she simply didn't have the will to move them.
Her lips were parted. Her face was still flushed all the way to her hairline. A fine dew of perspiration at her temple, her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. She looked—undone. Completely, privately undone. Not a performance. Just a woman who had been taken apart.
Lorenzo didn't move. Face still pressed to Marie's neck. Eyes closed. The red was fading. The fangs drawing back, slow and reluctant. She focused on the warmth of Marie's skin against her cheek. On the sound of her breathing beginning—very gradually—to even out. On her own clit, still pulsing faintly with the last of it, still warm.
Slowly—slowly—the bloodthirst settled.
Blue. Just blue behind her closed eyes.
She had held. Not through gritting her teeth. Through paying attention to the person in her arms. Through the small sounds and the trembling thighs and the way Marie's pulse had hammered against her mouth—louder than everything else.
She let herself have a few seconds more of it. Of Marie's weight against her. Of the stillness. Of the illusion that this was tenderness and not its exact shape carved from anger and longing and two people who didn't know how to say what they meant.
Then Marie's hands moved to Lorenzo's chest.
And pushed.
Lorenzo stepped back instinctively—and in the same reflex both hands went immediately to her waistband, pulling her pants up, fastening them, body turned slightly before she'd consciously processed the motion. Years of careful habit.
Marie slid off the table. Her legs took her weight and nearly didn't—she caught the edge, steadied herself, then straightened. Yanked her nightgown down with sharp, precise movements. Did not look at Lorenzo.
"You have taken everything from me."Her voice was terrifyingly calm. The fury had burned itself out entirely, leaving something colder and more final behind. "My reputation. My future. My dignity." She gestured between them—at the scraped table, at the ruined room, at the space between their bodies. "And now you have this. This proof that I am exactly what everyone says I am."
"That is not—"
"I will never forgive you,"Marie said, still not looking at her. "Leave my room."
Lorenzo stood—shirt hanging ripped open, blood drying at her shoulders, pants barely fastened, looking at the hard line of Marie's profile.
"Marie, please—"
"Leave." The word didn't crack this time. It landed flat and final. "Now."
Lorenzo took her coat from the chair. Crossed to the door. Put her hand on the handle.
"I love you,"she said quietly.
Marie said nothing. Jaw tight. Eyes fixed on the wall across from her.
Lorenzo left, and pulled the door closed behind her with the softest possible click—gently, despite everything, as though the night deserved that much at least.
---
In the corridor, she leaned against the wall and tried to steady her breathing. They had come together in anger and parted in something worse than anger.
She adjusted her pants properly, pulled on her coat, then walked through the dark corridors of the Boleyn estate. Past the guards who carefully averted their eyes from her dishevelled state, her wild hair, her hastily fastened clothes, the scratch marks visible on her neck.
Some bold guards snapped to attention when they saw her approaching.
"Your Highness—"
"At ease," Lorenzo said. "I will be staying here tonight."
She found Marcello still awake by the fire in the garrison quarters. He took one look at her, dismissed the sentry beside him, and poured wine into two cups without a word.
They sat in silence, watching the flames.
Marcello asked no questions. Lorenzo offered no explanations.
Finally, Lorenzo spoke. "She definitely hates me. At least tonight I could control the bloodthirst "
Marcello sipped his wine. "A win is a win! How did you manage if I may ask?"
"She was rough enough to keep my mind on her and not her blood," Lorenzo said quietly. "What is quite troubling is Every moment. Every choice. Even knowing it leads here. I would not change a thing"
Marcello nodded slowly. "That is love, then."
"Or madness,"Lorenzo replied.
"Perhaps they are the same thing."
They finished their wine in silence, and when Lorenzo's tent was ready, she retired without another word.
---