Yesenia walked into her new apartments for the second time that day and found them changed. Her trunks were open and a mess, a thought she saved for later because more pressing was the obscene quantity of floral dressing draped across absolutely everything in the sitting room. Chairs, tables... anything that could be covered, was. The offensive odor of the dead blooms obscured the fresh pine of the forest. She caught only a hint of it upon the breeze passing through the open doors to the perch.
Gifting Corin an accusing glare, she angled through the arched doorway to the bedchamber. As suspected, the crime was even fouler there. Roses, both whole and de-petaled, were heaped by the thousands across the bed, the sea of crimson madness broken only by the appearance of a lacy nightgown that had not come from her trunks.
“It’s not personal,” Corin said. His wince following was almost expected. “I mean to say the Quinlandens do this for all newly wedded.”
“Aye, well it certainly is personal.” Yesenia whipped her gaze across the mass casualties. It was the Easterlands, so of course, roses probably grew aplenty, but to waste them?
To waste anything was a privilege.
“What did Mother say to you?”
“Nothing that should surprise you.” Yesenia clawed through a handful of blood-red petals. Their silken texture was startling but more so was knowing that tomorrow they’d be wilted, ugly. Even deader than they were now. Beauty wasted.
“I don’t want you to—”
They both turned toward a scream. A bloated silence followed, and Yesenia wondered if Corin had only reacted to her shift in attention, but there it was again, louder. Corin leaned against the wall with a sigh.
“Lady Maeryn will not have a good life here,” he said.
Yesenia was horrified. “Does your father know how his son treats his wife?”
“Father has never tempered Aiden’s cruelty. My father... He’s...” He shook his head. “He has more humanity than Aiden. I suspect he harbors some jealousy over his son’s easy abandonment of his conscience.”
She watched him over her shoulder as she unlaced her boots. “Why live in the trees?”
“Go to the perch, on the far end of the sitting room.”
Yesenia didn’t move.
“From here, the people of Whitechurch, of the Easterlands, they look small, like little mice skittering to and fro. They can only look up and guess what it must be like for lions.”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” Yesenia replied.
“Thankfully, you won’t see it much beyond Whitechurch. The wealthy here compete for status this way, but the rest of the Reach has little time for it.”
She spun around. “Are you really afraid of heights?”
He nodded. His eyes met hers but then dropped.
“All the more reason for us to live in the Southerlands. Donnae need to climb any higher than a cliff’s edge.”
“He’d never allow it. My father.”
“My father wouldnae ever brook a Quinlanden to sit at his table either.”
“So we agree. On something.”
Yesenia curled her lip with a half laugh. “Why is that so important to you?”
“Is it not obvious?” He peeled himself off the wall and approached her. With the passage of twilight to evening, the waning light cast an ethereal glow upon his pale skin, causing the flecks of blue in his eyes to dance. “If we are nothing else, Yesenia, I hope we can be friends.”
“Friends?” Yesenia twisted her tongue in her mouth, running it through her teeth. If Erran were here, he’d easily read this shift in her, know what it meant: that hard press forward was coming, pushing them into a much different moment.
Corin lost a step as she marched toward him. She bunched his collar in her fists when she became close enough to smell his breath and the weird leaves he’d eaten in the banquet hall.
“Friendship isnae what the king intended for us.”
His throat bobbed. His soft mouth opened... closed. Fear lived in his sparkling eyes, but as she let her hands run down his golden dress, Corin’s expression became something else.
Did he know what was coming? What would it mean to him? Could he, like her, separate himself from it, become what the moment demanded?
Yesenia’s hand cupped between his legs.
He did know, or at least suspected.
Unlike Erran, she had no use for needless foreplay.
“We don’t have to do this,” he whispered. “I would never want to force you—”
“You donnae hold the power capable of forcing me.” Yesenia took his bottom lip and scraped it lightly through her teeth. Until the moment was upon her, she hadn’t been certain she could summon this part of herself, to do what she must with someone she’d been bred to hate. “Unless you donnae want this?”
“I do... want it. But I need to tell you something first,” he said quickly, fighting to get the words out between her commanding strokes. “I’ve never done this before.”
Yesenia released his lip. She licked at her bottom one. “You’re a lord’s son, who could have anyone he pleased, and you’ve never done this?”
“Have you?” He rattled a startled laugh. “I guess you have, by the way you... of course. I mean no offense, Yesenia, and—”
Yesenia cut him off by burying her tongue in his mouth. That shut him up, finally. The tension in his back and limbs melted into action as he moved his hands toward her hips and planted them, seeming uncertain but firm.
Yesenia took a step back. A twinge of guilt struck her that she would be his first. She bit down on it, swallowing it whole, for a Quinlanden would have no such remorse if the roles were reversed.
She planted her hands on his chest and shoved. Corin, startled, fell back upon the bed covered in dying flowers. As he struggled to sit, she tugged at the satin pants he wore under his formal dress. He seemed too stunned to do more than gape at her as she deftly slid out of her leather trousers. She enjoyed his flinch at the heaviness with which they fell to the ground, courtesy of her daggers.
“You can stop me at any time, you know,” she said.
Corin shook his head, failing to speak.
She left her blouse and vest on, then ripped at his dress until she heard the buttons pop off and land on the floor in little pings.
“Oh.” Yesenia buried her awe at the impressive organ he’d been hiding under all the gold and satin. Corin saw her noticing. He looked down, likely trying to decide whether he should feel shame or pride.
She climbed over him. Her hair fell down both sides of her face, running over his.
Lie back and remember the Southerlands?
I prefer he be the one to do that.
Her cry of shock at the size of him was buried in the groan he launched as she slid down over him. Such a prize was wasted on a Quinlanden, but her disgust had no power over her as the unexpected surge of desire washed through her. She moved faster, reaching between her legs to double her pleasure and enjoying Corin’s wide-eyed hunger at the way she knew her own body.
His smooth hands caressed her ass, fingers pressed into her flesh to urge her on. The tingle began in her arms as the start of her summit made itself known. Her thighs instinctively tightened around him as the wave surged, and Corin’s grunts only fired her up more.
But this was duty, and she couldn’t let him think for a moment that it could ever be more.
Yesenia threw her head back and screamed when the orgasm overtook her. Her muscles tightened over Corin, destroying what remained of his resolve. He pitched forward and pressed his lips to her chest as his own pleasure thrummed through him, until it faded to soft, erratic jerks.
She rolled off him, still panting. She’d need to clean herself, to be sure there was no surprise in nine months, but right now she was so tired.
With the last of her energy, she turned her head toward him, taking in his flushed face, mussed hair. He was still hard for her.
“’Tis the one and only time that’ll happen.”
Corin’s labored breaths were his only response, until his mind caught up. “I told you, Yesenia, we didn’t have to—”
“Aye, but we did. Your father will ask ye tomorrow if your wedding night was productive. You’re a terrible liar, but now you willnae have to lie.”
Corin rolled to his side, eyes and mouth knit in concern. He hadn’t covered himself and seemed unaware of the oversight. “I can handle my father. I don’t need your pity.”
“Ye think I have pity for you?” She vaulted off the bed and went to recover her trousers. She felt his eyes follow her ass as she moved across the floor. “If I do, it’s that ye didnae grasp the expediency of what we just did.”
As she removed her dagger holsters and let her pants fall back to the floor, she watched him. Her pretty husband. Erran was a pretty man too, but he had substance. Strength. Mettle. He was not so easily broken nor bought.
“Politics isnae just about reading people, Corin,” she said finally. “If ye cannae learn to read a situation, you’ll always be the one lapping at the heels of those who can.” She grabbed a fistful of petals as she shook her head. “A wedding night failure helps neither of us.” She dropped the bunched petals to the floor. “I’ll sleep on the settee.”
“No,” Corin said quickly. He recovered his senses, clambering for his discarded clothes. “You take the bed.” He made for the door to the sitting room. The look in his eyes told Yesenia this was a battle he intended to win.
She decided to let him. He’d be easier to control if she allowed him his meaningless victories. “Fine.”
His nod in return was more gratitude than relief, which was good because it meant he knew she’d allowed it.
He was right, after all, that they were stuck together.
“For now,” she whispered to the mess waiting for her atop the bed. She swiped her hands across enough of the carnage to peel back the cover and then dropped in, still in her traveling clothes, and submitted to her exhaustion.