by Millie Adams
She suddenly felt small and unequal to the task. And as much as it angered her, she was glad that Maximus was there beside her. She was glad that she wasn’t doing this alone. Glad that he had offered to marry her, even if she should be appalled to have considered such a thing. Even if she should be angry that she felt she needed a man to assist with her ascension to the throne.
It’s nothing to do with being a woman. Or him being a man. And everything to do with spending so much of your life locked in a dungeon...
Yes. She had.
Hadn’t Maximus begun teaching her new things? And that made her feel too raw. She couldn’t think about that. Not at the moment. She could only focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Could only focus on the solidity of his strength to her right.
It was nearly like a wedding. They walked up the aisle together, but then he left. For it was not him she would be making vows to, not today. It was her country. Her people.
While the priest handed her a scepter, and a robe was draped over her shoulders, she stood. A blessing was spoken over her, and then she spoke the words of affirmation back, vows promising stability. To honor the people, the country, its traditions. To make progress where it needed to be made. To protect and support and heal. And she meant the words. Every last one of them. Because she had survived for this. Had lived for her country. And when the heavy, golden crown was placed on her head, she felt it fully. For this was her cause.
Not pastries and finding out whatever it was she preferred best to eat, and not sex in the garden. This.
The responsibility hurt. Making her heart ache.
But nonetheless, she finished the ceremony and looked out at her people.
“With all that I am,” she said. “With my life. I will serve.” She swallowed hard, and she pressed on, with words from her heart and not words from a rehearsed script.
For she understood, suddenly. That while she might have to present a certain front, it was her core, who she truly was, that had brought her to this moment.
That had helped her to survive, and to keep her spirit through those long years of captivity.
That had driven her to seek help from Maximus.
Yes, in some cases her choices had felt forced upon her by those who sought to harm her. But it was her strength that allowed her to withstand them.
Not just anyone would have chosen to fly across the world, find the super soldier who had led the mission against her country’s dictator, chloroformed him and forced him back to her country.
Not just anyone could stand here in this moment, after being a prisoner. After withstanding an assassination attempt only a month earlier.
Only her.
Queen Annick.
“We lost much when we lost my parents. You lost a King, and with the death of my brother, the future King. And I know that I, as Queen, am an unknown. But with all the strength I possess, I will lead you. I will honor my father, but we will also push forward. This is a new era. We will not hide here in the mountains, a kingdom isolated. We will embrace technology, connecting with the world as we haven’t done before. We will grow in strength. Not me, not Annick. But all of us. This strength will not be to subdue, but to stand on our own. All of us. Together.”
And then it was done.
“And here now is presented to you,” the priest said, “Queen Annick Lestrade of Aillette.”
She was met with applause, and she nodded serenely, walking back out of the chapel with Maximus meeting her at the door.
There would be a large luncheon after, tables set up in the gardens outside, but she was not sure she could stomach any food. Or being in the gardens. Considering what had happened the last time she was there.
No. She would be strong. She would not trip at this first hurdle that was not even a hurdle.
And so she spent the rest of the day smiling and speaking to whomever wished to speak to her. By the end of it all she felt every inch the symbol. As if there was nothing of the woman left at all. It was an odd sensation.
And then she looked back at Maximus, and she felt... That she couldn’t breathe.
She wanted him. She wanted him again. And it didn’t matter that he had been unkind to her. Didn’t matter that he had abandoned her. That he had said it was for the best. That he had made it plain that he was not going to share with her or be intimate with her again because of...control. Or whatever else he’d spoken of.
What did you survive the dungeon for?
Wasn’t she enough of a reason?
Finding this core of herself, recognizing it, made her ask new questions even now.
Did their arrangement have to be solely for her country?
Oh, she cared about it a great deal. She would serve her country, give her life for it. It was true. But couldn’t she also want something for herself? Couldn’t she have also lived...simply to live? To be touched by a man. As she had been last night. To be able to get married. To be able to have children. To enjoy dresses and makeup.
To enjoy pastries.
She wanted those things. She did not think that it made her bad or selfish. Yet he was all about control. But he would not tell her why.
Here again, she was to be a figurehead.
His wife, but not for real. He would not share with her. He would not sleep with her, because he’d been undone by what had happened between them. She knew it. She’d seen it. Her honesty was a devastating weapon to him. And she would have to hide herself from him. As he would continue to conceal his own secrets.
It would be far too similar to living that dungeon life she had been in for this many years.
She was sad for it.
When the luncheon finished, and the guests had cleared away, she found that Maximus had vanished as well. She gathered her skirts, lifting them up from the ground, and swept back into the palace, moving down the corridor, heading toward his chamber.
Then she walked in. Without knocking, because why would she? He had come into her room without so much courtesy the morning of their dance lesson.
And she was not disappointed. For he was there, his jacket discarded, his shirt partly open, showing a beautiful slice of his chest. That she had licked. Bit. She wanted more of him. She was just so...hungry.
And she wanted someone to share that with.
“I am a woman,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered. “You are not a coffeepot. That much is certain.”
Perhaps her honesty was her greatest weapon, and why should she shield him from it? He was hurting her with his distance. Why should she protect him?
“I am a woman, and a Queen. I am both. And I had the terrible sensation today as I stood up there before the crowd that I would lose myself as the crown was placed upon my head. I thought to myself...this is why I lived. This is. This coronation. This moment. The opportunity to take care of my people. But then I thought...it is not why I lived. I would have lived if I would’ve lost the country. I would have lived, and it would’ve mattered. Does it matter?”
“Of course it does,” he said. But his face gave nothing away, and he stood rigid.
Though it was that blankness that spoke volumes, at least as far as she was concerned.
“It does,” she said. “It matters that I breathe. It does matter.”
How she wished she could break down his walls. But maybe the fact that she had broken them was evident here. Maybe she had, and that was why he was so horribly blank. So she pressed on. “I am not a person who died.” Tears pushed against her eyes. “My family died. There was nothing to be done. My family died, and it is... True sadness. But I’m not dead. I’m not dead and I am more than a figurehead to be trotted out at the whims of...of those men. Those men who saw me as nothing more than...” She blinked back tears. “I would go days sometimes without seeing the sun. All that time I spent in a dark dungeon. And they would l
et me out, only to serve them. And in my heart I thought that if I could survive, then I would fix things. And sometimes it gave me the strength to keep going. But sometimes I just thought of being held again. Being loved. Sometimes I just thought that maybe someday there would be a man who would hold me in his arms. And sometimes that was enough.”
She waited. She waited, but he did not surprise her. Instead, he did what she’d feared.
“I’m not that man,” he said.
“I don’t need you to be,” she said, desperate now and not caring if he knew it. “But I would like for you to be you. I would like for you to not hide what you are—who you are—from me. When I am the one who has seen you. I am just so very tired. And so...” She reached behind her back and grabbed the zipper tab of her green dress and released it, letting it fall to the floor. And then stared at him. He looked at her, hunger in his dark gaze, and she felt an intense tug of satisfaction. She was wearing nothing but a strapless lace bra and matching panties. And the shoes that she had not bothered to take off.
“I cannot explain,” she said. “I can only feel. Feel the desperate weight of that darkness closing in around me. It was so horrible. I was nothing. Nothing. A tool to be used. And that was what decided if I lived or died, and that is what I had to be. And you can see now why it angers me. To have to say the right things, to do the right things. To dress the right way. When I want me to matter. Me. What I want. And it never will. Not out there. Because you’re right. I must be appropriate. I must be what my country needs. But I am also a woman. I am not just a Queen. And I want you. Whether you are rough or not. I want you, the real you. The real... Feelings for me.”
“I do not have feelings,” he said, his voice going pitch-dark.
“I don’t have the words,” she said, feeling full to the top with frustration. “Learn French if you want good words. I don’t have them in English. Or learn my language. Learn my language if you want to hear something better. Only... I am tired of being contained. I am tired of easy. I want hurt. Because hurt is better than nothing at all. The gray and darkness and numbness. Do you have any idea? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be locked away like that? No, you don’t. Because you were raised rich and with freedom.”
He moved toward her, and she could feel the crackle of intensity beneath his skin, could feel it barely contained inside of him, fighting to escape. “I know what it is to be trapped,” he ground out. “To be trapped inside a darkness that you cannot fight. To be trapped inside something you cannot even see. Don’t tell me that I don’t understand.”
Her frustration boiled over then, because she was standing there, bared in every way, and he was still resisting this and she simply could not. “Then if you understand, fight against it with me. Feel with me.”
“There’s no reason,” he said, his voice as rough as gravel. “And it benefits no one to care.”
“Lies,” she whispered, the word choked by emotion. “You care. Whether you want to or not, whether you want it to be about the sainted woman that you speak of or not, you must care about the world.”
“Or maybe I’m simply a killer.” He took hold of her arm, drew her to him. She responded. Her nipples going tight, her heart thundering harder. She did not fear him. She felt for him. So much, she might burst with it. “Have you ever thought of that? Maybe I’m filled with hate, and killing is the only thing that makes that feel better. Maybe I dress it up in missions and assignments and all of those cold clinical words we use to justify government-sanctioned death. What if I like it? What if I care about that more than I care about fighting for justice?”
“It is not true,” she said. “Whatever you say, it is not true. Or you would not have offered to be the King here. You would have simply gone about finding a person to assassinate in order to protect me. You would not have allied yourself with me as you did.”
He released his hold on her. “Or perhaps you prove your point. Perhaps you prove your point that killing sometimes creates more problems.”
“I don’t know.” She turned from him, pacing away from him. “I don’t know about any of this. But tonight...”
She took the crown from the top of her head and placed it on the dresser by the door.
“Can I be Annick? And you be Maximus? Not the King, not the Queen. But just us. As we are. Can we be simply feeling? It doesn’t have to be feelings for me. It can be feelings for her. It doesn’t have to be anything easy. It can be sharp. It can be painful. But this... Last night. When I bit you. When I tasted you. I am just starving. I am just starving for all that I could have. For all that I have missed.”
He didn’t say a word. Instead, he stepped forward, grabbing hold of her hips and dragging her up against his body. She could feel his desire there. His hardness. The need that he felt for her, and he could not deny it. No matter how much he might want to. She pushed at his shirt, shoving it from his shoulders and tearing buttons off it as she did. They scattered across the floor, and then his chest was bare. Just as she liked it.
And she found herself dropping down to her knees before him, undoing the belt on his pants and opening them, reaching her hand inside his underwear and revealing that thick length of him that had felt so incredible inside her the night before. And she was ready. Ready for him. Ready for this. She was ready for everything that he might have for her. But first. She wanted this. This moment to luxuriate in the feel of him. The taste of him. She wanted this moment for them. For her. She wanted this moment to simply be.
She leaned in, sliding her tongue along his length.
“Annick,” he growled, taking a handful of her hair, and she felt the pins there biting into her scalp.
Does a King submit to his Queen here?
You know that he does not.
And here she was, on her knees, submitting to her King.
Except, it was not so simple. For he was at his end; she could see that. The fierce light in his eyes, the strength with which he held her in his grip. He was beyond himself, and she was... She was powerful. In this moment, on her knees before him, she was everything. Woman. Queen. Submissive. Powerful. In this moment. Finally, she could feel all the light that she had been denied for all of those years. In his strength. His heat. His taste.
She didn’t obey him. Rather, she leaned her head forward, pulling against his hold, loving the way the pain dovetailed with the pleasure that pierced her like an arrow between her legs. And she took him in deep. Tasted him, took him in so deep that he touched the back of her throat. And he growled, bucking his hips upward. And she took it. All of it.
“Annick.” He said her name, rough and raw and ragged, and it was everything that she needed it to be.
She lost herself then. In pleasuring him.
In this endless circle of need. It filled her. It emptied her. Giving him pleasure gave her her own, and she could not have explained that if she had been asked to. All she knew was that she wanted it. Wanted him.
All she knew was that she was a slave to this. As much as she was the master of it.
And she had come to him across the world, not because she had thought they might find this, simply because she thought they might be able to help.
But this was more than help. And it was more than simply for her. It was something...
A gift.
Annick had spare few gifts in her life.
A spare few.
He jerked her away from him suddenly, and she could see that he was pushed to his limits, his muscle shaking.
“Not like this,” he said, his words a fractured example of the control within.
“Why not? You made me shatter that way last night.”
“But I want to be in you, my Queen. I wish to feel how tight you are. How wet. I wish for you to come apart in my arms while I shatter against you.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
And she would. She would.
“Take your clothes off,” he ordered.
And she could hear it. That his restraint had slipped its leash.
That she’d gotten her wish.
And now she would pay the price.
Oh, she craved that price.
He freed himself from the rest of his garments while she undid her bra, drew her panties down her legs. While she kicked her shoes off.
“Yes,” he said. “There you are. Not a Queen, are you? Just mine.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
And she did not know why she found such a great comfort in that. In being his. Except he would never take her to a dungeon. He would never lock her away. He wanted to make her feel good.
As long as she belonged to Maximus, she would be safe.
Suddenly, she wanted to weep. Safe.
She could not remember ever feeling safe. Safe.
Safe with him. If she was his, that was how it would be. And he could be hers. She could...
And then she couldn’t think anymore, because he closed the distance between them and kissed her. Hard and fierce and long. Kissed her until she couldn’t think. Until her world was reduced to the way his hard body felt naked against hers. Then he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.
He was over her, those eyes gleaming and intense. The eyes of a man who had sat there with his finger steady on the trigger, waiting to take a life. Who had done so to save lives. Who claimed he had no conscience and no soul but held her like she mattered.
And he positioned himself at the entrance of her body, and when he thrust into her, she gasped.
For there was no control, no finesse. All the things he’d said he needed were gone. And she reveled in it. Gloried in it.
For this was what she needed.
This. This moment of abandon. Each thrust was so intense it was nearly painful. Pleasure. Pain. Lights flashing across her closed eyes. Every sensation she could possibly have hoped for cascading over her in the moment. Her need building to such heights she didn’t know if she could withstand it.