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She knows the knock on the door is Xaden. She’s not sure how she knows this. It’s not like he’d deign to use a special cadence to indicate his presence, or even that they have the type of relationship that would warrant such a ritual—they don’t. They don’t have any type of relationship, evidently.
She wants to make him stand in the hallway. Not the king in his castle, not this time. She wants him to wait, to stand with his stupidity. She wants him to feel as horrible as she does.
Still, she opens the door.
The mage lights in the corridor are dim, but they cast him in a golden glow. It’s idiotic, Violet knows, but she wishes the lights weren’t so flattering. If they weren’t, maybe she could pretend she wasn’t just as attracted to him as she always was. It would be futile. He’d be beautiful in any light, at any time, anywhere. But still, a golden light was ironic, if anything. He was meant to be painted in shadow, something as dark as the man himself.
He ducks his head and pushes past her, entering the room without permission. Not that he needs permission, not in his house, his country, his…
She’d have appreciated being asked, because it gave the impression that he thought she might say no.
“You’ve been ignoring me, Violence.” His accusation is delivered in a low tone. He has the gall to sound angry, of all things, and to go as far as to direct that anger at Violet, instead of inward, where it belongs.
She shuts her door and sits down on the edge of her bed, while he leans against the desk in the corner. She’d never understood why he went out of his way to give her a desk—she knew the other rooms didn’t have one, but hers always did. A sacrifice to her scribe sensibilities, perhaps.
The turndown service at Riorson House is impeccable. There’s a little chocolate on her pillow—one of Xaden’s favorites. She could give it to him.
She tears open the wrapper, pops it into her mouth, and feels it melt on her tongue.
“Have I?” she asks, blinking innocently.
Under his breath, he laughs. The sound of it is beautiful and dark, as always, but she still finds herself bristling. She doesn’t like the context of it, the implication that she’d said something funny.
“Don’t play dumb, Violence. You aren’t any good at it.”
He’s been staring at her, with those damned eyes, and Violet can’t take it. She pivots on the mattress, studying her pillows. She’d seen her mother’s room this trip, and she knows Xaden consistently puts Violet in superior accommodations. Her sheets are softer, her pillows, plumper.
“What do you want me to say, Xaden?” she snaps. She doesn’t mean to confess so readily, but around him, the truth of her is always closer to the surface than it should be. “Of course I’m going to act differently around you. I don’t know what I am to you anymore.”
If she’d ever been anything at all. She hadn’t, probably. If she had, Violet would have learned about Catriona from Xaden himself, and not from her mother.
“Vi–” he starts, crossing the room to join her on the bed. She flings up a hand, stopping him in his tracks. He stops so suddenly, the rug bunches at his feet.
“Don’t. You can’t touch me. You’re engaged.”
He recoils, though the motion is so slight, Violet only catches it because she’s so very attuned to him. Is Catriona that attuned to him? Violet doubts it. She doesn’t think anyone but her is capable of such a feat.
“Betrothed,” he corrects. “Not engaged. Betrothed.”
Violet scoffs. It’s the same difference. He’s marrying someone. Someone else. Someone who isn’t her.
Not that he was ever going to marry her. She isn’t an idiot, contrary to whatever her mother must think of her. No, Violet’s always known this thing between them was temporary, a moment in time.
A moment in time that has come to an end.
“You’re committed elsewhere,” Violet insists, turning her face somehow farther away from him. It isn’t a natural motion. Her neck muscles ache.
“It’s not–” Xaden cuts himself off, huffing. “I don’t feel anything toward her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Violet’s brow arches. “Anything at all?”
She wants to tell him she isn’t worried about his feelings toward Catriona. No, Violet’s only concern is continuing to avoid looking like an idiot. And if she lets herself be the other woman—the king’s consort, of all things—she’ll be beyond idiotic. She might as well walk herself into a dragon’s mouth, sacrifice herself to those flames.
“It’s not like that,” Xaden says. He sounds…his words are stretchy, as if pulled down by some unseen weight. He settles onto the bed beside her, though he takes care not to touch her. This, Violet knows, is a courtesy to her. She doesn’t have the energy to deny him further.
“Then what’s it like?” Violet presses. “Because my mother–”
She stops speaking. What is she to say? My mother told me to stop doing what we were doing, because you were with someone else.
“Your mother doesn’t know a thing about me, Violence.”
Violet smiles, wryly. Violet doesn't know a thing about him, either. She’s just like her mother.
“Then tell me.” Let me know you. “Tell me the truth.”
“My father organized a contract during the revolution. The marriage, in exchange for the use of Tecarus’s luminary. Are you familiar with Viscount Tecarus?” Soundlessly, Violet shakes her head. Her mother had given her the girl’s first name, but nothing else. An aristocrat, like Xaden. A good match. “Well, he’s Poromish.”
Her mother had seen fit to mention that detail. Xaden’s impending marriage was more than Violet’s personal crisis. It was symbolic of a larger deterioration of Navarrian-Tyrrish relations, as Tyrrendor was further aligning itself with Poromiel.
“So what?” Violet asks. “It isn’t what you want?”
“Of course it’s not what I want,” Xaden snaps. “How could it possibly be what I want?”
The anger in his voice draws her eye, and she sees him stare at her with near-incredulity. He shifts, sitting beside her on the bed, but keeping an inch between their thighs.
She can only handle the intensity of it for a moment before she’s looking away again. “It’s what you’re doing.”
Xaden exhales sharply. “The things I do usually have little correlation to the things I want to be doing.”
She rubs her lips together. “Usually?”
“Yes, Violence. Right now, I’m doing precisely what I want to be doing, but that’s rare.”
Her lips twitch and twist. “You want to be arguing with me?”
“What I want,” Xaden snaps, “is to be with you. I don’t care if we’re arguing. I wasn’t going to let you ignore me.”
“Why?” she asks. “Because that would be disrespectful?”
He huffs, “Don’t be insolent, Violence.”
“How am I being insolent?” Violet retorts. “I want to know why me ignoring you was such a big issue, Xaden. I was trying to give you space since you obviously–”
She bites her tongue, literally clamping down on it between her teeth to hold her words back. She tastes her own blood, metallic, bubbling up.
“Of course I want you, Violet,” Xaden whispers, and as he does, his hand reaches for her thigh. She can’t have that.
“I said you can’t touch me.”
His hand hovers inches above her skin. “Why can’t I touch you?”
“Because,” Violet insists. “You’re engaged to someone else, and if you were engaged to me, and I found out you were fooling around on the side, I’d be furious. I’m not doing that to her.”
“It’s not like that,” he repeats, as if those words mean anything at all. “We’re not even together yet, really.”
“Have you slept with her?”
It should be impossible, but Violet thinks she feels the temperature in the room drop. Xaden is silent.
“Right,” she says. “So you see my issue.”
He opens his mouth, and Violet knows exactly which words he’ll say, so she cuts him off once more with a sterile, “No.”
But he keeps speaking. “Let me show you how much I want you.”
“Xaden,” she starts, but he presses on.
“You don’t believe that I want you, so let me show you.”
She laughs, dryly. “Have you heard a single thing I’ve said about not touching me, Riorson?”
He stands from the bed and walks around her body to sit before her. She doesn’t look away. “Believe me, Violence. I have. There are other ways.”
Somehow, his eyes convey what his mouth cannot. He wants her to play along, to play with him. And desperately, more than anything, more than she wants even to cling to her dignity, she wants to play.
She bites her lip. “Such as?”
His lips stretch into a smirk. “You’ll have to follow my orders. Do you think you can do that?”
She shrugs. “If they’re good ones.”
He hums. “They will be. They’re from me, after all.” He pushes off the bed, then walks toward her sitting area. She stays seated, right where he’d left her. He turns an armchair so that it faces her bed, then re-positions it so that he has a perfect view of her, where she sits.
“Are you ready, Violence?”
It’s almost laughable—the idea of any version of Violet, somehow not ready to hear how much Xaden wants her. She’s always ready for that. She feels like she’s spent her entire life waiting for someone—for him, really—to tell her that.
She inclines her head. “When you are.”
Xaden’s smirk transforms itself into something else. A smile, maybe, though that feels generous. He looks far too devious for it to be a real smile.
He says, “Take off your nightgown.”
Instantly, her hands drift toward the lacy hem, already riding up her thighs. But, as she reveals inch after inch of skin, she begins to hesitate. She doesn’t think it’s too obvious. If anything she seems sultry, sexy, but Xaden catches it.
“Something wrong, Violence?”
Minutely, she shakes her head, but still, her lips part. “This is what you want?”
“Your rule about touching isn’t going to stop me from giving you an orgasm,” he replies. “I’ve set a standard for your visits I have to maintain.”
And it’s true—every time she’s accompanied her mother on visits to Riorson House, she and Xaden have laid together. And she always gets off when they’re together.
“And that’s the only reason?” she asks, throat-tight. “Because it’s habitual?”
“Because I enjoy it, Violence. And so do you. Take off your nightgown.”
She hitches the fabric higher up her thighs, revealing her black panties, her hips, her stomach, her bare breasts. The last thing she sees before she yanks the fabric over her head is his face, entranced. She pulls the nightgown up over her head, then down her arms. By the time she can see him again, he’s calmed his expression down. His eyes lock only onto hers.
“Panties, too.”
She stands from the bed to accomplish it, bending herself in half and coaxing her underwear over her ass, down her thighs, and pulling it to her ankles. She steps out carefully, one foot at a time, then leaves her clothes in a pile on the floor.
“Sit back down,” Xaden instructs. She complies, settling into bed. “Back against the pillows, good. I want you comfortable. Now, Violence. Open your legs.”
Her spine is well supported by the pillows, but she’s reclined just enough that when she opens her legs—which she will: he told her to do it, and so it will be done— it will feel like an offering, somehow. She’ll be presenting herself to him. And it isn’t like he hasn’t seen her naked before, but seeing her naked with the sole intention of seeing feels…different.
Still, she’d meant what she’d said. She’d told him she’d listen to his orders, and so, she brings her feet together, knees high, then lets her knees fall open, like the pages of a book.
Xaden straightens in his armchair. She watches his eyes, somehow growing more focused as he rises. He wants to see all of her, in detail.
“Tell me, Violet,” he asks, voice a low rumble. He doesn’t move his eyes from her cunt. “Did you start getting wet when I knocked on the door? Or has your pussy been needing attention for longer than that?”
Her breath hitches at the question. Her hands have been resting on the insides of her thighs, holding herself open for him, but at the mention of wetness, of attention, her hands start to drift down her soft skin towards her center.
“Ah, Violence. Did I say you could touch yourself?”
Her hands, now frozen with the knowledge that she can’t give herself any relief, dig into her skin. She wonders if she’ll mar her thighs in any way. The skin there is soft, sensitive. Sometimes, when Xaden handles her, marks will remain for hours, even days, the topography of their union.
She swallows, to wet her tongue. “You said I could orgasm.”
“And you will.” His smile slices across his face. “Eventually. I think you can get plenty wet from this alone, holding yourself open for me, knowing I’m watching you. I’m paying such good attention, Violence.”
“I’m not-” Her voice catches, unable to articulate a thing with the weight of his eyes on her, as heavy as his body would be atop her own. “I’m not doing anything, Xaden.”
“Do you think you have to be doing something to interest me?” He sounds genuinely curious, as if that possibility has never occurred to him before—that she would need to do more than just exist to catch his eye.
It’s ridiculous, because that is the way of things. He’s the king, and she’s…
“Yes,” she admits, quietly.
“Well, you don’t. It’s nice, actually, to have you like this. I never get to pay enough attention to how pretty your pussy is. I need to make up for lost time.”
She digs her hands deeper into the skin of her thighs. Pain is a type of relief. From her time with Xaden, she knows that well.
Voice so breathy it’s near-inaudible, she asks, “How pretty is it?”
“Oh, Violence,” he croons. “You’re dripping for me, of course. You usually are. And you’re pink, and swollen with how much you need me. I can see your pretty little clit from here, and I know just how badly it needs to be touched. It needs some attention, doesn’t it?”
It takes her a moment to realize that she needs to answer him. His words have a lulling effect, soothing her into some other state, somewhere she has no responsibilities except to listen to him and let him look at her.
But he’d asked her one more thing.
“It does, Xaden.”
“Mm. Get your fingers wet for me. With your mouth.”
Her breath hitches at the specificity of his command, but at the same time, her right hand starts to slide up her thigh, then up her abdomen. For a moment, she pauses. Should she use her left hand? If she had a ring—
She’ll never have a ring there. Not from Xaden.
“Your mouth, Violence,” Xaden prompts once more. She feels her chest grow hot, but she slides her hand up it anyway, over her breast, then up her neck. She pauses, feeling her lips, how soft they are, how plump. Sometimes, before he kisses her, Xaden will touch her lips with his thumb. Stroking them, parting them. He’ll take stock of her mouth, of her teeth and tongue and gums. All of her, offered to him.
She slips her middle finger into her mouth. She’s mechanical about it, wanting to get herself as wet as possible, for her own comfort, but she hollows out her cheeks, too. Her eyes don’t leave Xaden’s, and she knows exactly what he must think of when he sees her like this: her mouth, hollowed out around his cock.
“More than one finger,” Xaden instructs, and so she retracts her finger, opens her mouth, then slides two fingers down her tongue.
She hears Xaden’s breath hitch. From this distance, she can’t make out his eyes as well as she’d like to—the colors aren’t as clear, swallowed by the darkness of the room. She knows what he should look like, though. She knows that when she’s truly excited him, his pupils blow wide, and his gaze grows somehow serious, intense. Predatory, even. He looks at her, and she feels like she is on fire. She feels that way now. The flames dance along her skin.
“How wet are they, Violence?”
She retracts her fingers from her mouth with an obscene pop, then presents them to him, for his approval.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, looking them over. “Touch your clit. No circles yet, just touch it.”
She doesn’t drag her finger down her skin this time. He’d instructed her to wet her fingers for a reason, and she intends to follow his instruction, implicit and explicit.
She presses the pads of both fingers to her clit. Her gasp rings out in the silence of the room. Normally, touching herself like this, without friction, does little for her. He’s the magic factor. The weight of her fingers is miniscule in comparison to the weight of his attention—that’s what’s truly making her gasp.
“Describe what you’re feeling,” Xaden instructs.
Her brain scrambles to find a suitable answer, something that will make him want her with every fiber of his being.
She says, “Wet.”
Instantly, her cheeks go pink. Wet? Of all things?
She looks to him without meaning to, her desire to see if she’s ruined things stronger than any self-protection instinct. But he’s smiling, and his expression almost seems soft, fond.
And his hand…his hand is on his bulge. His pants aren’t yet pulled down, but still. He’s touching himself, to the sight of her alone.
“And…hot,” she says.
Xaden hums. “You’re always wet and hot and soft for me, Violence. So soft. Circle it.”
She complies instantly, and another gasp tears itself from her throat. She shudders with it, the way her pleasure pulses out from her center.
He hadn’t specified how many times she’s allowed to circle her clit, so she stops after one, then meets his eyes, seeking approval.
His smirk splits his face. He looks more victorious than Violet thinks she’s ever seen him.
“You’re being so good for me today, Violence. You can keep circling, keep touching yourself. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Eagerly, she continues swirling her fingers around her clit. She’s needy for it, any sort of friction with which she can ease the ache brought on by his attention.
“Because I’ve been good?” The words tumble from her mouth before she can think better of it. Her neediness is unhidden.
But Xaden doesn’t falter. “Yes,Violet. As your reward. Stick a finger inside yourself, too.”
She switches hands, playing with herself with the same care Xaden would. He usually uses both of his hands on her cunt, unless he wants to touch her elsewhere—her tits, her throat, her waist, her lips. And really, she learned how to masturbate from him, how to touch herself, to work herself up. Even now, when she can see his hands and knows he isn’t the one touching her, she imagines it was him. She pretends her own hands are rougher, larger. She imagines the feel of his signet ring, the shock of cold against the heat of her arousal.
She slides one finger into her cunt. She’s so slick, she hears the noise she makes, but she’s too aroused to truly grip herself tightly. She can feel her walls convulsing, begging her for more. Begging her for him.
Xaden prompts, “Description, Violence.”
She responds the only way she can. “It misses you.”
She sees Xaden still. His hand, which had been stroking his cock idly, stops moving.
“If you want me to go over there and touch you, you’ll have to ask,” he says, voice low.
“No,” she says, voice almost cracking. “We shouldn’t touch. I just…” She knows even as she says it that her reasoning isn’t foolproof. Whatever they’re doing now is far more intimate than sex itself. She knows that. She swallows. “I just wanted you to know I wanted it.”
“Wanted what?” he asks, but she sees him reach for his own waistband. He undoes his pants, then starts to slide them down his hips, but he stops before his cock is truly free. “Ask.”
Her eyes, which had been glued to his bulge, dart up to his expectant face. “Ask what?”
“I’m assuming you want to see my cock, given that look on your face. But if you do, you have to ask.”
Her heart pounds in her ears. She pumps her own finger inside of herself, searching for the perfect spot. Her hands are too small to accomplish it, but the circles she forms on her clit help her pleasure ratchet up regardless.
Of course she wants to see him, all of him. She always does. She dreams of him.
“Xaden,” she says, voice sweet. “Can I see your cock, please?”
He smiles. She wonders if his eyes are sparking. Usually, when he smiles like that—like he’s proud of her—the golden bits of his eyes dance. But his gaze is slightly hooded. She can’t make out his eyes.
“Of course you can, Violence,” he says, finally pulling his pants down his hips, then freeing himself of them entirely. The move shouldn’t be as graceful as it is. Violet knows, in her rational mind, that it isn’t graceful, and yet, she’s consumed by how badly she wants him, how beautiful he is, every part.
Mouth dry, she says, “Can you take off your shirt too?” He holds her gaze, stubbornly, until she adds, “Please?”
He smirks. He reveals an inch or two of warm, brown skin, the trail of hair that goes up and up. His abdominals are tight, and Violet knows precisely what they feel like under her tongue. She pumps her fingers more, demanding more pleasure to complement the sight of him.
He says, “Thought you’d never ask,” and pulls his shirt fully over his head. He discards the fabric in a heap on the floor—her floor. His clothes have been there before.
“Keep going,” he continues. “I want you to work yourself up.”
At his command, she starts to circle her clit faster and faster. She says, “Yes, Xaden.”
He grins, practically. You’d think he was the one rapidly approaching orgasm, but even as he strokes himself, he’s lazy with it. If Violet was the one touching his cock, she’d take better care of it. She’d be diligent, attentive. She’d make him fall apart.
“You’re being so obedient today, Violence. Is that just because you want to come?”
It isn’t just because of anything, except perhaps the presence of him. Still, she says, “Yes.”
He nods, once, then says, “Stop.”
Her fingers freeze, inside her and on her clit. She doesn't even truly think about the action before she performs it. He’d said stop, so she stopped. It felt natural to wait for his commands.
But as she feels her please recede, fury takes hold.
“Xaden!” she whines. Her hips buck into her hand, seeking pleasure mindlessly.
“Shh,” he soothes. “Keep being good and I’ll let you come soon.”
“You don’t need to let me do anything,” she huffs, though she knows the stillness of her hands on her cunt detract from the impact of that statement.
“Don’t I?” Xaden retorts. “You think you’d be able to come, if you kept touching yourself now? You think you’d let yourself come, knowing you’d disobeyed me?”
“Xaden,” she whispers. Whimpers, really. It’s more uncomfortable to have him draw attention to this particular weakness than to be denied her pleasure.
“You brought it up, Violence. I wouldn’t have said anything, otherwise. I know who you are.”
It hurts. Those words, the curve of his lips as he says them. She wonders how he views his knowledge of her, if it’s another bounty.
He doesn't let her linger there. “Touch yourself again,” he commands. “Your clit and your pussy. There you go.”
She works quickly, and her pleasure builds and builds. He hadn’t made her wait for too long, so she isn’t starting from scratch. Not that she’s ever starting from scratch, around him.
“Xaden,” she says, pleading. “Can I come this time?”
As her sensations intensify, she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to hold back, even if he doesn’t give her permission. Her body has a mind of its own, and all she can think about is if his hands were on her, instead of her own. The weight of his body, pressing her down. The way he’d coax her pleasure to the surface. Surrendering to her pleasure has always meant surrendering to him.
“Of course, Violence. Come for me.”
She still has to do the work, of course, but she starts to let herself whimper, the needier she gets. Still, she starts to get frustrated with it, her pleasures seeming refusal to come to her.
“Do you need help, Violence?” She nods and nods and nods, and she doesn’t even care if he means he’ll come to her, to touch her. What right does Catriona have to him, anyway? He is hers. It’s obvious. He’s never looked at anyone else like this, Violet knows. This version of Xaden belongs to Violet, and Violet alone.
“Pinch your clit,” he instructs, and she does so without a second thought. Her pleasure closes in on her, swallowing her, her thoughts, everything that isn’t perfectly good. Her brain goes white, eyes rolling back as her body shakes with it.
She’s panting as she comes down, the room coming back into detail. Xaden’s still in his seat, still watching her. His hand rests on his cock, but he hasn’t come.
“Do you…” Still, she has to catch her breath. Xaden always knows what he’s doing—making her wait to come had only made it better. “Do you want to come?”
He shakes his head. “I’m fine, Violence. This was about you, remember?"
She swallows. “About how much you want me.”
“And you know how much I want you, don’t you?” Xaden asks. And in the beautiful, golden haze of her post-orgasm glow, she lets herself shake her head.
Xaden swallows, roughly. She watches his throat bob. “More than anything else, Violet. More than my crown.”
“Don’t–” she starts, though she has no idea what she’d meant to say. Don’t lie, maybe, but she doesn’t think he’s lying. His eyes are far too intense for that.
“I mean it,” he tells her, and he sounds like he’s swearing something. She thinks his voice must have sounded the same at his own coronation, when he’d promised himself to this country. “Let me fix it. I’ll fix it.”
A laugh forces itself out of her throat. “How would you do that?”
He shakes his head. He seems resolute, solid. Whatever plan he’s concocted, he’s confident in it.
“Tomorrow morning,” he promises her. “I’ll fix it tomorrow morning.”
Violet’s leaving in the morning. Her carriage is coming at dawn. She wanted a clean break. Still, she nods.
Xaden stands from her arm chair. “Let me stay,” he says, or asks, or pleads. “Let me sleep here. With you. We don’t…we don’t have to do anything. Just sleep.”
Her lips fall open. He’s walking towards her, saying, “Please, Violet.”
She swallows. She nods. “Stay.”