Chapter 7

When we finally return to my quarters—no, our quarters—Jakol doesn’t pressure me to do anything besides kissing, which I participate in more eagerly than I would like. Even when we’re in bed together, he simply splays his hand across my hip and presses his lips to my forehead, then promptly falls asleep.

Maybe this could be tolerable. Maybe I can find my way through and discover some semblance of normalcy in my life with Jakol.

The following day, I decide to invite him into my office and start showing him what I do. We’ll be leaving for our honeymoon tomorrow, and I have a lot to take care of before I’m gone for two weeks. It pains me to leave the kingdom right when they need me most, but this is expected of us. It is all part of the illusion of happiness I’ve sold to my people.

Jakol catches on quicker than I’d expected of him, learning the way that I like to handle new issues as they come in. He oversees the building of the Burbarre settlements and humbly writes up a request for how much lumber, stone, and iron they will need to erect permanent structures. His gratitude is palpable in every word. As we stand side-by-side over the desk, I find his hand straying to the small of my back, where he gently strokes as I speak. It’s comforting, in a way, and I don’t know what to make of it.

We take another evening walk that night, and this time our hands easily link together as we explore the garden. Jakol stops me underneath a flowering cherry tree, its pale pink petals gliding down around us in a wispy, sweet-smelling cloud. Gently he brushes one off of my hair.

“It was lovely to watch you work, my Queen,” he says, voice dropping to that low, rumbling tone that I’ve learned now is reserved only for me. I want to bring it close to my chest and hold it there. “You are wise and decisive. I have much to learn from you.”

The way the words fall from his lips, I know that they’re genuine, and I decide that this time, I will let his compliment in. It buoys me as he tilts my chin up, his earnest face leaning down close to mine, and takes my lips in his.

This time when we kiss, his large hands roam a little more freely, exploring the curve of my hip, drawing warm trails up and down my arms. I find that it’s not enough. The more we sink into each other, the more I want his hands in other places—but he is careful where he touches me, never straying anywhere too intimate, too personal.

I’m surprised to find myself asking, “Should we go to bed, then?”

My question pleases him immensely, and Jakol is radiant as he agrees.

I can’t tell which of us is leading as we walk down the halls toward our quarters, but perhaps we both are. I am the one who opens the door, and Jakol is the one who shuts it firmly closed behind us.

Before I can take two breaths, he’s kissing me again, and I’m being lifted off the floor so that our mouths can touch. Rather than dangling down below me, my legs wrap around his waist, and he lets out a grunt of pleasure. He holds me up like that for what feels like eons, plundering my mouth and winding me tighter and tighter against him.

The small animal inside me has grown large, with great claws. It is banging down the door. I am hot all over now, and his tongue inside my mouth makes me think of certain other objects that fit into each other this way.

No. There’s no chance that I’m thinking of him like that—the Burbarre that came to me threatening my kingdom if I didn’t give him my hand. I can’t possibly be imagining that lump of fur and how it opened when he became aroused by me. I can’t be thinking of its full length, what it must be like fully extended and engorged.

But I am, and I can’t stop.

Still holding me wrapped around his hips, Jakol sits on the bed and gently withdraws from our kiss. I feel almost dizzy as I open my eyes and find him looking back at me. Underneath me, something firm presses against my thighs.

“Tell me when to stop,” he says, bringing his face so close our noses touch. His breathing is fast and shallow.

I ought to say it right now: Stop, stop. Instead, the words that come out are, “I will.”

With a hungry look in his eyes, Jakol retakes my mouth. Now his hands are moving up my back, all over my shirt, and mine are doing the same to him—but I have it much easier, as his chest is bare save for a triangle of stitched leather hanging from his neck.

It’s like I’m watching myself from a distance when I start to unbutton my shirt from the top, and Jakol helps me by attacking the buttons from the bottom. We meet in the middle, and suddenly it’s falling off my shoulders, leaving only my chest and the bra holding me in. I’m not big or ample, but he looks the opposite of disappointed.

“Hmm,” he says, eyeing the bra. “What is this?”

I reach around behind me and quickly unfasten it. I can’t seem to stop myself. All I want is to feel that bare, firm chest of his against mine.

Before it’s even off my arms, Jakol has captured my lips again, and this time he moves me much more forcefully so I’m lying on my back. He kisses down from my mouth to my chin, my throat to the hollow at the base of my neck. There he pauses, and then—almost bashfully—he kisses in circles around each of my small breasts, never once touching the nipples. Now, suddenly, I don’t want anything else besides his lips on them.

“Tell me what you would like,” he says, his mouth hovering only an inch away from tasting me. The way he says it, I can tell he’s offering himself up to me, making whether we stop or continue based only on my desires.

“Please.” The thickness of the need in my voice is surprising and embarrassing. “Suck on me.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

Clearly, I crave something that King Jakol has, or I wouldn’t be asking for this. What it is, I still don’t quite know, but for a moment, I send rational thoughts scurrying from my mind and let my body lead.

As I said, I will give this a chance.

His lips settle around my nipple, and he brings it into his mouth, running his tongue across the tightened tip over and over again until my back is arching into him. He grunts and slides an arm underneath me, keeping me close while he traverses to the other nipple. Each lap of his tongue sends sparks of pleasure coursing through me, building some greater, brighter feeling deep in my belly.

When he’s finished there, Jakol continues to kiss southward. Soon I’m faced with his curved, cruel horns, which curl away from his face, then angle outward before turning back and narrowing into points. Curious about their texture, I run one hand along the hard surface, and I feel Jakol pause underneath me. He remains still while I test them, bringing my fingers from the base up to the devilish tips. They’re ridged like ram’s horns and shiny black, and the ends that I thought were sharp are actually rounded. He couldn’t hurt much of anything with them.

When I’m satisfied, he continues downward, neither of us speaking. I feel like I’m in a trance, and if I were to say any of the things I’m thinking or feeling, it would break the heady air around us like glass.

His hands drop to the buttons of my pants, where he waits just before undoing the top button as if giving me a chance to stop him. Suddenly I’m afraid of what he’ll see there. What if he doesn’t like what he finds? We are so very different, after all—I doubt that I look like a Burbarre woman between the legs. I give a faint nod anyway, and King Jakol smiles, undoing the remaining buttons and sliding my pants down to my feet.

Once they’re off, he runs a hand from my chest, across my gently rounded belly, to the bundle of hair between my legs. With a soft breath, he teases my thighs apart, and I let out a little sound as the cool air reaches me between my legs.

“So beautiful,” he says, simply tracing his finger to my folds. He does not seem to notice if anything is amiss. His hand is warm against me, and I realize with a start that I’ve gotten quite moist and swollen down there. I hope the feel of it, the smell of it, won’t scare him off. But as he gently samples that embarrassing wetness with his fingers, Jakol looks more eager and hungry than ever. He pulls my lower lips apart, getting a good, clear-eyed view of me. I want to crawl under this pillow and hide, but before I can wriggle away, he crouches down so his face is only inches from my soft center. There he breathes in deeply, his eyes closed. I gasp at the sensation, and in a moment, there’s a soft tongue on me, lightly brushing my clit from side to side. I gasp at the sharp spark of pleasure that races up to my throat. Encouraged, he licks with more enthusiasm. I squirm underneath him, suddenly overcome by sensation, but he maintains an even pace back and forth across me, over and over, until I realize that I’m moaning.

His tongue drops down to the core of me, the one I’ve kept hidden for so long, and he continues his path until it’s inside me.

“Oh!” The feel of him is so unexpected but so lovely that I find myself grabbing one of his horns to hold on. “Yes. There.”

I can feel him smile against me as he continues to stroke his tongue in and out of me in a quick, regular rhythm. I want it everywhere, that marvelous tongue. I would allow it any place it wants to go. He withdraws and circles my sensitive nub with it again and again, until I’m clutching his horns in both hands, and he’s lapping me like a dog at a pond. A sensation I haven’t felt in some time, a kind of wonderful aching, starts to spread across my body, concentrated right where his mouth is attacking me.

That’s when I feel it—the top of the mountain. He’s pushed me up there, and now I’m teetering at the cliff, every part of me trembling with the need to fall over. All of my muscles curl up, and I’m crying out as his tongue works faster.

“Yes,” I hear Jakol whisper. “Yes, my Queen.”

Then it hits me, and I’m gone, falling into the abyss. I haven’t been here in some time, and it’s like a soft blanket and a crash of ice water at the same time. I could simply disappear into the world, and I think for a moment that I do, lost in the wild wonder of his mouth.

When I return to this plane, Jakol is lying on the bed beside me, his face slightly wet. My eyes instinctively drop down to his waist, where he lies next to me, still wearing a coil around his hips, the leather tented by something underneath.

“I can remove it,” he says. I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I want to agree, but I can’t. All I’ll want to do is stare. I realize I’m still afraid, but at the same time, I’m compelled by it—fascinated by it.

Eventually, I swallow and say, “All right.” He won’t make me do anything I don’t want to do, I’m certain of that, and this certainty is like a protective bubble around us.

Jakol leans in and kisses me again, and as his tongue opens up my mouth, I feel him moving his hands around his waist as he unties the coil. Then he sets the leather aside, and I know that only inches down from where my fingers rest at his hips, there’s no more barrier between us.

I have to see it. I have to know.

I pull away from the kiss, and when Jakol takes in my expression, a wry smile pulls his lips to one side. He leans back to allow me a better look at him. Sure enough, the white fur has parted to the sides, and a surprisingly large penis has emerged from between. The head is less defined from the shaft than I expected, while the point is more pronounced. The long, rigid shape of it is like nothing I’ve seen before.

The moment that my mind imagines it inside me, it shuts down.

I curl my hands up and draw them away, suddenly afraid that what I’m looking at is foreign, alien. How could I be so close to it and consider parting my legs for it when it comes out of a bundle of fur like that? It’s creamy at the tip, and I hold in a little gasp of alarm.

“Dienne.” Jakol’s voice draws me back upward. He brings his hands up to my face so that I’m forced to look at him. “It’s all right. That’s enough for now.”

I realize then that I’m panting with fright. I let this go too far tonight. I got caught up in my lust, in my hunger, and it almost got the better of me. Even my hands are trembling as Jakol takes them in his and slowly runs his fingers up and down to massage them.

When I’ve calmed down a little, but still not spoken a word, Jakol lifts up my legs and frees the blanket from underneath me, then pulls it up over on top of us. I’m not shaking anymore when he brings me in against his chest and holds me close, but I can’t stop my thoughts from racing.

It was so big that it was almost frightening. What would I do with that? I feel deeply guilty, too. That is what he is down there, after all. I knew that when we began.

“Can you tell me what’s on your mind?” Jakol asks in the darkness. I can’t see anything, but I can feel him holding me tight. Already his smell is familiar, his presence comforting. Something about this vast emptiness around us makes me feel like I can speak again.

“I’m afraid.”

He doesn’t ask why but simply nods and tucks his chin against my head. I can feel each of his breaths as he takes them. “I understand,” he says. “Your people do not look like me.”

“No, they don’t.” He’s right. It is different, and I don’t understand it yet.

“This will take time.” Jakol takes my hand in his and holds it at my side. I know he’s still naked, pressed against me under the bedcovers, but that soft, wet, pink presence isn’t so startling when I can’t see it. “I will wait as long as I need to.”

“Thank you.” It takes me some time, but I’m able to fall asleep wedged in his great big shoulder, his furry legs tangled up with mine.