Chapter 9

Everything feels less bright without Jakol around. How have I grown so used to him, so accustomed to his presence, after only a handful of weeks? My bed feels big and cold, and I start sleeping with one of the enormous furs he brought from home because it smells like him and reminds me of his furry body wrapped around mine.

At least I have a lot to catch up on since we were gone so long, and that occupies most of my attention.

“Your Majesty?” asks Arnwell one afternoon. I’ve been staring off into space for a while, wondering when the zeppelin reached the Burbarre homeland. I hope things are going well despite the terrible event that’s happened there. “May I ask a personal question?”

I study him. His last series of personal questions were rather uncomfortable for me, but he is my dearest friend. “Sure.”

“Are things going well?” He lets out a little sigh. “I know you only did this for our good and for the good of our country.”

I’m surprised by the question. “I suppose it is.” I blush just thinking about our honeymoon and the number of times King Jakol made me climax all over his mouth and hands.

Arnwell must catch the look on my face because he smiles a little. “Should we expect a prince or princess?” he asks.

This question is indeed incredibly personal. I think of that big cock of his and how it felt with my mouth wrapped around it. I imagine it releasing that stream of seed inside of me.

“I truly don’t know,” I say. I’m not even sure if it’s possible, and I’ve never once asked Jakol. It seems like such a bizarre hypothetical that my mind can’t even conceive of it.

“I’m sorry for overstepping, Your Majesty,” Arnwell shakes his head. “I am just wondering if, for the kingdom, we ought to be preparing for change.”

“What sort of change?” I ask.

“The Burbarre do not nominate leaders like we do. If you and the King decide to produce children, we may have to implement a different policy.”

I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s been a custom here for hundreds of years, and it has served us well. But it’s true that the Burbarre come by their leaders differently, and I have no idea what would happen if one of us passed away.

It feels too soon, too early to think about losing Jakol—and about who might take over after us. I shake my head and try to paste on a smile. “That is a long way off,” I say.

Arnwell nods rapidly, clearly regretting that he brought up the subject at all. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

But for the rest of the time that Jakol is gone, the question remains in my mind. What comes next for us?

When the Kingdoes at last return, he does not greet me the way I had imagined he would, sweeping me up into his arms and covering my face in kisses. No, he kneels in front of me like that first day he came to the palace and takes my hand, pressing his lips to it once. Then he rises and turns away, instructing his servant to carry his things to our room. I receive nothing else. Whatever Jakol left behind, it has taken its toll on him.

During dinner that evening, he tells me that the landslide stole a great many lives and left the city in ruins. He is somber as he relives the tale, and I want to reach for his hand, but his body language is restrained and closed off.

“I will have to return again soon,” he says. “And stay for some time to help with the rebuilding effort.”

Why does this bring me so much sadness? I was fine before Jakol, and I will be fine again without him.

But that night, when we lie side-by-side in bed, not touching one another, I wonder if I will be fine. I’ve gotten too attached to this man—this creature. When I turn toward him, Jakol does not return the gesture. He is staring up at the ceiling, clearly lost in thought. I want to say something, to bring him back into the fold of vulnerability we had created before, but the words stick in my throat. When the light is off, I lie there feeling just as cold and alone as when Jakol was gone.

I wonder what I have done, what has happened to him in our time apart, to change him this way.

The next morning is much the same: Cold and lifeless. Over our meal, he says, “I will only be here for a few days to take care of the settlements and oversee some new construction. Then I will return home.”

The way he calls it home, when he had meant Fiore before, makes my chest feel tight. I keep my eyes down on my plate of food because I don’t want him to see how this news makes me feel. Of course, I can’t keep him away from his people.

I also find that as the day wears on and we attend to our respective matters, I want him. I hunger for his mouth on me again. Even if I just had his arms around me, that would be satisfactory. But Jakol is quiet, barely looking at me as we work. By the time the day is over and we’re headed back to our quarters, I feel like a balloon full of apprehension, about to burst.

“Have I done something wrong?” I ask as I change, with my closet door open, into the sheer nightgown I’d once felt so embarrassed about wearing.

Jakol blinks at me, confused. “What? No, of course not.”

His reaction tells me that his coldness is just a side effect of the stress, but it is still hard not to take it personally. I feel the tears pooling in my eyes, and I quickly rub them before emerging back into the bedroom. He notices the redness in my face anyway, and the exact thing I wanted to avoid happens: His expression fills with guilt. He leans down and runs a hand along my cheek. “I’m sorry, love. I haven’t been attentive to your needs, have I?”

I fake a smile. “I’m fine. It is just the fresh blooms making my eyes water.”

Jakol gives me a look that says, Do you think I’m that stupid? and puts his arms around me. “It warms my heart that you missed me, but it also saddens me that I’ll just have to leave you again.” He sighs and presses me even tighter against his chest.

“Please, don’t trouble yourself over my feelings,” I say. “Your first responsibility is to your people.”

“Is it?” He leans away from me so he can look down into my eyes. “You are my Queen, and your happiness should be paramount to me.”

“I’m perfectly happy.” I pretend to swat him away. “I even had a little privacy, for once.” Jakol does have a tendency to walk in on me in the bathroom, and the way it doesn’t bother him has always annoyed me. But he just looks sad.

“What is it?” I ask, sitting down on the bed beside him. I sense that something deeper is wrong, and there is a cloud over Jakol that threatens to suffocate what little time we do have together.

“Dienne...” It is not often that he calls me by my first name, and this immediately draws my concern. “I am sorry.”

I wonder what’s happened that he feels he needs to apologize for. “Why? What for?”

When his gaze rises to mine, it is full of regret. “I forced you into this,” he says, voice drawn with self-loathing. “I made you marry me, Dienne, on the threat that I would conquer your people.”

Something truly has changed in the time he was away.

I nod carefully. “Yes. You did.” It’s not that I’ve forgotten; it’s simply that the wound has grown shallower and the pain less acute as time wears on. I have accepted what is and what cannot be changed and decided to make the best of it.

That is what I’ve done, isn’t it?

“And for that, I’m so sorry.” Jakol stares down at his hands as if they’ve offended him. “It was terrible of me to leverage your good nature against you. I trapped you here and thought that would be enough. That you would come to love me in spite of it.”

On the surface, he is right. We are only here because he held the safety of my people over my head. But I have come to care about him anyway, I can’t deny that.

“What is it you’re trying to say?” I ask. What has sent him down this path? I thought we had abandoned it far behind us as a fact of life that we can’t change now.

His deep, dark eyes are clouded when he caresses my face in his palm. “I’m trying to say that I’m letting you go, Dienne.”

The words flow through and past me at first, and I have a hard time grabbing onto them. What could he mean? We are married now.

“I want to undo what I should not have done in the first place,” he continues, a crack appearing in his gravelly tone. “I release you from our agreement.”

It washes over me like cold water, and an answer won’t come to me. He’s willing to annul our marriage, now, after all we’ve been through?

Then my gut twists, and I withdraw from his touch like he’s burned me. So this is why he’s been so cold and closed off: He’s been planning to leave me. He must have decided on it while he stewed alone in his capital city.

“You want to end this?” I ask, and my vulnerability, my budding hurt, comes out in it.

Jakol stiffens, then curses at himself. “No. No, my love. I would never.” There’s a desperation in his voice. “I want you more than anything. I always will. But it haunts me, Dienne, that I gave you no choice. I will wonder until my dying day if you truly care for me, or if you have simply decided you must in order to get by.”

I could rewind time to the day the Burbarre appeared here and turned my kingdom upside down.

But did they really? Our peoples have already learned to live alongside one another. They trade and cohabitate, though they cannot speak the same language. They are seeking to understand one another to make our new combined kingdom work.

“It would be impossible,” I say, “to change what has been done.”

Jakol shakes his head. “I would withdraw with my people and return to our lands, should you wish to have your freedom back.”

Freedom. I’m not sure what that word means to me. I don’t feel trapped here in this room, sitting next to Jakol on our bed. Now that he’s returned, I find that I want more of him, not less. If anything, it’s as if there are binds wrapped around my arms right now, keeping me locked in place and away from my husband.

Leaving him would not be freedom. It would, I think, break my heart. But I grasp now what he’s truly asking for, what he needs from me. In the slump of his shoulders, in the tremble of his hands, I can see how much he fears what I might choose now that he’s given me the chance. And he would accept it whether I decide to stay or leave him. We could return to the way things were before he and his forces arrived at our front door.

Then it dawns on me. Jakol has been afraid to get close to me in the circumstance that I accept his offer to leave.

I reach up to run a hand along his horn, down to his long, silken hair, and then his high, square cheekbone. He seems afraid to look at me.

“Jakol. Thank you.” I cradle his face. “Yes, this marriage began that way. But when you left and then came back to me... It felt like I had found a part of me I’d lost.” Jakol leans into my hand and presses his lips to my palm, sinking into my words. “You give me the choice to walk away if I want. But what if I choose to stay instead?”

A burst of hope crosses his face. “Despite what I’ve done?”

“It was misguided,” I admit. “Now I can’t even sleep properly when you’re not here in this bed with me.”

Awash with relief, he pulls me against his body hard and squeezes me so tight I think I might break. Then he leans down and kisses me with a surprising ferocity. His arms wind around my waist, and before I know it, I’m pushing him back onto the bed. His eyes are wide and surprised as I straddle him. Even I’m shocked that my need has grown so large and so bold, but I find I want him more than I ever have—my husband, whom I’ve chosen and who has chosen me.

Quickly he has my shirt off, and he suckles my breasts with enthusiasm, feasting on every stretch of my skin. It feels better than I remember. He retakes control so he can pull my pants off, too, and before long, he has one hand between my legs, pumping two fingers in and out of me while his incredible tongue teases my little bundle of sensation. Unbidden, I think of his pouch again, the white fur parting to let out his cock, and I come almost immediately.

“You taste as good as I remember,” Jakol says, rising to his knees above me.

He still has his coil on, so I sit up, too, and reach out to take it off. He freezes. When I have him fully naked in front of me, I find the fur bulge doesn’t frighten me at all this time. No, in fact, I want to see it come out. I’m surprised that it hasn’t already. I wonder if he still wants me after his trip back home.

I bring my hands up to the familiar furry pouch, gently rubbing the sides and bottom, which I know he likes. Jakol breathes in sharply, and soon, the white fur parts to either side and his big pink cockhead starts to emerge.

“Dienne...” he says quietly. “I’m not sure if I can handle a tease tonight. Not like I usually can.”

The words are spoken so softly but feel so harsh that I withdraw right away.

Was I planning to tease him? I don’t know. I have no clue what drove me to want to bring it out, and now I feel awful. I thought he would let me experiment on him forever, I suppose. But everyone has their limits.

“Oh, my love.” He lowers himself to my height and takes my face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I am.” My heart is trembling like a mouse that’s been caught. “I’m the one who’s sorry. For taking so long. For being so uncertain.”

He looks as heartbroken as I feel. Jakol sweeps me up into his arms and holds me like that, as tight as he can. Then he brings me under the blankets with him, and it feels right and good to be in his warm embrace again.

But I can’t help that I still feel hot between the legs, still moist for him. I’m ravenous, I realize, with him being gone for so long. All I wanted was to see his cock again, to perhaps touch it with my mouth, or even?—

I cut off the thought immediately. But when I close my eyes to try to sleep, it comes roaring back. My breath speeds up a little as my imagination starts to play vividly in the darkness. I wonder how that pointed tip would feel, that gentle slope of him, as it worked its way inside me. It’s been so long since I was intimate with a penis that I have to piece the sensation together, and all it does is make me even wetter. Soon, Jakol’s breath evens out next to me, so I know he’s asleep. I gently pull away, trying hard not to wake him, and turn onto my side so I can hide as I reach down between my legs. I just need to release again, I think, and then I can sleep, too.

I dip a finger inside myself, and unbidden, the image of his cock performing the same motion makes me tighten. I rub my clit back and forth, then slide my finger inside again, and my breaths speed up. It’s so close, I can almost taste it. I think even harder about how he would feel pushing inside me, spreading me wide enough to accommodate his impressive size, and I have to hold in a little moan.

“My love?” It’s Jakol’s sleepy voice, and I go absolutely still. I feel him shifting in the bed, wondering where I’ve gone. Then he finds me with his arm, and I’m hot all over with my hand down between my legs. I’m so deeply ashamed of doing this right next to him that I want to liquefy. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I say, even though we both know that’s a lie. He rolls over so he’s pressed up against my back, and his hands start to wander up and down my exposed side.

“Nothing?” He sniffs my neck, and I remember how powerful his sense of smell can be compared to mine. “It doesn’t seem like nothing. Have I left you unsatisfied?” He sounds disappointed in himself.

“No.” I keep lying, but the truth feels ugly. He’s right. I can’t keep using him, expecting him to cater to my needs without any regard for his own.

Why are all of my emotions suddenly so complicated and sharp? I don’t understand why his turning me away suddenly feels like the end of the world.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he says.

“Don’t be. You simply told me your boundaries, and I need to respect them.”

Jakol sighs. “Do you know how much I want you?” he asks. His lips reach my neck, and it makes all the hair on my skin stand on end. “It consumes me, thinking about you. Thinking about how it would feel to be inside you. I haven’t been able to put my mind to anything else. If you touched me for even a moment, it would be impossible not to...”

He trails off, and now, I understand. He wants the next level, and anything else would be a taunt. But he’s too raw right now for such things. If I want him, I have to fully want him, or not at all.

That’s when it settles on me like a soft fur around my shoulders. I do want him—all of him. I want to know what he feels like, how full he’ll make me, what I’ll see on his face when he’s inside me. But can I say it aloud? Can I ask for what I want in case I take the cowardly way out?

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into the sea below. If I decide to step over into the emptiness, will the ocean catch me, or will I simply fall and die against the rocks?

“My love?” Jakol asks, voice uncertain in the darkness. “Are you all right?”

“Could we...” I begin and swallow hard. “Could we try?” I feel ashamed and selfish for asking. He would be putting his heart on the line, and then no matter what happened, he would only have to return to his homeland again.

His breath hitches. I can feel it against my backside as his cock begins to emerge, and the wetness of it tickles me. I’ve seen it so often that it’s easy to picture it sliding out from inside the bundle of fur at his groin and then rubbing against me.

I want it, I know now. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.

“If you’re certain,” he whispers against my ear. “Then I would be happy—more than happy—to oblige.”

I turn around so I’m facing him, then I pull my legs just a few inches apart so his cock can slide between them. He inhales a sharp breath, and unconsciously, his hips jerk against mine. I’m wet down there, so wet, and I know he can feel it as he slides himself between my folds.

“Oh, my love.” He gently moves back and forth, his cockhead teasing my clit. All I would have to do is tilt myself a little, and he could slide inside.

“I want you,” I whisper. “Please, Jakol. I want you.”

It’s all he needs. He reaches down between us, and as slick as we both are, it takes very little effort for him to press his tip inside me. I’m surprised at how easily it slips in, as if it were meant to be. I gasp as he comes up against my tight inner layer, and it stops him from progressing further.

“Dienne.” The word is husky and full of need. I spread my legs wider, and he’s able to glide in more. I’m taken aback at how good he feels spreading me open for him. Now I can easily imagine how it would be to have him all the way inside me, filling me up to the brim. Eagerly I tilt my hips so he has better access, and he dips in even further, slippery with my juices. We both gasp at the same time.

Suddenly, I’m on my back, with Jakol still halfway inside. He’s huge above me, with the moonlight coming in the window illuminating only the edges of him. I can make out the shape of his chest, the brown of his nipples, and the curve of his great horns. I need more, so I rock my hips, and more is what I get. He groans as he pushes through my tight walls, stopping after a moment to take another deep breath, and then?—

There. He’s fully encased in me, and I let out a moan as his tip reaches a place deep inside. A place I’ve never felt before, that I didn’t know existed. It is a different shape than I remember from others before him, but I find that I like it. The fur at the base of him tickles my sensitive button in a way that sends little shockwaves up my spine.

Jakol starts to move, and the ease with which he slides in and out of me is absolutely contrary to the heavy, thick way he feels, stretching me to my limits and pushing against every crease I’m made of. I’ve never felt anything as exquisite as this. With one slow, purposeful stroke at a time, he makes love to me. I can’t discern the exact shape of his face in the darkness, but I can feel his eyes on me, drinking me up while his powerful hips sink his cock in and then slowly drag it back out, lighting every inch of me on fire. My arousal has made him slippery, and with each mouth-watering stroke comes a wet sound.

He brings one hand up to his mouth and licks two fingers, then reaches down to my clit. While he continues to move at the same slow, even pace, his fingers flick me back and forth, and I instantly tighten around him. Jakol groans as he pushes through it, and instinctually his thrusts speed up. I’m drowning in him, consumed only by the sensation of him burying himself up to the hilt and then pulling out until he’s nearly escaping from me. I need more. So, so much more. I want all of him.

“Please,” I whimper. “Please, faster.”

“Yes, my Queen.” He leans back and lifts one of my legs up so he has easier access to me, and he starts to fill me even fuller than before. I cry out as his fingers work against my small nub, and I can hear in his heavy grunts that he’s getting to his own climax. I wonder what will happen if he unleashes all that Burbarre seed inside me. Just thinking of it, my muscles clench, and Jakol groans. He moves with greater and greater urgency until he’s plundering me for all I’m worth, while his hand continues tantalizing me. It’s the most exquisite and torturous feeling of my life to be brought right up against a wall of light and look through it, not knowing how I’ll get to the other side.

“Oh, Dienne,” he whispers my name.

I bring his face down close to mine so I can look into his eyes—those familiar eyes that I stared into so many times outside my conservatory.

“Jakol,” I say, tangling my hand in his hair. “I love you. Not because I have to, but because I choose to.”

He groans at my words and buries his face in my neck as if looking upon me has become too much for him.

“My Queen,” he murmurs. “My love. I will always be at your side.”

That’s when I feel him start to grow inside me, from the base of his huge cock and spreading up to the tip. Just when I don’t think I can accommodate any more of him, I do, and it’s the last piece of the puzzle I need to step over the threshold. He moans and jams himself into me as deeply as he can. I’m riding an immense wave, and he’s riding it with me, and the sound of our pleasure mingles in the air between us. I’m sucking him in deep, squeezing tighter and tighter as my orgasm races up into my throat to the base of my skull. I’ve never felt something like this as long as I’ve been alive.

Buried as far in as he can be, Jakol finally unleashes. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him as close as I can, even though I’m panting and trying desperately to bring air back into my lungs. I just want to feel him everywhere while his cock continues to throb and drip inside me. Jakol is gasping, too, and he hastily brings my lips to his, kissing me deeper than he’s ever kissed me before.

We stay like that for what feels like eons, just breathing against one another while we wait for the storm we’ve conjured to cool down and float away. Eventually, he softens up and gently withdraws himself from me. His cock doesn’t retract back inside, as I expected, but lies against his thigh, dripping with both of our fluids.

I drag a finger up his chest, then down again to where the fur begins at his groin. I want to memorize all of him so I can remember when he’s gone again. Jakol puts an arm underneath my head and brings me in as close as he can, then kisses my forehead over and over.

“You are marvelous,” he says, running his hands down my belly like he’s wondering the same thing I did—what will his generous amount of seed do in there?

“So are you.” I sigh against his neck, and it’s a deep, contented sort of sigh. “Thank you.”

He chuckles. “It’s my absolute pleasure. I will happily do that with you for the rest of my existence.”

I find that I don’t mind the idea of that too much, either. My lover may be a beast, but he’s my beast.