They say the royal library of Valeria holds every secret ever written.
Tonight it holds a new one.
The hour is past the second watch. The palace is a tomb of silence. Even the scribes have been dismissed hours ago. Only one lamp still burns, low and golden, on the long ebony reading table that runs the length of the western wing.
Queen Elowen sits in the high-backed chair at the head of the table, legs crossed, a heavy ledger open before her. She wears a dressing gown of deep burgundy velvet, sleeves pushed to her elbows, throat bare. Her hair is braided loosely over one shoulder. She looks like a scholar, not a queen.
I know better.
I stand behind her, ostensibly turning pages when she commands it. In truth my hands have not touched parchment in twenty minutes. They are occupied elsewhere: one buried beneath the fall of her gown, two fingers stroking slowly inside her, the other hand cupping her breast, thumb circling a nipple that has been hard since the moment we locked the doors.
She is soaked. Has been since the first corridor we passed where a single guard might have seen us. The risk always does this to her.
"Read the grain estimate for the northern provinces," she says aloud, voice perfectly steady, as though my fingers are not curled against the spot that makes her breath hitch.
I lean over her shoulder, pretending to scan the column of numbers. My lips brush the shell of her ear.
"Forty-two thousand bushels," I murmur. Then, softer, "You're dripping down my wrist, Mother."
Her only answer is to press back against my hand, taking my fingers deeper. A tiny, almost imperceptible moan vibrates in her throat.
I smile against her hair and withdraw my fingers. She makes a sound of protest that turns into a gasp when I bring them to my mouth and lick them clean, right there where she can watch.
Her eyes are dark, dangerous.
"On the table," she orders, voice low. "Now."
I obey instantly.
The ebony surface is cool against my bare back when I lie down among scattered scrolls and open ledgers. My shirt is already gone; she tore it off in the spiral staircase on the way here. My breeches are unlaced, cock jutting up flushed and leaking.
She stands, lets the velvet gown slip from her shoulders, and climbs onto the table after me. The lamp flame flickers across her skin as she straddles my hips, knees braced on either side of me.
For a moment she only looks, her gaze raking over me like a hand.
"My beautiful boy," she whispers. "All mine."
She sinks down in one slow glide.
We both exhale at the same time—long, shuddering, reverent.
She does not move at first. She simply sits there, full of me, inner muscles fluttering in tiny pulses that make my vision blur. Her hands rest on my chest, nails digging half-moons into my skin.
Then she begins to ride.
Slow. Agonizing. Every roll of her hips deliberate, dragging me across every sensitive place inside her. She watches my face the entire time, drinking in every twitch, every stifled groan.
I grip her thighs hard enough to bruise. She likes the marks. Likes seeing them the next morning when she dresses.
Minutes stretch into an eternity of wet heat and measured breath.
When she finally increases her pace, it is still controlled—long, deep strokes that end with her grinding her clit against me on every downstroke. The table creaks beneath us. Scrolls slide to the floor with soft thuds no one will ever hear.
I feel her tightening, drawing close.
"Come inside me," she commands, voice trembling on the edge. "I want to feel it while I spend on you."
I thrust up hard once, twice, and let go.
The release is blinding. I spill deep, pulse after pulse, groaning her name like a prayer. She follows a heartbeat later, back arching, head thrown back, a silent cry shaping her lips as her cunt milks me dry.
She collapses forward onto my chest, hair spilling across us both like ink. I wrap my arms around her, still buried inside, and hold her tight.
For a long while there is only the sound of our breathing and the soft rustle of parchment beneath us.
Eventually she lifts her head.
"Tomorrow," she says, tracing idle patterns through the sweat on my chest, "we take the throne room."
My spent cock twitches inside her at the thought.
She feels it and laughs, low and wicked.
"Greedy boy. I have created a monster."
"No," I whisper against her temple. "You have only unchained the one that was always yours."
She kisses me—slow, filthy, full of promise.
Outside these walls, the kingdom believes its queen spends her nights alone, mourning the absence of her warrior king.
Inside, she spends them teaching her youngest son exactly how many times a woman can come before the lamps burn out.
And we are only on night three.