The palace bathhouse is fed by natural hot springs that run beneath the citadel. At this hour it is deserted; the attendants were dismissed with a single cool glance from the queen hours ago.
Steam coils like incense through the vaulted chamber. The pools glow turquoise in the lamplight, the surface trembling with every breath we take.
She stands on the top step, naked, hair pinned loosely atop her head so only a few damp strands cling to her throat and breasts. Water laps at her calves. She looks like a goddess who has decided to ruin a mortal for sport.
I am already in the water, waist-deep, cock aching beneath the surface. She made me wait while she undressed slowly (peeling away each layer of court finery like shedding lies).
"Swim to me," she says.
I cross the pool in four strokes and stop just short of touching her. The heat of the water is nothing compared to the heat of her gaze.
She descends one step. Two. Until the water kisses the undersides of her breasts and her nipples tighten in the sudden cool air above the surface.
"Kneel."
The pool is shallow here; the water reaches my chest when I sink to my knees before her. She widens her stance on the submerged marble bench, places one foot on the step beside my thigh, and opens herself to me.
"Drink," she whispers.
I lean in and lick a slow line through her folds. The spring water has washed away the taste of us from earlier tonight, leaving only her (clean, aroused, perfect). I drink from her like the water is holy.
She threads fingers through my wet hair and rides my tongue with lazy rolls of her hips. The steam wraps around us; every moan is swallowed by the vaulted ceiling.
When she comes the first time, it is quiet (just a sharp inhale, a tremor that ripples the surface of the pool).
She does not let me stop.
She turns, braces both hands on the edge of the pool, and bends forward. The position offers her arse and cunt to me in one perfect, obscene line.
"Again," she orders over her shoulder. "With your fingers this time."
I slide three into her without warning. She is still swollen from the throne room, still sensitive. She pushes back greedily, fucking herself on my hand while I curl and thrust until she comes a second time, harder, a low cry echoing off the tiles.
Only then does she turn back to me.
"Stand up."
I rise. Water streams from my skin. My cock juts up, flushed dark, aching.
She wraps one hand around the base and squeezes (once, warningly).
"You do not move," she says. "You do not thrust. You stand perfectly still and let your queen take what is hers."
She sinks beneath the surface.
The first touch of her mouth underwater is shocking (heat and pressure and the strange weightlessness of the pool). She takes me to the root in one smooth glide, throat working around me, bubbles streaming from her nose.
I grip the edge of the pool to keep from falling.
She surfaces only when her lungs demand it, gasping, hair plastered to her cheeks, eyes wild.
Again. Deeper. Longer.
On the fourth descent she stays down until her throat convulses around me and I come helplessly, pulsing down her throat while the water churns around us.
She breaks the surface smiling, lips swollen, eyes triumphant.
But she is not finished.
She pushes me back until I am sitting on the wide submerged bench. Then she straddles me, guides me inside her, and sinks down slowly (so slowly) until I am buried in the tightest, hottest grip I have ever felt.
The water buoys her; she rises and falls in long, languid strokes that feel like dying and being reborn with every glide.
I cup her breasts, roll her nipples between my fingers the way she likes. She arches into my hands, head falling back, throat exposed.
"Mark me," she breathes.
I lean forward and suck a bruise just below her collarbone (dark, deliberate, impossible to hide beneath any gown tomorrow).
She moans and rides me faster.
The water sloshes over the edges of the pool with every thrust. Steam coils thicker. The lamps flicker.
She comes twice more like that (once grinding slow and deep, once bouncing hard and fast until the surface is a storm).
Only when she is trembling, oversensitive, does she slow and lean forward to rest her forehead against mine.
"Stay inside me," she whispers. "All night if we could. I want to fall asleep with you stretching me open."
We do not have all night. Dawn is only two hours away.
But we have long enough.
She stands, water streaming from her curves, and leads me to the wide marble ledge at the pool's edge (meant for resting, now meant for ruin).
She lies back, legs spread, and pulls me down on top of her.
"Slow this time," she murmurs. "I want to feel every inch for hours."
I slide into her again (easy, familiar, perfect) and begin the longest, laziest fuck of my life.
We move like the tide. Minutes blur. The lamps gutter lower. Her ankles lock at the small of my back; my mouth never leaves her skin.
When I finally come again, it is with her name on my lips and her fourth (or fifth, I have lost count) climax rippling around me.
After, she keeps me inside her, arms and legs wrapped tight, as though she could fuse us into one creature if she only held hard enough.
The water grows cool around us.
Somewhere far above, the palace will soon wake.
But here, in the steam and the half-light, there is only the sound of our breathing and the soft, wet drag of my cock still moving gently inside her because neither of us can bear to separate.
Not yet.
Not ever.