You were not about to have a repeat of that tonight, so you made them. Still, that didn’t mean you were safe from her shenanigans, because about eight rounds into truth or dare, you already had a cocktail and three shots into your system, enough alcohol to make your vision blurry at the edges and put a filter over the rational part of your brain.

Three shots turned into five, and another cocktail was half-emptied when you dragged your skirt up your legs, wobbling a little in front of the mirror where your reflection was staring back at you, hair messy and cheeks pink from all the laughing. As you struggled to change into some clothes worthy of being into a club full of drunk college students, Simone was already calling for a cab while the other girls were still rolling on the floor, giggling and drinking from their plastic cups.

You didn’t have half a mind to refuse going out, even if you knew there was a possibility for things to take a turn for the worst tonight, knowing Tara and Simone and the version of themselves clouded by so much alcohol. You took your purse from the couch in a hurry and followed them to the cab, stumbling a little on your poor choice of shoes. Just because you were tipsy, that didn’t mean you weren’t gonna dress for the occasion.

You stop in front of the bar now, Simone already leaning over the counter with a smile on her face, boobs peeking out from the cut of her blouse, chest pressing into the wood with the movement. She says something to the bartender, which you guess must be something flirty because he gives her a small laugh and turns to pour some transparent liquid into five small glasses.

The music is super loud, especially near the bar, but you still hear them clearly as they chant “Shots! Shots! Shots!”, so you all take your glass and clink them together before your head dips back and the strong liquid swirls down your neck, burning. You wince, coughing a little as you set the glass down on the counter, giggling at Simone and Tara’s faces, which aren’t that different from yours.

“Woo! That was much better than whatever we had at the dorm!” Tara grins, sliding her arm around your neck.

“Yeah, and a lot more expensive, too!” you huff, smiling at her because it is indeed better.

You spend the next half an hour or so by the bar, sharing a few more drinks, and you settle for a cocktail this time, something easier that takes longer to finish. Your mind is already fuzzy, everything funnier than it should be, so you know you’re not just tipsy anymore. You got to do some damage control, so you avoid any more shots, even when Tara pouts at you to try to convince you to have one more round with her.

The other two girls found their way to the other side of the pub where it is a lot more crowded, bodies clinging to one another while dancing, and Simone is deep in conversation with the bartender, which you suspect is nothing casual because his eyes keep drifting down to Simone’s chest every now and again, and she doesn’t seem to mind.

You laugh to yourself and turn your attention to Tara, then scan the rest of the pub. Since this is close to campus, you wonder if you’ll find any familiar faces here tonight. You frequent the pubs around campus often, especially when you’ve gotten all your focus on your studies and feel burned out. Being in a place with loud music and full of students such as yourself, who chase the same feeling of letting go of anxieties and stress, even if just for a few hours, makes you feel like there’s more out there than just your studies.

Tara is leaning against the counter beside you, her chin propped lazily in her palm as she scrolls through something on her phone, the screen casting a faint blue glow across her cheekbones. You take the opening to slip a hand into your purse and fish out the soft pack of cigarettes you’d shoved in there earlier, the cardboard a little crumpled from being pressed up against your lipstick and your keys. You nudge her shoulder with yours, leaning in close so you don’t have to shout over the music that’s still thrumming through the floor and up into the soles of your feet, the bass making your chest vibrate in a way that almost feels pleasant by now, almost familiar after this long.

“Smoke break?” you angle the pack so she can see it, drawing her gaze up from her phone. “I’m dying.”

She gives a small hum of agreement, slipping her phone into the back pocket of her jeans before sliding off the stool with a slight wobble that mirrors your own. You loop your arm through hers because you can already feel the buzz pooling warm and heavy in the bowl of your stomach, that liquid sort of heaviness that makes your steps feel a fraction too long, a fraction too generous with how much space they take. Tara is just steady enough to anchor you while you weave back through the crush of bodies, and you keep your free hand splayed out a little for balance as you slip between people, your shoulder catching now and again on someone’s arm, someone’s drink.

This place is one of those underground spots that doesn’t quite have rules, or doesn’t quite bother enforcing the ones it has, and there’s a stretch of corridor just off the main floor where people pour out from the different bars that share the space, leaning along the bricked wall with cigarettes pinched lazily between their fingers, the air heavy with smoke and the scent of perfume that bleeds into sweat and spilled liquor and turns into something almost intoxicating in its own right.

The music drops to a muffled pulse the second you step out from the doorway, and the relief of it hits you somewhere behind the ribs, your shoulders coming down a fraction as you tap the pack against your palm and slide a cigarette between your lips, the filter catching slightly on the tackiness of your gloss.

Tara is already drifting a few steps off, shouting at a girl she barely knows from her psych elective, so you let her go and lean your shoulder blades against the cool stretch of brick while you cup your hand around the flame of your lighter. It flickers twice before catching, and the first drag is warm and grounding in a way you didn’t realize you needed tonight, your eyes slipping half-closed as you tilt your head back and let the smoke curl slow up past your lashes.

You picked up smoking as a bad habit, second year in Uni. The pressure was too much, combined with the emotional wreckage your ex put you through, so you turned to something unhealthy instead of crying yourself to sleep every night. You tried to quit, but bad habits die hard, so you give yourself some grace on nights like this, blaming it on letting lose, telling yourself it’s just for tonight, just as a social thing and not something you still need to ease off the heaviness in your chest you still occasionally get.

You drag your eyes to the left, and it takes you a full minute to realize who is standing at the far end of the corridor. Caleb. Of course he would be here tonight, it doesn’t even come as a surprise to you that he’s out partying with his friends. You met Caleb your second year, too, in this exact same spot. You were a mess back then, makeup smudged and eyes puffy from crying, because you were really going through it at the time, and the loud music, the alcohol and seeing everyone around you have fun while you were still not over your ex—everything made you fall down the rabbit hole even faster. You were down to your last two cigarettes which you were desperate to inhale and just try to shut off your brain, but luck wasn’t on your side.

You lost your lighter somewhere in the crowd that night, and this stranger saw you were about to have a full mental breakdown as you desperately rummaged through your purse, huffing and puffing, annoyed. Caleb offered you his lighter with a casual smile, easy and charming enough to erase some of the frown between your eyebrows, and you took it from his fingers, giving a small smile.

You spent the rest of that miserable night talking and smoking in a corner, and the miserable night turned out not to be that miserable after all. He shared his own pack of cigarettes, shared some funny stories of himself, all in an attempt to make you laugh, which you did. The satisfaction swam from his face in waves, grinning at you like he won a prize, which only made you roll your eyes at him. But you were grateful, more than you wanted to voice, because his presence made it easier, stopped your from spiraling like you did many night before, in that same spot, doing the exact same thing, only being much more dejected and alone.

Caleb is the kind of person who occupies the air around him whether he means to or not, all loose shoulders and that easy slouch he does against any available surface, head thrown back laughing at something with the line of his throat catching under the cheap yellow string lights running along the corridor. He’s in that worn navy crew-neck he wears half the week, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, hair looking like someone (probably him) has been pulling at it for hours.

And right beside him, half a step back with a beer bottle dangling loose between his fingers and his other hand shoved deep into the pocket of his black jeans, is Zayne.

That makes your fingers go still around the cigarette, the smoke curling thin and untouched past your face as you take a beat to actually process what you’re looking at, because Zayne is not the kind of person you expect to find in an underground pub on a Friday night, leaning against a brick wall and listening with that faint half-smile he gets when he’s tolerating something more than enjoying it.

You’ve never quite been able to figure him out, in the loosely overlapping way that you know him, mostly through Caleb, mostly across the table in that one shared seminar where he sits two rows up and answers questions in that low, even way that always sounds like he’s already considered three counterarguments before opening his mouth. You’ve been on group projects with him a couple of times too, polite and easy to work with every single time. He’s a mistery to you, and you would lie to yourself if you didn’t admit he is quite an interesting person.

He’s brilliant, of course. Everyone on campus knows just how smart Zayne Li is, never one to be underestimated, never one to pass his study sessions in favor of hanging out or going out to have fun or just do things that don’t require a textbook and a laptop. He’s soon-to-be doctor, of course he is the type of person prioritizing his studies. Paired with the way he looks, you have to admit to yourself, he would make quite a handsome doctor.

Knowing all this about Zayne, it does take you by surprise actually seeing him here tonight. With a bottle of beer in his hand, no less. It makes your eyes squint despite yourself, a small smirk of curiosity more than anything pulling at the corner of your lips. Him and Caleb are as much opposites as people with different life ideals and future plans are, yet you couldn’t help but notice of how well they fit together as friends in the time you got to meet them and interact with them. Even so, from getting along well to this… well, it’s safe to say it’s got you all curious how Caleb even managed to drag Zayne out here, and even more so, how he convinced the guy to drink beer with him.

He looks different out here. Or maybe he just looks like himself in a setting where you weren’t expecting to see him. The contrast is what’s catching you off guard, because the dim corridor light cuts shadows down the line of his jaw in a way that makes you swallow before you’ve decided to. He’s even dressed so differently than he usually is on campus, with fitted black jeans and a black tee under his leather jacket. You would blame it on the amount of alcohol you had tonight and the thick layer of smoke haunting the corridor, but fuck it if he doesn’t look sexy as hell dressed in that. You bite your lip, eyes dragging up and down his body, quietly glad he doesn’t seem to notice he’s being checked out.

Caleb spots you first, his face splitting into the grin that’s probably gotten him out of more parking tickets than he’ll ever admit to.

“No fucking way!” He’s already pushing off the wall, crossing the corridor in a few easy strides. “Tell me you guys didn’t actually come here on purpose.”

“Sorry for barging on your domain, Xia.” You smirk at him when he’s close enough to see it. Tara is abandoning her psych girl and their conversation to throw her arms around his neck because Tara has known Caleb almost as long as you have, and the two of them dissolve into the loud, hugging, half-shouting reunion that they always seem to do whenever they collide somewhere unplanned.

Which leaves Zayne leaning against the wall with the bottle hanging loose in his hand, watching the spectacle with that mild expression that doesn’t quite commit to anything.

Watching, you realise after another second, you.

The cigarette burns down a millimeter while you hold his gaze, and you don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the bass still thumping faintly through the wall behind you or the fact that you weren’t expecting him here, but you can feel the heat climbing in a slow crawl up the side of your neck that you can’t quite reason away. You lift the cigarette in a small salute across the gap between you, then bring it back to your lips and pull a deliberate drag with your eyes still on him.

“Didn’t have you pegged for the underground type, Zayne.” you finally call, loud enough to carry over the loudness around you, soft enough that it isn’t really for anyone but him.

His head tilts a fraction, and he pushes off the wall to come closer. “Didn’t have you pegged for a smoker.”

He takes his time crossing to you, the bottle still loose in his hand, and you catch the way his eyes flick down the length of your dress and back up in the kind of split-second pass that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. You were looking for it, which is why it is hard to bite back the small smirk painting your lips.

“I guess I’m just full of surprises,” you say, shrugging one shoulder against the brick, unbothered.

“So I’m gathering.”

He stops in front of you, closer than acquaintances usually stand. The corridor is loud but not loud enough that you wouldn’t hear him if he wasn’t staying so close. He doesn’t really need to stand in your personal space, but it still feels like a decision, one he made somewhere around three strides back. You tilt your chin up to keep his gaze, and the brick is cool through the thin fabric of your dress where your shoulder blades are pressing into it.

“Caleb dragged you out, didn’t he?” you smile at him, eyes flicking back over his shoulder where Caleb is laughing with Tara and another girl a few steps back, and then flick back at him.

You’re aiming for casual, but it comes out a little lower than you meant it to, smoke-slow almost. His mouth does a small twitch at the corner, the not-quite-smirk that you’ve watched from across a seminar table more times than you’d like to admit to yourself in this exact moment. It makes heat crawl up your spine, grip your cigarette a little tighter.

“Something like that,” he hums, tilting his head.

“He’s persuasive.”

“He’s something.”

The laugh that comes out of you is real and surprised, the alcohol warming it from the inside, and Zayne watches you laugh with an expression you can’t entirely place, except for the part of it that you can. You hold the cigarette up between you, the smoke curling thin and pale through the space between his face and yours.

“You smoke, Zayne?” You already know the answer to that, like you knew the answer to him drinking, yet here he is in an underground pub with a bottle of cheap beer in his hand. So really, do you know the answer?

“Not usually, I don’t.” There’s a small pause, the corner of his mouth twitching again. “I do on special occasions, though.”

You tilt your head, eyes narrowing in surprise. “Social smoker?”

“Something like that.” Your eyes follow as he lifts the bottle to his lips, head tilting slightly as he takes a sip of the beer. It’s probably gotten too warm, judging by the smallest narrowing of his eyes at the taste.

You drag another smoke into your lungs, even if only to distract yourself from staring without any regards at him. His throat bobs slowly with it, and you can’t help but trace it with your eyes.

You’re not as subtle as you usually would be. Granted, you’ve got a little too much alcohol in your system to care for subtlety, but you’re at least aware of Zayne watching you closely too. That alone makes you shiver slightly, a small tremor up your spine, which you could always blame on the coldness of the wall behind you. It would be a lie, anyway.

“Sorry if I’m having a hard time believing that, Zayne—you? A social smoker?” you puff out the smoke, letting it curl in the space between you that has gotten an inch smaller since you’ve started talking, “What, you’re a social drinker, too? And here I thought you lost a bet to Caleb or something.” You gesture to the bottle in his hand with a cheeky smile.

Zayne only hums, something you can’t actually hear because of all the noise, but you do inch a tad bit closer to him.

“There’s quite a lot you don’t know about me.” He tilts his head down, hazel eyes focused on you, and the subtle move has your heart picking up the pace a little. He only lingers on your face for a few seconds before looking around casually. “Is it that hard to believe I’m here out of my own free will?”

You puff a small laugh, because yeah, it is quite hard to believe Zayne Li would choose this as his preferred Friday night activity. He doesn’t seem that out of place as you would have thought he would, if someone were to come up to you and say they saw Zayne Li in an underground pub, surrounded by smokers and loud college students, drinking beer in a leather jacket and tight jeans.

“I feel like answering that would not make your impression of me improve.” You inhale again, pursing your lips around the cigarette. A small curve of his lips has your stomach doing a flip, because of many reasons, really. One would be that you never expected Zayne to be so easy to talk to, and another one would be how good that smirk looks on his lips.

You lick your own unconsciously.

He shuffles closer to you, and you shift on your heels to make some space for him. Leaning with his shoulder on the wall, he brings the bottle to his lips again, so you break eye contact to rummage through your purse again, looking for another cigarette since the one you had in your hand burned all the way through.

From the corner of your eye, you see Tara and Caleb laugh at something, then Tara looks your way and silently gestures toward the bar at the end of the corridor. You immediately get what she’s saying, the two of them already making their way there, Caleb’s hand around her shoulders to stabilize her. You roll your eyes and smile, turning back to Zayne who’s silent beside you, eyes looking in the same direction.

You’re almost out of cigarettes, which would be just your luck, but at least you’ve got enough to stay out here for a while longer. Not that you really need an excuse to hang out here, but hanging out with Zayne in this enviorment which is far from academic, makes you feel a new type of nervousness.

You light your cigarette with a flick of the lighter, the small flame catching the corner of your mouth for half a second before it disappears, and you tilt your body in Zayne’s direction, hip cocked against the brick, smoke curling slow up between you.

“Fair enough. Then you won’t mind me asking why you’ve picked up smoking?”

He lifts a brow at you, something curious in his expression, something almost probing, like he’s already three steps ahead of whatever answer you’re about to give him. He waits patiently for your response, head tilted a fraction, and you find yourself shrugging a shoulder before the silence has the chance to stretch into something heavier than you want it to.

“Bad habit,” you offer, mouth curving in a playful gesture, something someone who hasn’t fully decided how much to share would do, tapping a little ash off the end of your cigarette. “Seems like I stumble into bad decisions lately.”

The corner of his mouth lifts, the smallest thing, but enough that you catch it and feel the warmth of it settle somewhere low and pleased under your sternum. You like that. You like that you can pull that out of him without seeming to try very hard at all. He brings the bottle back up to his mouth then and tips the rest of the beer into his throat in one slow swallow, the line of it working under the dim corridor light. When he’s done he leans sideways and sets the empty bottle on the narrow ledge running off the brick, where someone has already left two crushed caps and a folded matchbook.

“Do you mind?” His chin lifts slightly toward the cigarette between your fingers, brows arched, easy with it.

You blink at him for half a second, an eyebrow flicking up in something that’s mostly confused and a little curious, and the smile that pulls at your mouth has a touch of cheekiness in it that you don’t quite bother smoothing over.

“By all means.”

You pass it to him slowly, the brush of your fingers landing in the handoff, and you watch with quiet curiosity as he lifts it to his mouth, the filter catching the light where your gloss has left a faint pink print along it. He pauses just before he draws, gaze flicking up over the line of his fingers to lock with yours, holding it there long enough that the air between you tightens around your ribs.

You lean in then, mouth drifting close to his ear because you tell yourself the corridor is loud, even though neither of you have been struggling to hear each other.

“Is this one of your special occasions, then?”

You linger only a breath longer than you need to before easing back, and the small smirk that curves slow over his mouth has your stomach turning once in a lazy roll.

“I have a feeling you wouldn’t mind if it was, would you?”

His voice is low, casual enough on the surface that it would be easy to miss what’s underneath it if you weren’t already listening for it. He drags a slow inhale from the cigarette, the ember flaring orange in the dim light, and tilts it back toward you between two fingers while exhaling the smoke off to the side of you, lips half-parted, gaze still settled steady on yours.

You raise an eyebrow at him.

He raises one back.

“Come closer, then.”

You take half a step in and tip your face up, but he doesn’t pass the cigarette to your fingers this time. He holds it for you, knuckles brushing the corner of your mouth as you wrap your lips around the filter and draw. Your free hand drifts up the front of his jacket, fingers walking slow over the leather, finding the lapel and curling there a beat before sliding higher to the collar. You tug him down without hurry, just enough that his head dips and his lips part on a quiet exhale that you can feel along your top lip.

You let the smoke leave your mouth in a slow, unhurried push, and he takes it from the gap between your lips in a soft inhale, his chest rising shallow with it, the line of his mouth coming so close to yours that you can feel the heat of him without quite touching. Inches between you. Neither one of you moving to close them.

His free hand finds your hip then, settles there with a quiet weight that’s deliberate in a way that makes your breath catch under your ribs. His eyes search yours for half a beat, something unspoken passing through them, a question low enough that he doesn’t need to voice it for you to feel it land. You tilt your head a fraction in answer, nose brushing slow against his, and the corner of his mouth twitches against the small drag of it.

You slip the cigarette from between his slender fingers, holding it up between you with a small, playful curl of your mouth, and bring it to his lips while trying to not be too aware of how close you’re standing. He smirks, eyes still on yours, and parts his lips around the filter as you hold it for him, the ember catching as he draws. His hand slides from your hip up along the line of your waist in the same breath, fingers spreading wide over your ribs through the thin material of your dress. The sudden firm grasp of it pulls a small gasp out of you before you’ve decided to make a sound, your back arching against the brick on instinct.

He uses it. He bends his face down into the small space your gasp has carved between you and exhales the smoke between your parted lips in a slow, deliberate stream, and you breathe him in without thinking, the heat of his breath, the bitter trace of the cigarette, all of it dragging down into your lungs while his thumb sweeps a slow circle against the side of your ribcage.

You hold the smoke a beat longer than you need to before letting it spill back out, curling pale up between your mouths. You see his gaze drop and stay this time, settling on your parted lips, a look so intense it has your tongue peek out to wet your lower lip.

“You’ve made a real mess of it, by the way.”

His voice has gone quieter, more of a low vibration in his chest than a proper sentence, and his thumb keeps up its slow tracing against the side of your waist, the easy patience of it almost worse than the kiss he isn’t giving you yet. You’re pretty sure that’s where this is going, and you don’t know what made you dizzier. The fact that his hand is on your waist, burning through the fabric, or that you’re close enough to smell his cologne mixed with the cigarette smoke.

You don’t quite follow at first, head still hazed from the smoke and the alcohol and the warmth of him pressed close.

He did it so casually, too. You knew Zayne to be confident in his academics, but didn’t quite expect him to flirt so smoothly. When you offered your cigarette to him, you thought he would either pass or just awkardly draw from it, aiming to indulge you. What you didn’t expect but are currently pleasantly surprised by was his little cocky act of doing shotguns with you.

“Of what?” You breathe against his lips, batting your eyelashes at him.

“Your lipstick.”

Your tongue traces the inside of your lower lip on instinct, and his gaze drops with the movement and snaps back up as if it hadn’t quite given itself permission to wander.

“Have I?”

“Half of it. Pretty thoroughly.”

The way he sets it down has a careful weight to it, an observation laid between you that he’s clearly waiting for you to do something with, and it takes you a beat longer than it should to catch the implication underneath. Smudged. Like someone else has already been at your mouth tonight before him. The slow grin tugs at the corner of yours before you bother to school it.

“And you’ve just been thinking about that this whole time, is that what you’re saying?”

His thumb hasn’t paused along your ribs, the slow circle of it almost distracted in its patience, grounding and indecent at once.

“Hard not to, when it’s right there.”

“Got a theory?” You stare right into his hazel gaze, voice a little defiant in its provocation.

His hand drifts slowly, sliding up the line of your side until his warm palm finds the curve of your throat and settles there, fingers spreading along the side of your jaw with a tenderness that doesn’t quite match the heat behind his eyes.

“A few.” His eyes trace a slow path from your eyes to your mouth and back up.

“Care to share?” you whisper, finger dragging slowly down his chest.

The pad of his thumb drags slow along the corner of your mouth, no accident in the angle, smearing the gloss further across the seam of your lips, and he doesn’t even bother to hide the small curl of satisfaction it pulls into one side of his own.

“Not particularly.”

You let him. You let him work the soft pad of his thumb across the ruined line of your mouth, eyes still tipped up to his, your own smirk tugging slow at the smudge he’s just made worse, and you can feel your heartbeat picking up under your collarbones in a way that’s almost ridiculous, given how little it takes to set it off. You laugh lowly, more of a hum in your chest than a proper sound, and his thumb pauses at the corner of your mouth at the feel of it before resuming, slower now, almost thoughtful.

“It was a shot glass,” you tell him, smiling sweet up at him through your lashes in a way you know is performative and a little unfair. “Disappointing answer, I know.”

His mouth twitches, the not-quite-smirk pulling at the corner.

“Hm. Less interesting than I had it.”

“And what did you have in mind?”

“Someone less careful than I would be.”

That lands low and warm in your stomach in a way the alcohol can’t take credit for, and the air between you thins by another fraction, your chest brushing his with the next breath you take in.

“You think you’d be careful with my mouth, then?” You raise your eyebrows at him, while he only tilts his head to the side.

“When I wanted to be.”

“And when you didn’t?”

His gaze drops to your mouth again and holds there, the smallest curl pulling slow at the corner of his, his thumb still warm at the smudge he made.

“You’d find out.”

You let the silence stretch a beat longer than it needs to, fingers still curled loose at the collar of his jacket, the cigarette burning quietly down between your knuckles, his palm still cradling the side of your face.

“Hm. Then perhaps I can just...”

You don’t wait on him this time. You tilt your face slow out of his hand, the drag of his palm trailing along your jaw as you go, and bring your mouth to the line of his instead, lips parting against the faint catch of stubble as you press a soft kiss just below the corner of his jaw. His exhale stutters audibly through his nose, and you feel the small tightening of his fingers along your jaw before they slip down to settle warm at the side of your throat.

You drag your mouth lower, unhurried, brushing along the line of his jaw and dipping into the soft warm hollow under it, where his pulse is hammering a good deal faster than the rest of his face has bothered to let on.

“Looks like I’m finding a way to smudge it on my own,” you murmur against his skin, the words landing in soft drags of your mouth as you say them. “Hope you don’t mind.”

You feel his hand slip from your throat, his arm winding loose around your waist as it goes, palm trailing the line of your spine in one long, slow stroke before it dips lower still and finds the curve of your ass. There’s no hesitation in the way his hand settles there. He cups you with the same easy certainty he used to find your hip earlier, except this time he uses it to pull you flush against the front of his body in one quiet, deliberate haul. It takes you off guard, the gasp that comes out of you is small and entirely involuntary, breaking soft against the side of his neck where your mouth had been working a kiss in.

You let it land. You let yourself breathe through the sudden warm press of his body against the line of your hips, the heat of him through denim, before you tilt your face up to drag your lips along the shell of his ear.

“Keep that hand right there, Zayne,” your voice has gone smoke-low, almost lazy with it, the dirty curl in it sliding under the playfulness, “and you’re going to ruin a lot more than my lipstick tonight.”

You could care less that you’re surrounded by people, and Zayne doesn’t seem to mind either, so you resume your kisses down his neck. There’s nothing to see, anyway. If anyone glances your way they would only see two drunk college students making out against a wall, in a dirty underground corridor connecting multiple pubs.

He huffs a soft sound through his nose, something close to a laugh but not quite committing, the warm gust of it stirring the hair at your temple. His hand tightens a fraction at the curve of your ass before easing back into a more measured grip, like he’s reminding himself of the line he’s already crossed. His other hand has come up to your face at some point you can’t pinpoint, and you find his palm warm along the side of your throat with his thumb resting at the line of your jaw.

“Is that the alcohol talking?”

The words land close to your temple in that low tone you remember from across a seminar table, except they’re pressed up against the side of your face now and carrying a heat behind them you’ve never heard him use in a classroom. Your hand has its own ideas about the silence, sliding slow up from the lapel of his jacket along the line of his throat, fingertips dragging through the soft warmth at the side of his neck before settling there. You watch the way his throat works in response, the small swallow he doesn’t quite manage to hide.

“Are you blaming my advances on how much I had to drink?” you pull back from his neck, lashes fluttering.

“Shouldn’t I?” His thumb traces your jaw, gaze flicking over the color sitting high in your cheeks like he wants you to know he’s noticed. “You’re flushed all over and clinging to me.”

Your fingers curl at the back of his neck where the hair tapers short as you laugh softly at his words, giving a small tug at the strands there, just enough to angle his face down a fraction lower toward yours. The flicker of surprise that crosses his eyes is gone almost as fast as it shows.

“Don’t girls cling to you without being tipsy, Zayne?” Your gaze drifts lazy up at him through your lashes, slurring your words just enough. “I doubt it.”

You watch as his gaze drops slow over your face, considering what you’re implying. His hand at your throat slides a fraction higher, his palm now cupping the underside of your jaw, and that has your pulse picking up under his fingers. The silence stretches loaded enough that you shift your hips an inch against the front of him just for the warmth of him through your dress, and the corner of his mouth twitches, catching it.

It’s not that you really think girls just throw themselves at Zayne on a daily basis. He is smart, funny, and considerate, yet he doesn’t strike you as the type to just have women at his side. That would be Caleb, with all his positive energy and charisma, a true heartbreaker with women hanging around him all day in hopes of keeping his attention on them.

Zayne is the opposite. Or at least, the Zayne you knew before tonight. Quiet Zayne, who girls occasionally gather enough courage to go up to and ask to hang out under the pretense of studying together. But this Zayne is different. Or maybe it’s just another side of him you didn’t know existed, yet somehow managed to capture your attention and keep it.

You’re intrigued, that’s what this is. Intrigued of just how he’ll behave if you push him just a bit more.

He plucks the cigarette from where it’s burned down between your knuckles between two of his own fingers, gentle about the handoff, and lifts it back up between your faces.

“Finish your cigarette.”

You arch a brow at him, the smile pulling slow at one side of your mouth and a little defiant.

“Finish it for me.”

His mouth twitches deeper this time. He lifts the cigarette to your lips without ceremony, holding it for you the way he did before, and you let him, drawing slow with your eyes still up on his while the ember flares. When you pull back, he brings the filter to his own mouth and pulls the last of it down to almost nothing in one long, easy inhale, the line of his jaw working under the dim corridor light in a way that has heat curling low in your stomach for what feels like the tenth time tonight. He drops the spent end to the floor and grinds it out under the heel of his boot.

You don’t wait for him to take the lead this time. Your right hand that has been rsting on his chest simply moves, fitting along the line of his jaw with a grip that’s firmer than is strictly polite, thumb sliding under his chin to tilt his face down toward yours. The small flicker of surprise that flares behind his eyes is barely a breath long before it folds back into the half-lidded heat that’s been settling there for the last several minutes.

“Won’t you kiss me?” the words curl between your mouths like smoke, soft and tempting.

You don’t bother making it sound like anything other than what it is, just a soft, easy question, your mouth already drifting up toward his on instinct. As you move to close the distance, his hand moves to your face, thumb pressing firm against the soft underside of your chin to keep you a careful half-inch shy of getting there.

It catches you off guard. You’d half-expected him to dip into it the second you angled up. You feel the wall of him before you feel the resistance, but he doesn’t move into your hand and doesn’t move out of it either. He just stays like that, with his head tilted slightly, the little smile playing slow at the corner of his tempting mouth.

“Is that all it takes?”

Your brain runs a beat slower than it should, the smoke and the alcohol and the warm pressure of his palm cupping your ass adding up to something you can’t quite manage at speed, so you blink up at him in something soft and confused before the question lands properly.

“Hm?”

“Batting your eyelashes at a guy and sweet-talking him in order to kiss you breathless?”

The word breathless lands somewhere behind your sternum in a way that doesn’t help the current situation where you can only think about how much you want to close that inch between you. Your lashes do a small, slow drag down his face, entirely accidental this time, and you watch his gaze flick down to catch it. Your fingers shift along his jaw, thumb pressing a little harder under the line of his chin like you’re trying to hold him in place by sheer reminder of who started this.

“They usually fold at that.” you smirk up at him, looking as confident as you can be.

He mirrors your smirk, hazel eyes sparkling in what you guess is amusement and wonder.

“I’m sure they do.” His thumb leaves your chin to trace a slow line along the seam of your bottom lip, dragging the smudge of lipstick a fraction further across your mouth. “But you don’t have to do all that with me.”

You blink up at him properly this time, something almost wary threading through the heat, because that wasn’t quite the response you’d braced for. The hand still cupped firm around your ass tells you he isn’t pulling away. The hand at your face tells you the same. So what he’s actually saying takes a moment to settle.

“All what?”

He leans in, close enough that the warmth of his breath skims along your top lip, close enough that for one suspended second you think you’ve actually won, but his voice when it comes is barely more than a vibration in his chest.

“Beg.”

Your breath stops in your throat. The breathy tone he used, dancing across your mouth while his eyes stare you down, it all makes your thighs tense.

“As much as I’d love to get you begging, I tend to reserve that for activities a little more befitting than kissing.”

That one sentence does something to you that you weren’t prepared for, and your whole body responds before your brain has a chance to catch up. The heat climbs hot up the column of your throat, your thighs press together on instinct against the wall and the front of him, and the laugh that tries to come up at the back of your throat dies somewhere before it makes it to your mouth, because you suddenly have no idea what to say back to that.

You decide, somewhere fast and unspoken, that you don’t necessarily enjoy not knowing what to say.

So you do something with your hands instead.

The fingers curled at the back of his neck tighten down hard, the hand at his jaw drops to fist in the front of his jacket, and you push off the wall behind you with one decisive step that brings him with you, his weight following your pull in a way that suggests he had maybe half a second to brace and chose not to. You spin your bodies slowly until you are the one with facing the wall now, and his back finds the brick where yours had been pressed up against it a heartbeat ago.

He goes easily. He goes so easy you don’t entirely trust it, because the corner of his mouth lifts in something that isn’t a smile so much as an acknowledgement, like he’s noting the move down somewhere for later reference.

You take it anyway. You pin him there with the flat of your palm pressed against the front of his jacket, your other hand sliding from his jaw down to grip the side of his throat with a hold that’s firm and just slightly bossy, your thumb resting against the soft hollow under his ear. His hands settle at your waist, both of them now, his cool palms warm again through your dress. His grip is still rather loose, casual even, no attempt to flip you back, just standing pinned with his hands at your sides like he’s letting you have this and intends to enjoy every second of it.

You let go of his jacket to slide your hand down and curl your fingers along the dip of his waist, gripping there. You pull his hips snug against yours in one slow controlled drag, while you slide your hand back up from his throat to cup the side of his jaw, fingers fitting along the line of bone there with a hold that is firm and unmistakably for-keeping, tilting his face down toward yours another small fraction.

He lets the silence sit for a few beats. Lets it work on you. His thumb has started a slow, lazy drag along the dip of your waist again, like he is in no particular hurry about anything despite the position he’s currently in.

“Besides,” he tilts his head a fraction lower, mouth grazing along the line of your cheekbone now, the brush of his stubble pulling another small involuntary shiver through you, “you’re beautiful even when you’re sexually frustrated.”

Your breath catches audibly. You can’t help it. The grip you have along his jaw tightens, your fingertips pressing into the soft skin at the side of his face hard enough to leave a faint imprint, the other hand sliding up his waist to fist loose at the side of his jacket and drag him in another small fraction.

You hold his gaze. You don’t bat your lashes like before, you only lift your lashes very slowly from his mouth to his piercing eyes, licking your lips. Every sensual second of it pointed straight up at him with no question left about what it’s asking for.

“Kiss me, Zayne.”

He leans down to kiss your cheek instead, the brush of his mouth too soft to count, the smirk you can feel against your skin doing the rest of the work. You catch the faint warmth of his breath before he pulls back just enough to watch you suffer through it.

“You’re just teasing me at this point!” The huff comes out half laugh, half complaint, and your body betrays you anyway, leaning harder into the line of him, hips finding the firm shape of his thigh through his jeans. You grind once, slow, mostly to see what he does with it.

What he does is press his thigh up a fraction to meet you, casual as anything, like he hasn’t just made your dress ride higher up the back of your leg. His free hand settles on your waist, thumb pushing under the hem to find bare skin, and you forget, for a second, that you’re standing in a corridor at all.

“You asked me to kiss you,” he murmurs, low enough that you have to tilt your face up to catch it, and there’s a quiet laugh threaded through it that says he knows exactly what he’s doing.

You blink up at him, lashes heavy, mouth parted around the obvious answer he’s pretending he didn’t hear. The little crease at the corner of his eye gives him away. He’s enjoying this. He’s enjoying you, scrambling.

“Obviously I meant my lips.” You jab a finger lightly into his chest, the gesture losing all its bite when your palm just stays there, flat against the warmth of his shirt, feeling the slow steady thump of his heart under it.

He glances down at your hand. Then back up at you. The smirk pulls a fraction higher on one side, like he’s clocked the way your fingers have curled into the fabric without permission, and he is going to make you live with the evidence of it.

“Should have been more specific.” It comes out almost lazy, dropped right against the bridge of your nose, and you have approximately half a second to register the unfairness of it before he moves.

He smirks and leans down, rotating you so your back is against the wall again, brick cool through the thin fabric of your dress. His mouth brushes yours, a graze, barely a promise, and his hands come up to cup your face, tilting it the way he wants it with that easy confidence that should not be legal on a college campus.

You close your eyes. You wait for it. You actually part your lips for it. And then his mouth slides down past yours, jaw to throat, lips closing soft and sucking against the skin under your ear.

“Why don’t you—oh fuck…mmm.” Your voice flatlines mid-sentence, the rest of whatever clever thing you were going to say abandoned somewhere you don’t care about. The frustration that had been building under your skin tips, slides, becomes something heavier and lower and a lot less articulate. Your fingers, still flat against his chest, curl until you’re holding fistfuls of his shirt.

That has your arms wrapping around his neck, palm sliding up into the back of his hair where it’s soft and a little damp from the heat of the place. One of his hands leaves your jaw and finds your ass through your dress, gripping firm enough that you feel it in your teeth, pulling you flush against him. He moves slow over your throat, mouth open, sucking kisses in a careful line like he’s mapping for something specific. When he finds it, just under the angle of your jaw, you make a sound straight into his ear that you would not have made sober. He hums against your skin, satisfied, and stays there to suck more marks.

The corridor is loud. There’s music thumping muffled through the wall behind you, somebody shouting somebody else’s name from the bar end, the wet smack of a bottle going over and a chorus of laughter rolling after it. You hear all of it from somewhere far away. The actual noise in your head is the rush behind your ears and the soft, obscene sounds his mouth is making at your throat, and the way your body keeps trying to climb him by half-inches.

You’re thinking about his dorm. You don’t even know if his dorm is empty right now, or if another one of his roommates is there right now. You’re thinking about it anyway, in the vague, drunk way of somewhere with a door that closes, and you’re imagining how fast you could get there if he picked you up off this wall right now and asked.

“Babe?”

Simone’s voice cuts through it like somebody pulling a needle off a record. You feel Zayne smile against your throat before he lifts his head slowly, taking his sweet time about it. His thumb strokes once over the line of your jaw before his hand drops.

You turn your head against the brick. Simone is two steps out of the pub door, one hand braced on the frame to keep herself vertical, the other holding what looks like somebody else’s drink, because she’s not the type to drink that questionable-looking liquid. Her eyes have done the math on Zayne’s mouth and your throat and the gap that is approximately nonexistent between your bodies, and instead of saying anything about it she just goes wide-eyed and breaks into a slow, delighted giggle behind her hand.

“Oh my god,” she shouts-whispers, which is louder than her speaking voice, “okay, okay, I didn’t see anything! I’m looking for Tara. Have you seen Tara? Hi, Zayne.”

“Hi, Simone,” Zayne says, perfectly even, like his hand isn’t still resting on the back of your thigh.

You open your mouth to answer her and don’t get the chance, because that’s when Tara rounds the corner from the bar with Caleb half-draped across her shoulders and a small herd of people you only half-recognise from someone’s seminar trailing in their wake. Tara takes one look at you against the wall, one look at Zayne, one look at Simone giggling into her own wrist, and her face does something complicated and triumphant that you’re going to have to answer for tomorrow.

“Round two!” Caleb announces to the entire corridor, lifting an arm. “Music’s fucking unreal in there, we’re going back in. Li. Bring your girl.”

Your girl. You feel that one land somewhere under your ribs. Zayne’s thumb does a small, deliberate stroke against the back of your thigh where nobody can see it, and you don’t trust your face at all.

“We’re good,” Zayne says easily, already pushing off the wall enough to give you space without giving you up. “You guys go.”

“Booo. Boring.” Caleb grins at him with no real heat. “Suit yourself, man. Text me.”

Tara’s eyes flick from Zayne to you and back, and she doesn’t say a single thing, which from Tara is loud. She just hooks her arm tighter around Caleb’s waist and lets the herd pull them toward the door, Simone falling in beside her with one last giggly look thrown over her shoulder.

The door swallows them. The bass kicks back up muffled. You’re aware, suddenly and very clearly, that you are still flushed from your collarbones up, that your dress is twisted slightly at the hip, that you can feel the wet print of his mouth cooling under your jaw, and that your head has started doing the slow soft pitch that means another drink would absolutely be a bad idea.

You should go in with them. The smarter version of you, the one who isn’t several drinks deep with her thighs still pressed together against a brick wall, knows that. The version of you currently operating is mostly running on the question of whether Zayne is going to put his hand back on your face or not.

He doesn’t. He steps in close again, but only to lean down to your ear, one hand braced on the wall above your shoulder, and his mouth ghosts over the same spot under your jaw that he claimed two minutes ago.

“If I kiss you properly right now,” his voice has gone quiet enough to be just for you, “you’re not making it home alone. So.” he pauses slightly, the barest scrape of his teeth against your skin. “Be specific next time, hm?”

He kisses your cheek. The same chaste, smirking press as before, in exactly the same place, and you feel it like a verdict.

When he pulls back his eyes are doing that mild thing again, the one that doesn’t commit to anything, except now you know better. He pushes off the wall, fishes his phone out of his back pocket, fires off something quick that you assume is the promised text to Caleb, and tilts his head toward the stairs at the corridor’s end.

You follow him with your throat still buzzing and your head full of all the versions of tonight that just got taken off the table, and you are absolutely going to think about the one where you’d been more specific the entire way home.

(credits for the Art go to Raoni - @/raonnni on X)

© zaynessbeloved 2026. please don’t copy, repost or translate my works. thank you!

.ᐟ✧ translations or reposts of my work on tumblr, ao3, or other sites ARE NOT permitted. please do not ask. do not reuse my blogpost headers, dividers, or layouts. these are original designs of my own. thank you!

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You had expected a prince, beloved by his people and low enough in the inheritance line of his own kingdom to allow him to wed you. Or perhaps a duke, well-liked with his handsome features and intellect. You would've even taken a general, an irreplaceable asset in talks of strategy.

What you had never anticipated was for your intended spouse to be a silent knight.

"He is to be my husband? Truly?" you ask your lead lady-in-waiting as she assists you in undressing your extravagant engagement gown. "Him?"

"The court has deemed him as such," Tara says as the velvety fabric the color of rich wine pools at your feet, moving to unlace the ties of your corset at your back. "Why? Is he truly so terrible?"

"I would not know," you say, laughing humorlessly as you think back to how still and stoic he had been. "He spoke naught for the entire engagement talks. He hardly moved, nor did he even remove his helmet."

Tara's fingers pause. "Truly? Even in the presence of his queen?"

"Not a soul made a comment on it," you huff, taking in a lungful of air when relief rushes into the release of your bosom from the corset's restraints. "And I am not queen until the ceremony which makes me his."

"It will make him yours, milady," Tara corrects gently, removing the undergarments from your weary form. "You will rule this kingdom. He is just a formality."

"He's a suit of armor," you scoff, irritation blooming into anger as you lower yourself into the steaming bath basin brought in after the long day. "I could not pick him out from any of the ones that line our halls."

"Then he is a decoration," Tara corrects as she rests her head on her elbows on the edge of the basin. "Hopefully a pretty one!"

She knows how you prefer to bathe yourself, and stays for conversation, even as you scrub at your own skin in jerky, annoyed movements.

"Only the gods know," you mutter, head tilting back as you sink further into the heated water. Your brows furrow as you stare up at the ceiling, tracing the intricate, swirling patterns there with your gaze. "Is he to always keep the armor on? Am I to marry him like that? What of our wedding night?!"

Tara coughs, cheeks an adorable pink at your blunt words, and you stifle an affectionate snort.

"Maybe he will draw the curtains?" she suggests, giggling at the thought, and you can't hold in your own laughter now at the ridiculous mental image. "And tell you not to look?"

You groan, holding your breath as you submerge yourself in the bath in favor of facing your daunting future of being married to a man hidden away from you in metal.

There is a very brief engagement period, more for show than anything else.

You suspect it also gives ample time for the court as they rush through preparations for the wedding itself. They were eager to put you on the throne as soon as possible, unwilling to leave the kingdom wanting of a ruler for much longer.

And being courted by your chosen fiancé is…well.

Courting is hardly a suitable term.

Sitting across from each other as you sipped at your tea, and he refused to lift his visor to partake in his own? Making idle comments on the weather, the color of your wedding dress, what flowers were being arranged, only to be met with stone cold silence from your husband to be?

Lovely.

You are all too well aware of the attention of your court chaperones in the parlor with you. As you are also aware of any tantrum you may want to throw not being tolerated.

You were no longer just a princess to be spoiled and entertained. You were to be queen, and to be married to a taciturn knight, who seemed to hold no possible interest or regard for you.

At one point, you swear you hear snoring coming from inside that helmet, but then his head is lifting the next.

"Am I to at least have your name?" you finally ask at one point, unable to keep all the bite out of your tone when you do.

There is an echoing hum of disapproval behind you, and your eyes slide away from the silvery helmet, gazing at the wavyleaf sea lavender dancing in the breeze through the window.

"It has been decided that it would not be for the best," one of your advisors says from behind you, and you lift your fingers to your lips, hardly muffling the bitter laugh that slips through.

"It has been decided," you repeat slowly, balling the fabric of your gown in your lap, frustration hidden underneath the tablecloth, "that it would not be best for me to know my own husband's name?"

Silence.

"That…is correct, Your Highness."

You turn your sharp gaze onto your fiancé, a smirk tilting up behind your hand when you hear the creak of his armor when he straightens a fraction under your attention.

"And does he agree to such conditions in our marriage?"

"He does," your advisor replies.

"So he will never speak?" you intone the statement, exasperated beyond measure.

"Ah…that is up to him, Your Highness," they say, and you glance off to the side again.

"And his face?"

"Again, it is not in your best interest—"

"Then I have heard enough."

You rise from your chair, delicately smoothing out the wrinkles you'd caused in your dress.

With tight-lipped smile, you nod towards the future companion of your life as he sits motionless, faceless, nameless. A complete stranger for all your days.

To hell with no tantrums. The least you could do before bearing the weight of the crown was show a little bit of how furious you were.

"Well then," you say, grinning with thinly contained malice. "I look forward to our matrimony and life together. I am sure we will be so very happy."

You ignore the sharp cries of your advisors behind you when you leave, and force yourself to keep going even when you hear the armor creak again, the chair pushed back.

You keep walking, and refuse to take any visitors for the rest of the day.

You have not looked back towards your ever present, stoic statue for your walk through the gardens.

You do not remember at what point he had slipped in behind you. It had been a lovely day, the scent of the lavender on the breeze calming enough to lure you out of your royal chambers. And with the wedding day fast approaching, you'd take any moment of solitude you could get.

It may have not even come to your attention that he had joined you if it wasn't for that telltale creak in the armor on your third bout around the garden.

You paused, and so did he.

For a long moment, you stood there, your dress the color of a slow approaching dawn fluttering in the floral breeze. The rose and lilac shades of the skirt tighten in your grip.

"Were you sent to follow me?" you ask finally.

Another moment passes, steeped in silence.

You sigh, ready to march back within the castle walls, desperate for as much time away from him as you could manage before you were bound to him forever.

Then, you hear a gentle voice carried to you on the wind.

"No, Your Highness," the knight says, and you freeze. "I was not."

His voice is…oh.

It is much softer than you had imagined. It carries with it a calm that almost washes over you, if you weren't so irritated by his existence in the first place.

You wait for him to say something, anything else.

He doesn't.

Slowly, you begin to walk through the gardens again.

You are acutely aware of his presence now as he follows behind you.

"May I have your name?" you ask finally, unable to curb the curiosity, the uncertainty of the unknown that gnaws at your insides when it comes to him.

"You may not."

You school your expression, head held high as ever, well-practiced at hiding your frustration when you truly wanted to.

You just liked to make it be known when you could afford it.

"Will you answer any of the questions I ask?"

He does not reply.

"Why do you hide your face?"

He is quiet. When you glance back, the knight is gazing off to the side.

You're certain he will not answer you now either, and you begin to move away.

"I was instructed not to offend Your Highness."

Your brow twitches, attention snapping back to him. "Offend me?"

He nods, finally turning back to you. The helmet still renders him unreadable as he states plainly, "I am well aware of the customs of court. Typically, a member of it with a face such as mine would quickly be expelled and hidden from your sight."

"I—"

You gulped, your anger at the situation ebbing in favor of a strange sensation by the tone he uses to speak. His voice is ever soft, nonconfrontational despite what he claims, and it gives you pause in confusion.

His face?

You glance over his armor, noting he did not don a ceremonial set that day. This one did not appear ostentatious, but practical, well-crafted for durability and protection. It appeared as if it had seen battle, bearing the dents and scratches that showed of a life paved with violence, steeped in blood and victory.

It greatly contrasted the gentle way in which he spoke, and the grace with which he carried himself, even as he was six feet in armor.

Your head tilts, wondering what battle-hardened visage may be hidden underneath that helmet.

"You are scarred, then," you say aloud with the realization.

He merely nods again.

You frown.

"So I am never to see you, my intended husband, due to scars."

"It was believed the best course of action would be to hide my face from you," the knight informs calmly, not showing a hint of discomfort or annoyance in his tone as you peer so closely at him. "So as not to offend your sensibilities."

You almost laugh, the bitter sound sticking in your throat.

"Ah, yes. My delicate sensibilities."

As if you were not the one would ensure the well being of an entire kingdom, overseeing all the good and ugly it had to offer.

"And when the queen orders you to show your face?" you counter, arching an eyebrow in challenge.

"You are not yet queen," he replies bluntly, his voice still soft, ever calm as he meets your challenge readily.

You laugh, loud and sharp, sending the birds nesting in a nearby tree fluttering away.

"What a unified front we will be, my beloved," you hiss through gritted teeth before marching past him.

He catches your wrist.

You whirl around, eyes blazing at the action.

"You dare to—"

But he's letting go in an instant, and you look to your hand that he had grabbed in confusion.

In your fingers is a single, small bunch of blue-petaled flowers.

"I am aware this is not your choice," the knight says softly, and the breeze picks up, brushing between you with the gentle scent of lavender once more. "And I am sorry. If I could…"

He trails off, and after a moment of holding your breath, he bows to you.

"Your Highness," he murmurs, and you watch as he departs, disappearing back within the castle walls.

If he could what? you think all day and into the night.

You wonder it in the days to come before the ceremony, gazing at the forget-me-nots you had pressed into a favorite book of poetry.

If he could not wed me? If he could show his face? Tell me his name?

Time before the crown would be yours passes by with your unanswered questions. The nights are restless, any moment alone spent pacing.

And each morning, you wake to a small, freshly picked bouquet of baby blue flowers sitting outside your doors.

The night before your wedding, it feels hard to breathe.

You toss and turn in your bed, sleep eluding you. The knowledge of sharing it at this same time tomorrow leaves you restless, and you sit up with a sharp groan, kicking the thick blankets off.

"I just need some air," you whisper to no one, pulling your dressing gown over your shoulders and tying it tight.

You evade the guards stationed through the corridors with practiced ease, feeling a familiar rush to when you would sneak through the halls as a child with your sister, out way past your bedtimes.

The thought of her makes your chest ache, like a corset pulled impossibly tight, cutting off your ability to breathe.

Your bare feet pad across the cold floors and into the grass when you exit the castle into the gardens. You suck in a lungful of the fresh night air, breathing out a sigh of relief when the scent of lavender surrounds you.

Pacing through the flowers, you let your fingers dance along the petals, reciting the names of each species and color in your mind to calm your nerves. Your heart begins to calm in its relentless pacing.

And then pain surges through your foot.

"Argh!" you yelp, hopping back on one foot as a dull thud rings in the air from whatever you had ran into.

"Mm?"

You jump, covering your mouth to smother a surprised screech at the unexpected, distinctly human sound.

Staring down at what your poor toes had collided with, you witness the sabatons of a polished set of armor shifting.

You follow the leg into the shrubbery, pulling aside leaves and baby blue flowers to see a familiar helmet facing up towards you.

"Oh," your fiancé's soft voice emits from inside of it, and you nearly throw your hands up into the air in exasperation. "It's you."

"What are you doing?" you hiss.

You glance around you, suddenly paranoid that you would be found with him like this, just one night before when you were actually supposed to be alone.

He's quiet, and you stare down at his large frame while he awkwardly perches himself up onto his elbows in the flowers.

"Napping."

You stare at him.

And stare.

"Do you not have a bed for that?" you whisper scream.

Gods, you were going to lose your mind married to this man.

"The lavender smells nice," he replies in the most tranquil, sleepy voice you have ever heard from a man of his size and caliber, helmet turning to gaze around at the gardens. "And the sky is clear."

Your mouth opens and closes, searching desperately for a witty, scathing response.

But they all fail you when he turns back to you and asks calmly, bluntly, "Are you eloping?"

You scoff. "With who?"

His pauldrons lift and drop, metal creaking in the silliest looking shrug you have ever seen.

"A lover."

You shake your head, turning away when you mutter, "Lucky for you, I have none."

The silence that falls between you feels like an ocean separating you from one another. Once again, you are reminded that you are no better than strangers, and tomorrow…

"There is nowhere I could run," you murmur, clutching across your chest to hold your shoulders, bracing against the night's cool breeze. "I wouldn't even know where to start." You laugh humorlessly. "As if they wouldn't find me within hours anyway."

"There's a nice seaside town at the northern edge of the kingdom," he says quietly, almost sounding wistful, and you turn back to him. His armor gleams in the moonlight, his helmet tilted up towards the stars. "The people are kind, and welcoming to strangers. I think it would take them about a week to find you there."

You blink, at a loss for words once again. It's a talent that your strange fiancé seemed to have just for you, on the rare occasions he did speak.

"I can lend you my horse," he keeps speaking, the tranquility in his soft tone slowly relaxing the tension in your shoulders. "She is a kind beast. It will give you a head start."

"Do you wish to be rid of me that much?" you whisper, choosing to believe anything other than the cruel hope that you may actually have a choice for yourself.

He shakes his head, moonlight catching off the steel of his helmet.

"I made no such claims," he says, his voice steady, resolute.

This, you actually do dare to believe, and to your own bewilderment, it softens you.

"Sit with me?" your future husband asks, offering an armored hand up to you. "The stars are beautiful tonight."

You hesitate, then slip your hand into the leather. His glove beneath the gauntlet is warm with his body heat, and he helps you sit, looking away for your decency as you adjust your dressing gown to cover yourself completely before lying back.

You hate to admit it, but the strange, stoic knight is right. There is hardly a cloud in the sky, and you can see the constellations clearly, shining brightly for you in this quiet, stolen moment.

When he says nothing for a while, you assume he has fallen asleep again.

"Why do you leave me flowers?" you whisper the question that has haunted you, relying on the certainty of him not hearing.

He shifts beside you, and you nearly jump out of your skin.

"Do I need a reason?" he asks, clear and awake.

"Well—" Words fail you, and you find yourself hating that he can manage to rob you of your gift of talk and charm, the one thing you had always relied on in your life of court politics. "I suppose not."

"Do you not like them?"

You turn your face away so he cannot see how he's flustering you.

"I made no such claims," you mutter his own words from earlier.

"So you do like them."

"Be silent," you snap, more bashful than as seriously annoyed as you have been, restlessly pulling your dressing gown tighter around yourself.

Your ears perk up when you hear the most quiet, melodic giggle.

Head snapping around, you stare at the knight, who quickly shuts his mouth.

"I said silence!" you repeat.

"My apologies, Your Highness," he replies smoothly, distinctly not following your order, and you swear you hear a smile in his voice.

You huff, throwing your head back into the flowers.

"You look ridiculous," you mutter, shifting restlessly, "by the way. Wearing your armor, lying in the garden. Napping."

"Thank you," he says serenely.

You snort, a genuine sound of amusement that slips past your lips, and you cover them with surprise.

His armor creaks when he turns to look at you.

You turn back, staring wide-eyed into the reflection of yourself in his shining helmet.

And for just a moment, you think you see a glimpse of wide eyes staring back through the visor.

You think they might look just like the starry sky above you.

Then he shifts again, and the image is gone.

You both lay your heads back once more. The atmosphere of the moment shifts, a tension different from the one haunting you for weeks making your heart flutter, your stomach lighter.

"Were you truly asleep just now?" you mumble, adjusting your dressing gown as a breeze slips past, the aroma of lavender washing over you and your faceless fiancé as you lay together in the bed of flowers.

"Mhm."

"And were you asleep when we had tea?"

"…Yes," he answers quietly, and you bite your lip to stifle a laugh at how bashful he sounds. "Just for a bit. I am sorry, truly."

A giggle escapes you, and you cover your mouth with both your hands. Still, it doesn't hide the way that you fall into a fit of laughter, all the nerves from the weeks of stress leading up to the wedding lifting from your muscles.

There's a soft, nervous chuckle echoing from inside the helmet beside you, and you turn back to your fiancé.

Who would become your husband come tomorrow.

You suck in an unsteady breath, pressing a hand to your face to hide it from him.

"Are you alright?" he whispers, shifting beside you, and you can feel the intensity of his gaze upon you even with his face completely hidden. "Are you feeling sick?"

"I am fine," you say quickly, smoothing out your dressing gown again. "Just…nervous."

Your voice gets quieter when you admit it, and you keep your face turned away. You couldn't help but feel helplessly vulnerable around him, when he could see you, and you could never read his face, could hardly ever hear emotion in his voice when he rarely spoke.

"I am too."

The whispered confession makes your heart clench, and you turn back to him.

"Truly?"

He nods, and you feel the anxiety in your chest ease, just a fraction.

"I am sorry that it's me," he murmurs, and it makes your eyes sting, something aching deep within you at how honestly apologetic he sounded.

This wasn't as fair to him as it was to you, you realize with sudden clarity. You are both the same.

You sniff, wiping at your burning eyes, and find yourself shaking your head.

"Well, you are better than some spoiled prince," you say in a choked voice, and he huffs a laughs under his breath. "I may not see your face, or even know your name, but…you have been kind to me tonight."

The warm leather of his gloves grazes across your fingers in the grass, and you hold your breath when his own fingers gently intertwine with yours.

"I only ever want to be kind to you," he whispers to you, sounding so brutally honest, the waver of his gentle words as vulnerable as you feel, and it nearly pulls a sob from your throat.

"Well," you sniff, years of training to gain control of your emotions triggering in a split second to suppress them. "If I never see you, I can pretend you look as handsome as I please."

He laughs, a gentle chuckle that has warmth rolling through your chest, and you smile.

"You should return to your rooms," he says kindly, and you see his shining armor in a new light when you let him help you sit back up, and then stand. "It will be a long day tomorrow, you need rest."

"Yes, of course," you mumble, brushing grass and stray flower petals off your dressing gown.

You gaze back up at the visor in his helmet, at the darkness within, wondering what color eyes were peering back at you.

The knight takes your hand in his once more, and you watch as he lifts it to his helmet, resting the back of it against the cool steel, where his lips would be beneath.

Your heart skips a beat, and you hold your hand close to your chest when he gently relinquishes it.

"Good night," he bids you, and you drop into a curtsy by habit.

"Good night," you whisper, "my knight."

Your wedding feels a solemn affair.

And, yes. Your groom dons armor for the event.

It is a ceremonial set, unmarred by battle. Unlike the one in the garden, when you had felt for the first time there was a human inside the armor.

His wedding armor is decorative, floral and star motifs engraved in the shining silver. There is a lovingly crafted depiction of the moon and its phases across the cuirass, and the helmet has golden wings coming out from the sides.

You must admit that it is beautiful, shimmering in the light of the chandeliers above you.

Even with the understanding you had felt the night before, you still would have preferred seeing the face of the man you were about to be bound to for the rest of your life and rule over your kingdom.

You commit to your vows, as he does his. To be wife and husband, queen and prince consort, until one of you may meet the end of your days.

The celebrations that follow are stifling. There is no parading through the streets, no addressing the masses just yet. Though the weight of the crown is now on your head, there will come another official ceremony for the people to witness. Tonight is purely for the union of the queen and her new beloved.

There are guests from other kingdoms as you wine and dine, though your husband eats nothing. He is still silent, and now present, unwavering from your side through the evening and into the night.

You only part when darkness falls, your ladies-in-waiting ushering you to your bedchambers to ready you for your wedding night. They bustle around you, speaking in hushed, excited tones, and only Tara runs over things with you directly.

"I know, my dear," you sigh, smiling at her as she tells you again where it goes, how it feels, how it may pinch or hurt but to not be afraid, it would be over quick. "I'll be fine."

You're undressed and freshened up in the tittering of excitement. The only request you dare to make is for your lavender bath oil, which you take time to rub into your skin as it thrums with a tingling, heated energy.

"I will be here first thing in the morning," Tara says as she hugs you tight, taking one last moment to fix the white lace of your delicate shift. "And remember, the candles—"

"Must be blown out, yes, I know."

You sit on the edge of your bed in the silence that follows, the first time you've caught your breath since the night before.

You think of the knight, how the glove of his hand had been warm in yours. How sweet he had sounded when he admitted to being nervous too.

Gazing at the last candlestick alight next to your bed, you lean forward to blow it out before you lose all your confidence.

Time seems to stretch on endlessly before you hear the tentative knock on your doors.

"Is it my husband?" you call out, willing your voice not to shake as much as your hands trembled where they gripped your blankets.

There is silence for a beat.

"It is," his soft voice replies, and you grip the sheets tighter.

"You may enter."

When he does, it is with no clanking of metal, no armor. Only the whispers of fabric and soft footsteps, and your heart races in your chest. You force yourself not to look towards where you feel him lingering at the door once he closes it.

It's not like it would matter. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, as you and Tara had once joked about.

Nothing seemed funny now, with the nerves nearly eating you alive.

"We don't have to do this," he whispers, and you shiver from hearing his voice so clearly without the helmet, in the intimate silence of your private rooms this late at night, knowing what was to come. "If you do not want to."

"It is my marital duty, as it is yours."

"But if you do not desire—"

"Do you not desire it?" you counter, finally pushing yourself up to sit.

The question left unspoken hangs in the still, tense air between you.

Do you not desire me?

He was kind the night before, but had always been detached before. Even if he was polite, it did not mean that he wanted this. That he wanted you.

Why do you so badly wish for his desire?

You gaze aimlessly towards your doors, where the shadow of him hovers on the precipice of confirming the last step of your marital bond, and you swear you can feel him hesitate.

"I do not want you to be uncomfortable."

"Then do not make me uncomfortable," you reply easily.

Tara's advice echoes through your mind, and you shift forward onto your hands and knees, emboldened as you crawl to the end of your large, plush bed.

"Men are supposed to enjoy it," you murmur, gripping onto one of the posts at the corner of your bed. "I see no reason why a woman cannot as well."

The knight lets out a heavy breath.

"A woman can enjoy it," he assures you, his gentle voice suddenly low. "A gentleman will ensure his wife enjoys it."

Something burns inside you with the sound of his voice, ringing so clear in the privacy of night, so dark with intent. The tension that has lingered between you goes to your head, and turns into a heat simmering low in your stomach, your thighs squeezing together.

You know now why you crave his desire.

"Then show me," you whisper.

You desire him.

And he finally moves with the sound of that desire in your voice when you call for him.

Your knightly husband approaches the bed slowly.

"Lay back," he commands you, gentle but firm, and you should be irritated by it. You were to be ruler, not him.

But something in the way this gentle knight waits patiently at the edge of your bed, stripped of the armor that protects him, has you heated with anticipation, shifting slowly to lay yourself out for him.

"You know what happens?" he breathes the question out, still hovering on the edge of something more. "In the marital act?"

"Yes."

One of your hands fists into the sheets by your head, the other in the soft fabric of your wedding shift.

"Do you know you should be readied first?" he breathes, the bed finally dipping beneath his weight.

You find it hard to breathe when you feel him climbing up the bed towards you. Your husband, faceless and nameless but yours, and gods that shouldn't excite you so much. But it has your core throbbing, thighs clenching together in search of some relief.

"Answer me, Your Majesty," he murmurs your new title, low voice dripping with sinful promise, and you jump with a gasp when his fingers graze lightly along your knee.

"No," you rush out, shaking your head even if he cannot see it in the darkness of the room. "I was not aware of that."

His hand curls around your knee, lifting your leg up slowly, easing your thighs open until they fall apart.

"Before I give you my cock," he whispers, pressing a kiss to the inner part of your knee, and you whimper quietly at the filthy words. "I use my fingers."

The knight brushes his lips a bit higher, then stops.

"Do you permit this, my queen?"

You blink rapidly, surprise melting way to a warm feeling of awe that he's asking for permission, and how he uses your title with reverence. It gives you a moment to think as he waits patiently for your honest answer, and the tension through your muscles begins to ease.

"Yes," you admit in a hushed whisper, the truth a breath from your lips. Then you confirm, louder, "Yes, I do. I…want it."

His hand is bare on you, large and warm, and you feel the slick on your thighs when you rub them together subconsciously.

You suck in a breath, and correct yourself quieter, a confession, "I want you."

He lets out a shaky exhale, grip tightening on you. Your knight nods against your thigh, and slowly kisses up it.

"Have you done any of this before, my queen?"

"No," you breathe out, gripping your shift for purchase when he slips the fabric up over your stomach so you are bare to him. "I—well, I have touched myself, out of curiosity."

Your voice trails off with the admission, and you cover your face with your arm.

"Have you felt a climax?" he asks, unashamed.

You bite your lip, flustered. "Once or twice, yes," you whisper, and he hums in approval against your inner thigh.

He kisses it softly, rubbing circles into your other thigh with his fingertips. You can feel the callouses on each one, and you wonder how he looks when he wields a sword.

Does he fight with a shield, or in a dueling stance? A longsword or a greatsword? Is he graceful and elegant, or aggressive and relentless?

When he kisses your skin again, he whispers against it, "Would you give me the honor of touching you now?"

You nod, then remember he can't see you either, and say, "Yes." In a quieter voice, you add in a whimper, "Please."

Seconds pass while you hold your breath, watching for his touch where you need it most.

Then, your breath escapes you in a long whine when his rough fingertips barely graze against your slit.

"Oh!" you gasp in surprise at the sensitivity from him touching you intimately in the darkness, even if just barely.

Your hips twitch and jerk up, and his palm finds your thigh, pressing it down by instinct.

The way he wields control is graceful, heady and addicting to be under, and you decide his fighting style must be elegant. Precise, measured.

Is he just an esteemed knight, or a general? Or perhaps of royal blood, a bastard of some far kingdom thrown into military service? How long has he trained? Where has he lived? Who has he fought?

"Do you want me to keep going, Your Majesty?"

Your lashes flutter, and you nod rapidly. "Yes, please."

His fingers press against you again, confident and gentle. They trace along your slit again, collecting your slick, all the way up to where you have found you are most sensitive.

"You are already wet," the knight murmurs, sounding surprised and…pleased?

It makes your sex clench, and you whine, wiggling your hips impatiently.

He presses down on your thigh more firmly, keeping you parted for him to collect more of the slick dripping from your entrance.

Then his touch trails up, pressing firm, slow, tight circles into that bundle of nerves and oh.

"There you are," he whispers, pressing kisses into your inner thigh as you moan quietly, hips rolling up into his touch. "How does it feel?"

"It feels like—" you break off with a choked gasp when his thumb flicks across it, then rubs it faster, making your mind go blank for a moment. "Hot. Tight. Good. Like pleasure."

He kisses your thigh again, and you swear you feel his lips tilting up against your skin.

Is he…smiling?

"I can use my mouth as well," he informs you, his voice calm, almost innocent, and your eyes widen at the thought. "Would you like me to try?"

You bite your lip as you try and imagine what he would look like with his face pressed to your sex, if only you could see it. What colors eyes would be peering up at you as he tasted you?

But somehow, the thought of him still being invisible to you as he kisses the most intimate part of you has excitement coursing through your veins.

"Do it," you murmur, the nature to command coming as easily to you as it does to him.

He needs no further instruction.

His hot tongue licks a long, flat stripe up your core, and you gasp, hips bucking up.

"Oh gods—"

His lips close around where his fingers were just driving you mad, and he sucks the bundle of nerves into his mouth, tongue circling it as he plays you like a beloved instrument, like he was a talented musician as well as a soldier.

It has you whining, thighs closing around his head as the pleasure grows hotter, sharper. It builds up quickly in the pit of your stomach, and you try and get impossibly closer.

When he pulls back, you whine in disappointment, and his answering chuckle has you trembling.

"I need to prepare you," he whispers, the tips of his fingers prodding at your entrance, and you stiffen by reflex. His other hand strokes gently at your thigh, easing your legs back open. "Relax for me. I want you to feel that climax you've felt before. Do you want that too?"

You suck in a deep breath.

"Yes, I do."

The knight slowly dips the tip of one of his fingers inside you, and you bite your lip.

But he pulls back out, testing just his fingertip a few times, before sinking it in further.

You hiss in a breath at the unfamiliar sensation, and he pauses.

"Do you not like it?"

"It's—" you steady your breath, adjusting to the feeling of his thick finger a few inches deep in you. "It's different."

"Do you want me to continue?"

You roll your hips in a test, and you both gasp when your cunt sucks him in further, clenching around him by reflex.

The knight groans quietly into your thigh, and you answer, "Yes. Keep going."

He carefully thrusts his finger in until he's completely inside you and, gods, it's long. The calloused tip strokes at your tight walls, and you moan, parting your legs further for him.

"You're so warm," he breathes against your skin, brushing his lips down to your sex again to attach them back to that pleasure spot.

It has you gasping, thrashing gently when he circles his tongue around it, his finger slowly pumping into you.

"Oh gods that—"

He hums against your core, and your lips fall open in a soundless cry from the added pleasure of the vibration of his soft voice there.

"Pleasurable?"

"Very," you moan, bucking your hips into his face when he slowly prods another finger into your tight hole.

The longer he thrusts his fingers into you, the less tense you feel. Your body relaxes, accepting him, sucking him back in whenever he began to draw back for another thrust of his fingers.

And when he begins to curl them, and brushes those calluses against somewhere that makes pleasure spark hot down your spine, you cry out softly.

"There," he mumbles to himself, and strokes that spot again.

"Y-you—"

Words escape you for the first time in your life, and you reach down by reflex, your restless fingers tangling into his hair.

You gasp softly at the same time he moans, his fingers thrusting into you with fervor. Your eyes roll back as you stroke our own fingers through his hair, impossibly soft, longer than you had imagined.

Was it brown? Blond? Perhaps a more fantastical color that hid under his helmet?

The wet sounds of his hand smacking against your skin with each thrust of his fingers into your soaked cunt is obscene, and has your toes curling, grabbing onto his hair tighter. Hot pleasure keeps growing in your gut until you feel yourself about to burst with it.

He moans again when you subconsciously yank at his hair. He's still stroking that spot each time you suck him back in, his tongue rubbing against you, and you climax against your knight's face with a nameless moan for him.

It's a high pitched cry, loud, restless, and mellows out with quieter groans as he works you gently through each wave of pleasure.

His soft kiss against your overstimulated nerves makes you twitch, and he smiles against your stomach.

"You should be ready now," he murmurs, and your mind spins at the thought of more. "If you still…?"

"I still want to," you confirm breathlessly, tugging at his hair, and the answering grunt is delicious, sparking more desire in your soaked cunt, a longing to be filled by him completely.

He pulls himself up over you, and you hear the rustle of fabric, then him grunting quietly, wet slaps echoing, before you feel it.

You jump as the head of him slips through your slick. It's curved, bigger than his fingers, and you clench in anticipation of taking it all.

It catches on your entrance, and you whimper when he begins to slip in.

"Tell me if it's too much," he whispers, his voice suddenly shaky as he lowers himself onto his arms over you. "My queen?"

"Yes," you breathe, trembling as he begins to sink into you.

He does it in short thrusts, rolling his hips to almost slip out of you before slowly easing himself back in, giving you time to adjust.

And gods, he is big. Impossibly long and thick, throbbing deliciously as your body welcomes him in.

A part of you can't help but be glad that you can't see it, knowing you'd be overwhelmed by both seeing the size of him, and being under his sharp gaze as you squirm beneath him.

When he bottoms out, his hips flush against yours, you both sigh in unison.

Your knight gives you another moment to adjust. His hand finds your thigh, stroking gentle circles into it with his thumb, and you wonder if he even realizes he's doing it.

Then he thrusts into you once, filling you completely, and your eyes flutter shut.

When he does it again, a whimper escapes from your throat, and he promptly stops.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, hushed in the darkness.

You fingers flex and clench into the sheets above your head multiple times, trying to find the words he'd stolen from you along with the breath from your lungs.

"…No," you answer honestly after a tense moment. Even if you cannot see his eyes in the night, you still find yourself gazing off towards the side in shyness. "It…feels good."

Your knight—no, your husband—pauses above you.

Then, ever so slowly, he rolls his hips, grinding his pelvis into that spot above your folds that makes your toes curl.

"And this?" he whispers, dark and intense, and you bite your lip.

"G-good," you stutter out, breath hitching loudly when he bucks into you once with an obscene sucking sound, and then does it again.

"This?"

"Good," you gasp, grabbing at your pillows, head thrashing to the side when he keeps bucking into you.

Your skin slaps together with each deep thrust, loud and wet, the sound filling up your large chambers along with the scent of sweat and musk. He's impossibly deep, picking up speed, making it hard to think clearly.

"Very good," you breathe, voice shaky with mounting pleasure.

"Truly?" he breathes right next to your ear, his lips grazing it.

You whine loudly, your hand flying up to try and find purchase on his back.

But his skin is bare, no hinges of metal to hang onto. It's soft, smooth, only for your fingers to run across the occasional raised skin across his shoulders, down the span of his broad back.

Scars, you think, and wonder what each one looks like as you blindly trace them.

Your mind spins with the knowledge of him, this strong and silent man, being exposed to you at last, only for you not to see one bit of him.

But he's all around you, deep inside of you, utterly consuming you with every thrust and grind of his hips against yours. Your fingers curl against his back a few times, desperate to ground yourself.

When your nails scrape against him, and he lets out a quiet grunt, your scattered thoughts fizzle out.

Do it again, is all you can think when your mind comes back to you, even as you can't find the words to tell him. Make that sound again.

You eagerly dig your nails into his back, and he spasms above you, pulling out almost entirely only to thrust back into sopping cunt, bottoming out and bucking up into you rapidly.

"O-oh," you moan breathlessly, both hands coming up to grab at him.

You dig your grip into him at every spot you grab, leaving marks you'd never see. Your back arches off the bed each time he grunts and moans quietly into your ear from the sensation.

He feels good, you think distantly, more drunk off the knowledge than the finest of wines you'd consumed on your wedding night. All the opulence and celebration pales in comparison to this moment, when you and your husband were one—faceless and nameless as he is, he is yours. You're making him feel good.

His chest presses to yours as he leans his weight into you, his arms wrapping around your torso to hold you tight to him. He breathes against your ear, quick and shallow, as he makes soft, broken sounds.

Too distracted by the deep grind of his hips into yours, stimulating you right where you need it, you don't realize for a few moments that the broken sounds he makes are the syllables of your name.

You come apart for him with a sharp cry that breaks halfway, mouth open in soundless pleasure while your cunt spasms around his cock, drenching him in your sweet release.

"You—" he gasps, dull nails digging into your hips as they lazily thrust up to meet his own, riding out the waves of your climax. "Did you—"

He breaks off with a strangled moan, and gives a few last, deep thrusts before he's suddenly gone.

You whine at the loss of him when he slips out and away so easily. Your eyelashes flutter as you force your eyes open, transfixed by the dark shape of him over you as his hips jerk, hand moving quickly while grunting quietly, and your thighs are coated in something warm and wet.

"What…?" you breathe, your mind slowly playing catch-up, blinking rapidly. "Why did you…?"

Your thighs twitch when he runs his fingers across them, collecting his release with yours, and smearing them onto the sheets below you.

"Your maids will deliver it to your court advisors in the morning." How he still manages to sound so calm while catching his breath, you have no idea, and it makes something dark and ugly twist where pleasure just bloomed in your gut. "For proof of the marital duty being fulfilled."

"But you didn't—" you breathe heavily, pushing yourself up onto your arms as he shifts off the bed. "You were supposed to finish inside of me. There is no fulfillment unless you do so."

"It is close enough. They cannot tell the difference."

You watch his shadowy figure move, hearing the rustle of fabric.

"And now you are leaving?" you snap. "Just like that?"

"Not yet," he answers, his hushed, unbothered tone only infuriating you further.

He moves through the dark, towards the direction of your vanity, and you turn to stare at the wall. Anger stews in you, your body tense despite the lingering pleasure, knuckles tight in the sheets as you hear the pitcher of water being poured.

You don't want to look towards him.

You don't.

But you give into that inexplicable temptation anyway, that curiosity that lingers for any impossible glimpse of him, only for your breath to catch in your throat.

While you had been expecting the same tall figure drenched in shadows, you were graced with a sliver of moonlight peeking through your curtains to fall across his back, still turned to you.

His skin is pale and smooth, with a dusting of a pink flush across his broad shoulders. There is a long, faded scar across the back of the right one, nearly covered up by the hair that falls past them. The soft strands appear white, perhaps silver. Or maybe it's just the pale moonlight that makes it appear so.

When your husband begins to turn back towards you, you quickly look away, eyes readjusting to the darkness once more while he approaches.

I should have kept looking, you think when you feel the edge of the bed dip under his weight. What color are his eyes, I wonder? How sharp or soft is his brow? Are his lips full? Thin? Is his nose—

You jump at the cool cloth that presses between your thighs, a sharp hiss escaping through your teeth.

"Sorry," he whispers as he gently wipes away the evidence of your coupling from your sensitive flesh. "I tried to warm it between my hands."

You soften slowly, the tension held tightly throughout your body melting away as he cares for you. The act has something warm curling up inside your chest, your eyes suddenly hot and heavy.

"Why didn't you do it?" you whisper, still gazing off to the side, even when you feel his gaze upon you in the dark. "Why did you not fill me?"

His hand slows in wiping down your thigh. Instead, his thumb swipes across it, and you shiver at the light, calloused touch.

"Do you want children?"

"I am expected to have an heir," you answer quickly, automatically, the duty of it instilled in you.

"But do you want one?" he presses. His insistence is gentle, yet unwavering. "And do you want it now? Right as you have become queen of a kingdom that needs your guidance?"

You turn fully onto your back, gazing at where he hides from you in the shadows.

But even though his face is unknown, his name still a mystery, his voice is a comfort. It is a warm balm to your soul, when you didn't even know it was aching under the pressure of your new position.

"I was never given the choice," you whisper, unsure.

"I am giving you the choice now," he answers, strong and gentle at once.

You swallow thickly, allowing yourself the precious moment he had given to you. A wedding gift greater than any other, to be able to think and dream only for yourself.

"Not yet," you admit, quiet and intimate, for his ears alone.

"Then I will not fill you," he confirms, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles into the sore muscles of your thigh, and your eyes flutter shut with a sigh. "Not yet. Not until you ask me for it, if you ever do."

You push yourself up onto your arms.

"Then you will do what I ask of you?" you breathe, a hope inside of you suddenly blooming.

"You are my queen." It is a repetition of his oath, only for you to hear now. His soft voice is a caress to your senses, as much as his hands that find your waist, stroking lightly up your sides.

It's quieter still, intimate with devotion you hadn't dreamed of receiving from him when he adds, "And you are my wife. I will do as you command me."

You shake your head.

"What I ask of you," you insist in correction, feeling the need to give to him what he had given to you. The same grace, equal footing to stand on. "As your wife, I merely ask it of you."

He moves closer, leaning over you, the bed dipping further under your combined weight when you lay back again.

"Then what do you ask of me?" he whispers, blindly feeling for your hand in the sheets.

When he brings it to his mouth, he presses a lingering kiss to the heel of your palm, and your heart skips a beat.

His voice is unbelievably tender, the moment reminiscent of a stolen secret, just like the night before, when he adds softly, "My wife?"

You let out a shuddering breath, reaching for him. Your hands palm up his chest and down his stomach, feeling it's soft but toned, the muscles jumping under your touch.

"Let me see you?"

You feel him stiffen above you at your hushed request, and you reach blindly for his face.

"Please?" you ask, your fingers meeting his skin, gingerly tracing a few inches of his jaw before you pull them back.

You lose your breath when he catches your hand in his.

Slowly, he brings it back up to his face. His long fingers direct your palm open, and you let him guide it to his cheek. A soft, keening noise leaves your throat when you feel him sink into your touch.

"Do you truly wish to see me?" he asks, breathless and unsure. "You may not be pleased."

"Yes," you answer instantly. Swallowing thickly, you add, "I wish to see my husband on my wedding night."

He drops your hand, and you almost feel disappointment before he's leaning over and past you.

Then, a moment and a match flaring to life later, your room is suddenly awash in the warm, gentle glow of candlelight.

You blink rapidly, gazing across his chest once your vision adjusts.

Scars litter across otherwise unblemished skin, and your fingertips dance across each one, down to the soft roundness of his stomach that was hidden underneath that heavy armor.

Your heart is lodged somewhere in your throat when he slowly leans back, letting you see all of him.

And, gods above, he is beautiful.

You suck in an unsteady breath, glancing over his face. You're overwhelmed by all of him all at once, more so than when he had been inside of you in the dark, in awe of how ethereal he was in the lone flickering candlelight.

Your husband's eyes are blue, bright like a spring's sky, calm as the surface of a lazily running river. His brow is both soft and sharp, his nose handsome. His cheeks are soft and flushed when his gaze shies way from your scrutiny, and his lips so full, so pink.

And his hair was long, a color of which you'd never seen the likes of before. You had thought it was white, perhaps silver-toned in the moonlight, until the candlelight cast it golden, creating a glowing halo effect around his head.

"I know," he murmurs, and you blink out of your daze. "The scars are unsightly. I am sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No," you say quickly, cupping his face eagerly, and his eyes widen, shooting back towards your own.

Glancing over them now, you can't imagine why anybody would call his scars such. The faded red of the raised skin did nothing to eradicate the ethereal beauty of his face. To keep such a handsome, angelic visage hidden away forever seemed more than a shame, it felt like a crime.

You trace the pattern of the first scar, how it splits into two through his eye. First, you graze your touch up into his light brow, where the light hair won't grow back from the healed skin. Then you follow the line down across his elegant cheekbone, to the edge of his jaw.

Moving gently, your thumb brushes up along the raised edge of the next scar jutting from his bottom lip, and you feel his breath stutter on a shaky exhale right against your skin.

"You are beautiful," you whisper, breathless with honesty, caressing the corner of his lips with your thumb.

You watch with held breath when you graze it along his bottom lip, dizzy with how he willingly parts it for you.

Your hands come up to cup his face, and you peer up into his eyes.

The blue is impossible to see now, swallowed up by his dilated pupils. Even so, there is an emotion that wavers in them, in how his eyes flicker across your face, the thinnest shred of restraint held in the tension of his arms resting on the bed around you.

"And you are my husband," you breathe against his lips.

You recognize the emotion when he looks down at your own lips, his calloused thumb brushing up under your chin, grazing along your jaw.

Longing.

"Will you give me your name?" you breathe, fingers trailing down his nose, tracing the shape of his lips, addicted to mapping out the sight of him, in case you never got the chance again. "My husband?"

He exhales, the sound shaky as you feel the warmth of it against your fingers. His eyes are so deep and blue just in the candlelight, and you find you cannot wait to see them in the light of day.

"Xavier," your knight without his armor whispers, and you feel warm with an indescribable hope when he leans in. "My name is Xavier."