𝕊𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕊𝕚𝕞𝕡

Frank should have been working.

That was what he told himself when he sat at the edge of the bed with his laptop open beside him, the screen casting pale light across the dim bedroom, his reading glasses low on his nose and one hand resting over the soft weight of his stomach.

He had papers on the bedside table. Reports. A book he had been meaning to finish. A half-drunk glass of water. Sensible things. Ordinary things.

But you were out shopping with your friends, and the house was too quiet without you.

That was the trouble.

Frank Benson had spent most of his life becoming comfortable with silence. Silence before orders. Silence after explosions. Silence in rooms full of men who were too frightened to admit they were frightened. Silence had never bothered him.

Until he married you.

Now silence had shape. It had your absence in it. It had the memory of your perfume in the sheets, your laugh in the hall, your bare feet padding across the floor in the morning. It had the echo of you saying, “I won’t be long,” before kissing his cheek and walking out in a dress that made his jaw tighten.

He had watched you leave.

Then he had lasted forty minutes.

Now he sat in bed with his trousers pushed low on his hips, his shirt unbuttoned, white hair slightly mussed, hazel eyes narrowed at the laptop screen while a woman moaned beneath a man who was taking her from behind.

Anal.

Frank’s grip tightened around himself.

He had not searched for it by accident.

He could have pretended otherwise, but Frank was not a man who lied to himself unless he absolutely had to. He wanted to try it with you. He had wanted it for weeks, maybe longer, though he had buried the thought under discipline and politeness and the stern self-control of a man who knew better than to frighten what he loved.

You were younger than him. Softer in some ways, bolder in others. You crawled into his lap like you belonged there and teased him until his baritone turned rough. You touched his belly with greedy affection, kissed the edge of his hooked nose, called him handsome when he knew very well he was not handsome in the way younger men were handsome.

And yet he still had not asked.

Not that.

He could tell you filthy things in the dark. He could pin your wrists above your head and make you shake apart beneath him. He could command you with a single word and watch you melt for it.

But asking for that felt different.

More vulnerable.

More exposing.

More likely to reveal something ugly in him.

The actress on the screen cried out, taking the man easily, almost theatrically, and Frank worked himself harder, his breath leaving him in slow, controlled bursts. His thick fingers moved with steady pressure, up and down, his thumb dragging over the head of his cock as he imagined you in her place.

Not her face.

Yours.

Your mouth open against the pillow. Your hands twisted in his sheets. Your voice breaking around his name, half protest, half plea. Your body trembling beneath him while he leaned over you, broad chest to your back, his soft stomach pressed warm against your spine, his mouth at your ear.

“Easy,” he imagined himself saying, voice low and gravel-thick. “That’s it, sweetheart. Breathe for me.”

He would not rush you.

No.

Frank’s jaw tightened as the fantasy sharpened.

He would eat your pussy first. Properly. Slowly. He would put his mouth between your thighs until you forgot to be shy, until your legs shook around his head and your fingers dug into his white hair. He would make you come hard, leave you boneless and sweet and open for him, all soft little sounds and trembling limbs.

Then he would kiss his way up your body, let you taste yourself on his mouth, watch your hazy eyes focus on him when he reached into the drawer.

Lubricant.

He could see it too clearly now.

The bottle in his hand. Your breath catching. Your thighs parting a little more because you trusted him, because he had earned that from you.

Frank groaned softly, stroking himself faster.

He would warm it first in his palm. He was not a brute, no matter what his body wanted. He would touch you carefully, one hand spread over your lower back, the other sliding between you with slow, patient intent. He would rub the slick over that tight ring of muscle, feel you tense beneath him, then melt when his mouth returned to the back of your neck.

“Don’t fight me,” he would murmur. “I’ve got you.”

You would whimper.

He could hear it.

That little breathy sound you made when you wanted to obey but your body did not know whether to run from the pressure or push back for more.

“Good girl,” he would say. “There you are.”

Frank’s hand moved harder now, the bed shifting faintly beneath him. His hazel eyes stayed fixed on the screen, but he was no longer truly seeing it. He was seeing you. His wife. His impossible young wife, pliant and flushed under him, trusting him with something intimate enough to make his chest ache.

He imagined circling you slowly with his thumb.

Imagined pressing in just enough to make you gasp.

Imagined the tight resistance, the heat, the careful surrender.

“Frank,” you would breathe, nervous and needy.

“Yes,” he would rasp against your shoulder. “I know. I know, sweetheart.”

He would open you one patient inch at a time. Fingers first. Slow. Slick. Gentle enough to be kind, firm enough to make you remember who was touching you. He would praise you until you were shaking, until you stopped hiding your face in the pillow and started begging in that broken, embarrassed voice that made him lose his damn mind.

Please, Frank.

More.

I can take it.

His hips jerked into his fist.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.

Then, suddenly, the fantasy broke.

Not because it had gone too far.

Because his mind betrayed him.

What if it was not your first time?

Frank’s hand slowed.

Then stopped.

His breathing remained heavy, his cock still hard in his grip, but the pleasure had gone sharp-edged and sour. He frowned, eyes returning to the laptop screen as though the answer might be there.

The actress was still being fucked.

Still moaning.

Still taking the man easily, her body open and practiced around him.

It certainly was not her first time. That much was obvious. Performance or not, experience had a language of its own. Frank knew how to read bodies. He knew ease when he saw it.

What if it was the same for you?

The thought entered quietly.

Then widened.

You were young. Curious. Inhibited only when you wanted to be. You had a mouth on you that could make him feel twenty years younger and twice as foolish. You flirted with danger as if danger were a perfume you put on before leaving the house.

And somehow, you had married him.

An older man. White-haired, broad, a little chubby, stern-eyed, with a hooked nose and a voice that belonged in command rooms, not bedrooms where you laughed against his throat and called him yours.

Frank’s fingers loosened around himself.

What if another man had already had that part of you?

Some younger man, perhaps. Smooth-faced. Arrogant. Careless with you because he had never had to learn patience. Someone you had wanted before Frank. Someone who had made you moan that way. Someone who had seen you spread and vulnerable and open in a way Frank had been too cowardly to ask for.

The idea made something hot and ugly twist in his stomach.

He shut the laptop.

The room fell into darkness except for the bedside lamp.

Frank sat still, jaw tight, cock aching and unattended, one hand braced on his thigh.

Jealousy was absurd.

He knew that.

You had lived a life before him. Of course you had. He was not a fool. He had married a grown woman, not a memory sealed in glass until he arrived. You owed him honesty, not virginity. Trust, not untouched history.

He knew all of that.

It did not stop the image.

Some faceless man behind you.

Your hands clutching sheets that were not Frank’s.

Your voice begging for someone else.

His mouth curled with displeasure before he could stop it.

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself.

He did not know whether he meant the imagined man or himself.

The front door opened downstairs.

Frank froze.

Then came your voice faintly from the hall, bright and tired. “Frank?”

His pulse kicked hard.

He reached for the towel beside the bed, cleaned himself with irritated efficiency, then fastened his trousers and shut the laptop properly. By the time your footsteps sounded on the stairs, he had composed himself. Mostly.

The bedroom door opened.

You appeared there with shopping bags in one hand, your hair slightly windswept, cheeks flushed from the cold outside. You looked pleased to be home. Pleased to see him.

That only made it worse.

“There you are,” you said, smiling. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I’m not.”

“You are. This is old-man darkness.”

Frank looked at you.

Your smile faded slightly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Your brows drew together. You set the bags down near the chair and walked toward him, eyes narrowing with the kind of attention he usually admired and now resented because it meant you could see too much.

“Frank.”

His name in your mouth softened him against his will.

He looked away. “Did you have a good time?”

“Yes.” You stood between his knees now, close enough that he could smell your perfume and the outside air clinging to your coat. “But that’s not what I asked.”

His hands settled automatically at your hips.

A mistake.

The second he touched you, the fantasy came back.

You beneath him.

You open for him.

You possibly already knowing exactly how it would feel.

His grip tightened before he could stop it.

Your expression changed.

“Oh,” you said softly.

Frank’s eyes lifted to yours.

“What does that mean?”

“It means something happened while I was gone.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Frank.”

That tone again.

Gentle. Firm. Unafraid of him.

He exhaled through his nose. “I was thinking.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It often is.”

You reached up, smoothing your fingers through his white hair. He leaned into it before pride could stop him, and your face softened.

“What were you thinking about?”

His mouth tightened.

“You.”

“That’s usually good.”

“Not this time.”

Your hand paused.

Frank looked up at you, hazel eyes dark, hooked nose casting a stern shadow across his face in the lamplight. He had commanded rooms full of soldiers, politicians, analysts, lawyers. He had said words that moved machines and men.

Frank knew that was the perfect opening.

There it was, laid neatly at his feet like a report awaiting signature. All he had to do was speak. Tell you. Admit the thing lodged beneath his ribs and lower still, the desire he had been circling for weeks like a cautious officer around unexploded ordnance.

I want to try something with you.

Simple.

Direct.

Adult.

You were his wife. You loved him. You had never once made him feel foolish for wanting you, even when he was stern and awkward and older than the men who probably turned their heads when you walked past them in shops. You would listen. You would tilt your head, maybe smile that slow, private little smile, and ask him what he meant.

And then he would have to say it.

Frank’s jaw tightened.

Coward.

His hands remained on your hips. His thumbs moved once, unconsciously, over the fabric of your coat. You were looking down at him with all that soft patience he did not deserve, fingers still in his white hair, waiting.

He could have done it.

Instead, he glanced past you toward the shopping bags.

“What did you buy?”

Your expression changed at once.

Not disappointment, exactly.

Amusement.

You stared at him for one long second, as if you could see the retreat happening in real time and were deciding whether to let him get away with it. Then your mouth curved.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I’m asking a question.”

“You’re hiding.”

“I’m being interested in my wife’s afternoon.”

“That sounds suspiciously like hiding.”

Frank gave you a flat look over the rim of his reading glasses. “Are you going to show me or interrogate me?”

You laughed softly, and the sound loosened something in his chest despite himself. You stepped back from between his knees, taking your warmth with you, and Frank’s hands fell uselessly to his thighs.

He watched you cross the bedroom to the bags.

Of course he watched.

The way your coat shifted over your hips. The way you bent slightly to search through the purchases. The way domesticity sat on you so strangely and beautifully—his wife, home from shopping, rifling through tissue paper in his bedroom while he sat half-undressed on the bed with filthy thoughts still cooling in his skull.

You reached into one of the bags and pulled out folded fabric, bright against the dim room.

Then you turned around, holding it up with both hands.

Frank stared.

A shirt.

For him.

Pink.

Not pale enough to be mistaken for white in poor lighting. Not muted enough to be called salmon by a charitable man. Pink. Proper pink. Soft, cheerful, shamelessly pretty pink.

Frank’s face settled into immediate suspicion.

“No.”

You grinned.

“Frank.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even touched it.”

“I don’t need to touch it. I can see it from here.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s pink.”

“Yes.”

“Why,” he asked slowly, in the grave tone of a man discussing military error, “do you buy so many pink shirts for me?”

You pressed the shirt against your chest and looked delighted with yourself. “Because you look good in pink.”

“I do not.”

“You absolutely do.”

“I am nearly seventy years old.”

“And?”

“I have white hair.”

“That’s exactly why it works.”

He narrowed his hazel eyes. “That is not an explanation.”

“It is. The pink makes your hair look even whiter, and your eyes look warmer, and you get all grumpy when you wear it, which makes it better.”

“I do not get grumpy when I wear pink.”

“You’re grumpy right now and you’re only looking at it.”

Frank’s mouth twitched before he could stop it.

You saw.

Your grin deepened.

“There,” you said. “You like it.”

“I tolerate you.”

“You married me.”

“A lapse in judgment.”

You gasped dramatically and clutched the pink shirt like he had wounded you. “A lapse?”

“A prolonged one.”

You came back toward him, still smiling, the shirt held out in offering. Frank looked at it as though it might bite.

“Try it on.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Frank.”

His eyes lifted from the shirt to your face.

That was unfair. You knew it was unfair. The softened voice. The playful sweetness. The little tilt of your head that made you look younger and brighter and impossible to refuse. You wielded tenderness like a weapon and then had the nerve to look innocent about it.

His baritone dropped. “You enjoy making me ridiculous.”

“I enjoy making you mine.”

That silenced him.

For a moment, the teasing faded from the room.

You stood close enough now that your knees brushed his. The shirt hung between you, pink and absurd and somehow intimate. Frank looked at your hands holding it, then at the ring on your finger, then back at your face.

“You are mine,” you said, quieter now. “And I like dressing you sometimes.”

His throat worked.

Frank Benson, who had once worn a uniform heavy with rank and expectation, who had stood in rooms where men waited for him to speak because his words carried consequence, found himself undone by a pink shirt and his wife’s smile.

“That so?” he murmured.

You nodded. “Yes.”

“You like putting me in soft colors?”

“I like seeing you look loved.”

There it was again.

That ache.

Frank looked away first.

Not because he was embarrassed by the shirt anymore.

Because you had a habit of saying things that got under the armor before he could brace for impact.

You noticed, of course. You always noticed.

Your voice softened. “Frank.”

“I heard you.”

“I know.”

He sighed through his nose and reached for the shirt with the resignation of a man accepting an order from an unreasonable superior.

“Give it here.”

Your face lit up.

“Don’t look so pleased,” he muttered.

“I’m extremely pleased.”

“Yes, I can see that. It’s unbecoming.”

“You love it.”

“I love peace and quiet.”

“You married the wrong woman.”

His gaze flicked up, warm despite the stern set of his mouth. “Yes. I’m beginning to understand that.”

You helped him out of the shirt he was wearing, fingers slipping over his shoulders, down his chest, brushing lightly over the soft weight of his stomach. Frank sat still under your touch, but his breathing changed. You felt it. The small hitch. The tension beneath his skin.

For once, you did not tease him.

You only leaned down and kissed the top of his head, right into the white of his hair.

That did something to him too.

Frank closed his eyes for half a second.

Then you drew the pink shirt over his shoulders.

He grumbled the entire time.

“It’s too bright.”

“It’s perfect.”

“It’s not my color.”

“It is now.”

“I look like a pensioner on holiday.”

“You look like my handsome husband.”

Frank’s hands paused on the buttons.

His hooked nose cast a stern shadow over his mouth, but the sternness did not quite hold. Not with you standing between his knees again, buttoning him slowly, looking at him as if he were something precious rather than something worn, disciplined, and difficult.

“You’re very determined,” he said.

“You knew that before you married me.”

“I thought it would be useful.”

“It is.”

“To whom?”

“To me.”

His lips twitched.

You finished the last button and smoothed your palms down his chest. The shirt fit well. Annoyingly well. Soft over his broad shoulders, gentle against the silver-white of his hair, warm against the hazel of his eyes.

You stepped back to admire him.

Frank looked down at himself with open distrust.

“Well?” you asked.

“I look absurd.”

“You look adorable.”

His eyes snapped up. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Very adorable.”

“I was a Lieutenant General.”

“And now you’re my adorable husband in a pink shirt.”

“That sentence is treasonous.”

You laughed and climbed into his lap before he could continue protesting.

Frank caught you automatically, one hand at your waist, the other bracing your thigh. His body softened beneath you and steadied at once, that familiar contradiction you loved: broad, warm, a little heavy, and still somehow the safest place in the room.

You cupped his face, thumbs brushing over the lines beside his mouth.

“You really do look good,” you said.

His gaze searched yours.

The humor faded again, but gently this time.

“You mean that.”

“I always mean it.”

Frank’s hand slid up your back. “You say things too easily.”

“No. You just believe them too slowly.”

That one struck deep.

He looked at you for a long moment, hazel eyes dark and thoughtful behind his glasses. Then he reached up, removed them, and set them on the bedside table with careful precision.

You smiled faintly. “That serious?”

“Possibly.”

His baritone had changed.

Lower now.

Not quite dangerous. Not quite gentle.

Your pulse picked up.

Frank’s hand settled at the back of your neck, thumb resting just below your ear. He drew you closer until your forehead nearly touched his.

“You asked what I was thinking about earlier,” he said.

You went still.

“I did.”

“I changed the subject.”

“I noticed.”

His mouth tightened, but this time he did not look away.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

Your expression softened with immediate attention. No teasing now. No pink shirt jokes. Just you, watching him as if whatever he said next mattered.

“What?”

Frank inhaled slowly.

The old discipline returned, but not as armor this time. As courage.

His thumb moved once against your neck.

“Not now,” he said. “Not like this. But later, when we’re in bed properly, I want to talk to you about something I’d like to try.”

Your eyes widened slightly.

“With me?” you asked softly.

His gaze held yours.

“Only with you.”

The answer seemed to warm you from the inside. Your fingers tightened gently at his shoulders.

“Is it something you’re nervous to ask?”

Frank’s mouth twisted with dry self-disgust. “Apparently.”

You smiled then, small and fond.

“My terrifying old soldier.”

“I am not terrifying.”

“You are a little.”

“To other people, perhaps.”

“To me, only when you go quiet.”

He absorbed that.

Then nodded once.

“I’ll try not to.”

You leaned in and kissed him, soft at first, then warmer when his hand tightened at your waist. The kiss was not frantic. Not yet. It was reassurance. Permission. A door opening, but not forcing him through.

When you pulled back, your nose brushed his.

“You can ask me anything,” you whispered.

Frank’s eyes lowered to your mouth.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He looked at you again.

For once, he did not deflect.

“I’m learning.”

Your smile returned, slow and bright, and then your gaze dropped to the shirt again.

“You’re also learning that pink is your color.”

The silence lasted one beat.

Frank stared at you.

Then he sighed so heavily you laughed against his chest.

“You are impossible,” he muttered.

You shifted in his lap, still smiling against his chest, your knees bracketing his hips as the ridiculous pink shirt stretched softly across his broad frame.

Frank was trying very hard to look stern.

Unfortunately for him, you were close enough to feel the truth.

The moment you rolled your hips, slow and deliberate, rubbing yourself against the hardening shape of him beneath you, his expression cracked. Only slightly. A flicker in the hazel eyes. A tightening at the corners of his mouth. But you felt the grunt before you heard it, deep in his chest, low and involuntary.

His hands closed around your thighs.

“Careful,” he warned, baritone rough.

You smiled wider. “Careful?”

His fingers squeezed, firm enough to make your breath catch. “You heard me.”

“I did.” You rocked against him again, softer this time, just enough to make his jaw tighten. “I’m deciding whether I care.”

Frank’s eyes darkened behind that elderly-officer patience he wore like a uniform. “You’re in a mood.”

“I came home and found my husband sitting in the dark, half-dressed, suspiciously quiet, with his laptop closed like it had committed a crime.” Your hands slid down the front of his pink shirt, palms flattening over his chest, then lower, over the soft warmth of his stomach. “Of course I’m in a mood.”

Frank’s gaze shifted away.

There it was.

Your smile turned sharper.

“Oh.”

“No,” he said at once.

“I didn’t even say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to ask a very normal marital question.”

“There is nothing normal about that tone.”

You leaned back just enough to look at him properly, your hands still resting over his stomach, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing beneath the fabric. His white hair was mussed from your fingers, his hooked nose stern in profile, his mouth pressed into a line that might have intimidated generals but had never once intimidated you.

“What were you masturbating to before I walked in?”

Frank went still.

Absolutely still.

Then color rose high along his cheeks.

Your eyes widened in delight.

“Oh my God.”

“I was not—”

“Frank.”

His mouth snapped shut.

You stared at him, thrilled. “You were.”

He looked toward the window as if considering tactical evacuation.

You laughed softly, not cruelly, but with so much bright, wicked affection that his blush deepened.

“Sometimes,” he muttered, “I hate how observant you are.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do at this moment.”

“You married me.”

“A recurring flaw in my judgment, as previously established.”

You cupped his face and turned him back toward you. “Don’t hide from me.”

His eyes met yours then, and the humor softened.

For a moment, you only looked at each other.

Then your thumb brushed along his cheekbone, tender enough to make something in his expression falter.

“Was it about what you wanted to ask me?”

Frank did not answer.

He did not need to.

His silence landed between you like a confession.

Your teasing faded a little, replaced by curiosity. Not alarm. Not disgust. Just curiosity, warm and intimate, the kind that made him feel more exposed than if you had stripped him bare.

You tilted your head. “Frank.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

“Later,” he said.

“No.” You nudged him lightly in the chest with your knuckles. “Now I’m thinking.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It is.” You narrowed your eyes at him. “Is it something with another person?”

His brows pulled together. “What?”

“A threesome?”

Frank blinked.

Then he looked genuinely offended.

You pointed at him. “Because if that’s what it is, let me be very clear right now. If you’ve got your eye on another woman, I’ll kick your ass out of this house so fast your pink shirts will still be hanging in the closet when you’re gone.”

For one second, Frank simply stared at you.

Then he laughed.

Not a small laugh. Not one of his dry little exhalations. A real laugh, rich and startled, rumbling up from his chest until his eyes crinkled and his hands tightened around your thighs to keep you steady in his lap.

You tried to look severe. “I’m serious.”

“That,” he said, still laughing under his breath, “makes it worse.”

“I am not joking, Lieutenant General.”

His laughter faded into a smile, slow and deeply fond. “No. Clearly not.”

“I’ll throw you out.”

“In the pink shirt?”

“Especially in the pink shirt. Let the neighbors know what you did.”

Frank shook his head, his white hair catching the lamplight. “My God.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” His hands slid from your thighs to your waist, holding you more gently now. “And no.”

You searched his face. “No?”

“No threesome.”

“No other woman?”

His expression shifted then, amusement giving way to something quieter. More serious.

“No other woman,” he said, baritone low and certain. “Not in thought. Not in fantasy. Not in practice.”

Your mouth softened.

Frank looked at you with a kind of stern tenderness that always managed to undo you, as if even affection from him came with structure, oath, and consequence.

“I don’t want anyone else in this marriage,” he continued. “I don’t want anyone else in our bed. I don’t want another body between us, beside us, near us. I’m old-fashioned enough to find the idea exhausting and possessive enough to find it intolerable.”

Your lips twitched. “Possessive, are we?”

His thumb pressed into your waist.

“With you? Yes.”

The answer warmed you, though you tried very hard not to show it too easily.

“So what is it?” you asked more softly.

Frank’s gaze dropped.

For the first time since you had known him, he looked almost awkward. Not uncertain in the way weak men were uncertain, but in the way proud men became when honesty required them to lay down a weapon.

“It’s difficult to say.”

“Because it’s dirty?”

His mouth tightened.

Your eyebrows rose.

“Oh.”

“Don’t look so pleased.”

“I’m not pleased.”

“You are extremely pleased.”

“I’m touched that my terrifying old soldier has filthy secrets.”

Frank gave you a flat look. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“I’m your wife. It’s my right.”

His gaze moved over your face, lingering on your mouth, then your eyes. His hand slid up your back, firm and warm, drawing you closer until your forehead nearly touched his.

“You know I would never ask for something that hurt you,” he said quietly.

That made you still.

“I know.”

“Or something you didn’t want.”

“I know that too.”

His jaw worked once.

You waited.

The room seemed to narrow around him: the warm lamp, the pink shirt, the quiet bags on the floor, your knees on either side of his hips, your fingers resting lightly against his chest. He had commanded operations with less effort than it took to hold your gaze now.

Finally, he said, “I saw something.”

You blinked. “On the laptop?”

He nodded once, grim as a man giving testimony.

You bit back a smile. “Porn?”

Frank closed his eyes briefly.

“Must we use that tone?”

“What tone?”

“The tone of a woman who has just caught her husband stealing biscuits.”

You laughed, then softened when his embarrassment deepened. “Sorry. Go on.”

He opened his eyes again. “Yes. Porn.”

“And it gave you ideas?”

His gaze sharpened. “You’re making this harder.”

“I think you were already doing that before I came home.”

Frank stared at you.

You smiled sweetly.

For a second, you thought he might scold you. Instead, his hand came down on your thigh in one sharp, controlled smack that made you gasp and then grin.

“Behave,” he said.

“There he is.”

His eyes darkened, but he did not let himself be distracted. “It made me think about something I’d like to try with you. Not tonight unless you want to discuss it properly. Not casually. Not because I’m worked up. Properly.”

You studied him.

The careful wording. The embarrassment. The way he kept watching your face for the smallest trace of discomfort.

Your teasing quieted.

“Oh,” you said softly. “It’s something you’re worried I won’t like.”

Frank’s thumb moved once over your back.

“Yes.”

You grabbed the front of his shirt.

Not hard enough to hurt, but with enough sudden determination that the pink fabric bunched in both your fists and Frank looked down at your hands with immediate, wary suspicion.

“What,” you demanded, “is it?”

Frank’s mouth flattened.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Frank.”

“That tone will not help you.”

“That tone has helped me many times.”

His hazel eyes narrowed. “It has manipulated me many times.”

“And beautifully.” You tightened your fists in the shirt, tugging him a fraction closer. “Now tell me.”

Frank held your stare for a long, measured moment, trying to summon the old command of his face, the military stillness, the stern authority that had once made rooms go silent. Unfortunately for him, you were sitting in his lap, wearing the expression of a woman who had just scented blood in the water, and his shirt was pink. Authority had its limits.

“You are impossible,” he muttered.

“You married me.”

“A lapse in judgment.”

“You keep saying that, and yet you keep letting me sit on you.”

His hands, still on your waist, flexed once.

“That is because you are very difficult to remove.”

You smiled sweetly. “And because you like me here.”

Frank looked away.

A mistake.

Your eyes widened.

“Oh, you do.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m already starting.” You leaned in, your nose brushing his. “You can’t say something like ‘I saw something’ and ‘I want to try it with you’ and then expect me to go, ‘Alright, darling, keep your secrets.’ Do you know me at all?”

“Painfully well.”

“Then you know I’m not moving until you tell me.”

Frank sighed through his nose.

There it was again: that deep, weary, affectionate sound of a man who had seen wars, politics, moral disasters, international crises, and still found himself defeated by his wife’s curiosity.

“You’ve always been like this,” he said.

“Curious?”

“Relentless.”

You grinned. “That’s just curiosity with commitment.”

“It’s interrogation with better hair.”

You laughed, and Frank tried not to soften. He failed.

His gaze dropped to your hands, still knotted in his shirt. Pink. Ridiculous. Domestic. Yours. He remembered, not for the first time, that he had stopped buying surprise gifts for you after the first year of marriage because surprises were impossible with you in the house.

The necklace hidden behind the spare towels? Found within two days.

The perfume tucked into the locked drawer of his desk? You had discovered the key under the old paperweight and then pretended, badly, not to know.

The weekend trip he had arranged in Bath? Ruined because you saw one line of a hotel confirmation reflected in his glasses and pestered him for forty-five minutes until he gave up and told you everything.

Frank Benson had overseen classified operations with fewer breaches.

“You cannot leave anything alone,” he said.

“I like knowing things.”

“You like knowing everything.”

“Especially about you.”

That quieted him.

Not completely. Frank rarely went completely quiet unless something inside him had shifted. But your words softened the line of his mouth. His eyes searched yours with that severe tenderness he always seemed to wear when emotion became inconvenient.

“About me?” he asked, low.

“Yes.” Your grip on his shirt loosened, smoothing instead over his chest. “You hide things. Not cruelly. Not like secrets. More like…” You tilted your head, thinking. “Like you put them away in drawers and forget other people don’t know where to look.”

His expression changed, almost imperceptibly.

You brushed your thumb over one of the pink buttons.

“I want to know where to look.”

Frank swallowed.

For a moment, he simply sat there beneath you, broad and warm and uncharacteristically exposed, his white hair falling slightly over his forehead, his hooked nose stern in the lamplight, his hazel eyes darker than before. The old soldier and the husband warred quietly in his face.

Then he sighed.

Not the annoyed sigh this time.

The surrendering one.

“Fine.”

Your posture straightened instantly. “Fine?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“You’re telling me?”

“Before you tear this ridiculous shirt off me by force, yes.”

You smiled. “I knew you liked the shirt.”

“I did not say that.”

“You called it ridiculous with affection.”

“I called it ridiculous with accuracy.”

“Frank.”

He gave you a look. You closed your mouth, though not without visible effort.

He noticed.

“Thank you,” he said dryly.

You waited, eyes bright, body still in his lap, hands resting now against his chest. Frank lowered his gaze for a second, as if gathering the words from somewhere deep and irritatingly human. His thumb moved once against your hip, a small unconscious motion that betrayed more nervousness than he would ever admit aloud.

“I want to try something with you,” he said carefully.

“You said that.”

His eyes lifted.

You pressed your lips together.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

His mouth twitched, but only briefly. Then the seriousness returned.

“I want to try it properly. Slowly. With discussion beforehand. With the understanding that you can say no at any point, including after you’ve said yes.”

Your brows drew together softly, not with fear, but with attention.

“Frank,” you said gently, “what is it?”

He held your gaze.

The pause stretched.

Then, in that low baritone of his, controlled but rough at the edges, he said, “Anal sex.”

You blinked.

Frank became very still.

There it was.

The confession, finally placed between you.

He watched your face with the intensity of a man tracking movement on a battlefield. Your eyes. Your mouth. The slight lift of your brows. Any flicker of discomfort, distaste, mockery. Anything that might require him to retreat immediately and burn the subject behind him.

Instead, you stared at him.

Then glanced down at the pink shirt.

Then back at his face.

“This is what my terrifying old soldier was too shy to ask me?”

Frank’s eyes narrowed. “I was not shy.”

“You were sitting in the dark having a crisis.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were brooding.”

“I do not brood.”

“You absolutely brood. You brood in serif font.”

His mouth tightened, but the faint color along his cheekbones gave him away.

You softened before teasing him too far.

“Oh, Frank.”

He looked away. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Make it sweet.”

Your hand rose to his jaw, turning his face back to you. He resisted for half a second, because of course he did, but not enough to stop you.

“I’m not making it sweet,” you said. “I’m trying to understand why you looked like you were about to confess treason.”

His gaze held yours.

“Because it matters.”

That stopped your smile.

Frank’s voice remained low, steady, but there was a strain beneath it now, something honest and bare.

“You matter,” he said. “Your trust matters. The fact that you let me touch you the way I do matters. And I won’t be careless with any of it because I’m old enough to know what careless men do to women who trust them.”

Your expression changed completely.

The teasing left you.

For a few seconds, the room was very quiet.

Then your hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, fingers threading gently into the white hair there.

“You’re not careless,” you whispered.

“No.” His jaw worked once. “But wanting something badly can make men stupid.”

“Are you calling yourself stupid?”

“I am saying I prefer safeguards.”

“That is the most Frank Benson answer you could have given.”

His mouth twitched without humor. “Good.”

You studied him for another long moment. He looked stern, composed, almost severe, but you could feel the tension in him. In the way his hands held your waist. In the careful distance he had placed between admission and action. In how he was not trying to seduce you into agreement, not pushing, not dressing the request in command.

He was asking.

Actually asking.

And somehow that felt more intimate than anything else.

“So,” you said softly, “you watched porn while I was shopping and imagined doing that with me?”

Frank closed his eyes.

“Must you phrase it like a crime report?”

“I’m reconstructing the scene.”

“Of course you are.”

“You were here.” You tapped his chest. “Laptop open. Pink-shirtless at the time.”

“That shirt had not yet entered my life and ruined my dignity.”

“Handsome, brooding, probably pretending to be serious while being incredibly filthy.”

His eyes opened again.

“Careful.”

You smiled a little. “And then you got jealous.”

Frank’s face froze.

Ah.

You leaned back slightly, watching him. “You did, didn’t you?”

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

His gaze sharpened. “You are becoming too good at reading me.”

“I told you. I like knowing where to look.”

Frank looked as if he regretted ever teaching you anything about him.

You touched his cheek again, gentler now. “What was it?”

He said nothing.

“Frank.”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“You are insufferable.”

“And curious.”

“And insufferable.”

You waited.

He held out longer this time. Ten whole seconds.

Then his shoulders dropped a fraction.

“I wondered,” he said stiffly, “whether it would be new to you.”

Your expression softened.

“Oh.”

His jaw tightened. “It was an absurd thought.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you had a life before me.” His voice came out clipped, as if he disliked every word but had decided to say it anyway. “You are not obliged to arrive in my bed untouched by history. I know that. I believe that. I am not some adolescent idiot who thinks love begins at the exact moment he enters the room.”

You smiled faintly. “That was almost romantic.”

“It was not intended to be.”

“It was.”

“It was practical.”

“It was jealous.”

Frank’s eyes flicked to yours.

You didn’t look away.

The room quieted again, but differently now. Warmer. More dangerous, perhaps, but not because of sex. Because of truth.

Finally, he muttered, “Perhaps.”

Your eyebrows rose.

Frank glared. “Do not look victorious.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“You are failing.”

“I love when you admit things.”

“I’ve noticed.”

You cupped his face in both hands, the pink shirt bunched slightly between your bodies.

“Frank.”

His expression remained guarded, but his hands softened on your waist.

“You can ask me things,” you said. “You can want things. Even strange things. Even filthy things. Even things that make you blush like a Victorian widow.”

“I am not blushing.”

“You are absolutely blushing.”

“I am considering divorce.”

“You’d miss me by breakfast.”

His mouth twitched despite himself.

You leaned closer, your forehead brushing his.

“And for the record,” you whispered, “I like that you want to try things with me.”

Frank inhaled slowly.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not saying it because I have to.”

His eyes searched yours, still careful. “And the thing itself?”

You paused, considering him honestly.

“I’m curious,” you admitted.

Frank’s gaze darkened slightly, but he stayed still.

You noticed that too.

A lesser man would have pounced on the word. Frank only waited.

“I’m not saying yes this second,” you continued. “Not like that. I’d want to talk about it. Properly, like you said.”

His nod was immediate. “Of course.”

“And I’d need you to be patient.”

“I would be.”

“And if I changed my mind?”

“Then we stop.”

“No sulking?”

“I do not sulk.”

“You sulk in serif font too.”

His thumb pressed warningly into your waist, but his eyes warmed.

“No sulking,” he said.

You smiled, reassured despite the humor. “And you’d really be careful?”

Frank looked almost offended.

“I am careful with everything I value.”

Your heart squeezed.

“You say things like that and then wonder why I buy you pink shirts.”

“I still do not understand the connection.”

“The connection is that you’re secretly soft.”

His brow arched. “Secretly?”

“Well, not in this shirt.”

That earned you another flat look.

You laughed and leaned in, kissing the corner of his mouth. Frank let you, though his hands tightened at your waist, anchoring you there as if you might slip away.

When you pulled back, he was watching you with that dark, thoughtful expression again.

“What?” you asked.

“I don’t want you agreeing because you think I need it.”

Your smile faded into something gentler.

“I know.”

“I mean that.”

“So do I.” You brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I’m not agreeing to anything tonight except the conversation. But I’m not disgusted. I’m not frightened. I’m not laughing at you.”

“You laughed at me several times.”

“Not for wanting me.”

His face shifted.

That one landed.

You felt it in the sudden stillness of his hands.

“I would never laugh at you for wanting me,” you said.

Frank swallowed once, quietly.

Then his arms wrapped around you fully, drawing you closer against his chest. You went willingly, settling into him, your cheek against the pink shirt you had bullied him into wearing. For all his sternness, he held you with immense care, one broad palm between your shoulder blades, the other at the small of your back.

The room stayed quiet for a while.

Then, because you could not help yourself, you murmured, “So did the porn have a plot?”

Frank’s chest moved beneath your cheek.

“You are determined to ruin this moment.”

“I’m just asking.”

“No.”

“No plot?”

“No worthwhile plot.”

“So you watched it for the dialogue?”

His hand landed on your backside in a firm, warning smack.

When you woke the next morning, the sun was already brushing pale streaks across the damask curtains. The hunting lodge was quiet—eerily so. For a moment, you thought perhaps you’d dreamt the chaos of yesterday. That Louis hadn’t bargained for your forgiveness with baths and flowers. That he hadn’t cried in your bed, pressed trembling kisses to your fingers, and begged with the desperation of a dying man.

But then you reached across the sheets.

And he wasn’t there.

No wig. No scent. No warmth.

Just a faint indentation on the mattress.

He had risen before you.

You sat up slowly, rubbing the back of your neck, the weight of the silence pressing into your shoulders. Before your thoughts could spiral, the soft rustle of skirts at the door drew your attention.

Your ladies-in-waiting had already assembled.

Marie. Béatrice. Solène.

All of them neatly dressed, their hair pinned, their hands folded like birds on a perch. Not one of them commented on your expression. Not one asked if the King had slept beside you. But they saw the redness at the edges of your eyes. They saw the tired grace in your limbs as you rose.

None of them spoke of it.

Instead, they drew your bath.

Steam lifted in curling ribbons as you stepped into the copper tub, jasmine still lingering faintly in the air from Louis’s punishment-bath the day before. You bathed quietly, scrubbed your arms, shoulders, and legs, and—like always—used the linen cloth soaked in vinegar to clean your teeth. Sharp. Astringent. Comforting.

You sat still as Béatrice brushed out your hair and began weaving it into something respectable—nothing too formal, but elegant enough for court eyes.

By the time you were dressed, the summer sun had climbed higher, spilling gold across the stone floor. You chose a modest gown in soft green silk, adorned with cream lace, and no jewelry save for the ring Louis had given you the year of your marriage. You wore it today not for sentiment.

But for theatre.

When you arrived in the breakfast chamber, you expected silence. Perhaps Louis alone, sulking behind a goblet. Or waiting for you, brooding with that storm in his eyes.

Instead—you found company.

The man rose at once when you entered, bowing low in deference. He was older, with clever eyes and hands that looked more accustomed to soil than ink.

Louis stood beside him, perfectly composed, dressed in a crisp morning coat of blue and gold, black wig freshly powdered and perched askew as always. He held a teacup with imperial laziness, and his expression—when he looked at you—was bright. Smiling.

As if the previous night hadn’t happened.

“As promised,” he said, his baritone warm and effortless, “I have summoned the very man who will build your orchard.”

The man bowed again. “Jean de La Quintinie, Majesty. At your service.”

You arched one brow.

Orchard?

Louis gestured to the chair beside him. “Come, ma rebelle. Sit. We’ve begun without you, but I’m told the soil will wait.”

You obeyed—not because he asked, but because you needed to know what game he was playing. You took your seat beside him, your spine straight, your eyes fixed on the stranger.

Louis poured you tea as if nothing had happened. “Monsieur de La Quintinie is the finest gardener in France. I’ve tasked him with creating a fruit garden worthy of the Crown.”

“A potager, Majesty,” Jean corrected gently, his voice eager. “A formal kitchen garden, to be exact. But one with elegance. Harmony. I envision a space that marries nourishment with beauty.”

You turned to Louis slowly. “A potager.”

“Oui,” Louis said, grinning, as if this were his idea and not something ripped straight from your arguments. “A personal one. I will no longer tolerate the disgrace of linens-flavored peaches on your breakfast tray.”

Jean smiled with pride. “The King has instructed that we grow peaches, above all. His favorite.”

You looked at your husband.

His expression was insufferably smug.

You blinked once. Slowly.

“You’re serious?” you asked.

Louis leaned closer, his voice pitched intimately low. “Utterly.”

Then, to Jean, louder: “The Queen wishes to know what else we might grow. Enlighten her, monsieur.”

Jean brightened. “Tomatoes, of course, though they remain a novelty. Strawberries. Figs. Aubergines. Lettuce. Cress. Even medicinal herbs—lavender, rosemary, hyssop.”

You tilted your head. “Could we grow oranges?”

“La Quintinie smiled. “If there’s a greenhouse, Majesty. Or a well-positioned wall to shield them. But yes.”

You smiled despite yourself. “And cherries?”

“Certainly. Though we must protect them from the birds.”

Louis nodded, folding one leg over the other. “What of the placement? I want it where the Queen can see it. Right in front of her windows.”

You froze.

La Quintinie hesitated. “Sire, that depends on the terrain. I must study the light, the soil, the water access. If the ground is not fertile, we would waste months—perhaps years.”

You opened your mouth. “There’s no need to build anything in front of my windows—”

“There is,” Louis said firmly, reaching for your hand.

You blinked down at your fingers. His were warm. Steady.

“I made a promise,” he said, not looking at Jean now. Just you. “And I intend to keep it. Even if I have to move the trees myself.”

You didn’t speak.

You stared at him—wig crooked, hands still faintly damp from rosewater, eyes heavy with everything left unsaid from the night before.

He smiled.

Not charming. Not imperial.

Just soft.

“I told you I would bring you fruit,” he murmured. “And I will.”

You slowly withdrew your hand from his, careful and deliberate, like pulling away from something hot.

Louis didn’t stop you.

He watched the motion in silence, the faintest crease forming between his brows. His fingers lingered where yours had been, as if holding the ghost of your touch.

Then you spoke—quietly, but without softness.

“This isn’t the promise I asked you to keep.”

The words settled in the chamber like falling dust—light, but impossible to ignore.

Louis didn’t flinch. He didn’t argue.

He only lowered his gaze for a moment, the lashes of his tired hazel eyes casting faint shadows against his cheeks. Then he exhaled through his nose and said, baritone voice calm and composed:

“I will keep this one, too.”

You looked at him—truly looked. He met your gaze evenly, the smile now gone from his lips, the theatre stripped away. He wasn’t trying to charm you. He wasn’t pleading, bargaining, groveling, not this time.

“I swear it,” he continued. “When we return to Versailles, the first thing I do will be to send her away.”

You didn’t answer.

You couldn’t.

Not because you didn’t want to believe him—but because hope was a dangerous thing in the hands of men like Louis.

Instead, you turned your attention away, your gaze drifting to Jean de La Quintinie, who had wisely busied himself with his plate, his knife moving through a poached pear with delicate precision, as though it were the most fascinating object in all of France.

You studied him for a moment.

Then asked, “How much do you think the Potager will cost the crown, monsieur?”

Jean blinked, startled, his fork pausing mid-air. “Majesty?”

“The construction,” you said. “The walls, the irrigation, the greenhouses, the seasonal labor. What will it cost?”

Jean opened his mouth to answer, but Louis interrupted—casual, dismissive, waving one gloved hand as if brushing away smoke.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “The taxes will cover it.”

You turned back to him, sharply. “You already take too much from the people of France.”

Louis’s smile thinned. “They’ve always paid for the glory of their kingdom.”

“And what glory do they eat at night?” you shot back. “What use is an orchard outside my window when children in Paris dig through gutters for bruised fruit?”

He tilted his head, tone still calm, though his jaw tensed faintly. “You’ve already done more for them than most queens have. The twelve wells in the city—your wells—have changed lives. I heard it myself. They praise you for it. And that hospital for war widows—”

“Is only one,” you cut in. “One building. For one kind of suffering.”

Louis sighed, setting down his teacup with care. “You expect me to fix all of France before breakfast?”

“I expect you to remember them,” you said, your voice quiet now. “When you order gardens built and marble shipped and wigs powdered with silver. I expect you to remember them. That’s all.”

Silence fell between you.

Not hostile. Not cold.

Just quiet.

Louis leaned back slightly in his chair, fingers tapping the table once—twice—then stilling.

He studied you.

Hair braided, gown simple, posture regal but tired. Not defeated. Just… guarded. Fortified. Like a fortress that had once been a palace.

His voice, when he spoke, was lower.

Steadier.

“I remember them more when you’re near.”

You didn’t look at him.

Jean de La Quintinie cleared his throat discreetly. “The costs, Majesty,” he said carefully, “can be managed if we reuse the old stone from the collapsed east wall at Saint-Cloud. The scaffolding will need reinforcing, but if we begin in autumn…”

Louis listened.

You stared at the steam curling from your teacup, hands still.

The garden would be beautiful.

But it was not the thing you needed.

Not yet.

And Louis—well, Louis was learning.

Slowly. Painfully.

Like a man dragging himself through every inch of the orchard he promised to build.

Fruit by fruit.

Lie by lie.

Bath by bath.

Jean de La Quintinie spoke for nearly an hour.

He spoke of walls and soil and sun exposure. Of espaliered pear trees trained against warm stone, of peaches coaxed into sweetness by clever placement and patience, of herbs that could be both useful and beautiful if planted in ordered beds. He spoke with the fervor of a priest describing paradise, hands moving over the table as though already shaping the earth between his fingers.

Louis listened with the kind of grand, regal attention he gave to men who interested him. Chin lifted, one hand resting near his cup, black wig sitting with more confidence than accuracy upon his head. Every so often he would ask a question—sharp, practical, unexpectedly informed—and Jean would light up, delighted to be understood by a king whose vanity, for once, had found something useful to attach itself to.

You listened too, but more quietly.

You watched Louis more than you watched the gardener.

He seemed almost peaceful when discussing fruit.

It irritated you.

Not because peace looked unnatural on him, but because it suited him too well. Because under the powdered grandeur, beneath the ridiculous black wig and the royal stiffness and the stubborn refusal to bathe without threats of exile, there was still the man you had once loved. The man who could look at a map of a garden as if it were a kingdom kinder than the one he already possessed. The man whose hazel eyes softened when Jean described cherries ripening under netting, whose mouth curved slightly when oranges were mentioned, as if he remembered Spain because he remembered you.

That was the cruelty of it.

Louis was never only the villain of your grief.

He was also the hand that had once steadied yours when you first crossed the threshold of Versailles. The voice that had read to you in the dark when storms shook the windows. The man who had sent musicians away because their playing gave you a headache, then pretended it had been his own displeasure, not tenderness, that moved him.

He was the wound and the memory of the bandage.

And now he sat across from you, speaking of soil.

“It must not be ornamental only,” you said at last, interrupting Jean’s discussion of drainage channels.

Both men looked at you.

Louis tilted his head. “What must not be ornamental?”

“The garden.” You folded your hands in your lap. “If you build it, then it must feed more than my vanity.”

A faint line appeared between Louis’s brows.

Jean, wise enough to sense the ground shifting beneath his feet, lowered his eyes to his notes.

You continued, your voice calm. “If the Crown is to spend money on walls and fruit trees and clever irrigation, then part of the yield should go to the hospital. The widows’ hospital. Fresh herbs, vegetables, fruit in season. Not scraps after the court has eaten. Not bruised fruit. A proper portion.”

Louis stared at you.

For a moment he said nothing, and you thought he would dismiss it. You were ready for the familiar gesture, the elegant hand wave, the paternal little sigh that reduced suffering to numbers and numbers to inconvenience.

But he did not wave you away.

Instead, he leaned back slowly in his chair, his fingers resting against the carved arm. The morning light touched his face at an angle that made him look older than his portraits ever dared. There was gray at his temples beneath the wig, a tired heaviness around his eyes, a faint looseness at the mouth that had nothing to do with weakness and everything to do with years spent performing strength.

“A royal potager,” he said thoughtfully, “that feeds widows.”

“And children,” you added.

His gaze flicked back to yours.

“The children of soldiers,” you said. “If their fathers die for your wars, they can at least taste peaches from your gardens.”

Jean’s fork stopped against the porcelain.

Louis’s expression did not change, but his hazel eyes darkened.

For one sharp second, you wondered whether you had gone too far. Then you remembered the tax carts. The hunger. The silk gowns paid for by cracked hands. The war widows with infants at their breasts and nothing but prayer between them and starvation.

No. Not far enough.

Louis took a breath.

“That,” he said slowly, “would be good theatre.”

Your face hardened.

His hand lifted before you could speak. “And good policy,” he added, softer. “And perhaps, even, good mercy.”

You looked at him warily.

He turned to Jean. “Can it be done?”

Jean blinked. “Majesty?”

“The Queen’s proposal. Can the garden be designed with distribution in mind? Proper storage? A place for washing and packing the produce. A record kept of what leaves the grounds and where it goes.”

Jean’s face changed at once, calculation replacing surprise. “Yes, Sire. It would require planning. A separate entrance, perhaps. Somewhere carts could arrive without disturbing the formal paths. Storage cellars. Drying racks for herbs. If we include medicinal plants—”

“Include them,” Louis said.

You said nothing.

Jean bowed his head. “Then yes. It can be done.”

Louis nodded once, as if he had just ordered a fortress built. Then he looked at you again.

“There,” he said quietly. “A garden that feeds.”

You hated the small flicker of warmth that moved through your chest.

So you crushed it.

“A promise written over breakfast is not yet a deed,” you said.

Louis’s mouth twitched, but there was no amusement in it. “No. It is not.”

Jean, sensing that the conversation had become less about gardens and more about a battlefield he had not been paid enough to enter, began gathering his papers with careful dignity.

“I shall inspect the grounds this afternoon,” he said. “With Your Majesties’ permission.”

“You have it,” Louis said.

“And I will prepare sketches. Several possibilities.”

“Good.”

Jean bowed to you first, then to Louis. “Majesty. Sire.”

When he left, the chamber felt larger.

Too large.

The remaining servants retreated without being asked, closing the doors behind them with the quiet skill of people who had survived court by knowing when not to exist.

You reached for your cup.

Louis watched you.

You could feel his gaze like heat across the table.

“Don’t,” you said.

He blinked, all innocence. “Don’t what?”

“Look at me like that.”

His voice dropped, baritone and smooth. “How am I looking at you?”

“As if you have earned something.”

His eyes lowered.

For once, he accepted the blow without flinching theatrically.

“I know I haven’t.”

The admission was quiet enough that you almost disliked him for it. You preferred him arrogant. It was easier when he was impossible. Easier to hate the Sun King than the tired man whose hair curled gray beneath a badly placed wig and whose hands trembled when he thought you were not looking.

You set your cup down. “Where were you this morning?”

“In the chapel.”

That surprised you.

Louis saw it and gave a faint, humorless smile. “You did not think me capable of prayer?”

“I think you capable of performance.”

“As do I.” He looked toward the window. Beyond the glass, the trees of Marly moved under the wind, green and gold and indifferent. “But this morning I prayed.”

“For what?”

His fingers tightened once on the arm of the chair.

“For restraint.”

You studied him.

He did not look at you as he said it.

“For restraint,” he said again, when you did not answer.

The word sat between you strangely. It did not sound natural in his mouth. Louis XIV had been raised to believe the world was a thing meant to bend around him: men, armies, churches, borders, women, weather if he could find a minister foolish enough to promise it. Restraint, for him, had always seemed less like virtue and more like an insult invented by people with no power.

You tilted your head. “Restraint from what?”

Louis’s mouth opened.

For one treacherous instant, the truth rose so quickly in him that you saw it almost form on his tongue.

Not to kill your lover.

His hazel eyes flashed. His jaw tightened. The tendons in his throat moved once, hard. He almost said it. Almost spat Henri’s name across the table like blood. Almost dragged the night back into the room, with all its silence and jealousy and the image of another man’s hands where his had once belonged.

But then he stopped.

A small miracle.

Or perhaps only strategy.

He turned his face slightly toward the window, fingers smoothing the cuff of his sleeve with exaggerated care. “From speaking too quickly,” he said instead. “From saying something that cannot be unsaid.”

You watched him.

“That sounds almost mature.”

He gave you a wounded look. “Do not insult me before noon.”

“I thought kings enjoyed praise.”

“That was not praise.”

“It was close enough for you.”

A faint smile touched his mouth, brief and unwilling. Then it faded, and for a moment he looked toward the trees beyond the glass as if he had forgotten the chamber entirely. When he spoke again, his voice had shifted—lighter, too casual, the voice of a man turning a knife into a ribbon before anyone noticed the blood.

“Come into the city with me.”

You blinked. “What?”

“The city,” he repeated, turning back to you, and now there was something almost boyish in his face. Dangerous, because boyishness in Louis was rarely harmless. “Paris. Or the nearest market town, if Paris is too far for your royal patience. You have never properly seen it.”

You did not correct him.

You did not tell him that you had gone once.

But you did not tell Louis that.

Instead, you lifted your cup with regal composure and asked, “How, exactly, do you propose we go to the city? We are king and queen. We cannot simply wander through the streets as if we are two bored merchants looking for ribbon.”

Louis’s entire face changed.

It was immediate. Alarming. Like you had handed him a battlefield and permission to enjoy himself.

“Ah,” he said, leaning forward. “But that is where you underestimate me.”

“I rarely underestimate you. I usually prepare for the worst and am still surprised.”

“I am excellent at disguise.”

You stared at him.

He looked offended. “I am.”

“You are Louis XIV.”

“Yes.”

“You wear heels, jewels, embroidered coats, and a black wig that announces your presence three rooms before your body arrives.”

He raised a finger. “Which is precisely why no one suspects me when I am not wearing them.”

You lowered your cup slowly. “You have done this before.”

His silence was far too elegant.

“Louis.”

“A king must know his people.”

“A king must not sneak through taverns in borrowed shoes because he is restless.”

“I have never borrowed shoes.”

“Of course not. You have probably stolen them from a footman and called it taxation.”

He smiled, pleased despite himself. “You wound me.”

“You deserve it.”

“I do it often enough that it has become a skill,” he said, ignoring you with magnificent enthusiasm now. “A true skill. I know how to lower my voice, how to walk without command, how to keep my hands hidden so no one sees the rings. The trick is not to look humble, you understand. A man trying to look humble is always suspicious. You must look tired, slightly annoyed, and concerned about the price of onions.”

You stared at him for a long moment.

Then, despite yourself, you laughed.

It was not a warm laugh. Not entirely. It had disbelief in it, exhaustion, a thin silver thread of the absurd. But it was still laughter, and Louis heard it. His eyes caught on your mouth as if he had found something alive in a burned house.

“You are serious,” you said.

“Utterly.”

“You have costumes?”

“Not costumes,” he corrected, deeply affronted. “Fantasies.”

“Fantasies?”

“Disguises,” he amended quickly. “Though technically both.”

You closed your eyes. “God preserve France.”

“He has so far, though I admit the arrangement has required effort on both sides.”

“Louis.”

“I already have the perfect ones.”

That should have warned you.

It did not warn you enough.

Less than an hour later, you stood in a private dressing room at Marly, staring at the King of France as he twirled.

Twirl was the only word for it.

He did not turn. He did not test the hem. He did not examine the stitching with sober interest. He twirled.

The low-class dress was brown wool, coarse at the sleeves, patched at one elbow and cinched too tightly at his middle in a way that made his waist look both theatrical and deeply unconvincing. A faded apron hung over the front. A kerchief covered the infamous black wig, though he had insisted on keeping the wig beneath it because “no one respects a woman with insufficient volume.” The effect was not peasant. The effect was a widowed tavern keeper who had once seduced a bishop and was waiting for him to apologize.

Louis lifted his skirts slightly and looked down at himself with open admiration.

“Well?” he demanded.

You blinked once.

Then again.

“You look insane.”

“I look poor.”

“You look like poverty as imagined by a man who has never touched a broom.”

He turned to the side, examining the fall of the dress in the mirror. “The hips are good.”

“The hips are a national emergency.”

He smiled, smoothing both hands over his waist. “You are jealous because I am beautiful.”

“You are wearing a tablecloth.”

“A flattering tablecloth.”

“You are the King of France.”

“Not today.” He turned to you then, hazel eyes gleaming beneath the shadow of the kerchief, his baritone lowering into wicked satisfaction. “Today, I am your wife.”

You looked down at yourself in horror.

They had put you in boy’s clothes. Low-born boy’s clothes, to be exact: plain breeches, a loose shirt, a worn vest, stockings slightly too large at the ankle, and a cap meant to hide your hair. Your shape had been flattened with linen binding, your sleeves rolled up, your face scrubbed clean of royal polish. You looked younger, sharper, less like a queen and more like a narrow-shouldered apprentice who might steal pears and lie badly about it.

Louis circled you once, assessing.

You hated that he looked delighted.

“No,” you said.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Absolutely yes.”

“I refuse.”

“You already agreed to the city.”

“I did not agree to become your husband.”

“History will applaud your sacrifice.”

“I will push you into a ditch.”

“And I will scream as any respectable wife would.”

You pointed at him. “You are enjoying this far too much.”

He lifted his chin, every inch the monarch even in brown wool and an apron. “Because I understand theatre.”

“You understand lunacy.”

“Same family.”

You crossed your arms, but the gesture looked irritatingly boyish in the clothes. Louis’s mouth twitched.

“Do not laugh,” you warned.

“I am not laughing.”

“You are glowing.”

“I am radiant by nature.”

“You look like a spoiled washerwoman.”

His expression brightened. “Exactly.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“It should have been.” He stepped closer, the hem of his dress brushing your boots. “Listen carefully. For this to work, we must have names.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Mine is Marguerite.”

You stared at him.

He continued gravely, “A beautiful woman. Spoiled, yes, but misunderstood. Born for finer things. Married beneath her station to a thin, irritable husband with limited intelligence but occasional usefulness.”

Your mouth fell open. “Limited intelligence?”

He gestured toward you. “You must commit to the role.”

“What is my role?”

“Your name is Pierre.”

“Pierre?”

“Yes. Skinny. Somewhat retarded. Loyal in the way a dull dog is loyal.”

You stared at him so long the silence became almost religious.

Then you said, very softly, “I am going to kill you before dinner.”

Louis placed one hand dramatically over his bodice. “You see? Brutish. Very Pierre.”

“I am not playing your skinny, retarded husband.”

He leaned closer, his eyes glittering with mischief. “You must. Otherwise no one will believe I married you.”

“Why would anyone believe I married you?”

His mouth curved. “Because I am beautiful and spoiled.”

“You are deranged.”

“And you are Pierre.”

“I am the Queen of France.”

“Not in those trousers.”

You glanced down at yourself again and felt the immediate, irrational urge to kick him in the shin. “Why can’t you be the husband?”

Louis looked genuinely scandalized. “Dressed like this?”

“You chose the dress!”

“Yes, because I have range.”

“You have vanity.”

“I have artistry.”

“You have several lovers and no shame.”

That struck closer than you intended.

For a heartbeat, the brightness in his face dimmed.

Not fully. Louis was too practiced a performer to drop a mask completely. But the smile paused, caught at one corner, and his hazel eyes shifted from playful to watchful.

The room cooled.

You regretted it, then hated yourself for regretting it.

Louis looked down, adjusting the rough cuff of his sleeve with needless care. “Today,” he said quietly, “I have one wife.”

You swallowed.

The words should not have moved you. They were too little, too late, too easily spoken in a borrowed dress, far from Versailles, far from Montespan’s perfume and the gilded corridors where promises went to rot. Still, something in his voice—low, baritone, stripped of its usual flourish—settled uneasily beneath your ribs.

You looked away first.

“Your kerchief is crooked,” you muttered.

His eyes lifted.

A smile returned, softer this time. “Fix it, then.”

You hesitated.

Then, with a sigh sharp enough to preserve your dignity, you stepped close and reached up. The kerchief was indeed crooked, tied badly over the black wig he refused to abandon. You tugged it into place, fingers brushing the edge of his temple where, beneath all that theatrical darkness, you knew gray hair curled close to his skin.

Louis held very still.

Too still.

His gaze rested on your face with a kind of aching attention that made your hands clumsy.

“There,” you said, pulling back too quickly. “Now you look like a woman who overcharges for eggs.”

His smile widened. “Perfect.”

“You cannot use your real voice.”

“I know.”

“Your voice sounds like a king trying to seduce a courtroom.”

“A courtroom would be fortunate.”

“You need to sound ordinary.”

He straightened, cleared his throat, and produced in the same unmistakable deep baritone, “Good day, sir, might I trouble you for the price of onions?”

You stared.

He stared back, waiting.

“That is the exact same voice.”

“It is not.”

“It is. You just added onions.”

He tried again, slightly higher. “Good day, sir—”

“No.”

“Madame—”

“No.”

He frowned. “I cannot make myself sound like a goose.”

“I am not asking for goose. I am asking for peasant.”

“French peasants vary widely in tone.”

“You would know, apparently, from all your secret onion research.”

Louis’s expression became solemn. “Precisely.”

You covered your face with one hand.

He reached for your wrist, gently lowering it. “Come with me.”

You looked at him.

The humor was still there, but beneath it something else waited. Not command. Not even pleading. An invitation, foolish and dangerous and absurd. A door cracked open where there had only been walls.

“I want to show you,” he said. “Not as King. Not as Queen. Just… come.”

“You cannot stop being king by putting on a dress.”

“No.” His thumb brushed once over your wrist, then withdrew before you could pull away. “But perhaps I can stop being obeyed long enough to hear something true.”

You did not know what to do with that.

So you chose irritation. It was safer.

“If we are caught, I will tell them you forced me.”

“If we are caught, I will faint delicately.”

“You will not.”

“I shall collapse into your arms, Pierre, and cry that my cruel husband led me astray.”

“I hate Pierre.”

“Pierre loves me.”

“Pierre is considering annulment.”

“Pierre cannot afford it.”

Despite everything, the laugh escaped you again.

Louis brightened at once, greedy for it.

You pointed at him. “Do not look pleased.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“I am merely appreciating my wife’s effect on my husband.”

“That sentence alone should have you excommunicated.”

He swept into a clumsy curtsy, skirts rustling. “Then let us go before the Church catches up.”

You stared at him: Louis XIV, King of France, disguised badly as a low-born woman named Marguerite, still wearing his black wig under a crooked kerchief, smelling faintly—miraculously—of rose soap rather than rot, his hazel eyes alive with mischief and melancholy both.

Then you looked down at yourself: breeches, vest, cap, the absurd skinny husband Pierre.

Nine days, you reminded yourself.

This was only day two.

It started with a wardrobe. You needed somewhere to put your clothes, after all.

Then, a new mattress. How Hilly slept on that lumpy old thing, you had no idea.

A bed frame came soon after that, then a new couch.

You weren't paying Hilly any rent — even when you offered, he refused to take it.

"Sweetheart, I know how much I pay you. I ain't charging you rent."

So you paid in furniture instead, insisting it was all for your own benefit — which partly it was — but you wanted to do something for Hilly after all he'd done for you. Once your community service hours were done and you'd convinced the parole officer you'd spent all that time supporting Idaho instead of fucking his boss, Hilly insisted on paying you — even if the salary were meagre, he wasn't going to let you keep working unpaid.

Most nights, you were handed more cash by drunk, drooling customers than you were by Hilly at the end of the night — especially at the weekend. On a Friday or a Saturday, you could easily make more in tips than Hilly paid you in a whole week.

You saved as best you could, and once you had enough, you started buying furniture for Hilly's apartment — the apartment you were only supposed to be staying in temporarily until you found your own place, but somehow, that just never happened. Anywhere you found that you could afford was too far, too small, too sketchy, or just plain falling apart. Hilly's apartment was, objectively, the best place for you right now.

Of course, there was one place you could go. Somewhere clean, spacious and safe. But your parents had given you two conditions for coming home: stop working at that awful bar, and honor your contract.

Well, fuck that. You weren't going to stop working at CBGB, and you sure as hell weren't going to honor the contract your father had signed for you when you were a teenager. You'd take Hilly's dingy old apartment over your parents' glamorous penthouse any day of the week.

Not everything was sunshine and rainbows, though. Any time the Dead Boys were playing, when they came in at four to soundcheck, you ended up arguing with Cheetah Chrome. He just couldn't understand why you were choosing to live in a building that had a roach problem, working for a sliver of cash every night at a club with a lower hygeine rating than a landfill site, when you had a recording contract and penthouse apartment waiting for you.

"You know how many bands in this place would kill for a record deal? And you're treating it like it's some kinda prison sentence!"

"I would rather have had a prison sentence than set foot in a studio again."

"You got no sense of reality, you know that? You pretend you're one of us, but you ain't one of us."

"Who the fuck is 'us'?"

"Punks! Rebels. People with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Real people."

You scoffed. "Whatever, Gene. Don't pretend you know my life."

You didn't need to explain yourself to him. You didn't want to explain yourself to him. No one could know what it was really like to live under the thumb of record producers until they'd lived through it themselves. To have some men in suits who knew nothing about you make decisions about every detail of your life, where you went, what you sang, what you wore. It was even worse for a teenager, because how were you supposed to figure out who you were when the world wasn't giving you space to explore?

There was only one thing that ever tempted you to go back: your bank account. You knew you had a lot of money sitting in there, everything you'd ever earnt from your music, waiting in a trust account until you came of age. Of course, you were 21 now, so you should be able to access it — except that your dad had all the details. You didn't even know which bank it was held with, let alone how to access it, and your parents had been clear that you wouldn't get anything from them until you went back to your recording contract.

So, despite what Cheetah thought, you were just as much of a punk as everyone else that came to the club. Maybe more so, because every day that you woke up in Hilly's apartment, you were actively rejecting what society wanted you to be, turning down the fake life of comfort and riches in favour of the authentic life you were choosing for yourself.

Hilly could sense the tension between you and Cheetah. You tried not to involve him in it, because you knew that he'd decided he was managing the band and he was working his butt off to get them everything Cheetah was bitter that you'd rejected.

But there was no hiding anything from Hilly. You lived together, and you worked together, meaning you saw the best and worst of each other. When you mopped the floor a little too aggressively at the end of the night, he noticed. When you hardly engaged in conversation when he talked about the band, he noticed. And when you were too busy fuming to be in the mood to mess around, he definitely noticed.

"Why are you always in a mood when the Dead Boys are playing?" Hilly asked you one night as you walked back to the apartment, your hands in your pockets and your shoulders tensed rather than trying to feel Hilly up as you normally did.

"I'm not."

"Yeah, you are. You barely talk to Cheetah anymore, and when you do, you're arguing. What's up with you two?"

"Nothing."

"[Y/n], c'mon. Talk to me."

"Can't. You're their manager."

"Yeah, but I'm also your —"

He paused.

"I care about you more, alright?"

You shrugged. "He's jealous, I guess. That I have a recording contract I'm just sitting on, and they're working so hard to get one. You're working hard to get them one. He thinks I'm pretending to be someone I'm not."

"Bullshit," Hilly scoffed. "I've met a lot of people who pretend to be someone they're not, [Y/n]. That ain't you."

"I dunno, maybe he's right. I mean, is this really what I want, or do I just wanna piss my parents off?"

Hilly chuckled. "From what you told me, just refusing to go back is enough to piss them off. This, the club — me — that's just extra."

You smiled and pulled one hand out of your pocket to slip it into his hand instead.

"I know I'm not with you just to piss my parents off."

Hilly cocked an eyebrow at you. "With me, huh?"

"Shut up, you know what I mean," you said with a blush. "I don't think they'd approve of me — doing this — with a guy the same age as my dad."

"I can tell ya Lisa sure don't approve. She likes you sure enough, but I think she's worried you're gonna be her step-mom."

You laughed just as Hilly reached into his pocket for the key to his apartment.

"I mean, I'd sure as hell be weirded out if my parents got divorced and my dad married someone younger than me. But then again, my dad reckons he's Mr Perfect American Patriarch. I don't think you pretend to Lisa you're anything other than a hot mess."

"She's the one always reminding me what a mess I am. Shit, where's my key?"

"Oh, here." You reached into your pocket and pulled out your own key.

"Thanks, sweetheart. What would I do without you, huh?"

"You'd probably be dead from some disease you caught in your apartment."

You opened the door and were promptly met with the all too familiar smell of dog shit. Jonathan had learnt to shit in the box, and not anywhere he liked, but that didn't stop the shits from stinking up the place.

You gagged and held your nose. "Ugh. It smells like a sewer leak in here. You're cleaning that up."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

There was very little you wouldn't do for Hilly. He was the type of guy who inspired loyalty, and you more than anyone felt like you owed him. You got stuck in to some pretty gross jobs at the club, stuff no girl with a million dollars in the bank should even think about doing. But cleaning up any kind of bodily waste, be it human or dog, shit or vomit or blood — that was where you drew the line. You only cleaned up stuff that came from you — and sometimes Hilly, if he got cum everywhere.

As for Jonathan's shits, you point-blank refused to touch those. You taught yourself to clean pretty much everything else to stop the apartment turning back into a biohazard, but when Jonathan shat, it was Hilly's job to clean it up.

At least he was shitting in the box now. The first few weeks, although Hilly was teaching him to use the box, Jonathan still left his shits around, meaning you were constantly having to look where you were going. These days, you were pretty confident you could walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night without having to turn the light on — but you still never went barefoot, just in case.

While Hilly sorted out swapping the newspaper out in the shit box, as you'd ended up calling it, you made your way into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

The bathroom was clean these days,but it was still old and needing sprucing up. You wondered how much it would cost to get a new bathroom fitted. Would that be a step too far? Buying Hilly new furniture was one thing, but a whole new bathroom? You'd never be able to afford that on tips.

He needed a new kitchen, too. Hell, he just needed a whole new apartment. Somewhere bigger, with a garden so Jonathan could have his own bathroom. Maybe even a second bedroom, so you could have guests over. You weren't the last person Hilly had let stay on his couch, and you'd had to remind him several times that he needed to warn you if you were going to walk into the living room in the morning and find a stranger on the couch.

Stop it, you reminded yourself as you brushed your teeth. This is his home, not yours. You're not his wife.

You wondered what he was going to say earlier before he stopped himself. I'm also your… what? There was something he was going to say. He thought of himself as your something — a something that was more important, in his mind, than a band manager. But what?

Hilly appeared behind you, wiping wet hands on his shirt.

"All done," he announced, as if he expected a medal for cleaning up his own dog's shit. He placed his hands on your waist from behind and kissed you on the shoulder. You smiled as best you could with a toothbrush in your mouth as he trailed kisses up your shoulderbone towards your neck, the bristles of his facial hair tickling your skin.

You bent down slightly to spit into the sink, and Hilly took the opportunity to rub his crotch up against your ass.

"Oh my god, I can't even brush my teeth without getting humped."

Hilly chuckled mischievously. "You don't like it?"

"Never said that."

You turned around to face him and let him wrap his arms around you, and for a few moments you rested your head on his shoulder and savoured the embrace.

I'm also your…

Man, that was going to bug you.

But you didn't want to ask. You didn't want to know what he thought he was to you. If he'd said boyfriend it would have terrified you, but if he'd said roommate or fuck buddy it would have broken your heart.

So what? Lover? That made it sound like it was the illicit love affair of a married woman.

Maybe he hadn't been about to say anything. Maybe he stopped mid-sentence because he didn't know how to end it. Maybe there wasn't really a word to describe what you were. All you knew was that you were his and he was yours, and that was enough for you.

----

Things cooled down between you and Cheetah Chrome eventually — if "cooling down" meant you stopped talking. Neither of you were going to convince the other, and since their manager was not your boyfriend but definitely your something, you were going to have to move past it.

The Dead Boys were squeezing Hilly for every last cent, and every time you found him stressed about where he was going to find the money for them, you thought about the money that was sitting in a bank account somewhere with your name on it. The money you could access — if only you'd suck it up and go back to your recording contract.

You would do it, for Hilly. If he needed it, you would do it in a heartbeat, even if it meant never seeing him again. But for the Dead Boys? No. If Hilly wanted to waste his money on them, he had to face the consequences himself.

So instead, you helped Hilly the best way you knew how — by helping him let off steam. No matter how stressed he was, whenever he saw you, his shoulders relaxed and his frown softened. And after a long night at the club, when he'd broken up several fights and yelled at more customers than he could afford to, he seemed like a different man entirely once he'd cum inside you and collapsed next to you on the bed.

He gladly put an arm around you as you cozied up to him, his soft body always far more comfortable for you to lay on than the mattress. Hilly smiled and hummed with contentment as he kissed your hair.

"[Y/n]…"

"Hm?"

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing, getting these boys a record deal?"

The goddamn Dead Boys again.

"Do you mean, do I think it'll fuck them up like it did me?"

"Yeah."

"No, I reckon they'll be just fine. They got a manager that cares. Producer, too. And they're not people-pleasers; if someone treats them wrong, they won't hesitate to let 'em know."

"I'd like to meet your parents one day."

You frowned. "Why?"

"Tell them they fucked up. A girl like you don't deserve to be treated like a money-making machine."

"Yeah, they'd love that. Just add to the list of reasons they'd hate you."

"You reckon they'd hate me?" Hilly frowned.

"Oh, yeah." You held up your fingers and started listing things off. "You're poor, you're Jewish, you're Russian, we're living in sin, you created punk rock, and if you tell them they fucked up they're gonna think you got an attitude. The age thing would be the last of their worries. Just don't knock me up, they'd probably murder you then."

Hilly laughed. "You know, Cheetah once told me he reckons you're only with me to piss them off. Maybe he's got a point."

"Hey! I'm with you 'cus of that great big heart of yours. The fact you'd piss off my parents is just a bonus."

It hadn't passed your notice that he'd used the words with me — and you'd said with you in turn.

"Just my great big heart?" Hilly said with a raised eyebrow.

You rolled your eyes. "Okay, your great big cock too. Man, is your ego so fragile it needs stroking every five minutes?"

"Watch it, you," Hilly growled, reaching around to give you a playful slap on your ass. His other hand pushed your hair out of your face affectionately, and you smiled as you leaned into his touch, reaching your hand up to cover his — then frowned. You took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away from your face to look at it.

"Where's your watch?"

The only time you'd ever seen Hilly take his watch off was when a toilet had clogged at the club and he had to stick his arm into the U-bend. Otherwise, it stayed on — in the shower, during sex, during shower sex. It was his father's watch, you knew, one of the few heirlooms he'd been able to pass on to Hilly, along with the guitar.

"Oh, I, uh… sold it."

"You what?"

"Went to a pawn shop. Sold a bunch of stuff."

"Why?"

"For the Dead Boys. They're gonna need it."

You scoffed and rolled off him to lie on your back.

"Fucking Dead Boys. All you ever talk about anymore is the fucking Dead Boys! I really don't know what you see in them. They're not even that good. You have much better bands on every night."

"They got something to say," Hilly shrugged. "We should listen."

"'I wanna be a dead boy, I'll die for you if you want me to'? That's worth more to you than your father's watch?"

"I didn't know my father's watch meant that much to you."

You turned your head on the pillow to look at him with a frown. "I didn't know it meant that little to you."

"Hey, don't you get on my ass now," Hilly grumbled. "I've already got Lisa and Merv whinin' at me about money, damn rent collectors knocking on the door, my mother asking when she's gonna get her investment back. You're the one person who don't complain, not even when I can only pay you ten bucks for a whole night, or I keep putting off asking you on a date 'cus I can't afford to take you anywhere nice. And you're drawing the line at my father's watch?"

"Don't do that, Hilly."

"Do what?"

"Drop 'I wanna ask you on a date' like I'm supposed to be so shocked that I forget what we're talking about. There's plenty you can do on a date that costs nothing, if you really wanted to ask me out, you woulda done it months ago, so don't use money as an excuse."

Hilly took you by surprise when he rolled over, his arms resting either side of you, his body shrinking yours as his large frame loomed over you, his face close enough to yours that you could count the hairs in his beard.

"You think I don't wanna ask you out?" he growled lowly, his deep voice reverberating through his chest. "You think the only thing you're good for to me is pouring beers and sucking cock? You really think that I let you stay here, cleaned the damn apartment and made my dog shit in a box because, what, your pussy's just that good?"

He rolled his hips against yours, firmly, and you let out a squeak as his weight bore down on you, his breath hot on your cheek.

"Don't get me wrong, sweetheart. Your pussy is fuckin' spectacular. But you gotta be out of your goddamn mind if you can't see that I'm nuts for you."

He rolled his hips again, and you could feel him getting hard as his cock rubbed up against your folds, which were still wet from your earlier escapades.

"Hilly…"

"Mhm."

"We just fucked."

"So?" Another roll of his hips, and he was getting dangerously close to slipping back inside you now.

"So, ain't you tired, old man?"

"You don't get it, do ya?"

Hilly pushed himself back inside you with one firm thrust, helped easily by the wetness he'd already elicited from you earlier.

"I ain't never gonna be tired of you, sweetheart."

Despite your earlier attempts to get the conversation back on track, Hilly had in fact been entirely successful in distracting you, and as he began thrusting lazily, taking his time to feel every inch of you before punctuating each thrust with a grunt, you entirely forgot what you'd even been talking about.

"So, this date you wanna take me on…"

Hilly shook his head. "Can't. Only places that'll let someone like me in… way too sketchy for a girl like you. You deserve… a night at the Plaza or… God, just a fuckin' restaurant with no rats in the kitchen. Hotel with no roaches on the walls… bathroom that's sanitary…"

You giggled, and the sound of your irritatingly adorable laugh just made Hilly more frustrated, his thrusts harder, and, as a result, your cunt wetter.

"You don't get it either," you purred in his ear, your arms wrapped around his shoulders to hold him closer, his weight pinning you down onto the mattress. "I'm nuts for you too, Hilly Kristal. I'd go on a date with you to the dumpster behind the club."

Hilly laughed. "Good, 'cus that's about all I can afford."

"You know, Central Park's only twenty minutes on the train."

Hilly looked at you with amusement. "You wanna go on a date with me to Central Park?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

Hilly shook his head, but he was smiling.

"Unbelievable. You tricked me into asking you out."

"Only way you were gonna do it. Now, are you gonna keep teasing me, or are you gonna fuck me like a real man?"

Hilly growled, his eyes darkening as he adjusted his hips to allow you to spread your legs and wrap them as far around his waist as you could.

"You asked for it, sweetheart."

----

You were sore all over the next day. With the bar open as late as it was, it was usual for you not to wake up until past noon, especially when Hilly had fucked you stupid before going to sleep. But this time, he'd left you not only exhausted but sore too, and you spent a good hour just lying in bed before getting up at 3pm to get ready to go meet Hilly at the club.

It wasn't unusual for him to wake up and leave before you. He didn't seem to need as much sleep as you did, so by the time you woke up, he'd usually left to take Jonathan for a walk before heading to the club, and you would meet him there.

You stopped to get a bagel, and while you were waiting, you looked across the street and spotted a pawn shop, and remembered what Hilly had said last night about selling his watch.

Idiot. Sometimes you thought Hilly only had one brain cell, which could only process one thought at a time. It would explain why he never thought about consequences, just what he wanted in that moment. What would his mother think if she knew he'd pawned his dead father's watch to float the Dumb Boys?

Once your bagel was ready, you wandered over the road to look at the pawn shop window, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of bacon, egg and bread. Hilly probably went to the first pawn shop he saw, rather than getting prices at different stores. This one was on the route from the apartment to the club, so chances were, this was the store he'd gone to.

You finished up your bagel, then went into the pawn shop, the bell above the door announcing your arrival to the shopkeeper, who was writing something down in a little book.

"Good morning," the shopkeeper said politely when he looked up at you. "What can I do ya for?"

"Hey, did an idiot come in here yesterday and sell a bunch of stuff?" you asked as you approached the counter.

The shopkeeper chuckled. "I get a lot of idiots selling stuff in here. Couple of 'em yesterday. Got any details on this idiot?"

"Big guy, curly hair. Dunno what else he sold, but it would have included a watch."

"Oh, you mean Hilly Kristal? Yeah, I know him. He was here."

"Great. Can I buy the watch back? And while you're at it, can I see what else he sold?"

"As a matter of fact, I was just pricing it all up." The shopkeeper gestured to his notebook, which looked to have a list of item descriptions and prices scribbled down. "The watch — let's see." He looked back down his list. "Yeah, that's a thousand."

"You gave him a thousand bucks for it?!"

"No, I gave him four hundred bucks. I'm selling it for a thousand bucks."

You stared incredulously at the shopkeeper, who seemed to have absolutely no qualms about the ridiculous mark-up.

"That's insane. Nobody's gonna pay that much for it."

The shopkeeper just shrugged. "You clearly want it."

"I don't want it! He shouldn't have sold it, I just need to get it back."

"Sorry, sweetheart —"

"Don't call me sweetheart."

"— but if everyone who regretted their sales got their stuff back for the same price, I'd never make a profit. One thousand bucks."

You huffed. A thousand bucks? Where were you supposed to get that kind of money? You made good tips, but not that good.

Once again, you silently cursed your father for withholding your trust account from you.

You leant against the counter and sighed.

"Look, you said you know Hilly, right?"

"Sure. Everyone in the Bowery knows Hilly."

"Yeah, you know why? 'Cus he's a good neighbor. He treats people right and he expects them to treat him right too. You give me his watch back for four hundred bucks, maybe he gets a band to donate some signed merch to the good cause of your burgeoning wallet."

The shopkeeper looked at you thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Alright. Eight hundred."

"Fucking hell!" you groaned. "Jesus. Fine. Look, can you hang on to it for a couple days, maybe keep it in the back? I'll get you your eight hundred bucks. Might have to sell my soul, but I'll find it."

"Sure. Still wanna see what else he sold?"

You sighed. "Yeah, sure. Nothing else I can afford, but sure."

The shopkeeper bent down to lift a box from the floor, and when he moved, you saw something behind him.

You paid the box no mind. You didn't care what was in there.

What you did care about was the guitar propped up against the wall, with magohany wood and phosphor bronze strings. Your guitar.

"Do not tell me Hilly sold you that fucking guitar."

The shopkeeper looked back at the guitar as if he'd forgotten it was there.

"Oh, yeah. Antique, that one, but it's been spruced up. Reckon I'll get two grand for that."

"He sold it to you?!"

"Sure. Gave him 750 for it."

It felt like your whole world had just come crashing down around you. Your guitar — his guitar — your guitar, plural — the guitar you played every damn day, the guitar you'd gone out of your way to fix up for Hilly when you hardly even knew him. He'd sold it. For $750. For $750 to give to the fucking Dead Boys.

Good thing he loved the Dead Boys so much, because he was about to become a Dead Man.

----

It was almost opening time, and there was already a line halfway down the block. Taxi was doing one last soundcheck, Merv was counting out the float for the register, and Hilly was pacing the club floor, running his fingers through his hair.

"Where the fuck is [Y/n]?" he asked the air.

Merv didn't look up from the bills he was counting. "That's the fifth time you've asked, Hilly, and the answer's still the same. We don't know."

"Maybe she's still asleep," Taxi called over from his spot beside the stage.

"Maybe she got tired of your shit," suggested Lisa, who'd just emerged from the back with a tray of freshly 'cleaned' beer glasses.

"Yeah, you wish," Merv laughed as he closed the register. "Those two are so co-dependent, they might wither away and die if they're separated for too long. Look at him, it's already begun."

"You shut the fuck up," Hilly barked. "Get the damn bar open. I'm gonna try calling her again."

You didn't pick up when he called the apartment again, and when the club had been open for three hours with no sign of you, Lisa got tired of her dad sulking in his office and took his key to go check the apartment herself.

"She's not there," she announced a little while later, tossing the key back at him — he didn't even try to catch it, and it sailed over his head. Hilly just sat there, arms folded, and Lisa couldn't quite tell whether he was worrying or sulking. Probably both.

Lisa punched him in the arm to get his attention. "Dad. Listen to me. She's a big girl, alright? She can look after herself."

"Then where the fuck is she?" Hilly snapped. "She never misses a shift. Never. She was fine when I left this morning. Something's wrong."

Lisa sighed. "You said she was asleep when you left, right?"

"Yeah."

"And she's not there now. So she's gone somewhere."

"Where?"

"How the fuck should I know? She's your girlfriend."

"She's not my — never mind." Hilly pushed himself to his feet. "Keep an eye on the place. I'm gonna go find her."

"Find —? How are you gonna find her? Are you gonna knock on every door in New York City asking if they've seen her? Dad!"

Hilly just ignored her. He left out the back, not wanting to push his way through the crowd and risk people trying to catch his attention. He followed the route back to the apartment, looking around as he did, wondering where else you might have gone.

You would have left the apartment and headed up to the club. Depending what time you woke up, you might have stopped for a bagel.

Hilly nodded to Steve, the guy who ran the bagel stand, in greeting.

"Hey there, Hilly," Steve said as he handed a bagel to a waiting customer. "You want your usual?"

"No, thanks, Steve. Have you seen [Y/n]?"

"Who? Oh, the hot chick you're usually with?"

Hilly's jaw tightened, but he ignored the comment for now.

"That's her. She come by here?"

"Yeah, maybe early afternoon. Had her usual, then she went across the street. Think she went in there."

Steve pointed across the street — to the pawnshop.

Hilly sighed. Of course. You were still mad about the watch, as if you thought it had been easy for him to sell it.

"Thanks, Steve."

Across the street, Hilly entered the pawnshop, and the shopkeeper didn't seem surprised to see him.

"Evening, Hilly. Look, I'll tell you what I told your girlfriend, alright? I got a blanket policy, you can't buy your stuff back unless it's at full price. But since it's you, I'll knock the price down."

"What was she looking for, the watch?"

"Yeah, and she seemed pretty pissed about the guitar too."

The guitar. Fuck. Hilly knew he shouldn't have sold it.

"Did you give them back to her?"

"No, but I promised I'd keep them in the back for a week, give her time to rustle up the money."

"How much did you ask her for?"

"Eight hundred for the watch, fifteen hundred for the guitar."

Hilly scoffed. "You are a con artist, Dave. That's more'n twice what you gave me."

"We all gotta make money somehow."

"Yeah… did she say where she was going?"

"No, but I gotta say, she seemed pretty pissed at you. You not seen her since? I figured she was going straight to murder you."

"Not yet, but give her time, I'm sure she's making a plan. Thanks, Dave."

"No problem."

Hilly left and leant back against the wall dividing the pawnshop from the neighbouring laundromat. He folded his arms as he thought hard. You were pissed at him. You wanted to get the watch and the guitar back. You hadn't gone to murder him, so you must have gone to find the $2300 you needed to rustle up.

But where the hell were you going to get that kind of money?

----

The answer came to Hilly the next day. When he woke up, he sleepily reached across the bed to hold you — and found empty space. You were still missing.

Something was wrong, he was sure of it. He wouldn't have blamed you if you'd got tired of his shit and left, but all your clothes were still in the wardrobe. Your toothbrush was still in the pot in the bathroom. If you were leaving him, you'd have packed up everything that was yours — no way you'd leave all your stuff behind.

Hilly walked up the road towards the club, intending to seek out Officer Stan and ask him for help finding her, when Dave from the pawnshop caught up with him and told him to come back to the shop.

"Here y'are," Dave said as he ducked behind the counter to grab something. "As promised."

The watch was sitting on a display cushion. Hilly stared at it for a long moment, then looked back up at Dave.

"You ain't just giving this back."

"Nope. I got paid. You get your watch back. Oh — and I was asked to give you this."

Dave picked up an envelope from between the sheets of his notebook and handed it to Hilly.

"Thanks," Hilly said cautiously, taking the envelope. It was thin and unmarked, as if it held only a single piece of paper. "The guitar?"

"Took it with him."

"…Who did?"

"Didn't give me a name. Just paid in cash, took the guitar, gave me the envelope, said to give it to you with the watch."

"You're not very helpful, you know that, Dave?"

"Not my job to ask questions, Hilly. There's a story behind everything I buy and sell, I ain't got time to listen to all of 'em."

"Right. Thanks."

Hilly pocketed the watch along with the note — something in his gut told him not to put it on yet, not until he'd opened the envelope.

Once he was at the club, in the office, he sat down and placed the watch on the desk while he opened the envelope. He was right, it was just a single sheet of paper inside — very fancy paper, not the flimsy stuff from the dollar store. The handwriting was neat, succinct, and definitely not yours.

A – Aftercare

Impeccable. He treats you with the same reverence he applies to his most precious bolts of silk. He does not simply toss you aside; he cleans you with warm water and linen scented with lavender, his hands steady and gentle. There is no shame in his touch, only a quiet possessiveness. He will wrap you in a heavy robe and pour you a glass of wine, sitting in silence until the trembling stops. He takes care of what belongs to him, for he is nothing if not a responsible guardian of his assets.

B – Body Part (Favorite)

Yours? Your wrists. He is fascinated by the delicate bones beneath the skin, by how easily they can be bound by silk rope or pinned against a mattress by his single hand. His? His eyes. They are hazel, sharp, and unyielding. He does not need to touch you to strip you bare; a single, heavy-lidded glance from across the room is enough to make your breath hitch and your knees weaken. He watches you like a hawk watching a hare.

C – Cum

Inside. Always.

There is no mess in Antoine Richis’s world, only order and ownership. To spill himself on your skin would be wasteful; to finish inside you is an investment. He likes the feeling of sealing you up, of keeping a part of him locked within your body long after he has withdrawn. It is a primal, biological claim that overrides his social civility. “Keep it,” he will murmur against your temple, buttoning his trousers with precise fingers. “Let it remind you of who manages your affairs.”

D – Dirty Talk

Sparse. Quiet. Economical.

He does not degrade you with filth; he dominates you with protocol. His voice is a low baritone rumble that seems to emanate from his chest. He corrects your posture, your breathing, your sounds. “Arch your back,” “Open wider,” “Quiet.” He praises you in terms of value and beauty, treating your pleasure like a transaction he is auditing. “You look exquisite when you struggle. Take all of it. Don’t waste a drop.”

E – Experience

Extensive. He is a man of the world, a merchant who has traveled and seen the decadence of Parisian salons. He knows the anatomy of desire as well as he knows the fluctuation of spice prices. He is not rushed. He is not clumsy. He takes his time, unhurried and exacting, dismantling your defenses with the patience of a man playing a long, winning game of chess.

F – Favorite Position

You, seated in his lap in his heavy velvet armchair, facing him. He likes to see your face, to watch your eyes lose focus as he controls the pace. One hand rests on the small of your back, the other cradles the back of your neck, forcing you to look at him. He likes the intimacy, the way he can whisper threats against your mouth while he uses you. “Ride me,” he will command, not moving a muscle, forcing you to do the work. “Show me your gratitude.”

G – Groaning

Deep. Controlled. A resonant hum.

He is not a man who shouts or growls. His pleasure is a heavy, suffocating weight. He exhales sharply through his nose when you clench around him. When he finishes, he lets out a long, shuddering breath that sounds almost like a sigh of boredom, though the grip of his fingers on your hips tells you otherwise. He grunts low in his throat when he buries himself to the hilt—a sound of satisfaction, like a lock clicking into place.

H – Hair

Head: Thick, silver-gray, perfectly groomed. Not a strand out of place, even when he is sweating.

Body: Sparsely scattered on his chest, tapering down to a darker trail below his navel. It is coarse and wiry against your softer skin.

He allows you to run your fingers through it, a privilege he grants few. But if you pull it, he will stop immediately and look at you with such cold, mild disappointment that you will wish he had struck you instead.

I – Intimacy

Protective. Suffocating.

His intimacy feels less like love and more like a fortified compound. He draws the shutters. He locks the doors. He creates a world where only you and he exist, safe from the chaos and filth of 18th-century France. In the dark, his control slips just enough to reveal a terrified man underneath, clutching you as if you are the only solid thing in a crumbling world. “I will not let anything harm you,” he whispers, and you know he means it, even if he is the one you fear most.

J – Jacking Off

Almost never. He has immense discipline; he denies himself base urges until they can be satisfied properly.

However, in moments of extreme stress—when the roads are closed, or the killer is rumored to be near—he might stand at the window, watching the town square, and touch himself roughly. It is not an act of pleasure, but of release. A necessary tension-breaking mechanism. He finishes into a handkerchief, wipes his hands with fastidious disgust, and returns to work.

K – Kinks

- Power Exchange. He is the Master; you are the charge. He makes decisions for you—what you wear, when you eat, when you climax.

- Silence. He demands you be quiet. A moan is a lapse in control.

- Corruption. He gets off on taking an innocent thing and soiling it with his experience. “You were so sweet before I touched you.”

- Protective Bondage. Tying you to the bed not to hurt you, but to ensure you absolutely cannot leave his sight.

- Clothed Sex. He rarely fully undresses. He finds the friction of his waistcoat against your bare skin, the brushing of his cravat against your face, intensely erotic.

L – Location

- The Counting House. Bent over his heavy oak desk, amidst the ledgers and coins, the smell of ink and old paper heavy in the air.

- The Carriage. The rhythmic clatter of wheels and the sway of the cabin hide your gasps. He draws the blinds to block out the world.

- The Master Bedroom. In his massive four-poster bed, surrounded by heavy drapes that feel like a tomb.

- The Bath. He washes you, his hands slippery with soap, the water cooling around you as he takes his time.

M – Marking

Not with bruises—those are common. He marks you with jewelry and perfumes.

He clasps a necklace around your throat tight enough to leave an indent. He fastens bracelets around your wrists so heavy they bruise the tendons. He dabs his own scent—musk and expensive civet—behind your ears. He wants you to walk through the town smelling of him, wearing his gifts, a walking testament to his ownership. “You are adorned,” he says, checking his reflection in the mirror. “Do not disgrace me.”

N – Nudes

He would commission a portrait, not a dirty sketch.

He prefers the idea of you frozen in oil paint, draped in silk, looking out at the viewer with a knowing, secret gaze. If you were to send him a drawing of yourself, he would frame it and lock it in his safe. He does not distribute images of what is his. He is a jealous god, and he does not share his icons.

O – Oral

Receiving? He stands. You kneel. He does not hold your head; he rests his hand on your shoulder, anchoring himself. He watches you with a detached, clinical fascination, analyzing the bob of your throat, the hollow of your cheeks. He expects perfection. “Relax,” he will instruct softly. “Don’t choke. Use your tongue. Good.”

Giving? Rare. He treats it like a sacred rite. He pushes your legs apart and studies your sex with the intensity of a jeweler examining a gem. He is slow, methodical, tasting you with deliberate laps of his tongue until you are shaking. He does not rush. He wants you to unravel completely, weeping his name into the silence of the room.

P – Pace

Deliberate. Unyielding.

He does not pound like a beast; he thrusts like a piston. Smooth, hard, and rhythmic. He sets a tempo that you must match. If you try to speed up, he will still his hips and wait, hovering over you, until you stop struggling and accept his rhythm. He is in control of the seconds, the minutes, and the hours.

Q – Quickies

Non-existent. Antoine Richis does not rush.

Sex is an event, a ritual, a necessary part of the day’s order. To rush would be uncivilized. Even if he only has twenty minutes, he will take twenty minutes. He will lock the door, unbutton his breeches just enough, and take you standing up with the same gravity and attention to detail as if he had all night.

R – Risk

Aversion to it.

He is a merchant. He calculates risk. He hates the unknown. He will not take you where you might be seen, where the structure of society might crumble around him. The only risk he enjoys is the risk of his own self-control snapping. He teases the edge of his own discipline, seeing how much of your pleasure he can endure before he loses his temper.

S – Stamina

Enduring. He has the constitution of an ox and the discipline of a soldier.

He does not tire easily. He can go for an hour, maintaining the same steady, driving rhythm. He is fueled by a quiet, burning intensity. When he finally finishes, it is because he has decided to, not because his body has failed him.

T – Toys

Objects of beauty.

Feathers. Silk ribbons. A silver hairbrush with a smooth, cool back. A string of pearls that he trails over your skin, perhaps moving between your legs to feel the cool beads against your heat. He once used a heavy velvet pouch of gold coins to weigh down your stomach while he fucked you, the clinking sound a perverse accompaniment to his thrusts.

U – Unfair

Ruthlessly.

He is the judge, the jury, and the executioner of your pleasure. He will stop you right at the peak, holding you there, suspended, just to prove he can. “Ask me,” he will demand. “Beg for it. Tell me you need it.” He makes you say things that humiliate you, breaking down your pride until you are nothing but a grateful creature in his bed. “Good girl,” he whispers, and it sounds like a verdict.

V – Volume

Low. Dangerous.

The room is always silent, save for the rustle of fabric and the wet sounds of your bodies joining. He speaks in hushed tones, as if he is afraid the walls themselves might listen. When he comes, he bites your shoulder to stifle the sound, exhaling a sharp hiss against your skin. He is a man who guards his secrets, and his pleasure is the most guarded of all.

W – Wildest Fantasy

Escape.

It is a fantasy that disturbs him deeply. He dreams of taking you away from the town, away from the trade, away from the looming threat of death. He imagines a small, isolated cottage in the mountains where no one knows your name. There, he is not the wealthy merchant; he is just a man. He locks the door and throws away the key, keeping you safe and hidden forever. It is a fantasy of love twisted into obsession, a prison built to keep the world out.

X – X-Ray

Proportionate. Heavy.

It is a noble weapon, pale and thick with age and strength. He is not circumcised, clean and hygienic. When erect, it curves slightly upward, eager and demanding. It is flushed a deep red at the head, contrasting starkly with the gray of his pubic hair. It looks imposing, serious—a reflection of the man it belongs to. It fills you completely, stretching you until there is no room for thought, only the pressure of him.

Y – Yearning

A deep, hollow ache.

He yearns for peace, but he finds only you. He desires you in a way that frightens him, a hunger that no amount of food or wine can satisfy. He looks at you when you are reading, when you are sleeping, and he feels a desperate need to protect you, to possess you, to keep you under lock and key. He loves you with the terrifying weight of a man who knows he is going to lose everything.

Z – ZZZ (Sleep)

He sleeps like a king.