#anyway.. enjoy

AN: Thank you so so much for this request 💕 I once again took this and ran with it. It actually wasn’t my first Luigi x princess reader request sitting around in my inbox, so come one, come all! I have an inkling I might have questions about this one, so lemme know! I enjoyed writing this very much x

Ps: in order to keep this Drabble length and not fic length, I definitely cut out some backstory . But I hope despite that, it’s easy to follow along xo

You're an angel, I'm a dog

Or you're a dog and I'm your man

You believe me like a god..

I'll destroy you like I am

— I’m your Man, Mitski

Ironmere lies suffocated beneath its winter shroud, the castle's hundred hearths cold and dark save for one — your father's study. You've no choice but to seek its warmth, sprawled across a leather chair that's seen generations of royal lectures.

The fire pops and hisses, each crack of burning wood another tick in your mental count, anything to dull the familiar sermon.

"I must remind you," your father says, pipe smoke coiling around him. His shadow stretches across the study walls, cast by flames that paint the room in shades of amber and gold. "That the Grims are bred for loyalty, my dear." He turns to study your face, but you keep your eyes fixed on the dancing flames, refusing to meet his gaze. "Can be no more your equal than a well-trained dog."

The fire swallows his words, and you wonder if it, too, finds them bitter.

Since catching you at your balcony, tracing the Grimguards' movements with hungry eyes, your father has waged his own quiet war; each day brings a new warning, each meal seasoned with thinly veiled threats meant to plant fear where fascination grows.

But seeds of warning find no purchase in frozen earth.

"Speaking of which," he says, abandoning his chair to stand before the frost-kissed window. Beyond the glass, the Ironmere mountains pierce the steel-gray sky, their jagged peaks collecting snow. The ancient evergreens bow beneath their white burden, branches dripping crystal daggers of ice. "We've taken a new pup out of training. Young one, but promising. He'll be stationed near the South Tower."

They're bringing in a new generation again, stealing youth and binding it in black armor and cold metal muzzles.

Your father's cruelty wears a gentleman's mask, polished and pristine as the rings that adorn his fingers. Time has taught you to see beneath it, to recognize the calculated malice hiding behind words like duty and tradition.

The South Tower stands like a frozen sentinel, eternally facing winter's fury. It's where your father plants his fresh seeds of war, watching come morning with clinical interest as frost either hardens them into soldiers or claims them for the grave.

No coincidence leads new Grimguards there.

They either wake to see another dawn, their breath clouding behind their muzzles, or they join the nameless others whose bones might still rest beneath the tower's foundations.

This is how he plays at being divine — selecting who lives and dies with the casual interest of a man trimming roses; Nature's selection, he calls it, as if nature ever intended for young men to be bound in iron and left to freeze.

"Another child?" The words slip past your guard and your head turns toward him, though the fire still claims most of your attention, its warmth a mockery of comfort.

"No younger than yourself, my love." The endearment falls from his lips like frozen honey — sweet, yet somehow wrong. He speaks of sending a boy your age to stand in winter's cruelest depths, guarding a tower that has stood empty since before your grandmother drew breath. "We've discussed this before," he says, finally abandoning his view of his frost-touched kingdom to fix you with that measured stare. "You ceased being a child the moment you became heir to Ironmere."

You answer with silence and the loud protest of leather against leather as you shift in your chair.

Let him interpret the sound as he wishes — rebellion or resignation, it matters little. In this moment, you think of another young man who whose breath will freeze behind a muzzle while you sit before this fire, counting the ways your father fashions cruelty into crown.

"The muzzle ceremony is their rebirth." His voice takes on that familiar, aristocratic lilt—the same tone he uses when discussing wine vintages or the value of old tapestries. As if he speaks of art rather than chains. "This one's training scores are exceptional. He'll serve the crown well."

You've watched these ceremonies before, hidden in gallery shadows. Seen how they strip away names and replace them with numbers, how they forge living flesh into living weapons. The muzzles aren't just metal — they're shackles of status, marking each Grimguard as something less than human but more than beast. A perfect servant for your father's perfect kingdom.

In your mind, you see another humans eyes, bright with unshed tears as cold iron meets warm skin — another soul bound to Ironmere's frozen heart, while your father speaks of service as casually as one might discuss the weather.

Through frosted windows, you've studied their brutal dance since childhood.

The Grimguards train in Wolfdens outer courtyard where the stones are perpetually slick with ice, where one misstep means more than just a fall. They move like shadows given form, their black armor drinking what little sunlight winters here permit.

The training starts before dawn, when breath freezes mid-air and fingers can barely grip steel. They fight with those peculiar curved blades — somewhere between sword and sickle — that have become as much their signature as the muzzles that cage their faces.

The weapons are deliberately unwieldy at first, designed to strain muscle and test resolve.

Many break their own wrists learning to wield them.

You've counted the phases of their training through seasons.

First, the endless drills until their movements become reflex, then the sparring that leaves red droplets crystallizing on white snow. The masks come early — crude training ones at first, heavy iron things that make it hard to breathe, harder still to see. They learn to fight half-blind, to rely on instinct over sight.

To become creatures of pure reaction.

But it's the endurance training that haunts your dreams.

They stand for days in the bitter cold, perfectly still, until ice forms on their armor. They run barefoot through snow until their feet bleed, then run further still, and some disappear during these tests, their names never spoken again, as if Ironmere itself had swallowed them whole.

Your father calls it necessary refinement.

You call it what it is.

The systematic breaking of human beings until all that remains is loyal steel wrapped in obedient flesh.

It was the whimpering that drew you from your chambers — a sound so foreign in these stone halls where weakness dares not echo. Your footsteps fell like fresh snow as you traced that desperate keening, following it until it transformed into a metallic chattering, silver bars rattling as violent tremors wracked a body fighting to remember warmth.

He doesn’t turn when you found him in the South Tower's breezeway, though surely he heard you.

His silhouette matches the template they all conform to eventually — broad shoulders carved by endless drills, frame solid as the mountain itself, training blacks clung like a second skin, running from throat to wrist in an unbroken line of shadow. Only his gloved hands betrayed movement, fingers flexing and unflexing in a rhythm that matched his shivering.

The new muzzle catches what little moonlight filtered through the frost-laced windows, shaped like a snarling dogs snout, throwing silver patterns across the walls. Too new to have darkened with use, too rigid yet to have molded to his face.

Another wolf being broken to the bit, another hound learning to embrace his cage.

The closer you drift toward him, the more your father's warnings drum against your skull.

Never approach a new Grimguard alone. They're most dangerous before the muzzle takes hold.

The metallic chattering quickens like a death rattle, and the cold seems to deepen, carving into your marrow with ancient teeth, and memory washes over you as you recall exactly what they become — watched them train in the courtyards below your window, witnessed how they move like poetry written in violence, how they strike with the precision of winter's first killing frost.

But this one.

This one still trembles.

His control fractures with each shudder, and you remember how father once told you that a Grimguard is most lethal in the moments they're breaking.

Like a wolf with its leg in a trap, he'd said, that familiar cruel smile twisting his lips. They'll tear through their own flesh to survive. Imagine what they'd do to yours.

Pain shapes them. The cold hardens them.

A common solider dies for his kingdom, a Grimguard kills for it.

"Are you cold?" The whisper escapes before wisdom can catch it, and the transformation is immediate — his trembling ceases as if frozen in time, muscles locking into place with military precision.

Whether it's training or pure shock that stills him, you can't tell.

These new ones are always unpredictable, balanced on a knife's edge between their old instincts and their new purpose.

"I heard you whimpering," you continue, the words hanging dangerous and delicate in the space between you. Through the silver teeth of his muzzle, his breath comes in short, controlled bursts, each exhale creating ghost-white clouds that dissipate against the metalwork.

The pattern is deliberate now — mechanical — as if he's forcing each breath through a carefully memorized cadence, the same measured rhythm you've watched the veteran Grimguard use during their drills, when they're trying to master pain.

You wonder if he's already learning to lie with his body, or if he's simply too terrified to show weakness.

You hover in the uncertainty, unsure what response you're seeking.

The Grimguard are like shadows given form and function — you've spent years watching them from windows and walkways, learning their peculiar language of violence and restraint.

They move in packs through the fortress halls, all lethal grace and barely contained aggression, but you've also witnessed the moments they think no one sees.

A Grimguard pressing their muzzle against a packmate's shoulder after a brutal training session, the silent comfort shared between two hounds who lost their third to a snow bear's claws at the North Gate, and there’s something almost gentle in how they lean into each other then, these weapons your father has forged, finding warmth in the spaces between their brutal purpose.

But those moments are never meant for outsiders' eyes.

They're certainly not meant for the kings daughter, whose very presence reminds them of the hand that holds their leash.

You've seen how quickly they can shift from deadly grace to deadly intent, how the muzzles hide everything except the truth in their eyes.

He turns — slowly, deliberately — and you catch your first glimpse of eyes behind the silver latticework.

They're brown, almost gold in the dim light, and far too lucid for comfort. Not yet hollowed out by more training, not yet carrying that vacant winter-wolf stare that marks the veteran Grimguard.

These eyes study you with an unsettling clarity, as if cataloging every detail of your presence.

His head tilts, just slightly, reminding you of the hunting hounds when they catch an unfamiliar scent, and the motion is too natural, too human. Somehow that makes it worse, as most Grimguard move like they're reading from a manual of precise angles and measured steps.

The muzzle shifts as his jaw works beneath it, and you realize he's trying to decide if he's allowed to speak to you. New recruits often struggle with this — the complex hierarchy of who can command their voice and who must be met with silence.

The princess falls into a grey area their training hasn't covered yet.

Finally, his gloved hand rises, not toward you but to his own throat, fingers pressing against the high collar of his blacks where you know the control runes are etched.

The control runes are your father's masterwork — ancient symbols seared into the skin at throat and spine, binding each Grimguard to the fortress's will.

You've seen them during the marking ceremonies, watched how they burn with a cold blue light as they're carved, how they fade to silvery scars that pulse with each heartbeat.

They serve as both leash and collar, limiting how far a Grimguard can roam from the fortress walls, how much force they can use, who they can harm.

"My Lady." The words emerge like broken glass wrapped in velvet — smooth on the surface but jagged underneath. His voice carries that telltale distortion all new recruits have, as if speaking through layers of frost, but there's something else there. A tremor of defiance, perhaps, or desperation. "The cold is necessary. Part of our conditioning."

He swallows hard, the muzzle's intricate metalwork shifting with the motion. The runes must be burning now — you can see how his fingers dig deeper into his collar, tendons standing out against the black leather of his gloves, but he holds your gaze, those amber eyes still too present, too aware.

Most pups learn to lower their eyes by now.

You notice a tension in how he stands, like a bowstring drawn too tight, and you recognize the stance from watching new recruits, called the Unblooded, in the training yards.

"Necessary," you echo, tasting the word's bitter edge. You've heard your father use that same justification countless times in his workshops, watching dispassionately as fresh recruits screamed through their first exposure to the killing cold. The cold that reshapes them, hardens them, strips away everything warm and human until only the Grimguard remains.

His breathing hitches — just slightly — at your tone.

The runes pulse again, brighter now, a steady rhythm like heartbeats beneath his collar. You notice how his other hand has curled into a fist at his side, leather creaking with the strain, Fighting the compulsion to kneel, perhaps, or fighting the instinct to run.

Both would be equally futile.

"And who told you that?" The question slips out softer than intended, almost gentle — It's dangerous, this curiosity about their lives before the muzzles, before the markings. Your father has warned you repeatedly about seeing them as anything more than what they are now: tools, weapons.

But there's something about this one's eyes, about the way he still holds himself like he remembers another life, that makes you reckless.

You can hear the slight scrape of metal teeth as his jaw clenches beneath the muzzle. When he finally speaks, his voice has splintered, "The Keeper himself, my Lady. Your father."

You hear the sound of boots approaching, the groundslurkers making their rounds to assure everything is just-so.

"Inside," you murmur, touching the frozen door behind you. Not a command, but an invitation. A dangerous one. No Grimguard is allowed in the royal quarters unless specifically ordered by your father.

The punishment would be severe.

He knows this.

You see the conflict ripple across what's visible of his face, the way his fingers twitch toward his turtleneck collar, but the patrol's footsteps are getting closer, and you've already seen too much.

You push the door open wider, letting candlelight spill onto the frost-rimed stones. "Choose quickly."

For a moment, he's perfectly still, like the ice sculptures in the winter garden, then he moves — one fluid step through the doorway, silent as snow despite his armor, and you close the door just as the patrol rounds the corner, their heavy boots echoing past without pause.

In your chambers, he looks desperately out of place.

The black armor and cruel angles of his muzzle stark against the rich tapestries and furs. He stands rigid, carefully not touching anything, as if afraid his mere presence might taint the warmth of the room.

In all your life in the palace, you've never dared to get this close. The Grimguard are your father's shadows, his weapons — to be glimpsed from afar, never examined.

But now.

You circle him slowly, studying the way frost creeps along the joints of his armor, how it crystallizes in delicate patterns where leather meets metal. Up close, you can hear the soft crackle of ice forming and reforming with each breath, see how the cold radiates from him in barely visible waves that make the air shimmer.

The muzzle is even more intricate than you'd imagined.

Delicate silverwork overlays darker metal, creating a lattice of thorns and frozen vines that cage the lower half of his face. You can see now why they call it a muzzle rather than a mask — it's fitted precisely to his features, allowing just enough movement to speak when commanded, but designed to remind both wearer and observer of its purpose.

Control.

Your hand lifts before you can stop yourself, drawn to the impossible intricacy of it. His whole body goes rigid, but he doesn't step back. This close, you can see the minute tremors running through him — fighting against something you don't fully understand, or reacting to your proximity, or both.

"Does it hurt?" you whisper, fingers hovering just above the metalwork. "All the time, or only when-“

"Yes." The word comes out rough, barely above a whisper. He hasn't spoken this long without a command in who can say exactly how long. "Always. But more when..." He trails off, eyes flickering to your still-raised hand, then away.

More when fighting whatever's been done to him, you realize.

More when showing any trace of humanity.

Your hand trembles slightly, caught between pulling back and closing that final distance. The cold radiates against your skin, a warning or an invitation— you're not sure which.

You've never heard one of them admit to pain before.

They're not supposed to feel anything at all.

But he does feel.

He hurts.

His eyes widen, a flash of something — fear, hope? — breaking through their frozen surface.

"Let me help you," you say softly, reaching for the intricate clasps of the muzzle nestled in his wavy, black hair. "Just while we're here. No one will know."

"You can't," he says, the words strained. Even this small act of refusal seems to cost him. "The cold will hurt you. And if the Keeper—"

"My father isn't here," you interrupt, your voice steady despite the way your heart pounds. "And I'm not afraid of the cold."

You're close enough now to see how the metalwork digs into his skin, how even the simple act of speaking makes the thorns beneath the sides of his muzzle bite deeper.

All these years, you never knew the muzzles were lined.

Never wanted to know.

His breath catches as your fingers brush the first clasp, but he remains perfectly still, caught between what he's been made to be and what you're offering him — a moment of freedom, no matter how brief.

The clasp comes free with a sharp click, and his whole body jerks as if struck. A soft sound escapes him — pain or relief, you can't tell, as frost spreads rapidly across the metal where your fingers made contact, but you refuse to pull away.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, working on the next clasp. "I'll be quick." The cold bites into your fingertips now, sharp and hungry, but you can see how the muzzle's grip has already loosened slightly, allowing him to take a deeper breath. “Are they all like this?”

His hands clench at his sides, trembling with the effort to remain still, and each release of a thorn seems to send shockwaves through him, as if the very act of being freed is its own kind of agony. But he doesn't stop you, doesn't pull away — and that tells you more than words ever could.

The facade of silver and shadow begins to come apart under your careful touch, revealing glimpses of what lies beneath; you try not to think about how long it's been since anyone has seen his true face, or why your father thought it necessary to cage him so thoroughly.

"No," he manages, voice tight as you work on another clasp. "Not all. This one is special." There's a bitter edge to the word that makes you pause.

The implications sink in slowly. Your father must have designed this one specifically for him — more thorns, more pain, more control. Because he was different somehow. Because he fought back.

You examine the cruel metalwork with new understanding, noting how the thorns are positioned to punish speech, expression, any hint of defiance, your fingers tracing a particularly deep puncture mark, and he goes completely still, hardly breathing.

"Almost done," you promise, though your hands are nearly numb from the cold now. Each clasp reveals more evidence of long-term torture disguised as restraint. The more you see, the more questions burn in your throat, “Why’d they give you one like this?”

He's quiet for so long you think he won't answer, the final clasp coming free under your trembling fingers, but he makes no move to remove the muzzle completely.

"I remembered," he finally says, "Something I wasn't supposed to. My name." His eyes meet yours, and there's something terrible in their depths — not just pain, but knowledge. "They take everything when they make us, but I kept one thing."

He stops abruptly, as if even this small confession costs him dearly, and you can see the thorns pressing deeper as he speaks, drawing pinpoints of darkness that might be blood, might be something else entirely, yet he hardly reacts.

The pain hardly registers.

A weapon isn't supposed to remember who it used to be.

But this one does.

“What’s your name?”

His breath catches at your question, and you can see him fighting against years of conditioning, against the very magic that binds him, and the room grows colder, frost crystallizing on the windowpanes.

"L-" he starts, then gasps as if the very attempt causes him physical pain. His hands clench. "Luigi," he finally manages, the name coming out in a rush of frozen air.

You repeat the name softly, testing its weight, and he shudders at the sound of it from another person's lips. How long has it been since anyone has called him by his real name? How many years of being nothing but a number, a weapon, a Grimguard?

This is where it began.

And soon, you find yourself inventing excuses to avoid Duke Aldrich of Brindsborough's tedious evening calls. Instead, your nights belong to these stolen moments; you and Luigi seated on the floor of your chambers, knees touching, sharing whispered confessions in the candlelight.

He teaches you how the Grimguards sleep — bodies intertwined for warmth in the cold stone kennels, finding comfort in the press of limbs and shared breath. The first time he shows you, hesitantly arranging your bodies so your back fits against his chest, you understand.

It's not just for warmth — it's about trust.

You learn to read the minute changes in his expression, the things he can't say even without the muzzle. He learns your tells, too — the way you twist your rings when you're anxious, how your laugh changes when you're truly happy versus when you're playing the perfect princess.

These evenings become your refuge whilst the rest of the castle prepares for your upcoming marriage to a man you barely tolerate, you and Luigi build something fragile and precious in secret candlelight.

You tell him about the time you were seven, and you snuck your injured falcon into your bedroom instead of letting the gamekeeper "take care of it." You'd splinted its wing with strips torn from your favorite dress and fed it scraps from your dinners for weeks. Your father had been furious when he found out — not because you'd ruined the dress, but because you'd shown weakness.

Mercy was unbecoming of a princess.

The next memory stands out sharp and clear — that particular night when everything shifted.

You'd barely managed to secure the door's heavy lock before Luigi abandoned his usual restraint, muzzle yanked off. One moment you were turning, the next your back hit the floor with a soft thump, driving a surprised laugh from your chest.

His movements were pure instinct, almost feral — nothing like the rigid control the Grimguards usually displayed. Cool lips and nose traced your neck once you’d pulled his muzzle away, your collarbone, your hair, erasing every lingering trace of Duke Aldrich's cloying cologne. Each brush of contact sent shivers down your spine, not from cold but from the intensity of his need to claim, to possess.

"Marking your territory, are you?" you whispered through breathless giggles, fingers threading through his hair. The words made him pause, and you felt him tense — caught between embarrassment at his display and a deeper, darker urge to continue.

You could feel his breath against your throat, quick and uneven. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. "He touched you. I could smell him on you all evening. I couldn't. I can't-“

Instead of pulling away, you tugged him closer, understanding flooding through you. This wasn't just possession — it was protection, desperation, love transformed by whatever magic had remade him into something wild and fierce. "I'm here," you whispered. "I'm yours."

A sound rumbled deep in his chest — not quite human, not quite animal—and his grip on you tightened almost painfully. The temperature plummeted, frost blooming across the flagstones in intricate spirals, but you weren't cold.

Not where he touched you.

"Mine," he breathed against your skin, the word holding years of denied wanting. His control, already fragile, splintered further. You felt the magic that bound him surge and twist, fighting against this claiming that went against everything they'd bred him to be.

Grimguards weren't meant to want.

Weren't meant to possess anything but their duty.

Yet here he was, trembling above you, eyes dark with need as they met yours. One hand cradled your face with impossible gentleness, even as the other gripped your waist with bruising intensity. The contradiction of him — deadly weapon and tender protector, ice and burning want — made your heart race.

"Say it again," he pleaded, voice rough with desperation.

You reached up, traced the scars where the muzzle had been, and watched his eyes flutter closed at your touch. "I'm yours, Luigi," you whispered. "Only yours."

The moment your fingers trace those scars, Luigi shudders violently, a full-body tremor that sends cascades of ice crystals shimmering through the air. His breath hitches, catches — no one has ever touched him there, not with such tenderness, not since they first bound him.

But then he does something that steals your breath — he leans into your touch. Like a half-wild thing learning trust, he presses his face against your hand, nuzzling into your palm.

His skin is cold as ever, but his breath comes hot against your wrist. When his lips brush your skin — tentative, questioning — you feel the ghost of frost patterns blooming up your arm.

"Warm," he murmurs, sounding almost drunk on the sensation. "You're so warm." His eyes are half-lidded now, tension melting from his shoulders even as his grip on your waist remains possessive, and the contradiction fascinates you — how he can seem so dangerous and so vulnerable in the same moment.

You trace another scar, and this time he makes a sound that's almost a purr, deep in his chest. The ice spreading across your chambers takes on a soft, pearlescent glow, as if reflecting his pleasure. It's intoxicating, this power to gentle him with just your touch, to make the fearsome Grimguard melt like snow in spring.

When his eyes open to meet yours again, they're heavy with an emotion that makes your heart stutter. The gold in them has darkened to midnight, pupils blown wide. "More.” he whispers, and it's both a plea and a demand.

With trembling fingers, you map the constellations of his scars, each touch drawing new sounds from him — soft gasps and broken whimpers that make your chest tight. The marks are smooth beneath your fingertips, silver-white against his olive skin. You trace them all; the deep grooves where the muzzle's straps cut in, the lighter marks across his jaw where they tested different bindings.

His control slips further with each caress, and frost flowers bloom and fade on your skin where his hands roam, leaving trails of delicious cold that make you shiver. When your thumb brushes the corner of his mouth — where the metal once forced his silence — he catches it gently between his teeth, eyes locked on yours as he presses a kiss to your fingertip.

"They told us we couldn't feel," he murmurs against your hand. "That the binding stripped everything but duty.” He presses his forehead to yours, breathing ragged. "With you, I feel everything."

You curl your fingers into his hair and pull him down, eliminating the last space between you. His lips are cool against yours, but they warm quickly as you show him this new way to be close, to trust, to want.

He learns fast, desperate and eager, like a man who's been dying of thirst finally given water.

You feel it in every desperate roll of his hips, that untamed creature beneath his skin — the one the Grimguard could never fully bind. It surfaces in the frost that spreads beneath his palms where they bracket your head, in the way his breath comes in ragged pants against your neck, hot despite his perpetual cold.

He's beautiful like this — composure shattered, cheeks flushed an impossible pink against his beautiful skin, and his eyes are blown wide, that ethereal chestnut brown nearly swallowed by black, and they catch the light like stars when he gazes down at you.

There's something almost painful in his expression — wonder and desperation and disbelief all tangled together.

The friction between you draws broken sounds from his throat, primal and unrestrained. His movements are instinctive, graceless — so different from his usual precise control, each roll of his hips against your thigh becoming more frantic than the last, his whole body trembling with need.

"Please," he gasps, though you're not sure what he's begging for. You’re almost certain he doesn't know either. His fingers curl against the floor, "Please, I can't- I need-"

You reach up to thread your fingers through his hair again, drawing him down until his forehead rests against yours, and he whimpers at the contact, hips stuttering in their rhythm.

This close, you can see every emotion flash across his face — vulnerability and hunger and love so intense it steals your breath.

The wild thing in him recognizes its match in you, and neither of you want to tame it anymore.

His voice trembles as he tries to find the words, years of enforced silence warring with raw need. You cradle his face in your hands, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.

"Tell me," you whisper. "I want to hear you say it."

"I-" he starts, then breaks off with a shaky exhale.

"I need to be closer.” He whispers, his movements between your legs desperate and juvenile, but there’s something so, so sweet about it.

He’s reduced himself to raw and visceral need, and cares little for how it makes him look, this feared Grimguard, a hound who sleeps in piles with his pack, a weapon of mass destruction, a human being. He’s flayed himself open for you, guts spilling forth, red hot and oxblood — this primeval need, this unfiltered want.

It simply is not something you’d ever find in anyone else.

Specifically the Fiancé your father has hand-selected.

Luigi groans as you guide him where you need him, the sound low and broken against your throat. Your nightgown rides higher, silk cool against fevered skin. His grip on your hip tightens instinctively, and you gasp at the perfect pressure of frost-touched fingers.

Each roll of his hips is hungry, instinctive — like his body remembers what his mind was forced to forget. You wonder if he dreams of this, if behind those crystalline eyes he imagines all the ways he could unravel you. If during those long, cold nights in his chamber, thoughts of you haunted him like this.

The friction builds a delicious heat that makes your head spin. You arch against him, chasing more, and his breath hitches at the way you move. His eyes are wild when they meet yours — desperate and wanting and almost afraid of how much he needs this.

The etiquette mistress would faint if she knew the thoughts that filled your head during lessons now — memories of frost-touched skin and desperate sounds and the way Luigi says your name like a prayer.

You guide Luigi beneath you, and he goes willingly, eyes wide with wonder as you settle above him, his hands tracing paths of up your thighs, mapping you like something precious, something sacred, each touch leaving ghostly patterns on your skin that fade like morning mist.

The silk of your dress whispers between you as his fingers trail higher, catching on your collarbone where your necklace rests, transfixed by the way the pendant rises and falls with your quickening breath, by how the gold warms against your skin while his touch remains winter-cold.

"Closer," you echo, fingers curling in the hem of his black shirt. You draw it up slowly, exposing him inch by inch, the moonlight streaming through the window catching on old scars that map his abdomen like constellations — some precise and surgical, others jagged and cruel.

Your heart aches at their implications, but now isn't the time to count his wounds.

Not when he's looking at you like this, like you're everything he was told he could never have.

His breath hitches as your hands explore the newly exposed skin, and the temperature drops further with each touch, frost spiraling out beneath him in intricate patterns that match his racing pulse.

"Please," he gasps, and you're not sure if he's begging you to stop or never stop. Maybe both. The wild thing in him is closer to the surface than ever, making his eyes glow like arctic stars in the darkness. "I need- I don't know how to-"

You lean down until your foreheads touch, breaths mingling in the frost-edged space between you. His skin radiates winter's chill everywhere except where his heart beats strong beneath your palm. You can feel him trembling, power barely contained.

"Let me show you," you whisper against his lips, cradling his face. His eyes are luminous in the darkness, filled with vulnerability and desperate trust. The temperature drops as his control frays further, delicate patterns of frost blooming across every surface.

"I've never-" he starts, voice breaking.

You silence him with a gentle kiss. "I know," you breathe. "I've got you. You're safe, Lu."

His fingers flex against your arms as emotions war across his face — years of isolation and fear battling with his need to be known, to be accepted exactly as he is. The wild thing in him strains closer to the surface with each passing moment. "Let go," you tell him softly. "I got you."

You pour all your love into another kiss, wet and hot, showing him that he's worthy of gentleness, of care.

That he doesn't have to hold himself back anymore.

And he doesn’t.

You watch in wonder as his composure fractures, that usually fixed expression melting into something vulnerable and raw, his hands grasping you like an anchor as his careful control slips further.

The temperature drops with each shared breath, but you've never felt warmer.

His face — usually so guarded, bearing scars that speak of battles fought alone - is transformed. Open. Trusting. His lips part on silent pleas as his eyes lock with yours, glowing like arctic stars, and the wild thing in him is closer to the surface than ever.

You've never seen anything more beautiful than this proud, powerful man allowing himself to be soft for you. To be vulnerable. His fingers flex against your skin as another tremor runs through him.

"You're safe," you whisper, rocking your hips against his in a slow rhythm that allows the both of you to adjust. "You're mine."

The sound he makes is something between a sob and a prayer, raw with years of loneliness and need. You kiss him deeply, showing him with every touch that he's worthy of this — of pleasure, of care, of love freely given, and he takes just as his heart desires.

It hardly takes him any time before he’s got the hang of it, raw and needy, soft but strong.

He shoves his face in your neck once you’ve been laid on your back again, his teeth biting gently into the soft flesh of the curve in your shoulder, his instincts still lingering, but you welcome them and each mark he leaves against your skin, the rhythm of his hips sloppy and wild but achingly free, your own body cherished as if he’d come undone at your altar.