#weapon play

He adjusted the reins and kept walking. She made a frustrated sound behind him and he heard the pebble leave her hand before it hit the back of his head. When he turned around she was studying the sky with theatrical interest.

By midday she’d moved on to touching. Adjusting his cloak when it didn’t need adjusting. Brushing dust from his shoulder that wasn’t there. Squeezing past him on a section of road that was perfectly wide enough for two, her body pressing against his back, her hand resting on his hip for balance she didn’t need. She let it linger there. He felt the warmth of her palm through the leather and it stayed with him for a mile after she’d pulled it away.

She asked him if he’d ever escorted a woman before. He said he had. She asked him if they were all this unsatisfied with his performance. He didn’t answer. She told him she was beginning to think he’d been chosen specifically for his inability to be interesting, that perhaps someone at the court had said find me the most tedious man in the garrison and send him with the princess, and here he was, exceeding expectations.

He let it land. He let all of it land.

By evening she’d worn herself out. She climbed into the wagon without a word while he built a small fire and sat against the wheel with his sword across his knees. This was the dangerous stretch. Two more nights of open road before they reached the keep. If anyone was tracking them, this was where they’d come.

He sat with the fire at his back and watched the dark tree line and listened. The woods clicked and rustled with small living things. The horse shifted its weight. The wagon canvas rippled in a wind that smelled like rain coming from the east. He was thinking about the river crossing tomorrow when he heard her.

At first he thought she was in pain. A sound from inside the canvas, muffled and breathy, the kind that makes you reach for your weapon before you’ve fully registered what it is. He was on his feet before the second one came. By the third he knew exactly what he was listening to. She wasn’t hurt, but she was certainly loud. Loud enough that anyone within a hundred yards of this road would hear her.

He pulled the canvas back.

She was on her back with her traveling clothes pushed up to her ribs, one hand between her legs, head tipped back, mouth open. She looked at him. Her fingers kept moving. That same smile from the pebble incident crept across her face, like she’d been waiting to see how long it would take him to come looking.

"Do you have any idea how far your voice carries out here? I can hear you from the fire. Which means anyone on this road can hear you from a hundred yards out."

She arched her back slightly, watching him from under heavy eyelids. "Well. Now that I have an audience, so it seems rude to stop."

"This isn’t a game, your highness. I need you to be quiet."

"You’ve needed me to be quiet all day. I’ve been very uncooperative about it. I don’t know why you thought nightfall would change things." Her hand moved slower between her thighs, not stopping, not even pretending to consider stopping. "You can just go back to the fire. Pretend you didn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re very good at pretending things about me aren’t happening. You’ve been at it all day."

He climbed into the wagon.

She opened her mouth to say something else and he took her wrist and pulled her hand away from herself and pinned it against the wagon floor. The gasp that came out of her was nothing like the sounds she’d been performing. Sharp and involuntary, startled out of her. She hadn’t actually believed he’d do it. The smile vanished. Underneath it her face was open and flushed and honest in a way he hadn’t seen all day.

"You have no concept of the danger we are in right now." His voice was low, his face close enough to hers that he could feel her breath coming fast against his mouth. "I have been out there keeping us alive since sundown, and you couldn’t think of a single better way to pass the time."

"You refused to talk to me." Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "You're escorting me, you should pay attention to me. What was I supposed to do?"

"Anything other than this."

"Well, this seems to have worked, so I won't stand for your lectures."

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he reached down with his free hand and drew his sword from the scabbard. He drew it slowly. Slowly enough that she heard every inch of steel leaving the leather, that long clean whisper of metal on hide, and the sound did what nothing he’d said all day had managed. She went quiet. Completely, instantly quiet, her eyes dropping to the blade between them.

He reversed his grip. The blade pointed down and away from both of them. The hilt faced up, the leather-wrapped pommel dark and smooth, still warm from sitting against his hip at the fire.

"A knight has nothing if not his sword and his oath, and I will not betray my oath for stubborn royalty." He held the pommel where she could see it. "So have this. Since your own hand wasn’t enough."

Her eyes moved from the pommel to his face. Her lips parted but nothing came out. For the first time since he’d met her she looked like she didn’t have a response prepared.

He pressed the hilt against her entrance. She flinched hard, her whole body jerking, but his hand on her wrist kept her pinned flat. The leather was warm and firm and wider than her fingers. He watched her body resist it, her thighs tensing, her breath catching high in her throat. Then the resistance broke. He pushed it into her slowly and her spine lifted off the wagon floor, her free hand flying to his forearm, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks through his sleeve.

The sound she made was raw and thin and startled. Nothing performed about it. Nothing bratty. Just a desperate, cracked-open noise that he felt in his chest.

He worked the hilt deeper. Steady, controlled in a way that he could tell was making her unravel faster than if he’d been rough about it. Her hand moved from his forearm to his shoulder, then to the canvas above her, then back to his chest, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. She couldn’t settle. Couldn’t find anything to anchor herself against.

"This is what you wanted all day." He pushed the pommel further and felt her whole body clench around it. "Every time you touched me. Every time you opened your mouth just to see if I’d react."

"I wasn’t— that’s not—" Her voice broke apart on a moan she couldn’t hold back. He twisted the hilt slightly and she cried out, her hand clamping over her own mouth a half-second too late.

"Quiet." He stilled the hilt inside her and waited. She whimpered, bringing her palm to her mouth, her chest heaving. "Unless you want whoever’s in those woods to find the princess like this. With a sword hilt inside you and tears on your face. Is that what you want? They'd do worse to you than me."

She shook her head. Tears were already running sideways into her hair. He resumed, slow and deep, and she sobbed through her fingers, her hips rolling up to meet each stroke like her body had decided to cooperate with him even if the rest of her hadn’t fully surrendered. He could feel her thighs trembling against the backs of his hands. He could hear the wet sound of the leather moving inside her between the ragged gasps of her breathing.

She whispered pleas into her palm. He didn’t ask her to clarify. He pushed the hilt deeper, held it there, and watched her body go taut as a bowstring, every muscle locking at once. She came shaking hard enough that the wagon creaked on its wheels, her back arched off the floor, the sound she made through her clenched hand barely more than a whimper. The quietest she’d been all day.

He withdrew the hilt slowly. She curled onto her side, breathing in ragged bursts, tears still wet on her face, her whole body twitching with aftershocks. He sheathed the sword. It slid back into the scabbard slick.

"Get some sleep." He released her wrist. There were red marks where his fingers had been. "Long day tomorrow, and I won't stand for any more tantrums."