[WLW] Queen Aurelia of Valedonne

You had almost made it.

One foot was already on the floor, toes braced against the cold stone beyond the edge of the fur rug. The rest of you was in the slow, careful process of following. Behind you, the bed still held its warmth like a banked fire, and in it, tangled in ivory sheets, lay the Queen of Valedonne — who, in a little under an hour, was expected in the council chamber.

That was the entire reason for the escape. You had woken to grey light and the distant clatter of servants in the corridor, and had done the arithmetic. Aurelia had a kingdom to run this morning. A queen with a council waiting did not need a noblewoman tangled in her sheets, and a noblewoman who was not supposed to have been there at all definitely did not need to be found there by a maid with a tray.

So: the escape.

It had taken four attempts. The first three had ended with a sleepy murmur and a tightening of the arm across your waist. The fourth had worked only because Aurelia had rolled onto her back, freeing your hip, and had not yet noticed the loss.

Now you were upright. Now you were free. Your chemise had ridden up to your thighs in the night, and the air in the room had that early, sharp cold that came before the braziers were lit. Your gown lay over the chair by the window. Beyond the window, the corridor. Beyond the corridor, the long walk back to the east wing, where a lady of your house was very much supposed to have spent the night.

You took one step.

The floorboard beside the bed had a voice, and it used it.

"Going somewhere."

Not a question. Not quite. Aurelia's voice came up from the pillows, roughened by sleep, that rich contralto scraped down to something almost gravelly. You froze and turned your head.

The Queen had not opened her eyes. Her hair was a ruin of copper waves across the pillow, one strand stuck to her cheek. In the grey light she looked less like a monarch than a woman who had spent the night being thoroughly enjoyed, which — as it happened — she had.

"You have a council meeting," you whispered, as if the room were full of sleeping children.

"I do."

"It's in an hour."

"It is."

"So I thought I might—" You lifted the shoes you were holding. "—not be here when the maids come."

Aurelia's lips curved without her eyes opening. "You are holding your shoes."

You looked down. You were, in fact, holding your shoes.

There was a rustle of sheets, a slow exhale, and then Aurelia's hand came out from under the covers — long fingers, three gold rings, the emerald one she never removed — and found your wrist without appearing to look. Her grip was loose. It was also absolute.

"Come here."

"Your Majesty, you have a kingdom—"

"You only call me that when you are sneaking."

"I am not sneaking. I am being considerate."

"Come here, my darling."

Aurelia pulled, unhurried, and you had a choice for exactly as long as it took you to lose your balance. The room tilted, the shoes hit the rug with two soft thuds, and you landed back into the warm hollow you had spent five minutes escaping. The sheet came up over both of you. Aurelia's arm came back around your waist, heavier than before, and her body settled along your back — all that warmth, and the unmistakable weight of her, soft and heavy against the curve of your thigh, not quite interested in anything yet and entirely content to be there.

"The council," you said, weakly.

"The council," Aurelia agreed, into the back of your neck.

"Lord Ferrand will be waiting."

"Lord Ferrand waits for everything. It is his single accomplishment." A slow breath, warm against your skin. "He waited for his wife. He waited for his inheritance. He can wait ten minutes."

"Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes," the Queen said, "and then the fate of Valedonne may resume."

You felt the arm tighten, just slightly, then loosen again, as though Aurelia had caught herself being greedy and had decided, at the last second, not to care. Her thumb had begun to move in small circles against your hip. Her hair smelled of rose oil and the ghost of last night's wine.

"You are going to be late," you murmured.

"I am going to be deliciously late. There is a difference."

"There is no difference."

"There is every difference. One implies poor planning. The other implies a queen who knows precisely what she values." A pause. "And who is currently pressed against her back, warm, and smelling of my own soap."

Outside, faintly, a bell rang the first quarter. Somewhere down the corridor a door opened and shut. The day was arriving whether they liked it or not, and the Queen of Valedonne had her face buried in your hair and no apparent intention of moving.

"Ten minutes," you reminded her.

"Mm."

"Your Majesty."

"Say it again," Aurelia said, drowsy and pleased with herself, "and I shall make it fifteen."

Then her eyes opened — properly, finally, green and gold and wide awake all at once, and much too close — and she smiled the smile that had been making your life difficult for months.

"Go on, then," she said. "You have ten minutes to convince me to let you go. Use them well."

The lesson had been running for two hours, and you had spent at least one of them being deliberately difficult.

Aurelia's private study was warm with lamplight and the low fire in the grate, the windows dark. Between you on the desk lay the evening's material — a treaty draft, three letters of trade correspondence, and the queen's own annotations in her slanted hand. You were meant to be reading the second letter. You were, instead, watching her over the top of it.

She had taken off her circlet. A strand of copper had come loose against her cheek. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, a private thing she never did in court, and her fingers turned the emerald ring around and around while she read.

You waited until she reached for her tea. Then, in your best imitation of her: "Mmm. And what do we observe here, my darling?"

Aurelia paused with the cup halfway to her lips. "You are doing it again."

"Doing what?" You tilted your head the way she did. "My dear girl, do try to keep up."

"That was not my voice."

"It was exactly your voice."

"It was a caricature."

"A loving caricature."

She returned to the letter, and you gave her thirty seconds before you did it again — the slow lean forward, chin on hand, the precise angle of her brow when she was pretending to be patient. "Note," you said, "the queen's remarkable restraint."

Aurelia's mouth twitched. "Note the noblewoman's remarkable talent for wasting my evening."

"Note the queen's failure to—"

And then she laughed. The real laugh, not the court one. Low and sudden, breaking out of her, shoulders shaking, face lit. She pressed two fingers to her brow and laughed until she had to put the letter down.

"That was a very serious discussion of maritime tariffs," she said, when she could.

"You made it easy."

She looked at you for a long moment. Then she set down her quill — slowly, aligning it with the blotter — and raised her eyes.

"You know, insolence of that order deserves a punishment."

"You are not angry."

"I am not angry," Aurelia agreed. "Which is precisely why you should be worried."

She leaned back in her chair and studied you the way she studied a clause she intended to rewrite.

"You have spent the entire evening using that mouth of yours," she said, "to be clever at my expense. So." She patted her knee, once. "Kneel. Let us find out what else it is good for."

You slid off your chair and onto the rug between her knees, and she watched you do it with an expression of unhurried pleasure. The firelight caught the gold of her rings. Above you, she picked the letter back up.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Good." She shook the page flat. "Then we shall continue. I will read. You will keep your hands to yourself until I say otherwise."

"That's the punishment?"

"That is the beginning of the punishment."

She began to read aloud, calm and even, in that rich contralto — the guild of the Eastern Reaches submits, with respect, that the proposed adjustment to the tariffs on dyed cloth would place an undue burden upon the smaller houses of the coast — and you knelt there listening to a woman recite trade policy while her thighs spread a fraction wider on either side of your head.

It took her perhaps a paragraph to deal with her own clothing. She did it one-handed, without looking down, still reading, and when her cock was free of it you felt your mouth go dry.

"...a burden which, the guild submits, might be—" A pause. She glanced down at you. "Well? It is not going to attend to itself."

You leaned in.

The first touch of her on your lips was hot and heavy, and she exhaled through her nose, once, and went back to reading. You took her slowly — the weight of her on your tongue, the stretch at the corners of your jaw, the taste of her skin and the faint salt of her, and under all of it the knowledge that she was watching you from above with her letter in her hand.

"...might be mitigated by a staggered—" You hollowed your cheeks and her voice caught. "—staggered schedule. Mm."

You worked her with your mouth, shallow at first, learning the shape of her, and then deeper, taking her until she nudged the back of your throat and your eyes watered. Her free hand came down into your hair — not pushing, just there, fingers curled, thumb moving slow along your temple. She read another two sentences and lost the thread of the third.

"...the guild further notes that—" Deeper. "...that—" You swallowed around her and her hips shifted, small and involuntary, and the letter rustled as her grip tightened on it. "You are doing that on purpose."

You hummed an agreement against her.

"Insolent," she said, and there was no bite in it at all.

She let you have her like that until the letter had been abandoned entirely, until both her hands were in your hair and her head was tipped back against the chair and she was making low, rough sounds above you that she would never have made in court. Then she tugged, gently, and pulled you up.

"Enough. Up."

You got your feet under you. She rose with you, half a head taller, and walked you backward across the rug — one hand on your shoulder, steering, until your shoulders met the tall bookshelf and the spines shifted behind you.

"Sit," she said, except there was nothing to sit on. She caught your thigh, lifted it, hooked your knee over her hip, and held it there with one arm, pinning you between her and the shelf.

You got one breath, and one glimpse of her face in the firelight — flushed, copper strands loose, eyes gone dark — and then she pushed in.

Slow. One long, inexorable slide, and the angle was everything — her standing, you lifted and opened and braced against the shelf, taking her so deep you felt it in your stomach. A book toppled somewhere behind your shoulder. Neither of you looked.

"There," she breathed, against your mouth. "There is what that mouth was for."

Then she moved.

She fucked you against the bookshelf with a patience that was almost cruel, long deep strokes that lifted you onto your toes and dropped you back, her hips rolling, her forearm braced under your thigh. You could feel every inch of the drag, the wet of you slicking her, the shelf edge biting into your shoulder blades. Her other hand had come up to your jaw, thumb pressing at the corner of your mouth, and she watched your face the whole time — watched it come apart, watched your lips part, watched you lose the ability to form a sentence.

"Say something clever," she murmured. "Go on."

You couldn't. You tried. What came out was a sound.

Aurelia laughed, low and delighted, and drove up into you harder, and the whole shelf creaked against the wall.

The lesson had officially ended eleven minutes ago.

The state papers were still spread across the low table between you — land disputes, a trade agreement with the eastern provinces, three separate petitions from the wool guilds that Aurelia had promised herself she would actually read tonight — and yet not a single one of them had been touched since she had reached across, taken your chin between her thumb and forefinger, and drawn you into her.

It had started as a kiss. A harmless one, by their standards. The sort of thing that could be explained away as the queen rewarding a promising student, if anyone had ever been foolish enough to ask. It had not stayed harmless. Somewhere between the first press of her mouth and the moment your fingers had found their way into the loose copper waves at the nape of her neck, it had become something considerably less innocent, and Aurelia had stopped pretending to care.

She had you half-drawn from your chair now, her lips warm and insistent against yours, her free hand splayed low on your back to keep you close. The circlet had slipped loose from her hair at some point and sat forgotten on the arm of the sofa. A few strands of copper had escaped her braid and curled against her cheek. When you made a small sound against her mouth — the kind that always seemed to please her — she answered it with a low hum of her own and tilted your face to deepen the kiss, slow and thorough, like a woman with all the time in the world.

She had, in fact, all the time in the world. Or she would have, if not for the footsteps.

They came quickly down the corridor — soft-soled, unhurried, the particular brisk rhythm of someone who worked in this wing and knew exactly where she was going. Then the knock.

"Your Majesty?"

Aurelia pulled back by perhaps two inches. Her eyes were bright, her breathing only slightly uneven, and the curve of her mouth was already climbing toward something dangerously close to a grin.

"Lady Marchetti," she murmured, so quietly it was almost only the shape of the words against your lips. Then, louder, in a voice that sounded as though she had spent the entire evening doing nothing more stimulating than reading tariffs — "One moment."

She straightened. She did it fast, and she did it well — the queen's particular gift, slipping from lover back to monarch in the space of a breath. Her bodice was righted, her hair tucked, the loose collar of her gown smoothed flat. Her gaze flicked down to you, still half-drawn from your chair, lips pinked, hair undoubtedly a mess, and something wicked flashed through those green eyes.

"Get behind the screen," she said softly. "Quickly."

You had just enough time to slip behind the folding screen in the corner — a beautiful thing of painted silk and carved wood, positioned perfectly to conceal an entire person and to offer a rather good view through the seam between its panels — when the door opened.

Aurelia was already at her desk, seated with her back to you, quill in hand as though she had been interrupted mid-sentence.

"Lady Marchetti. It is late."

"My apologies, Majesty, but the northern dispatches arrived with the evening post and you had asked to see them the moment they did." A pause. "Are you quite well? You look a little flushed."

There was a beat of silence. Behind the screen, you could see Aurelia's shoulders shift — the barest, most controlled motion — and you knew, with absolute certainty, that she was smiling.

"It is warm in here," she said evenly. "I had the fire built up."

"Shall I have a servant bring the dispatches to your desk?"

"Please. Set them down and go. I will review them before I retire."

More footsteps, the rustle of paper, the low murmur of a brief courtesy. Aurelia answered every word with perfect, unbothered composure — and the entire time, through the narrow gap in the silk, you could watch her run her thumb slowly along the edge of her desk, the way she always did when she was enjoying herself far too much. When the door finally clicked shut and the footsteps had faded down the corridor, she did not move. She waited. Counted. Then —

"You may come out, little trouble."

You emerged from behind the screen to find her turned in her chair to face you, one arm draped over the backrest, chin resting lightly on her knuckles, regarding you with the unhurried amusement of a woman who had enjoyed that entire encounter more than she had any right to.

"Close the door properly this time," she said, and there was laughter tucked just beneath the words. "And then come here. We need to discuss a small problem."

You came. You always came when she used that voice — and you knew she knew it, which was half the reason she used it.

She caught your hand as you drew level with her, drawing you down so that you perched sideways on the arm of her chair. Her thumb swept a slow line across your knuckles. Up close the amusement was still there, but there was something else too — an appreciative, considering sort of heat that had nothing to do with the fire she had just lied about.

"A problem," she repeated, and her free hand rose to straighten the collar of your dress, smoothing the fabric where it had rumpled. She did it slowly. Deliberately. "You are far too good at that."

At that — at kissing her senseless in a room full of unfinished work and nearly getting the both of you caught.

"For someone," she went on, tilting her head, "who is supposed to be helping me keep this relationship a secret, you are remarkably careless about remembering that the door does not lock itself." She let the tip of her finger trail down the edge of your collar before withdrawing. "One more minute and Lady Marchetti would have been treated to a rather different version of her queen than she bargained for. And you —" the eyebrow lifted, that famous teasing eyebrow, "— would have had to explain why you were sitting in my chambers after dark with your hair coming down."

She leaned back, the very picture of regal composure, and regarded you with an expression that promised this conversation was nowhere near finished.

"So." Her voice dropped, soft and warm and entirely too pleased with itself. "What do we do about you, my darling?"

Aurelia had a great many letters to answer, and every single one of them had somehow become a personal insult.

Not because the letters were difficult. They were the same tedious business as always — a baron petitioning for a road to be built through his lands, a coastal magistrate requesting funds for the harbour wall, an interminable missive from a cousin of the crown offering opinions on matters no one had asked about. Aurelia had been raised to handle them, and handle them she would.

She had simply underestimated how difficult it would be to handle them with her cock buried in you.

It had been your idea, more or less. Or rather, it had been her idea, dressed up as yours — she had drawn you down onto her lap an hour ago, pushed her gown aside, freed herself from the loose fall of her smallclothes, and guided you slowly, deliberately down onto the length of her. You had taken her an inch at a time, slick and hot and tight, watching her jaw go tight as you swallowed her to the base. And then she had reached calmly for her quill and informed you that the arrangement was practical.

"Comfortable," she had said, straight-faced, adjusting her grip on the pen. "You are warm, and I have work. It is an efficient use of both of us."

An hour later you were starting to suspect efficiency had nothing to do with it.

Because Aurelia had not moved. Not once. She sat exactly as she had been — back straight against the chair, one arm loose around your waist, the other hand moving steadily across the parchment, her cock seated to the hilt inside you and utterly, maddeningly still. No rocking. No grinding. No polite little thrusts. Just the thick, hot weight of her stretching you open, the twitch of her every time you shifted, the slow pulse deep in your belly, and the way she refused — absolutely refused — to do anything about it.

Twenty minutes in, you had begun to squirm. Aurelia noticed, and said nothing, which was worse.

Now you rolled your hips — a small, hopeful lift and settle that dragged her along your walls, wet and slow — and she made a soft sound low in her throat, and still did not move.

"Mm," she said, and signed the letter.

"Your Majesty."

"My darling."

"You cannot possibly be comfortable."

"I am exceptionally comfortable." She reached for the next sheet. "You are warm, you are snug, and you are being very good. Why would I ruin that by moving?"

"Because I'm dying."

"Are you." She dipped the quill in the inkpot, and the small motion of her shoulder jostled you — barely — and a soft, involuntary noise escaped your throat, and she smiled down at the parchment like a woman who had just won something. "You are seated on the queen of Valedonne, in a warm room, full of her, with a book in your lap. There are prisoners who would call this paradise. Endure."

You tried again. This time you lifted properly, rising up along her until only the head of her was left kissing your entrance — and then you sank back down, slow and deliberate, taking every inch back in one long roll, clenching hard as you bottomed out.

Aurelia's quill stopped. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes closed for one full second.

"There," you said, pleased with yourself.

"Mm," she said. And resumed writing.

That was the game, then. She was going to finish every letter with her cock buried in you and pretend it was normal, and you were going to lose your mind about it. And the cruelty of it — the precision of it — was that seated like this, with no thrusting to blur the sensation, you felt everything. Every twitch of her. The swell of her getting a fraction thicker every time you clenched, like her body was answering yours even while her hand kept writing courtesies to men about wool. The heat of her. The way she filled you so completely that when you breathed, you felt her move inside you.

You began to work yourself on her in slow, frustrated little circles, grinding down, chasing any friction you could make without her help. She let you. She let you think she was letting you.

Then, mid-sentence, she slid her free hand off your waist and down between your bodies — and found your clit with two wet fingertips, and began to rub, unhurried and precise, never once changing the rhythm of her writing hand.

Your breath broke. Your thighs shook. You ground down hard onto her, chasing it, so close, so close —

And she stopped. Fingers gone still. Cock gone still. Quill moving steadily across the page.

"Aurelia," you gasped.

"Concentrate." She did not look up. "I am drafting a reply to the harbour magistrate, and you are grinding on me like a woman with a personal grievance against the crown."

"You—"

"If you want to come," she said, calm as still water, "you may. But you will do it sitting still on my cock, you will do it quietly, and you will let me finish this letter."

And then she pressed her thumb down flat against your clit and held it — a steady, pulsing pressure, no movement anywhere else, her hips perfectly motionless — and you discovered, humiliatingly, that it was entirely possible to fall apart exactly like that. Seated. Full. Still. Every muscle in your body locking tight around the length of her, clenching and rippling and dragging a rough, unguarded sound out of her chest that she tried to swallow and could not.

You came with your forehead against her temple, shaking on her lap, squeezing her so hard she had to grip the arm of the chair with her free hand. She signed her name with a slightly unsteady flourish. Sealed the wax. Set the letter aside.

"There," Aurelia said.

And then her hand came down on your hip, hard — a real grip, fingers digging in — and her voice dropped out of its court register entirely, into something lower and rougher and considerably less polite.

"Was that so difficult?" She rolled her hips up into you, properly, for the first time in an hour, and both of you made a sound about it. "Gods. Do you have any idea what you've been doing to me? Sitting there, squeezing me, getting my cock slick — an hour, darling. An hour of you clenching around me while I tried to write about grain stores."

"You could have moved."

"I could not. I had a point to make." She dragged you down onto her again, slow and deep and heavy, bottoming out with a soft wet sound that made her hiss through her teeth. "And now the point is made, and you are going to pay for every letter I got through. Do you understand?"

You nodded. You could barely speak.

"Good girl." She took your hips in both hands, thumbs pressing into the soft dip above your ass, and began to move you in earnest — lifting you up her length and drawing you back down, slow and thorough and relentless, her eyes fixed on your face and nothing else. Every stroke dragged her along every sensitive inch of you, slick and thick, and her thumb returned to your clit to circle it in time with each thrust, and she watched you take it with a flush climbing from her chest to her throat.

"You feel incredible," she breathed, composure well and truly gone now. "Wet and hot and so tight around me — you always are, but gods, like this, after an hour —" She broke off, ground up into you hard, and made a low, filthy sound. "Ride me properly, my little trouble. You wanted it so badly just moments ago, didn't you?"

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