The pale wrists, the still air, the softest skin under velour, arousal that seems to spill out her eyes and down the occupied throat. Horselord is incriminated by the hammer in his chest. White skies, cut to blind, had but laid on noble lips the golden gleam of spring. He pours over her with pleasure, a new one in each fondle.
“Let that be my worry.”
Her kiss is to soothe. But if he relishes the gust of honesty that binds them tighter each time they speak in ways free of caste, it is also because he enjoys rekindling the darker embers of corruption. It casts a glow on the part of him which prefers shadow.
Yué will not endanger him. Batu offers no comparable promise, pushing her down into the grass now. He stands over her, jaw split, eyes meeting imperial lilac. At length, they rest here. Then they slip down the pointed pink nose to balance on the end of wet lips, stroking through her chest, and gazing over each row of sweetened peaks, dropping last to the velveted warmth guarded by sinuous joining of inner thigh.
It is not nomad's attention she truly desires— she would rather have had the emperor’s love— the one she must continue to believe in, that had followed her through into parallel worlds, so she would not be alone.
And the empress must have realized that the creature above her is full of wild ruin, with seeking, dark eyes and jagged teeth. That if she runs in among the trees or treads too close, he would come to tear her. Horselord imagines it. He is not better than this.
She should call to have him taken away. If she denies this, Batu would have the knowledge that she must sense something— sense he is still worth keeping close, even in understanding what is risked.
“Forgive me, Heaven’s mercy.” Emptied air pours where flames had rent before, nomad retreating steps away, returning to man beneath deel— but not a han. A mongolian.
Flush into lea, empress is nearly more mare than han, speaking a tone breathy and with bright authority, though horselord is half-dristracted. Yué’s fur is mussed and clinging like sealskin. She looks like something else: an apparition, a goddess, the glassy scale from a trout. Like a moth’s wing mimicking something else, it is hard to tell quite what he sees.
A moment ago she had sheathed herself with intent to deflect. He does not know how much she enjoys being looked at by slough-eyes.
And the sky is overbright, his mouth raw for wanting. A strangeness clothes them, tension in the walls of green around.
Nomad balances many senses, mostly, the sequence of movement required to feel Yué’s mouth as she speaks.
She demeans him. Uses him. Is he not hers to command? A piece on a board to be moved by queen’s paw? Wèi jūn, he had asked for this, and empress has graciously granted it, above even the merit of her own people.
But he is not han, and in looking at her the fire of a steppe stirs, sore and satisfying. The tender pulp of a fresh-pulled fang. The sense of something better off removed.
It feels good, if not right. Desirous, if not honored.
Moving around grass, Batu teases the ache; grateful, irritable, adoring her easily.
He strides forward, pushes her back, sweeping at lavender fur where it curls down the length of her throat. He kisses her lips. “Careful, empress Yué.”
And moves off, away, a stallion’s tread in heady thought.
