The Executed Empress Proposed to His Scarred Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Chair by the Fire
Alone in the tower, Iseult asks Ilarion to touch her, and in his lap by the fire she comes for the first time by her own choice, before he stops.
The Lantern Tower had one door, two guards on the stair, and a bed the size of a small boat.
Ilarion waited until the bolt slid home outside before he let go of her hand.
He crossed the room, looked out the window, tested the shutters, and checked the hearth for a way up the chimney.
Then he turned a chair to face the fire, sat down in it, and put his boots on the stone.
"I'll sleep here," he said.
Iseult stood in the middle of the floor in her ivory ball gown.
Her heart was still racing from the long walk through the palace.
"You'll sleep in a chair on your own wedding eve?"
"It isn't my wedding eve. It's ten days away."
"It's the only night I've got where nobody can see me."
He looked at her for a while.
The firelight lay along the white scar and made it gold.
"You walked across a ballroom and picked me out in front of the whole court," he said. "Like a man choosing a horse."
"Yes."
"I'm not a horse, my lady."
"You're much bigger than a horse."
The corner of his mouth moved, the side the scar didn't reach.
"You haven't told me why," he said.
"I will."
"When?"
"When I can say it without you throwing me out the window."
"The window is barred."
"Then I'll tell you after I've kissed you."
She reached behind her head and began to take the pins out of her hair.
One by one they dropped into the little silver dish on the table, and the copper-red weight of it came down over her shoulders.
His eyes followed every pin.
His hand tightened on the arm of the chair.
"Lady Iseult."
"Iseult. I'm going to be your wife."
"You're shaking."
"I know."
She was not afraid of him.
She had stood on a scaffold that morning, in a life that had not happened yet.
Her body still did not believe it was warm.
She crossed the stone floor in her stockinged feet and stopped between his knees.
"I had a husband for six years," she said, before she could stop herself.
"You've had a fiance for six hours."
"I've had a husband who never asked me what I wanted. Not once."
His face did not change, but something behind his eyes went very careful.
"What do you want?" said Ilarion.
Nobody had ever asked her that either.
She put her hands on his shoulders and swung one knee over his lap.
She sat down on him with her gown spilling around them both.
He did not move at all.
He was warm and solid beneath her, and she felt his breath catch against her mouth.
"I want to kiss you," she said. "And then I want you to touch me."
"Then do the first part."
She kissed him.
It was clumsy for a heartbeat, her nose bumping his scarred cheek.
Then his hand came up into her hair and the clumsiness went away.
He kissed like a man who had been hungry a long time and was determined not to show it.
His mouth was slow and sure, and his tongue stroked hers once, and she moaned into him without meaning to.
His other hand found the small of her back and pulled her flush against his chest.
"Good," he murmured against her lip. "That's good."
The word went through her.
She had signed her name six hundred times in her old life and nobody had ever told her she had done anything good.
She kissed him harder, and he let her.
Then he turned his head and kissed along her jaw to the soft place under her ear.
"Ilarion," she said.
"Say it again."
"Ilarion."
"Louder."
"Ilarion, touch me."
His hand left her hair and slid down her back to the laces.
"Not those," she said. "I don't want to wait for the laces."
He looked at her, and she saw him decide something.
His palm went to her knee and slid slowly up under the ivory skirts.
It crossed the top of her stocking, found the bare skin above it, and stopped at her thigh.
"Hold still," said Ilarion.
She held still.
It was the first order he had given her, and she felt it.
His fingers moved inward along the soft inside of her leg.
She was already wet, so wet that she was embarrassed, and he found it at once.
"There she is," he said, very low, and pressed two fingers against her through her thin silk drawers.
Her whole body jerked.
"Hold still," he said again, and his thumb found the swollen place at the top and pushed.
She gasped and grabbed his coat with both fists.
He drew the silk aside with one finger and touched her bare.
His fingertips slid through the slick heat of her pussy and circled her opening without going in.
They came back up to her clit in a slow, unhurried stroke.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, gods."
"Look at me."
She opened her eyes.
His grey eyes were dark now, the pupils huge.
He watched her face.
He rubbed her clit in small, firm circles, right where she needed it, and the pleasure climbed her spine in short hot steps.
"More," she said. "Harder. Please."
"Like that?"
"Yes. Yes, there."
He gave it to her, and the sounds she made were nothing a Valcour should have made.
She rocked on his lap without deciding to, her hips chasing his hand.
Under her thighs she felt the hard length of him straining against his trousers, and he did nothing about it at all.
He kept every ounce of his attention on her.
"You're beautiful," he said. "Come for me. I've got you."
She came with a cry that she buried in his neck.
The orgasm rolled through her in long, helpless waves.
His hand kept moving until the last one had passed, and she went limp against his chest.
For a long moment there was only the fire and her ragged breathing.
His fingers slipped out from under her skirts, slick, and he did not seem to know what to do with them.
He wiped them slowly on his own coat.
She laughed shakily into his collar.
"I've never come like that," she said. "Not once, not by anyone's hand."
"Then you did well."
"Don't be gentlemanly. I want you to."
She slid one hand down his chest and over the hard ridge in his trousers.
He caught her wrist, gently, and held it still.
"Iseult."
"You want it."
"I do." He said it plainly, with no apology.
"But you're trembling, and you haven't told me anything."
"I don't take a woman who's still frightened of something I can't see."
Her throat closed.
She had asked him to see her, and he had, and it was the one thing she could not bear.
"Ask me again at midnight," Ilarion said, and he lifted her chin with one finger. "When you've stopped shaking."
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