The Crown Princess Faked Her Death and Married the Mercenary King novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Kneel
Her plan holds the south gate; that night she orders the king to his knees and he obeys.
The Governor's men hit the south gate an hour before dawn.
Ha-rin watched from the inner gatehouse stairs, wrapped in a borrowed grey coat that came down to her knees.
Do-gyeom stood three steps above her with his sword drawn and his eyes on the wall.
Two hundred Company soldiers waited on the courtyard stones below, quiet, with bows strung.
Gwang-ho crouched beside her holding a lamp.
"Ma'am," he whispered. "What do I do with the oil?"
"Nothing yet."
Outside, a ram thudded against the gate, and the whole fortress shook.
Men shouted in the dark.
The oak doors held for three blows, then four, and on the fifth they cracked in the middle.
"Now?" Gwang-ho hissed.
"Wait."
The sixth blow broke the bar.
The gate burst inward, and a flood of Namju soldiers poured into the short stone passage behind it.
It was a long, narrow tunnel, walled on both sides, with a second gate at the far end.
"Now," said Ha-rin.
The second gate slammed down behind them.
The oil came down from the slits above in a golden rain.
Archers rose on both walls of the passage and loosed in one volley.
Ha-rin did not look away, and she did not let herself smile.
It was over in the time it took to count to forty.
The Governor's captain, trapped at the front, threw down his sword.
The rest of the Namju force broke and ran back down the hill, leaving the ram and fourteen dead.
The Company had lost two men.
The courtyard went silent.
Then somebody started to cheer, and the cheer ran through the fortress.
Do-gyeom came down the stairs with blood on his sleeve.
He stopped in front of her, and every soldier in the courtyard turned to look.
"Strategist," he said.
It was the first time anyone had called her that, and it hit her.
"Madam Han keeps her own room in the east tower," he said, loud enough for the courtyard. "She sits at my table. Anybody who says a word against her answers to me."
Eight hundred soldiers roared.
Gwang-ho wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
"I told you the lady knew what she was doing, boss."
"You told me she was a spy."
"I said she was a clever spy."
Ha-rin laughed.
It came out rusty, and she realized she had not laughed out loud in the Eastern Palace in six years.
That night she stood alone in the east tower room, a round room with a narrow bed, a basin, a small drafting table and one arrow slit that showed the stars.
Bong-sun had gone to the kitchens at the first mention of a kitchen.
Someone had left a clean grey Company coat folded on the bed.
She was still holding it when she heard the knock.
She knew the knock.
"Come in," she said.
Do-gyeom opened the door and stood in it.
He had washed, and his hair was wet, and he had put on a plain dark robe belted at the waist.
He looked like a man who had not decided whether to come.
"I wasn't sure you'd be awake," he said.
"I wasn't sure you'd come."
"I can go."
"Lock the door."
He looked at her for a long second.
Then he turned and slid the bolt.
"I don't take orders," he said, low, turning back. "I give them. Eight hundred men, three years."
"I noticed."
"I've never taken an order from anyone I wanted."
Her breath caught.
"Then you'll do something for me," said Ha-rin.
She leaned back against the drafting table, put both hands on its edge and hitched herself up to sit on it.
Her coat fell open.
Under it she wore only the plain shift Bong-sun had found her, the cotton pale in the lamplight.
Heat moved across his face.
"Come here," she said.
He crossed the room in three steps.
"Closer."
He stopped between her knees.
"Take off my shift," she said. "Slowly."
His hands were shaking.
She saw it, and it made her feel enormous.
He found the hem and drew it up over her thighs, her hips, her ribs.
He lifted it over her head, and dropped it behind him.
She sat naked on the table in the lamplight, with her cropped black hair and her small, high breasts and the long pale line of her stomach.
He took a long breath.
"You're beautiful," he said, as if it hurt.
"Say it again."
"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
She felt that one everywhere.
No one had said it to her.
She knew, now, that she had waited six years to hear it from a man who meant it, with his hands shaking.
"Kneel," said Ha-rin.
His eyes flashed up to hers.
He did not move for one heartbeat.
Then Kang Do-gyeom, King of Cheolgwan, who had held a mountain pass against a kingdom, went down on his knees on the stone floor between her legs.
"Yes, Strategist," he said, hoarse.
Her whole body clenched.
"Put your hands on my thighs. Open me."
He set his big palms on her inner thighs and pushed them wide, slowly, and looked at her.
She was already wet.
She could see him seeing it, and the sound he made was close to a prayer.
"I want your mouth," she said. "I want it exactly where I tell you."
"Tell me."
"Lower. Your tongue flat. Start slow."
He lowered his head.
The first touch of his tongue was hot and broad and wet, a long slow stroke from her entrance up to her clit, and she gasped and dug her fingers into his hair.
"Again."
He did it again, lazy and thorough, and she felt every inch of it.
"Slower."
He slowed.
He was obedient, and attentive, and so hungry that his shoulders shook.
She held his head and showed him the rhythm with her hips.
"There. Right there. Circle."
He circled her clit with the tip of his tongue, over and over, and her heels dug into his back.
Pleasure rose in her low and heavy, building.
She was not quiet.
She did not care who in the east tower heard.
"Two fingers," she gasped. "Inside me. Slowly."
He pushed two thick fingers into her, curled them forward, and when he found the place she moaned out loud.
"There?"
"Yes, there, don't stop, don't you dare stop."
He did not stop.
His mouth sucked her clit, and his fingers pressed in time, and she came apart.
It rolled over her in one long wave, harder than anything her own hand had ever done.
Her thighs clamped around his head and she cried out his name, and she kept her fingers in his hair and rode his mouth through it until she was shaking and loose.
When she went still, he lifted his head.
His mouth shone, and his eyes were wild.
"That's the first time I've ever come with someone," she said, because it was true, and because she wanted him to know.
He closed his eyes, and she watched his throat move.
"Strategist," he said roughly. "You're the first person I've ever wanted to please."
She brushed a lock of wet hair off his scarred brow.
He was still on his knees, with his hands on her thighs, and the front of his robe tented hard and heavy.
She looked at it.
"Take me to bed," he said. "Please."
It was the first time she had heard him say please.
She pulled him up by his collar and kissed him, tasting herself.
"Not yet," she said against his mouth.
He made a sound like a man being strangled.
"When?"
She smiled slowly, and lay back on the table, and pulled the Company coat over her bare skin.
"When I decide."
He laughed, a short shaken breath.
"Yes, Strategist," he said.
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