Proving Her Worth
The tongue that invaded past her lips was merciless.
Thick and pointed, it slithered through her mouth like the head of a snake — rigid one moment, supple the next, leaving a slick, clinging heat everywhere it touched.
"Nnh… hah—"
Her breath through her nose was growing hot and ragged.
Seoin's own tongue raised its head in resistance too, but as if he had been waiting for exactly that, he licked along the back of it and coiled it up against her own.
"Haah!"
At the same time, his hand stroked her thigh and eased her legs apart.
Somehow, no strength would come to her body.
Her tongue had already been toyed with by his, left soft and tangled beyond her control.
Her heart pounded hot and hard, and an unfamiliar restlessness woke every inch of her skin.
"Nngh…."
Even the sounds escaping her nose were turning into something coquettish, maddeningly sweet.
Seoin had been taught the arts of the bedchamber after her first moon.
Of all the miscellaneous skills the women of the palace had to master in order to survive, none weighed heavier than the art of coupling.
A princess might live out her days in the outer palace, but as royal blood she bore the duty of continuing the line — so learn it she must.
The endless illustrations, the demonstrations staged right before her young eyes, had stirred a budding sexual curiosity in the girl she had been.
But back then, still innocent, the girl felt not love at those beastly acts so much as a flush of hot revulsion.
And when both curiosity and embarrassment had long since burned away and the whole thing grown familiar, the slick mechanics of procreation had come to mean nothing more than a dry obligation — the duty and burden of producing descendants.
She had believed she would never again feel curiosity, or shame, or heat in her cheeks over such a thing.
And yet here she was, ashamed of her own body rising toward this man.
Ever since an impossibly handsome stranger had begun gazing at her with eyes full of greed, every place his sight had touched had burned. And against all expectation, his hand — rough, the hand of a man who had held a sword for years — gripped her thigh, and it felt as though her whole body were caught in his fist.
The man licking the soft flesh inside her mouth, sucking at her lips, seemed in a hurry to hollow out her mind entirely.
As his hand slid down beneath the thigh he held, her skin shivered into gooseflesh.
But that shiver didn't fade — it only deepened, leaving stronger and stronger echoes as his hand drew nearer to the place between her legs.
A whisper-light brush.
"!"
Where the fine hair grew, his fingertips grazed the oversensitive skin of her most private place — a sensation so sharp it was as if she could hear it.
No. Don't.
That was the scream in her mind, but the pride that refused to look beaten kept her mouth shut.
Her startled body jolted of its own accord at the intensity of it, though —
and so their lips fell apart naturally.
"Haah… haa…!"
Seoin looked up at him through hazy eyes, panting breaths spilling from her dampened lips.
Wiyeon let his own hot breath escape, his gaze sliding down at an angle to roam over her body.
A woman's body was nothing he hadn't seen until he was sick of it.
Why would it be?
From the moment he'd first known a man's release, the royal house had sent women streaming into his chambers without end.
They called it education for securing an heir, but Wiyeon had never felt much of anything during those encounters.
A body heated by instinct simply spent itself, ejaculating like something being excreted. There was pleasure, certainly — but not a pleasure anyone could call joy.
And yet this woman's body was stirring something in him now.
Her sun-browned face and throat were dark, but the skin beneath her armor was white as jade.
That contrast — as if she wore white silk fitted to her skin — struck him as strangely, wickedly erotic.
Above all, her snow-white breasts, made to be cupped perfectly in two hands, rose and fell with her breathing and swam before his eyes.
On this slightly lean frame, they looked almost lush.
Soft-looking, yielding, yet with a fullness that didn't lose its shape — he wanted to knead them freely until they spilled over his palms.
But fairness was fair.
He took Seoin's hand and placed it at his own waistband.
"See for yourself."
Seoin found the confidence on his face almost funny.
Clearly, since he was putting on a show anyway, he intended to pull out the most impressively swollen version of himself.
Every time she'd heard men crowing proudly about the size of their manhoods, she'd found it pathetic. That even the magnificent sovereign had such bluster in him was, somehow, a little endearing.
So Seoin, without a moment's hesitation, pulled his trousers down.
"!"
Strength gathered in her hazy eyes.
She had never imagined he was carrying something this enormous inside his waistband.
It was not cute.
A throbbing crimson pillar, corded with veins, glistened in the lamplight.
The size was utterly unlike the male organ she had imagined — no, the one she had only ever seen in paintings and models.
Worst of all was the brazen way it swaggered toward her own lower belly, all bravado and menace.
Seon Wiyeon found her flustered expression and her trembling, frightened eyes delightful.
What if the mask of the bold, unshockable woman — the one who clearly didn't count as innocent — peeled off this easily?
And this was only the beginning.
"Well? Feeling like making the deal? If you don't think you can handle it, say so now. I won't stop halfway."
Seon Wiyeon already knew.
Knew she had no other choice.
But he needed a little time to soothe the ravening, rutting beast straining toward her entrance and begging to be sheathed.
By now she had hidden her flusterment; her eyes met his squarely, and she opened her mouth.
"Let's see what you can do."
It staggered him — that in the middle of all this, she would issue yet another provocation, daring him to satisfy her.
"Ha!"
He hadn't imagined she would plead fear and beg off.
He'd expected her to demand he get it over with, or at least force some brittle composure. Instead she affected leisure, as if she meant to enjoy this too.
No — she carried herself as though she were the one holding the hilt.
And with that, Wiyeon swelled further, filled with the expectation of spending a whole uninhibited night with her.
He brushed away the tangled strands of hair clinging to her cheek and murmured low.
"However you like it, then. When do you plan to spring your honey trap?"
"Now."
That one short answer was the beginning.
Seoin seized his cock in her hand.
The motion was unflinching — like a hand closing around the hilt of a sword.
"Hhk!"
Caught off guard, Seon Wiyeon crumbled utterly before her unexpected boldness, his head tipping back as a groan escaped him.
Then he barely held himself upright, one fist clenched white-knuckled in the bedding.
But Seoin, watching his composure turn dizzying in a heartbeat, tasted victory for the first time in ages.
Wiyeon caught the hand of the woman who had so abruptly grabbed hold of him.
Then he drew it away and carried it down between her own legs.
"I prefer this side of you."
The slight frown on Seoin's face made her all the more alluring.
"That is not to my taste."
"Never once played with yourself?"
"I don't do such things."
"Liar."
With that, he made Seoin part the curls herself with her own fingers.
She bit her lip and turned her head away from his gaze.
It was a lie.
But touching herself was one thing, and being made to touch herself under someone else's eyes was another entirely — more shameful, more electric, than even his hand on her would have been.
The coarse curls were growing damp, beaded with dew.
His hand guided her thumb and forefinger apart, spreading the clinging lips beneath them.
Having imagined what came next, Seoin squeezed her eyes shut in shame.
His middle finger pried into the center at last.
She tensed her thighs, but with no way to close them, all she could do was show him the tremor of flesh drawn taut and quivering.
The dew-soaked petals closed over the finger, and his thumb burrowed deeper, more secretly, hunting out that small ridge of flesh.
Then his hand pressed down on her thumb.
"Ha…."
An unbelievable jolt of pleasure lanced from that tiny bud straight through her lower belly.
In the same instant, the middle finger searching for her entrance flooded wet.
When he withdrew his hand, Seoin moved to withdraw hers as well.
"Don't move."
Somehow, from that voice she could not refuse, her hand stayed where it was.
One hand at her mound, the other covering her breasts, she twisted in her shame to the fullest.
Wiyeon swept her hand away from her chest entirely.
Her nipple, riper now than before, brushed her fingertips and bounced free.
"If this is what a honey trap looks like, I'll fall for it gladly."
So murmuring, he sank his teeth into her breast.
"Hahk!"
The searing bite of hard teeth grinding soft flesh, the teasing prick of his tongue-tip against her nipple — Seoin arched and thrashed beneath him.
When a club had slammed into her side, when a blade had opened her arm, it had hurt — but she had endured.
This was nothing more than her breast being bitten.
It didn't even seem to be all that hard a bite, and still she couldn't hold her body still.
He gnawed, chewed, and sucked like a child at the breast.
"Nnhh…."
Strange, unbearable stimulation — Seoin writhed, whimpers leaking from her again and again.
Without thinking she grabbed his head and pushed, but it was useless.
If anything, as if offended by the attempt, his teeth clamped down hard on her nipple.
"Ughh!"
A cold, needle-piercing pain shot through her body.
At the same time a shivering current of pleasure swept down to her lower belly — and clenched the entrance her own fingertips were still pressed against.
That was where it began.
He grew rougher.
Before she knew it, both the hands that had been pushing at his head were seized and lifted above her own.
Gathering her wrists together with one hand and pinning them down, he looked down at her.
Then, with his free hand, he took her jaw and turned her face so she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
"Nnh."
Startled by stimulation she had never known, Seoin's eyes wavered.
"Last chance. I'll give you the choice one more time. Shall we stop?"
"Haah…."
Her chest rose and fell with her ragged breathing.
The wavering in her eyes steadied by degrees until she was staring directly into his.
Her red lips curved up, just slightly, at the corner.
"Do you have the skill to stop me, Your Majesty?"
What a burning provocation it was.
"No."
"Then stop pretending to be refined. Play with me the way a vulgar man would."
The tone was bold and level, but Wiyeon caught the tremor hidden beneath her breathing.
Bravado, through and through — and unmistakably consent.
Seon Wiyeon's sharp, briny smile deepened.
"Then let's find out just how vulgar yours is."