Sophia saw it coming. Tears might have draped a foggy veil over her vision but she knew it was coming. Inexperience with the other sex needed not deprive Sophia of the knowledge of the fleshly desires. She, herself, had acted on said lusts for longer than she cared to admit.
She grew up with men who were of lower stations than hers; they laid no claim nor authority over her. But Louis did. As her betrothed, he was already granted a soft claim over her, just as she over him. Perhaps, if he had asked, she would have refused. But that had nothing to do with whether she had wanted him to claim her lips. It would have been the denial of power being granted to him and the selfish desire to remain a distance away from those who could hurt her, that would have made her utter her demurrals. And it was well within her rights to push him away; she was not his yet. Not before God she was not.
But she chose not to. It was his lips, too, she had a claim over. And it was him she had a claim over. Sophia took a leap of faith when she closed her own eyes and leaned forward, even before his mouth touched hers. For a split second there, fear kicked in: What if he did not mean to do it? What if this was another trick her sleep-deprived mind was playing on her? Yet said doubt was dispelled the moment she felt his mouth over hers.
Tasting him was a violent emotion - so incredibly violent that her heart threaten to combust inside her chest and her mind blank like Russia’s blankets of snow. Reasons had died upon her the mere second her heart cried out for her to cling onto him. Her hands found the back of his neck once more, for she feared such intensity of her own feelings and desire would crush her, turn her bones as brittle as glass, and leave her as nothing but a pile of stardust . The shaking of her body had reduced to barely noticeable from on onlookers’ perspective. But to be in her skin, one would say other wise. The cold and hard Tsarevna of Russia had come undone and naked before the man she had repeatedly denied. It frightened even herself how one kiss could disarm her so effortlessly and how she knew he would be her ruination. Yet still she craved for more as she let her lips move with his, like silk caressing the skin (smoothly and sweetly, yet never lacking in the prospect of fabric burns because even the most delicate things killed).
Sophia was the one to beg them back to reality by lowering herself back onto the heels and soles of her feet. She had waited for regret to set in, but she neither pulled away nor bolted for the door. All that reigned her was rather novel to her: She was still there and in control. Her hand still remained on the tilt of her sword, and yet why did she feel so utterly helpless before him? Where did such a weakness sprout from?
“I can already tell… My Lord… that you’re going to be the undoing of me.”
He is torn asunder and pieced together in fragments that crack beneath her touch and threaten to reform in her image. She tastes of smoke and wine and holy light that leans so far out of his reach that it is as though he is given grace once more. Louis de Valois is no stranger to intimacy, to kisses stolen in the alcoves, to flesh laid bare and explored. But this is far beyond that, beyond him, for this kiss is more a reaffirmation of who he is and where he is with this woman who threatens to pull him apart. His head spins and his ribs ache and all that holds him standing is based purely onto the strength of her grip. It is only when she pulls away that he sways a bit, dumbstruck from both the intensity of the kiss and the weight of the day sinking into his bones and numbing them.
A soft huff of a laugh leaves his lips at her words and he leans into her, the hand curled around her cheek flexing. One thumb brushes over the outer line of her jaw as he levels his gaze to hers, cheeks flushed and pupils blown wide. This is dangerous, so very dangerous, that such a woman can make him feel this way and burn away every resistance he has in this moment of vulnerability. It was an act of desperation and a sense of grounding himself but this has grown far more than he had imagined through a simple kiss. “It seems you have done far more for me,” he whispers. There is a moment when his senses return and he slowly peels away from her, wiping roughly at his tears lest others see them. It is pushing back into his box, his shadow, this sense of self that is wholly unlike him beyond the comforts of his loved ones.
