It started with the pace. The wagon moved as fast as the horse pulling it, which wasn’t fast, but she still couldn’t be bothered to keep up. She walked beside it, then behind it, then drifted toward the tree line because something caught her eye. A bird, a flower, something she wouldn’t share with him when he told her to stay close.
He told her to keep her voice down because these roads belonged to no one friendly. She laughed, full-throated and ringing, just to show him she could make whatever sound she wanted.
He did his best not to engage. He walked ahead, scanned the road, kept his hand near his sword. That was the job. Protect her. Deliver her safely. She was a package he was duty bound to transport — even if the package had opinions about the route, the weather, the quality of the road, the distance between stops, and the fact that he hadn’t given her any attention in the last hour.
"I hope you realize that most men in this kingdom would consider it an honor to escort me. They’d make conversation. They’d ask how I was finding the journey. They’d at least look at me when I’m speaking to them, which you haven’t done since this morning, which I find astoundingly discourteous, in case you were wondering."
He said nothing. She continued in a huff.
"Is this some kind of oath you’ve taken? Silence until we arrive? Is that why they chose you? Because you're big and quiet and do as you're told?"
He adjusted the reins and kept walking. She made a frustrated sound behind him and he heard the pebble leave her hand before it hit the back of his head. When he turned around she was studying the sky with theatrical interest.
By midday she’d moved on to touching. Adjusting his cloak when it didn’t need adjusting. Brushing dust from his shoulder that wasn’t there. Squeezing past him on a section of road that was perfectly wide enough for two, her body pressing against his back, her hand resting on his hip for balance she didn’t need. She let it linger there. He felt the warmth of her palm through the leather and it stayed with him for a mile after she’d pulled it away.
She asked him if he’d ever escorted a woman before. He said he had. She asked him if they were all this unsatisfied with his performance. He didn’t answer. She told him she was beginning to think he’d been chosen specifically for his inability to be interesting, that perhaps someone at the court had said find me the most tedious man in the garrison and send him with the princess, and here he was, exceeding expectations.
He let it land. He let all of it land.
By evening she’d worn herself out. She climbed into the wagon without a word while he built a small fire and sat against the wheel with his sword across his knees. This was the dangerous stretch. Two more nights of open road before they reached the keep. If anyone was tracking them, this was where they’d come.
He sat with the fire at his back and watched the dark tree line and listened. The woods clicked and rustled with small living things. The horse shifted its weight. The wagon canvas rippled in a wind that smelled like rain coming from the east. He was thinking about the river crossing tomorrow when he heard her.
At first he thought she was in pain. A sound from inside the canvas, muffled and breathy, the kind that makes you reach for your weapon before you’ve fully registered what it is. He was on his feet before the second one came. By the third he knew exactly what he was listening to. She wasn’t hurt, but she was certainly loud. Loud enough that anyone within a hundred yards of this road would hear her.
He pulled the canvas back.
She was on her back with her traveling clothes pushed up to her ribs, one hand between her legs, head tipped back, mouth open. She looked at him. Her fingers kept moving. That same smile from the pebble incident crept across her face, like she’d been waiting to see how long it would take him to come looking.
"Do you have any idea how far your voice carries out here? I can hear you from the fire. Which means anyone on this road can hear you from a hundred yards out."
She arched her back slightly, watching him from under heavy eyelids. "Well. Now that I have an audience, so it seems rude to stop."
"This isn’t a game, your highness. I need you to be quiet."
"You’ve needed me to be quiet all day. I’ve been very uncooperative about it. I don’t know why you thought nightfall would change things." Her hand moved slower between her thighs, not stopping, not even pretending to consider stopping. "You can just go back to the fire. Pretend you didn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re very good at pretending things about me aren’t happening. You’ve been at it all day."
He climbed into the wagon.
She opened her mouth to say something else and he took her wrist and pulled her hand away from herself and pinned it against the wagon floor. The gasp that came out of her was nothing like the sounds she’d been performing. Sharp and involuntary, startled out of her. She hadn’t actually believed he’d do it. The smile vanished. Underneath it her face was open and flushed and honest in a way he hadn’t seen all day.
"You have no concept of the danger we are in right now." His voice was low, his face close enough to hers that he could feel her breath coming fast against his mouth. "I have been out there keeping us alive since sundown, and you couldn’t think of a single better way to pass the time."
"You refused to talk to me." Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "You're escorting me, you should pay attention to me. What was I supposed to do?"
"Anything other than this."
"Well, this seems to have worked, so I won't stand for your lectures."
He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he reached down with his free hand and drew his sword from the scabbard. He drew it slowly. Slowly enough that she heard every inch of steel leaving the leather, that long clean whisper of metal on hide, and the sound did what nothing he’d said all day had managed. She went quiet. Completely, instantly quiet, her eyes dropping to the blade between them.
He reversed his grip. The blade pointed down and away from both of them. The hilt faced up, the leather-wrapped pommel dark and smooth, still warm from sitting against his hip at the fire.
"A knight has nothing if not his sword and his oath, and I will not betray my oath for stubborn royalty." He held the pommel where she could see it. "So have this. Since your own hand wasn’t enough."
Her eyes moved from the pommel to his face. Her lips parted but nothing came out. For the first time since he’d met her she looked like she didn’t have a response prepared.
He pressed the hilt against her entrance. She flinched hard, her whole body jerking, but his hand on her wrist kept her pinned flat. The leather was warm and firm and wider than her fingers. He watched her body resist it, her thighs tensing, her breath catching high in her throat. Then the resistance broke. He pushed it into her slowly and her spine lifted off the wagon floor, her free hand flying to his forearm, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks through his sleeve.
The sound she made was raw and thin and startled. Nothing performed about it. Nothing bratty. Just a desperate, cracked-open noise that he felt in his chest.
He worked the hilt deeper. Steady, controlled in a way that he could tell was making her unravel faster than if he’d been rough about it. Her hand moved from his forearm to his shoulder, then to the canvas above her, then back to his chest, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. She couldn’t settle. Couldn’t find anything to anchor herself against.
"This is what you wanted all day." He pushed the pommel further and felt her whole body clench around it. "Every time you touched me. Every time you opened your mouth just to see if I’d react."
"I wasn’t— that’s not—" Her voice broke apart on a moan she couldn’t hold back. He twisted the hilt slightly and she cried out, her hand clamping over her own mouth a half-second too late.
"Quiet." He stilled the hilt inside her and waited. She whimpered, bringing her palm to her mouth, her chest heaving. "Unless you want whoever’s in those woods to find the princess like this. With a sword hilt inside you and tears on your face. Is that what you want? They'd do worse to you than me."
She shook her head. Tears were already running sideways into her hair. He resumed, slow and deep, and she sobbed through her fingers, her hips rolling up to meet each stroke like her body had decided to cooperate with him even if the rest of her hadn’t fully surrendered. He could feel her thighs trembling against the backs of his hands. He could hear the wet sound of the leather moving inside her between the ragged gasps of her breathing.
She whispered pleas into her palm. He didn’t ask her to clarify. He pushed the hilt deeper, held it there, and watched her body go taut as a bowstring, every muscle locking at once. She came shaking hard enough that the wagon creaked on its wheels, her back arched off the floor, the sound she made through her clenched hand barely more than a whimper. The quietest she’d been all day.
He withdrew the hilt slowly. She curled onto her side, breathing in ragged bursts, tears still wet on her face, her whole body twitching with aftershocks. He sheathed the sword. It slid back into the scabbard slick.
"Get some sleep." He released her wrist. There were red marks where his fingers had been. "Long day tomorrow, and I won't stand for any more tantrums."
He climbed out of the wagon, sat back against the wheel with his sword across his knees, and listened to the woods.
hear ye, hear ye! kinktober is upon us, and this year a new knightly challenge has emerged!
in honour of the fond place the knight kink community holds in my heart, I put together a knight-themed kinktober prompt list. knightkinktober is very casual, don't feel pressured to complete the list or burn yourself out—just have fun with it! I look forward to seeing whatever is made with these prompts :)
remember to tag the work you share with #knightkinktober25!
Gunplay, but not as a fear thing or a threat. More like fucking the hilt of a sword, but sideways and with more dieselpunk than the regency vibes – to recognize the weapon as both extension of your protector/hired killer/dog's power and their greatest fear, now operating on a hair-trigger. A sword is dangerous, is in fact the epitome and epaulet of danger even still, but it's intimate. The tool of your subjugation is itself subjugated, nestling so trustingly into the hand you choke it with; it will not move or flinch or kill unless you do. (Though it remains stiff and immaculate regardless of your will as any other's, the weapon inside you you will never be able to fully put down, only sheathe and garb in any softness that will hide it while you pretend you're not a killer.) When your partner stabs themself through on it, makes a stigmata of themself, they invite a dripping penetration, sympathetic reaction, to invoke the full metonymy of you-and/as-sword – you cannot harm them any more than they have decided to wound themself on you. The sword – forgive the obvious – pierces. In subjecting oneself to it, in being subjected to its length, it bypasses the protection of the rib, the sheath, to lance your arm through a body's core.
A gun is not so trained. Domesticated, perhaps – a thing without so noble a legacy; a tool meant solely for explosive, gory violence, brought in like a barncat, not into the house or household but maybe (if it's lucky) to the mantle. A gun, a gunner, operates at a remove: you press the trigger, projectile-pass the distance, watch the ruined target smoke. Even at its most passive, to wound its wielder is no mere love bite or training flaw; you cannot sync into a gun, tame it, become its extension and fuel of soul the way you can a sword. The caustic thing bites, all kickback and burns. You have to treat it like... well, a loaded gun. All bullets removed, absent wielder and finger on the trigger both, you'd still be horrified to catch your partner making out with the muzzle. There is no precaution you or either of you could take to make this (to make you) safe. So when they meet you staring them down with cold eyes and weapon drawn and sink to their knees to take the barrel on their tongue, when they rub their legs together after a particularly ruthless shot or when you catch them oiling the mechanism with more rutting through their fist than strictly necessary... That's control, isn't it? You have to be able to count each and every bullet, know the trigger's kinks more intimately than any of your own, keep iron grip on weapon-room-victim so the only messiness when you bring the hammer down is what's running down their thighs. It's for their own good that your hand pulls taut in their hair, leather palms and bare fingers forcing them down the barrel to ensure there's no deviation from your will. And that's trust – not only in your stay of fire, but your skill. That that weapon, all its wildness, will never do anything more or less than what you tell it to. That you, in all your wildness, would never do anything to hurt them – not on accident.
That, while you could do it on purpose... you won't.
