Thinking about Viking King Steve and his Queen. I'm pretty sure he had lovers before. Perhaps even one who is of higher status and thought he might pick her to sit beside his throne.
So what if she visits unannounced, claiming she came to pay respects to the new queen, but obviously she's subtly flaunting herself in front of Steve. After all, she says, it's not uncommon for a Viking to have lovers...
Of all the asks in my inbox, I'm not exaggerating when I say that around 20% of them are for this AU, and half of those ask about what you would do when another woman comes into play, but THIS ASK is the one that finally gave me and the muse a lightning strike of how to specifically attack this eventuality... Thank you for sending, Eva!
It Rises with the Fall [For the King & Conqueror]
Characters/Pairings: Viking King Steven x curvy Female Queen!Reader Word Count: 7.5k Summary: Visitors from other viking shores stretch your bonds and bring new facets to light between you and Steven in the dark.
Content/Warnings: DARK established relationship - kidnapped wife; explicit smut: oral (female receiving), anal play, unprotected vaginal and anal intercourse, insemination; cockwarming; use of pet name (little wife); dare we say some actual feelings?
Author Notes: Bahaha, had y'all known it was our viking king in this poll, I'm sure the results would have been different. But here he is, bringing Valensmut to a close.
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Astrid weaves your hair with an almost priestly focus, her long fingers working the intricate braids while she hums an old cradle tune, soothing as you sit as patiently as you can. Strands of bright blue ribbon, the same shade as Steven’s clan, glimmer in the plaits, spiraling through your hair like a frozen river. It is the first feast of the year to welcome outsiders—envoys and traders from the southern coast, men and women who do not know your face or your story, who will judge only by what they see. The knowledge stiffens your shoulders with a tension Astrid mistakes for excitement.
“You look like a goddess of the old stories,” she says, catching your gaze in the silvered glass. “Vidar agrees.” She gestures at the orange cat, who has perched himself upon the window ledge and watches your reflection with the gravity of a child awaiting a bedtime tale.
He hops down and jumps into your lap, clearly knowing his own name. You smile and stroke his ears, then peer up at Astrid as your scalp tingles with each gentle tug. “Remind me not to sway my head too much. I’m afraid your artistry might come undone.”
“It would take a storm at sea to ruin this braid, my queen.” Astrid ties off the end with a precise knot, then leans back to admire her work, face split by a grin too wide for the room. “Though you should know—Helga says there’s trouble in the kitchens. The foreign ships arrived with more mouths than expected.”
Before you can ask what “trouble” means—spoiled meat, missing wine, or some new spat among the bread-maidens—Helga herself enters with her customary briskness, skirts swishing in determined arcs. She is flushed, but not winded, and you know immediately that she is holding onto information, but holding back from immediately tossing it at your feet.
Helga closes the door behind her, not with a bang but with a soft, purposeful click. Her gaze flicks first to Astrid, then to you, but she doesn’t speak right away. Instead, she dusts her hands on her apron, glances out the window, and then reaches to smooth a stray lock of hair at your temple.
You steel yourself for news of some disaster: a fire, a sour barrel, an insult from the southerners that could spark a feud. What you do not expect is for Helga to say, quietly, “There is a woman among the southern guests. She travels with their lord, but she is not his kin. Nor is she a simple companion.” Helga’s voice is even, but her eyes flick up to meet yours, sharp as a kestrel’s. “They say she once belonged to your husband. In ways that matter.”
It’s not the information itself that unmoors you—of course Steven would have had lovers, many of them, maybe a line of them stretching along the spine of the continent. You’d guessed it not only in the way he took you in the beginning, but in how skilled he was, how voracious his appetites were. But this, the fact of a woman from his past making landfall here, clutching an invitation to your table, is different.
And what matter should it be to you? Both of you had lives before he carried you away from your old one and forged you into his.
You raise your eyebrows just enough to suggest curiosity, not concern. You even manage a small smile. “Thank you, Helga,” you say, and you stroke Vidar’s back to steady your hands. “Has the woman caused any concern?”
Astrid, eager to defend your honor, clenches her fists, and you see her glare in the reflection. “Is she here to undermine our queen? To make a spectacle?”
Helga lifts a hand, stilling the younger woman with a look. “No spectacle, not unless someone makes one. She holds herself apart. Wears no clan colors. But she has not taken her eyes off your husband since they arrived.”
Helga is still watching for a reaction, so you ask, “Did she give her name?”
Helga nods. “Inga of Storn.” She says it cautiously, as if delivering the name will levy more of an impact.
You ask the only question that really matters. “Has the king acknowledged her presence?”
“He has not spoken to her publicly,” Helga replies. “He may choose not to. She has withdrawn now, as have the others, to prepare for tonight’s festivities.”
You nod, and preserve as much of your wits as you can. You try manage the slow, spreading heat that comes from knowing you will soon be obliged to share a room, a table, perhaps even the throne, with the shape of the woman who held your husband's heart—or, at least, his body.
Astrid is still fuming. “If she tries to speak to you, my queen, you need only give the smallest glance—”
“No,” you say, not so sharply as to wound, but enough to plant your feet in this moment before it runs away from you. “She is here as a guest. As long as she is so, there will be no pettiness.”
Astrid huffs, as if she wishes she could personally bar the door against any ghost of Steven’s past, but she relents somewhat in her fire. You marvel at her loyalty, but you’re not a child. If there’s any power dynamic to be threatened here, you intend to stay abreast of it, not be held at its mercy.
“I’m grateful, Helga,” you say, pressing a thumb to Vidar’s chin to make him look at you. “We’ll show our guests the courtesy—and strength—of this hall tonight.” You rise, skirts crackling as you straighten them, and the orange cat leaps gracefully from your lap to pad after you.
The final hour before the feast passes in a cloak of anticipation. The sun falls lower until the halls are rimmed in copper, and servants light the torches, fanning the smoke with sprigs of dried sage. In the antechamber, you stand with the other women of the household, conscious of every movement, every tilt of your chin, as if the very air is a lens through which every soul will judge you tonight.
The horns sound, and you file in. The hall is pulsing with voices and color and music. The main table, set up on its dais, is resplendent with silverwork and dressed in the king’s blue. The guest tables are alive with a cheerful chaos of strangers’ laughter, a thousand tiny dramas swirling in the air. Steven stands at the center of it all, hair bound with a leather cord, his tunic blue to match yours. But he is already deep in conversation with the lord of the southerners, and beside him stands a woman, draped in gray and gold, her hair the kind of pale that seems to catch and hold the last of the sun. She is neither beautiful nor plain—her features are sharp, her gaze even sharper.
You allow yourself a single moment to look—the way she turns her face up to him, the quick curve of her mouth, the deliberate way she does not touch his arm but lets her presence fill the space between them like perfume.
You feel Steven’s gaze slide to you a moment later. The cut of him is remarkable. Your king is nearly a head taller than any man in the hall and so broad at the shoulder that even his finest tunic strains to contain him, but tonight it’s the angle of his eyes, the directness of his claim, that makes you catch your breath. He gestures you forward with an imperceptible tilt of his chin.
You cross the main floor of the hall, the clamor dimming as you approach. The southerners bow their heads, the ring of their movement perfectly choreographed—each body turning just enough to show deference, but not servitude. The pale woman, Inga of Storn, nods to you with a correctness so precise it almost scalds.
You keep your chin up, expression schooled into the perfect image of hospitality—welcoming, but not wishing to betray any nerves.
“Queen,” she says, her voice low, clear. “It is an honor.”
You answer carefully, “You honor our hall with your presence.” You smile, enough to be diplomatic, but not enough to offer welcome to someone you must see as rival, remnant, or both.
Steven’s gaze darts between you and Inga, then back to the lord of the southerners, a shrewd man he introduces as Tomas. He looks to be older than Steven by some twenty years, but by no means born down by age, but instead a strong and vibrant force of a man.
Tomas’s eyes crinkle as he bows to you, the movement fluid, practiced, and just the right side of unthreatening. “Your majesty. It is a fine hall and a finer welcome, especially in the dark of the year.”
“Not so dark tonight,” you observe, glancing at the torches and the banners and the armies of candelabra above. “We strive to make it warm for our guests even when the snow stacks to the eaves by sunrise.”
He smiles wider at that, revealing slightly crooked teeth—a flaw that only makes him more approachable. With everyone now present, you take your seats, you and Steven at the head table, though not seated next to each other this night. Tomas sits at his right hand—as is fitting for the highest ranking guest of honor—and to your unease, Inga is placed at his left, but you square your shoulders and determine to put it out of your mind.
Bowls of wild carrot soup are ladled out to begin the feast, warming those who trekked in through the chill outside. Both Tomas and the southern guests seated on your other side are warm and jovial, and full of many stories. The feast unfurls in courses—cured fish, roasted fowl, the first of last year’s turnips and winter apples. Conversation swirls: trade, adventure, discovery and battle stories. Tomas’ expression and manners are warm, almost fatherly, and it strikes a pang of longing for your own father, left behind in your former life.
You do your best to contribute lightness to the conversation, steering the southern guests to delight in the oddities of northern cuisine. The men at your table are charmed by your wit, and you can feel the subtle undertow of approval in the way even the local men listen when you speak. You pay careful attention to Inga’s end of the table, however. She appears to be quiet but captivating, attentive but reserved. She confers with Steven in sparse, low exchanges, always too brief for you to catch more than a murmur. When their eyes meet, Steven’s gaze is unwavering, but if there is emotion in it, you haven’t the skill to name it.
As the feast progresses, the warm haze of mead and full bellies softens the edges of the hall’s tension, and by the time the musicians strike up their first tune of the night, the mood is jubilant.
Steven eventually stands, towering above the crowd. He raises his drinking horn and with a voice that rolls over every torch and table, calls, “Tonight we honor old friends and new! Raise your cups to the bonds that hold us fast, and to the storms that make us stronger.” The hall erupts in a shout, the echo near deafening. He sweeps his gaze over the assembled, and though the words are for all, the message is for you as much as for Tomas, Inga, or anyone else present: This is a show of unity, of mastery, of tradition. There is no room for ghosts here unless Steven himself invites them to the table.
And there is at least one ghost at this table, which, for your own sanity, you can not blow bellows to the tiny flares of envy or jealousy. You must exist beyond the clutches of it.
So you raise your own cup, letting the warm thrum of solidarity pulse through your hand and into your chest, focusing on the other visitors in the hall.
But as you lower your cup from your lips, for the first time in the night you meet Inga’s eye. You think she is about to smile at you—something sly, almost conspiratorial—but the moment is gone before it can fully form. She turns her attention to Steven, saying something that makes him laugh, his baritone booming over the harmonies from the musicians’ corner. You can’t help but study her in the periphery—every tilt of the head, every calculated calm. Is she a threat? An echo of what Steven once needed, or proof that he has changed appetites—for the better or worse, you can’t say. And as the queen, you do not wish to give any obvious behavior for anyone to speculate over.
You notice Inga does not drink heavily, does not indulge in the flirtatious banter that is a currency among the guests. She listens as much as she speaks, and when she does, the table grows quiet, as if all sense recognize the gravity of her voice. Even then, she never once attempts to draw Steven away from conversation, or even to claim his attention. Her very restraint feels like a challenge, and you find yourself equally determined not to betray any agitation, keeping your laughter easy, your conversation nimble.
You are grateful for the music, for the tartness of apple cider that follows and the way the children of the hall begin darting between the tables, snatching sweet buns and giggling, unburdened by the weight of any history. Their laughter is a buffer, and you use it to steady yourself between exchanges.
At the first coaxing notes of the next song—a lively dance tune from the southern coast—Tomas stands and extends a hand to you. “Will the north’s most gracious queen honor an old man with a dance to beckon spring to hurry its speed back to us?” he asks, grinning widely.
You’ve never danced formally in this hall. For a split second, nerves coil in your belly, but then you consider the alternative: remaining at the table, a passive spectator to the silent communication running like a tide beneath Inga and Steven’s every movement. You’d rather risk a stumble on the slick flagstones than be left to chew over every possibility.
You stand and take Tomas’s hand, a ripple of interest moving through the guests as he leads you out into the open before the hearth. A gap opens in the crowd, and the musicians punctuate the moment with a flourish of strings and drum. Tomas bows with exaggerated solemnity, then sweeps you into a measured turn.
You follow his lead, surprised by your own ease. Tomas is a practiced partner, gentle with your hands but confident, never once jerking or crowding your stride. His feet are silent on the stone, but his voice is not. “You’ve the poise of a born queen.”
You tilt your chin, keeping the smile soft at the corner of your mouth. “I was not born for this, but I endeavor to do my part now that I am here.”
You spin across the stones, and as you do, you scan the tables. Steven’s eyes are on you. For a moment the music and the crowd dissolve, and there is only him: his gaze, steady and measuring, tracking your every motion. You do not falter. You let Tomas spin you and cross-step backwards right up to the hearth, recalling the reels of your childhood, the feel of packed dirt and summer wind and the memory of a future you never lived. The steps come back to you, and you find yourself smiling for real, alive in the exertion and the quickening of your own pulse.
“Grace alone is never enough for a court like this,” Tomas murmurs, leaning close during a tight turn. “You have mettle. Not the kind acquired by accident, either.”
You search his face, but his tone is light, his intentions wrapped in courtly ambiguity. “If that’s meant as counsel, my lord, I am ever eager for the wisdom of those who have weathered more storms than I.”
Tomas’s steps never falter, though his grip on your hand tightens a fraction. “That is good. If you ever need a friend at court, or anywhere else, you would do well to keep my confidence.” The dance brings you in close, and you catch the glint of honest intent in Tomas’s eyes. “There will be many storms, and you must endeavor to discern which storms require bolting the doors, and which are best met with open arms.”
Whether it is a warning, an offer, or simply a kindness, you do not know, but you incline your chin in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Tomas of the south. I will remember the counsel.”
“I believe between you and I, we are cut from the same cloth. Perhaps a finer, softer weave than these old bones, but the same resilience deep in the thread.”
The dance ends, and he bows you out with a flourish. There is a round of applause from the assembled guests, followed by a ripple of laughter from you and the others who joined you in dance, and Tomas gently guides you back toward your seat.
But before you make it, Ursa intercepts you, her eyes wide with the thrill of the moment. “My queen, you were glorious,” she whispers, then slips away as quickly as she arrived, swishing back into the tide of party.
The song ends. Tomas bows you out, guiding you back to the table with a flourish that leaves your head slightly spinning. As you sit, Inga of Storn is watching you, chin propped on the backs of her fingers. She offers you a nod, measured and dignified; you answer with the same, nothing more, nothing less.
The courses roll on. Dishes change rapidly as servants whisk away battered platters and empty bowls and refill goblets at a tempo that keeps the feast in perpetual motion until honeyed cakes and dried fruits are brought around at the end.
You’ve barely savored the last morsel when Steven appears at your side, towering, the heat of his body radiating through the cold of the hall. He takes your hand, enveloping it in his, and tugs you gently but inexorably away from the crowd, ignoring any final etiquette or protocol the occasion may actually have called for. Not a single protest is raised. You can feel the tension radiating off him, and you can only imagine the intensity that must be written on his face. No one will challenge this man in this moment.
You expect him to drag you, as he sometimes does, straight to the bed, or to pin you against the wall and ravish you before the echoes of the feast have even faded. Instead, Steven releases your hand the moment you cross the threshold of your chambers and crosses to the hearth, where the fire is guttering low. His movements are restless, unrooted. He throws a handful of pine boughs onto the embers, and the fresh pitch cracks and blooms with the flames and the sweet, sharp scent that you always associate with midwinter.
He neither speaks nor turns, only begins to unlace the collar of his tunic, then pulls it over his head with a movement so forceful you hear the threads strain. He works at the bindings of his arms and wrists, then his belt, and a tremor in his hands betrays the force of his mood. You watch, uncertain—half expecting him to turn on you with that voracious hunger that rarely seems to be quelled. He continues undressing until he’s stripped down to the waist. He is all muscle and shadow, scarred and beautiful in his brutality, but there is something closed off inside him, a storm clouded rather than spent.
Finally, you move further into the room and commence your own nighttime preparations, beginning with removing bracelets from your arms and slipping out of your shoes, still keeping an eye on him.
He seems to sense your scrutiny, shoulders rising in a slow, controlled breath. “You handled yourself well,” he says. The words are measured and strange. “Better than some would have, in the presence of a woman like her.” He can only mean Inga of Storn.
“She is your past, not mine,” you say, and you mean it—or at least, you want to mean it. “Why should I rise or fall for her presence?”
He turns at last, blue eyes catching the full flare of the firelight, and he studies your face like a puzzle he cannot put together. “You should,” he says. The words are hard, unyielding. “It is the nature of things, little wife. Inga is a woman who inspires envy—and not on accident.”
You bristle, the spark of his challenge igniting something that had lain carefully banked all night. “Is that what you wanted? For me to make a scene? Douse the table in your mead and tear her hair out, so the court thinks I am threatened by a pretty ghost?”
His jaw sets, the muscle in his cheek ticking. “Not a scene. I expected you to care.” He spits the last word like a barb, as if it offends him to say it. “You did not flinch, not a blink, when she looked at me with hunger in her eyes.”
It angers him. Truly angers him—not the cold, analytical anger you’ve seen him summon in anger or as a tool of command, but a real, burning, personal need that you see so rarely in him.
“You did not ask me to care. Nor do you seem to require it.”
He stalks forward, bare from the waist up but for the scars that mark him as both king and conqueror. The fire newly lit gives his skin an uncanny glow, as if he’s built from the gods’ own rage and spit. “So that is what it is for you?” he asks, not waiting for response. “A matter of requirement?”
You don’t answer, not directly. You stand your ground and begin to unfasten the heavy belt at your waist, the traditional blue and white sash Astrid had wound and knotted. The silk slips loosely between your hands before you lay it over the back of the chair at your vanity. You undo the laces of your dress, and slip out of it, leaving you in only the simplest of undergarments. “What am I except your conquest? The treasure you brought here? I am scarely more than a trophy fucked and paraded as your queen. I did not know there was an allowance for feeling.”
Steven closes the distance, the air heavy with the pine smoke and the tension you can nearly taste on your tongue. He stands in front of you, massive and imposing, every inch of him radiating heat and intent. “You think that is all you are to me?” he says, voice low and dangerous. “After so many months, you still believe you are just a prize?” He snatches the discarded silk sash and—too fast for you to resist—loops it around your wrists, pulling tight, binding them before your body as if you are a lamb readied for ritual. There’s nothing gentle in the motion, but you drink in the shock and let your body summon the wariness that once governed everything here.
He drags the length of blue over his fist and yanks you forward. You crash against the wall of his chest, the heat of his body a living fire, but his hands do not grope or clutch at you—he holds you at arm’s length, searching your face for something you cannot name.
“I could have any prize, have had many,” he breathes, but it’s fire and not flattery. “I do not keep what I do not want. I have never yearned or sought for more from a woman the way it was from that very first evening.” He leans in so close you smell the salt of his skin, the iron of his mood, and for a moment all you can do is match the wildness in his eyes.
“And even when I have you, I am not satisfied. You become more.” He lets go, not with violence, but in a way that makes the lack of his touch ache.
He circles, pacing almost, the blue silk still twisted around your wrists. "When I look at you," he says, softer now but fiercer too, "I see every dream I have ever had for this hall, this land, my blood. And still it is not enough." He shakes his head, wild with a need that cuts deeper than desire. "That is what you should know, little wife." The last two words rumble from his chest, not dismissive but desperate, as if it is the only truth worth clinging to.
And with that, he drops to his knees—in front of you, not as a servant or a slave but as a king stripped to his hunger. He presses his forehead to your bound hands, inhaling as if scenting your skin might save him. The heat of his breath is humid against your knuckles. For a moment you see the massive hands that have destroyed and built so much now trembling at your command, your body.
But then his hands close around your hips and jerk you forward, so abruptly your knees buckle and you nearly overbalance. He grips you—hard—and rakes both hands up your thighs. The snowy white of your chemise is no hindrance to him: Steven seizes it in both fists and, eyes burning up at you, and rips it from the hem up to your hips with a force that shocks even you, the fibers surrendering in a gasp of threads. The rush of air is cold against your bare skin, but his hands are instantly on the flesh of your thighs, spreading them, and you stagger, almost lose your footing on the rug, except he holds you firmly enough to pursue you poised there as he wishes you to be.
He does not hesitate. He presses his face into the junction of your thighs, beard scraping your bare skin, his mouth finding your cunt with a hunger absent of delicacy but not of skill. He holds you in place by the blue-silked wrists and licks at you, slow and then quick, the heat of his mouth blazing against your skin, beard rough at the crease of your thighs. You gasp, the sound escaping you as a broken little cry, and he drags his tongue up your slit, thumb grinding the bud of your clit until your head tips back and you are moaning, open-mouthed, at the ceiling.
Steven twists you by the hips, turning you, commanding your body how he wants it. He bites your flank, then lower, sharp teeth grazing the swell of your ass, and you yelp, a sound you try to muffle in your own shoulder but which makes him laugh against your skin. He kneads the flesh in handfuls, then thumbs your cheeks apart, spreading you so bluntly you want to disappear into the floor, but you cannot because Steven is behind you, greedy and intent.
The next sensation shocks you: the wet, hot press of his tongue at your tightest opening, circling and probing, and you buck against the sensation, a strangled gasp tearing from your lips. Though Steven has claimed all your holes, he does not torture or pleasure your tightest hole frequently. The shock of his tongue there is always a violation so intimate you might burn to ash beneath from his ministrations.
He sucks at you, his tongue sliding into places ever dared even imagine you would be touched before him. Even now the crudeness of it alone would have made you weep from shame if not for the fact that your knees are shaking with the need to be filled, to have him utterly claim every part of you. Your body responds to him with the swiftness of a summer storm—one touch and you're drenched in need, lightning coursing through nerves that know only him. Months in his bed have carved these pathways of pleasure to flood at his command.
He pulls you down and you end up kneeling on all fours. You whimper—it is all you can do—and Steven holds you steady, his hands bruising your hips as he works his tongue over both your cunt and the tight ring of muscle, switching between them until you’re trembling, the world reduced to blue silk, candlelight, and the raw, obscene wet slickness of your own arousal. You do not have the wherewithal to care if any hear you cry out. There is only your need, the way Steven’s mouth and hands erase everything but the edge you’re teetering on.
He shoves your knees wider, so wide you sway in the joints and nearly collapse—except there is his arm, corded and firm, braced across your hips like you are some wild animal being tamed. He licks at you, fucking his tongue into your cunt, then back to your ass, alternating with a rhythm that leaves you panting, open-mouthed, on the rug. You feel a fresh rush between your legs with each circle of his tongue, and Steven groans as if the taste of you is his favorite mead, his favorite honey, his only holy thing.
Suddenly he stops, and you have just enough time to register the loss, the ache of missing his touch for even a heartbeat, before he’s looming over you, rising to his knees and fitting the wide, hot head of his cock to your entrance.
He doesn’t push in yet. He slides the tip up and down, teasing, painting the slick of your arousal along your cunt and further back to your ass, pressing just enough that you feel the hint of promise, the threat of it, a stretch you both want and dread.
“Steven,” you gasp, your voice gone hoarse, “please—”
He braces one hand at the base of your neck, thumb pressed to your nape, and with the other, guides himself in, slowly, filling you inch by inch until you’re gasping, blinded by the fullness, the impossibility that this act never grows less shocking. He drags it out, slowly, making you feel every notch and ridge, until he bottoms out inside you, hips flush to your ass.
He holds you like this, utterly open and claimed, and rocks his hips forward. The first thrust is slow, almost reverent, but it is a brief moment of gentleness before the pace sharpens. His cock drives in and out of you, using your cunt as an anchor, but every third thrust, you feel the blunt head of him nudge against your other opening, slicked with your own arousal and the wet residue of his mouth. The pressure is relentless, an inexorable stretching, and then—without further warning—he is pushing inside you there too, just the tip at first, but widening you, forcing the tight ring of muscle to yield.
You cry out, the sound raw and wild, and Steven laughs, low and dark, as he works both holes—one with cock, the other with a ruthless finger slicked in spit and your own juices. You can barely process the sensation, pleasure and pain crashing in waves, every nerve in your body tuned to the twin pulses of pain and satisfaction.
He fucks you like this, both cock and fingers filling you, setting a rhythm that is brutal and perfectly pitched to bring you to shattering. The force of his thrusts pitches your body forward, but Steven follows, his hand bracing at your shoulder, yanking you back to impale yourself on him again, again, until you’re wrung out, body bowed, the blue silk biting into your wrists. Your moans are so loud you think you must be heard down the hall, maybe in the kitchens, maybe in the snow fields beyond the fortress walls, but you are past caring.
He leans over you, chest against your back, the scratch of his beard burning your neck, and you hear him snarl into your ear, “Mine. Only mine.” He bites down, hard but not breaking skin, a mark of claim to your own. The heat of his mouth and the iron grip of his arm send you over the edge, your body convulsing, the orgasm crashing through you like a wave ripping a cliffside to ruins. Your cunt milks his cock desperately, and Steven groans, a sound that vibrates through your whole body. He presses further, thrusting as if he could drive his soul into you through pure force of will, matching each spasm of your core with a savage, punishing pace.
He does not let up. Not when your legs collapse under you, not when your cries go ragged and raw, not when you sob for breath and for mercy and for more in the same voice. He ruts your ass until he feels you tremble again, the pain and pleasure indistinguishable now, and then he yanks out, slides his slick length back into your cunt, and fucks you until you scream his name.
Finally, when you are empty of everything but your voice, Steven shoves in hard and stills, cock pulsing as he finally spills into you, a rush of heat so intense you weep from the fullness of it. He slumps forward, folding you beneath him, pinning you to the rug so you cannot move, cannot even think to move, and for a long moment there is nothing but the roar of your heartbeat in your ears and the heat of his breath at your neck.
He doesn’t speak. He stays, spent and trembling against you, his sweat slick at your back, his cock softening but held inside as if to keep you forever tethered to the earth and to him. The pine boughs in the hearth spit and crackle, the only sound in the chamber aside from your twin gasps for breath.
After what feels like an age, Steven rolls you to the side, still bound, and gathers you up before rising himself and carrying you to the bed. He lays you down, then produces a knife from where exactly you know not, and cuts away the remnants of your chemise. Only then does he descend, moving in behind you, pressing your back to his naked, sweat-slicked chest. He slings one burly arm across your belly, cinching you to him, as if he suspects you might unravel and slip away, vanish into the night unless physically anchored. The other hand, still holding the blue silk binding your wrists, brings them to rest at your breastbone, a possessive knot over your heart. He nestles his nose into the braid of your hair, breathing in the sweat and salt and whatever trace the night has left on you. For a long while, he is silent, letting the wet heat of your bodies leach into the linen, letting both your hearts hammer back toward something like peace.
This is not uncommon, a ferocious fucking, and then a decent into slumber, but then he does speak before you’re too far gone.
He speaks as if you are not there, as if he is confessing to the dark, beard rasping your neck. “If it was merely your body I wanted, I could have stolen and kept you as a concubine, a pet for the king and his men.” He draws your bound hands to his mouth, presses a kiss to the ribbon cinching your wrists. “But I saw in you a queen who would have strength and the wits of survival. You proved it through your actions in ushering your women, children, and elderly to flee into the forest and hide. You were only caught because you were the last to leave, the rear of the pack.
“And I think maybe I knew—” He laughs, the sound gruff and incredulous, “—the moment you stared down a blade and spat in the dirt at my men, you had the bone in you that could survive me, could take all I would give and not break."
You want to tell him that’s not what you feel now—not breaking and survival, but the slow, hot flare of something more dangerous and enveloping. But you cannot move your mouth, cannot move your hands. The warmth, the utter exhaustion, pins you like an insect in amber. It’s the truth, though: you can take all Steven gives and more, and even when he breaks you, you reform, sharper and surer than before.
He pulls your braid loose and combs his fingers through your sweat-damp hair, unbraiding it section by section, as if to erase the ribbons and colors the court braided into you and replace it with only his mark. He works methodically, with the patience of a hunter skinning his prize, so slow you feel every drag of his thumb at your nape, every careful untwining.
When his hands have untangled every ribbon, when your hair spills wild and loose as the night he first took you, Steven says, voice raw and unguarded, "Do you want him?" The question is a blade, unexpected, honed to a perfect, silent edge.
It is not the kind of jealousy you expect from him—Steven, the conqueror, the unmoved, the one who’s consumed, enthralled, and conquered you. But there’s a new, black hunger in the way he says it, a need to know if you can be swayed, if Tomas’ gentler words or softer eyes could tempt your loyalty a finger’s breadth from Steven’s grasp.
You twist to look over your shoulder, wrists still bound, and see the truth of it in his expression. He is not angry, but something deeper: haunted. You know then that he could trust you with his life, but not with his terror of being abandoned. “You like the southern lord Tomas.”
His tone is feral, a warning note you know instinctively not to ignore. You lie propped against the iron of his arm, your heart thrumming against the knot of blue silk, and wonder if he will truly believe any answer you give.
You do not play coy. That would only make it worse. “He reminds me of someone,” you say.
A pause. The heat of him presses in at your back, more tense, and you can sense his mind tearing through every possibility, every motive. “Someone you would have preferred to me?” The words are almost spat, but beneath the venom is a tremor—a thread of vulnerability that stuns you.
“My father,” you say quietly. “He was… kind. He asked questions. He listened.” The ache that trembles there in your voice, you know it will not land gently for him or for you. You go on anyway, the words catching like thorns in your throat. “I miss him. I miss my mother, my sisters.” You swallow, hard. “Tomas is nothing like you. He can see through a room and set those around him at ease. It reminds me of how my father was. I don’t want him. I want…” You pause, the word refusing to come, but you force it out, soft as a bruise. “I want not to be alone.”
There’s a long silence. Steven’s breath rasps in your ear, ragged, and you feel the strong pulse of his heart beating. The words hang between you, heavy as the furs that swathe the bed. For a long time, neither of you moves. You expect Steven to snarl, to snap, to claim you again with hands or teeth or cock, but he only tightens his arm around you, pressing you close enough that your breath stutters in your chest.
“Alone,” he finally echoes, as if this is a thing he has never truly named. His chin presses into your shoulder, and the scrape of beard is almost tender. “You have never been alone since the day I brought you here. Not a single night, not a single dawn.” The words rumble out of him, half accusation, half vow.
But you know what he can’t know, what no one here could possibly understand, and you find yourself trembling as you say, “It’s not the same.” The words are small in the dark, nearly swallowed by the thick cocoon of the bedding and the iron of his arms and the weight of him still half inside you.
He stiffens, but you press on, voice hollow with a truth you have never let touch air, have scarcely allowed yourself to acknowledge since the early days of your new life. “You think I am not alone because you are always here, because I have servants and duties and… an entire kingdom to help care for. But every face is new, every wall echoes with the absence of the home that was mine.” You swallow, steeling yourself. “Every kindness here is suspect. Every affection is one I must earn, or keep, or defend.” The words tumble out before you can stop them, raw and truer than anything you’ve ever let him see.
Steven is very still behind you, considering. You feel his hand, slow and careful, splay over your belly. “And me?” he asks. “Am I only… a conqueror to you, even now?”
What can you say? You have wanted, desperately, to hate him, to let yourself be ice and stone, but every night you share this bed, every morning you wake pressed close to him, his heat and his hunger and the unexpected moments of care. “You are a conqueror,” you admit, “and there are days I loathe you for it.” You turn, finally, within the cage of his arms, and this time the blue silk is support, not restraint. “But you are also the root the grows all I have now,” you admit, the words dry as bone, the last of your pride crumbling with them. “Everything I was is gone, except for how you see me, the life I’m building here only because of you and my position as your queen.” The confession is everything you know how to give. You expect him to seize it, to use it as leverage or to brand you with it in the way only Steven can. Instead, he is silent, haunted by the truth of it, and you sense a shift in the air.
He searches your face, eyes dark and wild and unmoored, and then something in him gives. He closes his eyes, a long, shuddering exhale bleeding out of him, and then, with the patience of a stone altered by centuries of wind, he gently unwinds your bound wrists and brings your hands to his lips. He kisses the inside of each palm, one and then the other, callused hands cupped around yours to hold them steady for the ritual. You think he means to claim you again, to turn every declaration of weakness into a demonstration of strength, but instead Steven just holds your hands to his heart, bared and thrumming fast and fragile against your skin.
He presses his brow to yours, the heat of his body incandescent, a lighthouse in the storm. “I see you,” he says. “I saw you from the first, and I will not let you vanish, not even if you wish it.” The words are a cord binding you, not to the palace or the kingdom, but to the man beneath the scarred skin and steel beneath. The admission is not in words, but in the slow pulse of his heartbeat under your palm, the way he curls his hand around your head to keep you there, to keep your face pressed close, as if proximity can substitute for explanation.
You are swept by a wave of exhaustion, not the clean fatigue of sated pleasure, but a deep, marrow-tracing depletion, the kind that comes from exposure more than exertion. For a time neither of you moves, except for the hot, desperate breaths that collapse in your lungs and then shudder out of you both, braided together and matching pace. You close your eyes, feeling the scrape of his thumb over your cheekbone, and tell yourself you don’t care that you cry a little. How many times have you shed tears in his presence? Of fear, of frustration, of pleasure, of longing.
There is nothing left to say this night. You surrender to the thickness of the moment, to Steven’s hands redrawing every line of your body, as if this is the first and last night he will ever have you. You shudder against him, not from cold, but from the slow-mounting realization that love, even the broken, brutal kind, has taken root where only survival grew before.
viking themed divider by @saradika-graphics
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