His Secret Slave to Scandalous Queen

Everything in her life had become shadow and secret. She had gone too far to back out now and free everyone from this entanglement.

A quiet sound came from the door. Livia sat up at once. Her heart gave one silly, traitorous leap. Then Richard slipped into the room, dressed in his shirt and breeches, hair slightly disordered.

He closed the door behind him quietly. It made a soft click and he winced. Livia pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

Richard turned, caught her expression, and whispered, "I feel like a thief in the night."

"You are a thief in the night," she whispered back, smiling despite herself.

His grin appeared at once, quick and boyish and devastatingly unfair. "Yes. Gallantly here to steal your virtue, Duchess." Richard came toward the bed and leaned over her, bracing one hand near her hip as he bent down. His mouth brushed hers first in a teasing kiss, then again. "Hmmm..." he murmured against her lips. "I missed you..."

Livia pulled him closer. She kissed him back with conviction — hands finding his jaw, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, eliminating whatever remained of the distance between them.

Richard smiled against her lips. It didn’t matter, he decided, that she hadn’t told him about Henry. It mattered more — considerably more — that she was here, in his arms because she had chosen it. Was choosing it. Right now, with her hands roaming his body and her mouth warm against his.

That was enough. For now, that was everything.

His fingers found the hem of her nightdress, trailing upward along the inside of her thigh until he found exactly what he was looking for.

She was warm, wet, waiting.

"You naughty duchess," he murmured.

"I’ve been waiting a while, your grace."

"Pardon my tardiness." He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "I shall endeavour not to delay your pleasure in the future, my lady. You have my word as a gentleman."

She laughed and then she kissed him again, pushed herself into him with purpose. Her hands found his shirt and shoved it impatiently. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He shrugged it off obligingly, and her palms spread flat against his chest immediately — warm skin against warm skin — and she made a small satisfied sound against his lips that went directly to every nerve ending he possessed. He pulled his breeches halfway down. He returned to her — hands finding her waist, her hips, settling back into the space she’d already made for him in the way she was lying, the way she’d arranged herself because her body simply begun to know him.

Livia pulled her legs apart. An invitation that required no translation. Richard found his way home.

He pushed inside her with a slow, deep exhale.

"You feel so good, your grace." Her head fell back against the pillow, her whole body settling into the rhythm of him.

"The way you look right now." His voice was low, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. "It ruins me, Diana. Every single time."

"Deeper," she whispered. "Please."

He reached for her hands, gathered both wrists and pulled them up over her head, pinning them gently against the pillow.

She wrapped her legs around him in response. He pushed deeper. Until there was genuinely nowhere left to go and she felt him everywhere.

Her lips parted. Her fingers flexed beneath his grip. The pleasure was building fast now — that particular quality of inevitability she recognised, her spine tightening with every stroke of him. "Richard—I’m going to—"

"Do you love me?"

Her eyes flew open. The question landed in the middle of everything — in the heat and the breathlessness and the exquisite tension of being right at the edge — and it was so unexpected, so completely unanticipated, that her mind went entirely blank for a few seconds.

He was still moving inside her with deep rhythm, still holding her wrists above her head, still watching her face with dark eyes that were waiting — patiently, intently.

"Richard?"

He pressed his lips to her cheek. Her temple. The corner of her jaw. Kisses scattered across her face while his hips maintained their devastating, unhurried pace. "Do you love me?" he repeated. He’d decided the asking mattered more than the answer and was prepared to ask it indefinitely.

Livia considered it. He was a good man. She knew that now in a way she hadn’t when any of this started — not good in the performed, public sense, but genuinely, deeply good.

And the sex was good. And he loved her. He loved her, he’d managed to see underneath who she used to be and he seemed content.

It was supposed to be complicated. Somehow it wasn’t.

"Diana—" Her name left him on a moan, his rhythm faltering slightly, his forehead dropping toward hers as the effort of waiting for her answer competed with every other demand his body was currently making.

"Yes," she said softly. "Yes, your grace."

"Say it." His voice was wrecked, barely held together. "Tell me just how much."

"I love you," Livia said. "Very much."

Richard slapped his hips against her. The jolt pulled her entirely out of her thoughts and back into her body — back into the heat and the fullness of him and the pleasure that had been building through the entire conversation with absolutely no regard for the emotional weight of what was being said.

"I’m glad." His voice had gone somewhere dark and deeply satisfied. His pace shifted — harder, each thrust punctuated with intent. "Cum for me, duchess."

She did. The cry that left her was loud enough that Richard’s palm landed over her lips — muffling the sound even as her body arched clean off the bed, spine curved, toes stretching and pointing as the orgasm crashed through her.

Her fingers twisted in the sheets. Richard felt her clench around him and came apart at the seams.

"I love you, Livia." Her real name left his lips as he plunged deeper, driven forward by her confession, by her acceptance, by the knowledge that she had chosen him. "I love you, Diana—" Again, deeper still. "I love all of you."

(Its the weekend again people!)