He takes you to dinner

You get the question out before the hall goes quiet, a full quiet sentence in her voice because a whisper will make him ask again.

"Is supper a table I sit at, or a display I stand in, so I know how to stand when you come back."

He stops with the key still in his fingers, and the answer is the extra you paid for by asking it clean.

"It is a display," he says. "The envoy from the kingdom that stole you from me is already in my hall, and he will eat while he looks at the woman who left me. I will use you where he can see it. He will not put a hand on you unless I leave the room and say so. There will be a toast. After the toast I will decide if he walks home with a story or with a problem. That is three hours of your night. Take the robe off."

You take the robe off, and then the lace, because naked is what he said in the part he did not bother to say and the beads are loud on bare skin. The collar stays. The rings stay. He pulls a strip of dark cloth from his sleeve and ties it over your eyes himself, tight enough that the palace becomes sound: his ring clicking, the latch, a servant in the stair who stops talking when the door opens.

He clips a short lead into the empty collar-ring.

"On your hands. If you stand I will put the ring up until you cannot."

The crawl is the bad part.

The stones of the corridor are colder than the rug and they scrape your knees on the first turning, and he walks at a pace that is comfortable for boots and not for a woman who cannot see the steps. A servant drops a tray and does not pick it up while you pass. Someone laughs once and kills it. He turns the ring on his hand when you slow, and the clit bead spikes so hard you go down on your elbow and the lead jerks your throat, and he does not stop, he only shortens the leather so you have to catch up with your mouth open. Stairs come without warning. You find them with your palms. Blonde hair hangs in your face under the cloth and sticks to your mouth, and the breasts swing with each step, rings tapping, the hum in them climbing whenever his hand remembers the ring.

The hall is warmer and it smells like meat and wine. Voices drop the way they drop for a door, not for a person. He walks you the length of it on the lead, and you can hear a chair that does not stand and a man who does not look away, and when the king stops you are under the edge of the high table with the cloth still on your eyes.

He does not announce you. He opens his trousers, takes your hip, and puts himself in you from behind while the envoy is already seated, and the first push is thick enough that your arms fold and your cheek hits the stone. The beads kick because he clicks the ring as he seats himself. You make a sound that is hers. The hall hears it and does not help.

He does not stand and does not look away from the table. The king talks border numbers over your back as if you are a point he is making, and every few thrusts he clicks the ring so the clit bead kicks while he is in you. Your breasts hang under the table-edge. Someone farther down the hall has gone very still.

He does not finish. He leaves himself in you and stops, which is worse, and he says to the envoy, almost mild,

"That is the start. We will eat. If she comes on my floor during the first course I will take that as her toast."

The beads stay high. He is still inside you. The blindfold does not come off. The next hour is already in the room.

*****

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