She was still eating and had just picked up a red apple. My fucking favorite thing to watch her eat. She ate it with abandon, the juice dribbling down her chin.
So much had happened since I married her. The kingdom was prospering under my rule, particularly as I left most of the day-to-day running to Giles, who was always looking to make the next move, to increase our wealth with this scheme or that.
With all that prosperity, there was money and time to make things stronger—roads, bridges, and our army. All the things that take a kingdom from good to great. Iris, though plenty busy with the kids, still studied under some of our physicians, helping to found a school for midwives, both for humans and for livestock.
She still went back to the farm, whenever she could, to help Bonny with the animals. On those days when she went to help, she dressed like a milkmaid all over again, so that she could move through Aramoor unnoticed. It drove me fucking wild, every single time.
I once asked Giles how he achieved the trick with the sun on the day of my coronation. He had laughed and told me that he wasn’t that powerful, and that he merely made sure my father passed on the day the eclipse was coming.
How he achieved that he wouldn’t tell me, but he did say that the death was supposed to come later, sometime in the afternoon, making the morning eclipse a “portent” of my divine right to rule, but he thought it worked better the way it turned out.
As for Patara, she caught pneumonia in the castle prison the winter after her half-assed grab for the throne. Iris tried to treat her, as did all of our physicians. But there was nothing to be done. Water in the lungs was what killed her, they said. She was buried quietly, in a night funeral, in a plot far away from the castle.
Iris finished the last bite of her apple and placed the core in an empty bowl on the table. She sighed heavily, happily, and rubbed her round belly, smiling sweetly as she looked down at my baby inside her.
“Come here,” I told her.
She rose and came to me where I was seated. It was an altar, more or less, where I could sit and she could kneel on a padded stool before me so she could worship my cock with her mouth. She stood before me, not kneeling yet, and I undressed her completely. The dress, the corset, all of it fell to the stone floor, piece by piece. It was a fucking production, all those clothes, but by then, I knew how to get her naked as well as I knew how to undress myself.
Once she was fully nude, in all her fucking beautiful glory, I traced a line from her tits, across her collarbone, then down the small of her back, her ass, to her full, heavy thighs. She stood still, letting me do as I pleased, never questioning me, never sassing me. She fucking knew the rules. And she knew the power of obedience.
From the wall, I took a length of waxed cord and bound her hands behind her back. Standing behind her, with one hand on each of her shoulders, I guided her down to kneel before me. Once there, I checked to make sure her full belly was comfortable on her thighs.
Coming back around in front of her, I hooked her jaw with the tip of my finger and raised her face so she was looking at me. Usually when I had her on her knees, it was for one reason and one reason only: so that I could shoot my cum into her throat, or her mouth, or all over her face. But this time, I had a surprise for her first.
I took a long second to just study her, to take her in, the way people do with cathedrals and harvest moons. She was everything sacred to me. She was everything that mattered. “I love you,” I said. “So fucking much.”
Her eyes glistened with a quick flush of emotion. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said. “As a father, my husband, my King.” She inhaled, breathing deeply. “I’m so lucky.”
I shook my head. “I’m the lucky one, beautiful. Now, close your eyes. I’ve got something for you.”
She blinked a few times and then did just as I asked. Quietly as I could, I walked away from her. As I got things ready, I thought of what she was hearing, rather than what I was doing. Me walking away. A rustling of fabric. Clothes, or maybe sheets, or maybe neither. Hinges opening, then closing. Silence for a moment. Then the sound of my footsteps returning.