Don't Provoke Me
He felt his nerves draw taut, sharp and alert.
As he trickled the raw, green-smelling liquid into that narrow, damp space, her flushed face twisted faintly. She seemed to genuinely despise the taste of the potion.
But he could not share in what she felt. He could register the thick grassy reek that stabbed at the nose and the fierce bitterness that scoured the tongue—yet those sensations never resolved into anything like displeasure.
Barcas pressed his tongue into her tightly clenched mouth, withdrew it, and pressed again, drawing her thrashing body still closer.
She swallowed what had pooled inside her and shuddered thinly. Her ragged breathing dampened even the hollow of his throat.
He tried to coil her tightly contracted tongue around his own, and when it would not go as he intended, he lifted his head.
What met his eyes was a face wrecked by an unfamiliar act.
Suddenly, something sharp scraped down the length of his spine.
He forced her jaw open with his thumb, pressing down on her swollen lower lip, and drank in the short, humid breaths spilling from that wet aperture as he urged her roughly.
"Stick out your tongue."
Her moisture-bright eyes wavered with unease.
He pushed his fingers past her teeth and lightly pinned down the damp tongue within.
A somewhat impatient voice slipped free.
"Come on."
The woman who had been staring up at him in confusion slowly put out her tongue.
The moment he took it into his mouth and drew on it gently, her body—so thin it seemed ready to snap—went rigid with the shock.
He cupped the nape of her stiff neck and tipped her head still further back.
That small tongue writhed, teasingly. He pursued it with relentless care as it kept trying to escape, and wound his arm around her soft waist.
Beneath the thin fabric he could feel the delicate architecture of bone and the gentle curves of flesh.
In only two seasons she had put on a noticeable amount of weight, yet even so the body felt as if the slightest pressure might shatter it to pieces. A strange restlessness rose in him, and he released the tongue he had been holding.
Clear saliva spilled between her raw, rose-red lips. As he licked it away, a voice came to him that sounded close to tears.
"Why…"
She looked up at him with eyes like someone burning with fever.
"Why would you go this far?"
He knit his brow.
He wanted to ask her the same thing.
Why shouldn't I?
They were husband and wife.
Even acts far beyond this would not have been strange between them. He simply had not demanded them, knowing she would not want it.
But you were the one who reached out first.
He swallowed the urge to throw that at her and looked instead into those dizzying, unreadable eyes.
Confusion, wariness, and suspicion all tangled together in her gaze, and something in his gut twisted tighter and tighter.
Slowly, he loosened his arms.
"If you don't like me doing this, then don't provoke me from now on."
The woman bit her lip and dropped her eyes.
That ruined mouth drew his gaze again. He sneered at himself for it and began to rise from the bed—only for a tightly locked voice to scrape across his nerves.
"Wh-who said I didn't like it?"
Barcas looked down at her with cool eyes.
She made her demand as if reclaiming something she had left in his keeping.
"I won't cry anymore, so keep going. The medicine—there's still some left."
For an instant, a savage heat tore through his belly.
At a sensation uncomfortably close to displeasure, he frowned.
What does this woman even want from me?
I want you to hurt. A lot. A whole lot.
The words she had once muttered under the influence of the drug drifted through his mind.
At the time he had dismissed them without much thought. Even after more than a decade, his sense of pain had never returned. He could no longer even recall what pain had felt like.
But the thought struck him that perhaps this sensation he was feeling now might be something close to suffering.
"I-if you don't want to, fine—just get away from me."
Unable to bear the lengthening silence, Thalia shoved at his chest.
He caught that hand as if snatching it out of the air and pulled her absurdly light body up onto his knees. The body that had gone rigid with tension melted soft almost at once.
He wound his fingers through hair so smooth it raised gooseflesh and bit down on her wet lips.
She had always been a woman who was only satisfied once she had made a wreck of others—and of herself.
From the moment he had taken responsibility for a creature like that, he had known his orderly world would begin to come apart.
Barcas closed his eyes against a heat that felt as if his insides were being scalded raw.
It was like swallowing venom.
The journey continued smoothly.
They visited the principal territories of the northeast, then moved south and toured a succession of commercial districts.
For a time, the vistas of great cities—vast enough to make the eyes go wide—unrolled one after another, and the fervent hospitality of wealthy merchants and nobles followed in their wake.
Yet none of it held any claim on her heart. Her mind was simply too full of chaos.
Thalia fretted at her stinging lips and gazed out the window.
Between the knights marching in orderly ranks, Barcas's figure flickered in and out of view.
In black breastplate, riding with an unbending posture, he looked every inch the cold, severe lord. It was impossible to reconcile that image with the primal man who savored her mouth night after night.
Feeling her insides twist of their own accord, Thalia drew the curtain across the window. But even with her sight cut off, the thoughts circling her mind would not stop.
She compulsively turned over and over the acts they had repeated together.
Barcas never kissed her first without her asking. And yet he never looked as if he were forcing himself to comply. He would always press the kiss on with stubborn persistence until she was driven to her limit and began to struggle—sometimes it even seemed as if he were the more impatient of the two.
But the moment she grew frightened of contact that had grown too deep to bear and pushed him away, Barcas would withdraw with a clean, untroubled face. At those times, everything began to feel like her own overinterpretation again.
Thalia chewed absently at her lip, then winced at a sharp sting. When she touched the place with her fingertips, a faint smear of blood came away.
She had no way of knowing whether the wound was one she had made herself or one Barcas had left. Lately he had been tormenting her mouth more often.
Fingering her cracked lips, Thalia shut her eyes tightly. Just as she was about to try for a nap—anything to empty the clutter in her head—the carriage that had been racing without rest came to a halt.
"We've arrived. Please step down."
A blunt voice carried in through the window.
Thalia straightened her disordered clothes and climbed out of the carriage.
Across a broad plain, large conical tents and weathered huts stood sparsely scattered. The rather humble landscape brought a wave of bewilderment. Compared to the north, where the gulf between rich and poor ran deep, the south was generally prosperous—it had been quite some time since she had visited a village like this.
"We plan to spend the night here."
A young mounted warrior whom Barcas had assigned as her escort approached and explained.
"It will be uncomfortable, but please bear with it for just one day."
Thalia moved forward without any reply.
Barcas was speaking with a man who appeared to be the village steward. She was staring blankly at the scene when Barcas beckoned her over with a tilt of his head.
Thalia approached him carefully. He set a hand on her shoulder and addressed the steward in a businesslike tone.
"We'll be pitching our own tent, so you need only prepare lodgings for my wife."
Thalia looked up at him with startled eyes.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Tonight there will be a light punitive expedition."