Lips Like Ice

XVIII

"You don't really want my consent," Lydia says. It's like knives ripping up her tongue to articulate this, but she can't think of any other way to make him understand. Because, for both of them, it has to be dead clear. He needs to ask, yes—but more than that, he has to understand what asking means to her. "You don't actually care about it."

The Prince makes a frustrated sound, low in his throat, and suddenly his arms are around her waist, one hand sliding upward to tangle in the fine hairs at her nape, the other sliding downwards to grip the muscle of her rump.

He breathes into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, cool moist hair in her hair, over her ear. The tentative, slick touch of what could only be his tongue. "I do care. I care a great deal about your comfort, your safety."

"But what about me? Do you care about what I think, how I feel? As a person?"

The Prince rolls his hips up once, frustrated and on the edge of annoyance. "Why ask that? I want you. Let me have you."

The scent is even more overpowering this close to him, wafting up between them. Lydia can almost feel it curling into her own flesh, penetrating to her core, pooling hot and honey-like between her legs.

There are lips on the shell of her ear, a soft repeated plea that is just barely audible. Lydia pants. "You're going to take what you want, regardless, and my wishes don't mean anything."

"They do," he whines. "Capitulate."

"Forced submission is still forced," Lydia says. "You're not letting me do this on my own terms."

The Prince pulls back just enough to keep her breasts crushed against the flat plane of his collarbones, and touches the tip of his nose against hers. He looks up into her eyes, earnest and trying so hard, god, so hard. But not hard enough.

"Then what are your terms?" he asks.

Lydia actually pulls at her hair, she is so frustrated. "To be free to come to you if and how I choose."

"You are!"

"I am not free, don't you understand?" She puts her hands on his shoulders and shoves.

The Prince yelps and falls back, holding his injured arm, and pouting up at her in shocked betrayal.

"God, you're a child," she says.

"I am not! I am a fully mature adult! My genitals have come in."

"I didn't mean... ugh!" Lydia steps out of the nest and throws her hands in the air and does her very best to ignore the hot stretch in her middle, the way her inner thighs have grown warm and slick. "I meant mentally! You just... you want what you want and you will wheedle and whine and command until you get it. And that's not consent!"

"Don't," the Prince says softly, and when Lydia turns back to him, he is holding his hand out again, eyes large and wet. "Do not."

"Don't what?"

"Leave me. You are... you are the only one who cares. Do you not understand that? You are the only thing I have in the world." And because Lydia has always been a soft touch, because he smells so good, because he is hurt, and because Lydia has seen how his family treats him, she goes back. She ignores his outstretched hand, and instead cups his face between her own,

kisses his forehead once.

It's not the understanding that she wanted. But it's close.

Perhaps close enough. Perhaps as close as it's ever going to get.

Then she pulls his fingers away from his shoulder, peels back his shirt, and stares at the skin.

"Nice colors," she says. The bruise is as large as her hand and encompasses the area right under his rotator cuff, leaking into his hairless armpit. It hasn't shaded black, as it might if a bone was broken. "Is it swollen? Hot?"