Glory in Our Defiance • Zarry

5. - Burning Desire

1485 - York, England

Love for a royal is most often just a children's tale. They do not have time to fall in love and usually, the opportunities are simply not there. When someone from the royal or an otherwise influential family wants to marry for love and not lands, wealth or status, it rarely ends happily for them.

Marriages in their world are just a means to an end. A way to get a throne, to gain influence or money. It is not a declaration of love and affection. Princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses - they cannot just decide to settle down with anyone they find enchanting. And God forbid they choose to love someone bellow their rank and status. The worst of it is loving a peasant or any commoner. For that, some have been even disowned by their parents or sent into converts and monasteries.

Fucking on the other hand, that is an entirely different tale. When marriages are arranged, there are talks of 'virtue' and 'virginity' and 'purity' but all of that is just sheer bullshit. No one sticks to those traditions. Maybe some of the most religious ones, but there always comes a certain age at which the body just demands some excitement, to feel another warm body and quench that desire, that feeling bubbling in their bodies. Be it a sin or not, they barely give a fuck.

Zayn lost his virginity a few years ago. His mother has hopefully no idea because she would cut his balls off right after he provided an heir.

It was with an older princess visiting from France. Florie was beautiful but that was about it. They fucked a few times, she left and that was it. Ever since then, Zayn has tried many companions, whether male or female, highborn or lowborn. It does not matter to him, as long as they are aware of the fact that there will never be anything more between them.

There is an arranged marriage somewhere in Zayn's future, he knows it. As the future King of England, there is no chance that he will get to choose the person that will rule by his side and will help him provide the heir to his Kingdom. It is what it is and he has already left all those useless tales about true love and all that in his childhood.

That is precisely why he does not stop his greatest enemy from kissing him. Even if it is Harry Styles' tongue in Zayn's mouth, does it really matter? When the sun comes up and their sobriety returns, the war continues. One night of passion and sharing the same bed is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They are still warring. They are still waiting for each other's deaths.

After Harry had kissed him, the fire just erupted between them and nothing could stop them. The wine cruising throught their veins only helped add to that recklessness but fuck, it felt good.

"Do you still want me dead?" Harry asks after he pulls away, his lips red from kissing. His hands are clutching the sides of Zayn's face and Zayn's own hands have found a spot on Harry's hips.

"Maybe in the morning," Zayn says, his voice just above whiper. He moves his hands to Harry's arse, shamelessly grabbing it and pulling Harry closer, before kissing him again.

The kissing wakes something up inside of him. This wild desire that feels good, too fucking good. Perhaps it's the element of forbidden fruit, the knowledge that this is the last thing they should be doing together. The whole nation expects them to fight, to unsheath their swords and keep them in their hands until one of them is slain. What would their mothers say if they saw this? Their sons, both of them raised to be Kings, Kings fighting for one and the same throne, and now they are hidden in an inn, kissing and grabbing at each other like they were being paid for it.

It does not take long before they start removing their clothes, layer by layer until they're standing shirtless in front of each other, nothing but their underpants on.