Rendezvous in the Romanowskian Empire

53. Tease

It looked perfect with the dark blue dress she wore. In fact, it looked perfect with anything she wore. My eyes went down.

Given the green vein pulsating along her neck, I wanted to put my ear on her chest and hear. How loud her heart was beating.

At that thought, I concentrated on my own breathing. It took everything in me to not just do what I was thinking.

"Althea," I tilted my head, "Fight me off. Again."

When she wasn't able to look at me, I pushed the flat area of the sword below her chin, compelling her to look at me.

She bit on her lower lip in apprehension, her eyes at my neck. Then I felt her knees bending upright beneath me, brushing the inside of my thigh when her movements stopped. She grew impossibly red.

"It- It will hurt you," she uttered, mortified.

Oh baby, it's already started to hurt, I wanted to whisper that out, right at her face.

But I just smirked. God knows if she'd really hit me out of self-defence.

Though her defending abilities were impressive, she was breaking rules after rules, right in my presence. I threw the sword aside and placed my hands on either side of her head, looking down on her.

It was as if she's challenging me, day after day, to come for her.

"You love testing my patience, huh?"

She looked on with wide eyes, "You never allow me to visit interesting places," she said in a burst of energy, "be it this place or the bath arena-" Her eyes closed when I placed a finger over her lips.

Her soft lips. A surge of inexplicable want rushed through me, but I held myself. This usually wouldn't happen, but God damn.

I've been fantasising about her.

Way too much.

She was within my reach, yet so distant that a single mistake from my side seemed as if it would propel her away from me.

I retreated my finger from her lips, "What did I say about you ranting?"

Blood rushed to her cheeks, and I only fuelled her flushed face by gently holding her neck, the back of my thumb sweeping down her pulse, "What was the rule, Mila?" I asked calmly.

"Y- You said, y- you'll..." My fingers moved past her neck and into her honey-like hair, holding them in a fist.

The movement alone had her eyes closed in what I could decipher as bliss, neck arching lightly as I held onto her hair. This simple action was enough to have her shudder. I wondered what would happen if I moved my fingers against her...

"Speak the rule, Althea," I tugged at her hair, my own breathing violent at yet another fantasy.

"Y- You would personally... make sure to... shut my... l- lips-"

"So that's the reason you go around breaking the rules?" I murmured, satisfied at how her eyes were glazing off at our proximity.

"Do you want me to kiss you, Althea?" I lowered my voice, feeling like a lion with a fawn under his paws, ready to sink his teeth into her soft flesh, "do you break the rules so I would kiss you as a punishment?"

Either she was too reckless or the consequences of breaking the rules didn't deter her.

"No..." she breathed out, adding to my inner fervour.

"Maybe..." I brought my mouth next to her ear, wanting to bite on her earlobe, "I haven't made the kiss as punishing as it should be, hmm?

"Maybe I didn't do it harder, didn't trail it lower and lower until..."