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“You cannot leave Russia in the hands of —”
“He’s half of me.”
“His first word was ‘pussy.’”
“A salient point. His second, ‘book,’ though …”
“He works you and you don’t even see it.”
“Don’t, Marial. We have rules.”
“I love you too much for rules.”
In the dark of Catherine’s bedroom, Marial stared into her empress’s eyes, trying to will her to understand with some kind of psychic power, since her words were clearly not doing anything. And then, when the psychic power did nothing (unless Peter was fucking keeling over somewhere else in the palace), she followed through on the promise of the statement and surged forward with a kiss.
Because it was true. She loved Catherine too much to let Peter keep her on this stupid, self-destructive path. She loved Catherine too much to keep to her own, private rules, too, if there was a chance that that could sway herr.
She loved Catherine too much not to use every weapon in her arsenal to save her.
So Marial climbed onto the bed — the great big soft bed she used to serve Catherine her breakfast in, the bed Peter regularly fucked his wife in — and pushed Catherine back down onto the pillows, darting between her arms while she was still surprised at the advance.
“What are you —”
Marial cut off the rest of the question by planting her mouth on Catherine’s and kissing it — hungrily, more hungrily than she’d meant to, but she’d spent so long wanting to do it. So fucking long. Catherine’s lips felt exactly like she’d imagined, thin but soft, and after a moment she was kissing Marial back with the same fervor she gave to her male lovers. A very encouraging start.
Marial took it as a sign that she could go further, and let her mouth stray from Catherine’s over to her jawline — and at that, Catherine gasped, and clutched at her, and then flipped them both over so that Marial was on her back and Catherine hung over her with wide eyes.
“Are you —” Marial began, but she didn’t really know what she was going to say. Which turned out to be fine, because Catherine lunged for her mouth again and she wouldn’t have been able to go on anyway.
She couldn’t help but think back to those rumors. Those horrible, unfair rumors about Catherine, that she fucked horses and all that. Of course, Catherine didn’t fuck horses, but there was something wild and insatiable in her that Marial had never been able to see before. Frantic fingers tried to untie Marial’s shift’s neckline, and when they failed, they just started pulling it up her thighs like Catherine needed to be up against her skin.
Marial was used to fucking and being fucked. She and Gregor were going at it all the time, of course, and he was hardly the only man she’d known. But with Gregor there was the passion of their long acquaintance, and with the other men there’d been, oh, the promise of some extra food or a better blanket or just something to take her mind off of how fucking angry she was about being made into a serf. With Catherine? There was pure joy and curiosity on Catherine’s part, and … relief on her own. She’d done it! She’d finally fucking done it! And rather than awkwardly pushing away and being nice about it, Catherine was all in! At least for the night. And that was fine. It would be one hell of a night.
Once Marial’s shift was pulled well up her body, Catherine sat back and gazed between Marial’s spread thighs. “So that’s what it looks like from this angle.”
“It’s not a science project,” said Marial, not really cross. It shouldn’t have been endearing and also still — well, she wasn’t going to use the word romantic. But it was still, anyway.
Catherine reached out, and her fingers met skin that was achingly ready. “I like it like this, do you?” She dipped two fingers inside Marial to make them slick, and then started to rub them around in soft circles. Marial couldn’t help it — she wanted to be cool, collected, like always, but she had to take a sharp breath and roll her hips up into the touch. It made Catherine smirk infuriatingly. “I’m the empress,” she went on in her bossy way, “so you have to answer.” Almost immediately she stopped moving her fingers and her brow crinkled. “I mean, you don’t have to, of course, I was just —”
“Yes,” Marial said immediately. “Yes, your majesty, I like it — the way you’re doing it.”
The smirk reappeared, and Marial gave herself up to being fingered by her empress and best friend, letting her own arms fall limp on either side and straining to keep her legs from clapping together around Catherine’s slim, soft hand.
This had to be a dream. It wasn’t so different from some she’d had before, really.
And then it got more like one of those dreams, because Catherine leaned in and kissed her so sweetly on the mouth, and then on the chin, and then at the base of her throat, and then between her breasts, and onward and down until she was stretched out on the enormous bed between Marial’s legs, glancing coyly up up her. A second later, she planted one last kiss at the top of Marial’s cunt, and then she began exploring it with her tongue in that determined, forthright way she did everything.
On one level, it was galling to be reduced to a quivering mess, splayed out in the most vulnerable way, all of her bravado and sarcasm stripped away along with her clothes. But on another — oh, it was beautiful. Catherine’s technique wasn’t perfect, but she was plainly ready to experiment, nibbling here and flicking her tongue there, and every time she found something that worked, she’d do it again and again, and return to it a little while later. A true Enlightenment scientist, Catherine.
When Marial came, she threw her head back against the mountain of pillows behind her. She cried out and tried to stop herself from crying out and ended up with a stifled sound halfway between a moan and a sob, and then had to shut her eyes and breathe hard for a long moment.
She could feel Catherine moving around on the bed, and when she opened her eyes again, she watched Catherine daintily wipe around her mouth with her nightgown, then lay down next to her. “That was … very …” she said, and for once Marial didn’t try to interpret the subtext.
“I should go,” she said instead of repeating that she loved her, because that thought was close to her lips. But as she started to try to marshal her body into rising, Catherine caught at the sleeve of her silk wrapping gown.
“Please? Don’t.”
She ought to, Marial knew. Things would be awkward the next morning. Catherine wasn’t going to shift her loyalties from Peter to Marial just because of one night — one night where she fucked Marial and not the other way around, for fuck’s sake. This had all been a huge mistake, probably, and staying there would be compounding it.
But instead she obeyed, curling up onto her side to face Catherine and allowing Catherine’s hand to twine around hers, Catherine’s foot to work its way between her ankles, and she fell asleep with their foreheads touching.