#emperor/reader

[mothiir]

little rabbit - e.g the droit seigneur fic

authors notes: first time I’ve written fanfic in an age and it’s 40k smut. Inspired by @moodymisty’s amazing continuations of that one unhinged ask I sent about the emperor cucking his sons (on anon because I was not expecting people to actually vibe with it)

Cw: dubcon, size kink like woah.

It has been a long, long time since he’s had a human woman -- oh, back in the halcyon days of his youth, back when Terra was the only planet he knew, he was a warlord with the tastes of a warlord, and left many a pretty young thing with trembling thighs and flushed cheeks (or with teary eyes and puffy lips, depending on his mood). But the mission, the hungry endless gaze of the monsters beyond the stars, the crushing weight of his responsibility -- it distracted him. There were far more important things that called his attention, and as hundreds of years became thousands his power grew, and his humanity atrophied. Sexual desire, he assumed, went the way of compassion and affection: sloughed aside, deemed unnecessary and detrimental to his greater purpose. 

But even the greatest man to ever step foot on the red earth can be wrong sometimes, and for the first time in millenia he is glad of it. The girl in his lap was not even born --nor, for that matter, were her grandparents’ grandparents -- the last time he bedded anyone, and the thought stirs some deep, primal part of him, a sense of ownership. 

“Easy,” he rumbles, as she whimpers and shivers, her tiny body barely able to take even the head of his cock. He strokes her sides, kisses her jawbone, then mouths along her jugular, relishing the rabbit thrum of her heart against his tongue. “We have all the time in the world. Take it slowly.”

He’s getting sentimental in his old age, he swears. Time was, he would have split her clean open in his desire to get inside -- though, of course, that was when he was a good deal smaller than he is now. He has no desire to rip her asunder on his prick. 

She hiccups and whines, his hands moving to her hips, spanning not only her waist but the lean length of her thighs. 

“Hurts,” she manages, and he chuckles.

“Yes. But you’re a good girl, aren’t you? You can do it.”

He knows she’s stronger than she looks. When he found her, she was in Roboute’s quarters, smelling of the Primach’s sweat. He didn’t think his son indulged in his serfs, but he cannot begrudge him the distraction -- after all, Gulliman is precisely the soldier the Emperor needs him to be. A little too uptight, perhaps, and altogether too fond of spreadsheets, but a useful strategist. And, apparently, someone who shares his father’s excellent taste in human women. 

“I -- I don’t know --”

She wriggles herself over him, and he spares one hand to hold his cock still, making it easier for her. The mere fact that she is arguing back has him pulsing with desire; it has been so so long that a human has looked at his shining face without falling to their knees in supplication, let alone since one has argued back when he demands the impossible. 

Well: seemingly impossible. He is larger than Roboute, but not insurmountably so, and he has unending faith in the indomitable human spirit. And in the accommodating stretch of the human insides. 

There’s an almost audible pop as he finally pushes inside, and she cries out. 

“Oh god --  I mean -- shit -- I don’t mean I believe in gods -- I don’t -- ”

Her eyes widen with fear, and he laughs -- a deep bass rumble that she probably feels in her marrow.

“Lord is an appropriate term of address,” he says, teasingly, nuzzling at the top of her head. It’s adorable just how nervy she is; like a small animal clasped in his hands. A rabbit cowering before a bear. 

“Yes -- yes my lord --” she pants, and he allows her a moment to adjust, before starting to pull her down onto him. She’s warm and soft inside, overwhelmingly so, and the Emperor moans with appreciation, awkwardly hunching his shoulders so he can continue to lave his tongue and teeth over her neck -- before pulling back so he can admire the way her belly bulges around his girth, his cock pushing aside her insides to make room for him. 

She’s whimpering, her fists clenched in his robes, salt tears starting to drip down her cheeks. He licks them away. It’s all so much for her -- too much. And yet the little warrior does not quibble or complain; she takes him, and takes him, and when he’s seated all the way to the hilt, her small body flush with his lap, he rewards her with a moment’s pause, and another deep kiss, exploring the inside of her mouth. She’s small enough that his tongue practically fills her up, sinking almost to her gullet, heedless of her blunt human teeth. 

“There,” he says, and she coughs out a proper sob, so clearly stretched to the absolute limits. He rubs at the outline of his cock inside her, her skin stretched taut around him. “Now. Let’s begin.”

[inknopewetrust]

[kthologue]

𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 (𝐢) – 𝐠𝐨𝐣𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐮

contents. period piece, forbidden love, ooc, angst (eventual comfort), yandere emperor!gojo, lovesick!gojo, servant!reader, obsessive behavior, lowkey unreliable narrator, time skips, 7.2k words of gojo unable to process his feelings

notes. sorry for leaving everyone hanging after the prologue (make sure to read or reread since it's been a hot minute!) TT but here it finally is!!!...not proofread soz :x

series masterlist | chapter 1/2

You haunt his dreams, he’s sure. Gojo never believed in superstitions or the supernatural despite what all those old geezers preached. That was until your figure started to appear every time he closed his eyes.

The familiar scene of you gets cloudier every time it appears in his dreams, but he knows it is still you. It’s nearly comical how even his subconscious knew of your everlasting beauty. Everytime, the same sequence replays: a grand celebration he had hosted in the palace in honor of a prosperous year of his reign. The two of you were overlooking the guests, seated at the head of the room.

You’re wearing court attire that was altered to fit solely you (it hugged your body in such ways that made Gojo’s head spin), fabrics and dyes all originating from foreign lands. In your hair sits beautiful hair ornaments, swinging with every movement you make.

However, Gojo knows it is not the materialistic items that make you beautiful, no, he knows that it was simply you.

“Has anyone told you how unnerving your eyes are?” You quietly comment, eyes still trained on the party in front of you. Satoru cracks a slight smile, not ashamed in the slightest that he was caught ogling you.

“I thought you said you loved them?” He blinks at you, attempting to lean closer to show off his blue orbs. “You’re starting to hurt my feelings, beloved.”

You purse your lips, subtly leaning away before he can initiate improper conduct. He does not take your action well, snaking an arm around you to firmly cage you in his hold. Normally, you would welcome his advances but you’d rather not be publically humiliated in front of the entire Imperial Court and all of the influential clanheads of Japan.

“Please have mercy on me, Your Grace,” You whisper, eyes flitting across the room, making sure there were no eyes on you. Luckily, everyone was too absorbed with the luxurious goods Gojo had imported for the occasion. It was the anniversary of his coronation, after all.

He makes a noise of disapproval, “Can’t. Must let these people know that you’re mine.” Gojo closes the gap between you and sniffs your neck, softly moaning at your scent. He knows that if the geezers looked up from their silver spoons they would have a heart attack at his public display of affection. Not that he cares. His unorthodox ways may make them livid, but Gojo knows they won’t do anything. He was going to pave the way for the Golden Age of Japan— with you by his side.

“Your Grace!” You giggle at the ticklish sensation left by his warm breath. Any attempts of shying away from him are fruitless.

“Don’t run away,” His other hand firmly places itself on your clothed thigh, restricting your movements. All of this is hidden by the table that sits in front of the two of you.

You’re looking at him with those shiny eyes of yours, silently pleading with him. “Can’t this wait until tonight?”

He huffs, “I have suffered enough today without your presence. Ijichi kept begging me to finalize the preparations, but who am I to care? My flower was too busy having fun without me.” 

“You and your dramatics. I was only away to tend the gardens in the Consort’s Pavilion. Which, might I remind you, is fading by the moment because someone refuses for me to stay there.” You tut, picking up your chopsticks to eat the delectable fish placed in front of you. 

Gojo’s stare never falters as he watches you pick up a small piece, eyes shining as if he were watching a spectacle. “You know I can’t sleep without you.”

“And I, you.” You pop the piece inside of your mouth, chewing happily at the flavor that fills your tongue. “You know, I–” You began, but were cut off by the sudden seizing of your throat. 

The chopsticks in your hands clatter loudly with the porcelain they are dropped on. 

Gojo's breath hitched, his eyes wide and trembling with horror as he watched you struggle for air. "My love?” he choked out, his voice cracking under the weight of rising panic.

Your hands immediately travel to your neck to alleviate the sudden burning feeling that blossomed in it.

“[Name]!” He shouts, large hands quickly rising to cup your cheeks. In a desperate attempt, he squeezes your cheeks to get you to spit it out. 

"Poi–poison," Your voice was hoarse, your face losing its color by the second. Satoru was frozen with fear. “Don’t eat it…Satoru.” With those parting words, you lose consciousness.

“[Name]?” Satoru’s hoarse voice can’t stop repeating your name like a prayer, hands lightly tapping your cheek as if it was going to bring you back to life.

Gojo wanted to laugh. Even when you were dying, you worried about him. Not that it mattered. You weren’t going to die. He refused.

Sometime during your struggle the chatter had stopped, and all eyes were on you. Satoru looks up from you to bark orders to the guards he had placed around the room. They leave to summon the Imperial Physician while Gojo is left clinging onto your limp body, praying to the Heavens above that they will grant him one more miracle.

—

Back in his chambers, Gojo’s head pounds, but he’s not sure whether it was the speed he shot up from his bed or the dream itself. He feels hot, sweat running from his bare chest that heaves to bring oxygen to his quickly pumping heart. He’s nearly certain his chest is going to cave any second with the way it constricts with pain. It was like he was a geezer, he humors silently.

“Your Grace?” A delicate hand cups his cheek. 

He follows the direction of the hand, eyes slowly trailing up the feminine body it belonged to, barely covered as a result of the thin silk nightgown that highlighted her natural curves. “Are you alright? It was only a nightmare.” She cradles his face, moving slowly in his vulnerable state.

Satoru breathes heavily, eyes widening as they travel from her breasts to her face, beautifully illuminated by the sparse moonlight leaking from the window. Her dark hair falls past her shoulders, obscuring some of his access to her skin. His beautiful mistress. He’s sure that she is whispering sweet nothings into his ear, but the images of his memory keep replaying in his mind, occupying it from functioning properly. ”Himiko, how did you–”

“I heard you and I couldn’t bear it.” Her finger softly caressed his flushed cheek, trying her best to ignore the bewildered look on her lover’s face. 

THE PRESENT —

The journey to the Inner Palace was a blur. After a long goodbye, a horse drawn carriage was sent to the front of Yaga’s estate the very next morning. Your mind was elsewhere the entire time, too busy mulling over your past and now damned future. 

That is why when the carriage comes to a complete stop in front of the servants’ quarters, you are startled to meet two awfully familiar faces.

The two are silent, eyes carefully watching you exit the carriage. The purple set of eyes steps forward first to take your bags from you. 

“Ah thank you Mister—“ Your voice trails off, eyes looking up from the dark robes in front of you only to be surprised with a familiar face. “L-Lord Geto?” 

His lips quirk up slightly upon recognition. “Welcome back, [Name].” Your heart throbs at his indifference from the last interaction you had. It is quickly concealed by the excitement in your voice when your eyes spot a comforting pair of eyes.

“And Kento?” You light up.

Suguru raises an eyebrow at your familiarity with the Imperial Chancellor. He knows he should be relieved that you held no malice towards himself and Nanami, knowing the struggle you were subjected to when banished. However, there was a foreboding feeling gnawing deep within his soul. Guilt? Fear? It was hard for Geto to put a finger on it.

Nanami simply nods in acknowledgment, but stays silent under Geto’s watchful gaze.

“[Name],” The black haired man starts. Your eyes return to his face. “I wanted to be the first to greet you here, but I suppose Lord Nanami must have had the same idea.” He chuckles lightly, but the mirth never makes it to his eyes. You don’t notice Lord Nanami stiffening up.

“To say I am flattered would be an understatement, Lord Geto.” You return the same sugarcoated pleasantries. 

Geto must have noticed your unease, reminding you, “Please, there is no need to keep your guard up around me. I don’t bite.” His voice has a teasing lilt. It does little to soothe you. 

“Can you blame me, Lord Geto?” Your eyes meet his purple ones that narrow at your allusion.

“I suppose not.” He hums. “Though I must tell you that the incident was out of my power. I must carry that burden everyday, so I implore you to forgive me, [Name].” He throws out your given name once again like you were familiar. 

When you don’t respond, he continues, “I know, it is easier said than done.”

“You don’t say.” You bite your tongue as soon as the words leave your mouth. He fails to acknowledge how your last interaction was your banishment, served just by the man in front of you.

A sigh escapes Geto’s lips. "As a gesture of my accountability, I place myself entirely at your disposal. Simply name a favor, and it shall be fulfilled." You can’t detect anything but sincerity in his words, leaving you speechless. “Of course, it had to be within my power, but I shall grant you one request in return for your forgiveness.”

“I—” You were too shocked to form a thought. “I don’t know what to say.”

Suguru’s eyes crinkle, "Our last encounter may not have been pleasant, but I still consider you a dear friend, after all.”

“I am flattered to say the least that you had decided to grant me such honor,” you gape.

Geto shakes his head softly, “You shouldn’t hold me to such high regard. I could hardly bear the weight of your disfavor.”

“You know I don’t harbor any ill feelings towards what happened,” you say softly. It wasn’t Suguru’s decision what happened that night.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself otherwise,” the black haired man in front of you pushes. You relent. Perhaps you should just bite your tongue and accept the opportunity presented. “Please. Just think about it.”

You watch in silence as Geto turns around to walk away. His sudden offer leaves your mind racing. A man of his caliber, second to none but the emperor himself, would be able to grant any of your desires. Perhaps you should ask to import Western literature, tales of great fantasy— or, you could think bigger and ask to move back with your clan. Though you highly doubt he will entertain the latter, considering your indentured servitude to the Inner Palace. 

Your racing thoughts are diverted when you hear someone clear their throat to capture your attention. You perk up when you realize that Lord Nanami was still here, and you have completely ignored his presence.

“I am just as surprised to see your immediate return to the palace.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his face, sympathetic eyes never leaving you. You flush under his gaze. It was quite embarrassing knowing the entire palace probably had caught wind of your incident with the emperor.

A nervous chuckle escaped your lips. 

“It wasn’t my intention,” you mumble. “But I suppose if fate has decided, there is not much I can do.”

“You truly believe that it was fate that brought you here?” Nanami asks, the hold he had on your arm tightening enough to catch your attention but not enough to hurt. 

“I-” You begin, words failing to conjure. “I’m not sure.”  You had thought that your banishment was fate, but now that you had been brought back, it felt like you were simply at the mercy of something cruel.

Nanami watches your eyes staring wistfully at the blue sky above, his own flickering to each of your features. He wonders if you know that your expressions gave you away. It’s more endearing than anything, from the flutter of your eyelashes, the wrinkle of your nose, to the furrow of your eyebrows. Only a blind man would deny the fact that you were easy to fall in love with. However, it would make a foolish man to dare to pursue you.

 He’ll appreciate you and your charm from afar where his head may stay attached to his body.

The comfortable silence shared between the two of you is disrupted by a flock of handmaidens passing by. Nanami tenses his jaw when the voices become audible. 

“Is it really her?”

“It’s said that she tried to sneak into the Emperor’s chambers.”

“Is that Lord Nanami? My, we must warn him about that whore that tried to seduce the emperor!”

“Poor Lady Himiko.”

Anger swells in your chest. Though you’re not sure what tale had managed to escape the servants’ quarters, but you pray that they may never reach the emperor’s ears. It was simply profane to the beloved consort, an offense that you know Gojo would never forgive you for. You can deal with nasty gossip, having previous experience, but you doubt you can handle being beheaded for conspiring against the emperor and his consort.

“I’m afraid no matter how much time has passed, the palace rumors seem to never die.” Nanami sighs, exhaustion evident in his gravelly voice. “I advise you to brace yourself. Within these coming days, the fire will only get hotter.” He doesn’t bother elaborating on his words, choosing to lead you to your new chambers.

“Thank you for the advice Nanami,” you exhale. “However, I am sure I’ll be able to manage on my own. After all, I’ve been doing it for quite some time.” The moment the solemn words leave your mouth his eyes soften. You quickly look away, flustered.

“I know you can, [Name]. I suppose my anxieties are misplaced, forgive me.” You can feel his stare bore into the side of your face. He sighs, “it is a habit that comes natural to me.” He worries for you. The words go unsaid, but you are able to decipher his double meaning.

Your heart flutters at his kind implications, eyes too shy to meet him once more. Instead, you choose to fix your gaze on the doors to the servants’ quarters. The blonde man beside you takes the liberty to open the doors to your new room. 

At the sight in front of you, your heart lurches.

Before you stands a familiar head of white hair, standing tall with his back turned towards you. His head was tilted slightly, as if scrutinizing something unseen, before he slowly shook it. Then, with an unsettling calm, he turned to face you, his gaze heavy with unspoken intent.

“I’ll take her from here,” Gojo’s icy voice breaks the silence that had overtaken you and Nanami.

“Of course,” Nanami bows deeply. You turn to bid the man goodbye, but he leaves hurriedly without sparing you so much as a glance. You can’t help but furrow your eyebrows in confusion, eyes longingly watching your old friend walk away.

The moment the shoji doors close behind him, Gojo clears his throat.

“[Name],” he tests the waters, his movements deliberate as he takes a slow, tentative step toward you, the air between you thick with an unspoken tension.

“Your Majesty,” You respond shakily, retreating a step as your breath catches.

“Please,” Gojo mutters breathlessly, his voice trembling with unspoken desperation, his eyes pleading with an intensity that only deepens the pit in your stomach. He takes two deliberate strides forward, the gap between you vanishing as though drawn by an invisible force.

“No,” You shake your head, pain flashing across your face. You won’t let him waltz right into your life after carelessly tossing you away, not without consequence. It is to no surprise that words seem to go unheard to the man in front of you. His eyes glistened in the dim lighting, fixed intently on your face, tracing each feature with a quiet focus, as if he were trying to burn them into his memory.

The world seemed to stay still just for the two of you. But it only lasted for just a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” Gojo mutters, a strong hand flying to the back of your neck tugging you towards him for a searing kiss. The instant his lips crash against yours, he lets out a soft whimper, as though the very act consumes him. Despite the passage of time, your body responds instinctively, like it was always meant to be this way.

It felt like the only thing that mattered was the fact that he was right in front of you, your fast beating hearts making contact with the way he had your chest pressed to his. All while pushing you against his body, Gojo allows his hand to trail down your back, revisiting every valley that he had once memorized.

“Mph,” your traitorous hands find their way into his head of white hair. He smiles into the kiss upon hearing his name leave your mouth.

“Yes?” He leaves a wet kiss at the base of your throat, bending down to continue his frenzy.

“This isn’t right,” the words came out of your mouth in a whisper, as if you almost didn’t believe them yourself.

“You’re wrong.” He inhales deeply, attaching his mouth onto your collarbone, ”I was made solely for this.” A small whine leaves his mouth when you hesitantly try to push him off. He uses his innate strength to fight your attempts.

“May I ask something of you?”

A kiss was placed on your jawline. Another on the base of your throat.

“Anything,” he breathes.

“Do you..” Your voice falters. “Do you love her?” Like you loved me? 

The trail of kisses come to a complete stop. For a second you fear you may have overstepped. The emperor’s silence was palpable. The only sound that filled your ears was the harsh thuds of your own heart. 

“[Name]...” he slowly stands up to tower over you with his height. The distant look in his eyes forms a pit in your stomach.

“Answer me,” you whisper, the pit deepening.

“I am just a man,” he reasons. Your heart drops at his answer.

“You could not even take an oath of monogamy,” you spit. “You are nothing but a weak man.” 

His eyes shoot up from their trance frantically. You fear that the lust he had been tempted with had worn off, and now you were left with nothing but wrath.

“I understand that I was nothing but a spoil of war, but you could have done me one last favor by allowing me to leave on my own accord. You did not have to cast me away,” your vision starts to waver with the tears that puddle in your eyes. “If I knew your heart had yearned for another I would have left.”

The set of blue eyes that stare at you are no longer the lively shade that you had grown to love. They have been replaced by an uncertain stormy grey. It was almost laughable. A man, so big, who had the world in the palm of his hand looked so small.

A cruel part in you enjoyed seeing the turmoil in his eyes after the events that had transpired.

“Had I known the tribulations I put you through, perhaps I would have put a second thought before choosing you.” Gojo exhales, pinching in between his eyebrows. “But I must assure you that you weren’t the only one suffering.” And for a moment you think you see lightning strike in those stormy irises of his. 

Your eyes widen at his confession.

He lets out a deep sigh, “The head maid will be here any minute. I bid you farewell. I pray that with our next interaction, your heart learns to soften.”

Ever for dramatics, Gojo leaves before you can get the last word.

—

True to his word, the head maid soon comes to assign your duties. You’re not surprised at your new set of responsibilities: tending to the emperor’s garden, sweeping the floors to his chambers, and overseeing his meal preparations. 

It is nothing out of your skill set, and you’re more than willing to accept your predicament rather than being burned alive for offending the emperor on numerous accounts. You suppose even Gojo was kind enough to spare you from that cruel fate. It almost softens your heart enough to decide to forgive him of his transgressions. Almost.

Your thoughts are interrupted by a loud clang of a pot. When you turn your head towards the direction of the sound, you’re met with the head maid’s stern gaze. Her eyes narrowed on the wooden spoon you had been mixing in the broth. 

Ah. She wanted you to perform the mandatory poison test before serving the food to the emperor.

However, just as you bring the spoon to your lips, it is violently swatted from your hand, clattering to the floor. Your eyes sadly linger on the spilled broth before snapping to the culprit, your gaze filled with disbelief.

"There were strict orders to ensure that the task did not fall to you," the head maid, Ogami, declared sharply. The elderly woman, with silver hair neatly tied in a tight bun and skin etched with the marks of years spent in service, raised a wrinkled finger in your direction.

You blink, taken aback by her sudden reprimand, the sharpness in her gaze leaving you momentarily frozen. It didn’t make sense—there had been no mention of any such orders, no one had informed you of any changes. You open your mouth to speak, but the words catch in your throat, swallowed by the weight of her unyielding stare. 

How strange.

Days pass by like a blur, your routine falling into place. When dawn arrives, you’re up to prepare the emperor’s garments for the day. Your mid-mornings grow even busier as the palace comes alive with activity. Whether mending torn hems or ensuring the ceremonial robes are free of imperfection, you move like a ghost through the corridors with hopes of going unnoticed. The emperor’s unusual antics, however, make it nearly impossible to slip by unnoticed. He seems to have a knack for drawing your attention. His antics often begin at ungodly hours, long before the sun graces the horizon, as he attempts to coax you into sharing the first meal of the day with him. You decline each time, yet his persistence never wavers, a boyish grin always accompanying his invitations. By the time the sun reaches its zenith, Gojo finally departs to attend to his imperial duties. It’s only then, in the quiet lull of his absence, that you find the chance to make real progress with your work.

“To say I am relieved because of your presence would be an understatement, [Name].” Nanami and you overlook the palace’s main courtyard. 

You smile, hands filled with silks that needed washing, “I could say the same.” The emperor’s outrageous requests were driving you mad. Your mind flashes to earlier that week when he had insisted on hand feeding you honey! You wonder how he survived without a personal servant before you took the position.

“His Majesty is as eccentric as ever, I assume.” Nanami’s eyes crinkle. 

You laugh, “You know him too well!”

“I didn’t have much choice,” he shakes his head, smile ghosting his lips. “We’ve known eachother since our youth.”

You perk up at the news, your curiosity piqued. The confusion must have been written all over your face, prompting Nanami to offer a quick clarification.

“It was brief, our time at the academy. But we were both under the instruction of Yaga,” he elaborates. Huh. What a small world, you think as Nanami paints an unexpected connection. 

“I am struggling to imagine you and him studying under the ever serious Yaga,” you giggle.

“I was in the year below him. It was Lord Geto and Shoko who were first hand witnesses to his nature.” Nanami tells you. 

You nearly dropped all of the emperor’s clothes, “Shoko?” The revelation that your own friend was acquainted with the emperor stopped you dead in your tracks. Had she known him personally all along? If so, she made no effort to reveal it. Instead, she appeared almost disgusted by him, though you had chalked it up to her disdain for the new ruling dynasty rather than a personal vendetta against the man himself.

“I am aware you were well acquainted with her in your time in the Outer Palace, no?” “Yes, but–” you pause, before eyes snapping back to Nanami. “How did you know?”

Nanami blinks, momentarily caught off guard. His eyes widen a fraction, and he opens his mouth as if to explain, but then falters, his words stumbling.

Before he can say anything, a soft, familiar voice drifts from behind you.

“[Name]!” A servant of Lady Himiko calls urgently, her voice laced with a sense of urgency. You turn to face her.

“Yes?”

“The emperor requests your presence in the ceremonial hall. He says it is of great importance and that you must make haste!” The girl exclaims, grabbing your only free arm and tugging you toward the hall.

You glance back at Nanami, your eyes silently promising him that this conversation is far from over. He gives a small nod, acknowledging your unspoken words as he bids you farewell.

“Ah, may I ask what the emperor requires of me?” you ask, trying to maintain some control over the situation.

“You’ll see,” she replies, her tone clipped. Without sparing you a glance, she pulls you forward with determination, clearly focused on her task.

Like a lamb heading toward slaughter, you find yourself helplessly being dragged through the grand doors of the ceremonial hall, your thoughts swirling with questions you can’t yet answer.

The expansive room was eerily empty, a stark contrast to its usual grandeur. The sunlight poured through the tall windows, casting long beams of light that danced across the polished floors, illuminating the intricate tapestries and the grand pillars that lined the hall. But your gaze soon shifted, focusing on the emperor’s seat at the very end of the room.

You had expected the usual scene: Gojo slouched in his throne-like chair, whiny and complaining about the mountain of paperwork he despised. But what greeted you instead was something far more unexpected.

A figure stood poised at the head of the room, commanding the space with an elegance that was undeniable. Anyone familiar with the court could recognize her signature choice of kimono—the rich plum silk embroidered with intricate gold patterns, delicate yet striking. Her hair, black as midnight and flowing like a river of silk, cascaded down her back in perfect waves, a stark contrast to her porcelain-like complexion.

It was Lady Himiko. Her beauty was legendary, whispered about among women across the nation, often compared to a living work of art. The rumors of her grace and poise weren’t exaggerated. Standing there, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, who remained perfectly still and attentive at her side.

Her eyes met yours, and for a brief moment, your breath was stolen. The stillness of the room was palpable, and you couldn’t help but wonder why she was here, in the emperor’s seat, with not a whisper of Gojo in sight.

“Ah, just the one I was looking for!” her eyes light up when she sees her servant return with you in her hand. The gleam in her eyes fill you with unease.

“Lady Himiko, it is an honor,” you bow.

“There’s no need for that! Please, stand.” She waves her slender fingers at you, or so it seems, but at her silent command, her ladies-in-waiting begin to move toward you.

You take a step back, instinctively using the emperor’s garments, still damp from your earlier washing, as a shield against their sudden movements. The soft rustling of fabric is almost deafening in the silence that follows.

Lady Himiko’s eyes narrow at the motion, her sharp gaze flicking to the garments you hold between you and her. A faint, almost imperceptible smile plays at the corners of her lips, but it does nothing to ease the tension thickening in the air.

“I understand the unspoken animosity between us,” she says, her voice smooth, but there's an edge to it that sets your nerves on edge. “I pray you will accept my humble apology.” She clasps her hands together, but her eyes remain calculating, never leaving yours.

Her words hang in the air, heavy with implication. “I had not expected the emperor to kindle such… passion for me so suddenly. It was neither of our intentions that fateful night we reunited after the days of our youth.” She shakes her head softly, laughing nervously. "How rude of me, I doubt you of all would want to hear about Satoru and I."

Your breath hitches, caught between surprise and a tightening knot of discomfort in your chest. The weight of her words presses down on you, and you struggle to maintain composure.

“I do apologize for bringing you here on such deceptive terms, but I had to get your attention somehow,” she continues. “As one who has been a former concubine, I wanted your counsel on how I should navigate this delicate matter.” If you didn’t know any better, you would say she was mocking you. But you knew Himiko wasn’t one you wanted to offend, so you bite your tongue.

Instead, you nod, steeling yourself against the discomfort crawling up your spine. “What is it that you need from me?” you ask, your voice betraying none of the wariness you feel.

Himiko’s ladies-in-waiting close in around you swiftly, subtly guiding your every step toward the emperor’s stand. The grand hall feels even larger as you’re led deeper into its heart, each step reverberating through the space.

At the end of the room stands Himiko, watching you approach with a distant gaze. The soft glow from the nearby windows catches on the polished surface of the wooden desk before her, where inkstones, brushes, and stacks of paper lie in disarray.

You pause, your gaze falling upon the desk, and that’s when you notice the manuscript she’s pointing to. Her perfectly filed nails trace the edges of the paper with deliberate slowness. Though you cannot read the characters from this distance, the emblems that adorn the papers are unmistakable. They belong to some of the most powerful clans in the empire, each one a mark of authority and influence.

As your eyes skim across the paper Himiko’s hand rests on, the characters seem to leap off the page in a rush of realization. It’s a proposal– one written by the notorious Zenin clan. You can almost feel the air grow heavy as you piece it together. The words speak of demands for more autonomy—an increase in their power, more control over the lands they already possess. And you know, instinctively, that if this were to pass, everything Gojo has fought for, everything he’s struggled to protect, would crumble into dust. His fight against the rigid clan-based hierarchy would be for naught.

For a moment, your mind reels. This is no mere conversation or request for guidance. This is a game of power, one where you’re being used as a pawn. Her eyes lock with yours, and the air between you thickens with unspoken understanding. She must’ve taken you for a mere tool to execute her own plans.

But you’re no fool, and that realization comes like a slap to the face. You straighten your posture, eyes hardening as the weight of the situation settles in.

“These seals...” Your voice falters as you stare at the emblems, your hand hovering over the manuscript as though touching it might implicate you further. The weight of the realization crashes down on you like a cold wave. You look up at Himiko, bewildered, your heart pounding in your chest. Meddling with state affairs, let alone tampering with the emperor’s documents was a crime punishable by death.

“Does the emperor know about this?” you demand, your voice trembling with a mix of fear and indignation. “This—this could be considered treason!”

“Careful with your words,” she says softly, her tone calm. “It is not treason when it is for the betterment of the empire.”

Your mouth opens as if to respond, but no sound escapes.

“The emperor has always held you in high regard,” Himiko says with a wistful sigh, her eyes narrowing on your figure. “I’ve no doubt he would find it impossible to refuse any command spoken by you.”

Her cryptic words linger in the air, their implications sinking into you. You’re left reeling, unsure of whether her remark is meant as flattery or a thinly veiled mockery of your banishment. 

She scoffs, her delicate façade cracking as her tone turns venomous. “The emperor may not know, but I see right through you. Seducing him to claim yourself as some spoil of war and twisting his mind to lead our nation to ruin—it’s sickening. Truly, a shame the assassination attempt failed.” Her words lash out like a whip, her civil mask shattering entirely.

You gasp, her implications cutting deep even as your heart hardens against the venom. Had she known–?

“Perhaps that is what the entire Court believes of me,” you manage, your voice trembling yet steady enough to carry your conviction. Months of whispered rumors and vicious gossip had thickened your skin, and you refused to crumble under her scrutiny. “But I will not allow you to sully the emperor’s reputation.”

As much as you detested Gojo, your disdain for the corrupt elders burned hotter. They had plotted your downfall, attempted to take your life, and now sought to undermine everything Gojo was fighting to build. You could not allow them to gain any more power in the Court  than they already held.

Himiko’s lips curl into a cold, triumphant smile as she picks up an inkstone and brush from the emperor’s desk. “As his Honored Consort and future Empress I command you to hold this for me while I pave the way for a greater future.” Her words are laced with mockery as she extends the inkstone toward you.

You recoil instinctively, shaking your head. “No. I refuse—” Your rejection is firm, your voice sharper than you expected, as you pull away, clutching the emperor’s garments protectively against your chest. 

The next few moments unravel in slow motion, as though fate itself had decided to humiliate you. Himiko’s gasp pierces the air as your sudden movement causes the inkstone to slip, spilling its dark, viscous contents over her elaborate kimono. The silk, undoubtedly crafted from the finest threads in Japan, drinks in the stain, the deep black spreading like a wound across the fabric.

“My lady!” Her servants rush to her side, their collective cries of alarm startle you. They push you aside as they fuss over her, their movements frantic as they attempt to salvage her now-ruined garment.

You stumble back, staring in disbelief at the disaster you’d unwittingly caused. “I—I am truly sorry—” you begin, but your words falter under the weight of the situation.

“What is going on here?”

The booming voice echoes through the hall like thunder, freezing everyone in place. You whip your head toward the source, your pulse quickening as your eyes land on the figure now standing in the doorway. The emperor himself, Gojo, commands the room with his presence, his expression a mixture of confusion and rising fury as he takes in the scene before him. By his side stands the owner of the voice, an elder, with an expression carved with barely restrained anger piercing through you.

Himiko lets out a sharp cry, her voice trembling with a convincing mix of distress and indignation. Gojo reacts instantly, rushing by her side, his features hardening with concern.

“I found her forging His Majesty’s signature,” Himiko exclaims, her voice wavering just enough to sound genuine. “When I tried to intervene, she lashed out and attacked me.” She trembles as she buries her head against the emperor’s chest.

It hits you—the full realization of her calculated scheme. This was her plan all along.

“I-I didn’t!” you stammer, your voice raw with desperation. “That wasn’t what happened at all– she was the one tampering with imperial documents. I tried to stop her!”

Gojo’s piercing blue eyes snap to yours, cutting off your explanation. His gaze, once warm and teasing, now burns with unrestrained fury. The bile rises in your throat as you see it. Anger, disdain, and worst of all, disbelief.

“Himiko,” he murmurs, his arms tightening protectively around her trembling form. Her soft sniffling only adds to the spectacle.

“To be caught tampering with imperial records is one thing,” Gojo finally says, his voice icy and cutting, “but to stoop so low as to accuse Lady Himiko? Was this an act out of jealousy? Spite? How pathetic. This is beneath even you, [Name].”

You feel your knees weaken, the tears you’ve fought to hold back beginning to pool in your eyes. “Please, you have to believe me,” you whisper, your voice cracking under the weight of his words.

His expression darkens further, the light in his sky-blue eyes replaced by thunderclouds. “Why would I believe you?” he sneers, his tone laced with contempt.

A single tear escapes down your cheek, followed by another, and then another, until you can no longer stop them. The dam of your resolve breaks, shattered by his cruel dismissal.

“Why?” Your voice trembles, breaking as the tears come freely now. “Why don’t you believe me?”

Gojo’s lips curl into a bitter smile. “Don’t make me laugh,” he says coldly. “How could I ever believe in one as base as you?”

His words cut deeper than any blade, piercing through the walls you’d built to protect yourself. You’d convinced yourself you were immune to his indifference, but the searing pain in your chest proves otherwise.

“Leave,” he commands, his voice sharp and final. “Do not look back. Your very presence stirs nothing but disdain within me.”

You stagger back, his words striking harder than any physical blow. He might as well have drawn his sword and ended it here. The infamous tales you had heard about Gojo were once glorious images that were painted of your beloved. You had never thought you would be on the other end of his blade. 

Without a word, you turn and run, your vision blurred with tears. The emperor’s garments slip from your hands, forgotten in your haste to escape the suffocating anguish. You don’t look back, even as the echoes of his disgust chase you out of the hall.

If there was one undeniable truth that Geto Suguru knew, it was that his best friend, Gojo Satoru could be an utter fool. Perhaps it was the inevitable result of a youth stolen too soon, replaced by the crushing weight of an empire resting on his shoulders. The brilliance that made Gojo a formidable emperor rendered him hopelessly inept when it came to navigating the labyrinth of his own emotions.

And as his closest confidant, bound by loyalty and friendship, Geto Suguru couldn’t help but feel the urge to shake some sense into him—to force him to confront what he stubbornly refused to see.

That is why, when your trembling form hurries across the courtyard, tears streaming down your face, Geto Suguru can’t help but halt you in your steps. 

“I’m leaving.” you declare, your voice raw, your eyes red and swollen. The words, so resolute despite your trembling tone, catch him off guard.

“What?” he asks, his brows knitting together in confusion.

“My favor,” you say firmly, though your voice wavers. “I want to leave this place.”

For a moment, Geto says nothing, his sharp mind scrambling to process the abruptness of your request. Then he shakes his head, his expression softening. “You know I can’t do that.”

Your incredulous gaze snaps up to meet him. “So you lied to me?”

“No, not at all,” he says quickly, holding up his hands. “I meant—I can grant you time off. But as someone under the emperor’s direct supervision, I can’t allow you to leave permanently. What I can do is give you one lunar cycle away from court.”

You hesitate, weighing his offer before giving a sharp nod. “I’ll take it. Just let me leave,” you reply, sniffling.

Geto watches you for a moment longer, his chest tightening at the sight of your despair. “I’ll make the arrangements right away,” he says gently. “I’m sorry we seem to meet only under such terrible circumstances.”

“I’m sorry too,” you murmur, your tone hollow.

He hesitates, searching for the right words to offer some semblance of comfort. “Whatever he did, I’m sure—”

“I don’t care,” you cut him off, your voice colder now. “He made his disgust for me perfectly clear.” You march past him, your steps resolute despite the trembling in your shoulders. “Thank you for understanding, though I must beg you to keep this between us. Who knows what might happen to either of us if he finds out.”

Geto exhales slowly, his composure steady but his mind racing. Just what, exactly, had his best friend done this time? Gojo’s antics always seemed to leave Geto cleaning up the aftermath, but this—this was something else entirely.

Just as he promised, there is a carriage waiting for you outside of the servants’ quarters. With heavy bags in hand and an even heavier heart, you make your way toward it, each step weighted with reluctant resolve. The irony of the moment doesn’t escape you, a sense of déjà vu washing over you, as though life had played this scene out countless times before.

You turn sharply, your bleary eyes meeting the calm, hazel gaze of someone you hadn’t expected to see.

“Nanami?” you breathe, disbelief coloring your tone.

He inclines his head in a polite nod. “Forgive the intrusion, but I insist on accompanying you,” he says, his voice as composed as ever. “The roads beyond the palace can be dangerous, especially for someone traveling alone.”

For a moment, you simply stare, caught between gratitude and confusion. The warmth in your chest battles against the ache that lingers from your earlier ordeal. “And what of the emperor?” you ask, forcing a faint smile. “Would he not throw a fit in your absence?”

Nanami lets out a quiet, mirthless laugh, the sound more bitter than amused. “Perhaps,” he admits, adjusting the luggage in his hands with ease. “But he was never one to share, was he?”

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[that-one-fangirl69]

you ever read a fic so good you just gotta sit there and contemplate your entire existence and everything you’ve ever read before?

[lovebugism]

✶ ┄ HOLY GRAIL !

part one | part two

summary: in ancient rome, where survival is determined by the whims of a mad ruler, the empire's beloved general gives you – his first and only love – to the crazed emperor to ensure your safety. (6k)

pairing: marcus acacius / fem!reader, emperor geta / fem!reader

contents: established relationship, strangers to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort cw for mentions of war and violence, mentions of sex work, swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, m receiving oral, unprotected sex, cuckholding, exhibitionism) (this is a pretty dark fic so pls heed the warnings!!!)

Marcus Acacius was the name on the lips of a thousand fallen empires. His ledger ran a deep scarlet color, which dripped like proof from his sword. The war had destroyed the General over the years — had turned the man into an empty thing filled only by untamable ghosts. The relentless battle had wrung his boyhood from his body like a slow, merciless death. Any remaining innocence has since been replaced with violence.

Rome made a legacy of his grotesque evils, turned him into a saint. Marcus Acacius did not want to be a saint. He did not want to be angry; he did not want to be cruel. He only wanted to love and to be left alone with his tenderness. His mouth filled with blood instead.

You loved him like all doomed, grotesque things are meant to be loved. In the dark. In the shadows of war. In the depths of the soul.

“This is me,” he confesses, the great General Acacius, returning to you like a ghost to its haunt. “This is who I am.”

His golden armor is sullied from a victorious battle, tainted now with blotches of soil and dried blood that’s not his own. His dirtied, unholy fists tremble at his sides as he fights the urge to cross the threshold of your quarters to meet you. Marcus knows he doesn’t deserve to be held by you now. Not when he still wreaks of death.

He can still feel the breath of a fist on his bruised cheek, but the way his sword felt plunging through the beating heart of an enemy soldier plagues him most of all. 

“Love turned on me long ago— It is not a burden I compel you to carry.”

So, please, do not love me, he doesn’t say. I only know how to destroy you.

You smile at him, eyes soft with sympathy, and cross the threshold of longing with an admirable effortlessness. You cradle his weathered, war-torn face in your palms, willingly staining your delicate hands with the blood stained there.

“I love you despite. So I imagine I’ll carry it anyway,” you coo to him, gentle eyes locked firmly with his heavy ones. “And I’m certain you love me in return, regardless of what you think the siege has made of you.”

“There is naught I can do about it,” Marcus admits, words heavy with choked-back emotion. He melts into your touch but continues to deny himself the want to hold you back. “Not while I still oversee this campaign. Not while there is a war to be won—”

“We love each other, don’t we?” you interject, pleading eyes searching for emotion behind his dark, stoic gaze. Marcus swallows hard. His scruffy chin scrapes your palm as he nods once in response. You grin and say the unforgiving truth out loud. “So fuck the war.”

You pull him down by his face to press a kiss to his unclean lips. Marcus rests his shaking hands over your waist and lets you build cathedrals in his mouth with your tongue. The blood in his teeth turns to holy water. 

Marcus long understood that bringing you to the city would be his last act of love.

Keeping you in the heart of Rome was the only way he could ensure your safety, with the surrounding towns still under merciless siege. The people there were docile, and loyal most of all to the General who had won them a thousand wars. They would not hurt you because it was not in their kind too, and because they feared General Acacius’ wrath as much as they respected his mercy.

This was known to everyone in Rome except its Emperors.

Geta and Caracalla ruled together following their father’s untimely demise but shared not a brain between them. They were boys, after all, the oldest being hardly two-and-twenty –– it was in their nature to talk more than they listened, and to pretend as if they knew the world despite never leaving the city walls. 

They were as cruel and as stupid as anyone who wished to rule an empire would be.

But the two of them relied heavily on their General to keep the restless public at ease. It made it easier for Marcus to bring you with him, knowing he had the trust of the most powerful men in Rome. He knew Geta kept meticulous care of his most precious gifts — all Marcus had to do was get you there, really, and the Emperors would do the rest for him. 

It was simple, but it was not easy; though he imagines no war ever has been or would be. Both of you had survived, yes, but neither of you had been spared. Bringing you here was a testament to that, which you seemingly could not comprehend. You were as soft and green as the countryside he plucked you from, too naive for politics.

Marcus tells himself that this was the merciful decision, anyway, as he gives you a tour of Caracalla’s labyrinthine gardens — the place farthest from the feasting hall where the noblemen dined. Hidden behind climbing leaves, free from prying eyes.

“I can’t imagine why you would be so apprehensive in bringing me here. It’s beautiful,” you marvel aloud as you walk ahead of the man guiding you. 

Your sandals pad faintly along the cobbled trail as you skim your palm over the bed of blooming roses. The petals feel like silk against your skin. You pluck one from the soil, careful to avoid its thorns, and hold it up to your nose. You turn to face Marcus with the crimson flower resting on your cupid’s bow.

“And it smells better, too,” you quip softly, tilting your head to your shoulder as you smirk behind the budding rose.

Marcus just barely manages to bite back his own grin until you reach out for him, tapping the delicate flower against the bridge of his strong nose. He exhales hard through his nostrils in place of a laugh.

Your giggling comes carried on the breath of a warm summer breeze — a symphony of salty ocean, dainty florals, and the pretty oils you’d bathed in. The wind billows through your thin, white gown and creates music with rustling leaves. You squint one eye when the setting sun peeks through the swishing tree limbs, bathing you in a golden-hour aura. 

You’re as beautiful as sin. Sweeter than death. Smiling at him like this is the beginning of something that died the moment you entered the city walls.

Marcus clears throat and gently guides your hand away. His cautious eyes flit around the vacant garden. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder, you find, despite being the strongest man in all of Rome. You feel safest at his side, so you don’t know why he always looks so frightened.

“I know you are drunk on youth and immortality, petal, but we cannot get ahead of ourselves,” he advises, all stiff and stern, though the term of endearment spills effortlessly from his mouth. “We’re in the city now. So we must play the part. Like we discussed.”

He speaks to you with an unintentional sort of vagueness that makes you bow your head like a scolded child. Your arm falls limp at your side. A scarlet petal slips from its stem and hits the unforgiving stone.

“I know,” you murmur with a poorly hidden frown that conveys otherwise. Your sheepish gaze flits from the ground to Marcus’ unwavering stare and to the ground again. “I just thought— whenever we were alone, that we might—”

“We aren’t alone. We must behave as though the city is full of eyes. Understand?”

“I can’t,” you confess, peering up at the General from beneath your lashes. 

Marcus’ chest stings, like the fiery sun blazing his newly-fashioned armor. “What do you mean you can’t?” he bites emotionlessly.

He looks like a corrupt sort of angel in this light, unnaturally handsome and hopelessly wartorn. He was as hard as the earth below your feet — a statue made of clay, iron, and marble — cold to the touch and melting only for you. 

His heavy eyes were so brown they looked almost black, and they shone with a perpetual sort of gloom. His gaze swam with the prophetic darkness of a man who’s seen too much, though you often felt like you could drown in its void. For a man so adept at killing, he looked at you with a remarkable softness.

It wasn’t as shallow as physical desire. It was something far more cruel. You wanted Marcus Acacius the same way flesh wanted to knit itself together over a healing wound. It was simply in your nature to love him. 

“I mean, it’s impossible,” you ramble with a concerned furrow to your brow. Your grip on the flower’s papery stem tightens until the bulb rattles with the force. “How am I to be here with you but not touch you? That’s like asking the seasons not to change— It’s unnatural, and it’s cruel—”

Marcus swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His hands begin to ache with the urge to touch you. He balls them into fists instead.

“It’s the only way I know to keep you safe!” he confesses, words sounding heavy in his mouth. His eyes flit across the garden in a paranoid search of something that isn’t there. “Emperor Geta will take care of you. I know he will. And his brother is a half-wit, but he is kind when he wishes. He’ll take a liking to you, I’m sure of it—”

You interject his anxious rambling with a stubborn shake of your head.

“I can’t be someone else’s,” you murmur, voice as wet as the tears glittering in your wide-eyed gaze. “I don’t know how.”

“You will learn,” Marcus tells you with an emotionless stare. Not because he’s sure you will, but because he knows you have to. “For me.”

Your pretty features swirl with anguish. “Marcus…” you whisper his name in a feeble whimper caught in your throat.

He does not soften at your emotion like you’re used to. He’s practiced apathy for so long that it comes naturally to him now. He bites his tongue to keep from kissing you and lets the blood stain his teeth all over again.

“If not for your own sake, then for mine. The Emperors would have my head if they understood the pretenses I brought you under.”

You flinch at his words, perhaps finally understanding the weight of the unforgiving world in which you live. The surest example of such cruelty stands before you now, in the only man you ever loved now using your purest devotion as a means to keep you pliant. But your anger for the merciless arrangement is long eclipsed by your yearning.

“Then I will,” you tell him, rigid with a glacial disposition Marcus hasn’t seen before now.

The choices here were few. Either you were slaughtered outside the city walls by soldiers and pillagers, or you were slaughtered within them — in the metaphorical sense that burns physically in your chest now. 

Being without Marcus feels like a fate worse than death, but you want him so desperately to live. So much so that you’ll fall on the sword of your longing and bleed out at his feet. Knowing that you’re under the same sky would have to be enough for you. 

You can’t tell which it is — sacrifice or self-slaughter — but Marcus knows it isn’t as poetic as all that. 

Death is death.

Emperor Geta staggers drunkenly down the spiral stone steps of the west wing of his castle. The path to his chambers is illuminated by several dwindling torches hung along the brick walls. The subtle squeaking of his leather sandals sounds much louder in the quiet — filled only by crackling flames, a distant dripping noise, and the song he slurs under his breath. 

The latter ceases suddenly when he stumbles to a stop at the sight of General Acacius. The man stands like a statue outside his bedroom door — arms crossed behind his back, old spine perfectly straight — like the obedient guard dog he is. 

The thought makes the Emperor’s lips curl into a crooked smile. “What are you doing here, dog?” he calls to the General as he approaches him, voice echoing down the soulless corridor.

“Your nameday present, your majesty—” Marcus answers and tries not to make a face when the Emperor stands before him. The bittersweet scent of wine stains his breath, overwhelmingly so. Geta was never one to practice temperance. “—I was told to see that you got it.”

The younger man hesitates. “From my uncle?” he wonders aloud.

Marcus nods wordlessly in response.

Geta pauses for a moment. His wide, glassy eyes flit over the General’s shoulder to the arched doorway behind him. His stomach swirls at the thought of what may lie inside. The last nameday present his uncle sent from overseas was a monkey his younger brother has grown much too attached to.

“Well… What is it?”

Marcus swallows hard and steps aside. “Look inside, your majesty.”

Geta takes a deep breath in and swings the creaking door open. His bedroom is lush with crimson silk and golden candlelight, familiarly fragranced with cinnamon and sweet myrrh. It’s accompanied by something foreignly floral, a feminine rosy-lavender that catches his attention before his eyes ever find you.

He steps through the threshold and finds a strange girl standing by the window, before a platter of fruit and wine — bathed half in the silver beams of a full moon, and half in flickering orange flames. 

White silk adorns your frame, so delicate it’s nearly see-through. One of your shoulders is mouthwateringly bare, and there’s a slit in the fabric that rises to your hip. You look as pure as a dove, though you’re so obviously built for sin.

The ground sways beneath Geta’s unsteady feet.

You crunch audibly into an apple before you realize anyone’s there. The juice runs down your chin before you swipe it away with the back of your hand. Only then do your eyes lock with the Emperor’s, who seems equally stunned to see you there. You tense and say nothing as you hide the bitten fruit behind your back.

“It’s a woman,” Geta observes to no one in particular, though his dark eyes have not yet wavered from yours.

Marcus stands behind him and nods — hands still clasped behind his back, heart still pounding against his ribcage. “Yes, your majesty. In plain terms.”

“Well,” the Emperor glances over his shoulder. “What does she do?”

“Whatever you want,” the General answers, though the words taste like vinegar on his tongue. He swallows the bitterness down like bile and leers at you, looking upon his lover as though she were a stranger. “You need only ask.”

Geta, satisfied by his answer, turns back to you. His initial surprise has ebbed into something more pleased, diabolically so. His pink lips curl into a sneer as he walks slowly towards you, eyeing you up and down with curious eyes — a predator stalking its prey.

“Is that true?” he asks you, voice ringing through the quiet room. “Or is he confusing you for a dutiful hound?”

“A dutiful whore, your majesty,” you correct with an acquiescent smile, following the story as Marcus intended. 

The half-truth comes easily to you. Not a lie exactly, but not the whole tale either. You’d spent many of your years working in a brothel on the outskirts of Rome. You were a young woman, unmarried, without family or viable prospects — whoring seemed the most obvious decision then, though it feels so long ago now. 

You’d waited your whole life for something, for Marcus, though you hadn’t expected it to kill you when you found it. You won’t die a saint if the crazed Emperor decides to take your head, but perhaps you could be a martyr. Perhaps that’ll be enough.

Fear beats through your body like a second heart, but your eyes never waver from the Emperor’s. It’s easiest to meet his gaze. He feels more like a human that way. 

There are flecks of gold in his dark eyes, and dark strands in his gold hair. He’s got stubble on his long neck, spots on his broad nose, and wrinkles on his forehead. Not quite as perfect as the pristine white-gold armor would let on.

His eyes flit down your form once more. Something sparks in the deep brown of them, a flicker of silent realization. He spins suddenly on the heel of his sandal to flash Marcus an accusatory glare.

“Is she your whore, General?” he lilts into the heavy silence. His brows raise when he receives no answer from the man across the room. “The question was not rhetorical, Acacius.”

“No, your majesty. She is not mine,” Marcus answers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. It’s like he’s plunging a knife through his own heart. He can feel the cold sting of the sharpened blade and the burn of the blood on his skin. “Though, I don’t believe whores belong to anyone.”

A boyish chuckle spills from the Emperor’s mouth. “No. They don’t,” he says with an airy giddiness. “Not before now, anyway—”

Geta spins back again, pleated skirt fanning around his pale thighs. His smile fades with an eerie swiftness. “What are you waiting for? Undress,” he commands with a wave of his ringed hand.

Your wide eyes flit instinctively past him to Marcus, who still idles in the doorway. Only then does he realize how long he’s been staring at you. He forces himself to glance off in another direction, but his gaze keeps finding yours — like a magnet, or a planet with its own gravitational pull.

Your eyes lock, and the only thing you hear is each other, though neither of you has spoken a word. This is the only way, you hear his voice in your head as clearly as your own. This is the only way to stay together. The only way to survive.

Geta mistakes your fear.

“Don’t worry about him, little dove,” he coos, and taps the bottom of your chin with his fingers — as soft and petaled as your own. He smiles when your attention turns to him again, speaking loud enough for the General to hear. “He’s only the guard dog. And good boys get scraps, don’t they, Acacius?”

Marcus’ face screws like he’s tasted something sour. He’s grateful the Emperor isn’t looking at him to see it. “They do, your majesty,” he monotones.

“So you will watch. And report to my uncle how his lovely present fared,” he calls to the older man, though his eyes remain locked with yours. You tense when his pale hand reaches suddenly for your face. He holds your cheeks in his fingers until your lips jut in a soft pout. “Let’s hope I don’t have to send him back your head, little dove.”

He says it with an absentminded effortlessness, as though it’s something he’s done before. 

Still, you manage a small smile and blink up at him with innocent eyes. “What good is a dead whore, your majesty?” you quip.

Geta’s grin widens.  “Precisely. Now undress.”

You reach for the singular sleeve of your slip with trembling fingers. Your right hand sweeps across your left shoulder, skin blazing with fear and anticipation. The fabric trails down down down your arm before falling to your feet in a puddle of milky white silk. Your bare body glows silver and gold between moonlight and flame. 

Goosebumps pebble over your skin despite the humid summer night as Geta circles you like prey. His eyes trail slowly down your form in time with his rhythmic steps. The sound of his sandals scrapping the stone floor, crackling candlelight, and subdued breathing are the only sounds in the quiet room for several long moments.

The Emperor disappears behind you, and you forget how to breathe. Your wide, wet eyes find Marcus once more — pleading, though for what, you cannot say. His face reveals nothing but wrath burns in his gaze.

Geta reappears at your right side. You smell grape wine on his breath when he nears you, breathing heavily through his mouth as he reaches out to touch you. His ringed hands smooth over your collarbone. Your breath catches in your throat. He smiles as though your fright pleases him.

“You’re skittish for a whore,” he muses, playful in a way that makes your stomach wrench. “Are you sure the General didn’t bring me a virgin?”

You swallow hard as his hand trails down your body. Over the swell of your breast, skimming his thumb over your taut nipple, before tracing the expanse of your ribs. His fingers run down your stomach and past the thatch of hair between your legs. They dip finally between your thighs. 

Geta hums a faint moan at the velvet feeling of your pussy. The way your lips part for his fingers, silky skin warm and wet to the touch. 

“I’m whatever you want me to be, your majesty,” you answer, breathing hard through your nose when he pulls his hand away — a warmth you find yourself begrudgingly grieving.

“I need only ask…” the Emperor coos, running his middle and pointer finger over your bottom lip. They shine with the honey you leak despite yourself. Your mouth parts, and he rests the pads of them on your tongue. “…Do I not?”

You nod wordlessly through the salty fingers in your mouth, trying to imagine their Marcus’.

Geta smiles when he parts from you. “Undress me,” he demands. 

You work at his tricky armor with nervous hands and bated breath. 

You unclasp his cape first. The white fabric, now free from its chain, falls heavily to the floor behind him. Your fingers have gone noticeably clammy as they struggle with the sleeves of his tunic. It takes you a beat too long to loosen the laces at his shoulders. The cloth falls finally and puddles around his feet, leaving his lean body on display before you.

His torso is lean and mostly hairless, save for splotches of chestnut on his sternum and stomach. His skin is smooth and flushed from the alcohol. His stomach is slim but noticeably full. The Emperor is well-taken care of, though his subjects outside the keep suffer from the consequences of war.

Your trembling fingers curl around the hem of his loincloth. His pale skin is warm to the touch, boiling with desire while you freeze over with fear. You crouch before him as you drag the garment down his scruffy thighs. You hear Geta sigh above you when his half-hard cock meets the cool summer night air. 

He’s paler there compared to the rest of his golden body, though the mushroom tip glows a faint strawberry-red color. A vein trails in jagged lines to the base of his heavy cock, fading as it reaches the thatch of dark blonde hair at his pubic bone. He’s not nearly as thick as Marcus, though not many people could hope to be — but he is long and thin and soft like velvet.

“How do I look?” Geta wonders as he steps out of his loincloth. He tilts his chin to his chest to peer down at you, on your knees to untie the intricate laces of his sandals. You blink up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “Without my armor,” he adds, then repeats. “How do I look?”

You realize, then, that he wants your praise. Though you’re unsure why, you’re not in any position to deny him of it. “You’re a— a very handsome man, your majesty,” you respond cautiously, with a wavering smile.

You hear his breath catch at the compliment. The corner of his mouth flickers upward, and his nostril flares as he takes a deep breath in. 

“Well, go on, then,” he insists suddenly, nodding his head to egg you onward. “Good whores don’t keep their masters waiting, do they? You don’t want to see me impatient, little dove.”

You wrap his stiff cock in a tentative fist, averting your gaze as you give an experimental kitten lick to the bulbous, strawberry tip. Your tongue swipes away the pearlescent pre-cum beading there. The salty tang is foreign on your tongue, sweeter and thicker than you’re used to.

You imagine your lover when you take the Emperor’s cock in your mouth. A practiced form of dissociation that comes naturally to you now. 

You focus on the way the stone floor digs into your knees as you cup his balls in your hand — a desperate attempt to finish him quickly. Geta shudders when you swallow him whole, burying your nose in the coarse thatch of hair at the base of his cock. His head tips back as he groans at the ceiling.

“You are a proper whore…” the Emperor moans with a delirious smile. He tilts his flushed cheek to his freckled shoulder to sneer at Marcus, then frowns when his eyes meet the back of him. “Are you distracted, General?”

The man keeps his back turned and his eyes trained on the wall, counting the bricks there to distract his racing mind. His mouth snarls at the Emperor’s words. His hands ball into fists as he fights to keep his composure.

“Just giving you your privacy, your majesty.”

“Nonsense!” Geta laughs, loud. “You should watch! You should observe— so you know what to tell my uncle.”

Marcus can hear the mischievous lilt in the younger boy’s voice. Like it’s all just a game to him. Like you’re just a whore to be played with, and like Marcus’ only hope of companionship is warfare. Both might’ve been true once, but not since you find each other.

The general smacks his lips against his teeth. “As you wish,” he deadpans and spins on the heel of his sandal.

He’s strangely grateful to find the Emperor’s body obscuring your own. Geta’s lean, pale form towers over your kneeling one — back muscles flexing, hips thrusting, fingers knitting in your hair.

But Marcus can still hear the sounds of your mouth on the other man’s cock. The room fills with heavy breathing, wet noises, and the Emperor’s unabashed whines. Embers of envy burn in the General’s empty chest. A wildfire of want and wrath rages behind his ribcage.

You swallow with Geta’s cock in your throat and squeeze softly at his balls. You hear his breath hitch just before a lengthy moan spills from his parted mouth. Several loads of salty cum spit down your throat a second later. The man shows you little mercy as he holds you by your hair, keeping your nose pressed to his pubic bone. You take shallow breaths through your nose and try not to choke.

You pull off of him when he lets you go. A string of saliva threatens to keep you connected. You take a deep breath in and swipe at your swollen mouth with the back of your hand, staying on your knees while the Emperor tilts his head back. He exhales a breathy laugh of relief at the ceiling. You peer up at him with wide, wet eyes, still so uncertain of your fate.

“Proper whore, indeed,” Geta muses, almost to himself, as he drops his heavy head once more. 

His flushed chest sparkles with a foreign feeling at the sight of you beneath him — eyes teary and fearful, lips swollen and rosy, features flushed with sweat and sex. His cock jerks, still sensitive but threatening to harden again. He grips himself with a loose fist.

“On the bed,” he instructs suddenly, then grins madly at your shock. “You didn’t think I was done with you, surely. Not until I mount you like a mare, anyway— Treat you like the bitch in heat you are…”

Geta cups your warm cheek in his free hand. His touch is strangely gentle as he cradles you there, right before he smacks gently at your jaw to urge you upward. 

Your bare feet pad towards the bed, then. Geta swats your ass as you go and laughs when you squeak in response. You fight the urge to look at Marcus, lest you see the rage burning in his eyes — lest he see the heartbreak swimming in yours. 

Marcus watches you crawl over the silken sheets, both of you sporting similar far-off gazes. He feels a bit like a ghost now. An empty, invisible thing, doomed to watch the rest of the world go on without ever being able to live in it. It’s dreadfully symbolic of how he’s lived most of his life, and how he’s spent the years loving you. Because even if a ghost is full of love, the only thing it knows to do is haunt.

The silk pillow feels cool under your burning cheek. The mattress dips under the Emperor’s weight when he kneels behind you. His ringed fingers smooth over your ass and down the arch of your back. He treats you with an uncharacteristic sort of tenderness, as though he were molding you out of clay.

“You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?” he whispers under his breath. “And timid, too… I like that…” 

Your pussy clenches at his words despite yourself. Geta’s chest swells with pride accordingly. “You don’t have to be scared, little dove. I’m going to take such good care of you.”

Despite his words, he does not bother to ready you for his cock when he positions himself at your pulsing entrance. You hadn’t expected him to, of course — not many men were as kind as Marcus in that way, who often treated your pleasure as if it were his own. But the slick sticking to your thighs has made your pussy more than pliant. Your velvet walls swallow Geta’s cock with a pulsing vigor.

The Emperor groans as he fucks into you, savoring every inch as he buries himself to the hilt. His ringed fingers dig into the plush of your waist, as though you were a toy he didn’t want getting snatched away.

“Look at the hound!” Geta giggles boyishly to himself. “He’s itching for a feel of you— I just know it.”

Marcus remains as still and stoic as the battalion trained him to be. He reveals nothing on his face, though his skin prickles with flames of envy beneath his armor. 

Marcus Acacius was not a jealous man. His love for you was a testament to that. He visited the brothel you boarded in and spared the same coins as every man in the establishment did. But it was different now. Because the Emperor does not deserve you, and he forces Marcus to watch as if he knows it, too.

Something within him seethes, like a feral animal trapped behind his ribcage, desperately clawing its way out.

“Look at him,” Geta snaps when he sees you staring at the wall, eyes glassy and glazed over. He’s grinning all over again when your gaze snaps to Marcus’. 

The soldier’s weathered eyes burn with tears then. General Acacius has faced death a thousand times over, but it wasn’t quite as heartwrenching as this. His wrath simmers to a boil. He swallows it down like fire.

This is her salvation, he tells himself. This is how she survives.

Your features twist with the anguish of being seen as the Emperor lays himself over your back. His slick chest sits flush with your spine, pinning you to the mattress. “I bet he can taste you now. Smell you,” he murmurs in your ear, chapped mouth brushing the shell of it. “His mouth is salivating at the thought of putting his tongue on you— Isn’t it, dog?”

Marcus swallows through the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away stinging tears and feigns an air of nonchalance. “It would be… impolite to talk so brashly about something that doesn’t belong to me, your majesty,” the General responds. Obedient. Loyal like a hound.

Geta grins wide. “Good answer, Acacius.”

When the Emperor finally fucks into you, it’s with a sloppy sort of precision. There is no rhythm or care to his thrusts. He is led only by his blinding pleasure, like a man who has only ever fucked playthings and his own fist. He props himself on one forearm and curls the other beneath you, holding your breast in his ringed hand.

Geta’s flushed cheek presses against your own while he slides in and out and into you again. You hear his groaning as you feel it rumbling in his chest, still laid against your back. You stare at a framed portrait on the wall across the room and wait for it to be over, even as your body refuses to dismiss its simmering orgasm.

Your swollen clit ruts against the silk sheets with each of the Emperor’s sloppy thrusts. You can feel a wet spot forming beneath you, and your stomach twists at the thought of seeing proof of your own pleasure. 

His balls smack your leaking cunt, creating a symphony of lewd noises — moaning, whimpering, clapping, smacking. Marcus thinks the sounds of war were more merciful than this.

“Do you understand what that means, little dove?” Geta croons into your ear, words choppy through his labored breaths and irregular thrusts. “You belong— to me now… So whatever you used to be— whoever’s you used to be— no longer matters.”

He thrusts once, hard, and shudders above you with a choked-back groan. You grit your teeth to swallow down your own noises of pleasure. The assault on your clit, though unintentional, is still yet relentless. You feel the distant white-hot burning feeling begin to swell in the pit of your stomach. A coil about to snap.

“Fucking me— Making me feel good—” the Emperor pants, punctuated by his hips against your ass. “—Is your only duty now. Understand?”

You nod, cheek running over the silk cushion as you grip it in your fists. “Yes, your majesty,” you gasp.

Geta presses his smile to the apple of your cheek. He can feel you leaking around him. You’re enjoying this just as much as he is, to be sure. A proper whore, indeed.

“Now… Take my spend like a good bitch, and thank me for it—”

He fucks you harder, and your face twists with a pleasure you’re too weak to fight away. 

Your gaze falls instinctively to Marcus as your orgasm threatens to swallow you whole. Your eyes squeeze shut in a feeble attempt to hide. Your mouth parts with a silent moan as you cum around the Emperor’s cock.

“Thank you, your majesty,” you whimper obediently into the pillow as you tremble beneath him. “Thank you.”

Geta buries a whine in your neck when he cums again. He gives you only two pitiful, warm loads but still possesses more stamina than your Marcus. He stills, then shudders, then rests his unforgiving bodyweight on top of you when pleasure makes a puddle of him. And of you, you assume, as a mixture of your spend leaks out of your cunt and onto the sheets.

“Write to my uncle, Acacius—” Geta slurs into your skin, heavy through labored pants. “—A thank you for my nameday present.”

Marcus forgets, until then, that he can still be seen. He felt more akin to a corpse hidden in the walls, forced to spend his afterlife in a merciless purgatory. His heart has stopped beating, frozen over, and now sits dead in his chest. He will never be as gentle as he was with you. He will be bloodied knuckles and pulsing wounds. Rough and cruel and angry.

“Yes, your majesty,” the General nods, thankful that it’s over now.

Geta rolls off of your body and onto the empty spot beside you — not shy about his nude form or yours. The sudden lack of warmth makes you shiver. 

“And tell him to send another— To keep the General’s bed warm, too,” he says, patting your ass with his palm before smoothing tenderly over the skin. “One whore’s as good as any other, I’m sure.”

Marcus flinches at the thought of being with anyone other than you. He couldn’t hide the look of disgust if he tried. It makes the Emperor laugh loudly in response.

“Oh, did you— Did you want to try this one?” Geta muses knowingly, pointing to your limp body, still trembling beside him with the aftershocks of your orgasm.

“No. No, no, no— See, this one’s mine,” he corrects the General as if he were a child. “And it would be impolite to touch something that belongs to me, would it not? It would be treasonous, even.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Marcus nods, lip flickering in a mere hint of a smirk as his plan finally comes to fruition. “It would be.”

The Emperor sees you now as his property, and no one hurts what belongs to him without meeting a certain death. Marcus is comforted only by the thought that nothing can touch you now. Not even him. But perhaps that’s the price he pays for love. Perhaps, in the end, love is grief.

“So best tread lightly, Acacius,” Geta warns with a crooked smile, petting you like a dog. “I’d hate for someone to get hurt.”

[multific]

Love Beyond History

Emperor Geta x Reader

Summary: All husbands must love their wives. The Emperor was no exception.

In the magnificence of Ancient Rome, there existed a love story that defied expectations. 

It revolved around Emperor Geta, a notorious figure known for his insatiable thirst for blood in the gladiator games, and his beloved wife, a gentle soul who despised violence. 

As the sun cast its golden glow upon the Colosseum, Geta and his wife, you, found yourselves surrounded by a roaring crowd, eagerly awaiting the sensation that unfolded before you. 

Gladiator games.

The air was thick with anticipation and the scent of sweat mixed with the metallic smell of blood. 

While Geta enjoyed the brutality of the games, you struggled to moderate your own emotions with the darkness of said games.

Amidst the clamour and the rising heat, you felt a wave of sickness washing over you. You were sitting beside Geta, his brother watching from his own chair.

The sight of blood and the overbearing atmosphere became too much for your heart to bear. 

Your face paled, and your breathing grew shallow. 

As if sensing your distress, Geta turned to you.

With a concerned look, Geta gently took your shaking hand in his own. 

He led you away from the frenzy, finding comfort in a secluded corner where the noise of the Colosseum was muted and it was a bit colder. 

His voice, soft and soothing, whispered words of comfort and love into her ear. 

"My Darling. It is probably way too hot for you, and also the blood. I know how much you dislike it."

"Geta. I'm sorry." you whispered as you finally felt like you could breathe.

"No need for it. I only wished for you to share the same love for the games as I do. But I see it now, this really is not for you." 

"I'm truly sorry." Moved by his tenderness, you looked into his eyes, realizing the depth of his affection. 

At that moment, Geta sealed his devotion with a tender kiss on your forehead.

It was a gesture that spoke volumes, an affirmation of his love for you.

As the night arrived in Rome, Geta and you retired to your chambers after dinner. 

The flickering candlelight danced upon your faces, illuminating the room with a warm glow. 

It all filled your heart with such happiness.

You believed, that in this room, you were only a wife and a husband, nothing less, nothing more.

No Rome, no power, no titles.

Just a man and a woman.

Geta, captivated by the beauty and kindness in you, watched you as you peacefully slept. 

The Emperor rolled onto his side watched your face in the candlelight as you faced him.

Overwhelmed by the depth of his emotions, he was awestruck by the fortunate turn of fate that had brought you together. 

Even if it wasn't fate. It was all him.

His selfish nature declared you as his wife the moment your eyes met his.

But in that moment, he realized that his love for you had transformed him. Softening the edges of his bloodthirsty nature and revealing a gentler side.

With a heart full of appreciation, Geta whispered silent words of adoration into the night. 

He vowed to cherish you, to protect you from the darkness that lurked beyond the chambers. 

And so, your love story continued to unfold, defying the expectations of a bloodthirsty emperor and his gentle wife. 

It was the kind of love that exceeded history.

People the upcoming centuries learned about the brutal Emperor Geta and his beloved wife.

Truly a love story worth learning about.

Taglist: 

@castellandiangelo @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl @manduse @jacalineiscomingforyou 

@mandoloriancookie @deliciousfestsalad @lilliumrorum @asgards-princess-of-mischief 

@fallout-girl219 @dracaryxzs @snowtargaryen 

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

/YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO TRANSLATE, TO STEAL OR TO REUPLOAD ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

[innerfare]

Going Down On You - Part 1 

Summary: how they go down on you

Characters: Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Ace, Sabo, Law, Kid

Genre: pure smut

CW: NSFW // oral sex, shameless dirty talk, Kid is a little mean

——— 

Luffy: 

As soon as the two of you are alone, he’s pushing your legs apart. Often times, he doesn’t even take your clothes off, just pushes what he can to the side and buries his face in your pussy. He eats you out like an all you can eat buffet and comes back for multiple rounds. 

He slurps so loud- comically loud. 

“So tasty,” he’ll mutter. “I could eat this for hours.” Sometimes he does. He doesn’t stop when you cum, he stops when he’s had his fill, no matter what time it is. 

Sometimes, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night ravenous. If you’re wearing panties, he rips them off, so you’ve learned to sleep naked. Half asleep, he’ll bury his face between your legs until he’s had his fill, lapping tiredly at your folds, humming and groaning while he does it. If you try to squirm or get away, he gets super annoyed.

“Stop it,” he grumbles in that slight raspy voice of his, lips glistening with your juices. “I don’t care if you’re tired, I’m hungry.” 

What Luffy wants, Luffy gets. 

If the two of you were stranded on an island together, he probably wouldn’t even hunt for food. He’d just strip you down on the beach and pin you with his face between your legs until the two of you were rescued. At times, he even prefers eating you out to fucking you. 

Zoro: 

When he’s hungry, he won’t ask. He’ll just pry your legs apart and go to town as casually as making a cup of tea, though he does it with such fervor you think he must be an addict. 

He usually drags you on top of him and makes you sit on his face so he can lap at your folds at his leisure. He prefers to sit with his hands behind his back while he does it, as if he’s a king and you’re servicing him by letting him tongue your poor, aching cunt (you are), but if you’re being naughty, he’ll wrap those massive hands around your thighs and hold you in place. He also gets super annoyed if you squeal or squirm. 

“Quiet, woman,” he’ll tell you, furrowing his brows. “You’re distracting me.” 

He likes to spread your lips apart and take a good look at you first. He’ll bury his face in your folds and inhale as deeply as he can several times, taking his sweet time before he begins poking and prodding. He’ll mutter to himself as he does it. 

“Mmm, that’s good. Yeah, just like that. That’s a sweet pussy. So sensitive. I bet I can make it cream.” 

He’ll stop in the middle of what he’s doing to place some warm, lingering kisses on your folds before ramming his tongue back inside you. Really loves spitting in your hole and pushing it in deeper with his fingers. Will literally drool in your cunt because he enjoys seeing it spill out. 

Sanji: 

Literally so loud when he does it, makes the most over the top, dramatic noises, moaning as if you’re sucking him off. He especially loves to suck on your labia (no hate to innies but he definitely prefers outies, if you know what I mean). This man would carry a picture of your wet pussy around in his wallet if you let him. He takes the opportunity to taste you very seriously, a little too seriously. Has spent so much time perfecting his technique it’s unreal. 

He’s so sweet about it, too, and so grateful. 

“My precious babygirl, thank you so much for letting me taste this sweet pussy.” 

Such a giver he would happily give up his own pleasure for yours, but that doesn’t mean 69-ing isn’t his absolute favorite thing in the entire world. He especially likes it when he’s sitting up with his back against the headboard, your ass in the air and your face buried down in his lap (helps with the height difference, too). He’ll hold you open and massage your ass while he laps at your folds. 

Always wants to finger you in this position but can’t bring himself to do it, doesn’t want to waste a single drop of your juices; also just can’t keep his face out of your cunt long enough to manage. If hickies on your clit were possible, yours would be covered constantly. He also wants to eat his cum out of you after you two fuck.

Ace: 

All of those manners he worked so hard to learn go right out the window when he gets your panties off and his face between your legs. Is especially obsessed with the smell of you; as soon as he catches the scent, he’s on you like a beast. He wants it all over his face and hands. He wants to fall into bed and smell you on his sheets and pillows. 

“The best smell in the fucking world,” he’ll groan, dragging his nose up your slit. 

His favorite is to put you on your back and push your bottom half up so your bare cunt is high in the air, completely exposed and vulnerable for him to eat at his leisure. He’ll put his big, strong hands behind your knees and hold your legs in an impossible position while he buries his face in your juicy cunt, the knowledge it’s all his enough to make him hard. 

“Fucking delicious. And it’s all fucking mine.” 

Like his brother, he has quite the appetite, but unlike Luffy, he’s never just content to devour you. He’ll lap at your folds until you’re overstimulated, and then he’ll pull out his thick, veiny cock. He’ll shush you as he pushes it into your quivering cunt and fuck you until he’s as spent as you are, and then he’ll fuck you a little more.   

Sabo: 

Another ravenous appetite. Sabo is so messy when he eats you out. He’ll have your juices and his saliva running down his chin and smeared all over his cheeks. He’s even gotten it in his hair before. He doesn’t care, though. When he gets his face between your legs, he gets pussy drunk and completely spaces out. Time stands still, and the only thing that matters is pushing his tongue into your quivering little hole. 

It’s his favorite way to wind down after a long day, and if he’s been away on a mission, he’ll most certainly return with a new mission: to suck your soul out through your clit.  

He’s especially good with his tongue. He’ll stuff it into your hole and massage your most sensitive areas, working it in and out of you while his thumb kneads your sensitive clit. He likes to change positions a lot, putting you on your back then flipping you on all fours before dragging you down to sit on his face, and he’ll have a wicked grin on his face the entire time. The most important thing is that your fingers are tangled in his hair while he works. 

His possessive side really comes out while he’s going down on you. With Sabo, there’s no such thing as your pussy, only his pussy. He'll spit on your folds and leave hickies on your inner thighs to mark you as his.

“Nobody else gets to taste you. Not now, not ever.” 

Law: 

Most definitely uses it as a punishment. He’ll chastise you while he fingers you slowly, his lips mere inches from your leaking cunt. He’ll scold you for being so wet for him or for whining/being impatient. 

"Poor thing, you're aching for it."

When he does finally go down, he’s meticulous about it, tonguing every crevice and licking up every last drop. He’ll make you hold your own legs up and wide open so he can have easier access, and so he can busy his own hands with your breasts. 

On the occasions he does let you lower your legs, he really enjoys your fingers in his hair and your feet resting on his back. Especially likes it when you use your feet to push him away so he can wrestle with you a little; he pulls rank, too, telling you that you have to listen because he’s your captain or a doctor. 

“Y/n-ah, stay still. Doctor’s orders.” 

He’s a spanker and if you get too loud, his hand will come down on your breasts or ass until you grab a pillow to muffle your cries, never mind that the sound of him spanking you is louder than your moans. Also, he has a habit of falling into bed at 2am and waking you up with his head between your legs. 

Kid: 

Prefers to eat you out from behind. There’s no division between eating ass and eating pussy as far as this man is concerned, either. He does both or neither, and putting you on all fours or bending you over something is the easiest way for him to get what he wants. 

He’s so mean about it, too. “Poor little thing. You can’t function properly until you’ve been tongue fucked by your man, can you?” 

He’ll chew your nipples raw and snap at you to stop whining about it, you brat. He’ll pull back to spit directly onto your folds, doing it quite loudly because he knows it embarrasses you and makes your hole clench, you adorable fuck bunny. He’ll flick your clit and laugh when you squeal, and he’ll make fun of you when you cum, you needy slut. If you cream or squirt, you’ll never live it down, you pathetic whore. He’ll hold it over your head, but don’t take that to mean he doesn’t like it- he’s obsessed with your cream. 

He’ll spank you, but he prefers to bite. Your ass will be covered in bite marks and hickeys before he ever plunges his tongue into one of your holes. He’s feral when he does, growling and grunting the entire time. And when he’s finished, he’ll place a few sweet kisses on your cunt and ass, give you a light spank, and tell you to get yourself cleaned up. Unless, of course, he wants to fuck you after, in which case you’re in for a long night. If he eats his cum out of you, he'll most definitely be fucking another load into you.

———

Hope you enjoyed it! If you want more, you can check out my masterlist here!

[yandere-sins]

Charming the Tyrant Emperor

A new isekai story from me? I know, bonkers! Actually inspired by the blurb I read on an actual isekai manga/manhwa/etc. BUT I liked the idea enough that I didn't read the story so I could write my own yandere version of it, hope you guys enjoy it ♥

Characters: Yandere!Emperor x Isekai!Fem!Reader

Warnings: Yandere, Forced Marriage Trope, Isekai Trope, Depiction of War, Violence, Attempted Murder (not from or on the reader)

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Sighing, you put down the packaging of the game you just loaded up, having hoped it would give you any clue about what it was all about.

A dark, black box with only the game's title imprinted on it—Fated Encounters—was as helpful as a blindfold in the streets. Thus, you threw it over your shoulder, hearing it plop onto your bed as you stared back at the character creation screen you had worked on for a while.

You had to admit, your character was really damn cute, from the pretty eyes to the custom outfit you put together. But at the same time, not knowing what the game was all about, it was hard to decide what was needed now: stats.

"Weird game," you mumbled, feeling slightly irritated at the lack of direction you had received. The friend who told you about it had simply called it "the best game I have ever played" before leaving you behind at the game store after having pushed the box into your hand. They felt very off lately, but you didn't know why. So you thought maybe if you played their favorite game, you could get them out of their shell and to spend time with you again.

Naturally, you could play it safe and just put an equal amount of points in all the stats, but where was the fun in that? You didn't know what occupation your main character had and had no idea what alignment you wanted them to have throughout the run, so you were like a stranded whale when choosing the right stats—utterly helpless.

And out of frustration about it, you decided to say fuck it.

Pressing the button of your controller, you held it until all of the points you were given went into charisma. Who needed strength, magic, defense, and health when you could simply talk your way out of every dangerous situation? Make everyone believe you were innocent and sweet while dodging the possible bullets. With your lack of knowledge about the game, it was the best choice, and if you liked the game, you could still revisit it with better stats next time!

Clicking 'start' almost excited you as you waited for the screen to change from black to an intro cutscene, but instead, another confirmation popped up, asking you, "Are you sure you want to proceed with these choices? Note: All choices have consequences."

"Ominous," you chuckled before hitting the confirmation again. The game made a small sound of acceptance before it finally turned black and stayed this way. Seconds passed, and you started to press all buttons, up, down, left, and right, until finally, you gave up, accepting that all your hard work creating this character had just been in vain, as your system must have frozen.

Frustrated, you forced a manual shut-down of your game system, discarding the controller somewhere on the table before getting up and letting yourself fall head-first into the mattress. What a stupid idea this was, you thought to yourself as you felt the hard box of the game poke your stomach. Anger unleashed upon the poor box as you yanked it out and discarded it on the floor, instant regret overcoming you as you hoped it wasn't broken so you could return the game.

You would definitely not go through all this work again to play it.

No way!

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You awoke to the sounds of screaming.

Bellowing voices were all around you, yelling at one another, grunting, despairing. The ground beneath you shook with ferocity as the bangs of explosions hit you from both sides, barely shielded by the ringing in your ears. Alerted, you pushed your hands into the surface beneath you and felt your fingers dig into what felt like loose earth or sand while you tried to focus. What had happened? You only just fell asleep after being so frustrated with the game you couldn't play. Why had the atmosphere changed so drastically?

Gripping your head, a surge of pain went through you, a nasty gash on your forehead wetting your palm. The red was striking even through your blurred vision as you gazed at your hand, and reality was still hard to grasp as your senses suddenly cleared, letting in the unmistakable sounds of war all around you.

Hastily, you looked around, trying to focus on one thing and all at the same time. This place didn't look like your home at all! There was neither a bed nor your gaming setup around that clearly marked it as your room. Instead, you saw dirt everywhere, flames rising from bushes and trees, and the worst part—bodies.

Countless humanoid bodies lay in the dirt, the ground stained with what could only be blood. Most were face down, arrows sticking from their backs, spears slammed through the armor some of them wore. Some of their heads were rolled to the side, staring at you lifelessly, and for some reason, you were overcome by guilt, as if it had been your fault they died. You grabbed yourself by the arms as you were overcome by the horror, finally realizing you were on some battlefield, wounded and terrified, with no idea how you got there.

Had your country been attacked while you slept? How could you have not noticed it? Where was your family, why did these bodies look so medieval? What the hell was going on?!

Next to you, another person stirred, clad in black armor and clearly in pain. You crawled over to the knight, helm covering his face while he clutched his side.

"Hey! Hey, stay calm!" you called out to him, and he jerked at your voice, probably just as scared as you were. "It's going to be alright," you assured him, looking his body over for wounds until you noticed the gaping opening his hand tried to press down on.

"It's okay," you kept assuring him, hoping he wouldn't notice the wavering in your voice. You had no idea if it would be okay or not. Honestly, it looked pretty bad for him. All you knew was that one should press down on wounds to stop the bleeding, and although you felt bad, you put more pressure on top of the knight's hand, hoping that would help.

"Why..." he grunted, and you gulped.

"We have to stop the bleeding so we can get you to someone who can help! A-A doctor... healer, something like that! I don't know, I'm sorry! This is all so strange, I have no idea what's going on! I'm doing my best! I just don't know what to do! I'm so so sorry!"

Your whole body was wracked with shivers as you tried to assist and help this person somehow when the sound of his voice suddenly cut through your panic in a way you didn't expect.

He chuckled.

"No, why would you help me?"

"You're hurt..." you whispered in response, saying it before thinking clearly.

"It's war. Would you not want your enemy to be hurt?" he asked, his voice lightening with curiosity. Even if the concept of war was so unfamiliar, only known through stories and history to someone like you, you understood that he meant that hurt and death were inevitable when two sides clashed. Still, it meant very little to you, who couldn't bear these thoughts even though you had to have them.

"War is awful! No one deserves to be in pain or die!" you sobbed, tears having collected in your eyes. This wasn't the right moment for your pity party; after all, this man was probably as good as dead. Yet here you were, making it about yourself and your stupid, conflicted feelings. But this guy was perhaps the same as you, lying in the dirt, scared and frightened. You didn't want the closest thing to an ally you had, to die miserably.

"I don't want this! I don't want you to die! I don't care if you're my enemy! You deserve to live and be happy! Enjoy your life, eat good food, and be in love with someone who loves you just the same! It's not fair! No one should have to die in vain!" you yelled, and it took him a moment before he laughed softly, rolling his head over the ground.

"Your Highness, get away!" someone yelled, the voice clear and strangely familiar as the black knight next to you suddenly rose from his early grave. Even though you both sat on the ground, he towered over you, the shining black of his armor looming like death incarnate. His hand reached up towards your face but instead caught your wrist from where it had touched him. You jolted in surprise, his grip crushing as it wrapped around you. Gasping out in pain, an arrow suddenly came swooshing through the air, cutting close enough to the knight's grip on you that you could feel the wind on your exposed skin around your hand, tearing you out of your fear and pain.

For a moment, his grip softened, and this time, your body responded perfectly, yanking yourself out of his hold and toppling back. It was neither elegant nor careful. It hurt as your elbows crashed onto the ground, your lower back taking most of the blow, but at least you were a few inches away from that strange knight.

Strong arms hooked underneath your body, the presence of many people surrounding you as you were lifted from the ground swiftly. You heard all sorts of armor clanking and clicking as people moved around, but even more so, you were forced to listen to the blood-curdling screams of soldiers being struck down right in front of you.

Was it the black knight or the ones now crowding around you? All of the people here wore silver plates, but you could only see hints of black through the gaps in their formation.

"Your Highness, you need to leave right now! It's too dangerous to remain here!" the soldier that held you from behind yelled over the screams, and without asking for permission, your hand was once again gripped by a bigger one, dragging you after him as he ran.

More knights closed in as you two stumbled in the opposite direction, shouting and attacking enemies behind you while you stumbled over your feet, trying to keep up. Hand lodged tightly in the iron grip of the knight, he didn't look back as he made his way through the soldiers, almost as if his mission wasn't fighting but rather fleeing.

Not so much you. Somehow, you couldn't shake off the need to look back, to assure yourself, to see something you weren't yet in the place to judge.

There he stood amongst the silver knights, flames reflecting in the brilliance of his black armor. You had been sure he had been severely wounded. Yet, he swung around his battle axe effortlessly, striking down the soldiers one after the other as if they were no match for him.

"Hurry, your Highness!" the soldier yelled, tugging you forward repeatedly as the black knight's head appeared to look up. He met your gaze in a bizarre look as it was covered in his helmet, yet you could feel his eyes drilling into you, fixating on yours while he was being attacked.

It was you who had to break the strange eye contact as you were suddenly gripped by your hips and unceremoniously lifted into the air, falling into a saddle on top of a nervously stomping horse. Reigns shoved into your hands, you yelled out in surprise as the animal took off, no regard to its rider's condition, and you could only cling to the reigns and saddle as it gallopped of to who-knows-where.

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"He keeps advancing towards us, showing no signs of stopping."

"He won't stop no matter how much gold and resources we promised him! Open your eyes, Minister! It's not like he spared any of the cities he rode through during his conquest! They don't call him the "cruel tyrant" for nothing!"

Many men shouted angrily around the large table, making their panic and frustration known as they discussed how to stop the tyrannical approach of the new emperor who reigned over even his own vassal state. From small ministers to military captains, no one knew what to do, and the pressure threatened to overcome all of them. The crown on your head still felt as heavy as the first time they forced you to wear it—unfamiliar, not right. They called you their Queen, yet you didn't feel royal at all.

Because you weren't, you were an imposter.

For all you knew, you had taken over some noble's body while they were attacked by the emperor's forces. That noble turned out to be of quite a high standing, putting you into this awful position of ruling a queendom. No matter how much you asked for information from the people around you, they'd give you weird looks, expecting you to know the answers to your own questions. Still, you couldn't exactly tell them you weren't that person either, not knowing what they'd do with you if that were to happen.

And it was all that stupid game's fault.

You had no idea how this could have possibly happened. "Isekai" was only ever a concept you had seen in stories and games. But when you sat in front of a mirror for the first time, you immediately remembered the face that looked back at you—the character you had created. The disconnect to your body was severe and real; no matter how much you rubbed your face and grimaced at your reflection (the maid giving you apprehensive glances), you had to eventually accept that this body was who you were. Things still didn't make sense, but you tried your best in the new role, although it never felt right.

"If only someone had killed the emperor when they had the chance," one of the ministers noted with a dramatic sigh. All eyes fell on you for just a short moment, making you cower. You couldn't have known! That's what you kept telling yourself. He technically told you he was your enemy, but how would you have known that without playing the game? But you doubted you could have really killed the black knight—the emperor—even if someone had told you that he was your mortal enemy. Even if your body was that of the monarch under attack by the emperor, you didn't have a sword and much less the will to kill someone.

However, your hesitation made you look incapable in everyone else's eyes.

Now, you didn't just have to deal with the upcoming attack—your head still throbbing from the gash whenever you thought about the war—you were also scrutinized by everyone for failing to protect them from the emperor's advances. It was a lot to handle for someone so wholly underprepared as you were. This wasn't your life, but for them, it was all they had ever known.

The door being suddenly thrown open saved you from yet again explaining why you didn't kill the emperor when you had the chance. Why you let him live despite "knowing" who he was. All eyes fell on the butler standing in the doorway, panting heavily, holding up a letter and fanning it in the air with urgency.

"Your Highness!" he yelled through despite the lack of hair. "A letter arrived! A letter from... from... the emperor!"

Gasps went through the rows of people as the one closest to the door jumped up, ripping the letter from the butler and opening it. Some ministers gave each other worried looks, and some stretched their heads towards the one reading the letter as if to see better.

Suddenly, the minister rejoiced, laughing out loudly, and you were uncertain if that was a good or bad sign. He did sound indignant, but at the same time, he seemed to have just solved all the worries in the world.

"An alliance! The emperor wants a marriage alliance with us!"

People sprung from their seats as they cheered, although some of the older ones sent worried glances towards you. "The war is over!" someone yelled, and more of them fell into a chant as they danced around the table. But could it really be that easy?

"Uhm, I'm sorry?" you called out, gathering the attention of those still seated. "The emperor wants to marry who?"

Now, all the eyes were back on you as the cheers died down. The letter was passed towards you, the oldest, wisest minister at your right looking it over, adjusting his monocle to read it properly. Sputtering a little, he lowered the paper again, leaning forward and reaching for your hand, cupping it gently, encouragingly. Yet, you didn't feel comforted at all.

"That would be you, your Highness."

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Still as the dead, you stood in the forest clearing, waiting. Everyone around you was tense as they waited for the emperor's delegation. But you were long past nervosity. Between the letter and the arranged date to hand you over to the emperor's delegation were months of tears and training.

You tried to revolt and make the people understand that you couldn't possibly marry him! But it all fell on deaf ears when you screamed and raged. Rumors had reached you of how he had killed potential spouses for less. How this was all a facade and how the emperor would still ruthlessly conquer the land that had made you its ruler and then kill you to mock them on top of it. And you had shed many, many tears pleading for your life. Almost everyone had cried with you, chastizing you while their own hearts broke, taking pity on you, and comforting you.

But to these people, you were the only hope they had.

Perhaps you would have conducted yourself more gracefully if you had been their real queen. Accepting your fate and enduring the strict training needed to ensure you were perfect for the emperor. When you asked them to stop pleadingly, they would. But after a brief rest, you were forced to train again, your muscle memory of very little help when all the etiquette wasn't good enough for the empire's standards. It was while you were training that you finally understood something.

Every choice had consequences.

The game had warned you before starting and freezing on you. If you acted up, threw tantrums, raged, and went against what the people wanted, you got nowhere. But instead, if you sympathized with them, asked nicely, and conducted yourself well, you got everything you wanted. Giving them what they desired always ended in you getting your will. All points in charm, right?

So, if you wanted to survive, then you had to find out what the emperor desired. Quickly.

All of your senses were in survival mode, making you seem graceful and dignified while you waited, going through countless scenarios in your head. If he wanted money, you'd tell him how to construct something lucrative from your world. If he wished to reign the world, you'd offer him to conduct peace treaties in his name, having to charm more people so they'd agree. You had devised a solution to almost every problem when birds flew out of the trees, alerted by the incoming caravan.

On your way to the empire, you'd listen intently to the delegate to be prepared. Everything would be fine. You could do it. All points in charm would help you! You had trained yourself for this and made sure you were more aware of people. Everything would be fine!

But you didn't expect to see the black armor that haunted your dreams to lead the delegation, the emperor himself arriving before you the moment his horse stepped out into the clearing.

You drew in your breath sharply before bowing deeply as his horse came to a halt in front of you while your heart raced. The clattering of armor took you back to the war, your body wincing with trauma. You weren't prepared for this, his heavy footsteps shaking your resolve as they approached. Some maids gasped in horror, the soldiers on your side readying their weapons to defend you.

How could they? Everyone knew what he was capable of!

But they loved you too much to not defend you with their life if they had to. So you remained low—for their sake, too. Until a hand reached beneath your chin, cold metal clinging to your skin as your head was lifted, forcing you to face your worst fear.

With you standing straight again, he still towered above you, much like when you met him on the battlefield. His touch lingered as he reached around his head with his free hand, pulling off his helmet. His looks hadn't been much of a surprise as the emperor had sent you his painting along with countless presents once the deal was made. But still. He was devilishly handsome for such a cruel man, with hair as black as his armor and eyes as red as only the fiend could have.

"There you are," he murmured, only meant for your ears. "I've been waiting for this."

"So have I," you replied quickly, not wanting to disgruntle him at the first meeting despite your voice wavering with fear. It wasn't the ideal situation—perhaps there never would be one—but your plan was still solid: find out what he desired and force him to keep you alive to get it.

His gaze shifted from one of your eyes to the other, searching for a lie. But it wasn't. Ever since you realized you couldn't change the fate that was to befall you, only sweeten it, you had waited for the day you'd meet him.

Pleased with his findings, or the lack thereof, his lips cracked into a wide grin, befitting of the cruel tyrant as it paired well with the glint in his eyes to reveal only madness. So far, it had gone well, but you couldn't count on his mood appearing to be favorable. He was as unpredictable as his strategies on the battlefield; that much you had learned already about him. To further fall into his good graces was all you could do.

"I was surprised about your proposal," you spoke calmly, putting some of those charms to work. Reaching up, you pulled the emperor's hand from your chin, instead cupping his palm over your cheek and holding it there. The emperor watched every one of your moves with curious interest, probably expecting you to try and kill him at any given time as well. Almost, you two were alike like this.

"I didn't expect you to want--"

"You."

You forced a grin, chuckling curtly, and his expression sank slightly. "Yes, me. Why me? Why not someone from the empire or the other states? What could you want with little ol' me?"

Lips curled back even more, showing off teeth that seemed almost predatorily sharp before the emperor suddenly burst into laughter, doubling over while still holding your face in his palm. The soldiers around you two were completely taken aback at the emperor's sudden outburst, inching closer while some backed away in fear. He regained his composure quickly, though, bringing his other hand up to cup your face fully now between them as he chuckled, inspecting your face thoroughly.

"You have such a refreshing way of speaking, my dear. Unlike any other noble I've ever met. And I could just eat you up for it." His thumb loosened from the side of his hand, rubbing over your cheeks gently. The metal left a cold smear on your skin, but you forced yourself not to react to it, holding his gaze firmly while you feared that looking away could be your death sentence.

"But that was not the reason," he clarified, and you gave him a small nod, indicating that it was fine with you. "It was what you said on the battlefield. That you didn't want me to die. Me. Do you know how many of our peers disagree on that? Do you know how many I have beheaded for less than wishing for my death?"

"I do not."

He stared at you with this maddening smile on his lips before the emperor's expression suddenly softened, his thumb returning to caress your cheek. "Good," he sighed, sounding almost relieved. "I don't want to scare you. Very well then."

Letting his hands fall from your face, you still didn't feel like grasping the situation completely, but you didn't hold on to him, watching instead as he hiked up his pants, adjusting the armor over his legs before taking a knee in front of you. Everyone—including his side of soldiers—gasped, but the emperor paid them no mind. The boon of the strongest must have been that no matter what he did, he couldn't care less about the opinions of others, and he made it very clear, asking silently for your hand by presenting his own.

There was no reason to refuse him, so you placed yours into his palm, letting it linger as he reached upwards, pushing back the sleeve on your arm. His grip tightened as the bruises you had suffered from your training were exposed, face falling as he looked at the damaged goods that you felt like. Panic rose as you feared his anger, and you quickly reached over to push down the fabric again when his eyes fell from the wounds to yours, overpowering you and pushing the sleeve out of the way.

"I promise to take you as my spouse," he announced solemnly, leaning down to kiss the back of your head.

"To love and honor you, as will you, me," his lips wandered upwards as he muttered the words, kissing the small specks of bruises littering your arm.

"Not to hurt or trouble you," he looked up, lips curling into a cheeky grin as he lightly bit your arm, making you gasp before adding much more quietly, "Unless you like it."

"And protect you until my dying breath."

Finalizing his oath, the emperor quickly got up again, smiling at you like a child on Christmas. You had no idea what kind of awkwardness lay in your own expression, but when he offered his arm, proceeding with the handover, you barely hesitated to link yours with his. As if this new life wasn't surreal enough, you didn't understand his character at all. Was he a terrible tyrant or a kind husband in the making? Mad or simply living up to what people expected of him? Searching for comfort in you or planning something devious and evil?

But before you could ponder these thoughts, you heard a sudden commotion behind your back, making you look back only to see one of your soldiers break out of the protective formation and charge toward your new husband with a dagger raised.

"Die, you monster!" he yelled, aiming for the emperor's back. However, your husband twisted around without letting your arm fall, catching the dagger in his free hand. "Careful," he grumbled. "You could hurt my wife with that."

With a strong yank that you only saw, not felt, the emperor discarded the dagger, his soldiers crowding in and grabbing your knight, kicking his knee until he was doubled over. With an appalled gasp, you detached from your husband's arm, but he caught your hand, pressing his palm to yours and linking your fingers forcefully, every one of his movements deliberate, yet no less oppressing, as if to make a point.

"Tell me what to do with the traitor, my Love," your husband asked, eerily asking for your opinion. You gulped, the life of the knight weighing heavy on your mind like the crown. Looking at the emperor, he was waiting patiently for your decision, but you knew he had no intentions of letting this knight live, and you gulped. You had to survive. You had to put yourself first, even if it hurt.

"I don't want any more bloodshed. It makes me feel terrible," you whispered, looking away in defeat. "But I understand if its what you have to do."

All you had was your charm. You could have pleaded for the knight's life, but if it wasn't what the emperor wanted, you wouldn't convince him and risk your own. The words left you with a heavy heart, but it was the best you could do for yourself. You had to save yourself if you wanted to make any change—and that was hard enough.

"Very well, then," the emperor announced suddenly, turning away from the knight that attacked him, instead wrapping your arm around his again. Confused, you looked back as your husband moved onwards towards the carriage, glimpsing the same confusion in the eyes of the other soldiers.

"You're not going to kill him?" you asked as the emperor signaled for a servant to open the door to the carriage, making sure you had a steady hold on him as he led you into the inside.

"No. You said it makes you unwell. I don't want that."

"But... why?" you asked, feeling a little stupid as you took a seat in the luxurious carriage, much better than the one your state had provided for you to travel to this spot. "Isn't that what you want?"

"Again, you ask about what I want. Is that all you care about?"

You gulped, feeling busted as you watched him climb inside right behind you, his armor making it hard to move, but he managed just fine. Still, his question felt genuine and less like he expected something, so you decided to play dumb.

"Is it not the most important thing for your wife to know?" you mumbled, the subservience in your own question almost making you gag. It was hard to throw away your values, even if, in the age of this game's setting, you had to play along unless you had the strength to rise above.

The moment he sat down, the carriage began to move, your body losing its strength at the unexpected movement. However, sturdy arms caught you, helping you to sit upright again and find the emperor's gaze on you, his expression briefly worried before it grew serious. It felt like you messed up big time, and that so shortly after meeting him, too.

But then the seriousness cracked away again as he smiled, shaking his head softly. "Ridiculous," he mumbled, his eyes flitting up to meet yours again after taking a deep breath. "I just can't be mad at you, no matter how stupid your questions are. Aren't you glad you are such a charmer?"

Yes. Very glad. Very, very glad. At least at that moment.

"Then I will say it once more," he announced. "Make sure to not forget it, as I won't repeat myself a third time."

With comical playfulness, he poked your forehead, making you scrunch up your face, and he laughed at your expression in return.

"When we were on the battlefield, and you told me you didn't want me to die, I realized I couldn't. You may have been simply pitying me or trying to be nice in my last moments, but my body was overcome with vigor as if you had commanded it not to die. That's how sincere your words felt."

He leaned back, but his eyes never left you, even as he took a break from talking to seize you up. You had an inkling that without knowing about your skills yet, all points in charms must have worked back then, too.

"Almost like you put a curse on me..." he added, eyes narrowing as he thought. Gripping your thighs, you realized that, technically, this wasn't good news. Technically, you had caused this mess. All choices had consequences, and you made one without realizing it by telling him not to die.

"You are the only one who wishes for me to live, so I knew you were the only one who could stand by me. And now look what you make of me, no more wars, no bloodshed, just as you demand. Do you know what that means now?"

"That you... want to settle down?" you mumbled, half joking, half unable to think of a better response.

"No." Again, he tapped you on the forehead, and you got a feeling it was his way of reprimanding you.

"I will do as I said, protect you, love you, honor you. As long as you are with me, I will be good. I can't promise to be peaceful all the time, but at least in front of you, I'll keep my vows, and I assume you, too, bear responsibility for taking everything I want from me and replacing it with what you want. Our encounter must have been fate, as nothing could shake me until you came along. So tell me, and I hope you took note, what do I want?"

Silence fell over you two as you tried to work through all the information you had acquired. He'd stop waging war? Would stop the bloodshed? Just because you wanted him to live and he wants to honor his vows in return? This could never undo the harm you knew he had already caused to so many, but it had the potential to better the future.

"You want..." you mumbled, thinking about what it could be. It felt as if it was on the tip of your tongue, but no matter what scenario you recalled playing through in your head, you couldn't find one that fit. No money, no territory, just something he claimed he already told you.

Your eyes widened as you realized it, and the cruel emperor's grin widened madly in response.

"Correct," he murmured, leaning forward until his lips were brushing against yours, his palm returning to cradle your cheek.

"You. I want you."

[cryobabiess]

girldad!geta pleeease!

Filia Divina

Pairing: Emperor Geta x Wife!reader

Tags: childbirth, pregnancy, miscarriage mentioned, implied infanticide, soft!geta (if you squint), historically accurate practices, NOT BETA READ SO IF YOU SEE SOMETHING WONKY NO YOU DIDN’T, good ole fashioned misogyny

AN: Tollere Liberos is in reference to an ancient Roman tradition where a father decides whether or not to accept a newborn as their child. Rejected children were abandoned via ‘expositus’ (aka dead ass just leaving a baby out in the wilderness). So basically girldad!geta but historically accurate lol. Enjoy!

It had only been an hour since you birthed her—a sweet little creature with curls the color of honey and supple skin like the flesh of a ripe plum. With a mighty wail fit to be heard across an empire, she came into the world. Your goddess, Juno, generously granted her the health and strength you prayed for. You rejoiced, though your joy was not shared.

The midwives cleaned your daughter in grave silence, save for the whispers of the politic-men gathered to witness the birth of Rome’s divine son. They huddled together in the far corner of the chamber as your girl laid against her mother’s chest for the first time.

“It cannot be true—look again!” Geta frantically commands the weary doctor. He paces across the marble floor in a state of distress. A litany of expressions troubles his face; disbelief, panic, betrayal.

“My lord, it is not what was desired, but I assure you—the child is female. You have my greatest sorrows.” The doctor mournfully bows his head, knowing better than to look the short tempered prince in the eye.

Geta was persistent, diligently sewing his seed in your womb since your holy union. You passed two of his children as blood, and he held you as you suffered through the pain. He watched your body grow when his efforts succeeded, massaged your taut skin with olive oil, and fed you bread soaked in sweet wine when you felt ill. He even kneeled at Jupiter’s alter to call for the safe delivery of his first son and the health of his wife—All these precautions only to be cruelly slighted.

“The gods have punished me, yet I’ve done nothing but bend to their will.” Geta holds his head in disbelief, his devastation made evident by a deep scowl.

Senator Gracchus tentatively approaches your distraught husband, resting a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“My lord, we must atone for our offenses, whatever they may be. It is a grave misfortune indeed, but your bride—“

Rage ignites across Geta’s face as he pulls away from his constituent’s touch.

“Speak tactfully of your empress if you wish to keep your tongue, Senator.” He seethes through a tight jaw. Gracchus relents, his tone softening considerably. He continues slowly and with caution.

“Two winters have passed since your union, and she has yet to bring forth an heir of Rome. Her body has proved inhospitable. The gods have sent a message, and it would be foolish to turn a cheek—you must heed this omen! ”

Geta takes a moment, carefully considering the senator’s plea for reason. He looks back to you, Obsidian eyes gazing down at the linen sheet that obscures your sleeping child.

“I am a conduit of their will. Tollere Liberos will prevail and the gods will decide through me.” Geta turns to you fully. Your heart becomes heavy in your chest as you search your husband’s face for tenderness, but see nothing but solid stone.

In your dreams, you imagined the day Geta approached his first heir as sweet—that he might kiss your reddened cheeks and proudly claim his child. Never did you think the sight of him would cause you to tighten your grip and cower away. He looms over the bed where you lay exhausted and perspiring—like a holy monument.

“Show me the child.”

“My love, I beg you—“

“Your emperor commands it.” Geta callously interrupts.

You unwrap your daughter in your arms, trembling hands moving as gingerly as possible. She shifts in her sleep, curling her precious limbs toward her delicate body, but does not wake. Geta’s eyes widen at the sight of her.

“So it is true. My faithful wife’s womb has betrayed me.” His gaze softens. Something stirs behind it, but you are not sure what.

“If you wish to return her life, then be merciful and do the same with mine.” Your heart twists and aches, your love for your emperor becoming a knife in your rib.

To your shock, Geta reaches out to his daughter, takes her tiny fist in his palm, and runs a thumb over her blushing knuckles. She wraps her hand around her father’s finger with a mighty yawn.

You have seldom seen your restless husband become so still.

“She bears your resemblance.” Geta’s voice is but a whisper. His gaze doesn’t stray from her. It appears his heart aches the same as yours.

“And a head of golden hair.” You can only offer an exhausted smile.

Geta takes his daughter into his arms for the first time.

“The gods have spoken!” He declares to the small gathering of senators. Your emperor raises his girl above the laurels atop his head. Some look on with horror, and others with pride.

“She will have my name! It is done.”

As your daughter’s first weeks pass, Geta’s tenderness only grows. In the lavender hours of dawn, you wake to find him cradling her in the crook of his arm. He speaks to her softly.

“Poor girl, you have wounded your father’s pride. My, what tragedy.”

You smile at the sound of her gentle crooning as your husband assuages her back to sleep.

“A son would belong to Rome—but you, dear Septima, will belong to me.”

[finallychaoticeffigy]

Yandere Emperor x reader

You woke up with a massive feeling of headache. The mattress you're in was too soft and grand to be yours. The feeling of unfamiliarity is eating you up.You look around to see... nothing? The hell why it is so dark.You questioned trashing around. Even worse you're left ankle was chained to the massive bed your in.

Just then a little bit of light came to sight. You almost jumped in fear as the door suddenly opened.

Revealed a tall huge man yet you can't see his face properly. He slammed the door behind him leaving you to see the darkness again. The situation you're in is super scary.

You can't see him yet you can totally feel his dark aura moving closer and closer, not to mention that heavy breathing.

"Who are you? Where am?" You asked, clutching the heavy metal to try and break free although you know you can't, it's too hard and difficult.

"Baby, Baby,My Baby Y/n !" .He said as he lunged at you, trapping your shaken smaller figure on his massive ones.

"Baby finally, finally i have you, I love you a lot Fuck you're really mine" he commented, almost suffocating you with how tight he's holding you. Heck he's even sniffing you and keeps kissing your neck.

No way. "You highness?" You asked bewildered, why did he even kidnap you? why did he take you? So many questions run through your mind but you stay still. You're afraid of him. I mean who doesn't? He's the fucking evil tyrant emperor who everyone feared.

You've noticed him always staring at you when you attended the same events. Now that you thought about it, he's everywhere you go. But you didn't pay no mind to it. You assumed you were just being delusional.

He pulled away and looked at you "Baby , you're trembling,are you scared of me?hmm?are you afraid? Don't be I'll never hurt my wife. But Fuck you're even adorable when you're scared" He said in lowly voice before attacking your lips hungrily kissing you.

[plutotheplum]

Keep My Hand in Yours

emperor!zayne x concubine!reader - read part 1!

summary: the emperor is intent on convincing you that you are worthy enough to be his empress.

cw: nsfw (18+) - mdni!!, smut, fluff, oral sex, vaginal fingering, p in v, praise kink, throne sex, spanking

wc: 6.9k

a/n: part 2 is finally here! thank you for all the sweet comments, i cherish them all!! <3 umm... i do plan on adding some more parts to this series... so yeah, i hope you enjoy! :)

also on ao3!

“She is not with child.”

Zayne’s stern voice cuts through the chatter of his advisors, his fingers tapping against the arm of his throne irritatedly. The drone of voices silences, his advisors lowering their heads in respect.

You stand off to the side, playing with the sleeves of your robes nervously. Perhaps you’d been a little naive to think the advisors would have been accepting of your blossoming relationship with the Emperor. 

Word had spread throughout the palace, and most likely throughout the entire Empire about the new developments that had taken place overnight. The guards had heard you of course, their eyes averted and cheeks flushed pink when Zayne had held your hand and led you out of his chambers.

An unforeseen turn in events, and you had somehow excelled past the advisors’ expectations, garnering the Emperor’s affection for you. Whilst a small number of the Emperor’s advisors were pleased, the majority were not. Standing before them, you can see the disdain on their faces, the hatred that belies their thin smiles. Jealousy is above all however, for their own daughters were once placed forth as noble matches for the Emperor. 

You jolt out of your thoughts when an Imperial guard takes your arm, moving you to stand before the Emperor. Zayne looks down at you, and you can spy the slight softening of his eyes as he watches you bow to him.

“As I have said,” Zayne repeats, “she is not with child.”

“Forgive me, your majesty,” a voice speaks out from behind you, “how can she not be with child? We- we have heard of what occurred.”

Zayne motions for you to spin around, and you do as he wants. You now face his entire court, advisors gathered in hours of the early morning. It was the grand chancellor who spoke, a tall man, his face gaunt. You remember he had served Zayne’s father before he had passed.

“We are both not ready for children,” Zayne explains, “I had the palace physician brew a tea under my command.”

It was true. You had both spoken about the matter, and you simply could not handle carrying a child so soon. Zayne had agreed, snuck you out through the passages in the middle of the night, and had taken you to the palace physician. The brewing of such teas was not unheard of, but certainly not an accepted occurrence, although perhaps more commonly used among the nobility.

“I see…” the grand chancellor says slowly, his gaze fixating on you.

You want to shrink away, somehow hide behind the safety of the Emperor, but you cannot. Instead, you shift on the spot, averting your gaze to the floor as though you were not the very object of interest of this gathering.

“And you intend to continue this foolish endeavor?” 

Your head snaps up at the harsh words, gaze settling on the new voice that had spoken out. A lower ranking official judging by the coloring of his robes, his eyes narrowing as he stares at you.

“It appears you forget yourself,” the Emperor replies coolly. 

“Or perhaps you forget yourself, your majesty,” the official spits, stepping forward, “you would ruin the image of your rule to marry some… some lowly concubine?”

The murmurs of the other members of court are hard to ignore, hushed whispers breaking out at the official’s blatant show of disrespect towards the Emperor.

“And was it not this very court that decided to gather concubines without my knowledge?”

“For child bearing!” the official hisses, pointing his finger towards you accusingly, “not for marriage!”

You swallow harshly at the viciousness of his words, biting back the insults that threaten to spill out. Retaliation in such a meeting would only support the official’s cause. 

“She will be your Empress,” Zayne says calmly, “if you seek to insult my future wife yet again, I will have you removed immediately.”

Heat rushes to your cheeks when he affirms that you’ll be his wife. It may not be the best time, but the light flush covers your cheeks and you try to stop the pull of your lips, a smile threatening to spread across your face.

“If you think I- we will stand for such insolence, you are sorely mistaken, your majesty” the official snarls.

A bitter laugh echoes through the throne room. 

“Be grateful that I am not my father,” Zayne murmurs, “for he would have had your head. Remove your seal.”

The official sputters, looking around at the rest of the court members wildly. Most avoid his eyes, others unconsciously touching their own seals through the fabric of their robes.

You flinch when the official removes his Imperial seal angrily, tossing the little silver square at your feet.

“You have poisoned his mind,” he accuses heatedly, face reddened from his outburst, “and you should do well to remember your station.”

Irritation pricks at your skin, your teeth gritting together. You were well aware of your station, of your status and how you’re perceived. The incessant reminders aren’t doing well to calm your frayed nerves, brows pulling together as you glare at the official. 

“Bow to her.”

The rules of nobility have been set in place for longer than you could possibly know, and yet Zayne seems insistent on breaking them. It’s bold, even for him, to demand such a thing. You turn, shooting him a look, subtly shaking your head. There’s a hint of a smile on the Emperor’s face, as though enjoying this confrontation.

“I- I will do no such thing!” the official protests.

“You have already lost your seal and your position and you still will not do as I say?” Zayne murmurs, leaning forward in his throne.

You watch with wide eyes when the official does bow to you, the upper half of his body lowering. Another round of hushed whispers passes through the room, and you can feel the grand chancellor’s eyes boring into you. His authority was only second to the Emperor, the only man who held a real chance of changing Zayne’s mind.

“Good,” Zayne says, leaning back on his throne, “now leave us.”

The throne room clears out immediately, until you’re the only one remaining. You smile at him, stepping between his legs until you’re standing in front of him.

“I did not take you for a tyrant,” you tease, brushing his hair out of his face.

“And I did not know that protecting my future wife made me a tyrant,” Zayne muses, his arms wrapping around your waist.

He tugs you closer, his head falling forward to rest against your stomach, face burying itself in your robes. A soft sigh leaves you, fingers running through his loose hair, scratching at his scalp lightly.

“Tired?” you ask, arm wrapping around his neck.

The Emperor nods against your stomach, trying to press his face deeper. A laugh escapes you at his needy behavior, your hand managing to cup his jaw to bring him out of his hiding place. 

“The affairs of state have become bothersome,” Zayne says, peering up at you.

“Oh? You did not seem to mind before.”

“Playing coy?” Zayne smiles faintly, tugging you forward until you stumble and land on his lap.

“Hardly,” you whisper, pressing yourself closer as your hands curl into his robes.

The Emperor leans back on his throne, his hands kneading at your hips. You chase after him, eyes fluttering shut as you press your lips against his. Zayne lets out a low noise, drawing you closer, his hand sliding up your back as you kiss. The memory from last night is still fresh, the feeling of his hands on your body ingrained in your mind. 

“I cannot have enough of you,” he whispers, lips brushing over yours.

“You- you ought to rest,” you gasp, tilting your head to let him kiss down the length of your neck.

Zayne kisses your sternum, and back up your neck before he sighs and tucks his face into the crook of your neck. You hold him close, hand smoothing over his hair gently.

“I have made things difficult for you,” you say quietly.

He shakes his head, squeezing your waist reassuringly. 

“I have become complacent,” he murmurs, “simply letting others do as they please.”

You kiss his forehead when he lifts his head, brushing your thumbs over his cheeks. Exhaustion mars the Emperor’s face, his eyes looking sunken and dull. The sudden gathering of his court appears to have drained his energy.

“I shall have to gather them again,” Zayne says, “the trade agreements need attention.”

A smile settles on your face when he kisses your cheeks gently, his hands petting your sides. You move off of his lap, standing up with him reluctantly. Reaching out, you fix his hair and his robes that you had held onto earlier. 

“Finish, then retire to your chambers to rest,” you instruct, patting his chest.

Zayne laughs, his head dipping down to kiss you. You return the kiss eagerly, pulling apart with a few sweet, little pecks to his lips.

“You are already acting like a doting wife,” he whispers.

You flush when he says that, looking away. It’s still hard to get over the fact that Zayne, the Emperor, wants to marry you of all people. The thought of it all makes your palms sweaty, cheeks hot and heart race. There’s a whirlwind upon you, Zayne, tearing apart your preconceived notions of the Empire. 

“I want to dote on you.”

The words tumble from your lips, soft and vulnerable. You’ve never felt this way about a man, never had a man pay attention to you, never been touched by a man before him. It’s as though the Emperor’s expressions are always tender in the way he gazes at you. You’ve never known what it’s like to be in love, but if it’s like this, so startlingly soft and sickeningly sweet, you fear you may be lost in him forever. 

“I- I just meant-” you begin to correct yourself, fidgeting with your robes.

“I know what you meant,” Zayne says softly, his hands finding yours.

Your breath catches in your throat when he lifts your hands to his mouth, his thumbs running over your skin soothingly. Zayne keeps his eyes on you as he kisses across your knuckles, squeezing your hands gently after. 

“I said I take care of what’s mine,” he continues, drawing you close, “and you are mine now.”

You nod jerkily, shoving your face into his chest. The Emperor hums, stroking your hair slowly. Unfortunately, you don’t get to bask in his embrace for any longer, a guard announcing the arrival of a messenger.

“Rest,” you remind him, planting a soft kiss on his cheek.

Zayne nods, squeezing your waist before allowing you to draw away. 

-

The other girls crowd around you immediately when you enter your chambers, their expressions sly and knowing as they tug you towards the middle of the room, soft giggles filling the air.

“Well?” one of them asks, eyes wide with curiosity. 

“Well what?” you ask, feigning innocence.

A chorus of complaints breaks out.

“Stop being shy!”

“We tell you our stories!”

“You must tell us!”

One of the girls reaches for you, her arm hooking with yours. She leans down, her lips brushing against your ear as she whispers conspiratorially.

“Was the Emperor well-endowed?”

“Oh, stop it!”

- 

The grand chancellor has been lurking in the hallways.

You’d noticed the tall man when you had left to make some tea, but after a considerable amount of time, he was still there. The cold breeze outside should’ve been enough to deter him, but you’ve figured he must be intent on speaking to you.

To be frank, you aren’t in the mood for another confrontation just days later from the disastrous court meeting that had occurred. It’s why you hold your breath as you sneak out from your chambers, feet padding against the floor lightly as you try to slip past the grand chancellor’s turned back.

“Will you avoid me for much longer?” he calls out. 

You wince, halting in place. The grand chancellor cannot be avoided forever, you suppose.

“Come along,” he says, his fingers motioning for you to follow him.

You do as he says begrudgingly, following after the grand chancellor. To your surprise, he leads you into the gardens rather than a private room. Snow is yet to fall today, autumn soon drawing to a close in a few weeks. You wipe the fallen leaves that have landed on a nearby bench, sitting down after the grand chancellor does.

It’s suffocatingly awkward, your fingers playing with each other agitatedly as he simply sits next to you, looking out at the plants and trees that make up the gardens. You realize it would be a foolish idea to let your guard down around him. The grand chancellor hadn’t reprimanded Zayne during that meeting and yet you remember the way he had been staring at you. His intentions are hard to discern, his loyalties to the Emperor and the Emperor alone. 

“Much like his father, his majesty is stubborn,” the grand chancellor says, “I have had the pleasure of knowing both men since they were children.”

“I see,” you murmur, peeking a glance at him.

You don’t know why he’s telling you this, half-expecting the man to begin berating you for becoming so close to Zayne. 

“I shall be frank,” he sighs, turning to face you, “I did not expect the Emperor to become so… enamored by you.”

“I did not expect it either,” you grumble defensively.

“His majesty is an intelligent man. He knows of the consequences and yet seems intent on taking you to wed.”

“Consequences?” you echo.

“Political alliances are frail,” he explains, picking up a fallen leaf and examining it, “marriage is the easiest way to prevent a war between regions.”

“We have not been at war for years!” you protest, shaking your head.

“And we will not be for many more,” the grand chancellor assures you, “I am simply warning you of what may come when you are Empress.”

You don’t understand the politics of the Empire, have never been privy to such things. The grand chancellor only adds to the confusion and uncertainty that has been brewing inside your mind. 

“I thought you would dissuade him,” you say quietly.

“The boy deserves happiness,” the grand chancellor murmurs, standing up, “if he wishes to be with you, then I will allow it.” He peers down at you, his lips thinning. “Take caution, child. Envy drives men to madness. The nobility may hide behind their bloodlines, but a cesspool festers within.”

The grand chancellor hands you the withered leaf.

“Loyalties change as the seasons do.”

- 

A week later, the Emperor finds you in the gardens, sitting under a tree.

“You have not come to see me,” Zayne says, sitting down beside you.

“I did not want to trouble you,” you reply.

You reach for his hand, lacing your fingers with his. The Emperor’s fingers are stained with ink, streaks of black covering his pale skin. Zayne’s arm wraps around your waist, pulling you flush against his side.

“The grand chancellor is worried.”

“I surmised as much,” the Emperor sighs, his fingers playing with your robes.

You peer up at him, and Zayne leans down, dropping a kiss to your forehead. There’s a part of you that can’t help but feel you’re putting him in a position that he normally wouldn’t be in if he had simply chosen to marry someone of higher status.

“Do you truly wish to marry me?” you ask quietly, averting your gaze.

“Have I told you otherwise?” Zayne asks in return, his fingers gripping your chin to turn your head so that your eyes meet his again.

The tenderness in his eyes is overwhelming. You feel as though you’re drowning, swallowed up by his irises and his honest gaze. Things would’ve been far simpler if he were someone less important, but you can’t imagine Zayne being anything other than the Emperor, for it would be a disservice to the Empire.

You shift, standing up before settling your hands on his broad shoulders, straddling him as you climb up onto his lap. It’s improper to act so brazenly, but you’ve done far more improper things with him, acted far more brazenly in his presence. The Emperor grunts as you settle yourself on his lap, his arms wrapping around your waist to pull you closer.

“I am not fit to be your Empress,” you whisper.

Zayne doesn’t say anything for a moment, his hand simply rubbing up and down your back soothingly. Your throat is tight and you can feel your lips trembling. You don’t want to cry, but you can’t help it when a sniffle escapes you.

“And you think I am fit to be Emperor?” he whispers, “I am only here because of my father and his father before him and so on.”

“But you are the Emperor,” you insist, voice quavering, “I could not possibly-”

“Forget about nonsensical titles,” Zayne murmurs, his hands cupping your cheeks as his thumbs wipe away the hot tears that have begun to roll down your cheeks, “I meant every word I said that night.”

“B- but-” 

“But nothing,” the Emperor soothes, staring into your eyes intently, “I would sooner have no one than not have you.”

“You are the worst,” you say tearily, pushing at his chest weakly. 

“Ah, I am sure,” he says, a small smile spreading across his face.

The Emperor cradles your head, tilting it to his will as he kisses away the fresh tears that wet your cheeks. He doesn’t stop there, his lips dragging over your skin gently. The Emperor kisses your brows, your closed eyelids, the tip of your nose, every inch of your face that is bared to him.

“Thank you,” you whisper. 

You kiss him gently and Zayne smooths his thumbs over your cheeks, deepening the kiss as he presses his lips against yours firmly. A soft whine leaves you, letting his tongue lick over the seam of your lips before he licks into your mouth, tongue delving deep. The Emperor kisses you as though trying to convince you of his words, as though to make you stay. 

“I want to show you something,” Zayne says, his forehead pressing against yours. You nod, moving to stand up. Zayne doesn’t let you, instead hauling you up into his arms and standing up. A surprised squeak bubbles out of you when you realize the Emperor is carrying you.

“Zayne!” you protest, “Zayne, people will see!”

Zayne only tightens his grip when you begin to squirm, brushing a kiss to your forehead to calm your ministrations.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, people do see. You try to shrink in his grasp, pressing yourself into his chest as the palace staff pause their duties to watch with wide eyes as the Emperor carries you out of the gardens. Some are unable to stop their jaws from slackening, others beginning to point and whisper amongst themselves.

The Emperor hardly bats an eye, his stride strong and purposeful as he carries you through the hallways and courtyards. It’s a statement in and of itself. 

You spy the smirk on an Imperial guard’s face when he opens up the doors to the throne room, your eyes narrowing when the man sends you a wink. The doors slam shut with a resounding thud, leaving only you and Zayne inside.

“Zayne- Zayne, no!” you hiss, hands scrabbling at his shoulders when you realize what he’s doing. 

Your legs kick out, trying to somehow climb up the Emperor’s tall frame. It’s futile against his strength, his hands manhandling you until he sets you down on his throne. If he doesn’t punish you for it, you fear the Heavens will. 

“Stay,” the Emperor says, pushing at your shoulders when you try to shoot up from where you’re sitting, “I command it.”

You sit in place rigidly, back straight. There are centuries of history that make up this throne, and you can’t help but feel that you are somehow dishonoring it all by sitting here. 

“What are you-” your brows furrowing when he suddenly begins to bend.

Fingers digging into the arms of the throne, you feel as though you might faint as you watch the Emperor bow to you before sinking to his knees. Zayne stares up at you expectantly, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

“G- get up!” you whisper heatedly.

There’s no one here, but you can only imagine the severity of the consequences if someone were to stumble in here and find the Emperor on his knees for you.

“Command it,” he says, looking perfectly content in his current position.

“No one can command the Emperor!”

“I will not move unless you exert your authority,” Zayne says simply.

Your eye twitches at his insistence, at his own brazenness. 

“Say it,” he coaxes gently, “say it and I will stand.”

“I-” your breath catches in your throat awkwardly. You flush when Zayne nods his head encouragingly, your voice breathy when you begin to speak again. “I c-command you to stand.”

“Very good,” he murmurs, standing up and moving towards you.

Zayne smiles at you, his head dipping to crash his lips onto yours, his hands braced on the arms of his throne. You gasp, arms wrapping around his neck as he kisses you fiercely. The Emperor continues his onslaught of kisses, dragging his lips down your neck as his fingers pull free the knot holding your robes together.

“You think your station determines your worth,” Zayne whispers, his teeth scraping your shoulder, “but this- you are worth more to me than the finest jade.”

“Stop,” you whisper, eyes slipping shut, “you must stop speaking like that. It does awful things to my heart.”

He laughs softly, kissing between your breasts. You bite your lip as his mouth envelops your breast, his tongue swirling around your nipple. His teeth catch on it, tugging playfully before letting it pop free as he switches breasts. You run your fingers through his long hair, head tipping back against the throne as your body convulses.

The Emperor holds you in place, letting his tongue lave over your areola, his half-lidded eyes peering up at you to catch your reactions. You give him a weak smile and Zayne moans around your breast, his hand squeezing at the fat of your other breast.

Your dazed eyes watch as he kisses down your body, kissing your hip then your navel. He sinks to his knees once again, and you can’t find it in yourself to reprimand him, lost in the haze of lust and love. Zayne kisses the curls of hair on your mound, his hands gripping your calves to help guide your legs over his shoulders.

“I have missed this,” he whispers, his thumbs pulling apart your folds.

“As have I,” you sigh.

You moan when Zayne licks up a stripe over your cunt, collecting your arousal on his tongue. He rests his cheek against your thigh, watching intently as your aching hole clenches around nothing, watching as more slick drips from you.

“Stop staring,” you mumble, pushing at his head gently.

“I enjoy the sight,” he says in return.

Your thighs twitch when he pushes the hood of your clit up a little more, exposing the swollen bud. Zayne groans, kissing the inside of your thigh firmly before licking over your cunt again. A strangled gasp rips out of your throat, hands tightening in his hair as he sucks your clit into his mouth.

“Z- Zayne- ah- hah!” 

A soft whimper escapes when he kisses your clit, his fingers dimpling into the flesh of your thighs harshly. Zayne pulls you to the edge of the throne, his face burying deeper as he groans again, drinking down your slick. 

You squeal when he fucks his tongue into you, body shaking uncontrollably as you fist his hair tighter. He hisses against your cunt, renewing his efforts. You can feel his mouth opening wider, trying to consume you whole, licking and sucking desperately at every inch of velvety, sensitive flesh he can reach.

His nose rubs against your clit, and you’re seeing stars. The Emperor makes an obscene noise and you can feel his tongue moving inside of you, the feeling making your thighs clamp around his head. 

“Have- have you ever put your fingers inside of yourself?” he asks, raising his head.

You shake your head, watching as his fingers stroke over your clit lovingly, his mouth pressing open-mouthed kisses to your knee.

“May I?” the Emperor whispers, his finger prodding at your hole.

You give him a jerky nod, legs falling apart a little more for him. He smiles up at you, his finger sinking into you slowly. You whimper at the sensation, clenching around his finger. Zayne adds another soon after, and you’re panting desperately, hips bucking as he curls them inside of you. 

“The scroll said to do something like this,” he mutters under his breath.

“You- oh- you read a scroll?” you grit out.

“It was quite informative,” Zayne murmurs, beginning to move his fingers.

“Why must you be so- ah!” 

You don’t get to finish your sentence, your knuckles turning white as you grip the throne for stability as he latches his mouth back onto your clit, his fingers thrusting in and out of you. The heat inside your stomach grows more intense with each flick of his tongue, his teeth scraping against your sensitive flesh for good measure.

Moans have begun to fill the air, and you can’t find it in yourself to care anymore, letting go completely. You guide his head to where you want him, toes curling against his back, crumpling his silk robes. Zayne’s mouth works with his fingers diligently, his fingers crooking up a little more to graze the spot where you need it most.

You peek down to see the pink flush on his cheeks and your back arches, his name leaving your mouth in a cry as you come on his fingers and his tongue. The Emperor moans as you writhe, his fingers moving in and out of you a couple more times before freeing them from your clenching walls.

Chest heaving, you pant, slumping back in the throne as he kisses across your puffy folds and sensitive cunt. Your thighs twitch a little when he peppers soft, little kisses against your clit and you can’t help but think the man has an obsession with its ability to bring you such pleasure.

The Emperor kisses up your body and you cup his jaw, kissing him sweetly.

“I fear this throne may be ruined,” you whisper against his lips.

He laughs, his nose nudging yours gently, “I recall promising to take you on it.”

“Before that,” you stand up on shaky legs, pushing at his chest until he sits back on his throne.

Adoration glimmers in his eyes, watching as your loose robes slip from your shoulders, pooling at your feet. You stand bare before the Emperor, and you catch the slight spreading of his thighs to relieve the ache of his cock.

This time it’s you that’s sinking to your knees, pulling his robes free. The muscles of his abdomen clench when you run your fingers down his chest, his hand coming up to cover his flushed face.

“Why are you shy now?” you accuse, pouting up at him.

His thighs twitch when you curl your hand around his cock and you can feel the throb of his fat, hot length. 

“You do not have to-” he whispers when he sees your head dip.

“I want to,” you say stubbornly.

Zayne nods in acquiescence, moaning when you begin to drag your hand up and down his cock. It’s a little intimidating when you stare at it up close, but you swallow down your worries, leaning forward to kiss the tip experimentally.

His cock twitches in response, pre-cum beading at the tip. Your tongue darts out, licking up the little glob, feeling the taste of him spread across your tongue.

“Zayne,” you whisper, breath fanning over his cock, “Zayne, you must watch me.”

The Emperor groans at your lilting voice, his eyes opening the moment your mouth envelops him. His hips buck and you nearly seize up at the feeling of the head of his cock hitting the back of your throat. You mewl around him, breathing through your nose, tongue swirling before your head begins to bob up and down.

“Fuck,” Zayne hisses, his fingers spreading across your scalp, “my love, you are devious.”

You hum in response, pulling off of his cock in favor of giving more attention to the tip of it. You swirl your tongue, tongue flicking at the flared head and it’s enough to make Zayne whine, his thighs spreading wider for you. 

“Can you take it deeper?” he asks, his fingers trailing down the curve of your cheek.

“I shall try,” you murmur, mouth opening for him.

He hooks his thumb into the corner of his mouth, cupping your chin before his thumb spreads over the flat of your tongue. You smile, eyes flashing with mischievousness as you suck his thumb into your mouth, tongue flicking against the pad of it. 

Zayne shoots you a searing look and you watch as he grips the base of his cock. He drags the tip of his cock against your closed lips, entranced as he watches his pre-cum smears across your lips. His other hand presses at the back of your head and your mouth opens again, letting him guide his cock into your mouth.

“Just like that,” he whispers, “good girl.”

You can feel arousal shooting through you at the praise, slick pooling between your thighs yet again. The ache is so unbearable that you shove your hand between your thighs, rubbing at your clit.

The Emperor pushes your head gently and you go willingly, slurping and sucking around his thick cock. Saliva drips from your mouth, coating his cock and his balls, strings of it landing on the edge of his throne. You rub at your clit faster, eyes fluttering as he brushes your loose hair away from your face.

“A- ah,” Zayne rasps, “hah- my love.”

The term of endearment is enough to have you taking it upon yourself to sink down his cock even more. The tufts of his black hair hit your nose for a moment, but you’re inexperienced and you’ve overestimated your own abilities. The feeling of his cock filling your throat is too much, and you choke, throat seizing, causing you to pull off with a hoarse cough as your eyes water.

Concern flits across Zayne’s face, his thumb swiping over your swollen lips. You give him a watery smile, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He sighs in relief when he sees you’re okay, leaning forward to place a tender kiss to your lips.

“So willful,” the Emperor murmurs.

He slides his hands under your armpits, picking you up and setting you down on his lap.

“I can do it again,” you mumble, gaze lowering to see his cock pressed between your bodies.

Zayne smiles, petting at your sides, “as much as I enjoyed the feeling, I cannot have my darling choking on my cock.”

“I was not choking,” you whine, hiding your face in the crook of his neck.

“If you insist,” Zayne soothes, “but when we are married, I will have many more opportunities to watch you swallow my cock.”

The Emperor’s constant promise of marriage has your heart lurching and you lean forward, crushing your lips against his. He grunts in surprise at your sudden action but returns the kiss just as eagerly, squeezing at your hips.

You whine into his mouth, his hair tickling your skin as he presses forward, his hips rolling up into yours. You can feel his hard cock between your thighs, the length dragging between your folds. 

Zayne groans at the sensation, his head falling back and you take the opportunity to kiss down his neck, rolling your hips wantonly, your nails digging into his broad shoulders.

“Who are you?” he whispers, groping the fat of your ass.

“W- what?” you pull back, confusion spreading across your face.

The Emperor guides your hips to continue moving, your folds hugging his cock as you grind against it.

“Who are you?” Zayne asks again, “your title, what is it?”

Pleasure has made your mind hazy, and you can’t discern whether he’s playing a game of some sort with his questions, or whether he’s suffering from some sort of untimely amnesia.

“Your concubine,” you reply, “I thought-”

You jolt in his arms when he suddenly lands a heavy spank to your ass, his eyes narrowing when he hears your answer.

“Incorrect,” Zayne murmurs, his hand squeezing your ass in warning.

“I am your concubine- ah!”

Zayne shakes his hand, spanking you twice. You can feel the prickly heat spread across your skin, the pain searing. You glare up at him, and he smiles back, his hand smoothing over your reddened backside. 

“Who are you, my love?” he whispers, his nose nudging yours.

Oh. Oh. 

The Emperor’s insistence is a remarkable thing, you think. He may be even more stubborn than you are. Zayne’s fingers tapping against your cheek brings you out of your thoughts, your eyes meeting his. 

“I- I am your Empress,” you say quietly.

“Precisely.”

Zayne slots his lips over yours and you mewl, your hips beginning to rock again, inner thighs wet with your slick and his pre-cum smeared over his abdomen. He kisses you over and over until you’re short of breath and your lips are swollen and slick with his spit.

“Will you take my cock, my love?” 

“Y- yes,” you say airily, lifting your hips as he grips the base of his cock, “please.”

Zayne squeezes your hip, watching as you bite your lip and sink down on his cock. His cock is just as girthy as you remember, filling up your needy hole perfectly. Your body falls forward at the feeling and Zayne kisses your cheek, his arms wrapping around your waist.

“Always take my cock so well,” he praises.

Your hands plant themselves against his chest as your head tips back, taking what you want from him. Hips rising and falling, airy moans filling the air, you ride the Emperor. Zayne moans with you, his hands kneading at the flesh of your sides before drifting to take handfuls of your ass too.

“So good,” you slur, the force of your movements increasing, “feels so good, Zayne.”

“I know,” Zayne whispers, watching the bounce and sway of your breasts as you move atop him, “use me, my love.”

You do as he says, using him to drive yourself further to the edge of pleasure. The sounds filling the throne room are lewd, the clap of skin echoing throughout coupled with your shared noises.

Your thighs burn as you roll your hips, taking his cock deeper into the heat of your cunt, feeling it punch into the most sensitive spot inside of you. It’s too much, the mind-numbing sensations and your own body tiring with every movement.

You slump against him, hips slowing to a pitiful stop, his fat cock still stuffed inside of you. It twitches and you whimper, peering up at Zayne desperately.

“Husbands should take care of their wives,” you mumble, lips pressing against his.

“But we are not yet married,” he whispers teasingly. 

Zayne kisses you slowly, his hand sliding up your neck and stopping to cup your cheek. He molds you to his will, maneuvering your body as he sees fit, grabbing at every inch of flesh he can reach.

“But I am yours,” you say earnestly, “and I will be yours till the day I die.”

“You will, won’t you?” Zayne smiles, drawing you closer, “nothing makes me happier, my dear.”

You wail when he suddenly ruts up into you, balls slapping against your ass as he tightens his grip to bounce you up and down on his lap. Your hands lose their holds on his shoulders, scrabbling for stability until you find purchase on the top of his throne. 

The Emperor is fucking you on his throne. 

You try to feel some sense of mortification, but you can’t, the feeling of his cock erasing all sensible thoughts from your mind. Zayne slaps your ass and you squeak, body falling forward even more. Your breasts press into his face and you whine when he mouths at them, sucking a hardened nipple into his mouth.

The Emperor’s name leaves your mouth in a pleading chant and he answers your needs, pulling you down until your cunt is flush with the base of his cock, pussy swallowing up his length completely. Zayne slows to a grind, keeping his cock stuffed inside of you. 

You curl an arm around his neck, hugging him closer to your breasts and Zayne groans, his mouth opening wider to try and take in your entire breast. He stares up at you, the flush on his cheeks deepened and eyes so, so soft. 

Your lips slot over his as soon as his mouth detaches from your breast, your lips working against his slowly and sweetly, hips swaying back to meet the slow thrusts of his hips.

“You have ruined me,” you confess, cheek resting on his shoulder.

“Better it be me than some other man,” he whispers.

You agree with him on that. Zayne has given you far more than you could’ve possibly dreamed, the twist of fate bringing you something, or rather, someone to cherish.

“You are everything, Zayne.”

He groans at your bold words, his head falling back against his throne. You come undone in slow waves, body trembling as he comes with you, his cock kicking inside of you as hot cum spurts from the tip, filling you up. You can feel the thickness of it, cum spilling into you for a few moments longer as your hips slow to a stop.

You both breathe heavily, his chest moving under yours. A thin sheen of sweat covers your bodies, robes forgotten as they lie at the foot of the throne. 

A soft smile graces your lips as you move his hair out of his eyes, tilting his head to kiss his forehead.

“You spoil me,” Zayne mutters, nuzzling into your palm.

“I think it is the other way around,” you laugh breathlessly.

He sighs, slumping in his throne, his cock still inside of you. You can feel it softening, no longer plugging you full as cum begins to leak out from your pussy.

“I may need more tea,” you whisper.

Zayne huffs in amusement, his fingers collecting his viscous cum. He smears it across your pussy, his fingers catching onto your clit as he rubs his cum onto the little bud. He lifts his hand to your mouth and you accept eagerly, staring into his eyes as you suck his fingers clean of cum.

“Minx,” he mutters.

You giggle, kissing the pads of his fingers affectionately, shifting to sit on his thigh. Zayne smiles in return, his hands massaging your sore thighs. He kisses your cheek a few times, peppers a few kisses here and there over your shoulder.

“Feeling better?” Zayne asks, nuzzling your cheek.

“Much,” you whisper, smiling up at him, “but I fear I may not be able to walk.”

“Shall I carry you again?” the Emperor whispers.

You roll your eyes, prodding your fingers into his chest, “I did not enjoy that.”

“Lying is punishable by death.”

“You are insufferable,” you whisper.

Zayne leans forward for another kiss, but you deny him, slipping off of his lap. He laughs when your thighs tremble, reaching out to catch you by the waist before your knees buckle.

He tugs you onto his lap, thwarting your escape as he kisses you again. You think you won’t be leaving this place anytime soon.

-

Zayne doesn’t think there’s anything more beautiful in this world than when you’re sleeping. 

The slow rise and fall of your chest, the sweet innocence of your face, your hair splayed against the pillows, the gods must favor him for they’ve sent him a vision.

He smiles as he watches you stir in your sleep, brushing away the hair that’s fallen onto your face. Zayne can’t resist leaning closer, his fingers tracing the curve of your cheek, feeling your soft skin under his.

Zayne likes it when you smile, when you glare, the way you protest against his subtle teases. He’s never met someone as endearing as you, never bothered to take interest in another until you came along with that tray of tea clutched in your hands. He hasn’t told you about how his own heart flutters at the mere thought of you, and doesn’t think he will. He’d be better off showing you instead.

Above all, he remembers when you’d stumbled into his chambers, your flustered disposition as you’d apologized. He’d been lonely before you, trapped in a dull existence with others meandering through his life without purpose.

But you’ve changed things now. He feels free when he hears your laugh, the light in your eyes warming him from within. The world around him seems brighter, sparks of color appearing in places he had never seen before. 

You had painted the world for him.

[mothiir]

which primarchs are into their partner crying?

cw: dubcon, noncon, explicit sexual content.

Fulgrim - absolutely loves it when you breaks down into overwhelmed tears, sobbing with pleasure, unable to form words as he wrings another orgasm from you. He thinks you are beautiful when you cry, and won’t hesitate to tell you this, cooing it as he licks the tears from your face, all while whispering in your ear that you are beautiful, perfect, darling, all his. He will fuck you until you cry, then make you sit for a portrait — if the tears stop flowing at any point he will sigh, like all of this is a great inconvenience, set his paints aside and busy himself between your thighs until you begin to weep once more. Yes. Perfect. Like that. He is not above whispering degrading filth into your ears when you are at your most vulnerable — telling you what a stupid sloppy whore you are after you have just taken his load to your face, or cooing about how wonderful it will be to watch you bend over and take his legion, one after the other. Once you start weeping, he will gather you close, kiss your neck, tell you not to fret, that he doesn’t mean it, not really. He just loves seeing you look so puffy-lipped and red-eyed.

Konrad - as ever with konrad, it is a weird dramatic mix of he really really likes it when you cry, loves it when you’re weeping and begging him to stop hurting you, is never harder than when you are sobbing to the point where you get snotty and ugly and gross…and yet he also hates the fact that he enjoys it and will not admit how much it turns him on. the end result of this is that he will make you cry, and then blame you for being such a weak little human — you are innocent of any crime, which is why you are in his bed rather than on his flaying rack. Why must you snivel so? Has he not been merciful? Has he not been kind?

Alpharius/Omegon — they love it when you cry, but in very specific circumstances, in that they prefer it to be more psychological. They like it when you get teary with confusion, unable to tell which one is touching you, or which of their sons fucked you the night before. They thrive in subterfuge, and rendering you a teary, frustrated mess before fucking you senseless makes them feel oh so good at their job.

Perturabo — of course he likes it. He likes it when you cry because he’s too big for you to take, when you are stretched to breaking point around his dick, but still have another dozen inches to take; he likes it when.— normally despite, rather than because of, his efforts — you cum, and cry from the sheer overwhelming sensation. basically, he likes tears because they make him feel Big and Strong and Manly.

The Emperor — had to throw him in there, because you cannot tell me that one of Big E’s favourite things isn’t cooing and murmuring encouragement while you cry that he’s too big, it’s too much, you can’t take it. And he will say yes you can, you absolutely can, he’s not a god but he can perform miracles — namely, sheathing his considerable sword in your dagger-sized scabbard. And yes, he will say that almost verbatim. He’s a barbarian warlord. He has a limited range of metaphors.

As a bonus: Leman Russ absolutely hates it when you cry. He doesn’t mind a bit of scrabbling and kicking, but he does not like whining and snivelling, and — depending on the nature of your relationship — he will either stop at once and cling to you, or scruff you and tell you to stop that whining because he’s getting soft.

[urfavstan]

Emperor Sylus!- is late—always late. He never manages to make it to his meetings on time. Lately, he’s contented himself with sending staff in his stead. His excuses usually involve sickness, but the issue is that this particular sickness is love sickness—one only remedied by his wife, the Empress.

Despite the exorbitant power he holds over the lands, nothing brings him to his knees quicker than her. She is the fond object of his affection, the being he would worship religiously, all merely because she exists.

He locks himself away with her, day after day, in the imperial suite. Only their most trusted staff are permitted to even knock, and only for the most dire or basic needs—such as the occasional meal or snack he requests for his beloved.

Their time there is spent tenderly intertwined, two hearts beating as one, bodies moving in rhythm to a song only they know—seeking what was meant for them alone to find in this life.

[femmeftal]

﹒`₊ 01  ┆︎  EMPEROR.

.   ݁pairings : emperor!mark x reader

.   ݁warnings : 18+ soft sex, pet names, biting, fem!reader, breeding, ( p in v ) mating press

EMPEROR!MARK who is bigger than all those years you have been together, muscles outlined in the new outfit that he is acquired to wear His new look made many viltrums look up to him finally claiming the title emperor finally successfully conquering

EMPEROR!MARK who is so much different behind those closed doors of your shared adorned bedroom, colors reminding you both of your old apartment you both had before all of the events placed. barely seeing that place from being booked with so much places to save, helping others, etc .

EMPEROR!MARK that is seen as a big scary ruler but truly is just a man who wants to protect his woman, to make her proud, make her worries go away just like how any other man would feel about theirs. of course he would want to make his queen safe .

EMPEROR!MARK that is always seen with his beautiful smaller mate, you looked so smaller than him when you guys stood next to each other. you didn’t mind one bit and sort of finding it attractive, your red tinted cheeks appearing every time that his arm wrapped around your waist to shield you.

EMPEROR!MARK whose libido starts to rise, brushing it off as just an hormonal thing and not bothering to take care of it. he didn’t want to bother his precious queen for stupid issues like this, when there could be more worse problems to take care of than just sex

EMPEROR!MARK that offers to take his queen to a space trip, wanting her to see how beautiful this galaxy truly is. smiling every time you guys star gaze at the multicolored sky, tinted with purples, blues, and harsh pinks. if he could store the galaxy in a jar for you he’d have done it so many times just to make you oh so happy.

EMPEROR!MARK who gets you a pet, chuckling when the puppy like creature jumps into your arms and licks your face covering it with sticky saliva. finally coming up with a name for the red creature, gaéya.

EMPEROR!MARK that goes away for atleast a day, handling missions to expand the planet viltrum. sending his wife messages on how much he misses her every single second, minute and hour and has a big surprise for her when he returns back to her.

EMPEROR!MARK when coming back has a big bouquet of flowers for you, exotic looking flowers being different color patterns than each others the wild colors colliding with the others. the scenery of the flowers being beautiful soon placing them into a decorated glass vase for flowers.

EMPEROR!MARK who wants to start a family with you, no matter how much children you give to him he would be so grateful for what he receives, being hesitant to bring up the subject he waits until the time is extremely perfect when your hormones are acting up again. he knows when too.

EMPEROR!MARK who finally talks to you about it in bed, your Lacey night gown revealing your soft beautiful skin. caressing your glowing face those eyes even looking up at him while he speaks his mind, you looked so.. sexy to him he couldn’t help but to release his stress onto you everything unwinding when your lips collide kissing.

“ my beautiful women.. my queen “ speaking between the breath taking kisses your tongues fought each other for dominance the taste of you reminding him back of your guys first time with each other, flipping you over to be on top of him he finally broke the kiss. the trail of saliva following you both soon seeing you lick your plump lips, the lewd scene made his soft member start growing erect under you. your sultry giggle egged him on the feeling on your nails massaging his chest “ oh emperor, if you were this hungry for me why wouldn’t you just take me then and there? “ your words were like a porn scene, you could feel your husbands hands trailing underneath your night gown raising it up to access your rear.

“ mm i’ve waited so long~ “ slowly reaching to the curve of his neck you began to place your kisses against the muscle of his neck, the remaining saliva that had sat on your lips smeared against his skin. softly sucking on the desired area you choose, you knew it wouldn’t do anything but the thought had count and that was all that matters. “ tell me when you want to do to me emperor “ whispering in his ear and tempting him, his grip on your ass slightly tightened and so did his pants he wore for sleeping, the space between you and your soulmate faltered soon only being entangled into each others body “ i want to do so much to you, give you my kids so little me’s would be running around “ hooking his rough fingers around the hem of your panties, wiggling your hips to help him achieve his goal of removing your panties. finally you felt the air hit your bare glistening cunt, gasping from the cold sudden air mark began his attacking on your neck making it his payback for yours. mewling the sensation had distracted you from the rustling of pants being undone, biting your bottom lip you’d slowly rock your hips against marks

“ mm..please emperor i need you to fill me”

the slap of his hard member had surprised you, feeling the skin on skin contact with his fat cock against your sopping pussy had you shying away. eyes slightly squinting from the sensational feeling of mark’s member sliding between your wet pussy lips making soft audible wet sounds, you and mark haven’t had intercourse in forever. so the exercises and yoga you’ve been doing in your free time when your lovely ruler was away has tightened you up, pressing your hips down to at least inter tip inside you could feel marks hand pulling you right back up trying to pry you away from his cock

“ wait for me princess, you can wait for me yea? “ his question sent you overboard trying to wiggle your hips back down, no way in hell you were gonna get blue balled from him trying to be all patient with you.

getting flipped over again on your back, the soft cushions bouncing you up and down vaguely. watching him stroke his cock made your patients fly out the window your eyes following the movement of his hand. precum trailing down his tip and sliding down all the way down to his base where he was slightly trimmed. “ mark.. do not tease me like this pleaase.. need you so badly my king “ your eyes were filled with desperation and lust.

he knew what he was doing making you watch him jack off to atleast prep himself before entering you, after what felt like minutes you could see him reach for your legs pulling them back to your shoulders you could feel your muscles stretch making it be slightly uncomfortable, you and mark

had made eye contact except his eyes had dominance filled in them his cock being painfully hard, every single time his member had pulsed it slapped against his lower abdomen. “ tell me you’re ready and prepared for me. “ he said softly the glimse in your eyes said everything, trying to stutter out a response oh so quickly “ m ready! just put it in please.. i want to mother your kids! “

grabbing onto the base of his cock and leading the tip between your folds, it had took multiple times to at least enter his tip inside of you. mark knew he was above average from the moment you told him he was, squealing when you guys last had sex.

you were already a moaning panting mess just from the tip, so when mark had started pushing his cock into your gummy velvet walls you were lost and brain dead. mouth opened to be agape into a “ O “ like shape preparing to mewl even more mark finally pushed in the most he could, not trying to break you from entering all if his inches into your small pussy. it was so nasty how he just stared down at your messy face, you could already feel the swell of tears blinding your eyes. “ ohh.. fuck it feels shoo good “

seeing you pant like a dog in heat had flipped a switch in mark like something told him to start pounding into you, and so he did grabbing onto your delicate frame giving it a grip that would atleast help with keeping you in place. pulling his hips out to atleast get his cock all the way out until the tip, he slowly but steadily pushed himself back in, grabbing anything he could that was on your body. caressing your soft plump breasts and imagining how soft and round they would look when your milk would produce for your heir that you’ll give him.

his hips would roll in a circular motion to hit all the spots he could find, it was effortlessly the best sex you’d ever had with him. he would ruin you for every man but him breaking you down just to build you up .

“ mm.. markk ouu mhm keep going.. “ your small mains and pleads encouraged him to continue his slow yet hard pounds, his sack meeting your wet plump cheeks. being covered in your messy arousal, marks torso bent down making your mating press get deeper. all for him to latch your nipples into his hungry mouth, sucking them like he was trying to pry milk from them. giving both of your breasts attention he left your legs hanging up to you, using his hand to tease and twirl your nipples in his fingers sometimes even squeezing then while he focused on pounding your pussy. “ mark m gonna cumm.. please god “ this was true love making, feeling your the middle of your chest having a wet patch of saliva getting licked all the way to your neck also sucking on it leaving small red marks that’d would be there for weeks. “ cum for me.. we will both … hughh fuck we will both cum “ he said groans and whimpers catching up to his words, the thrusts of his hips speeding up to chase you and his orgasm. quickly pulling you into a kiss he would grab your arms holding your delicate wrists, practically feeling the way his cock was getting squeezed by your tightening walls had indicated you were close. taking the opportunity to make you cum, the continuation of his hips circling made the band in your stomach snap and so did his, moaning into each other’s mouth you both came. mark still thrusting from his stuttering hips “ ohh.. markk “ his heavy body slightly collapsing onto yours to give each other a break.

all work owned by @femmeftal , requests open

[cherrysweets-world]

Eyes of the Gods Masterlist - Complete

Pairing - Caracalla x fem!Reader, Geta x fem!Reader, Caracalla x fem!Reader x Geta

Summary - It takes only once for them to notice you. Nothing will be the same after you have caught the eyes of gods.

Warnings - minors dni, 18+, unedited, blood, background character death, gladiator fighting, dub-con, pining, obsessive affection, historical inaccuracies, mentions of past domestic violence + child abuse, induced vomiting, reader is intoxicated at certain points, threesome, possessive/obsessive/unhealthy relationships and behaviours, attempted murder, mentions of pregnancy, mentions of miscarriage (not reader’s),more to be added

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Mood board

Helpful Info

. Caracalla does not have syphilis in this fic - his illness is more so caused by issues at birth

. Questions/asks I have been sent about this fic are tagged with- #eyes of the gods asks - in case you want to read more tidbits and other people’s thoughts

. Lotsss of mentions of pregnancy + breeding kink but we will not actually see the Reader pregnant/giving birth (apart from one-shots) for those who hate pregnancy trope

pictures from radio times article and google

I do not give permission for any of my works to be posted elsewhere

ao3 - cherrysweetswrites

[lovebugism]

✶ ┄ HOUNDS OF LOVE !

part one | part two

summary: you and marcus live lightyears apart within the city walls when emperor geta takes a greater liking to you than expected. you start to find a strange sense of understanding within the crazed emperor, while general acacius plots your escape. (11k)

pairing: marcus acacius / f!reader, emperor geta / f!reader

contents: established relationships, angst, hurt/comfort, cw for mentions of war, mentions of sex work, brief mentions of emotional abuse (geta has anger issues he's working on), swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, unprotected sex, exhibitionism & voyeurism) (this is another dark fic!! please heed the warnings!!)

“Meet me in the garden,” you pant against the General’s mouth as you kiss him with a desperate sort of fervor. It’s all wet and hungry and unforgiving, like biting into an apple. “At sunset, on the morrow. Say you’ll meet me there.”

Despite your delicate touch, you cradle Marcus in a most violent hold. You keep him impossibly close with one hand wrapped around his neck, tanned and taut with the strain of war. Your other twists in his hair, dancing through the greying curls of fine silk. You embrace the General within the candlelit crypt where, before now, only death seemed to roam.

Marcus stands as still as the statues of ghosts surrounding you. You lick into his mouth like you plan to breathe life back into his lungs, even while he withers into nothingness at your feet. A thin layer of your spit coats the scruff of his chin. He balls his calloused hands into fists at his sides and pretends a part of you isn’t glittering upon him. He holds onto plausible deniability like a shield.

“It is not safe,” Marcus murmurs in a gruff whisper when you pull back to take a breath. His lidded eyes dart over your kissed face — gaze heavied, lips swollen. Beautiful devil, fallen angel. “You know this.”

Not anymore, he wants to say. Not while you belong to Them.

“Why not?” you challenge, always so girlishly gentle in your stubbornness. “Everyone will be at the feast, Marcus— No one will see us, I’m sure of it.”

Your eyes flit between his kissed mouth and dark-eyed gaze. Universes shine in your irises despite the shadows of the labyrinthine tomb. Marcus feels a white-hot knife twisting in his chest as he resists the urge to hold you.

“It’s the world we live in now, petal. There is little use in questioning it.”

“But why?” you question, anyway. “Why must we live in this world, hm? The war is over— We could make our own, somewhere far away from the city. Somewhere no one could ever find us—”

You create heavens with your naivety.

Marcus burns them down with words.

“The Emperors would not stand for losing their general. For them, the war is never finished,” the General interjects in a sorrowful deadpan, aching when your face twists with grief. “And if they misplaced you? They… They would burn cities to the ground in their hunt… They would set the world aflame before they stopped searching for you.”

Marcus knows this because he knows himself — every star in the sky would burn out before he stopped looking for you. He knows this, too, because he knows the Emperors. Perhaps better than anyone else in the entire world. 

Geta and Caracalla were born with the belief that they possessed ownership over everything they touched. Anyone stealing from their Empire would meet a swift and tortuous demise. They were merciless gods who dangled life and death on their fingertips. Only those who kissed the ring would make it out of their rule alive.

And you knew it, too. 

That was the worst part of it all: you knew it.

Tomorrow comes and passes like rolling summer clouds, slow and heavy and suffocating. You watch from the royal garden as the sky turns from a glittering sapphire to milky shades of peach and lavender. Another day gone by that you’ve spent grieving on your own. 

Though time marches mercilessly on, threatening to untie unbreakable bonds, it changes little of how much you and Marcus have grown together. Like cherry trees kissed with the promise of spring, with your roots tangled gracelessly together. It’s a knot that cannot be undone, not even by the promise of death. 

And for that, you figure you must be grateful.

Because as you sit on the stone steps of an artificial lake, twirling your fingers in the warm water of the koi pond, you wonder how dreadful it must be for the multi-colored carp. To swim in circles your whole life, to think the world is only as big as the bricks holding you hostage. 

At least you know what it means to grow up in the rolling green of an infinite countryside. At least now you have gardens to roam in the greatest city in the world. At least now you get to live.

A breeze sweeps suddenly through the garden, rippling the crystalline water and rustling the bright green leaves over your head. It carries the soft sound of footsteps scraping the stone trail. Your ears perk, your heart stops, and your head whips over your shoulder. You hope to see Marcus standing at the steps below you.

Your chest tightens and deflates all at once at the sight of Emperor Geta.

He’s adorned in his white-gold cloak, with his laurels sat atop his strawberry-blonde curls, and carrying a jeweled ring on each finger. The sunlight paints the man in flaxen rays of light. The rainbow-colored flowers seem to bloom with every one of his steps. All you can think is how beautiful he is — much too pretty to be so cruel.

“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Emperor concedes, eyes wide and palms splayed in surrender. His sandals scuff the cobbles with each hesitant stride.

“No, of course not,” you blurt with a rapid shake of your head, a quickness sure to give away your choked-back terror. “I just… I only thought you’d be at the dining hall with the rest of the court.”

“I was. Until the handmaidens notified me of your absence.”

You meet his wide-eyed expression with a narrowed gaze, lips curling into an unsure smile. “How can I be absent from a place I do not belong, Your Majesty?” you quip, though your voice threatens to shake.

Geta’s brows furrow. His ringed fingers twitch at his sides. “Belong?” he echoes.

“The feast is for nobility, and I grew up in a brothel,” you answer, giggling quietly under your breath. “I am certainly the farthest thing from royalty.”

You flash him a gentle smile and playful gaze, but the Emperor only frowns. 

He can hardly stomach the thought of it — of his most precious thing living in the countryside, surrounded by filth, touched by unworthy hands. He’s glad you’re now, where only he can touch you. Where he can make you clean.

“There is a place for you there, nonetheless,” Geta tells you and takes another step closer. He stands at the bottom of the stone steps and tilts his chin to his chest. His chocolate eyes harden as he presses more firmly, “And I will see that you attend.”

His sudden glacial disposition makes your stomach wrench. You’ve grown so used to him now, learned all the ways to keep him satisfied, that you’ve forgotten how quickly angered he can be. You don’t want to remember his wrath. 

You nod at the invitation with a wavering smile, knowing you aren’t at liberty to turn him down, and rise from your spot by the pool.

You hold your gown in both hands as you descend the stairs, flinching slightly when Geta rushes to help you. Sometimes, you think he can sense your worry, or that he regrets snapping at you the way he does. Either way, his efforts to pivot the situation are apparent to you — like he never learned how to apologize, so he’s forced to improvise in the matter.

His warm, petaled hand engulfs you to ease you down the tricky cobbles. 

“I only mean that… it is strange. Being without there… Or anywhere, really,” he admits, talking slowly like each word is foreign to him. His gaze darts from yours to the vacant path ahead. “I find that I am looking for you in places I knew you could not be. It’s foolish, I know.”

His gentleness is perhaps more striking than his rage.

“It isn’t foolish, Your Majesty,” you insist as you reach the bottom of the staircase. You peer at him through your lashes and fake another smile. “I just didn’t know you were such a poet.”

Geta doesn’t understand your meaning. Where was the poetry in his words? How did such burdensome feelings of tenderness make him a poet? 

“Neither did I,” he muses, guiding you out of the garden with his hand in yours.

Though still riddled with feelings of uncertainty, Geta is strangely moved by how you’re looking at him now — with the sun sparkling in your softened gaze, more gentle than anyone deserves to be looked at. So he figures he can be a poet for you, if he must.

You bathe again in the rosehip oil Geta always insists you wear, and dress yourself in the fine silk gown you know he prefers. The pale blue fabric drapes off your shoulders and flows to your ankles, cinched at the waist with a jewel-encrusted belt of gold. Your skin and body are adorned, in this moment alone, with perhaps more money than you’ve ever seen in your life. 

The thought makes your head swim as you amble to the dining hall. 

The silent guards at your side make no effort to rush you for fear of the Emperors’ wrath. Still, though, the notion that they are commissioned to ensure your attendance is not lost on you. Any attempt to flee will surely be met with force — if not from the knights, then from Geta himself.

The feasting is long done by the time you arrive. Mingling bodies flit around the crowded manor in a blur. Live music swells distantly as rose petals fall from thin air to decorate the marble floor. You wring your hands nervously together as you weave through the bustling court, gravitating to the large open window at the back of the hall — where you know the Emperors rest on their plush, velvet chaises.

Caracalla notices you first.

The boy rises from his lounged position — laurels crooked on his blonde head and robe shifting up his pale thighs — and smiles at you with all his crooked teeth. His lone golden tooth glints in the sunlight. 

“You showed,” he announces to no one in particular, just before his wild head swivels to his brother on the other side of the couch. “See, brother? I told you there was naught to worry about. Did I not?”

Geta does not appear happy to see you. His features remain in an emotionless scowl while his smokey eyes rake over your form. “You did,” he responds distantly, if only to appease his younger brother.

Caracalla doesn’t seem to notice the tension caging him on both sides as he flashes you another toothy grin. “He threatened to send the Praetorians after you,” he lilts like it’s some kind of silly secret. 

The Emperors’ bodyguards line the wall behind them, as well as all the entrances and nearly every window. They were like your Marcus — military veterans, strong and sharp and ruthless — though you imagine the only soft side you’ll ever see of them is a fist. They are certainly not the kind of people you want sent after you.

“Well, you were right, Your Majesty,” you grin. “There was naught to worry about. I was simply making myself presentable for the court.”

Caracalla holds his ringed hand out for you as you near him. You bend at the waist to kiss the emerald on his ring finger. The motion is muscle memory to you now. “You look beautiful,” he slurs like a child. “Like a fairy, almost.” 

“You flatter me, Your Majesty,” you nod politely and rise to full height again. 

You feel his ocean eyes on your body as you pass him by, glassy and sparkling with a boyish sort of wonder. A stark contrast to the way his brother glares daggers at you. 

“You certainly took your time,” Geta monotones in place of a greeting.

You stand obediently at his side and twist your clammy hands into knots. “I was only getting dressed, Your Majesty. I wanted to look pretty for you—”

“Nonsense,” the Emperor spits and turns away. You’re always pretty, he’d say if he could get the words out. Instead, he softens his suddenly hardened edges and flashes you a gentler glance. “I thought you’d defied me,” he confesses, as though in lieu of an apology for his fleeting hysterics.

“I couldn’t,” you murmur with a quiet smile.

Not wouldn’t, he notices. Not shouldn’t.

But couldn’t. Like your body was fated to listen to his command.

A funny feeling sparkles like gold in his chest. It makes him fidget uncomfortably on the couch. “Sit down,” he instructs with a wave of his ringed hand before slouching back in his seat, pale arms splayed along the edge of it. His brows pinch when you descend onto the empty spot beside him. “Not there.”

You freeze in place. Your eyes widen and dart to his thighs, spread out and hidden beneath the skirt of his robe. You look to Geta once more and cower beneath his expectant look. You sink hesitantly onto his lap, feeling like your heart’s in your throat as you lean into his chest. 

Your unsure hands curl around his shoulders. His curls brush your cheek. He smells overwhelmingly of musk and wine and cinnamon. Something about it makes you dizzy.

You survey the room from your position in Geta’s lap. Most people aren’t looking, you find, too busy talking and flirting and dancing together. A few noblemen across the way leer incredulously at you, though, like they’re trying to gauge if they know you from somewhere. You presume you likely slept with one or more of their sons during the war, most of which are likely dead now.

A few women crowd behind the chaise — all dressed in muted shades of silk, all dripped in jewels and gold. They’re pretty, effortlessly so, as they talk into their goblets full of wine. Some looked relieved to have the Emperors’ attention off of them. Others sneer at you for it, having no idea you’d switch places with them in a heartbeat if you could.

Your eyes dart across the dining hall, almost instinctually so. They lock immediately with Marcus the moment he enters the room. 

The General wears his black-gold armor and a faraway look in his eye as he leads a group of foreign gladiators into the manor. A hush lulls over the crowd, which parts for him without thinking. Marcus navigates through it with an absentminded sternness, like every step is muscle memory. 

He softens only when his gaze meets yours. 

His puffed-out chest deflates with a wavering exhale at the sight of you, a lamb on the lap of a man who holds a knife to your throat. He blames himself for it most of all, knowing he’s the one that brought you to slaughter. 

“Finally!” Caracalla shouts into the silence, voice ringing through the hushed court. “Where have you all been— In the showers together?” 

A bout of laughter rolls over the crowd as the blonde boy leans over to you. You try not to grimace at the bitter smell of wine on his breath. “Who nearly missed the games, little dove,” he croons too close to your ear. 

The nickname makes you tense. You muster a smile, anyway, and remind yourself to breathe. “What a shame that would’ve been,” you lilt in response.

“The armor is tricky, Your Majesty,” Acacius confesses, voice deep like a cathedral organ. “Especially for those who have not donned it before. Such as yourself.”

There is a bite to his words despite their monotoned delivery. Caracalla pays it no mind as he lounges back on the couch, wine sloshing in the chalice he holds in a limp hand. “Get it out with it, then,” he slurs.

Each gladiator faces the other. One is tall and sturdy, like an oak tree. The other is shorter and lankier, much too young and far too pretty to fight in such gruesome battles. As Marcus’ voice booms throughout the quiet dining hall to introduce them — The Barbarian versus The Might Vincenzo — Geta presses his mouth to your ear. 

“Which one shall we bet on, little dove?” he whispers to you as his hand curls tighter around your waist. His other idles over your skirt, pale and jeweled and warm, though his long fingers threaten to dip between your thighs.

You blink hard to keep your head from swimming. “Hm?”

“Which one of these imbeciles do you think will win?” Geta repeats.

“Oh, um, I— I don’t know, Your Majesty,” you stammer in response. It’s hard to think about anything other than how close Marcus is to you now. How pretty and wartorn he looks. How desperately you wish to hold him.

“Just guess,” the Emperor presses, squeezing softly at your hip. “It’s only for entertainment, anyway.”

How could certain death possibly entertain you? your mind races as your mouth blurts, “The little one, then.”

“Really?” Geta hums in amusement. His dark eyes, smudged with brown liner, squint softly at your glossy profile. They flit across your features like he’s seeing you for the very first time, though you aren’t looking back at him to notice. “Hm. I would’ve picked the oaf.”

“Well, it is the most obvious choice, Your Majesty. Though, I find it’s often the smaller ones that surprise you—” 

You turn your head to look at him. Your breath catches audibly in your throat when you find the Emperor much closer than expected. He’s so close your eyes nearly cross to meet his gaze. So close, that the tip of his large nose threatens to brush the bridge of yours. So close, you get drunk on the alcohol tainting his breath.

Geta’s wine-stained mouth curls upwards in a cynical smile. “They do, indeed,” he croons quietly, raspberry breath fanning warm over your jaw. 

Chills pebble along your skin accordingly. It takes great strength from you to break his magnetic chocolate gaze. You turn away from the Emperor and focus instead on the gladiators circling one another. Vincenzo moves in seemingly practiced motions, unfazed by the brutality of such duels. The nameless Barbarian houses a great sadness in his young eyes — a hardened look of regret, perhaps, for what he knows he must do. 

“Let’s not entertain them for our amusement, brother,” the Barbarian mutters lowly to his opponent, blade hanging limp at his side.

The larger man charges like a rhino. A deep roar sounds in his throat as he thrusts his knife towards the younger boy’s neck. The Barbarian dodges the swing with ease, possessing all the swiftness of a snake as he ducks past his opponent and slices his muscular bicep with one fell swoop.

The crowd gasps in a mixture of horror and amusement as Vincenzo’s blood drips onto the floor like deep red wine. It stains the marble in fat droplets, blending with the rose petals littered at the gladiators’ feet.

You flinch at the sight. Your breath hitches as you turn away — eyes squeezed shut, brows tightly furrowed. Geta chuckles with merriment. You feel it rumbling in his chest as he murmurs, “Don’t be frightened, little dove. It’s only a game.”

Something in you aches when the Emperor reaches for the jeweled goblet at his side. Your fearful eyes remain fixed on his face while the hall erupts in a symphony of violence — of battle cries and laughter, of dropped blades and dull smacks. 

“Here,” Geta offers with the wine in hand. “Drink. It will calm your nerves.”

He presses the rim of the chalice to your mouth. His gaze never waves from your lips as they part to welcome the bittersweet raspberry. The wine pools like blood on your tongue. It tastes like guilt going down.

Dusk falls over the city like a wounded swan. The velvet darkness outside your window makes shadows of everything it touches, only partially diminished by blinking stars and waning silver moonlight. The crescent shape of the bright white orb would fit just perfectly beneath Marcus’ jaw, you think to yourself. 

The thought alone sends a warm, melancholic feeling down your spine — with such an intensity only the tenderness of twilight could elicit.

You slide from the crimson satin of your mattress with a tight chest. You migrate towards the entrance — bare feet padding faintly along the floor, thin cotton nightgown trailing behind you. You stand before your bedroom door and rap your knuckles rhythmically against the wood. 

Twice, once, three times. 

And then you wait.

“It’s me,” you hear Marcus murmur from the other side.

Your heart swells like sunshine in your throat. You smile wide despite yourself, with no one else around to see it. “It’s been Romulus for nearly a fortnight,” you tell him, panting slightly from where you’d held your breath in anticipation. “I was starting to think you’d been banished from your post here forever.”

“You know the Emperor likes to torture me,” he quips, though his usual monotone never wavers. 

It might’ve been easier on you both, if Geta had shipped him off to lead another meaningless campaign. At least then Marcus could miss you from leagues away. Instead, he has to guard your bedroom door and miss you from the other side of it. Torture is an understatement.

“Well, I quite like it when you’re here,” you confess quietly, tracing shapes onto the doorframe with an absentminded hand. “Makes me feel safe.”

You wait patiently for a response.

“Good,” is all the General can think to reply.

Your face pinches with concern. Your chest does, too. “Are you angry with me?”

“Why should I be angry with you?”

“I don’t know… Our conversations together have grown so short— I worry you do not wish to speak with me at all.”

Though you cannot see him, Marcus flinches at your words. He stands like a statue outside your door, in the middle of the dim corridor, and glares over his shoulder into nothingness. “It isn’t true,”  he insists, voice low but honeyed still. “I wish to speak with you always.”

“Then why do you not?”

“Because it isn’t safe,” he repeats, though you never seem to hear him.

“Will it ever be?”

Marcus goes silent as he ponders for a moment. Quiet engulfs the bedroom all over again, filled only by crackling candles. “No,” he answers after a few long moments. “Not for a long while.”

You feel like he’s stabbed you with a freshly sharpened blade, right between your ribcage and into your bleeding heart. It would hurt less, anyway.  “Why?” you wonder aloud in a pained whimper, knowing the answer will do nothing more than twist the knife.

The answer sits ready on Marcus’ tongue, as though the question of why has plagued him long before you asked it.

“Because I… I ruined you. By bringing you here.”

“You saved me,” you correct.

“I destroyed you,” he retorts, voice heavy with choked-back emotion.

“I would be dead if it weren’t for you,” you remind him of the blatant reality, which threatens to consume you every time you see his face. You wish you were holding it now, cradling Marcus’ bearded cheeks in your supple palms, so that he might understand the weight of your words. “I would’ve lost everything if you hadn’t taken me with you. I would’ve been tortured, probably killed. But now I get to—”

The word gets caught in your throat. You swallow hard and fake a smile at nothingness. The pretending comes naturally to you now.

“Now I get to live. Both of us do.”

There is a brief moment of knowing silence. This isn’t what living is supposed to feel like — fleeting touches in dark crypts and whispered conversations through bedroom doors. Both of you know it, but it’s a truth too brutal to admit out loud.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“You know… We aren’t unspectacular things, Marcus,” you speak slowly and with a strangled intention. “We’ve already come so far. We’ve survived so much— We can survive a little more, can’t we? Until it’s safe again?”

“I don’t presume we have any other choice.”

“We don’t,” you sigh. “Because I love you.”

“I know,”  Marcus nods, with an air of surrender in his words. “Because I love you, too.”

You fall into the heavy wooden door as though it were your lover’s body. You did not need to see him to feel held by him. He hadn’t touched you, and he didn’t need to. His presence alone affects you in such a way that it feels like he has been caressing you for a long, long time.

Marcus’ heavy armor clunks faintly on the other side of the door as he stands up straighter. Emperor Geta enters his line of sight, a shadow slinking down the candlelight corridor. He clears his throat. “Your Majesty—” the General announces, for you and you alone.

He hears your feet pad against the floor as you scurry from the entrance.

“Dog,”the Emperor greets in a cynical deadpan. 

His sandals scuff the cobbles when he stands before the taller man. The torches hanging on the walls bathe Geta’s face in flickering amber hues, highlighting his tired features where the makeup had worn throughout the day. He seems weighed down by a certain kind of grief. The kind that makes Acacius feel ten feet tall.

“Have you been guarding my Empress like a good little hound?”

Marcus nods politely, though the term of endearment catches him momentarily off guard. To be the Emperor’s whore was one thing, but it was entirely another to be referred to in such high regard. The General tries to contemplate what that must mean as he answers, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Geta grins despite his visible fatigue. “Good boy.”

You’re already back in bed by the time the door swings open. You lounge along the expensive satin sheets and pretend you’ve done nothing but wait obediently for the Emperor, while simultaneously swallowing down any remaining feelings of longing and heartache.

Geta enters the room like a rolling storm cloud. He wears all the chaos of the day in his mussed blonde curls, smudged makeup, and wrinkled garb — a palpable sort of disarray. You scramble on the mattress to greet him, like you often do, until he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

“No. Don’t,” he commands. “Stay there. Don’t get up.”

You obey, freezing partially upright, with your elbows holding most of your weight. Your face swirls with concern at his look of annoyance. Your heart drops to your stomach in fear.

“Are you alright?” you ask him, though the Emperor pays you little mind as he migrates to the table by the window. 

He pours himself a chalice of wine. The glugging flagon fills the heavy silence. You swallow hard and stare timidly at the back of him. “Are you angry with me?” you repeat once more — a question that seems to accompany womanhood, especially when bound by the innate violence of man.

“I couldn’t be,” Geta answers like it’s obvious, sparing you a fleeting glance over his shoulder. He turns away to down the full goblet in three lengthy gulps, then wipes his stained mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s only my brother,” he confesses through labored breaths. 

Your worry lessens, but only slightly.

“Is he alright?”

“He’s acting like a child,” Geta spits, angered all over again, as he pours himself another cup. “More so than usual.”

“Has something happened?” 

“Nothing that should concern you.”

“Well, it’s certainly bothering you, Your Majesty,” you coo in slow and calculated measures as you rise from the many cushioned pillows. “So, forgive me, but it cannot help but concern me as well.”

Geta is unaccustomed to such tenderness. He tenses beneath it, glances hesitantly over his shoulder like he plans to find a ghost sitting in your place — as though he’d only heard the words in the wind and not from your mouth. A foreign feeling swirls again in his hollow chest, like a blizzard of snow or a flurry of rose petals.

“He’s jealous of me. Just as he always has been,” the Emperor tells you as he stalks toward the bed. He gestures mindlessly with his hands, and the wine sloshes over the rim of the gold chalice until it hits the stone floor. He raises it to his mouth, tips his head back, and down the bittersweet pomegranate.

His neck is long and milky white. His protruding adam’s apple bobs with each languid swallow. A drop of deep red trails from his mouth and down his chin once he’s finished. He rubs it away with a fist. You forget to stop staring.

“Lay down,” he commands, chest heaving. 

Your body obeys without a second thought. You lie back on the velvet cushions, docile and willing, in a way that comes naturally to you now. You’ve been Geta’s thing for so long that a part of you has grown used to it. Needy for it. 

The mattress dips beneath the Emperor’s wait as he kneels beside you. Your mind starts to reel. 

Your brain seemingly anticipates an inevitable pleasure, which comes to you like clockwork most nights. It makes your mouth water like a drooling hound that knows when it’s feeding time. A funny feeling stirs in the pit of your belly and pools like honey in your undergarments. Your thighs clench together when a subtle throbbing begins to pound between them.

You should be grateful when Geta crawls beneath the sheets only to rest his head on your chest.

You’re shocked, most of all, by such a foreign act of tenderness.

Your breath catches when his cheek presses to your breast. He nods gently to rub his burning skin over the smooth cotton. A deep exhale fans from his nose as he rests his body weight against you. 

You cradle him with hesitant hands and remind yourself to breathe. Your fingers scratch lightly over his clothed shoulder while your others comb through his strawberry-blonde locks. It’s a warmth so foreign to the two of you that it threatens to bring you both to tears.

“He says he wants someone like you— my brother,” Geta admits after a few moments of long silence.

“A whore?”

“A paramour,” the Emperor corrects, face twisted in irritation at your use of the term. He focuses on the muffled sound of your heartbeat when anger threatens to consume him. A heavy sigh deflates his chest. His anxious fingers twist in your nightgown. “I told him he could have his pick— Between us, we have plenty of women to go around, but… He insists his mind is stuck on you.”

Your bated breaths come to you in trembling inhale-exhales. You hope he doesn’t sense how frightful his words have made you. 

Geta is cruel, yes, but he is at most times predictable. Though Caracalla may be kind, he is most of all volatile. And there is nothing more dangerous than an erratic, easily excitable ruler.

“And what did you tell him?” you wonder with a feigned sense of curiosity.

“That you were mine, of course,” Geta blurts like it’s obvious. “He offered to share, to which I told him that he should be grateful that I’m sharing the throne alone with him… And now he’s off with his monkey, crying like a child…”

You feel strangely comforted by his words. You breathe a sigh of relief through your nose and rake your fingers through his blonde-brunette curls. “Your brother is a fragile thing, Your Majesty,” you advise in gentle murmurs. “You must be gentle with him.”

“I don’t know how to be gentle with anything,” Geta confesses, half-muffled into your chest. “Least of all, with someone like him.”

“Shall I speak with him? Perhaps I can calm him— make him understand?”

“It’s my burden alone.”

“It is mine as well, Your Majesty. So that mustn’t be true.”

Geta turns slowly to face you, with all the hesitance of someone unused to such kindness. His chin rests on your clothed sternum and bobs with each word. “You shouldn’t have to carry it,” he whispers into the honeyed silence of the candlelit bedroom.

You muster a small smile. “I know. But I will, anyway,” you shrug. “When you care for someone, your brain has little say in the matter.”

Geta falters at your admission. A foreign emotion swims in his chocolate button eyes. He’d rather blame it on the flickering flames strewn around the room. “Is that what this is?” he mutters, almost to himself, when he finds the breath to say the words.

Your fingers in his hair slow to a stop. “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

“This… This tenderness,”  the Emperor answers, spitting the word like it’s the first time he’s ever tasted it. His face scrunches distantly, as if it were sour on his tongue. “Sometimes it overwhelms to the point of tears. It’s a… a blinding radiance, like… a knife— lodged somewhere deep in the body…”

You cup Geta’s freshly shaven face between two, gentle hands. He swears he sees the sun.

“Why do you speak of love like it hurts you, Your Majesty?”

He swallows hard. “Because it does,” he confesses before rising from your body. 

You mourn his warmth as he swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He sits with his back facing you. His dove white robe hangs off one pale shoulder when he bows his head.

“I never believed in it as a child— the permanence of it all, of… love. And yet, I… I find myself longing for it anyway. Like a fool.”

You rise on one elbow and resist the urge to touch him. “Wanting to be understood by someone doesn’t make you a fool, Your Majesty.”

“I know that I… That I haven’t been the most gentle with you at times. But I am… I am sorry for it,” Geta tells you in near inaudible murmurs, flashing you a sheepish glance over his freckled shoulder. “I understand it must be difficult for you.”

“What, Your Majesty?”

“To be caught between all that was. And all that must be.”

Your stomach wrenches at his words. Your chest tightens beneath the weight of them until you have to fight for every wavering breath. You take a trembling inhale and rise so you’re sitting at his side, taking careful calculation in the following words you speak.

“We cannot… We cannot choose who we love, Your Majesty. We can fight ceaselessly against it, perhaps, but it doesn’t change fate.” 

You reach out for him with one tremoring hand. You rake a rogue curl behind his ear and hope he doesn’t know Marcus’ face is the one stained permanently behind your eyelids. 

“We love who we love, Your Majesty. And the rest stay ghosts.”

Geta’s eyes glitter with an emotion you’ve not seen from him before. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, as though searching for something in your gaze — sincerity, perhaps, or maybe an equal sense of longing. 

You blink, and his mouth is on yours. Geta kisses you back onto the velvet-satin and settles over you once more. It’s wet. Hungry. Unforgiving.

You kiss him back with a similar intensity, clutching his robe in both hands, desperate to understand him.

Marcus remains on the other side of your door — an invisible ghost, an unwilling witness. He hears all of it, as clearly as he would if he were seeing it with his own eyes. A hollow feeling of yearning and hunger gnaws at the pit of his stomach as he tries to imagine your pleasured form. The painting behind his eyelids is blurred and distorted with time.

He wishes he could see you now, even with Emperor Geta fucking you into the mattress.  He could pretend that he was the one fucking you, at least, and let the image alone bring his withered form back to life. 

You’re together in his head, entwined still, with your mouths bruised in a relentless kiss.

Marcus hopes you’re still together in yours, too.

General Acacius spends most of his nights in the crypt, which he feels is rather fitting for a half-dead thing like him. When he is not surveilling your bedroom door, or being otherwise taunted by Emperor Geta, he finds a strange sanctuary in the dreary tombs. It is perhaps the only place where he is left alone. 

Caracalla is petrified by thoughts of ghosts, and Geta detests history, so neither is likely to show their face in such an ancient mausoleum. Which is ideal for someone plotting an insurrection.

You find him there in the wee small hours of the late, late night. He wears a deep red cloak over his white robe, perhaps to conceal himself, as he shuffles around the room to snuff out flickering candles. You wonder who he lit them for because you know he does not need them. He’s grown too used to navigating in the shadows.

Your sandals scuff suddenly against the damp cobbles. Marcus does not seem startled by the intrusion. He knew you were there by the sweet scent of your perfumed body alone. There is nothing about you he would not immediately notice.

“What are you doing here?” he wonders with his back facing you, voice low with a timbre that bounces off the tomb walls.

“I wanted to see you,” you answer sheepishly.

Marcus says nothing in response.

You wring your hands into knots and shift your weight on your feet. He extinguishes the torch on the far wall, and shadows engulf the windowless crypt — save for one lone candle flickering atop Emperor Commodus’ cracking tomb. Your eyes flit from the flame to Marcus’ silhouette, gaze swimming with uncertainty.

“May I ask you a question?”

“I don’t see why not,” he monotones and flits across the room like a ghost.

“What do you do down here?” you ask. When your voice inevitably trembles with distant alarm, you quip, “I only mean it mustn’t be healthy— Spending so much time in the dark.”

“It’s none of your concern,” Marcus insists with a venom that makes you flinch. He hooks his pointer finger around the hook of the candle holder, and the dancing flame paints his statuesque features in shades of amber. He softens immediately at the sight of you.

“I just do not wish to incriminate you,” the wartorn man confesses.

Your chest aches with an immediate concern. “What does that mean? Please do not tell me that you’re doing something perilous—”

“No,” Marcus interjects firmly, then amends. “Not yet, at least.”

“Explain it to me, then. Help me understand.”

“It’s best you do not know, petal. It’s safer that way.”

The word alone makes you cross. You wish he’d stop using it.

“But I will tell you when the time is right, I swear,” he assures you, though his voice threatens to tremble with wavering strength. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, heavy with an emotion you cannot place. “I will keep you safe no matter what, you know that—”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Acacius,” you murmur with a stern glint in your eye, clutching the downy fabric of his robe in your fists.

“There is naught to worry about, petal. I assure you.”

Marcus takes a step closer to you despite the voice of reason in his head telling him otherwise. He lifts his free hand and swipes a callused palm over your cheek, soft and warm with sleep. You lean into his touch like a cat. A funny feeling blossoms in his chest.

“I’ve been thinking… About what you said some days ago… Making a new world for ourselves…” He talks slowly and deeply and nearly to himself. You nod against his palm to egg him onward. “You were right. We deserve better than this— Why should we have to live like dogs?”

Marcus swipes his thumb over your jaw and takes another daring step closer. You feel the heat from the candle he holds in his free hand, though your eyes remain on his face. You couldn’t look away from him if you tried. A part of you is hesitant to blink even, for fear that you might miss him for a millisecond too long.

He angles your gently head upward with his weathered palm. You can smell the musk on his tanned skin from here, as well as the ale and mint leaves on his breath. It’s dizzying. The ground seems to sway under your feet at the dwindling proximity between you.

“We love each other, don’t we?” he murmurs in a honeyed voice.

You nod without a second thought. Your mouth waters with the hopes of tasting him.

He nods with you. “So fuck the war.”

Marcus ducks down to press his mouth to yours. His lips swallow your own in a kiss, lingering and languid and deep enough to drown in. 

You melt into his touch with a heavy sigh exhaled through your nose. The warm breath fans across his unshaven cupid’s bow while your hands migrate to his hair. You twist the greying tendrils in your fingers, keeping him impossibly close against you. 

When Marcus goes to grip the fabric of your nightgown in both his hands, the candle holder tumbles to the ground. The gold clatters audibly across the cobbles. The wax light falls on his side, and the flame begins to dwindle on the murky stone floor. 

You wonder, briefly, if it will take fire — if the smoke will give you away, or if the tomb and all its history will burst into flames, or if the inferno will take you and Marcus with it.

Though it snuffs quickly out, bathing the two of you in a navy blue darkness, you figure you wouldn’t care if it did burn you to ash. Not as long as Marcus was there to kiss you into embers.

Marcus’ face consumes your dreams. 

The details are blurred with the haze of sleep, but he was there — touching your face, asking to try again. You merged into one another like ghosts. Like drops of melted honey. Like lovers of Pompeii turned to ash. Every day, you tell yourself that it is unsafe to love him more than you do now. And yet he haunts your dreams, and yet you find more love in you for him.

And yet…

A violent hand pulls you from your gentle slumber. It jerks mercilessly at your arm, snatching you from your peaceful dreams and waking you into a nightmare.

“Wake up!” a strident and familiar voice bellows into the quiet bedroom, lit only by the faint blue of an early morning. The words are punctuated by another rough tug at your wrist. You awake to the sharp aching in your fingers.

“Wha—” you slur, trying to blink away the bleary mist as you lift your heavy head from the pillows. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“Up!”

You’re urged from the mattress by the unforgiving fingers digging bruises on your arm. You squint through the sleep and ebbing darkness to find Geta looming over you — blonde curls mussed on his head, swollen eyes wide and wild, velvet robe askew on his shoulder to reveal his pale chest. His skin there is flushed red with anger. You don’t know what you did to deserve his wrath.

“Geta?” you gasp through a faint whimper in your throat, trying to pull your wrist from his grip. He only holds you tighter. “What are you doing— You’re hurting me.”

“Liar!” is all he shouts in response, like he doesn’t even hear you.

The crazed Emperor drags you out of bed just to drop you to the cobbles. The thin sleeves of your nightgown slip off your shoulder; the skirt of it bunches at your thighs. You make yourself as small as possible as you shrink away from the man towering above you. 

“I don’t understand,” you squeak through the heart in your throat.

“Liar!” he shouts again.

His voice rings through the shadowed bedroom. You cower in response. He sobers at the fear twisting your features, but only slightly. His heart pounds hard against his ribcage, beating red-hot rage through his veins. He can hardly hear you through the rushing in his ears.

“What have I done?” you whisper, voice trembling.

“You have made…” Geta trails off, swallowing the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away burning tears and spits, “A mockery of me.”

Fear ebbs into confusion. “I have not—”

“You lie!”

“I do not!” The volume of your voice startles even you. You blink up at him with wide, pleading eyes, searching for any ounce of mercy within him. 

You find none. 

Just a man made of towering orange flames, threatening to set you ablaze. 

“I have given up everything to be here,” you whimper. “To be at your side. To understand you—” 

“Make no mistake… Your lies no longer have an effect on me, little dove,” Geta interjects through a bout of cynical laughter. He shakes his head and grins despite the tears glittering in his eyes. “You think you are so clever. That you were brought here, to my Empire, to be cherished...”

The Emperor takes slow, daunting steps towards you. You shrink away from him and choke back a sob bubbling in your throat. Tears fall from your lashes in fat droplets down your burning cheeks. 

Geta grins like it pleases him.

“Let me be clear, so there is no longer any misunderstanding…” he tells you, speaking in slow, deep murmurs as he crouches before you. You can see the flecks of gold glimmering in his deep brown eyes from here. You can see the fire swimming within them, too, as he assures you, “You were created merely for me to destroy you.”

The throne room is absent of its usual bright red roses and ornate gold decoration. The chandelier overhead has not yet been lit. Instead, the spacious room is illuminated by an ever-rising sun — which basks everything it touches in shades of melancholy blue. 

The servants light torches along the wall while you and Marcus stand together before the scowling Emperor. Something about it strikes a feeling of nostalgia in your chest, though these circumstances are much different than the ones you were brought here under. Geta no longer looks at you with lust in his dark eyes. He looks at you, instead, with betrayal.

“Thanks to the civic virtue of some good men…” the eldest Emperor quavers into the silent room. “…Your insurrection has been revealed.” 

Your stomach twists at his words. Your mouth falls softly agape with shock. Of any explanation you could’ve been given upon your sudden imprisonment, you couldn’t have expected this one. You thought, perhaps, that he had somehow found out about your meetings in the crypt with Marcus. You would’ve been able to stomach that, at least. Your love for Acacius is something you’d be willing to die by.

But not this.

Not something you were completely unconscious of.

Geta continues tearily. “The honor… The dignitas that Rome has bestowed upon you— All this, you have forfeited by your treachery.”

“Emperor Geta, please,” Marcus sighs. His deep voice echoes through the empty throne room like a heavenly, sorrowful instrument. He bows his head and swallows hard, knowing now that he must beg for mercy. Not for himself. But for you. 

“Torture me, if you wish, but let her go. She had no part in this—”

“Forgive me,” Geta spits emotionlessly. “But I have no cause to believe you, General.”

Marcus turns to you then, tired eyes wide and pleading. “Tell him. Go on, it’s alright,” he urges gently, though your silence makes his chest ache. “Petal, tell him— Tell him you were unaware.”

You say nothing.

“Tell him!”he repeats in a shout that rings through the quiet throne room. His trained apathy splinters for the first time in front of Geta. He is perhaps more fearful now than he has ever been before. No war was nearly as frightening as the thought of losing you.

“What does it matter?” you mutter in response, voice fragile like glass. “He made up his mind the moment he found out.”

“Then take me if that’s what you want,” Marcus says, pleads to the merciless Emperor. His sandals scuff the stone floor as he takes a step closer in surrender.  “Put me in the Colosseum— Crucify me on the royal steps, if you must— But please, do not make her suffer for something I brought upon her. Do not punish her for my sins.”

“You are the Great General Acacius…” Geta croons bitterly. “What could one more splash of blood possibly mean to you?”

“Everything,” Marcus answers without a second thought, voice heavy with a predestined grief. “It would mean everything.”

Something in Geta shifts. You see it flickering in his dark, teary eyes. A surge of power, almost, like a stroke of bright white lightning. The corner of his pink mouth twitches as he tilts his chin upward. “Step back ten paces,” he commands suddenly.

Marcus’ brows pinch first in confusion, then relax a moment later when he inevitably obeys. His feet sound along the cobbles as he takes ten slow steps backward. He mourns the distance it puts between the two of you.

“Turn around,” Geta’s voice echoes through the vacant throne room.

You hear Marcus take a wavering breath in. He spins on the heel of his leather sandal until his back is facing you. His heavy eyes flutter shut as his chin falls to his chest. He searches for an ounce of hope within himself, knowing he’d lost all of it some time ago now.

The Emperor smirks. “Good dog.”

Acacius seethes.

Geta’s dark eyes, rimmed red with emotion, flit back to you. Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach — dread, perhaps, or maybe acceptance for what’s surely to come. 

“Was it a lie?” 

“What?” you ask with bated breath.

Geta shrugs, then readjusts his robe when it falls from his shoulder. “Any of it.”

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I am.”

Geta snarls at your subdued emotion. “I am the Emperor of Rome. I could have my pick of whores— You being here is a privilege. Do you understand?”

You nod once. “Yes.”

“You came from filth— to the greatest city in the world,” Geta spits the words like so many drops of venom. He waves his hands up and down your form, pale fingers now void of their usual gold rings. “You were just… some whore without a face before I made you better. I did this!” 

He gestures wildly around the darkened manor, voice breaking at the volume of his shouting. His robe falls askew to reveal more of his bare chest as spit coats his bitten lips. You remain in place while the Emperor inches closer. The fear has left you, as well as any instinct to cry — your grief is too violent for that now.

“I brought you here,” Geta convinces himself. His saliva splatters on your cheek in faint droplets. Tears glitter on his cheeks like stained glass windows. A fire flickers in the deep brown of his eyes. 

“I willed this— I cared for you with every bit of conscience as I was born with.” He takes a deep breath and steps back, shaking his head in disgust. “And yet…”

He turns away. 

You’re able to take in a deep breath for the first time in several minutes when he parts from you. The leadened weight on your chest remains.

“If you do not wish to be here, I certainly will not make you,” Geta rambles in teary blubbers. “One whore is as good as any other— Perhaps I can find one who is capable of pretending she cares.”

You step towards his retreating form. “Geta—”

“Go!” he shouts, looking back at you with a crazed look in his sleep-worn eyes. He wipes spit from his chin and quietens, strangled by an unavoidable emotion. “Now. Walk through those doors, and I promise no harm will come to you. Just do not stand before me and patronize me in this way, I will not stand for it.”

His promise makes your chest swell with hope. You remain frozen even still, stuck at an unnavigable crossroads. Such assurances of safety mean little to you when Marcus

has a sword to his throat. 

You look at the man over your shoulder. He has not moved from his spot some feet behind you. His back still faces you, though you notice his hands are balled into trembling fists.

Even if it were true — even if Geta really planned to let you go without a knight slitting your throat — it would mean little without Marcus. You would not know where to go without him. You would not be able to live with yourself if you left him here, not knowing what Geta planned for him. You would be away from the city, yes, but it would not be freedom.

Your instinctual will for survival is replaced by the primal need to keep Marcus alive.

To do that, you must reach for the bloodied hand of death.

You turn away from your lover — away from the opened cage door and the promise of freedom — and rush to the heartbroken Emperor. You clutch his cotton robe in your fists and tug at the gold trim to pull him closer. You meet him in the middle, entwining your mouth with his.

You kiss him. Hard. With enough ardor to snatch the breath from his lungs. His pink lips part for yours, almost instinctually so, and you swipe your tongue over the rough pad of his own. He tastes of sleep and honey and very distantly of wine. He gets heavy against you as he falls into your kiss. His hands cling to the skirt of your nightgown until his fists start to shake.

You pull away only when he’s melted for you all over again, when the red-hot anger has ebbed from his milky white body. A thin string of saliva keeps you connected until it splits against your chins.

“I know… I know you are hurt, Your Majesty,” you speak in slow murmurs, and through uneven breaths. Your fearful eyes dart over his face and find him utterly kissbitten — mouth swollen, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed. “And I know that it is difficult to forget pain. But I’ve found it’s harder to remember happiness. Glory.”

Each word from your mouth is stamped with intention. 

You speak of glory only with the hopes that he might remember his many useless wars, all of which Marcus has won for him without complaint. There would be no Empire to rule without the Great General Acacius, who dares not to sneak a glance at the two of you over his shoulder. He, instead, keeps his heavied gaze on the torch hanging by the door. The flame sears his vision until he can see you dancing within it.

“We have no scar to show from sweetness, do we?” you quaver with a forced smile, cupping Geta’s burning cheeks between both your hands. You swipe your thumb over a fat tear clinging to his cheekbone. “How can we allow ourselves to be blinded by anger when there is still so much love?” 

Geta snivels and rests his forehead against yours. His long lashes flutter against his glowing cheeks.

“I wept for you,” the Emperor confesses quietly, words weighed down by tears. “I had come to believe that… If I wanted something badly enough, the sheer strength of my desire would make it mine. I see now that it was foolish—”

“Perhaps it is true,” you whisper to him, breaths entwining and kissing both your cheeks. If he notices your voice shaking, you hope he confuses it with desire and not with fear. “Perhaps that is why I’m standing here now. Because I am yours…”

A moment of silence lulls over the blue hour. The quiet feels deafening in the large throne room, quelled only by the sound of heavy breathing. Yours hitches in your throat when Geta parts wordlessly from you. He sniffles once, then exhales hard through his mouth. 

Your gaze remains fixed on his face in an unwavering stare as you try to gauge his reaction. His features are emotionless, but his heavy-lidded eyes flit back and forth between yours — as though he, too, were trying to measure your sincerity. 

Your fate, in that split second, teeters on a knife’s edge. You hold your breath and wait for him to raise his hand. Not to hit you, maybe, but to sic his guards upon you like dogs — either to drag you into a cell or to be kind enough to kill you on the spot.

Geta lifts his palms only to cradle your jaw between them. His long fingers wrap around your neck like he intends to choke you there. He drags your mouth back to his instead. Your noses smush together with the intensity of his touch. It’s all teeth and tongue and spit. Desire and anger and grief. A billion things he licks into your mouth.

The weight of his hunger smothers you. Consumes you. He could kill you this way, if he wanted. There is little difference, you’ve found, between a bite and a kiss. It only matters how deep he buries his teeth into you.

Your chin shines with his spit when he parts from you. Geta’s chest heaves with labored breaths, flushed and swelling with proud. He hasn’t yet let go of your neck. You wonder if he can feel your thrumming pulse against his fingers.

“Show me, then,” he pants. “That you’re mine… Prove it to me.”

The Emperor goes to step back from you. Your hands dart for his wrists, holding him there when he threatens to pull them away. Geta’s eyes widen in shock.

“Don’t make him watch,” you plead in a delicate whisper.

His wide, chocolate eyes flit over your shoulder. He seems to forget about Marcus’ presence until that very moment. He looks back to you, at the plea swimming in your eyes, and nods once in response. 

“Take him,” he calls to the knights lurking in the darkness.

Their heavy armor clinks together as they comply without complaint. They lead Marcus to the door with their hands on the hilts of their swords. You watch him leave from over your shoulder, in the very corner of your eye. You hope he understands, but you wouldn’t blame him if you didn’t. You find it hard to forgive yourself even now.

Marcus always said that people find out who they truly are during times of war. Maybe this is who you are. Maybe you cannot kiss the devil without taking some of his sin.

The door closes with a heavy thud across the room. 

The weight of being alone with the Emperor washes heavily over you. Like drops of ice-cold rain. Like warm, melted honey.

Geta peers at you with a similar uncertainty. Head bowed slightly, wide eyes glittering from beneath his lashes. You do what you have always done — take care of this man the way he’s asked you to, placate his anger with your body. Giving yourself away is as natural as breathing most days.

“Sit down, Your Majesty,” you urge in a gentle whisper.

The Emperor listens as obediently as his knights. 

The sound of his sandals padding along the cobbles fills the suffocating quiet. He descends upon his throne like he was made for it, spreading his legs before him and propping his arms along the golden rests. He looks like a painting upon his seat of power, bathed in the deep blue of an early morning. An angel dragged to hell.

Geta watches you with an unwavering stare as you take slow steps toward him. His brown-eyed gaze goes glassy at the sight of you, an angelic thing all dressed in white. His thighs part to welcome you between them. He tenses under your palms when they smooth over his milky white chest, past the sparse chestnut hair littered there and down to the tie of his robe.

His stomach rises and falls in heavy, uneven pants under your touch. You unknot the string with bated breath, then brush the golden trimming to his sides. He’s bare underneath it, likely from where he’d been brutally roused from his slumber. His cock is on immediate display — resting on his fuzzy thighs, half-hard and glowing red at the tip.

You descend to your knees to take care of him on instinct. His hands dart to your shoulders to stop you. “Ride me,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea as it spills his swollen mouth.

Wordlessly, you straddle his thighs. The cotton fabric of your nightgown bunches at your hips. You spit into your palm and reach between your bodies for his cock in a single practiced motion. He feels like velvet in your fist. 

Geta’s nostrils flare with a heavy exhale when your hand drags up the length of his cock. His head tips back onto his throne when your fist falls back down again. Your lips find the expanse of his long, white neck like a deep-seated compulsion. You kiss his pulse as though it were his mouth. He cradles the crown of your head and brings his lips to your ear.

“You love me,” he sighs within a moan when your thumb brushes the head of his drooling cock.

You can’t tell if it’s a command to repeat the words back to him, or an affirmation he repeats only for himself. Either way, you nod in response and line his stiff cock at your entrance. Geta’s mouth parts in a silent moan at the feeling of your silky cunt. 

“I do,” you whisper just before you mount him. 

There is a dull ache in your belly when he pierces you, though you’ve grown accustomed to his length with time. Your satin folds split to welcome every inch of him accordingly. Your hips rock back and forth over his supple thighs and your velvety walls pulse around him, swallowing him further inside.

Your breathy moans entwine and fill the air. You keep a white-knuckled grip on the back of the golden throne as you ride him, without break and without mercy — in spite of the burning sensation in your thighs. You tell yourself it’s to finish him quickly, though a primal part of you chases after your own pleasure.

Geta’s breaths leave his parted mouth in huffed exhales as you bounce on top of him. He mourns the sight of him disappearing in and out of your glistening pussy but fights to keep his eyes open to watch the rest of you. Your fucked-out face swirls in a mixture of concentration and pleasure as Geta lifts his hand for the collar of your gown.

He unties the dainty knot at your sternum and tugs the fabric down your chest, baring your breasts for him. His mouth waters at sight of your plush skin, moving in time with your rhythmic grinds over his lap. 

A strangled moan sounds in your throat when he takes your left nipple in his mouth. You caress the back of his head, twisting your fingers in his honey hair in an effort to keep him close. He runs the rough pad of his tongue over your sensitive tit and smiles when he hears you whimpering. 

“You love this,” he mutters against your chest. “You love when I fuck you. ”

You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“God—” he grunts through gritted teeth, tipping his head back when one particular grind makes him twitch inside you. His hands grip your thighs over your skirt. His fingers threaten to sear bruises onto your skin. “Your pussy was made for my cock, wasn’t it?”

You nod again.

His right hand parts from you only to come down a moment later. The dull smack of his palm against your clothed hip echoes through the throne room. “I don’t think I heard you.”

“Yes,” you squeak with your face scrunched, trembling when your clit drags across the thatch of pubic hair at the base of Geta’s cock.

“Who’s cunt is this?”

“Yours—”

His hand lifts again. You hear the impact of his palm against your ass before you feel it, a subtle stinging you find a strange comfort in. Geta laughs in maniacal, breathy chuckles when you keen for him. 

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yours!” you exclaim in a feeble gasp, clutching the Emperor to your chest. You shudder on top of him when an orgasm rakes suddenly through your body. It flows quickly and without mercy, but never quite ebbs. You’re left a whimpering, weeping mess while the aftershocks of your pleasure consume you. 

“It’s yours,” you squeak in nearly inaudible blubbers, pressing your kissed mouth to the shell of Geta’s ear, repeating the phrase like it’s the only one you remember. “’S your pussy… It’s yours…”

The words alone are enough to make Geta burst inside of you. 

He tenses all over. His dull nails press crescent shapes into the skin of your thighs. His rosy mouth parts to exhale a guttural moan. You feel his cock jerk with your drooling confines right before he spits several loads of cum inside you. Your cunt pulses around him, instinctually milking him for every drop of liquid pleasure, and a whimper sounds in Geta’s throat.

You feel it bloom in the pit of your belly like a flower — something soft and warm and seeping. As the two of you relax against one another with wavering exhales, you feel his cum leaking out of you like drops of summer rain. It pools on his lap and drips down to the throne underneath him, tainting the gold with a mixture of your sin.

It proves a point. Marks a territory.

Geta swells with pride.

Your back slouches as you melt into his body. You hide your burning face in his neck as his feverish grip on you loosens. Geta twitches beneath you when your cunt pulsates around his softening cock. “Mm…” you hear him hum, mixed with a laugh you feel rumbling in his chest. His head tilts back as a lopsided smile tugs deliriously at his mouth.

He runs a gentle hand up and down your spine, a reminder of his being there despite your feeble efforts to dissociate your brain from your body. You can’t ignore the warmth of his touch on your tingling skin, or the way your hearts press together and beat to the same rhythm.

A distant feeling of acceptance pools in the pit of your belly along with the Emperor’s cum. Your grief is a much more discreet thing, however, and you miss Marcus like an unstitched wound that won’t stop bleeding. Like a knife lodged somewhere deep in the body.

“I think… I think I’ve found an adequate punishment for the General,” Geta pants, the crooked grin audible in his words. “Perhaps he will learn his lesson when I’ve fucked a child into you—”

You tense when the Emperor’s palm splays over your stomach.

“—Perhaps then he’ll understand that you’re mine.”