Empire is a master at rigid self-control, trained by a literal robot into glassy stillness; but he is still, at the end of the day, only human. And he is not the Bene Gesserit. Jessica can track the minute differentiations in muscle tension, the flicker in the size of his pupils, betraying his interest and attraction, the way he holds his breath and then lets it loose. He’s practiced, but not quite practiced enough.
It’s a slow, deliberate movement as she settles over him. Enough that the shield doesn’t crackle beneath her or repel her across the room. He feels the slight resistance — the pressure in the air, the slight delay before her weight settles into his lap, her skirts slithering higher.
But here is where his self-control fractures: Cleon makes a helpless noise as her fingers curl against the back of his neck, digging into his well-moisturised hair. This is a man who has never known a tender unthinking touch, a mother smoothing his unruly dark hair back from his imperial forehead. Demerzel was the closest thing any of them ever had to a mother, the closest any of them would ever come to a wife, and she was not soft.
Everything is yours, the concubine says, like they all say, and —
“Don’t lie to me,” Cleon hisses against Jessica’s mouth. “I don’t want platitudes.”
Happiness is complicated — happiness is not for Empire — personal happiness isn’t part of the program, and isn’t that a brutal lesson that Dawn is currently having to learn —
“I will, however, accept fleeting satisfaction,” he says, and his hands run up the long lines of her thighs, sliding beneath those ephemeral skirts to find the warm soft skin of her hips, her ass.
no subject
It’s a slow, deliberate movement as she settles over him. Enough that the shield doesn’t crackle beneath her or repel her across the room. He feels the slight resistance — the pressure in the air, the slight delay before her weight settles into his lap, her skirts slithering higher.
But here is where his self-control fractures: Cleon makes a helpless noise as her fingers curl against the back of his neck, digging into his well-moisturised hair. This is a man who has never known a tender unthinking touch, a mother smoothing his unruly dark hair back from his imperial forehead. Demerzel was the closest thing any of them ever had to a mother, the closest any of them would ever come to a wife, and she was not soft.
Everything is yours, the concubine says, like they all say, and —
“Don’t lie to me,” Cleon hisses against Jessica’s mouth. “I don’t want platitudes.”
Happiness is complicated — happiness is not for Empire — personal happiness isn’t part of the program, and isn’t that a brutal lesson that Dawn is currently having to learn —
“I will, however, accept fleeting satisfaction,” he says, and his hands run up the long lines of her thighs, sliding beneath those ephemeral skirts to find the warm soft skin of her hips, her ass.