“What would you do if you were truly seducing me then?”
Cleves does not care that it is a ploy to force her into showing her cards. She knows exactly what she wants to do to this woman.
She rises from the table and strolls towards the fire to stoke it up.
“First, I’d make sure the only shivering you’d be doing is because of me,” she says.
“Then?” Seymour says. Her voice is different. Cleves turns to see Seymour crawling across the table towards her on her hands and knees. Her bodice isn’t cut low, but at this angle Cleves has a clear view of the delicious crevice between her breasts.
“Then,” Cleves says, climbing onto the table herself. “Then I would draw upon your skin with my fingers, tracing the edge of your gown.”
They meet in the centre of the table, platters of half-eaten food all around them. Seymour nuzzles her nose against Cleves’s, her lips so very close, her breath a blessing upon Cleves’s cheek. Cleves unclips Seymour’s hood, drawing it gently back, revealing her hair. “Then I would strip you bare and touch every single part of your body, feeling for the places that make you gasp. And those places? I would worship them.”
“Fine words, Queen Cleves,” Seymour says. “But you know I place more stock in action.”
Cleves tangles her hand in Seymour’s hair. Their mouths meet in a kiss that is at first crushingly brutal, but quickly softens into something far more glorious. Cleves cannot help but moan. Seymour’s lips are soft, and she tastes of honey and salt.
Cleves needs every part of her body to be touching every part of Seymour’s. She breaks away from the kiss, breathless, and lifts Seymour to a kneel, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her even closer.
“Is this enough action for you?”
She trails her tongue across Seymour’s ear and down her neck, inhaling her scent – heart smoke, cloves and a hot, metallic hint of dragon’s blood.
Seymour drags Cleves’s face up to her own and kisses her long and deeply. “I want to undress you,” she says against her mouth.
This has always been one of Cleves’s favourite parts of a seduction. Women have so many clothes. The anticipation, as each piece is removed, revealing a little more skin, is deliciously painful.
She reaches around Seymour to undo her gown, not needing to look to know where to find each dress pin holding the gown in place. Seymour moves her attentions to Cleves’s ear, nipping gently at her lobe.
“Do you want this gown off or not?” Cleves says.
“Treat it as a test,” Seymour whispers.
“You are a test, my lady,” Cleves says, trying to ignore the deep shiver running through her body as Seymour scrapes her nails through her hair with one hand, the other pattering fingers down her chest bone, towards the place where her smock dives beneath her gown.
At last, the gown is loose enough for Cleves to tug the piece over Seymour’s head. She pulls the sleeves off next, letting her hands run down the bare skin of Seymour’s shoulders as the fabric comes away from the rest of her outfit. Then the frontlet and the kirtle, abandoned on the table, and Seymour is left in only her linen smock and her stockings.
Cleves runs a hand up Seymour’s leg, but Seymour stops her.
“You still have far too many clothes on, Queen of Cnothan,” she says. She pushes Cleves around with surprising strength, cradling her back with her body. Cleves watches the fire hazily as Seymour takes control. She isn’t used to this – she is usually the one leading the seduction. She is the one who delivers pleasure, who does the worshipping. And she has always been at peace with that – it is altogether safer.
Soon Cleves is only in her linen shirt and her breeches. Seymour cups her buttocks and squeezes.
“Do you know the parts of you I have longed for the most?” Seymour says. Cleves flushes.
“Your arms,” Seymour continues, her hands running up to Cleves’s shoulders. “Goddess, those arms, Cleves. They were my undoing from the moment we first met.”
Cleves leans back and kisses Seymour again and again, so Seymour will not see the tears that have sprung to her eyes. It is one thing to know that you are not unattractive. It is quite another to feel it after seven years of being told by everyone that you are – even if you were the one who engineered the slight.
Seymour pulls away, perhaps sensing her turmoil.
“Did you ever truly doubt it?” Seymour says.
“Never,” Cleves lies.
Seymour sees the lie. Of course she does, with that sight that is so quiet and so sharp. She climbs off the table, pulling Cleves with her, and moves them to the chair by the fireside.
“What are you doing?” Cleves says as Seymour pushes her into the seat.
