Roan thrust and Luna and Wilden groaned.

Her knees were bent, pressing into the mattress like butterfly wings with each press of Wilden’s hips into hers. Behind him, Roan gripped his lover’s neck, watching Luna with sleepy gold eyes.

“Still,” he warned, his voice low and dangerous.

“I’m still,” Wilden hissed under his breath. “Fuck. Fuck, she’s so tight.”

Roan bucked his hips, sending Wilden surging into her. And her hand tangled with Roan’s on Wilden’s hip, their moans and whimpers as tangled together as the sheets under her, and they yanked him back and forth, fucking him like that.

“Look at you,” Roan growled to her. “Breasts bouncing, nipples red and hard, and the way you’re biting your lip. You like watching me fuck my pet, don’t you? You like me fucking him into that sweet cunt of yours.”

“Oh gods,” Wilden said, head bowed as his body swayed with each slam of Roan’s hips. “Oh fuck.”

Roan’s knuckles tightened on Wilden’s neck. “Don’t you dare fucking come.”

It had been an hour now, and still he wouldn’t let Wilden come.

“Keep your eyes to yourself or lose them,” Eli growled.

The elf-touched man who’d turned to watch Luna walk past yelped and ducked his head as the towering orc glared at him. He hurried down the corridor, leaving behind only the sound of his retreating steps.

Tutting, Luna glanced over her shoulder at her orc. “That wasn’t nice.”

“Good. I’m not nice.”

“You’re the sweetest orc I know.”

His hand slid over Luna’s lower back leaving warmth like a thick summer sunshine. “Only because you bring it out in me,” he said, sending her nearly swooning in his arms.

She tilted her head back, leaning into the arm he’d wrapped around her. The meeting she had in the blue room seemed much less important right then. Forget budgets and tax bills. All that mattered was his honey presence. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Gone only for a week, but a week too long in Luna’s opinion. Her bed had felt empty without his bulk stretched out near her.

Heavy-lidded eyes smiled down at her. “I’m happy too. And I’ll stop scaring away your subjects.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.” She nudged his hip. “I kind of like it.”

The wrinkles beside his eyes deepened. “Come here, you,” he said, drawing her to a side alcove, where he traced his happiness over her lips, then nuzzled her cheek with his nose as he made a nipping, teasing path down toward her neck. “Missed this. Holding you, having you, tasting you.”

She leaned into him, relishing his scents, the feel of him, until a voice cleared its throat behind them.

“Your Majesty?”

Luna moved to turn and found herself blocked by Eli’s body.

“What is it?” he growled.

“I-I had a new report Her Highness will need before the meeting… I’ll just leave it at her spot.”

“Good idea.”

Her aide scampered away before Eli turned back around. Luna’s eyebrows were lifted, her lips pursed to bite back a smile.

Eli winced. Lifting his huge arm, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

Highly indecorous. An absolute abomination of royal dignity. Yet Luna drew herself up to his chest, standing on tip toe to reach him as her wide eyed, sweet orc lost his surprise and met her with a hungry growl under his breath.

She was the queen. She had to keep up the image. And right now, she didn’t care.

Mesja picked up a stone and placed it across from her white one, and then showed her examples of moves from there.

“At first glance, Hudo is a strategy game. Hudo refers to the middle of a river. Each piece you play moves downstream, toward the middle.”

Luna frowned as she watched him move the rocks without any discernible pattern. “You said ‘at first glance.’ Is Hudo not a strategy game?”

“It’s much more than that.” He placed a stone in the middle of the table. “It’s about moving, about balance, about being flexible.” He looked up at her. “Unlike chess, where the movement of all pieces is set, and the game is about finding the best maneuvers, in Hudo a player must be ready for new developments, new possibilities. The rules are changeable, decided upon by the opponent and then decided upon by you.”

“But how can the rules change so much?”

Mesja smirked as he reached over the table and tapped her bottom lip. “For someone who enjoys your politics, this should be easy for you.”

She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, pulling it away from his thumb. “I don’t see what you mean.”

He held up one of his pieces and then showed how he would jump it over the river. “The rules are decided by those who play. The more you understand and appreciate the other player, the more you can guess what rules they will follow and either join them or break them.”

“I see… So it can be cooperative or adversarial?”

“Like fucking,” Mesja said.

She choked back a laugh, darting a look around the grand dining hall as if everyone might’ve heard Mesja’s crass language. The dining hall was filled with people – green skinned orcs, the varied kinds of sidhe, the elf-touched, and humans. Tonight was the biggest feast put upon for the people, bigger even than Luna’s coronation, and it was a celebration of the first recognized elf-human union within the kingdom–her kingdom.

Her own.

The crowd had dwindled some since night had fallen, guests walking out yawning and murmuring their farewells with sleepy eyes. Her other celebrated husbands were mingling with the remaining guests while Mesja, her ral, stayed beside her. In the moment they had to themselves, which she imagined Fall and Eli had arranged since they stood closest near their table, distracting anyone who came too close with conversation and drink, Mesja taught Luna Hudo.
And when his hand drifted below the table, finding her bare calf, then her knee, and then higher to find the slit in her dress, she let him have his diversion.

“What rule of the game is this?” she asked, shifting and spreading her thighs apart slightly.

“Ours.”

“You know, most of our guests have your enhanced hearing and smell,” she said as arousal pooled in her belly. “Might not be wise…”

She drew off as his hand brushed her sex. Thank heavens their table was closed off at the bottom, draped with heavy velvet, or else everyone would see how her skirt was bunched up in Mesja’s hand, revealing her smooth, creamy legs.

Mesja didn’t look away from the Hudo pieces as his fingers skimmed her lace panties, collecting the moisture slowly soaking through. “Most here know that orcs can’t suffer through a day without touching their flame–and you’ve been absent all day.”

She clenched the edge of the table. “Getting dressed for our marriage, you – you–“

“What? What do you want to call me?” She could see his smirk from the corner of her eye. “Your ral, your husband?”

“You utter prick,” she said, lifting her hips into his touch.

While he pretended to play Hudo with ease, chuckling now, Luna struggled to concentrate. She wanted to press herself against his hand and feel the roughness of his calloused fingers. Like that first night, the first of many nights, she wanted him to take what was his without asking, without teasing her.

Maintaining her composure grew difficult as his claw hooked into the side of her panties, pulling them aside and allowing his fingers access to the wet swollen flesh between her legs.

“Mesja,” she whispered, her voice trembling as her gaze darted around the room. “People are looking.”

“I know,” he rumbled.

“But they’ll see,” she said, breathless.

“They won’t. But they’ll know that I’m here pleasing my flame, that no one else can satisfy you. And they’ll know you’re mine.”

At his words, her breath came in a rush and her core hummed with need. The thrill that shivered through her body at his possessive words was quickly eclipsed by his thumb’s firm press against her clit. She squirmed, trying to ease the pressure and trigger a simple orgasm, but he held her fast.

“Mesja.” She tried to make it an admonishment, but his name came out a prayer instead. “Please.”

“Please touch you?” he asked, his voice a low, animalistic rumble. “Make you come?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

“I want to hear you say it,” he said, his thumb firm against her clit. “I want to hear my flame beg.”

Begging in front of what felt like everyone in the kingdom. Her kingdom. Luna dropped her hand under the table, cupping Mesja’s hand and pressing it tight to her aching core. “Make me come, Mesja,” she said, and Mesja’s eyes came alive.

Straddling the line between arousal and embarrassment, Luna closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the throne. She took deep even breaths, or tried to. The pants that escaped her mouth were anything but calming. They were wet, hungry sounds that were quickly punctuated by her sharp gasps as Mesja slid first one, then two fingers deep into her as his palm bruised her clit.

Mesja’s fingers thrust into her, deep and hard. The heel of his hand ground against the aching nub between her legs, and her being flared with a sunburn, bright and hot and infecting every pore.

“That’s right, kitten,” Mesja growled as her hips bucked and she heard him say something else, but was too far away to comprehend it.

Then Mesja was moving, leaving her adrift only to pull her into his lap, her legs carelessly thrown over the side of his chair. A sting at her hips announced him ripping her panties away and then his hand was back, fingers pushing back into her, making her choke as she quickly looked around.

“Mesja!”

“They’ve been told to leave,” Mesja growled, burying his face into her neck. “Now fuck my hand, wife.”

The few remaining guests were indeed being shepherded out by the rest of her clan, Eli standing before the table in front of them so his towering frame blocked them from sight for the most part. It didn’t matter to Luna’s body, still squirming and bucking into Mesja’s hand as he teased from her every last ounce of pleasure. Wet, obscene sounds echoed in her head.

Luna knew that she was making the same embarrassing sounds. Whimpers and gasps, sighs and moans. She didn’t care. She gave herself over completely to it, to him, the world fading to a pinpoint, all of it centered on her ral.

The screech of a chair on marble had her opening her eyes as Mesja picked her up. Hudo pieces clattered to the floor and her eyes flew open as he spread her over the table in front of him.

“Mesja!”

“They’re gone.” Fall took her hands and drew her arms over her head, to where he stood on the other side of the table. The wicked smile in his eyes made a ragged moan escape her. “Now listen to your ral.”

“I must perform my husbandly duties,” Mesja said with a sharpness in his expression that made her tremble. His leathers dropped. He kicked her thighs apart and his claws pinched her hips. “Now come here, my queen.”