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gmofreejojos · 2 years

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Poly La Squadra/Reader Group Sex Scenarios

18+ Only, Minors DNI.

cw: breeding, degradation, humiliation, anal, exhibitionism (some dubious consent, but mostly consensual), afab reader but written gender neutral

Starting off my first post on this blog with a bang, I guess lol. Really graphic stuff ahead! Sorry.

In this scenario, reader is dating all of the La Squadra members, but they are not dating each other.

Melone, Illuso, Formaggio, Ghiaccio, Risotto

Group sex is fairly uncommon among La Squadra, as most of them are deeply possessive. It's only through their dedication to each other as a team that allows for you to be shared at all.

However, Melone is an exception. And he doesn't just not mind sharing, he *loves* sharing. He has a thing for fucking you after one of his teammates has had you because he loves how wet and sloppy you are afterwards. He's very into the idea of you being oversexed, overstimulated, and constantly full of cum. He wants you dirty and he likes feeling dirty himself, and knowing that he's fucking another man's cum into you makes him feel very dirtyZ It also plays heavily into his breeding kink. He likes to imagine that he and his teammates are breeding you, so the more cum, the better.

The idea of you having everyone's cum in you at the same time drives him wild and eventually, he tries to organize it. Prosciutto doesn't want anything to do with it--too proud and he'd find his teammates more distracting than anything. Pesci's too shy and worries he'll be mocked for his technique. Risotto is content to watch. Illuso agrees only if he can go first. Formaggio is all for it, as it's been something he's secretly wanted to but didn't want to deal with his teammates making fun of him. Ghiaccio, initially, is very opposed.

And so, the fun begins. Illuso takes you first, with you on your back and your legs around his waist. His sexual prowess is a point of pride for him so he puts his all in to making sure you have a *very* good time. He doesn't plow into you mindlessly, but fucks you deep and hard, grinding his pelvis against yours so that your g-spot is massaged. He won't shut up about how wet you are for him and how tightly you're clenching down on his cock, but the dirty talk is more directed at his teammates than at you; he wants to prove to them that he's a better lover.

Jokes on him though, Formaggio and Melone are just turned on by the dirty talk and are stroking themselves while they watch. Risotto is inscrutable as always, but there's a bulge in his pants that betrays his enjoyment. But by the time Illuso finishes, Formaggio is raring to go. Illuso kisses you, long and deep, just to spite Formaggio and then steps back to watch. Unlike Melone, he doesn't jerk off. He's here to be a bitch.

Formaggio climbs onto you eagerly, forcing your knees to your chest and spreading your legs wide so he can get a good look. The sight of cum dripping out of your entrance does *a lot* for him--it's even better than he'd though it'd be. It doesn't even matter that it's Illuso's cum. He pushes into you without care for your comfort, groaning at how wet and sloppy you've become and mesmerized by the loud, lewd squelches your hole makes when he pushes in and out. Your whimpers of overstimulation just egg him on as he thrusts away, chasing his own pleasure. Normally he'd be a bit more careful because he's fairly girthy, but you're looser after taking Illuso and he's aroused by the knowledge that he can just plow you without fear--never mind that the intensity of marathon sex is making you melt. He cums quickly, pushing himself in all the way to make sure he really gets in there. When he pulls out, you're so wet that strings of cum cling to his cock. It nearly gets him going again, but...

Surprise! Ghiaccio busts in. He couldn't help but overhear your cries of pleasure and the squeaking bed frame and got too horny to concentrate. He's annoyed and still grossed out by the idea of having anyone's sloppy seconds (or thirds), but too horny to care. He's mad, horny, and needs an outlet and there you are, naked and ready for him. Melone is all too happy to let him go and Formaggio doesn't mind the break.

Ghiaccio fucks you with a vengeance, flipping you over onto your knees and pushing your face into the bed as he mounts you from behind. As always, his pace is furious and desperate; generally, sessions with Ghiaccio require at least a day of recovery and you're already boneless from Illuso and Formaggio's ministrations. Fortunately, Ghiaccio isn't very big and he can afford to be rough and rough he is, with his fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise and occasionally slapping your ass when he gets too excited by how it bounces as he fucks you. He has a *filthy* mouth, rambling on about what a cock hungry whore you are, how they keep you around only as a cum dump (it's not true, but thinking about it gets Ghiaccio going).

He yanks your head up by the hair when he cums, but to everyone's surprise he only slows down for a second before he keeps going. You're babbling nonsense at this point, unable to do anything other than squeal and squirm. Through your hazy vision, you can see Risotto staring directly into your eyes and it both arouses and embarrasses you--as weird as it sounds, you want him to see you this way, see how much of a slut you really are.

When Ghiaccio cums for a second time, he collapses over your body and just pants for a good 30 seconds. You're worried he's going to fall asleep right then and there, but Formaggio eventually tells him to move as watching you get pounded into oblivion really got him going. He slips his fingers inside you and pushes them in and out, and the sound it makes nearly makes him cum again. He takes you like that, with your chest to the bed and his chest against your back.

Once Formaggio has cum again, Melone is finally ready to go. This whole process has been sweet agony to him. Watching how well you take the rough poundings, hearing and seeing how messy you've become, it's been driving him wild and he's been desperate to cum for what feels like ages. He flips you over and pushes your knees to your chest, carefully scooping up any cum that's leaked out of you and pressing it back inside and lectures you with a grin about how important it is to not waste a drop. Without any resistance, he presses three fingers into you and, to your embarrassment, turns to Risotto, Formaggio, and Illuso and tells them to look at how loose you've become. You cover your face with your hands, embarrassed, but Melone peels them away from your face and tells you not to be embarrassed--the vagina is a muscle and it'll tighten back up in no time, and you being loose now just means you must really love getting bred by multiple men. Somehow, that's even worse.

When he enters you, Melone pushes your ankles up towards your head and lays his weight against the back of your knees into a mating press. He fucks you slow, hard, and deep, trying to find angles that make the most noise as he fucks you. He cums three times without pulling out, all in the span of 20 minutes, overwhelmed by how wet you are.

(Eroticized pregnancy talk warning) For his first two orgasms, he can hardly speak as his eyes roll back into his head. But after the first two, the dirty talk starts. It's talk that the rest of his teammates aren't really into, at least not openly. He starts going on about how you're definitely going to get pregnant after being filled with so much cum (hope you're on birth control, because if you aren't he timed this for the fertile window of your cycle). He babbles on about how he won't be able to keep his hands off of you when your breasts and belly swell up, how he'll milk you himself when you start lactating. Illuso and Formaggio are definitely giving each other "what the fuck" looks.

After he cums for the third time, Melone asks you to keep your legs in the air for a bit. You're exhausted from the rough treatment, but you do it anyway. A part of you loves how full and sore you feel. Melone and Formaggio curl up on either side of you for cuddling, despite how sweaty you all are. Illuso turns his nose up at the thought of cuddling his teammates, so he leaves.

(More breeding talk, oops) Eventually Risotto entices you up and out of the arms of Melone and Formaggio. He carries you to the bathroom and brings you into the shower with him. Youre too exhausted to be embarrassed by the constant stream of cum down your thighs and Risotto is polite enough not to comment. He praises you for how well you took his men as he gently washes you. Eventually, his hands creep between your legs and he presses two fingers into you, whispering in your ear that he's not the kind of man to take anyone's sloppy seconds, but if Melone's trying to breed you, he wants in on it. You're too exhausted to protest when he turns you around and tells you to place your hands on the wall. Risotto's a big man with the tool to match, but for the first time, you take him without any trouble. Risotto fucks you while you whimper uselessly, too tired to even squirm. Afterwards, he dries you off and carries you nude to his bed and bundles you up in blankets. You conk out immediately.

Prosciutto & Pesci

Prosciutto has absolutely no interest in group sex, knowing that he wouldn't be able to concentrate with all of his teammates chattering on.

But, he admits to himself that the idea *does* intrigue him. He's fantasized before about hearing you gag and choke on another cock while he fucks you hard and fast. Though he prefers to ~make love~ to you, there's a part of him that wants to debase you and use you. And who better to share you with than Pesci, who will do just as he says?

The next time Prosciutto has you to himself, he calls Pesci up to his room. Prosciutto is already fucking you at this point and poor Pesci sputters and goes bright red when he opens the door to see your legs wrapped around Prosciutto's waist while he fucks you.

Pesci tries to leave, but Prosciutto calls him back--he's decided that Pesci needs to learn how to fuck like a man, not like a boy (poor Pesci does a decent enough job, but he's ever so careful with you). He commands Pesci to watch and watch he does, incredibly embarrassed and hard as well. Prosciutto explains exactly what he's doing to you as Pesci looks on, approaching it from a clinical angle but it's clear that he's riling himself. He starts going on about how Pesci needs to assert himself more, needs to fuck you and remind you of your place.

Eventually, Prosciutto beckons Pesci over and tells him to take out his cock. Pesci panics, but Prosciutto turns you over on to your knees and slips back inside of you, yanking your hair back to open your mouth. He tells Pesci that you're eager for it and truly, you're happy to comply.

Pesci's a *big* boy. He's thick and long and Prosciutto feels his dick twitch when he thinks about all that meat stretching you open. You take Pesci into your mouth, letting him thrust at his leisure. But it's not good enough for Prosciutto; he wants to hear you *choke*. He tells Pesci to stop being a pussy and to fuck your throat properly.

And he does. It's *brutal*. The incessant pounding from both ends of your body is almost too much to handle, but it doesn't last long--Pesci's always been a quick shot and Prosciutto's driven wild by the wet sounds of Pesci fucking your throat and the obvious strain.

Prosciutto loses it when he feels you cum around his cock with Pesci's dick lodged down your throat.

Bonus: Risotto + All

Risotto's fine with his men fucking your pussy, but he's insistent that your ass is his and he wants them to know that.

At first, you're not so sure about that; after all, he's very big and you've never really been one for anal.

But Risotto takes the time to train you up to it. And not just stretch you--he wants you to *like* it, to crave it, to cum from getting your ass fucked.

He starts with just eating your ass while he vibes your clit, then eases you onto one of his fingers. Your ass is a vice and it makes him feel eager to truly destroy it and make it his own little cocksleeve. You enjoy how the thick finger in your ass makes your vaginal walls rub together and, despite the new sensations, end up cumming a couple of times.

He does this everyday, increasing the amount of fingers, all the while fantasizing about fucking you where no one else can. Then he has you wearing plugs, constantly, gradually increasing in size. You do eventually come to love it. Even without clitoral stimulation, the sensation of something stretching out your ass gets you wet. The constant arousal isn't too terrible, as you have seven men around you that want to bone you. No one seems to mind that you're much tighter with a plug in your ass.

The day Risotto feels confident that you can finally take his cock, he tells you to wear a skirt or a dress w/ nothing underneath. And absolutely no sex or masturbation. You spend the day hopelessly aroused, pressing your thighs together and terrified you'd start dripping down your legs.

Towards the end of the day, Risotto calls everyone together. Assuming it's a meeting of some sort, everyone looks pretty bored. Until he calls you in.

He beckons you over and turns you so that your backside is to everyone else. You're just as confused. But when he bends you over and flips up your skirt to show his men your bare pussy, wet from neglect, you understand. You want to curl up and die from the embarrassment, but the arousal is too strong.

You moan as Risotto slowly eases the plug out of your ass and discards it. Risotto turns you around and lifts you on to his lap from his seated position so that you face his men. Their faces express a range of emotions--shocked, embarrassed, angry, but, most of all, aroused. You hide your face from them, too ashamed to look at them.

When he pulls out his hard cock, the length of it slaps against your pussy, making you squeak. Then he lifts you up and slowly spears you on his massive length. It's a sensation like no other--you have never felt so full. But the stretching did its job and there's only pressure, no pain. More than anything, it feels *good*.

Risotto inches you down his considerable length and each inch is a throb of heat through your gut. You're so worked up from not cumming all day that everything feels amplified. When you reach the base, he gives your clit a single, gentle rub and you cum, unable to hold back. It's one of the strongest orgasms you've ever had and you squirm through it, anchored by Risotto's hands on your hips.

After your orgasm subsides, Risotto grips your waist and begins to bounce you on his cock. You forget about the rest of the squad and can only feel the burning heat of Risotto inside you. You can't help but rub your clit, cumming multiple times as he fucks you.

Risotto cums with a groan, holding you against his pelvis as he rocks up into you. After a moment, he lifts you out of his lap and lets his cock slide out of you. He slips the plug back into your ass and stands, placing you in the chair he once occupied. Wordlessly, he leaves. He's made his point--that hole is his, and his men can do what they like with the rest of you.

And they do.

#not sfw #risotto nero #prosciutto jjba #melone jjba #illuso jjba #pesci jjba #formaggio jjba #ghiaccio jjba #gmofree writing #la squadra #la squadra x reader #risotto x reader #prosciutto x reader #melone x reader #illuso x reader #pesci x reader #formaggio x reader #ghiaccio x reader

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dear-mrs-otome · 2 years

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Pace non trovo - IkePri (Silvio)

Fandom: Ikemen Prince

Pairing: Silvio Ricci/MC (Emma)

Warnings: None - not even spoilers really, just speculation

Summary: Silvio sets out to discover what it takes to buy Emma…but the true cost isn’t something either of them expects. (6.7k YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT WHY BRAIN words of snark and fluff, SFW)

Author’s Note: Frankly I’m just tired of looking at this. It’s long and I’ll never be happy with it but I want it out there before Cybird undermines all my ideas. And the gratuitous Italian is all my own headcanon.

Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;

e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio

(I find no peace, and all my war is done.

I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice)

- Francesco Petrarca

“What price?”

The words are aimed down a set of glistening silver tines at her, fork brandished over the breakfast plate like a saber. A pair of deep blue eyes pierce her from the other end, and she pauses a moment to sip at her tea, collecting her thoughts before replying calmly. “What price what, Prince Silvio?”

“Your price. How much to buy you.”

She nearly aspirates her swallow as it abruptly reverses course, tannin burning her nose as she chokes it back down and clears her throat. “Forgive the impertinence in stating as much, Your Highness…” It takes more effort than she’d like to admit not to put any additional emphasis on his title. “But you seem to be laboring under some misconception. I am not for…sale.”

This was, by far, the strangest breakfast conversation she had had in a long string of strange breakfasts, since coming to this castle.

Silvio scoffs with derision after finishing his bite of soufflé. “Everything and everyone can be bought, donna.” Setting his fork aside he dabs at his lips with a crisp linen napkin, before leaning forward and shooting her a crooked grin - teeth bared in a way that reminded her of the fact that dogs were only generations removed from wolves. And could be equally as ravenous. “It’s merely a matter of finding their price. That one thing they just can’t refuse.”

She lets the smallest bit of her ire slip, tugging the corners of her mouth down and her eyebrows up into twin arcs of disbelief. “And supposing, for one ridiculous moment, I did have such a price? You believe I’d just tell you it?”

On a languid shrug, Silvio slouches back into his chair, gaze fixed on her contemplatively as he toys idly with the pendant around his neck. Looking every last inch the disgustingly rich, disgustingly arrogant tyrant she knew him to be. “You wouldn’t be worth it if you did. But figuring it out is half the fun.”

Nothing, not faking her existence as Belle or the harrowing waltz she had to dance day in and day out to keep herself safe in this viper’s nest of a court, had ever filled her with the same sort of gut-wrenching dread as that last sentence did.

The gifts began shortly thereafter.

At first they are easy enough to dismiss - or as easy as a room where every flat surface has been covered in vases of cut hothouse flowers could be, at least. Some so exotic she’d only seen their like in the beautiful illustrations of botany books that came through the shop, puzzling over the foreign syllables of their names as she traced their strange petals with wondering fingers.

“Have them gathered up and sent to the hospital and orphanage,” she suggests to Rio, who looks every bit as unamused as she feels. “At least they can brighten someone’s day.”

“That won’t be enough to stop him.” Rio proclaims this with the air of someone who knows as much from personal experience, and that is enough to give her pause. “This is only an opening feint.”

“It won’t encourage him either,” she finally concedes on a shrug.

The flowers are followed by chocolates, which look decadent, but she passes them along to the castle staff as a show of appreciation for their hard work. The elaborate cake that comes next goes the same way. The cake is followed by the silk dress that was reminiscent of a waterfall, a glorious froth of blue silk. After the dress comes the figurine of a single rose, bewitchingly carved of carnelian and gilded, nestled in a vase of porcelain so fine the light shone through it like paper.

“I told you, Your Highness. I can’t be bought. Least of all for trinkets.” She reminds Silvio of this after she knocks on his door that evening to return the rose (however reluctantly), having learned over the past weeks that he would not accept them if a servant brought it back.

He leans insouciantly against the doorframe, takes the gleaming flower from her hands and offers her a smug tilt of the lips in return. “Every item you refuse tells me something too. You’ll run out of secrets soon enough, coniglietta. And places to hide.”

“I will have to continue to respectfully disagree.” She breathes slowly through the perpetual finger-twitching urge to slap the smug expression from his regretfully handsome face and spark a diplomatic crisis.

~~~~~~~~

The jewelry, though, he delivers himself.

She is in the library some days later, poring over a stack of study materials earmarked by Sariel. Night had fallen whilst she was unawares, only realizing how dark it has grown when the servants pad silently in to light the candles and lamps around her. She likes the library at night, when the curtains can be twitched back to reveal the velveted drapery of darkness outside. When the endless, echoing castle grows just a little bit smaller. A little bit less of a reminder that she doesn’t belong here.

She’s lost in a treatise on ocean shipping lanes when her concentration is broken by the clatter of a door being thrown open, followed by a familiar jangle, and she braces herself for the oncoming storm.

Silvio strolls up like a thunderhead of furred cape and spiced cologne, plucks the tome from her hands and holds it up before him, letting it dangle from his fingers the way one might a dead rat. He turns it just enough to read the title embossed on the spine, before scoffing audibly. “I could tell you far more about maritime trade than you’d find written in that. Probably more than this entire library contains.”

“How very kind of you to offer, but I believe I’ll pass.” She rescues the book from him before he can drop it, sets it carefully aside and narrows her eyes peevishly up at him towering over her. “What is it you need…Your Highness?”

He draws a brocade bag from where it had been tucked into a breast pocket and loosens the drawstring that had cinched it shut tight, tipping the pouch over his palm and shaking it until a waterfall of gems pours out. When he holds them up between his hands can she see it for the necklace it is, strands upon strands of sapphire knotted with pearls, luminous in the wan lamplight. It looks like a queen’s ransom. Moves like a poem.

She doesn't mean to gasp. But intention does nothing to stop his eyes from sharpening when she does regardless, and his smile edges as fierce as the baying of a hound on the trail. “You like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” she admits, because she tries to abide by honesty as the best policy, and it would be a crime to insult something so lovely with banality.

“You should see it on.”

Before she can react he’s taken her by the shoulders, steered her over towards where the night has made a mirror of the windowpanes and she can see herself, mouth slacked with surprise, reflected back in perfect details. His hands, the second - no, third? fourth? - part of him she allows herself to admire, have the necklace around her neck between blinks. The barest brush of his fingers against the nape of her neck a warm contrast to the cool metal that nuzzles along her collarbone and breasts.

And for an instant, the library falls away. She stares enchanted into a mirror where she sees a queen looking back - Amphitrite among the waves, perhaps. Consort of the ocean, with a froth of seafoam and tides adorning her throat. Or the mermaid of her beloved stories, trading her freedom for legs, her voice for her heart.

Her life for her love.

While it lasts, it is a gossamer, glorious moment. But she blinks it away, because she knows better than most that happily-ever-after was the way few fairy tales ended.

Her fingers scrabble under the weight of her hair, seeking the clasp. “Take it off, take it off.” Her heart wrenching too tightly to care that it seeps into her voice, stringing it too high. Only when Silvio’s hands grasp hers to still them, surprisingly gentle, does she feel the sting of where she’s scratched herself.

He doesn’t say a word as he removes the jewelry - but for an instant, his gaze flickers up to meet hers in their reflection, a mirage shimmer of blue, and she wonders if she’s only hoping for the remorse she thinks she finds there.

Whatever it was, it lasts only a moment before it’s swept away by frustration. “Scores of women would kill to have this.”

“Then give it to one of them,” she tells him, turning about to face his anger head on. Dismay over her own heartache, over letting him get even infinitesimally under her skin, loosening her tongue. “Not me. You can put all the peacock feathers you want on a jackdaw, and it’ll never change the fact that it’s a dull. Ordinary. Jackdaw.”

She hurls the last word at him as if it is his fault that she were born without the gravitas of a surname to tie her down, to make something more of her than flotsam in this world.

He studies her for long moments, no sound between them save her own heavy breaths, as thunderclouds gather in his eyes. Something ghosting across his face, come and gone before she can read it. “At least a jackdaw can fly. Show me the peacock that easily can.”

She doesn’t trust herself with a reply not to expose anymore of her truths than she already has, and he makes no move to stop her when she pushes her way past him.

~~~~~~~~

"He's been asking about you."

It's Sariel, not Rio this time, who enlightens her as to this one morning over the tower of books he stacks up on her desk.

She doesn’t bother looking up from her page, or ask who he’s speaking of. “Tell me something I don't know.”

The desk shifts slightly as Sariel comes to lean a hip against it beside her, his arms folded and she can feel the weight of his stare on the top of her head. Knows by now it would be bruised with castigation. “Not sniffing around about your identity, exactly. He paid a maid to tell him the books you’ve read. The chef to spill on your favorite dishes. The gardener to say which flowers you linger at longest in the garden.” Sariel pauses, and it’s a jagged silence, one that might bleed her if she moves wrong. “Just what did you say to him?”

The clap of slamming her book shut is satisfying, but not enough to ease her frustration. Carefully, she arranges her hands atop the closed cover and takes a long, grounding breath before looking up at the man beside her. “I said ‘no’ to him. And I don’t think he’s taking it well.” She shakes her head over Sariel’s molasses chuckle, exasperated. “What is wrong with him? He could just ask me these things, if he really wanted to know.”

“And would you tell him?”

She lets his challenge slide past, unanswered because she can’t. “He thinks he can buy me. Thinks that if he throws enough money at me, I’ll love him.”

The silence is back again, only this time it’s not cutting. It’s expectant, like the breath held while watching a child toddle its first unsteady steps.

“Why would he ever imagine that would work?” she finally asks to break it - not because she expects an answer but because she can no longer stand it.

Sariel heaves a soft sigh. “What do you give someone, when you fall in love?”

She frowns at the rhetorical question before answering easily. “My love. My heart. Myself.”

There’s a smile hovering about one corner of Sariel’s lips, but she can’t decide if they’re canted with amusement or melancholy. “A ready answer. Because you’re certain of their value.��

She picks his words up and turns them about, peering through them from all angles as if they were a kaleidoscope. But the stark shapes they form both sadden and unnerve her, and she tucks them safely away - to be examined some other time.

~~~~~~~~

She almost preferred the jewelry.

The gems and the pretty lie they offered had been strong, the compulsion to accept them almost overriding her better sense for a moment, but it had been just that - a momentary temptation.

This. This though?

She flipped gently through the pages one more time, as if to commit the scent of its delicate pages and the gentle script flowing across its pages to memory. An authentic first edition of her favorite collection of stories that had been left on her desk, adorned in a simple red ribbon to mark it as a gift. Something she never dreamed she’d so much as see, let alone hold. Let alone read. Let alone be offered the chance to possess.

The writing box, inlaid with mother of pearl and meticulously carved yet still surprisingly practical, had been another gift difficult to return. The tray of pastries from her favorite shop, still flaky and steaming and tasting of many happy days gone by. The beautifully enameled music box that played the same childhood tune she often hummed to herself in the library

The single rosebud in a slim crystal vase delivered with her breakfast, exquisitely perfect. So freshly cut that the morning dew still clung to its blushing petals just on the cusp of unfurling, the exact shade of coral she knew would open to reveal how they brightened to yellow within, like dawn breaking in a blossom. They grew on the south trellis, and she had spent hours on her strolls admiring their sunny cheer and thinking how lovely the sight of them greeting her each morning would be.

She’s on her fourth read-through when she hears the musical tinkle that precludes her door flying open, although she’s not surprised by now. More evenings than not saw Silvio finding some excuse to come by her room after dinner had wound down, for one reason or another. He’d find the flimsiest of pretexts.

A part of her, when she was feeling generous, wondered if he was doing her the favor of making her daily rejection easier.

There‘s a bottle in his hand, half filled with some tawny wine, and she suspects from the faint color that rides his high cheekbones that the other half of it is already in his belly by now. “Drink with me, donna,” he orders, lifting the matched set of delicate stemware in his other hand imperiously.

She’d learned over the past weeks it was simpler to just say yes, or at the least not offer any protest, and get this all over with sooner.

He takes her silence for the grudging assent it is, and throws himself onto the settee beside her. His ridiculously long legs consuming the space as he props his boots on the low table and twitches his cape back behind his shoulders, pouring a measure of port in each glass before handing her one.

She takes a polite sip, rolling the heavy sweetness on her tongue to savor before swallowing. If she has to suffer through his company, at least it means being treated to good liquor, she supposes.

They lapse into a silence that, while perhaps not comfortable, isn’t uncomfortable either. It’s familiar, at least. He’s in one of his moods, she can tell, the ones that have him frowning at the far wall, lost in thoughts he doesn’t deem fit to share. Or at least not with her.

She wonders if there’s anyone he does.

She suspects there isn’t.

It’s a surprise even to herself when she speaks first, bothered for some unknown reason by the quiet. “You’ve gotten better at this.” She lifts the book in her hand slightly for emphasis. “I’m still not accepting it. But higher marks for effort.”

He blinks back to himself and offers her a cocky grin that she pretends not to notice seems a bit taut around the edges. “You haven’t seen anything resembling effort yet.”

Scoffing softly, she opens the book back to where her bookmark lay tucked between pages, ready to dive back in when -

“Which story is your favorite?”

“You’re asking me? Whyever for, when you could simply pay the maid to tell you?” she tosses back dryly and he has the grace enough to glance guiltily away, however briefly. That tiny gesture though buys enough goodwill for her to answer. “This one.”

He leans in to peer at the title she traces on the table of contents, and his next question, posed without pretense, startles her. “Why?”

“Why?” She echoes him blankly…and then dithers. Weighing the pros and cons of giving him the gift of such knowledge for free, of letting him prize open any wider that tiny crack he’d inflicted on her careful wall. Marred it with a bejeweled hammer of glittering tide and brine.

Even she’s not sure what prompts her to speak, in the end. “It’s the story of a mermaid that falls in love with a human prince after she saves him from a shipwreck, and all the things she gives up to try and be with him.” Pausing, she arrows a sidelong glance his way. “It’s a story about how we can’t control other people or how they feel about us. The only thing in this life we can really control is ourselves.”

He looses a small sound of disbelief, and she braces herself for the sting of whatever crack of derision is sure to follow, feeling the faintest heat of embarrassment kiss her cheeks at having perhaps handed him the whip.

But it never comes.

“And does she?” he asks.

“Does she what?”

He throws her an exasperated look. “Does she end up with the prince?”

A smile toys with the edges of her lips, and she can’t quite resist tweaking the tiger’s whiskers. “You’ll just have to read it and find out, won’t you?”

She expects him to scoff something dismissive about a waste of time, about having better things to do. Instead, she’s taken utterly aback when he sets his drink aside and shifts sideways on the settee, feet propped on the arm of it, crossed nonchalantly at the ankle, and his head pillowed on her thigh. “Read it to me then.”

It takes a long moment for his demand to even register, and so astonished is she when it does that she reflexively obeys. Reading aloud the first sentences of a story she knows so well she could practically recite them from memory, their cadence and rhythm as familiar as old friends.

By page six, the intense blue of his eyes has been shuttered away behind drifting lids. By page ten, the tense set of his neck has softened against her leg. By twenty-three, his chest rises and falls in a steady, slow rhythm and it finally sinks in.

The first prince of Benitoite is asleep on her lap, lax as a newborn babe.

She finishes the story and rolls right into the next. She should close her book, she should push him off her and order him to go sleep in his own room if he’s that exhausted…and yet she finds herself reluctant to do so. Stealing glances instead, between pages, down at the absurdly handsome lines of his face. Softened now in repose, looking almost boyish when at peace. A far cry from the tyrant of norm.

The whitecap shock of his hair has spilled down to cover one eye as his head lolls sideways a little, and unthinkingly she brushes it back. Wholly unprepared for how soft and sleek the strands are as they slip through her fingers. What she imagines a bolt of silk brought from some far flung shore would feel like, the likes of which she’d only ever seen with her face pressed to the glass of some luxurious shop before arriving here at the castle.

When he doesn’t even so much as flinch she lets her curiosity get the better of her, trailing her touch through the odd dark thatch that stands out so starkly from the rest. She half expects it to feel coarser, or maybe thinner somehow, but it feels exactly the same as the rest, lapping along her skin like warm water. Like summer’s sultry waves, inviting indolence.

She loses track of how long she’s doing this, lost in fascination and story abandoned, when he stirs slightly. A line creasing into existence between his brows and she freezes, trying to eke out breath past the pounding knot of her heart in her throat at the thought of being caught, because he would never. Ever. Let her live this down.

But he doesn’t wake - just turns his head to nuzzle into her touch, the warmth of his soft contended sigh caressing her palm like the ghost of a kiss.

Haunting her long after she’s wriggled herself free and made her escape to the library, book rebound in ribbon and left carefully arranged on his slumbering chest.

~~~~~~~~

It’s two days later when he corners her in an empty corridor.

“You left me there. I woke up and - “ He cuts off, but from the faintly petulant note souring his voice, she can fill in the rest of that sentence with his accusation. ‘You were gone’.

“You invited yourself in, I figured you could see yourself out,” she replies.

“You returned the book. I thought you liked it.” There’s frustration furrowing his brows now, the dogged aggravation of a child endlessly trying and failing to hammer a square peg through a round hole.

“I did. But I’ve already told you. I don’t want your money. I want -” She snatches the tail end of that sentence and holds firm, lest it slip free and ruin her like the proverbial tiger.

But he seizes on it all the same, a courser catching the scent, and leans in. Avarice sparking a blue flame in his eyes that burns her just to look at it.” What? You want what? Name it and it’s yours. Anything. Anything at all.” There’s a wild edge to his words, rendering them half breathless snarl.

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. You could never understand. What I want…you can’t buy it, you can’t steal it, can’t beg or barter for it. It’s worth nothing and yet it’s priceless.”

Misery makes her sick to her stomach, sitting like a swallowed draught of sweet poison, because it’s in this awful moment that she realizes finally.

She wants him to understand.

Thus has she become undine, and every wobbly step in this sudden unfamiliar land is treading atop the edge of a knife. An agony unlike any she’s ever known.

“You don’t even know me.” She throws those words up like a feeble shield, putting a hand out to keep him at bay, as if he hadn’t already made gleeful rubble of her defenses with this strange siege they’ve been locked in. Her heart and her mind a cacophony that almost drowns out the tight hiss of his breath as she makes contact with the warm wedge of skin left bare by the cut of his shirt, her fingers tangled between the weave of chains about his neck.

Any force she’d been about to put into the attempt withers entirely when she chances to glance up, baffled by the way he’s gone impossibly still - only to find a flush riding high on those sculpted cheekbones, spreading like an overturned well of red ink.

She can't say how long they're both locked like that, the moment stretching gossamer thin, her every heartbeat another strand plaited into this snare holding them in place. Until he wrests back control of the situation by surging forward, into her touch.

She can feel the hard swell of his chest flex beneath her fingers as he braces an arm against the wall behind her, the fall of his cape half caging her in. Making an entire world of two alone. The shift of his position causing her hand to slip even further into the gape of his shirt, muscles of fresh-forged iron pressed hard against her palm, the anvil pound of his heartbeat behind them emblazoning a brand she’ll never forget.

She knows he’s doing it intentionally.

Her mouth goes bone dry at the sensation, dread and a searing curl of awareness battling for supremacy in the pit of her stomach as he brings his lips to her ear, so close they traipse along the curve of it as he speaks. His voice a dark bedeviled purr, a rumble of sound that glides down every last nerve in her body to gather right between the legs most wickedly. “I know all of your secrets…shopgirl. Save the one that matters to me most.”

It’s the cold slap of fear that has her leaping from the sprung jaws of that trap, left trying to catch her unsteady breath as she backpedals another desperate handful of paces.

“You’re running again, coniglietta,” he calls after her.

The words nip mockingly at her heels as she turns tail and abandons him to that hallway, but she ignores them. Just like she ignores the thundercrack behind her of his fist striking the wall, as she races away like the coward they both now know she is.

~~~~~~~~

One thought seems to crash through all others again and again, incessant as waves chewing away at the shore. Shopgirl. Shopgirl. Shopgirl. Stopping her mid-bite of breakfast, waking her from her dreams.

He knows. Some way, somehow, he’s found her out. The one thing she was never supposed to let happen.

The thought of what he might do with the knowledge gnaws at her, a bone in the jaws of some great beast. Will he hold it over her head, blackmail her into compliance? Demand concessions of her, a piece at a time, until she’s given herself away entirely? She’s left in a breathless sort of agony, her heart leaping into her throat at the faint rattle of a teacart wheeled down the hallways, the chime of the chatelain’s keys as she shoos the maids off on their morning duties. Hunted and haunted.

She backs off the edge a little when the days roll on without sight of him…until even that becomes a new source of worry. Unsure of what to make of the disruption of their strange little dance, tripped up by the unfamiliar rest in this waltz. Left in this lurch, it’s almost a relief of sorts when she hears the faint ringing outside her door one evening.

Only for all her fears to come roaring back again when the sound that follows is a knock. A knock. “Donna. Open up.”

The doorknob is cool against her clammy palm as she turns it, keeping a tight grip on it to hide the way her hands tremble when Silvio comes into view on the other side. Clutching just as tightly to affrontery as a mask when she raises her chin to fix him with a hard look. “It’s late. What do you want?”

He sighs, rakes a fierce hand through his hair, and her fingers twitch with the memory of how soft it had felt between them. “I won’t stay. I only came to give you this.”

It’s a small oblong box that he thrusts unceremoniously in her direction, his eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder, and she takes it half on reflex. Still rolling on it when she opens it and finds a necklace nestled within.

For a moment her stomach drops, fearing a repeat of the last time he’d tried to ply her with jewelry, but its freefall is halted as she takes a closer look. It’s no gaudy spill of gems this time, hardly a one to be found, in fact - only a simple chain twisted in a clever design, with a single pendant hung on it. A ring with four points, small gems polished and winking cheerfully from each, anchored by one in the center. No two the same shade or sheen.

Like a compass rose, some absent corner of her mind notes, as she holds it up to stare at it blankly.

It’s surprisingly understated for someone like Silvio, yet exquisitely crafted. And it hurts her heart more than a little to return it to its place, close the lid, and offer it back to him. “You know I can’t -”

His hand lifts, as if to push it towards her again, before falling away into a fist at his side only a fraction through the motion.

“You can’t return it. Not this one.” His gaze remains locked on the long box in her grip, as if he can see straight through the velvet to the gems cradled carefully back inside. His expression guarded in a way that catches her attention more than any bluster or thunder ever would - because for all his countless faults Silvio could always be counted on to be unabashedly Silvio. “Shove it in a drawer and forget about it, throw it away, sell it if you want. It’ll fetch a pretty penny. But it’s yours to do with as you will now. My last gift.”

There is an unnerving openness to his eyes when he finally shifts them to meet hers. What she imagines a cloudless day at sea would be like, in which you can no longer tell where the horizon ends and the ocean begins and you are left adrift in a sphere of blue. Only a sliver of timber and a smear of pitch between you and drowning in that expanse. “I can’t take it back. It’s no longer mine, and it won’t ever be again.”

Beyond baffled, she watches the unfamiliar sight of his receding back as he abruptly turns and walks away. Leaving her holding the box, her tongue…and countless unanswered questions.

~~~~~~

A week goes by without a glimpse of Silvio. And then another.

Fourteen days of blessed, uninterrupted time in the library. In the halls. In her room each evening, without anyone crashing through the door like a summer squall. It sounded downright heavenly.

So then how did she explain this ennui?

There’s a listlessness to her routine now, a sameness. As if a great hand had come along and pressed the peaks and valleys of her days flat. She should be studying right now, attending to her duties as Belle. Instead she sits and stares unseeing out the window, lost in thought. Precarious towers of books and papers strewn across the workspace before her, but she ignores them in favor of toying with the pendant around her neck absently.

Wearing it isn’t accepting it, she tells herself. She’s merely resigned to believing the truth of Silvio’s words, and it seems a shame to let something as lovely languish in a drawer somewhere. It was hardly the necklace’s fault she took issue with its gifter.

Sariel’s voice breaks her reverie. “I see your mind is on your new gift, and not here where it should be.”

Guiltily she lets the chain slip from her grasp and sits up straighter. “It’s not a gift,” she tells him, kneejerk. “It’s…it’s a…loan.”

Sariel’s snort shreds her tissue paper reply. “Too bad it can’t lend you some focus.” He rounds the table and narrows his eyes as he looks down at the pendant nestled in the hollow of her collarbone. “May I?”

Mystified, she nods, and reaches up to undo the clasp, passing the delicate piece over. It gleams like a spill of moonlight across dark water against the leather of his gloves as he adjusts his glasses and peers at it closely. Long enough that she begins to almost worry. “Is there some problem?”

“No, no…” That’s what his reply is, but when Sariel glances up at her there’s a tension plucking at his tone. “This was a gift from Prince Silvio?” She nods, and Sariel makes a small sound low in his throat. “Why didn’t you return this one too?”

“I tried.” She shrugs helplessly. “He wouldn’t let me. Said it was mine to do whatever I wanted with, he couldn’t take it back.”

He studies it another moment, before turning his attention back to her. “Have you ever heard of acrostic jewelry?” At the shake of her head he goes on. “It was all the fashion some time ago. Hidden messages spelled out in gemstone by using the first letter of each. I wonder…”

When he trails off thoughtfully, she snatches up a scrap of paper and quill.

“This one is an emerald, clearly.” Sariel brushes a finger against the central gem, first of the five, its verdancy the richness of sunshine filtered through pines. “There’s lapis, opal, ruby, and…this one I’m not as familiar with but it’s very distinctive. See that luminous stripe to it?”

She nods, because she’s already well familiar with the lustrous band that bisects its startling green, pale as spring’s tenderest new growth. Had stared at it in fascination as she shifted it and the stripe seemed to move with her every new angle.

He snaps his fingers and a servant is suddenly there, in that uncannily prescient manner of the servants Sariel always seems to surround himself with, a heavy tome in hand. She can see from the embossed title that it has something to do with gems and minerals, and she waits with anticipation while he opens it and thumbs through the pages.

Only to jump when he snaps it emphatically shut only moments later, nodding sagely. “I thought so. Cat’s eye.”

E. L. O. R. C. She writes them all down dutifully, and then frowns at the resulting gibberish. “Are you certain?”

“There’s no telling in what order you’re meant to read the compass, I suppose. North, South, East, West? Clockwise? Does the center stone come first or last?” He holds up a finger, as if something had just occurred to him. “It’s a bit of a reach, but lapis is also sometimes called ultramarine…fitting for a seafaring prince, I suppose.”

She adds U? to her page, and sighs.

Sariel only offers her an adder’s sly grin. “Oh, and lest I forget.” He turns and selects a volume from a nearby shelf, before setting it on the desk beside her. “That might come in handy. Good luck.”

The sound of the door closing behind him as he leaves barely registers with her, as she reads the title in dismay.

A dictionary of the language of Benitoite.

It takes her the better half of a very large pot of tea to puzzle it out, the evening light slowly slipping away one tannic sip at a time as she works, amber squares of light from the window sliding across the desk and plucking warmth from the necklace back around her neck once more. The possibility of it being a foreign term throws a monkey wrench into her entire thought process, slowing her down.

Until finally she sets her quill aside and looks at the last arrangement of letters still uncrossed out, the entry open on the dictionary page nearest.

The chair clatters to the floor as she shoots to her feet, but she pays it no mind. Her pulse churning too hard to focus on anything other than those five letters as they chase themselves about in her head, an endless circle just as they march on the pendant. Shaking in the scoop of her collarbone with every thunderous beat of her pulse.

She hikes up her skirt and runs, abandoning book and pen and ink, heedless of the late hour - out the door, down the halls, from one wing to the next. The gilded ornamentation and statued niches naught but a glittering blur as she goes, blind to their opulence and to the servants that step out of her way. Watching with both bemusement and alarm as she flies past and ever onwards.

Her lungs are burning, her chest heaving with every breath when she finally scrambles to a halt in front of one particular room, half crashing into the carved and gilded panels in an ungainly tangle before she manages to grab the doorframe and keep herself upright. Too breathless for words to call out as she pounds on the lacquered grain.

“Che cazzo…” Silvio’s bitten out curse is muffled and distant, but she can hear the rumble of him storming towards the door, before it’s thrown open unceremoniously, a dark scowl on his face. “You don’t have to break it down. What do you -”

He never finishes the sentence. Only stares at her mutely, mouth open and eyes wide, dark circles smudged beneath them that didn’t exist weeks ago.

“Do you…” Words high and reedy as she struggles for air, she gulps in a breath and tries again. “Do you mean it?”

He leans back slightly, a sudden wary tension breaking the perfect square of his shoulders. “Mean what?” His gaze, though, flickers down to alight ever so briefly on the necklace resting around her neck. Speaking truths she knows his tongue may never.

And she decides she’s done with giving him the chance not to.

It’s not elegant. It’s nothing like her stories at all when she throws herself at him hard enough to send them both stumbling a few steps, arms around his neck to pull him closer to her level when he finally finds his footing and steadies them both with his hands on her waist - near enough to catch the intoxicatingly spiced scent of his cologne, near enough that the wide blue of his eyes and the coral of his blush fill her vision before she lifts herself up onto her toes and presses her lips to his.

She wasn't sure what she had expected, least of all when the moments where he stands stock-still drag on for seemingly ages, but it’s not what she gets. Not a plunder, or a demand, a war or a siege - what she gets is a kiss that’s gentle but meticulous in the best of ways. His mouth sweeping a soft caress, testing the give of her own. As if he was memorizing every tiny detail, lingering on each moment.

She’s lost in it so utterly that it’s a shock when he pulls away, and she has to stop herself from chasing after him. Greedy for more already, her hands clutching at the weave of his shirt plaintively, the tiny ember that’s been slumbering inside of her since their interlude in the hallway fanned to a full blaze by the taste of his breath on her tongue. “Silvio…”

If she had an ounce of shame left it died a swift, ignoble death at the way he bends his head to lick a hot line up the length of her throat.

“Yes, I meant it.” He growls the words more than speaks them into the hollow beneath her ear, and she can feel them tremble her very bones. Feel them seep into the marrow and become a part of her. “I told you, I would give you anything. Although…it was already yours all along, whether you knew it or not.”

Reaching up she twists her fingers into his hair and hauls his gaze back to meet hers, triumph and giddiness galloping reckless through her veins. “I love you, you stupid man, I lo-”

He presses a finger over her lips, silencing her. Hunger yawning, yearning in the stare he pins her with, so vast and great she wonders if it would ever be satisfied. “Be sure. Be very sure…because I never let go of what is mine.”

She catches his finger between his teeth and nips at it defiantly. “I am sure. And you did let go of something that belongs to you, once.”

He rumbles a laugh, replacing his finger with his thumb and drawing it gently along the curve of her mouth. A gesture so reverent that it nearly breaks her heart, as if she truly were something priceless. “Once. Just once,” he agrees, using that same thumb to part her lips so that the rest of his thought is murmured into her mouth. Prelude to a kiss that burns away anything resembling doubt. “But you’re more than worth it, tesoro.”

Pressed tightly together as they are, there’s no telling where one heartbeat begins and another ends, or whose belongs to whom. Her pendant remains caught between them, silent witness to the union...steadfast in its unending litany spelled out in gems far less precious than the sum of its whole. The price of her.

Cuore.

Heart.

#ikemen prince #ikepri #ikepri silvio #my writing #hahahah what even am i doing anymore #idk #if you read this whole thing you are my new favorite person #my favorite flavor is CHEESE

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