#while it is not wrong... frenzy is not careful nor discrete

[otonymous]

A Moment In Time (MLQC Victor - NSFW)

Description: Things get wet and wild with Victor Warnings:  NSFW/18+:  Explicit/graphic language — reader discretion is advised.  Spoilers for the “Rooftop Date” with Victor, very mild spoilers for main plot Word Count: 3011 words (~15 mins of angst/fluff/smut) AO3: read here

Author’s Notes: I got a couple of requests for something spicy with Victor, and @leoamber66 specifically requested a story inspired by the karma card depicted above, so I decided to amalgamate that scene along with one of the production scenarios and his “Rooftop Date.”  The lines marked with an asterisk were taken directly from the date.  Hope you all enjoy it and happy reading!

Tagging: @leoamber66 @kitsune-mana

All characters & Mr Love: Queen’s Choice owned by Elex

“I miss you…”*

God, I must be drunk, you think to yourself, trying to suppress the sick lurch of your stomach. No doubt you’ve had too much to drink if you’re hearing Victor’s voice in your head, an echo of the phone call he made to you at an ungodly hour that very morning.

Despite your brain fog, you vaguely recall him mentioning something about France before the line went dead, shortly after you informed him he had dialled the wrong number. The memory of the affection in his fatigued voice brought a rush of heat to your cheeks, but you chalked it up solely to the alcohol in your veins.

Carefully stepping around the pool on the roof of the building and moving beyond eyeshot of patrons in the adjacent restaurant, you lean against the ledge, looking out over the twinkling lights of a city too bright to sleep, the breeze blowing off the river below caressing your face.

And somewhere in those neon pinks, yellows and greens, you see Victor’s face: the firm set of his masculine jaw, strong brows furrowed in displeasure...his eyes, cool and assessing, as he tut-tutted at your inability to hold your alcohol.

“Yup. That’s exactly the type of face he’d make,” you say, the night wind spiriting your words away as soon as they leave your lips.

You hoped you didn’t make a complete ass of yourself in front of all those telecommunications CEOs Victor invited you to dine with. But in all honesty, everything after your second shot of Moutai was a blur. That was the one thing you could never get used to in this industry: the hard drinking culture that came part and parcel with sealing business deals.

And as you sat there watching these ruddy-faced men throw back the alcohol like it was water, the respect you already had in spades for your father deepened. How many nights did he spend entertaining those so-called VIPs, his liver and gut paying the price in securing funding for the company? The thought that you could never thank him again for all the sacrifices he made for your family stung like smoke in your eyes.

And what of Victor, who made up some excuse or another to intercept most of the shots that came your way?

You shake your head, chasing the thought away. Victor is a big boy. He can handle himself. He’d just scoff at your concern if he ever learned about it.

So with your mood sunk low by the dull ache of longing for your father and the prospect of a horrible morning hangover, you excused yourself and left Victor behind with the group of middle-aged men, expressly ignoring the look he shot you as you exited the private room of the Michelin-starred restaurant.

You preferred the food at Souvenir anyways.

“How long are you planning to stand there like an idiot? Everyone has already left and you’ve blown a perfect opportunity to forge business connections.”

The sudden appearance of Victor’s voice — this time, outside your head — makes you jump, his sharp tone grating against the headache already forming at your temples. And while you were grateful for his help, tonight was not one of those times when you could stomach his delivery. To your dismay, he was only getting started.

“You really don’t care about the future of your comp-“

“I’m sorry, Victor. You’re completely right. I shouldn’t have excused myself like that. Could you please, just…leave me in peace tonight?”

Sighing, you turn to face him, seeing Victor for what seemed like the very first time tonight: backlit by wavering aquamarine waters, the ethereal glow softened his features, and even you had to admit he was incredibly handsome when his face wasn’t pulled into a frown.

Tall and broad, his white dress shirt lay crisp against a beautifully toned chest, and the entirety of the man exuded an aura of power, wealth, and the determination to have the world in the palm of his capable hand.

Despite all this, the only thing you could focus on was the tenderness that suffused his gaze as his eyes met your own.

“I miss you…”*

In the ensuing silence, Victor’s voice, travelling thousands of miles to whisper in your ear with a single phone call, came back to haunt you at the worst possible time.

Don’t look at me like that.

Throat growing uncomfortably tight, you tug on the satin collar of your red dress — the motion recalling the time Victor had hurriedly readjusted his tie after Chik left his office. But not before the up-and-coming actress had given you a cold once-over.

For all that she was unpleasant however, she was also gorgeous. And standing next to Victor, they looked like they belonged together.

Please don’t look at me like that, not when I’m not the one in your heart.

Perhaps it was the alcohol. Or the fatigue of working endless days and nights, trying to keep your father’s legacy afloat. Whatever it was, the memory irritated you, and you wanted nothing more than to be as far away as possible from Victor and his unsettling gaze.

“I’ll have the progress report ready for you on Thursday. Thanks again for dinner.”

Bidding Victor goodnight, you brace yourself against your wobbly knees, stepping around him in stilettos you weren’t used to walking in as you made for the restaurant’s entrance.

But then he reaches for your wrist, holding you in place - the grip comfortable despite being firm.

“You got a call this morning, didn’t you?”*

His voice is low and gentle, so contrary to the imperious way by which he usually addressed you. And as the heat of his touch penetrated the delicate skin of your wrist, you guessed that he must be inebriated, conveniently ignoring the signs that indicated otherwise.

“What did you hear?”* The LFG CEO pressed on, the strength of his grip not abating.

“Just a few simple sentences. I won’t blab to anyone…”*

Victor’s lips fall open, neither confirming nor denying as uncertainty danced across his face. So sure in the way he carried himself professionally, his vacillation now enraged you for reasons you could not comprehend. And before you could stop yourself, the words spill from a tongue loosened by alcohol.

“Why don’t you go visit her if you miss her so much?”*

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you continue, masochistically twisting the blade embedded so deeply in your heart you liked to pretend it didn’t exist.

“As long as the two of you are in love, nothing can get in the way of that. She…I think she must be a beautiful and gentle person…”*

Blinking, you push back the sting behind your eyelids, ignoring it like you ignored the despondency you felt every time rumours of Victor’s supposed significant other splashed across headlines of media outlets everywhere.

“You talk too much.”*

Gone is Victor's hushed tone, replaced by the simmer of an indignant anger that threatened to boil over. Reflexively, you step backwards as Victor closes in on you. And as the ground disappears beneath your feet, the last thing you see before falling into the pool is the panic in his eyes.

The chlorine burned as it travelled up your nose, adding to the fear that gripped you when you realized that, even in stilettos, you couldn’t touch the bottom of the pool. Desperately trying to surface, you cursed your inability to swim as you fought against the wet drag of your clothes, your frenzied movements carrying you farther and farther away from the edge of the pool.

All of a sudden, the waters around you violently displace as strong arms wrap around your waist, guiding you to safety.

And with that first breath of air filling your lungs, you are struck by such intense nostalgia you cannot help but look around, surprised to find yourself in a rooftop pool instead of a sunshower in the middle of a busy street, the car that would’ve careened into you already speeding off into the distance.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is the sensation of being held tightly in the arms of a man who always arrived in the nick of time: Victor.

He moves you onto the ledge of the pool, and it isn’t until your coughing subsides that you realize everything seems strangely still. The flashing lights that cascade along the length of a nearby tower like falling dominoes had frozen in place. Turning towards the restaurant, you see diners through the floor-to-ceiling windows, utensils raised in mid-air en route to open mouths like some comical tableau. Finally, you look down to see Victor still half-submerged in the pool, head resting on your thighs while his heaving chest gradually slowed.

The glint of his vintage Patek Philippe wristwatch catches your eye.

“You…you stopped time?”

He raises his head, fixing you with an incredulous stare.

“That’s the first thing you think to say after I just saved your life again?”

Snappy retort not forthcoming, you focus instead on the way he combed a large hand through wet strands of jet black hair, unable to tear away from the sight of a water droplet running down the bridge of his nose to rest at the cupid’s bow of his lips.

And suddenly, you burned hot despite the damp clothing laying cool against your skin.

“Or perhaps you’re fine with everyone seeing you the way you are now?”

Of course. Victor was right, as always. Your up-do had completely disintegrated and wet satin clung to your body, outlining every curve in a way that left little to the imagination. And although his tone had been sharp, you were touched to find him attentive to such a detail.

“Wait here and don’t move,” he says, starting to swim towards the pool ladder. But before you can even process your actions, you’ve already grasped his arm, feeling the impressive flex of his bicep under your grip.

“Why did you get angry?”

You did not know where this bravado had come from, for your impromptu dip in the water had an immediately sobering effect. But the surprise that flashed across his face was strangely satisfying, goading you on.

“Did I touch a nerve earlier?”

Victor drops his gaze, seeming to contemplate the question. And although time had stopped, you grew more and more impatient as you awaited his response.

“You tried to encourage me when you thought I was courting another woman.”*

Accusatory. Hostile even. His voice was every bit what you had come to expect from Victor. But the hurt in his eyes was a surprise that filled you with regret, sinking to the pit of your stomach like a stone.

But perhaps it was a diamond in the rough — a glimmer of hope hiding behind the meaning of his words. And if it was, did you have the courage to reach out and touch it?

As intuitive as Victor’s business acumen was, perhaps he had already seen through you, for his lips were on yours before you could even react, water spilling onto the ledge as he hoisted himself onto your body, arms encircling you for the second time that night.

The alcohol on his breath. The scratch of his five-o’clock shadow. The softness of lips that were as endearing as rare when curled up into a secret smile. Victor’s kiss was so intoxicating you desperately searched for signs you weren’t slumped over your desk at work, dreaming in fitful sleep.

But the insistent press of his body against yours told you this was real. And the way you melted in his embrace brought with it the realization that even if you were dreaming, you did not wish to wake.

His tongue drawing slow circles about your own, your world slowly tilted under Victor’s control until all that filled your vision were the striking features of his face amidst the backdrop of an ebony sky. By then, you were already caught between wet ground and the subtle grind of his pelvis against your core.

Slightly breathless, Victor pulls back to study you with naked intensity before bringing your palm to rest against his solid chest. And as his large hand covers yours, the racing heart beneath it beats electric through the fabric of his now-transparent shirt.

“When will you finally get it?”*

The plea in his voice sounds so foreign for having come from his lips, and when his question is met with silence, he continues,

“Dim-witted as you are, let me spell it out for you.”

Free hand reaching for the knot of his tie, Victor removes it with a single yank.

“So there’s no room for misunderstanding.”

Thumb and forefinger deftly undo the top button of his shirt before sliding to the next in line.

“I would never go near another woman…”*

Smooth skin pulled taut over muscle and sinew, more and more of his bared torso gradually comes into view.

“…when all I want is you.”*

Hands finally dropping to his sides, Victor pauses, exposed and patiently awaiting your response. And although you weren’t sure if your pulse throbbed in time to his heartbeat or your own, nothing felt more certain than the compulsion that made you fist your hand around his loosened collar, pulling him down to quench the desire raging through your body.

Surreal, like a scene from a movie, you watched your reflection off the glass panes of the restaurant’s windows, putting on a show for the unwitting patrons within as Victor bent to run his tongue along the column of your neck. And when you gasp to feel him sucking at the tender flesh, he intertwines his fingers with yours, squeezing as he rejoiced in the thrill of marking you for the world to see.

“Mmm, Victor!”

You barely suppress a moan as he kisses down your bare legs, stopping just as he reaches your ankles. Looking up, he taps his watch and says,

“Scream as loudly as you want, no one can hear you. No one…besides me, that is.”

The subtle flush on his cheeks made him even more alluring as he unbuckled the delicate straps of your heels, gently sliding them off before pressing kisses to the sensitive arch of your feet.

And caught up in the eroticism of the moment, you’re barely cognizant of the path the hem of your dress has travelled until it’s resting around your hips, Victor’s gaze falling on the promise beckoning in the space between your legs. His eyes darken with a primal hunger, bottom lip disappearing behind the bite of even, white teeth.

Exacting. Arrogant. Ruthless. You had thought all these things of Victor when he first announced Loveland Financial Group was pulling funding for your company. Never in a million years did you imagine you’d have the CEO between your legs, cheek rubbing against the lace panties looped around your thigh like a bridal garter as he made you tremble with every flick of his talented tongue against your clit. And when your back arched to feel the sure slide of his long fingers deep into your pussy, the wonder in his gaze makes you think that this was something he, too, never anticipated.

But life has a funny way of bringing people together, and there was no denying how right it felt to have Victor penetrate you to the hilt, dropping tender kisses at the corners of your lips as he rode out the undulating flutters of you clenching tightly around his sizeable cock.

“You feel…so good….”

He whispers in your ear, the warm pants of his exertion incendiary against your skin.

“Would it be okay if I didn’t hold back?”

Eyes dark with desire search you, their corners crinkling as he breaks into a smile as natural as it is breathtaking when you nod. And when you almost think to point out that he really is quite handsome with a grin on his face, Victor takes the words from your mouth when he wraps your legs around his waist, saying,

“Hold on tight.”

You had always guessed that Victor had no shortage of muscle beneath those bespoke suits, but your suspicions were now confirmed with the effortless way he bounced you in mid-air, your arms looped tightly around his neck to anchor yourself against the incredible depths he was reaching within you.

And just when you bordered on the verge of exhilarated breathlessness, Victor’s release finds your own, the warmth he leaves behind slowly trickling down the inside of your thigh as he pulls out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“W-what happened to the two of-”

“Goldman, get the car.”

The LFG CEO’s stern command was more than enough to send his assistant scrambling to obey, dropping any further questions as to why the two of you looked like drowned rats.

Drawing the lapel of Victor’s suit jacket closer over your chest, the spicy notes of his cologne recalled the way it smelled on the skin of his neck, and you couldn’t help but steal a glance his way.

But Victor already had his eyes trained in your direction, ignoring the scandalized stares of diners in the vicinity as he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, seemingly amused by your attempt to draw back.

“V-Victor! What if rumours start flying about you?” You hiss under your breath, turning away so he couldn’t see you blush.

“So what? It’s not like the rumours are unfounded in this case. You have to stop worrying about what others think. The only opinion that matters is mine.”

You whirl around, incredulous, only to find yourself in his arms again — the world falling silent once more as Victor steals another moment in time, his kiss stretching an instant into an eternity of bliss.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you so much for reading!  Check out more of my work here! 📚

#mlqc #mr love: queen's choice #love and producer #mlqc victor #li zeyan #mlqc fanfic #mlqc fic #mlqc smut #love and producer smut #fanfiction #my writing #elex #all request line

[xtruss]

Now There’s No Doubt Meghan and Harry Had to Leave

Caught between a hate-filled media and a terrified royal family, the surprise is not that the couple struck out on their own. It’s that they didn’t escape much sooner

Harry says racism ‘large part’ of reason why couple left UK

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu: Meghan has been mistreated for years

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, speaking to Oprah Winfrey on US television. Photograph: Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions/PA

seldom remembered fact about the royal family is that, before the death of Princess Diana, it was not normal to be interested in them. Tabloids were fascinated, but it was more of a convention than news – like a splash about tomatoes causing cancer, it was the out-of-office auto reply of the industry, a fallback. The family (I seriously dislike the affectation of calling them “the Firm”) survived while there was nothing to see. They were caught between two irreconcilable forces – their own culture of discretion, on one side, and intense, 24-hour scrutiny on the other – and they navigated that with a studied blandness. What did they actually care about? Manners, duty, causes, the Commonwealth. Whatever curiosity surrounded them, they simply did not reward it, and the regular response to that, after a few centuries and whatnot, was to not be terribly curious.

You may recall David Blaine, the magician who lived in a glass box above the Thames for 44 days in 2003: people really wanted to know what he was doing, even though we could see what he was doing – and that was mainly nothing. There grew a peculiar resentment of gawping at something that was only interesting because it was untouchable. But we could see for ourselves that it was not interesting – and then everyone got annoyed and some of us (not me) threw eggs. Eventually, hawkers started selling eggs. That pretty much sums up the experience of the royals pre-1997.

The death of Diana changed all that, but in a counterintuitive way. Curiosity had driven a woman into a pillar, so you might expect a generalised reflection on the nature of it – what were the paparazzi hoping to see? A divorcee, going about her business, with a gentleman caller. Was there not a case for just giving it all a rest, especially given that the core traits of royalty, the bits that made them so unusual – restraint, self-abnegation, respectability – had been more or less torched by Prince Charles’s generation, anyway (it wasn’t just Camilla and Fergie and their antics; Prince Andrew, who, of course, was then still just a buffoon with no Jeffrey Epstein taint, had added to it with It’s a Knockout).

Instead, the opposite happened: far from posing difficult questions about whether all this invasive scrutiny was warranted or humane, the tragedy seemed to elevate it, to usher in a belief that this obsessiveness between a society and its head of state and her offspring and in-laws was somehow natural. The post-rationalisation of Diana and her place in culture is almost hallucinatory at times.

If you are of a certain age, you might recall that before she died, we were not all trying to dress like her. She was not our people’s princess; we may have watched Martin Bashir’s Panorama interview but with an idle rather than passionate interest. She was neither a feminist nor any other kind of icon. Fair play, it was a decent thing, when she held hands with HIV patients, but generally speaking, she was just a Sloane in an egalitarian age, a pretty relic. Her death should have sparked a conversation not just about an intrusive press but about what the family represented, whether its hierarchies and rules could survive any more contact with living, sentient modern souls.

Instead, it catalysed quite a cunning, self-justifying switcheroo from the gutter press: we had to hound the woman because the public demands it, the public is just so interested. This buried a landmine that has detonated a quarter of a century later, upon contact with that other fixation of the same media, race: or, more specifically, dog-whistling racist tropes.

Harry and Meghan in 2018. Photograph: Neil Mockford/GC Images

And so we come to last night’s interview. It’s possible, of course, in any clash between two factions, for everyone to be in the wrong. It’s possible, for instance, for the royal family to be inhumane, hierarchical to the point of lunacy, snobbish and racist – and simultaneously for Prince Harry and Meghan to be spoilt and high-handed. On the eve of the Oprah interview with the couple, which aired on CBS on Monday at 1am GMT, it was indeed fair to expect that the impartial viewer would come away thinking: “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” For those who were already Team Windsor, there were aspects that would grate enough to confirm their views: Oprah’s faux toughness, the mad opulence of the garden backdrop, the very carefully choreographed frankness. But in the end what swung it so far the other way certainly wasn’t the cute gender-reveal (the couple are expecting a girl). Instead, it was something much darker: Meghan’s disclosure that she “didn’t want to be alive any more” at one point, while pregnant with their first child, Archie. “That was a very clear and real and frightening, constant thought,” she said.

When I spoke to Katie Nicholl, royal reporter and the author of Harry and Meghan: Life, Love and Loss, before the broadcast, she had said, judiciously: “I think she perhaps didn’t give it long enough. Within 18 months they were off – that was no time at all. Fergie and Diana both gave it longer than that.”

That made sense when we spoke: what’s 18 months to get used to your in-laws? It’s the blink of an eye. But making the briefest survey of the kind of coverage Meghan received, the vehemence and double standards are breathtaking. It also goes some way towards explaining why she couldn’t just give it another year: the press seemed to be whipping itself into a frenzy; every negative story generated 10 more. If she ate an avocado, she was “wolfing down a fruit linked to water shortages, illegal deforestation and all-round general environmental devastation”. If she used lily of the valley in her bridesmaid’s flowers, she was potentially risking the lives of tiny children. She was portrayed as having bullied Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, to the point of tears over flower girl dresses for the wedding (the opposite was true, she told Oprah, God knows what was the root of all that) and routinely disregarded the Queen. And before very long, she was in despair. So you have to wonder, what is a reasonable amount of despair for a person to live with, and to what purpose? When were the smears ever likely to end? Do you have to be Californian and touchy-feely to ask whether that intensity of hatred is worth it, just to have people who will open your curtains and run you a bath?

Harry put it surprisingly strongly, when he said he’s “acutely aware of where my family stand and how acutely scared they are of the tabloids turning on them”. In this he gave the kindest possible reading of the situation, not a family closing ranks against its own, but one cowering in terror and simply not strong enough to protect itself. Whatever the truth of that, the individuals and their possible shortcomings are less interesting than the central question, which is not why Meghan and Harry left, but why any of them stay.

Certainly, the most shocking part of Oprah’s interview were the revelations that Harry was asked by unnamed members of his family how dark his first child’s skin was likely to be – and that, whether relatedly or not, they discovered that Archie would not have a title or, accordingly, any security. So. Many. Questions. Not least, how was Harry supposed to make a guess at his unborn son’s skin colour? But panning out to the general vilification of Meghan, the she-said-he-said mysteries that remain become more or less irrelevant. Irrespective of which earrings she wore and who she got on with or didn’t in the royal household, it was impossible to ignore from the start of the couple’s relationship that she had become the cipher for racial slurs that were, in general terms, unsayable.

Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, traces the timeline: when they first met, the Daily Mail imagineered a “satirical” scene in which the Queen meets Meghan’s mother, who’s “straight outta Compton” living in a “gang-scarred home”. Upon the occasion of their marriage – another revelation of the interview is that they actually married three days before that ceremony; I’m not sure how important that is in the grand scheme of things – there was an outpouring of colour-blind celebration. That “just showed how little understanding we have of racism,” Andrews says, “if you think that Meghan Markle would make any difference at all. The monarchy is probably the primary symbol of white supremacy in the world; the idea that one black woman could make a difference to that is just facile.” He compares her fall from grace to that of Barack Obama, “the early celebration, racism’s over, which then switches to: ‘This isn’t about race, this is about you being problematic.’”

When you look at the build up of negative press, it was focused on Meghan as aggressive, bullying and angry, with a secondary motif of her being inauthentic and devious and having hoodwinked Harry, who is typically portrayed as the hapless idiot in what has unfolded. “No one’s called her a racial slur,” Andrews says, “but you can see the stereotypes, she’s basically being treated like most black people in elite white institutions.” She doesn’t belong there, so she must have used cunning to get there, and naturally she wouldn’t know how to behave once she arrived.

Let’s not pretend rich people don’t also kill themselves or experience depression’ ... Meghan during her interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday. Photograph: CBS

Here the idea that her predicament was in any way similar to Diana’s or Fergie’s comes apart. Yes, it would be a difficult adaptation for anyone, to suddenly be subject to protocols in which their individuality counted for nothing and all that mattered was the birth order of their spouse. But there was a particular timbre to the coverage of Meghan, that she was matter out of place – and what you’re dealing with there is not so much a hierarchy as a caste system.

In the end, Prince Charles probably emerges worst from the interview, with Harry’s disclosure that his father stopped taking his calls. Prince William comes off relatively unscathed; the Queen, likewise. The damage done to the institution is that one person leaving breaks the spell, and you wonder why, if they are all “trapped”, as Harry says, they can’t just … change. But the hangover from the affair is the tenacious media vindictiveness that, once it finds its target, doesn’t seem able to let go. We accept it as a caper, a game, but the despair it causes is real.

— The Guardian USA | Zoe Williams @zoesqwilliams | Monday, March 8, 2021