Princess of the Void

2.6. Good Girl

Grant stares at his wife. “Dress you?”

This woman commands an invincible warship. She rules the entire sector. Every world he’s seen, every Taiikari he’s met, bends the knee to her. “Pick whatever you want me to wear.” She indicates the trove with the hand that isn’t crossed over her bare chest. “And I’ll wear it.”

He looks uncertainly at the wardrobe. “I’m not sure what you like.”

“I like all my clothes.” Her blush spreads across her face and her chest. “I want to wear what you like.”

He steps up behind her and leans down. She swallows. “Are you sure?” he murmurs into her ear.

“If it’s not too much. Yes. I—” The curve of her butt brushes his leg. “I know I’m being strange.”

“It’s not too much.” His hands land on her waist and push a light gasp out of her. “But you will tell me if I’m putting together some kind of disaster, right?”

She laughs out some of the tension on her face. “It’s all red, black, and gold, dove. And very expensive. It’s foolproof.”

“You say that. But I’m a special kind of fool.” He pulls a sheer black thong from her underwear drawer. “This, maybe? To start?”

She lifts a leg, slowly. He sees the need. He gets down on one knee and slips his wife’s lacy little panties up her calf. She obediently steps into them. He feels her breath on his neck. “Dress?” she whispers.

He stands up again and rummages through her closet. He pauses on a strappy little satin dress, its fabric beaded and intricate. “How about this?”

Her eyes widen. “For a state affair?”

“You like all your clothes, right?”

“I do.” She takes the dress from him with a hesitant hand. “I love that dress. But it’s—bold.”

“You’re bold,” he says. “And I want to see how it looks on you.”

She looks at the dress like it’s a spotlight she’s about to step into. Excited and awestruck and a little scared. She wiggles the shiny fabric up her hips. She snaps the fastener above her tail and turns around. “Zip me up?”

He takes his time. Her breath shakes as his touch lingers along her spine and rests lightly on the nape of her neck. Goosebumps raise on her cerulean skin.

She steps away and does a little turn. The dress clings to every elegant curve. The scarlet hem flows like a liquid. “How do I look?”

He takes her shoulders and pulls her gently back before the mirror. “What do you think?” he murmurs.

“I think...” Her voice quivers again, and she forces a deep stabilizing breath. He can still see the blush on her chest through the intricate cage of satin. Her horns are emerging with determination from the black river of her hair. “I think I look beautiful.”

His fingers tighten on her gracefully sculpted deltoids. “I think so, too.”

“I really ought to wear something underneath this hem. If you, uh...” She slides a drawer open to reveal a trove of sheer, lacey hosiery. “If you’d permit me to.”

His thumb runs down her back. “Do you have anything with garters?”

“Garters, huh?” A smile teases her lips. Her confidence is coming back, drop by drop. She makes a show of bending forward into the drawer. “I have garters. For this underwear I have matching garters.” She unfolds a pair of sheer stockings, connected by thin lace ribbon suspenders to a delicate elastic belt. “Something like this?”

He nods, not trusting himself to speak, and watches his wife slide into her stockings. Her plump upper thighs bloom out from their snug bands and their pinching suspenders. His fingertips find her hips of their own accord. Her ass eases back into his touch, filling his palms. His knee is nudging up between her legs.

She opens her jewelry drawer. “Necklace?”

He reaches into the drawer and comes out with an intricately chained fan of quartz prisms. “This one’s nice.”

“Oh, no. Not that one, I’m afraid. Lonesome.” Her voice drops down from breathy penthouse pet to businesswoman as she sets his selection aside. “That was a gift from one of Garuna’s least favorite ministers. Wearing it is a statement we shouldn’t be making.”

“What about this, then?” He finds a choker, burnished gold and black silk. “Is this a statement we’d like to make?”

She pulls her hair into a ponytail to give him access to her neck “What’s it saying?”

“I don’t know how other people will hear it. But to me, it’s saying…” He clicks it shut around her throat. “Good girl.”

He’d braced for feeling like such a weird bastard saying it, to brush it off as a joke. But Sykora doesn’t take it like one. Sykora whimpers a mewling “Grant,” and nearly melts out between his fingers. Her indulgent noise vibrates his hand on her neck; her tail wags madly.

His tough-talk gambit in the interceptor may have awakened something, he realizes, in the Princess of the Black Pike. And as he watches his little wife squirm happily in the clothes he picked out for her, something might be awakening in him, too. His hand fans across her stomach and encompasses it, from her belly button to the prow of her delicate ribcage. He marvels again at how different they are, how tiny and vulnerable the Princess looks in his grip. She could rip your throat out easily, he reminds himself. But the primeval possessiveness roosting in the back of his brain defies logic.

Her eyes find his in the mirror. They’re prey-animal wide. “How does it all look together?”

“I’m going to have to work very hard,” he says, “to pretend I’m interested in anything at that party but you.”

“If they knew...” Her ears flutter as her fingers worry the choker around her neck. “If the people at this event knew we’ve done this, my reputation would be ruined. Completely ruined.”

There’s fear in her voice, but that’s not all.

“What have you done to me, Grant?” she whispers. She’s staring at her own body in the mirror. The pad of her pointer strays from the choker up to her lip. “This Maekyonite perversion. You’ve infected me.”

“We can take it all off,” he says. “Change into something else, maybe. And you could put this on again when we’re back.”

“No. No, it’s fine. I don’t mean to catastrophize.” She smooths out her dress. The shallow divot of her navel is visible under the clinging fabric. “This isn’t so outre a look. A little on the daring side, perhaps. But it’s all my clothes, still.” He hears her breath thicken. “My clothes, but they feel—” She leans backward, against Grant’s body. “Different.” The straps of her dress are slipping down her shrugging shoulders. Her pinky slides below his waistband.

“We only just got all this stuff on, Majesty.” There’s a laugh at the corner of his words. He lets it spill out further at Sykora’s frustrated hum. “How about be, uh, be a good girl—” again, the internal cringe, mitigated by the mad wagging of Sykora’s tail “—and do some cutthroat statecraft, and then I’ll take this off you once we’re back.”

She whines, but keeps her hands to herself. He prudently removes his.

“I am only saying yes,” she says, “because the sexual frustration is going to make me particularly vicious.”

Sykora returns the deck crew’s salute as she climbs into the shuttle. Arn, her driver, is once again genially punted from the craft.

“I feel bad for the poor guy.” Grant buckles in and helps Sykora with the preflight check.

“Oh, he’s overjoyed, I’m sure.” Sykora reaches past Grant and clacks the transponder on. “Arnie’s a fighter pilot. The true guilt was in making him fly this clumsy comfort-wagon. Switch on the radio for me?”

Grant leans over and turns the boxy comlink on. The light under its grille pulses yellow.

“Lord. We’re being hailed already. Always so busy.” Sykora flips a toggle on its control board. “You have the Princess.”

“Majesty.” That’s Vora over the radio. “News from Aodok. Another Comet sighting.”

“Aodok?” Sykora frowns. “That’s halfway across the sector. They kept that burn up the whole way.”

“Same thing as before, Majesty. They’re sitting in the trade lanes. Two corvettes.”

Sykora sighs. “The same corvettes?”

“In all likelihood, Majesty, according to the Chief Engineer. Will you be canceling your trip?”

Sykora rubs her choker and glances at Grant. “No,” she says. “The Cloudsprint is our way in. And I want to buy some art for my husband. We’ll double burn after the party. Let Aodok’s governess know the Pike is inbound. Until then, close the lanes and ground the barges. The planetary defenses should be enough to keep the corvettes out of orbit.”

“Understood, Majesty.” Vora’s tone lightens. “Have a lovely evening, you two.” The radio light clicks off.

Sykora opens the throttle. The engine hums in Grant's gut. “Let me hear the rankings again,” his wife says.

Grant counts on his fingers as Sykora coasts them out of the Pike. “Empress, Princess, Marquess, Countess, Viscountess, Baroness, Lady.”

“Very good, dove.” Sykora eases their nose along the trajectory the shuttle’s calculated for them. Alamenko grows across their window. Its marbled clouds flash distant lightning across its rusty surface. “And our suffixes?”

“Palatine means they’re from the Imperial family and are effectively a rank higher. And Margrave means they’re military and trump a non-margrave for military stuff.”

“Right again.” Her tail ruffles his hair. “That’s all you need to muddle through.”

“So you’re a Princess Margrave?”

“I am a Void Princess. We’re our own category. Somewhere between a Princess Margrave and a Princess Palatine.”

“Shit.” Grant scratches his neck. “How many own categories are there?”

“Oh, tons.” She smiles ruefully. “There are edge cases all over the peerage. It’s intentionally obfuscating and quite annoying. I’ll fill you in when one comes up. Don’t worry—by my side, you won’t need to be overly deferential to anyone. Just a quarter-bow to whoever you’re introduced to will be more than sufficient.” She stiffens her back and does a demonstrative quarter-bow. “Let’s see it.”

He dips his chest, as well as the harness across it allows.

“Good. You’re my Prince Consort, remember. Don’t let anyone act like they can strong-arm you.”

“Are you going to be the highest ranked person there, you reckon?”

A cloud passes over Sykora’s face.

“There’ll be someone there to match me, I’m afraid,” she says. “Another Void Princess at the function. A little family reunion that I’ve been putting off. I’m going to do my absolute best to keep her talons out of you, but you may have to meet the Princess of the Glory Banner. My sister, Narika.”

Inadama’s words: She was quite vexed before her disappearance. Distraught, I think, over her sister.

“It sounds like there’s history here,” he says.

“Extensive, dismal history, yes.” Sykora’s mouth is a hard line. “You asked me how I ended up crashed on Maekyon. I still don’t know. But it has to have been someone in the Imperial family. A Princess, I think.”

“How do you know?”

She chews her lip. “For reasons I’m not prepared to reveal to you yet. But I know.”

Grant lets that go. As long as there’s a yet. He’s a patient man.

“As for motive and identity, I have a bumper crop of theories.” Sykora looks out at Alamenko’s expanding horizon. “And most of them involve Narika of the Glory Banner.”