Princess of the Void ch 19 - dress me

“I am going to get you on Ramex soon. I owe you a day at the sabsum springs.” Sykora taps her foot while the command deck raises out of the bridge, hissing back into its private place under the dome of stars. “But I have to debrief on the troublesome clusterfuck that just occurred, and I’d like to appear sober and not boy-crazy while I’m doing it. To appease Hyax, if nothing else.”

Grant looks over Sykora’s shoulder at the scarred Brigadier, who’s watching the footage of the pirates jumping again, bushy brows furrowed deep. “She practically threatened me to get in bed with you. Now she’s being a spoilsport?”

“I think she assumed I’d get it out of my system.” The hand pressing against Grant’s inner thigh gives him a very firm grasp of the folly in that assumption. “Would it upset you to miss out?”

“Of course not.” Grant lets his wife lead him off the deck, into the lavishly carpeted hallway beyond. “It would all just wash over me, anyway. I’ll take Ajax with me and put in some time in on the range.”

“Oh! That reminds me.” Sykora pulls a cylindrical canister from a pocket of her topcoat. “It wasn’t just the drones I was nagging Waian about. This is for you.”

She cracks the cylinder open in half along its curve. Inside, nested in black felt, is a pair of anticomp goggles.

“I do hope they fit.” Sykora fumbles with the strap as she holds them up. “And if you don’t like the look, of course, we could get them retrofitted. I ought to have consulted you on that, I know, it’s just I was oh—”

Grant snatches the Princess off her feet and into a deep kiss. Her lungs shiver out a light, feminine groan; she softens beneath his touch. When his chest is burning for breath, he lets her go and rests his forehead against hers, nose-to-nose.

“They’re perfect, Batty,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Oh.” She unwraps her tail from his waist. “Oh, good. You’re welcome. I, uh. Really should get going.”

“Okay, baby.” He squeezes her butt and puts her down. “Meet you back at the cabin, right?”

“Right. Okay.” Her fingers are brushing her lips. She blinks the haze out of her eyes. Behind them, on the deck, Vora’s looked up from the papers she’s shuffling into order with a wry smile on her lips. “You’re so—you’re very assertive, for a man,” Sykora murmurs.

“Is it okay? I know you have a thing about being picked up. I can resist.”

“It’s, uh.” She giggles like a lovestruck teenager. “It’s quite okay.” She walks to the door with a little wooziness in her step. “I’ll just—I’ll see you soon. Don’t want to be late.”

The look she gives him as she slips back into her chamber of command isn’t one she, or any other woman, has ever given him before. He isn’t sure how to interpret it.

Grant’s relationship with his wife is advancing at a rocket-fuel pace. His talent for flying is hard-won and exciting. He’s privately thrilled at the new person he’s becoming.

He still cannot shoot for shit.

He squints downrange at the defiantly intact wooden target. He decides to blame the anticomps. He’s still getting used to the amber filter through which they show him the world. Surely that’s why. He slots another magazine into his pistol.

“Prince Consort.”

He turns and pulls off his earmuffs. Ajax is standing by the armory door.

“We’re sweeping in fifteen, sire. Have to clear out of the firing range.”

“Oh. All right.” Grant snaps the safety on and holsters his piece. “Why?”

“Regulations, sire.”

“Why the regulation, though?”

Ajax shrugs. Grant blows out a resigned breath and follows the marine out. His normally taciturn escort breaks his silence as they enter the lift. “You’re wearing anticomps, sire.”

“Yep.” Grant loosens the strap. “Do you have any tips to prevent lines?”

“I use a visor, sire. Couldn’t tell you.” Ajax taps his helmet. “May I ask you something?”

“Sure. Turnabout’s fair play.”

“Why is the Princess letting you wear anticomps?” The marine’s voice is carefully neutral.

“I asked nicely.” Turnabout’s fair play on brusqueness, too.

If Ajax is annoyed by his answer, he keeps it restricted to his hidden face. “It’s unorthodox, sire.”

“Is that a problem, marine?” It comes out sharper than Grant had intended.

“No, sire.” Ajax’s posture rebounds to parade rest. They hum through the core of the Black Pike in silence for about a minute before he speaks again, quieter. “It’s good to see.”

Grant’s brows rise behind his goggles. “It is?”

Ajax nods. “It can be… tough, sometimes. Even on the frontier. It’s a good example she’s setting, the way she treats you.”

Grant smirks. “Well, it was my idea, you know.”

Humor creeps in at the edge of Ajax’s reply. “As you say, sire.”

He returns alone to the cabin and places the anticomps reverently on his nightstand. He watches the rainbow scintilla of the spreading sweep-sails.

This time, when it kicks in, the hum is loud, instant, and chordal. The lurch is so sudden and strong he actually loses his footing and spills into the recessed bed. Thank God Sykora isn’t here. She’d be rolling.

Oh, shit. His shoes. He kicks them off and over to the door, which is starting to slide open as his right boot clops off of it.

“Hi, hubby.” Sykora wobbles in under a pile of tailored cloth. “Careful where you toss those. They’re big enough to concuss.”

“What’s with this burn?” He sits up. “I’m feeling this one a lot harder.”

“The last sweep was half-burn. This one’s double. We’re in a hurry, I’m afraid.”

“Where are we hurrying to?”

“An out-of-the-way little Class-K world called Alamenko. Ptolek’s neighbor in the system. We’re going to a dinner party there.” She remembers their new arrangement. “Or—I am, anyway. And I very much hope you’ll accompany me.”

He climbs off the bed. “I’d be honored, Majesty.”

Sykora beams and starts pawing through the stack of silk she brought him. “These are some pieces from the ship’s tailor. The crew took your measurements the night you arrived.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Officially, it’s to mark the opening of a gallery of a… third cousin-in-law’s nephew. I think I have that right.”

Grant scratches the indent where his goggles’ strap lay. “It sounds like you’re a big fan.”

“Never met him. But everyone’s a fan of an excuse. The peerage will have a dinner party for a particularly impressive sneeze. The boy’s not the point, though I’d happily buy you a piece or two if they’re any good. Try this on for me.” She hands him a trim, tailored jacket. “We’re going to be there because an exo baroness named Arenta Konia is going to be there. And you’re going to get an invitation to the Ptolek Cloudsprint from her.”

“The Cloudsprint. Is that some kind of race, I’m guessing?”

“You guess correctly. And it’s the event of the season for the exo clique. A superb place to gather information and maybe get some alone time with a Trimond or two. Let’s try the black.” She tosses him another jacket. “It’s not an event I’m normally on the invite list for. Here’s the pants.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve… strongly encouraged them to shut it down more than a few times. It’s low-altitude, it’s blisteringly fast, and the safety precautions are woefully inadequate. There’s inevitably a body-count.”

“Fuck me. We’re getting invited to a death race?”

“A death race?” Her face twists. “This is a thing on Maekyon?”

“It’s a thing in our movies.”

“You and your Maekyonite movies. I really must acquire some. What do you think, love?” She positions him in front of the wardrobe mirror.

Grant’s never worn an expensive suit. Whenever he’s had to put something together (for a family member’s court date, say) it’s been shabby separates. This is a long way from a Maekyonite cut—the jacket’s tailed, the collar straight and peaked, the lapel asymmetrical and martial. But it’s by far the best he’s ever dressed.

“Shit.” He does a half-turn and admires the fabric’s drape down his leg. “I actually look pretty good.”

Sykora’s grin is wide and lecherous. “I’ll say.”

“Are you going in your uniform?”

“We’ll get to me. Come here a moment.” She tugs on his pant leg. He gets down onto his knees. She eases a cravat around his neck and ties a complicated knot into it. “Perfect.” She kisses his forehead. “Would you play a game with me tonight? With the peerage?”

“What’s the game?”

“You’re the debutante, and I’m the controlling wife. You get Arenta to talk to you about the Cloudsprint—she’ll be eager to, she’s very smug about hosting it—and you badger your poor jealous bride into attending.”

“I really don’t know if I can be a debutante.”

She snaps her fingers. “That’s what makes you so perfect for the role, dove. You’re gorgeous without realizing you’re gorgeous. You’ve grown up on a planet of hunks, so you think you’re plain. It’s like a steamy novella. Just be yourself. Be normal. A beauty acting normal is intoxicating.”

Grant struggles to place himself adjacent to the word beautiful. It’s not unimaginable in this suit, but there’s still a chasm between his passable looks and his knockout wife. “I’ll try, Princess. Don’t pin an entire plan on it, okay?”

“I won’t. Just do your best. You’ll surprise yourself. I’ll act very possessive. It’ll help.”

“Just acting, huh?”

“I am going to be quite convincing.” Her tail brushes his stomach. Her arms wrap around his shoulders. “So don’t be too friendly with her, or I’ll be tempted to unseam her. And I need her alive.”

He grins. “I’ll find a balance.”

“Bringing up balance.” Sykora clears her throat. “I’m making you attend this little ballyhoo and do this playacting. I don’t want to owe debt.”

“I’m fine going to this thing,” he says. “You don’t owe me.”

“I do, Grant.” She shakes her head. “You’re free, now. That—” Her hand brushes his stubble. “We have to make that mean something. I know I said it was meaningless. But I was being a horny fool.”

Grant kisses the pad of her thumb. “You gave me the choice.”

“I want to give you another,” Sykora says. “I can’t acknowledge it outside of the Pike, so from now on I am going to work doubly hard when we’re alone. If I’m going to decide where we go and what we do, you should be able to decide other things.” An odd quiver in her voice. “Things about me.”

Sykora steps back and shoulders her topcoat off. She removes her uniform. She’s been naked in front of him almost as often as she’s been clothed, but there’s something different about this time. Something timid in the way her thighs fold together. She reaches her hand into his, and gently pulls him to his feet. He follows her to the voluminous wardrobe attached to her vanity. She opens its intricately carved door, revealing an ocean of finery: scarlet silk, jet taffeta, brocade and fur.

“Dress me,” she says.

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.

“Yes,” she whispers. “If it’s not too much. 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 on. She obediently steps into them. He feels her breath on his neck. “Dress?” she whispers.

He stands up again and rummages through her closet. 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 groaning “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 indulgently in the clothes he picked out for her, something might be awakening in him, too. His hand fans across her stomach and encompasses it, belly button to breasts. 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 that 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 little 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. Hellfire.” 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 fingers 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.”