Chapter Text
“I heard what happened with ambassador Demidov.”
Aleksander glances up from his paperwork; Alina stands before him, arms crossed over her chest, ready for battle. She’s every bit the Sol Koroleva: veiled in afternoon sunlight pouring through the window of his study, her winter-white hair aglow. His wife’s temper—a shame to find himself on the receiving end of it—fills the room like a living, breathing thing.
“So you have.”
“You handled it indelicately. Apparently he’s embarrassed. I’m confused as to how that works in our favor.”
He supposed she had a point—Demidov had come close to wetting himself during yesterday’s...negotiations. Aleksander had relented only because he liked the rug in that particular receiving room .
Still, she’s ready to argue for some reason that doesn’t actually involve the minister’s lackluster proposal at all. What she lacks in quiet patience, she’s always made up for with passion—but hardly ever for matters like this. The fiscal state never interested her. There’s no looming burden of war, no possible immediate threat to evoke this type of reaction from his wife. Something else was weighing on her.
“Come here,” he says, patting his thigh.
Alina bristles, as she always does when ordered about, acquiescing only when her hesitation earns a sharp look. Huffing, she drops into his lap, shoulders stiff with ire. Seventy years of marriage and still such a brat, he thinks, biting back a smile. Instead he begins to stroke her hair, watching as his touch melts some of the tension from her small frame.
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s really wrong?”
“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t believe you’re upset about the trade routes, milaya.”
Alina squirms, fiddling with the cuff of her sleeve. The other end of the bond flares at his inquiry: mostly with precarious uncertainty, trying to decide if it was worth holding court with him. Beyond that? A thread of desire, compliments of how even now she leaned into his embrace.
“Alina,” he coaxes, sensing her wobbly indecision.
“He estimates another year before they have the final draft of the agreement,” she blurts, shaking her head. “We can’t wait that long—West Ravka needs the aid now.”
The words fall like water through a sieve; now that she’s started, she can’t stop. “We’re going to wait all these months for what’s little more than posturing and paperwork, while the military stationed on the border eats up funding that could go to the peasantry. Our people starve while bureaucrats argue for weeks over the minutiae of tarrifs. It’s obscene .”
By the end of the rant, her small fingers have curled into the collar of his kefta, brown eyes luminous. Several wisps of hair have escaped Genya’s tailored work, curling at Alina’s cheeks. Aleksander finds himself overwhelmed with the urge to tuck them back. Or mess them up further. Which was it?
“We sit here in the palace and nothing changes, Sasha.” Her cheeks are pink with fervor, a crease between her brows—
Ah. He recognizes that feeling, settling sharp in his middle. It’s desperation—how badly he wants to kiss her frown away. Aleksander scrubs the errant thought.
“We’re in the business of moving mountains. Were you expecting them to reach an agreement overnight?”
Alina rolls her eyes. He can’t remember the last time someone’s done that in his presence. “I hate when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“That tone,” she bites her cheek. “It’s patronizing. You make it sound like I’m being...childish.”
“Hardly. Just young.”
“What’s the difference?”
He tilts his head, considering. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, most everyone seems young. Humans get such a limited time on earth; it shapes their perspective on almost everything. And you—you’re straddling the edge of it: burdened with immortality yet too little experience to properly wield it.”
Alina’s expression remains clouded, but she nods.
“You and I alone are untethered by time,” he lifts her hand to kiss her palm—where her gift burned most brightly. “How the petty squabbles of mortal men must bother you.”
She blows an errant curl from her forehead, apparently mollified. “Has anyone ever told you you’re quite dramatic?”
The mood softens. Aleksander forces his mouth to thin enough to hide any trace of an emerging smile, squeezing her waist. “Watch your tone, young lady.”
Alina ignores him. “And what do you suggest I do, wise husband? To ease the burden, as you call it ”
“Hm.” Her fingers meddle with the clasp of his kefta with a glint of her wedding band. The sight awakens something possessive deep in his veins, an animal scenting the hunt. “Perhaps a healthy dose of patience.”
“I assume you’re the only one qualified to administer treatment?”
“Naturally.”
“Careful. I’m beginning to think you’re flirting with—“
The sentence is cut off by a squeak of surprise: Aleksander scoops up his wife and deposits her on the edge of his desk among scrawled notes, creasing a map of the Shu Han border. He leans over, arms planted on either side of her body beneath him. “Take off your underwear, spread your legs, and I’ll show you, lapushka .”
“Oh,” she breathes, eyes liquid heat, comically wide.
Alina scrambles frantically to comply, to his amusement. Wriggling off her clothes until her curves are laid out bare, Alina leans back on her elbows and pins him with a heated stare. He wonders briefly if she has any idea how perfect she is like this, his little sun summoner with her pouty mouth and scrunched nose.
“Well? Hurry up.” She extends a leg, bumping his shoulder with one foot. His hand wraps around her fine-boned ankle, turning his head to graze his lips at her calf.
Already failing your first lesson. If I recall, you used to be such an apt pupil,” he shakes his head, slinging her leg over his shoulder. “I wonder what happened to that well-behaved girl.”
“She got married,” Alina answers sardonically. “Rumor has it her husband is a terrible influence.”
Raising a brow, he shifts up, close to bending her in half so her knees are to her ears. Cupping her breasts in his palms, Aleksander takes a moment to admire how delicate she seemed with his hands dwarfing her chest, smoothing a thumb over the peaks. Instantly her nipples pebble in the cool air. The effect he has on her is satisfaction to the core: his wife presses into his touch, breathless.
She also looks a little too pleased with herself. They’d fix that soon enough.
“I’m happy to teach you patience, Alina,” he kisses one breast and then the other, lingering when her eyelids droop with pleasure. “But you’ll need to listen. And you’ve never been very good at that, have you?”
“Mm,” she rolls her hips, rubbing her bare cunt up against the front of his trousers with purpose, crossing her ankles behind his back. “I don’t think you like it when I listen, Sasha. Can’t deprive my husband of the chance to dole out punishment.”
Her hair spills out over his notes like a halo. He wants to tangle the silk of it, leave her in tatters so that she might understand what she’s done to his very soul. Sliding a hand at the base of her skull, he grips the bone-white tresses tightly enough to make her gasp.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he arches her neck, admiring her collar. “From now on, you only orgasm when I allow it. You’re going to wait patiently until I think you’ve earned it, and not a moment before—if you think you’re going over the edge, you’ll tell me so, understood?”
Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t see how this—“
He’s quick to pinch her nipple between his teeth, soothing the hurt with his tongue afterwards. Pulling off with a wet pop, he smirks down at his flustered wife. “No. But you will, pet. Lay back. Hands above your head.”
There’s little grumbling as she does what she’s told, to his surprise. Alina has a tell-tale blush coloring her high cheeks; he’s spent nearly their entire marriage indulging her every whim, pressing her into his bed and making her writhe over and over until she was completely spent.
No longer.
“I’ve made a spoiled creature of you, haven’t I?” he mutters to himself, trailing kisses down her soft belly, settling between her thighs. Splaying fingers across her abdomen, he spreads her open with his thumb on his free hand. He’ll need to be meticulous if he wants this lesson to stick.
Alina braces for his tongue, expression eager as her hips lift, expectant. Poor thing.
Instead, he presses a soft, chaste kiss to her center.
Again.
Again, again, again.
Again, until the realization dawns across her features—frustration to anger to a sharp jolt of delicious fear.
“ Oh ,” she says weakly, hands fluttering at his shoulders as he continues: never more than a fleeting kiss. No sweet pressure, no heat. It couldn’t even be called a tease. His wife’s face goes slack with confusion. “But—“
“Shh,” he noses at the crease of her thigh. “Patience, remember, Alinochka?”
A shiver runs the length of her spine at the nickname. Alina shyly glances down at him before nodding, lip swollen from where it was caught between her teeth.
He rewards that by pressing another kiss to her neglected clit, allowing his next words be spoken directly into her skin. “Are you going to be a good girl for me?”
Her body tenses, toes curling. Another nod, this time frantic.
“Good,” he purrs. “Now relax. We don’t have anywhere to be.” That wasn't true—he was dining with a few Grisha generals tonight, but there would be little consequence if he arrived late. There were certain perks to dictatorship.
The sun begins to hang lower in the sky while he works her over, the light transforming into buttery gold as it drapes across her body, playing with the shadows at her collarbone, the indents of her ribs. He gives her so little: a brush of lips, the pet of a fingertip—and soon Alina becomes, in a word, appreciative. She relishes each movement like a coveted gift, however minuscule.
He can tell, because she’s dripping on his desk.
He runs a finger up her wet cunt, pausing over her clit, painting it with her own arousal in a slow circle. Alina’s pupils are blown: she claps a hand over her mouth and moans for him.
“Please,” she babbles, incoherent. “Please, Sasha, I need—I’m so—“
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” He palms his trousers to take the edge off.
“Uh-huh,” she whines when his tongue flickers just once at the swollen nub.
“You don’t want me to stop, then?”
She blinks, lower lip trembling as she tries to figure out what the right answer is.
“And look at you—being so patient. It’s very sweet. I bet you could take more.”
“N-n—“
He licks her again, cutting off any protest. “There. Just one at a time. We’ll keep going,” he threads their fingers together, squeezing tight.
Her eyes well up, but his resilient little wife nods anyway.
They only make it to fifteen strokes before she begs him; before she tells him through pretty sobs that she’s going to come, lovely hips bucking against his face, smearing slick into his beard. Aleksander relents and pulls her into his lap, murmuring praise, soothing her trembling limbs.
“I didn’t finish,” she sniffles once she’s found the capacity for words again, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“You weren’t supposed to,” he says calmly.
“What?”
“You can come when I allow it. I never said it would be today.”
“But—that means…”
Her voice trails off. Her hips give a little involuntary movement against his lap.
“ Patience ,” she groans like the word has personally betrayed her, flopping against his side. “This was a mistake.”
He laughs then—it’s startled out of him, a rich, genuine chuckle; Alina goes still. It’s not a sound she hears often.
He wonders if his wife knows the truth: that nobody has heard it but her in an entire lifetime.