The Forbidden Fruit

by S. K Munt

  And she’d do that, because she’s just so good at coming through for Kohl when it counts? Because her wants and needs and wishes and pleas hold so much weight with Kohén and her husband? Pfft! If anything, running out to her and making it known that she has prior knowledge of this will see her kicked out the second that Kohén turns twenty-one, not propelled into a position where she will be able to intervene!

  I didn’t know what to make of any of it, and Kohl’s roving lips and high hopes was only making it harder for me to focus. All I’d wanted my whole life, was to have options for my future, and now that I had several, I didn’t know what to do! And thanks to the champagne I’d had, I knew that I wasn’t weighing the options the way that I ought to, before choosing between several such drastic courses of action.

  “What would Martya do?” was the question that I usually asked myself before making a decision, but that wasn’t going to help me now, because Martya would never have found herself in such a compromising position in the first place!

  ‘If you go public with this, and out Karol… he’ll probably rescind his birthday wish to spite us both,’ Kohl whispered, and something inside me flared hotly- furiously. Had he sensed that Martya was on mind? Was he psychic, on top of everything else? ‘Then, not only will we lose our freedom- but those other thirteen kids will as well.’

  His point hit the desired target and sank deep into my gut, where my anxiety lived. Kohl was right- going public would not only screw us, but it would screw those kids out of a future as well, and that wasn’t fair- just as announcing Kohl’s rightful claim on the throne would see more Given girls thrown into this existence, and that wasn’t fair either. So that left me with three options: Pray for the good in Kohén to overcome the evil in me and let Kohl and I off the hook scot-free (which seemed highly unlikely), die and let everybody else clean up my mess- or get a brand, my freedom… and Kohl too.

  I hated to admit it, but Kohl was probably onto something. It irritated me- the idea of keeping all of the royal family’s awful secrets for them while Kohl and I publicly played the roles of the wicked sinners, but so long as I kept what I knew to myself, I’d retain a little bit of the upper hand, wouldn’t I? If I kept her secret, maybe the duchess would find a way to help Kohl and I, either by smuggling us weapons or something to trade and maybe, just maybe, if I left him with his impeccable reputation, Karol would let Lindy and Coaxley be and rush to marry Ora as soon as he realised that I was off-limits, and always would be.

  I took Kohl by the hair and met his gaze. ‘You… are you sure that this is what you want?’ I whispered, fearful now that I was seriously considering throwing everything that I had worked for away with both hands, and clinging to Kohl instead.

  ‘A fresh slate with you? A chance to win your heart in its entirety?’ Kohl was radiant. ‘It’s all I want. And if you go over those falls…’ he shook his head, his eyes growing wet. ‘I will follow you anyway- to hell, according to even the most progressive shepherds.’

  A sob escaped my throat at the idea of being evil enough to convince such a sweet Nephilim soul that suicide was his only option too. ‘But... but the crown… your family…?’

  ‘I only ever wanted to be king, because it could have given me the power to make you my queen,’ Kohl whispered, his voice breaking. ‘So without you, it’s meaningless to me… can’t you see that?’ he swallowed, and a tear trickled out of the corner of his eye. ‘Can’t you look into my eyes, and see that the love I have for you will never go away, even if you do?’ he traced his thumb over my lower lip. ‘That I won’t rest, until I’ve won your heart?’

  But I didn’t need to look into his eyes to know that I should choose him- he’d just said the very thing that I’d been praying that Kohén would say for years: that I was enough. That I was all that he wanted of tomorrow. That I was worth dying for, and his admission made him priceless to me. Not a diamond, no, but something rarer: a shooting star- something forged from God’s light, and not compacted dirt.

  Someone who could win my heart for God.

  I sniffled and traced both of my thumbs over my his brown bone, and he closed his eyes blissfully. ‘You don’t need the chance to win my heart,’ I croaked, and when his eyes opened slowly and lazily, they were an azure blue. ‘I- I think you just did.’

  Kohl sucked in a breath. ‘You’ll…?’

  I nodded, wrapping my arms around his neck. ‘Yes, Kohl- I want my Happily Ever After to be with you.’

  We both heard the door open then- the one from the courtyard, letting in the strands of music being played by the band out on the common. Panic washed through me, but adoration numbed me to almost everything but Kohl’s arms around me. I was kissing him before I felt his lips against mine, and we were crossing into the throne room, me cradled in his arms, before I realised that he’d lifted me off my feet. I heard the murmurs and whispers and giggles before I was aware that we had an audience, and I felt the sunlight filter through the skylights and penetrate my eyelids while warming my skin, before I opened them. I heard a thump and a gasp or two, and then the shadows were back and I opened my eyes, curiosity overwhelming me for the millionth time in my short, wearying life. I looked around, and when I sighted the row of flags lifting away from the wall and billowing in an unseen draught, I knew that Kohl had carried us from the southern wing to the western, and now, we were alone in the west corridor with the world’s existing and shadowed flags as our only witnesses.

  Oh my god… we’re alone! This means we’re going to… oh but what about the witnesses? Oh my god, what am I doing? Am I actually stressing, that there won’t be enough people watching while I lose my virginity? This is insanity!

  ‘Don’t worry…’ Kohl whispered against my neck, and I heard a metallic click. ‘This will give them a viewing window, but allow us to retain a bit of modesty.’

  I craned my neck, and found myself staring through the glass windows embedded in the West Wing doors- and right at a shocked-looking noblewomen who was staring back from her position in the long bathroom queue. She whipped a fan out of her purse and began fanning herself while speaking rapidly to a younger girl in line ahead of her, and a giggle escaped my lips as I looked back at Kohl.

  ‘I think that one’s a member of the pious Amelia-Rose Choir fan club,’ I said as his hand pulled away from the door look. ‘And about to be in need of some smelling salts!’

  ‘Oh, she’s going to want a hell of a lot more than smelling salts once I’m through with you!’ Kohl joked, kneeling and running his hands down my sides, from my ribs to my hips as his eyes held mine. ‘But now I have a serious problem…’

  ‘What?’ I asked, feeling my nerves kick in as one of his hands slid back up my legs- but inside the slit in my dress this time, so that he was caressing my bare skin. My breathing hitched as that hand slid higher and higher. ‘Don’t tell me it’s a shy erection? Because that’s not really going to- ohhhh!’ I practically purred while he made a snarling noise and leaned in, raking his lips up the flesh on the inside of my knee. I began to sink as my knees gave out, but then his lips drifted up my thigh and nuzzled my sex through my lacy thong and suddenly I rising on my tiptoes, as though I could escape the pleasure and float away.

  But Kohl clearly didn’t intend for me to escape anything. ‘No…’ Groaning, he worked his mouth against the lace and slid his hands up the back of my thighs, catching my thong at the hips and tugging it down a little, making me feel so exposed that I began to pant again. One of his thumbs began to tug my panties down over my mound in the front agonisingly-slowly, while his lips ventured upward and along the valley where my abdomen met my pubic bone, causing the muscles and nerve endings beneath to twitch and sing in euphoric response. ‘Just... I have no fucking clue where to start exploring you, that’s all!’

  I didn’t know where I wanted him to start either, but I was certainly enjoying the way he was mapping me out for exploration! I writhed against the door, threading my fingers through his tousled dark hair as hi
s thumb began to circle my clit through the lace, making me throb.

  ‘Maybe here…? he breathed, and I nodded slowly and without grace or rhythm. ‘Or here…?’ he reached both hands around me and cupped my buttocks- squeezing them greedily and making me cry out. ‘Or…?’ he straightened, bit my lip and then slipped his hands into the sides of my dress, cupping my suddenly leaden breasts and moaning as he tentatively weighted them. ‘Oh God… or here?’ he made an agonised sound and leaned in, using his nose to gently move the fabric away from the side of my breast and then suddenly, his lips were trapping one of my nipples and suckling, and I was sure that I was going to pass out. ‘Mmm!’ he grunted the hum and then moved his face across my chest, caught the edge of my dress with his teeth and roughly yanked it back before capturing the other nipple in the way that he had the first.

  ‘OH!’ I still had his hair, but I released then and grasped his shoulders, making access easier for him as he continued to maul my pebbling peaks sensually. ‘Oh…Your highness… yes! That feels so good!’

  Kohl made a sonorous sound, and slanted his mouth against mine, cupping my breasts once more and using them to pull me up against him. It was too rough, and yet not rough enough and my nerve endings were firing haphazardly in response to all of these new, exciting and utterly confusing sensations. ‘Fuck! That sounds so fucking hot when you say it!’ he suckled on my lower lip and then slid his fingers into my curls, holding my head still. ‘Say it again!’

  I opened my eyes, and knew that I was giving him my most wicked smile when I responded innocently: ‘Say what, your highness?’ I teased. “Yes, your highness- that feels so good?” I slid my hands down his shoulders to his collar, and tore open his top two buttons before smoothing my hands over his hard, muscular chest. Leaning in and kissing it, I looked up at him through my lashes and whispered: ‘Or should I just fast-forward to: “Fuck me, Your Highness… please?’

  Kohl’s eyes went from blue to black and then we were kissing again, but it wasn’t like before. There was nothing slow or deep or languid about these kisses; our teeth clinked together, our breath came unevenly and shallowly, and our tongues twisted frantically around one another’s, each of us demanding and then ceding control while our hands tore at one another’s clothing. We stumbled from the door to the opposite wall, and this time we ended up with his back against the wall while I sank, working his leather belt out of his loops while my lips travelled messily down his chest and abdomen.

  ‘Oh… oh holy shit!’ Kohl’s fingers worked through my hair as I knelt and tossed his belt to the floor with a clank. ‘Do you have any idea how hot you look right now?’

  I did or rather- I had an inkling. I hadn’t spent all of my Companion classes napping, after all, and understood that the sight of a woman on her knees almost always brought a man to his own, and when I looked up at him, the ecstatic expression on his face was enough to assure me that I had education enough to get through this nerve-wracking rite of passage.

  Still, I’d never been one who was content to pass an exam- I liked to ace them, and so I sat on my haunches, reached behind my neck and unclasped my golden collar, my breath hitching when the weight of it immediately caused my dress to slip down to my waist and out of sight- exposing me both to his dilated eyes and the draught drifting down the hall. My nipples pebbled even more, and my face was instantly hot with a self-conscious but proud flush when Kohl groaned and cupped his mouth with his hands, gaping down at me.

  ‘No…’ I lied, kneeling again and reaching behind me, for the clasp on the belt. ‘Care to enlighten me… your highness?’

  35.

  Kohl blinked slowly, but his limerant gaze wasn’t trained on my face anymore- he was staring at my breasts and dragging his fingers down his lips. He shook his head slowly, and my sex clenched with some sort of instinctive awareness- I was going to be penetrated and soon, right here on the west wing floor- and I didn’t have the slightest inclination of stopping it. And what was more- I was going to like it. In fact, I sort of needed it! There was a heat blooming inside me, and I had a feeling that there was only one thing in the world that was going to be able to put it out and suddenly, I wanted that so much that the throb in my sex was all over me- my nipples, my pulse, my lips… I needed to be touched and I wasn’t being touched, so I unclasped the dress, letting it pool around my knees and then reached forward, tugged on Kohl’s fly and slid my fingers inside.

  ‘Wh-what are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘Larkin… wait! we don’t have time for that!’

  ‘Then we’ll make time,’ I whispered. ‘And be patient with me okay? After all, I’ve never done this before...’ He gasped as I did when my fingers fumbled to grip the silken, hot and hard erection straining within, and though I’d intended to pull him all the way out so that I could toy with him, the sight of it: pink and perfect and swollen for me pushed me through several long-standing boundary issues that I had. I moaned and bowed forward, suckling on the dewy tip of his untouched cock, and moaned again when something sweet and salty leaked from the tip, coating my lips and tongue but not gushing as I’d been told it would. This was just a taste of his ecstasy to come, and it was heavenly and most importantly- all mine!

  ‘Holy shit!’ Kohl’s voice didn’t sound like Kohl’s voice at all. It was something rough and breathless and primeval. I lifted my lashes and regarded him as I took him more deeply into my mouth- drawing him toward the back of my throat and watching with delight as he doubled over, catching himself on my shoulders and panting. ‘Oh! Oh… Lark! Fuck! Oh… I didn’t know it could be like THIS!’ His fist knotted in the silk of the Yael flag behind him and suddenly, the entire thing was falling to the ground with a snap and a twang. ‘I’m going to explode!’

  ‘Neither did I,’ I whispered honestly, slipping my hand around him and swallowing nervously as his entire length was revealed to my suddenly anxious gaze. I’d only gotten an idea of his size through his pants in Pacifica, and obviously he’d been more restricted by them that evening than I’d realised, because he was almost as long as Karol now, if not longer! ‘And… have you had a growth spurt in the last month or what? I don’t see how this is going to fit-’ I gasped when Kohl growled and yanked me to my feet, turning and spinning me so that I was up against the wall again. My dress got tangled around my sheepskin boots, but he slid a finger into my panties then and my knee lifted in ecstatic reflex, freeing one leg instantly while my hips bucked against his hand. ‘Oh! Oh… yes!’

  ‘You wanna know how it’s going to fit?’ he demanded roughly, sliding his finger into me and making my eyes fly open in shock. He groaned and rested his weight against me, retracting the finger before sliding it in again, and I was transfixed with the way his jaw was knotted with need. ‘Well, it starts with me getting you wet…’ his eyes lifted to mine, and they were still black. ‘And ends with you crying out: ‘More!’

  I moaned and he leaned forward and began to kiss me passionately again while he fucked me gently with one silken, lubricated finger, and now that I was naked, the feel of his cock grinding against my pelvic mound while he penetrated my sex was startlingly erotic and almost too intimate to bear. I couldn’t believe that this was happening- that a boy I’d only met on seven or eight occasions was overriding all of my bonds to a boy I’d loved for years!

  But there was a connection between Kohl and I- a sort of chemistry, which drew us together like magnets that not even my meanest, most candid streak could dissolve. There was no pressure, no obligations, no ownership issues- only mutual desire, raging hormones and most importantly- a common goal. Excited by his little moans and his erotic assault on my virgin and dripping wet sex, I began to tear his sleeves down his shoulders. But I couldn’t get them over his biceps, and when he paused to shear it off his body for me, I didn’t know what was worse: the loss I felt when he stopped kissing me, or the burning ache I felt in my clenched stomach at the sight of his rippling torso and bulging arms as he stripped for me.

  But then he was
naked, save for his pants that were bunched around his thighs, and when his hands gripped my waist and lifted me, I thought for sure that this was it- that he was going to bring me down on his erection with no further preparation, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to suppress a nervous cry.

  You’re doing this for freedom! You’re doing this for YOU! You’re doing this for every third-born-

  ‘Oh!’ I expelled the sound in a whoosh when I felt Kohl’s tongue dart into my sex, and my eyes few open again, bringing my attention to the fact that I’d closed them in fear. Kohl had lifted me off the floor, but instead of bringing me down on his manhood, he’d looped my knees over his shoulders and now his face was buried in my sex while his hands grasped my breasts and caressed them- all of his actions so fervent and manically charged that he was crushing me against the wall- pinning me in place so that there was no escaping the blissful debasement. I writhed and squealed and begged for mercy, but his tongue began to lap at me more ardently and a shudder went through me. I looked towards the door- horrified to know that people were witnessing such a raw, intimate moment, but fortunately the windows had misted over. They knew what we were doing, but no one was going to be able to sketch the scene after or anything, which made it a little easier for me to breathe.

  ‘Mine!’ he hissed against my clit before circling it with the tip of his tongue, and pinching my nipples between his fingers. ‘So hot! So sweet! Damn… oh DAMN you’re glorious!’ he began to fuck me with his tongue and I thought I was dying and what was more- I welcomed it. I tugged at his hair in a way that had to hurt but he responded with a grunt and began to suckle on my clit- plumping it with his perfect lips- milking it for every pulse he could beckon forth until all there was, was that pulsing. I cried out and lifted my arms, pressing my fingers to the wall behind me as my hips bucked wildly.