King and Northern Beauty
Copyright© 2025 by Laxu
Chapter 2
The bedchamber was huge, and beautiful, with many wall ensconces holding flickering candles, warmth brightening the gleaming tapestries and rich rugs, despite sunlight blazing in squat, dazzling squares through the slit windows. Cassandra’s eyes were inevitably drawn to the huge bed with the King’m arms emblazoned on the bedspread, raised on a dais, dominating the centre of the room.
She swallowed against her dry throat, and heard the Empress Dowager beside her snap out several orders in their liquid language, clapping her hands to the ladies surrounding them. Two shimmered forwards, and carefully folded back the heavy bedspread, revealing an expanse of soft white fabric loaded with white cushions. Cassandra felt a smooth tightening in her stomach and a rush of heat between her thighs as her heart speeded up further. She was barely aware of the ladies around her freshening her face and washing the slight stickiness from her fingers, her awareness was inward as she remembered the gleam in the King’s eye and realised with a slightly panicked feeling that this was the end of her journey. Two weeks’ travel over mountains, sea and desert, and she was about to be deposited on the bed of the Great King, selected because of a suggestive poem by a lovelorn troubadour.
Another lady touched perfume to her nape, wrists, and, with a giggle, cleavage, and Cassandra lifted her chin slightly, blush burning in her cheeks. She focussed on her friend, the Lady Helene, who was advancing with a small bowl that had been placed on an ornamental table beside the bed. The pleasant, musky scent, a gentle background presence in the large room, emanated more pungently from the slices of strange fruit, glistening with juice, in the bowl. The scent teased at Cassandra’s nostrils and she enjoyed the heady fragrance, feeling the scent soothe her senses as she took a long inhalation.
Feeling slightly divorced from reality, Cassandra put out a hand to lift one of the slices from the bowl, and was stopped by the firm grasp of the Empress Dowager ‘s fingers at her wrist. With a little mimed guidance, she instead obediently opened her mouth for Helene to place one of the segments on her tongue. Chewing carefully and swallowing the slippery, tart, yet sweet segment, Cassandra was briefly distracted from the strange ebb and tide of heat and cold within her veins. Then she stopped breathing as all the ladies stepped back to form a ring around her, smiling.
A soft, thick cloth suddenly descended over her eyes and she gave a choked cry, lifting her hands, but again felt her wrists grasped and held gently but firmly as the knot was pulled tight and secured. The ladies holding her hands with speaking soothingly in King’mese, she knew not what, while Helene stuttered, “It’s only a ... a bl- blindfold, my Lady. Just a blindfold. The ... the queen is tying it. Must be one of the customs here.”
With her vision removed, Cassandra suddenly became acutely aware that her sensitive nipples were still aroused and aching, brushing teasingly against the bodice of her gown as she was guided up the steps to the edge of what must be the bed, and pressed to sit by the murmuring ladies around her. The King’mese obviously knew how sharply a person became aware of the other senses when blindfolded; she blushed again, and felt the hot tingle in her stomach shimmer softly down to the junction of her thighs.
The bed was higher than she had expected, and she was guided, by giggling ladies, to slide back among the cushions until her feet left the floor. Her shoes were removed, and a damp, scented cloth stroked over her feet as they arranged her on the mattress. With no floor support, they coaxed her hands behind her and pressed her to lean back on them. Cassandra flushed again as the position pressed her nipples firmly into her bodice, and a twinge of heat caused them to ache even more fiercely, partly from the sensation of the fabric against her sensitive flesh, and partly due to the knowledge that she was being arranged, displayed, with her breasts pushed out towards the door through which the King would enter.
Damn him. This was so blatant.
A tap to Cassandra’s reddened cheek, and the Empress Dowager announced something, satisfied. The jangle of her bracelets as she again clapped her hands was echoed after a short pause by the soft shimmering rhythm of a cymbal, soon joined by a muffled drumbeat sounding to the beat of Cassandra’s heart. The sounds seemed to come from under the bed, and Cassandra started, jerking upright in shock and embarrassment on a gasp.
‘Musicians under the bed!’ she thought incredulously, “to play envigorating tunes while ... while...!’ The flush in her cheeks was crimson, and her heart was fluttering in her throat. The sudden shift in her weight caused her to begin to slip, and only the sudden pressure of many hands prevented her from sliding forward off the edge of the bed and rolling ignominiously down the carpeted steps of the dais.