A/N: This is happening. I have officially started shipping this and writing fic that focuses on it. I have a feeling there'll be no going back. I hope you enjoy!

Samara's heart was racing faster than it had on the stage of every beauty pageant and modeling contest she'd ever competed in as if to compensate for the lack of rouge on her cheeks. Not an easy conclusion to draw when a good portion of her earlier career was lost in the fog of her youth in which the orders she'd followed had been her only means of navigation and the hollow first places she'd won had had no value for her with all the power still held out of her grasp as the tip of the tiara on her head had barely reached her mother's waist. Yet, she'd come to the knowledge in the blink of an eye–or would have if hers weren't closed in the midst of the shared moment–had found it via what she would have been forced to play off as logic with the focus of a crowd on her but in the privacy of Erendor's bedchamber intuition didn't have to dig itself deep in the back of her mind like it was a dirty word.

It slipped freely through her fingers as she clutched at Erendor's outfit–still the one he'd traveled in when he hadn't taken the time to change and she hadn't given it to him–and guided her tongue to caress him in return for the invitation to openness. Her lips parted further to coax the little moans starting in the back of her throat to run along and greet his breath rushing into her system like her eyes had swallowed the sight of his carriage pulling up and her body was absorbing his company as if it was a solid ruby resting on her chest to ground her. Holding herself back would kill her in the vain attempt at hiding that it was.

There was no hiding from Erendor's mouth as it pressed hard against her own, enough so to burn her with the warmth of the contact and the insistence of her own being to follow and return the ardency. His tongue slid over hers hurriedly, sloppily even, like a clumsy river spilling all outside its bed – in a manner so unsuitable for a king. He was no king now. He was a servant to the devouring impulse she awoke in him. He was her husband.

She had to be drowning in fear but that wasn't what had her heart thumping in her ribcage as if looking for a vulnerable place to smash through and jump outside where it could be grabbed by rough hands. There was no reason to tame her pulse now and lock up the flood of blood behind foundation on her sides and neck like she'd done as a bride leaving her life for a palace she wouldn't even get to claim a trophy of her own. She wasn't a shadow anymore that had to seek cover from the obliterating reveal of truth. She was the one holding the light in her hand to be his control and the kingdom's. Her will was the sun he wouldn't poke to blind him. He'd ask for the rays and she'd give them without forcing him to plead to have the gold shining on both their heads in a radiant symbol of their union.

Her fingers slid over his jaw like it was the edge of the crown she was stroking but the heat on her flesh welcomed differently with his words and actions having laid a path for it inside her that his absence hadn't erased as if it was weak graphite. There was no chill running down her spine from the bright gleam of metal too heavy for her delicate neck, only the weight of his hands on her waist holding him to her, not the other way around. A crucial distinction she could hardly make out with her tongue all tangled up with his and the shift in temperature all over her body as his presence wrapped her more securely than the blanket she cocooned herself in at night as if she was a tiny centipede praying to transform into beauty that could fly rather than exhaust all those legs just to crawl.

Erendor growled in her mouth to send her heartbeat vibrating at the same frequency despite her inability to tell whether the primal sound was directed at the dress clinging in the way of his hands to her skin like it was its purpose or at the oxygen missing from their lungs while their mouths were locked together and her mind hyper focused in the space between their bodies to fill it away and leave no emptiness. She would have almost mimicked it as his lips slipped out of her reach if not for the quiet whine dropping out of her heart to tingle through her whole body like she had no shame to block the way and stop the spread.

"Show me," Erendor huffed against her cheek in the short reprieve he gave his system. His lips ghosted over the burning flesh to tickle with their softness and the breath rushing out of him in place of the usual orders he barked at their subjects.

One inhale. Two. Three. Enough to pin her mind in place as the rhythm of her own chest grounded her back in her body instead of the proximity of his. "What?" Not enough air had entered her in the absence of his tongue for the short word to get out without revealing the void it had had to go through. It didn't matter when his own voice had been quiet like shortness of breath didn't even make it after the physical effort his ridiculous friendly sparring with Oritel pulled out of him. It was the question of hesitation that shook the words off his lips despite his honesty always falling out of his mouth like a brick hitting her over the head with how unafraid he was to let her touch it.

"Show me how much you missed me," Erendor panted so close to her ear that the sound went directly through it and in her mind like a knife.

It was a weakness. And a weakness she couldn't give anyone so close to her. Close as Erendor had come after a two-week absence he'd kept away from her like it was an out-of-control dragon instead of a personal matter that was his to attend to. A visit to his family to relocate them to another estate they owned near the northern border of Eraklyon where spring came late and summer didn't stay long bought for the specific purpose of being as removed from the crown as possible.

It had been the family he'd had before her–a fortress of painful memories reflected in her eyes–he'd spared her, not the reign he'd pulled out of her hands. The crown was still on her head where her mother had put it but it had been his careful fingers through the waves of blood red hair that had fixed it there–even though she'd had no one else to catch the gold symbol from shattering if it slipped off–instead of knocking it away with the dismissal she'd lived inside before she'd called the palace home for the first time.

He wasn't asking her for affection, just for attentiveness. It was her own heart that had considered giving more on its own initiative which was more than she'd been given the chance for before she'd signed away her last name for a palace and a kingdom. He'd given her a husband and a family. He'd given her so much to hide from him in his presence and from herself in his absence if she wanted to continue living in the dark cast over her life by a silhouette time had been supposed to sand off her mind without the shape burning in her eyes every day.

She reached for the emerald green of her dress instead of the creased red clinging to his body like rust from the road to shed the fabric she wore like armor on demand of the diamond-hard habit embedded in her behavior. How would stripping him vulnerable say anything about her intentions, about her transformation... about her heart?