Monarchy Dark- Once of an Heir

The sleek and silver, serpentine collar clasped around my throat holds a history worth more than my life but not my blood. It holds the past of my ancestors and dooms my future to the very same fate. It is mine, but even I don't belong to me. And the one person who holds the key to my collar is the very same man with a fire different from the others who have never dared to touch me. The emotional stability and the physical comfort he brings during night terrors makes me think differently of him, but it's more than I can take when his eyes— as pale as moonstones, shutter with secrecy, making me think I could never know him as well as he knows me. "Please," I whisper to Master Alexander as he continues to pace back and forth in front of me. "If it pleases my Master, tell me what plagues you." "It would please your Master if you would simply hold the begging of a silence," he says with a winded kind of frustration before turning away in a sudden return to pacing. "But, Master Alexander," I say, stepping forward. "It is your silence that I fear most." It is now, with a pause, that his eyes soften to bring the reckoning of utter heartbreak... This night a night of mourning instead of celebration of my twenty-fifth birthday as a tear rolls down my cheek and falls to the diary now in my hands. It is the warmth of his touch on my cheek— his heat seeping into my bones to erase the cold breath of the marble cathedral, that tells me he knows I could never love upon another if I tried. But my eyes still sting with unshed tears, my throat aching with the waiting of my breath to unlatch with the conceal of a promise as I whisper to him: "It would please me to please my Master with the promise of a slave... For a slave abiding of a Master's unconditional love is worthy by eternal praise." "Melina, if I have ever given any indication you are unworthy, it is an unfathomable lie." "Oh, Master Alexander," I heave through a stifled sob at my fate to be married to another. "If you had ever done that to me, I wouldn't have the courage to speak freely in this very moment as I face the certainty that I love you without the bearing of proof." It is now as I sob openly, that he tilts my head to face him, his lips brushing over mine, teasing and coaxing, all at once. If there is ever a moment for him to confess his love to me, it is now, as my ears burn under the heat of his breath, the chafe of his stubble. Instead, his breath unlatches from his throat in a relenting groan, my eyes flying open when he palms through my red cloak, between my thighs, forcing a gasp from me at the spontaneous touch. "Then tell me, as you sail on breath to me... Tell me how and why I face the certainty of loving you without such a thing as a bearing of proof." I bite back a moan, the risk of losing my heart to him as I sink into ecstasy making me delirious. "As a slave, I can only bring the solace of a familiar warmth and residing comfort, all despite the uncertainty of this trying time." "Ah, but you see, what I feel is very much as certain as the pulse within your heartbeat-riddled breaths." "And as fragile as the thatching of a small bird's nest," I whisper, my heart cinching with the grief of an already breaking heart. "You only love me as your slave, but what about when I am no longer yours, Master. Will I still owe to you what I will owe to him as his slave? As his bride? What about as his wife?" "You will owe nothing," he says through a growl, returning to me in a kiss of clearwater, making my knees weak with the impulse to surrender to his will, my eyes fluttering closed through rising tears as I relinquish myself to him... the wrenching of my aching heart more overwhelming than the sharp yet fleeting pain of losing my virginity when he delves inside me. "Not even a name for a daughter or son." Before I can respond or consider what sentiment his eyes might betray, he withdraws to leave me aching for more, leaving me with the lonely ache in the unalone of my buoying heart... "There is nothing more certain," he says, turning me out of my bedroom. "Than what this Master feels for this very slave."