Queen Livia was, as expected, furious.
The reason? Not really the point. Her fury bubbled up from deep inside, steaming out to cling to whatever would make it real and solid. The 'reason' was only ever just an excuse. The real question, and what the whole court was watching nervously to find out, was how much damage she was going to do this time.
The two guards, Orlando and Ranulf, stood by and tried not to react. Ranulf tried even harder not to look. The Queen was wearing an especially... well... enhancing pale blue dress. And as she shouted and jumped to thrust home her point, her skin flushed and glowed, her deep blue eyes flared, her dark hair swung wildly, her breasts bounced and heaved as the low-cut neckline struggled to hold them in place, and her ass strained almost visibly through the thin material. She looked both terrifying and irresistible.
This was not a good place for any guard to be. But especially, as Ranulf was soon to find out, not for him.
The guards had been on edge since they woke in the early hours of the morning. The King had been gone five days already, and this was often a flashpoint. No. This was always a flash point. The first two days he was away, Livia would spend trying to be organised and making a few requests. Day three was usually upping the ante, a few weirder demands, and getting impatient. Day four was a mix of sulking, stamping feet, and snide or bitter comments; the orders would get ever stranger, and by evening a few dishes would often be hurled at a wall.
And by Day Five...
It was two years since King Harold had first set his lustful eyes on Livia's exquisite round face, marvelled at those high cheekbones and plump lips, got drunk on her heavy-lidded eyes and become besotted with her ridiculous curves. Within a fortnight he had plucked her from her noble family and made her his queen.
And since then, she had been nothing but faultless in his eyes. While being responsible -- when he was away -- for at least two kitchen hands and a gardener being dispatched from the court, and leaving countless others traumatised.
Two of the traumatised were the king's own guards. They had each emerged from her dungeon hours after being hauled down: gaunt-eyed, shaking the soreness from their wrists and ankles, and yet stubbornly silent about the 'blessings' she had bestowed on them. But as the king's trusted crew, they at least seemed physically unharmed. The same couldn't be said for the young stable hand who she had dragged down there two of the king's campaigns ago.
The guards begged Harold to keep the trips short. And the King tried to agree -- but it wasn't so easy. There were a lot of rumblings around the kingdom, and some things really hadn't been going well lately. The northern lords were jostling for power. And while a bit of tension helped keep them squabbling with each other, rather than challenging him, proper conflict was bad for trade. And morale. And made the kingdom as a whole look vulnerable. And if real conflict led to one faction winning out, their power could soon become a threat.
It was all very tiring, and he needed to work hard to keep a balance. That meant feasts and talks and drinking... all things he used to enjoy. And he still did. Mostly. But they also kept him away from his luscious young wife. Sure, the nobles were always providing skilled wenches to keep him onside, and he was always very happy and willing to partake with his favourites from around the kingdom. Even now, as he was instructing an aide to send a message back to the castle that he would be delayed another night, his cock was being hungrily -- and very skilfully -- swallowed by the honeyed lips of Eleanor, one of the north's very best. She was so good, he could barely get the instructions out before ordering the aide out the door. He needed full focus as he thrust into Eleanor's spectacular throat, her eyes wide and watering, her hands gripping harder with each wave of release. He was a great admirer of such talent and expertise. A connoisseur, in fact.
But Livia? She was something very special.
He missed her. Even as he emptied himself through Eleanor's pursed wet lips and felt her swallow without missing a beat, he missed Livia. He missed her voice. He missed those blue eyes looking up at him as she pressed her body against him, the way she would lift up onto her toes and curl a leg against his thigh, the feeling of those perfect round breasts against his chest, and that beautiful, delicate face.
And, yet again, politics were keeping him away.
As for Livia, she missed him, too. Desperately. She missed the way he commanded the court, and the easy respect that swept along in his wake. She missed his hands, the strength in his back and arms and chest, and the feel of her legs wrapped around the muscles of his thigh as he flexed against her. And, of course, she missed his cock. By day five, hell did it show.
To be fair to the queen, she wasn't wholly to blame for not keeping that frustration at bay. There had been a serious misunderstanding early on, and now no one seemed to know what to do about it. On the day after her wedding night, her old trusted maid had told her -- without any hint of ambiguity -- that she was married now and had her king to serve, and that a queen was not to look after her own pleasure. That had been it for advice, before the maid was whisked back to her home town.
Livia took that advice to heart. And so, suddenly, that was the end of the self-pleasure she had been so good at. No more biting down on her pillow as she squeezed her fists between her thighs and rode the balls of her wrists to the sweet and luscious release she had been perfecting since she first discovered what she could do for herself. She took her new role very seriously and stopped immediately, fearing some divine punishment was waiting for her. But what she hadn't realised -- and the old maid had completely failed to explain -- was why she wasn't to look after her own pleasure. She was, instead, supposed to make full use of her two highly-trained chamber maidens whenever the king was away. Or he was sick. Or he wasn't in the mood. Or, well, pretty much whenever she wanted.
That was the idea. And it had worked perfectly well for queens of the kingdom for generations. And, very probably, was true for so many other kingdoms too. But it just wasn't the sort of thing that anyone documented... and so, without being told, how was Livia to know?
The maidens themselves couldn't bring it up. And as she never demanded any of their services, they had simply, awkwardly, just set about keeping her chamber tidy and ready for her. In other words, the job they were supposedly -- but not really -- there to do. But their training wasn't wasted, and they'd had a very pleasurable two years perfecting their skills on each other.
With the King away five days, they were at risk of the Queen's fury just as much as anyone -- but between them they had always been able to use their velvet voices to talk her down in her chamber. The rest of the court knew that if they were doing their job properly, no one would have had to worry about that fury in the first place... but what was to be done? Hints and phalluses only seemed to make Livia madder. So, as much as the court was terrified of her erratic behaviour, they couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for her too.
