Pherenike - Chapter 109

Perhaps it was easier to see only a little beneath the light… Actor, like a penitent before the altar, confessed his own foolishness.

“Kybellaune, do you realize that this was the first time you ever kissed me?”

“I know.”

“And did you know this was the first time you reached for my hand, pulled me to you?”

“I didn’t realize.”

“It was also the first time you touched my shoulder.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Not out of necessity, not to stop me, not to hold yourself against me…”

The breath caught beneath her throat drifted out, slow and wavering.

“But simply, as if you were caressing your man.”

“…”

“As if I was… wanted, for once.”

“Actor Nikandros Pelagon.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to keep reciting your gratitude for every new place my hand touches?”

Pherenike teased him lightly, and he let out a low, embarrassed laugh.

“I’d keep a record, if you let me.”

“How pitiful.”

“I know.”

It really was pitiful. As always, she tucked her swirling emotions behind a mask. The woman with the cold face lifted her foot, still wrapped in a leather sandal, and gently pressed it down on his thigh.

“….”

A faint trail of dust appeared across the deep purple of the king’s himation, but Pherenike stared down at the soiled fabric as if she’d stepped on exactly what deserved it.

She pressed the weight of her foot from heel to toe, slowly, deliberately. Beneath the fabric, something hard was pressed down.

The king stifled a groan in his throat, his broad back bent forward. The veins stood out white on the backs of the hands he braced on either side of her legs.

With a faint, mocking smile, Pherenike whispered,

“I suppose this is the first time my foot has ever touched you like this.”

His face cracked as if a glaze had split on a clay statue; the man who had always seemed perfectly composed now looked completely undone.

“Lord Nikandros—your thoughts?”

She drew his face toward her, as if he were not the king of Evdokia, not anyone of consequence at all. Actor gripped the seat beneath her as if to tear it apart.

When he finally managed to compose himself, his words came out in a hoarse whisper:

“…I want to throw you down on the floor of this carriage, rip that white dress, and take you.”

“I can’t allow something so filthy.”

It was as if he couldn’t stand it any longer—he seized her ankle, pressing her sandal against himself. With just a twist, it seemed he could have broken her ankle, his grip was so intense.

Pherenike stroked his black hair, murmuring,

“Nikandros, take off my shoe.”

His jaw clenched, he looked up at her as if he would swallow her whole, and with hurried, rough fingers, untied the leather straps from her ankle. He nearly tore through the knot, his hands trembling slightly.

The sandal tumbled off her knee and to the floor. His large hand wrapped around her small foot, then slid softly along the sole.

Instead of letting him lift her hem, Pherenike reached for the himation that slipped from his shoulder and pulled it down herself.

In an instant, his upper body was exposed, but she didn’t spare it a glance. Instead, she used her toes to prod at the fabric down his abdomen. Actor gritted his teeth, shoving a hand under the fabric to roughly free his e******n.

As her bare foot slid along the length of him, he hardened instantly, rising to meet the lightest brush of her touch. After only a few strokes, Actor seized her foot and began thrusting himself against it.

“To think a woman’s foot excites you this much.”

She muttered with contempt, and the king, almost in despair, sought her lips, crushing their mouths together.

“It’s not a woman’s foot—it’s you that does this to me.”

He whispered through ragged breaths.

Actor’s eyes still held the vision of his wife. Pherenike was as composed as ever, not a hair out of place—only one shoe gone, nothing else disordered.

He, meanwhile, was a complete wreck. The king’s royal himation was bunched around his thighs, his e***t member exposed, his dark hair in disarray where her hand had run through it.

The pleasure he felt from her gaze, from her touch, seeped into him. In this, she dominated him entirely.

Pherenike had been born to privilege and power, and she wielded it as her right. There were always countless people bowing at her feet, but she’d long grown numb to the submission of others. Being worshipped was simply expected. She never felt exultant over others’ subjugation.

But this man, completely surrendered before her, brought her an unfamiliar, electric joy. Actor Nikandros knelt willingly, debasing himself in blind pleasure at her feet, worshipping her as if she were his only divinity.