All mental preparations that she made for her first time with another person flew out the window and disintegrated the moment Zion uncovered himself before her. She had never seen a male’s private parts before, but anatomy books of the palace library had imparted to her that there was only supposed to be one stick and two marbles. 

Indeed, Zion had two marbles.

But he also had two sticks.

And, huge sticks, they were.

What have I gotten myself into?

Terrified out of her wits, she whipped her eyes away from his crotch and focused on his face. There was no way even one of his members would fit inside her. She would be torn to shreds, left to bleed, never to recover, if they tried to mate. 

Grunt, grunt, grunt. Grunt, grunt?

His soft grunts were so expressive, she could almost hear what he was trying to say. That he would never hurt her, that they could stop, that she could always say no.

She leaned backwards, bracing herself on her elbows. It was a silent plea, and Zion responded immediately. He loomed over her, adjusting himself at her entrance, keeping her legs apart with his own. She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of the pain that was sure to come as the head of one of his members pressed against her.

But the pain never came.

Instead, he began sliding his length at her entrance, his feverish skin rubbing up and down her slit. It was an unfamiliar sensation, and a rather uncomfortable one at that. His member was hard and stiff, yet soft and yielding. The more he rubbed, the more her insides itched. Her stomach clenched. She could feel a strange wetness seeping from within her, and she panicked. It was not a gush of liquid, but she had to look. She had to be sure she would not be the death of herself. Her eyes flickered to the place where their bodies met, hoping to all the holy gods and goddesses of the world that she was not urinating on him, and the sight of it all immediately knocked the wind out of her.

The size of his members, as she had seen on their own earlier, was insane enough, but to see them in the same frame as her own body only amped up her anxiety. While one stimulated her, the other reared above it, twitching in the air, begging for release. Its head was a darker shade than the rest of him, closer to amethyst, and there was clear liquid leaking from the tip. Her eyes went wide. He was wet, like her, and she could finally place what the throbbing ache inside her was. Arousal.

Perhaps she did actually want him, too.

She had no idea who this man was underneath his beast form, but it did not matter. She liked Zion.

The room was quiet apart from the slick, wet sounds of their bodies, their heavy breaths and soft pants. Her mind was a mess. Her tutors at the palace never once hinted at the pleasures borne of consummation. Women were tasked to endure, men to indulge. She had been taught that a wife’s job was to submit and keep her mouth shut, clench her teeth through the pain if she had to, while the husband ravaged her and used her body however he pleased to achieve release and produce an heir. 

Yet, Zion the monster was doing nothing of the sort. His gentle touch, the way he held her like a flower with petals that could wilt at the slightest bruise, it brought tears to her eyes. It was care that she never imagined being treated with.

His fingers tapped her cheeks, lightly caressing her, dabbing at the wetness around her eyes. This was a monster whose calloused hand could cover her entire head and crush it like a piece of candy, and here he was, nothing but the softest of touches, cherishing her as if she was his most prized possession. A little embarrassed, but with a heart brimming with – happiness? – she smiled, and he froze in place. Confusion set in, and then Zion’s hefty tongue was parting her lips, skimming between her teeth, fervidly delving into her mouth in a wet slip and slide that set her entire person on fire and singed every last one of her nerve endings.

Chrysanthyllis had never dreamed of being kissed, be it by a man or a monstrous beast, but how could the latter possibly taste like blueberries on a warm spring day, of sweet dew under soft sunshine? His large tongue barely fit in her mouth, but it was a pleasurable pressure that did more than just assault her senses. He was imprinting on her a sensation that would visit her dreams so often she would never forget it, a memory she would fall back in over and over again until it swallowed her forever.

The clock chimed, breaking their rhythm, and Chrysanthyllis flinched. Dawn was upon them. They had spent nearly ten hours, limbs entangled, skin to skin, tongue against tongue, and they had made no progress at all. Surely the clock was lying; it did not feel like an entire night had passed. Her body was soft, melted into a pool of liquid cream, but she could not be more awake. She was teeming with energy. 

Zion grunted. She recognised frustration, but why? Because her body was not enough for him? Because she was not worthy to be his partner? 

“Do you not want me?” she whispered.

She sounded pleading. Piteous. Funny how she hated revealing this part of her in Zion’s presence, when she spared no hesitation in the face of the empress and the executors of her will.

But Zion did not seem to see her as the loathsome harbinger of all things terrible. He did not look upon her with the eyes her own mother did.

Growl, grunt, grunt.

Every grunt that he made was laced with desperation, raw, real desperation. As if he was thoroughly outraged that she could think she was undesirable to him, vehemently rejecting her lack of self-confidence and asserting that he could not possibly not want her. 

Without warning, he grabbed her arms, pulling her up so that she straddled his waist. Balance tipped forward, her naked breasts pressed into his muscular chest. 

The grunt that passed between his teeth was one of satisfaction, and Chrysanthyllis could not help but blush. Behind the luminous red eyes that peered into her face, there was a man who revelled in her body. 

But he still refused to penetrate her. Even after the passing of several more hours, after bearing the sheer mortification of Elliot knocking on the door to announce their lunch and knowing that they were trying to mate, Zion still would not let his member dip its head past her folds and into her. She did not know if she could ever leave the room without hiding her face. She could barely eat with Zion next to her, not with everything around them reminding her of every single thing that had happened between them and what waited for them after they finished their food.

The minute Zion shoved the trolley of their dirty plates out of the room and locked the door shut, it was back to hot, liquefying seduction punctuated by raspy breaths, guttural groans and shifts in positions. She was slick with juices, as was he, and even though both their bodies were trembling with need and desire, Zion’s iron will and self-restraint was still holding strong. She could not bear it any longer.

“Are…you waiting for an invitation?” she whimpered.

His members twitched so forcefully that the lower one slapped her between her legs, and she flinched as the deepest part of her squeezed with a longing for the very thing that he denied her so tenaciously. A thin line of sweat trickled down Zion’s temple and dripped from his jaw. She was not the only one in pain.

Zion did not make a sound. After all, he could not answer her question without facing the consequences. She took a deep breath and wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Please take me.”

The protrusion in his throat bobbed up and down. His veiny arms trembling on either sides of her waist, he stared at her for what felt like an eternity, as if he was contemplating really hard about something. 

Then, he released his breath. His nose-less nostrils flared hard, like her imagination of what an angry horse looked like. He must have given up in his brain exercise, because it also looked like he was not going to hesitate any more. The head of his lower penis kissed her entrance, light, feather-soft pecks that only made her want to beg for more. 

Until it pushed into her a little deeper, and its girth opened her up to the point that it hurt. She winced and bit down on her lip, and Zion halted instantly. His low grunts laden with concern, he fretted about her, but surely there was nothing he could actually do if they wanted to complete the act successfully.

But time after time, Zion showed to her, taught her, through his actions, that he was a gentle individual, even if on the surface he was none of the noblemen her palace tutors held in high regard. He withdrew ever so slightly, just so that the thickest part of him found itself outside of her. With short dips and light pressure, he slowly acclimatised her to his penetration, and bit by bit, she took him into her, until finally she felt him hitting a wall in the lower part of her belly. 

He was huge, and she could hardly believe that she managed to take all of him in. Unsurprisingly, it was not a comfortable fit at all, but he was, well and truly, completely inside of her.

Now what?