XXV: The Only Good
Feyd was distracted by the naked woman in his bed. Or attracted to it.
Whatever it was left him oblivious to my sneaking behind his back. I tip-toed behind his gaze to be sure my ambush was unseen.
Your lady will never know.
The urge to stab her after I stabbed him and before I slit my own throat occurred to me.
Muscles rippled through the tension of his shoulders. They rose high in their sockets.
I was close enough to smell his sweat now. Its metallic sharp tang filled my mind with memories of its cloud in other devious nights, when it was us trapped in his sheets cloaked in that smell. My knuckles clenched harder. Aches clawed up my fingers, around my wrist and up through my forearm.
Feyd did not sense me. Not until a blade slid along his throat, just light enough to keep from cutting the flesh.
"Careful how you answer that, na-Baron." I warned.
His dark eyes flashed to my hand, then to my face. Fear did not fill him as it should have. Instead it was delight that blared through his expression. Twisted black pools stared inside my gaze. The leech of excitement swelled.
"Sweetness." He spoke with surprise. "Have you devised this trap to entice me?"
This was no foreplay for excitement. I would not let him believe it was.
I pushed the metal harder against his throat. "Don't toy with me, Feyd. If there is to be a naked woman found in your bed, it would not be my doing."
It would not be her.
The very lady of court that I felt compared to at every moment since her father entered my life.
My teeth gritted together.
Feyd only enjoyed the view of my tension. "Have you not brought a treat for me to devour?"
I could have screamed.
"If you have need of treats, tell me now so that I might rid myself of this mess and allow you your sweet tooth!"
It clicked. He understood that my pain was not the amusing kind. A wash of seriousness overtook his face.
His eyes dared flash at the woman on the bed. The start of a cut began to form against his neck as I pushed the blade closer.
"You. Woman there. Your father told you where to find me, did he not? These corridors are a winding maze. Few know where to find mine. You did not come here on your own."
There was no response. His nose wrinkled.
"Answer, I command you!" He shouted.
Her body jumped. A muted whimper withheld by her clamped lips.
The silence angered Feyd further. He fought against the press of my dagger to surge the woman.
I groaned aloud. IF there was a shred of truth in Feyd's assumption, I did not want his hands stained with innocent blood.
"We'll not betray you. The truth will not be told to your father," I assured her behind my turned back. There was no intention to turn my back to Feyd.
"Or I'll string you up from the flagpoles in the Great Hall for him to find," Feyd threatened.
The young lady pulled a sheet to cover her exposed body. "Please, na-Baron. Don't kill him."
"I'll kill you if you do not speak," Feyd barked.
Tears filled the woman's eyes. Her fear, too, shined through now as her expression dropped away from seductress to woman again.
"He told me when to come and how to avoid the guards," she said in a light tone, unheard if not carefully listened to.
Feyd looked at me for appeasement.
Was I being tricked?
I cleared my throat. "What did he want you to do?"
"Be used by the na-Baron," she answered.
"To what end?"
Her head hanged in shame. "I was ordered to do whatever it took to make the na-Baron favor me."
My arms ached from the weight of the dagger. Weakness filled my knuckles as I held tight, refusing to abandon my rage.
Feyd stared at my flickering emotions. The loss of their control made my expression fall prey to their twisting. I reeked of anger. It seeped from my pores. The pains in my jaw said it was anchored there, too.
Who could I be betrayed by? Neither in my presence had controlled the situation. It was a mere making of another beyond the walls.
I sighed. "Go. Leave these quarters."
"Yes, my lady. Thank you, my lady."
Her feet slapped against the floor as she rushed out of Feyd's rooms. It was not until the door slammed behind her back that I finally released the blade against Feyd's throat.
He observed me in silence. He did not move.
I stepped away and tossed away the dagger.
Part of me had embraced a deadly instinct that should not have been fed. I'd put a weapon up to Feyd's throat with full intent to harm him if he angered me further.
Flickers of wickedness had taken a kindling inside myself. Somehow, I became ready to kill the very thing I loved with all my life.
The only good.
Feyd swiped the small cut on this throat. The blood smeared against his white skin. He licked it from his fingers. "I did not know you had it in you, sweetness. You will make a formidable Empress. You and that blade have my cock aching."
I hugged my arms against my chest. "I would have killed you."
"I know." He stepped close. His fingers toyed with the ends of my hair. "A welcome death at the end of your dagger."
"Stop it," I whispered.
I did not want to be a monster, but it seemed I was one. I'd taken in the flesh of his beastly form.
"You wouldn't have succeeded." His lips moved against my cheek as he spoke now. "I would have knocked the blade from your hand. Your grip was all wrong. One knock and it'd be my blade. Not yours."
Great. So not only had I wanted to kill him, but I also would have been incapable of it. Thwarted in my attempt.
My lips frowned. The single droplet of blood from his neck pulled them deeper into a frown. I touched at the tender flesh.
"I'm sorry, Feyd."
"Don't be."
"I am so sorry. It was foolish to abuse your trust like that."
He scoffed. "I am yours. To claim however you like." I pulled my face away. His playful tone was not lifting my horror at myself. The power in his voice turned strong. "If I damage your honor, you hold a blade against me. I'd rather have it be that way than be a man who dishonored his lady."
Feyd pulled at me, close against him, inhaling my smell, rubbing his forehead against mine, gripping my hair, my ass, interlacing his fingers between mine. My feet left the floor. His mighty arms hardly struggled with my weight.
"I missed you," he said.
"You didn't have the other sister in the thropter, did you?"
A stiff erection pressed against my body to the point of pain.
"Does it feel like I did, sweetness?"
"You are insatiable. It is possible."
"Never." He growled. His teeth scraped against my jaw. A moist tongue then cooled the slight heat. Pain and pleasure. As was the violent ride he brought me on every single day in his presence.
So long had been pain.
Now, pain was a welcome reprieve to the constant pleasure I felt.
I'd almost forgotten there was more than it. I'd allowed myself to forget who Feyd was beyond the bedroom.
There was real savagery outside those walls.
Savagery he'd saved me from. Savagery I did not fear thanks to his prowess. I knew not to fear a thing. He would not allow a single ragged touch against me.
His lust subsided once I leaned into his kiss, tasting my own calm within his mouth.
He eased me back to the floor.
"Lord Bondar is more ambitious than I anticipated."
Blood slipped back into his mind. It must have lessened in other places.
I did not feel good, but the last -the very last- thing I wanted to think of was that man.
Feyd pondered aloud. He did not believe there were gaps in his personal guard. Concern of his safety was an obsession of his. He would jump into any duel he faced without concern of his mortality, but the threat of it happening out of his focus was a situation he took steps to avoid.
"One of them took his money." He spat. "They let her slip through into our quarters." He thought longer. "Imagine if he'd demanded she slay you. Your blood would fill these sheets. The lady of my house found dead. In my protection."
Feyd wore his clingy black shiny shirt. It highlighted the depths of his muscles. Deep rivers outlined each.
His pants cinched tight at his waist. It hugged the thickness of his ass and thighs. The flare hid his black laced boots.
That was the animal that devoured me.
I was satisfied by that magnificent creature in unspeakable ways. The way it answered cravings my body had, without my knowing, told me that even in my total distrust of his need for me, there was a deeper level of need that neither of us understood.
We, so broken in the ways of love. There was no piece of us intact. Hands had broken our beautiful parts into ugly jagged and sharp shards. Unable to be held with delicate hands.
My palms were numb to the pain. As were his.
His little broken pieces were small and sharp, but they glittered like spice in the air. I'd never seen a beauty so haunted and broken.
He'd tried to show me good things. He stopped the pain. My life was made comfortable away from the shackles of those who shattered me. Even gifted me a pregnancy as a reprieve of the death. Finally a share of life we never had. A family, true and made in love.
Even in his anger, I saw allure.
"The entire guard will be cycled. I'll hook them all by their ankles and string them through this castle to make a point. Paint the walls with their blood. I will do the interrogations myself." He gripped me suddenly. His hands held me, gentle but firm enough that I could not pull away. "Stay here, Mintha. I will return when you are safe once more. New men will replace them by evening."
The parting kiss did not satisfy me.
Feyd stomped away with the intent to leave me alone.
I was not about to be on my own after an entire afternoon away from him.
Not when I was so driven to believe that he was meant for me.
"You may choose that." My mouth said. It stopped his pace. "But I'll have to…amuse myself in your absence."
He tilted his head back. A restrained glaze coated his eyes.
He caught the drift of my tone.
What my words said, without saying.
"Sweetness. This is important."
I walked to the footboard of his bed. My ass leaned back. "I'm not stopping you."
My fingers traced the length of my legs. The shiver of my linen dress coursed atop my flesh.
He followed the motions of my hands. Every subtle inch closer to my pulsating pussy fed waves into his frustration.
The pull of a choice he never had to withstand. Either go torture to feed his bloodlust or stay to slake his own carnal lusts with me.
"You- your fingers need not do that." The words stumbled rather than flowed from his lips. "I can tend to you…once my duties are done. Once you are safe."
"I am safe when you are here."
My lungs sputtered a sudden relieved gasp as the tips of my fingers brushed the fabric slipped through my thighs against my clit.
Feyd groaned. His body pulled him away from me.
It wanted me more. I knew it did. It always craved me more than the world outside those doors.
"I will do it," I sang, taunting him. "If you step out that door, I will use my fingers in a place I've never had to."
He growled. His hands threw his gear - still from his mission - to the floor. A tense line of black teeth showed with each flex of his jaw. Frustration filled his motions now.
As he stalked toward me, not an ounce of fear flickered through me.
Not as he swatted my hands away from my thighs.
He fell to his knees. Each kiss against my flesh was begrudgingly done. My knees, my breasts, my neck, my earlobes.
The flowy fabric was lifted to my thighs.
"You are not allowed to use yourself in any way," Feyd commanded as he slipped his fingers through my dripping wet into my deeper waters. "I am the only. The only pleasure you find." He roughly kissed my lips. His breath, hot and intense, inside my mouth as I swallowed all I could. "The only relief in this fuckin world."
I opened my mouth, but fingers plunged through my lips into the back of my mouth. It touched just at the cusp of my gag reflex. He stroked them in time. Each thrust went against my g-spot and my gag reflex.
"I need you to feel the way I do about you. Nothing quenches the fires within. No touch compares," he said low and gravely as he stared into my eyes. Gagging and fucking me with his fingers. "Not even your own."
My eyes watered as the fingers against my wet tongue pushed slightly further back into the start of my throat.
Feyd held them there until I dry-heaved. He retracted. Lips replaced his touch against my mouth. My own salvia smeared as he pressed against my mouth with greed.
The strong coursing storms of emotions I'd felt earlier, returned. They swirled deeper. I felt the tingles of his touch reach the untouched depths of myself.
My heart pounded in want of him.
It called out to be made equal to his own throbbing bloody muscle.
His hands roughly turned me around. One held me in place against his chest at the shoulder while the other gripped and pinched my breasts. He rolled my nipples between his fingers. It neared painful. Only just kept on the side of pleasure.
Teeth nipped at my earlobes.
"What would have you done if the Lady Bondar touched me, showed me her pussy in want of me, kissed my lips with hers?" He whispered against my ear.
A surge of thick tension and thrill filled my throat. "She knew not to."
An interested groan rumbled from his throat. The vibration touched my flesh.
"How?" He purred.
A hand gripped my breast, tantalizing the touch of pleasure, while his other hand rubbed the dress skirts against my sex.
My excitement dampened the fabric. It smeared against me as his fingers rubbed.
Toying. With me?
"I told her I'd slit open her thighs and watch her lifeblood weep," I breathed.
The erection pressed into my back twitched. It turned into discomfort against my spine.
Feyd groaned. I practically heard his eyes roll back.
"My lady was angry," he purred in awe.
The sense of himself washed away. The power of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was no more. There remained the broken needy animal of Feyd, whom begged to be touched by an ounce of my feral love.
My own feral desires surmounted my control. I became one with the skin I resided in.
"Would you like to hear what I would do to you if you had touched her back?"
"Tell me," he begged. Its sound, a lullaby of music, so filled with want and affection. The longer my silence answered his mouth, the angier he became. His touch turned rough, holding me tight against him to the point of pressure turned pain. "Please."
My lips smirked.
The mighty lord na-Baron was a beggar at my feet for a taste of my fury.
I wonder what the Baron would think if he knew the joy Feyd felt in his absence. How Feyd had become something much more than a pawn of power.
He was mine.
"Release me."
He did as I asked. The arms dropped to his side.
I faced him. "Take off your shirt. Slowly. Look at me while you do."
I leaned back against his bed frame as he made a point to undress himself in slow exaggerated motions. The reveal of his body was met with a smirk. I allowed my hunger for his nakedness show on my face.
He was gorgeous. The sharp definition around each muscle he'd crafted caught the light.
"Is that better, my lady?"
I swallowed. Was it hot in here? Or was it just me?
I gestured again. "Now the pants."
"My pants," he repeated in delight.
"Take them off, Feyd."
The lacing was undone quick. He worked the taut leather down his bulging thighs. I watched the scene in total awe. Attention, he clearly liked. His cock was unrestrained. It bounced freely, erect through the air, and needy.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was an impressive specimen.
A specimen for my use.
"Now my turn," he said impatiently. He stepped nearer. "Tell me what you had planned with that dagger."
I shook my head.
"No?" He quickly angered.
It did not brush the surface of how furious I was when I discovered that woman in his bed.
I did not mind denying him longer.
"Get on the bed," I instructed.
He wrinkled his nose. "Fine. But then I get to fuck you while you answer."
If he did that, he'd not last long. Violence, pain, anger, excited him so. The thoughts through my head in that moment were filled with the most bloodlust I possessed.
Feyd's pale body laid overtop where her body had been.
I slipped my arms out of my sleeves. The loose dress fell from my shoulders down past my waist to the floor. It only caught slight against the small swell of my abdomen.
His eyes noticed. The cock in the air twitched its excitement.
His attention followed me as I crawled across the oversized bed toward him. Hands ran along the flesh it could reach as I neared. My stomach being one of the things he caressed. Lovingly. Then his grip latched at my hips. It lifted me onto his lap.
"Now," he said gentler than before. "Tell me what you'd do to me."
"It shouldn't be something you want," I pointed out.
He grunted as he entered the heat of my pussy. It slipped through my muscles deeper than my pleasure could go. His cock was a fullness that bordered on too much. It rubbed me blessedly inside, but then it took a ragged pain when it went fast, eager.
That was what he was: the line between pleasure and pain.
An exhale left my lips as I settled atop his cock.
"Tell me." He sat up, making the strokes shallower, as his arms wrapped around my back. "I want to fuckin' feel your anger move through your pussy as I fuck it."
My hips rocked in slow motions against him.
"I thought to stab you through the heart," I told him. The response set excited thrill beneath his skin. He bucked his hips upward, deeper into me. My mouth dropped open to savor the feeling. "But." I groaned through my pleasure wave. "I wanted you to be in pain. Not dead."
Feyd clenched my hips. "How much pain, sweetness. Tell me what awaits your betrayal."
I leaned forward. The tips of my nails stabbed at the part of his shoulder where the joint connected with tendons to his body. More pressure built under my touch.
"Take another woman and I'll slip a knife between your bones just here. Your arm will not work. You'll be defenseless with your dominant arm disabled." I allowed a steadier rocking of my thighs against his body. "Another man will be able to take me away. With ease."
His enjoyment of the moment passed. He was seriously rattled.
The motion of our bodies stopped.
"Mintha," he growled furiously.
My nails pierced his flesh. A droplet of dark blood emerged. It stained the tip of my nail. "Now. You taste what I did when I found her here."
"That is not funny," he said.
There was a subtle rocking of his hips. I felt the toying pleasure alive inside myself.
"You did not want her, Feyd."
"She is not you." The grip on my hips tightened. He moved them back and forth. "You are the only pleasure there is."
I moved with the sway that he liked. It slipped in and out of me. Slow and intense.
My fingertips dragged down the swell of his upper lip to the pouty swell of his bottom lip. "You." I breathed. "You are the only good I know."
We moved slow in each other's laps. Our lips locked. The strength of how much we needed one another bled into other pleasures.
The only good in the Imperium was in this animal. I loved him so.
Feyd fled the chambers when the post-coital bliss wore of(f and I finally agreed to restrain from touching myself in his absence). He focused on securing our rooms to safety once more. There was too much damaged pride to demand he not change the guard to stay with me. It was the one thing that helped him sleep an entire night without startling at every sound.
I laid in the bed, wondering if Lord Bondar's daughter would have acted so bold if she knew I carried the heir.
As much as I disliked being forced into this position, it was a station that demanded protection. It was my place now. I had to defend it. For the sake of those who came after me. Any who carried Feyd's future heirs deserved to live with the safety that they would not be executed in their beds by the ambitious nobility.
Feyd advised I stay put. Things that needed to be done did not wait for his availability. I fled the chambers.
The advisors convened in their meeting room as they always did. They ensured that all the na-Baron's requests were being done.
Probably killed some innocents together, too.
They were the most demented below the Baron.
I marched into the room, into their stagnant air. My lips frowned at them. Their black robes were the makings of shifty shadows. None of whom I trusted.
All I knew was that they would serve Feyd as long as he was their only source of power.
"Lady Mintha." An advisor bowed his head.
With luck, Lord Bondar was off somewhere else. It left the entire board to my control. He was the only one who would speak against what I said, for whatever reason. The others kept tighter lips. Feyd had showed them what happened when I was bothered.
Lord Bondar had been spared the sight of that lesson.
"My lady." The rest of them murmured with hushed tones, heads bowed in the same respect they showed the na-Baron.
"I wish to surprise na-Baron with an epic celebration. Are there any that we can arrange?"
They showed their hesitation. Shift glances went around the room.
My face trained to what I knew a true lady to be. It showed boredom at their caution.
"That remains to be seen. What proportion constitutes as epic?"
"I have a surprise. It is important that it be celebrated throughout the city. In the castle. Everyone is to take part. To honor the na-Baron. He is to be the reason of all joy that night."
"Sounds expensive, my lady."
"It is a very important day for the na-Baron. Would you like him to feel as if grandeur was spared to save coin?"
"Well, no." Another advisor replied.
"We had to revoke harvesting in the North to counter our losses. Our coffers are not overflowing."
I would not take their denials.
I knew the state of our income here on Arrakis. Any pretending of wealth shortage was irritating. Did they take me for an idiot? As if Feyd did not share details with me; we shared everything else.
Now it was our blood shared together.
"Fireworks in the city. With money spent to fill the grounds with the people to be fed and given water," I said. "The nobility will be granted into the Great Hall. Duels in the na-Baron's honor and offerings should be brought. Gifts to his lordship."
A few of the men made note of the request.
I knew I'd be granted what I wanted. If they did not flat out deny me, I could manipulate them to do as I wanted.
The award Feyd gave me as Lady Mintha of Harkonnen House allowed sway. Sway I'd no longer deny myself.
Not since a highborn daughter came to steal my place.
Next, I visited Aishti. I asked for a dress with my specific vision in mind. She asked if I was certain. There was a level of doubt in her face.
I did not falter.
Power lived inside me now. I was the woman who had to mark a definite line that would not be crossed if I wished to remain at Feyd's side. Better, smarter minds than Lord Bondar would come and try to take it.
Feyd taught me one thing: I had to defend what was mine.