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“I have little left in myself — I must have you. The world may laugh — may call me absurd, selfish — but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Lucien is utterly fucked.
It is a feeling he is quite familiar with, for perhaps several centuries now. Perhaps an entire lifetime. But it is especially evident as he sits in Rhysand’s office, an ankle on his knee, fingers tapping nervously on the couch. He is utterly fucked to the point he cannot even listen to the words that drone on from the High Lord and High Lady. There is growing concern amidst the courts. This would be a symbol of goodwill for the future.
Yada yada yada. He’s been an emissary long enough to know what’s hiding beneath the pleasantries Rhys isn’t very good at portraying—he’s Pyrthian’s wild card and nobody likes that. His brother Eris has taken Autumn’s throne, he’s now the apparent heir to the Day Court, Tamlin has decided to forgive him in the reforged Spring Court, and he’s been awfully close to the Night Court now for years. How the hell did he end up in this position?
They say everything and nothing at the same time. The message is still clear.
It’s time to pick a side.
“We feel this unification would create a firm allegiance.” Lucien barely has the self-restraint to not roll his eyes at Feyre’s words. Pick the Night Court or else , as if he could read the thoughts being communicated silently between their minds. He’s been around it long enough.
Like countless times before, they’re dangling Elain in front of him without a mention of her name. And for once, Lucien decides to selfishly take it.
“I’ll marry her,” he pretends to investigate his nails, even if his heart is about to burst from his fucking chest. “But only if she agrees to it as well. That’s my only condition.”
He’s never been more fucked.
***
Jesminda did always say his mouth was trouble.
It used to make him smile, lips parting into something feline and sensual, his head usually already on her lap. You don’t seem to complain, hm? Morning and night. Morning and night he lived somewhere between her legs. He could have lived there forever.
In the beginning, she’d laugh and grab a fistful of his hair, and kiss that troubled mouth. Oh, Lucien— she’d moan.
Looking back, he can see it was all a warning, pieces unraveling faster than he could catch. He should have listened more, to the way her oh, Lucien changed its tune, disappointment ringing in its echo whenever that mouth of his told her about his father’s threats. The very ones that were becoming more persistent, more targeted. He’d open his mouth and promise they’d run away together, every claim to his name and title and family thrown to the wind. Because you are my mate, he would whisper into her ear.
When that sword fell upon her neck, he remembered what else she’d usually say. That mouth is going to get you killed one day.
He thought about it again when Amarantha plucked his eye out.
And again the day his mate tumbled out of the damned Cauldron.
He should have shut his stupid fucking mouth. He was never going to learn, was he?
***
“She’s in there,” Feyre says, gesturing with a nod towards the library in the River House.
They haven’t spoken since the agreement was made. Not surprising, given their general lack of history in talking. Elain stands at the window, soaking in the remaining strands of light that are fading away into the setting sun. Usually, he is nervous to enter into conversation with her, as if one wrong word will scare her and she’ll turn around to sever the bond with her bare hands.
But they’re going to get married so Lucien’s approach is a bit more like fuck it.
“I’ve heard that you have agreed to the arrangement.” He feels like such a fucking prick at the words, but there’s no speaking around it. He tries to imagine how that conversation went. We need you to do your part in the court, Elain. It’s time for you to serve the good of Velaris. How she had squared her shoulders and lifted her chin to the challenge. Not quite the words he would quite literally rather anyone say to her, the only truth as he knows it— he will love you like no one else will.
“Does this mean we’ll accept the mating bond as well?” She doesn’t even bother to turn around, fingers gripping the window sill tighter. “So you can claim me in every regard? Finally have the freedom to do what you want with me?”
There’s venom in her words. Selfish, selfish, selfish pounds against his chest. What would happen if he continued to give in to the primal hunger gnawing at this tether? If he stopped letting the thread between them wrap around his neck, choking him of all air? What if he just leaned in and said yes— she was standing here wasn’t she? Which could only mean she would go through with it all, marriage and mating bond and a life shackled to him, all he had to was say yes.
Lucien raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Elain,” he grits his teeth because his mouth is going to fail him once again.
She turns her head over her shoulder. She could turn him into stone with that look.
“We may be in the precarious predicament of a marriage suited by those around us, but the mating bond? That belongs to us. ” Lucien gestures to the empty space between them, though they both know it's truly towards the golden thread that binds their souls eternally. “And if you had ever bothered to ask me, I would have told you that I would not accept the mating bond until you are wildly, madly, deeply in love with me. I won’t accept anything less. Unless by some miracle that happens, we shall simply remain husband and wife from hereafter.”
Elain stares and stares. “Husband and wife,” she repeats, testing the words in her mouth.
“Here,” Lucien digs into his pocket and grabs the ring he had stupidly, stupidly gotten for this farce of an engagement. He slaps it on the window sill in front of her. A delicate, golden ring with an emerald center surrounded by smaller amber jewels, like a flower. Like her.
There’s not much else to say. There isn’t a point to even asking her to marry him. It’s been decided outside of this room. He may be the least favorite son, the exiled emissary, the fool with no home and a mate who didn’t choose him, but for fuck’s sake he wasn’t going to be a bad husband.
He has to get something right in his miserable life.
***
“Congratulations, fireling.”
Lucien looks to Cassian as he adjusts his cufflinks for the tenth time. “Thank you, but you say that as if I am walking to my execution.”
Is he wrong? In minutes he is going to be walking down the aisle to take his vows, as if the bond itself wasn’t enough to declare his never-ending pursuit for what he can never have. He’s walking to his sentencing because surely Elain was made to torture him. She will be the death of him. Married to his mate who refuses to accept the bond — it was painfully appropriate for what fate thought he deserved.
That mouth is going to get you killed one day, Jesminda had said.
In minutes Elain will appear, dressed otherworldly in lace, so beautiful as she faces her doom. He’ll repeat the words, the promises, I am yours and you are mine, even if it’s to the ghost of her standing before him. He’s narrowly avoided death countless times before, but this time? Lucien imagines he’s finally run out of luck.
***
Their kiss is chaste.
But it’s all he can fucking think about. Her lips, her breath, her teeth, her taste. The bond is insatiable and if he’s not careful he’ll accidentally burn their room to ashes. He’s sitting on the bed— their bed— with his head in his hands when she appears in her nightgown at the door.
Rhysand and Feyre were generous enough to purchase them a particularly tasteful townhouse in Velaris. A subtle reminder that this marriage was Night Court property.
Elain slips into the bed quickly, pulling the sheets up to her chin. Lucien waits for her to say anything , anything at all, but that stubborn Archeron blood runs through her as well. With a sigh, he extinguished the light, leaving them in darkness as he lies on his back, hands resting on his chest.
“My parents had a rather tumultuous and loveless marriage. I do not wish that upon us,” Lucien spoke to the blackness, even if he could feel Elain’s back facing him. He was skilled enough to carry a conversation with a wall if needed. “I know you didn’t want me as your mate. But I am your husband now. And I plan to be the kind of husband that makes you happy, in whatever regard you allow it.”
Lucien lets that hang over them in the bed. It makes his chest feel slightly lighter to have gotten it out. As he’s about to turn away to lie on his side, she finally breaks the silence since their vows.
“Hold me?”
Her voice, soft and small, just like her. Incredibly fragile. If there’s disbelief paralyzing his muscles, it only lasts a moment. He turns towards her, sliding his body behind hers, her small form tucking away into his easily. He gets it. He does. No one wants to spend their first night married alone. And the bond demands it, after years of yearning, it demands to feed now; he knows this request is from her body and not her heart, but gods, if he can pretend.
Hands slide over hip bones and he wonders if he’ll burn right through her thin nightgown. Their closeness hits him like a crashing wave. It’s only when he catches her scent shifting, arousal snaking through his nostril, that he brings his lips to her ear.
“ My pretty wife— ” he can’t help his teeth from skimming her ear.
“I live to serve you—” she all but moans as his tongue trails down her neck.
The wave threatens to drag him down, so he takes a breath and dives down deep. His fingers slide further down, to where her core is throbbing, pulling her panties aside, and when she opens her legs in invitation, he doesn’t hesitate to plunge his finger into her folds.
“Does that please you?” Lucien growls, curling his finger to stroke the bundle of nerves. It has been many years since he has touched a female, but Elain is an instrument in his hands. Her writhing form is pressed against his cock. He can’t remember ever being this painfully stiff before. Beneath her, his free hand is curled around her, his fingers pinching her pebbled nipple.
“Lucien—”
The sound of his name nearly undoes him. So he pumps harder, pushing two fingers in rhythm, harder and harder until it steals the words from her deliciously agape lips. Until it’s only nonsense and curses and the wet sound of her pussy against his hand. Her eyes are screwed shut, which infuriates him, until he can feel the corded muscles in his forearm tire from where he pumps.
He can feel her tighten, the peak of her wave washing over him through the bond. They moan together, his lips furiously sucking at her pale throat. Lucien helps her ride the climax all the way down, nimble fingers slowing in its descent, caressing her thighs.
“What about…” Elain has the audacity to blush at the gesture towards his cock, as if she didn’t just come into his hand.
Lucien brings his fingers to his mouth to suck her slickness, memorizing her taste on his tongue, then pulls them out with a wet smack of his lips.
“I’m good,” he smiles as her blush deepens.
They don’t speak again, but her shortness of breath does wonders for his confidence as he turns away to sleep, ignoring the angry erection between his legs. He was fucking selfish to marry her but he certainly won't be selfish in bed, thank you very much.
***
She never lets him kiss her.
It should piss him off more, but he doesn’t press it. Because at least she unabashedly cries out his name when they fuck, and that’s enough for Lucien. The closest to being claimed she will give him. The bond is constantly raw between them—satisfied but never full. He doesn’t want to imagine the madness a rejection can cause a male, because he is currently teetering closer to it with her maddening presence.
Lucien is positive he has kissed every inch of her except her lips, not including their marriage vows. He has breathed her air, swallowed the sound of her shuddering moans, and covered her screams with his palms. But he has not touched that beautiful mouth with his own since their wedding.
This is enough, he tells himself. He can live on this, even if it means he has to fuck her every day to ensure he doesn’t fall apart. Which he will gladly do. This is happiness, he tells himself, as he lifts her skirts from where she kneels on all fours in their personal garden. As close as happy can be, he tells himself, his tongue greedily trailing from pussy to ass while Elain pulls fists full of grass. This is the happiness he deserves, he tells himself, driving his hips forward until he fills her, till he chases the high pitch of her moans, dirt and rock crunching beneath his knees.
This is it, he tells himself. It’s enough.
***
“I want to go with you,” Elain says one day from their dining room, sipping her morning tea. It’s a shame they have to hire help to cook out of fear they’ll initiate the mating bond. Every single thing she cooks and bakes is wasted on others, and even if they’re bound by law, he finds the longing never goes away, even for something as pathetic as her bread rolls. Another reminder he doesn’t have all of her — even if she has him. “I want to start joining you on all political travels and visits.”
Lucien can sense she’s ready to fight. Ready to defend her rationale. Her muscles taut, her face as cold as steel. It is endearing to him; the urge to kiss her demanding mouth flutters in his chest.
“If you wanted to spend more time with me, all you had to do was ask.” She opens her mouth to argue but stops at the realization he has granted her wish. “Pack your bags, love. We leave this afternoon.”
If only she would ask more of him. Then she would see how much he was willing to give—everything. Everything. Every fucking thing.
***
Everything is natural and easy between them. It should be a joke, but it’s not. The fucking, the political summits, the negotiations across allies. Everything except their actual mating bond. He was about to reach down and adjust her necklace where the chain had been tangled when a voice snapped both of their heads around from where they stood in the ballroom.
“The infamous Elain Archeron has finally graced us with her presence. I see you finally gave in and let that bastard mate of yours claim you and fuck you.”
Lucien’s lips snarl, a beastly growl erupting from low in his throat. He is one step away from eviscerating Lord Grayson Nolan when Elain loops her arm into his elbow and pulls him closer.
“His name is Lucien. And he is my husband.” Her words land like an arrow on her ex-fiance.
Lucien smiles with satisfaction their entire walk across the hall, away from the gathering of others. Grayson’s insulted face stays imprinted in his mind as they pass him effortlessly, Elain’s ring glimmering under the chandelier lights. She leads them to a faraway office, away from the party, away from the old life of hers, the asshole she almost married.
“I don't know if I should be on my knees thanking that bastard human for not marrying you, or if I should slit his throat for not wanting you.”
Elain doesn’t turn around at his words, pretending to look at the books on the shelf. The books he knows these humans have never touched, presumably from the dust gathering on the covers. She doesn’t have to speak for him to feel the anger simmering at the bond, the one he always is privy to know, still seated front and center row to her every emotion and thought.
“Shall we ruin his office? Would that please my wife?”
At that, Elain snaps around, the anger knotted in her face. “Shut your filthy mouth, Lucien.” He laughs, crossing the room in just a few steps. He traps her between his arms, grabbing hold of the shelf behind her head. “Then tell me where to put it.”
It’s a dance they both know well. Like the good courtiers they are. Like husband and wife, he thinks. She’s gathering her dress up frantically and he’s quick to unfasten his belt. With a mixture of grace and fury, he scoops her thighs to leverage her higher against the bookshelf as he sinks himself inside of her.
“Is this where you fucked him, in his home? I need you to think of me when you think of this place.”
He is going deep inside her, every thrust pounding against her core. Her hands grip handfuls of his hair, pulling harder with each tug.
“Did he please you like I do?” Lucien hisses into her ear, kissing the expanse of skin along her neck, the one he is most intimately familiar with since her lips are off limits. “Say it, Elain, say it.”
“No he didn’t— fuck—” She has to bite her moans into his shoulder and it makes him nearly buckle, pushing her harder against the shelf.
“Lucien, Lucien, Lucien, fuck—” Her breath hitches because she is so, so close.
He can hear voices coming up the hallway, so he fucks her harder and faster till she reaches that edge. They come together, fingers leaving bruises on her thighs, until he can set her down slowly. They fix their clothes quickly, and she even takes a moment to adjust his collar. Before their moment is interrupted, as he adjusts his cufflinks, he looks her in the eyes, a gift he doesn’t always get from his beloved. And he reminds her what he hoped his body could say.
“Remember this, he is nothing. And you—you are everything, Elain. Everything.”
***
She lays out his clothes. Adjusts his collar before entering the room. She begins to match their outfits for the grander events, even if he never asks for it. The style of their home intertwines in their tastes, all daylight and greenery, dark wooden furniture, airy yet woodsy. Their exchanged gifts are thoughtful at every holiday. They share favorite meals, teas, and books. Suddenly they are in sync and he’s not sure they ever even tried to be — they just woke up like that one day. With each day, each month that passes, he does not notice the slow change creeping like vines up a stone wall.
Usually, Elain joins him for travel. Except for the few times he does leave her, she will just look at him, a half-breath away from standing up. But she never does. “Be safe,” she always says.
Until one day she doesn’t.
She doesn’t say anything. Her fingers brush against his hand, fire across his knuckles. He would have thought he had lived a lifetime in the skin of a ghost the way her singular touch awoke him. As if the world itself stopped, reality blinking into place. Elain has never dared such an intimate touch, her eyes lost beneath her eyelashes.
He could explode. But he doesn’t.
Something has changed.
***
One day he brings her a bundle of pink dahlias. He normally wouldn’t push his luck, but when he catches her frown at the petals, the stems stiff in her hands, his stupid mouth can’t help but open as the words come crawling out before he can stop. “What’s wrong, Elain?”
Elain swallowed, setting the bouquet down on the table by the window. “When are you going to ask me? What you’ve been dying to ask me?”
Lucien shifts uncomfortably on his feet. He feels as if he’s an actor on stage caught without his script. He’s forgotten his lines and this was never what they rehearsed in their day-to-day life of pretending to be a married couple, who just so happened to be mates. He just wanted to buy his wife stupid fucking flowers, like a normal male. He knows what she’s getting at with her pointed look and expecting eyes. When are you going to ask me why I still won’t accept the bond?
She wants him to ask a question? There’s only one more burning than that one.
“Are you happy?”
Elain stares and stares—searching, examining, judging his gaze. With a sigh, she bows and shakes her head, back at the dahlias abandoned at the table. It makes his blood boil the way she is always just out of his reach, the way she denies him an answer, the way she turns her nose up at the window, away from him. The way he cares, even if it kills him slowly, that he cares so much if she’s happy or not.
“What do you want from me, Elain?” He steps forward, his hands out in exasperation, before they begin clutching at his chest, right where the pain digs itself deeper. “I ask nothing of you. Nothing. And that’s what I get from you in return.”
At least she has the decency to look at him when his voice cracks. Brown, wide eyes taking him all in, perhaps for the first time.
“That’s the problem, Lucien.”
Fuck.
***
Weeks pass. Their closeness subsides, but the anger inside him does not. The barest, thinnest shreds of intimacy they possessed are gone. They exist in the same orbit but never touch. They sleep next to each other every night but he could have been standing on the other side of the Continent. He’s losing her—every small piece of her she had ever allowed him to have slips like water through his fingers.
Today she is waiting for him in the dining room. He moves to sit in his usual spot, only the sound of their chair scraping against the floor filling the air. For the first time in their marriage, Elain wordlessly pours his cup of tea, then carefully places an assortment of pastries on his plate. Before she hands him his plate, she looks at him with such intensity, the long pause stealing all breath from his lungs.
“Tell me what you want.”
Lucien looks up at where she stands, his mechanical eye whirring in focus. “Excuse me?”
“Tell me,” Elain’s tone is forceful, her face a swirling mix of frustration and care that pulls the thread attached to his rib with a furious yank . “Tell me what you want from me, Lucien.”
Stunned, he grips the arms of his chair with panic. Her ask is humiliating. To bear his naked, honest desires to her is the furthest thought from his mind. To say what he wants aloud would admit to what he has shamefully harbored for so long—that he is indeed selfish. It was safer to want without asking, to secretly covet her heart, than to be denied what he wanted most. It was better to pour himself into her happiness, to fuck her with a shaking, ravenous hope, to pretend it was all enough, rather than give what had branded his heart an actual name.
It was too much to ask more of her. That’s what fucking killed him. He already had more of her than he deserved.
But now she has asked.
“I want you.” He confesses, tearing his eyes from her, unable to face her directly. “I want you to kiss me.” Lucien cannot stop the tear falling from his russet eye, cannot hold back the tremor in his voice. “I want you to love me back.” Love. There it is. That sickening revelation.
“I want all of you.” Lucien feels Elain’s hand meet his jaw, delicately turning his head to lock with her gaze. It goes against everything inside him, but he opens his stupid, fucking mouth one more time. His whisper is choked. “Your entire soul, Elain.”
Lucien closes his eyes as she cups his cheek, pulling him into a gentle, slow kiss with the slant of her lips. He can’t breathe; it is as if he is a candle’s flame, finally extinguished after a lifetime of burning at the wick. He is all melted wax in her hands, pooling into the warmth of her deepening kiss. When she pulls away, his eyes flutter open, his hand quickly wiping away at the wetness in the corner of his eye.
“Eat, Lucien.”
He almost laughs because he is beyond confused. Then Elain is pushing the plate of pastries closer, leaning against the table in wait. It takes him a moment to blink in recognition. The laugh that nearly tumbles out immediately dies behind his teeth, replaced by a nervous shudder. “Elain—you don’t mean—”
The plate before him is an offering. A dream he stopped having long before they ever even married. A mating bond acceptance, made with the care of her hands. Her choice.
With shining eyes, Elain is nodding. “I think we did all this backward.” He can only stare and stare at his wife, his mate, his effervescent love. Lucien understands what she means. Soulmates before strangers. Married before mated. Lovers before friends.
Elain cradles a petite fruit tart in her palm. Before she brings it to his lips, she pauses, pulling it back to her chest.
“All this time and you never once asked me what it would take to accept the bond. Don’t you want to know?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You have been a good male, Lucien. A faithful, lovely husband better than I ever deserved. And you will be the father to our children one day. But I needed to hear you say the words, needed to look you in the eyes and know you loved my whole selfish, stubborn heart without waver.”
She holds out the tart with an honest, true smile. The bond between them floods open, and Lucien is drowning in her. “All this time, I just needed you to ask,” she tells him.
He is utterly fucked. In the best way possible.
Lucien opens his mouth.