By the stipulations of the agreent that allowed Lu Zhi to hold the unique status of ‘trial harette’, she was not allowed to sleep with John without another harette there to witness the event. That line had been skirted, even crossed, as the months went on, but it was technically still in place.
The sa limitation did not apply to sapphic activities.
Red and green lips opened and closed in a rhythmic exchange of affections. A finely cut European ruby mashed against Chinese jade. Light moans filled the bedchamber, the sounds echoing inwards while never leaving the room. Inside the walls was a layer of enchanted dampening, adding to insulations of all kinds. It would not have been an imperial retreat without the ans to shield them from the outside.
Lu Zhi took the lead in the kisses. Around John and Jane, the imperial tomboy indulged in her deeply submissive side, but she was not one of the many, many won in this harem who exclusively found their delight at the bottom. Lydia happily acted as one of the less kinky won in the harem. Which, given her proclivities concerning alternatives to the intended hole for intercourse, spoke volus about their gaggle of nymphomaniacs.
“Thank you for obliging , Lyly,” whispered one empress.
“You are welco, Lulu,” whispered back the other empress, though her title was not as clear.
Luxurious sheets whispered beneath them, the silk a rough fabric compared to the smoothness of the naked thigh that Lydia’s hand now glided up. John’s obsession with behinds, Lydia did not possess, but she was much too far down the road of bisexuality not to appreciate a marvellous behind such as hers. The curvature, the yielding cushioning, the firm core, it all worked perfectly with her figure.
Compared to her, Lydia felt downright rectangular. Had this been before her ditation-brought transformation, she may have felt jealous. As she was right now, she simply indulged herself in being of a different form, much taller and gentler in the swing of her hourglass.
Lu Zhi’s hands lingered on the Queen of Mithril’s points of interest. Butt, back muscles, shoulders and neck were all caressed in short order. Their making out session changed in its procedure, the kiss breaking, all so Lu Zhi could press her lips on her neck instead. “Mind if I leave a few hickeys?” the imperial tomboy asked.
“Permission granted,” Lydia sighed. The people would speculate who they were from and they would have ample to choose from. Though the relationship between Lu Zhi and John was vaguely public by now, she doubted anyone would make the correct guess nor would it matter if they did.
The playful suction of the lovebites made the empress swoon. Tilting her head back, she let her fellow sovereign kiss the skin to her heart’s content. Nibbles carefully applied the draconically sharp canines of the chosen embodint of tradition to the Queen of Mithril’s pale skin.
When Lydia lowered her chin again, it ca to rest on Lu Zhi’s head. The warmth of her black hair soon enveloped her fingers as well. The redhead parted the raven tresses. “I rember when these were more on the grey side,” she whispered. “Why did you change it?”
“I had it dyed to try and seem a little older for my reveal at the Divided Gates eting,” the imperial tomboy’s lips ford her cute voice into even more adorable syllables. “I know I don’t seem the type for little insecurities but…”
“Shhhh, I understand,” Lydia whispered. “From one empress to another, I am most aware of the doubts plaguing one who rarely hears earnest pushback.” Gradually, she raised her hand, watching the silky black glide and fall from her fingers one strand at a ti. “You are a gorgeous ravenette.”
“I’m still only the second cutest thing in the room.”
“I vehently disagree.”
Their lips t in a renewed kiss. Lu Zhi broke the unspoken barrier a mont later. Nimble fingers glided over Lydia’s swollen mound. The Chinese empress had a montary fascination with the way Lydia’s womanhood could be made to ever so slightly jiggle with a flick. Lydia rolled her eyes, then returned the favour – including the playful part.
Playful it did not stay for long. Cravings rose to the forefront, a pile of tinder ignited when Lu Zhi’s middle finger found her fellow woman’s clit. The touch was electric, a discharge that made Lydia’s spine and toes curl in a first twitch of desire. The mont was loaded with emotional resonance. Their breathing into the kiss beca hot and heavy.
Lydia once more followed the lead, responding in kind. Wet whispers of fingers dancing over sensitive buttons dominated the room. They laid in the enormous bed, way too large for the two of them. It had been replaced to fulfil the needs of the harem, should they ever decide to stay here as a group. It barely fit between the walls of the room of the Prussian palace.
The where was temporarily forgotten. Only the who she was with was important. The mutual fingering took all of their attention. Even the kiss ca to a halt. Forehead to forehead, they lay there, moved only by the involuntary spasms of their muscles as they approached orgasm rapidly. Lydia’s blue eyes reflected in the green of the jade beauty she had the privilege of sharing a bed with.
It had been many months since Lu Zhi had attained her position as trial harette. Many orgies had been shared, many more private monts indulged in. Though Lydia could count the tis she had been alone in the bedroom with the empress on two hands, their intimacy with one another was all the sa complete. John Newman had almost scarily good instincts when it ca to choosing his lovers. All of them were so attentive, so eager to learn about others’ needs. Lydia knew not only the sensitive spots of Lu Zhi, she knew everything about how to stimulate her.
Caressing her thigh, teasing a nipple, intermingling the intense targeting of the clit with shallow penetrations with her fingers, all of those were needed to truly drive the imperial tomboy wild. In return, Lydia was treated to rubbing of Lu Zhi’s thumb over her lower lips, the rubbing of their shoulders, and the gentle pressure of two fingers against her backdoor – stopping short of penetration.
It was this mutual understanding that made their lesbian engagent more than masturbation using another’s hand.
Careful calculation had them approach the pinnacle simultaneously. Hands sped up. Lydia’s voice rose to a loud moan. As so often, she hadn’t realized how quiet she had been until pleasure broke that subconscious wall. Once it was down, she scread out her delight. Their hips bucked against the other’s hand, then they ca.
First ca the wave of bliss, spreading up her spine like a tidal wave. It drowned out the remnants of her thoughts, fully removing from her, for a mont, the burdens of rulership. For a few seconds of spasms and cries, she was just a woman like any other, enjoying that which creation had allowed her to enjoy. Her nerves were alight with pleasure. Her soul buzzed, sharing a glassy-eyed stare and the mont with the woman she still lay next to.
After, ca the relaxation. Where the pleasure ebbed away, she was left satisfied. Though her reality returned, plenty of stress had been washed away. “Thank you,” Lydia voiced her gratitude.
“How long?” Lu Zhi asked, her voice still tinged by the fading climax. The nature of the question was clear. As the two harettes who did not have the luxury of always staying in the Palace, they had to live with so gaps.
“Two days. Lyndell visited . You?”
“Almost two weeks. Haven’t managed to et anyone since I left after the wedding.” A wanton sigh escaped the imperial tomboy. A slick finger trailed up from Lydia’s womanhood to the mark on her womb. That she was being painted with her own juices bothered Lydia as little as the slutty mark that was being traced. “You are familiar with the troubles?”
“Selbstverständlich,” the German slipped from her red lips automatically. It did that sotis still, despite how much of her conversations happened in English these days. Really, the greater wonder was that she never spoke Polish by accident. Though that was in part because that little girl had died when she had fused with her elental. “Quite,” she gave the sa answer in the proper lingua franca between harettes.
“I speak German fluently,” Lu Zhi reminded her with that smirk that only true tomboys could muster.
“And I speak perfect Mandarin, we are eting in the middle.” Lydia began the motion of sitting up, fully executing on it after Lu Zhi had withdrawn her hand. “Let us walk, my future sister-wife.”
“Love the sound of that,” the empress purred and jumped out of bed. Her shapely thighs, the natural extension of her perfect ass, trembled ever so alluringly. “You like what you see?” Lu Zhi teased, her smile half-hidden behind a suddenly manifested fan of green jade.
“I will know them around my head in due ti,” Lydia stated.
They had to walk down the mattress to reach the foot of the bed. The double-winged door led into an adjacent room, full of expensive items. A large glass case held a series of flutes and other instrunts, items of the previous owner of the leisure palace that Lydia was too sentintal about to even consider using herself.
“We’re just going to walk around naked?” Lu Zhi asked, once they headed for the door out of the private chambers.
Lydia stopped with a hand on the doorknob. “That was my intent, unless you find it uncomfortable?”
“No, no, I quite like not having to deal with clothes,” the empress was swift to assure. “It’s just that this residence has a lot of sentintal value, doesn’t it?”
Lydia placed a hand against the doorfra, feeling the gorgeously worked wood. “My predecessor would not wish for to move with a false sense of modesty around my property, especially not this property.” For a mont, the Queen of Mithril lingered in the realm of mory, then she allowed herself a joke. “Plus, this place could use so more overt female action.”
“Right, they say he never allowed won here?”
“An over-exaggeration, considering I myself was here at tis… not without rit, however.” Lydia sighed. Frederick the Great had earned his title and his granddaughter’s respect thoroughly, but he had not been without his problems. A rather complicated relationship with the fairer sex was among his lesser qualities. “This was his retreat for intellectual debate and he saw won as generally too irrational to pursue philosophy in earnest. I do not begrudge him the view, as little as I would hope n would not begrudge my view of their sex as rather brutish.”
“I’ve known enough court ladies to get his point,” Lu Zhi joked.
“Alas, he took the understandable base view a bit far in his private correspondences.” Lydia left it at that, not wishing to emphasize the bad parts of her honoured ancestor too much. No one was perfect and he deserved to be rembered for the good first and foremost. “All the sa, Sanssouci belongs to now. I will use it in my own way.”
Lydia opened the door and stepped into the adjacent corridor.
On the Abyssal side like on the mundane, Sanssouci was small by palace standards. It only had a single story, though the ceilings were high enough that a second could have fit underneath if Lydia had been inclined to install one. Though the opulence of the Renaissance era was on clear display, it was all on an intimate scale. Everywhere they walked, the powerful enchantnts in the walls swallowed up the sounds.
“The garden ought to be fine as well,” Lydia stated confidently, gesturing for Lu Zhi to follow along.
“I’ll trust you on that,” the empress said with a carefree smile. Even if there was a leak at this stage, it would only accelerate the inevitable. The benefit of Vinh’s approaching revolt was that the ranks of the Forbidden City were closing. Much grumbling would be had about the foreign emperor, but Lu Zhi’s station was above the suggestion that she would sign away the nation out of love. She had the backing of her patron deity.
Lydia could say sothing similar, but Reika did not have the sa degree of cultural power nor was the process of choosing as involved. Even now, her detractors insisted that she was both debasing herself by using her body to manipulate John and planning to give away the country once she could just to get headpats. She was, simultaneously, a conniving slut and a submissive broodmare.
Though that was, admittedly, judging her opposition by its least competent mbers.
Ignoring such unpleasantries was simple, once she and Lu Zhi stood atop the terraced vineyard. It was left to grow on the Abyssal side, though the multitude of magical plants in this garden also had been manipulated not to sprout where they weren’t supposed to. Those plants were another layer of privacy, swallowing sounds and ddling with scrying magic. An artificial breeze rolled over the tall hedges. At the bottom of the steps, down a long staircase, was a large fountain.
“Truly, European cultures are the only ones that could approach that of China,” Lu Zhi stated.
Lydia chuckled at the statent, before taking long strides forwards. “All of this was built so my grandfather could get away from the court life,” she said. “Layer upon layer of anti-scrying magic envelops this place. It was all designed to assure none would bother him. For us, it makes for an assured place to live out this love we share. Not even Luna can use her midnight eye to scry here”
The imperial tomboy hopped down the steps beside her, making it a point to hop down three on one leg, then switch quickly. It was delightfully unbecoming behaviour for an empress. Once they reached the bottom of the staircase, Lydia soaked her hand in the water. It, like the entire environnt, was ignoring the restrictions of early February and instead carried with it the warmth of early Sumr.
“As open as I am to more pleasure…” Lydia rinsed the traces of their lovemaking off the Lover’s Will mark, “…I believe we ought to discuss why you sought out?”
“Can’t I just want to spend ti with my gal pal?” Lu Zhi batted her lashes with exaggerated femininity a couple of tis, before laughing unabashedly. “Sorry, sorry… to the point.” The expression of the Heavenly Jade Empress suddenly shifted to sothing predatory. “I wish to recruit a few of the Knights of Teuton. One would do, but three would be to my desire.”
Lydia tilted her head. As she had grown more powerful, she had pushed her bodyguards more to the periphery, for multiple reasons. Obviously, she needed the protection a lot less. Any assassin that would have dared strike at her would have slaughtered the knights. A slaughter that she would rather avoid. The opening strike of the Five Days War had decimated the order. In terms of numbers, the recovery was going well. Regrowing the culture and experience of such an old institution took much longer.
“I could potentially spare three,” she responded slowly. “For what reason do you ask for them, specifically?”
“Their reputation has them as one of the premiere stealth forces in the world.”
“Their specialization is surveillance, not infiltration,” Lydia cautioned. The armour that the Knights of Teuton produced for their fully trained mbers was indeed enchanted with powerful invisibility. This was further sharpened by the training they received. It was enough that even Eliana, then level 400, had not imdiately realized their presence. “It is their purpose to be an unseen obstacle between an assailant and the monarch.”
“And I would not remove them entirely from that purpose,” Lu Zhi responded, her straightforward tone almost matching Lydia’s in its military strictness. One spoke like tempered steel, the other like polished stone, and both were to the point. “I don’t need them for infiltration or any long-range operation, I have such operatives myself.”
“Do you need them to be experts?” Lydia asked. “That is the restraining factor. I have few of them at hand, certainly not three that I am willing to risk in another’s endeavour.”
Sat down on the marble rim of the fountain, Lu Zhi looked up at her fellow empress. “Adequate suffices for this mission.”
“And what is the mission?”
“I want them to survey Qingi.”
A militaristic nod expressed Lydia’s understanding, though she still had to ask. “Is there a reason to distrust her?” An understandable snort made the Queen of Mithril rephrase the question. “Is there anything specific they are to look for? Any lie that spurs you into motion?”
“No such thing, the reason for this added security is my wish to tie her even deeper into my administration, which necessarily gives her access to my spies.”
It was the nature of power that those that had a lot of it were less and less affected by boundaries set. Hierarchies may form from the bottom up, but they were always enforced from the top down. Even in her own court, where she endeavoured to ensure powers were split between ministries and cabinet positions, the flow of favours necessarily blurred the lines between what one was supposed to and what one was able to do. The Mandate of Heaven, traditionally, did not have a strong separation of individual positions. One could hold as many or as few titles as one was empowered to.
“You wish to externalize the surveillance to so she may not influence them,” Lydia summarized with a nod. “To that end, it does not matter if she knows she is being watched?”
“It would be good if I had plausible deniability and if it all looked natural,” Lu Zhi responded. “I was thinking you could send a liaison to my court? Soone of your house who would naturally have a small detail of bodyguards? Any useless cousins you would be willing to put in the firing line?”
Lydia blew air out of her nose. Most of her cousins were useless, hence why she had managed to land the Candidatum Secundus in the first place, despite her rather middling talent when it ca to the nobility of the Greater Empire. “I have many… and one may be a splendid fit for this endeavour.”
“Oh? Do tell?”
“Ludwig Friedrich von Hohenzollern,” she began with his na.
“Second na Friedrich? In your dynasty? Daring, aren’t we?” Lu Zhi asked, her imperial tone breaking for sothing that Lydia recognized as -citation.
A long sigh flowed from her lips, the serious tone of the conversation now broken. “He is the son of my aunt, though we are necessarily estranged due to my mother’s choice to shed the family na. He is currently unlanded, 3rd in line to inherit a Protected Space on the Poranian coast that is of import only to the local area and my machinations of providing Luna with fresh Baltic fish.”
“A spare son of the blood, then?” Lu Zhi asked.
“Quite,” Lydia responded. “In more ruthless tis, I would have had him killed for his behaviour. He is a womanizer and it is only a question of ti until he spawns several bastards. To his credit, he has quite taken to John’s example of taking responsibility for a harem. To his detrint, he only has his na to back up such claims.”
“…Is he a good womanizer?”
“Annoyingly, yes. He is attractive and has absorbed the lessons on courting expertly. Were I not certain that I could produce a desired number of heirs and place them in positions of importance, I would worry for what he would do to the succession.” Lydia paused for a mont. “If I sent him, I would prepare to lose at least a couple of ladies-in-waiting.”
“A necessary sacrifice,” Lu Zhi said with a shrug. “What makes him perfect?”
“He is… how do I say… an outspoken enjoyer of… ah, why do I try to beat around the bush, we are both exposed regularly to the vernacular.” Another sigh, this ti of surrender, left the monarch’s lungs. “He likes his ‘big titty monster girls’.”
“Does he use that specific phrase?”
“Yes, at court.”
“A womanizer? Likes monster girls? Even calls them such?” Lu Zhi smirked behind her raised fan. “Could he be… one of my people?”
“Weebs…” Lydia muttered with almost sincere disdain. “With a bit of subtle encouragent by his security detail, he will orbit Qingi naturally, allowing my assigned knights to survey her without arousing much suspicion even if they are noticed.”
“Perfect!” The imperial tomboy swung her legs up, about to leap up from her seat. It was that opportunity that Lydia seized. Utilizing her superhuman speed, she moved between the empress’ parted legs before her butt could leave the ground. Surprised, she squawked. “What’s the play here, Lyly?”
“We are ahead of schedule, Lulu, no need to rush,” Lydia purred. “Two weeks is a long ti to not know the touch of a fellow harette. Let us indulge while we have each other.”
If Lu Zhi had any disagreents, they were silenced by the first lick.
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