Nervous but determined. Those were the emotions I was picking off of Artemis as she exited the bathroom in a slinky red silk nightdress that hugged her curves. Her face had been scrubbed clean of all traces of cosmetics and her red-gold locks, still moist from the shower, hung free and framed her face. Her wings shone silver under the bright light of the smokeless torches.

If she had been gorgeous before as she walked down the aisle for our wedding, right now, she was beautiful. Plain and simple.

Her piercing grey eyes transfixing my own, her stride oozing confidence, she approached me as I sat on the bed, looking every bit as domineering and regal as the First Princess was supposed to be. Maybe that was why I found her so alluring in that moment.. because of the contrasting signals sent by her body language and her inner anxiety.

I think that this was why Phobos had told me not to take it easy on her. Artemis was trying so hard to put up a strong front. If I coddled her and was extremely considerate of her like I planned to be, then she would be forced to take the lead despite her discomfort. It would be much better if I was the one with the initiative.

I stood up from the bed at her approach and she paused mere inches from me. Both of us were nearly the same height, give or take an inch. Neither of us had to look down upon the other.

She took another half-step forward and the tips of her toes touched mine. I could feel her warm breath playing on my face as her chest brushed lightly against me. There was nothing separating us, not even air.

And then she brought us closer. Closing her eyes, she locked our lips. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she intertwined her fingers in my hair, holding me in place as she inexpertly tried to pry my mouth open with her tongue and deepen our kiss.

I let her flounder ineffectually for a while making her increasingly frustrated before cupping her face in my palms and reversing the offensive. Her eyes flew open with a startled hum as I invaded her mouth with my tongue.

She lashed out reflexively with her wings. I winced, hoping that my Barrier would be enough to spare me the fate of lacerated skin. But instead of the bladed feathers I was expecting, all I felt was the softest of down. Instead of me, Artemis was the one who shuddered in my grasp and moaned into my mouth.

My newly forged bond with Artemis, while not as dark or as effective as it could be, gave me a fuzzy sense of the distribution of Earth mana around me as well as a cursory insight into her emotions. Now as I trained the sense on her wings, I realized the difference.

If earlier they had been practically saturated with her special brand of metallic mana, now they were devoid of even a smidgen of it. That explained it.. Instead of the hardest parts of her body, they had become the softest and most vulnerable.

With nothing to fear from her natural weapons, I wrapped my arms around her. The palm of my left hand rested on the small of her back while I circled my right arm under her wing to trace the mark between her shoulder blades with my fingers.

Her back arched as I pressed her lower body towards me with my left palm and leaned more fervently into our kiss, running my tongue over her gums and licking her palate. Her grip on my hair grew tighter, almost to the point of pain.

I broke the kiss. A thin string of saliva connected our lips as I drew back. Letting go of the death grip on my hair, Artemis ran her palms down my neck and over my chest, staring at me, her sharp eyes clouded by lust. Her hair was in disarray, her chest heaving.

Shooting her a mischievous smile, I stepped away from her. Her backless dress providing no impediment as I undid the string fastening it to her neck along the way.

With a startled cry, Artemis covered herself with her hands as her dress suddenly fell away from her body and pooled on the ground around her ankles, leaving her in only her underwear.

I could feel pride and embarrassment warring within her as I slowly unbuttoned my shirt and tossed it away. Would she keep up the pretence and act nonchalant about her near nudity or would she bend down and pick that dress up again?

It appeared that the sight of my bared torso helped her decide because she let her arms fall to her sides. Stepping forward, she placed a palm on my chest and pushed me until the back of my knees hit the edge of the bed and I sat down on it. Without breaking eye contact, she straddled me and settled down in my lap. Tilting my head back with her grip on my ears, she bent down and kissed me again. Hard.

She was a fast learner as she proved with her lips and tongue on mine, giving as good as she got in the battlefield of our mouths. Her hands roamed all over my back and chest, the callouses from hours of sword training everyday giving them a gritty sense of reality.

My hands weren't idle, sliding over her back as I took in the feel of the powerful muscles moving beneath. Reaching up to her bra, I unhooked it with a smooth flick of my finger. Her soft breasts popped out of their confinement and pressed up against my pecs.

Her motions with her mouth stagnated as I felt her embarrassment spike.

Taking advantage of her inattention, I broke our kiss and hugged her tight. Bringing my mouth to her ear, I blew gently into it. She shivered.

I hadn't noticed before because of how her ears were always hidden within her voluminous hair, but they were quite elongated with tapered tips and short silver fuzz growing along the top. When I bit down on it gently, she quivered in my grasp.

"S-stop!" she protested in a weak voice that set fire to my loins.

I kissed and sucked my way down her neck, until I reached her voluminous breasts. I was surprised to find that her nipples were inverted, hidden away within her pink areolae.

Artemis averted her eyes when I looked up. "W-what?" she muttered. "Never seen a girl naked before?"

Leaving aside the fact that I had three wives already, unless she considered herself male, I had a naked girl in my lap right now. But seeing the red flush that was climbing up her neck and cheeks and the almost substantive embarrassment I could feel radiating off her, I decided to let her off, focusing on the soft mounds in front of me.

Pinching the breast, I went to work teasing the nipple out of its confines with my tongue while massaging the other breast with my free hand. Throwing her head back, Artemis gasped out at the stimulation, hugging my head tightly to her chest. It wasn't long before the hard nub of flesh peeked out and flicking it with my tongue, I bit down gently, making her curve over my head and moan. Shifting to the other breast, I repeated the procedure, leaving her flushed and gasping with her two rose coloured nipples standing erect on her shapely breasts.

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When I finally let go of her, she collapsed on my chest breathing hard.

Pushing her off my lap and onto her back on the bed, I hooked a finger under her panties and tore them off. Leaning down, I kissed her breasts, giving each nipple a playful bite before licking my way down her taut stomach, leaving a silvery trail on her abs.

Finding my way to her untrimmed golden bush, I buried my face in it, plunging my tongue into her depths while rubbing her clit with my nose. Artemis gasped and clamped down on my head with her thighs. Her hands pressed down on the back of my head, fingers intertwined in my hair. She seemed torn between the desire to pull me away or to press me harder between her thighs.

I did not relent, mercilessly teasing her clit and lower lips, driving her steadily up the staircase of pleasure. Until finally her toes curled, and she threw her head back with a resonant scream of release. I felt the reverberations of pleasure radiate outwards from her slit to her inner thighs and up to her navel.

She collapsed weakly on the bed, breathing hard.

Sitting up and wiping my lips wet from her lust with the back of my hand, I pulled on the drawstrings of my trousers, letting them drop and setting my erection free. Moving forward on my knees, I positioned myself between her legs and slowly stretched the entrance to her warm, moist depths open.

Experiencing the aftermath of an orgasm as she was, just the insertion pushed her over the brink again and she arched her back in the throes of another orgasm. I settled into a slow rhythm, pushing myself deeper into her with each subsequent thrust, accompanied by the rhythmic music of her moans.

I leaned down to kiss her and she wrapped her arms and legs around me, even enclosing us within her wings as she held on tightly as I slowly increased my pace. Faster, deeper and harder I went until I was pounding her into the bed, each thrust knocking up against the entrance to her womb. She devolved into an incoherent mess of gasps and moans as each thrust brought her higher and higher..

And then over the edge.

With a scream that nearly deafened me, she reached a shuddering full body climax that rippled through her from head to toe. As her insides convulsed around my member, I thrust hard, once, twice, thrice then shuddered as I released ropes of thick hot lust deep inside her with a primal grunt.

Exhausted, I pulled out of her with a wet pop and collapsed beside her breathing hard. Her wing beneath me felt so soft and inviting that when she turned to the side and curled up against me, covering me with the other like a blanket, I immediately found myself feeling drowsy.

Reaching out to the smokeless torches, I starved them of fire mana, extinguishing them and plunging the room into darkness only alleviated by the soft moonlight streaming through the curtains.

It had been an exhausting day for both of us.

Wrapping my arm around the softly snoring girl, I drifted off to sleep.

---

Outside the room, in the corridor, Ceres nodded her head in satisfaction before turning around and walking back to her room. If Mars had inspected the torches in his room carefully, he would have noticed that they weren't completely 'smokeless'.