If the Emperor's Wife Can't Get Pregnant, It's Common Sense for His Son to Take Her as a Concubine
"I was originally the only daughter of the Charles family, who held a small fiefdom on the frontier."
Marti forced down the emotions that had been running wild. After that light kiss, her hands and thighs simply would not stay still, so she pressed them down hard and held them in check.
"Then one day a messenger came all that long way with word that His Imperial Majesty was campaigning nearby. Father, Mother, and I scrambled out in a panic to receive him. It wasn't as though he had come looking for our lands — he was simply passing through — but we begged him to stay just one night and leave us some good fortune, and we waited on him with every scrap of devotion we had."
As she spoke, she pressed a hand to her chest. She squeezed those pretty, softly rounded breasts of hers, hard,
"That was when I understood. That storm thrashing around inside my chest — that was what people meant by love at first sight."
"Love at first sight…?"
"Yes. It was shameful, and far above my station for a lowly frontier lord's daughter, but I couldn't take my eyes off him. Otto von Heim. He lived up to every bit of his reputation — those broad, manly shoulders, that stern face, an aura of authority rolling off him like a male wolf at the head of the pack…"
She gazed into the middle distance with glittering eyes, as if it were all still a dream.
"And now, here of all places, I get to see the continuation of that dream. That day I kept making mistakes, and my flustered behavior must have been obvious even to a Majesty who had only meant to rest for a moment, because he said to me — would I care to marry him?"
She still trembled at the memory, a full-body shiver. The raw reaction of a girl in love that day was still alive in her.
"Father was stunned, but for one instant my true feelings slipped out and I accepted on the spot. It was the first time in my life I had ever found that kind of courage. Before a year had passed the paperwork was finished, the imperial carriage arrived to receive me, and under the escort of knights and with Father seeing me off, I went up to the capital."
She flushed shyly. Plenty of details had clearly been buried under the force of her passion and left out, but for now I let her finish the story.
"It was truly a dreamlike stretch of time. A country mouse like me held a grand wedding in that enormous hall, and I was formally recognized as the Emperor's wife."
"…All right, let's do a little editing here."
"Pardon?"
Mama Marti had been floating somewhere up on a cloud as she poured all this out, but the truth was I had stopped being able to immerse myself somewhere in the middle. The problem wasn't the love story between a backwater lord's daughter and the Emperor who ruled the empire. The problem was the number of marriages I already knew about.
"Forgive me for asking, but… if that was the seventy-fourth wedding ceremony, then by that point I— no, no, Father would have been,"
I swallowed.
"Well past a hundred years old, wouldn't he?"
Marti answered my awkward question with complete blandness, as if she couldn't see what the issue was.
"No, further than that. Precisely one hundred and twenty-three."
"……So you fell in love at first sight with a one-hundred-and-twenty-three-year-old gentleman?"
With all the mixed blood in him, Otto had lived a long time for a human and stayed vigorous. Still, he had been unmistakably elderly, and age had piled on the penalties. In his final years he had barely scraped through typhoid, hemorrhoids, and two recurrences of cancer. He had clung on so stubbornly that he had finally ended his own life — but still.
I pressed the point, pointing out the condition of that old fossil of an emperor whose body I had once controlled myself. Mama Marti got angry instead.
"And why shouldn't I?! Is it wrong to adore a man past a hundred and twenty?!"
"It's not that it's wrong, but… you honestly thought that was attractive…?"
She's into old fogeys?
Marti even puffed out her cheeks. No matter that I was the Emperor, she would not back down when it came to insulting her absolute favorite.
"It was magnificent! That pure white hair, those splendidly weathered wrinkles, and the aura he still projected even at that age, commanding respect among men — that was the true figure of a man who ruled an empire!"
Mama Marti was still floating dreamily on her cloud. From here on, though, that momentum would crash down from the cloud and hit the ground of reality. Because this was where the cruel truth of the virgin came out.
"I was truly… so happy. Happy to have a husband so far above my station. Happy that I could even come up to the capital and hold a grand wedding. I went to the grandest merchant houses, picked out clothes in pure delight, and even bought several sets of the… racy underthings men are said to like, spending Father's pocket money with a free hand. But—"
Her shoulders shook.
"His Majesty… vanished without a trace right after the wedding."
……Ah.
I more or less understood. At this point, my past conduct finally came back to me — what I must have done.
"He went off to other women— no, he said there were diplomatic matters and left to handle state affairs. He left the capital's throne empty for ages while he went shooting around over there, and just when I thought he might finally be coming back, he went shooting even farther away. …And in the middle of all that, word came that another imperial child had been born."
"……."
"Even so, I kept hoping to the very end. When would he summon me? When would he appear like a sudden wind and come into my chambers? I always kept myself clean and ready. I waited and waited with all my heart, and then what reached me out of nowhere was………"
A sniffle. Tears actually welled under her long lashes.
"The sudden news of His Majesty's death…… and that he had taken his own life, without the slightest warning…"
"……."
"Hic…! The moment I heard it, my whole world collapsed. I waited my turn for so long in front of His Majesty's cleaned body, then secretly threw my arms around him and sobbed my heart out."
She proved right in front of me that not one word of it was a lie. Just recalling it was enough that the sobs would not stop, and tears rolled down past her chin.
"I was simply miserable. In the end His Majesty never so much as laid a finger on me, and I was left alone in this capital without even knowing why."
"Listen, that—"
"Even so!"
Her voice rose right in front of the Emperor, as if to say she was not finished yet. Cowed by that force of spirit, I shrank back again.
"Even so… our house was so minor that among all those wives the rumors never even spread, but… no matter how you look at it, this treatment is too much."
"……Y-yeah, it is."
"I turned it over and over — was I truly that unattractive as a woman? Was the passion of that proposal nothing more than pity for a country girl, or a whim? No matter how hard I think, I can't find an answer…"
I knew the reason. Looking at this Mama who was this turned on — or rather, given the age gap with Otto in his doddering years, was it more like a granddaughter? Either way, I knew the answer to her long abandonment in an instant.
I forgot, what else?
I had completely forgotten. Forgotten even that I had married her, and gone off chasing some other entertaining event. Honestly, once the wives hit seventy-four, there was no way I was going to remember them all. I had padded the numbers as high as I liked and let my eyes wander everywhere, and that was how these dark corners under the lamp had formed.
My conscience… is stinging.
Guilt rose up. In the end, someone had been hurt by something I had done.
"Your Majesty… somehow… you resemble the previous Emperor a great deal."
"D-do I?"
"Yes. It made me think, of course you would be the legitimate heir."
So that's why you got angry the moment you saw me?
I admitted it. Listening to all this, I really had been a bastard who deserved every curse she threw.
"So please, Your Majesty, answer me just once. Am I… am I unattractive as a woman?"
"?! N-no, of course not."
"I don't need pity or comfort. Please answer me seriously. Back… back in our lands we are still under the influence of Harald culture. A virgin at my age is said to be a woman men feel no desire for. Past twenty as a virgin and they say your arms are only good for wringing a man dry; past twenty-five and you're a withered gourd no one will touch! Am I truly that unattractive?!"
She was practically sobbing as she came closer. You could see the pitiful hysteria of someone who had been alone with this useless thought for years and months.
"……."
"……Your Majesty."
Marti had come right up under my nose. The reddened rims of her eyes and the tear tracks of my former (forgotten) wife, my blood-unrelated new stepmother. A little snot, even.
No. Don't cry and snivel. Don't.
Women must not cry. Because when they cry, it turns me on.
"Wha—?!"
Unable to hold that arousal back, I seized her chin and crushed my mouth to hers. Not the light kiss from before — this time I shoved my tongue straight in with raw lust.
"Y-Your Majesty… this, so suddenly, what on earth… ah, mmph♥"
A tongue kiss was something Marti had never experienced; she had no idea what to do with herself. She was swept into the thick intimacy of a man and a woman for the first time, and with a dazed face she yielded to my force and accepted it.
Of course she wasn't unattractive. My dick radar had reacted and I had wet my lips over her — there was no way she was a withered gourd.
"Hah, euh… feels strange— nnnngh♥"
I caught the flustered Mama Marti's wrists and drove my tongue in deeper. Our family line had dinosaur bones for a frame and excellent builds, so just sitting there I had more than twenty centimeters on her; from behind it would have looked like a beast pinning a young doe. As I kissed her I tipped that body gently backward. I slid my knee between her thighs and rubbed it suggestively toward her crotch.
"Nngh… strange, it's so strange…♥"
Even through the kiss I made sure she could feel it, dizzying, rubbing against my hard knee. I savored the way her lower body twitched between her thighs as orgasm started to climb.
"……Hah!"
Then I slowly pulled away. A long strand of clear saliva stretched between us and snapped. The kiss had lasted more than thirty seconds, and for a virgin with neither experience nor knowledge the stimulation had been so strong that her whole body flushed red at once. Even so, she still had a noblewoman's sense of face; Marti at least made a show of adjusting the shoulder strap that had slipped during the kiss. With a face gone somehow moist, catlike,
"Ah, you mustn't. Your Majesty, you haven't even formally approved me as a concubine yet, if you do this…"
"Then should I stop?"
"!"
The moment I wrapped my arms around her, she jerked back. A clear signal that stopping was always an option.
Ah, my Mama is so cute I could die.
It had been a joke, really. Just a probe to see how Marti would react — but
She clenched…!
"……♥"
Marti seized my collar roughly. Like a signal begging me not to go. Now that she herself was switched on and couldn't stand it, those cute little hands of hers pulled me toward her.
Hah… even if the head forgets with age, the eyes never lie, do they?
That was insanely hot. The way she clung and begged me to keep going like this. For someone so young-looking and cute, a virgin type, the female move of pleading for the male to climb on top of her made me throb all over again.
I leaned in once more. I kissed those still-baby-soft cheeks of her youthful face, and whispered against her flushed ear.
Then shall we have a real first night with 'Otto' like this?
"?! Y-Your Majesty, if you tease me like that…… nngh?! Ah, aaaah…♥"
I turned her face back and kissed her again. Kissing her as I slid the shoulder strap down. Sliding a hand lower to rub her thighs.
"Hah, haaah…♥"
The air grew humid as if someone had turned on a humidifier. The tempo of our breathing quickened, and the bed began to rock and bustle. There were soft thuds and rustles as garments slipped one by one to the floor.
This is going to need the full after-service package.
I decided to do it properly. The wife I had neglected — this time I was going to give her a proper wife-impregnating fuck.