Whiteout

Chapters

Chapter 1: Snow Showers
Chapter 2: Blizzard
Chapter 3: Storm Warning
Chapter 4: Hail (Mary)
Chapter 5: Eskimos
Chapter 6: Thaw

Chapter 1: Snow Showers

As the festivities for the evening began to wind down, and the various dignitaries and diplomats in attendance started filing out of Ponyville Castle into the brisk autumn night outside, Pound Cake finally had a chance to catch his breath. By all accounts, the Twentieth Anniversary Gala for Princess Twilight’s—now Starlight Glimmer’s, technically—School of Friendship had gone off without a hitch, but only thanks to hours of work on his entire family’s part that started before sunrise and still wouldn’t end for a while yet.

Thankfully, he had some help clearing dishes and breaking down tables from his quasi-cousin Lil’ Cheese and a few other foals from around town, drawn in by a promise of free milkshakes tomorrow in exchange for an hour or two of labor tonight. It was the kind of deal only a child would take, and fortunately he’d found plenty of takers over the last week—including his parents, who begrudgingly accepted his guarantee that a bit of free business now would lead to dozens of repeat customers later.

He was pretty sure it would, anyway. Pumpkin wasn’t, of course, but that was probably just because she wished she’d thought of it first.

In any case, the local kids seemed to be doing fine so far, and “fine” was more than enough reason to let his attention stop wandering and start fixating. Since the moment the train from the Crystal Empire had arrived that afternoon, his eyes had been locked on her Royal Highness Flurry Heart—on her crystalline shoes clinking across the station platform, the sun-spawned blush darkening her delicately shadowed cheeks, her tail as it hitched at the sight of him and her eyes as they twitched away from his every time she noticed him leering.

Most of all, he couldn’t take his eyes off her ass: swaying behind her as she walked, spreading over every seat she took, straining against the form-fitting turquoise dress she’d put on for this tortuously long reception. He didn’t need to imagine what she looked like underneath it. By this point, he could just about feel her molding to the curve of his hoof already, pressing warmly against him like a pillowy cloud soaked by the setting sun.

And now, after hours of looking and thinking and barely keeping himself contained beneath his formal wear and server’s apron, he only had a bit longer to wait. As soon as Flurry’s parents followed the departing crowd, the two of them would finally be all alone.

Well, as alone as two ponies could be in a room full of chattering foals. Close enough. He could work with that.

“You’ll be okay by yourself?” Flurry’s mother asked her, clearly repeating a question Flurry had already answered earlier. Pound Cake had met Princess Cadance plenty of times before, and her husband Shining Armor as well. As used to being royals as they were, they probably knew his name, face, and the fact he’d once been childhood playmates with their daughter, and absolutely nothing else about him. He was just fine with that. It meant he could sidle up to a nearby table and start clearing it off without them even noticing he was there.

“Yeah, Mom,” Flurry replied, and Pound couldn’t help but bite his lip hearing it. She had the kind of voice you could hear shaped into a moan inside your head: sweet and thin with a hint of an icy twist, like a mojito with too much mint. “You two enjoy the dance. I’ll get some dessert and see what’s going on in town.”

“Likely not much, in my experience,” her father added wryly, but he gently steered his wife away as he spoke. “Have fun, honey. Don’t stay out too late.”

“I never do, Daddy,” Flurry said, chuckling with her family at what must’ve been a well-worn inside joke. She watched the two of them depart and pointedly ignored the stallion next to her, who’d dropped all pretense of doing his job in favor of openly ogling her. Once her parents finally vanished from view, she wet her lips, lifted a near-empty wine glass from a serving cart nearby, and let out a sigh after draining it.

“I don’t recall giving you permission to stare at me all day,” she said, projecting her words into the air as if addressing a crowd instead of a single pony.

“Should I have asked first?” Pound unblinkingly replied.

Flurry let out a dismissive chuckle, and she charged every ounce of privilege she had into each of her next words. “For a busboy, you’re awfully cheeky.”

Pound matched her snide tone syllable for syllable. “For a princess, you’re appropriately bratty.”

Slowly, Flurry Heart turned around, chin tilted and eyes narrowed like a viper’s. Blessed as she was with natural-born alicorn genetics, she stood at eye level with Pound, who was used to being a little taller than just about every other mare he knew. “I wonder what my father would think about a peasant like you leching after his daughter.”

“I could ask for his permission too if it’d help.”

Pound felt a tug on his collar, and suddenly he and Flurry were nose-to-nose, his tie trapped within her unbreakable magic aura. “I wonder what I’ll do to you in the meantime,” she growled, each puff of air from her nose tickling the trimmed whiskers under Pound’s.

“I was hoping you’d get around to it sooner,” came his recalcitrant response.

“Insolent little twerp,” she hissed.

“Spoiled little... minx,” he murmured back.

They drew closer, millimeters apart, each awash in the other’s shallow breathing and quickening pulse—and then, somewhere to Pound’s right, somepony cleared their throat. Flurry’s grip on Pound’s tie loosened ever so slightly, and Lil’ Cheese shrank a bit as both older ponies looked his way.

“S-Sorry,” the little colt stammered. “I, um… w-which boxes do the small plates go in, Pound? ‘Cause they don’t fit with the big plates, and, uh…”

“With the soup bowls, in the plastic bins,” Pound replied, keeping his voice as level as he could. “Just rinse ‘em off first.”

“O-Okay,” the colt said. His gaze jumped to Flurry, and just as quickly shot down to the floor. “Hi, Princess Flurry,” he squeaked from behind cherry-red cheeks.

“Hey, lil’ dude,” she replied coolly, as if greeting a neighbor at the supermarket. “Where’s the nearest broom closet?”

“Why?” the colt asked, curiosity briefly overwhelming his embarrassment.

“So I can hide this idiot’s corpse there,” Flurry replied. “So?”

Lil’ Cheese glanced at Pound again. Pound gave him a look that said, Someday, buddy, you’ll want to be killed this way too. “Uh… left out those doors, then the second door on the right,” Lil’ Cheese informed the Princess.

Flurry wrinkled her brow in thought, muttered what sounded like calculations of distance under her breath, then shrugged. “Close enough,” she said, and with a flash of light, she and Pound vanished into thin air.

===

They both did their best to pick up where they’d left off. As soon as Pound felt himself materialize inside a dark and cramped space filled with cleaning supplies, he felt Flurry’s lips crash against his, and then her forehooves and chest. He let himself be shoved into the closet’s back wall, and then he kissed her back, hooking his hoof around her neck and pushing his tongue past her teeth, where her own tongue writhed over and under and all around it. With his other hoof, he groped at every inch of her he could reach—her wings, her back, the swell of her stifle under her dress.

And then, her sighs turned into giggles, and he felt her lips stiffen and pull back into a smile just as his did the same. Barely a few seconds after they started, they were clutching onto each other and shuddering with laughter, so much that Pound could feel a few tears soaking through his shirt where Flurry had pressed her face into his chest.

“Stars, he…” she tried to say. “Holy shit, his face…”

“He thinks I’m dead,” Pound managed to reply between gasps. “He absolutely thinks you murdered me.”

“Holy shit,” Flurry repeated, just before dissolving into another fit of giggles. Eventually, she pulled back to look up at him with glistening, gorgeous eyes, still balanced precariously on her hind hooves just as Pound was. “I fucking should, by the way!”

“What? I did great! I thought I did great.”

Flurry snorted again, grinning like a hyena. “Minx?”

“Oh, come on, you… put me on the spot,” Pound mumbled, burying his face in her hair as he felt his cheeks getting warm. “I thought we’d be gone by then. I had the rest of it all planned out.”

“Awww,” Flurry crooned, extricating a forehoof so she could stroke it against his chin. “You planned out your dirty talk? Just for me?”

“I’m not good at improvising, okay? I–”

He didn’t get to finish. Still smirking, Flurry slid both her hooves around his neck and kissed him again, humming with satisfaction as his lips softened against hers. “I missed you,” she murmured into his mouth.

Pound changed his angle of attack, just enough to press his muzzle briefly against her forehead. “I missed you too,” he murmured back, and then the tender moment was over. She pounced on him, planting her namesake’s worth of smooches across his face and chin, and he responded with his tongue and teeth and hooves, and whatever else turned her melodious sighs into satisfied moans.

With her magic, she finished the job she’d started earlier, slipping his tie free of its knot and tossing it aside. His vest followed, and then his cummerbund, and before long he was nearly naked, covered only by his rumpled dress shirt that, button by button, preserved less and less of his modesty. When the last clasp came undone, Flurry tore the shirt open, and even the dim light inside the closet couldn’t hide the hunger in her eyes as she drank in the sight of his bobbing, rock-hard cock.

“You did miss me,” she purred, wrapping the crook of one hoof around the base of his dick and rubbing the fetlock of the other gently along its length. As she inhaled his scent with half-lidded eyes, he huffed out a sigh of his own, trying to quickly think of a witty, sexy response.

He never even got close. In a single fluid motion, Flurry sank down to her haunches and wrapped her lips around the tip of his shaft, and after that all he could do was grip a nearby storage shelf and focus on not groaning aloud.

After swirling her tongue around his head a few times, Flurry glanced up at Pound and seemed to notice something. “Oh, sorry,” she said, pulling away from him with a faint pop. “Am I distracting you from your dirty talk?”

Pound chuckled, working his wings into a more comfortable position behind him and shrugging his shirt off completely in the process. For lack of a camera, he did his best to burn the image before him deep into his brain: Flurry huddled between his spread hind legs, her wide eyes gazing cutely up at him, and his dick propped against her chin with a thin strand of spit still connecting it to the corner of her mouth.

“Little bit,” he replied once he was done.

“Hmm… good,” she hummed, the vibration of her voice sending delightful tremors through Pound’s pulsating cock. “Not that I don’t like hearing it, but…”

She slid one hoof down to cradle his balls and swiped her tongue over both of them, then slid her lips up his entire length, pressed them around the ridge beneath his head, and suckled hard as she pumped his shaft with her other hoof. A moan punched out of his chest before he could even think to suppress it, and both his hooves shot forward to—at the last moment—-land delicately on top of her shuddering mane.

She pulled back again and smiled. “I like hearing that more,” she said softly, planting a delicate kiss over his tip before leaning forward and, eyes never leaving his, swallowing him all the way to the ring.

Stars danced in the dark of the rapidly warming closet, and Pound’s head bounced off the wall as he lost himself in the angelic embrace of Flurry’s mouth. He had no idea how many times she had done this, but he was sure he’d never meet another mare who could blow him anywhere near as well, or who audibly enjoyed the act so much. When he looked down next, he could even tell the hoof Flurry had stroked against his sack was now buried between her hinds, though it was only visible every other second as her head bobbed back and forth along his length.

She preferred to take things slower than most, lingering for long moments as she rose to bathe his head in saliva, and holding him just outside her throat once she sank back down, long enough that he swore he could feel her heartbeat pounding through her palate. He probably wasn’t the only stallion to receive this treatment from her—this tender, almost obsessive servicing punctuated by exaggerated slurps and reverberating happy groans—but he liked to imagine he was. All the other stallions probably do too, he thought with a furtive smile.

After a minute or two, she paused for the longest moment yet, keeping her lips pressed against his tip as she took deep breaths in through her nose. Pound was about to ask her if she was doing okay, but once again he didn’t get the chance.

With a grin and a wink, Flurry repositioned herself a bit, braced her hooves against his hips, and then pulled his cock into her mouth again. She slid down to his ring and then past it—to her back of her throat and then past it—until her nose bumped against his pelvis and Pound could feel her gullet massaging every inch of him, and beneath that a distant tickling sensation as she let out a tiny elated squeak.

His heart leapt as he squeezed his eyes shut, and if Flurry had stayed like that for more than a second or two, he would’ve blown the load he’d been saving for her all week straight into her stomach. But as soon as she saw him shiver and felt his rod swell against her tongue, she slid herself carefully back off of him, heaving for breath as she blinked the moisture out of her eyes and used her hoof to press his twitching shaft against her cheek.

“You close?” she hoarsely asked him.

He could barely collect himself enough to nod. Even the chill of the outside air felt like feathers dancing across his dick, and the gentle pressure of her frog was nearly enough by itself to push him over the edge. He wasn’t sure it was physically possible for him to be any closer than he was right now—and of course, Flurry knew that. She could feel it, just like she always did with him, and she’d driven him straight to his peak in seconds like he was a colt getting his first hoofjob under the bleachers at school.

This was his reward for eyefucking her all day and forcing this very moment into her mind at every opportunity, until all she could think about by the end of dinner was dragging him off to the nearest dark corner and taking him a dozen different ways. She’d promised him it would work on her the last time they’d met. In his wildest fantasies, he’d never imagined it working this well.

Flurry lit her horn, casting some spell that washed over her in a wave of shimmering light and winked out of view once it reached her hind hooves, then began to gently stroke his shaft, pecking her lips against his head between words. “You felt amazing, by the way,” she sighed, her tongue flicking under his head. “I wish we could’ve ditched that party sooner. I could spend hours with your cock down my throat.”

Pound whimpered—a noise he wasn’t even aware he was capable of making. Flurry jerked him faster, her breath quickening. “And after that, I’d fuck you all night. Make you ruin me. I’d worship you, cum for you…”

Pound’s shaft bucked in Flurry’s hoof. His head was swelling. He was over the edge.

“Cum for me,” she moaned. “Cum all over me.”

The first string of cum to explode from Pound’s cock missed Flurry entirely, splattering against the door behind her like it was shot from a miniature cannon. She shifted in place and tugged his shaft down, and the next blast coated her from horn to chin—and so did the third, and the fourth.

By the time the fifth strand of semen landed on her chest and began trickling down her dress, Pound managed his first sound in several seconds: a strangled groan that willed two more shots out of him and onto Flurry’s heaving belly. The eighth and final spurt wasn’t strong enough to separate from his shaft, but as the pearly liquid slid down his length and dripped off his balls down to the floor, a final spasm rolled through him that wiped away every thought he’d ever had.

He slid down the wall and landed hard on his rump. After several shuddering breaths, he opened his eyes to see Flurry still kneeling in front of him, drenched in what looked like three stallions’ worth of seed and shivering with near-orgasmic delight.

As Pound’s dick slowly deflated, Flurry cracked one eye open despite the globs of cum that should’ve pasted it shut. A moment later, Pound had his silent question answered: when Flurry shuffled herself away from him, his cum floated in midair between them, adhered to a translucent magic barrier shaped exactly like the mare who’d cast it.

After she made sure Pound’s eyes were on her, Flurry leaned forward and opened her mouth wide, licking and sucking at her barrier until she’d collected a cheek-bulging volume of his jizz on her tongue. She disappeared the rest of it in a flash of magic, crawled forward until her chest pressed against his, then tilted her head back and swallowed his load in one gulp. Just seconds after the strongest climax he’d had in months, Pound felt himself hardening again.

“Holy shit,” he whispered as her chin dipped back towards his.

Breathless, trembling, and flushed from head to hoof, Flurry practically ripped her dress off over her head, revealing the sheen of sweat covering her body and the dripping glint of arousal smeared all over her thighs. “I really fucking missed you,” she huffed, and as she kissed him hungrily and spread the faint aftertaste of his sperm around his mouth, she lit her horn once more and teleported them away.

Chapter 2: Blizzard

On the one hoof, Flurry was preternaturally good at teleportation magic. Even as a foal, she could zap herself across the whole town at will, and Pound remembered her blinking them both around so much during childhood visits that he’d almost—almost—gotten used to the vertigo it sent churning through his gut every time.

On the other hoof, she wasn’t as intimately familiar with Twilight’s castle as she was her own—and on top of that, she’d technically been covered in cum less than thirty seconds ago, which had to be at least a little distracting. So all things considered, a bumpy landing on the floor of her guest suite wasn’t that much of an inconvenience. Easier than flying, at least.

“Ow,” she groaned as she untangled herself from Pound’s forelegs, her belly rubbing against his semi-stiff length as she did. “They moved the bed. We were supposed to land on the bed.”

Pound soothed her wounded pride with a kiss under her chin, taking a moment to get his bearings as he did. They’d reappeared between the room’s entrance and a canopied king bed set against the wall, a couple feet above a thickly woven rug that was thankfully much softer than the hard crystal floor around it.

“This works for me,” he said. “It’s a nice rug. Very plush.”

“Well, it doesn’t work for me,” Flurry said as she straddled him and then stood up. Undeterred, Pound moved his lips from her throat to her chest, hooking his forehooves around her hocks for leverage. “I’m a Princess. Princesses fuck on beds.”

“And in broom closets.”

“Sometimes we suck dick in broom closets. Different energy.”

As Flurry tried to walk over Pound towards the bed behind him, Pound slid his hooves up to her stifles and squeezed, his lips and tongue sliding down her stomach in the same motion. From this angle, he could see her lower lips protruding below the swell of her pelvis, wet with a need for attention they very much deserved.

“Do Princesses get eaten out on rugs?” he murmured as he reached her teats and slipped one of them into his mouth. Between tiny gasps that rose in pitch whenever he pressed his tongue into her nipple, Flurry managed to cobble together a reply.

“Not usually,” she sighed as she scooched forward, “but I’m open to new experiences.”

With some repositioning of his own, Pound was able to brace his shoulder against the side of the mattress as Flurry laid her front half across it, leaving her rear hooves on the floor and her pussy at the perfect height—once she squatted down a bit—for Pound’s mouth to reach. When his tongue brushed against her clitoris, she sighed again, and when he sealed his lips around it and suckled, she let out a moan to match the taste that flooded his mouth: tangy, thick, and utterly delicious.

He couldn’t hold this position for very long before his neck started to hurt, but he did his best to make the most of it, alternating between flicking and flattening his tongue on Flurry’s clit and groping at her ass whenever he heard a plaintive mewl leave her throat. Once he had to move, he did so decisively, rolling onto his haunches and pulling her tail over her back so he could bury his muzzle in her backside and thrust his tongue as deep into her pussy as it could reach.

Flurry gripped the comforter and arched her lower back, tensing up with each wiggle of the warm appendage tongue inside her. As Pound gorged himself, focusing on the rim of her opening and occasionally darting over to each of her outer lips, the pressure of his hooves against her barrel slowly moved her further and further onto the bed, until her hind hooves could barely reach the floor.

Once she lost contact with the ground entirely, Pound took the initiative again, rolling her onto her back and attacking her clit with rapid flicks of his tongue, forming an airtight seal with his lips around her cunt that drew a delighted squeal out of her lungs. Her groans grew louder and higher with each passing second, as did the force of her thighs squeezing around his ears.

He felt her start to squirm beneath him, then shudder, then convulse—and then she threaded her hoof through his mane and pulled him up onto the bed, so fast that his tongue dragged up to her navel before he could manage to look up at her.

“What’s up?” he asked, sucking one last taste of her off his lips before crawling up to look her in the eyes. “You wanna stop?”

“Fuck no,” she rasped back, still tugging on his shoulders. “I want you inside me.”

Pound couldn’t help but frown. Usually she loved when he went down on her—and he loved doing it. “You seemed like you were close.”

Another shudder rolled through Flurry as she kissed him. “I’ve been close all day,” she said. “Fuck me.”

Well, if she insisted. With a grin, Pound shifted himself forward, slotting his hips between Flurry’s spread legs and wrapping his forehooves around her shoulders. Slowly, gently, he slid his rigid length over her folds and onto her belly, relishing the pitiful whimper the small motion drew out of her. She was as wet as he could remember ever feeling a mare be, and his balls tingled as her juices washed over them.

“Pooooound…”

He moved back, and then forward again, pressing into her, feeling her outer lips tug against the head of his cock as, inch by burning inch, he entered her. She twitched the whole way in, bucking her hips to help him along, until finally his pelvis bumped against hers. Together, they each let out a quiet, satisfied sigh.

“Fuck me…” Flurry ordered him again—eyes squeezed shut, her voice barely above a whisper.

And Pound obeyed.

He started slowly, drawing his full length out of her with every pull back and bottoming out with each thrust that followed. Flurry’s hoof shot to his neck and hooked around it. He leaned down and kissed her, thrusting his tongue against hers as his hips sped up. She squeezed him—with both sets of lips—and let her other forehoof settle on his back, just above his tail, pushing him closer and deeper.

The soft smacks of his hips against hers soon became rhythmic slaps, and then increasingly damp squishes as her arousal spread over her thighs and soaked into the fur below his belly. Flurry threw her head back as her hooves slammed into the mattress, bunching the duvet where she desperately clutched at it. She writhed underneath him, flushed from forehead to sternum, moaning in meaningless syllables she couldn’t quite collect into words.

“Gah… fu… Po… ahhhh…”

Pound shifted a bit in place, gathered his legs underneath his hips, angled his next thrust up instead of forward—and Flurry’s eyes shot open as her speech returned to her.

“Ohhhhh, keep doing that! Just like that, oh f-fuck…”

He kept his pace steady, kept pushing into the spot deep inside her that he knew would drive her crazy—even as his hind legs began to quiver and a dull ache blossomed in his hips. Hot as this position was, it was also really uncomfortable, but he could tank through it for her sake. Just for a few moments longer, until…

“Mmmf!”

Pound felt Flurry’s hips pull away from his, and then felt her tail brush over his stomach. He sat back—giving his screaming thighs a crucial moment’s rest—and saw she’d flipped onto her belly and pressed her chin into the bed, ass raised and shaking with the aftershocks of his previous efforts. Her pussy glistened in the late-evening light, smeared with their shared fluids, trembling with desire. Pound unsteadily stood, clapped his forehooves against her flanks as he lined himself up, and thrust inside her again, fast and hard enough that it forced a shout out of Flurry almost shrill enough to be a scream.

There was no romance to this position, no chance for an intimate kiss or tender hoof to distract Pound from railing his mare’s absolute fucking brains out. And judging by the contracted, almost pained expression on Flurry’s face, he was well on his way to doing just that, and getting closer with every forceful crack of his hips against her ass.

She wailed beneath him, each breath halfway to being a sob, and when he pressed his hoof into the space between her wings and slammed her flat against the bed, the ecstatic squeak it forced from her lungs etched itself immediately into Pound’s mind as a memory he’d cherish for countless hoof-off sessions to come. This was what he’d been waiting for, what he’d endured days of total celibacy to take full advantage of: a pampered, prissy, pristinely coiffed Princess, desperate for him to destroy her. She was his, no matter how many limp-dick royals or starfishing starlets had wasted her time before, and he would make sure she knew it in body, mind, and slutty little soul.

On his next thrust in, he felt her start to peak—saw her wings begin to flare as her legs and back went stiff. Instead of maintaining his pace, he went slower and harder, driving into her like he meant to knock her off the bed entirely, and blasting her deliriously, deliciously, screaming into an orgasm that shot through her like lightning from head to twitching tail.

She bucked him off of her as she spasmed and shook, and he sat back and watched as her staccato shouts trailed off into shuddering sighs. Once the best of it had passed, he crawled forward and wrapped his forelegs around her, pulling her onto her side and into her chest so he could lavish her neck with kisses and slot his painfully stiff cock between her saturated thighs. She pushed back into him as the last of the tremors worked their way out of her core, and after a few breathless seconds finally found her voice again.

“Hooooooly fucking shit,” Flurry said through a shaky sigh. “That was… really big one…”

Pound almost said something snarky like “It was good for me too,” but caught himself just in time. No sense ruining a moment like this with small talk. Especially with Flurry’s warm, wet, silky-soft thighs feeling oh-so-good around his tingling dick. He couldn’t help but move his hips a little—more of a wiggle than a thrust, but enough to make Flurry giggle drunkenly and squeeze her legs together.

“Sorry I… kinda threw you off me,” she said in a giddy mumble.

“You’re good,” Pound murmured into her neck. He rephrased his statement a moment later. “You’re good?”

“You did good. Just… sensitive.”

Pound figured as much. Flurry’s climaxes tended to be like fireworks: loud, thrilling, and—much as she’d told him she wished otherwise—a capstone to whatever show they were a part of. Fortunately, her proverbial encores tended to be just as good as the main event.

“Did you cum?” she asked him, likely already knowing the answer.

“I’m fine,” he answered, with a playful nip at her ear. “I’ve cum inside a Princess before.”

Flurry giggled again, then let the bubbly sound lengthen into a sultry sigh. Pound knew that sound well—and his twitching dick knew what it usually meant.

“You fucked a Princess in the ass before?” Flurry crooned.

Pound’s dick jumped again, in time with his heart. He really had done good.

“I’m open to new experiences,” he said. Flurry looked over her shoulder, pecked him on the nose, and gave him a look that could have boiled lava and ended wars. No stallion alive could’ve needed further invitation.

In moments, Pound had maneuvered his hind hooves onto the floor again and braced his hooves on either side of Flurry’s head, his still-sticky cock laid over her stomach. She stroked it gently with her hoof, then squeezed it as she lit her horn.

“Hang on…” she muttered.

Pound didn’t see the spell land, but he certainly felt it. Magic washed down from the tip of his dick to the base and left a sheen of lubrication in his wake, and he felt a similar slippery warmth graze over his balls, where they rested gently against Flurry’s backdoor. This time, he seriously couldn’t help himself.

“Who invented that spell?” he wondered aloud. “Was it supposed to be for something else, and then…?”

“I don’t know,” Flurry interrupted, holding back laughter. “Maybe they were just impatient like me.”

“Point taken,” Pound said, as he slid his dick over her lower lips and pressed the head gently into the pucker below them. Slowly, luxuriously, she opened up for him, and as he slid inside her again, her lips parted and her breath left her lungs in a drawn-out sigh. She was tight, stretching just enough to allow him entrance and squeezing him from all directions at once, and so searingly hot that hilting inside her sent a chill up his spine.

“You good?” he asked softly.

“Mm-hmm…” Flurry hummed. She grinned up at him, but in a way that looked a bit like a grimace. Like a thunderbolt, it hit him: this wasn’t just her way of thanking a gifted partner for their efforts. This was just for him—just to make sure he got off too, in a way she knew he’d love.

Pound felt his chest tighten and his legs stiffen up. He almost said something. He thought better of it.

He rolled his hips, driving as deep inside Flurry as he could, and the Princess shut her eyes and moaned as he fucked her in the ass.

“Oh shi…”

Flurry trailed off as Pound thrust into her again, biting her bottom lip as he quickened his pace. With every stroke in and out of her, she relaxed a little more, until her ass felt nearly as soft and inviting as her pussy. If there had been any hint of pain on her face before, it was gone now, replaced by pleasure that grew each time his pelvis impacted against her overstimulated pussy.

Pound pulled almost all the way out of her, shuddering as she clenched around the head of his cock, and used each forehoof in turn to pull her right hind over his shoulder and then her left. Flurry gasped when he thrust in again, at a downward angle that pushed her into the mattress, and she clapped her hoof over her mouth as blissful little squeaks crept out of her throat.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he hissed down at her. He drew himself in close before she could respond with words, teeth gritted as he filled her completely and stayed there, humping gently until he felt her shiver and heard her moan.

“You feel so good,” she whispered back. “I…”

Pound didn’t let her finish—decided to do it himself. He pulled away and thrust back in, each stroke long and hard and tortuously good, and soon enough he felt the hard edge of her hoof under his flexing stomach. He looked down and saw her circling her clit, and felt her clench around him again as pleasure shot through her. She was getting off to this. She loved this—him—the way he was defiling her. His chest started to hurt. He was nearly over the edge.

And she could tell. She could always tell. She looked up at him, squeezed him, rubbed herself like this was all her fantasies coming to life at once. Maybe they were. Maybe he shouldn’t care. Maybe he should just think how about amazing this felt, how tight and warm and right, how close he was to filling a gorgeous girl with cum as she begged him with her lust-crazed gaze to do just that.

Flurry opened her mouth, started to say something—and Pound exploded inside her, sunken to the hilt, blasting rope after rope of cum until he felt like half his soul was filling Flurry’s ass. She cooed as his warmth spread inside her, lips rounded into a perfect O, and rubbed herself faster as his jets of sperm became weak and quivering trickles.

As he got softer, she got tighter, her face crumpled with determination—and after a few moments, Pound felt her grasp on his cock become a vice grip as she grunted with delight and moisture trickled down from her quaking, winking cunt. Finally, she fell back onto the bed, and Pound let himself settle on top of her.

He wanted to kiss her. He was half-flaccid, covered in sweat and jizz and who knew what else, still trembling from his second mind-melting orgasm in as many hours, and the only thing he could think of doing next was leaning down and taking Flurry’s chin gently in his hoof, and kissing her like he meant to never let her go.

But she would go. She had to. She was a Princess from a land a full day away by rail, and he was the son of small-town bakers who depended on him to keep their family business running. He knew that. He had to remind himself of it every time he was with her, every time he felt her writhe beneath or on top of or wrapped around every part of him. Every time he caught her eye in the quiet moments after they finished fucking each other, saw her sardonic and confident veil slip away as her lips curled into a goofy little smile, and thought—just for a moment—that she might want him to kiss her too.

And then, like always, the moment passed. Flurry chuckled and sighed. Pound did the same.

“I need a shower,” Flurry groaned.

“Yeah, I could use one too,” Pound admitted. He pulled out of her completely, sending droplets of cum splattering onto the duvet, and carefully backed off the bed. Flurry followed a moment later, a bit bow-legged but glowing with satisfaction.

On the bright side, this Castle’s guest suites had very nice showers. Big ones too.

Chapter 3: Storm Warning

“So yeah, that’s why we have a new trade deal now. Nightclub diplomacy, baby.”

Pound shifted a bit under the covers, freeing a pinion feather that had gotten uncomfortably trapped between his ribs and Flurry’s. In the same moment, he brought his foreleg up from her side and wrapped it around her shoulder, pulling her closer to him and tucking her head more comfortably under his chin.

“That’s wild,” he murmured. “He seriously just yelled out his whole plan for world domination? In the middle of the club?”

“Right?” Flurry replied, barely restrained laughter pushing her voice up an octave. “Like, even if I hadn’t had someone listening in, I could’ve just asked anypony nearby, ‘Yo, did you hear that shit?’ Total amateur. I almost feel bad about it, honestly.”

Pound offered a sympathetic shrug. “He was gonna learn one way or another. Somepony else could’ve done a lot worse to him if they’d wanted to.”

“Yeah,” Flurry went on. She sounded a bit relieved to hear him agree with her. “Statecraft sucks. Might as well rip that bandage off early. Plus, y’know… happy ending anyway. He could hardly complain.”

Pound tilted his chin so he could catch Flurry’s eye. “How about you?” he asked with a smirk and a squeeze of her shoulder. “Could you complain?”

Flurry thought for a moment, then lifted her hoof off Pound’s chest and wiggled it in a “so-so” gesture. “Eh,” she said, “I’ve had better.” A moment later, she kissed Pound under the chin and clarified. “Much better.”

Pound accepted the compliment with a chuckle and another squeeze, then let his head settle back into the mountain of pillows behind him as Flurry made herself comfortable on his chest. For a minute or two, they just lied there in silence, enjoying each other’s warmth, basking in the last vestiges of afterglow from the last round they’d gone together—Flurry braced against the bathroom sink, still dripping from the shower, her protests about how they’d just gotten cleaned up fading into breathless moans for him to go deeper, faster, harder.

By the time they’d finished, they’d needed a second shower. That one, at least, had stuck up to now.

With a yawn, Pound stretched as best he could without dislodging Flurry and glanced at the clock hung on the bedroom’s far wall. The various post-Gala parties and private events around town were probably winding down by now. The Crystallian Royal Couple would be heading for their own lodgings in the Castle pretty soon—maybe planning on using them the same way their daughter had used her own. It wasn’t gossip Pound would bring up around Flurry, but he suspected it had at least some truth to it. Shining Armor did look pretty happy most of the time.

“What time are you leaving town tomorrow?” he asked Flurry, who mumbled her answer without opening her eyes.

“I dunno. Before noon, probably. There’s a summit with the Stalliongrad Ambassador day after next, so we’ve gotta be back in time to be pretty for that.”

“You know what I’m gonna say.”

“That I’m pretty all the time?”

“Well, after noon, at least.”

Flurry snorted and playfully pushed his face away from hers with her free hoof. Once she dropped it back onto his chest, he moved his chin back over her head, and she let out a contented sigh.

“You could come with us, if you want,” she said. “You ever been to a summit before?”

“Haven’t been to the diplomatic kind.”

“Oh, you’d love it. It’s all photo ops and fancy dinners with special cultural delicacies. Their delegation always brings this porridge-y stuff that tastes like woodchips and sadness. Supposed to be good for the skin.”

“You’re really selling me on it, I gotta say.”

Flurry looked up at him and waggled her eyebrows. “Diplomacy. I fuckin’ rock at it.”

Pound responded with a good-natured laugh, but after a long moment’s silence realized he would have to answer her real question. “I don’t think I could get away,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Sugarcube Corner barely runs at all without me.”

“I’ll make it worth your whiiiiile,” Flurry sang—but in a playful way, eyebrows still twitching.

“I’d like that,” he murmured. And then he was supposed to say, “But I can’t,” but he wasn’t quite sure why he should. So instead, he just let the conversation trail off, and Flurry didn’t pick it back up. She just settled her head back on his chest, and he brushed his hoof over her mane, and they both lied together in silence.

He wanted to go with her. That was what he really hadn’t said. He wanted to follow her wherever she went, go to bed with her each night and wake up next to her each morning, eat breakfast and brush his teeth and deal with the monotony of royal responsibility by her side. But not like this. Not as a consort, but as something else. Something real. Something he knew she felt the same way about.

He’d wanted it for years, since they were occasional playmates whose parents’ friends were friends with each other, since they’d grown a bit into gangly teenagers who didn’t know anything about each other except that they liked coexisting in the same space. Since a Summer Sun Celebration ten years ago, when they’d spent the whole day exploring the woods around Ponyville together and the unexpectedly chilly night huddled under a blanket together, watching fireworks explode overhead, listening to Pound’s sister Pumpkin snore on the grass next to them.

When he’d asked her why she liked Ponyville so much, and she’d said she liked how different it was from home, and they’d talked about places they wanted to see and things they wanted to do, and finally things they hadn’t done yet and didn’t know how to try. When he forgot about the fireworks completely, and met her widened eyes, and realized with a jolt in his chest like an electric shock that he was right next to her, shoulder to shoulder, practically hugging—and delicately, fearfully, on a whim that became a compulsion in a matter of inexplicable moments, kissed her. When she’d kissed him back. When nothing had ever felt more thrilling or terrifying or right in his life before or since.

For a whole year afterwards, he’d spent night after sleepless night reliving that moment, remembering the softness of her lips and the flutter of her eyelashes against his cheek, hypnotized from head to tingling hooves by the thought of seeing her again—doing that again—at the next Celebration. And then the Solstice came, and Pound had waited with his family at the train station, and his heart had leapt when he saw Flurry disembark behind her parents—and then sank, and shuddered, and shattered when he saw the well-kept young colt who followed her off the train, and the hoof he tossed casually around her shoulders, and the guilty lilt in the friendly smile she threw at Pound like a silent, almost insulting apology.

It was years before he forgave her—month after month of dodging questions from his parents, ignoring curious looks from Pumpkin, learning through bungled schoolyard romances and awkward midnight trysts what it took to make a mare happy and keep her coming back for more. He’d gotten good at it, good enough to have a reputation for it, and eventually word of it reached Flurry—fresh out of her latest fling, drunk at a house party after an appearance in Ponyville on her empire’s behalf, looking for new mistakes to make that might flush some old ones from her memory.

He’d given her everything he had that night: every twist of the tongue, every angle and position, every pent-up emotion and unsaid invective he’d wanted to hurl at her for years, since she’d broken his heart in a way that she couldn’t really even be blamed for. After all, what was one kiss with a colt she saw maybe once a year, compared to a thousand others with ponies who were closer, hotter, more interesting and powerful?

His first kiss, that’s what. And hers too. And he couldn’t rationally be angry about it, and that made him fucking furious. And when he finally got a chance to work it all out in a physical way, a real way, it had felt incredible. She’d felt incredible. And when it was over, when she’d lifted her trembling head off his chest and told him that she wished she’d done this with him sooner, his heart had broken all over again.

She had no idea what she meant to him—or maybe she did. She made a point to seek him out every time she came to Ponyville—and maybe it was just because nopony else fucked her like him, made her feel as beautiful and alluring and orgasmic as he did. He’d never asked her, and likely never would, because no matter what her answer was, it would destroy what they had right now. She might want to be his the way he dreamed of being hers, or she might resent him for ruining a perfectly good friendship with benefits, and either way their relationship would change forever. It would become real.

And he wouldn’t do that to himself. Not again. He was too much of a coward. And he was way, way too good at this.

Pound pressed his lips against Flurry’s forehead, seeming to wake her up from a doze again. He kissed her once above her horn, another time on her temple as she turned her head towards him, and finally on the lips as she smiled and hummed, encouraging him not to stop. When she kissed him back, she poked her tongue between his lips, brushing the tip across his teeth and retreating as soon as he stretched his own tongue out to meet it. As always, she wanted him to lead. She preferred it that way—or knew he did. He wasn’t sure which was true. He wasn’t going to ask.

With his hoof still wrapped around her shoulders, he tugged her on top of him, chest to chest, her hind legs straddling her pelvis. He moved both hooves at once—one to the back of her head, pushing her lips harder into this, and the other to her flank, repositioning her, making sure she felt every inch of the stiffness growing in his groin. She cooed into his mouth as his cock rubbed across her folds, as she ground herself against him and smeared her growing arousal from his base to his flaring tip.

He shifted his hips down a bit, freeing his dick from underneath her only to press it back against her entrance and, in one fluid motion, penetrate her. Flurry threw her head back and let her breath escape her in a rush, then looked back down at him with a cocky smirk.

“You can’t get enough of me…” she whispered, sounding extraordinarily pleased about it. Pound smiled up at her and squeezed his hooves around her flanks, savoring the way her perfect pussy molded snugly around his cock.

“Feels like you don’t mind too much,” he whispered back.

Flurry shut her eyes and shook her head. “Mm-mm,” she hummed as he pushed deeper inside her, stretching her as much as he was able. Each roll of his hips shifted her slightly in place, her head rising and falling an inch or two with every motion, and as her muscles loosened and she let herself slip deeper into his embrace, he ran his hoof over her mane, gently stroking in time with every tender thrust inside her.

He’d fucked Flurry Heart plenty of times before. He’d taken her two dozen different ways, in positions that defied gravity and decency in equal parts. But this felt different. This was a slow dance after a rock concert, a lingering glance after a passionate kiss. Of all the things he’d imagined doing—saying—being to Flurry Heart, he’d never tried this. He’d never found the moment. He’d never let himself believe that instead of just fucking, she might want him to make love to her instead.

With a soft sigh, Flurry braced her forehooves against Pound’s chest and pushed herself upright. The bedsheets hung on her shoulders for a few moments, suspended precariously from her flexing wings, and then fell away, leaving her unobscured on top of him—suffused in moonlight, radiant inside and out. The curls of her mane formed a wreath around her face, and each push in and out of her drained more and more built-up tension from her cheeks, until she looked like she’d never known a moment of life as royalty.

Pound let his hips slowly fall still beneath her, and she seamlessly took over for him, flexing her thighs just enough to move slightly up and down his length, never letting him fully leave her and taking him to the base with every indulgent downward stroke. He let his hooves settle behind her, just above the base of her tail, and helped her along with the slightest pressure—up and down, slowly out and rapturously back in. Every part of him buzzed, balls to bones, and he felt like the slightest movement left or right might send them both tumbling off the bed, into a chasm they never had to stop falling deeper, deeper, deeper down.

He lifted his hoof to her face, caressed her cheek. She tilted her head, leaned into his touch. The words bulged in his throat, formed on his lips, begged to be made real: I love you. I want you. I’ve never wanted anyone else.

“I…”

She looked down at him—expectant, hypnotizing, gorgeous.

“You’re incredible,” he said softly.

Flurry closed her eyes again, sighing through a smile. “You’re perfect,” she gushed back.

He was so close. She was too. He could feel it in the way her hooves pressed harder into his chest, the tremors that rippled through her each time he bottomed out inside her. The next time she pushed down into him, he thrust back up, and in the moment she was overwhelmed, he slid his hooves up her back and pulled her down towards him, forcing their chests together, taking the initiative again as she mewled and shuddered and buried her face into his neck.

“Oh, Pou-ah…”

He held her tightly, almost stationary above him, and drove into her with languid, powerful strokes, withdrawing almost completely with each thrust, keeping just the right pace to keep her rocketing towards her peak. She gripped him with every limb, her cries muffled by his coat, her wings fully extended above them both. Pins and needles raced over Pound’s skin, prickled through his cock, pooled at the tip in a growing, blinding, obliterating mass…

They came together. Pound’s cock erupted as Flurry’s inner walls clamped around it, and each rhythmic squeeze from her cunt milked another load out of him, filling every space inside her until his seed had nowhere to go but all over both of them, mixed with her own essence in a frothy mess that coated his balls and soaked into her thighs and flanks.

With each mutual pulse of pleasure, Flurry let out a breathless little whine, half-kissing and half-biting Pound’s neck as she quaked in his unyielding grip. Seconds passed that felt like hours, and then the darkened room snapped back into focus as Pound felt Flurry settle into him, exhausted and content.

The complex magical talent she’d displayed earlier in the night was nowhere to be found. All she could manage now was floating a clean towel over from the neat stack outside the bathroom door, and tossing it haphazardly over her back just as the rest of her went completely limp. Pound cleaned them both up as best he could, then gently slid her off of him and back into the crook of his foreleg. As far as he could tell, she was asleep before her head hit his shoulder.

This couldn’t last forever. Maybe she loved him or maybe she didn’t, but sooner or later she’d find someone who wasn’t afraid to admit they loved her back—who wasn’t terrified that they’d lose her forever just by asking. He could do everything else for her, make her feel as good as any mare possibly could, but someday that wouldn’t be enough anymore, and it would be nobody’s fault but his.

Or maybe it would be enough. Maybe this was truly all she wanted out of a partner: a good lay, and a soft chest to lie on afterwards. Maybe tying a mare like her down would be a crime against her better nature, and maybe she sought him out like this precisely because she trusted him not to read too much into it—not to push for something a little too real. The stories she told about her life outside Ponyville seemed to suggest just that.

Except the serene, soul-stealing expression on her face right now didn’t. Nor did the way she smiled at him when he entered her, or the way she clutched at him when he pleasured her, or the way she’d told him about her life outside Ponyville for hours without either of them noticing how quickly the time had passed.

He sighed, and shut his eyes, and snuggled her closer to him as sleep began to overtake him. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. And the only thing worse than this journey through the real and unreal was the inevitability that they’d someday reach a destination.

Chapter 4: Hail (Mary)

Princess Cadance was a morning pony, which would’ve been fine if Mi Amore Cadanza had been one too. For the Princess, every workday began at sunrise, and after years of dedicated service to the residents of the Crystal Empire, her internal clock had an alarm permanently set for the time near dawn where the adjective “crack” might come prefixed with “ass,” even on days when she technically didn’t have to be up until noon.

And Princess Cadance was fine with that—early to bed and early to rise, yadda-yadda-yadda, so on and so forth. But the thing was, Mi Amore Cadanza might rejoinder—muzzle probably buried in a twenty-ounce coffee mug with “I’M A WITCH I’M A BOSS” stenciled onto it—she was pretty healthy and wealthy already, and as her many interactions with the Empire’s landed gentry had made excruciatingly clear, wisdom was by no means a prerequisite for either.

And so the two metaphorical timberwolves inside her warred with each other, and the cute little roasteries in walking distance of the Crystal Palace stayed financially solvent. It was a tense relationship, but a functional one. At least, Shining Armor told her it was—and probably not just because she’d physically threatened him the last time he hadn’t.

To his credit, Shining was a dream of a husband most mornings, always rising before her and kissing her gently on the forehead before going to get his morning workout in. Even on days like today, when they both could’ve luxuriated in the soft—and, as they’d reestablished the night before, springy—bed provided for them in one of Ponyville Castle’s guest suites, he was already up and about by the time she awoke, carrying a steaming cup of dark roast and an endorphin-fueled glow. One thing both timberwolves agreed on, at least: a stallion bearing coffee and baring his chest could do anything to either of them he damn well pleased.

“Morning, Cady,” he said as she groggily sat up, his magical aura bumping against hers as he passed the coffee mug over to her. “How’d you sleep?”

“Rock-like,” she mumbled as she took her first sip, waiting a moment for the first jolt of caffeine to hit her brain before continuing. “Is Flurry up yet?”

“Figured I’d, uh… let her sleep,” Shining said, putting on a toothy grin a second too late. Cadance smiled too. Shining was a great dad, eternally supportive and proud of the young mare they’d raised together, but the “mare” part still threw him off his rhythm sometimes. With how much he’d doted on Flurry when she was small, he could be forgiven a bit of discomfort with what her not-so-small self got up to after dark.

“I’ll go check on her,” Cadence said with a knowing smirk. “Can you get breakfast?”

Shining didn’t bother hiding his relief. Breakfast, he could handle. “Egg sandwich over medium, pepper jack and grits?” he asked.

Cadence leaned forward and pecked him on the lips. “You know me so well,” she said once they parted. Shining smiled, offered a mock salute, and went off on his mission. Cadence, after a big slurp of coffee and a vertebrae-popping stretch, started on her own.

Flurry’s quarters were a bit of a hike from Cadance’s, and had been since the younger Princess had turned fourteen and become mortified that her biological parents lived on the same planet as her. Nowadays, it was more a matter of courtesy between adult family members: neither told the other about their plans for any particular evening, and neither felt the need to know.

At least, that was how it was supposed to work. But every time they came to Ponyville, Cadance couldn’t help but snoop a bit—not because of what she thought she might find out, but because of what she already knew.

Sure enough, a telltale flutter arose in her chest the moment she rounded the corner and got in eyeshot of the door to Flurry’s room, and the feeling only got stronger with each step forward. By the time Cadance grasped the doorknob and cracked the door open, the sensation was overwhelming, radiating out of the darkened space beyond like heat from a roaring fire.

Flurry was fast asleep in bed, tucked under covers striped by morning light poking through the half-drawn curtains over the window. A sturdily-built pegasus stallion with a beige coat and a blown-out brown mane lied behind her, forelegs wrapped tightly around her torso and chin pressed the top of her head.

The sight of her daughter sharing a bed with another pony was hardly a new one, or even a particularly rare one. But this wasn’t just any stallion she was with now, and it wasn’t Cadance’s eyes that told her so. It was her heart—or rather, Flurry’s heart, and the waves of ephemeral energy it gave off.

The same energy that Cadance sensed every time she passed a couple cuddling on a park bench or sharing a sandwich at a café table: love, raw and pure, so thick in the air around both slumbering ponies that even someone without Cadance’s special talent should have been able to feel it.

She’d been so excited the first time she sensed that spark coming from her daughter—years ago, on a train ride back from Ponyville, when Flurry had fidgeted and stared out the window and dodged every prying question from her mother about whether she’d enjoyed the Summer Sun Celebration and the fireworks show after. But of course, as Cadance had reminded herself when they’d disembarked back home, teenage love was its own unique beast, wild and passionate and liable to flit from one fixation to the next with little warning or fanfare.

Predictably, the same spark returned—not quite as strong, but present nonetheless—when Flurry talked to a cute mare at a concert some weeks later, and then when she hit it off with a colt who’d asked her to a spring dance at school, and Cadance thought she’d been wise to think little more of it. Until, that is, they returned to Ponyville for the next Summer Sun Celebration with that colt from school in tow, and the spiny lump of despair that opened inside Flurry when they arrived almost knocked Cadance off her hooves.

They both skipped the festivities altogether that year. Flurry had vanished after dinner with Princess Twilight and her friends, and Cadance had found her alone in her room, completely beside herself, wailing into her mother’s chest as soon she sat down next to her that she’d ruined everything and he hated her now. Not the boy she’d brought along from home, but the one she’d left behind here—the one she’d loved, and then tried to forget, and now lost forever because she wasn’t patient enough to deserve him.

And now that colt was a stallion, and Flurry was a mare, and they still played this game with each other every time royal business brought them close together. Flurry had had other partners in the years since, of course, some that she’d even stayed with long enough for Cadance to meet, but the relationships never lasted, and the spark never burned so brightly as it had on that train ride back from Ponyville.

But even now, after so many encounters with each other that became less and less subtle over the years—seriously, Cadence would need to talk with Flurry later about being slightly more restrained at a gala for a Friendship School, of all things—their distinct, discreet sparks never combined into a fire. The obvious connection between the two of them remained unspoken, for reasons Cadance could only guess at. Shame? Fear? Sheer impotent momentum? Whatever it was, it was certainly consistent—and at least partially because of that, it was quite frankly exhausting.

Another thing both timberwolves inside her agreed upon: situations like this were the worst part of the unique position she held. Cadence knew better than anypony that you couldn’t force love, even between ponies who already felt it for each other. No matter how hard you hinted or how repeatedly you shoved them together, in the end love had to be a decision two creatures made for and with each other, and sometimes you couldn’t do anything but watch two hopeless lovebirds be hopelessly in love in perfect parallel to each other, never intersecting and never making that final essential choice.

Stars help her, Cadence had tried anyway. She’d dragged Shining away to insufferable afterparties, whispered in the right ears to get just the right catering service hired for various local events, even one time arranged a minor diplomatic incident just for an excuse to stop overnight in Ponyville on the way back from fixing it. The Deervish still had a testy relationship with the Crystal Empire to this day because of it—and Flurry still hadn’t come clean about her feelings, and nor had the colt she so desperately adored.

Cadance sighed quietly, sipped her coffee, and gently shut the door to Flurry’s room again. This was getting a little ridiculous. She needed a new approach.

The so-called Princess of Love finished her coffee just as she reached Ponyville Castle’s guest kitchen-slash-breakfast nook, and since the bottom of her mug had held no brilliant insights on how to get her kid to stop being so dumb, she figured it couldn’t hurt to see where a second round got her. Just as she finished stirring a lump of sugar into her refilled cup, she heard a knock at the door separating this private area from the Castle proper. Cadance cracked a wry smile. She had a feeling she knew who her unexpected guest might be.

Sure enough, she opened the door to find a compact unicorn mare standing outside, looking like she’d been awake and working for a couple hours that day already. A neat blue bow held her frizzy orange mane away from her face, and her body—lithe and hard, compressed like a diamond under constant pressure—told a story of somepony who knew herself and what she could do better than anypony around her, and wasn’t shy of showing it off when the situation called for it.

Put simply, she was hot in a way that terrified stallions and unseated mares from their conceptions of themselves. It was a good look, Cadance thought. She really made it work for her.

“Morning,” said Pumpkin Cake, one-fourth of Cadance’s favorite Ponyville catering service and twin sibling to someone her daughter knew very well. “Is my idiot brother here?”

“Yes, he is,” Cadance replied, her tone familiar and familiarly worn out.

“Are they still pretending they’re not obsessed with each other?”

“Seems like it.”

Pumpkin’s eye roll came off as more of a reflex than a gesture of genuine frustration. This wasn’t the first time she’d made this early-morning walk across Ponyville, or even the first time it had included more or less this same conversation with Cadance. “Figures,” she grumbled. “Just hose him off and send him to the Corner once they get up.”

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Cadence told her, before gesturing with her head towards the breakfast nook. “Join me for coffee?”

Pumpkin shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll take green tea if you have it.”

Ponyville Castle did have green tea, and Pumpkin took it black and near-boiling hot. She sipped her drink slowly once she sat down across the table from Cadance, not to savor it but seemingly so she didn’t lose herself inside it, like she knew the moment she relaxed would be the moment somepony interrupted her. Secretly, Cadence found her fascinating: a perfect stereotype of a gum-cracking take-no-crap small business owner, but a little too perfect, like it was an air she was simply accustomed to taking on rather than who she really was.

Hiding a bit behind her own coffee mug, Cadence let her innate magic do its thing and sate her curiosity. Vague visions that were more like feelings flooded through her: black rubber, white feathers, metal and pleather and shamed depraved moans—and Pumpkin behind, above, and all over them. Yeah, that tracked. Lust magic wasn’t as perceptible or as potent as love, but it sure painted a pretty picture sometimes.

“So how was the reception?” Pumpkin asked, breaking the silence. “Last night, I mean. I wasn’t there. Held down the fort at the Corner.”

“It was good,” Cadence politely replied. “The food was incredible. As always.”

Pumpkin allowed herself a small, proud smile. “If you’re talking about the main course, that’s all Pound. Dumb as he can be sometimes, he’s a genius over a stovetop.”

“I’ve always preferred dessert, actually,” Cadence said, smirking a bit herself. Pumpkin’s smile grew. The feelings in Cadance’s head were slightly less vague now—and a bit more pink and purple in hue.

“Me too,” Pumpkin said, and then she sipped her tea and settled herself down. She needn’t have, though. Cadance was used to being lusted after, and frankly relished any time it wasn’t a self-centered stallion imprinting his painfully boring tastes on her.

After a minute or so of shared silence, Pumpkin sighed, and Cadance knew all too well why. “This is so stupid,” she muttered. “They’re so fucking stupid.”

“Love can be complicated,” Cadance said, with as little conviction as she could muster.

“Not this complicated,” Pumpkin replied. “They’ve been doing this for years, and they’re gonna keep doing it. And we just have to… let them.”

Now that was interesting: not Pumpkin’s frustration itself, but rather the source of it, the little flare of passion it inspired in her for an alicorn other than the one sitting nearby. It wasn’t love by any stretch, but perhaps there was more than one Cake family member who Flurry had strung along in her tempestuous young life.

And suddenly, Cadance had an idea. A terrible idea, even a downright manipulative one—but hey, what was love except mutually agreed deconstruction of the self? Or… something else like that. Fuck it. She wasn’t a poet. But she did want her daughter to be happy, and sometimes when love wasn’t enough to get someone there by itself, lust could help close the gap.

“What are you doing tonight?” Cadance asked Pumpkin, who blinked and furrowed her brow. She was sharp enough to know something was going on, but patient enough to let it play out a bit before acting on her instinct to stop it.

“Not much,” Pumpkin said. “Pound owes me an evening shift. Figured I’d get a couple drinks, maybe see a movie.”

“How does a party sound instead?” Cadance said, gears spinning in her brain as her idea crystallized into a plan. “Here at the Castle. You’d be our guest, of course.”

“Aren’t you going back to the Crystal Empire today?”

Cadance shrugged. “Politics move infamously slowly in Stalliongrad. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to delay our summit with them until next week.”

“What a pleasant coincidence,” Pumpkin intoned.

“What can I say? I like Ponyville. I think Flurry does too.”

Pumpkin set her mug down and leaned forward. “And what are you hoping Flurry likes about this town tonight?”

Cadance laid out her scheme and Pumpkin’s role in it, and the more in depth she went, the wider Pumpkin’s eyes got. When the Princess finished, Pumpkin took several seconds to respond.

“That is, uh…”

“Unconventional?” Cadance suggested.

“... a very polite way of putting it,” Pumpkin said, though she didn’t reject the idea immediately. Instead, she sat with it a bit longer, mulling it over, and then met Cadance’s eyes with complete sincerity in her gaze. “You really think this would work?”

“I know my daughter,” Cadance told her. “In some ways, better than she knows herself. And you know both of them.”

“Not quite in that way,” Pumpkin wryly remarked.

“You know what I mean. You’re a smart mare, and a capable one. If anyone could talk sense into both of them, it’s you.”

“Except with one of them, there wouldn’t be a lot of talking.”

“Well, whatever you feel is appropriate. You seem trustworthy too.”

Pumpkin chuckled, and Cadance could feel the mare’s more primal self going to war with her better judgment—and winning. Finally, she chuckled again and shrugged.

“No promises,” she said.

“Of course,” Cadance agreed. “But you’ll try?”

Pumpkin answered by tilting her head and smirking. “I’ll see how hard I need to.”

And with that, the matter was settled. Cadance sat back in her seat and swirled the last of her coffee around in its mug, preparing to gulp it down—and suddenly, Pumpkin laughed.

“Sorry,” she said once Cadance looked her way. “Just… it’s funny. Usually I don’t have this kind of conversation with a girl’s parents until after I fuck her.”

“I usually try to not have these conversations at all,” Cadance shot back, though not without a bit of mirth in her own tone. “In any event, I ought to be going. I need to check in with the Stalliongradian ambassador.”

“And I have a party to get ready for,” Pumpkin gamely replied. Both mares stood, and the shorter one made for the exit. Just before she slipped out of sight, Cadance called out to her.

“Oh, and Pumpkin?” she said, waiting until the young mare turned around before continuing. “Feel free to stop by anytime we’re in town, not just to pick up your brother. I could introduce you to my husband.”

Cadance packed every bit of implication she could into her expression, and Pumpkin caught it all and ran with it. “You could,” Pumpkin pointedly replied, and Cadance felt her desire so vividly that she shivered a bit as it radiated across the room towards her. Stars, this lithe little mare did know what she was doing—and in all likelihood, Flurry would have no idea what to do with her later. Exactly as planned.

Pumpkin left without another word, and Cadance—a bit breathless, despite herself—finished her coffee in a single swig. One last thing both timberwolves were on the same page about: she was great at this Princess of Love shit.

Chapter 5: Eskimos

Honestly, Pumpkin didn’t get ponies who drank their whiskey neat.

Of course, the ponies who did would claim it made perfect sense. It preserves the taste!, they might crow, probably while tightening their neckties and writing letters to the local newspaper editor about how mares simply weren’t physically strong enough to work construction jobs. Never mind the fact that the taste of whiskey straight from the bottle was mostly just “a ball of fire punching you in the throat,” and a splash of melted ice dulled the alcohol’s burn enough that you could actually tell what flavor was hidden underneath. It wasn’t really about the taste, she had to assume, but rather the feeling—the tough, stiff pain of a real stallion’s drink.

She swirled the ice cubes in her glass, watched them bounce against each other, and then took a slow savoring sip of the amber haze they were suspended within. Delicious, and silky-smooth. Pain, in her opinion, was overrated.

But then again, she usually wasn’t the one looking for it. And she usually preferred to give rather than receive: drinks, treats, and sometimes other things.

She swallowed, then set her glass on the table next to the plushy armchair she’d perched on. Across the room from her, lit by a smattering of candles and a tiny pinprick of an ember burning at the end of an incense stick, a canopied bed stood neatly made between a pair of matching nightstands.

And atop the bed, held spread-eagled by velvet-lined pleather straps, a frighteningly powerful, possibly immortal alicorn lied blindfolded and gently shuddering, breathing slowly and heavily through a flexible rubber ball gag. Over the soft sounds of the mare shifting over the silk sheets, Pumpkin could just barely hear the buzz of the small, smooth crystal she’d left her partner with when she’d gone to fix her drink. With one magical charge, it could last for hours, and it had been going for half of one already, vibrating invisibly inside the struggling mare—not fast enough to let her climax, but certainly enough to overwhelm her in every other way.

Flurry could’ve freed herself any time she wanted to, of course. The “magic-dampening” ring slipped over her horn was just a mundane hunk of metal, and the straps around her legs could be loosened with a simple spell or just by letting them go slack for a bit. But this, as Pumpkin knew so well, was about the feeling: of being trapped, out of control, fully at another pony’s mercy.

And oh, did she so enjoy being merciful.

“You comfy?” Pumpkin called across the room in a syrupy-sweet tone. Her partner for the night said something in return that her gag mangled into a vaguely affirmative grunt. The straps flexed, but stayed in place. No red or yellow sparks from her horn, and no rhythmic taps on the bedsheets. They could continue.

Pumpkin stood, relishing a bit in how tightly her outfit hugged her chest and flanks. She’d shied away from the classic pleather-and-latex dominatrix look when she’d first started doing this—experimenting years ago with a high school sweetheart, who she still kept in touch with in figurative and literal terms. She’d thought it was silly and cliché, and to be fair, it kind of was. But now that she was more experienced, it just gave her that extra zip that made her feel irresistible and her partners feel extraordinary.

Plus, on a selfish level, this crotchless get-up made her ass look fantastic.

Slowly, her hooves clacking audibly across the crystalline floor, Pumpkin approached the bed and, with practiced fluidity, climbed on top of it. Flurry shuddered as she felt the mattress sag under Pumpkin’s weight, the straps quivering like strummed guitar strings as the shorter mare positioned herself directly overtop of her—her right hind hoof centered between the alicorn’s hips, barely an inch away from her brazenly exposed sex, so close Pumpkin could feel the desperate heat radiating from within.

“I can see why my brother likes you,” Pumpkin said softly, stroking her hoof gently along the ridge of Flurry’s jaw. Flurry turned her head towards the contact, mewling behind her gag. “You are a pretty little thing. And so needy too.”

Like most of the things Pumpkin said in situations like this, that was a playful exaggeration of a pretty obvious truth. She’d honestly been expecting a harder sell at Cadance’s impromptu party earlier, even with Pound notably absent. But as it turned out, all it took was a few shared minutes, a lingering lustful glance, and a tiny nip on the tip of Flurry’s ear as she whispered where they could go to continue their conversation. Not that Pumpkin was complaining. Eager partners made her role so much easier to play, and more fun.

“I bet you’re like this all the time,” Pumpkin went on, leaning down so her breath tickled Flurry’s twitching nose. “I bet all the boys and girls back home treat you like royalty.” She shifted closer, whispering in her partner’s ear. “But we know better, don’t we?”

Flurry whimpered and nodded. Pumpkin could tell her eyes were squeezed shut behind her blindfold. She smiled, and shifted her hind hoof, and sighed with satisfaction as Flurry jolted and her juices spread over Pumpkin’s neatly trimmed fetlock.

“Is this what you want, little Princess?” Pumpkin purred. “You want me to make you feel good?”

“Hmmmmmfph…”

“Hmm.” Pumpkin kept her hind hoof perfectly still, bracing it against the mattress so it didn’t move even as Flurry thrusted herself against it. “But what about me? Shouldn’t I get to feel good too?”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm!”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Pumpkin said—and as she moved her hind hoof away, she lit her horn and slipped a tendril of magic inside Flurry, drawing the still-vibrating crystal out of her along with a pitiful moan. She held it aloft between them for a moment, letting Flurry’s intoxicating scent wash over them both, then deactivated it and put it aside.

“You were enjoying yourself up here while I was gone,” she said, suddenly stern. “Even though I told you to wait. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Even if she hadn’t been gagged, Flurry probably couldn’t have answered aloud. Pumpkin knew exactly what she was feeling right now—minute after endless minute of ever-growing, tortuous stimulation, cruelly torn away from her in seconds. So long as she kept up the act, kept her balanced right on a knife’s edge, Pumpkin could do anything to her she wanted.

She lowered herself onto Flurry, brushing her own aching lower lips against Flurry’s sopping-wet ones, hearing her partner and prey’s strangled squeak as each microscopic movement of Pumpkin’s thighs sent shockwaves of pleasure racing through both their bodies. The straps stretched as every muscle in Flurry’s body went rigid. The poor girl was ready to burst.

And she would. Eventually. Once Pumpkin got what she wanted.

“You know what I think?” Pumpkin murmured, grinding a bit harder, chewing on her lip as sparks flitted through her stomach and hips. “I think it’s all an act. I think you’ve been acting so long you’ve forgotten what the truth feels like. And I’m gonna pull it out of you.” She walked her forehooves up Flurry’s chest, until she reached Flurry’s drool-soaked bottom lip and gave it a playful tweak. “One. Inch. At. A time.”

Flurry fell back into the bed, her breath coming in shallow gulps through her nose. Pumpkin slid her hoof down Flurry’s cheek, caressing the strap that held the gag inside her mouth. “But I’m not gonna do it for free,” she added, smirking. “You’re gonna make it worth my while.”

With a flick of her magic, she undid the strap and pulled the gag free of Flurry’s mouth. As the alicorn panted and squirmed, Pumpkin pulled herself up towards the mare’s head, leaving a thin trail of arousal along Flurry’s torso from her pelvis all the way to her sternum. Finally, she reached her destination, and she straddled Flurry’s head as she lowered herself a bit further.

“First things fir–”

She had barely begun speaking when Flurry attacked her, punching the carefully crafted wordplay right out of her mouth.

Pumpkin had been eaten out by more than a few ponies, and she was generally of the opinion that enthusiasm, while certainly appreciated, was a poor substitute for skill. Right now, though, Flurry was an outlier in every sense of the word—slavishly bathing Pumpkin’s pussy in saliva, worshiping every centimeter of rapidly moistening skin, straining against her bonds to dig her muzzle deeper and knead her lips and tongue harder into everything she could reach.

“Hah… e-eager to please,” Pumpkin managed to say after a moment or two. “I like that in a mare. You…”

Flurry found purchase around her clitoris and flicked her tongue rapidly over it, and any thought of finishing her sentence vanished from Pumpkin’s mind. Enthusiastic and skilled—a wonderfully disorienting combo. Not for the first time in her life, Pumpkin regretted not hitting on the Princess at a party sooner.

“That’s it…” Pumpkin sighed, letting herself settle onto Flurry’s muzzle, humping against her mouth as the mare fanatically serviced her. “Just like that… good girl…”

Flurry groaned, and craned her neck, and thrust her tongue as deep into Pumpkin as she could, circling her opening, stretching it wider. Her blindfold had slipped a bit, and looking down at her, Pumpkin could see that her eyes were squeezed shut like someone had squirted soap into them. Or maybe not soap, exactly. She was doing an excellent job so far, enough that her chin and cheeks had gone from dampened to soaked in the space of sixty seconds.

Dropping all pretense, Pumpkin braced her forehooves against the bed’s headboard and clamped her thighs around Flurry’s head, trapping the bound mare’s mouth against her pussy, leaving her just the tiniest gap to suck in air through her nose. Flurry’s tongue was forced flat against her captor’s clit, and she made the most of the opportunity, licking and rubbing and sucking in equal measure on the little nub and on every crease and fold of saturated skin around it. If every mare she’d been with could eat pussy like this, Pumpkin decided, she’d never work another day at the Corner again.

Within minutes, Pumpkin felt her peak approaching, and she let Flurry know with a heavy hump against her nose and an involuntary sigh that became an uncontrolled moan. Flurry redoubled her efforts, sealing her lips around Pumpkin’s pussy, switching from flicks of her tongue to indulgent slaps, coaxing her closer and closer with servile determination.

Pumpkin’s hooves fell to Flurry’s head, and her horn bounced off the headboard, and she grit her teeth and groaned as she rocketed into a climax that left her at a loss for thoughts, let alone words. Her pussy convulsed around Flurry’s outstretched tongue, showering it with fluids that dribbled from the corners of Flurry’s mouth and dripped decadently onto the rumpled bedsheets.

Even as Pumpkin started to come down, Flurry kept going, deluging her in licks and love bites until she very nearly came a second time right on the heels of the first. She only stopped when Pumpkin lifted herself away from her, and only after waggling her tongue against empty air for a moment as the tendons in her neck bulged, desperate for just one more taste of her partner’s satisfaction.

“There… now isn’t that better?” Pumpkin sighed as she backed away from Flurry’s head, placing each trembling hoof carefully so she didn’t step on her as she repositioned. “Doesn’t it feel nice, thinking of someone else before yourself?”

Flurry worked her jaw and ran her tongue over her lips, and only realized after a few seconds that her gag wasn’t going back on. “Yeeees…”

Pumpkin put some bite back into her next words. “Yes what?”

Another moment, and then Flurry remembered what they’d discussed earlier. “Yes, ma’am,” she whispered.

“Good girl,” Pumpkin crooned as she lowered herself again onto Flurry, this time straddling her belly. “I think you’ve earned yourself a reward.”

Flurry shuddered between Pumpkin’s hind legs, and let out a quavering sigh as she felt Pumpkin’s magic wrap around one of the straps holding her forelegs. Instead of releasing her right away, though, Pumpkin stopped and hummed to herself.

“On second thought… that was just one lesson,” Pumpkin mused, tugging gently on the strap and twisting Flurry’s body just enough for a muscle or two to uncomfortably stretch. “And the only way to really teach somepony a lesson is…”

Pumpkin looked down, and saw Flurry watching her from underneath her crooked blindfold. She put on an evil smile, took the blindfold in her magic, and cinched it tight around Flurry’s head before continuing.

“Repetition.”

Pumpkin stood and hopped off the bed, taking Flurry’s straps in her magic again once she turned back around to face her. “Don’t get any ideas about running off now,” Pumpkin said, her voice still sweet but tinged with a terrible sharpness. “You do exactly what I tell you, or I’ll be very disappointed. And I don’t think either of us wants that, do we?”

Cheeks reddened and still shining with moisture, Flurry mutely shook her head. Pumpkin nodded, deftly undid the knots on both straps attached to Flurry’s forelegs, then did the same with the ones for her hinds. Flurry collapsed onto the bed, completely limp, shaking with the effort of remaining perfectly still until Pumpkin ordered her to do otherwise.

“Turn over on your belly.”

Flurry complied, though not without a bit of difficulty. Her body didn’t seem to want to obey Pumpkin, even though her mind sorely did. Finally, she got herself turned over like she’d been told, legs gathered underneath her, tail raised instinctively in case Pumpkin wanted access to her dripping-wet cunt.

“Stand up.”

Unsteadily, Flurry raised herself onto her hooves.

“Spread your legs.”

She did. A droplet of arousal beaded at the bottom of her pussy, dangling from her clit, stretching lazily towards the mattress until it detached and splashed down with a faintly detectable plop.

“Stay right there,” Pumpkin whispered, stroking Flurry along the goosebumps on the back of her neck. “I’ll just be a moment.”

Pumpkin already had what she needed ready nearby, and she knew how to efficiently put it in place. First, a pair of manacles—metal on the outside, velvet and feathery stuffing on the inside—to clamp around the alicorn’s forehooves. Then, a metal bar—capped on each end with similarly softened cuffs—to slot between her hind legs, forcing them apart even if she’d wanted to squeeze them closed. Finally, an elastic band with two adjustable loops, one which Pumpkin fastened around the base of Flurry’s tail and another she slipped over the alicorn’s horn. Once tightened to Pumpkin’s satisfaction, it forced Flurry’s chin up and pulled her tail almost all the way over her back, leaving her rear end hopelessly and whorishly exposed.

“There we are,” Pumpkin said once she’d finished. “All dressed up. How’s that feel?”

“F-Fine, ma’am,” Flurry said, though those weren’t the words Pumpkin cared about hearing. What she cared about was Flurry saying, “yellow,” “red,” or “stop”—and she didn’t. Good to go.

“Liar,” Pumpkin crooned, brushing her hoof along Flurry’s barrel towards her thigh. “It feels amazing, doesn’t it? It feels right. To be told what to do, how to feel… treated like the whore you are.”

Flurry’s breath left her in a rush. She bit her lip, blushed an even deeper red, and nodded—her tail hiking up even further as she did.

“Of course it does,” Pumpkin continued. “It’s simple. You can’t mess it up. It feels good… and that’s what’s important. That’s all you should think about, right?”

As Pumpkin silently picked up her next tool of the trade with her magic, she saw Flurry’s pussy wink out of the corner of her eye—swollen with desire, pulsing and gaping for another pony’s touch. But, Pumpkin decided with an unseen scowl, Flurry hadn’t earned that. Not yet, anyway.

“So why do you keep thinking about him?”

Flurry stiffened. Pumpkin paused in place, listened and watched and waited for a signal to stop. Moments dragged into seconds. No signal came. Pumpkin kept going.

“Is it because he talks to you like a pony, instead of a Princess? Is it because when you’re with him, you feel like you might be a good pony? Is it because he knows who you are… or because he doesn’t?”

Flurry didn’t answer. Pumpkin didn’t need her to. She lifted the item she’d picked up before—a perfectly straight cane about the length of her foreleg, wrapped in black pleather and tipped with a tiny flat piece of wood that looked like a miniaturized canoe paddle. She tapped the end of the crop against Flurry’s flank and then dragged it slowly across her mark, swirling it through the soft fuzz overtop.

“What if he saw you like this?” Pumpkin angled the crop a bit, sliding it around the curve of Flurry’s thigh and into the gap between her leg and her groin, teasing closer and closer to her pussy without quite making contact. “Or at a nightclub, drunk and high and suffocating under the weight of your unquenchable ego? What if he found out how much you love all of it, how powerful it makes you feel, how quickly and easily you use other ponies to get what you, and only you, want?”

Flurry twitched as the crop slid across her pubic bone, from one thigh to the other, still not touching her quite where her body wanted. If her mind felt differently about it, she didn’t say so.

“And even if he did see you like this, even if he liked you like this… you wouldn’t want him to, would you? He doesn’t deserve you—a shallow, power-hungry slut, who’d get bored with him eventually, who’d hurt him just like she hurts everypony else who cares about her.”

Pumpkin shifted the crop slightly—prodding Flurry’s labia, pressuring her clit, drawing an utterly pathetic whimper out of her throat. “That’s who you are, isn’t it? Who you’ve always been?”

Flurry’s breath came in halting gasps. Her jaw quivered. She opened her mouth wider, wincing with shameful pleasure.

“Yes…” she squeaked.

Pumpkin set her jaw, glowered, raised the crop…

“Liar,” she growled.

… and brought it down hard.

Flurry shouted, gritting her teeth as her pearly-white bottom began to flush pink and the pain of the blow reverberated through her legs and gut. Her whole body trembled uncontrollably, every muscle clenched, her cheeks and jaw most of all. Pumpkin waited, saying nothing, watching as Flurry’s pussy winked and her thighs strained against the bar spreading them apart—and the moment she saw the alicorn start to relax again, she placed the crop back against her hind, right where she’d struck her before, tensing her up all over again.

“I know exactly who you are,” Pumpkin said, every word laced with venomous displeasure. “I can see right through you. And you know what I see?”

She lifted the crop away—and brought it down, the impact rippling through Flurry’s pillowy, darkening cheeks. Flurry grunted and grimaced, choking back a louder cry with titanic effort.

“I see a mare who’s sensitive.”

She struck Flurry again.

“Romantic.”

And again.

“Even a little introverted.”

And again.

“And most of all, a coward.”

The last blow was the hardest of them all, enough to knock Flurry down onto her chest with a fearful yelp, forelegs bunched awkwardly beneath her, ass raised and shaking and cherry-red. Between her abused cheeks, her cunt clenched and unclenched desperately, drooling and dripping onto the bed beneath her. Pumpkin set the crop aside. It had served its purpose.

“Shallow, power-hungry, spoiled little brat… that isn’t you,” she whispered, softly and sweetly. “It’s the act you put on for ponies who think they know you from a glance and a trashy fantasy. It’s the lie you tell yourself, because the truth might hurt even more.”

Pumpkin climbed onto the bed, positioning herself behind Flurry so she had an unobstructed view of her sopping snatch. She leaned in closer, letting her breath brush against Flurry’s outer lips and the inflamed skin on either side. “And the truth,” she continued, “is that you’re afraid. Of how powerful you could be and aren’t, how ugly you feel no matter how beautiful you look.”

Pumpkin pressed her lips lightly against each darkening blemish that marred Flurry’s rear, kissing away the pain, drawing nearer to Flurry’s labia with every tender peck. “You can’t really be a pony worth loving,” she said between smooches. “Because if you were, he would’ve said so by now. You wouldn’t be here, without him. Without anyone.”

Pumpkin took in a breath, extended her tongue, and dragged it the entire length of Flurry’s quaking cunt—from her stiffened clit along her saturated folds all the way to the wrinkled rim of her asshole. Flurry thanked her with a long, low moan that, as Pumpkin repeated the motion again and again, transitioned into hiccuping half-gasps. It wouldn’t take long at all to make her cum this way—but that wasn’t what Pumpkin wanted to do, and it wasn’t what Flurry needed.

Pumpkin kept going—sucking on Flurry’s clit, spreading her pussy lips, savoring her exquisite natural flavor—until she felt the mare start to tense up, until the rhythmic squeezes of her inner walls around Pumpkin’s tongue got too tight to push past. When she knew Flurry was as close to the edge as she could get without tipping all the way over, she pulled away, scooched back on the bed, and reared up on her hind legs, mounting the half-prostrated alicorn like a stallion as she lit her horn to grab one last implement.

While most of what Pumpkin used in encounters like this had pretty obvious functions, few was quite as blatant as this: a jet-black, foot-long pillar of stiffened silicone, attached to a harness that slipped over the wearer’s stifles and croup to form a pretty close approximation of a real stallion’s cock. At least, Pumpkin assumed it did. She’d never had any intimate experience with the real thing, nor had she ever had any real desire to—but every mare was different, and she’d known almost at first glance that the one underneath her now would cream herself silly all over this particular accessory.

Before that, though…

“But did you ever let him say it?” she said, rubbing the head of the toy under Flurry’s belly as she stepped into the harness and cinched it tight enough to stay in place during use. “Or did you just fuck him, year after year, always wondering which time would be the last, which mare would be the one to steal his heart and shatter yours?”

With a flex of her hips, Pumpkin slapped the fake dick against Flurry’s abdomen. Flurry let out a muffled groan, her face buried in the bedspread as she arched her back and raised her ass a little bit higher, begging without words for her partner to bury anything she had to give as deep inside her as it would go.

“Maybe you’re right,” Pumpkin said. “Maybe this is better.” She angled her hips back, grasped her quasi-cock in her magic, steered its ever-flared head towards Flurry’s pulsating opening. “Maybe a slut is all you were ever supposed to be.”

With a sticky slap, Pumpkin drove her pelvis into Flurry’s rump, burying the strap-on in her pussy in a single brutal stroke. Flurry squealed as the toy filled her completely—maybe in pain, maybe in delirious pleasure. Before either mare could figure out which, Pumpkin drew the toy back out and slammed it in again, scooting Flurry forward on the bed, forcing another screech out of her and squeezing a spray of natural lubrication out of her cunt and onto the sheets.

“And if that’s true," Pumpkin said, steadily increasing her pace, tweaking her own clit with a spark of magic, “then why worry? Let him be happy without you, and you without him.”

The noises coming from Flurry’s throat began to sound less like orgasmic wails and more like painful groans. Pumpkin fucked her faster—harder. This was it. This was where it all came to a head, one way or another.

“You can do that, right?” Pumpkin said—mockingly, cruelly. “Just let him go.”

Flurry turned her head and pressed her cheek into the mattress. Her face was crumpled. Her cunt spasmed around the lust-soaked toy destroying it.

“Watch him get married without you, have kids without you, grow old and fat and think of you only as what you are: a trashy fantasy.”

Flurry’s blindfold fell off, pushed out of place by the friction of head against the sheets. Her eyes were squeezed shut. She grunted—convulsed—slid closer and closer to what Pumpkin knew would be an earth-shattering climax.

“Stop thinking about him. Stop obsessing over him. Stop wondering what might have been and learn to live with what actually is.”

Flurry let out a noise that sounded almost like a snarl—and Pumpkin threw her whole body weight forward, knocking Flurry’s hind legs out from under her, forcing her flat on her belly as Pumpkin’s hoof pushed her head down and her strapped-on cock plowed into her as fast as her hips could move.

“Is that too hard?” Pumpkin said through gritted teeth—sliding closer and closer herself. “Does that hurt too much?”

Flurry opened her mouth, but nothing came out of it—no insults, no invectives, and no safewords. She was at the edge of her conscious mind. She was ready to explode.

“Then do…something… about it!” Pumpkin roared between colossal, vicious, fully-in-and-out thrusts. “Stop… being… a coward! And stop… fucking… lying!”

Flurry screamed—angry, anguished, overwhelmed—and came, soaking Pumpkin’s hips and thighs, jerking so hard against her bonds that Pumpkin heard the metal creak. The unicorn rode out her climax with her, peaking herself seconds later, smothering Flurry’s body under her own as the alicorn let desperate gulps of air back out as haggard, hoarse growls.

As soon as she got her wits about her, Pumpkin sprang into action—pulling the strap-on out of Flurry’s gaping pussy, unclipping it with her magic as she used her hooves to release Flurry’s legs and horn, tossing all the equipment aside once she’d separated it from the shaking mare laid out before her. Despite all her experience, a pang of fear shot through her. She’d never gone so far—cut quite so deep—with a partner before. She might’ve gone too far.

She sat back, watched Flurry like a hawk, listened to her cough and pant and whimper as she processed what had just happened.

And then her shoulders hitched, her breath caught in her throat—and Flurry began to sob.

Pumpkin moved quickly, crawling up the bed to lie next to Flurry, sweeping the alicorn into her grasp, pulling her head under her chin and stroking her hoof along her sweat-soaked back as the beautiful, broken Princess bawled into her chest. Pumpkin let her cry, shushing her gently, whispering into Flurry’s ear as her tears soaked into her fur

“Ssh-ssh-ssh… you’re okay. It’s over. I’m here. Just let it out.”

And Flurry did—all her pent-up anxiety, all her self-deprecating fear, every word left unspoken to a stupid pegasus who was good at cooking, bad at improvising, and meant more to her than a thousand hook-ups or highs or whole kingdoms together ever could. Who she’d wanted for years as something she thought she could never have, and who—bless her stupid heart—wanted her just as badly.

But she wouldn’t have listened if Pumpkin had just told her that. She had to believe it, or at least be furious enough at herself to try—and this was her mother’s idea of how to drag her, cumming and screaming, across that unbreachable mental wall.

Honestly? It wasn’t the weirdest reason Pumpkin had ever hooked up with someone. Though it was pretty close.

“You did so good,” Pumpkin murmured to Flurry as she started to calm down, sealing her words with a tender kiss on the mare’s tear-stained cheek. “I know that was hard. But it feels good now, right?”

Flurry sniffled and rubbed her face with her hoof, squeezing out a few last errant tears. “I… I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I’m scared…”

“Love is terrifying,” Pumpkin softly agreed, “but you deserve it. And you deserve it with Pound.”

Flurry shook her head—but Pumpkin could feel how the mare fought against her body’s instinctive gesture, and see it in the expression her face crumpled into. “What if you’re right?” she whimpered. “What if I get bored with him, or I’m not good enough for him, or–”

“You won’t,” Pumpkin interrupted. “And trust me: you are.”

Flurry settled her head onto the mattress, seemingly deep in thought. Pumpkin smiled, sat up next to her, and stroked her hoof behind Flurry’s ears before swinging herself out of the bed.

“I’m gonna get cleaned up,” she said. “You should too. And once you do… stop by Sugarcube Corner. Come say hi. We’re open late tonight.”

Flurry stayed where she was, and Pumpkin let her rest as she quietly slipped into the attached bathroom. She still wasn’t completely sure this had worked. Flurry still might chicken out—or decide, after all that, to break things off with Pound for good. Either way, Pumpkin supposed, Flurry would make a choice for herself. Which, technically, meant the Princess of Love’s psychotic plan had somehow actually worked.

Well, half of it, at least. The rest would come after a shower. And maybe a breath mint.

~~~

Thankfully, Part Two of Operation: PoundHeart was a lot simpler than Part One—and also a lot dumber.

“Wait, you… are you being serious right now?” Pumpkin said, unable to find a less incredulous way of phrasing her sentiments. Pound blinked at her from across the counter, lit from underneath by the Corner’s glowing display case and looking about as idiotic as she’d ever seen a stallion look, which was saying something.

“Why would I not be serious about this?” he bluntly replied. “I’ve gotten a lot of mixed messages.”

“Mixed mess…” Pumpkin clacked her teeth shut and paced in place, trying to keep a bitingly sarcastic remark from escaping her throat. She failed so hard that she ended up adding a dopey approximation of Pound’s voice to her next words. “Gee, a really pretty girl I’ve known for years sucks and fucks me like a repressed filly on prom night every time we’re in the same postal code together. I wonder if she’s into me?”

Pound blushed and glowered at her as he rounded the counter’s end with a dishrag around his neck, making for a booth that had been vacated just as Pumpkin had returned from the Castle. “Maybe she does that with a lot of guys, I dunno,” he mumbled as he started wiping the table down. “I don’t wanna tie her down if it isn’t what she wants.”

“Pound, holy shit,” Pumpkin said. “I love you to death, and you are genuinely a sweet and wonderful guy, but you are like if someone shoved a useless lesbian into a himbo’s body.”

Pound blinked again and furrowed his brow. “What does that even…”

“It means you’re a fucking moron, dude!”

“And this is why I never brought it up with you,” he growled, scrubbing viciously at a hunk of dried icing. “‘Cause I knew you’d just make fun of me.”

“Pound, I’m not…”

Pumpkin sighed. Okay, fair point—she had kind of been making fun of him. For fuck’s sake, though.

“I just thought there was something you were hung up on,” she said. “Like, you thought you weren’t good enough to date a Princess, or it bugged you that she fucked other ponies sometimes. Something I could help with. And I want to help you, because it kills me to see you so happy every time Flurry comes to Ponyville and so miserable every time she leaves.”

Pound moved to the next table and got to wiping without a word. Pumpkin filled the space his silence left behind. “Pound, if that’s seriously it, if you seriously just don’t know if she feels the same way… trust me, I’ve seen girls catch feelings after hook-ups, and Flurry is so, so far beyond that with you.”

“Nice humblebrag,” Pound muttered.

“Oh, please, you’ve stolen more hearts in this town than I’ve had dates,” Pumpkin shot back. “And anyway, that’s what I’m saying! If you asked her to, Flurry would move in with you here, with Mom and Dad literally next door, just to be close to you. She adores you. And you feel the same way about her.”

Pound balled the rag up over a pile of crumbs and braced his forehooves on either side of it, staring at his reflection in the glossy tabletop.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know she does. I’ve known for… I don’t know how long, and I kept telling myself she didn’t, talking myself out of it. I guess I… I didn’t know if I was the only one, y’know? If she liked me enough to go exclusive with me, when she had all these stories about other stuff she’d done, other ponies she’d been with. Maybe other ponies who liked her like I do.”

Pumpkin walked to her brother’s side and squeezed his shoulder. “Pound, everypony on the continent has a crush on Flurry,” she said. “I have a crush on Flurry. But she’s a Princess, bro. If she wanted someone else, she’d go get them. And she never has, and she’s not going to. She’s waiting for you to come get her.”

Pound looked up at her, an odd look on his face. “You have a crush on Flurry?” he asked.

“It’s incredible how much that isn’t the point,” Pumpkin flatly replied.

“All right, fine, won’t ask,” Pound said, before sighing and pushing off the table onto all four hooves. “You really believe that, huh?” he asked, still hesitant but starting to struggle past it.

Pumpkin got ready to reassure her twin again, only to have a knock at the Corner’s locked door take the opportunity from her. Pound glanced at the store’s shuttered windows, then looked back at his sister.

“Doesn’t matter what I believe,” Pumpkin said, before nodding at the door. “You gonna get that?”

Silently, every step taking a little longer than it should have, Pound went to the front of the store, unlocked the door, and pulled it open with the tinkle of a bell overhead. Flurry Heart stood outside alone, mane freshly washed and brushed, still a bit red around the eyes—and, Pumpkin secretly suspected, a few other places as well.

“Hey,” Pound said, the word trembling a bit as it left his throat.

“Hey,” Flurry said, her tone more or less the same. She shifted from hoof to hoof, seeming to fight the urge to run away. She glanced past Pound’s shoulder and caught sight of Pumpkin’s expression. The message within it—now or never, babe—seemed to get through loud and clear.

“Can we talk?” she asked Pound, already bracing for his answer. When it came, it was barely louder than a whisper.

“Yeah…” Pound cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah! Sure. I was… gonna come talk to you, actually.”

Flurry looked at Pumpkin again, who gestured with her head as if to shout, “I am going to lose my fucking mind if you two drag this out any longer,” but in a loving and supportive way. The Princess blinked, nodded, and backed up a step to let Pound outside. The door tinkled again as it swung shut behind him, and then Pumpkin was finally alone.

With a sigh, she rounded the bar and ducked into the cabinet under the register, pulling out a bottle of bourbon Dad had promised not to tell Mom about so long as Pumpkin shared it with him. She filled a paper cup with ice from the soda fountain, gave herself a flirting-with-the-bartender-sized pour, and took a swig that left her grimacing and shuddering. The liquor was still warm, and the ice unmelted—but it would do. Her mission was complete. Probably. It had better be.

Cadance fucking owes me either way, Pumpkin thought as she swallowed away the alcohol’s burn. And when she pays up, I’m bringing the strap-on.

Chapter 6: Thaw

Flurry Heart, Princess of the Crystal Empire, heir apparent to the throne transparent, was not having the best Summer Solstice Eve ever.

The worst part of it was, it wasn’t like she’d had a bad Summer Solstice Eve either. For the most part, everything had gone swimmingly: the festival during the day, the parade in the afternoon, even the weird early dinner that was supposed to precede a long night of partying had all gone off without a hitch.

But that just made the small things—a spilled drink here, a broken shoe heel there—all the more aggravating, because it wasn’t enough for today to be good. Selfishly, vainly, she’d wanted it to be flawless, and the fact that such tiny flaws were actually bugging her was worse than if the whole day had been a total disaster.

And now, of all things, it was a little lock of rebellious mane hair refusing to stay where she wanted it that was fraying her nerves beyond all reason. It should’ve been simple to comb out, or at least tamp down with a spritz of product and a little cannon grease, but she’d been at it for ten minutes now, and if anything it had just gotten worse—sticking straight out from her temple in a frizzy, infuriating lump.

Stars, she couldn’t go out looking like this, like she’d just rolled out of bed and didn’t care how un-Princessly she appeared. Not with so many ponies watching her—them. Not with this being their first…

“Flurry? You in here?”

Flurry’s shoulders twitched, and her heart skipped a beat. It just about always did when she heard his voice, even after months of hearing it every day, like she was a nervous little filly trying to hide all her little flaws behind painted-on smiles and clever turns of phrase.

Just as quickly, though, she calmed down—remembered who she was, and repeated it to herself until she believed it: a Princess, dammit. She was fine. Everything was fine. And the proof of that was standing behind her now, smiling at her in her guest suite’s vanity mirror, eyes sparkling at the sight of her.

“Bad hair day?” Pound said, still smirking. Before Flurry could answer, he licked the edge of his hoof and rubbed it over the unruly bit of mane she’d been struggling with, smoothing it down with hardly any effort.

Flurry sighed. Of course she’d been overthinking it, just like she always did. And of course today didn’t need to be made perfect by outfits or hairdos or fancy receptions, because it was already perfect from the moment she’d woken up that morning, with his hooves wrapped around her and his breath tickling the back of her neck.

“Thank you,” Flurry muttered, chuckling to and at herself as she leaned into Pound’s touch. “I’m a mess.”

“You’re a very pretty mess,” Pound said, matting down another part of her mane with a kiss. “All the other messes are super jealous.”

Flurry grinned, and giggled, and swiveled in her seat so Pound’s next kiss would land on her lips. “I just got this idea in my head, y’know?” she told him. “Our first Celebration together, all magical and perfect… I don’t know. I’m being silly.”

Pound grinned back at her. “You know what I’m gonna say.”

“That I’m already perfect?”

He kissed her again, a quick peck that spawned butterflies in Flurry’s stomach. “That I love being silly with you.”

Speaking of un-Princessly behavior, it would have been very improper for Flurry to melt into a puddle right now, squealing like a foal at a boy-band concert. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t think really hard about doing it, and about dragging Pound down to the floor with her so he could do whatever he wanted with her squishy lovestruck remains.

“Come on,” Pound said, breaking her reverie with a nudge on her shoulder. “Come with me.”

“To where?” Flurry asked as she allowed herself to be gently pulled onto her hooves. “Is the party starting?”

“Nah, not for another hour-ish,” Pound replied. “Just need your help with something real quick.”

Flurry had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but she was more than fine following Pound to wherever he felt like explaining it. Which, it turned out, wasn’t inside Ponyville Castle or even anywhere in town, though they did stop briefly to chat with his parents as they finished setting up for the town's overnight festivities.

For most of her life, she’d only known the two of them conceptually, the way a foal was distantly aware that her friends had parents and those parents presumably had lives outside of cameo appearances during playdates. By now, though, she’d gotten to know them as fellow adults, and it turned out they were great fun to hang out with, spoiled her like a daughter whenever she and Pound stopped by, and deserved at least some of the credit for where they all were today.

She hadn’t been sure what Pound would choose on that night almost a year ago, the Twentieth Anniversary plus one day of Twilight’s School of Friendship opening. Even after they confessed to each other, after she was finally honest with him about what she wanted and found out he wanted it too, she had still wondered whether he’d be okay with leaving home—whether what they wanted could work with hundreds of miles between them.

According to Pound, his mother had answered his version of that question with a smile and a gentle tone: “Dearie, if you don’t go with that girl and live the life you want without even thinking about whether we can manage one silly little shop without you, I will take this rolling pin here and I will lovingly, passionately beat you to death with it.” And now, thanks to her son heeding her advice, the Cake family had two silly little shops—the original in Ponyville, and a satellite location in the Crystal Empire run by a fastidiously hard-working pegasus, who served a dizzying array of pastries during the day and had a two-month waiting list for dinner reservations at night.

But for all the hours he worked and eager customers he served, Pound always had time for the mare he’d left home for. If Flurry wanted to hit the town, he’d leave the restaurant early and join her, mane still damp from the shower he’d rushed through to rinse the sweat and spices off his face. If she was away on royal business, he’d send her a hoof-written note by magic every night before bed—sometimes a letter, sometimes just a doodled smile, and always infused with his natural earthy scent. And when neither of them had things to do, he’d just be with her, reading a book with his shoulder pressed to hers or dozing on a loveseat with her head in his lap.

There was no other way to put it—he was perfect. So much so that Flurry had to remind herself sometimes that this wasn’t all just a fortunate accident, that he really loved her and she deserved his love. Believing that got easier and easier with each passing day, and she loved him more and more because of it.

All that said, though, he could’ve at least told her where he was taking her, and why. Even after he took to the sky, leading her out of Ponyville and into the rolling fields surrounding it, he stayed completely silent, his indecipherable smile her only clue about his intentions.

When they landed on a hilltop about half a mile out from the town limits, he still didn’t say anything. Instead, he just looked at her expectantly, still smiling, like she was supposed to already know why they’d stopped here.

“What…” Flurry began to ask—and then she saw it.

It wasn’t anything big, just a comfy-looking blanket spread out under a poplar tree and holding a picnic basket full of baked treats and snacks. Nevertheless, her heart crept into her throat, and her eyes began to sting. She knew exactly why they’d stopped here—exactly where they were.

“I don’t know if it’s the exact right spot,” Pound said, seeming to take her silence as hesitance. “After a decade, y’know, all the hills around here kinda look alike. But it’s pretty close, at least. And we’ll have a great view of the fireworks later, if we want to come back and–”

Flurry threw her hooves around his neck and kissed him—madly, messily, like she wanted to make up for a hundred more they should’ve had right here at this spot. He kissed her back—gently, tenderly, just like he had the first time they’d been here all those years ago, when he’d set off an explosion inside her a million times bigger than the ones in the sky above them.

“This is incredible,” she whispered once she found the strength to pull away. “You’re incredible.”

“And you,” he murmured back, nuzzling his nose against hers, “are perfect.”

Caught halfway between swooning and sobbing, Flurry chose neither and just kissed Pound again, hoof caressing his chin, chest pressed into his. The next time she pulled away, she let her head fall beneath his, cuddling into his neck with a contented sigh. This day had gone perfectly after all.

“If you asked me to marry you right now, I’d say yes,” she mumbled idly, chuckling a bit at how much she meant it. Pound chuckled too—but in an odd way, like the sound had gotten stuck in his throat briefly on its way out. She leaned back and looked at him. He gave her a truly baffling look back: crestfallen and thrilled and amused all at once. Was something wrong? Was it something she’d…

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

“Um… well…” Pound mumbled, laughing to himself as his cheeks began to go pink. Flurry beat him to the punch, flushing scarlet in seconds as her hoof clapped over her mouth.

“Shit,” she said—trying not to laugh, or scream, or shake herself to pieces from irrepressible glee. “I messed it up.”

“No, you didn’t mess it…” Pound tried to say, chewing on his lip so he could get the words past the grin split across his face. “Kinda expected a different order to things, but…”

“No-no-no, let’s… let’s do this right.” Flurry backed onto the blanket and sat down, taking deliberate deep breaths, dramatically composing herself like an actress preparing for a scene. “Okay,” she told Pound once she was situated. “I’m sitting here, amazed by your romantic gesture, totally clueless. Go.”

“Okay,” Pound replied. He moved to stand before her, shoulders squared, still trembling a bit. “So…”

They stared at each other for a moment. Flurry giggled first, and Pound broke right after her. “I had a bit of a speech planned,” he informed her sheepishly.

She leaned forward on her haunches and pecked him on the lips, offering as much silent encouragement as she could with the look in her shining eyes. “Go ahead,” she whispered as she sat back down, her gaze never leaving his. He sighed, bent a more serious expression onto his face, and said what he wanted to say.

“I wanted to bring you out here because… because of what this place meant to me. Because, for a long time, it represented something I wanted but didn’t think I’d ever have. That I wasn’t sure I deserved to have.”

He smiled at her, growing more confident as he got going with what was clearly a well-practiced spiel. Flurry let him continue, drinking in every word, trying to commit every sensation of this moment to the deepest parts of her memory.

“I spent so long stuck here, in this idea of you that wasn’t real, because I thought I could learn to live with it if I just ignored how I felt long enough. And I wasted so much time, time I could’ve spent with you, being happier than I ever thought I could be, because I followed my fear instead of my heart.”

He sat on the blanket in front of her and took her hoof in his. With his other forehoof, he dug into the picnic basket, extracting a small velvet-lined box from under a pile of fluffy-looking rolls.

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” he said, blinking away tears, glowing inside and out. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and make every new moment with you better than all the ones we missed.”

He opened the box. A gossamer-thin silver bracelet lay inside, garnished with a blue-and-gray piece of labradorite fashioned into a miniature heart. “Flurry Heart,” he said simply, “will you marry me?”

For just a moment, Flurry thought about saying something snarky like “I’ll have to think about it.” She thought much, much better of it.

“Yes,” she told Pound. “Yes.”

Finally, he stopped holding back. A grin split his face, and a giddy chuckle slipped out of him as he fastened the bracelet around Flurry’s proffered hoof. It fit perfectly, and looked absolutely stunning—but it could’ve been a mud-crusted rock tied to a piece of twine, and her answer would’ve been exactly the same.

She looked up at him, and only realized when she saw tears beading in his eyes that she already had tracks running down both her cheeks. And she’d thought she looked like a mess before.

Well, as long as her makeup was already ruined…

She grabbed Pound by the shoulders and pulled him onto the blanket with her, kissing every inch of him she could reach, pressing him closer and closer until she could feel his heart hammering against hers. They rolled sideways, legs entangled, faces wet with who could tell what, and then Flurry pushed herself on top of him, straddling him at the waist, guiding his hooves with hers so he touched every part of her—her wings, her back, her withers, all the way to her…

“Uh… Flurry?” Pound grunted, speaking in whatever words he could sneak past her lips. His hooves had settled on her ass, squeezing gently as she ground herself atop his stiffening stallionhood. “We’re… it’s a little public here.”

Flurry trapped his bottom lip between her teeth, and tugged on it gently before sitting up to stare luridly down at Pound—at his sharp chin, and his broad chest, and every other delicious part of him. “It’s either this,” she told him, panting for breath, “or I jump you in town on the way back to our room.”

He glanced around at the deserted hills surrounding them—and then his eyes darted back towards her twitching lower half. “This is better,” he said with a nod and another squeeze.

“Much better,” Flurry added, just before Pound hooked his hoof around her neck and pulled her down on top of him again, repositioning his hips in the same motion. Instead of being awkwardly trapped beneath them, Pound’s cock now stood straight up behind Flurry’s rump, rubbing against her folds, silently asking to be invited inside. She tensed her flanks, kneaded him between her stifles, begged without words for Pound—for her fiancé—to have his way with the mare he’d just promised to marry.

And he did, in a way. He rolled them over again and slammed her onto her back—not roughly, but firmly, in just the way he knew she liked. He kissed her once on the lips, then on the neck, nipping at the soft skin under her chin. From there, he gradually moved down her body, tracing his path with touches of his tips and tongue, and finally reached her legs, which he peeled apart so he could bury his muzzle between them.

Flurry had really thought this would go a bit differently. She’d expected him to loom over her, his cock prodding against her nose, ordering her with a twitch of his eyebrow to do what she did best—and she would’ve loved to do just that, as good as she’d ever given it, until his eyes rolled back in his head and his seed spilled down her throat and dribbled down her chin.

But if he preferred this instead—lavishing her lips with broad swipes of his tongue, soaking her opening with saliva and her own slick arousal, teasing and tantalizing her until she felt like fireworks were exploding in every part of her at once—that was fine too. More than fine. Holy shit, it was about the finest thing she could imagine.

Except for one thing, that is. Something she wanted even more and, as much she loved him for his efforts, wasn’t going to wait for any longer.

“Pound…” she sighed, squeezing his head gently with her thighs to get his attention. He glanced up, lips still pressed against her pussy, tongue flicking over her clit and sending little jolts of euphoria up her spine. “Mmmfph… Pound…”

It took him a few seconds, but he eventually picked up on the specific flavor of yearning baked into her gaze. He surfaced from beneath her and crawled up her body at a leisurely pace, drinking her in with his eyes, objectifying her in a way that made her feel less like a Princess and more like an unconquerable goddess.

Finally, his eyes were level with hers, and his lips—still damp with her essence—were inside kissing range. She pressed her muzzle to his, took his face in her hooves, spread her legs and hooked her hocks around his back.

“Take me…” she whispered to the stallion she loved. “Make me yours…”

And her husband-to-be obeyed.

He slipped inside her slowly, decadently, opening her up inch by inch as his breath escaped him in a quiet hiss and her grip tightened around his neck. When he bottomed out, stretching her a little more with every thump of his pulse through his length, he stayed there for a moment, perfectly still, eyes shut as she shuddered under him.

Pound withdrew, keeping the same steady pace, pulling a gasp out of Flurry as his shaft tugged exquisitely on her innermost depths—and then he plunged back in, firmly and fully, forcing a moan from her lungs and a flash of ecstasy through her brain. He clutched at her as his hips moved faster, and she held him just as tightly as the pleasure inside her ramped up—as her skin tingled and her jaw quivered, and she met his eyes with elation flowing through her.

“Did you think about this?” she asked him, a shaky squeak the most audible tone she could manage. “For all those years? Doing this with me, right here?”

Pound hilted himself inside her, his face tensing as the head of his cock pressed against the deepest part of her. “Uh-huh…” he sighed.

Flurry sighed too, and smiled as she kissed him. “Me too,” she said—and she meant it, and she knew he did too, and it just made everything feel that much impossibly better.

He balanced himself on his haunches, took her hind legs in his hooves, angled his hips upwards and drove into her with steady, powerful strokes. She tried to participate, to match his blissful movements with her own, but there was little she could do from this position but lie back and enjoy it. And did she ever enjoy it—did she ever relish the incomparable feeling of being filled, completed, taken by someone she trusted without inhibition, who she would do anything for so long as it made him flush and grunt with satisfaction, while she squealed and shook right alongside him.

After a minute or so, she propped herself up on trembling hooves, kissed him and beckoned with her head until she guided him off her and onto his back, his cock standing straight up and glistening with her fluids. She climbed on top of him, pausing on her way up to wrap her lips around his bulging head and suckle until he groaned in delight, then straddled him and took him inside her again, caressing him with her thighs and hooves and inner walls, so sensitive now that the tiny internal motion almost knocked her off him completely.

He grabbed her by the flanks, tried to thrust upwards—and she pushed him down into the blanket, firmly but gently, saying with her eyes and smile and sweat-soaked body that it was her turn to lead. And she did—arching her back and rotating her hips, rising to the very top of his cock with each stroke before slamming herself back down, stars bursting behind her eyes with every damp slap of her thighs against his.

Pound wrapped his hooves around her own, still braced against his chest so she had leverage for every downward thrust. He trusted her too. He wanted her—screamed it with the lust in his gaze and the love in his tender touch, and the pretty little jewelry he’d given her that she’d already decided never to take off.

That alone was worth more than any material plaything or carnal sensation. It had kept her going through months of gossip among the Crystallian nobility and the club-going citizenry, all the whispers about how this relationship would never last and that poor Equestrian country boy had no idea what he was in for. It had silenced the loudest voice of them all: the one inside her head, so sure all those other ponies were right about her, so unwilling to let her feel or act or be good because the rumors and jokes would fly anyway no matter how hard she tried to prove them wrong.

And they surely would even with that bracelet on her hoof, even after her mom screamed with joy and her dad beamed with pride and they both put on the biggest and gaudiest royal wedding any organized society had ever seen. Ponies would still talk. Ponies would still look at her and see a spoiled, self-interested, sacrilegiously horny brat, even as she threw herself into public work with Pound by her side, even as every smile they put on the face of a hungry pony or sick foal planted an even bigger grin on her own.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered besides the fact that he was hers and she was his, and being with him—being the best version of herself that he had never stopped seeing in her—was the only life she ever wanted to have.

“Flurry…” Pound hissed, a hint of urgency in his tone. “Hah… baby…”

She knew that tone—treasured every single time she coaxed it out of him. “You close?” she whispered down to him. He nodded, his bottom lip clamped in his teeth. She was pretty close herself, and she knew just how to push them both over the edge.

Flurry raised her hips until Pound’s cock slipped out of her completely, twitching and flaring with nearly fulfilled need. She backed off of him and turned around, facing the horizon and the sunset starting beyond it, beckoning him forward with a smirk and an involuntary wink of her lower lips. He leered at her hungrily, mounted her powerfully, buried himself back inside her in one overwhelming stroke and kept going with staccato thrusts that wiped every feeling from Flurry’s mind except raw and pure desire.

“Inside…” she whined, every nerve aflame, the first pulses of a rapturous peak growing in her core. “Cum inside me.”

Pound clutched at her chest, pressed her muzzle into her neck, kissed and licked and bit down and growled—and then shuddered, and flared, and hilted inside her as slick, spine-tingling warmth blossomed within her. She pushed back into him, submerged herself in the sensation, let the spread of his seed supercharge the pulsing in her gut, until…

Flurry shivered, and seized up, and wantonly moaned, suffused in tingling warmth that surged white-hot and wild from the tip of her tail to the glowing point of her horn. And for every heart-stopping second, Pound—her husband—was right there with her, holding her tightly through every thrum and throb of their magical mutual climax.

As orgasm gave way to afterglow, Flurry guided both of them down onto the blanket and flopped onto her side, Pound snuggling up behind her as his cock softened and slipped out—and suddenly, a goofy giggle bubbled out of her. Husband. She was gonna get married. The infamous Princess Flurry Heart would soon be a doting housewife… or castle-wife? Didn’t have the same ring to it. Or anywhere close to the right vibe. She could dote with the best of them, but cooking was definitely best left to a professional. Like the kind she was about to marry.

She giggled again as she turned to face Pound, who gave her a blissed-out smile and a soft kiss on the forehead. “I lo–”

“I love you,” Flurry said, right as she realized Pound was already talking. His smile widened as he chuckled.

“You keep interrupting me!” he murmured, stroking her cheek.

“Sorry! Sorry…”

He slid her hoof down her side, hugged her, and kissed her again. “I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too,” Flurry whispered back.

They lied there together for a few more minutes, warmed by the setting sun. Finally, Flurry remembered what sunset actually meant.

“We should go get ready,” she mumbled into Pound’s chest. “For the Celebration thing.”

“Mm-hmm,” Pound agreed. He didn’t move. Neither did she.

“Okay, seriously,” Flurry said after another minute or two, reluctantly sitting up. “They’re gonna send a search party or something.”

“That’d probably be bad,” Pound acknowledged. He still didn’t get up, but he did prop his hooves behind his head and watch Flurry as she did, and accepted one of the wet wipes she found in the picnic basket.

“You coming?” she asked once she’d cleaned herself up. He cocked his eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”

“Better get used to it,” he said, grinning impishly as he got to his hooves and nudged her on the shoulder. “You just got a lifetime subscription to much worse jokes than that.”

Flurry gamely tried to pretend that sounded exhausting—but honestly, it didn’t. Pound could be really cute when he acted dumb. She nudged him back, flared her wings, and took to the sky, with the idiot love of her life right by her side.

They met the search party right as they were organizing patrols at the edge of town. Both their moms were leading the crowd. They didn’t scream when they saw the bracelet, but the mutual hugging and sobbing more or less made up for it.