64. Nice Hips

The heat of their breath warmed the honey enough to unstick their lips, but Sona took her time pulling away. When she did, she made a point to hold Taos’ glazed look and swipe her tongue over her lips.
He growled with satisfaction and gripped her hips tighter. “Did you like that?”
“The candy or your lips?” she purred coyly. 
“Either.”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice another taste?”
Sona licked her mouth again, thinking. Honey, strawberry… She giggled and shook her head. “Too sweet!”
Her head felt a little heavy but also a little light. She felt warm and comfortable and a little jittery. All the colors around her were vivid and kind of fuzzy like she was cross-eyed. She felt the desire to roll around in the flowers…and also grind her pelvis against his. A table wouldn’t do, but maybe here would?
Taos lolled his tongue out between his teeth, resting his neck on the bench and watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Promise me, trinket, that you won’t be mad.”
“Mad at you?” Sona giggled, watching his cock harden underneath his pants. “About what?”
“The candy—fuck, Sona, keep doing that,” he groaned. “The honey is spiked with ale. It’s alcoholic candy.”
Sona paused an inch away from kissing him. It took a moment to process that information. Another moment to process that it shouldn’t have taken that long to come to the conclusion that his deception was more funny than backhanded. 
“Is that why you ate so many?”
“I’m properly drunk. You wanna fuck right here?”
Sona hummed, smiling lazily, embracing her pounding core. “Thinking about it.”
“Tonight?”
“No. Right now,” she pouted. 
She bent to kiss his lips but Taos turned his head to the side and she kissed his stubbled cheek. He groaned again, this time begrudgingly. “I shouldn’t’ve done this so soon. Sona dear, my drunk plans do not include this torture. Yet.”
“Plans?” she giggled into his neck. 
“Revelries of the night. We need to get you dressed first. As much as I’d like you to be *un*dressed.”
“Then what’re we waiting for?!” Before she could even catch her balance, Taos scooped her up with his arms under her knees and armpits. “Ooh!”
“I don’t trust you as far as you can throw me, trinket,” he rumbled. 
“Not a lot,” she clarified with a giggle. “Do you have any more candy?”
Surprisingly he struggled to keep her in his grip while she tried to squirm free. “You can have some if you just stay still.”
“Oh, okay.” Sona obeyed, letting her neck rest on his arm to look up at the sky. Was it supposed to look all blurry like that? Was it evening already? Time moves so fast! “Where’re we going?”
“Just up to the tailor. She already has your outfit ready.”
What seemed like a few blinks later, Taos was setting her down on a creaky wood floor, holding her upright with his hands firmly on her hips. “Sona, meet Rossa, my personal tailor.”
The female striding up to them was tall and beautiful with streaks of pink-gray in her waist-length hair. She wore tight-fitting pants and a shirt in black leather. Every inch of her skin possible was covered by tiered bone jewelry.
“Hi,” she beamed. 
Later Sona would register that Rossa only responded with an unimpressed grunt. But she had no trouble feeling her up. 
“She has fine proportions,” Rossa said gruffly, hands running down her arms all the way to her calves, even seeming to weigh her ass and breasts. Sona felt her lower abdomen being compressed by thumbs pressing into the flesh there. “Hm. She has some meat on her bones, that’s favorable. Wide enough hips to bear a little of at least three, also very favorable to a leading pair to secure the dynasty.”
That brought Sona clarity *real* fast. 
She slapped Rossa’s hands away and barked, “Excuse me?”
Taos picked her up and set her down facing the other direction far too easily, petting her head as if that was supposed to appease her. “I don’t pay you an obscene amount of money to grope my future Luna.”
“You pay me to be honest about the bodies I fit,” said Rossa superiorly, waving a clawed hand and stalking away.
Sona made to lunge toward her insulter, but Taos snatched her upper arm and pulled her back against his chest. Fingers messaging her lower stomach in slow circles, he murmured in her ear, “Just ignore her, dear. You *do* have nice hips.”
Her alcohol-clouded mind got over it quickly, choosing to focus on the flattery instead. “Wide hips don’t really determine fertility, though.”
“An intelligent drunk,” sighed Rossa irritably. “Put this on. Before the moon rises, please, for blood moon god’s sake.”
Sona reflexively took what she was handed all while shooting Rossa a glare she was sure wasn’t threatening in the slightest—but there wasn’t much to grab. One piece of gauzy white fabric that felt more like scraps of an outfit rather than the actual ensemble. 
She shook her head to clear the fog in her head to little avail. “This is almost completely sheer. I can’t wear this.”
“That’s what these are for.” Taos held up two more pieces of fabric in each hand: one a wide band of silk, the other a decently-sized cut of a bolt. “Chest and hips.”
“They stay in place with this.” Rossa presented a complicated-looking mesh of clinking silver chain. Bones so tiny that had to belong to a mouse were dangling from some of the loops. “It sits on your shoulders and drapes to your waist. Hooks hold all bands. The gauze goes overtop.”
Sona took it all in skeptically. “Like some kind of cloak.”
“You’ll look like trailing smoke,” Taos said quietly, tugging on her waistband. “Beautiful when we dance tonight.”
She gasped. “Dancing? I love dancing!”
It wasn’t just the alcohol influence. All that wondering about the night revelries here…it was because she missed Moonvalley’s. She’d rarely participated even after Raff was born, but the times she’d been able to go without worries, Conri or sometimes Arden when her—former—mate was off on duty, she embraced lovely controlled chaos and lost herself to the music and torchlight.
“Then let’s change.” Taos’ hand guided Sona at the base of her spine toward the back of the small room. “Rossa, that’s all for tonight. Get lost.”
Rossa scoffed in offense at Taos’ harsh dismissal. “I’m not fond of your tone, Alpha. Your father—”
“Serkin is dead,” Taos barked. Sona gasped and flinched. “If you’re unhappy with my reign then go rip silk somewhere else. Where the fuck is my outfit?” 
Sona didn’t get to see if she went or even where she was being led until suddenly they were in a dressing room with a curtain behind them and a mirror in front. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“I can’t always be.”
“No, she deserved it.”
Taos chuckled. “I knew we could get along. Bonding over shitty wolves.”
“You said you wanted to undress me, right?”
They were looking at their reflections. It occurred to Sona distantly that this was the first time she was seeing herself next to the Redbone Alpha. And moon goddess above and below, they were as different as night and day.
Her: a small waif compared to him with gold-brown skin, frizzy gold hair in disarray, and sky-blue eyes made brighter by the dark circles under them. She was all curves and slopes and looked like she was made for sunny days and fields of flowers. She admitted she was pretty, but right now? Now she looked half-deranged.
Meanwhile, Taos looked like what he was meant to be: a king. He was two heads taller, a solid wall of muscled majesty. Hair as red as dying roses, his tan skin was peppered with his scars of all sizes and shapes. She’d grown to overlook them; rather than hyperfocus and judge, her mind simply accepted them as a part of him just as much as anything else.
And all the features she looked deep into every day now: all defined angles and edges with his strong jaw, sensual, cocky mouth, straight-bridged nose, and​​ the ever-sharp black hunter’s eyes that watched her with keen observation.  
He was just…beautiful. Just fucking beautiful.
This was how—more or less—they would be viewed after the wedding by the four Cardinal packs. Staring back at them was the Redbone Alpha and Luna.