by Loki Renard
A surprising number of women had been incarcerated by Naxus. There were at least two dozen in the cell Iris shared. There were men too, of course, but they were kept separately so that no comfort might be found in the sexes lying together.
“Did I hear what?”
Thalia smiled and wrapped her damaged arm with a dirty scrap of fabric. “I heard that king is back - and General Naxus is dead.”
“What king?” It was a stupid question, but dungeon imprisonment wasn’t conducive to having the quickest mental reaction time. The dungeons were lit with greasy torches, so the entire place smelled like barbecue the entire time but without almost any food to eat. Sometimes a prisoner would snuff out a torch and they would take turns sucking on the grease soaked wrappings which were the richest source of calories in the awful place.
“Archon. He's come back to rule over us all.”
Iris felt her stomach start to do flip-flops of extreme nervousness. Archon had returned. Why? Was she being arrogant if she thought it was on her account?
It barely seemed to matter. From the cell in which she had been thrown, beaten and bloodied, it was an irrelevance. The king didn’t know where she was, unless the general had told him, and that seemed unlikely.
“Come on then! Out you all come! It’s your lucky day!” The guards started hollering at the lot of them, confirming Thalia’s words.
“They’re letting us go! The king is pardoning all prisoners!”
The cry was taken up by all the ladies, and what ensued was best described as a stampede from the dungeons. Iris let the others go first. She assumed that she would still be put to death. No doubt the king they were referring to was Naxus. He had the bearing of a male who would declare himself king just to make the peasants bow.
Shuffling toward the end of the line, Iris tried not to get her hopes up. If she did somehow get out of here alive, she was going to keep her head down for the rest of her life. Better have a head down than no head at all. She had not enjoyed her incarceration even a little, and facing inevitable execution had not been any easier on her sanity.
Ahead of her, the women had all formed something like a receiving line, and were going past thanking the one who had set them free. When Iris looked in his direction, she thoroughly expected Naxus.
But it wasn’t Naxus.
It was Archon. He was standing handsome as ever, wearing the most astonishing gold scale armor which gleamed more brightly than the sun she had not seen in a long time. He was there to take credit for his alleged act of mercy. He was there, perhaps, to look for her.
Iris pulled her cloak up over her head and kept her face bowed. She was indistinguishable among the stinking wretched women who emerged from the dungeon. Or at least, so she thought. They all passed by the king, bowing, scraping, crying their gratitude.
“Thank you, thank you so much! I will forever be in your debt!” Thalia wailed in front of Iris.
It occurred to Iris that she shouldn’t stay silent. Some noise should emerge from her, even if she didn’t mean the words, or even if the words weren’t the same as the others words.
“Oh thank you wonderful dick bag king whose fault this all is,” she gasped, putting emphasis on the nice words and muttering the not so nice ones under her breath. It gave her a certain satisfaction to defy Archon one more time.
A large, scaled hand closed around her arm. She was yanked from the line, roughly and with urgency. Her cry of horror was matched with the king’s roar of discovery as the other hand ripped the cloak from her head and displayed her to his gaze.
“You’re alive!”
“You're hurting me!” She growled right back.
“Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip ever so slightly. “I thought you were dead. I killed Naxus because he told me he had killed you.”
She stared at him, wondering if he expected her to be grateful for the fact he’d been a complete murdering bastard yet again. Killing people and things was Archon’s favorite past time.
“I… I uh… missed you,” he added, his tone incongruous with the rest of his bearing and the general kingliness of his existence. He sounded almost nervous, and definitely uncomfortable. The words did not come freely from his tongue, and there was an awkwardness in his stance. It would have been endearing, if he weren’t the bane of Iris’ existence, the male solely responsible for every ill which had befallen her.
Iris tried to pull her arm away, but failed. He wasn’t letting go of her. She wondered if he’d just gotten lustful again, but the logical part of her brain told her that a king like Archon could have spilled his seed in almost any willing hole in the universe. He wanted her for some reason. Her specifically.
“What do you want?”
“Did he hurt you?” Archon answered her question with one of his own.
“No more than you did.”
Archon gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw. “Did he touch you the way I did?”
“Nobody has ever touched me the way you did, Archon.”
Chapter 19
Archon could not blame her for her anger. He had treated her poorly, used her as entertainment and then left her to the merciless Naxus when he thought he had finished with her.
“You have suffered enough, and it is time you no longer had to mourn. Your village, the people who were in it - they are all alive and well. I did not kill them. I took them into the belly of my ship with transport beams and I moved them to another colony. They are all still very much alive and well.”
“I don't believe you.”
“You don’t need to. I can show you.”
“I don’t believe you because you’re evil. You killed everybody I loved, and you ravaged me. You made me a sexual spectacle. And then you abandoned me to be arrested and imprisoned. There is no way for you to make up for what you’ve done to me.”
Her eyes burned with rage, the same rage he’d felt such a connection to the moment he first laid eyes on her. This is what he loved about Iris. Her power. Her absolute refusal to submit, or to break. She was right. He had absolutely ravaged her in the most filthy and shameful of ways. He had put her on display and fucked her to the cries of a baying crowd. He didn’t deserve forgiveness, and he wasn’t asking for it.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I can make up for it. Maybe you’ll never forgive me. I don’t mind. I know what I want now. I want you. You’re mine. Whether you hate me or love me is your choice.”
The slightly ashamed and nervous male who wanted her approval had slipped away behind that magnetic blue gaze, leaving her with the bastard king she hated.
“I’m not going to thank you for ‘rescuing’ me,” she hissed. “It’s your fault this happened to me to begin with.”
“Speak to me with respect, wretch!”
“Why? I don’t respect you. I don’t fear you. You’ve done everything besides killing me, and I don’t care if you kill me, because I don’t believe my family are alive. I think you’ve killed them all, and I think you’ll kill me eventually.”
“You will be the death of me, human brat,” Archon growled, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her thoroughly. He wanted to silence her as much as he wanted to taste her.
The kiss was dirty and not entirely wanted, but she didn’t fight him as hard as he knew she was capable of doing. Perhaps some part of her really did want him. He would never know what her little human mind contained, but he knew how she felt, and he knew that when he kissed her, he felt complete.
He broke the kiss and stared lovingly down at the squirming human in his arms, who snarled at him more fiercely than ever.
“I still hate you, even if I like kissing you.”
“Like I said, you’re welcome to hate me. Most do.”
He said the words without any kind of self-pity. It was a mere statement of fact. The corollary to being a merciless maverick king was that you got used to being hated. Archon had spent his entire adult life doing awful things to those who were close to him. He had no family left,
much like Iris, though to be fair, it was his fault her family were missing.
It occurred to him he could make it up to her and prove that he did not lie by reuniting them. It was possible, though he had not planned on it. The place the others were was very distant from where they were now, and technically outside the realm of his control. He’d wanted to keep Iris on her world, or at least the same general realm. She belonged here. She was part of this place, the living embodiment of wild humanity. Taking her, showing her the rest of the universe, that would change her.
He thought he might live with her anger, bear the brunt of it to save the last of what she was. She might hate him, but at least she would remain herself. He could stand her loathing. He just couldn’t stand being without her.
So he changed the subject.
“Come. Get cleaned up. There are baths and food and clothes upstairs, all for you.”
She came with him, her hand reluctantly trapped in his. He was not going to let go. Her touch meant everything. The warmth of her flesh, so soft against his rough palm made all the pain he’d experienced in her absence better.
Iris bathed while he sat on the side of the tub, watching her. She cast him the occasional resentful look, but otherwise did not seem to object to his presence. He was surprised to discover that he enjoyed spending time with her, just looking at her, almost as much as he did fucking her.
It was tempting to pull her from the water and fuck her thoroughly, but he knew she was in far too foul a temper to find that in any way arousing - and for perhaps the first time in their relationship, he was considering what she found arousing.
"Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You’re changing me, human.”
“I doubt that. I really, really doubt that,” she replied, sinking down in the tub so that only her eyes and top of her head were visible above the ceramic rim. She had such dark eyes. He felt as though he could lose himself in those eyes. There was a very real possibility he already had.
“There is a wardrobe full of clothing in the next room,” he said. “I believe they belonged to one of Naxus’ mistresses. Find something you like.”
Iris rose from the bath, water streaming from her body, coursing over her shoulders and breasts, fresh rivulets emerging from her dark locks with every motion of her head.
“Dry me,” she said.
Archon lifted a brow. “Excuse me, human.”
“I’m wet,” she said. “How am I supposed to get dressed if I’m wet?”
When she put it that way, it almost sounded reasonable, but the way she’d spoken was not reasonable. It was imperious. Almost worth of a queen.
Torn between thrashing her for her insolence, and, well, thrashing her for her insolence, Archon moved toward her, prepared to turn her over his thigh and whip her ass with his palm and any other implement which came to hand. There was a brush with a very long handle which held intriguing possibility. She’d used it to scrub her back. He’d use it for something else entirely.
The closer he got, the smaller she seemed, and the larger the marks of her imprisonment loomed. Dark circles around her wrists and ankles, not to mention under her eyes made her look pitiful.
Archon tipped her head up, his massive hand gentle under her chin. “Watch your attitude,” he murmured gently. “I don’t want to hurt you this soon.”
“I need a towel,” she replied.
So much attitude in such a little package. He would be whipping it out of her for months and probably years to come.
“When we return to my ship, I’ll have Anna attend to you,” he told her. “In the meantime, I suppose I will be Anna. Get out of the bath and stand on the mat. Wait for me.”
Chapter 20
Iris waited, a light shiver passing over her body as the water started to evaporate from all the most tender parts of her. She knew she was pushing the king, but she had her reasons. She wanted to know why he had come back, what he really wanted with her. She wanted him to hurt her, so that she could prove to herself that he didn’t really care.
It would be beyond dangerous to fall in love with a creature like Archon. He might have been a king, but he was also a vicious, manipulative, rough creature. The last time she saw him, she was leaking his seed as she ran away from him after having made her a public spectacle.
That scene was so incongruous with the one she faced now, the king coming for her with a towel. He started to use it softly, showing an admirable understanding of the soft and tender parts of her body. This was an entirely different king. She looked at his face, wondering if it was actually someone different. But it was him. From the scales around his eyes, to those bright blue eyes which seared into her, he was unmistakably him.
“I can feel the questions inside you,” Archon said, running the towel gently over her skin, patting her breasts lightly. “Ask them.”
“I don’t have any questions for you,” she lied. “I loathe you.”
He looked at her calmly. “Let’s eat.”
The king put on a feast the likes of which Iris had dreamed about every day while incarcerated. There was bird and boar matched with ground roots all boiled and mashed up with the milk of goats. Iris ate a lot of it very quickly.
“Careful,” he cautioned. “Don’t make yourself sick.”
“You make me sick,” she countered with little concern, and even less gratitude.
Archon let out one of those low, dragon-ey growls which served as a warning that she was getting near his last nerve. Iris did not care. Her pain and her suffering could all be traced back to this king. If he hurt her more, it would simply be more of the same. If he wanted to prove that he was truly fond of her, then he could do that without her help.
“I came back for you,” Archon reminded her.
“You came back for your own selfish reasons.”
“Those two things are not mutually exclusive.”
She was full. Full of food, and more than over his bullshit. Whatever Archon had come back for, it wasn't her. At least, she couldn't believe it was. Not yet. He had a lot of making up to do. And he could start by giving her some answers.
“Where are they? My family, I mean.”
“New York city, 2020. On a planet called Earth.”
“Excuse me fucking what?”
“I didn’t just move them in space. I moved them in time.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means a king capable of commanding a flying metal dragon is capable of more than you have seen, or might imagine.”
Iris was curious. She still loathed Archon, but she had always been a creature of intellect and exploration.
“Show me.”
“You make commands as if you were the one who had the power. You just came out of a dungeon, and that did nothing to cow your arrogance, did it?”
“I can be in a dungeon, or in a castle, it doesn't change who I am. You’re the one who needs a crown to feel special.”
He gave her another one of those glowering looks, the ones which excited her all the way to her core. She realized that she had missed annoying him. It was a pleasure to see his scaled brows draw down over those blue eyes, and know that she was making an impact on him. She didn’t need a castle to feel special, but having the king hanging on her every word, that made her feel incredibly powerful.
“I will show you under one condition.”
“And what is that?”
“You will make an effort to be respectful enough that I don’t feel the need to whip you every two seconds. It is tempting to clear this table of its plates and cutlery, put you across it and make a meal of you.”
“Why don’t you.”
“Because you just came out of a dungeon and I’m still feeling somewhat guilty about that - though you are eroding that sense of guilt faster than is good for you.”
She smiled to herself behind a cup of tea.
“Maybe I’ll have a nap first, and then you can show me all the wonders of your kingly abilities.
”
Chapter 21
And so it was done as Iris decreed. Archon was not certain that he was doing anybody any favors by giving into the whims of his human, but there was no doubt that the balance of terrible things in their relationship was very much tilted against his favor.
He wanted her to like him. Archon had never cared if anybody liked him before, and he really did not like the way it made him behave. He had to think about her wishes and needs and then provide for them. It was a lot of work.
At least she was asleep now, clad in a silken gown and lying on the finest of sheets. She looked almost angelic, certainly far more innocent than she really was. He found her ruddy hair very appealing, copper tones over brown. It was as if sun was trying to burst out of her hair, but remained hidden behind that rich, earthy color.
Archon sat back in the chair beside the bed and tried to think if he had ever felt this way before. He had of course mated females before, none so roughly or punitively as he had fucked this scrap of humanity. He had been crueler to her than any other female, and yet he also had far softer feelings for her than anybody in existence.
One of her eyes flicked open. She was suddenly awake, that dark eye glaring at him with a sort of elemental annoyance. It was amazing how quickly she was transformed by the simple act of opening one eye. The angel was gone, replaced by the devil.
“Were you watching me sleep?”
“Keeping an eye on you to make sure you didn’t escape,” Archon replied. She couldn’t know how attached he had gotten to her. She already had far too much power as far as he was concerned - and she had almost none at all.
She sat up and frowned at him. “You could have tied me up if you were worried about that.”
“Ties don’t do much for you,” Archon growled. “You’re a slippery little thing. I don’t trust you out of my sight.”