Ruled: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance

by Cari Silverwood

  Chapter Seventeen

  Drake woke her by yanking off the sheets, straddling her, and sitting on her thighs. The mauleon was heavy but not using his full weight. The bed made weird noises from being squashed.

  She blinked up at him... he was naked and magnificent. She stretched and her hands touched the headboard behind her.

  “Morning, my princess.”

  “Good morning.”

  After the day touring the city, he’d permanently installed himself in her rooms, telling her the time for fighting had passed and the time for enjoying his princess was at hand.

  Princess still. Queen-to-be was not the same, apparently.

  He’d told her she was his princess forever. She’d only smiled and accepted it.

  “Keep your hands up there.” He pressed at her wrists to show her where—against the headboard. His fingers circled her wrists, stroking them, then he brought one hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers then placed it back where it had been.

  Mmm. She was very awake, now, and wriggled her butt.

  His dedication to arousing her would possibly get her off in her sleep.

  Keeping her hands above made her feel vulnerable and she watched with rising desire as he undid each cloth bow on her top. Her fingers twined and tangled with each other. Nervous, she wondered what he intended.

  Drake showed appreciation of her breasts by squeezing and shaping them with his hands, before he pulled down her black-and-gold pajama pants.

  The weather had cooled, and these pants were long, if sheer.

  He edged up her body, his massive thighs framing her, then wound the pants about her wrists, snugly knotted them together, before tying the trailing ends about the bed frame above.

  “Ah, trapped, my beautiful girl.” He ran his hands down her sides and leaned over to bite her breasts, centering bites on the nipples a few times, and tugging. It made her squeak. “Just how I want you.”

  He slid lower to between her legs, forcing her to part them or be squashed. A claw was drawn along her slit, then Drake wedged the claws of his other hand into her inner thigh beside her mound. The points dug in and she shivered.

  “I can do anything to you now and you can’t move.” His golden eyes narrowed with evil glee.

  “No?” As if to prove him wrong, she tried to squirm away. Not that she wanted to be free.

  A growl from his throat froze her. Fear hardened her nipples. Delicious fear.

  Drake wrapped his hands over her wrists and let his cock poke at her with just enough pressure to open her a little. She felt her lower lips part, his cock nudge again, and she sighed. It wasn’t enough.

  “Mmm.” Calli wriggled again, trying to make him enter her. “More. Please?”

  “In my own time, girl.” And he nipped her throat, her jaw, her nose, making her giggle. “Shhh.”

  A bite to the side of her neck had her shutting her eyes to feel the blossoming of sensation. She bucked, wormed about, groaning, but his hands anchored her hips and ass to the sheets.

  His cock shoved in, impaling her.

  Poised inside her, he commanded quietly, “Open your eyes.”

  She fluttered them open and found him staring down at her with an intensity only he could master. She was the center of his universe.

  “Soon there’s to be a mauleon meeting of our Highest, in honor of our union. I will be collaring you for the night and leashing you.” He cocked a brow at her, daring her to protest. Claws ran delicately along the base of her neck—marking where the collar would go.

  “Oh?” Her pussy clenched onto his cock, and she inhaled through her nose, struggling to seem unconcerned.

  She’d heard of such events, had never imagined she might be at the center of one.

  She should be saying no but he had her in thrall, especially with that cock pushing in. The size of it never failed to jar her.

  His teeth showed. “I will mate you while the others watch. Ten of the highest mauleons. It’s our way, Princess.”

  “Fuck, no.” She finally managed to exhale, then pulled in another shuddery breath.

  He shoved in and took her throat in his hand. “You don’t want to be mated by me? Say so and I get to punish you. Maybe paddle you. I would like that.”

  He circled her nipple, around and around went his claw, and she gasped. “I’d like it... too.”

  “Of course you would—because you’re mine, and you like some pain. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” He slid out then in, smacked in hard, messing with her thoughts.

  Calli brought her legs higher, to let him go deeper if he wished to. Her legs trembled. She went to grab him to hasten his response but was jerked to a halt by the ties on her hands.

  Drake smiled and thrust, harder, faster, making the mattress bounce.

  “Like? Not like?” he said huskily, putting his head down, taking her earlobe in his teeth, and giving short body-rocking jabs, impaling her relentlessly.

  Hard, fucking her hard.

  “Like. Oh fuck. I like a lot!”

  He pressed her thighs upward until her feet threatened to hit the wall behind.

  “Good. They will watch and verify our union.”

  He fucked more shuddering moans from her, rammed in and stopped. She’d heard the sound of her wetness as he took up every inch of space inside that his cock possibly could.

  “Gods, this pussy, I love seeing my cock sticking out of you. Merged. One. I’m in you, Princess.”

  With each new thrust she grunted.

  She’d been turned into a packaged woman by his bonds and how he’d pushed her legs over her head.

  When he paused and pulled out, then slowly pressed his cock to her other hole, she thought once more to protest, but already he was pushing in.

  At the sting of pain, she grabbed the headboard and tried to shrink away. This might be more than she could take.

  “Be still. I’m going slow. The torm helps with this too.” Drake watched her face as he inched in, slow as syrup, invading past the resistance of that ring of muscle.

  Her mouth opened wide, wider, as if that could help her. The pain ebbed and flowed, fading into a most unusual pleasure as she relaxed, a pleasure that seemed to spread to her pussy. Her eyelids lowered and she sighed when he stopped and let her adjust.

  Panting, she looked inward, feeling where his cock impaled her. The throb of her around him.

  Yes, she liked it, liked it far too much. The pulse of him in her there, of his thick cock, it had never been her fantasy. It was now.

  Drake fucking her ass said dominance and it said bad—bad her, bad mauleon, and it twisted her desires, twisted her. It called to her in ways she barely fathomed.

  “Still like?”

  “It’s wrong.” She shivered. “It’s wrong but feels... good.”

  “Hmmm. Keep your legs up.” His voice was strained. Eyes half-lidded, Drake pulled aside her ass cheek with his claws, exposing her. He groaned at the sight then screwed himself in a minuscule amount more. “Girl ...” He grunted, swore.

  She twisted her hands in the bonds. Lust frissoned along nerves, making her shake and whine. Bits of her were probably fucking obliterated in the firestorm of whatever happened whenever his cock... shoved... deeper.

  “I might fuck you here, properly, on that day.” His grin was adamant.

  In public, collared and leashed? It scared her and fascinated her. No man would dare this, not with her.

  Except this one. Drake was mauleon, and she had come to see he was hers as much as she was his.

  She wanted to see his hand on her, ordering her down, while he collared her.

  Hot and taboo.

  He slid from her, making her flinch as his cock was extracted. As he wormed down the bed, she lowered her legs. He put his mouth to her pussy and dedicated himself to her there.

  Fingers, slippery pressing fingers. Claws and tongue. The sharpness of almost-pain. Wet pleasure that rose and rose, centered on her clit.

  A climax burst u
pon her.

  Jerking at his mouth, she came endlessly, or so it seemed until at last she collapsed, panting, her muscles limp. A few hazy seconds later he was on her and fucking her ass again. Unable to do more than groan, tied up and blissed out, she succumbed to the awesomeness of post-climax fucking.

  Claws cradling her butt, Drake snarled and shoved into her, and came inside her ass. Much of his cum seemed to end up on the sheets beneath her.

  Mauleons had their ways, yes.

  While he untied her, she decided she loved those ways... most of them. Being collared and leashed called to her in a filthy taboo way it never would have, a million years ago, when her brothers ruled. However, sex in public seemed a claw too far.

  But could she convince him otherwise?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Drake announced he was taking her to see the site where her brothers had died. Was that okay, because he had things to show her? After thinking through the dark memories she’d pretty much buried, she’d nodded.

  Yes, she would go. It would not be easy. She may not have wholeheartedly loved her brothers, but they had been family.

  Family meant a lot.

  “I’ll wait for you in the underground garage. I have to check on a few things.”

  Drake went ahead of her, down the grand stairs beyond her entry doors, while she did a last-minute check of clothes and hair, then applied a smidgen of makeup. This wasn’t an official occasion, so she wore black leggings, a long-sleeved shirt beneath a black corset, and plain shoes. In a way, this would be a last way to say goodbye to her brothers.

  Walking along the hallway to the white doors, she spotted an envelope on the hallway shelving, tucked beneath a book she’d been reading. It was addressed to her. Queen-to-be Calliope Dywin.

  It was always jarring to see herself addressed that way.

  She tore it open and glanced at the royal header, prepared to skim the contents because it was unlikely to be important. Drake hadn’t read this because he respected her right to some privacy. Even if he was otherwise most disrespectful and outright dirty.

  She smiled, then realized what she was reading. It was written in a shaky hand.

  For your eyes only, my sister.

  I am alive, if barely. Badly injured. My right hand does not work.

  Do not tell Drake. Please.

  I will contact you again when I am in better health.

  You will not find me.

  If you doubt this is me, remember when you let me into your rooms to escape from Letitia and I made you swear never to tell? It’s me.

  Burn this or destroy it somehow.

  Roarke Dywin.

  What to do with this? She clutched it to her then shoved it into a drawer among a mess of old cards. Drake was waiting.

  She hurried out and was accompanied down the stairs to the underground garage by four palace guards. Drake greeted her with a smile and a hug, and opened the door to the coach for her, brushing off the guard’s attempt to do so.

  As they drove into the sunlight, she was racked by a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts.

  Don’t tell Drake?

  Don’t?

  How could she not?

  Because he might have Roarke killed.

  She shut those thoughts down using a technique taught for battle, to quieten worries until a more appropriate time. Mister Fenton had been unusual. Battle was the least likely event, ever, to her mind. She was royalty, not a soldier.

  At least two hundred armed men joined the coach as they left the city, heading for what she knew had been the site of a potential factory.

  Her brothers had aimed to thwart the Overwatch sats by building an underground factory.

  Whatever had gone wrong that day, the factory site was now a hole in the ground.

  “Why so many men?” she asked Drake.

  He’d dressed in his own version of funereal garb. It made him look edible. Black pants, boots, shirt, along with dark glasses, a pistol, and a long sword with a hilt embellished with writhing fanged creatures. He was dark, handsome, and brutal—a combination she’d never tire of.

  “There’ve been ambushes of patrols. Small ones and not in this area but I’m not taking chances. I could have just told you about this but thought you’d like to see where your brothers died and hear how it seems to have happened.”

  He wrapped his arm across her shoulders and drew her to his side.

  “Yes. I do want that.” She smiled weakly up at him, then wrapped her fingers through his larger ones, eyeing their hands. How good they looked together.

  And here was she with this secret.

  It could wait.

  Roarke was not going to spring from the underbrush.

  The factory site was at the base of a green-topped hill. Trees swayed against the skyline and birds flitted about. If not for the toxins causing fertility problems and mutations this planet was close to perfect.

  She walked with Drake to an entryway cut into the earth. Though now collapsed, she could see it angled downward sharply.

  “Here.” Drake gestured for her to instead climb a small slope. He held her hand as they negotiated the irregular ground. Ahead was a gaping crevasse, with soil and torn metal framework lying on the rubble leading into the hole.

  Stairs had been cut into the earth and a ladder led the rest of the way to the floor.

  She descended the ladder with Drake below, watching her now and then with a concerned look on his face, as if she was unable to use a ladder. It made her want to shake her head and eye-roll at him, but he’d likely spank her. She seriously did not want to prod him into doing that, not in public.

  In private? She smiled to herself; maybe.

  Here and there, lamps hung from stands. Mauve tiles covered the partially shattered floor, and tables had once been set up in rows. The snapped-off legs screwed to the floor told her this, and the chunks of timber embedded in walls and earth. Large beams had been cracked and flung aside. If there’d been machinery, it was now only twisted wreckage.

  “There were other rooms,” Drake said, nodding toward the edges. “Blasted away by the bomb explosion.”

  The official report had claimed an Overwatch sat had targeted the site because it detected the heavy machinery. The whole point of this factory being underground had been to avoid Overwatch noticing the large machines.

  “Bomb?” She could smell chemicals, maybe smoke. “Not a sat laser or missile?”

  “No. Our experts, both human and mauleon, have told me a laser leaves less mess. No flinging about of debris for one. More melted material. While an Overwatch missile would make a far bigger hole and throw debris much, much further. This was an assassination from a bomb.”

  It was not a great surprise, not after the hints he’d dropped before this. “I see. Do you know who? General Vass, maybe?”

  “Perhaps. There’s nothing that points to anyone, but I’ve told them to keep investigating.”

  They’d died here. Whatever gory mess had been left, it was gone. She frowned and swallowed, looking about while trying to keep down her last meal.

  “The bodies I saw were not intact.” Her mouth twisted as she recalled having to identify her brothers. There’d been no face on one. Roarke. It made the letter plausible. The funeral staff had somehow recreated his face for the public funerals. “Are they sure who died?”

  Drake nodded. “Yes. I was told so. Why?”

  “Just that it was horrible, seeing them. It’s something that seems impossible even now. That they died.” He took her hand and pulled her into his chest, held her while she looked out over his arm at the room. “Keep looking, please. I want to know who did this. I have to know.”

  “Of course.” He kissed the top of her head. “I know. It’s being done.”

  Of course the list of who would profit was short.

  There were others who might have tried it simply due to hate. Those... seemed less likely to have succeeded in such a momentous task. Bombs that did this were not simple t
o make anymore. Two hundred years ago, yes, but not now.

  The big people with power remained.

  General Vass, commander of the army.

  Sec-Force General Aegis.

  Maybe even her palace guard commander, who she’d not met in many months.

  The last one on her list was Drake.

  She could never believe that.

  And still she could not tell him about the letter. It felt like a betrayal.

  * * *

  No more letters were left, and she had to wonder how the first had been smuggled in. By someone with access to her and Drake’s rooms, clearly. She’d burned the paper, as instructed.

  What if it wasn’t her brother? But it had to be. No one else knew of that incident.

  What if he recovered and returned?

  It was too much to unravel when all she had was one note.

  She began to read her father’s earliest memoirs, hoping to learn something new about her family, or perhaps she wished subconsciously to drown herself in history because the present was overwhelming. Most days the niggle of her betrayal bothered her—several times a day really.

  They were supposed to trust each other, and she did but...

  But this was her brother. Telling Drake might get her brother killed.

  Her brother might’ve changed for the better? Yes, he’d been terrible before, he’d had people murdered, but now he might have changed. Also now, he was the weaker one.

  What if he planned some new treachery? He was surely powerless, though? Surely? He was injured and in hiding.

  Not telling Drake could get him hurt if she was wrong.

  What if the note writer was not Roarke? And again, it had to be.

  She’d promised not to lie by evasion.

  She was a bad person. A disgusting person. How could she do this?

  This was when she first understood how irrevocably Drake had wormed into her psyche and maybe... her heart.

  What she was doing was a lie by default, and it was eating her up from the inside.

  She found a strange man at her entrance one morning. Someone had knocked. The guards had called out a visitor announcement. Drake was away dealing with some kingdom matter.