“Why else would you call me Sir? And how else will you know what others feel when they bow at the foot of your throne?” he said. “A queen must do things for the greater good, not only for herself. Let this be a lesson on how to serve.”
I nodded. It was just a blowjob. Nothing to get worked up about.
“Good,” Sir Kenosi said. “Now let’s put something in that big mouth of yours.”
He released my head, a gloating smile on his face as he leaned back and waited. I unzipped his fly, a little lurch going through my belly as I slid my hand inside and felt the heat of his stiff shaft. I undid the button on his pants and drew them down, hating the way my fingers shook. His cock stood up in front of me, gloriously long and brown and flawless. My heart picked up speed and heat pooled between my legs at the sight of it.
My brain knew I was being ridiculous, that I should be stronger than this. But my body wanted to push him back on the bed and sink that perfect monument of male sexuality deep inside me.
Get a grip, Itzel.
I leaned forward, wrapping my hand around his shaft and pressing my lips to the head of his cock. It was soft as velvet, smooth and delicate, so unlike the cruel man who possessed it. My mouth watered for more, thirsty to possess it for myself.
“Come on, Princess,” Kenosi said. “Wrap those pretty lips around my cock and suck it.”
I ran my hand to the base, marveling at his smooth skin and iron hardness. I couldn’t seem to let him go. His musky, spicy scent intoxicated me until all I could think about was burying his cock in my mouth and drinking every drop of cum from it.
I opened my lips, my tongue skimming over the head, drawing a low breath from him. I opened my lips further, sliding him in. I’d just give it a couple quick sucks, just a taste, and then tell him to go fuck himself, I wasn’t his slave. Leave him high and dry to serve him right for what he’d done to me.
A drop of saltiness spread over the back of my tongue, and I let out a low moan, nearly melting at the sensation of his soft skin against the inside of my mouth, sliding between my lips, the taste and smell of him invading me. I rose up on my knees, taking him deeper, all the way into my throat. My throat tightened and tears blurred my eyes, but Kenosi cradled my head, pushing deeper.
“Come on, Princess, deepthroat me.”
I fought back a gag as he pumped into the back of my throat, tears trickling down my cheeks with the effort of forcing back the reflex. Salty drops slid down my throat, and I gripped his shaft, my mouth suctioned around his head as I cradled his balls with my free hand. He moved faster, murmuring words of encouragement as I slurped at his cock, saliva trickling down my chin with each thrust.
“Good girl,” he said, his breath coming faster as he continued pumping my head up and down. “I’m gonna come.”
I started to pull back, but he buried his hands in my hair and drove his hips forward, pushing past my gag reflex, cum spurting into my throat. I swallowed reflexively, barely able to breathe. Cum flooded my mouth again, trickling out the corner of my lips and dribbling onto my cleavage as his cock expanded a final time, filling my mouth with thick, slippery fluid.
At last, Kenosi released me, and I fell back, gasping for breath. “Asshole,” I said, choking out the word and wiping the tears off my cheeks.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t drinking that shit up like a milkshake,” he said, grabbing my hair and pulling me back up. “Now, you’ve got some clean-up to do. I told you to swallow.”
“Fuck you,” I said, trying to pull away. “I did.”
Kenosi pressed me back so I couldn’t rise from my knees. “You can get off your knees when you’ve licked up every drop, you little slut.”
I struggled against his grip, but my scalp burned with pain from his tight hold. At last, I leaned forward, humiliation burning through me as I began to lick drops of cum from his cock, balls, and thighs. When I’d finished, I was burning with a rage like I’d never felt, not even when my father killed Tadeu. That had been tinged with shock and unbelievable pain. This was pure, murderous hate.
Kenosi hooked his hands under my arms and pulled me to my feet. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No,” I said. “It was pathetically soft and small.” I knew I was grasping at straws, delivering the hits of a desperate woman who has lost every shred of her dignity and has nothing left with which to hit back.
Kenosi chuckled. “A good queen knows when to submit to the demands of bigger, stronger nations,” he said, stroking my cheek with something close to tenderness. “And a smart woman knows when to obey.”
“Then I guess I’m not too smart.”
“You’ll learn,” he said. “If you want to see your friends. If you want to take the throne. That’s what your Amulet Tour is for. For you to practice facing the challenges you’ll face as queen, maybe not in this exact way, but they’ll come in handy one day. You’ll see.”
I bit back my rage, waiting for him to leave so I could plot a gruesome death for him. Kenosi leaned in like he might kiss me, but I jerked my face away. No fucking way was he getting that from me. There had to be something I could keep for myself.
He chuckled again, releasing me this time and stepping back to pull up his pants. “Very well, Your Majesty,” he said. “You’ve passed a test at last.”
“Does that mean I get the amulet?” I asked.
“Don’t be greedy,” he said. “You’ve paid off one of your debts. Consider your dinner paid for.”
“That only paid for a few measly bites of quail?”
“Let that be another lesson,” he said with a grin. “Never let yourself be in anyone’s debt. They always get to name the price.”
“So, let’s take care of the rest. What do you want now?”
“I’ll fuck your pussy later,” he said. “I want to savor the memory of your mouth a little longer.”
“Let me out of here,” I growled. “I’ll tell your king what sick things you’re doing here.”
“Go right ahead,” Sir Kenosi said, his eyes dancing with amusement. “I can’t wait to hear what he says about it.”
“Because you know he won’t actually do anything about it?” I demanded, my fisted hands squeezing so tightly they hurt.
I was so mad I could barely see straight, but Kenosi only gave a mock bow and stepped into the elevator. “You’re getting smarter already,” he said. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings, my princess.”
With that, the door swished closed, leaving me alone in the luxury suite lingering on the threat of more tests to come.
Seventeen
Lord Balam
Curandero, Jaguar Nation
As the oracle’s vision faded, I sat still, waiting for the sting of the magic to sink back through my skin and join my body. My jaguar skin slipped off my arms, and the tattoos that covered my body found their places once more.
I had been marked with them when I was not much more than a boy, but I didn’t regret the pain for even a moment. The oracle’s visions were as much a part of me as my jaguar. I was equally man, beast, and curandero.
That didn’t mean I always liked what they oracle had to say. I didn’t have to interpret this vision for long, because it had the same message it had given me many times now. Or nearly the same. There was some added weight this time.
I stood and made my way out of the room Sir Kenosi had afforded us for our stay. The moment I stepped out, Shadow scrambled up from where he’d sagged against the wall, his head hung in defeat.
“What did it say?” he asked, his growling voice contrasting with his youthful face. The boy couldn’t have grown a whisker if he tried.
I shook my head. “It told me not to interfere.”
“Bullshit,” he barked.
“Would you like to ask yourself?”
“No,” he said, scowling. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t believe you. We can’t just lay around here and do nothing. I know she’s in trouble. I can feel it.”
His eyes flashed that dangerous shade o
f green, and I clasped his shoulder. “Calm yourself,” I said. “Getting worked up isn’t going to do her any good. You’re lucky Gabor saved your ass last time.”
Shadow drew back and narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Gabor told them you were trying to stop him from attacking those guards,” I said. “Why do you think you’re here instead of working your ass off in the broiling sun with him?”
“He told you that?”
I shrugged. “No. One of the cheetahs who hauled him off to jail told me.”
Shadow gave me a calculating look, like he wasn’t sure if he could believe me. The young panther had some trust issues to work through.
“Why would he do that?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t want to let you die.”
“Why would an ocelot royal guard care if a panther died? They killed most of my clan.”
“You’d have to ask him,” I said. “My guess? He knows how much Princess Itzel cares about you. Don’t ask me why.”
Shadow’s eyes grew serious, but he didn’t answer.
“Be grateful she does,” I told him. “If Gabor hadn’t taken the fall for you, they’d have killed you instead of letting you rest and recover in the clinic.”
If only Itzel had an animal inside to heal her when she needed it, we’d have her back as quickly as Shadow. Having a human around—especially one we were all determined to protect—was a liability and a burden. But not one of us was backing down from the challenge.
“I have to find her,” Shadow said, turning away.
I grabbed his shoulder. “The oracle told me to trust her,” I said. “She may be human, but she’s far from helpless, Shadow.”
“I know that,” he snapped, his back tensing under my grip.
“Our job isn’t to run in there and rescue her, if we could even find out where she is,” I said. “She might not even want us to. She’s working her own magic, getting the amulet like she wants. If we fuck that up…”
The panther hesitated, still facing away from me, toward the elevator at the end of the hall. “You don’t think she wants us to find her?”
“I trust the oracle,” I said. “And I trust her.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. I could feel the turmoil inside the young panther, and my heart went out to him. I remembered the impetuous man I had been at his age.
“You really think she cares about me?” Shadow asked quietly, his back still turned to me.
“Yes,” I answered truthfully. “So be worthy of it.”
After a moment, he nodded. “I didn’t know Gabor did that,” he said. “I should be out there with him. What’s he doing?”
“Helping build a house for the son of the cheetah guard he killed.”
Shadow bowed his head and looked at his hands, his long hair falling over his face. “I killed that man.”
“Trust me when I tell you that Gabor has killed plenty of men,” I said. “I don’t think he minds doing some penance. If he wasn’t with the royal party, his punishment would probably be a lot less lenient.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Shadow said. “I can’t let another man serve for my crime.”
With that, he took off down the hall, not to find our princess, but to do his duty. Somewhere in there, inside that feral shifter, was a good man. If Itzel could forgive him, then I wouldn’t hold what he’d done against him, either. As much as I would have liked to claim Itzel for my own, I knew it wasn’t in the cards.
She was important, though I didn’t yet know exactly how or why. I only knew that I would take what I could get for now, and that I’d remember it as long as I lived. And I knew that I had to protect her, but that I couldn’t get in the way of fate. The Amulet Tour was a sacred tradition, and even without the oracle, I knew not to step in and interfere with another nation’s quest to gain them.
I’d told Shadow the truth about my reading, but not the whole truth. I hadn’t told him about all the other times the oracle had said the same thing. That it had also told me not to interfere with him and Itzel. If it wasn’t for that, I’d have murdered the son of a bitch for hurting her the way he had. But I knew I couldn’t let my passions rule me. The oracle was wiser than any man. And so, I obeyed.
Now the bastard was growing on me. Shadow’s concern for Itzel was clear as the tattoos on my skin. He cared about her and would do anything to protect her. I had to respect him for that, even if he was far too impulsive, and he let those impulses rule him.
I’d told him that the oracle had instructed me to trust Itzel here in the Cheetah Nation. She knew what she was doing. But I hadn’t told him that the warnings were getting stronger. That this time, the oracle hadn’t just told me that I shouldn’t interfere. When I asked about what to expect in the Lion Nation, it had told me that if we interfered, we would all die.
Eighteen
Itzel
Princess, Ocelot Nation
I barely slept, my stomach waking me with demands for food almost hourly. By the time the sun rose in the morning, my legs shook with weakness, and I could barely make my way to the bathroom. I swallowed as much water as I could hold and hoped this day’s test would include an eating contest.
July came knocking soon after I got out of the shower. She pushed her little cart out of the elevator, calling a cheerful good morning.
“Did you bring food?” I asked, eyeing the assortment of bandages, blood pressure monitors, and other medical supplies. At this point, I would have been happy with some IV fluids.
“No, silly,” July said with a giggle, rolling the cart to a stop beside the bed. “I’m here to check your shoulder.”
I slumped down in defeat, letting her pull up the bandage to check my stitches.
“Are you a cheetah?” I asked as she examined the wound. Even in my weakened state, maybe I could hold her at knife point if she was human.
“Everyone here is a shifter,” she said, dashing my hopes. “This is the Cheetah Nation.”
“Right,” I said. “Sir Kenosi wouldn’t associate with mere humans.”
“No,” she said slowly, pulling back to give me a strange look. “Humans don’t associate with us.”
“Ah,” I said. “I heard that cheetahs aren’t on good terms with their human neighbors.”
“We could just conquer them by force, like your people,” she said. “But our king is a peaceful, gentle soul. He prefers to let the humans come to terms with our existence in their own time.”
According to the history I’d learned from tutors back home, when shifters “came out” to humans, cheetah’s had been segregated, sometimes forced to leave their own property behind and live in horrible conditions. Their king refused to fight back or even resist, and humans refused to acknowledge or interact with them at all. Only through dealings with other Feline Nations was a young businessman named Kenosi able to amass some wealth. He bought land in rural areas and an entire city block where cheetahs could live and work, much to the annoyance of the human population. Instead of catering to humans and trying to appease them, he had developed apps and websites for supernaturals only, and he’d made a fortune doing it.
That was the textbook version of their history. The real version seemed much more complicated. I could see now why the people chose to worship Kenosi’s celebrity rather than their pushover king, but it wasn’t quite the comfortable living situation history had taught. For one, the women seemed to pull double duty as nurses, doctors, and maids by day and sex slaves by night. The men were guards, cooks, and servers, but if Sir Kenosi was keeping all the women to himself, they must be miserable despite their “comfortable” living.
“Are you happy here?” I asked, not expecting a real answer.
“Oh, of course,” July said. “I love my king and our nation very much.”
“And Kenosi?”
“He’s the best,” July said with a sigh, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my arm.
“You don’t mind shar
ing him with all these other girls?”
“Oh, no,” she said, pumping the cuff tighter. “If he was my True Mate, I would. But if we were True Mates, he wouldn’t have other lovers to begin with.”
“Where’s his True Mate?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe he doesn’t have one. Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she hasn’t been born yet. Most people never find one. It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun while you’re here.” She gave me a wink and pulled off the cuff. “You’re all set, Princess.”
“This is fun for you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding vigorously. “It’s so nice to have a safe place, a good job, food… Not to mention a gorgeous man to meet our more primal needs.”
“For one month out of the year,” I said. “What about the rest of the time?”
“There are guards, landscapers, cooks, and other men here. Then there are visitors from the other Feline Nations.” She gave me a sly smile and winked. “If it wasn’t my month, I’d be satisfying myself with your guard.”
A protective flare rose inside me at the thought, and I was glad that it was her month with Kenosi so she wasn’t coming onto Gabor. Not that I could see Gabor caving to desires for the flesh with a random girl, but what did I know? Even if he felt nothing for me, hearing someone have sex all the time had to make anyone need some relief of their own.
“What if you find your True Mate?” I asked. “Isn’t that what the amulet does?”
“A lot of cheetahs were killed when we came out to humans,” she said. “There aren’t a lot left to choose from. On the rare occasion someone finds a True Mate, she leaves Kenosi’s bed to be with her True Mate. But in the meantime, he keeps us safe and satisfied. When he found me, I was hiding in a slum, turning tricks for humans with shifter fetishes. If they decided not to pay me, I couldn’t eat. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I was working for myself, with no protection. If I complained to a John who didn’t pay, he could turn me in. If I went to the police myself, they’d figure out why people were ripping me off. They would have thrown me in prison or put me in one of the relocation programs where the human guards did whatever they wanted to the women, and the women never got paid.”
Captive Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 2) Page 9