by Ann Jacobs
Perfect Master
Ann Jacobs
Book 5 in the Pleasure Partners series.
Crown Prince Arik needs a consort to breed his sons but is afraid no woman will have him voluntarily once she sees his scars. He will meet his bride for the first time at their public mating, with Arik covered from head to toe in black leather—except for the bare essentials.
Emerald is alarmed yet highly aroused as the palace eunuchs fondle and stimulate her in preparation for Arik’s mating. But afterward, he pulls from her body, escorts her to his tower and leaves her alone.
Emerald once saw her prince from a distance and admired his beautiful form. Confused by Arik’s behavior, she insists she has the right to see her mate and he reluctantly accedes to her demand. Arik is afraid for the first time in his life and filled with regret that he refused the help of the cyborg maker. Their future rests on this fateful revelation.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Perfect Master
ISBN 9781419932502
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Perfect Master Copyright © 2011 Ann Jacobs
Edited by Pamela Campbell
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book publication August 2011
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Perfect Master
Ann Jacobs
Prologue
“Work your magic on my son, cyborg maker, and I will see you well rewarded.” Gawain, Obsidion’s ruler, stared down from the Diamond Throne at his subject, Pak Song, the galaxy’s most renowned master of bionic and robotic engineering.
Pak Song bowed to his king then met the old man’s tortured gaze. “Cannot fix man who refuses to allow it, sire.”
Gawain’s left eyebrow rose. “Not even on the order of your king?”
“With all due respect, sire, no. If patient is unwilling, results are likely not what you’d like to see. Man’s state of mind has much to do with how well he heals.”
Not even the direst threats or most outrageous promises of reward could sway Pak Song. Once the cyborg maker backed away from the Diamond Throne, King Gawain slumped forward, the weight of his crown suddenly more than he could bear.
When Gawain thought of his beautiful second son as he was now, so damaged he would only venture from his tower swathed in leather from head to toe, the primitive hook that replaced one hand sparkling silver against the all-encompassing black suit and hood, guilt and regret practically prostrated him.
Arik was a monster. And Gawain had caused him to be so. He choked back a sob, but not before it drew the attention of his assembled courtiers. Quickly he reclaimed his composure and reminded himself that none of this could be helped.
His memory took him back twelve years, when he’d lain in bed, assured by the idiot doctors that he was about to die. He’d had no choice but to ensure the succession of his eldest son by ordering that Arik and his royal cousins be castrated according to the law, or by hiring mercenaries to find and kill Arik once he’d fled from Obsidion to avoid the surgeon’s laser knife.
Thank the gods that his hirelings had failed in their duty to commit murder, and that his emissaries had been able to find Arik after Tabor’s death and bring him home, sexually whole but horribly maimed.
Thank the gods Arik fled before… Gawain let his gaze rest on the four royal eunuchs, his dead brother’s sons who served him now as servants. Thank the gods Arik is not like them.
Gawain realized no woman would willingly take Arik as her mate, not with the scars he refused to allow the surgeons to mitigate. The royal line would die with him, unless… “Summon the matchmaker,” he shouted to his chief of staff.
* * * * *
“The lady Meredith, sire,” one of the royal eunuchs announced an hour later as he prostrated himself on the floor in front of Gawain.
Behind him stood Obsidion’s matchmaker, garbed in rich black velvet, her eyes wide at the pageantry of the royal court. She inclined her head, her manner more one of respect than obeisance. “How may I serve you, your majesty?”
Can I do it? Could he sentence an innocent woman to look on Arik and his grievous scars every day for the rest of her life? There was no question in Gawain’s mind. Someday Arik would be king, and a king required a consort. Heirs. He cleared his throat. “You will make a match for Crown Prince Arik.”
Shock was evident on the matchmaker’s attractive, unlined face. “Yes, sire. But might I ask why the prince wouldn’t prefer to choose a princess for himself?”
“Arik is…shy.” Would that this were true.
Meredith hesitated a moment then nodded. “I believe I can find a proper match for such a prize as your son. Tell me, what sort of woman does your son desire?”
One who is blind to his scars. Gawain held back that thought. Better that the matchmaker not know about those, even in the abstract. “A beauty, with the bearing of a princess. Intelligent. A woman with uncommon tact and an ability to inspire the love of her subjects.”
“What dowry do you expect?” Meredith’s shrewd look reminded Gawain her business was matchmaking and that she was successful enough at it to command high prices from her customers.
“The dowry is unimportant. My concern is to see my son settled and, with the gods’ blessing, to see my first grandsons.”
Chapter One
“You’ve arranged a marriage for me with one of Eli the jeweler’s beautiful daughters? I’d sooner take a whore from one of the sex slave markets on the Street of Pleasure.” Arik, newly named Crown Prince of Obsidion, clenched the fist on his remaining hand and shoved his right arm with its vicious-looking hook practically into his father’s face. “A sexbot would be an even better choice.”
King Gawain shuddered, obviously pained to have to look upon the ravagement he had caused. “You cannot mean that, my son.”
Arik took pleasure in the way his father cringed when he had to look into Arik’s remaining eye. It gave him fiendish pleasure when the old man quickly looked away and focused his gaze on the priceless carpet at his feet. “At least a whore would close her eyes and give me my money’s worth. And I would walk away satisfied, with no obligation to provide her pleasure in return. A bot would care nothing about anything, even this sight that makes you look away.” Arik lifted his hand and touched the empty eye socket and a mass of scars tha
t crisscrossed that side of his face and neck.
The king’s eyes dimmed when he glanced up Arik’s body, his gaze settling this time on the hideously scarred surface of his son’s cheek. “The one named Emerald will not dare reject you.”
Arik curled his lip in disgust. “So you’ve bought me a princess with Obsidion’s gold. Do you think that will buy my forgiveness for you having sent a horde of mercenaries to chase me through the galaxy and destroy me?”
“There can be but one heir to the Diamond Throne. Tradition dictates that its heir be my eldest son.” The king’s expression softened. “The palace physicians told me I was dying. After you fled to avoid being made a royal eunuch along with your cousins, I ordered your death to prevent the battle that would have been inevitable between you and Tabor if both of you were alive and whole at the moment of my death. The gods must have foreseen that I would recover and that Tabor would fall in battle, to have looked over you and nursed you back from what must have been certain death. I am grateful I still have a son to continue Obsidion’s rule.”
“A son for whom you must buy a consort since your thugs failed to kill me.” Arik pondered the irony of it all as he limped across his tower chamber, the translucent robe that indicated his princely station flapping against his legs. “If you had left me to live my life peacefully in exile rather than hiring mercenaries to kill me, you would not now find yourself with an heir no woman will willingly take to her bed.”
“I did not buy a woman for you, though I would gladly have done so had it been necessary. Meredith the matchmaker brought me much gold from Eli. Apparently his spoiled eldest daughter insists she must have a prince for her mate.”
“I take it I was the only prince in Meredith’s inventory of possible mates for Obsidion’s sheltered beauties.” Arik made no effort to disguise his sarcasm as he looked out toward the twinkling, multicolored lights from businesses on the Street of Pleasure.
The king followed Arik. As though almost afraid to touch him, he reached out and laid a hand on Arik’s damaged shoulder. His gaze fastened on the scarred arm and the hook Arik now used after losing his hand and the lower part of his forearm on Eastphalia, where more modern prostheses weren’t available. He realized that while the device functioned reasonably well, it looked more beastly than human.
As beastly as his scarred face and missing eye, more so than the scars that ravaged his body. Wearing the hook gave Arik a perverse sense of satisfaction, every time he saw the regret and horror reflected in his father’s eyes. No way would he allow the king to salve his conscience by submitting to the lengthy plastic surgery the surgeons had proposed to restore his appearance, even though the old cyborg maker had tempted him with promises of functional prostheses for some of his missing parts. “The hook unnerves you, doesn’t it, Father?”
His expression stoic, King Gawain met Arik’s gaze. “I admit it does. It looks as though it might become a lethal weapon.”
“I promise not to use it to maim you as your hirelings maimed me. But I will not submit to the knife to make it easier for you to look upon me.”
Arik watched a tear slide down his father’s cheek. “Perhaps you will do it for the fair Emerald, if not for me or your future subjects. You mentioned being the only prince in Meredith’s inventory. You may be right about that. It is of no importance, however, for you are to mate with Emerald tomorrow. I pray to all the gods that she will soften your heart.”
It served his father right, having to see the results of his actions each day. Perhaps someday he would believe his father’s suffering had accumulated sufficiently to compensate him for all he’d lost. But it hadn’t yet.
The king cleared his throat as he stood by the door, ready to escape. “Your bride has been certified fertile, and I cannot doubt her beauty will stir your loins. I expect she will produce you an heir some ten moons hence. Now I bid you good night.”
“Good night.” And good riddance, Arik thought when he heard the tower door close with a satisfying thud.
He wished he were as certain as his father that his bride would do her duty, not run screaming when she saw him in the concealing garments he wore whenever he had to venture from these rooms. He figured he would chance that, though, over the near certainty that seeing him naked would make her scream in horror. As forbidding as he looked in head-to-toe black leather, he looked worse when he revealed his ravaged flesh.
Drawing his robe around him to ward off the evening chill, he strode to the other window of his tower, which overlooked the community where Obsidion’s full-time residents lived.
Obsidion. The pleasure planet was his home and now his birthright. From his vantage point he could see all the city. Sex slave parlors and shops renowned throughout the galaxy twinkled with many-colored lights, though night had not yet cloaked the sky in darkness.
Arik turned toward the other side of the city that was cloaked in twilight. It bathed mansions and cottages alike in a haze of mottled pink and lavender. Arik stood, fingering the rough surface of his ruined cheek and idly rubbing a painful spot in his empty eye socket as he watched dusk fall on his last day as a free man.
He could not, would not, submit to the restorative surgeries Pak Song and a team of surgeons had recommended. His father had summoned the old Earthling exile to the palace along with a half-dozen plastic surgeons, soon after Arik returned from exile, and he hadn’t tried to hide his disappointment when Arik had refused his services.
Pak Song and his colleagues hadn’t understood, either, that Arik saw his ugliness as a source of well-deserved pain for his father. He wore his scars as a reminder to all who looked at him of the cruel fate that befell younger sons of kings who refused to bow to Obsidion’s laws and sacrifice their genitals to a surgeon’s knife.
His cock swelled against the sheer golden silk of his robe, as though in silent thanks to him for having spared it by fleeing his home rather than becoming a royal eunuch along with his four cousins, the sons of the half-brother of Arik’s father. The four had been at or approaching puberty that summer twelve years ago.
Now they served in the palace as royal eunuchs, well-fed and well cared for though deprived of their maleness and any chance to succeed to Obsidion’s monarchy. And he was back, the unquestioned heir to the Diamond Throne. However Arik might feel about his mating, he accepted that he must marry and provide an heir. Maybe I should be grateful that my father arranged this marriage to a woman considered among the most beautiful on the pleasure planet.
In one way he was. He yearned for a woman to share his bed, and despite what he had told the king, he hated feeling the curious eyes on him when he went to Romulus the Aurelionian’s finest sex emporium for satisfaction.
If only his princess would look past the scars that marred his body and see him for the man he was, not the monster who greeted him in the mirror each morning. If only she would look at him for himself, not for the king he would someday become. Arik fixed his gaze on a glittering star and made the two wishes, though he had no faith that either would come true.
No. He’d not leave this chamber without the mask and bodysuit that hid his ugliness, and he would never invite his mate to join him here. Better that she fear what she did not know than run in horror from the monster who was her husband.
* * * * *
“There. The man I’m looking at must be your bridegroom. Do you see him, framed in the highest window of the tower? Those who say a monster lies beneath the leather hood and suit he wears must have lost their minds. The man is gorgeous. What a face! What hair! What a body.” When Pearl handed over the handheld telescope, Emerald noticed the lascivious look in her sister’s eyes. “I tell you, Emerald, I have never seen such a magnificent cock. If only I were the eldest.”
Garnet moistened her deep-red lips. “Or I. When Arik becomes king, he will have even more wealth than the Aurelonian who owns all the sex slave emporiums on the Street of Pleasure, or so people say. What think you of your prince, Emerald?”
Eme
rald focused the eyepiece and gazed at the man who tomorrow would become her husband—her Master. She stifled a sigh, for it was obvious that her sisters were envious. No way would she spoil the pleasure of her royal mating by having Garnet and Pearl scrap over her prince. After all, her father had already decided the crown prince of Obsidion would be hers. Garnet and Pearl must not only wait for their own matings until their father accumulated the gold for their dowries, they must also satisfy themselves with the lesser males Meredith the matchmaker would choose for them.
In profile, backlit by the bright lights in what she imagined must be his bedchamber, Prince Arik looked gorgeous. His shimmering robe let light through, enhancing the look of his impressive body in a sheer covering of pale gold that contrasted with his jet-black hair and skin that reminded her of caramel and cream. She liked the way he kept his long hair pulled back in a queue.
Emerald could hardly wait to loosen his hair and thread her fingers through the silky fall. He had a rugged look about him, a nose that was not quite straight, yet regal. High cheekbones and a strong, clean-shaven jaw gave him a look of blatant masculine command.
A huge man, he gave the appearance of fluid motion even while standing still. His massive thighs reminded her of tree trunks. She shivered when she focused on his cock, so big it sent a wave of anticipation from her cunt to her pierced nipples. It looked fearsome, a somnolent beast resting in its nest of dark pubic curls against a pair of large, round testicles.
A sudden frisson of fear made her look away for a moment when she considered how his mighty weapon would feel, penetrating her virgin flesh for the first time and making her his own. Perhaps some called him a monster because of his massive cock. She would gladly take that delectable flesh into her body to enjoy the privilege of having the gorgeous man as her mate.