by Eve Langlais
He cupped his groin and glared. “I didn’t give you permission to ogle.”
“Are you going to try and give me orders?” She clapped her hands and bounced. “How exciting. Mother and the aunties do that all the time, which means I’m predisposed to disobey. But with you, I don’t know if I should listen and please you.” Wink. “Or disobey and have you punish me.” Wink. Wink. The possibilities almost melted her girly bits.
“Do you ever shut up?”
“When my mouth is full. Why not move that hand so we can see if you have enough to accomplish that.”
The black look didn’t seem keen on cooperating.
How adorable. Much better than the woebegone heap she’d noted upon first entering the dungeon. A prison that came straight out of a B-movie, and her without the ability to take a picture for her memory album.
“So when do we get fed around here? I am starving. The bar I got drunk at didn’t even have peanuts. Talk about cheap.”
“We get one bowl of gruel a day.”
“Gruel, as in soupy kind of oatmeal stuff with chunks.” She shook her head. “That won’t do. I didn’t build this body on diet crap.” She gestured to her frame, pleased to note he admired her properly. “We’ll have to order in. Are you in the mood for pizza or Chinese?”
“You do realize this is a prison. We can’t call out for food. Nor make demands. This isn’t fucking Club Med.”
“As if Mother would let me stay there. Club Med is for humans.” Dragons stayed at special resorts, the kind that offered scale scrubbing and fang sharpening.
“I’m done dealing with you.” He turned to walk away, showing off those superb glutes of his. He acknowledged her admiring whistle with a finger. Probably the one he planned to pleasure her with when they escaped their dastardly cells.
How sweet of him to tease her.
Now as to their escape…
I might have bitten off more than I can chew.
Nothing wrong with a big mouthful, and the joke was on him. She’d already seen his equipment when he wasn’t paying attention. At repose, his dick was a thick slumbering beast. She wondered what it would take to get it to rouse and ravish.
Despite his dismissal—which, hello, she’d not condoned, so it didn’t count—she continued to speak.
“What do they offer for entertainment around here?”
Dead silence.
“Are there any other prisoners, or is it just you and me, stud?”
The man stubbornly kept quiet. Playing hard to get. Her crotch practically exploded with excitement.
“So you never said how they caught you.”
More silence.
It didn’t deter her. Just because he’d disappeared into his dark corner didn’t mean she’d let him mope. Let him bask in the ray of sunshine that was her personality. Now that she’d drawn him into her orbit—the one where everything revolved around her—he would soon snap out of his funk and return to his evil overlord self.
“Ooh, is this a guessing game? I’ll start. You got captured after a mighty battle fending off dozens of wyverns single-handedly until they overwhelmed you with sheer numbers.”
He didn’t reply.
“They sent a doppelganger, wearing my adorable face, meant to fool you into trusting her so that she could get close enough to drug you.”
A snort from the shadows. “I never said you were adorable.”
“You didn’t have to.” It went without saying. And lo and behold, he’d replied. “You must have marched valiantly into captivity in order to spare me from the wrath of this Suzie person.”
“You seem to have me mistaken for someone noble. In my world, it’s all about me.”
It used to be all about you. You’ll soon learn, stud, just whom you exist for.
“I’m running out of options. What does that leave? Ooh, I’ve got it. Your brother, Remiel, overcome with emotion at your reunification was also perturbed by your existence, and since he could not kill you, he handed you over to Suzie so he didn’t have to get his hands dirty.”
Another snort. “Remiel would have killed me himself given a chance. Alas for him, he never got one.”
“Aliens descended—”
He interrupted. “It was my own stupidity that led me here. I was angry and upset after Sue-Ellen—”
Cough. “Hussy.” Cough.
“—chose my brother.”
“No need for that pale imitation of a dragon. You’ve got the real thing here, stud muffin.” She skimmed her hands over her curves and, while she couldn’t see his face, imagined he avidly stared. She would if the roles were reversed.
“Do you want to hear what happened or not?”
“Carry on.” She gave an imperious wave.
He sighed. “As I said, I was pissed and wanted back what my brother stole from me—”
“Which, according to what I heard, you took from him.” Such a delightful man, taking from others to enrich himself. Deka lived by the same rule. And look at that. They were both so misunderstood because of it.
He growled, a low, rumbly sound that almost had her tearing off her clothes and shouting, “Take me.”
“Save the growling for later. I want to hear the rest.”
“The rest involves me getting a phone call saying I had allies in Europe and instructing me to meet some people at an airfield so they could smuggle me out of the country. Like an idiot, I believed them. I even got in the box on my own, inhaled the gas, figuring a nap would be nice. When I woke, I found myself here, a prisoner of my own stupidity.”
“It was a plausible story. There are factions within the Septs that would support your claim to the throne.”
“Is the Silver Sept one of them?”
She snickered. “Not the North American branch. As if Auntie Zahra would follow anything less than full-blooded Golden. Even if Remiel were to disappear, she’d support her daughter’s husband first.”
“You speak of Brandon, the swamp gator? He was created in a lab.” No mistaking the sneer in his tone.
“Yeah, but he’s family. You’re not.” Yet.
“You’re right. I have no family because I fucked it over. I gambled and lost.” Such a defeated reply. It belonged to anyone but her evil overlord.
“Why haven’t you escaped?”
“Why? Are you fucking kidding me?” That drew him from the shadows, an angry naked man stalking to the bars so that he might glare at her. “Do you think I haven’t tried? I burned my hands to the bone trying to yank these bars apart.” He held his palms up and showed her the traces of scars. “Every time that fat fucking jailer opened my cell, I tried to overpower him and escape.”
“Don’t tell me Jabba is stronger than a Golden dragon.”
“Of course, not,” he snorted with clear disdain. “But he has access to potions that knock me on my ass. Then he slaps on the cuffs, and I’m no better than a puny human.”
“I don’t know how they can live with themselves being so weak,” she said, nodding in agreement.
“The weakness makes it impossible to escape, and each attempt results in punishment.”
“Punishment is fleeting. Think of the agony you will deliver to your enemies when you escape.”
“The punishment fucking hurts, and thoughts of vengeance don’t do shit when your mind is being flayed from the inside.”
Despite his earlier reluctance to speak, he now proved a fount of information. “Who is holding us captive? Who dares to invoke the wrath of the Silver Sept? We shall strip the skin from his flesh. Eat his organs one by one as he silently screams.” Because a proper torture started with the tongue and ended with the eyes when there was nothing left to see.
“First off, it’s a she, not a he. The suzerain is a female, but I’m not sure of what race. She is powerful, though, more powerful than you can imagine.”
“Is she the same person who was screwing with the Crimson Sept?” The imposter had taken over the high priestess’s body and caused all kinds of
havoc. The shame of it would keep the Crimsons at the lower echelons of power for decades to come.
“She has the ability to take on any appearance she wishes. Even the one she shows me is probably not her true visage.”
“Why does she want you?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Of course, she wants you. A virile Golden dragon in his prime and a contender for the throne.”
“Fuck the throne. The damned thing has brought me nothing but trouble.”
“Don’t be so hasty.” Because Deka really had her heart set on a crown. The heifers back home would be so jealous.
“I’m tired of all the politics and games. Ever since my birth, it’s been ‘Samael, do this.’ ‘Samael, say that.’ Between Anastasia leading me around by the dick, and Parker with his goddamned experiments, I’ve yet to live my own life. To make my own choices. I’m tired of being a puppet to others.”
“Then stop.”
His gaze narrowed. “You say that like it’s easy. As if I have a choice.”
“Because you do. You’re a dragon. And not just a dragon, a Golden one. No matter how you were born, or who the other half of you is, you belong to the most powerful line of dragons. You can literally do anything you want. And short of a full-scale war, there’s nothing your brother, or even the Septs, can do.”
“Maybe, once upon a time, I could have, but now…” His shoulders slumped. “I am nothing.”
Before she could slap that morose expression from his face with words, the ceiling overhead rumbled. She peered upward and managed to say, “What the hell?” before water gushed from the ceiling, tons of it pouring out of tiny holes perforated overhead. She sputtered under the torrential downpour, skin soaked, garments sodden, her hair, already suffering from a kidnapping and bar hopping, a soggy mess.
It lasted long enough to cleanse every pore she had, and a few she was sure just appeared for the rainfall.
When it was done, stopping as suddenly as it had started, she glared at the ceiling. “That was rude.”
“That was a sign.”
“You mean that’s happened before?” she asked, noting how nice his skin looked when slick.
“Not often, but when it does, it only means one thing.”
“And that thing would be that Suzie wants us to drown? Grow gills?”
A grim expression pulled his features taut. “It means the suzerain wants me clean.”
“Well, that’s nice of her to care for her prisoners like that, but couldn’t she install a shower? Maybe heat the water a little.”
“She doesn’t care about our comfort. She only bathes me because of what she wants.”
“And what does she want?” Deka asked.
He didn’t reply, and in the silence she heard their jailor approach, keys jingling at his waist, a slow, haunting whistle at his blubbery lips.
“Nothing.” Samael stared downward, shoulders hunched. A shadow of the brash man she once knew.
“Surely, it can’t be that bad.” He didn’t look too abused unless one counted the fact that he’d lost weight. He bore no fresh scars other than on his hands. Had all his limbs.
“There are things worse than death,” he claimed, holding out his hands to their jailor, sliding both of them through a single set of bars so that Jabba might lock the special wristbands around them.
“What does she want from you?” she asked again as Jabba entered the cell and unlatched the collar at his neck.
Not answering, Samael meekly exited his cell and began a slow, plodding walk in front of their jailor. She could almost feel the shame rolling off him in waves.
“Where are you taking him? What does Suzie want?”
Jabba had no compunction and told her. More like he hummed it, and it was only after they were gone, as Deka repeated the familiar refrain to herself that she grasped the title of the tune.
Why is he singing, Just a Gigolo?
Then the light bulb went off.
“That bitch!” Suzie was pimping out her man.
Chapter Five
Marching up the hall, a cool draft brushed past Samael’s dick. It swung as he walked, and in his old life he might have felt some embarrassment at his nudity. It didn’t take long in here before he’d overcome that particular emotion. He’d not had any clothes since his arrival. Part of the breaking down of who he was. Who he used to be.
I was almost a king.
Now, as his jailor liked to remind him, he was a gigolo. Or would be if he’d give in to the suzerain’s demands.
Fuck her if she thinks I’m giving her anything. He might not have much left. No home. No freedom. No power. But the sperm in his sac belonged to him!
I’ll choose who gets it.
For now, at least. Until the suzerain tired of his refusal and took it by force. Just like she’d taken other things without permission.
The journey from the dungeon to the upper levels of the castle proved interesting. The stone work intricate and vast. The halls long and winding. The windows few and far between. Not that he saw much through them. The drapery kept them covered.
As a man who enjoyed an extensive nightlife, he never thought he’d miss the hot kiss of sunlight.
But he did, and he missed real food and his bed and playing Stickman Golf on his phone. So many things he took for granted. So many things he’d never done or achieved.
So much pussy he’d never dipped his dick into.
I would have liked a taste of Deka’s. The woman might only have gotten a cursory glance from him before, but mostly because he was otherwise preoccupied.
Now, however, with her residing in the cell across from him, he couldn’t help but notice her.
Want her.
She would look lovely draped in jewels. His hidden hoard had more than enough to cover her body. Even better, he could imagine her splayed upon his heap of precious stones. Unlike a fragile-skinned human, he’d wager she wouldn’t whine if the gems bit into her skin as he pounded into her sweet flesh.
And she would fuck him. The damned crazy woman said she’d come for him.
Why?
She made it sound as if she were interested in him as a man. As a lover.
She’d soon change her mind. Who’d want a broken thing like him?
Some days, when he opened his eyes, he cursed the fact that he’d woken, because the hopelessness weighed him down. Even the voice in his head, the one he’d listened to most of his life, had given up fighting.
He’d come to grips with his nightmare. Or thought he had. Her arrival, though, had him feeling off balance. Hope tried to break out of its cage. His arrogance simmered at the edges of the moat he’d surrounded it with.
This place didn’t allow for either, and should the suzerain even guess he was ready to fight, the hammer would come down—and he didn’t want Deka to hear him scream.
The jailor—that he tried not to think of as Jabba like Deka named him—stopped in front of a pair of regal doors. The black metal had been beaten into panels carved with intricate swirls. Despite Jabba not raising a fist to knock, they swung open at their approach, the lack of creaking more ominous than the cavernous room they opened to.
“Go in. The suzerain awaits. And you know she hates tardiness.”
He knew, and a tiny part of him screamed, Don’t make her wait.
Another part of him thought he should go find the kitchen and make himself a sandwich.
He stepped inside, and though the temperature didn’t drop, his balls shrank, practically crawled back up inside his body.
Good thing Deka wasn’t here. She wouldn’t be so impressed with him now.
Nothing much had changed since his last visit. Still a ginormous space with an arching, ribbed ceiling, and pillars holding it up over a polished stone floor. All in black with striations of red.
The epitome of an evil throne room.
If it didn’t evoke such painful memories, he’d covet it.
The room had a stark opulence to it. There wasn’t much in the way
of decoration or furniture—no paintings of ugly heirs, or spindly-legged antiques. The few pieces scattered in the vast room were expensive and decadent.
Take the super-sized throne, built out of the skull of some massive beast—say it, you know what it is.
Fine. It was the skull of a dragon with spiraling horns inset within it, framing it on the sides. The white of the bone was covered in dark gems, not exactly rubies, although he’d seen the heart of them pulse with red fire.
Other than the throne, there was a fireplace, a massive open hearth that he’d yet to see filled with any flames. A shame. The cold room could have used some warmth.
The chain hanging from the ceiling was comprised of the dull metal that inhibited his dragon side, the dangling cuffs lined with velvet. The suzerain wanted to be the cause of his screams, not the metal.
He preferred the throne room visits to those of the bedroom with its massive four-poster bed, though. Some instinct for preservation wanted to keep him out of the mad woman’s boudoir. A female he’d seen, yet knew for a fact wasn’t the true face behind the illusion.
Could I handle seeing the truth?
Would she have tentacles? He hated tentacles. Nasty, wiggly things.
The air in the room changed, charged with a malevolent chill that pimpled his skin.
I am not afraid.
You should be.
The cowardly voice he’d acquired since his incarceration advised him to stand down. To behave, lest he incur punishment. There were times he wanted to ignore its sage advice. To rant and rail and fight.
Don’t fight. You know what happens when you do.
Yeah, he felt like a man. As if he did something rather than accept his fate.
This is my life now. I can’t change it.
Can’t or won’t?
As the chilly air was displaced by the approach of the suzerain, he didn’t fidget.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t even turn his head to look or give a disparaging glance.
He wanted to. How he wanted to laser that bitch with his stare. To cow her with a sneer.
Don’t fight. Obey.
The soft words in his head drew a sigh.