by Eve Langlais
“Yes. Yes.” She couldn’t help but chant as he deftly traced her sex. His tongue slipped into her, teasing and probing. He flicked her clit until she gyrated, shoving her ass out, needing that rhythm.
Over and over, he sucked at her clit, teased it into swollen delight. Sexual tension built inside her.
“Fuck me,” she begged. “Give me that beautiful cock.”
“Come on my tongue.” The command tore what shred of control she had. She came, screaming loudly, her body clenching in orgasm as he continued to tongue her, drawing out her pleasure, stringing it so tautly she gasped and cried. “Enough. I can’t. No more.”
He paused his licking to murmur, “Yes more.” He blew on her, and she shuddered at the promise in his words.
He moved, and the tip of him pressed.
“Yes!”
The head of him slid and teased across her swollen, wet sex. He grabbed hold of her hips and sheathed himself, deep and filling, oh so filling.
The wideness of his cock stretched the walls of her channel. Gave her something plentiful to grip. Her pussy suctioned him tightly as he thrust, in and out, his pace starting slowly but quickening.
He slapped in and out of her, his fingers digging deep into her flesh, his breathing ragged, as labored as her own, and her throbbing body quickened.
The steady rhythm stoked her desire until her body tightened for a second time. She screamed, loudly, as her second climax hit. Her whole body seized, and he uttered a sound as his own orgasm hit.
Heat bathed her womb.
Deep satisfaction curved her lips.
She practically collapsed from pure sexual bliss. Her head hung low, and her breath was ragged, but that didn’t stop her from screeching when his hand slapped her ass and he commanded, “Fetch me a sandwich, princess. And this time, easy on the mayo.”
Chapter Sixteen
After that first time in the throne room, he ate many sandwiches, in between fucking Deka senseless.
He enjoyed the latter more than the former, which was saying a lot because she actually made a pretty mean sandwich.
In between the sex and food, he explored. The mystery deepened the more he searched.
The castle proved ancient. As in stone crumbling with age, some rooms covered in a thick patina of dust, ancient hieroglyphics.
Taking his time to go through dressers and wardrobes meant coming across strange garments, some disintegrating at his touch. Most had a medieval feel to them, the skirts long for the women while, for the males, the breeches were snug and usually laced. Only in Suzie’s quarters did he find signs of modern wear, for both male and female. But no cell phone. No way to contact the outside world.
No answers to anything.
There was a library in the castle, the tomes, covered in some strange leather, almost like dragon skin yet not, inscribed with strange runes. Since he’d studied archeology what seemed like a lifetime ago, he had plenty of experience with archaic languages, yet he couldn’t decipher a thing.
Nor had he yet discovered what lived, or used to live, in this world. Because Suzie wasn’t the only sentient creature here. The abandoned village showed signs of once having been inhabited, but not by humans.
The chairs had no backs; everything was a stool. The doorways were tall—taller than he was used to seeing. And there were no beds, rather strange bars suspended overhead, almost like perches for bats.
But no bats. Nothing lived in this barren world. Nothing except him, Deka, and the Jabbas.
The first few days, he didn’t pay his former jailors much mind. He treated them as they’d once treated him. He tossed them bowls of gruel and occasionally set off the sprinklers—their hollers at the cold cleansing douse bringing a grim smile of satisfaction to his lips.
The days fell into a routine where he woke and fucked Deka senseless. Then she’d make him breakfast—from supplies that dwindled—then off he’d go exploring, claiming he was searching for a way out.
He found it, and rather quickly, too.
Turned out the portals weren’t all that hard to activate. But…he kept that a secret for now because he was having too much fun.
For the first time ever in his life, Samael could do what he wanted. He worked, fucked, or did nothing at his leisure.
There was no one around to give him orders except Deka, and those were usually of the erotic variety.
No one to punish him for wanting to be his own man.
No one to be jealous of.
No one around to make demands of him but Deka.
His Silver princess.
She, on the other hand, kept trying to find a way out, claiming they needed to escape. Although he would add that she didn’t try very hard and was easily distracted.
Look, a romance novel I’ve never read—the Jabbas’ bedrooms proved full of them—and off she popped to read for a few hours. He didn’t mind because, once she got to the dirty parts, she always came for him, eyes alight with need and hunger.
Dirty, hot, sweaty, and erotic hunger.
Fuck it felt good.
No wonder he didn’t care if they ever escaped. But the food dwindled. And he was running out of places to explore. He even took to playing checkers—the board created on the stone floor, the pieces the cracked bones of the cooked bird he’d brought the brothers—with the Jabbas when Deka thought he was valiantly searching for an exit.
In case anyone wondered, he wasn’t softening on the Jabbas’ incarceration. He still didn’t trust them. But he had no problem buttering them up to get information.
Jabba One—whose real name turned out to be a rather banal, Maedoc—happened to ask about two weeks into their Hell vacation if Samael had been keeping up on the news in between banging his girlfriend.
Yeah, my girlfriend. He’d agreed to that much at least in the face of her persistence.
Pausing the game, Samael glared at the male, who didn’t appear as putrid with regular bathing and a clean robe. “What do you mean news from the outside world? I thought we were cut off.” He moved a fragment of thick bone to a spot and watched the rib with a little bit of gristle adjacent from it.
“Did you not wonder at how Suzie”—the Jabbas had adopted the name—“was so well informed?”
“Not really.” Because he’d been self-involved with screaming most of the time.
“I know you’ve been exploring. Did you not wonder at the number of mirrors in the small parlor?”
“Um, no.” Because he’d assumed they were for kinky sex. It was how he used them. Taking Deka on the one settee in there meant he got to see her from any angle he liked.
His Silver princess was so beautiful when she came.
“The largest, most ornate mirrors are tuned to different worlds, and some of the smaller ones surrounding them to different places in the same world.”
“Why?” He watched Maedoc move a chunk of leg across the board.
Excellent. Samael made his next epic move.
“Knowledge is power. Even though she was imprisoned here, the suzerain always kept well informed for the day she could escape.”
“Why wait? Those portals outside aren’t that hard to activate.” A few of them at any rate. Some remained dark, no matter what he did. He just wished the lightning wouldn’t crackle when he played with them. He kept expecting Deka to notice, yet whenever he experimented, he returned to find her napping soundly. And then, because she looked so temptingly soft, he usually fucked her.
“Those portals work in phases. The one she originally came through went out of alignment shortly after. It took her centuries of waiting before the cosmos moved close enough again for her to create a portal back to Earth.”
“Centuries?” Samael frowned. “Impossible. You told me she was a dragon once upon a time.” The revelation still shocked him. “We age better than humans, but we’re not eternal.”
“Have you not guessed her secret to life yet?” Maedoc mocked him. “For a scientist who specialized in the past, you’r
e not very astute.”
“I still don’t know if I believe she’s a dragon. Her eyes are all wrong.”
“You mean the red irises?” Maedoc shrugged as he moved another piece. “The solitude of this place and her diet changed her.”
“And made her live longer?”
“The dark magic she’s discovered is what extended her life.”
Samael questioned, and for once, Maedoc answered. What he didn’t understand was, why? “How come you’re revealing this to me? How do I even know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. However, it occurs to me that my brother and I will probably die in this place, and I find myself unwilling to let our story die here, too.”
“You aren’t going to die.” He’d even thought of letting them go once he and Deka left.
“Our fate is sealed. As is yours if you don’t leave before the portal between this world and Earth shifts. The other planets you can access can’t sustain our kind of life. And we’ve stripped everything we could from this one. Once the planes move out of alignment, we will have no access to food and starve.”
Samael absently moved a piece on the game board as he absorbed the information. “In other words, it’s time to move on. What if I took you with me?” Again not altruistic on his part at all. The Jabbas had knowledge to impart, and knowledge was power.
“We cannot leave this place. It is part of our banishment.”
“Who banished you?”
Maedoc looked him in the eye with a gaze so familiar that he wasn’t surprised when he said, “The Septs did. The suzerain wasn’t the only dragon abandoned here.”
He eyed the tubby male up and down and then snickered. “Dragon, my ass. If you’re a dragon, shift.”
“I can’t. Not anymore.”
“Because you’re lying. First off, dragons don’t live centuries. Two, they don’t have red eyes, and three, I’m pretty sure if a bunch of dragons had been exiled for crimes, we’d know about it.” Almost being wiped out didn’t mean their legacy had died. From a young age, they were taught the history of their kind. Hammered with the mistakes of their ancestors so they wouldn’t make the same errors again when they rose to power.
“Our existence was wiped from the annals. No one wanted to remember the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
“The suzerain, who started her life as an Orange dragon of the Ochre Sept, was a sorceress.”
Huge snort. “Dragons aren’t witches.” They had unique and special powers depending on their genetic color blend, but it was their nature, not mystical power.
“Are you going to listen or just disparage every word I say?” Maedoc’s rebuke emerged tersely.
“You’re asking me to listen to a fairy tale.”
“No, I am asking you to listen to a truth that has been hidden and buried for a long time. Once upon a time, certain dragons, a rare number of us, wielded magic. But we were banished after the purge by the humans. All dragons exhibiting the slightest hint of magical ability, down to the smallest child, were exiled to this land.”
Samael wanted to deny it, and yet there was a somber quality to Maedoc’s claim. A truthfulness he couldn’t deny. “Why banish you?” he asked.
“Because our own people feared us.” He snorted and shook his head. “Feared us because of a single sorceress who singlehandedly destroyed our people.”
“The humans destroyed us.”
“Those puny creatures?” Maedoc snorted. “The humans had help. A dragoness sorceress was the one who brought back the metal the humans used to kill us. From this very realm, as a matter of fact. Then she further abetted her crime by aiding the humans, giving the location of the lairs to them.”
“Why the fuck would she do that?” A betrayal of that magnitude shocked even Samael. He’d only locked up his brother, never machinated his death. Nor the deaths of hundreds.
“Jealousy. The fact that a suitor spurned her advances. She wanted the Golden king to marry her, but he chose her sister. And so she sought revenge. She didn’t live long to gloat about it. Her own sister was the one to track her down and rend her limb from limb. It wasn’t enough to save us. The actions of one doomed all the sorcerers of that time.”
It took only a short moment for him to reason out the why. “The Septs had to eliminate all the magic users because they knew how to get more of the metal. That kind of power…” The temptation of knowing a plane where you could get the one weapon that would make you a ruler over all the Septs…
“Now you understand. All of them had to go. Even the queen and her little magic-using daughter, who had nothing to do with the crime. In order to prevent any more fighting and truly decimating the few dragons that were left, the queen led the way through the portal to this plane, along with as many supplies as they could manage.”
“If they knew how to open it, couldn’t they have just returned?” He had a hard time fathoming people who would sacrifice themselves.
“The queen’s honor meant everything to her, she had a way of speaking that made you believe in her. By the time we realized the hell chosen for us, the planes had shifted. The way home was blocked.”
“And you all should have died of old age, but didn’t. How?” This was the crux of the story.
“While we had food to sustain our bodies, mortality stalked our kind. As we grew older, there was a desperation to stay alive. To extend our life any way we could. The queen forbade it. But once she died…” Maedoc shrugged. “We didn’t all have her fortitude. We chose survival.”
“But how? You’re talking about living centuries past a normal life span. How is that possible?”
A snort shook the male. “Magic, of course. Magic that we found here in our prison. Once we discovered it, we didn’t hesitate. At first, we stole life from others. Using the portals to invade the other planes when they rolled into position. We hunted down the living, bringing them back that we might feed.”
“You ate them?”
Maedoc snorted. “Don’t be dense. You’ve seen how it’s done. Seen how the suzerain uses her magic to imbibe your essence. It’s dark magic, the darkest kind, and yet, it was all we had. That and a will to live. Some of us were so young when shoved into this prison for the simple crime of being born. We didn’t want to die for the sins of others.” The resentment still burned in Maedoc’s words.
“The world has forgotten what happened. No one knows. Why not start over? If you don’t like this world, then why stay? You said you have access to other places—”
“Uncivilized planes, none of which promised the possibility of one day going home. Dead worlds now. Stripped bare of all life in order to extend ours. In our arrogance, we never thought to keep breeding pairs to sustain ourselves. Kind of shortsighted if you ask me. But at the time, we never expected our exile to last so long. And as our soul supply dwindled and age once again crept, we turned on each other.”
“You cannibalized each other?”
“Not at first. We borrowed essence back and forth, only to have the lack of fresh souls fail miserably. We changed. Became unrecognizable.” Maedoc looked at his body. “That was when the madness set in, and the killings began until only three were left.”
“Three?” He eyed Maedoc and then behind them at the other cage with Eogan, his brother. “Three fucking dragons. I don’t believe it.” Couldn’t believe it because looking at them was peering at a perversion of life itself.
“That is the problem with the young nowadays, no respect for the word of their elders.” The disdainful remark floated to them across the way, and Samael scowled.
“You have to admit your story is farfetched, starting with the fact that you don’t look anything like the dragons I know. Or smell like them for that matter.” Rather a putrid scent that no soap or water could rinse emanated from them, one like overripe flesh.
“Because once we began to feed back and forth, we were, in essence, starving. The perversion of essentially eating ourselves caused us to
shift. We lost touch with our dragon and became grotesque.”
“Suzie isn’t nasty.”
“Because she committed the ultimate travesty. A century ago, she began picking off those exiled with her. Treated us like a buffet, and with each complete soul, she changed. We might have lost the ability to change into our beasts”—a hint of sadness there—“but she gained the ability to shift into whatever, or whomever, she liked. A true doppelganger. But one who grew increasingly madder. The curse of killing while feeding.”
“If she ate all your buds, how come you’re still kicking around?”
“Because she needed servants. In the past, we had others to do chores, creatures brought from other worlds to serve her.”
“They were delicious,” Eogan added with a dark chuckle.
“I’m still not understanding something, though. You said the planes shifted, that she had access back to Earth. So why kidnap me? Or Deka for that matter?”
At first, he thought Maedoc wouldn’t answer, and that meant he’d have to grab him by the throat and toss him against a wall a few times to make him speak. But he wouldn’t enjoy it. He kind of—very little mind you—liked the guy. Dragon. Thing. Whatever.
Eogan replied. “Suzie, as you call her, is preparing for the end of times. As this world drops out of alignment, so a darker realm takes its place. The horsemen will soon ride and, in their wake, will sow pure chaos. She wants to be part of that.”
“So she’s what, preparing for Armageddon? Is that why she’s got those humans and wyverns doing her bidding? And how did she find them anyhow?” It wasn’t exactly easy to build an army. Samael had learned that the hard way.
“She has the gift of compulsion, and those with weak minds fall sway to her will.” Eogan approached the bars and gripped them. Samael found it interesting to note that, despite their so-called dragon heritage, they didn’t cringe or react to the metal.
Then again, I don’t always react either.
“Suzie is strong. Stronger than even she realizes at times, I think. As the youngest of those banished, she’s been collecting souls for a long time. A few in battle. Most by subterfuge. But as she learned early on, taking from the weak resulted in weak results, and she’s not interested in weakness. She wants to rule the world. You asked why come after you and the Silver girl. Because you are the strongest of the colors.”