“I can’t.”
“You can. You just don’t want to, badly enough.” He hit me with the ropes again, and this time I cried out.
“I can’t even see the candle!” I only knew it was behind me.
“All the better. When you manage it, I will be more impressed.”
“But – my powers –“ I protested.
“They’re still inside you.” He took a step forward and put the palm of his hand on my ass. I flinched and then relaxed as he stroked it down, his fingers in my cleft until his hand slipped between my thighs. “Focus, Ilylle –“ he said, pushing a finger into me. I made a small noise, and tilted my hips back so that he could have more – and his free hand smacked my ass. I yelped and rocked forward, but his hand moved with me, and his body again pressed behind mine, catching me on purpose, scraping his buckles against my welted skin, his free hand pinching my breast, armpits, and stomach, hard, whispering, “Focus, Ilylle – focus –“ as his other hand pulsed in and out of my dark place.
My power was on me in a rush, a thick cloud of it, choking the air around me. Zaan made a primal noise at this, and I could feel his erection rub against my thigh. “Focus, Ilylle. The power is yours – it’s always been yours. Take it inside of you and then set it free.”
I twisted my head and body, trying to get away from his attention or fall into it in turns, riding up and down on his hand, feeling the rubbing of his cock against my leg. I stayed in that moment, on that brink between decision and abandonment and saw the candle in my mind, and called for it to spark as I went off. I shouted, as he pinched, as his hand pressed, as a cold buckle pressed hot skin, and then I roiled as I felt my power consume me. I was the flame I called out, and every piece of me burned.
I went limp after that. Zaan caught me, holding me up long enough to free my hands, and then carefully lay me down atop my bed. I couldn’t move, my arms were sore, my back – there was no part of it that didn’t sting – my calves were cramping and my breasts felt swollen. But despite all that pain, I didn’t feel like I was a part of my body anymore. I’d lifted away from it, moved beyond it. I was finally free from the palace, and from myself. I was spinning.
“Look,” Zaan said, taking my chin and moving my head. I didn’t believe what I saw, not until I blinked my eyes.
The candle was burning. One tiny flame. I’d done that – my magic had done that. I could be like Airelle – Zaan was right – I was right. I was a Queen.
Then a zoomer crawled into the chamber, jumped up onto the desk, and reached out with a paw to put the candle out.
#
I lay beside Ilylle, watching her breathe. Now that she knew what she was capable of – I wouldn’t have to take her that far the next time.
Had I ever pushed Airelle that hard?
I didn’t think I had.
I’d always been bound by love for her. What great heights could we have reached if instead we were bound by blood and hate? Too late to wonder, now.
Ilylle’s whole back was a map of red. I knew how fast she healed – my blood-kiss upon her thigh was gone. But even though she wouldn’t see what I had wrought upon her in a day, it’d still be in her mind. She would never forget what I had done to her. For her.
Nor I forget what she had done to me. I’d come alongside her, her magic draining my cock, making my seed wet and stain the fabric by my thigh.
I had always been a man of precision and control – that was what it meant to be a Zaibann. Without it, I would have blown away the first time I ever transformed – or been one of the Zaibann who chose not to transform, castrated by fear, never attempting to use their own powers.
I hadn’t wanted release – I’d envisioned conquering her fully, then untying her and pulling her head down to fuck her face with my cock. But the call of her magic had caught me unprepared and I’d released with a shout the same as she had, unable to stop myself.
At the thought of her raw power dredging through me, my cock stirred, just as Ilylle twisted her head to drowsily look up.
“Is our lesson done?”
Beastly need flowed through me for a second time. “No,” I said, reaching for her neck.
I spread my legs, pushing apart the fabric that hid my cock from her. “Come here, girl,” I commanded, pushing her head down to my hips. Her body sank willingly under my control, and a second later her lips were wrapped around my shaft.
“Yes,” I groaned, a guttural sound. I took a handful of her hair so that it pulled against her scalp and moved her up and down. She’d taken control away from me minutes ago – now I wanted to take control away from her. Her lips tightened on my shaft and pulled as I raised her, holding her high to suck the head of me, before I shoved her back down, making her gag on my cock, feeling myself bob at the back of her throat.
For her part, she didn’t fight, she let me make her ride me, taking what I gave her as my hips thrust up and my fist in her hair shoved her down. She made small noises, of weakness, of submission, but I didn’t relent because her lips and tongue wouldn’t stop sucking, even when I’d almost pulled her off of me, her tongue pressed against the bottom of my cock, licking against my head, searching out the spot that opened into me – I ran both hands into her hair and made her take all of me, holding her to me as my ass tightened, pushing more of me into her, her spit too much for her mouth, dripping down my balls – I took her like that, three times, head to hilt, hilt to head, and then came hard, spilling the second course of my seed inside her mouth. I spasmed bodily, and kept thrusting, again and again, until my cock started going soft and I released her, hairpins falling out of her tangled braids.
Ilylle looked up at me, her lips red and swollen. “My King,” she whispered, her blue-eyes misted with some emotion, I knew not what.
She’d swallowed my seed. She’d swallowed every drop.
“My Queen,” I acknowledged her, and then let my head fall back onto her bed.
Chapter Eleven
We lay there together, silent. Time passed. Her unreal servants brought in a tray of food. I, however, needed other nourishment.
I sat up, covering myself again, looking down at her welted naked skin. “Are you all right?”
She looked up and gave me a nervous smile. “Are you?”
“I am.”
She tucked her head back down, bringing one hand to her chin. From her position on the bed, she could see the desk and candle. “It worked, didn’t it.”
“It did.”
“What now? Or dare I ask?”
“More lessons – later.” I moved to stand beside the bed. “I need to go back out to check on the councilman’s plans – and I need your blood.”
Ilylle nodded, without raising her head. Instead she offered me a hand.
I took it like I was pulling her to dance, then swung it wide. Hands and wrists were no good if one was concerned with making marks, no matter how temporary. I bowed, like a horse drinking from a fountain, and carefully bit into her inner upper arm.
She cried out softly as my teeth sank through her flesh. At least this time if she fainted, she’d already be lying down. I sucked at the wounds I’d made, working at her with my teeth and tongue, until enough blood flowed that I was sated. This time, I carefully cleaned my mess, licking the last drop up from her and off my lips before rising.
“Thank you,” I said, standing again.
“You’re welcome,” she said, folding her arm back in.
“I’ll be back soon. Do not get into your cradle,” I told her, and she nodded. I walked off down the hall towards the metal-way-out and had a feeling I’d find her in that same spot when I returned.
#
I watched Zaan leave until I couldn’t see him anymore or hear his steps.
Zaan had given me his seed. I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth, wondering at the salty earthy taste of him, so different from Joshan. He wanted me. Not just keeping me alive and teaching me my powers for his own sake, no, that last part had been all him, hi
m needing me to suck him.
I had never felt so wanted before, and fresh power stirred, not in my hips but in my chest. I was wanted by my Zaibann – he’d needed me so badly that he couldn’t resist. I trailed a hand over my welts and bruises, hips and breasts, and finally felt strong.
Joshan entered the room, coming in to retrieve the tray. “My Queen,” he said, noticing my eyes upon him.
I rolled over on my side to face him. “Am I beautiful, Joshan?”
“Of course, my Queen.”
He would service me and he would feign enjoyment of it, but he didn’t have needs like Zaan – Joshan would never bow my head to make me take him in my mouth.
But my slave did still have his uses. I got up and went to the desk, picking up the candle. “Are there others of these in the palace?”
Joshan looked at it and then nodded. “Yes, my Queen.”
“Bring them to me. Bring me all of them.”
“My Queen,” he agreed, and bowed before walking out.
That finished, I picked up the dress that had fallen and carried it over to my chair, to cushion my sore bottom while I wrote.
I threw away the last three pages I’d written for Yzin – honestly, I spent half an hour trying to call up enough power to burn them, I was so shamed by what I’d written. The ending of the story had been about the jewel waiting to be rescued, hoping that someday the rebels would find her, if only they got to her in time.
I crumpled them and threw them to the floor so zoomers would carry them off and started fresh.
No, instead the ending of this final story would be about how the girl trapped inside the jewel broke free -- then burned the palace down around her.
Joshan returned hours later, just as my story was almost complete, dragging a large box. “I believe these were what you wanted, my Queen,” he said, opening it.
It was full of candles of all shapes and sizes. “Excellent work, Joshan.”
I swept my papers aside and lined up the candles front to back and side to side, all facing the bed. “Is there anything else, my Queen?” Joshan asked when we were through.
“Yes,” I said, prying up a bent wick with a fingernail. “Go to my bed. I’ll meet you there in a second.”
When I was done arranging the candles in perfect height order, my entire desk covered in sweet smelling wax, I turned and saw Joshan standing where I’d told him to, patiently.
“Oh, Joshan,” I said, shaking my head at him.
“Yes, my Queen?” he asked, eager to please. He cared for me, in his own machine way, but now that I had Zaan I knew I needed so much more.
Still, though – I crawled up onto my bed and walked over to him on my knees to take his hand. “Come,” I said, and pulled him on the bed beside me. Then I took his shoulders and pushed him down, head up but facing the end of the bed. As I was still naked it was an easy thing to straddle his chest.
The only part of me that didn’t hurt from Zaan’s lesson was my pussy – which was good because it was the only part I needed to make this experiment work.
I rose up and crawled forward, till my knees were by his neck, my dark place inches from his mouth. “I need you to taste me, Joshan. You know how I like it.”
“I do, my Queen,” he answered, and then I lowered myself down.
His lips lapped at me as I sank slowly, his tongue tracing the outside of my folds, and up underneath my hood, before my petals parted to let him in.
After that, everything was simple – his tongue thrust up into me, where Zaan’s fingers had just been – and then licked forward, sucking my most sensitive spot.
For my part, I crouched over him on all fours, knees spread wide. My magic was already alive, I could feel it surging, up and down my spine and thighs. I held myself up on one arm and cradled my other breast, pulling that nipple tight – and then looked at the candles. They would burn. I wanted them to burn. I would call down fire upon them, and all of them would light.
Joshan’s tongue didn’t stop and neither did I – any time I felt too close I clawed myself back to attention.
The power was mine. It was in me. I controlled it. All of it.
The nearest candle flickered and hissed. Seeing it light mesmerized me, and I sank, grinding more of my pussy into Joshan’s face, his chin pressing in as his mouth sucked and tongue lapped.
The next candle, and the next one, the one after that – all of them took, one row, two rows, four, twelve – until every candle on my desk was waving a tiny spot of flame – just like the tiny spot between my legs that Joshan licked.
“Joshan!” I shouted as I came, bobbing my hips down deeper into him, clawing my hands into my bedding as I released. “Joshan –“
Zoomers – ten of them – crawled into the room and up the desk and made short work of quenching all the candles.
“I did it –“ I said, propping myself back up. “Did you see that?” I asked him.
“See what, my Queen?” he asked, looking only up.
I laughed. It didn’t matter. I knew what I’d done. I lay down and rolled over and saw Beza in the doorway, waiting.
“Did you see that, Beza?”
She shook her head. “No, my Queen.”
I looked between them. “Neither of you? You’re no fun.”
Beza took several steps over to the bed. “We do like to play with you, my Queen.”
I smiled softly and flung my arms out – and found Joshan’s hard cock pressing against my palm. I slipped my hand between the folds of his robe and took hold of him because it pleased me to do so, just as my mouth had pleased Zaan, and I traced his outline with a fingertip.
Why? Who would make a machine this thoroughly? And towards what end? Why would anyone care if I knew how to take a man?
Did someone know that fucking would unlock my magic from inside of me? If so, how?
“Joshan, sit up.” My hand went with him as he moved, until he was kneeling on my bed, looking back at me. “Beza – come here.”
“My Queen,” she said, and let me pull her onto the bed. I wrapped my hands into her hair as Zaan had trapped mine, and pushed her mouth down to take Joshan’s cock. He groaned as she throated him, and like a jacar’s kitten she began to purr.
I watched her take him, rocking back and forth, arms and ass as he stood still, hips thrust slightly forward. I pushed her hair back so I could see how far her lips slid up his shaft, and how wet his cock was when it slid back out.
“Keep going,” I commanded, getting another idea. I ran to my desk and found a candle roughly the size and shape of a cock, and returned to my bed. I flipped up Beza’s hem, until her perfectly curved ass swayed in front of me with each of her mouth’s strokes. I stroked both soft sides of her ass and then reached between them and down to find her dark place with one finger – and then gently pushed the candle in.
Beza moaned, muffled by Joshan’s cock in her throat.
“Is that good?” I asked her, stroking her back. She made another pleasured muffled sound, and rocked back farther toward my hand.
“Good,” I whispered back. My magic stirred in me again as I orchestrated them -- whatever Zaan had done had broken walls and now I felt it rushing, trapped inside me, like a lilan fluttering against a gilded cage – it needed a way out.
I pressed the candle in another inch. Then two, watching her petals push open as if grasping to take more of the candle inside. I reached around her to touch her bright spot, circling it before rubbing it carefully, while pulsing the candle in and out.
“Can you take this, my Beza? Can you take so much more?” I felt the thrill of the conqueror controlling her, just as Zaan had done to me. At the head of the bed, Joshan’s hands were tangled in her hair.
I started fucking her with the candle, using it just like a cock. She moaned, the sound still muffled, but her honey spilled out over my fingers, and I was tempted to pull away to taste a drop – but no – I rubbed the top of her folds so gently, and then became more rough, feeling her body ro
ck with the thrusts of the candle, her mouth trapped around Joshan’s cock.
Everything about her was still for a moment, and I knew she was on the verge of release. I pounded the candle into her as my fingers sped up and in moments she was screaming against Joshan.
Good Joshan, loyal Joshan, had waited until that moment – but now his hips thrust madly against her face, pulling on her hair the same way Zaan had mine, until he made a guttural sound, and pulled back.
“My Queen,” he said, a look of worry in his eye.
“Good, Joshan –“
“No – my Queen –“ he untangled a hand from Beza’s hair and pointed behind me.
I turned, and gasped.
#
Empowered by Ilylle’s blood, I surged down the halls in my smoke form, finding the exit and wending my way out and down, until my feet landed on the road outside, unseen.
The marker I’d left on the woman called to me. It was closer this time though, so I followed it as a man, changing my smoke-armor to match what other men wore on the street.
Daylight did not do the city around the palace any favors. Refuse piled on corners where children ferretted through it with small hands. I didn’t know what they were looking for – I didn’t want to know. This was so different from Aranda of my time. There’d been poverty, yes, but the very air stank of desperation here – desperation and the foul breaths the metal beasts put out as they traveled on the roads. I had to leap out of their way several times, the drivers inside not seeing or caring if they hit me.
Soon my marker led me to a sewer grate inside a long alley. I looked down at it and frowned. I could turn into smoke to get in, but I didn’t know what was below, and as smoke I could be trapped. I waited, hoping the woman with the marker would emerge, but when she didn’t I dissipated myself and sunk in.
I stayed near the ceiling of the sewer, following her pull. There were just as many tunnels under here as there had been in the palace – in fact, if my sense of place was accurate, I had doubled back beneath the ground to be near the palace’s underbelly.
Why was that woman down here? I knew I was getting close, the pull was stronger – I reached what I knew would be a final door, and sunk below it, finding the woman and several others in a heated conversation.
The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) Page 10