She pushed into the library. The floor was littered with huge, old pornographic picture books opened to choice scenes. A handful of guards stood at discreet attention in shadowed alcoves. A dozen beautiful, naked young women were arrayed on leather couches and chairs in various poses and salacious embraces, clearly for their masters’ amusement rather than their own. The eldest might have been Nturi’s age; the youngest not much more than sixteen or seventeen. All were from planets recently subjugated by the Novizvezdans. None would ever have a chance at a decent life on this planet, not while the current regime was in power.
Czar Mikhail was seated in a leather easy chair in the middle of the room, his corpulent body stripped down to a pair of red velvet breeches. A girl with long, flowing black hair was sitting on the floor between his knees, sucking him.
Prince Oskar was in the middle of a richly-woven carpet a few meters to his left, pounding away at a frail-looking girl pinned beneath him. Oskar was a man of about thirty with a shock of short red hair. He looked a little like Alexander, but he was heavier, his features coarser. He was still wearing his silk fencing shirt and trousers, the latter opened and pulled down just enough to give his equipment room to work at the unfortunate girl. She was completely naked, biting her lip as if in pain, her eyes shining with tears.
Nturi felt a terrible fire building in her chest.
“Move a little, for god’s sake,” Oskar snarled at the girl.
“I’ll move for you, Your Highness,” Nturi said loudly. “Perhaps you should try me, instead.”
Oskar’s head jerked up, and he arched an eyebrow when he saw Nturi. He pulled out of the girl and stood up. Nturi saw that his erection was streaked with blood. The girl lay where she was, apparently afraid to move.
“Where did you get that robe?” he asked.
“From your brother, Your Highness.”
Both eyebrows rose in surprise. “Did he fuck you?”
She nodded. An unpleasant smirk spread across Oskar’s face.
“Well, well, so that pale little priss decided to be a man after all. Lose the robe,” he ordered.
Her heart pounding, she pulled the silken belt open and shrugged the robe off her shoulders. The garment fell in a soft heap around her ankles. She could feel a blush spreading across her skin. She swallowed down the reflexive embarrassment and fear. Don’t lose your resolve over a little exposure. You’re built from steel now. Act it.
Oskar prodded the girl with his toe. “Get out of my sight.”
The girl rolled over and scuttled away behind a couch. He waggled his softening penis in his left hand and stared at Nturi. “You. On your knees before me.”
Nturi did as he asked. Oskar held his blunt, bloody tool inches from her face.
“Give me your head,” he ordered.
“Why would I give you my head, Your Highness,” she replied, her voice dangerous and low, “when I came here for yours?”
She flexed the new muscles in her forearms and the bone stilettos snapped into place, sharp as tiger’s claws. A split-second later, she’d leaped to her feet, skewering her left blade deep into Oskar’s heart as she cut a wide smile across his throat with her right.
The nearest guard gave out a shout, and the girls began to scream and scramble for the doors. In the chaos, Nturi threw Oskar’s hemorrhaging corpse to the floor and vaulted over a couch toward the czar. Mikhail had been too engrossed in his blow job to realize what was happening until it was too late.
Nturi jerked his chair back, dumping him headfirst onto the floor. She landed two vicious kicks to the side of his head to stun him, grabbed him by the neck and dragged him backward to an unoccupied alcove. He was heavy, but she’d grown strong, and her rage made her stronger still.
Her back to the marble alcove wall, she pulled the czar’s semiconscious form up in front of her body as a shield and pressed her right blade to his throat.
The startled guards had drawn their guns and were stumbling toward her.
“Stay back!” she shouted. “I can cut his throat before any of you can get a shot off. Bring Alexander in here! Now!”
But Alexander was already there. He pushed into the library, his face red. He’d dressed hastily, his shirt misbuttoned. He’d probably come running out of his room when he heard the girls screaming. Probably anyone within a hundred yards of the palace had heard them.
Her husband stared around and the room, his face turning pale when he saw his brother’s cooling corpse and paler still when he saw Nturi with a blade to his father’s throat.
“What have you done?” he whispered. His expression was an odd mix of shock, dismay, wonder and hope.
“Something that you should have done a long time ago, my love,” she replied. Nturi crossed her blades beneath the czar’s Adams’ apple, then ripped them down and across. A jet of bright blood sprayed out in an arc from his ruined neck.
“All hail Czar Alexander!” she shouted. “Long live the new czar!”
The guards were taking aim, their guns’ capacitors giving off a hard whine as the weapons powered up.
This is where I die, she thought, closing her eyes and retracting her blades.
“Stop! Lower your guns!” Alexander shouted. He pushed through the knot of men and stood before her, trembling.
“Is this what you came here to do?” he asked in Guevaran. “To take revenge on my family? A brother for a brother, a father for a father?”
“No,” she replied in her native tongue. “This isn’t vengeance. And it’s not even close to justice. It’s necessary. You told me yourself what you hoped to accomplish for the universe once these two were dead. Now you won’t have to wait two decades to do it.”
He stared at her, at the blood on her hands, considering.
“Is your wife not fit to be your queen?” she asked. “Politics and chess, my love. The queen defends the king, and after what everyone’s seen here tonight, my reputation might be the best protection you could ever wish for. The nobles will think you’re quite a clever boy to have masterminded a coup like this.”
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
He took a deep breath and turned to the guards and servants. “Bring the Minister of Offworld Affairs and the Minister of the Interior to my chambers in one hour,” he ordered in Russian. “I am hereby canceling the engagement my father set up for me with Princess Duria, and I will be marrying this woman, Nturi of Guevara, in a formal ceremony in one week. Until then, she is to be addressed as Czarina Nturi, and she is to be given every courtesy you would give to me. Understood?”
A chorus of stunned “yes, Your Highness,” came from the assorted onlookers.
Alexander retrieved his robe and helped Nturi to her feet. “Someone bring some decent clothes for my wife,” he called, wrapping the robe around her shoulders.
“And get some decent clothes and food for those girls that were in here,” she added, staring pointedly at the guard who’d shoved her outside the library. “Make sure they’re comfortable in the guest rooms tonight. And if I find out any of you have been molesting them, you’re going to wish you’d never been born. Clear?”
“Perfectly, Your Highness,” the guard replied grudgingly, then ducked out of the room.
Nturi turned to Alex and kissed his cheek. “I think this is the start of a wonderful partnership, don’t you?”
He lifted her hand and kissed her bloody fingers. “Yes, my love, I do.”
Roses of Gomorrah
KIRA LAY very still until she heard the brothel guard’s footsteps receding down the hallway. His booted heels rang hollowly on the aluminum floor panels, the sound barely audible over the moans, thumping, and orgasmic cries coming from the Class C dormitory beside her room. The C girls were having a loud, athletic orgy. They were always having an orgy. Their libidos were amped up so high that they’d fuck each other until they passed out from exhaustion. They’d have to be shaken awake in the morning, but once they’d gobbled down their breakfa
st, they’d be horny as ever and ready for customers.
Kira rolled out of bed and stood in the darkness of her small cell. She hated hearing the Cs going at it all night, because their pleasure amplified her own loneliness. As a Class A, Kira was engineered to satisfy the refined tastes of customers who wanted conversation, dancing, or perhaps a bit of role-playing. The expensive As had both the intelligence and the self-control to find a way to escape the New Vegas space station, so the owners kept them separated and locked down.
But, at least in Kira’s case, they hadn’t tried hard enough.
She stood on the metal folding chair beside her costume closet and used her thumbnail to work at the screws holding the air vent cover in place. Once she’d gotten the cover off, she chinned herself up to the open vent and began to ease herself inside. Kira was a small, wiry woman, but her breasts and long black tresses inevitably got in the way, and the institutional pajamas she’d been given were too thin to keep her from getting snagged by jutting rivets and sharp metal corners. She had to be careful; cuts and bruises would be noticed and questioned during the weekly inspections. Her masters would have no qualms about chaining her to her bed at night if they thought she was getting out.
Once she was in the vent, Kira sniffed the air, trying to figure out if her beloved Seth had been able to get out of his cell. The exotic genes that made her technically nonhuman (and therefore property) had also given her a few talents that veered from the human norm. Her flesh-pretzel limberness was a planned trait, she imagined, but her rat-keen sense of smell probably wasn’t.
She took a deep breath. There were tens of thousands of people on the station, the stale station air an olfactory white noise of sweat, excrement, food, oil, and hydraulic fluid. But the prostitution constructs smelled different than normal humans, sweeter and muskier. If Seth were in the ductwork…yes. He was out. His lambstew-vanilla scent slid across her olfactory nerve, and Kira felt herself getting wet.
She’d first met Seth two years before when a quartet of spacers on shore leave rented them and another pair of prostitutes for a night of group sex. The moment she’d laid eyes on Seth, she’d felt an unmistakable, undeniable attraction to him. Once the spacers had drunk themselves unconscious and the other two slaves had nodded off, she and Seth ended up making out and talking until dawn.
It smelled as if he were down a few levels. Maybe he was in the mezzanine health club? She hoped so. The gym had been shut down for a few weeks due to some sort of revenue tax problem with the station government. But the station hadn’t shut off the water or electricity, and Kira loved making love with Seth in the showers and steamroom. And on the locker room benches, and on the exercise equipment, and on the wrestling mats…
Kira made her way down through the maze of metal ducts to the grate that led into the women’s locker room. The grate had already been removed and was leaning against the locker room wall. She crawled through and stood up on the dry, rubbery floor. She could smell Seth clearly, and could hear the hiss of the steamroom jets.
Kira pulled off her pajamas, folded them, and laid them on one of the dressing benches. Seth’s scent was deliciously strong, and she felt herself getting wetter and wetter as she crept toward the steamroom. It had been three days since she’d seen him, and it felt like three years.
When she opened the translucent glass door, the first thing she saw through the hot mist were the purple welts and bruises across her beloved’s back.
“Oh no,” she breathed.
He turned. There were more welts across his sculpted chest and thighs. His wrists and ankles were rope-burned. His thick blond hair had been shaved off, and his left eye was blackened and nearly swollen shut.
“Kira,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’ve missed you so much.”
She ran to him, and he grabbed her and hugged her tightly. Up close, Kira could see that the bruises on his shoulders were actually bite marks.
“What did they do to you?” she whispered.
“I haven’t been able to think of anyone but you,” he murmured. “I was escorting a woman two days ago, and I just…I just wasn’t into it. She got mad, and complained to the owners. So I got sold for rough trade last night.”
“Oh god, did they—” she began.
“Let’s just say they weren’t into safe, sane, and consensual,” he said. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
She kissed him gently, and he returned the kiss less gently, his vanilla-flavored tongue sliding into her mouth. Kira’s knees went rubbery, and her loins ached with desire for him. The steam condensing on their skin ran down their flesh in warm rivulets. She felt his ridged erection harden between their bodies. He kissed her neck, licked her earlobes and traced the length of her throat with his tongue. His hands slid down her smooth back to her ass.
Kira kissed his chest and found his nipple with her lips. He sucked in his breath as she nibbled him. She slid a hand down his taut, wet belly to his erection and began to stroke him, the soft skin sliding over the thick cartilage rings around his shaft.
“I wish I could be inside you,” he whispered.
“I wish that, too,” she replied, caressing his balls with her other hand. “But even if you could get inside me, we’d lock up. We’d be stuck together for hours.”
“If we ever get out of here,” he said, “first money I make, I’m getting surgery to get these things taken off. And then I’m going to make love to you for three days straight.”
“Just three days?” she teased.
“Well, after three days I’ll probably be too faint from hunger to keep it up much longer.”
He slid his hands around her hips to her hairless vulva. He gently spread her thighs. “And speaking of hunger, I’ve been dying to taste you again.”
He knelt on the rubbery floor before her and spread her lips with his thumbs. “Why, hello there! Looks like someone’s glad to see me.”
He ran the tip of his tongue over her inflamed clitoris, and a jolt of pleasure electrified her body, dizzying her. She rocked backward, but Seth caught her by her thighs and pulled her close to his face.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “You don’t get to faint until after I’ve made you come.”
He began to run his tongue in slow, agonizingly wonderful circles around her swollen little bundle of nerves. He slid a finger down the slick groove of her vulva and slowly penetrated her. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. She felt him find the sweet spot between her third and fourth rings, and she felt her flesh tighten around him, her legs quivering.
“Yes, that’s it,” she moaned.
He stopped circling her clitoris and started giving it quick, direct licks as he pressed into the wonderful spot inside her. Kira cried out as the orgasm took her hard and fast. Her legs turned to mush, but Seth wouldn’t let her fall. He drank down her nectar as her flesh spasmed sweetly against his hand and tongue.
When her climax had passed, Seth lowered her to the floor and planted a soft kiss on her lips as she lay there, stunned.
“A good one?” he asked.
She nodded. “I don’t know how you do it,” she whispered. “I come all the time with customers, but when I’m with you…it’s like comparing static electricity to a lightning bolt.”
He grinned at her. “I’m just that good, is all.”
Kira got up on her knees and took hold of his erection. She leaned down and licked off the prejack beading on his glans. Vanilla cream. She started to take him into her mouth, but he stopped her.
“Do you think you could come again?” he asked.
Her flesh was still humming. “Yes. For you, I could come a thousand times and still want more.”
“I want to feel that hot groove of yours. And I want to kiss you. And most of all, I want to be looking into your eyes when you come.”
He helped her up, then backed her up against the warm, wet tile wall. A steam jet hissed near their heads. He kissed her deeply, passionately, and she helped him slip his erection between her
legs. He began to thrust in and out, his rings bumping wonderfully against her slick flesh. She tilted her pelvis forward so her clitoris would get the best of the rub.
“More,” she whispered. “Faster.”
Seth was working hard, grunting as he pushed against her. She licked his neck, and tasted his sweat, salty and sweet like honey-roasted peanuts. He leaned back, staring deep into her eyes. His green eyes were dilated so wide she could barely see the irises.
“Come for me,” he whispered.
Kira felt the tension rising in her loins, and she leaned into him, squeezing her thighs around his hard shaft. Each stroke brought her closer and closer to ecstasy.
“Come for me!” he shouted.
The shock of his voice brought her home. She thrust her hips against his, meeting him stroke for stroke, wishing he was inside her, aching for him to be inside her, and as her flesh pulsed she felt his body shudder and he was coming, too, howling as he greased her thighs with his sweet vanilla spunk, and this time his legs gave out, and they tumbled backward in a jumble of arms and legs and tongues and she humped against him until they were both spent.
“Ouch,” he said, his body stiffening beneath her. “Please let me up.”
She rolled off him. As he unsteadily got to his feet, she saw that the fall had torn open some of the scabbed welts on his back and he was bleeding. She helped him out of the steamroom, got him to sit on one of the benches, and found some peroxide and gauze in a first aid kit bolted to the wall.
He winced a little as she wiped off the blood and cleaned his wounds.
“It’s not fair that we can’t be together,” he said, tracing a finger down her damp cleavage. “We were made to be together.”
“I know,” she said, blinking back tears. They’d really beat Seth up. His injuries hadn’t looked nearly this bad in the dim light of the steamroom. “Dammit, why didn’t the madam take you to the medic?”
“All part of the lesson,” he replied bitterly. “But they’ll have to heal all this up in the morning so I’ll be a nice, clean slate for the next customer.”
Lucy A. Snyder - Sparks and Shadows Page 6