Battle Queen: Red Ruler Series (Book 1)

by Kahaula

  L’Ryx’s skin was flushed. He was a deeper and darker black than the last time I had seen him. If I wasn’t mistaken, he even looked as if he had a fine dusting of crushed gold or a winking shimmer dancing along the smooth planes of his skin. The hand that had held my ankle twitched and his fingers rubbed against each other, savouring that small feel of me.

  I sat down again. I was going to give whatever was going on here a chance.

  “I understand,” he was quiet, not a hint of bravado or falsehood, just a weariness born of understanding, “We each have people we protect. People we answer to.”

  “Yes.” Tell me. Tell me why I should stay and not go.

  “Your secrets are your own and so are mine,” he lifted a glass of deep violet alcohol and took a small sip, “That doesn’t mean I’m your enemy.”

  “Nor are you my ally,” I stated. I needed to push and I wasn’t going to sit around for more half truths. I understood our positions just fine, but I needed honesty if whatever this was was more than empty political intrigues. I knew those games and had played them. This didn’t feel like one and I was willing to face it head on only if he was too.

  “Maybe we could be—“

  “Don’t. Don’t insult my fucking intelligence, L’Ryx,” I smashed my finger down on the table for emphasis though my anger was plain to hear.

  “Tell me why you had me running around all over this fucking city trying to find you and I’ll tell you why I’m here!” L’Ryx’s yell was punctuated by his heaving breaths. I saw the shimmer run across his body, flashing in and out.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You demand honesty, but you don’t return it,” he scoffed.

  “I said I don’t fucking know!” I leaned back and threw my hands up in frustration, “Contrary to how it may seem I don’t waste time dicking around with clients and playing games. So when I fucking tell you I don’t know, I fucking mean, I. DON’T. KNOW.”

  “You think I let myself be led around by my cocks, either?” His face morphed into disbelief and irritation, “I was sent here for you. YOU, are literally my mission.”

  “Why?” I sucked in a breath and tried to calm my beating heart. Had Rentok High Command or any other major central world power caught on to our plans?

  “Welo,” he scolded, shaking his head, “You and I both know that you are a medical impossibility.”

  “We may be a backwater planet but we’ve earned enough money to afford proper medical care here,” I rolled my eyes, “Maybe the central worlds don’t give a fuck about the little people, but my people are always my first priority.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it,” he scoffed, “Now who’s playing coy?”

  “You’ve seen it for yourself—“

  “And in your words: Don’t insult my fucking intelligence,” he sneered. He continued before I could fire off a shot, “You, Welo, are perfection.”

  “What?” To say I was thrown off by the awe in his deep voice was an understatement.

  “You,” he swallowed down another breath and licked his lips, “If I hadn’t seen you with my own eyes I would have thought High Command had sent me on a fool’s errand,” he laughed softly.

  “Gene splicing, physical changes, these can all be bought on the black market, L’Ryx,” I looked away but felt his gaze burning into the side of my face. “My former master made changes himself. He fancied himself, quite the scientist.”

  The silence stretched. I held in a breath, feeling my pulse thrum. I had given him more information than anyone outside of my small circle of trusted friends and mates. He could do so much with those two sentences. He could ruin everything.

  A warm palm cupped my cheek. I closed my eyes and turned into his hand. I didn’t want to fuck L’Ryx. I wanted to know him. I wanted him to know me.

  “I wish to negotiate my own contract tonight,” his thumb caressed my bottom lip following the dip down to my chin. The backs of his fingers ran down my throat, stopping just before the first wraps of my dress. Of all the things he could have said I did not expect that or his touch.

  “I’ll never willingly sign a breeding contract,” I pulled back and away from his still outstretched hand.

  “That’s not what I want.”

  “I also don’t fill pleasure contracts.”

  “I know,” the edges of his lips twitched in a half smile. His eyes seemed to search my own, as if all the answers to the universe resided in my eyes alone. “I want to request one night where I’m yours, just as myself, just L’Ryx,” raw honesty and different kind of vulnerability coloured his voice.

  “You want to offer yourself?” He only nodded and calmly waited for my answer. I swung my legs over his and straddled his lap. He didn’t move a single muscle but I could feel the heat radiating off his body. I brought my hand up and touched my fingertips along the gold cuff he wore. I traced the lines that marked where I had been and where I was now.

  I danced my fingers down his shoulders, down his arms, fitting his hands to my thighs. Looking down I could see actual dust on my fingers where I had touched his skin. “What is this?” A soft and fuzzy euphoria raced in my body.

  “My people are hyperadaptive,” his hands came up to cradle my own, “we produce various biochemicals to increase pleasure during couplings and matings.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One may very well kill me not to do, and the other will kill me regardless,” he groaned.

  “What?” I laughed.

  “A coupling is for pleasure,” he nuzzled his nose along mine and the euphoria returned, “a mating is so I can pour every drop of seed I have deep into your beautiful cunt.”

  “And how do you know my cunt is beautiful?” I laughed silkily.

  “Because if it is half as intoxicating as your pheromones and your mind, then it will be beyond beautiful.” I felt my heart speed up as my pulse pounded in my clit. I lifted my mouth and licked the line of his lips. I moaned hard and felt my back arch. Taking the dust in orally was a heavier hit of pleasurable euphoria than just feeling it on my skin.

  “How can I keep going when all the pleasure seems to be my own?” I pouted and pulled back.

  “Then you’d be wrong,” he chuckled darkly, “just as everything I secrete will affect you, my body is adapting so that you will affect me.” I let my fangs drop and blood pool in my mouth before it healed. I pulled his head flush to my own and kissed him. Hard.

  Our fangs clashed as our tongues tried to outdo the other. Hot puffs of air escaped our lips as we became drunk for more sips of each other. I leaned back and his eyes feasted on the sight of my flushed body as surely as we had the food earlier.

  I lifted my hands and undid the clasp on my left shoulder. The fabric pooled around us like blood. L’Ryx sucked in a breath and just stared. His hands on my thighs clenched and released, kneading my flesh.

  “Show me, L’Ryx. If you’re offering yourself, then show me what you can do,” I whispered. I tapped the table with three fingers and it lifted and placed itself along the edge of the room, leaving us in a sea of pillows.

  Gods, I was nervous. Me, the Battle Queen of the Blood Sands. Killer. Seductress. Leader. This was the first time in four years that I was with someone for my own pleasure that was not one of my mates. The only exception was Bibi and that had been more about helping her than my pleasure.

  But L’Ryx? L’Ryx was the first I had chosen to be in my bed. Fate had brought I and my mates together. I loved them all the same but not even my mates could say that I had chosen them until much later when we were all free.

  L’Ryx must have seen the nervousness and doubt lingering on my face because he leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly over my own. The gentle touch only intensified my nervousness. I could wrap my head around a fuck, but whatever this was, was more than that. Feelings were aways risky, feelings for or shared with L’Ryx could be world ending.

  L’Ryx wrapped his heavy arms around me. He hugged me to h
is warm body. The defined ridges of his muscles pressed against my soft breasts and taut stomach. He didn’t move, or kiss me. He just kept holding me.

  My hands traced his spine up and down. I felt my heart beat slow. He turned his head into the crook of my neck and kissed behind my ear. His hands mirrored my own movements and his claws trailed along my spine. I shuddered and my nipples tightened.

  He dipped me back onto the pillows and continued kissing me down the column of my neck to the swell of my breasts. He pealed the remaining fabric of my dress away from my skin and ran his hands down my body.

  “I don’t think you even know... This is the hardest challenge I’ve ever faced,” he groaned, tracing patterns across my inner thighs and belly.

  “Why?” I cupped and played with my breasts while smiling wolfishly at him.

  “Your pheromones flooded the room the moment I touched your ankle,” he panted and I looked up to see his dilated pupils. He leaned down quickly and took a long lick of my dripping cunt. He pressed his forehead into my belly, shaking and panting. The tips of his claws pierced my skin. I moaned and bucked my hips, his euphoric dust hitting my bloodstream directly.

  “Holy Darkness, the taste of you...,” he shuddered and dived between my thighs. The violence of his mouth and tongue as it lay siege to my clit and lips was completely unlike his gentle touch before. He sucked and pulled, teased and drank me down. His growls vibrated through my core and I screamed out as I came. “I... I’m sorry,” he panted into my pussy like he was afraid to get too far from me, “that was too fast, too fast.” I laughed and wiped disbelieving hands up my face.

  “Do you hear any complaining, L’Ryx?” He laughed and pressed one more kiss to my clit, sucking and rolling it between his lips before looking up at me. “I want to see you. With only my cuff on you.”

  “As you command, my Queen,” he teased. He stood and took off his pants and boots. I could see that he had the same kind of protective slit that Hs’tar had. He fell to his knees and I crawled forward. Without waiting I licked a slow line up his slit. “Fuck!” I smiled up at him cheekily. A white sack spilled out of the slit and I frowned. Uh... What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Shit, I didn’t even check if we were physically compatible!

  “I can see you’ve never been with a Rentok before,” L’Ryx chuckled. “I can see your mind already going, going, going trying to figure it out.”

  “Ok, to be fair,” I reasoned, “this isn’t exactly where I had seen this night going.”

  “Isn’t it though?” He ran his fingers along my jaw, “I think we both know this, whatever this is, was always going to lead us here,” he finished softly. I watched as the white sack lengthened and grew thicker. “You wanted to test me. You wanted me to show you that I was worthy.”

  L’Ryx lifted me onto his hips and fell back. He gripped the crease just below my ass cheeks and lifted me to hover just above his pale white erection. Slowly, inch by inch he slid me down until he was completely inside me. “Remember, L’Ryx, this is just a coupling—no mating, no trying to get me pregnant.”

  “This is not ‘just’ anything,” he laughed breathlessly, “I was made for you,” I gasped and my spine arched in shock. His cock was growing and shaping to every inch of my inner walls. It pulsed and pushed from inside me as L’Ryx lifted and dropped me onto him. I felt something else slide up and push into my ass. A third something suctioned and ground my clit into my pelvis.

  My head spun as L’Ryx’s secondary cock also grew larger inside my ass. The pressure and sense of fullness was beyond anything I had ever felt before. L’Ryx moaned as I rolled my hips to capture more of the sensations.

  “Do you want more, my Light?” I gasped as he threw me onto my back without breaking away from inside me. He fit me everywhere so thickly that I could only cry out in pleasure as he slammed his hips down into me.

  “How?” It was all I could manage as my breasts bounced fiercely as the breath was being fucked right out of me.

  “Hyperadaptive, remember?” He laughed but it was strained. I felt another of his cocks slide into me. It curved inward above the one already deep inside my cunt. It felt like soft bumps were pressing and massaging my g-spot.

  “OH, FUCK!” I screamed and squirmed but L’Ryx never stopped his heart stopping pounding.

  “Please, my Light,” he begged, his voice ragged and as raw as mine, “please let me feel you come all over me. Take all that I am, my beautiful Light.” L’Ryx’s words sent me careening over the edge. I squirted all over his cocks and clenched so hard I was sure I must have broken them.

  He shouted and shuddered pressing his forehead to mine. I felt his cum flood my body and I screamed as it set off a second torrential orgasm that made me claw and gouge his back. He grunted and gritted his fangs against the pain before pinning my wrists down next to my head.

  “Please let me come at least in your ass,” he pleaded as his hips continued their onslaught.

  “What the fuck was that if that wasn’t you coming?” I ask incredulously.

  “C-Coupling,” he stammered. “Fuck Welo, I... Please, just please, my Light...,” he kept repeating himself, never once breaking or stopping. I felt myself building back up to another climax as he wrapped his arms around my body. He kept mine locked onto his, as if he was afraid to let go and lose me.

  “Yes! Yes, come in my ass, L’Ryx,” at this point I didn’t even know what the fuck I was saying but I wasn’t about to judge myself over it. His pace increased, but now he pulled my hips hard against him with his every punishing downstroke.

  The pleasure was so intense that I tried to squirm away from him but he wouldn’t let go. Exhausted but saturated inside and out with head spinning euphoria I fell soul first into another orgasm. This time L’Ryx joined me as he roared and tightened his arms around me, slamming me down on him one last time.

  A warmth filled and dripped from my ass wholly unlike the cum that poured out from between my thighs. Unlike the brain melting orgasm triggered earlier, the warmth of his mating cum in my ass washed a sense of deep contentment and bliss through my body.

  L’Ryx kissed me deeply and thoroughly. I wrapped my arms around him and knew, absolutely and whole heartedly, that I was fucked.

  No one would ever feel what L’Ryx could give but me, ever again. L’Ryx was mine.

  I dropped into darkness to the sound of his heavy breath on my breasts and his head resting peacefully over my heart.

  L’Ryx

  I felt whole. Complete.

  Warmth and home filled my senses. A gentle rise and fall lifted my head. Inhaling deeply I sighed and turned into that wonderful scent. My face smashed up against hot flesh and my mind struggled to put the pieces together.

  Welo.

  Welo’s shaking thighs.

  Welo’s raw screams of ecstasy.

  Welo’s cunt dripping bliss into my veins.

  I opened my mouth and tasted the sex saturated air. I blinked my eyes open into the dimly lit room. Welo’s golden body was curled around my own, her breasts my pillow. Even in her sleep she cradled me to her heart, not letting me go.

  Dread stabbed deep into my soul.

  Her face was so open and clear. The things I had told her. The things she had told me. There was no denying that I now had confirmation. My mission objective had been achieved. She had given me the two sentences that would damn her existence.

  I couldn’t lie to myself and not put the pieces together. I also couldn’t lie to High Command. This mission had already dragged out far longer than it should have if she had been innocent of their suspicions. Darkness help me, what was I going to do?

  Welo’s brow pinched as if sensing my shift in mood, even in her sleep. Pain squeezed my heart. I had lived for centuries and had never met someone like her. I raged and roared inside my skull. I looked down at our entwined bodies, her gold on my black.

  “What the...,” I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Everywhere we touched my skin shimmered like star patte
rns and nebulas. I placed my hand on her belly and watched as the skin there bloomed into winking star like patterns. When I took my hand off her they lasted for a minute longer then disappeared.

  Never in my long life had I seen something like this before. Something niggled at the back of my mind as I continued to stare at the beautiful glimmering patterns. A story. My mother had told me a story as a youngling about the Star Kissed.

  I racked my brains but couldn’t remember. It felt so important. As important as saving Welo from what I knew High Command would demand. There was no way I could get out of reporting what I knew to them. Especially not with five central world ambassadors on their way.

  A few more standard days and they would be here.

  Welo’s thumb massaged my fretting brow. I looked up into her sleepy face and her warm eyes. Sadness tainted their warmth but she never uttered a word, just kept caressing my face.

  “I have to go,” I whispered.

  “I know.”

  “Welo, I—“

  “We all have our own Kuleana, our responsibilities and obligations,” she rose from the pillows and slipped out from under me. She walked to the edge of the room and looked over her shoulder, “You have yours, and I have mine.” Before I could do more than push myself upright she sank down into the floor, the lift taking her away from me.

  Welo

  The girls had confirmed everything was going smoothly by red noon. The red giant sat high in the sky casting its blood soaked light onto everything. Its light mocked me, making my heart feel as bloody as the skies above.

  “Commander Hs’tar, Planetside Security.”

  “Enter.”

  Hs’tar’s red and black uniform fell into my periphery before he sat at the back edge of my desk a few feet to my right. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

  “Of course he will,” I said numbly.

  “Maybe he won’t,” Hs’tar said gently.

  “He doesn’t have a choice, Hs’tar!” I didn’t know why I was yelling but the pitying look Hs’tar gave me only pissed me off more. “Don’t,” I warned him.