Candescent

by Zoey Ellis

  Mov­ing gin­gerly, Ria climbed out of bed to ex­am­ine the win­dows. Al­though they were locked, it wasn’t im­pos­si­ble to pick them. The only prob­lem was, it was clear she was on the sec­ond or third floor of the build­ing, and she would most cer­tainly hurt her­self if she sim­ply jumped from this height with­out magic. Fur­ther, there were no trees to hide among if she did man­age to get down there. She needed a plan.

  She sur­veyed the room, but there was noth­ing that in­ter­est­ing. Her boots had been left by the ta­ble, and a large closet was in one of the cor­ners. Af­ter find­ing noth­ing use­ful, she re­turned to the bed.

  She didn’t have to wait long for gen­eral to re­turn, and when he did, she was shocked to see that he only wore a towel around his waist. He must have bathed too, be­cause the tips of his hair were wet. Even with­out his clothes and his ar­mor, the gen­eral was mas­sive. In fact, he seemed more daunt­ing now that she could see the bulging mus­cle of his arms, shoul­ders, and chest. Ria looked over him care­fully, try­ing to pin­point his age. Ini­tially, she had thought he was a much older al­pha, but there was noth­ing to sug­gest that from just look­ing at him. Maybe it was the con­trolled way he moved or his man­ner, but there were no ob­vi­ous signs of age on his face or body. The only thing that told her that he may be older was the sparse strands of sil­ver that streaked through his dark brown hair.

  Sud­denly she re­al­ized he had stopped in the cen­ter of the room and was smirk­ing at her as she stared at him. She dragged her eyes away, de­ter­mined not to give him the sat­is­fac­tion of her eyes on him.

  “Where are you from, lit­tle Ria?”

  She ig­nored him, though his deep voice caused a trem­ble in her stom­ach. Her stupid body was re­ally start­ing to an­noy her.

  “I want to know ev­ery­thing about you. Tell me where in the Lands you were born.”

  She kept her head fac­ing away, star­ing straight ahead, not al­low­ing him to en­gage her again, even in sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion.

  The Al­pha chuck­led. As he moved around the room, Ria found her­self cu­ri­ous about what he was do­ing, but she kept her eyes away.

  Fi­nally, he moved to the side of the bed, and she closed her eyes, wait­ing for him to climb in, but he didn’t. She made her mind up to not even ac­knowl­edge him no mat­ter what he did, but when he growled, low and lux­u­ri­ous, there was noth­ing that could stop her from turn­ing to him.

  What she saw sent a shock of car­nal hunger through her core. The gen­eral stood fully naked, his hard length in hand, rub­bing and stroking it as he stared at her. His ex­pres­sion was so fierce, it drew a whim­per from her lips. In­stantly that fa­mil­iar des­per­ate need surged through ev­ery inch of her. But it wasn’t just the sight of the bulging, weep­ing head of his cock that caused it, or the flex­ing of his thighs as he jerked his hips for­ward to his hand. The gen­eral had her panties pressed up to his nose. Ria’s pussy, as sore as it was, clenched as her slick be­gan to gather again.

  “Do you still want these back?” His ques­tion came out as a harsh growl as he worked his cock faster.

  Ria tried to drag her eyes away, but couldn’t, and in her rap­ture, she for­got she wasn’t sup­posed to be talk­ing to him. “I thought they were ev­i­dence.”

  The in­ten­sity of his eyes height­ened. “They are. Ev­i­dence that your pussy smells gor­geous.”

  The heat that rushed to her face flus­tered her, and al­though she opened her mouth, noth­ing came out. She squeezed her legs again, winc­ing at the pain be­tween them while his scent drifted into her nose. That needy part of her was flour­ish­ing, raw, con­sum­ing de­sire threat­en­ing to take over again, but she couldn’t let it win.

  Forc­ing her­self to look away, she at­tempted to ig­nore him, but the firm, wet strokes of his cock, aided by his flu­ids, drew her eyes back.

  His length was mas­sive. How had that fit in­side her? Go­ing by how sore she was, it barely did, but she couldn’t deny how in­cred­i­ble it felt. The more he stroked, twist­ing his wrist ev­ery time he reached the tip, the deeper the crav­ing within her burned, mak­ing her mouth wa­ter. When she licked her lips, the gen­eral snarled, mov­ing closer as he sped up, and soon he was drag­ging the bed­sheets off her, rum­bling in sat­is­fac­tion at the sight her body.

  Ria told her­self to get up, to move away from him, but those thoughts dis­in­te­grated when he grabbed her throat. She im­me­di­ately went limp, and a beam of calm sat­is­fac­tion and plea­sure soothed away all con­fu­sion. This didn’t need to be that dif­fi­cult. It was clear what the Al­pha wanted, and she wanted it too, didn’t she? She blinked. No.

  As the Al­pha climbed over her, trap­ping her be­tween his thick thighs, she served him with the best glare she could man­age. He growled and moved his hand from her neck to spray her with his seed. Streams of the warm fluid coated her neck, chin, and chest, and as he con­tin­ued to stroke, he saved the last spurt for her mouth.

  Ria couldn’t help but lick the pun­gent fluid from her lips, sa­vor­ing the taste of him. Some­thing about his seed cov­er­ing and mark­ing her set­tled her just as much as his hand around her neck. When he low­ered down and pushed his drip­ping cock be­tween her lips, she au­to­mat­i­cally sucked the tip ea­gerly, drain­ing him of ev­ery last drop, be­fore re­al­iz­ing what she was do­ing.

  “I won’t bathe my scent off you again,” he said, al­most to him­self.

  With those words, Ria fi­nally came to her senses. “I will,” she said sharply, pulling her head away from him. “I am not walk­ing around stink­ing of you, Al­pha.”

  A strange look jumped into his eyes, but he said noth­ing. Climb­ing off her, he walked to the ta­ble and dragged the chair over to the bed.

  “Tell me who you are,” he said, low­er­ing to the chair.

  Ria said noth­ing. Pulling the bed­sheets over her to cover her naked­ness, she leaned back in the bed and fixed her eyes on the ceil­ing.

  “What is your fam­ily name?”

  Si­lence.

  “I told you, I can keep you here as long as it takes, lit­tle Ria.” Why did he al­ways sound like he was goad­ing her? And why did he al­ways sound so sexy while he was do­ing it?

  She pursed her lips. “Where is here?”

  “My home.”

  At that, her eyes snapped to his, and she frowned. “This is your home? I thought you were tak­ing me to your base?”

  His eyes flicked over her face. “You earned the right to my bed.”

  Ria swal­lowed. Had the dark grey of his eyes al­ways been so pretty? Ig­nor­ing the flut­ter in her stom­ach, she re­turned her gaze to the ceil­ing.

  “It’s clear you went to the moun­tains for some­thing.” He hes­i­tated. “What was it?”

  “Noth­ing you can give me.”

  “I am the gen­eral who runs this ter­ri­tory. I trade with all the other ter­ri­to­ries and have di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Lox Palace. If you want some­thing, I will get it.”

  Ria slowly leaned up on an el­bow. “What I need is for you to let me go. You have no right to de­tain me.”

  “I have the right to do what­ever I want with tres­passers.”

  “Like fuck them on the floor of old sta­bles?” she shot at him.

  He shot off the chair to­ward her, anger flash­ing in his eyes as he leaned over her. “Yes,” he ground out. “Like fuck them un­til they are wet, and beg­ging, and filthy with my sweat and come.” His eyes roamed her face. “You are the first tres­passer to have had that honor.”

  The strength of his voice re­bounded through her, as though the vi­bra­tion was seek­ing out some­thing that could only be found deep within her core. “I wasn’t tres­pass­ing.”

  “You were not in­vited to the Ariyon moun­tains,” the gen­eral pointed out. “The treaty for­bids it.”

  Ria kept her mouth shut. He didn’t need to kn
ow why she went there or that she wasn’t go­ing to stop re­turn­ing there un­til she got the in­for­ma­tion she wanted.

  “You’re go­ing to tell me even­tu­ally,” the gen­eral said, his voice low as he leaned far­ther to­ward her. “Whether it be while you are calm and clear­headed, or when you are clench­ing around me and out of your mind for my come, it will hap­pen, lit­tle chal­lenger. It’s just a mat­ter of time.”

  Roil­ing anger burst into Ria’s stom­ach. “You Lox Al­phas are so ar­ro­gant! You think that you are owed ev­ery­thing you can touch, when all you have done is take take take from ev­ery­one else. You will not get any­thing from me!”

  The gen­eral frowned as he straight­ened. “Why are you so against the Lox? Things have been bet­ter for the East­ern Lands since we have claimed it.”

  Ria’s mouth dropped open, and then she laughed. “You truly be­lieve that? Are you new to this job?”

  The gen­eral growled, his eyes flash­ing.

  Ria’s body re­acted, the sound caus­ing a plea­sur­able wave that lin­gered be­tween her legs.

  “I have been a gen­eral for years,” he growled. “And I have seen pos­i­tive changes in this Land since the Lox has taken over. It is much more pleas­ant now than how it was with all dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries ar­gu­ing and fight­ing. Things are uni­fied now that Em­peror Drocco is in charge.”

  “That is not what I wit­nessed,” Ria mut­tered.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked up at him. “I wit­nessed peo­ple fear­ful and afraid. I wit­nessed re­bel­lions and protests. And I wit­nessed the em­peror deal­ing with all of that in a vi­o­lent and un­for­giv­ing way. In Va­more, ba­bies were tram­pled as crowds ran from Lox war­riors; in Ray­del­more, mer­chants were killed for not ac­knowl­edg­ing Lox taxes, and in Grence fur­ni­ture mer­chants killed them­selves rather than give a fam­ily mem­ber’s life to show their loy­alty.”

  “That was be­fore!” The gen­eral stared at her in dis­be­lief. “That was when he first took over. All peo­ple need time to ad­just to change. There has been none of that in re­cent months.”

  “Only be­cause of the em­press,” Ria ar­gued. “The em­press has calmed things, not the em­peror.”

  The gen­eral’s eyes nar­rowed. “What is your point?”

  “My point is that you give him more credit than he is due. He has not been the one to unite lands.”

  “They are as one, the em­peror and em­press. One can­not be with­out the other.” He eyed her. “So you agree then that the Lands have been united?”

  Ria started, her body jerk­ing as she frowned up at him. “No.”

  “How do you know what went on in these dif­fer­ent cities any­way,” the gen­eral said, sus­pi­cion in his tone. “You trav­eled to all of these places?”

  Ria didn’t an­swer.

  “How is it that you have trav­eled across the em­pire so ex­ten­sively? I haven’t known any­one to do that un­less they were some kind of diplo­mat or trav­el­ing mer­chant.” He moved around the bed, sus­pi­cion in his gaze. “Is that what you do?”

  Ria’s gaze didn’t wa­ver. She de­bated whether to lie, but she fell back on her train­ing, even though she didn’t want to. “If you want in­for­ma­tion from me, you must be pre­pared to give it.”

  That hard look of wari­ness she’d first no­ticed about the gen­eral, reen­tered his eyes. She hadn’t even no­ticed when it had dis­ap­peared. He low­ered to the chair again, ob­serv­ing her care­fully. “What in­for­ma­tion do you want?”

  Ria held his gaze. “What are the de­tails of the treaty you have with the moun­tain peo­ple?” If she could find out more about this treaty, then maybe she would have bet­ter suc­cess talk­ing to them when she re­turned.

  The gen­eral watched her for a long mo­ment be­fore mak­ing his de­ci­sion. “Of all the peo­ple in the em­pire, the moun­tain peo­ple of Ariyon have been most dif­fi­cult to align to Lox prin­ci­ples.”

  “I thought the Lox would just storm in and kill them,” Ria re­marked, dryly. “Isn’t that what you nor­mally do?”

  The gen­eral growled. “The moun­tains are strate­gi­cally prob­lem­atic to over­come in bat­tle. It wasn’t im­pos­si­ble to do, but my com­man­der wanted to main­tain the beauty of the moun­tains, not de­stroy it. If we had stormed it, there was no guar­an­tee it would be the same af­ter­ward. It is a much-loved phe­nom­e­non that can, at some times of the year, be seen across the en­tire East area of the Lands. Its des­e­cra­tion would be a con­stant neg­a­tive re­minder of the Lox.”

  Ria tilted her head. “Clever. I did not ex­pect strate­gic think­ing from the Lox.”

  Thorec clenched his jaw at her words, but con­tin­ued. “The de­ci­sion was to try to cre­ate some kind of agree­ment with the moun­tain peo­ple. I dis­cov­ered they don’t ac­tu­ally have a prob­lem with the Lox it­self, they just want to be left alone. When the Lox took siege of the East­ern Lands, many peo­ple tried to find an es­cape in their moun­tains and took ad­van­tage of them. That dis­rup­tion was detri­men­tal to their liveli­hood. They wanted us to re­move peo­ple who didn’t be­long there so they could con­tinue liv­ing their lives as nor­mal. That be­came the ba­sis of the treaty. We would help them to main­tain their pri­vacy as long as they did not in­ten­tion­ally do any­thing to de­stroy the phe­nom­e­non of the moun­tains.”

  Ria snorted. “And you be­lieve that the moun­tain peo­ple have the power to in­ter­fere with the beauty of the moun­tains?”

  The gen­eral shrugged. “They have proved that they can dim its color-chang­ing ef­fects. I don’t know how they do it, but they do have some power over how brightly the moun­tains shine. It would be fool­ish of us to not take them se­ri­ously, es­pe­cially when we have no ob­jec­tion to what they want or the life they want to live.”

  Ria nod­ded slowly. That made sense, al­though it seemed far too rea­son­able for the Lox.

  “Now tell me where you are from?” the gen­eral said, evenly.

  “I’m not from any­where.”

  The gen­eral’s eyes nar­rowed. “Do not try to take me for a fool, lit­tle chal­lenger. Where are you from?”

  “I don’t have a home,” Ria in­sisted.

  The gen­eral frowned and leaned for­ward on his knees. “How can that be? Ev­ery­one has some­where that they grew up, some­where they iden­tify with.”

  “I do not have such a place. I travel, I wan­der, I ob­serve.” She shrugged. “And I live. I have an­other ques­tion for you.”

  “You haven’t given me an an­swer yet,” he growled.

  “I have. Just be­cause it’s not the an­swer you want, doesn’t mean it’s not an an­swer, Al­pha.”

  Thorec shot for­ward again, but this time he climbed over her again and grabbed her jaw, just like he’d done on horse­back. “Thorec. Gen­eral Thorec,” he snarled slowly. “That is my name. Say it.”

  “Gen­eral Thorec,” she said, through grit­ted teeth. “It doesn’t change that you are an Al­pha.”

  That strange look ap­peared in his eyes again. “I am your Al­pha. You will call me by my name.”

  Ria blinked. Her Al­pha? She watched him as he re­moved his hand from her jaw. Did he think just be­cause he took her on the floor of some dirty barn that he owned her now? She ex­haled slowly, re­fo­cus­ing her mind. Ul­ti­mately, it didn’t mat­ter. She would take what she needed from him, just like he did from her. “One more ques­tion, Gen­eral Thorec,” she said.

  He dipped his head in a nod, but this time he lay on his side next to her. For some rea­son, it un­nerved her that he was so close but not touch­ing her. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Not all Al­phas are mem­bers of the Lox,” she be­gan.

  “True.” His eyes were soft and ran over her body in slow, smooth strokes.

  She tried to ig­nore the way he wa
s look­ing at her. “Why would an Al­pha want to join?”

  “Why wouldn’t an Al­pha want to join?” the gen­eral coun­tered. “The Lox up­holds many of the stan­dards that are im­por­tant to Al­phas and keeps us fo­cused, struc­tured and or­dered. It is like a broth­er­hood.”

  Ria tilted her head up to him, cu­ri­ous. “So it stops you from be­ing so wild?”

  “For some Al­phas, yes. Be­ing part of an army helps you to learn dis­ci­pline, to have an out­let for our wild na­ture as well as able to bet­ter our­selves in ways that we didn’t al­ways have the op­por­tu­nity to be­fore the Lox ex­isted.”

  That was in­ter­est­ing. “Is that why you joined?”

  A hint of a smile graced the gen­eral’s lips, and sud­denly Ria won­dered what a full smile would look like on his lips. “I was a wild Al­pha when I was younger, yes. But mostly it was pent-up en­ergy and frus­tra­tion. Once I learned to di­rect that into my train­ing, things changed.”

  Ria ran her eyes over his face, notic­ing the scratches on his jaw she’d in­flicted. “How old are you?”

  “Forty-seven,” he re­sponded.

  Ria nod­ded. That seemed right. “Don’t you want to know how old I am?”

  The Al­pha rum­bled out a chuckle. “You’re old enough.” Tuck­ing a thick arm around her torso, he scooped her into his body and set­tled her against him. “It doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence.”

  Ria tried not to get too com­fort­able in his arms, but his skin against hers was a com­fort she hadn’t ex­pected to en­joy, es­pe­cially with pains still so strong. “You bruised me.”

  “And you marked me,” he re­sponded, forc­ing her eyes back to the scratches on his face. “We have bat­tled. It is ex­pected.”

  “Bat­tled? Is that what you call it?”

  He tilted his head. “Yes. What would you call it?”

  Ria squinted at him, rais­ing a brow. “You forc­ing me to—”

  “No,” he said sternly. “You at­tacked me so I would fuck you how you needed. You set your ex­pec­ta­tion and de­manded it with brute force when I didn’t com­ply, lit­tle Ria.”