Searching for the Kingdom Key

by TylerRose.

  He resumed at a slower pace, learned to read her reactions, her rises, her sounds as she reached that pinnacle again and again. She was engaged, passionate, resilient.

  Nearly an hour of controlling her potent sexuality and he let his own climax happen. An intense explosion of mind and body and he at once regretted that he could not keep her always in his care.

  Resting together, she very quickly curled up with her head on a pillow and fell asleep. He picked up pen and paper from the bedside table and wrote down the lines he’d thought in the Hall. And more.

  Here the pale beauty lies

  The most ardent cure

  To my grief.

  She woke to find him reading a book, and within a moment he acquiesced to her request to have him in her other orifice. Not something many K’Tran women could do, perhaps one in all the favorites he’d ever known, he indulged himself in a pleasure rarely offered, nipping and biting across her shoulders.

  She’d never really enjoyed biting before. For some reason, from him, she found it an orgasmic experience.

  Only afterward did she leave his bed to get her plate from the dining table. Normally, he would not allow any food in his bed; but he found he could not refuse her. Watching her eat, naked in his bed when she had been so difficult a pursuit, was its own reward. Plate finished and set on the table on her side, she fell asleep again while he watched the daily news reports.

  Far earlier than he ever had, he turned off the screen and the lights and slid down to sleep as well. With a woman in his bed for the first time in four moon cycles, he slept as solidly as she.

  He woke first, having forgotten to turn off his morning alarm, and showered. Returning to her, she roused easily enough and was more than ready for him. When she wanted him inside, he instead opened her legs to taste her, biting up and down her thighs, licking the wet center. He liked, maybe a little too much, how he could make her squirm and gasp. He enjoyed, maybe a little too much, her increasing desperation for relief as he pulled back to kiss and bite her thighs, stopping her every climax.

  “Fuck me already, dammit,” she growled after his fifth denial.

  “No,” he said, lying beside her. “I want you to come back to me tonight. I will leave you unfinished and wanting.”

  “I can just pop myself off in my own room.”

  Blink.

  “You can do that?”

  “In under a minute,” she informed him. “What? K’Tran women can’t masturbate?”

  “Show me how you ‘pop yourself.’ You have me curious.”

  She stared up at him a moment. No one had wanted her to masturbate for them in quite a long time. Now and then Nails liked to watch her from his chair at the foot of his bed.

  She reached down to stroke that small nub with the pads of her first two fingers. Not a large motion, but vertical and pressing inward firmly. His own hand over hers learned the motion. She tensed and squirmed next to him, her legs tightly together as she rose to that final pinnacle. He felt it happen, felt her sink into the bed slightly, felt that tremor through her body just before she stiffened. Breath held, inward gasp, held again, then a low grunt with her knees pulling upward. A last jerk and she stopped to lay gasping for breath.

  A spectacular display and she was too enraptured and weak of muscle to stop him when he took position to have her where she lay. Little sounds, meeps and peeps, moving with him in pleasure beyond words but with no risings to climax. She was as eager with her passion spent as she was when he’d awakened her.

  “Zitara,” he whispered, when she was able to find that orgasmic zenith once more, when he gave in to his own.

  Zitara

  Love I cannot keep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mankell accompanied Tyleraround the world, going to a different destination each day. The teleporter hub in On’R had set transport times like an airport, but also allowed for appointments. He had only to say what time he’d be there and how many he expected to be in the party, and didn’t have to give a destination until they were ready to teleport.

  As they were getting into his ground vehicle three mornings after their first night alone, the space ship in the neighbor’s front yard lifted off. She took pictures as it hovered and then took off directly upward.

  “Several days there, several days back,” Tyler said under her breath, and got into the vehicle. “Five to seven days.”

  She marked it in the calendar of her phone. The rest of this day was like the two before it. Off to visit some place, to talk to people who clearly didn’t want to have to talk to her; visit a local Gar for the first part of his Gathering; back to Mankell’s for the night.

  Unlike the previous two nights, when she’d refused him, she went with him into his suite for the night.

  “Why not come to me every night?” he asked, unzipping her gown for her.

  “Because I don’t want you to get the mistaken idea that I’m at your beck and call,” she replied, pushing the gown past her hips.

  “I remind myself every time I speak and call you Zitara.”

  “Is that why that is what you call me?” she asked. “To remind yourself?”

  Turning around in his arms, a hand sliding up his magnificent chest.

  “Yes. It is.”

  She had to remind herself as she went to her own room in the morning. Bright as the room was, she was glad of the dark bed closet, and climbed into it without a word to Pisod. He left her be and sent Ch’Wik and Saber to sit in the room to protect her while he got a good shower and a change of clothes. The crystal in his pocket too depleted to draw a charge from, he teleported back to his father’s palace on Voran III to recharge it.

  “Prince Pisod, the Emperor requires you attend him at once,” one of the guards inside the door told him.

  Pisod made no reply. The recharged crystal in his pocket, he left the worship chamber to go up one floor to the Imperial rooms directly above.

  Shestna arrived with him. Dorn, the 1st Wife’s second son, was already present, being their father’s Chief of Security. He was decades younger than Shestna, only a few years older than Pisod’s nineteen years. The Emperor waved the room clear of courtiers and lesser sons in order to speak with these three most important sons. The ones who would guide his heir when the time came.

  Shestna and Pisod gave the appropriately low bow, and waited to sit until indicated.

  “What have you to report?” Emperor Encito asked of Pisod.

  “I understand why Shestna is infatuated with her, Father. She is quite the force to be reckoned, but she is not the Nareeva. She takes no crystal energy. Rather, it acts like a shroud around her, shutting out intrusive energies. It clashes with her own energy, resulting in a jolt like a static shock.”

  “What abilities has she exhibited?” Emperor Encito asked.

  “Telepathy, intuition, teleportation, conjuring. She has a particularly tight focus that shuts out the universe while she’s on her task. It can be hard to reach her. She dances a spirited K’Tran Promenade and a most elegant Waltz, and beat Gar Mankell at a game of Parimend in one move.”

  “The female never wins at that game,” the Emperor said.

  “This one did. She blackmailed a soldier into moving out of her way and took her steps forward until she knocked the Gar off his spot and to his butt on the floor. He conceded the game.”

  Encito laughed a most delighted laugh that brought his 1st Wife and Empress out from their bedroom. All three Princes rose from their seats to bow to her.

  “Pisod, I’m pleased to see you. You are enthralling your father with tales of females, no doubt?” she teased Encito rather than Pisod.

  “I am, Empress,” he smiled, having always revered his father’s 1st Wife. His own mother was a lesser wife.

  She kissed Encito’s fuzzy, wrinkled cheek and whispered into his ear and he patted her hand. She returned to the bedroom and Encito leveled hard eyes on his eldest son.

  “You still believe this is what she is? A Nareeva-li
ke Immaculate?”

  “I do, Father. Just because she does not feed on the energy now doesn’t mean she will not at some point in the future. Everything I have found in my research says the end result is accomplished in stages and phases. She is very young, only 18 soon to be 19, and has only had one Widening that occurred less than a year ago. We cannot expect all abilities to come out in a single shot. She has had no time to develop the abilities she already has. She is denied all guidance and instruction and has been thrust out into the galaxy with almost no preparation, to drown or swim on her own. Whether she knows it or not, whether she likes it or not, she requires vigilant protection.”

  “There is no assurance that she is to be the next omnipotent,” Encito pointed out.

  “No one can give one hundred percent assurance, Father,” Shestna had to admit. “The one thing that is assured right now is that she already has too many enemies. One of them is the very man who is in the best position to help and hurt her as he chooses. I can only do so much on the station.”

  “She does not know what she might be?” Encito questioned. “Why not?”

  “Even if she was reading my mind to know I was telling the truth, she would not believe me,” Shestna shook his head. “She disbelieves and distrusts first. Always. She is the embodiment of confrontation.”

  “He is right, Father. She would never believe it,” Pisod added. “She has a strong sense of self but I watched her completely lose her nerve when a roomful of men bowed to her. She would never accept that she might grow to be a world-creating goddess. Not if it was told to her by someone else. She has to come to the realization on her own.”

  Encito eyed them both critically, one and then the other. “At what point will she outright refuse to be protected?”

  “Oh, she’s already there,” Pisod said. “The only reason she has allowed me to stay is to play foil to Gar Mankell and to assist her in learning about the society. If it did not suit her purpose, she would have sent me back at once. She is extremely stubborn and determined. She needs no man to do anything for her.”

  “Not even if she wanted a child?”

  “Father, if she could do that by herself…? I promise you she would.”

  Pisod’s straight face in saying it caused Encito to have another hearty laugh.

  “May I please return to her now? She’s with good men, but I don’t want to leave her for long.”

  “Yes, go,” he waved away the third of his favorite sons.

  Pisod stood and bowed, leaving the oldest with the Emperor while he teleported directly out from the suite. Encito looked to Shestna most seriously.

  “You will bring this female to me. I must meet such a feralina.”

  “I’ve already been working on that,” Shestna admitted. “If I can get her here, immerse her in the power of your crystal, perhaps it will spur her to have another Widening. If she can have a second, here where she is protected, Earnol will be powerless to stop her development. At least two of the team that went to Earth to wait for her died in the invasion earlier this year. Or so I was told. If I brought one or two who are left and one or two from the Gethis team, we might be able to put together our own to help her.”

  “Is not Gethis among the forbidden planets?” Encito asked.

  “Gethis and Earth,” Shestna nodded. “Forbidden by Earnol because of her and the teams waiting for her. Also a planet called the Devoid but I’ve not learned exactly why. Information on it is tightly restricted. All I do know is that ships stop working and crash when they get too close.”

  “Who else knows all this?” Encito asked.

  “Almost no one. Earnol has done his best to squash all information. There is no looking into why the teams existed and why one went to Earth. He has changed the story to say the station was put in a neutral location, not that it was put there specifically to assist the team with the Eminent when she emerged. If no one goes to Earth or Gethis, no one will find out who she really is. As I understand it, those who are left on Gethis don’t even know that was their purpose. They’d been made to forget by Fate or they’re not alive anymore. There’s been no word from them since Fate took over and I understand Parin has died because he could not regenerate and she did not look to help him. I suspect that’s why Fate went there in the first place. She was specifically sent to stop Tyler in her previous incarnation. It wouldn’t surprise me if Earnol sent her, but that was before he lived. So it would have been someone else before him.”

  “This information will get you killed,” Encito said, slouching a bit in his seat.

  “I know. That’s why I only speak to you about it, and only in this company.” Meaning his full blood brother Dorn with the red and gold full mane, who was still present at the table. “If Earnol was aware of how much I know, he’d send an assassin. I have no doubt. All the more reason to get her here permanently.”

  “Will you give her the Psala? Force it into her hand?” Encito asked.

  “If I must; but I disapprove of the tactic. You already know that, Father. I’d rather she come to me of her own desire. Otherwise, she will only think of Voran as a prison. If she becomes contrary, we will get nowhere with her.”

  “I will trust that you know what you are doing, my son.”

  Shestna took his leave and Encito’s sharp eyes shifted to Dorn, the silent one four years older than Pisod, whose coloring was so much like his own had been a hundred and fifty years earlier.

  “What do you think of all this?” he asked his closest son, the one raised with his own views on their society.

  “I think if Earnol knew, he’d send an invasion force here to destroy us all and her.”

  “That is why you are my Chief of Security,” Encito smiled. “Shut the door on your way out. I’m going to impregnate my 32nd wife.”

  “I look forward to the birth of my newest sister,” Dorn said, standing to bow to the ancient feline Emperor who was as virile as he’d been a century and a half earlier.

  Encito took energy from the pinnacle of the crystal coming up through the floor. Retiring to his bedroom to find his newest wife performing cunnilingus on his Empress, he watched a moment. His Empress was grey and peach-colored with soft, greying fuzz that still felt like the softest, warmest velvet. The new wife was pink and white with black streaks and spots. With her short fuzz of black and white fur, she looked much like their feline ancestors as she lapped at the Empress’ open sex.

  “Be seen, Neverseen,” he said.

  The Neverseen servant, moving so swiftly she could not be seen unless she stopped all motion and then kept herself very slow and deliberate, appeared to help the Emperor off with his clothing. She vanished again to go about her duties within the apartment.

  Leaving the new wife where she was, pleasuring the Empress, the Emperor lifted her hips from the bed and mounted her from behind. Engaging his sharp penile hooks with severe resolve, enjoying the sound of her discomfort as they stabbed in to grip and open her virginal flesh, he extended his member its full length into her with a force and depth few females enjoyed. Today he did not care.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pisod returned a few days laterto again recharge the crystal. Not sure if he would have time to come back and do it a third time, he charged up a second to keep in reserve.

  The next day, over breakfast in her room while she wrote in her journal, they saw news that the shipment from Ercoli had been stolen. Julian was shown giving a statement that the Congressional security services were investigating the theft. In seconds, she was on the her phone asking Julian to come visit her and he arrived ten seconds after that.

  “You’ve refused visitors. Why now?” Julian asked with a kiss to her cheek.

  “Let’s talk outside,” she said, closing her journal, and they went down the back stairs and out the East House corridor. “There are too many ears in the building.”

  “So why do you want to see me?” he asked aloud.

  [Because I know who stole the Ercoli blocks and I need yo
u to not pursue them. They need to come back here so we can catch them in the act of handing it over to a Rosaas or Rosaas agent] she said telepathically.

  He blinked, realizing what she’d said, and took a sudden step back. [You think one of the ruling men of this planet is intentionally stealing from Congressional planets?]

  [I don’t think it. I know it] she said. [I have an operative aboard the ship right now gathering information for me. If you catch the ship, you will ruin my operation. I’m already on it and have been for a week.]

  [How will you know the blocks are here?] he asked.

  [Because the ship is going to land on the front lawn next door] she jerked her head toward the front of the building. [I’m going to know when they’re on approach, because of my man on the ship. I’ll know where they are making the drop because of him. If you can have men ready to converge on my signal, we can nail them all at once in a joint effort between K’Tran and the Congress. Expose the member of the Rosaas who is keeping this secret from the others, take down a piracy operation, and put K’Tran in a better position to get into the Congress.]

  “You find trouble wherever you go, don’t you?” he said aloud.

  “You sent the telepath to look into the society of non-telepaths,” she shot back, not nearly so humorous about it.

  “Has Mankell jumped your bones yet?”

  “No subtlety there,” Pisod snorted from a pace behind.

  “I don’t know the meaning of the word,” Julian said over his shoulder.

  “It’s none of your business. You’re not asking why there’s a Voranian with me, so I’ll guess you and Sta are both in on that one,” she said instead.

  “We are. I asked him to send someone.”

  “When you go back, I want to know where my friend Nails is buried. Kevin Neiland. He was a lawyer. Find out if they actually found a body or if he’s missing. I need to know where his grave is.”