The Prince of Cups (Villainess Book 2)

by Melos,Alana

  “Think of what we could do together, you by my side…” he purred, biting my neck hard and drawing blood. I gasped, relishing the pain. I wanted it. I wanted more. I watched his wings unfurl from his back in the window’s reflection, wrapping around us to leave us in a cocoon made of the darkest night. His lust was beginning to rise, and interest was definitely piqued. Not many women would want him as he was now, a twisted, dark creature, but looks… looks never mattered much to me. All I could think about was how he felt between my legs with half of my mind, while the other half plotted how to exploit his interest. “You’d be my queen on this earth, my most precious treasure,” he said, lapping slowly at the slow trickle of blood at my neck. “We’d taste everything together, do anything we wished,” he rasped, his bright demonic eyes boring into mine.

  “Yes,” I whispered, moving my hand down to stroke the head of his rough cock thrusting between my legs. The extra bumps of the scales hurt in a most delicious way, and he moved his hand aside so I could guide him into me. When he was poised, he thrust hard and I gasped aloud, “Yes!”

  “My delicious Caprice, following her whims,” he said, licking the wound on my neck as his taloned hand grasped my breast, leaving furrowed trails of red behind. He withdrew and thrust again, “My wonderful queen, my dearest princess.” I began to turn my head, but he forced me to look forward again, into the reflection. What I saw there was myself writhing in painful ecstasy, a delicious agony which made my face distorted and unreal. It was me, the core me I was seeing. Not the perfect mask I wore, nor the professional one, but the real, beastial side of me. The want and anger and arrogance… but nothing else.

  “It’s not real,” I whispered, though I wanted it to be, desperately. I wanted to come on his hard cock. I wanted to give myself over to his savage affections. He could give me the easy path to what I wanted, the power I craved so I could inherit my birthright. I knew he could. While the demon kept fucking me hard just the way I wanted it, I could see myself at his side in the glass, the reflections of what might yet be. We tore a bloody path through the city, the world, the underworld… through everywhere we went. We seduced men and women both, using and discarding them as we saw fit. Feasts of blood and ashes, laughter over a cup of bones.

  “It’s not real,” I said, more firmly this time, anger welling up in me. “You’re showing me what I want.”

  Malech grabbed my hair and bent me over further, riding me hard. “You’d be my one and only, sweet Whimsy,” he said, half snarling and half laughing the words. He kept going, harder and harder until I was moaning uncontrollably. His cock was hot, and everywhere he touched, lust infected me, curling around my body and mind like unbreakable chains. There were no words to describe the terrible pleasure it brought me. Climax drew closer and closer, yet I resisted. It wasn’t me doing this; it was him doing this to me. At the verge of my orgasm, I screamed, rejecting it at the last second. At the denial, it vanished like a pricked soap bubble.

  I stood at the window, clothed, untouched, just the aching between my legs and lust for power in my heart. I turned to him, scowling darkly. He sat behind his desk, much as he had before, but with fingers steepled in front of him this time. His emotions were easier to read as there actually was some emotion now. Interest. Lust. Approval. “Not many see through the illusion,” he said with a soft sigh. “But I know your heart now, and I’ll grant your request.”

  “What did you do?” I demanded, stomping over to his desk and snatching up my blade.

  He gave it a look of derision, then fixed me with his bright blue eyes. I saw an echo of his true self reflected there, and my desire gave me a pinch. I wanted to throw myself at him anyway, even knowing what he was, knowing that if I did, I’d be lost… like the vacuous waitress. I longed to plunge into that abyss anyway, but the cooler half of me prevailed. This time.

  “I looked into your heart, to see your sins, my beautiful Whimsy,” he said. “One would have thought lust, but no… a diversion, not the main event.” He paused and eyed my body up and down, weighing me, “A big diversion, though.”

  “And what? I was found wanting?”

  “Quite the contrary,” he said. “If you would bother to listen rather than get upset at a little fun, you would have heard I’m fulfilling your request.” He reached into his desk and pulled out a card to hand to me. I snatched it from him and scanned it quickly. It was an address. “I look forward to seeing you in the future, lovely Whimsy. We’ll roll the dice again, and see which half of you comes out on top.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, and found myself standing at the door to the exit of the Underground. I tucked the card into my skirt pocket and picked up the duffle which the demon had thoughtfully teleported with me. Now that I had a place to go, I wasted no time in heading out, my pussy aching from want, and my head buzzing with ideas, most of them bad.

  Have I mentioned before how much I hated magic?

  Chapter Four

  The address which he had given me actually lay outside of Imperial City, though not as far as I would have thought for someone on the run from a alternate dimension bent on universal domination. I would have never looked for him here, so it must not have ever occurred to them as well. I mean, come on… it was the suburbs.

  The house I landed in front of was unassuming. A plain tan house with a small yard and high bushes around it. A driveway was to the side with a plain white car parked in it. However, upon a closer look as I walked up to the door, I noticed all the curtains were drawn, as if warding away inquiries. Looking around at the other houses around with their bright frilly curtains open to let in the sunlight, I had no doubts this was the place. Something about it was dark and furtive, warding away people with its very blandness.

  Like any decent visitor, I knocked at the door. I hadn’t bothered to change, which I think gave me a youthful look. People would probably think I was selling candy or something door to door for my high school. I could sense a veiled presence inside, but didn’t push since he was a telepath. I didn’t want him to come out both guns blazing, and from all the rumors I’d heard about him, he was crazy as hell.

  So when a sixteen or seventeen year old male opened the door, I could only stare at him. “Uh…”

  “Well, hel-LO, cutie!” the kid said, beaming ear to ear. He was blond and attractive though his features were sharp and thin, and his broad grin reminded me of Sadowski, but in a good way. He’d had the same cocky smile before I’d killed him. “What brings you to my door?”

  “I, uhm,” I said, blinking a few times to regain my equilibrium. “I’m looking for Gerard.”

  “Well, you found him,” he said, grinning ear to ear. I blinked again, and he laughed softly at the confusion on my face. “Do we go to the same school?”

  “No, I, uhm… I’m probably looking for your dad…? Is he a Gerard as well?” Recovered, I smiled and tilted my head to the side. He eyed my outfit appreciatively, and I couldn’t help but to preen under his attention. While he was distracted, I pushed out with my mind reading the threads of his emotions. I got another shock: he wasn’t lusting after me at all, but rather the dark green of paranoia and murky blue of suspicion dominated, as well as other unsavory threads less well defined.

  “He’s out right now… you wanna come in, cutie-pie?” he said, opening the door as wide as his lecherous grin. His gaze had sharpened, and I knew he’d felt me reading him.

  “Of course,” I said, and walked inside. It’d be better to do this in private. I didn’t want the neighbors calling the cops. As soon as I passed the threshold, his mind sinuously wound around mine, sensing my intent and emotions as I had done with him. The door slammed and I whirled to block his fist. “Now, now, is this how you treat guests, little boy?”

  Without pausing, he leg swept me and I went down, but rolled backwards minimizing my fall. When I came up on my feet again, I threw the duffle at him, but he dodged aside easily, and pressed in for an attack. This was an impossible fight… we sensed each
other’s intent as the fists flew, and got out of the other’s way easily. It would have gone on for some time, but I raised my hands up in the universal gesture of peace, and opened my mind to him. I had nothing to hide, nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

  Sensing my openness, his mind lunged into mine, slicing like a razor. A thrill of pain shot through my head, but subsided quickly. He pressed forward with his body, and pushed me up against the wall. His eyes were blue, clear like ice, and cold like it as well. The grin stayed. The dark look in his eyes colored his smile, turning it dark and anticipatory. I noted with some surprise he was a couple inches shorter than me, but his presence more than filled the space behind him.

  You know why I’m here, I sent to him as he rifled through my thoughts and my emotions...what few emotions I had.

  Quiet, he ordered me, expecting obedience. I huffed but let him do what he liked. I was here to ask for his help and it wouldn’t be helpful to harm him. Much. The invasion continued. He stopped at my recent memories and reviewed the one with Malech carefully, so much so the thwarted lust renewed itself as an ache between my legs. One of his hands slid down my body, testing it as he tested my mind. I stared back at him coolly, unperturbed by his touch. I really did have nothing to hide and was unafraid of him. I feared no one.

  Deeper down he went, chasing memories back, and I curled my lip up as he hesitated upon my memories of my mother and father. He ignored my father, save to curse him under his mental breath, but lingered for a while upon my mother.

  You look like her, he sent, but not the same. Interesting.

  Why would I? I sent. I’m a different person. He laughed aloud as his smaller body pressed up against me, and I could feel how toned he was underneath his high school disguise of a t-shirt and jeans, lean and sharp. Down further, he chased the lines of my personality and reviewed the few things there, feeling my emotions, making me feel them as he did. My lust flared, but so too my anger and rage, my hate, my want, and then it subsided.

  Had your fill yet? I asked, impatient with the process.

  Not yet, he replied and invaded my mind. I fought back against the attack, knowing it was coming and ready for it. How to describe a battle between telepaths? It was over and gone in a blink, yet it took an eternity. We held each other in a deathgrip, attacking savagely, dodging, blocking… but all in the most abstract sense. His intent wasn’t to test; it was to control. I saw the lust he’d had for my mother in the bad old days, and the hatred he harbored for my father, who had stolen her away from his point of view. He saw me as a suitable replacement, approved of my personality, but wanted me under his control, utterly. He wanted a slave. I would never be a slave. Ever.

  Nothing was sacred in his quest for dominance. My memories were sorted and weighed, filed away for later review in his mind, much as I would do. He looked and laughed a little at my defeat from earlier, approving of my revenge on Harry. Sights and sounds and smells lost to me from my childhood came rising out of my mind like corpses exploding from the ground. Darkness, and blood, the skull which ground its teeth at me, fear and loathing and hate wrapped up tightly into a ball, imprinting on a young and delicate mind, one which had no defense, none whatsoever. Insanity at the laughter of a pile of corpses, the coldness which gripped part of me so, emptying me out of anything useful but leaving me with my rage and hate and self-loathing that I was weak, oh so weak, and couldn’t do anything about it, but how that would change….

  He saw what I wanted from him, my goals, laid out, one, two, three… on down the line of dominoes. My lust for power, for life, for sex, for everything… everything consumed, thrown down into the deep hole of my psyche as I tried desperately to fill it with something, anything so I could feel something other than my anger and hate, to divert myself away from how cold it was down in the darkness, how badly it burned me.

  As he saw me, so I saw him. Memories of his whirled through my mind, uniforms and driving beats of matched feet on pavement, the thundering hooves of decay and death, camps which still operated even now, cleansing dimensions as they’d “cleansed” their world, pretending, smiling, playing the joker, acting the child, being the student, drawing people in, lowering their defenses, and stabbing them in the back, twisting their minds, making them do what he wished, raping them in every sense of the word, in every way a person could be raped, taking from them what had been taken from me, a chance and a choice, their minds and souls and personalities… laughing about it, the laughter rang loudest in my head. It wasn’t just a desire to dominate, but a need for it, an obsession, something to protect himself, to regain what had been taken from him, to deny his purpose and act freely as he wished, with no limits. He saw himself as a ragged eagle with his wings clipped, trying to free himself from chains of subservience.

  Gripping each other with a hold meant to kill or control, we teetered on each other’s madness: his need for absolute dominance in everything and my lust for power to achieve what I wanted. Rage and hate flowed between us freely, a hot drink on a cold winter’s day, warming both of our hearts by setting them aflame and burning them to ash. No damage done that wasn’t reflected or echoed in the other.

  We were evenly matched… but his superior experience tipped the fight in his favor. The balance of power shifted, and I wailed inwardly. Outwardly, my heart beat faster and faster, and he grabbed my jaw, forcing me down, down, down, kneeling. His eyes shone with victory and then, a flash of pain drove through my head, and I smelled the scent of jasmine. He screamed and grabbed his head, thrusting himself backwards as I regained my feet, sliding my back up against the wall as I watched him stagger, blood trickling from one of his nostrils. He’d hit the block in my head which my mother had put in ages ago. That damned block, the bane of my existence, she’d put in and diverted most of my power from me, cutting me off from my true potential. It was at the deepest core of my self, locking away all that I wanted and more. That it protected me from mind control, I’d had no idea. That was new, but it had her smell all over it. Even now, years and miles between us, she was manipulating my existence.

  He continued to hold his head as my heartbeat slowed and I regulated myself to calmness, forcing away my hate. Watching him with wary eyes, I listened to his ragged breath, the thin wheeze of effort as he put his mind to order. I’d read him as much as he’d read me, and we were a mirror of each other, if slightly cracked and askew. He was a psychopath, intent on fulfilling his desires and needs, and to hell with anyone else. Unlike myself, he shared no inhibitions about mind controlling people for his pleasure. He used them in every sense of the word, and threw them away without a second thought. I admired that about him, that he was able to do it without regret. He was a kindred spirit, a spiritual brother. Maybe a step brother. I couldn’t control as he did as my fresh, raw pain told me. I wouldn’t. I’d just kill them. It was cleaner.

  When he lowered his hands, rage was writ large on his thin features, but was quickly dispelled with a charming smile. Regulus wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, making sure he got every bit of it before looking to me. “Caprice,” he said, bowing slightly. “So you’ve come to ask for my help.”

  It was no surprise to me it was as if he had never tried to enslave me. I would have done the same. Charm could work wonders when force couldn’t. “You saw the reason why, and how I came to that,” I said, smiling beautifully at him while I studied him closer. I dusted off my outfit, “What say you?”

  “Nothing’s ever free,” he said with his wicked grin, and gestured towards the couch. “Hungry? Thirsty? Have a seat, make yourself welcome.”

  “Date rape drug going to be in it?” I asked snarkily. He scoffed and waved a hand at me while he padded on his bare feet to his kitchen, leaving me alone in the sprawling living room. It had wide windows--albeit covered at the moment--and a large marble fireplace dominated the room. A couch and chairs were arranged strategically around it as well as lamps for lighting, and, of all things, a bearskin rug lay on the floor. I
couldn’t help but to laugh a little at that, thinking how terribly tropey it was. Everything in the room was expensive, belying the mundanity of the outside.

  I chose a seat on the couch and floated my bag nearby, making sure the sword handle was sticking out for easy grabbing. He returned, smiling his good old boy smile with two cans in hand. He sat down next to me on the couch so close our legs were almost touching, and handed me the sealed can. “Safe, see?”

  I took it with a smile, but set it down on the coffee table before turning fully towards him. His eyes roamed my body, looking at my killing squad outfit with interest. I posed for him, shoving my chest out a little. “What’s your answer?”

  “No negotiation? No chit-chat?” he asked with a loud tsk, popping the top of his soda and taking a sip. “How crass.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t see the point,” I said. “You know what I want. What’s your price?” I leaned forward and ran a finger down his cheek, feeling how smooth it was. It wasn’t right. I had no doubts this was the man I had come looking for, but he should be in his late forties, at the youngest.

  His sharp features pulled back in a smile. “Oh, I don’t know…” he said in a taunting sing-song voice.

  “Do you want to fuck?” I asked, point blank. His lust to possess me--and that was how he thought of it, possessing, not fucking--was apparent, though he wasn’t hard. He maintained control over his body well. “It’ll be the best you ever had.”

  “Now you’re over selling yourself, beautiful,” he snorted, reaching over to put his soda down on the coffee table while I narrowed my eyes at him. Those words were echoes of my own to Harry not so long ago. My mouth twisted at the words, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Besides, we’re going to fuck anyway. You’ll fuck me, I’ll fuck you, then maybe the other way around again. We’ll see.”