by Addison Cain
Feeding off so much animosity, her lip curled, and she stoked the fire. “Tiburon, will you close your eyes while you fuck me? Will you picture Dr. Saniel?”
The male outright laughed, unconcerned Karhl had yet to release his throat.
Sovereign’s touch was all over her, magnified from the simple, possessive hold he’d been fostering during their talk. His lips were at her ear, their words gently insistent. “It is cruel to mock him, beloved. Tiburon is still your Brother, and a great warrior who has reshaped the universe for you.”
The wrong emotion echoed from Tiburon. He was disgusted, even if he simpered and stared.
Looking to the giant, to Lord Commander Karhl, Sigil called to him. “Karhl.”
One name, spoken on a sigh, and the tableau was forced to end.
The white-haired warrior let Tiburon free, and held out his hand to the woman. “You are hungry and need rest. Let us go see to such things.”
His coolness poured through her, Sigil reaching out so he might remove her from the chamber. “I am hungry.”
Karhl took her hand. “Nor have you slept in days. You shall do so by my side once bathed.”
Sovereign said nothing to dissuade Karhl’s course, releasing Sigil even if his touch lingered until she stepped away. All he gave was one word in a promise. “Tomorrow.”
Sigil disappeared around the corner, on the arm of the male both infamous and revered throughout galaxies for the genocide of billions. In that moment, Karhl was most certainly, the lesser of three evils.
***
Stretching—arms over her head, silken sheets at her back—Sigil arched into the touch of a roughened palm skimming her flat belly. Karhl had stroked her for an hour, watching as his attention hardened the tips of her breasts, pinkened her skin, even before Sigil had awoke.
The woman bowed again, and he tasted. One languorous lick, that’s all he offered her pert nipple, abrading the puckered thing with the tip of his tongue.
Dipping thick fingers lower, watching Sigil’s lips part on a perfect intake of breath, Karhl found her dripping wet. “You wake aroused.” Twisting about inside her, pale fingers were removed so the Lord Commander might taste them.
With loss of touch, Sigil reached for his hand, pulling his fingers from his lips so she might put them back to where her clit ached, throbbing where it peeked from its hood.
The female’s impatience inspired the most minuscule of smirks, Karhl freeing his wet fingers to trace lazy circles around rosy nipples instead. “I imagine these swollen with milk.” Sea-glass eyes left her tits, waiting to see if the female might speak. “I long to drink from you...”
They were in her bed, the massive tree branching high above them, the ostentatious decoration blocked from view when Karhl leaned down and sucked a ripe breast into his mouth.
Sigil’s hand threaded into white ropes of hair. She pulled his head from her breast, stared as her nipple popped from wet lips. Something like regret hung between them, created when she’d asked him to leave her alone. But there had been no Brother inside her in several days, and she did crave the touch.
Limpid eyes adored, Karhl asking softly, “Would you prefer I call for Sovereign?”
“I gave him my word I’d be a willing Imperial Consort.”
“Young one, your body responds to me. It has from the first time I touched you.” Palming her hip, rising above her, Karhl continued, “But I will not make love to you because you bear a sense of obligation... so you might live in the city and learn of your people. It would cheapen my faith in your eyes.”
His erection sat heavy on her thigh, Sigil’s attention drawn to its studded beauty. “What if I want you to fuck me? Do you desire to hear me beg like Sovereign does?”
“Is that what he does?”
Her brows creased. “No... yes. Maybe.”
“I’ve watched you mate him. The violence...” Karhl ran his lips over hers. “That will not be what we share.”
Karhl slipped several fingers inside her dripping slit, sharply hooking her pubic bone to reach a wondrous buried nerve. Sigil squirmed and danced, making noises that made his cock jerk. Mouth, neck, ear, nipples—he sucked, chewed, and tasted, grinding his palm against her pussy, rubbing hard inside her to stroke a place no other lover had discovered. When her legs began to twitch, his little Sigil crying out before orgasm might send her past sleepy delirium, Karhl’s manic touch grew rough.
That hint of pain and she lost all control. The mattress grew wet beneath her, his hand dripping her fluids. Soothing the passage that clenched and wept, Karhl assured the woman was pliant, panting, and willing to let him do as he pleased.
If the Lord Commander was not feasting between her legs he was devouring her breasts, those same fingers working inside her to manipulate strange nerves. He brushed aside her touch each time Sigil thought to reach for the pierced organ grown purple with the need to fuck. It was not until she was slick with sweat that he stroked his crown through her folds. Up and down her slit he ran those metal piercings, Sigil angling her pelvis to catch him. But he would not align and enter her.
“Karhl.” Had she really just panted? Had she begged him?
And had he laughed...?
Sea-glass eyes held hers, Karhl bracing his arms beside her head. “I told you I did not need you to beg. My claim that I would not take you unless you wanted me was sincere.”
He was teasing her, and instead of making her angry, it only heightened her desire. “I want you inside me.”
Once it was said, his face turned dark, fiery with the passion of a demon ready to devour another’s soul. That bulbous organ was not offered gently, but shoved forward to fill her so sharply her body shook and her back scoured over the sheets. Had she been lesser, Sigil might have been frightened by the change in the Lord Commander.
Instead, she reveled in it.
He roared as he fucked her, that jabbing pierced cock internally attacking the very flesh his fingers had made sensitive and swollen. And it felt so fucking good Sigil’s eyes rolled back, her claws gripping his ass to urge deeper penetration.
The second it seemed her pussy might draw tight and orgasm, he made her wait, altering his rhythm. He found every sweet spot, his tongue in her mouth and his fingers pulling at her nipples.
It was unlike any fucking she’d ever known—unique in its calculated physiology—Sigil made docile, spreading eagerly, and willing to lie beneath him. She showed no temper, didn’t bite to harm or scratch to draw blood. Instead, she licked at him and whimpered. She stroked and urged.
And the quiet one cooed out nasty words as he promised lust and salvation like fresh water to a woman trapped in the desert. “You love your cunt stuffed full of my cock. I feel you trying to suck me in, greedy because you know I belong there!”
Her mind was on another plane, lips answering on their own. “Harder.”
Five snaps of his hips, deep and punishing.
Overloaded, her moans so shrill the city must have heard, Karhl showed his teeth. He changed the angle back to punish the spongy flesh on the roof of her pussy, savoring when Sigil arched like one possessed. One flick of his finger twisting her clit and what had been a powerful orgasm became all out seizing.
Mouth hanging open, Sigil’s body was flooded with so much feeling, everything else was washed away—just as her pussy was washed when Karhl gushed a mess inside her.
He kept pumping through it, displacing more of his come with each thrust, until her cunt sloppy with it, until her thighs stank of him.
And his sweetness returned while her mind floated somewhere free. Buried hilt deep, soft kisses were pressed on her lips, soft words formed at her ear.
It may have been poetry he whispered to her in that daze. It may have been an update on Irdesian border expansion. Sigil didn’t know.
“...forever.”
She managed the barest of breaths. “What?’
Smug, Karhl dipped his tongue past her lips and swept her mouth with his flavor. �
�Tell me what you feel.”
His weight was pressing down on her belly just enough so the size of his cock could not be ignored. “I feel full of you.”
“And not just my cock, young one. My offering pools in your belly, shot deep, where I will keep it plugged in that delicious cunt until you absorb my mark.”
It ached beautifully, the places inside her he’d manipulated. “Where did you learn how to do that?”
“I have practiced on many human women in anticipation of this moment, the technique learned when I claimed the Vuul Palace’s famous archives. Their manuals on sexual method are... intriguing.”
“And the Vuul?”
“There are no Vuul.” Because Karhl had seen every last one of them destroyed as soon as infiltration had uncovered the population was highly resistant to Conversion.
Pinned under a giant, Sigil panted, her hair damp and her sore pussy fluttering each time Karhl’s heartbeat pulsed through his dick. “And how many worlds, how many Vuuls, have you eradicated?”
Karhl, still inflamed by fucking, growled, “As many as it takes to assure you, your children, and our people, will be safe in a treacherous universe. Your skittishness on the subject will alter the instant you feel love for something fragile that could be taken from you, young one. What wouldn’t you do for your child?”
“I don’t have a child.”
He looked at her as if he meant to invoke the name Jerla. Instead, Karhl formulated. “But you will, soon.” Karhl kissed lips grown petulant, easing her back against the pillow. “You have been especially difficult lately, your chemistry odd. Though I have yet to discuss my suspicion with Sovereign, I believe conception resulted from our previous group mating.”
Hearing such a thing made her skin buzz. “You’re wrong.”
“We shall see.” How proud the man could look even while offering practically no expression. “And you will be so happy to hold her.”
***
Sigil allowed the process, Dryden and his Convert attendants dressing her in what was deemed appropriate attire for the Imperial Consort. The white gown was heavy and uncomfortable, enough decorations having been stabbed into her hair that—like the deeply satisfied male watching from the corner—she jingled with each minuscule movement.
Karhl had personally bathed her, prepared himself beside her in a fresh uniform Dryden had carried in.
Sigil had told Sovereign she would be a willing Imperial Consort. Now she was to walk out the massive gateway of the family quarters and parade through gawking subjects.
The sooner it was done, the sooner she could go back to the city—near the baker’s quiet mind.
The attendants helped her off the dais, Dryden swearing she was a vision. Arden was not there to agree.
So long as Quinn was camouflaged under the paint, Sigil welcomed the ridiculousness of it. For once scrubbed clean, her hair set free of the cement worked through it, no court retainer would know her.
It made bearing the weight of a solid metal sunburst on her head far more tolerable.
Picking at the skin around her fingernail, Sigil asked, “They must be done by now. Can we go?”
Dryden interceded, smiling as if everything wonderful was his doing. “I will be with you, should you need guidance. Ask me anything.”
Many nasty retorts sat stinging her tongue, Sigil swallowing them down. “Isn’t that Arden’s job?”
Dryden bowed gallantly, his robes swishing. “The Herald was required for a sensitive diplomatic mission, Sigil. I am afraid he is not here.”
Sigil stopped her parade towards the door, the train of her dress hitching. If Arden was gone, did that mean she would have to deal with Dryden in his place? The High Adherent grated on her nerves. “When will he come back?”
The sparkle in Dryden’s eyes made his joy at the new dynamic obvious. “Sovereign may be better able to answer that question.”
Ignoring the smiling sycophant, Sigil scowled at the Lord Commander. “Karhl?”
“Arden has gone to serve as ambassador before the Tessan Authority. It will be some time before he returns.”
If the Empire was in talks with the Tessans, Arden seemed the natural choice for Herald. But he had been useful to her... and Sigil felt strange to hear he would not be around.
There was no time to frown. The bronze portal spread wide, Karhl setting her fingers on his arm.
There were no humans near the family wing, only the occasional smiling Brother standing guard. Many more she sensed but could not see.
Through galleries and anterooms, chambers and halls, Karhl led her. The farther they went, more overdressed Converts accumulated. Watching her every step, Irdesi’s highest ranking retainers whispered at the sight of her.
The last room was by far the largest, packed and humming with shushed conversation. In that place Sigil ignored all others, because only one had all her attention—a woman with soft grey hair.
A blue sash hung from her shoulders, and unlike most other high ranked ladies, her jewels were few and far between. The woman held the little hand of Jerla, whose tail flicked happily in match to his grin.
“You look funny!”
Sigil took in the child, scrubbed clean and dressed in Imperial black. “Do I?”
The boy repeatedly shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “My room is HUGE. Outside there is lots of water that falls down and makes the air wet. But there are no trees...”
Robotically quoting what had once been drilled into her brain, Sigil reached out a hand to take the child. “Irdesi Prime is a planet of rock and water, chosen for strategic purposes in the system’s relation to long ago unconquered human governments. The atmosphere is filtered by algae and moss.”
Jerla was still too enthusiastic to see Sigil’s silent command to come to her. “The Emperor says we get to see the fracturing. Lady Belloy told me it was even more exciting than the waterfall outside my window.”
Lady Belloy? Sovereign had mentioned her before... and her name had shown up more than once in Arden’s histories.
Icy eyes darted back towards the human touching her Jerla, and measured the older woman’s gracious smile. “I have heard of Belloy’s spouse. You are Matron Delphine, the Convert wife granted children with Sovereign’s Brother.”
“Twins, yes.”
Looking over every last inch of the matron, Sigil wondered why that human was more important than the rest. Why she was allowed near, why she was the exception. Why could she wear blue when all others in the room wore black? “You have cared for Jerla since he woke?”
“It was my honor, Imperial Consort.”
The boy seemed happy, his tail swishing in a sure sign of contentment. “She can’t fly, but we played games with numbers. I know twenty now.”
Face blank, Sigil blinked, and extended her palm to the child. “Well done, Jerla. Thank Lady Belloy and take my hand.”
Matron Delphine interjected. “At a later time, may we discuss his course, Imperial Consort? Tutors must be chosen to suit the path you intend him to walk.”
Jerla’s little hand gripped the painted fingers Sigil outstretched, the boy confused. “Why are you covered in white dust. Why is everyone quiet? I want to go outside.”
The chatter made her nervous.
Yellow eyes stared up, Jerla’s brow dipping. “What’s wrong?”
There were so many humans in the halls, all of them watching her. Sigil snapped Jerla up to her hip, his tail already wrapping around her middle, his little hand smearing the script between her breasts.
Lips at the indentation of his ear, Sigil whispered, “Be cautious, Jerla. Not everyone who smiles is a friend.”
Reaching up his scaled mouth to coolly brush her ear, Jerla mimicked her whispering. “She’s nice.”
Sigil’s eyes bored into the placid expression of the matriarch waiting to be dismissed. No drop of suspicion was concealed. “You’ve already won him over.”
A steady reply awaited. “The boy was well chosen,
Imperial Consort. He loves you.”
There was that word again. Those four letters held such power.
Sigil turned the weight of her skull to see the child leaning into her shoulder. The little one’s forehead pressed in, his snake-like face hidden as he squeezed.
“I love him too.” Pitiless eyes darted up and circled the crowd, Sigil’s face one of severe warning while she employed that word. “I love him greatly, and I will crush any who think to make use of that love. I would harm your children, your house, your people. I would destroy anything a Convert heart might hold dear, until you were nothing but dust forgotten in history.”
No one in the assembly would meet her eye, all genuflecting just enough to cover shock at the Consort’s outburst. But hearts were nasty things, and the room was pinging with several minds that Sigil knew not to trust.
No living thing was passive when more could be gained. Everyone wanted an edge.
Standing there she saw it. The city below might have been some ideal, but Irdesi’s court was Pax, only much more pretty. But Sigil was no longer the invisible pleasure slave. Now, she was Drinta.
“Imperial Consort,” Karhl retook her arm, allowing little Jerla space between them. “If we linger, we shall miss what Sovereign would share with you.”
He had not called her ‘young one,’ and the alteration hung between them.
The final set of grand doors opened out onto the grandest terrace on the planet. Sovereign waited. As did the population of Irdesi Prime crowded down below.
A little boy who adored without question tugged her clothes. “Look at all those people!”
The Emperor called her forward. “Come now, beloved. Step to the balustrade so everyone can see you.”
Sigil obeyed, her susurrating steps confined by that ridiculous gown.
The air was blazing with cheers, the noise so loud Jerla’s excited chatter could not be heard. Looking to the boy in her arms, seeing his state of bliss, she smiled.
The sky broke, scattering light veining in and out of atmospheric storms. The Converts’ hum vibrated through them all until the world felt perfect—until it was even easy to feel the love she’d claimed she bore the child.
