Shadows of the Night (Kingdom Key Book 2)

by TylerRose.

  Stretching over her, re-inserting his penis until it pressed against her partially open cervix, he kissed her. She was as eager to kiss as she was to receive his cock.

  “My Rabbit. Into which briar patch should I throw you this time?”

  Her hand came into view. That same thin belt held between graceful fingers. “My breasts, if it should please my Bear.”

  He took it from her. Her arms slid on the grass to rest around her head, opening her torso for him. Arm extended to brace on his hand over her, looking down into her eyes, he swung the strap short and smart. Enough to catch her breath, but nothing more. He started his retraction and extension, laying the strap to her breast once on retraction and once on extension with increasing force. Only the one breast, not looking to see where it would land. Instead he watched her face and felt the motion of her body.

  He knew when he landed on the small nipple. She tensed and arched her back and a flooding of her channel announced the orgasm though she made almost no sound. He dipped his head to mouth the struck nipple, sending her into another arching and flooding. Her skin moist, the strap coming down stung more for the next two strikes.

  “I like it when you take my pain in near silence. It means the sound when I do make you scream is honest and not an act,” he said, and brought the strap down harder than before.

  She tensed and shuddered and whimpered a yelp.

  “More, my Rabbit?”

  “More, my Bear. Harder. Please.”

  He did, preferring now to watch where he landed to be sure he didn’t accidentally clip her chin or hit the middle of her chest plate. He was striking hard enough to raise individual red welts and see where each ended across the curve of her lovely breast.

  He dropped the belt and used his hips to thrust into her and bring about his ejaculation, remaining deep within while kissing her. In his own time, he retracted to lie on his hip beside her in the grass but still be close and kiss and trace the wedding beads resting on her throat.

  “When you are in a mood to have me use that belt, wear it. Over your clothes or under does not matter. I will know it is there and I will know you are asking to be thrown into our briar patch at my earliest convenience. When I call you Rabbit, I am saying I love you, because I cannot ever say it outside of our briar patch. What are you saying when you call me Bear?”

  Blinking, eyes working through expressions connected to thoughts, she could only reply “May I have time to think on that?”

  “Of course you may,” he smiled gently. “I must caution you not to speak to Shestna about us. He is good at hiding it, but he can be very jealous. I am already worried that he gets too rough with you.”

  “I know. I felt how intensely jealous he could be before he took Jerome’s energy. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone except maybe Pisod, but I don’t have to if you’d prefer not.”

  “Pisod would be safe. It’s not that we’re hiding anything. Shestna has told you I am to be your lover and guard. Father has instructed me to do the same. He told me today that Shestna would be a fool to try and make you be strictly monogamous. They both know feelings can develop under such an arrangement. We can be open when we are alone. We must be more discreet when around outsiders.”

  “Can I start to travel again?” she asked.

  “I don’t see why not. I can go with you, since Shestna cannot teleport anymore. I have to ask, though. Travel for what? You don’t have a paying job anymore.”

  “I don’t know. I feel a need to go places. Like before I developed my telepathic abilities. An urge to go somewhere.”

  She started to sit up and he held her back, hand firm but not hard on her arm.

  “I must insist that you not go running off anymore when you get angry. You must not go anywhere outside of this principality without speaking to me directly. No leaving messages and going anyway.”

  “None of that is needed,” she tried to dismiss.

  “It absolutely is,” he said, putting her onto her back in the grass again. “Shestna wants to be in charge, he can be in charge. I’m still the one who makes your rules. I have to know where you are at all times, even when I’m not physically with you. If something happens and I don’t know where you are, my Emperor will cut my balls off before he cuts my head off.”

  “Silly me. I thought it had something to do with me,” she said, with more than a little sarcasm.

  “It has everything to do with you. He’s known from first description who and what you are. He’s been on your side every minute, from long before you met him.”

  “I know.”

  “Then do not repay his kindness with trickery and deception.”

  She reached up to grasp a handful of his red hair below his ear. “Yes, Bear.”

  “Where do you want to go tomorrow?” he asked. “We’ll go anywhere on Voran you want.”

  She opened her mouth to answer. Having no answer, she let go his hair and closed her mouth. “I don’t know. When someone tells me I’m not allowed to go, I know exactly where I need to go. But with permission and cooperation, I have no idea what to do.”

  He gave a short laugh.

  “I like this you,” she said.

  “Tell me something. Have you sat in your own front room or eaten at your dining table?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then tonight you will do both. Maybe there will be something on the news or entertainment that you’ll want to go see tomorrow.”

  They went inside to dress, and sat with the guys to watch whatever they found on the entertainment channels that was interesting.

  “The story of the 20th wife of the previous Emperor, who the Emperor ordered to be sullied when she became pregnant out of her time,” she read a description. “What’s that mean? Sullied?”

  “It’s a method of shaming a wife who has been unfaithful to her husband, particularly if she became pregnant,” Dorn told her. “The husband takes her to a Rovan Den and any man in the place may pay ten Ruds to have her. She may be made to service a hundred men. More if it’s a very busy night.”

  “So…to punish her for having sex, she’s made to have…a lot of sex. This is punishment…how?”

  “For you it wouldn’t be, Rabbit,” he said with a tug of her hair. “You’d think of it as a busy night and complain if you didn’t get enough orgasms.”

  “Well, yeah,” she had to agree.

  “For a Voranian woman, it is exceedingly shameful,” he continued. “All those men would know she had not been faithful. All the women present would know. Basically, everyone in her city would know within a day because the word would spread.”

  Strange as it felt, when supper was ready, she sat at the head of her own table, the six men lined down the sides.

  In bed at a reasonable hour, lying together without having had sex, she spoke her wish for the next day.

  “I want to see a Rovan Den.”

  “Shestna forbade it.”

  “Yes, he did. You said anywhere I want to go. Don’t make promises or offers you cannot keep.”

  “Okay, then. Well go to a Rovan Den tomorrow evening. My sister Fennica will be here in the morning.”

  “What for?” she questioned.

  “Because she is now your sister and wants to meet you outside the palace and do those sisterly things sisters do.”

  Which turned out to be enjoying a pipe together and helping Tyler plant flowers that had been ordered and delivered that morning. They worked on opposite sides of the long, narrow beds. Nearing the end of one, Tyler spied a plant that hadn’t been there before.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “Do you know?”

  Fennica looked at the six inch tall sprout. “Looks like a young Psala plant.”

  “There were no Psala here at all. Where’d it come from?”

  “I don’t think I would know, Your Highness.”

  “It was rhetorical. Your father pulled weeds with me at this place,” Tyler recalled.

  “I would not be surprised if he p
lanted it. See what color it is when it blooms. That will tell you more,” Fennica told her. “Red is passion. White is love. Blue is friendship. Yellow is asking for forgiveness and cannot be used for the marriage proposal.”

  They finished the end of the bed and washed up in the sink in the small shed.

  “If it would please you, I could visit every couple days and we can talk,” Fennica said on their way up the walkway into the house.

  “We’ll see. I enjoyed your company but I don’t like to have visitors a lot. I’d get rid of half these guys around me if I could but Shestna and your father insist they be here.”

  Fennica said nothing more beyond a goodbye, seeing herself to the door where Saber walked her out to the front gate. By the time he was inside the house, Tyler was in her room and the music was starting. The smell of her pipe wafted through the library at the same time. She wasn’t going anywhere for at least a couple hours. Ch’Wik called Pisod to let him know and then let Volf and Saber take some time to themselves until supper.

  Dorn arrived in time for the meal. She was dressed and ready. They ate and he teleported them to their destination.

  Not exactly what she’d expected. Instead of taking her up into the mountains, they arrived in the palace. In the farthest rear section of the men’s wing, down in the lowest level below ground, was a Rovan Den created specifically for the court and royal family. An access corridor split into three directions like the real dens. Cavernous but not as large as the dens in the mountain, the rooms were divided along rank, age and marital status lines. Young princes who had more than one wife were allowed into the room with the more mature princes. Unmarried princes and all courtiers were in the others.

  Princes sitting around drinking. They preferred to drink the Rovan rather than smoke it. There was little conversation. Background music. No dancing. No sex going on. It was nothing like what Mariah described. Within fifteen minutes she was bored out of her mind and asking to leave. She’d rather be at home to smoke her pipe and write in her journal while singing along with her stereo.

  He took her home. Holding both hands halted her from walking away.

  “There will be no more asking to go to a Rovan Den. There will be no sneaking away to see one. You have seen it. There’s nothing to see but men getting inebriated and sometimes having sex with available women.”

  “Why did you take me there rather than up into the mountain?” she asked. “They are two entirely different experiences.”

  “Because the other Princes won’t care. People in the mountain would gossip that we had been there.”

  “I still want to go somewhere. Tomorrow I will.”

  Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “You were fine before. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Seeing the palace’s tame version of a Rovan Den, which you knew was watered down in the first place, was unsatisfactory and now I want to do something else, I guess.”

  “Your friend died because of a Rovan Den. Take that lesson to heart. It’s not a suitable place for non-Voranians.”

  “So I’ve been told. Fine. I won’t go to one. If you’re not up for wherever I decide to go, that’s okay too. I was doing just fine with Pi and the guys as companions. You don’t have to go everywhere with me. I’ve not talked with Shestna. When is he coming back?” she abruptly changed the subject.

  “He has had to go to the Congressional station for the emergency vote to replace Earnol as Administrator. It will take him two days to go there. He’ll be there several days. Then several days to get back.”

  “So another seven or eight days before I’ll see him again?” she said. “Was he going to call and talk to me about any of this?”

  “I cannot say if he was or he wasn’t. Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”

  “No. I’d like tonight to myself if you’re just going to be a dickhead. Show yourself out,” she said, already walking away from him.

  “You can be a very tiresome woman.”

  “And you are an asshole.”

  The door opened without her touching it, closing without a slam. A few seconds and her music started.

  “You are never going to get it right with her,” Ch’Wik observed.

  “I don’t think there is a right way with her.”

  “There is. You were doing it yesterday on the grass when you were equals. You gotta keep her physically happy in order to get what you want from her. And don’t try to trick her like that again. You actually thought a palace playground would satisfy her curiosity?”

  Dorn said nothing. He got himself a drink and sat to watch the news, waiting for the music to end. When it did, when the room had been quiet for quarter of the hour, he went in. He didn’t bother to knock. She was in bed, on her side facing away from him. He undressed and got into bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Joining my lover in her bed to tell her she’s right.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m still mad at you,” she said.

  “So. The palace’s den isn’t the same and I should have known it wouldn’t satisfy your curiosity. Maybe you wanted to go up to the mountain dens to see if you could find one of the men who contributed to your friend’s overdose? Maybe I ruined that quiet plan of yours?”

  She said nothing. He didn’t expect her to. She would never admit to such a plan. He reached around and down, sliding two fingers over her clitoris for a very slow and gentle caress. She tensed, curled, groaned.

  “Maybe you were hoping to be sullied yourself,” he whispered over her ear.

  She giggled, not about to admit that either.

  “Is your sex drive so strong now that a single day without puts you into a confrontational mood?”

  “Apparently,” she replied, and groaned much louder as he penetrated her anus.

  “You aren’t going to chase me away by calling me bad names, Rabbit. Nor will they get you thrown into the Briar patch. Perhaps I should punish you with gentleness,” he teased.

  “That’s just mean.”

  “You called Nails Master. There is no legal slavery on Earth. Did Master mean teacher? Or did Master mean owner and disciplinarian?”

  “The second, but he did all three,” she said. “Can we stop talking so I can enjoy this ass fucking?”

  “We will talk if I want to talk. Right now, I do. You know husband and Master are the same word here. When you call Shestna husband, you are calling him Master as well.”

  “Yes, I know that,” she groaned, riding the edge of an orgasm from his slow fingers.

  “He doesn’t really act much like it, does he? He’s very indulgent. Whips you when you want it, how you want. You get everything you want from him. You’ve been a long time without your Master to tell you when you do wrong. To get that point across. To tell you no and guide you with authority. You flounder without him.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell them before but they sent him away.”

  “I know. Shestna told me. If I’m going to issue punishment as Tribulator and make your rules for you, then I am that person for you. I am the authority you will look to, especially since he will be traveling on a ship more frequently and will be away longer. Will that be helpful to you?”

  “Yes, Bear.”

  “When you call me Bear, what are you saying?” he asked.

  “I’m calling you Master.”

  The hand stopped. He pushed to roll her onto her belly to give her the strength she needed to be sated and he needed to bring about his own climax.

  Fortunately, she fell asleep quickly. He was went into the pool tub to extend his penis in the water. The penile socket needed to be cleaned thoroughly. He couldn’t leave it more than a few minutes or he risked an infection.

  Out of the water and drying himself off, he saw the flash of his telephone. Shestna had left a message. The vote had happened already. He’d voted from the ship during the live meeting. The Councilman from Ercoli had been elected with 43% of the votes. The next nearest competitor, the Senior Congressman
from Sistair, had 27%. Several others had split the remainder. The Sistarians hadn’t had enough time to blackmail and buy votes.

  He was coming home for a few days. When he left again, he would take Tyler with him to the Congress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shestna took her to the Congressional station whenever he had to go. She worked in the Ambassadorial office to fill her time when he was in meetings she could not attend. She went on diplomatic missions with him to Sistair, Ercoli, Deek’Trai IV and V. She hosted dinners and parties with her husband, attended luncheons on her own.

  Dorn was her constant companion but three of the K’Tran were sent home after sixty days with no incidents. Volf remained for the time being, having less to call him back to K’Tran.

  When the time came, Shestna told her not to get the contraceptive. Dr. Dheez explained it would be several weeks before she would be fertile. If they were actually trying and she wasn’t pregnant within twelve to sixteen Voranian weeks, they should come back and see if there were any problems.

  “Gar Mankell asks to see you,” their on-station servant interrupted Tyler’s journal writing.

  She put down the pen to go out in to the sitting room, and stopped short.

  Mankell was holding G’Ven’s walking stick.

  “When?” she asked, having had no dreams or visions.

  “Yesterday morning. The funeral is done already. We do these things very fast.”

  “I would have liked to be there. I’m sorry, Kell. He was such a special man.”

  “He was, and thought highly of you. He wanted you to have this,” he said, holding the stick up.

  She took it from him, at once having a vision of the stick as a branch on a tree, watching young lovers making love beneath its shade. She smiled.

  “I promise to care for it well.”

  He kissed her cheek and left on other business. Stick across her lap, she sat to pick up her writing again, the topic wholly changed.

  The first appeal hearingwas held four Voranian months after Earnol’s plea deals, after numerous motions, continuances, and depositions. Both sides were allowed half an hour to state their case. The judge collected all evidence from the appealing prosecutor and declared an extended recess until her decision would be announced. How many weeks that might be was anyone’s guess. The only thing ruled on immediately was to dismiss the motion about his arrest. No arresting procedure was needed because he had surrendered himself. Sistarian law did not require the arrest procedures when a person surrendered and confessed.