Fallen Princess

by Alexa B. James

  So, he thought the guards didn’t know.

  But I could see what he couldn’t. The dozen guards stood in a row behind him, and at least half of them exchanged glances with eyebrows raised but without a shred of surprise. A few looked old enough to have been here when my mother died, though of course they hadn’t been her guards. Her guards had been executed, not because they failed to protect her but because they knew or suspected the truth. But a few of the older guards had been in the palace then, and the rest had probably heard rumors or lore passed down from them about what happened in the final weeks of her life.

  “You can buy the silence of your guards and even your whole nation, but they all know what you are,” I said to my father. “They’re never going to believe I could love a monster like you.”

  He gave a sadistic smile, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Oh, they’ll believe,” he said. “You’ll enchant them just like your mother did, and when you tell them it’s all true, they’ll believe us both.”

  “Never,” I hissed.

  “And as for my guards,” he said. “Once they taste a High Priestess, they’ll understand everything I’ve done, past and present. They’d do as much to keep you for themselves as I would, if they could. But they can’t. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching my last wife, but she was pure, a virgin fit perfectly to my measure. You’ve already shared yourself with so many. Now it’s my turn to share you, to make sure my guards understand. And, my bride, to make sure you understand. I am the one who holds the power here. Your body, your magic, your life… They are no longer yours. They are mine. I control them, I use them freely as I wish. Your one job is to obey.”

  I gathered all the saliva in my dry mouth and spit in his face.

  His fingers tightened in my hair until my eyes watered, but he didn’t move to wipe it away. “After tonight, I’ll keep you all to myself,” he said. “But it pleases me to know that they know what they’re missing. That every inch of your delicious body is mine to rule, to dominate, to devour.”

  “Like you devoured your last wife? My mother?”

  “They’ll get only a taste, but they’ll never forget it,” he went on, ignoring my words. “They’ll never forget that I get to drink the magic from your cunt every night, that I will be inside its snug grip each night when they can only dream of how thirstily it sucks the seed from my cock while I breed you. Yes, my kitten, I will make sure you’ve enough daughters to ensure at least one can contain your magic and become the High Priestess after you. And each night, I will grow more powerful as you share your magic with me.”

  “I’ll kill myself before I fuck you,” I seethed.

  “No, you won’t,” he said. “Because if you do, Camila will become queen, and I will be as much a king then as I am now. Not to mention that a queen can only have one king beside her on the throne, which means I’ll have to choose which one of her admirers lives to rule beside her, and which five are executed as foreign invaders plotting to take over the ocelot government.”

  Rage like I’d never felt before billowed inside me, threatening to take me over. Red throbbed behind my eyes at the utter cruelty of this man—and at my utter helplessness. I could do nothing but obey or risk the lives of my mates. And even if they no longer loved me as True Mates should, I still loved them. I didn’t need a True Mate bond to feel bound to them, to feel the ache of their loss down through the depths of my heart, to feel the roots they had each put in my soul.

  Or maybe I did love them as a True Mate, if I was really an ocelot. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. I loved them, and I would do anything to keep them safe.

  Even marry my own father.

  He wasn’t related to me by blood, even if I still thought of him as a father despite his evil. I’d never known anyone else to fill that role, and I couldn’t change how I saw him overnight. But I’d already lost my mates to Camila. I wouldn’t lose them again, this time permanently. I wouldn’t have them die for my stubbornness.

  King Ocelot turned on his heel to address the guards, his voice perfunctory and cold. “Put her on the slab,” he commanded. “Then you will each taste the High Priestess before I claim her as my wife. The audience will feel her magic, but only you know what it means, her true title. It will stay that way from this day forward. They can speculate, but only you know the truth. You will have drunk from the well of the goddess of life herself.”

  The men shifted and glanced at each other again, but all I saw in that moment was Gabor’s horrified expression.

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  He choked out the words, as if someone had forced them from his mouth against his will. For ten years, he’d nodded like a good yes-man, beaten and murdered and mauled people at my father’s command without so much as flinching. But this, he could not do. I didn’t know if it was his love for Camila stopping him or if I was truly that repulsive to him. I only knew that though the curved blade of the scythe remained high above me, I felt it cleave my heart down the middle. He would lay down his life at the king’s feet rather than touch me.

  It seemed the wrong hill to die on, but then, I’d made a career out of trading my body for gain. Obviously, Gabor had morals, something I could hardly claim to understand. I did what I had to do, even if it meant I retained neither dignity nor honor.

  I burned not with the sting of his rejection, but with the shame of what it implied.

  For a second, no one moved. The guards were all staring at Gabor in shock. Guards never said no to the king. Never.

  I waited for Father to pull down the scythe and slice off Gabor’s head, but he only raised a brow and gave the guard a smug smirk. “You will,” he said, then nodded at the other guards.

  Four of them stepped forward and wrestled me onto the stone. I twisted and flailed, but without the use of my hands, it would hardly have been a fair fight even if there was only one of them. They were shifters, with superior strength, and there were four of them and only one of me. It didn’t take them long to have me pinned on my back on the stone.

  King Ocelot stepped up to the bottom of the stone. “I will have the first taste,” he said. “Spread my new bride’s legs for me.”

  “No,” I cried, clenching my knees together and jerking at my bloody hands. The thought of my father seeing my sex spread open made my head swim with horror. I couldn’t even think about what he wanted to do to me.

  Ignoring me, the guards pried my knees apart, holding my legs wide for the king. He smoothed his beard with one hand, his eyes gleaming with greed as he reached down, spreading my pussy lips to reveal my pink center.

  In the stands, the crowd was growing restless with anticipation, calling out in encouragement.

  “Nothing in this world tastes like the High Priestess’s cunt,” King Ocelot said. “One taste, and you’ll give up everything for more.”

  Leaning down, he fastened his mouth to my open pussy. The shock of his hot, wet mouth on my dry, bare sex made me cry out and buck against him. My skin crawled with revulsion at the sensation of his rough beard against my newly shaven skin, his greedy mouth that had torn my mother’s flesh from her bones now savoring the delicate inner lips of my pussy as his fingers spread the outer lips wide. When I thrust up, trying to push him away, he moaned and dipped the tip of his slimy tongue into my opening. I slammed back down on the stone, arching to get away from him, my legs shaking with the strain of trying to close them. My father gave a greedy suck to my clit before straightening and licking his thick lips, his eyes rolling back in his head for a moment.

  The crowd was in an uproar, but I barely heard them. I was numb with shock and horror.

  “One minute each,” King Ocelot said, gesturing for the guard next to him. “Get a good taste. It’s the only one you’ll ever get.”

  The guard, an older guy who was in the king’s inner circle, looked less than enthused as he stepped up to take his turn. I tried not to let myself feel anything, but by the end of a full minute, his insistent licking br
ought wetness to my center. The next guard stepped between my legs, looking more eager than the last. His tongue explored me, sucking greedily at my opening before he forced his thick, wet tongue into my entrance for a second. Shame and humiliation burned through me that I couldn’t control my body’s biological response to a warm, wet tongue stroking my sex.

  I wasn’t alone. The other guards looked distinctly uncomfortable, though I couldn’t tell if they were simply getting aroused from watching a naked woman having her pussy licked or if it was something more. The young guy who had brought me food looked like he was about to cum in his pants. He stepped forward eagerly, slurping at my wetness with slobby, audible sucks. Another guard pulled him off and dove in, his tongue skilled and frantic as he lapped at my slick folds. I looked around, searching desperately for something to hold onto, to focus on, that would keep the tingling heat from building between my spread thighs.

  My eyes met Gabor’s, and I latched onto his gaze just as the next guard latched onto my sex, sucking and panting, his breath repulsively hot against my bare, newly shaven skin. I clung to Gabor’s dark gaze, watching the faint glimmer of gold building there as he watched me being tasted, sucked, and licked by his fellow guards. Suddenly, with my eyes locked on his, I could imagine he was the one now taking his place between my thighs, that it was his tongue exploring my folds, circling my clit, and dipping tentatively into my opening, as if scared the king would suddenly grow possessive and decide to hang every man who knew the taste of his bride.

  Heat shimmered through me as the next guard took his turn, building into a crescendo of pleasure inside me as I gazed into Gabor’s eyes and felt the tongue of a guard trying to catch the mixture of saliva and my juices dribbling down my crack and onto the stone beneath me. I pictured Gabor’s mouth on me, and suddenly, the magic that had been walled up inside me began to flow over the dam that had stopped it. I could feel it pulsing around me with my heartbeat, with the throb of my clit when Gabor’s eyes left mine and moved to the man taking his turn between my thighs.

  A sparkling blue mist had began to creep from my cuffs, the haze hanging over my body and spreading, licking around the guards. Gabor’s jaw was tight, the muscle in his cheek bulging, his hands curled into tight fists. He didn’t look angry, though. His eyes were mad with hunger as he held himself back and watched. His nostrils flared with each labored breath, and his eyes had turned from obsidian with flecks of gold to a dark, ominous mixture of dark churning with gold swirls, like a living tiger eye stone.

  Suddenly, he strode forward, yanking the man away before his minute was up. He stared down into my eyes for a moment, his own glazed with lust.

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” he said, his voice ragged, and then he dropped to his knees and buried his face in me.

  There was nothing tentative or exploratory in his touch. He wrapped his hands around my thighs from the bottom, spreading them as wide as they’d go to open my pussy further. This time, I didn’t tense, though my thighs already ached from being spread so wide for so long. My knees dropped open as I relaxed for him, and I gasped as his tongue went straight for my slippery opening, plunging deep inside me. The others had held back, but Gabor had no reservations. He knelt up on his knees, pulling my body so my hips were lifted toward his face and his tongue could enter me from above. He angled his face down to go deeper, roughly plundering my hole with his tongue. Pleasure gripped me, and I arched in the other direction now, wanting to get closer instead of further from the hard strokes of his tongue through my slit and into my entrance.

  On either side of me, the guards holding my knees had dropped their grip to pull their cocks free of their pants. They were both jerking and stroking themselves, and after a few moments, the young guard joined, then another and another. They stood around me, all of them staring transfixed, jerking off over my naked body while Gabor ate my pussy. I didn’t even care. I didn’t care when I saw my father standing over my face, jerking his cock with the rest of them.

  I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted. I was riding a wave of magic, one that had been building inside me for a month with no release, and I knew that if I fell off, something terrible would happen. I had to hold onto it, to control it somehow, even though I couldn’t even control my own body. It jerked and rocked against Gabor’s mouth, needing more, demanding it. I panted and whimpered for it, helpless with pleasure, with need.

  He moaned into me, an anguished sound that was halfway between a growl and a groan. His body shuddered with the sound, a loud purr wracking his frame and entering my pussy each time he thrust roughly into my slick, hungry opening. Cries of pleasure escaped me as I writhed under him, taking every inch of his tongue as he drove it deeper, fucking me hard and fast. I felt his tongue extend and grow sandpapery rough as his ocelot began to slip through. The thought of this stone soldier of a man losing control coupled with the sensation of his tongue fucking me deep into my core undid me.

  The climax slammed into me, pulling me under and obliterating everything else in the world except this man who I had loved until it hurt. I could feel his tongue stroking me higher, his lips sucking my clit painfully hard as it throbbed out my orgasm. Suddenly, the cuffs on my hands shattered and fell away, and I buried my hands in Gabor’s thick hair and dragged him deeper, grinding my pussy against his face as my whole body convulsed in ecstasy.

  Streaks of blinding, white-hot magic shot from me in every direction as I lost control over it, but I was powerless to stop them, powerless to do anything but cry Gabor’s name over and over as I came in his mouth so hard that all I saw was blackness in front of my eyes. Streams of hot, sticky cream rained down on my bare skin as the other men came over my body, bathing me in their cum. My father’s cock squirted over my face, his cum running down in warm streams into my mouth and eyes, blinding me.

  Hot jets of cum poured over my breasts, bathing my nipples, my belly, trickling down my thighs toward my clenching center as their groans and grunts filled the air. Gabor’s grip on my thighs remained tight and possessive as his mouth roughly sucked my cum out, demanding every drop with a brutal suction that made me cry out in both pleasure and pain as a second, smaller orgasm rocked through me immediately following the first.

  Before I could even begin to come down from the dizzying height of my double orgasm, Gabor’s mouth was ripped free of me, and cool air hit my swollen, fevered flesh. Around me, I could hear growls and snarls and howls, and I could see a mass of guard bodies brawling, punching, kicking, biting. I couldn’t see Gabor anywhere. Were they attacking him for making me come?

  “Gabor,” I cried, straining to make out his uniform among the many others. Someone grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder, racing for a door off the arena. In the stands, people were ripping into each other, tearing off clothes, fucking and sucking as screams of pleasure and pain, roars and moans echoed through the arena. My head was still spinning, my pussy pulsing out the last tremors of my orgasm. I barely had time to register anything before we were through the door and plunged into complete blackness.

  “Let me down,” I growled, but the person carrying me only ran faster, racing along darkened corridors where I couldn’t see a thing. So, it must be an ocelot or at least a big cat shifter.

  Suddenly, I remembered something eerily similar when I went into heat. I’d had sex with Kwame, and all the snow leopards in their mountains had appeared and fought for me. That time, Jetsun had whisked me away to safety, though I hadn’t been too happy about it at first. I’d needed to mate, and being locked up with only my brother had been less than ideal. I only wished the man carrying me now was Jetsun.

  I groped around in the dark, feeling his broad shoulders and stout back. Definitely not Jetsun. I tried to remember who had grabbed me from the fog of my bliss, spiked with fear when I saw Gabor being mobbed. Had he given me an orgasm so powerful it sent me into a heat, even though I no longer had an ocelot? No, that couldn’t be it. I’d never gone into heat before I had an animal companion inside
me, and I wouldn’t go into one after it was gone.

  There was so much about my magic that I didn’t know yet, though. I had no idea what it was capable of, what had happened back there.

  I had learned one thing, though. No amount of calling my magic or indulging my hurricanes of rage had broken the cuffs. Only pleasure had broken through the barricade to my magic.

  Guess I should have masturbated with the cuffs after all.

  My hands had been cramped inside the metal cuffs for so long that they felt cold and strange being exposed, and I had the ridiculous urge to curl them up again, the way they’d been curled in the cuffs. When I extended my fingers, they ached from disuse. Ignoring it, I ran my hands over my captor’s back. The fabric under my hands was thick and rich, the velvet not worn by guards at all.

  It was my father.

  I hadn’t fought him taking me, partly because I’d still been stunned by the orgasm and partly because I had known it was dangerous in there. I hadn’t just made all the guards covet my father and the spectators get a little whiff of magic that made them think they liked me. I’d caused mass hysteria. And a mass orgy involving a few thousand people—people who prided themselves on being refined and dignified.

  Then again, I’d never been to an ocelot party. Maybe they did this kind of thing all the time.

  “Did you know that would happen?” I demanded, starting to struggle on my father’s shoulder.

  “Of course not,” he snapped, tightening his grip around my waist. “That guard took advantage of my generosity. He was supposed to have only a taste.”

  His words sent a throb straight to my clit, as if it were reminding me how thoroughly I’d enjoyed being tasted by that guard. As if I could forget.

  “He’ll pay for violating my wife,” the king raged, though he hadn’t been complaining while Gabor was bringing me to orgasm. He’d stood there jerking off with the rest of them. He could have stopped Gabor if he wanted, but he’d wanted to come, so he let Gabor go on until he got relief. And now he was pissed about it.