Chapter 9
My lips parted, but no words were coming forth as the door opened and in walked the decorated commander. In his arms, he carried a hammered silver box carved on the top with a floral motif.
“What do you think, Commander?” The king grinned against his wine goblet as he tipped his chin toward me. “Isn’t he delicious?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Neopal said, bowing. “Good choice. Very unique.”
The king nodded toward the box, and Neopal lifted the lid, presenting its contents to the room like a prized auction item.
My soul tried to leave my body.
Inside the box was the largest spile I’d ever seen, tucked into a black silken fabric.
“What is that…?” I trailed off when it hit me.
It was the tradition of a formal contract where a whore was expected to wear the ass plug of the vultus who bought them when entering the demon’s home as a symbol of ownership. I’d never done that as I’d never done a contract. I’d always been too unwilling to leave Landry.
My voice was barely there as I asked, “You want a contract with me? At the palace?”
“Did I fail to mention that?” The king brushed his jeweled fingers over the spile like it was a pet, then dug it from the fabric.
Was that…normal? Fuck. I blinked. Fuck. I didn’t know. “When?”
“Right now, my pet. We’ll be taking you tonight.” The king brought the spile to my mouth and rolled it over my bottom lip. It was freezing as he slid it onto my tongue, clinking metal against metal. “Oh, I simply must have you. I do not like to wait.”
I slowly opened my mouth and let him plunge it all the way inside, winding it around for me to lubricate it. It was huge and cold and tasted faintly of fruited perfume.
“And what an honor to be invited to the palace.” The king twisted the plug around my mouth. “Don’t you agree, Neopal?”
I glanced at the commander, whose jaw tightened as he said, “Indeed, Your Grace.”
“Speaking of honors.” Saliva strung from my mouth when he pulled the plug out, grinning as he handed it to his commander. “Would you be so kind as to do them?”
Neopal took the plug with another bow as if it were a formal ceremony, disappearing from sight to position himself behind me. He lifted my robe, exposing my ass to him, and panic seared through me.
It felt too pat, too easy. It felt too reassured. I suddenly couldn’t shake the feeling that not only should I not let them take me anywhere, but I should be fucking running.
“Look at me, pet,” the king said, lifting my chin. “You’ll need to breathe for this.”
Neopal spat onto my hole. The kingdom’s most perfect lubricant was built into their glands like venom to a snake. It hit my hole with a light splat. He swirled his thumb around, pushing a little inside me, then did it once again. I could feel him twitching.
My heart was careening through beats as the king’s dark eyes, so deep and faceted, swayed down to my mouth. If I ran, I wouldn’t get very far. If I bit his hand, it’d be a death sentence.
But I couldn’t ignore a lifetime’s worth of intuition telling me that something wasn’t right. It was all of it. Their presence here. Him choosing me. My invitation to the palace.
The cold metal of the spile shocked me when it pressed against my hole.
“Wait,” I breathed, jolting forward, but the king held me still effortlessly. “Can I have a moment to—?”
“Shhhh,” the king whispered, petting my hair as Neopal began pressing it tighter. And tighter. “The more you relax, the faster it will go—”
“No, no, no. I cannot.” I was able to wiggle from his grip just long enough to spew the first thing that came to mind, “I’m so sorry, but I cannot go to the palace. See, I take care of my brother. His legs do not work, and he is unable to care for himself.”
He held up a hand to cease the commander as his head cocked all the way to one side. “What is his name?”
My heart stopped. Oh. It was possible I’d just made a monumental mistake. “His name?”
“Yes. What is the name of your brother, boy?” The king smiled, but something about it was stilted. “If we are going to also bring him to the palace, we need to know his name, don’t we?”
FUCK.
“Oh, he is not a concubine.” My words were too rushed. “He would be of no use to you.”
“Doesn’t matter. If you do not come without him, then we will find something for him to do.”
“Lennox,” I said, swallowing hard. I hadn’t intended to lie, but it came pouring out. “Lennox is his name. But I just remembered that he is staying at an uncle’s farm for a few weeks.”
The king’s grin slowly grew. “What luck.”
Every muscle in my body wanted to seize. But I forced myself to nod. “What luck, indeed.”
“Continue,” the king said, nodding once at his commander, and cold fear leaked the length of my spine.
Neopal began pressing the spile further. And further. I gasped when I opened to receive the massive plug, but the king was there, leaning down to cup my face in his palms.
“There we go. Watch me.” He lifted my face. “Watch me as you take it.”
I grimaced up at him, and I could almost swear, it made him smile more.
“Oh, I do like this part,” he chuckled, glancing at Neopal. “It’s so big, isn’t it, my pet? So much to handle.”
My anklet jingled as I squirmed away from the plug and tighter into the king. It was far too big, and I was far too tense, and it was going to split me open. Run.
“I think you need a little help taking it.” The king grinned so sweetly at me. So pristine. Like fresh snowmelt.
I didn’t need help. I needed to think, but I was currently crammed between them, fucked and out of excuses.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” the king said, dropping his gaze to my mouth. “I’d be a pleasure.”
He crushed his mouth to mine.
Right away, I could feel the difference. He wasn’t just kissing me like he’d done before. He wasn’t exploring. He was drinking me.
Hard.
Pleasure blanketed my body all over and all at once. I’d possibly never had one drink so hard. It was intense. More than intense. Insane. Words had no place for what it was. They had no place in describing a feeling so mind-boggling.
It was like lying on a shallow ocean shore while an undertow with magnificent power sucked the sand from beneath your body. Only it wasn’t sand. It was my energy, my sex, and it was fucking intoxicating.
He sucked harder.
And harder.
And harder.
He was drinking with reckless abandon, like there was no end to his hunger.
Pleasure thrummed through my system, stoking higher the more he drank. The pain of the spile transformed into pleasure, too, as Neopal massaged my ass with one hand as if to help coax it.
“Fucking gods, you have to taste this,” the king whispered between kisses. “You have to try him. You won’t believe it.”
“You’re certain, Your Grace?” Neopal asked. “Your needs come first. Always.”
“You know I’ve been eating all morning.” The king swiped his tongue over my parted lips. “I’m nearly full.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Neopal said. “That’s so gracious of you.”
I’d never felt more like a toy being shared between them as the king twisted my face to the side to devour my neck in wet kisses.
“I’ve almost gotten it,” Neopal said. “I’m trying not to rip him. He’s so fucking tight.”
“He’s deep is what he is.”
I blinked my eyes open. Wait. But I struggled to blink them open. They were heavy. Far too heavy.
“Get on with it.”
“As you wish.” Neopal pressed the spile further and out poured a raspy cry past my lips, making both of them twitch.
The king snarled, cupping my face, biting onto my lower lip as I leaked precum onto my robe. “What a lovely sound. Do it again.”
Neopal pushed the spile as far as it would go, and I moaned against the king’s mouth, melting in an exhale when my hole could finally, finally relax with the huge, heavy part inside me.
I tried to shake my head clear of the dizzy fog it was suddenly in, but it was useless.
“Eat, Commander.” The king sat back in the chair, taking the wine glass once more. “Eat him while I watch.”
The commander began to lick the length of my spine, long and slow starting from my crack and up to my hairline. He drank differently from the king—less meandering; more direct. But he was just as intense.
He syphoned my energy. No, he fucking guzzled it.
“My gods, he’s deep,” Neopal was whispering against my skin, licking again from the base of my spine to the top. “What is that?”
“A well,” the king answered, smirking as he twirled the wine glass. “That is a deep, never-ending well of life.”
Their words were beginning to get a little misty, soft around the edges as if they could’ve been spoken from a couple of rooms away. Another deep, epic gulp from the commander had my stomach muscles constricting in pleasure while more precum spilled.
“Where does he end?” the commander was saying. “It’s like he’s bottomless inside. Shall I call in another soldier?”
“No, he’s almost there,” the king said, petting my hair. “He’s just stubborn. Give in, my pet. Sleep.”
So, they wanted to put me to sleep. They were trying to put me to sleep. Fear struck my heart. I knew it. I fucking knew it.
I pushed against the king uselessly, whimpering when Neopal drank another huge gulp and a wave of pleasure vibrated through me in its wake. It’d barely registered that his mouth was on my ass, licking and biting as he pressed a thumb against the plug.
Black orbs dotted my vision as I tried to keep my eyes open, but they were too heavy.
The king chuckled as he fisted my hair to keep me from crumbling to the floor in a worthless pile of bones. “I didn’t want to alarm you, sweetness, but we need you asleep. It’s just a precaution. Boring palace chitchat that you wouldn’t want to listen to anyway. You understand.”
His cock was rock hard through his trousers. He pressed my mouth against it and gently rolled his hips as if to shove it into my mouth through the expensive fabric. My throat was parched and my head absolutely swimming. All I could do was drool.
“We won’t hurt you, my pet. Trust that we want you very much alive. Why don’t you close your eyes and rest? Let your worries drift away.”
I was as hard as the king. The only difference was, he was getting stronger as each moment passed and I was getting weaker as an airy sensation slithered up my throat, demanding I give in.
“There it is, Neopal. Can you feel it? Wait for it.” The king held up a palm. “Almost. Ten seconds… three…two… Annnd stop.”
Neopal pushed himself off me and roared in his natural demon voice, “FUCK, THAT’S GOOD.”
Pain—excruciating and mind-scrambling—splintered in my ears. Their organic voices, the ones they shielded from us, were so wrong. They sounded like an echo in a tunnel, screamed by a hundred different suffering voices.
But I barely had the strength to open my eyelids, much less cover my ears.
“I’m counting on you to keep him asleep the whole way,” the king said, blotting his mouth on a handkerchief. “Trust me, you’ve been tasked with worse.”
Someone lifted me into their arms. The commander, probably. He wasn’t pristine like snowmelt, so it wasn’t the king.
“How would you like me to handle the keeper?”
My eyelids stung as I tried to pry them open, and my brows pinched together. I writhed in Neopal’s arms, my body desperately demanding sleep. No, I wouldn’t give in. I had to stay awake. Stay AWAKE. I had to.
“It doesn’t matter,” the king said. “Pay the owner for his loss and be done with it.”
What? What loss? Wait. My thoughts were trying to swirl the drain. It was like swimming through the wreckage of a ship with a hundred broken planks of wood and all of them too small to keep me above the water.
Pay the owner. Someone had mentioned loss…
The distinct sound of a bag of coins tossed onto something startled me from the twilight of unconsciousness I’d drifted into. My eyes wouldn’t open to see how much, just like sleep wouldn’t just leave me alone. It beckoned cruelly.
“Get me the fuck out of here,” someone said. The king? “I’ve never seen such a shithole. We’ll have to check him for lice.”
Every other thought was bleeding into the next. Something about paying the owner. About handling the keeper. Landry. Lennox. Loss.
I gave into the darkness as someone said, “Then again, that’s the price of a diamond.”