7. An Accomplished Devourer of Men
7. AN ACCOMPLISHED DEVOURER OF MEN
RUSH
Natania and Malina were two of the queen’s most constant ladies. They’d arrived at court around the time I had, a presence at every party and gathering I’d been forced to attend.
By the calculated and controlling insistence of her mother, Dayana, Natania pretended to be refined and sophisticated—and at court appearances were all that mattered. Dayana had been offering up her daughter to me on a shiny dinner platter since I first met the pair. But Natania had feigned timid flirtation anyway, trying to get me to believe some redeemable qualities had survived her mother’s continuous meddling.
Malina, however, had come to court unaccompanied. She was openly brash and loud about her sexual exploits when she shouldn’t have been. Unmarried as she was, I couldn’t imagine a potential suitor would be thrilled by how many men she claimed to have bedded. Actually, I couldn’t fathom any potential suitor would be thrilled about anything about the woman, who was currently ogling my body, her grin hungry and feral, as if she were an accomplished devourer of men.
I warred with the urge to pull away from her greedy, groping fingers across my skin, but there was nowhere to go to escape her. Or any of them.
Despite their differences, neither of the women stepped away now that their task was complete. Not a single stitch of clothing concealed me from my audience: twenty-two women; the queen, who scarcely counted as a woman with her brutal bestial nature; Ivar and Braque; and who knew how many servants and slaves who observed from the shadows.
So I busied myself with cataloging inane details to distract from my terrible reality. I was drake to a noble fae clan that had been around since the origins of the Mirror World. For thousands of years, my ancestors had cared for its fae and the land entrusted to them. They’d been honor bound. Of course, none of them had been perfect, and Amarantos had its own history of violence and avoidable deaths. But overall, I’d been proud to become leader of our clan. I’d been hopeful, even, that I’d find a way to lead my subjects out from the darkness that infected our world.
Here, now, I felt neither proud nor hopeful. I feared I might never experience either again. I simultaneously felt too much and too little.
My tattoos, ordinarily betraying my true emotions when I least wanted them to, were strangely muted. I guessed that was an effect of the umbrac poison. For that reason alone, I no longer regretted taking it. There was no stopping the queen from using my body the way she wished. But at least how much I hated the experience would remain mine alone. If even just my hate could be my secret, it would be something.
It was one thing to anticipate how the violation would feel. How being so exposed, vulnerable, and defenseless would cut worse than a physical pain. But it was quite another to live through it. Already, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it the same man I was now. And the queen hadn’t even touched me yet.
Should I drink more of the umbrac poison? If I left the vial where it was, hidden against the base of my skull, it would remain intact so long as I didn’t press my neck into the bed the wrong way.
The bed .
With a gaze that felt unseeing even as it registered every single horrid detail of my surroundings, I stared at that bed—large enough to accommodate several of the females—even as Malina dipped her head in front of mine in an attempt to draw my attention.
“That’s enough,” the queen told Malina and Natania as she spread out upon the coverlet of black silk.
Silk was soft, but also strong enough to strangle her with it. If she weren’t so unreasonably fast, I could have looped it around her neck before she, Ivar, or Braque could stop me. It wouldn’t kill her, not with the land’s magic protecting her, but it would bring me a small measure of satisfaction in a place I already foresaw would haunt my future nightmares.
Obediently, Malina and Natania stepped away from me. If the females were smart, they’d have sensed that something about the queen was wrong—more so than usual. They’d be treading carefully.
When Natania and Malina lingered around the bed, the queen clucked her tongue and flicked a hand toward the chairs.
The women hurried to take their seats. Even the ever-eager Malina didn’t tarry.
“Come closer.”
For a moment, I debated the merits of pretending I didn’t realize the queen was addressing me. But what would that achieve?
Keeping my stare fixed firmly ahead so as not to glance at exactly how much flesh I had on display, I stalked forward.
You’re a warrior , I reminded myself. You command troops. This is just another battle. It’s only your body. It doesn’t have to mean anything more.
Apparently it didn’t matter how many times I told myself this. I still didn’t believe the lie—and oh how I wanted to.
When the bed hit my thighs, I stopped. Several additional silver orbs raced in, illuminating my body. The indignity of the queen’s treatment hadn’t been enough, obviously.
I pretended not to notice the lights, or how the queen examined my dick like it was a curio she had every right to collect, to handle, to possess.
I’d been mistaken to imagine umbrac poison had any chance of dulling me enough. An entire jug of it wouldn’t be sufficient. It would just kill me—very possibly a more welcome option.
“Well,” the queen commented, her voice uncommonly thready. “The rumors about you don’t disappoint. How very refreshing.” A theatrical breath, then, “I’ll derive much pleasure from your … equipment.”
She trilled as if that were the cleverest thing to say in the entire fucking universe. I very nearly wished for my dick to shrivel up and fall off, just to elude her touch.
One moment she’d been on her back, leaning onto her elbows, the very next on her knees, her hands reaching toward my “equipment.”
Before I had the opportunity to steel myself, her fingertips, unexpectedly gentle, trailed along the length of my dick. I tensed all over before I hurried to make myself relax.
I failed.
A whimper sounded from our audience—Elowyn, I suspected, not that I’d heard her before—and her protest seemed to encourage the queen. Her fingers caressed me with the gentleness of a lover.
I wanted to recoil, to abandon my skin and flee with my heart while it still beat in a familiar, recognizable rhythm.
Gulping subtly, I wondered how the fuck I’d find the arousal needed to perform for the queen. If I couldn’t summon an erection for her, would she order my dick sliced off? She’d murdered men for far less than rejecting her.
Fast, again too fast, both hands slapped around my hips and tugged me down onto the bed. I fumbled to land with my hands on either side of her so as not to crush her, or press along her body as a lover would.
My arms bracketed her face, and beneath me she spread her thighs, pressing them to either side of my hips.
Maybe this was better. Perhaps this would be a fast pump-and-grind, then dismiss me so I could puke in private.
“Undress me,” she ordered as if her patience were wearing thin.
Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just do .
I pressed back onto my knees, grateful for the slight distance between our chests, until her thighs pressed my hips. She arched her body, scraping her pelvis against mine.
My next inhale trembled but I guided the thin silk of her gown up her torso and over her head. Beneath it, she was as naked as I was.
She’d demand my appreciation, so before she could I made a show of studying the appeal of her many curves. Objectively, the woman was stunning. And if she hadn’t been so damn ugly inside, she would have been one of the most beautiful women in the entire kingdom .
But she was ugly inside, so fucking ugly.
I leaned into the dullness of the umbrac poison as I took in the graceful features of her face, the seductive curve of her mouth, the wolfish arch to her brows. She blinked long, dark lashes as she studied me back, and it was almost easy to imagine the queen was Elowyn.
My sight grew purposefully hazy, blurring as I imagined Elowyn in this body.
Forgive me, Elowyn .
When her mouth opened to bark her commands, I slid back down between her legs and kissed her.
As if those very same lips hadn’t ordered the death of my sister, the terms of my captivity, and the torment of innumerable of her subjects, I kissed her.
Elowyn . It was a fantasy, but one that wouldn’t hurt the woman who’d never be the wiser, and one that might preserve some part of me that would otherwise become irretrievably broken.
When she moaned wantonly and parted her lips for me, I pushed my tongue between them, pretending I was the one in control, who wanted this. Her tongue was hot and soft against mine, and yet the taste of her was bitter with what I feared was the tang of blood.
Elowyn, Elowyn, Elowyn , I chanted through my muddled thoughts as if she were a lifeline. As if the stranger could keep me tethered to the body I wanted so desperately to abandon.
When her moans became loud enough to drown out the chatter to my left, she began to writhe beneath me. Once more, when I sensed her commands rising up her throat, I kissed them silent. I palmed both of her breasts.
She groaned, long and guttural, and I drew back so I could take in her tits apart from the rest of her, as if she were nothing more than a collection of body parts—exactly how she saw me.
The queen was merely a body. I was merely a body. Our audience wasn’t there at all. Did they even exist if I didn’t register them there? What was existence anyway?
If I didn’t view myself as a victim here, would I still be one? Behind the fading numbness of the umbrac poison, I knew the answer. I refused to reach for it.
I swirled my lips and tongue across her tits until her hips bucked. I squeezed and nipped and flicked, and when I sensed it was no longer enough for her, when she reached for my dick, found me not hard, and squeezed so brutally it had to be punishment for my lack of arousal, I didn’t delay.
I slunk down her body, propped her knees over my shoulders, and pressed my tongue to her slit.
Instantly, those punishing fingers that had drawn blood from Elowyn earlier flopped onto the bed, loose and open.
Elowyn, that’s right. It’s Elowyn, not … it’s just Elowyn . Elowyn, who wore her heart and courage for all to see in a court where evidence of either was dangerous.
I licked the length of the queen’s pussy, lapping up her juices as if I weren’t holding back a gag. I spread her legs wider and sucked and rubbed and licked at her clit until she was bucking and screaming beneath me.
As her ethercrest crashed over her, she cried out my name.
The cunt .
The motherfucking cunt .
She dared to cry out my name in the throes of pleasure as if I had any agency at all in this. As if my earlier proclamation of my eagerness to please hadn’t been a play on the battlefield, an entire clan at my back, the duty of their protection solely on my shoulders.
She was forcing me. No matter what I said or how I acted.
And she damn well fucking knew it.
When she panted, telling me to soften the touch of my tongue, when she pressed her ass into the bed with such force it was obvious she was trying to escape my stimulation, I gave it to her all the more.
I licked and sucked and pressed—fucking hard—with my tongue and teeth and lips until she was again writhing with her pleasure. And this time, when she cried out my name as if we were true lovers, I nipped at her clit.
The rest of my name died on a startled gasp.
I wanted to rip and rend and tear every part of her body that had come together to deliver her gratification. I hesitated with that temptation for several long beats during which her chest heaved and her head lolled to one side. I’d never seen her so vulnerable, so open.
Perhaps it, too, was a show .
I could claw at her cunt and her tits. No one would stop me in time before I hurt her in at least some small way. That attack would, of course, do nothing to kill her, and it certainly wouldn’t further my cause of ridding the Mirror World of her sickness. But fuck, would it satisfy a deep, twisted part of me that her darkness was now touching.
My own chest heaving, I rose to my knees and stared down at her. While temptation whispered its musings, she eventually opened her eyes to stare up at me, licking her lips. Her mouth curled with delight. I didn’t know what to make of it. Were these more theatrics? Was she just insane?
Her gaze raked down my chest to my dick.
Undeniable evidence that I despised her despite my own performance.
She scowled, her nostrils flaring, surely scenting her own arousal. Her eyeballs jittered, and I surrendered to what might be my imminent death.
If it was to come, then let it come now, before I was forced inside her. Before I knew what it felt like to give over something intended to be so sacred to the least sacred person I’d ever known.
A cry from our audience grew sharp and suddenly loud, only then drawing my attention to the muting whoosh that had churned in my head, blocking out the background noise.
A few hearty guffaws skittered darkly along my skin. I refused to look to locate their sources .
Then … another cry, this one as pained and broken as I already felt inside.
I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to, but my head turned toward that pain anyway.
And there she was. Elowyn again. A pair of orbs floated above only her, singling her out, as if the queen were getting off on her suffering as much as my own.
When she felt my attention, Elowyn’s eyes flew to mine. Her face was screwed up into deep grooves of agony. Tracks of tears glistened along her cheeks. One lonely one pooled at the corner of her lip. She drew in a ragged breath that shuddered through her chest, drawing my eye to the swells of plump breasts, like pretty cakes.
Her eyes never leaving mine, she rasped, “Your Majesty.” She swallowed loudly enough to reach through the haze that still coddled me a little, that still held me in a gentle cocoon that fought vainly to isolate me from my actions.
“May I … please join you?”
With a predatory jerk, the queen spun her head toward Elowyn. First surprise, then calculation slid across her stare.
“No,” the queen answered, but didn’t look back at me—waiting, I understood, for Elowyn’s reaction.
Elowyn didn’t disappoint. She pressed a hand to her chest as she seemed to struggle to breathe. “Please,” insisted the woman who’d defied the queen with such strength in the great salon I wouldn’t have believed her capable of begging, much less to a woman like the queen. And yet…
“I’ll make sure you … like it,” Elowyn added.
The queen cackled. “I already like it. Isn’t that right, Rush?”
When her attention fell to me, I made my lips move, smile. But despite my efforts, no response slipped out.
“I’ll make sure he’s as ‘eager to please’ as he was last night,” Elowyn continued, and the queen snapped her attention back on her. “You were watching, weren’t you?”
What in dragonfire was going on now? Last night, what?
Elowyn evaded me when I tried to snag her attention.
“Maybe I was,” the queen finally said before cupping her hands around her own breasts and squeezing.
“Then you liked what you saw.” It wasn’t a question.
Another squeeze of her tits, as if that were some sort of clue to what the fuck they were going on about. “Maybe I did.”
Elowyn stood, and Ivar was suddenly beside her. Was he drinking blood too, then? Was it responsible for his recent changes?
“Let me show you,” Elowyn urged, tears still tracking down her cheeks. The one that had quivered at her lip had broken free and rolled slowly down her chin toward her neck.
Transfixed by its progress, by her suffering, shared inexplicably with me, I watched, the whoosh ing in my head increasing in volume.
“Fine,” the queen said. “But if it’s not what I saw last night, you’ll be done.”
With what, exactly, wasn’t clear.
Ivar shadowed her steps until Elowyn was beside the bed, and when she crawled onto it, pausing only to kick off her heels and gather her skirts in her hands, he remained close. His hand rested on the hilt of his cutlass.
As if Elowyn were an actual threat to the queen, who couldn’t die by worldly means.
Who was this woman?
As Elowyn neared, my body warmed, yielded, seemed even to want to stretch to be closer to her. The stranger I’d only met this morning…
But all at once, even with the queen splayed out beneath me— especially with the queen splayed out beneath me, each of her folds spread open so crassly—all I could see was Elowyn.
Elowyn’s face, lips, hair, shoulders, arms, and breasts, nipples I longed to spy. Her eyes, oh, how her eyes held mine. Their depths churned with a violet I couldn’t place, that I was certain I’d never seen before, and yet it felt like … like … home.
Without a word to me, she sidled up beside me, her skirt falling across the queen’s thigh. Her hands bracketed my face, and with more tenderness than I’d ever felt, she drew my lips to hers. When she kissed me, it was like I could breathe deeply again.
When the queen tsked in disapproval, I discovered my arms wrapped around Elowyn’s shoulders, pulling her against me across the queen. I hadn’t registered doing it. Was it the poison, or was it some other magic?
After a hasty glance at the queen—when I was still anticipating her lips against mine again—Elowyn wrapped a hand around my dick, lowered her head, and dragged her tongue along its tip.
Involuntarily, I groaned, closing my eyes as comments buzzed from our audience. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh , drowned out the specifics.
When Elowyn pulled as much of me into her mouth as she could, I grunted and braced myself on the queen’s knee.
She growled in warning, causing Elowyn to pull her mouth from me to tell her, “It’ll be worth it, Your Majesty. I’m working on it.”
My eyes flew open at that. What the devilry was this?
But then Elowyn’s mouth was back on me, and I felt myself hardening beneath those sensuous lips. That hot, hot tongue. That perfect suction. The way she caressed my balls as if she and I were about to make love.
The haze whooshed more intently around me, until I felt as if I were deep underwater, the pressure both too intense and welcome at the same time. There, beneath the water, it was just she and I. Her touch and no one else’s. Her kiss. Her murmured comfort whispered beside the shell of my ear so no one else might hear it.
At some point, there were too many hands on my skin, too many tongues and mouths. But through it all, there they were, her eyes that swirled an odd mixture of gray and violet and that somehow still felt like home.
Like safety , when I understood despite the haze that I was deep in the dragon’s den.
Elowyn’s hands tangled in my hair and clasped around the small vial. Her eyes were wide with an unspoken question when they flew to mine. When her lips murmured next to my ear again, “Will it kill me?” I shook my head, my movements sluggish.
“Will it take away the pain?”
Had the umbrac poison taken away mine, or had that been her? Either way, I nodded, my eyes drunk with her as she consumed my sight. As she erased the others around me.
As the stranger I’d only just met filled every void and soothed every jagged crack.
Laughter and moans and gasps were a constant in the background, behind the endless whoosh ing. They weren’t hers, and that was all I cared to know.
Her. Elowyn. Only her.
When I finally collapsed on the bed beside her, I noticed the vial was gone from its hiding place.
Her eyes were closed to me, to whomever else was on the bed with us .
I shook her but she wouldn’t look at me.
Others called my name, seductive growls and whispers. The air was musky with the scent of too many women.
I wrapped myself around Elowyn and clenched my eyes shut, ignoring every call that followed.
Even the queen’s.
Especially the queen’s.
I didn’t open my eyes again until I woke to a bed entirely empty save for me and my shame.