Perfect Master (6 page)

He moved in front of the stool, sighed and
awaited the horrified reaction that always accompanied anyone’s first sight of
him. No words could adequately prepare her for what she was about to see, but
he had to try. “Be careful of the right side. I’ve lost an eye. Some of the
scar tissue around the socket is still sensitive.”

“You aren’t going to scare me off, Master,
so you may as well save your breath. I wanted a prince for a mate, and now that
I’ve got you I intend to keep you. Have you any idea how jealous it made my
sisters when Meredith matched me up with you?” Emerald’s banter eased Arik’s
fears while the feel of each lace giving way to her gentle fingers fed them.
Damn it, he could barely breathe.

By the gods, he wanted her to accept him.
He’d never before met a woman willing to defy a prince’s order—or one so determined
to impose her own will on her Master. When he’d told his father he’d sooner
fuck whores from the Street of Pleasure than take a mate chosen by a
matchmaker, he had been wrong. In one day the beautiful redhead who now had his
hood loose and was about to lift it off his head had captured more than his
animal lust—she’d engaged his emotions.

He’d never been so scared, not even when
the three mercenary craft had circled him off the small planet of Eastphalia,
shooting their lasers with deadly precision, determined to destroy him and take
his small transporter down. Or when he’d come to in a primitive clinic on that
planet in a haze of pain that almost but not quite dulled the revulsion he
felt, looking for the first time at the charred stump of his right arm,
realizing that was only a small part of what had happened to him when he’d
crashed his burning ship.

He’d give all of Obsidion’s wealth to keep
Emerald from seeing it now. “Wait,” he told her, lifting his hand and trying to
grasp the loosened leather but succeeding only in putting pressure on the
tortured flesh beneath it.

She stayed his hand. “It will be no easier
later. Let’s do it now.”

He couldn’t watch. Couldn’t bear to see the
horror in her eyes. But he couldn’t deny her right to see the man she’d mated
with, the father of the child who even now might be growing in her belly.
Defeated, he closed his eye. Then he lowered his head and steeled himself to
hear her scream.

All he heard as the concealing leather fell
away was her swift intake of breath and a dull thud when her body hit the
marble floor.

Chapter Five

Half-conscious now, Emerald lay not on the
floor but on Arik’s bed, trying desperately to recall why she’d fainted.

Softly, so softly, he was speaking to her
as though she were a frightened child. How long had she been lying there? She
had no idea. It could have been mere moments—or hours.

Though his words hadn’t stuck in her mind,
she’d never forget the tear that fell from his eye and lingered on her cheek—a
warm, wet kiss from her Master. A kiss that held regret, resignation and
disappointment. One that made her want him more than ever, even more than she
wanted to experience a repeat of the delicious climaxes he’d brought her
yesterday.

No! Fate couldn’t have played such a
cruel trick.
Shame washed over her, for she sensed
that by fainting she’d hurt him as badly as the injuries that had mutilated
him.

I shouldn’t have insisted he bare
himself. Should have kept my curiosity under wraps. Curiosity, nothing, I
wanted all of him, needed him to bring me pleasure, not just with his cock but
with all of him. I couldn’t be satisfied with him fucking me, and his royal
eunuchs doing what he would not, could I
?

She heard voices, Arik’s and Hikaru’s? She
felt someone tying silky-feeling scarves around her wrists and ankles.
I
told you I won’t run away. You don’t need to tie me to your bed
. Although
she wanted to speak, her voice wouldn’t work and her eyelids felt too heavy
when she tried to open them.

“I believe she’s waking up, my lord.”

“Then finish restraining her and go. Hurry.
I will call when I need you to get me back into the leather.”

Footsteps, too light to be her Master’s,
padded along the floor. The door opened and closed. Tentatively she moved her
arms and legs, found them so lightly tethered that she could move one arm. When
she raised her hand to her cheek, she found the spot that still was damp from
the prince’s tear. “Master?”

“Yes, it’s me.” He sounded resigned, as
though expecting her to try to bolt. “Open your eyes and take a good look. I’m
naked now. Hikaru finished the job you started. At least this time when you
faint, you’ll already be on the bed.”

Emerald forced her eyes to open, the edges
of her mouth to lift. “I never faint,” she said, but her words sounded hollow
to her own ears. She looked up, steeling herself not to wince or scream. There
he was, in profile, his uninjured side to her, as magnificent now as he’d
seemed when she saw him in the window, and she spied another tear on his cheek,
sparkling like a diamond.

A diamond in the rough, as courtiers often
whispered about the man who’d one day sit on the Diamond Throne. “I want to see
all of you.”

Slowly, he turned, showing her his back.
Broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips and massive thighs as thick as tree
trunks. On the left side he was perfection, his skin reminding her of
satin-smooth caramel and cream. On the right lay crisscrossed scar tissue that
extended the length of his body, its devastation most evident in the hideously
mangled stump of his arm. “When you wear the bodysuit, it looks as though your
arm is uninjured. Oh gods, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I shouldn’t—”

“Why? You’d have to be blind not to notice.
I usually use a primitive sort of hook prosthesis they taught me how to use
when I was recovering on Eastphalia.”

Beneath the gruff, almost defiant façade,
Emerald sensed Arik was hurting. Though she still shuddered, recalling her
shock at the sight of his ruined face and the gaping hole where his eye had
been, the emotion that overwhelmed her now was not pity but anger. Anger with
him for thinking her so shallow she’d reject him because he was less than
princely perfection.

He wasn’t imperfect where it counted. He
still had his mind, his emotions. Again she recalled the tear he’d shed when he
thought he had repulsed her. She’d show him he didn’t, much as he’d shown her
yesterday that they’d been destined to mate—that he only needed that lustful
eye and his magnificent cock to make her cunt explode.

She held out her free arm to him, her
expression as stern as she could manage while trembling like a leaf in
Obsidion’s hot summer wind. “Untie me, Master. Then forget you’re my Master for
a little while and lie down on the bed. Face up. I want to look at every inch
of you, caress you, show you the kind of pleasure I can give you with my hands
and mouth.”

For a moment she thought he’d refuse. His
mixed emotions showed in his eye, in the set of his mouth, in the way he
clenched his fist before sitting on the edge of the bed and loosening her
bonds. “You don’t have to do this,” he said gruffly when he met her gaze.

“But you do.” Smiling, she moved to the
foot of the bed and looped the silk scarves Hikaru had used to confine her
around his ankles, then bound his left wrist to the ornately carved headboard.
Looking at the stump, she smiled and set one of the scarves down. “I guess
we’ll just have to pretend I’ve tied down this arm, too.”

Settling cross-legged by his ravaged side,
Emerald reached down and stroked the worst of the scars from where it started
above his right ankle. “You must have taken quite a hit,” she commented as she
traced the jagged, reddened mass up his leg and body. “All this came from just
one battle, didn’t it?”

“Yes, but it was one hell of a fight. Me in
my little transporter against three armed mercenary fighters. Some of the
damage happened when I had to crash-land on Eastphalia and my ship caught
fire.” He flinched when she stroked the mangled stump of his arm but looked at
her and said, “Don’t stop.” He watched her, wonder in his expression as though
he could hardly believe she didn’t recoil at his scars.

Her intuition had served her well. Her
Master was literally starving to be touched, treated as though someone still
found him worthy—desirable. Bending, she touched her lips to his stump.
Nuzzling his warm flesh as she moved inward, she found his right nipple buried
in his dark chest hair and laved it with her tongue. “Mmmm,” she said, lightly
tracing along the web of scars on his upper arm with a finger, “this must have
been terribly painful.”

“I don’t want to think about that now.” He
laid his hand on top of hers, his fingers lacing with hers. “It feels so damn
good when you touch me this way.”

She straightened then climbed over his body
and straddled his torso. His cock felt good—incredibly good—warm and rigid, yet
velvety soft where it nudged her swollen cunt lips. “Touch me, too,” she said,
watching his expression change to one of wonder—of lust—when he looked up and
finally met her gaze. “And let me fuck my Master.”

“Untie me and I will.”

Emerald slipped the silk scarf down over
his large hand. “I believe I’ll leave your legs tied so I can have my way with
you.”

Arik’s balls tightened. His cock throbbed.
Once his hand was free he wasted not one moment before impaling his mate, his
beautiful Emerald whose wet, swollen cunt told him better than words how much
she wanted him.

She wanted him as he was now, not as he’d
once been before his father had commanded his death. And he wanted her. His
only regret as he stroked her satin skin and took her nipples between his teeth
was that he couldn’t turn back time, be the perfect lover for his perfect love.

But he could. Somehow it no longer seemed
important to Arik that he continue making his father pay on a daily basis for
having tried to kill him. He’d seek out Pak Song and let the surgeons and the
cyborg maker remake him.

Later. Blood slammed into his groin when
Emerald leaned over and laid soft kisses on his ravaged cheek. Her plump ass
cheek filled his hand, firm but woman-soft. Steadying her with his stump while
she fucked his cock, he slipped two fingers up her ass and gently fucked her
there. When she took his mouth and sucked his tongue between her lips, her
tight, wet cunt contracted around his cock.

He swallowed her little scream, answering
with a harsh bellow when his climax slammed into him. Gods but he loved her. He
even loved his father for having contracted the match between them. Without
thinking, he cradled her to his body with his naked stump—an act he’d never
imagined he would do.

Chapter Six

At first he stayed in his chamber with
Emerald, sharing meals with her when previously he’d dined in solitary
splendor, enjoying her companionship as well as her gorgeous body, but
gradually he started venturing into his father’s court.

With his princess at his side, accepting
him as he was, Arik began to venture out of the shadows. Not all at once, for
he’d spent too much time in darkness and despair. During the next weeks he shed
the all-encompassing leather in favor of an opaque, hooded robe that left most of
his face visible but allowed him to hide the ravaged side from impressionable
women and children.

His impulsive resolve to restore himself as
much as possible had weakened with the realization that his mate accepted him
as he was, for he dreaded the months of recuperation from surgeries he’d been
told were so complex they couldn’t be performed using modern laser techniques.
Though he’d softened toward his father, Arik still felt a bit of satisfaction
that the king was paying emotionally for having caused his ruined face and
broken body.

That afternoon, after they ate lunch in the
palace dining room and retired to their tower, Emerald took Arik’s hand. “My
lord, I would like to go to the city and visit my father and sisters. I want
you to meet them since the king refused to allow them to attend our mating.
Would you…”

His first reaction was to refuse, for he
cringed at the idea of leaving the palace now that she’d become his constant
companion. He didn’t want his father’s subjects to gawk at him but couldn’t
imagine himself going out without being covered.

I would be a beast to refuse her time
with her family. I can’t expect my princess to live in the isolation I crave.
He hated hearing the hesitation in her voice. “If you wish it,
although I’d prefer that they come here. Do you truly want them to see the
monster who is your Master?”

“You are no monster. You’re my Master, a
lover beyond what I hoped for in my wildest fantasies. And you’re my friend as
well.”

“As you are mine.” The look she gave him
warmed his heart. She had given him back a life he’d thought was over. He could
do no less for her. “I have decided to do what I can to remedy this.” Lifting
his arm with its wicked-looking hook, he gestured toward his face. “You deserve
better than to spend your life confined within the palace walls because of my
affliction. I will tell my father I’ve decided to see the surgeons and the
cyborg maker, and listen to their recommendations.”