Authors: Ann Jacobs
When the king burst in, Hikaru at his
heels, Arik turned to face him while the members of the medical team, from
chief surgeon and cyborg maker to lowliest technician, prostrated themselves.
Emerald
is right. There is too much obeisance going on around here.
“Get up, all of
you. King Gawain should be bowing to you. You have saved him from the misery of
looking, for the rest of his life, on the results of his fearing a war, should
he have died leaving more than one legitimate heir to the Diamond Throne.”
“My son is right. Rise. I owe you more than
I can repay.” Tears flowed down the king’s cheeks as he looked at Arik’s face.
“Thank you.” Grasping Arik by both shoulders, he kissed first one cheek and
then the other. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
Arik placed his hands on his father’s
shoulders. “Not for you, Father. For our subjects. And for my princess.” At
that thought, his mood softened. “Perhaps for you, a little, because you having
brought her to me has given me happiness I never expected to experience when I
returned from Eastphalia. Now I can begin taking over some of your duties so
you can enjoy your old age.”
* * * * *
Later, after all the team had left with
their gear and the king had returned to his own tower, Arik turned to Emerald
as she stood gazing out the tower window. When he spoke she had no doubt what
was on his mind. “It has been six weeks. But it feels more like six years since
we enjoyed more than a very careful, very gentle fucking. Now I intend to enjoy
my precious slave, in every possible way.”
Her heart leapt in her breast. “Shall I
call Hikaru?” She recalled the night before their mating, when she’d seen Arik
in this same spot, backlit by the soft lighting in the room and bathed by the
light of Obsidion’s three golden moons, and when she did, her cunt clenched
with anticipation.
“Yes. Tonight we will try out the fucking
swing. And I will initiate your last virgin hole.”
“Yes, Master.” Emerald moved away to the
communicator, glancing up at a gleaming, black-leather and chrome fucking
machine hung from the high ceiling on sturdy hooks. She’d been dreaming of this
night ever since slaves had hung the swing while Arik had still been confined
to bed.
A light tap on the door brought her out of
her reverie. Hikaru stepped inside when she opened it, his arms loaded with the
supplies she’d ordered. As always when he entered the royal bedchamber, he set
down his load and prostrated himself at her feet. That still irritated her, but
she’d learned to expect it—after all, Hikaru had spent many years now since his
fate as a royal eunuch slave had been sealed, and she realized habits that old
were hard to break.
“Rise, slave,” she said as sternly as she’d
heard Arik do so many times. “I need to have you make me ready for our Master.”
Hikaru scrambled to his feet and ran a comb
through her short auburn curls that Arik so loved touching. Then he accompanied
her to the bidet in her bathing chamber and administered the most thorough
cleansing she’d ever had. While her cunt tingled and her asshole puckered from
its unfamiliar dousing, she watched him hurry to set up the fucking swing.
She imagined Arik stepping up behind that
swing, lubricating her ass and finally doing what he had been promising since
the day after their mating. While he’d convalesced he’d often tortured her by
fingering her rear hole, whispering about how he intended to deflower it. Now!
She was finally going to find out what she’d been missing.
“The swing is secured, my lady.” As if to
prove it, Hikaru gave the seat a hard jerk.
Her pulse raced. Her prince’s halting
footsteps echoed from the other side of the tower, the sounds urging her to
hurry and position herself facedown, ass in the air. “Help me,” she told
Hikaru. “Secure my arms and legs so I don’t fall out of this swing.”
Emerald had never felt more open, more
vulnerable. Her body was suspended on two leather straps, her legs spread wide
and secured with padded cuffs to braided leather ropes. When she moved her
ankles, pulleys on the ropes raised them, opening her even more. His touch
impersonal, Hikaru brought her arms behind her back, cuffed her wrists and tied
her at the elbows. Gods help her, she was now completely and deliciously
helpless.
“I see you’re at your Master’s mercy.”
Emerald recognized the gravelly timbre of Arik’s voice, knew without looking
that he was still naked. No more full bodysuit and hood like the one he’d worn
the day of their first mating. She felt the heat of his strong, muscular body,
the male musk that surrounded them. “Hikaru, blindfold her now.”
“Yes, my lord prince.” The eunuch knelt
before her and secured a satin-lined leather blindfold over her eyes, tying the
soft streamers at the back of her head.
Darkness isolated her but she had no fear.
Her Master would bring her exquisite pleasure, never pain. He used his hands to
cup her breasts, catch the rings in her nipples, tug them ever so gently. “Oh,
yes,” she hissed, loving the contrast of his big gentle hands on her breasts,
the bionic one feeling as real, its touch as sensuous as the real one. “Fuck
me, Master, please.”
His sharp intake of breath told her he was
close. It wouldn’t be long. As always, though, her prince would move at his own
pace. He’d taunt her until she burned for release, provide it, and then arouse
her to orgasm again and again before giving her what she wanted above all else.
His perfect cock. In her cunt. In her
mouth. In the last place it could go to seal his full possession.
Hikaru’s soft lips nibbled her clit. Then
he stepped away, moving to her head to stroke her short curls. Her Master’s hot
breath tickled her clit. “Please, Master, fuck me.”
His huge cock head slid along her dripping
slit. “I can’t resist fucking your delightfully wet cunt first, my princess.”
At the same time Arik sank into her cunt, Hikaru moved beside her and rotated
the large lubricated butt plug she’d barely been able to insert immediately
after he’d cleansed her. Her muscles protested, but soon she was clenching both
monster invaders with more pleasure than pain.
Her slippery cunt sucked Arik’s huge cock
noisily when he withdrew. When he pushed back in, his balls made slapping
sounds against her clit. Deprived of sight, all her other senses seemed
enhanced. The smells of sex—clean, slightly salty, a little bit musky—intensified
with every stroke of his cock in her spasming cunt. She became more aware of
sensation—the velvety hardness of his rigid cock as he fucked her, the brush of
his scarred torso and nipples against her back and thighs and of the tough
leather straps that supported the weight of her torso. Warm breath and soft
hands—Hikaru’s—stroked her ass cheeks, moving now and then to keep her aware of
the lubricated plug as it stretched her to take Arik’s cock.
“Yes. Don’t stop.” Sensations bombarded
her. The hot spurts of her Master’s ejaculate set off another climax. It left
her panting yet wanting more. Much more. When he withdrew his cock, she felt
empty, but only for a moment until Hikaru worked something cold and hard into
her still-spasming cunt and set it to vibrating, ever so slowly.
She felt the plug come out of her ass,
heard the popping sound it made. Cold, slippery lubricant made her asshole
contract, but when she felt her Master’s huge, well-lubricated cock pressing
against that narrow opening she squirmed with more anticipation than fear. Her
mouth opened, as though she could take him there as well.
Hikaru must have been waiting for the
opportunity, because he slid a penis-shaped gag into her mouth and secured it.
Arik’s whispered words, repeated many times as she’d lain in his arms in the
dark of night while he healed, echoed in her ears.
I’m going to tie you up
so you’ll be completely at my mercy. When you’re helpless, I’ll fuck your cunt
and your mouth and your pretty ass, and if the gods will give me a way to do
it, I’ll fuck all three at the same time. And you’ll love every minute of it
.
He’d found a way. Fresh, intense arousal
warmed Emerald’s belly, curled through her body. She relaxed as he’d said she
must, and took intense pleasure in his final conquering of her body, her soul.
When he entered her fully and began to move, she saw stars—no…diamonds.
Later they lay together on the bed, legs
tangled, his fingers ruffling her hair while he whispered to her of love…of
sex. “I hurt for Hikaru and the others.” She recalled the eunuch’s stoic look
as he’d untied her and washed the smells and dampness of sex from her body and
Arik’s. “You’d never let them do that to our sons, would you?”
Arik turned her to face him, his expression
fierce. “Once I become king I will outlaw the making of eunuchs on Obsidion.
Not just royal sons. I’ll not be responsible for any man being unable to fully
enjoy his lovers’ bodies. I vow that on my life. On our love.”
Epilogue
One year later, in the royal palace of Obsidion
At the sound of footsteps on the tower
stair, Emerald handed their eleven-week-old son to his nurse and shooed them
both from the room. Yesterday she and Arik had celebrated the anniversary of
their mating with the king and members of the royal court. Today they were on
the way to her sister’s mating ceremony. Afterward, she intended to have her
own private celebration with the prince who’d made almost all her fantasies
come true.
The matchmaker had done right by them.
Though others might think Meredith had made an awful mistake in matching her
with Arik, Emerald had never doubted from the first that they were soul mates.
When Arik had offered to go to Pak Song and have himself turned into a cyborg
so he could appear as he had before—the perfect prince for his perfect princess—she’d
realized he loved her, too.
Too much to let him do it. She loved her
mate for what lay within him—no matter how the gods had wrecked the outer
wrapper. She was glad she’d persuaded him to compromise, keep his own body
parts but let the surgeons repair the damaged facial nerves that kept him in
constant pain and replace the hook with his modern, bionic right hand.
Not for her, because she loved him as he
was, he’d let the surgeons fit him with a prosthetic eye and cheekbone to
repair the ruined side of his face, so he wouldn’t look quite so fearsome to
his subjects. She was glad he’d opted not to get bionic eyes, for as long as he
could see well with his left eye, she hadn’t wanted him to trade it, not even
for the flawless X-ray vision he could have had with the bilateral bionic
replacements the cyborg maker had tried to sell him on.
What they both appreciated about the repair
to his face was that he didn’t hurt anymore. Not that his improved appearance
didn’t make life easier for Arik as well as for those who looked upon him. That
had become important these past few months, since the king had ceded most of
his royal duties to his son.
“You look stunning, Master,” she told him
when he joined her on the stairs, his emerald-green uniform the perfect
complement her green-velvet court gown. “I do believe we’ll outshine the
celebrants today.”
He laughed. “It’s only right. After all,
the crown prince and princess must outshine mere subjects. Besides, I couldn’t
let my princess grab all the attention, or risk that she might look at me and
faint again today.”
Emerald let him tuck her arm through his
and they began to descend the long, curved stair. “I wouldn’t talk about
fainting if I were you.”
Her fainting the first time she’d seen him
had become almost their only subject of contention. Arik seemed determined
never to let her forget she’d passed dead away the first time she’d seen his
face. But she had him now. Every time he mentioned her squeamishness, she
reminded him how he’d collapsed in a heap on the birthing-room floor when
little Arik made his entrance into the world.
“I won’t, then. Why don’t we make a pact to
forget about fainting?” He squeezed her hand as they headed across the
courtyard where the litter awaited to take them to her sister’s mating.
She looked up at him, the unlikely prince
of all her fantasies. Meredith had done well, indeed. The matchmaker had truly
found Emerald a diamond in the rough. Her perfect Master.
The End
About the Author
Ann Jacobs is a sucker for lusty Alpha heroes and happy
endings, which makes Ellora’s Cave an ideal publisher for her work. Romantica®,
to her, is the perfect combination of sex, sensuality, deep emotional
involvement and lifelong commitment—the elusive fantasy women often dream about
but seldom achieve.
First published in 1996, Jacobs has sold over forty books
and novellas, some of which have earned awards including the Passionate Plume
(best novella, 2006), the Desert Rose (best hot and spicy romance, 2004) and
More Than Magic (best erotic romance, 2004). She has been a double finalist in
separate categories of the EPPIES and From the Heart RWA Chapter’s contest.
Three of her books have been translated and sold in several European countries.
A CPA and former hospital financial manager, Jacobs now writes
full-time, with the help of Mr. Blue, the family cat who sometimes likes to
perch on the back of her desk chair and lend his sage advice. He sometimes even
contributes a few random letters when he decides he wants to try out the
keyboard. She loves to hear from readers, and to put faces with names at
signings and conventions.
Ann welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website
and email address on her
author bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
.
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