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Copyright © Cari Silverwood 2022 of this bonus chapter for Vedrock.
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Epilogue
JINX
In the few weeks since the bomb, it had come to this. It was how I would have imagined a meeting of the upper echelon of Grut, long before I even knew Echelon existed.
Boring as fuck.
One long, black, mirror-shiny table with a few people occupying seats at the top end and scurrying servants. The room was just large enough for all the people and the table, and there were no windows.
It was stark, efficient, economical, and precisely how the Grut Bureaucracy should be.
Vedrock, Deamona, Wilden, Jarlrad, and two other Echelon members sat at the table.
There was only one mechling visible—Sherbot.
And one of me, sitting near the wall behind Vedrock.
The ceremony to induct Ved into Echelon seemed almost over and had so far entailed murmured conversations, some mild laughter, as well as the handing over of various virtual keys to the functions of Grut. I gathered he had a new starship too.
I was ready to yawn, until Sherbot walked up and stood beside my chair. He concertinaed down on his gold-tinted steel legs, as only a mechling could, and went, “Pssst.”
I inclined my head. “Yes?”
“I have information for you. May I send you a hard-comm message? I am not enabled as a sender on your comm.”
“Of course.” I fished out the device and punched in Sher’s code. “Go.”
A hard comm message sounded terrible serious, and I welcomed anything that would break the tedium of this long-ass meeting. I stifled that yawn and opened the text.
“Uhhh.” I frowned, and then frowned harder as I read further. Here, in this secret room, it would not be unthinkable for a micro-drone to be scanning the screen. Quietly, trying not to appear worried, I looked up and around.
“I’ve scrambled this area, blocked all other surveillance for the duration of this meeting. Don’t tell anyone I can do that.”
“Thanks. And Sher, you’re certain?”
He harrumphed and I had to smirk.
“Arrogant mechling.”
“This, I am learning to be. I will leave you to decide on who to pass this to.” Meaning Ved.
He turned and headed for his post beside the gray entry doors.
I lifted an eyebrow at my mauleon’s back then looked to the message and read it again.
I knew about Sher’s new job, or hobby as it might be called, being the therapist and spiritual consultant for anyone who wished to talk to him. Vedrock had approved it. I loved the whole notion. It was cute and meaningful, and a sign of what might come.
The mechlings had great potential as inhabitants of this galaxy. They could be the balance humanoids and the other species needed.
And they could be something more concerning, such as exceptional hackers, spies, and thieves. Though maybe that was a sign of diversity, and sentient species needed that.
Sherbot made a promise, to those he spoke to, that he would seal their confidential information into his unreachable files. How did he come across the data in the message?
I stared at the ceiling. On the other hand, he probably failed to promise not to investigate any information by himself or to make whole new deductions based on what he found.
Yes, that would be how this had happened.
I swallowed. Fuck. What would Ved do? Would someone have to die?
You have a traitor in Echelon who plans to remove you and Vedrock from power. I am monitoring their comms, and nothing is going to happen today.
Warning. The concealed section below may disturb your mental equilibrium. It reveals their name, the method I used to discover this, and the means by which they hope to destroy Vedrock.
Destroy meaning kill?
Grimacing, I poised my thumb to tap the shrouded lower message. Should I? What did they want to do to me? Who were they? How could anyone possibly kill Ved?
Humanoids were endlessly inventive.
Pain flared in my temples, peaking in time with my heartbeat.
I jabbed with my thumb and the message came into focus. I skimmed, barely looked. I shut the comm having learned one thing. The name.
Wilden.
The rest I’d not let myself read. His name had stood out because Sher had bolded the letters.
I made myself not look at the alpha mauleon who sat opposite Vedrock. Then I took one more breath and I forwarded it all to Vedrock. I wasn’t sure why Sherbot had shown this to me first, but it would be insane to not show my mate.
I remained in silence, with my head down and one hand locked in the crinkled white fabric of my evening gown. I was fuming. Maybe I was pregnant, maybe my hormones explained my ire? But no, death threats deserved anger. The white boots I wore beneath the gown would have been good for stomping about or kicking Wilden in the teeth. How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
I thought he liked me. Perhaps he did, just too much.
While the meeting concluded, I wondered how we would have fared if Sherbot and his hacking abilities had not been with us, and he’d not been loyal. Being at the top of Grut was indeed fraught with danger and backstabbing.
“Onward to the celebrations,” Vedrock said as he took my hand. “Theater then orgy.”
“Orgy?”
He smirked. I didn’t dare say anything about the message.
“After all of that ascension to Echelon stuff, you look the same.” I nudged him with my hip.
“My dick grew an inch, though.”
I gave an unladylike snort. “I have scissors.”
“The snark is strong in you tonight.” He swung our hands. “Claws beat scissors.”
JINX
In the few weeks since the bomb, it had come to this. It was how I would have imagined a meeting of the upper echelon of Grut, long before I even knew Echelon existed.
Boring as fuck.
One long, black, mirror-shiny table with a few people occupying seats at the top end and scurrying servants. The room was just large enough for all the people and the table, and there were no windows.
It was stark, efficient, economical, and precisely how the Grut Bureaucracy should be.
Vedrock, Deamona, Wilden, Jarlrad, and two other Echelon members sat at the table.
There was only one mechling visible—Sherbot.
And one of me, sitting near the wall behind Vedrock.
The ceremony to induct Ved into Echelon seemed almost over and had so far entailed murmured conversations, some mild laughter, as well as the handing over of various virtual keys to the functions of Grut. I gathered he had a new starship too.
I was ready to yawn, until Sherbot walked up and stood beside my chair. He concertinaed down on his gold-tinted steel legs, as only a mechling could, and went, “Pssst.”
I inclined my head. “Yes?”
“I have information for you. May I send you a hard-comm message? I am not enabled as a sender on your comm.”
“Of course.” I fished out the device and punched in Sher’s code. “Go.”
A hard comm message sounded terrible serious, and I welcomed anything that would break the tedium of this long-ass meeting. I stifled that yawn and opened the text.
“Uhhh.” I frowned, and then frowned harder as I read further. Here, in this secret room, it would not be unthinkable for a micro-drone to be scanning the screen. Quietly, trying not to appear worried, I looked up and around.
“I’ve scrambled this area, blocked all other surveillance for the duration of this meeting. Don’t tell anyone I can do that.”
“Thanks. And Sher, you’re certain?”
He harrumphed and I had to smirk.
“Arrogant mechling.”
“This, I am learning to be. I will leave you to decide on who to pass this to.” Meaning Ved.
He turned and headed for his post beside the gray entry doors.
I lifted an eyebrow at my mauleon’s back then looked to the message and read it again.
I knew about Sher’s new job, or hobby as it might be called, being the therapist and spiritual consultant for anyone who wished to talk to him. Vedrock had approved it. I loved the whole notion. It was cute and meaningful, and a sign of what might come.
The mechlings had great potential as inhabitants of this galaxy. They could be the balance humanoids and the other species needed.
And they could be something more concerning, such as exceptional hackers, spies, and thieves. Though maybe that was a sign of diversity, and sentient species needed that.
Sherbot made a promise, to those he spoke to, that he would seal their confidential information into his unreachable files. How did he come across the data in the message?
I stared at the ceiling. On the other hand, he probably failed to promise not to investigate any information by himself or to make whole new deductions based on what he found.
Yes, that would be how this had happened.
I swallowed. Fuck. What would Ved do? Would someone have to die?
You have a traitor in Echelon who plans to remove you and Vedrock from power. I am monitoring their comms, and nothing is going to happen today.
Warning. The concealed section below may disturb your mental equilibrium. It reveals their name, the method I used to discover this, and the means by which they hope to destroy Vedrock.
Destroy meaning kill?
Grimacing, I poised my thumb to tap the shrouded lower message. Should I? What did they want to do to me? Who were they? How could anyone possibly kill Ved?
Humanoids were endlessly inventive.
Pain flared in my temples, peaking in time with my heartbeat.
I jabbed with my thumb and the message came into focus. I skimmed, barely looked. I shut the comm having learned one thing. The name.
Wilden.
The rest I’d not let myself read. His name had stood out because Sher had bolded the letters.
I made myself not look at the alpha mauleon who sat opposite Vedrock. Then I took one more breath and I forwarded it all to Vedrock. I wasn’t sure why Sherbot had shown this to me first, but it would be insane to not show my mate.
I remained in silence, with my head down and one hand locked in the crinkled white fabric of my evening gown. I was fuming. Maybe I was pregnant, maybe my hormones explained my ire? But no, death threats deserved anger. The white boots I wore beneath the gown would have been good for stomping about or kicking Wilden in the teeth. How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
I thought he liked me. Perhaps he did, just too much.
While the meeting concluded, I wondered how we would have fared if Sherbot and his hacking abilities had not been with us, and he’d not been loyal. Being at the top of Grut was indeed fraught with danger and backstabbing.
“Onward to the celebrations,” Vedrock said as he took my hand. “Theater then orgy.”
“Orgy?”
He smirked. I didn’t dare say anything about the message.
“After all of that ascension to Echelon stuff, you look the same.” I nudged him with my hip.
“My dick grew an inch, though.”
I gave an unladylike snort. “I have scissors.”
“The snark is strong in you tonight.” He swung our hands. “Claws beat scissors.”
STARSTRUCK THEATER
JINX
We were ushered to seats high above the stage, with Deamona and the others occupying the remaining lavish seats. These had been set up to allow for each Echelon member to sit with their partner, or partners and to have space around them. Below us people thronged, waiting for the play to start, finding their seats, shuffling along rows.
The same shuttle had been used by all of Echelon to travel to the theater and so I’d not yet spoken to Vedrock in private.
The seat upholstery squeezed down under my weight but made no sound; the fabric was plush and purple. The balcony we were on was shielded from the public.
This was probably why Ved slid a hand along behind my back then pulled me onto his lap. I hissed my displeasure.
“Give in. You’re staying.” He tickled me until I shook my head and smiled at him.
“Okay. Okay. I’m staying.”
“Never any doubt.”
My gown was thin and left little between my body and his. I sighed and relaxed against him, tempted to curl up and ignore the show. Or undo his pants and suck him off just to go one better. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t that lewd or daring. Deamona was on his other side and the closest. I knew Ved. If I gave him an excuse, he would be very lewd.
Should I? I shouldn’t. Although I’d never had a lover I could mess around with like I did with Ved. I’d never wanted to, really.
I sneaked my hand behind me, worming it lower, lower…
“Enough.” He squeezed my waist. “Don’t spoil the show.”
On stage, dancers whirled into view, along with an intricate light display of simulated forest. Golden leaves shook and fell, spinning with the dancers.
“Um.” I settled into his lap and stopped teasing. He was more interesting and warmer than my seat, especially when he wrapped one solid arm about my middle. I whispered, “Ved? Did you read—”
“Not now.” His claws sank through the dress and pricked my hip. “Do I need to spank you?”
I pouted. Surely what I’d sent had been read and had made him anxious to take some action? Wilden was seated to my right, beyond the two newly introduced members.
Something waved to my left above Deamona. I glanced at her then stared. I’d been pre-occupied, that was my excuse. Her partner was a gogogian? As the dancing and the music picked up in urgency, his tentacles writhed to the beat. Deamona reached up and took hold of one tentacle, brought it to her neck and I heard her admonish him to be quieter and stiller.
I grinned, a little sheepishly, a little apprehensively too.
“It’s okay,” Vedrock said. “Things are in motion. Stop worrying. Watch the show.”
I subsided and found his hand at my hip and brought it to my mouth. I kissed each finger, gave the last one a lick then held his hand. It was warm and reassuring. Absentmindedly, I traced his claws. I had to trust him to fix this.
He kissed my back where the plunging gown revealed skin.
The show began to draw me in and fascinate me. The music made me want to join the dance. It thumped rhythmically, sifting into my bones, driving heat through my veins. It also made the suggestion of cock firming behind my ass feel even more thrilling.
Trying to be good, I squirmed only when compelled.
When Ved muttered something and held me in place, I smiled. Ooops.
The song became an ode to a lost lover then a triumphant story when the lover returned, sliding across the stage on his knees. For the next part, the music died and segued into the boom of war drums. Sharp shadows of red and black spears marched across the backdrop.
I swayed in time to the music, and Ved sneaked his hands beneath my breasts to cup them.
“Heyyy, you told me no,” I said quietly.
“Alpha privilege.”
The rasp of his thumbs across my nipples was enough to jolt me into shutting my eyes and melting. I wished we were elsewhere, wished I could seat myself on him, properly. Fucking him suddenly became everything. I shuddered and tried to remember how to breathe.
This was never me in the past, I was never this wicked, this debauched. The alpha-omega thing? Of course. I was obstinate. I could resist.
Then his hand moved into the side split in the dress, across my bare thigh, and came to rest above the divide of my legs, and all the while his thumb brushed and circled my nipple.
The cloth rasped under his thumb.
My breathing harshened.
The first drip of slick leaked from my entrance.
The mauleon was fucking cheating. So much for shhh.
I sucked in some air and thought seriously about moaning and then descending to my knees before him to encourage more of this rude activity.
Not in front of all of these people.
I found his hand through the material and tried to push it lower.
“Bad, bad Kittie,” was his soft scolding.
But he delved deeper. He slipped his fingers beneath my panties while I watched enraptured, with my mouth open. Serpent-like, those fingers slithered under my dress and moved past my clit. His palm stayed over my mound, pressing at me there and making wicked promises.
“Fff-- ” I caught myself and didn’t say the word. Instead, I strangled his wrist as his fingers played along the wet line where my slit lay, back and forth, up and down, a little closer each time. I held my breath, waiting.
And waiting and waiting…
I squirmed. My thighs parted.
Waiting for his fingers to slip within and penetrate me.
When his thumb searched for then moved onto my clit, I gasped and leaned over. A rhythm began. Pressing, squashing, over and over.
Gods. He licked my neck, laughing silently.
Another sound made me open my eyes and glance leftward. Not Deamona—it was her partner, for she was biting his, or her, tentacle while another appendage wriggled and ran under the hem of her short red dress.
Vedrock bit my nape, his whole mouth closing on me.
“Fuck,” I croaked, freezing in place while my blood went thud, thud, thud, marking the time his teeth held me.
"Shhh."
I shook and more slick left me, and my panties were being drenched.
The stage played at war and people fought mock battles, and Ved kept on toying with me. Whatever else took place down there would have to happen without me. Was it love, war, assassination, or the birth of a king?
Assassination was coming, for us. For a flicker of a second, I recalled that we were targets.
On Osarii I’d learned to ignore fear. Fuck fear.
I should be terrified, but… but indeed, I now had two fingers fucking me and playing slippery games in the slick that welled. He painted me with it and even my dress was soaked.
Shuddering, I found my core clamping onto those fingers that were stuck inside. He moved them, making a sucking sound; I swallowed a moan. I lost interest in anything else—our deaths, my enslavement, whatever Wilden had planned.
Those fingers were embedded, pinning me to his lap, making me his, and I clutched his wrist and prayed for more. His lower thumb probed my nub, revolving it and pressing, while he nibbled skin wherever his mouth could reach, all the way to halfway down my back.
When I gulped and stiffened, seconds from the shattering peak of an orgasm, he ceased to play. His hand was pulled from me. He rearranged my dress and nonchalantly sucked his fingers clean in front of me. I may have been quietly cursing him and I did claw his thigh; it did not help. I only felt the abrupt juddering of his chest as he silently laughed.
People were clapping. The play was done?
“It’s over, Jinx.”
I wriggled. “Keep going?”
“No. The play’s finished.”
Vedrock made me rise then moved out to stand beside me. He sighed and twisted his mouth. “You’re too cute when you’re turned on.”
He tilted me backward, then angled in for a kiss, his eyes locking on mine. I clutched his ass and relished the hot moment. My mouth was his, my body throbbing for more. The hushed, wet noises and the breath-on-breath warmth from our kisses was addictive, and I chased his mouth as he left me.
“Stay.” He moved lower, whispering his fangs southward, nipping at my jaw.
The pricking of bites marching down my neck and his rumbling growl when I grabbed at him with my claws out and cut him, these threw me into a confusion of wild panting.
“We can’t go yet. I need you.” I groaned my frustration and held both sides of the collar of his coat as I whispered my plea—no matter who might hear.
“Not here,” he murmured, warm on my neck, licking where he’d bitten. “You didn’t come?”
I shook my head.
“Good.”
I hate you. I hate you not. I want you inside me.
“Fucking you here would be nice, but you can wait. I want to impale you at my leisure. We’re off to a party next—a drug-fueled orgy, perhaps.”
“Will there be impaling?” A Grut orgy would have seemed ridiculous, a few months ago.
“Definitely. Of the worst kind.”
Everyone had left. The balcony was empty. “Not here?” I pouted. “It could be?”
“Not. Here.”
“Fuck.”
He took my hand and towed me toward the exit.
Impaling was all my mind wanted to think about.
The next shuttle turned out to be ours alone. Somehow, he’d arranged that. The pilot was walled away in his cockpit, and behind him were our seats. Sherbot and a few guards were behind another bulkhead, in a rear cabin.
“We’re alone for these few minutes of flight. Once we arrive, you behave and say nothing about Wilden until I say it’s clear. Okay?”
I nodded, a little soberer, a little less obsessed with sex.
Even so, my entire body was crawling with desires that made me tingle and dissolve at every touch of his skin to mine. My pussy reacted to his smallest caresses. This sensitivity was worse than ever. I felt… hot.
I felt like a goddess, ready to strut about for any alpha male to grab and make his.
I leaned into him and took his shirt sleeve in my hand. Wallowing in his scent, I rubbed the side of my head at his biceps. It was then I knew. This wasn’t normal. The data about omegas that I’d found at Grut, it ran into my head, waving red flags.
I raised my head to say it to his face, wrapped my clawed hand around his neck. “Am I… is this heat?”
“You?” He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled. “Fuck. Yes. Your scent betrays you, Kittie. Fuck. This is probably not the best time. Though I’ve seen and scented omegas in heat. They begged for it all, in every hole, for days.” Ved assembled one of his flat smiles, edged with dire promise—a smile that made me shiver. My erect nipples turned to ice-cold stone. “Remember I told you this problem Sherbot raised is under control?”
He was still speaking in riddles. Did he think the shuttle was unsafe? I nodded.
“Before we arrive, I need you to tell me something.”
“Mmm?”
“Three options.” His eyes bored into mine. “One, we run. We flee to a galaxy far, far away—or as far as possible using a WORSK drive. Two, we stay, and we have Wilden executed, and his followers imprisoned. This only needs my signal. Three, we have him tortured as an example to the rest of Echelon to not fuck with us. Which is it to be, my future queen?”
“Holy Darknesses of Osarii, what a question. You have this ready to go? You truly want me to say?” He nodded, waited. I kicked my mind into gear. Running seemed stupid. “Not torture. Kill him if we must. Why did Sherbot inform me first?”
“Because I told him to with such things, if possible. Also the Darkness is not holy.”
“Uh-huh. Whatever.”
“You’re sure no torture?”
“I am sure.”
“I agree. Torture rarely accomplishes anything. Unless I’m enjoying it. I do recall this one female…”
I narrowed my eyes and bit back a retort.
Even if Wilden deserved it. I’d just condemned him to death.
“You’re doing this soon?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed that realization but refused to let this ominous future divert me. I literally couldn't. I cupped my breasts for a moment, to relieve the sensation. They felt full and heavy, and I needed Vedrock to do all the things. Now.
He eyed me, frowning. “Stop that, unless you want me to torture your nipples at the party. Stay buckled in and good, until we arrive at this party.” He took his hard comm from his coat pocket and began to use it, saying as a last aside, “Did you see what he wanted to do to us?”
“No. And don’t tell me.”
“Then be good and quiet while I sort this out.”
I folded my arms and slumped into the seat, scowling at the front wall of the shuttle before I crammed shut my eyelids.
“One other thing,” he said. I looked at him. “I instructed Raith to carry my justice to Uncle. I know Sherbot told you the details.”
“The torture, yes.” I winced and my mouth twisted awry. “He told me. Though not that Raith would do it. I am okay with that… vengeance.”
“Well then. It’s done. I meant it as Raith’s punishment, also.”
I nodded. Was that just? Probably?
“From what he said here.” Vedrock raised the comm. “He sees it as penance. Not that I’m excusing myself but that might ease your mind.”
It did. I understood how a penance would assuage guilt. “Thank you for telling me.” Though I was so not going to imagine what had happened to his uncle.
“Good. Back to quiet mode then.” He flashed a smile then went back to looking at his comm.
Quiet mode? That made me grumpy. I was needy and awash in conversations about torture and death. The combination sucked.
In my mind, I cursed Wilden, and then I cursed Ved. I didn’t want him to get ideas about punishment. Though, maybe I did. There was something about his hand on me…
Without fuss, I slipped my hand beneath my dress.
“Nipple clamps,” Ved murmured, without lifting his eyes from his screen.
I withdrew my hand.
All the way to that party, desire did not fail to torment me.
JINX
We were ushered to seats high above the stage, with Deamona and the others occupying the remaining lavish seats. These had been set up to allow for each Echelon member to sit with their partner, or partners and to have space around them. Below us people thronged, waiting for the play to start, finding their seats, shuffling along rows.
The same shuttle had been used by all of Echelon to travel to the theater and so I’d not yet spoken to Vedrock in private.
The seat upholstery squeezed down under my weight but made no sound; the fabric was plush and purple. The balcony we were on was shielded from the public.
This was probably why Ved slid a hand along behind my back then pulled me onto his lap. I hissed my displeasure.
“Give in. You’re staying.” He tickled me until I shook my head and smiled at him.
“Okay. Okay. I’m staying.”
“Never any doubt.”
My gown was thin and left little between my body and his. I sighed and relaxed against him, tempted to curl up and ignore the show. Or undo his pants and suck him off just to go one better. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t that lewd or daring. Deamona was on his other side and the closest. I knew Ved. If I gave him an excuse, he would be very lewd.
Should I? I shouldn’t. Although I’d never had a lover I could mess around with like I did with Ved. I’d never wanted to, really.
I sneaked my hand behind me, worming it lower, lower…
“Enough.” He squeezed my waist. “Don’t spoil the show.”
On stage, dancers whirled into view, along with an intricate light display of simulated forest. Golden leaves shook and fell, spinning with the dancers.
“Um.” I settled into his lap and stopped teasing. He was more interesting and warmer than my seat, especially when he wrapped one solid arm about my middle. I whispered, “Ved? Did you read—”
“Not now.” His claws sank through the dress and pricked my hip. “Do I need to spank you?”
I pouted. Surely what I’d sent had been read and had made him anxious to take some action? Wilden was seated to my right, beyond the two newly introduced members.
Something waved to my left above Deamona. I glanced at her then stared. I’d been pre-occupied, that was my excuse. Her partner was a gogogian? As the dancing and the music picked up in urgency, his tentacles writhed to the beat. Deamona reached up and took hold of one tentacle, brought it to her neck and I heard her admonish him to be quieter and stiller.
I grinned, a little sheepishly, a little apprehensively too.
“It’s okay,” Vedrock said. “Things are in motion. Stop worrying. Watch the show.”
I subsided and found his hand at my hip and brought it to my mouth. I kissed each finger, gave the last one a lick then held his hand. It was warm and reassuring. Absentmindedly, I traced his claws. I had to trust him to fix this.
He kissed my back where the plunging gown revealed skin.
The show began to draw me in and fascinate me. The music made me want to join the dance. It thumped rhythmically, sifting into my bones, driving heat through my veins. It also made the suggestion of cock firming behind my ass feel even more thrilling.
Trying to be good, I squirmed only when compelled.
When Ved muttered something and held me in place, I smiled. Ooops.
The song became an ode to a lost lover then a triumphant story when the lover returned, sliding across the stage on his knees. For the next part, the music died and segued into the boom of war drums. Sharp shadows of red and black spears marched across the backdrop.
I swayed in time to the music, and Ved sneaked his hands beneath my breasts to cup them.
“Heyyy, you told me no,” I said quietly.
“Alpha privilege.”
The rasp of his thumbs across my nipples was enough to jolt me into shutting my eyes and melting. I wished we were elsewhere, wished I could seat myself on him, properly. Fucking him suddenly became everything. I shuddered and tried to remember how to breathe.
This was never me in the past, I was never this wicked, this debauched. The alpha-omega thing? Of course. I was obstinate. I could resist.
Then his hand moved into the side split in the dress, across my bare thigh, and came to rest above the divide of my legs, and all the while his thumb brushed and circled my nipple.
The cloth rasped under his thumb.
My breathing harshened.
The first drip of slick leaked from my entrance.
The mauleon was fucking cheating. So much for shhh.
I sucked in some air and thought seriously about moaning and then descending to my knees before him to encourage more of this rude activity.
Not in front of all of these people.
I found his hand through the material and tried to push it lower.
“Bad, bad Kittie,” was his soft scolding.
But he delved deeper. He slipped his fingers beneath my panties while I watched enraptured, with my mouth open. Serpent-like, those fingers slithered under my dress and moved past my clit. His palm stayed over my mound, pressing at me there and making wicked promises.
“Fff-- ” I caught myself and didn’t say the word. Instead, I strangled his wrist as his fingers played along the wet line where my slit lay, back and forth, up and down, a little closer each time. I held my breath, waiting.
And waiting and waiting…
I squirmed. My thighs parted.
Waiting for his fingers to slip within and penetrate me.
When his thumb searched for then moved onto my clit, I gasped and leaned over. A rhythm began. Pressing, squashing, over and over.
Gods. He licked my neck, laughing silently.
Another sound made me open my eyes and glance leftward. Not Deamona—it was her partner, for she was biting his, or her, tentacle while another appendage wriggled and ran under the hem of her short red dress.
Vedrock bit my nape, his whole mouth closing on me.
“Fuck,” I croaked, freezing in place while my blood went thud, thud, thud, marking the time his teeth held me.
"Shhh."
I shook and more slick left me, and my panties were being drenched.
The stage played at war and people fought mock battles, and Ved kept on toying with me. Whatever else took place down there would have to happen without me. Was it love, war, assassination, or the birth of a king?
Assassination was coming, for us. For a flicker of a second, I recalled that we were targets.
On Osarii I’d learned to ignore fear. Fuck fear.
I should be terrified, but… but indeed, I now had two fingers fucking me and playing slippery games in the slick that welled. He painted me with it and even my dress was soaked.
Shuddering, I found my core clamping onto those fingers that were stuck inside. He moved them, making a sucking sound; I swallowed a moan. I lost interest in anything else—our deaths, my enslavement, whatever Wilden had planned.
Those fingers were embedded, pinning me to his lap, making me his, and I clutched his wrist and prayed for more. His lower thumb probed my nub, revolving it and pressing, while he nibbled skin wherever his mouth could reach, all the way to halfway down my back.
When I gulped and stiffened, seconds from the shattering peak of an orgasm, he ceased to play. His hand was pulled from me. He rearranged my dress and nonchalantly sucked his fingers clean in front of me. I may have been quietly cursing him and I did claw his thigh; it did not help. I only felt the abrupt juddering of his chest as he silently laughed.
People were clapping. The play was done?
“It’s over, Jinx.”
I wriggled. “Keep going?”
“No. The play’s finished.”
Vedrock made me rise then moved out to stand beside me. He sighed and twisted his mouth. “You’re too cute when you’re turned on.”
He tilted me backward, then angled in for a kiss, his eyes locking on mine. I clutched his ass and relished the hot moment. My mouth was his, my body throbbing for more. The hushed, wet noises and the breath-on-breath warmth from our kisses was addictive, and I chased his mouth as he left me.
“Stay.” He moved lower, whispering his fangs southward, nipping at my jaw.
The pricking of bites marching down my neck and his rumbling growl when I grabbed at him with my claws out and cut him, these threw me into a confusion of wild panting.
“We can’t go yet. I need you.” I groaned my frustration and held both sides of the collar of his coat as I whispered my plea—no matter who might hear.
“Not here,” he murmured, warm on my neck, licking where he’d bitten. “You didn’t come?”
I shook my head.
“Good.”
I hate you. I hate you not. I want you inside me.
“Fucking you here would be nice, but you can wait. I want to impale you at my leisure. We’re off to a party next—a drug-fueled orgy, perhaps.”
“Will there be impaling?” A Grut orgy would have seemed ridiculous, a few months ago.
“Definitely. Of the worst kind.”
Everyone had left. The balcony was empty. “Not here?” I pouted. “It could be?”
“Not. Here.”
“Fuck.”
He took my hand and towed me toward the exit.
Impaling was all my mind wanted to think about.
The next shuttle turned out to be ours alone. Somehow, he’d arranged that. The pilot was walled away in his cockpit, and behind him were our seats. Sherbot and a few guards were behind another bulkhead, in a rear cabin.
“We’re alone for these few minutes of flight. Once we arrive, you behave and say nothing about Wilden until I say it’s clear. Okay?”
I nodded, a little soberer, a little less obsessed with sex.
Even so, my entire body was crawling with desires that made me tingle and dissolve at every touch of his skin to mine. My pussy reacted to his smallest caresses. This sensitivity was worse than ever. I felt… hot.
I felt like a goddess, ready to strut about for any alpha male to grab and make his.
I leaned into him and took his shirt sleeve in my hand. Wallowing in his scent, I rubbed the side of my head at his biceps. It was then I knew. This wasn’t normal. The data about omegas that I’d found at Grut, it ran into my head, waving red flags.
I raised my head to say it to his face, wrapped my clawed hand around his neck. “Am I… is this heat?”
“You?” He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled. “Fuck. Yes. Your scent betrays you, Kittie. Fuck. This is probably not the best time. Though I’ve seen and scented omegas in heat. They begged for it all, in every hole, for days.” Ved assembled one of his flat smiles, edged with dire promise—a smile that made me shiver. My erect nipples turned to ice-cold stone. “Remember I told you this problem Sherbot raised is under control?”
He was still speaking in riddles. Did he think the shuttle was unsafe? I nodded.
“Before we arrive, I need you to tell me something.”
“Mmm?”
“Three options.” His eyes bored into mine. “One, we run. We flee to a galaxy far, far away—or as far as possible using a WORSK drive. Two, we stay, and we have Wilden executed, and his followers imprisoned. This only needs my signal. Three, we have him tortured as an example to the rest of Echelon to not fuck with us. Which is it to be, my future queen?”
“Holy Darknesses of Osarii, what a question. You have this ready to go? You truly want me to say?” He nodded, waited. I kicked my mind into gear. Running seemed stupid. “Not torture. Kill him if we must. Why did Sherbot inform me first?”
“Because I told him to with such things, if possible. Also the Darkness is not holy.”
“Uh-huh. Whatever.”
“You’re sure no torture?”
“I am sure.”
“I agree. Torture rarely accomplishes anything. Unless I’m enjoying it. I do recall this one female…”
I narrowed my eyes and bit back a retort.
Even if Wilden deserved it. I’d just condemned him to death.
“You’re doing this soon?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed that realization but refused to let this ominous future divert me. I literally couldn't. I cupped my breasts for a moment, to relieve the sensation. They felt full and heavy, and I needed Vedrock to do all the things. Now.
He eyed me, frowning. “Stop that, unless you want me to torture your nipples at the party. Stay buckled in and good, until we arrive at this party.” He took his hard comm from his coat pocket and began to use it, saying as a last aside, “Did you see what he wanted to do to us?”
“No. And don’t tell me.”
“Then be good and quiet while I sort this out.”
I folded my arms and slumped into the seat, scowling at the front wall of the shuttle before I crammed shut my eyelids.
“One other thing,” he said. I looked at him. “I instructed Raith to carry my justice to Uncle. I know Sherbot told you the details.”
“The torture, yes.” I winced and my mouth twisted awry. “He told me. Though not that Raith would do it. I am okay with that… vengeance.”
“Well then. It’s done. I meant it as Raith’s punishment, also.”
I nodded. Was that just? Probably?
“From what he said here.” Vedrock raised the comm. “He sees it as penance. Not that I’m excusing myself but that might ease your mind.”
It did. I understood how a penance would assuage guilt. “Thank you for telling me.” Though I was so not going to imagine what had happened to his uncle.
“Good. Back to quiet mode then.” He flashed a smile then went back to looking at his comm.
Quiet mode? That made me grumpy. I was needy and awash in conversations about torture and death. The combination sucked.
In my mind, I cursed Wilden, and then I cursed Ved. I didn’t want him to get ideas about punishment. Though, maybe I did. There was something about his hand on me…
Without fuss, I slipped my hand beneath my dress.
“Nipple clamps,” Ved murmured, without lifting his eyes from his screen.
I withdrew my hand.
All the way to that party, desire did not fail to torment me.
THE TOWER
JINX
The party was being held in a tall white tower that rose from the smallest, green island, in the middle of a lake filled with red-tipped reeds that fluttered and tossed in the wind from the shuttle engines.
“How real is this?” I asked, as we ascended in the quiet lift. My voice felt wrong, the world around us seemed more fantasy than solid. My skin simmered with heat, as did everywhere intimate. It made walking uncomfortable.
I rested a palm on Vedrock’s chest and imagined I heard his heart.
“It’s real and a place where Echelon has their wildest parties.” He swept his hand over my head, my ears, and through my hair, to where it hung loose to my shoulders. “This isn’t how they always are. Business is Grut business and takes up most of their time. But we are celebrating my… our ascendancy. Forget Wilden. He will not be here, and he won’t ever be near you again.”
“Oh.” I kept my hand where it was and this connection to him was all I required.
“When we arrive at the top, you’ll strip for me. Take off everything and kneel. I like you crawling.” His hand slipped to my shoulder, then he caressed along my jaw to end with his thumb resting on the corner of my mouth. “You’ll do this for me, after I gift you with something new. You’re in heat, Kittie, and I love that.”
I drew a shaky breath, and he noticed. My tongue found his thumb and I half-closed my eyes at the taste of him. While I was in this state, I knew he would see the minutia of every movement of my body.
I became mesmerized by his gaze, aware of the hypersensitivity of my body, the way my skin reacted to him, his touches, his words. The atoms of his breath seemed likely to make me orgasm, if he simply breathed on me below… on my cunt.
The word heat had wrapped itself in power.
The lift opened. Beyond a foyer, a double doorway showed a curved room that looked out over the lake.
The others were here but I had eyes for only Vedrock. He ordered me to undress, and I shed my clothes. The dress and my underwear were flimsy and fell to the floor like shreds of clouds. I stepped out of the small pile, naked, barefoot, and Ved removed a pink collar from his coat, where he’d draped it over a well-padded mauve armchair.
It dangled from his hand, the pieces on it glinting silver as it twisted.
“Kneel for me.”
I slipped to my knees and waited.
“This is not metal, it’s as soft your lips.” He showed me what ran around the collar. “With stars and moons to show you our love is eternal. Kittie is written here.”
He buckled it on my neck then attached a silver leash. I fell into a crawl and padded with him into the room over a soft rug. Sprawled across the furniture in the room were the other Echelon. They had embarked on their own sexual adventures, and I spared them a little of my time, until I halted to observe Deamona. She was in the center of a bundle of writhing tentacles, with several of them entering her in all the right places.
Those were thick and ever-so flexible, and they had suckers. I swallowed. I found Ved staring down at me and looking curious.
The sex we’d had in the underground city wormed from my memories, but that tentacle had been on a sculpture. I squeezed my thighs together and tried not to stare at her.
Vedrock was saying something in the background.
I couldn’t decipher the words and was finding it impossible to multitask. “That looks—”
“Fun?” Vedrock scooped me into his arms then paced toward a black-and-gold sofa. “Not listening to me? Okay, I didn’t need an excuse. Gods, you’re beautiful.” He raked my body with his gaze, lingering at my breasts but going all the way to my toes, before he sat on the sofa’s armrest and flipped me facedown over his legs.
I yelped as I faceplanted into a cushion.
He tugged on my tail and moved it to one side. “One lush ass in the air. Perfect.”
The flat of his hand smacked onto one cheek. The shock of this and the sudden pain muted me. He kept going, smooshing me onto his thighs with each blow. With my eyes closed, I could feel the stinging sensations transform into a pleasure that arced languidly through me to my core.
Over his lap, with his hands holding me, this was heaven. Another three smacks echoed into my body. I sobbed and hugged the cushion as if it were a lifeline and felt myself open and release more slick. My clit sat up, throbbing a plea for his touch, his mouth, his soft, probing tongue.
After more of those fiery contacts of palm to butt, I had to stifle my moans in the pillow.
“I knew you’d like it. My naughty kittie.”
I wriggled my ass with thighs squashed together. My skin was burning wherever he’d hit, but the fire was glorious. He spread me and stroked his hand around my pussy entrance then pushed one finger slowly inside.
“Ungh.” I burrowed my head under the cushion. The leash tinkled and slid off the sofa.
He laughed. “Thought so.”
My heat was doing this, surely?
“Of course I need more decoration on you.” I heard him click his fingers and someone walked over and delivered something. Unceremoniously he dropped me fully to the sofa. I rolled over and stared, my tongue cautiously exploring my upper lip. “Kneel up here, present those breasts, so I can put these on them.”
He’d threatened clamps, and there they were in his hand—silver like the collar, with tiny little jaws and each equipped with tiny weights connected by a short chain.
“Owie?” My tail flicked about—no doubt it was as unsure of this as I.
“You might like these too.” The evil smile and the crinkles forming around his eyes told me to be wary.
I drew a long inhalation and climbed to my knees, and I pushed my chest out.
Truthfully, anything from him would do. Anything. I lusted after being groped, penetrated, held down and hurt by him, sure that every one of these devious things would only bring me nearer to ecstasy. So, I sat there and thrust my breasts forward. I watched with curiosity, a smidgen of dread, and a quivery sort of lust roiling in my belly, as he sucked on each nipple, squeezing them in finger and thumb before attaching each clamp.
The pain was strong and mind-rocking. Never-stopping, ever-hurting, and then it changed. The pain did not leave me but in some ways, this became him, his touch. The formidable throb from these was as of biting beasts, gnawing evermore. Or his teeth on me.
I panted and stared at the things. He tipped one clamp, sending the little weighted ball at the end swinging. I let out a groan and dug my fingers into my thighs.
I wavered on my knees, rent by a need to clutch my breasts, and hide them. But also to watch them, for he bent to curl his tongue beneath each clamp, one then the other, paying homage to my breasts.
“You kept your hands away. Such a good kittie.”
My panting shook my breasts and seemed to fascinate him.
Vedrock ran claws over the undercurves, leaving scratch marks, I was sure.
“Now to show Echelon what and who they have admitted.” He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder.
Eeee, as they flipped about, the clamps hurt even more.
We headed for an out-curved globular window. The artificial yellow sun was dipping into the lake and above us were stars—real stars. The weights on my nipples lurched and swung. He set me on my feet facing the window.
“Here. I’m fucking you here.” He urged me forward until I must plant my hands on the glass or squash myself against it. “Legs apart and bend over so I can get into both your holes at once.”
“What?” I croaked, trying to control myself and yet knowing slick was smeared on my inner thighs and dripping and trickling down my legs.
The threat of sex was unmaking me. I obeyed, my head low, my legs trembling. I rearranged my palms on the warm glass.
A starship had started its engines out there, above us. The blue glow flared. There must be an enormous screen or shield far above the tower, past the sky.
“Is that real space?”
I forgot the question for he probed in both my holes, pushing slick into my asshole with a finger before circling my clit. His finger and thumb pulsed on it, squeezing. At the ripple of premature pleasure, I gasped and hunched forward, mouth opening, my eyes crashing shut.
“It’s real. We’re shielded. Put your little rear out and up so I can inspect you for defects and see the marks I made.” Amusement thrummed in his voice.
I stuck out my ass and even waggled it, until he swatted me. The sound rang in my skin, and it was as if he’d touched me intimately and run a finger into me.
Spanking… I would try this again when I was not in heat.
“Be still, Kittie.” He pulled aside my tail and parted my cheeks. As he probed, his claws came near to pinning my pussy open. “Fuck though, this view is better.”
I whimpered and treadled my toes. This examination shook my sense of self, reminding me of my femaleness, and what devious things I was letting him do to me.
“Your cunt squeezes in when your toes do.” He observed, as if unaffected. The rasp in his voice betrayed him. “Yeah, I think they’ll fit.”
He already had. They? I frowned and left my palms on the glass. The clamps on my nipples tugged whenever I moved, and this alpha had me exposed to not just his view but the others behind me.
The taboo thrill of exhibitionism never faded.
“Stay.” He pressed a clawed hand to my spine.
I twitched my tail, and I stayed.
His voice faded, but I could see his reflection in the glass, distorted by the curve.
A redness glowed in his eyes and his sideways silhouette wavered, grew, and darkened until the glass struggled to show him. His nearest hand was the clearest and the gray Darkness claws extruded, lengthening past normal mauleon limits. The frantic movements and grunts and groans of the others fornicating had quietened. Tentacles froze in mid-air.
“This is who you deal with!” His voice had roughened. “Wilden betrayed us. He’s gone and I sincerely thank you for cooperating with his removal. But this is me. I am two not one. You should not fear me, but you cannot destroy me. He planned to chain me into the engine backwash of that starship you just saw leaving the system. It would not have succeeded. I cannot die but I am also a just mauleon… Justice. Remember, I am for justice!”
He left a pause at that, and I had to wonder if he might mean all of that as a subtext: You should only fear me, if you wrong me. My judgement was currently flawed, my brain on the fritz with my needs. I wasn’t sure.
When he growled and grew his Darkness, I only wanted him more.
Vedrock edged back toward me, ran his hand into my hair and gripped me there, cranking back my neck until I must look up at him.
“Know this also! Jinx is mine and she is my anchor, my one and only love, my lodestone of righteousness and she tempers me. She makes me a better mauleon!”
“So, is that to remind us not to kill her or take her from you?” Deamona had surfaced from her ball of tentacles, and I saw them lower to wrap about her protectively. The gogogian was surely smitten. “Or else you’ll do something terrible?”
Vedrock chuckled dryly. A chill shivered through me and down my arched spine, peaking my nipples. My ears flicked at the pain in my scalp. Sighing, I eyed the side profile of my possessive lover.
“Just don’t fuck with us again.”
“None of us here did.” I watched her fuzzy figure stretch and I thought she smiled. “We welcome you to Echelon, Vedrock. We do not like threats, however.”
“I will cease those from now on. I was troubled. I apologise.” He gestured and bowed. “And so, back to our fetishes.”
“Do. Please.” She laughed. “I’m enjoying the spectacle. Hinochs are always so disgustingly private. And those… hmm. Two? I’d like to take them for a spin one day,” she drawled.
Those…
I’d seen him when the Darkness surfaced before, and he wasn’t like this. I didn’t have the courage to turn. Starkly obvious, in wobbly dark silhouette on the curved glass, were two erections, like a hinoch—double cocks.
I tried to move, to pull away from the glass. His growl roughened. His fist clenched in my hair, and he positioned himself behind me. His other claws moved to my ass then he hitched me higher… and I felt the prod of his cocks. My back arched. His aim was good, but I wriggled to encourage him.
Impatient, I moved my hand down there and managed to reach beneath and stretch, and slide a finger into my entrance. It ran into my pussy alongside the head of his cock.
He wrenched my head back again, until I had to slam both hands to the glass, and he thrust inside me with what felt like half an arm’s length of those cocks, then stopped.
I keened at the abrupt fullness. I was nicely impaled, but he’d frozen.
I caught my breath and wallowed in the feelings of being reamed by two. My eyes rolled upward.
He wasn’t moving. “One in your ass. One in the cunt. Now is when you beg for more.”
He shook my head to jar the words loose.
Open-mouthed, drooling a little, I was still trying to adjust to being so thoroughly filled. Then I managed, “Yes. Please. More.”
“Excellent. The Darkness says you feel good inside—all hot and wet and soft.”
He restarted his thrusting, harder, even deeper, ruthlessly taking me.
Oh fuck. Of fuck. It was all I could think of as he destroyed me from the inside.
My hands smeared the glass. My claws scratched it. My cries and tortured moans were in no language even I could recognize.
Sex devolved into a montage of mess and come, slick and drool, of pleas for more and for less, for harder, with my body being rearranged and positioned and overwhelmed, on floor and rug, spread out and pinned down and always, always, pleading.
We panted while locked together as one. My nipples felt raw and they throbbed. My cunt equally so.
The days and nights ran together.
When we paused for breath, my memory caught up and fed me scenes.
Ved between my legs with the flat of his tongue being applied to my clit. The lancing sharpness of claw and fang. I was reddened and scratched, sore in every hole. The spasms from one, long, train of orgasms left me curled up and raggedly panting while others chatted somewhere in the room. I’d been dragged across the floor by one leg and my tail. Those two cocks had triggered climax after climax until I was a limp thing.
The world wobbled into being, even though I wasn’t seeing anything.
I was sprawled on my back on the floor, coming down from yet another orgasm, with my legs apart and my hair sticky. My hands were flopped beside my head, and I couldn’t bear to move them. I ached from past misdeeds. Sweat dribbled, so did my slick and whatever else was on me. I was so very done.
“Enough,” I said weakly, eyes glued shut by something probably resembling come.
“Enough?” Vedrock was lying beside me, and I heard him move before he rolled me into his body and patted me. “You need sustenance again. Some water, some fried wings in that zonkatta sauce. I even saw this delish cream concoction on the table. After you have some, we might begin again?”
“Pssshht. No more. How long?” I grated, still blind, my memories etching scenes of the recent sex on my eyeballs. My claws had screeched as I ran them down the glass while he rammed me into it. My tail had lashed at his ankles, and he’d used it more than once to manhandle me roughly, to expose my ass for him to fuck.
I rocked my jaw, sure he’d fucked me there more deeply than ever. I tasted him on my teeth.
“How long have we been here, fucking? Two days.”
“That all?” I slurred, cracking open one eye. “You’re insatiable.”
“Me? I suppose. You were in heat. And what else could I be except insatiable, especially with my Darkness?”
That was his excuse? I struggled onto one elbow, trembling in every muscle, still seeing him one-eyed, and noting that his eyes were no longer glowing red. “And what really happened to Wilden?”
“You are making sense again.” He reached up to trace below my split lower lip. “He was chained behind a starship, as he wished me to be. Don’t fret about his ending.”
“I won’t. I think he deserved it.” I really did, upon reflection.
“Good. Now cuddle with me while we recover, together. We should practice this again?”
I grunted dubiously. “Next time we could try a candle-lit dinner and some romantic music, then we could stroll along the shore, and just…” I waggled my hand. “Kiss? Your Darkness needn’t come.”
“Maybe.” He grinned. “If that’s what you want. Not sure I can stop the Darkness joining us, however. He seems quite enamored of you, especially when I’m inside you. He says kissing sounds good too.”
I quirked an eyebrow.
So, I had two lovers? I wasn’t sure of the terminology when one of them was a supernatural entity inside the other one. I lay down again in the angle of his shoulder and arm. Considering his indestructible make-up and determination to find the same for me—if I wished it to be so—well…
We should still have a few millennia to get the sex right.
Flowers and quiet dinners would be nice. Though I knew Ved and those would be a small percentage of what would happen.
The rest of the time, it would be madly destructive orgies, momentous, galaxy-spanning battles, espionage, and other stuff where we teetered on the edge of killing everyone who got in his way.
“Quiet dinners.” I smiled then squirmed until I lay partly on top of him, with his chest beneath my ear. “I can hear your heartbeat.”
“Mmm.” He patted my back. “Good. I need that.”
“I wonder, if the Darkness is in you, does he have your heartbeat? Or is he separate? Like, is he inside your atoms of your body, or does he sort of exist between them?”
“You think too much.”
“Probably.” I sniffed him—he still smelled great. Licking was beyond me right then, besides it might make him want to fuck again. My eye kept closing. I was so tired, but still had to wonder if I had babies inside me… “If I’m pregnant, will they be your babies, or his too? Can a Darkness have babies?”
“Oh gods.” He groaned. “He says he doesn’t know. There. Also he won’t be inhabiting anyone else but me, as far as he knows. Now shhh unless you want punishment?”
My butt felt more heated than normal and abused from his bites. Gingerly, I felt myself there, and winced. Definitely fang marks.
“Kind of you to offer, but no.” I looked up and raised my head, still with one gummed-up eye, and found his were open. He peered down at me. “Go to sleep, Mister Grumpy.”
My thoughts kept churning, but I saved them for another conversation.
He thought I had powers that curbed his villainy, but why was I happy to execute someone? Had I changed too? Maybe it was simply me the way I’d always been? I’d never pondered the ability to give out death sentences.
Some people did need killing.
I watched my hand rise and fall with his chest. Before sleep claimed me, Ved began to snore, and I smiled and whispered, “Mine.”
JINX
The party was being held in a tall white tower that rose from the smallest, green island, in the middle of a lake filled with red-tipped reeds that fluttered and tossed in the wind from the shuttle engines.
“How real is this?” I asked, as we ascended in the quiet lift. My voice felt wrong, the world around us seemed more fantasy than solid. My skin simmered with heat, as did everywhere intimate. It made walking uncomfortable.
I rested a palm on Vedrock’s chest and imagined I heard his heart.
“It’s real and a place where Echelon has their wildest parties.” He swept his hand over my head, my ears, and through my hair, to where it hung loose to my shoulders. “This isn’t how they always are. Business is Grut business and takes up most of their time. But we are celebrating my… our ascendancy. Forget Wilden. He will not be here, and he won’t ever be near you again.”
“Oh.” I kept my hand where it was and this connection to him was all I required.
“When we arrive at the top, you’ll strip for me. Take off everything and kneel. I like you crawling.” His hand slipped to my shoulder, then he caressed along my jaw to end with his thumb resting on the corner of my mouth. “You’ll do this for me, after I gift you with something new. You’re in heat, Kittie, and I love that.”
I drew a shaky breath, and he noticed. My tongue found his thumb and I half-closed my eyes at the taste of him. While I was in this state, I knew he would see the minutia of every movement of my body.
I became mesmerized by his gaze, aware of the hypersensitivity of my body, the way my skin reacted to him, his touches, his words. The atoms of his breath seemed likely to make me orgasm, if he simply breathed on me below… on my cunt.
The word heat had wrapped itself in power.
The lift opened. Beyond a foyer, a double doorway showed a curved room that looked out over the lake.
The others were here but I had eyes for only Vedrock. He ordered me to undress, and I shed my clothes. The dress and my underwear were flimsy and fell to the floor like shreds of clouds. I stepped out of the small pile, naked, barefoot, and Ved removed a pink collar from his coat, where he’d draped it over a well-padded mauve armchair.
It dangled from his hand, the pieces on it glinting silver as it twisted.
“Kneel for me.”
I slipped to my knees and waited.
“This is not metal, it’s as soft your lips.” He showed me what ran around the collar. “With stars and moons to show you our love is eternal. Kittie is written here.”
He buckled it on my neck then attached a silver leash. I fell into a crawl and padded with him into the room over a soft rug. Sprawled across the furniture in the room were the other Echelon. They had embarked on their own sexual adventures, and I spared them a little of my time, until I halted to observe Deamona. She was in the center of a bundle of writhing tentacles, with several of them entering her in all the right places.
Those were thick and ever-so flexible, and they had suckers. I swallowed. I found Ved staring down at me and looking curious.
The sex we’d had in the underground city wormed from my memories, but that tentacle had been on a sculpture. I squeezed my thighs together and tried not to stare at her.
Vedrock was saying something in the background.
I couldn’t decipher the words and was finding it impossible to multitask. “That looks—”
“Fun?” Vedrock scooped me into his arms then paced toward a black-and-gold sofa. “Not listening to me? Okay, I didn’t need an excuse. Gods, you’re beautiful.” He raked my body with his gaze, lingering at my breasts but going all the way to my toes, before he sat on the sofa’s armrest and flipped me facedown over his legs.
I yelped as I faceplanted into a cushion.
He tugged on my tail and moved it to one side. “One lush ass in the air. Perfect.”
The flat of his hand smacked onto one cheek. The shock of this and the sudden pain muted me. He kept going, smooshing me onto his thighs with each blow. With my eyes closed, I could feel the stinging sensations transform into a pleasure that arced languidly through me to my core.
Over his lap, with his hands holding me, this was heaven. Another three smacks echoed into my body. I sobbed and hugged the cushion as if it were a lifeline and felt myself open and release more slick. My clit sat up, throbbing a plea for his touch, his mouth, his soft, probing tongue.
After more of those fiery contacts of palm to butt, I had to stifle my moans in the pillow.
“I knew you’d like it. My naughty kittie.”
I wriggled my ass with thighs squashed together. My skin was burning wherever he’d hit, but the fire was glorious. He spread me and stroked his hand around my pussy entrance then pushed one finger slowly inside.
“Ungh.” I burrowed my head under the cushion. The leash tinkled and slid off the sofa.
He laughed. “Thought so.”
My heat was doing this, surely?
“Of course I need more decoration on you.” I heard him click his fingers and someone walked over and delivered something. Unceremoniously he dropped me fully to the sofa. I rolled over and stared, my tongue cautiously exploring my upper lip. “Kneel up here, present those breasts, so I can put these on them.”
He’d threatened clamps, and there they were in his hand—silver like the collar, with tiny little jaws and each equipped with tiny weights connected by a short chain.
“Owie?” My tail flicked about—no doubt it was as unsure of this as I.
“You might like these too.” The evil smile and the crinkles forming around his eyes told me to be wary.
I drew a long inhalation and climbed to my knees, and I pushed my chest out.
Truthfully, anything from him would do. Anything. I lusted after being groped, penetrated, held down and hurt by him, sure that every one of these devious things would only bring me nearer to ecstasy. So, I sat there and thrust my breasts forward. I watched with curiosity, a smidgen of dread, and a quivery sort of lust roiling in my belly, as he sucked on each nipple, squeezing them in finger and thumb before attaching each clamp.
The pain was strong and mind-rocking. Never-stopping, ever-hurting, and then it changed. The pain did not leave me but in some ways, this became him, his touch. The formidable throb from these was as of biting beasts, gnawing evermore. Or his teeth on me.
I panted and stared at the things. He tipped one clamp, sending the little weighted ball at the end swinging. I let out a groan and dug my fingers into my thighs.
I wavered on my knees, rent by a need to clutch my breasts, and hide them. But also to watch them, for he bent to curl his tongue beneath each clamp, one then the other, paying homage to my breasts.
“You kept your hands away. Such a good kittie.”
My panting shook my breasts and seemed to fascinate him.
Vedrock ran claws over the undercurves, leaving scratch marks, I was sure.
“Now to show Echelon what and who they have admitted.” He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder.
Eeee, as they flipped about, the clamps hurt even more.
We headed for an out-curved globular window. The artificial yellow sun was dipping into the lake and above us were stars—real stars. The weights on my nipples lurched and swung. He set me on my feet facing the window.
“Here. I’m fucking you here.” He urged me forward until I must plant my hands on the glass or squash myself against it. “Legs apart and bend over so I can get into both your holes at once.”
“What?” I croaked, trying to control myself and yet knowing slick was smeared on my inner thighs and dripping and trickling down my legs.
The threat of sex was unmaking me. I obeyed, my head low, my legs trembling. I rearranged my palms on the warm glass.
A starship had started its engines out there, above us. The blue glow flared. There must be an enormous screen or shield far above the tower, past the sky.
“Is that real space?”
I forgot the question for he probed in both my holes, pushing slick into my asshole with a finger before circling my clit. His finger and thumb pulsed on it, squeezing. At the ripple of premature pleasure, I gasped and hunched forward, mouth opening, my eyes crashing shut.
“It’s real. We’re shielded. Put your little rear out and up so I can inspect you for defects and see the marks I made.” Amusement thrummed in his voice.
I stuck out my ass and even waggled it, until he swatted me. The sound rang in my skin, and it was as if he’d touched me intimately and run a finger into me.
Spanking… I would try this again when I was not in heat.
“Be still, Kittie.” He pulled aside my tail and parted my cheeks. As he probed, his claws came near to pinning my pussy open. “Fuck though, this view is better.”
I whimpered and treadled my toes. This examination shook my sense of self, reminding me of my femaleness, and what devious things I was letting him do to me.
“Your cunt squeezes in when your toes do.” He observed, as if unaffected. The rasp in his voice betrayed him. “Yeah, I think they’ll fit.”
He already had. They? I frowned and left my palms on the glass. The clamps on my nipples tugged whenever I moved, and this alpha had me exposed to not just his view but the others behind me.
The taboo thrill of exhibitionism never faded.
“Stay.” He pressed a clawed hand to my spine.
I twitched my tail, and I stayed.
His voice faded, but I could see his reflection in the glass, distorted by the curve.
A redness glowed in his eyes and his sideways silhouette wavered, grew, and darkened until the glass struggled to show him. His nearest hand was the clearest and the gray Darkness claws extruded, lengthening past normal mauleon limits. The frantic movements and grunts and groans of the others fornicating had quietened. Tentacles froze in mid-air.
“This is who you deal with!” His voice had roughened. “Wilden betrayed us. He’s gone and I sincerely thank you for cooperating with his removal. But this is me. I am two not one. You should not fear me, but you cannot destroy me. He planned to chain me into the engine backwash of that starship you just saw leaving the system. It would not have succeeded. I cannot die but I am also a just mauleon… Justice. Remember, I am for justice!”
He left a pause at that, and I had to wonder if he might mean all of that as a subtext: You should only fear me, if you wrong me. My judgement was currently flawed, my brain on the fritz with my needs. I wasn’t sure.
When he growled and grew his Darkness, I only wanted him more.
Vedrock edged back toward me, ran his hand into my hair and gripped me there, cranking back my neck until I must look up at him.
“Know this also! Jinx is mine and she is my anchor, my one and only love, my lodestone of righteousness and she tempers me. She makes me a better mauleon!”
“So, is that to remind us not to kill her or take her from you?” Deamona had surfaced from her ball of tentacles, and I saw them lower to wrap about her protectively. The gogogian was surely smitten. “Or else you’ll do something terrible?”
Vedrock chuckled dryly. A chill shivered through me and down my arched spine, peaking my nipples. My ears flicked at the pain in my scalp. Sighing, I eyed the side profile of my possessive lover.
“Just don’t fuck with us again.”
“None of us here did.” I watched her fuzzy figure stretch and I thought she smiled. “We welcome you to Echelon, Vedrock. We do not like threats, however.”
“I will cease those from now on. I was troubled. I apologise.” He gestured and bowed. “And so, back to our fetishes.”
“Do. Please.” She laughed. “I’m enjoying the spectacle. Hinochs are always so disgustingly private. And those… hmm. Two? I’d like to take them for a spin one day,” she drawled.
Those…
I’d seen him when the Darkness surfaced before, and he wasn’t like this. I didn’t have the courage to turn. Starkly obvious, in wobbly dark silhouette on the curved glass, were two erections, like a hinoch—double cocks.
I tried to move, to pull away from the glass. His growl roughened. His fist clenched in my hair, and he positioned himself behind me. His other claws moved to my ass then he hitched me higher… and I felt the prod of his cocks. My back arched. His aim was good, but I wriggled to encourage him.
Impatient, I moved my hand down there and managed to reach beneath and stretch, and slide a finger into my entrance. It ran into my pussy alongside the head of his cock.
He wrenched my head back again, until I had to slam both hands to the glass, and he thrust inside me with what felt like half an arm’s length of those cocks, then stopped.
I keened at the abrupt fullness. I was nicely impaled, but he’d frozen.
I caught my breath and wallowed in the feelings of being reamed by two. My eyes rolled upward.
He wasn’t moving. “One in your ass. One in the cunt. Now is when you beg for more.”
He shook my head to jar the words loose.
Open-mouthed, drooling a little, I was still trying to adjust to being so thoroughly filled. Then I managed, “Yes. Please. More.”
“Excellent. The Darkness says you feel good inside—all hot and wet and soft.”
He restarted his thrusting, harder, even deeper, ruthlessly taking me.
Oh fuck. Of fuck. It was all I could think of as he destroyed me from the inside.
My hands smeared the glass. My claws scratched it. My cries and tortured moans were in no language even I could recognize.
Sex devolved into a montage of mess and come, slick and drool, of pleas for more and for less, for harder, with my body being rearranged and positioned and overwhelmed, on floor and rug, spread out and pinned down and always, always, pleading.
We panted while locked together as one. My nipples felt raw and they throbbed. My cunt equally so.
The days and nights ran together.
When we paused for breath, my memory caught up and fed me scenes.
Ved between my legs with the flat of his tongue being applied to my clit. The lancing sharpness of claw and fang. I was reddened and scratched, sore in every hole. The spasms from one, long, train of orgasms left me curled up and raggedly panting while others chatted somewhere in the room. I’d been dragged across the floor by one leg and my tail. Those two cocks had triggered climax after climax until I was a limp thing.
The world wobbled into being, even though I wasn’t seeing anything.
I was sprawled on my back on the floor, coming down from yet another orgasm, with my legs apart and my hair sticky. My hands were flopped beside my head, and I couldn’t bear to move them. I ached from past misdeeds. Sweat dribbled, so did my slick and whatever else was on me. I was so very done.
“Enough,” I said weakly, eyes glued shut by something probably resembling come.
“Enough?” Vedrock was lying beside me, and I heard him move before he rolled me into his body and patted me. “You need sustenance again. Some water, some fried wings in that zonkatta sauce. I even saw this delish cream concoction on the table. After you have some, we might begin again?”
“Pssshht. No more. How long?” I grated, still blind, my memories etching scenes of the recent sex on my eyeballs. My claws had screeched as I ran them down the glass while he rammed me into it. My tail had lashed at his ankles, and he’d used it more than once to manhandle me roughly, to expose my ass for him to fuck.
I rocked my jaw, sure he’d fucked me there more deeply than ever. I tasted him on my teeth.
“How long have we been here, fucking? Two days.”
“That all?” I slurred, cracking open one eye. “You’re insatiable.”
“Me? I suppose. You were in heat. And what else could I be except insatiable, especially with my Darkness?”
That was his excuse? I struggled onto one elbow, trembling in every muscle, still seeing him one-eyed, and noting that his eyes were no longer glowing red. “And what really happened to Wilden?”
“You are making sense again.” He reached up to trace below my split lower lip. “He was chained behind a starship, as he wished me to be. Don’t fret about his ending.”
“I won’t. I think he deserved it.” I really did, upon reflection.
“Good. Now cuddle with me while we recover, together. We should practice this again?”
I grunted dubiously. “Next time we could try a candle-lit dinner and some romantic music, then we could stroll along the shore, and just…” I waggled my hand. “Kiss? Your Darkness needn’t come.”
“Maybe.” He grinned. “If that’s what you want. Not sure I can stop the Darkness joining us, however. He seems quite enamored of you, especially when I’m inside you. He says kissing sounds good too.”
I quirked an eyebrow.
So, I had two lovers? I wasn’t sure of the terminology when one of them was a supernatural entity inside the other one. I lay down again in the angle of his shoulder and arm. Considering his indestructible make-up and determination to find the same for me—if I wished it to be so—well…
We should still have a few millennia to get the sex right.
Flowers and quiet dinners would be nice. Though I knew Ved and those would be a small percentage of what would happen.
The rest of the time, it would be madly destructive orgies, momentous, galaxy-spanning battles, espionage, and other stuff where we teetered on the edge of killing everyone who got in his way.
“Quiet dinners.” I smiled then squirmed until I lay partly on top of him, with his chest beneath my ear. “I can hear your heartbeat.”
“Mmm.” He patted my back. “Good. I need that.”
“I wonder, if the Darkness is in you, does he have your heartbeat? Or is he separate? Like, is he inside your atoms of your body, or does he sort of exist between them?”
“You think too much.”
“Probably.” I sniffed him—he still smelled great. Licking was beyond me right then, besides it might make him want to fuck again. My eye kept closing. I was so tired, but still had to wonder if I had babies inside me… “If I’m pregnant, will they be your babies, or his too? Can a Darkness have babies?”
“Oh gods.” He groaned. “He says he doesn’t know. There. Also he won’t be inhabiting anyone else but me, as far as he knows. Now shhh unless you want punishment?”
My butt felt more heated than normal and abused from his bites. Gingerly, I felt myself there, and winced. Definitely fang marks.
“Kind of you to offer, but no.” I looked up and raised my head, still with one gummed-up eye, and found his were open. He peered down at me. “Go to sleep, Mister Grumpy.”
My thoughts kept churning, but I saved them for another conversation.
He thought I had powers that curbed his villainy, but why was I happy to execute someone? Had I changed too? Maybe it was simply me the way I’d always been? I’d never pondered the ability to give out death sentences.
Some people did need killing.
I watched my hand rise and fall with his chest. Before sleep claimed me, Ved began to snore, and I smiled and whispered, “Mine.”
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