9. Rivvac

9

RIVVAC

My head felt like it’d been cleaved in half with a draggi ax.

I forced myself up onto my knees and felt the world turn on its axis. I refused to lower myself back down as it would only require me to do it all over again. And if there was one absolutely rule among the Ulsen, it was that we never backed down.

It was forward or it was death.

Although my head hurt worse than I’d ever known, I maintained my position and distracted myself by thinking back over what had happened right before I’d gotten knocked unconscious.

Mia. She was screaming… No, not in pain, at least not physical pain, but terror. She was dragged away by… who? I wasn’t sure. A figure curled and hunched over. Then my memory cut out like I’d fallen asleep.

And I woke up here.

Okay, go back, further.

What had made me feel sick to my stomach before I passed unconscious? What had threatened to spill my contents over the pod’s floor?

Pod.

Escape pod.

That was right, I thought, pushing back the thick misty shroud clouding my memories. We’d been in an escape pod careening through space until…

Until…

The tractor beam.

And we’d been abducted.

“Rest, Prince Rivvac,” a deep, sultry voice said from behind me. “There’s no need for you to push yourself any harder than you already have. It’s over. There’s nowhere you need to go, nothing you need to do. Rest.”

I felt a small feminine hand on my lower back, flesh against flesh, and it was only then that I realized I was naked, stripped bare.

I would have whipped around but my head was still swimming. I knew I would only succeed in making the room curl more.

“You’re safely back in the palace.”

The palace.

My father’s palace.

But before that we’d been on a ship…

The Empress.

The Sirens’ ship.

I knew I recognized the ship from somewhere. It was difficult to identify by appearance alone as its exterior was altered as often as the Sirens’ faces.

“You’ll recover quickly now that you’re awake,” the sultry voice said, and suddenly this too, I recognized. It belonged to the Siren Scepter. “Until then, I suspect you’ll react aggressively, so let me explain why that would be a very unwise thing to do.”

“Mia…” I managed to say through numb lips.

“Mia has been removed,” the Siren Scepter said.

“Removed?”

“Taken from this place. We’re not in the business of murder.”

No, I thought, but your minions and those you manipulate are.

“Then she’s… she’s still… alive?”

“Yes. At the moment.”

My heart thundered hard in my chest, so hard I thought it would leap out. I hated losing control and being at the mercy of others. It was the worst feeling in the world.

I shuffled to one side, crawling toward the edge of the bed. “I need to… to find her…”

“You won’t find anyone any time soon,” the Siren Scepter said, shoving me to one side, so I fell onto my side. “You have the strength of a newborn criatch. I suggest you not make any sudden movements. Just listen. You are integral to our plans, and we cannot allow another female—a human female—to get in the way. You should have known this was going to happen. You could have avoided all of this if you had chosen us during your Steyatt.”

“I didn’t want you.”

“Since when has what the male wanted, been important? Your wants are secondary to what we require. There is a far bigger game going on here than you can possibly imagine. We require you to play your part.”

“I don’t want any part of your political games.”

“You don’t get to choose what you are and aren’t part of either.”

I shook my head. None of this mattered. It wasn’t getting me anywhere. “Where’s Mia?”

“Forget her. She’s not important.”

A thought floated up to the surface of my consciousness and popped:

Mia was the most important thing.

Without the mist of regular thought, my mind was crystal clear and unencumbered.

I have to find her… I have to rescue her…

“We’ll tell you where she is,” the Siren Scepter said, “but first you must give yourself to us.”

“Give myself?”

“Marry one of our Sisters, become one with the Sirens. Give yourself and you will know a freedom unlike any you have ever experienced before…”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You have no say in the matter.” She turned her head to one side. “Girls?”

Soft footsteps approached from each corner. There were four Sirens, each with their makeup curled into Floricix, the Goddess of Seduction, their horns burning bright with the pulp of the jamisarr tree. They wore no clothes. They danced hypnotically, luscious bodies curled about me, breasts in my face, asses thrusting…

I turned my head to one side to avoid the worst of their overwhelming scent, each a different form of the Irresistible Flowers from all four corners of the Empire. Even if I could resist one, another would cloy my senses and force me to obey them without reservation.

“No…” I said, feeling my cock grow hard. “No… Please…”

Once they took me, I would become like a zombie, obsessed with them. They could demand me to do whatever they bid.

One pressed her lips to me as another ran her tongue along my dick. The other two shared a nipple each.

Mia, I’m sorry, I thought, shaking my head.

I attempted to force them off me but they caught my weak arms and forced them back down on the bed, slipping a perfectly formed breast in each of my hands.

Their perfume was so strong I could hardly think. Even when the mist of my earlier injury gave way, that powerful scent took its place until I was aware of nothing but them and their incredible bodies, the very meaning of satisfaction.

“Relax,” the Siren Scepter said. “It will soon be over. You’ll know a satisfaction only the Chosen had ever felt. Give yourself to it, give yourself to us.”

“No…” I cried. It might as well have come from a baby for its lack of conviction.

“Give yourself…” one of the females working me over said.

“Become a part of us…” another said.

They switched places, stimulating me all over at the same time. The pleasure was rich, powerful, strong.

I gasped as electricity traveled like a lightning bolt from each of my nipples, stoking my brain and sending flashes of pure ecstasy through my system. The one between my legs took my cock in her mouth, soft, gentle…

Superb.

When I gasped and grunted, the fourth member of the circle caught it and sucked it from my lips, silencing me with a tongue across my lips, reaching inside my mouth and massaging my tongue with hers.

It felt good, really good, as only experts trained in the ways of pleasure and ecstasy could deliver.

I felt myself tipping over the edge, already balancing precariously on the edge of a knife as the infinite pull of sexual pleasure yawned open on the other side of the blade.

And for some reason, perhaps because she was my most recent lover, I thought of Mia.

I recalled her lips on mine, how soft they were, how rich and soft, how she felt with her body pressed against me, marveling at the peaceful pleasure we shared every moment we were together.

A wild cacophony of memories flew at me so thick and fast I could barely keep up…

When she would slip back under the bed covers and pressing her smooth mouth against my cool scales. Even then, floating someplace between sleep and wakefulness, I had been aware the whole time, aware of her scent, her feelings and how happy I was. My heart swelled so big it encompassed the two of us in that moment, and always would, forever.

And when we were in the gardens when she would look up at me and smile, the sun rise but a flicker of a flame beside her beauty. I knew that every time I looked at her, I would see that same peace and happiness, a thousand sun rises in a single day, a vacation every time I fell into her eyes and lost myself to her.

Those deep chestnut orbs of endless deep pools in the island of nowhere, and the soft gentle gasp on her lips every time I entered her, pulling the extreme intensity from her with every thrust of my hips, and bucking her own body as she suckled me with the lips between her legs, joining her in her ultimate ecstasy.

The look of her sitting in the co-pilot seat, her head turned to one side, her face away from mine, and the infinite happiness of knowing she was right there beside me, the knowledge that she would be there forever and always… except no, that wasn’t right. She would one day be gone from my side, my own selfish short-sighted desires forcing her from me.

And the angry look on her face when she demanded an interview with me, not knowing the whole time she was the one in charge and interviewing me, knowing the fates had arranged this meeting in mind all along, relaxed in the knowledge that this was what they had planned all along, and the helplessness of knowing that I had little control over what happened next.

Except that I always had a choice, the same was true of these demons taking their turn sucking on me right now. They had made their choices, and there was no way I was going to let them dictate what I was going to do with my life or who I was going to love…

I felt a change come over me then as the mist of my earlier injury gave way to the sunlight of Mia’s love and that I had for her. I pushed harder, forcing that warmth deeper into the bloodred mist curtain the Sirens had brought down over my consciousness.

And then I pushed harder…

“Something… Something’s wrong!” one of the females said, her voice full of fear.

“He’s… He’s resisting us!” a second female demon said, outrage tainting her words.

“This is impossible!” the deep Siren Specter said from the foot of the bed.

“It’s… it’s too much!” the third girl cried. “I… I can’t take it…!”

“It’s something else… something powerful… I can’t… I need to… No!”

The Siren Scepter descended on me, adding her own skills to the mix.

The golden light I had been holding as a halo, forcing back on the Sisters began to fall away, the effect of the Siren Scepter more powerful than the other girls put together.

I felt real fear as she forced me back on that knife’s edge. I began to teeter over the side once more… until I realized that I was never going to fall over it.

The blade was a figment of my imagination created by the Sirens. The blade and its edge were me. Just as the darkness spilling over on either side were me too.

I looked up and saw that the strings attached to my arms and legs were being guided by a figure high in the darkness above us. The one who really controlled my emotions and feelings… the one I wanted to direct my emotions.

I grinned inwardly despite myself as I pictured the warm loving smile of Mia and the soft, simple touch of her hand as we reached out and shook hands, agreeing our deal that was to last for a week.

I let the golden halo of light envelop me, wrap around me tightly like the cocoon around a baby’s body, always and forever a part of it. I let it overtake me and it exploded out from me in a single powerful bolt like an explosion at the center of my heart.

“No!” the Siren Scepter cried as the tsunami of love—and that was what it was, I knew—washed over the Sirens and washed their red misty madness aside like tiny puddles.

My eyes bolted open, and I found myself as I had before, laying stark naked on a bed with four gorgeous female bodies on each side. Only now they were trapped in some sleeping state, writhing and touching themselves unconsciously, glowing from the golden halo of love I had forced upon them.

They rubbed their nipples and slipped their fingers inside themselves, hungry to savor what I had shown them, give them a simple taste of what true love feel like.

They wanted more, for the first time in their lives suffering from the obsessions that they had forced upon countless males over the years.

Only one managed to peel back the curtain and flutter her eyes open, looking up at me as I zipped up my pants.

“How…?” the Siren Scepter said.

“You really don’t know?” I said, beaming down at her.

“How did you… do this?”

“There’s only one thing that can defeat powerful seduction and obsession… and that’s true love. She is my fated mate.”

The sultry Siren’s eyes widened, then her eyes shimmered with tears before she blinked and they peeled down her cheeks.

“Fated mate…” she said with desperate longing in her voice.

I sensed she had either experienced the emotion before or had always secretly been desperate to feel it. Her life had been pledged to nothing but a sham, a grim caricature of what real love felt like—that obsession and sex could only ever be a poor second-rate cousin.

“Where is she?” I said softly. “Mia. Where is she?”

She told me amidst a flurry of “Sorrys” and apologies. I knew she would never be the same ever again.

Franky, neither would I.