Chapter 2: Starlight Sovereignty: The Emperor's First Gift
Dolores woke to a silence so complete it felt like pressure on her eardrums. No birds, no rustle of oak leaves against the roof, no distant hum of a tractor. Just a deep, resonant stillness, punctuated by the nearly sub-audible thrum of something powerful.
She was alone in the wide, low bed. The sheets were a strange, cool fabric that didn’t wrinkle.
She sat up, heart hammering against her ribs. The room was the same: smooth, dark walls, the viewport now a sheet of profound black dotted with impossible stars. It wasn’t a dream. The previous day—the knock, Zaltar’s piercing eyes, the frantic, wall-shaking sex, the obsidian ship—all of it was horribly, magnificently real. She was in a vessel moving through space. She was married to an emperor. Her floral suitcase was probably in a corner somewhere, the most absurd artifact in the galaxy.
She pushed the luxurious covers back. Her body ached in familiar, tender ways, a private souvenir from yesterday’s desperation. She found her clothes folded neatly on a low shelf—the last remnants of her. She pulled on the baggy jeans, the denim soft from years of wear, now feeling oddly loose and yet constricting. She tugged the form-fitting top over her head, the fabric stretching across her full breasts and stomach, a familiar comfort in the utterly unfamiliar.
She had to find Ullan.
The door irised open at her approach. Outside, the corridor was empty and softly lit. She took a few tentative steps, the metal floor cool under her bare feet. A moment later, an armored guard rounded a corner, his movements silent, his helmet obscuring his face. He stopped, awaiting instruction.
“Ullan,” Dolores managed, her voice thin. “The Emperor. Where is he?”
The guard gave a single, sharp nod and gestured for her to follow. They moved through the ship’s sleek arteries, passing closed doorways and occasional crew members who would stop, press a fist to their chest, and bow their heads as she passed. It made her skin crawl. She kept her eyes on the guard’s backplate.
The entrance to the command deck was a wide, arched portal. It sighed open.
The scale of it stole her breath. The room was vast, a cathedral of technology. The ceiling was a dome of that same star-strewn blackness. Below, in a pit of focused activity, a dozen soldiers sat at consoles that glowed with holographic schematics, star charts, and scrolling streams of alien script. The air hummed with low-toned communications and the deep, visceral roar of the engines—a sound she felt in her teeth.
And there, at the panoramic viewport that curved across the far end of the chamber, stood Ullan.
He was bathed in the cold, brilliant light of a million stars. He wore simple, dark trousers and a tunic, but he stood with a regal bearing that made the simple clothes look like a uniform. His long, dark hair was unbound, a waterfall down his back. He was watching the cosmos wheel by.
He sensed her. He turned.
A slow, predator’s smile touched his lips, transforming his stark profile into something warm and possessive. The Emperor receded; her husband appeared. He crossed the deck towards her, his boots silent on the floor. The soldiers at their stations did not look up, but she felt the intensity of their sidelong attention.
“You found me,” he said, his voice a low rumble that cut through the ambient noise. He took her hand, his fingers weaving through hers. “Come. I want to show you something.”
He led her past the rows of consoles, up a shallow ramp to a raised platform directly before the enormous window. Here, the view was unimpeded. The universe sprawled before them, an infinite tapestry of nebulae, star clusters, and the cold, beautiful dust of creation. A swirl of violet and cobalt gas dominated the view, light-years across, dotted with the fierce diamond prick of newborn suns.
Dolores’s breath hitched. All the fear, the dislocation, the terror of the unknown, momentarily evaporated. She was struck dumb by a beauty so profound it felt holy. Her hand went to her mouth. She leaned forward, drawn to the glass.
“Oh,” was all she could whisper.
Ullan watched her face, not the vista. He watched the starlight catch in her wide, dark eyes, the reflection of nebulas shimmering on her golden skin. Her expression of awe was a better prize than any conquered star system. He moved behind her, his body a solid warmth at her back. He placed his hands on her shoulders, then slowly slid them down her arms.
His right hand continued its path, around her hip, and cupped the full, denim-clad curve of her ass. He squeezed, possessively, familiarly.
The spell shattered.
Dolores jolted as if shocked. She slapped her own hand over his, pushing it away. She glanced, horrified, at the soldiers below them, their backs turned, their focus ostensibly on their work. She spun slightly within his loose embrace, her face flaming.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” she hissed, her voice a strained whisper.
Ullan’s brow furrowed, genuinely confused. He kept his voice low, for her alone. “I am touching my wife. You told me I could touch your ass whenever I wanted.”
She remembered. A rainy afternoon in her kitchen, him coming up behind her, his hands roaming. She’d laughed, swatted at him, and said that exact thing. A private joke. A rule of their old life.
“Yes,” she whispered frantically, “but that was then! We are surrounded by people I don’t know! I don’t know their customs!”
His frown deepened, a hint of imperial impatience flickering in his eyes. “Their customs are what I say they are. And I want to touch your ass.”
“You are not going to grope me in public,” she stated, her own voice gaining a sliver of steel. This was a line. Here, in this terrifying new world, she needed to draw one.
He studied her face, the stubborn set of her jaw. The emperor warred with the man who loved her. The man, reluctantly, conceded. But only partway. A sly, familiar grin touched his lips. “Fine,” he murmured, leaning in so his breath warmed her ear. “I will be… discreet. But I will do it when I want.”
Dolores held his gaze, the nebula painting his face in ethereal light. A slow, answering smile spread on her lips. She reached back, found his hand, and gave it a quick, secret squeeze. “Or,” she whispered back, the word a promise and a challenge, “when I want.”
Ullan’s grin widened, a real one now, full of dark amusement and anticipation. He nodded, once. A new treaty, forged between an emperor and his empress.
Dolores, her heart still racing but for a different reason now, lifted her gaze from his. Her eyes scanned the command pit below.
And locked directly onto General Zaltar.
He was standing near a tactical console, a data-slate frozen in his hand. He wasn’t even pretending to work. He was staring right at them, his sharp, handsome features etched with an expression of pure, unvarnished shock. His mouth was slightly open. He had seen the entire exchange—the grab, the push, the intense, whispered negotiation.
For a long, silent moment, they stared at each other across the humming space. Dolores felt a fresh wave of heat flood her cheeks.
Zaltar said nothing. He didn’t move. He just stared, as if re-evaluating the entire universe and his place in it. Then, very slowly, he closed his mouth. He gave a minuscule, unreadable shake of his head, looked down at his slate, and became very busy.
He gave a minuscule, unreadable shake of his head, looked down at his slate, and became very busy.
The spectacle of the cosmos suddenly felt like a performance. Dolores turned from the viewport, pulling Ullan’s hand gently. “Can we go back?” she asked, her voice low. “I feel… exposed.”
He didn’t argue. They walked from the command deck in a silence that felt heavier than the void outside. The route back to their quarters was a blur of gleaming corridors. Once the door sealed behind them, the artificial atmosphere seemed to thicken with everything left unsaid on the bridge. Dolores walked to the center of the room, wrapping her arms around herself.
“When will we get to Solum?” she asked, the name feeling clumsy in her mouth.
“Sorüm,” he corrected softly, coming to stand behind her. He didn’t touch her yet. “We arrive tomorrow. The approach takes time.”
“Tomorrow,” she echoed. She let out a long, weary sigh, her shoulders slumping. “So, we just wait? What am I supposed to do to pass the time in here?”
Ullan moved then, a deliberate shift in the room’s energy. “You could read,” he offered, his tone lightening. “There is a tablet here, in our quarters. It has access to archives. I understand there are some very good stories available.” A pause, laden with knowing. “The kind you like.”
Dolores turned her head, a slow smile spreading across her face despite her earlier disquiet. He meant the erotic novels she used to read on her old e-reader, tucked away in her farmhouse bedroom. He’d caught her once, her face flushed, and had teased her mercilessly before taking the device from her hands and demonstrating his own practical interpretations. “You had them loaded onto an imperial database?” she asked, laughter in her voice.
“I may have instructed Zaltar to acquire a cultural cross-section of Earth literature,” Ullan said, a smirk playing on his lips. “I can configure it for your language.” He walked to a seamless panel in the wall, which he tapped. It slid open, revealing a slate of dark glass. He manipulated a few glowing symbols. “Here. It’s ready.”
“Thank you,” Dolores said. She walked toward the bed, her back to him, scanning the sleek surfaces. “Where is it?”
She heard his footsteps, soft and predatory. He was on her before her next breath.
His arms locked around her waist from behind, one hand splaying across her stomach to pull her firmly against him. The other hand came up to cup her breast over her soft top, his palm rough and demanding. He squeezed, his thumb finding her nipple and rolling it into a tight peak through the fabric. She felt the hard, insistent ridge of his erection press against the seam of her jeans, right into the curve of her ass.
A sharp gasp left her. Her head fell back against his shoulder. Her body, traitorously familiar with his, arched into the contact, her hips pushing back against that rigid line of heat.
“I have a better idea for passing the time,” he growled into her ear, his teeth grazing the lobe.
Dolores laughed, a breathy, wanting sound. “Do you now?”
In one fluid motion, he spun her and pushed her backward. She fell onto the deep bedding with a soft bounce. He came down over her, his knees framing her hips. His fingers went to the button of her jeans. He worked it open with focused care, then slowly tugged the zipper down. He gripped the worn denim at her hips and peeled them down her legs, his movements deliberate, not rushed.
He was being careful. He remembered.
The last time he’d torn a favorite piece of clothing from her in his desperation, she had gone rigid beneath him. The intimate moment had shattered. “You ruined them!” she’d shouted, shoving at his chest, her eyes blazing with real anger. That day had ended with him rebuked, painfully hard, and with Dolores storming out of the room to sew the ripped lace. He had learned.
Now, he freed her of the jeans, tossing them aside to land safely on a chair. He knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed, his hands sliding up her inner thighs, pushing them apart. He hooked her legs over his shoulders.
His mouth was on her before she could speak.
He ate her with a single-minded intensity that made her cry out. His tongue was a flat, demanding stroke against her entire slit before he zeroed in on her clit. He licked and sucked the sensitive nub, his stubble scraping the tender skin of her inner thighs. One hand pinned her hip to the bed; the other pushed two fingers deep inside her, curling upward.
“Fuck, Ullan!” she moaned, her hands fisting in the strange sheets.
He didn’t answer with words. He answered with the relentless rhythm of his tongue, the press of his fingers, the low, hungry sounds vibrating from his throat into her core. He was claiming her, rewriting the anxiety of the command deck with this intimate, filthy knowledge. He knew her body’s map better than any star chart.
Her climax built fast, a taut, screaming wire within her. He felt it, the way her muscles fluttered around his fingers, the saltier taste of her. He redoubled his efforts, his tongue circling her clit with rapid, precise flicks.
She came with a shattered scream, her back bowing off the bed, her thighs clamping around his head. He didn’t stop until the last violent tremor had subsided, until she was a gasping, boneless thing on the sheets.
Only then did he rise.
He stood beside the bed, his eyes dark pools of hunger. He pulled the tunic over his head, tossing it away. He always made sure his torso was bare when they had sex. He knew how much she loved his physique—the carved muscles of his stomach, the powerful shoulders, the silken trail of hair that led downward. He pushed his trousers and undergarments down just enough to free his cock, which stood thick and painfully erect.
He leaned over, sliding his hands beneath her ass. In one strong lift, he raised her hips from the mattress, leaving her upper back and shoulders on the bed, her slick folds exposed to the cool air. He positioned the broad head of his cock at her soaked entrance.
He pushed forward, not in a slow tease, but in a single, deep, claiming thrust that buried him to the hilt inside her still-quivering flesh.
Dolores shrieked, the overstimulation a sweet agony. He was so deep. The angle was brutal, perfect. He held her there, impaled, his grip iron on her hips, his own abdomen flexed with the strain of holding the position.
“This,” he grunted, his voice ragged with strain, “is how an emperor waits.”
He began to move.
It was a relentless, driving rhythm, each withdrawal almost complete before he slammed back into the soaking clutch of her. The wet, obscene sound of their coupling filled the room, loud against the ship’s distant hum. Dolores could do nothing but take it, her hips held aloft by his unforgiving grip, her body a vessel for his frantic possession.
“Ullan!” she cried out, the name torn from her throat as he pistoned into her.
It was a guttural, raw sound. Even after four years of marriage, she should have been accustomed to his size, to the specific way he filled her. But like this, at this angle, she felt exquisitely stretched, each thrust a breathtaking invasion that bordered on too much. The sensation burned through the last of her dislocation, anchoring her to this moment, to him, in the most primal way possible.
He watched her face unravel. His eyes, dark with lust, tracked the way her fingers twisted and clawed at the strange, smooth sheets, searching for purchase that wasn’t there. He saw her mouth fall open on a silent scream before another choked moan spilled out. This was what he had always loved: watching her come completely undone, the competent, compassionate woman reduced to a writhing, begging creature of pure sensation.
His gaze dropped to her breasts, freed from her top now, bouncing and swaying with every brutal impact of his hips. The sight of her full, heavy flesh jolting with the force of his thrusts made his own need sharpen to a razor’s edge.
“Look at you,” he rasped, his own breath coming in short, sharp gusts. “My perfect, filthy empress. Taking every inch. You feel like heaven wrapped around my cock.”
“Don’t stop,” she begged, the words slurred, her head thrashing side to side. “Please, don’t fucking stop.”
He adjusted his grip, sliding one hand from her hip to where their bodies joined. His thumb found her clit, swollen and slick, and pressed hard circles against it as he fucked her.
The double assault shattered her. A second, sharper climax ripped through her, this one a convulsive, blinding wave that clamped her around him like a vise. Her scream was continuous, broken only by her ragged gasps for air.
Her tight, rhythmic convulsions milked him, dragged his own release roaring up from his base. With a final, deep snarl, he buried himself as far as he could go and let go. Hot pulses of his come filled her, a claiming that was both biological and profound. He held himself there, trembling, as the last of his control bled out into her.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their heaving breaths and the ship’s eternal whisper.
Slowly, gently, he lowered her hips back to the bed. He withdrew, a slow, wet slide that made her whimper. He collapsed beside her, his skin slick with sweat, one heavy arm thrown across her stomach.
They lay in the tangled sheets, the scent of sex thick and personal in the recycled air.
“So,” Dolores finally murmured, her voice hoarse. She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “Is that how you pass all your time during interstellar travel?”
A rough laugh escaped him. He ran a hand through his damp hair. “Only when the view is particularly inspiring.”
She swatted his arm, a weak, playful slap. “You’re impossible.”
He turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand. His expression grew more serious, though his eyes remained soft. “Sorüm will be different. The court… they will test you. They will whisper.”
“Because I’m human?” she asked.
“Because you are mine,” he corrected, his finger tracing the line of her jaw. “And because you are kind. They will see it as weakness. They will try to find edges to exploit.”
Dolores thought of Zaltar’s shocked stare on the command deck, the calculated neutrality that had followed. She thought of kneeling soldiers in her petunia bed. “What do I do?”
“You be exactly who you are,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “The woman who took in a wounded stranger. The woman who isn’t afraid to shove an emperor’s hand off her ass in front of his generals.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “That frightens them more than any bluster ever could.”
She absorbed this, the weight of it settling beside the physical weight of his arm. “And you? What will you do?”
“I will be at your side,” he said. The simplicity of it was a vow. “And I will remind them, the moment anyone forgets, what happens to those who threaten what is mine.”
Outside the viewport, the swirling nebula had given way to a starfield of impossible density. A single, steady point of light, brighter than the others, burned a sapphire blue at the center of the glass.
Ullan followed her gaze. “That’s it,” he said quietly. “The Sorüm system. We make orbital descent in a few hours.”
Dolores looked from the distant, brilliant star to the face of the man beside her—the emperor, the husband, the stranger she knew better than anyone. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach. But beneath it, thrumming like the ship’s engines, was a current of defiant curiosity.
She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers with his. “Okay,” she whispered, to the room, to the star, to him. “Let’s go home.”