Chapter 68: Roots of Dominion
The silence after my words stretched, thick and heavy as honey. The three kneeling men didn’t move, but I could feel the shift in them, a quickening of pulse, a sharp intake of breath that was more tribute than fear.
Gena uncoiled from her throne with a predator’s grace. “You heard my mother,” she said, her voice a silken promise. She descended the dais, her hips swaying, and stopped before the leader. She didn’t touch him. She simply circled him, a slow, appraising orbit. “What’s your name?”
“Kael,” he said, his voice rough with a contained fervor.
“Look at me, Kael.”
He lifted his head. His eyes, dark and fierce, tracked her. The reverence was still there, but it was now fused with a raw, naked hunger. I felt a corresponding throb deep in my own belly, a sympathetic echo. The throne beneath me seemed to pulse in time with it, the roots tightening almost imperceptibly.
“The realm has been starving,” Gena continued, her fingers trailing through the air just inches from his shoulder. “We intend to feed it. Starting with you.”
She finally touched him, a single finger placed under his chin, tilting his head back further. A shudder wracked his powerful frame. I rose from my throne, the movement fluid, the dress of shadows clinging to my skin like a second awareness. The other two warriors watched me, their postures rigid with anticipation.
I approached the one on the left, a broader man with scars mapping his torso. I didn’t speak. I simply reached out and placed my palm flat on his chest. His skin was hot, his heartbeat a frantic drum against my hand. The contact was a circuit completing. The low, constant hum of the realm sharpened into a focused keen. I could feel the life in him, a vibrant, untapped well.
My own body responded instantly. A warm, heavy dampness bloomed between my legs, a slick readiness that soaked the insubstantial fabric of my dress. The faint, sweet scent of my own arousal mixed with the jasmine and loam. My breasts felt full, tight, a faint, pearlescent fluid beading at my nipples, darkening the shadow-cloth.
“Take what you need, my queen,” the scarred man breathed, his eyes glazed.
“I don’t need to take,” I corrected him, my voice low. “You will give.”
I fisted my hand in his hair, not gently, and pulled his head to my chest. He didn’t resist. His mouth, hot and desperate, closed over my nipple. The sensation was electric, a direct line from my breast to my core. It wasn’t just pleasure; it was a transfer. I felt a strand of his vital energy, bright and hot, flow into me as he suckled, even as the life-giving essence from my body flowed into him. A moan was torn from my throat, raw and unbidden.
Behind me, I heard Gena. A sharp, wet sound. A gasp that was half laugh, half groan. “That’s it, Kael. Get on your back. I want to see your face when you come inside me.”
I didn’t look. I was consumed by my own conquest. I pushed the scarred man onto the soft earth, the living floor of the throne room welcoming him. His trousers were already open, his cock jutting up, thick and veined and leaking. The hyper-fertile ache in my womb clenched, a visceral, demanding pull.
I didn’t lower myself gracefully. I mounted him with a single, brutal thrust, sheathing him inside me in one slick, perfect motion. He cried out, a guttural shout that echoed off the grotto walls. I was so wet, so ready, he slid in to the hilt without resistance. The feeling of being filled, stretched, connected to this raw source of life was overwhelming. It was more than sex. It was a claiming.
I rode him, setting a punishing rhythm, my hips pistoning. My short nails dug into the hard muscle of his chest. Each drive down onto his length sent jolts of power through me, into the throne at my back, through the roots into the realm itself. The bioluminescent vines in the walls brightened, their pulsing light syncing with the slap of our bodies.
“Fuck,” I grunted, the crude word feeling right in this primal space. “Give it to me. All of it.”
His hands found my hips, gripping hard, helping me move, his own thrusts becoming frantic, desperate. His eyes were rolled back in his head, lost in the torrent of sensation and the siphoning of his essence. I could feel his climax building, a coiling pressure at the base of my spine. My own orgasm was a tidal wave gathering, fed by his energy, by the throne’s power, by the sheer, fucking rightness of this act.
A sharp, ecstatic cry from Gena cut through the air, followed by Kael’s roar. The sound was a trigger.
The scarred man beneath me bucked, his body seizing. “My queen!” he shouted, and I felt the hot, urgent flood of his release deep inside me. It was the final key. My vision whited out as my own climax detonated, a chain reaction of pleasure so intense it was pain, so consuming it felt like death and rebirth fused into one shattering moment. I threw my head back, a silent scream on my lips as I felt the energy—his, mine, ours—cascade through me and into the hungry earth.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing and the slow, satisfied pulse of the light in the walls.
I slowly climbed off him, my legs trembling, my body humming, dripping with our mingled fluids. I looked over at Gena. She was straddling Kael’s hips, her body glistening with sweat, a look of fierce, sated triumph on her face. The third warrior watched us, his hand stroking his own hard length, waiting his turn.
Gena met my gaze. Her eyes, still glowing with stolen silver, dropped to the mess between my legs, then back to my face. A slow, wicked smile spread across her lips.
“The realm is waking up,” she said, her voice husky. “I can feel it breathing.”
I looked at the waiting warrior, then back at my daughter. The hunger was already stirring again, deeper, more insistent this time.
“Good,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Then let’s not let it go back to sleep.”