Chapter 17: Mandatory Ecstasy
She woke to a heartbeat not her own.
It pulsed against her skin, a slow, rhythmic pressure at her wrists and ankles. Liora’s eyes flew open. The obsidian ceiling swam into focus, the bioluminescent veins casting their ghostly light. She tried to move. Her arms were stretched above her head, secured by bonds of dark, fibrous material that felt alive. They coiled around her wrists with a gentle, unyielding strength, warm and slightly damp. Her legs were spread wide, anchored to the bed at the ankles by the same living rope. It constricted minutely with each throb, like the grip of a sleeping predator.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. She jerked against the bindings. They held.
“They respond to struggle.” The voice came from the shadows at the foot of the bed. “The more you fight, the tighter they become. A lesson in acceptance.”
Vexis emerged from the gloom. He was fully dressed in his customary dark mesh, every scale in place, the warlord restored. Only his eyes betrayed the memory of the night before. They burned with a focused, hungry light that had nothing to do with tenderness.
“What is this?” Her voice was raspy, sleep and fear tangling in her throat.
“A continuation.” He walked slowly alongside the bed, his clawed fingers trailing over the curve of her hip. The touch was possessively casual. “You gave me your treason. You gave me your body. But you hold your reactions close, Liora Voss. You control even your pleasure. I find I want the unchecked truth.”
He reached the space between her spreadeagle thighs and stopped. Liora’s heart hammered against her ribs. She was completely exposed, the cool air and his hot gaze touching every part of her.
“You’re tying me down to get the truth?” She forced a scoff, a brittle echo of her defiance.
“No.” He leaned over her, bracing his hands on the obsidian on either side of her head. His face was inches from hers. “I am tying you down because I enjoy the sight of you bound. Because the memory of Ryland’s fear-tactics hangs between us, and I will replace every one of them. His whispers in the dark with my commands in the light. His hurried groping with my leisurely consumption.” His voice dropped to a resonant whisper. “Shall we test how loud a human can scream when her pleasure is mandatory?”
A shudder, equal parts terror and desperate arousal, wracked her. She hated it. Hated how her body responded even as her mind screamed warnings. The slick heat between her legs was a betrayal.
He straightened, his eyes roaming her naked form. He pulled a small, cruel-looking blade from his belt—not metal, but a shard of black crystal. With deliberate slowness, he brought it to the neck of his mesh tunic and sliced downward, parting the material. He peeled it off, revealing the scaled, powerful torso beneath. He wasn’t fully aroused yet, but the intent was there, heavy in the air.
He knelt between her thighs. The bed was just the right height, bringing his mouth level with her core. He didn’t touch her. He simply looked, his gold eyes missing no detail.
“You are already wet for this,” he observed, his tone clinical. “Your body understands its purpose better than your pride does.”
“Go to hell,” she spat.
“Later.” He finally touched her. Not with his mouth, but with a single, razor-sharp claw. He traced the outer line of her labia, a feather-light scrape that made her jolt against her restraints. The living ropes tightened in response, a warning pulse. “Be still.”
He applied the faintest pressure, parting her. The cool air on her exposed, sensitive flesh was a shock. He studied her, as if reading some complex text. “You see? The truth is here. Swollen. Needy. This pretty cunt is mine. It came for me last night. It will come for me again. It has no allegiance to Earth or Command. Only to sensation.”
He lowered his head.
His tongue was a flat, hot stripe up her center. Liora cried out, her back arching off the bed. It was not the rough, thrilling friction from before. This was slow, meticulous, and devastatingly thorough. He licked into her with a scientist’s precision, finding every fold, every hidden spot, mapping her responses. He circled her clit with the very tip of his tongue, a maddeningly light tease.
“Don’t…” she gasped, hips straining.
“Don’t what?” he murmured against her, the vibration shooting through her like lightning. “Don’t make you come? It is mandatory, little spark. You have no veto.”
He closed his mouth over her clit and sucked.
The sound she made was ragged, animal. Pleasure, white-hot and coercive, slammed into her. She fought it, teeth gritted, muscles taut. She would not give him this. Not like this.
He read her resistance in the tension of her thighs. He added a hand, sliding two thick fingers deep inside her, curling them upward. The dual assault was intolerable. His mouth worked her with ruthless expertise, his fingers pumping in a steady, coring rhythm. The living ropes pulsed, a counter-rhythm to her pounding heart.
“I can taste your fight,” he said, lifting his head for a moment, his chin glistening with her. “It’s sour. Let it go. Scream for me. I want to hear the exact moment you choose to break.”
He redoubled his efforts. His tongue flicked rapidly. His fingers scissored inside her, stretching her, finding a spot that made her vision flicker. The coil in her belly, tight and burning, was forced to a critical mass. Her defiance was a thin shell around a torrent of need.
It cracked.
A broken, raw cry tore from her throat, echoing in the cavernous chamber. Her body convulsed, seizing around his fingers as the climax ripped through her, violent and involuntary. Wave after wave of intense, shocking pleasure, drawn from her by force of skill and will. She shook, powerless, sobbing for air.
He gentled his mouth, lapping softly as she came down, drawing out the last tremors. He withdrew his fingers slowly and rose above her, unbuckling his belt. His cock, fully erect now, was a thick, violet testament to his own arousal. He stroked himself slowly, watching the aftermath of her orgasm play out on her face.
“There,” he said softly. “Was that so hard?”
Tears of frustration and overwhelming sensation welled in her eyes. She blinked them away furiously.
He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head pushing against her swollen, sensitive flesh. He was not gentle. He pressed forward in one relentless, deep thrust, hilting himself inside her with a grunt. She was so wet, so open from her forced climax, that he slid in easily, but the fullness was still staggering.
“Now,” he said, bracing himself over her, his scaled arms corded with strain. “Now we see how loud you can scream.”
He fucked her. It was the only word for it. A hard, driving, possessive rhythm that gave no quarter. The bed was unyielding, her body his anchor. Each thrust jolted through her, sending fresh sparks through her over-sensitized nerves. The sound of their coupling was brutal—the wet slap of skin and scale, his guttural breaths, the sharp, rhythmic creak of the living ropes as she strained against them.
“This is what you are now,” he gritted out, his control veneer-thin. “My turncoat. My pleasure-pet. Look at you. Taking an alien cock so deep, your human commanders would vomit to see it.”
His words were filth, but they were the truth she had chosen. They ignited her. Another orgasm, darker and deeper, began to coil in her gut, built from the ruins of her resistance.
“Vexis—” It was a surrender.
He read it in her voice. His rhythm fractured, becoming erratic, punishing. He drove into her with a final, brutal series of thrusts, his roar echoing off the obsidian walls as he came. She felt the hot flood of his release, and it triggered her own, a second, shuddering climax that left her blind and breathless.
He collapsed against her, his weight crushing, his face buried in her neck. The living ropes finally relaxed, their pulse slowing to a gentle, resting throb.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The vines pulsed on, indifferent.
Vexis shifted, rolling to his side but staying within the circle of her limbs, one heavy arm draped across her waist. He looked at her—really looked—his gold eyes searching her face, the tear-tracks, the parted lips.
He reached up and brushed a thumb over her bottom lip. His voice, when it came, was quiet, stripped of all performance. “The mirror on the wall,” he said. “It does not reflect our faces. It reflects potential. Futures. I have only ever seen shadows and ruin in it.”
He paused, his gaze holding hers with a terrifying intensity. “When I look at you now, I see only one shadow. And it is mine.”