Chapter 33: The Debt Collector's Visit
The victory from my practice felt like a plaster mask—stiff, decorative, and already cracking. It lasted three days. Then the summons came, not on parchment, but through Jabari’s silent, bald chamberlain who appeared at my door as I broke my fast. “The King of Kush and the Lady Neferti request the honor of your company tonight at the second watch,” he intoned, his eyes glassy. A request from a king was a command. My stomach turned to stone.
Benedetta fretted. Marisa sharpened a knife, her face grim. “It’s a trap. Obviously.”
“All of his chambers are traps,” I replied, dismissing them. I dressed not as a supplicant, but as a general for a covert campaign: a sheath of black linen, my hair braided tight as a rope, no jewelry save my signet ring. The armor of no-nonsense. I would not be caught in vapors of desire this time. I would be impervious.
Jabari’s private chamber was as I remembered: a cavern of heat and looming shadows, the air thick enough to sip. He lounged on the basalt throne, a cup in hand, watching me enter with the amused detachment of a man observing ants. Neferti stood beside him, a vision in gold leaf and malice. She wore a girdle of linked lapis beads that did nothing to conceal the triangle of dark hair beneath, and her smile was a sickle moon.
“Empress,” Jabari greeted, his voice a low rumble. “You look… prepared for a council of war.”
“One must be prepared for anything in your presence, Jabari,” I said, my tone carefully balanced between warmth and ice.
Neferti glided forward. “We were so inspired by your last visit. The tension was… exquisite. It begged for resolution.” Her eyes swept over me. “You wish for control. Jabari wishes for spectacle. I propose a game that satisfies both.”
I did not blink. “Name it.”
“A contest. A test of will, of physical fortitude.” She gestured to a low, wide divan heaped with furs that had been placed before the throne. “We lie together. A sixty-nine. A position of perfect reciprocity and perfect inequality. We each take an obsidian egg.” From a small ivory box, she produced two spheres of polished black stone, each the size of a ripe plum. They drank the firelight. “We insert them. The first to relax enough to lose her egg… loses. The winner receives the privilege of finishing upon Jabari. The loser…” She let the word hang. “The loser serves the winner for the evening. In any capacity she requires.”
My blood went cold, then hot. This was not about sex. This was about humiliation, engineered with cruel precision. It targeted the very shame I had been nursing—the lack of control, the unfinished climax. It forced intimacy with my rival while a man sat in judgment. It was barbaric. It was brilliant.
“And if I decline?” I asked, knowing the answer.
Jabari sipped his wine. “Then you concede. And we will know the fire in you is mere gossip.”
I was in the arena before I even moved. There was no exit. My pride, my throne, my very identity as the unassailable Empress was on the line. I thought of the slave boy’s terrified eyes, my own detached study. That had been theory. This was brutal, live combat.
“I do not decline,” I said, and began to untie the belt of my dress.
Neferti was already disrobing, her movements fluid, unashamed. We faced each other naked beside the divan. Her body was leaner than mine, all tight muscle and sharp angles. My own curves felt suddenly soft, vulnerable. I swallowed the thought.
We took the obsidian eggs. They were shockingly cold, unnervingly smooth. I turned away from her, from Jabari’s gaze, and guided the sphere to my entrance. The cold was a shock, the stretch a burning, full ache. I breathed out, forcing muscles to yield, to accept the invasion. I heard Neferti’s soft, controlled exhale behind me. We both succeeded.
Without a word, we arranged ourselves on the furs. The scent of them—animal, old, vaguely metallic—filled my nose. She positioned herself above me, her thighs framing my vision, that dark triangle looming close. I felt her weight settle over my mouth as I did the same to her. The intimacy was instant and suffocating. There was no hiding here, no artful technique. Only function.
Jabari’s voice came from above, a lazy commentary. “Begin.”
It was not like the practice. There was no cataloging of responses, only the overwhelming present of her taste, her scent, the press of her body against my face. I used my tongue, my lips, with a ruthless, mechanical efficiency, the same focus I applied to reading a spy’s report. I could feel her doing the same, a mirror image of determined motion. It was oddly desolate.
The real battle was elsewhere. Inside. The obsidian egg was a heavy, alien pressure, a constant, demanding presence. My body, under the dual onslaught of the work I was performing and the sensations I was receiving, kept threatening to clench, to tighten around it in pleasure. That was the trap. To climax would mean a spasm, a relaxation, a loss. Pleasure was the enemy. I had to wall it off, separate the work of my mouth from the rising heat in my belly.
Neferti’s breathing changed. It hitched, then smoothed out deliberately. She was struggling too. Her thighs tensed against my ears.
I concentrated on the cold weight inside me. I imagined it as my own crown, a core of black stone that anchored me. I pictured the throne room, the dry administrative lists of grain yields from Upper Egypt. I recited them in my head.
Her movements became more aggressive, a frantic rhythm. She was trying to overwhelm me, to break my concentration and force a climax. A thin, desperate sound escaped her. It fueled me. My own technique became sharper, more punishing. I was not giving pleasure; I was waging war with my mouth.
Sweat slicked our skins. The air was a furnace. Time lost meaning. There was only the strain of muscle, the metallic taste of effort, and the terrible, building pressure that threatened to shatter my focus. My body was screaming for release, a tidal wave held back by the thinnest dam of will.