Chapter 2: The Beast Enters
The wait stretched, thin and agonizing. Every second in the silence was a tiny eternity. Veyla’s arms, bound behind her, began to ache in a deep, mundane way. The cold air raised gooseflesh on her skin. The gag was a constant, dull pressure, her saliva soaking the rubber, the straps cutting into the corners of her mouth. She focused on the drain beneath her feet, a dark circle in the pale floor. This was the reality. Not the throne room, not the fluttering silks. This cold, this ache, this utter helplessness. It was more honest than any state dinner.
Then, a sound.
Not the hydraulic sigh of the door. A heavier, metallic clunk from within the wall itself. A bolt retracting. The door panel slid aside, not quickly, but with a slow, deliberate grind.
He filled the doorway.
Kaelen Drayk was a solid wall of a man, his shoulders nearly brushing the frame. He wore simple black combat trousers and a sleeveless undershirt that did nothing to hide the landscape of scars and corded muscle on his arms and chest. A broken nose sat crookedly above a mouth set in a flat, uninterested line. His eyes were the colour of slag, and they swept over her without a flicker of recognition or awe.
He stepped in. The door ground shut behind him.
His boots, heavy and scuffed, made a solid tok-tok-tok sound on the floor as he circled her. He didn’t speak. The only sounds were his footsteps, her ragged breathing through her nose, and the low hum of the lights. He completed a full circuit, stopping in front of her again. His gaze was clinical, assessing the bindings, the gag, the red marks Elara’s hands had left on her breasts.
A low, rumbling sound came from his chest. It wasn’t quite a laugh. It was the sound of a man looking at a tool and finding it adequate.
“Look what they left for me,” he muttered, his voice a gravelly baritone that seemed to vibrate in the sterile air.
His hand moved, too fast for her to flinch. It wasn’t a gentle touch. He grabbed a fistful of her platinum hair, coiled so perfectly earlier, and yanked her head back sharply. The pain was immediate, a bright, tearing sensation at her roots. Her neck was forced into a painful arch, her violet eyes staring up at the featureless ceiling.
He leaned in close. She could smell him—sweat, metal, and something dark like engine oil. He studied her exposed throat, her strained face, the tears of pain already welling in her eyes.
“Clean,” he grunted, as if checking the teeth of an animal. He released her hair with a slight push, letting her head fall forward. “Expensive, though. You can always tell.” His boot scuffed against the floor near her bare feet. He hawked and spat. The wet sound, the sight of the spittle landing so close to her toes, sent a violent, shameful thrill through her.
He stepped around her again, his fingers tracing the line of her spine from her neck down to the small of her back. The touch was impersonal, like checking the seam of a garment. He stopped behind her.
“You’re going to be a good little hole, aren’t you?” he asked. The question was flat, rhetorical. He didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t want one.
There was the whisper of leather against fabric, a metallic click. She couldn’t see, but her whole body tightened, anticipating. The air shifted behind her.
The first impact was a revelation.
It wasn’t a hand. It was harder, broader. The leather paddle cracked against the soft flesh of her backside with a sound that was both hollow and shockingly loud. Pain exploded, white-hot and spreading, a stark, vivid brand against her skin. A strangled, guttural scream was torn from her, utterly muffled by the gag, emerging as a desperate, nasal whine. Her body jerked against the ropes, but there was nowhere to go.
Heat bloomed where he’d struck, a fierce, spreading blush that felt like it was glowing.
He didn’t speak. He just swung again.
Crack.
This one landed lower, on the sensitive curve where her ass met her thigh. The pain was different, sharper, deeper. She cried out again, her knees buckling slightly, tears now streaming freely down her cheeks, mixing with the saliva on her chin.
“Stand up,” he said, his voice bored.
She forced her legs straight, a sob hitching in her chest.
He leaned close, his mouth near her ear. His breath was hot. “You asked for this. Remember that. You paid for it. You’re just a rich bitch who gets off on being a punching bag. Makes my job easy.”
Each word was a shard of ice, precisely aimed. They stripped her faster than the clothes had. Princess. Heir. Dynasty. They were ash. All that remained was the truth he spoke: a rich bitch, a punching bag.
He walked over to the velvet-lined table she had noticed dimly upon entering. Her vision was blurry, but she heard the clink of metal. He returned, circling to face her. In his hand was the weighted collar, a broad band of black leather with a heavy O-ring at the front. He didn’t ask. He simply unbuckled it and fastened it around her neck, snapping it shut. It was heavy, a constant, grounding pressure on her collarbones. A leash. A brand.
He attached a short lead to the O-ring and gave it a sharp, testing tug. Her head snapped forward. “Good,” he said.
His free hand came up and patted her reddened cheek, not gently, but with a condescending familiarity. “We’re just getting started, hole.” He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on the wetness between her legs, a betrayal her body offered freely. A faint, cold smile touched his mouth. “Seems you’re ready. Let’s not keep you waiting.”
He pulled on the lead, turning her roughly towards the restraints bench. The metal cuffs gleamed under the lights, waiting, open.
The metal cuffs gleamed under the lights, waiting, open.
Kaelen guided her with the lead, his movements efficient and devoid of ceremony. When they reached the bench, he didn’t bother with the cuffs first. He planted a hand between her shoulder blades and shoved, hard. The world tilted. Veyla’s breath left her in a muffled gasp as she pitched forward. Her bound hands, trapped behind her, did nothing to break her fall. Her chest and stomach hit the cool, padded leather of the bench, her face turning to the side, pressed against the same unyielding surface. The weighted collar dug into her throat from this new angle.
He loomed over her. One heavy knee planted itself between her shoulder blades, pinning her upper body down. She felt his hands on her still-bound wrists, fiddling with the ropes. He didn’t untie them. He released a catch on the bench instead, and a moment later, her wrists were seized and locked into the cold, waiting cuffs. The mechanism clicked with finality. The separate, coarse rope was cut away with a quick slice of a blade she never saw.
Her arms were now stretched forward, secured apart. He moved down her body. His knee left her back, only for his hands to grip her hips and yank them downward. Her knees hit the floor on either side of the bench’s base, leaving her ass raised, exposed. He pulled her ankles back, one at a time, clamping them into cuffs at the bench’s legs. The position was utter, complete, and left her utterly open.
He walked around to the front of the bench, his boots stopping in her line of sight. She could only see from his knees down. He crouched. One calloused hand grabbed her jaw, his fingers biting into her cheeks, forcing her face to turn and look up at him.
His expression held a detached, almost artistic curiosity. “Look at you,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “All trussed up.王室のオナニー素材.” He used the gutter dialect of the lower orbital docks, the words intentionally crude and foreign. “A fancy, tied-up little fuck-toy. Is this what you dream about in your big, empty palace? Being locked down so you can’t run from what you really are?”
He shifted his grip from her jaw to her hair, his fingers tangling in the platinum strands. He pulled her head up just enough to smack her, open-handed, across the face.
The impact was sharp, bright. It wasn’t meant to injure, just to degrade. Her head rocked to the side, the sting blooming on her cheek. Tears, never far, spilled over.
“Stupid slut,” he muttered, almost conversationally. He pulled her head back again by the hair, forcing her to look at him. “Couldn’t just get a normal screw, could you? Had to have the whole production. Had to be made into nothing.” He spat the word ‘nothing’ like it was a flavor he enjoyed.
He released her hair, letting her head thump back onto the bench. He stood up, moving out of her sight again. Panic, sweet and desperate, fluttered in her chest. She was blind to him now, only able to hear the rustle of clothing, the sound of a belt being undone. The cool air touched new areas of exposed skin.
Then he was there, behind her, his presence a radiating heat. One hand clamped on her hip, hard enough to bruise. The other fist plunged into her hair again, yanking her head back sharply, arching her spine.
“This is all you’re for,” he growled, his mouth close to her ear. “Remember that. You’re a hole. A warm, wet, useless hole.”
He drove into her in one brutal, unforgiving motion.
A ragged, animal sound was torn from Veyla’s throat, swallowed by the gag. The stretch was a shock, a claiming. There was no tenderness, no preparation beyond the violence that had come before. It was just use. His grip on her hair was iron, holding her head back at a painful angle as he set a ruthless, pounding rhythm against her locked-down body. Each thrust slammed her forward into the bench, the edge digging into her hips, the collar choking her. The pain from her hair, her ass, her filled and used core, all fused into a single, white-hot strand of existence.
He used her. That was the only truth. He grunted with effort, the sounds harsh and functional. He didn’t praise her. He didn’t call her pretty. He just held her hair and took his pleasure from the vessel she had paid to become.
“Yeah,” he breathed, the word hot and ragged against her ear. “That’s it. Just a thing. A fucking thing.”
His rhythm faltered, the brutal pace stuttering to a stop. The sudden stillness was worse than the movement. His weight remained on her, inside her, a hot, oppressive anchor. The hand in her hair tightened, twisting.
"You're too quiet," he growled, his breath hot and damp against her ear. "Just taking it. That's not begging."
He released her hair. She heard the click of a buckle behind her head, then the straps of the gag went slack. He ripped the sodden rubber from her mouth. It peeled from her lips with a wet pop, and she gasped, drawing in a shuddering, ragged breath of the cold, ozonated air. Her jaw ached with a deep, welcome throb.
Before she could even swallow, his fingers were there. They shoved past her teeth, pressing down on her tongue, rough and tasting of salt and leather.
"Beg for it, you stupid bitch," he commanded, his voice a low, vibrating threat. "Go on. Use that royal mouth for what it's worth."
She tried to form words, but his fingers were an intrusion, a violation that made speech impossible. A pathetic gurgle escaped her, mingled with spit. Tears of pure humiliation, hotter than those from the pain, flooded her eyes and tracked through the sweat on her temples.
He laughed, a short, mean sound. "Can't even do that right. Useless." He withdrew his fingers, slick with her saliva. "Beg for it, slut!"
"I... please," she croaked, her voice raw and unfamiliar, shredded by muffled screams. "Please, I..."
"You what?" he mocked, leaning close again. "You need it? You want to be used? Say it."
"I want it," she whispered, the confession scalding her throat. "Please."
But she was moaning, too. The sound was low and trapped, betraying her completely. Her body, pressed against the bench, trembled not with revulsion but with a humiliating, aching need. The pain, the exposure, his absolute control—it was a furnace, and she was burning in it.
He heard it. Of course he did. "You love it," he stated, no question in his tone. "Disgusting. A princess who gets off on being a worthless set of holes." He pulled out of her suddenly, the emptiness a shock.
He walked around the bench, his boots loud in the quiet. He stood before her, where she could see him. He was hard, glistening with her. He grabbed the weighted collar at her throat and used it to drag her head forward, off the bench.
"Open," he said.
She did, obediently, her mouth falling open. He guided himself between her lips, not entering, just resting the heavy, heated tip on her tongue. The intimate, musky taste of herself filled her mouth.
"This is what you are," he said, looking down at her with those slag-colored eyes. "A throat to fuck. A worthless thing." He pushed in slowly, deliberately, watching her face contort. He didn't let her adjust. He just fed himself deeper, until she choked, her body seizing against the restraints. "Maybe I’ll keep you like this. Locked in this room. Let my friends come have a turn with the royal cunt. A little party. Would you like that? Being community property?"
The image, vile and explicit, ignited something dark and yearning in her gut. She groaned around him, the vibration earning a grunt from him. He pulled back slightly, then shoved forward again, fucking her mouth with the same detached brutality he’d used elsewhere. Her nose pressed against his skin. Tears and spit ran freely down her chin and neck, soaking the collar. She couldn’t breathe. The world narrowed to the stretch of her jaw, the choking blockage in her throat, the sound of his rough pleasure.
He withdrew completely, leaving her gasping and dripping. He moved behind her again, and she felt him push back inside her with a single, forceful thrust. One of his hands clamped over her mouth, his palm sealing her lips and nose. The other wrapped around the front of her throat, squeezing just enough to pressure her windpipe.
"Shut the fuck up, stupid slut," he hissed, his voice thick with impending release. He pounded into her, his hips slamming against her bruised skin, each impact jarring through the hand on her mouth and the arm around her neck. Spots danced at the edges of her vision, a mixture of asphyxiation and overwhelming sensation. She was nothing but a vessel for his momentum, a toy being broken.
With a final, deep grind, he pulled out. His hand left her mouth. She sucked in a heaving, sobbing breath.
He came around in front of her, gripping himself. His other hand swung fast, smacking her hard across the cheek. The sting was blinding. "Open."
Dazed, she let her mouth fall slack. He smacked her again, the flat of his hand catching her tongue this time, a sharp, shocking pain that made her eyes fly wide. In that instant of stunned openness, he finished. He painted stripes of heat across her tongue, her teeth, her cheeks. It landed in her eyelashes, on the bridge of her nose.
He stepped back, looking at his work. She hung from the restraints, panting, covered in sweat and spit and him, his release warm on her face. The taste filled her mouth.
He wiped himself off on her hair, a casual, finishing gesture. He didn’t say another word. He simply turned, collected his things, and walked to the door. It ground open, then shut behind him, leaving her alone in the bright, silent room with the taste of degradation thick on her tongue.