Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
His hands, resting on the arms of the strange, reclined chair, gripped the wood until it creaked in protest. Braze focused on the pressure, using the bite of pain in his palms to ground himself, to keep from bucking his hips up into that maddening, silky heat.
He stared at the back of her head, at the elegant line of her neck where he’d kissed her, at the way the starry gown cascaded over the curve of her shoulders and left her back bare. He committed every detail to memory, using her beauty and his commitment to their shared mission as an anchor.
Hold on, he told himself. Just hold on. It can’t last forever.
The feast swirled around them—servants bearing platters of glazed, unrecognizable meats…the clatter of cutlery…the drone of conversation…and the wet, obscene sounds from the Empress’s concubine who was still tasting her pussy enthusiastically a few feet away.
It was a scene filled with opulence and depravity. But for Braze, the world had narrowed to a single, burning point of contact.
He wondered how long the feast would last and the thought was a dual-edged blade. Part of him—the part that needed so badly to come—hated it. He needed movement…friction…release. He needed to flip Kaitlyn over, tear those pretty lace panties aside, and plunge into her slick, wet heat—he needed to fuck her until they both forgot their own names. Being unable to do that was physically painful.
But the other part of him—the part that whispered “Mistress” when he thought of her—never wanted it to end. This suspended state of wanting…this public yet secret intimacy…was its own kind of perfection. It was a slow burn of tension that threatened to consume him utterly, and he found he was willing to burn for her—more than willing.
So he sat in the reclined chair—a living statue of desperate lust—and endured his painful paradise. He counted Kaitlyn’s breaths. He memorized the pattern of stars on her gown.
And he waited, in sweet, endless agony, for whatever came next.
13
KAITLYN
A lull in the conversation was filled by the arrival of servants bringing in a dish. They placed a heavy, iridescent bowl that reminded Kaitlyn of a huge clam shell before each guest at the high table. She looked down into hers and felt her stomach give a queasy roll.
It looked like some kind of escargot, but utterly alien. The snails themselves were huge—each one the size of her thumb—with fist-sized, spiral shells that weren’t pearlescent, but a dull, mottled grey-green that seemed to absorb the light. They were submerged in a thick, viscous gravy the color of pond scum—a green so deep it was nearly black—from which tiny, iridescent bubbles rose and popped with barely audible pffts.
Strangely, cutting through the visual horror was a smell that didn’t seem to go with the dish at all. It was cloyingly sweet—unmistakably the scent of overripe strawberries.
The conflict between the disgusting sight and overwhelmingly sweet smell was deeply unsettling, Kaitlyn thought.
“Ah, the glimmer-marsh are here!” the Empress exclaimed with delight, not pausing the rhythmic rocking of her hips against her concubine’s face. “You must try one, my dear Ambassadress. They are a delicacy.”
“Oh, thank you,” Kaitlyn said automatically, reaching to pluck one of the shells out of the grayish-green slime.
But the Empress shook her head.
“Oh no, my dear! The shell is far too caustic to touch. Use the tongs, and the extractor.”
Kaitlyn looked and saw that beside the bowl were two utensils—a pair of delicate, bone-white tongs, and a long, needle-like fork with four wickedly sharp, slender tines that looked more like surgical instruments or torture devices than cutlery.
Her appetite—already tenuous—had now vanished completely. But she’d been on enough diplomatic missions to hostile worlds to know the first rule—you never, ever refused the host’s food. To do so was the gravest insult.
She thought of the rubbery, still-pulsing grishnak liver she’d choked down on the desert world of Xylos Prime. The taste of its coppery blood had lingered on her tongue for days. Or what about the fermented vlorp eggs on New Thessaly, which had burst in her mouth with a taste like rotten cheese and ammonia? This couldn’t be worse than those.
At least she hoped not.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” she said, forcing a smile. Her fingers felt clumsy as she picked up the tongs. They were slick but she managed to clamp them around one of the grotesque shells, lifting it dripping from the green slurry. It was heavier than it looked.
Holding it steady, she took the sharp fork and aimed for the opening of the shell, trying to spear the creature within. At first, she couldn’t get it—the meat seemed stuck inside the shell.
With a slight grimace, Kaitlyn jabbed harder, twisted, and finally pulled out a glob of meat. It was a dull, purplish-grey, veined with iridescent blue, and it quivered at the end of the tines making her wonder, with horror, if it was actually still alive.