“Apex,” she gasped against my lips. “I think—I think I’m gonna…”
“Yes,” I hissed, triumphant. “Come, Atlanta. Come with me. Milk my cock with your hot, perfect cunt. Give me your pleasure, and I will give you mine.”
My balls tensed against her, so heavy I could hardly stand to wait so much as a thrust longer. But Atlanta was a generous queen. She did not make me wait. Her back arched beneath me as her legs encircled my waist. Her nails pressed into my shoulders, so hard I would be surprised if I did not find scratch marks there come morning. She let out a cry so loud and high, I would be even more surprised if the entire palace did not hear.
Good. I wanted them to hear—because when she came, she did so with my name on her lips.
“Apex!” she all but screamed.
I sank my teeth into her neck and my cock deep into her cunt as my balls throbbed and released. Hot cum gushed up from my tip, positioned exactly at her cervix. Flush with the entrance to her womb.
And though I knew I could not get her pregnant—it was not possible—in that moment, it was the only thing on my mind. Breeding her. Claiming her completely. Forever making her mine.
After, she cuddled against me as I wrapped her in my arms. She smiled up at me like I had just laid an entire universe at her feet. There was a strange look in her eyes, like she was about to fall asleep. She looked dazed.
“I wish…” She cut herself off, then giggled. “No. Never mind. Definitely not saying that right now.”
“Saying what?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I shifted to face her and ran my thumb over her lower lip.
“Tell me, Atlanta.”
She closed her eyes, still smiling. “It’s just stupid, Apex. And even if it wasn’t, I shouldn’t say it.”
“But I want to hear it.” I smiled back at her when she fluttered her eyes open again. They were so green. Like an ocean covered in life-giving algae. Like an emerald, perfectly cut, glistening in in the light. Like green grass beneath our feet, darkened with blood. “I want to hear your every thought. I want to listen to everything you have to say.”
“I just…” Atlanta shifted her hand to her belly, just over the mound of her sex, and laughed. “I wish you could, you know. Knock me up. I don’t know how Savannah managed it, with the birth control implants we have and all, but…I wish you could anyway. Then I could be yours. But don’t say it—I know exactly how stupid that sounds.”
I only laughed and kissed her again. But from the way my heart had skipped a beat at the mere suggestion of it, the simple concept that someday, somehow, I could possibly stir life in Atlanta’s womb…
Of course I wished the same as her. In that moment, it had seemed the only rational thing to want. The most natural thing I could ever do.
But I also knew something else, something that stirred less wholesome thoughts in me.
Idria had told me to do whatever it took to make myself into someone Atlanta could trust, but this night—this perfect, exquisite moment—I did not do any of this for Idria.
I did this for Atlanta.
I did it for myself.
15
Atlanta
“Another ball, another feast.” I groaned as Apex led me through the throngs of elaborately dressed courtiers in Queen Lieja’s ballroom. “Doesn’t it ever get old for these people? Surely they have something better to do here than just eat and dance and judge each other.”
“They do not,” Apex assured me. “Nightmoor is their prison just as much as it is yours. Do not let the fine dining and joyful music mislead you. This is their sentence for their crimes, whatever they may be. Endless eating and drinking. Endless dancing. Endless judgment from their peers.”
“That seems like a pretty half-assed punishment to me.” I gave a side-eye to a busty green-skinned woman, her face painted white with rouge on her cheeks and lips. Her violet hair was piled high atop her head like some of the women I’d seen in classic French paintings, but her entire outfit was made up of diamonds hanging from glimmering silver chains. She threw her head back and laughed as a purple, tentacled alien ate pieces of fruit from her cleavage while a blue-skinned alien kissed her neck from behind. “They look like they’re having the time of their lives.”
“Appearances can be deceiving at court—especially the one here at Nightmoor. Watch her carefully—but do not stare.”
We did a loop of the room so I could keep sight of the alien woman out of the corner of my eye. It took a bit, but soon the male aliens who had been doting on her wandered off after a tall, silver-skinned alien who was wearing even less than she was. As they left her, I saw her eyes dart around the room almost frantically as she looked for someone new to entertain her. That flash of terror and abandonment before she found a new target was almost heartbreaking—though, it was hard to feel real sympathy for her without knowing her crimes.
“They’re all lonely,” I said softly. “I guess I see what you mean.”
“All courts are lonely places,” Apex agreed. “They are only attended by those who wish to climb socially, so they might better their own lives. The difference here is that no matter who these prisoners appease or what they do, there is nowhere to climb to. Their prison is a gilded one, but a gilded cage is still a cage.”
“I remember.” I still hadn’t forgotten my own gilded cage—the literal one that Lieja had put me in before Apex talked her into releasing me into his care. “I guess I have a lot to thank you for. You
