To my returning readers: Thank you for bearing with me through this long delay. The scope of the story has grown exponentially since I began, as has the cast of characters. I'm grateful for all the thoughtful feedback I've received thus far, and I hope to read more. After many revisions, here is the third chapter of Imperius.
To any new readers: While I do attempt to expound on the universe and the characters here, this story will make considerably more sense if you read the prior chapters first.
~*~
Lilah shifted, the clinking of her shackles accompanying the motion. She winced as the rough metal chafed at the already tender flesh of her wrists. The sensation summoned memories of being bound in an imperial slave caravan, ignoring the jeers of staring enemy soldiers. The last time she had felt so sore, it was due to a combination of rough handling and forced immobility as she was bound, naked and exhausted, amongst her fellow captives. This time the cause was somehow more humiliating—she had pulled at her chains in the throws of unwanted passion, pinned beneath the power and the dark allure of her enemy.
"You shouldn't struggle so much next time, Lilah," said Magnus, Praetor of the Imperius, with the dry humor that surprised her so frequently. He circled her, stern and imposing, but there was subtle thread of mischief in him, lurking in the curve of his lips and his potent gaze.
He had closed the view screen of his sky-ship, casting them in shadow and rendering him the only clear thing in the room.
It had been only the evening before that he had sent for her, a captive in chains, but it felt like an eon, offering no rest from the fear and treacherous desire he invoked in her.
Lilah knew she ought to hate him. Her captor, slaver, would-be destroyer of her country. But his attention was a heady thing, like the air of a thunderstorm, dark and entrancing. She found she couldn't always think under the weight of it. He had only to come near, and it was as though a mist descended over her thoughts, and warm desire flickered over her skin like flames, golden and feather soft. He stood, bare chested, and her own impulse to touch that bare, bronze skin made shudders ripple through her being.
He knows, she thought. He controls the speed of my pulse like the moon pulls the tides. There was a certain heat to his willpower, at once both predatory and playful.
She was kneeling on the floor before him, nude and vulnerable, her hands pulled behind her and her head lowered. Her sunlit curls took on a darker cast here, like polished gold falling in tumbling waves down her bare shoulders.
He touched her cheek, lifting her eyes to his.
"There are places in Drace for slave training. They are—by all accounts—unpleasant." His eyes, a stormy, hypnotizing grey, held hers in thrall. "I would spare you that, Lilah. But in return, you'll need to prove to me that you're responsive to my instruction." He paused, his eyes dark. "Unhook my pants."
She stared, baffled. Her hands were still bound behind her.
He raised his eyebrows at her, "Your mouth."
Her mouth.
She did try, ashamed and awkward as she felt doing so. It felt like minutes, and he waited patiently all the while, watching her lips fumble around the fabric and the clasp. It wanted finesse, knowing when the metal hook had been drawn inward enough to loosen and detach.
And she couldn't see, damn it. It felt impossible, sisyphean.
Magnus gazed at her impassively.
She took a steady breath, trying to silence her frustrated anger by reminding herself how much more humiliating things could be, to balance the knowledge that it was wrong with the awareness that it could be much, much worse.
She returned to the task, tuning out every other thought. When the hook broke free at last, she watched his phallus rise against the fabric beneath. He lifted it, held it out to her. She expected it to bob awkwardly, but it didn't. It stood, stiff and swollen before her, both intimidating and strangely beguiling, seeming larger than when she had first seen it. Purple veins stood out against the golden bronze skin, and she felt a delirious impulse to trace the lines of them.
The thought made her thank the heavens for her bindings.
"I trust you know what's expected of you?" he asked, his tone dryly solicitous, with that teasing undercurrent that seemed so strange alongside his superficial austerity, "Or do I need to instruct you?"
She promptly flushed, but met his eyes, shaking her head. He was still testing her, framing much of this as a favor to her, as generosity she needed to earn. He knew it was wrong, even owned it, but he used it all the same, gauging her ability to endure the indignity.
It wasn't easy. As much as she knew that it could be worse for her, there is a vast distance between a thing not being so bad as it might be and a thing being good. Knowing it and acceding anyway was both provoking and humiliating. He was baiting her defiance.
The thought unnerved her.
She lowered her lips to the edges of his member and kissed the skin tentatively. The appendage responded, swelling still larger. Her eyes darted to his, and his gaze was eloquent with hunger. "Use your tongue, Lilah," he ordered, his voice husky.
Perfidious desire stirred inside her, and it was a blessing to lower her head again. She touched her tongue to one of the veins, tracing a path against his skin. His hand came down on her hair, as heavy a weight as the incorporeal force of his will. His cock followed her movements as though it sensed her. It might have made her feel powerful if she weren't so keenly aware of being guided and gauged. She bathed his skin with her tongue, responding to silent commands until she felt nearly desperate with the need to please him, to satisfy the hunger she still felt radiating from him.
He groaned then, and pushed himself through her lips and steadily further into her mouth.
Her throaty whimpers seemed only to incite his passion to a hotter ferocity, and he drove his cock deeper until she sputtered. Then he eased, long enough to allow her to regain her composure, and then began again. The texture of him was soft and slick against her tongue, and yet the force of him against the roof of her mouth was hard and unyielding as stone. The whimpers rose again and again, and each time he buried his hands deeper within her hair, guiding her head with cruel precision as his thrusts gained speed. It seemed to go on and on, wherein one moment, she found her bearings and moved with him, and then the next where it was all she could do to steady her breathing.
When at last his taste flooded her mouth, salty and rich, he arched his head back, and his hands in her hair were vice grips.
"Swallow it," he instructed, lifting her face to his. His fingers played along the skin of her neck. She obeyed, her eyes locked with his. The warmth of it slid down her throat, viscid and heady.
