Royal Treatment

by Cecilia Tan

Circlet Press, Inc.

Cambridge, MA

Royal Treatment
Copyright © 2012 by Circlet Press, Inc.

Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
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Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

About the Author

Contents

I wasn’t supposed to see what I did. I was supposed to be
elsewhere, occupied, doing what doesn’t matter now.

I wasn’t supposed to see my father rocked back on his heels

by the power of a slap so hard that it sounded like a gunshot in
the spare, hard room he used as his audience chamber. The orbital
station he called home was never luxurious; softness did not suit
him. I was too late to hear what he had said, or see what he had
done, to deserve such a blow. I ducked to the side of the doorway.

“Give me your hand,” I heard a female voice say. The woman

in the room with him, by the glimpse I had caught of her, was
someone important. I dared a peek around the edge of the open
hatch. She was in bright scarlet, the royal house’s color, carried a
rod of office, and had a long, red cloth woven through the mound
of hair on her head.

My father opened his hand, palm up, and extended it toward

her. She placed something in it, and I saw his fist clench instantly,
the cords of his muscles and veins standing out as he squeezed
whatever it was as hard as he could. It was hurting him, as if she
had dropped a hot coal into his palm, yet the pain never registered
on his face.

She smiled. “You always were a stoic one.”
He nodded.
“You’ve been hiding him long enough,” she then said, and I

suddenly knew why I had been sent off on an errand just before.
Any thought I had of sneaking back to my duties disappeared. This
visit from an important personage was about me.

“I haven’t been hiding him,” he said, his broad shoulders

tensing visibly. “His mother’s people...”

“Come now, come now.” she said, her voice sinuous and light.

“We know about the school on Phynia, about the girls whose

Part One

parents called them suddenly home. He’s one of us, Audan. You of
all people must recognize that.”

“I will train him, as I have done before. When he is ready.”
“He is ready. He is more than ready. It is you who are not ready

to face that he is not a boy anymore. He is twenty-three, Audan.”

“I know how old my own son is.”
The bantering tone she had been using evaporated. “Trella will

not be denied in this. You will send him to Baelia where he will
meet the others. Tomorrow. Be thankful I am not taking him with
me now.”

And then I saw something else I had never seen. Which was

my father, slave trader, slave trainer, and former high priest of the
Empire, dropping to his knees. The woman parted her scarlet robes
and he placed a cursory kiss upon her mound. Before he could
rise, though, she had the rod on his shoulder. She lifted one elegant
leg in scarlet tightskin over his other shoulder, and then I could
no longer see his face because her robes were in the way. By the
sound of it, though, he was licking her, and she was enjoying it.

I turned away in shock. Yes, of course it was within her rights

as a noble superior to demand such favors, but as far as I knew it
was rarely done other than as a part of a public abasement. And I
had never seen my father abased before anyone before. I knew, of
course, that he had been through the full training, had years as an
acolyte to the priesthood as well as years at court, so surely in his
lifetime he must have spent as many hours on his knees as any
man of his position. But I had never seen it. I had never met a
Kylaran who outranked him. And certainly never one who
demanded her full right.

I also suspected, as it was certainly rumored, that my father

had not touched a woman sexually since my mother’s death. Men
yes, both slaves and peers, but women, no.

If the long disassociation with the female genitalia had affected

him, I could not tell. It seemed mere moments before she began
to cry out, and I heard the sound of the rod falling to the floor,
then something heavier. I peeked again and saw she had collapsed,

Royal Treatment

and he now had his arms locked around her thighs as his tongue
continued to work, as her cries rose and fell and rose again. Now
she was trying to push him away, but weakly, her hands barely
responding as her body arched with pleasure and sensation and
she writhed.

When he pulled away, he remained on his knees, eyes up,

hands open on thighs, perfect posture. Hers was somewhat less
than perfect as she stood, still slightly a-shudder. He sat placidly,
the only evidence of his exertions was the sweat making a fringe
of the gray hairs behind his ears. She opened her mouth as if to
say something, then thought better of it, and instead left through
the opposite hatch, the one toward the airlock.

I waited until he had regained his feet to come into his

presence, and I did not kneel when I approached him. Between
us, we only used the protocols when I was actively training. But
there were advantages to not looking one’s superior in the eye.

“You need to learn to hide your emotions better,” was the first

thing he said. I suppose it was obvious from the expression on my
face that I had just seen everything. He looked at me as I stood
there, trying to think of what to say, what to ask him. “Everything
changes now,” he added. His eyes swept the room. The space was
curved, all white and gray, as antiseptic as the medical center and
as empty as a tomb, save two chairs on a raised platform at one
end.

I found my tongue. “When she said ‘Trella’...”
“She meant Princess Trella. You’re to join a group of others in

forming a circle for her.” He used the old word for “circle,” torun.
The word had echoes in it of our words for collar, and for
embrace, and for strangle. He went to sit in the left hand chair,
then sat staring at the palm of his hand.

“Are you hurt?”
“No. Siksie’s little agony bomb left no marks.” He held up the

hand to prove it. “She’s a vicious one,” he told me then. “And I
will apologize to you now in advance for the suffering she is going
to inflict on you to get back at me.”

Cecilia Tan

“For taking control from her,” I stated.
“Exactly,” he said, his approval radiating from his eyes as he

almost smiled before he became serious again. “But don’t think she
is so easily beaten. I took my one opportunity and made it count.”

“I know how the game is played...”
“It’s not a game.” It was not like him to interrupt me. “I won’t

be able to protect you down there.”

I opened my mouth to say I could take care of myself, but this

time he stopped me before the words came out.

“No, you don’t understand. In the palace they are not just

about who is sleeping with whom and who is dominant to whom.
I could really lose you.”

“You mean she might make me her slave consort forever,” I

answered. “I know that. Anyone in the circle could...”

“Could end up dead,” he finished, finally shutting me up. It

was a signal that I should listen. I spread my feet slightly and settled
my weight on my legs. If he started to lecture I might be standing
there for a long time. “What the other sons and daughters of our
noble peers and superiors might do for power, what rules they
will follow and which they will break, I don’t know. You will have
no allies but your own wits.”

He rubbed his knuckle hard against his chin. “I always knew

you would someday have to take a place in our society,” he said.
“Even when I didn’t want to admit it to myself. But I didn’t think
it would be quite like this. Right into the palace!”

“Surely one of the others will be eager for the position and the

rest of us are just there for show,” I said.

He huffed. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the choosing were

rigged. But things are rarely so simple. Those who bear a grudge
against me would think nothing of taking you apart just to see me
suffer.”

He proceeded to give me a crash course in palace politics as

they had been when he was my age and what he knew now. I had
been on and off Kylar many times in my life. I wasn’t a complete
stranger to the protocols, the hierarchies, and the rules, even if

Royal Treatment

Audan had, for his own reasons, raised me outside of them for the
most part. I was also confident in my abilities to withstand pain
and pleasure, and to deal out both. But we didn’t know anything
about Trella, who had been raised mostly in seclusion, and what
we knew about the Emperor himself, well, let’s just say there was
a reason my father lived on an orbital platform and not on the
surface of the planet. I still didn’t know exactly what had caused
the falling out between the two of them years ago. Once upon a
time they had been so close that my father named his first born
son, me, after the man. Certainly many Kylaran nobles did the
same, it was a common enough custom, but not the sort of thing
Audan would have done without a reason.

He also would not have kept me standing there through the

whole conversation without a reason. But maybe he had said it
himself. Everything changes now.

“Obviously, I have to go,” I said when he wound down. “But

is there something you want me to do?”

He made a noise, half-grunt, half-gurgle. “Your mother wanted

you to be your own man. In her eyes, that meant not being...
dependent on the Kylaran way.” He suddenly glanced up, as if
realizing I was still standing, and indicated the chair next to him
with a flick of his eyes.

I sat. “What do you mean?”
“She felt a person had to be a person first and a master or a

slave second. I promised her I would give you the chance to
discover who you were outside of dominance and submission.”
His eyes lingered on the chair as if he had never seen it before.
“Outside... protocol.” He seemed almost chagrined at how easily
the two of us had slipped into a formal mode. “That’s why you
spent most of your life away from here.”

“But you knew this might happen.” I thought about the two

times he had sent me to foster on the homeworld, once when I
was seven, and once when I was fourteen.

“I had to respect her dying wish, but also prepare you for a

life here, if you wanted it.”

Cecilia Tan

“You never told me it was because of her.”
He didn’t answer that, merely let the statement hang there as

truth. Then he said, “I don’t believe you can be anything other
than what you are,” and I realized we agreed. Perhaps my mother
was able to make a separation where the Kylaran way stopped and
the Kylaran personality started, but Audan didn’t and neither did
I. “And I am sure the Emperor thinks that, as well.”

“It sounds like someone has been watching me.” My sudden

recall from Phynia was making more sense to me now, too. I had
been engaging in, shall we say, a healthy sexual life while there
and had created a circle of willing slaves of my own there. Phynian
girls are very particular but very specific about their virginity, and
that had made it a particularly interesting challenge for me. And
even the woman who had just been here, what had she said? He
is one of us?

“Trella wants you for some reason, Arshan.” My father stepped

down off the dais and we faced each other eye to eye. “I don’t
know if it is revenge for something I did, or if it is part of some
other scheme we have yet to uncover, or if maybe she just likes
what she sees. All I know is, if she bonds you for life as her slave...
“ He grimaced at the thought.

“How do you know I wouldn’t be happy as her slave?” I asked

him, smirking at my own thought. “Maybe she’s what I’ve been
waiting for.”

He gripped me by the shoulders. “Don’t joke about it!” His

eyes searched mine.

“Didn’t you teach me yourself that even the most dominant of

souls must serve sometimes?”

“I know you, Arshan. You were not made to be bonded as a

slave. Your soul would die.”

I shrugged off his intensity, though not his grip. “It’s not as if

I haven’t served before. Remember when you sent me to Mirell’s
house?” Mirell had been cruel and sweet to me, exacting and never
skimpy with either punishment or reward. I remembered her
fondly.

Royal Treatment

“No. This wouldn’t be like training. This would be forever, a

pact drawn in blood in front of the gods.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the gods anymore.”
He stared at me. “The gods are real, Arshan,” he said softly. “I

just no longer follow them.”

Cecilia Tan

I landed on the surface of the planet the next day, escorted by a scar-
let-robed acolyte who was silent for the entire trip. She left me in a
sleep chamber in the Sunset Palace, the “vacation” palace, if you will,
where the princess was gathering all her potential suitors.

Suitors was not the right word, but partners wasn’t right either.

Candidates, perhaps? Out of the circle, she would draw not only her
slave consort, but possibly other important figures in her court. That
such a group had not been convened for Trella before now was
curious, as some young royalty in our history gathered their peers
when they were barely teenagers or younger. Some of the groups
had been known to bond strongly and stick together through difficult
times. But it was as Audan had said. Many of the old rules and the
old ways were being forced to change, even as those ruling kept the
ones they liked.

The chamber was sparsely furnished, a strange mix of ancient

and new. The bed was a thoroughly recent construction, with ties
and attachment points cleverly hidden around an indestructible
frame, but the bookshelf was old, real wood, and the books looked
even older. I was afraid to touch them. It was clear no one lived in
this room; it was for visitors.

I met my fellows that night when we convened in a high-

ceilinged hall for dinner. A circle is supposed to be eight, a sacred
number, which if Trella were included in that number would make
seven of the rest of us. Five women and one man besides me made
up our group of candidates, which seemed skewed toward the female
side. The other six mostly seemed younger than me, though not by
much. Trella was not at the table, though. Instead, we were hosted
by Siksie—the woman who had delivered the ultimatum to my
father—and a bevy of house slaves who were silent around us, barely
noticed as they whisked delicacies in and out.

Part Two

Siksie sat at the head of the banquet table, resplendent in the

tightskin suit over which her robes flowed so smoothly. I was
seated at her right, where I had plenty of opportunity to see her
rod of office, which lay inert on the table between us. The handle
was thick, carved or formed out of some substance that might have
been wood or bone; the body tapered to an angular hook like a
bird’s beak. She was a gracious hostess, encouraging us to eat and
drink, telling us stories about the history of the castle, which had
been built in the days before space flight. The flagstones under our
feet were cut and laid two thousand years ago, the tapestries woven
six centuries back. But when the house slaves had cleared the
dishes and we had each savored a chilled glass of a strong cordial
I had never had before, she rose, raised her rod of office, and the
face of the friendly hostess fell away like a mask.

“There are no ranks here,” she said. Then she smiled as if she

had made a clever joke. “That is, among you seven, there are no
ranks. Your birth order, social station, none of that matters now
that you are within these walls.” She chuckled. “Trella and I, of
course, do have rank. As do the other members of the household,
the officers, staff, and trainers. Of course, we are the same as
always. Even the house slaves.”

She examined the crook at the end of her rod, as if something

interesting were written there. “You are lower than the house
slaves, of course.”

A gasp escaped from one of the women toward the end of the

table.

“You all begin at the bottom. Are you familiar with the tale of

Zal’s Ladder? As of this moment you are not even on the bottom
rung, yet. How you perform during your tenure will determine
the hierarchy within your little group and whether you rise in
station above others outside of your group, as well.” Her eyes
flicked to me. “Trella will be training you herself some of the time,
and one of you will bond to her, caishen to caitan.” She used the
formal words for master and slave, words which implied the bond
in their very meaning.

Cecilia Tan

I could sense the glances going from one to the other among

them, though I could not look away from Siksie, whose gaze stayed
on me. “I know. You’ve all been raised to be masterful and
dominant, your whole privileged, noble lives. You barely
remember what it was like to be subservient to someone other
than your sires.”

The rod came down on the table with a startling crack. “Well,

you’ll remember soon enough.”

With that, she stood and strode out of the room, leaving us

there talking amongst ourselves. Or, I should say, the others talked
amongst themselves while I sat and listened. Some of them had
known each other from society, others had just met tonight.
Already I could feel the shifting, though. Would friendships survive
the climbing of the ladder? And why did I get the feeling that the
odds were stacked against me?

“What does it mean that we’re lower than the house slaves?”

the red-haired woman on my right turned to me to say. Her name
was Miera and she was the daughter of a high-ranking official. She
was also the one person there I thought might be my age or older,
and I liked her voice and her smile. “They don’t really expect us
to grant them favors, do they?”

“Yes, we do.” A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who had been

stoking the fire spoke. She put aside the tool with which she had
been poking at the coals and came to stand in front of us. Her
voice quavered a tiny bit as she said “Her ex-excellence, the
Princess T-Trella expects the members of her house, slaves and all,
to abide by these rules.”

Miera laughed. “Look at you, a domestic slave all your short

life. Do you really have it in you to push us around?”

The young woman straightened her spine, glancing from

Miera to me. “Her Word is law.”

The other man in the group, Jelan, spoke next. “So, it is an

exercise in discipline, not dominance, am I right? You might be
the mousiest, most timid creature on solid ground, but the fact
that you are empowered by Her Word means we must submit?”

Royal Treatment

She nodded as if to thank him. “Exactly.”
“And we will be judged on how we... perform?” Miera could

not get the look of bemusement out of her face.

The slave nodded yes, a curt nod and then, again, glanced at

me before looking away. It was a noble’s nod, and we all smiled at
the slave trying to act in a way she never had before.

I stood, and Miera looked up at me in surprise—the surprise

widening her eyes still further as I executed a perfect obeisance
on my knees in front of the young woman. “May I please you?” I
said, ritual words I had not spoken in earnest in many years, only
in play. Well, and perhaps to me this was play, too. I had never been
one to pass up an opportunity to engage sensually with anyone...
and I had a hunch that it wasn’t strict obedience that would lift us
from one rung of the ladder to the next.

The young woman swallowed as if trying to decide what to do

next. In this position in the ritual I was hers to do with as she
pleased. She could take the poker out of the fire and singe my balls
with it if she wanted to. She could order me to fuck Miera silly. But
it wasn’t hard to read those glances in her eyes where desire had
been writ large.

“May I please you?’ I said again, more softly. I had a sudden

rush of feeling then, as if my own vulnerability suddenly sank in.
The sacrificial nature of that position, my palms up on my knees,
my eyes up, nothing hidden, sank in. What would she do to me?
But then she nodded and motioned me forward with a tiny
crooking of her finger. I moved, walking on my knees on the
ancient flagstones, and I heard the others chuckle behind me.

“Pretty good for a half-breed outworlder.” That had to be Kessa,

though I did not take my eyes off the young woman in front of
me. “You’d think he’d been trained as a slave.”

“He has,” one of the others half-whispered to her. “His father

believes in the old ways, I hear.” More chuckles from the others. By
abasing myself this way, they were certain I was now on the bottom
rung. “Looks like one of us might actually want to be slave consort,”
said the first voice again, and the others laughed— nervously.

Cecilia Tan

So, none of them wanted the position any more than I did. Had

I doomed myself by being the first to kneel? Somehow I doubted
it, but I had no time to think about that now. I had reached my
target and placed a tender kiss on the mound of the woman
standing over me. She wore dark blue tightskin with an apron
cinched over it; the cloth of the apron tickled my face as I did it,
which made me smile. She smiled back a coy, girlish smile. “Have
you ever been pleasured by a noble superior?” I asked her.

“Oh, uh... most certainly...” she answered, no doubt trying to

decide if some of the attentions other nobles had visited on her
could count as pleasure the way this would.

I took her hand then, and put one of her fingers into my mouth,

my eyes still searching hers. Her hands were soft, petal soft and
cool, and my tongue swirled around her fingertip as if it were a
different part of her anatomy. She flushed as if she could tell what
I was thinking. I slid the apron from her then and rubbed my face
against the sheen of her tightskin, my cheekbone bumping softly
over her mons as my breath, I knew, warmed her crotch.

“Here, my lady,” I said, drawing her down to me. “My lap is

much more comfortable than the stones.” It was not difficult to
find the seals in the tightskin and half-peel the uniform from her.
She was tiny in my arms, the pulse in her neck fluttering as I found
the erogenous zone there with my lips, as my fingers played over
her nipples.

I do not hurry in times like these. The others were perhaps rapt,

perhaps bored by the time I ceased with the light caresses that had
her bosom heaving and her legs quivering. I shifted us to the rug
in front of the fireplace, her skin glowing in the flamelight, and lay
her down on her back as my mouth crawled down her stomach.

She was making tiny noises of surrender even as my fingers

splayed her open and searched for her opening. I can’t help it. There
is a part of me that lives to hear that noise and always will. It is as
my father said, we cannot be other than what we are. I had until
that point remained flaccid, my penis obedient to my will,
determined to please only her, but when she began to whimper it
hardened and grew.

Royal Treatment

I ignored it, using my index finger to circle inside that first

ring of muscle, feeling her opening clamp down like a small
mouth itself. I thumbed her clitoris and looked into her face as I
did so. Her eyes were shut tight, her mouth open. I thrust my
tongue into her mouth at the same moment I thrust my fingers
deep inside her, and felt her entire body surrender to me. Inside
my head I was chuckling to myself. If Trella’s household was like
other traditional Kylaran houses, her slaves were not allowed to
come without her express permission. Who knew how long it had
been since this girl had come? Oh certainly to be humane they got
them off with inducers or occasional permitted frigs in the shower
every few weeks. But how long since anyone had teased her like
this, played her like this?

She had never stood any chance of dominating me, Trella’s

“word” or no. And my understanding of the game was different
from Jelan’s. I suspected we were going to have to find out who
was dominant to whom, not only among the seven of us, but
throughout the entire household. After tonight, they might
consider me the lowest of their number, but I would be above one
very satisfied slave girl.

Though I wasn’t ready to satisfy her yet. I began to lap at her

clit gently, my fingers still working. She was starting to beg me
now, the word “please” being tossed indiscriminately from her
mouth. I wondered if I could make her writhe the way Audan had
made Siskie writhe, all sense of herself and her body gone for
those few seconds.

As she drew closer to climax, I was sure that I could. Though

of course to be fair to my father, this situation was slightly
different.

That was him taking control of a situation that he had not been

in control of, and with a noble woman at that...

Understanding hit me like a flash of light. She began to writhe,

even as I sat up and tried to pull away, to reverse course, my hand
now trapped between her legs as she came, calling my name and
clutching at me, “Arshan! Arshan!” What had I done? The truth

Cecilia Tan

had been there in front of me all along. Her petal soft hands, her
perfect imitation of a noble’s nod, the hesitation speaking Trella’s
title and name...

And she knew my name, because she had to be Trella herself.

There was a moment, and only a moment, when I tried to think
of what to say next. Could I keep up the charade so that the others
would not know also? Or had any of them divined what I had?

It was only a moment because in the next moment I found

myself reeling from a hard blow to my ear. I rolled over on the
flagstones and came up in a defensive stance to face Siksie, her rod
of office in her hand.

“What have you done!” she hissed. She glanced back at Trella,

whose eyes were still locked on me, but who had the good sense
to snatch up her apron and run from the room.

I did the only sensible thing to do. I dropped to my knees.

Siksie raised the rod as if to strike me in the face with it, and I am
sure if I had cringed or put up my hands, she would have beat me
black and blue. But I held my pose, and she lowered her arm,
reaching inside her robes for something.

“Hold out your hand,” she said.
As I opened my palm, Miera spoke. “Wait, what did he do?

Why is he being punished?”

“Silence. You are owed no answers.” Siksie’s voice dropped into

its more usual purr. She held up what looked like a small ball of
silver between two fingers so we all could see it. “Do you know
what this is?”

No one answered. “No, my lady,” I finally said, hoping I chose

the right title for her.

“It’s of my own design,” she answered. “When it makes contact

with your skin, it convinces the nerves there that you are... on fire.
I made a man swallow one once.” She paused for dramatic effect
and I obediently asked what she wanted.

“What happened to him?”
“Amazing what the brain can do to the body, isn’t it?” She

replied. “Massive shock, internal organ failure. He died.” With that
she pressed the ball into my palm.

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Like my father, I clenched my fist. Unlike him, I also balled up

on the ground and could barely keep from screaming. This was
apparently the price for having made the crown princess submit.

Cecilia Tan

“The rest of you, back to your rooms,” I heard Siksie say through the
agony. “Leave him to me.” Then she knelt close by me, and her hand
felt cool against my forehead as she coaxed me to open my eyes. Her
voice was surprisingly sweet. “Do you want to know how to make
the pain stop?”

Begging is so easy at a time like that. When it feels like someone

else holds your life in their hands. “Yes, yes, my lady.”

“Well, one way,” she purred, “is to make me come. Didn’t your

father tell you that?”

It was hard to believe that my hand was still there, cradled to

my chest, since my mind was convinced it should be a charred
stump by now. But the training, all that training, was kicking in, as
were the endorphins, and I slowed my breathing and spoke clearly.
“No, my lady.”

“I’m sure you think you’re a match for your father, after what

you just did—don’t you?” She stood up now, and I got up on my
knees again. “Answer me.”

“No...” The pain intensified as if the damn ball could tell I was

lying, and I clenched my jaw shut to keep from crying out.

“Yes, that was Trella,” she went on conversationally. “Our darling

princess. Her father wants her to be just like him. Cruel, domineering,
cunning, the very avatar of Zal. Did she seem that way to you?”

Siksie seemed intent on having a conversation and ignoring the

pain I was in, so I strove to do likewise. “Not very, my lady. But surely,
it was just a role she was playing?” Not that I believed that, but I
needed to show her I could play along. I wasn’t eager for her to think
she had to kill me to keep a secret.

She pursed her lips. “Perhaps.” She draped her robe over the back

of a heavy wooden chair and turned to face me, her smile widening
then. “Have you studied the Arian disciplines?”

Part Three

“Yes, yes, I have,” I replied. I had mastered the bioneural

feedback techniques that allowed most Kylaran males to control
their erections long ago. My father had started teaching me when
I was very young, and Mirell had made sure I could perform the
tricks under trying circumstances.

“Good. Make that thing a bit smaller and come over here.”
She was right, of course, my erection was huge, straining

against the tightskin I wore and partly unsealing it. I undid the
seals the rest of the way and went naked to where she now sat on
the edge of the table where we had eaten. My right hand was still
clenched, but my left was free, and she guided one of my fingers
into her mouth.

When she broke away to kiss me, I circled her nipple with the

wetness, and she moaned in appreciation. As she did, the sensation
of cold air blowing on my not-actually-burned-skin gave me goose
bumps. I understood now. The ball was somehow keyed to an
implanted system in her body, an electronic augmentation of some
kind. I wondered if the implant had been her idea or if her master,
the Emperor, had done it to her.

She did not struggle to keep control as I had feared she might.

She let me work then, talking to me when her mouth was free,
never really giving up the control of me in a larger sense since the
ball was still in my hand. It was not like with Trella who was on
the edge of surrender all the time until I pushed her over the edge.

“You know, I’m not much younger than your father,” she said at

one point, when my tongue was buried deep in the folds of her.

I freed myself to answer. “Please don’t think this is merely flattery,

but, you don’t look it.” Except for her carriage, her air of gravity, and
all the layers of meaning in her voice, she could have almost been
Trella’s fraternal twin sister. I toyed with her pubic hair while I said
it. “So, you’ve been with the Emperor for a long time?”

“A very long time.” She lay back as I twisted two fingers into her

with a corkscrew motion. I could barely feel the burning sensation
of the ball, and knew how close she was. “Enough talk, you cheeky
thing. Time for this,” she said, reaching out to touch my cock.

Cecilia Tan

“Yes, my lady.” I heaved myself onto the table, pushing myself

up on both fists as I settled my hips between her legs.

She had asked about the Arian disciplines and I assumed she

had had many opportunities to sample the talents of the Arian
adepts. She was old enough to be my mother. This was no slave
girl, or even princess, hungry for attention and release. A part of
me wondered if I could do what she would consider a decent job
of fucking her. But I have my talents.

And the ball made it easy. I teased her first with the tip until

my hand began to hurt again, and then I fucked her with just the
first inch. Through the ball I could feel what she responded to,
when to back off and when to give her more. She was as slick as
any woman I had ever bedded, which was many, and it wasn’t long
before I was plunging into her with long strokes, conscious of my
own orgasm building somewhere far away.

“Make it bigger, Arshan,” she said simply at one point, and I

did, the fire in my hand completely quenched as I doused her in
pleasure. Her eyes were open and looking into mine when she
began to come. I couldn’t help but think, though, on whether she
had ever said those same words to the Emperor, who after all
shared my name. Probably not, I thought. He probably made her
beg for it. I wondered what he did that made her submit. How
did he overcome her? No flash of insight came to me. I merely
kept fucking her until the last spasms of contraction were done.

Then I asked, “Do you like to come again after one like that?

Or not?”

She grinned. “One more.”
I grinned back. “Yes, my lady.” Now that I wasn’t in

excruciating pain, she was almost likable. She pushed me onto my
back and rode me for this one, her clit scraping against my pubic
hair as she rammed herself down and then lifted up, tightening
her muscles prior to the next thrust through them. This time she
did close her eyes, shuddering hard against me and knocking my
head against the table a little bit.

Then she climbed off and sat back in a chair with a tired

Royal Treatment

exhalation. The fire had long since gone out and she pulled her
robes around her. “You didn’t come,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“No, my lady. You didn’t give permission,” I said from where

I was still lying on the table. I sat up, sensing the mood shifting.

“Arian adepts can orgasm without ejaculation, though,” she

said. “How do I know you are not lying?”

I dropped to my knees on the stone in front of her, the open

and vulnerable stance again. Now was not the time for cheek. “You
don’t. I have no way to prove my innocence and I accept whatever
punishment you set before me.”

She frowned, but not about what I said. “You are like water

that flows around a stone,” she said.

“I am sorry if that offends you, my lady.”
She laughed then and reached out to tousle my hair, and for a

moment I felt the difference in our ages. “It does not offend me;
it frustrates me,” she said. “Because you know how hard it is to
break water? Impossible. Your father was all stone. You, are
something else.” She stared into the empty room and thought
about something, Trella, probably.

“I told him it was dangerous to bring you here.” She meant

the Emperor, of course. “But he has some grudge against your
father and wanted... well, we’ll just have to see. I may have to send
you away, or maybe there is a way to work this out.”

I wanted to say “to work what out?” but I knew better than to

speak out of turn this time.

She turned to me. “When did you realize it was the princess

you had your fingers in?”

“At the end. Only right at the end, I suddenly put all the facts

together.” She narrowed her eyes again, and I held my pose, palms
up on my thighs, as unable to prove my innocence as I had been
a few moments before. “I have no palatial ambitions, my lady. Nor
does my father.”

“I believe that,” she said. “And it’s clear the princess has eyes

for you. The question is, is the damage reversible?”

“Damage?” I said before I could stop myself.

Cecilia Tan

She stood up then, settling her robes straight on her shoulders.

I was beginning to feel a bit chilly there on the floor but that was
the least of my worries. “You don’t seriously think the Emperor
would allow his daughter to be submissive to anyone, do you? A
follower of Zal, like him?”

“It was just the once...” I started to say, but I knew it was futile.

How could she stay in power if, in her heart, she wanted to
surrender to a man like me? I had been drawn to her like a moth
to the flame, and so would many other Kylaran men, especially
those seeking power and influence. Now I could see why they had
raised her in seclusion and why her circle had not been convened
before now. “I see why she needs a consort.”

With that Siksie’s eyes widened for a moment, as if she had

just solved a problem. Then she shook her head. “He’d kill her be-
fore he would let her submit to any man other than himself.”

“And you won’t let that happen.”
“You aren’t calling me ‘my lady’ anymore.” She gripped my

hair and bent me backwards, but without much real malice. Don’t
ask me why, but I was no longer in fear for my life. “You do know
what I’m thinking, don’t you? If you and she are truly bonded...”

“As master and slave?” My voice rose with incredulity.
“Yes. If Zal and Kyl have decided to put you two together, far-

beit for me, or even the Emperor, to part you. But we must main-
tain appearances.” Her smile was terrifying this time. “And you
do kneel so nicely.”

I stared at where my knees met the stone. So she was proposing

to marry me to the princess, whose master I would be, but to all
outward appearances I would be her slave? I think I may have made
a noise of dismay. What was it Audan said? I had to learn to hide
my emotions? “My lady, I do not think... I think people will see
through the ruse. I don’t think I could...”

“Even if it were the only way to save her life?”
I slumped out of my perfect posture. To be the master of the

one-day Empress, and yet in the eyes of the entire Empire to be
the slave of all slaves... I shuddered. Audan was right. My soul

Royal Treatment

would die. If she were mine, truly mine, it might work. But I did
not feel particularly bonded to the princess. I could read her like a
book, yes, and she seemed to want to bond to me, but if something
magical was supposed to happen, this was not it. “Your plan might
work,” I said. “But not with me. She’s not the one for me.”

She laughed at that and said “You really don’t have palatial

ambitions.”

“No.” I shrugged. “If that offends...”
“Oh, shut up already!” She threw up her hands, exasperated.

“Arshan, I must apologize.”

“For what?”
“I find I do like you. You have a charm your father never did.

But to get out of the mess we are now in, I may have to... “ She
drew in a breath. “I will do whatever I need to, to protect Trella
and the Emperor.”

“And that might mean giving me up as a scapegoat.”
“You might be smarter than your father, too.” She motioned

for me to stand up. “You know what would happen if you fled
now?”

I stood and stretched my back. “You’ll say I forced her.”
“Yes. You’d become one of the most wanted criminals in the

empire. The bounty on your manhood would be immense.” She
came and stood next to me, reached down and stroked my balls
and penis with one hand. I could not tell if she was thinking it
would be a waste or if she wanted to collect them herself—or
both. “I think it would be to both our benefits if you played along
for a little while.”

“I’ll try.”
She gathered up her shed tightskin and tucked it under one

arm. “Do you think the others know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think they do, though they surely

suspect something out of the ordinary.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “How did you know?”
“It just came to me in a flash.” I suppressed the urge to get

back on my knees, as I saw her eyes flash and thought she was

Cecilia Tan

going to come toward me again. “I was thinking about my father,
and... you. About the difference between a slave girl and a noble
woman. And suddenly I realized it.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy her. “Audan also had unusual

gifts of perception.”

“So I have heard.”
“Still, we’ll need an explanation for the others.” She raised an

eyebrow as if she expected me to supply one.

It is funny what one can do when one is asked. “Maybe we

could tell them I was under orders not to ravish the slave girls?
Perhaps my father’s word?”

Her smile was warm and terrifying at the same time. “I’m

trying to imagine Audan putting that kind of rein on you.” She
chuckled. “He never would, of course—in fact he’s been entirely
too easy on you your whole life. But the rest of them don’t know
that.”

“They do seem a bit...”—I chose my word carefully—” -

confused about my actual background.”

“And the fact they you are half-blood will make it easy to make

you seem shamefully inferior in their eyes.” She came close again,
taking my chin in her hands. “Are you sure you can take it?”

“Take what, my lady?”
“You’ll need to be punished,” she said. “It will need to be

convincing.”

“You are not afraid to hurt me,” I answered. “You choose. The

whip? Knives? Which do you prefer?”

She shook her head. “If it is always me punishing you, then the

others will sympathize with you too much. Maybe it should be Trella
who does it.” She seemed to forget I was there for a few minutes as
she thought about it. Then she looked down at me again. “I have a
better way to make sure they don’t sympathize with you too much.”

I shuddered, my brain again making the leap forward on

knowledge before it was spoken aloud. “You’re going to have them
do it.”

She nodded. “If I throw you to the pack of dogs, they’ll be too

Royal Treatment

distracted by their own jockeying to worry about why you’re
there, and it will reinforce beyond any doubt that you are barely
clinging to the last rung of the ladder.”

“That plan does make perfect sense,” I agreed, while that

shudder of vulnerability passed through me again. “Will there be
any rules?”

She put down the clothes she was carrying and put her hands

on my shoulders. With gentle pressure she moved me onto my
back on the stone floor, slipped my sticky erection into her mouth,
and sucked for a few moments. The pleasure was like warm water
pouring over my body, and I gasped as one might when slipping
into a hot spring.

She paused then to say, “The story will be this. You were under

strict orders of abstinence from Audan as punishment for getting
favors from his favorites, the duration to be, say, eight days. For
breaking your pledge, now you’ll need to go another eight days.”

Eight, the sacred number. “But the others will surely...”
“Want sexual favors from you. Yes.” She stroked me with her

hands while she talked. “But you won’t be allowed to come for
eight days, and they will know this. They will, essentially, be
punishing you in Audan’s place.”

She slid her mouth over me again and I knew I should just let

her do it, but I had to ask. “How will you know if I come,
though?”

She squeezed my balls hard while speaking this time. “You’ll

have an implant we’ll monitor. We’ll know. Now I suggest you shut
up and I suggest you ejaculate this time.” She swung her leg over
me then, and slid deftly onto my erection. “It’s your only chance
for quite some time.”

I gripped her by the hips then, and ground myself into her.

She had studied many disciplines herself and tightened deliciously
around me. I did not hurry, but neither did I dawdle on the way
to spurting a deep load of semen into her.

“Thank you,” I said as she climbed off with a little shudder

herself.

Cecilia Tan

“Don’t thank me,” she answered, but her gaze was soft with

affection. “You’ll be spending the night in the dungeon. I won’t
be able to help you any more.” And with that she left. A few
moments later, guards in red uniforms came in, put me into
restraints, and carried me away.

Royal Treatment

I awoke naked in the center of a nearly featureless room, not stone
and archaic architecture like so much of the castle, but a seamless
cubicle of modern make, the only break in the uniform light blue
walls the rectangle of lighter material that was the door. It
brightened then and became a window.

“Is he awake?” came a voice which echoed in the chamber.
“He’s awake.” Miera spoke and now I could see her standing

in the doorway. Her red hair was bound back in a tail and she wore
black tightskin with a short tunic over it. She turned to Jelan; I
could see part of his face and shoulder as he took a look, a flash of
his blond hair.

“Let him out.” Jelan said, and the window opaqued for a

moment and then the door slid open. “Come on, Arshan, you’re
to come with us.”

I examined myself briefly—no restraints. I stood but as I

approached the doorway, Jelan slapped me in the face. “You haven’t
earned the right to stand with us,” he said. “You crawl.”

Miera rolled her eyes at that, but Kessa gave a little clap of her

hands, and the whole group surrounded me as I crawled out into
a larger room. My cell, apparently, was just off a large central area.
I could not see much right away through their legs but I could
make out various racks and tables. A discipline chamber, obviously.
My knees were sore from all the kneeling on stone last night and
I crawled gingerly until the milling of the group kept me from
moving forward. At that point I sat back on my heels and scratched
the back of my neck where something itched.

I felt a suture there. The implant. So Siksie would be

monitoring me as she said.

It was Kessa who spoke to me first. “We’ve been charged with

punishing you, Arshan.” She had black hair, cut in a straight line

Part Four

above her blue eyes, and she bent down to look into mine. “At
least until Trella finally arrives.” I stared back at her, waiting to see
what she would say or do next. She leaned down further to
whisper in my ear, “I want to ride you.”

Some of the others were clustering around a table to which

they had apparently already decided to bind me. Kessa took me by
one arm and Jelan by the other and led me to it. It was a standard
design, thinly padded in gray, jointed so that the slave bound to it
could be positioned various ways depending on what one wished
to do. They raised it to meet me, used the built-in restraints to
attach my wrists and ankles at each corner, then tilted it so that I
was no longer standing but was angled somewhat with my back
exposed, my face toward the floor, and my feet dangling.

My guess was they were going to whip me. Fair enough. One

of the first lessons I had learned in my earliest training was how
to take a beating. I slowed my breathing and waited. There was
some debate going on between them—probably over who was
going to start, or perhaps finish—and I tuned them out.

When the first blow came it gave me a jolt, but nothing out of

the ordinary. I didn’t know whose hand the whip was in, but they
used a classic punishment style, three hard strokes and then a
pause, three strokes, then a pause. The pain was fiery, yet not
unbearable. I dissociated myself from it easily and let the lashes
flow over me like rain. They were taking turns. Each had their own
rhythm, their own style. Some of the whips cut more, someone
liked to get me on the thighs, between my legs. At least some of
them if not all six were enjoying themselves, which pleased me.
If they could be pleased with me barely paying attention, so much
the better.

I don’t know if they had a pre-determined stopping time or if

it ended when they got tired. I was sweating freely and feeling
quite thirsty by the time they did. Another one of the women,
Ghiba if I remembered her name right, came with a water bulb
for me. She pulled my head back, and as she poured the liquid
into my mouth, she raked her hand down the ravaged skin of my

Royal Treatment

back. I made some sound out at this, a strangled sound since I was
swallowing at the same time.

“You’d almost think he likes it,” she said.
“You could be right,” answered another voice. Kessa, again,

behind me. “Who knows what tendencies a freak like him
inherited?” Then someone, probably her, was licking the welts on
my back and I could not help but writhe against the table. Did I
like it? Well, that’s not a simple question to answer. Certainly a
healthy masochistic streak is a necessary trait for any successful
Kylar, and I am no exception to that. My early training had also
taught me ways to make pain into pleasure for myself, and those
reflexes would always kick in. I had even, at Mirell’s hand, learned
to love some of the sadistic attention she would pay me, a puppy-
love version of a slave’s feelings. But did I crave it? No. And would
I have preferred to be the one holding the whip? Certainly.

These were nuances that none of these so-called nobles

appreciated at that moment. What followed was more of the same.
They turned me around, applying many standard punishment
methods to me, including prod shocks, temporarily driving
needles through my skin, and putting various things into my ass.
Nothing that elicited any comment from me. It was clear to me
they had stopped worrying about whether they were actually
punishing me and were instead treating me as a plaything, doing
what they fancied.

I kept my tongue silent. It would probably only be a matter of

time before they grew bolder or one of them let their sadism really
run. Meanwhile, they hadn’t asked me to do anything but lie there
and take it. That was how it went that first day.

The second day went much like the first as they continued to

torture me, and I began to actually get bored. Not that I minded
bored. Bored was safe, at least.

The boredom ended when Kessa climbed onto the table toward

the end of the day. I was flat on my back this time, almost drifting
off to sleep when she leapt up and straddled me. The edge of the
rough black tunic she, and they all wore, tickled my stomach. “I
know what we should do.”

Cecilia Tan

“What’s that?” Jelan asked from a few feet away.
“We should really undertake to train him to be Trella’s consort.”

Kessa’s eyes sparkled. “Wouldn’t that be grand? That way it
wouldn’t have to be one of us, and we’ll all get credit for...
producing him.”

Miera stepped close. “We’ll need to catalog his talents and iden-

tify areas to improve.”

Kessa smiled. “He should spend a night with each of us. We’ve

got seven nights to go, after all.”

“And I suppose you think you should have him first?” Ghiba

asked.

“Don’t worry, I won’t ruin him for you,” Kessa replied. “Unless

you want to fight me for him.”

“I’ll accept that challenge,” Ghiba said.
I didn’t hear the rest as they all rushed out of the room at that

point, as the details of the challenge, the rules and stakes were to
be hammered out. I don’t know what exactly they did, whether
they fought hand to hand or had a challenge of skills or wits. All I
do know is that Kessa won, as the guards delivered me to her
chamber a few hours later, chained me by a collar around my neck
to her bed, and left me there. Her room looked much like mine—
the one I hadn’t yet slept in because of my nights in the dungeon.
The outer wall with the window was stone, as was the floor, but
the other three walls were of more modern make. The chain was
long enough that I could be positioned anywhere on the bed, but
I could not reach any of the other furniture in the room. There
was a low pallet at the foot of the bed that was for me. I sat cross
legged on it and waited.

Kessa herself came in, freshly damp from a shower and smelling

slightly of something sweet, with a plate of food that smelled even
sweeter in her hand. I hurried to take a more submissive posture on
my pallet. She put the plate down on the table near the door, then
stripped off her tunic and skins and came to me.

“Ever since I saw the way you played that slave girl, I’ve wanted

to see what it was like with you,” she said.

Royal Treatment

“I am yours to do with as you will,” I replied. “Is there a title

you prefer?”

She smiled a hungry-cat smile. “Well, since I’m to be training

you for Trella, why don’t you call me ‘your excellence?’”

I smiled back at her, both of us a little titillated by the use of a

title neither of us could lay claim on.

“Since we are only playing,” she went on.
“Yes, your excellence.” I began to think that maybe this night

might hold some pleasure for me after all, even though I could
not come. “May I please you, your excellence?”

“Make me ready,” she said, and I remembered what she had

whispered to me the day before.

I shifted my feet under me and took her in my arms the way I

had Trella that night, letting my hands play her torso while my lips
played her neck. Her hot spots were different from Trella’s—every
woman’s are—but it didn’t take long to find them. It did take a
while for her to become sufficiently creamy for me to stop,
though, and ask if she wanted to move on to other things.

“Later,” she said. “I’m impatient to get you inside me.” She

motioned me toward the bed, where I put myself obediently onto
my back, shifting to get the collar lead out of the way. She straddled
me and stroked her clit. I heard a crackling sound.

“So, do you have any special talents that come from your freak

side?”

“Pardon me?” I literally did not know what she meant for a

moment and it threw me, then I recovered. “I’m sorry, your
excellence, but I didn’t hear you.”

“I heard your mother was from one of the colony worlds, one

barely above animal-status. But your sire fell for a beast-woman
anyway, and couldn’t keep his hands off her.” She said this while
arching her back, touching herself, spreading her cunt lips so the
clitoris stood out among the slippery folds. I heard another crackle.
“He bedded that beast so much and so often that she got with
child. You.”

My face flushed. I had been subjected to many kinds of

Cecilia Tan

abasement in my training, but not this. I closed my eyes and
concentrated on the sensation of her cunt now rubbing up and
down my penis, slicking it against my stomach with her
voluminous juices.

“Is it true, Arshan? Do you have an animal side?” She slapped

me across the face then, and demanded. “Answer me.”

“If it pleases you to think so, your excellence, then I do.” That

answer earned me another slap. “I never knew my mother,” I said
then, which was the truth, though I knew full well she wasn’t, as
Kessa tried to hint, less than human. The words made me angry
anyway.

“Are you sure he’s your father?” she said then, even as she

continued to tease me. “The two of you hardly look alike. You look
more like your namesake than like him. How do you know she
didn’t rut with some other man when she had the chance? I’m
sure if she displeased him your father would have put her in the
fuck pen, wouldn’t he?”

The slap hurt more as I tensed with anger and again she

demanded an answer. “He does have a fuck pen on that ship of
his, doesn’t he?”

“I hear he does,” I managed to answer.
“Of course he does.” She used her hand to tilt my cock upward,

toward her slit. “I hear he’s ruthless.”

So much for bedding Kessa being a pleasure. “Yes, your

excellence. He’s quite ruthless.”

“As ruthless as this?” she breathed, as she slid down onto me.

The crackling noise seemed to come from inside my head and the
pain that radiated throughout my cock and groin was unlike
anything I’d ever felt before. It was like the pins and needles of a
re-awakened limb, like tiny teeth sinking into my flesh over and
over and zapping me with electricity at the same time.

I cried out, grabbing her by the hips, but lifting her up only

made the pain intensify.

She settled back down onto me. “I told you I wanted to ride you.”
My training kept my mouth working. “Yes, your excellence.”

Royal Treatment

“You seem surprised. I guess you haven’t seen the latest in

slave-control devices.” She came up off me completely then, pulled
her cunt lips apart and I could see what looked liked sparks
between her legs. “One’s owner shouldn’t have to give up the
pleasures of the slave just because a slave like you is being
punished, now should they?”

“No, your excelle—” That was as far as I got before she slid

down onto me again and I screamed anew. Flaying the skin off my
penis with fire-hot knives would have been less painful.

“The best part,” she said, as she began to ride me harder, “is

that the more intense the sensation is for me, the more for you as
well, and vice versa. So the more you hurt, the better I feel, and
the better I feel, the more you hurt.” It was the opposite of Sikie’s
agony bomb, which now seemed positively magnanimous to me.
And to think Audan had called her vicious.

My only answer this time was a weak sound.
“And don’t even think of trying to go flaccid on me,” she said.

“The only way to get out of this is to satisfy me.” She was moving
faster and faster, but then began to slow again. “And there is one
more thing I have to tell you.”

I still couldn’t answer, but she didn’t seem to care.
“Because I’ve been using this technique often—it’s one of my

favorites, can you tell? My nerves are a little deadened. So it takes
me a long time to come. You may have to work very hard, in fact,
to get me there.” She dragged herself up and down my shaft once
more and then pulled off me to lay on her back. “Get to work.”

“Yes, your excellence.” I went after her for a bit with my

tongue then, only to find that even my mouth felt like it was being
shocked and scalded, and eventually I had to put my cock back
into that hell hole.

At least it didn’t seem likely to kill me, I reflected. And that was

something.

Cecilia Tan

I woke up in the morning on the pallet at the foot of Kessa’s bed.
She was nowhere in sight, but there was a small plate of food next
to me. I had few bites of bread and fruit and then sat up straight
to take inventory. A few deep breaths later and I closed my eyes. I
didn’t seem to be injured. My back was still sore from the beating
they had given me two days ago, and I was a bit stiff from sleeping
curled at the foot of the bed, but otherwise, not much the worse
for wear. The collar was gone. Could I have been so drained from
her abuse that I didn’t’ feel them take it off? I tugged on my penis
experimentally. Everything seemed in working order there, no
obvious physical after effects of Kessa’s vaginal punishment device.
I had the urge to pull myself to orgasm, as I usually did when I
awoke, but I knew there would be hell to pay for that. Instead I
took a few more breaths and deflated myself.

“Show me how you do that.”
I started. I must have been more fatigued than I realized not to

have heard Jelan come into the doorway. It was a connecting door
between this room and another. His golden hair stood out against
the black uniform. Before I could speak he went on. “I’m next in
the hierarchy, now. Are you surprised? I found a way to make Miera
submit last night.”

I kept silent. If he wanted to brag, so much the better, as maybe

I might learn something I could use. But that was all he said on
the subject for now as he stood there, staring hungrily at me.

“Is there a form of address you prefer?” I asked.
“I like lord,” he said, an almost childish sense of relish in his

voice. “Lord suits me well, don’t you think?”

“Yes, lord.”
“Follow me.” He turned and disappeared into the other room.

I followed him through a parlor and then into another room, this

Part Five

one with only the one door, and a window through which the
sun was streaming. This exterior wall was inlaid with tiles, and the
floor was covered with a thick carpet, woven with designs. He
took a seat in a high backed wooden chair and indicated I should
kneel in front of him.

I did, perhaps less smoothly than I had my first night here. My

knees were a bit bruised still, but if he noticed any difference he
did not say so. “I saw what you did in there, just now. I need you
to teach me that.”

“The Arian disciplines... lord?” I asked, almost forgetting the

title. “Have you studied them at all?”

He shook his head. “My sires thought them techniques fit only

for whores who please women. I’ve experimented a bit on my
own, but...” He was unaware he had begun to blush, the redness
creeping into the fair hair on his head. He narrowed his eyes at
me then. “You’re mine for now. Show me.”

I had every intention of showing him what I could, and found

his demanding tone almost petulant. “I’ll do my best, lord,” I said,
“but not everything can be learned in one day.”

“Don’t make excuses.”
“As you say, lord.” I took a deep breath. “Please forgive me if

my explanations seem obscure. I learned the basics a long time
ago and I’ve never tried to teach them to another person before...”

At that he slapped me across the face. He spoke slowly and with

a clenched jaw. “I do not forgive.” He slapped my other cheek to
even things, and then said, “And stop stalling.”

My urge just then of course was to grab him by the neck, force

him to the ground, and make him beg for his life. I felt fairly
certain I could do it, too. But Siksie and I had a deal, and I was
committed to it. “Yes, lord. I’m sorry, lord.” It wasn’t that the slaps
had particularly hurt. I’ve had much worse. But what an
insufferable prat he was turning out to be. “If I may suggest that
you... expose yourself?”

He stripped out of the tightskin undersuit but left the tunic

on, then sat back down in the chair, his flaccid but sizable penis
hanging between his legs.

Cecilia Tan

I put my own hand around my cock and began to work it

slowly up and down. “Now, when you get hard, if you
concentrate, you should be able to feel two sources of energy, one
that comes from the front of your body, down your chest, over
your stomach, which is lifting you up, and the other one that
comes from your root, from the heels of your feet up through
your thighs, through the center of your body and into your penis
from underneath.”

“What do you mean?”
“Please, lord, just make yourself hard and try to concentrate

on feeling the two-directional pull of your erection.” He tugged
on himself and eyed me suspiciously. “The wave that travels down
your front is your arousal, while the wave that pushes up from
underneath is your hardness.”

He didn’t say anything, but tugged on himself more, while I

kept talking. “I think in more physiological terms, the frontal wave
is your nervous system and the nerves that control orgasmic
sensation, while the root wave is the blood flow which results in
hardness, size, and ultimately, ejaculation. If you can control them
independently, you can come without ejaculating, vary your size
and hardness at will...”

“I know what the disciplines are for,” he growled. “But tell me

how to do it.”

I faltered. I actually let my eyes fall, as I floundered for what to

say next. “First, you have to feel the difference between the two
sources of energy...”

“Yeah, and?”
“And then you must control them independently of each

other.” I tensed for the blow. I already knew there was no use
telling him that it took practice. Audan had taught me starting from
the first time I masturbated, when it came naturally and easily to
me. I couldn’t imagine trying to start on the learning now, after
how many thousands of orgasms Jelan must have had in his life.
The slap was predictably hard.

“How?” He asked again. The red tip of his cock jutting up

Royal Treatment

through his fingers was as flushed and angry as his face.

I could not keep the answering anger out of my eyes as I looked

up at him. “Once you feel the two sources, you have to create a
dam in each river depending on what you want to do.”

“A dam.”
“Metaphorically speaking. If the energy sources feel like a river

to you, you create a dam. In your mind.”

He licked his hand and now stroked himself faster. He was

growing even larger, larger than me, larger than my father, larger
than any penis I’d seen this close before. “My dam is not working,”
he said. “Do you want to see how big I can get?”

He had inherited the true Kylaran anatomy, that much I could

see as he swelled. He seemed quite proud of his size—really who
wouldn’t be—as he grew in length and thickness both. Both his
fists were now wrapped around his pole and pumping merrily.
“Do you like it?” he asked, anger still flaring in his eyes.

“Yes, lord,” I said without much sincerity.
“You won’t,” he said. “None of the house slaves do. My sire

sends them to me for punishment.”

So, he was a braggart after all.
“When I want to be nice, I’ll start out smaller,” he said, his

pumps becoming more vigorous. I added my hand to his and he
purred in appreciation. As he talked, I fitted my mouth around the
engorged head and he beamed with pleasure. “I’ll fill her up, or
him, and let them think for a moment that it’s not going to be that
bad. But then I’ll, how would you put it? Let the river flow. I can
make it hurt. It happens very fast.”

I was already nodding as I bobbed up and down on him. He

wasn’t protesting my treatment of him so he clearly hadn’t
foreseen what I had, which is that he could have easily decided to
give me the very treatment he was describing.

“Other times, I just shove it into them, dry. Depends on what

they did. Have you ever tried it? It feels like nothing else, just get
yourself to that point where you can’t get any bigger, any more
stretched, and then just ram. The friction is intense and the way

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they move and scream. But I want it to last longer. It’s so intense
that after five or six strokes I...”

His words were lost after that as he began to come in my

mouth. He bellowed and bucked on the chair and I didn’t even
make an attempt at swallowing—it wasn’t as if he was going to
notice. He stood then, knocking the chair back and me to the side,
and pumped hard with his hands to squeeze out two, three
additional spurts.

The deflation was as rapid as his famed inflation, and then he

threw himself exhausted onto the bed in the corner.

I stood and went to him. “That’s how you made Miera submit,”

I said.

“What?”
“Once you got inside her, you made it unbearable. You made

her beg to stop. Am I right?”

His smile was a sneer. “You should have seen the look in her

eyes. Originally it was she who was to have you next, you know.
Until I knocked her down a peg. Last night I cornered her after
dinner and asked for a little bedplay. When she realized what I
could do to her, she fought tooth and nail.”

“So she didn’t...” I had to be careful with words here. To submit

was to agree to certain things, at least by some measures. “Surren-
der?”

“Not at all. Though she did beg me in the end. She begged me

to stop.”

“And did you?”
“Only after I was finished.”
Audan had warned that the rules might be different. Siksie, too,

had said as much, that among the members of the circle we were
at one another’s mercy—or lack thereof. But whether my views
were out of date or not, I felt what he had done was wrong. It is a
debate that will never end—is there a difference between
submission and coerced consent? I tried to see a way that it might
be justified, but did not find one. If he had raped a house slave on
a whim, no Kylar would have given it much thought. But he had

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raped a peer, pure and simple, to prove he had power over her and
because that was how he got off.

I tried to put it into perspective. Did the fact that we had no

ranks while here mean that he could treat her as such without
provocation? I thought about my own situation. I had chosen and
agreed to go through with it. Kylaran nobles jockeyed for rank and
position all the time, but as I understood it, it usually entailed one
manipulating the other into a compromised position. If anyone
could simply bugger anyone else and take their title, there would
be open warfare at all times.

Besides, some part of me liked Miera. And no part of me liked

Jelan. That was enough justification for me. I gave in to my earlier
urge, leaped on top of him and sent the pillow flying. He twisted
in my arms, trying to escape, but that only made it easier to get
him into a choke hold. I dragged him onto the floor.

“You...!” I had left him enough airflow to talk. His voice was

more outraged than fearful. “You’re supposed to be my slave today!”

“Is that how it works? I was given to understand that you are

all helping to punish me in my father’s name. No one told me that
the establishment of hierarchy was suspended in my case.” I gave
him a little extra squeeze and he made a choking noise. “Did you
forget I’m not a slave, but a peer, too?”

He was so easy to read. Apparently, he had forgotten, and he

never would have told me what he did, otherwise.

“What you did to Miera was wrong,” I breathed into his ear.

He struggled a bit but the movement only tightened my grip. “If
you’d made it a test, if you’d bet her she wouldn’t be able to stand
it and she couldn’t, well, then I would have to let you go. But you
forced yourself on her.”

“Didn’t!” he said, or something like it, his voice rising with

fear as his lungs began to feel deprived.

“What backwater province did you grow up in not to know

that some things are wrong? What would the judiciary say about
something like this?”

“Don’t,” might have been his next word.

Cecilia Tan

“I’m going to give you two choices, Jelan. I can ruin you by

taking this to judicial. You know they’ll remove your lovely club,
don’t you? You’ll lose any chance of remaining in the palace circle,
you might even have to leave the planet. It’s that, or you submit
to me.”

I released him then and he sat on the floor coughing and

gasping, and rubbing his throat where I had dug my arm bone
into his voice box. “What will you do to me?”

I smiled. “Do you really want to know in advance? After all

your waxing poetic about how great your fucking technique feels,
I’m of a mind to try it myself.” He blanched. “Or maybe I’ll just
make you kneel down, kiss my feet, and swear that no matter what
happens, I’ll always be a rung above you on Zal’s Ladder. You will
always answer to me.”

Well, he skipped a step, he made his choice by throwing

himself at my feet right then, and begging me to spare him all
kinds of things. After that display, I didn’t need to dirty my hands
with him any longer. Part of me thought that to drive the point
home I should have really at least made him suck me, but since I
was still prohibited from coming, that wouldn’t have been nearly
as much fun as it could be. Instead I left him there, on the floor of
his room, while I wandered out into the castle wondering what
would happen next.

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The Sunset Palace, as it is called, is on a stretch of warm coastline,
so the fact that I had no clothes was not much of a bother to me.
There were plenty of areas of Kylar where nudity was the norm,
for both slaves and masters. I was starting to feel rather hungry,
however, and since no one seemed to be in charge of taking care
of me, I decided to try to find the kitchens. I found my way back
to the dining room where we had eaten on the first night here,
and from there I followed my nose.

In the kitchen I discovered a merry crew of cooking slaves under

the direction of a formidable female personage. Her arms were twice
the thickness of my legs and her legs I could not see under her
protective aprons but they appeared to taper to improbably small
feet. Even her jowls were large. “You there!” she pointed at me when
I appeared in the doorway. “You don’t belong here.”

“You’re right about that, mima,” I said, using a pet name for

“mother” for her, to see how it would work. “But I’m able-bodied
and willing to work.”

She gave me a narrow-eyed smile. “Can you cook, or are you

only good for bed work?”

“Whatever is your pleasure, mima. I’m hungry and don’t mind

earning what I get.”

She laughed at that. “I didn’t believe it when she told us, yet

here you are, offering favors.” She tossed me an apron and a set of
loose-fitting kitchen togs. “For now, we could use the help with
the vegetable prep. I’ll decide later if you need to do something
special for me.”

And so I was put to peeling and chopping with a group of four

others, two women and two men, which wasn’t hard work and
wasn’t dangerous. The others eyed me nervously, as if they could
not quite decide how to react to me. How did I fit in? Was I to be

Part Six

addressed with a title, or not? In technical terms, the rules of the
game put me below them, but it was as Miera had so disdainfully
said, most of the house slaves were unable to assert themselves
above me. It wasn’t long before I had rearranged our work area so
that one of us was washing, one removing the stems, one peeling,
one chopping, while I orchestrated the finished dices into
containers.

Mima—she had told me neither her name nor given me a

different form of address—came over just as I was sweeping the
last of it into a dish. She laughed and pulled me aside, into the dry
goods storage and I thought surely she had come to collect a favor.

But the first thing she did was give me some advice. “I should

have left you buck naked. Then you wouldn’t have been so bossy.”

“Did I do something wrong?”
“Not as such. You got the job done in half the time, But don’t

you know how slaves are fed?” She leaned close to me, her voice
dropping. “You don’t have the slightest idea, do you.”

“That’s true.” I was trying to imagine what she meant. Did they

eat without utensils or something?

“The royal household runs on the quota system. Each one

gets... if they peel this many, they get this many for themselves. It’s
supposed to reward the faster, harder worker.”

“But...”
“I know. You cooperated and did more in less time. They were

too scared of you to say no.”

“Surely their share can be calculated by percentages?”
“You’re assuming there’s someone here who can do

mathematics.” Her smile was sly. “Fortunately, I can. But that’s not
true everywhere.”

I must have blinked stupidly because she laughed quietly

behind her hand. The slaves I had known in my life had all been
educated, trained, made to be as useful as possible. Mirell’s house
staff were as polished as she. They competed for the honor of
serving her. They chose that life. I felt suddenly very naïve. Did I
really think that every slave who passed through my father’s hands

Royal Treatment

was schooled and groomed like an equal? I knew they brought in
shiploads from conquered worlds sometimes, hundreds upon
hundreds at a time. What Kessa had been goading me with, the
idea that my offworld mother might have been just above animal
intelligence, gnawed at me. I knew it wasn’t true of her, and yet
was that true for some? Unable to read, write, or calculate?

“Anyway,” she said, drawing my attention back to her. “You’ll

all have to share. When we’re done preparing the meal, I’ll sit you
all down together. But don’t be surprised if they don’t all treat you
like a lord from now on.”

“I didn’t mean to...”
“Sure, you didn’t. Personally, I like you as a lord better than as

a stray pet.”

“Why is that?”
“I’d much rather have a lord’s favor than some mongrel’s, eh?”

She batted her eyelashes at me, and I took that as a cue to kiss her.
She was all soft folds of flesh and heavy breathing after that, quite
easy to please, and by the time we emerged from the storage, the
others had finished the preparation and had handed the finished
dishes off to the servers. The kitchen slaves and I sat together at a
round table in the back, with bowls of soup garnished with fresh
herbs, and a loaf of still-warm bread. They all sat staring at me,
their hands in their laps. Apparently no one would eat until I ate.
I broke the loaf with my hands and gave them each a piece, and
then dipped it in my soup. The soup was delicious, thickened into
a velveteen texture and very good on the bread.

I tried to stay to help with dinner as well, but Mima shooed

me out as the others began the process of cleaning up. “I’ll need
that apron back, sir,” she said, her teasing tone still there even
though she added an honorific for me. “You can keep the togs on
if you don’t want to go bare-assed through the halls, though.”

“Thank you, Mima.”
“You’re welcome, sir. Come back and see us again.” And she

bowed her head to me, then looked up and winked before she
bustled away with the apron between her hands.

Cecilia Tan

I made my way from there to the gardens, where the afternoon

sun and the sea breeze made for a pleasant combination. It seemed
odd to me that no one had come to either return me to a cell or
to challenge me in any way, but perhaps my defeat of Jelan had
earned me some free time. Technically it wouldn’t be someone
else’s turn at me until tomorrow. This left me restless and bored. I
lay back on a stone bench, warmed by the sun, and tried to guess
who would be next. Ghiba, maybe? Would she also be above
Miera, or had Miera asserted herself some other way?

I dozed off while thinking about it, and dreamed that Kessa

and Siksie were pinning me to the ground. Kessa straddled my
face, and my tongue reached between her folds and drew out
something round and hard and smooth which I swallowed before
I could stop myself... I woke with a shiver, the phantom pains of
Kessa’s device ghosting across my groin. I shuddered and sat up.
Perhaps the damage wasn’t as temporary as she claimed. I
suspected repeat abuse of my nervous system could definitely
impair me, and I wondered how the slaves in her house fared.

Perhaps she was one of my father’s customers. The thought

sickened me a little. My father had once been a priest, the high
priest, of the twin gods Zal and Kyl. In our reckoning, Zal was the
master, Kyl the slave, bonded forever in a relationship of
equilibrium and mutual need. Thus the bond of master and slave
was considered sacred, a spiritual truth among the Kylar. Where
was that spiritual truth, though, in a workforce plucked from other
planets, kept illiterate, and subjected to any superior’s whims? Or,
for that matter, in a circle of bossy dominants jockeying for
position when not a one was eager to, or worthy to, serve as slave
consort? My head hurt. Now was not the time to wonder how it
was that my father went from being the guardian of the old ways
to being the head slave trader for the empire, nor how I felt about
it. Until I saw him again, spoke with him again, any speculation I
had was just likely to upset me.

I pushed the thoughts aside and instead wondered if I should

try to find my way back to my own room. I was looking up at the

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castle, now in its own shadow as the sun set, trying to remember
the way, when I heard voices. Two women, talking.

At first I thought perhaps it was Siksie and Trella, but as they

neared me I saw it was two of the other women in the circle. My
hope that one of them would be Miera was dashed when “There
he is, Belse,” one of them said to the other. These two were cousins,
Belse and Vorna, and they had sat together at the opposite end of
the table from me that first night.

“Where?” The one named Belse squinted into the copse of

thorny flowering bushes where I had found the bench. “Arshan?”

It wouldn’t do not to answer. “Here.”
They approached me in step with one another. Both had the

healthy brown of women who spent much of their time in the
sun, both had red highlights in their hair. Belse took the lead. “I
thought you were supposed to be with Jelan tonight.”

“Jelan has already had his fill of me,” I said. “He’s the only

person I’ve seen today. What’s going on with you all? I’ve been
wandering about loose. I thought you were supposed to be
keeping me.”

Oh, that earned me a slap from Vorna, while Belse spoke. “How

dare you speak to your betters that way!”

“I take it you are next?” Don’t ask me why, perhaps it was all

the thinking I had been doing, but at that moment I simply did
not have it in me to bow to them.

“We are.” Belse gripped me by the chin while Vorna dealt me

another blow; this one made me see stars. “We’ve decided to work
together. That makes you ours for twice as long, you know.”

“Do your worst,” I said through clenched teeth.
“With pleasure,” Belse said and seemed to snap her fingers.
The next thing I remembered I was waking up indoors

somewhere. The light was very dim, coming from a source I could
not see. I was tied down, spread-eagled, on a padded surface with
a vaulted ceiling above me. My head was held back so I could not
lift it. I had no idea if I was on a platform or on the floor, the
ceiling was too high to tell.

Cecilia Tan

“He’s awake.” That was Vorna’s voice, somewhere to my right.
From my left came Belse, and it appeared I was on a platform

because she climbed up and then crawled over me. She was naked,
her skin glistening with a sweet scented oil, and she lay herself
down along the length of me. “Siksie has told us you are not
allowed to come.”

I didn’t answer, but she didn’t hit me.
“She has also told us that if you do, you’ll have to start the

eight days of punishment over again.” She closed her mouth over
mine, her tongue pushing between my lips, my teeth. I did not
bite her. “We know you’ve studied the Arian disciplines.”

Vorna climbed up beside her. “We’ve studied the Velian

disciplines,” she said with her white teeth flashing in her
shadowed face. “And there are two of us.”

“And we have two days,” Belse added. “Shall I start?” she asked

Vorna, who gave her a curt nod and slipped off the platform.

So they sought to break me with pleasure, to make me give up

my self-control. “And if I do not break?”

She laughed. “You’ll break. And then we’ll get to do this all

over again.” She cupped my balls in her hand and the next thing I
felt was her mouth, warm and soft, on the head of my penis.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on what I had been

trying to teach Jelan earlier in the day. I dammed up the flow of
arousal down the front of my body, hitching my breath and
concentrating, while at the same time trying to let energy flow
out through my feet, to reverse the tide.

It worked for a while, a long while, I think, though once I

entered that state it was impossible to tell how much time passed.
But her mouth was relentless and her fingers kept trailing up my
stomach, up the thin line drawn between my groin and belly
button, then up to my nipples, which she barely touched, barely
caressed. A few minutes of that would have been of no
consequence, but she did not stop. Had an hour gone by? Two?
Three? I did not know, but my nipples had become rock hard, the
water behind the dam rising higher and higher.

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Then suddenly she gripped my nipples, flicking both hard with

her thumbs. and I felt the water begin to spill over. She raked her
nails down my stomach then, as if she could hurry the stream of
arousal toward my cock—which I suppose is exactly what she did.
I could stay deflated no longer, and some blood did rush in.

Now she turned around, straddling my stomach so that I was

staring at her backside, and she raked her nails gently, so gently,
up the insides of my thighs, up the underside of my ball sac, up
the half-hard center length of my cock.

I regained a small bit of control, breathing deeply and then

willing my inner muscles to relax, but it was only a matter of time
before she had chipped away the defense. Eventually I was
rampant, and beginning to sweat. The Arian disciplines allowed a
measure of control on a part of the body that otherwise would act
like it had a mind of its own, but they were not foolproof. And I
was not made of stone.

“This is beautiful,” she said to me, admiring the length and

curve of my member with her eyes and her hands. “I like it just
like this.” With that she climbed onto me, inserted me deep in her
folds, and I gasped as she slid down. She was contracting her
vaginal muscles as she did so, in a way that I had never felt before.
I opened my eyes wide in surprise.

I was still far from coming, but Belse had already gotten further

than I had expected her to. On Phynia, no girl had ever been able
to make me hard if I had been trying to hold back. Even Mirell,
when she had sent me back to Audan, had boasted of my abilities.
But Mirell was not a Velian adept, and she had never had a serious
incentive to break me. Belse had every reason to.

She seemed to lose herself for a while then, riding me and

enjoying the feeling. Part of me enjoyed it, too, for while she was
distracted I was able to keep my arousal from rising any more. I
even began to soften slightly as she began to increase her pace,
but of course she noticed that immediately. “Oh no, I need you
harder,” she said, and snapped a ring in place around my cock and
balls. She went back to her manual manipulation and oral

Cecilia Tan

stimulation, and soon I was as hard as before, with the blood flow
now trapped in my organ.

If I had to guess I would say she rode me, bringing herself to

orgasm numerous times, for two hours. Then she slid off, kissing
me again as she did so, and Vorna climbed on.

Was it torture? I wish I could say I slipped deep into a trance

and woke up two days later with the two of them frustrated and
exhausted at the foot of the platform. But there was no trance.
There was just moment by agonizing moment of holding back
and holding back. It was as if they had made me stand up and hold
a giant jug of water over my head, and my goal was not to spill it
while they wanted me to douse myself. Hour by hour I grew
weaker, and sometimes a few droplets would spill as I shook, but
still I held the water back. And yes, it was torture.

They fed me something through a tube, and made me drink

water from a bulb, and undid the strap from time to time to allow
the blood to flow out again before they would start all over again
making me hard, and bringing me to the brink. I am not sure, but
I think it took less time to make me hard each time. In other
words, they were gaining on me. I assumed one of them would
rest or sleep while the other worked on me with her hands, her
mouth, her cunt. Vorna impaled herself in the ass at one point, just
for her own pleasure I think, because she could not get the same
contracting action she had with her vaginal muscles.

Me, I did not sleep. Whenever I would drift off, I would begin

to lose control, and I could not let that happen. Once in a while
they would attach me to a machine that would whoosh all the
urine and feces out of me in a few short seconds, leaving me clean
and sanitized and ready for more. And then whichever one’s turn
it was, she would start again.

Then midway through the second day, they double teamed me.

Belse, whose contractions were stronger and more varied in their
pattern, riding me, while Vorna fished for my prostate gland. That
was when I began to pray.

The current Emperor Arshan exalted Zal most of all, but it was

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to Kyl I prayed, while thinking of my father’s words. The gods are
real, he just didn’t believe in them anymore. Kyl, father and mother of
my spirit, I prayed, help me. The ones who seek to break me are not worthy of me.
Help me find the strength to endure this and make me stronger than they are.

I wasn’t truly sure if I believed in the gods myself, but the

prayer seemed to help. I repeated something on that theme over
and over to myself as time crawled by. Vorna’s fingers stroked the
gland inside me and Belse purred in appreciation as my cock
twitched inside her. She redoubled her efforts but I kept repeating
the prayer to myself, and we seemed to plateau once again. I felt
Vorna slip out, away, and then return, something large and cold
and slippery now pushing between my ass cheeks.

And then a voice, startling and real, not Kyl answering me, but

Siksie standing somewhere near my head. “Isn’t that cheating?”

Belse made a noise of frustration, and I suddenly knew they

were running out of time. “He’s right on the edge,” she hissed.

“He’s been right on the edge for six hours now,” Siksie purred.

I felt her fingers, cool and dry against the skin of my neck. She
caressed the place I knew the implant had gone in. “I’ve been
monitoring.”

Vorna shoved whatever it was into my ass and I arched upward,

bucking against Belse, but I did not come. I squeezed my eyes shut,
trying to distance myself from the sensation once again, while
maintaining control of it at the same time.

Belse did come, though, herself, one more time, this time with

intense shaking and convulsions, a sensation so strong that had
Siksie not been there, had I not known that time was running out,
it might have been enough to make me give in. Someday I would
have to get together with a Velian adept for pleasurably spiritual
purposes, I decided.

She slipped off, exhausted and spent. Vorna pulled whatever it

was out of my anal cavity and flung it in frustration at the wall.

Siksie released the restraint on my head and then stroked my

forehead. The look in her eyes radiated approval and her stroking
felt as though she were praising me. “You never agreed on what the

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outcome would be if he won the challenge,” she said to the women.

They were out of my line of sight now. I lay there, relishing

the feeling of Siksie’s touch and the deflation of my erection.

“I think that makes it your choice, Arshan.” She reached across

me to undo one of my arm restraints and the tail of her braided
hair tickled my face. Then she did the other. “What will it be?
Public abasement?”

She circled around toward my feet to undo the restraints there.

“Reciprocal suffering?” She flashed me a wicked smile. “I know
you are in no shape to deliver such a treatment yourself, but
someone else could be delegated to.”

I tried to sit up and failed. “I think I’d much rather they swore

to obey me when I called on them.”

“Well, you’ve clearly proven yourself their superior.” Siksie

turned toward the women and I watched, sleepily fascinated as
the red cloth wound in her hair swung back and forth.

“I declare it fair,” Siksie said, with an official tone in her voice.

“Swear it.” I could not see, but heard the women drop to their
knees and each one kissed the royal attendant on the mons.
“Done.” And with that, she dismissed them.

I expected her to leave, too, but the next thing I found was she

was up on the platform with me, helping me to roll onto my side.
“Zal’s whip. Arshan, you’re in bad shape.”

“I just need sleep,” I said, my eyes closing. “Was it really two

days?”

“Yes, and the bitches dehydrated you.” She pressed a water

bulb into my hand.

I was too tired to lift it to my mouth. “Wanna sleep,” was all I

could say.

“Ghiba is next,” she said softly.
That woke me a little. “How long?”
“I can get you a few hours. Not much longer.” She took her

robe off and covered me with it.

“You sound like you regret making me run the gantlet,” I said,

turning slightly so I could see her face.

Royal Treatment

She frowned. “Regret is too strong a word. I’m pleased you’ve

done so well so far.” She ran her hand over my forehead again. “I
dislike seeing those who are not worthy of respect demanding it.”

I suddenly wanted to ask her what she knew about my father and

his falling out with the emperor, or what she thought of him and
the slave trade, and a hundred other things, but even as I tried to
open my mouth she said, “Sleep now. I’ll give you as long as I can.”

“Yes, lady,” I answered and was asleep before she left my side.

Cecilia Tan

I woke to find Ghiba staring at me. I was in a bed, just a normal
bed at first glance, with no restraints or moving parts, though I
knew they could be hidden. I stared back, my brain foggy and the
fatigue in my muscles weighing me down like a sodden blanket.

She seemed content to stare while I began to think. She was a

beauty, this one, with a pronounced curve to her hips and bust,
and a curl in her hair. It’s a favorite game of Kylaran nobles to guess
who has which blood lines. There are no “pure” bloods, of course,
not after ten generations of starfaring and conquering, but there
are those who, through whatever genetic mix, fall into one of the
two classic phenotypes. I was one, the tall, slender type, the
aristocratic preference. My father was the other, broad-shouldered,
stocky. Kylaran women tended toward small breasts no matter
which type they were. Ghiba was clearly neither, both long legged
and well-endowed, and curly hair was definitely from some
offworld gene. She was a big girl and I wondered again what had
passed between her and Kessa such that she lost.

My brain was also urging me into action. Take the initiative,

set the ground rules. But I was too tired.

She spoke first. “I would have let you sleep longer, but time is

finite.”

That reminded me of something that had been nagging me.

“Every time I wake up, I’m somewhere different. I’m not that
heavy a sleeper.”

She smirked at me. “Are you really as naïve as you act?” She

came and sat on the bed next to me, her hand caressing my neck.
“It’s the slave implant. I can’t believe you agreed to have one put
in.” She smelled salty, like she had been exercising shortly before.

“I’m under the impression that when my eight days are up,

it’ll be taken back out.” I wanted to sit up now, but with her body
weight on the blankets I was actually swaddled as I was.

Part Seven

“That’s undoubtedly true,” she said. “But you’re no coward,

that’s for sure.”

I gave a short laugh. “Maybe I would have been, if I had known

what I was in for.”

She smiled in return. “I doubt that.” She ran her hand through

my hair, which was in need of trimming. I had let it go while on
Phynia and for whatever reason Audan hadn’t made me cut it. “So,
tell me about this no-ravishing-the-slave-girls prohibition.”

It took me a moment to catch on, and confusion must have

flickered across my face for a second before I said “Oh, that. Well,
my father’s very into the old ways.”

“What do you mean?”
“He believes in the bond between one master, one slave, and

he practices abstinence as spiritual cleansing.” This wasn’t strictly
true, but I doubted she could test the veracity of anything I said.

“How romantic.” She used her nails to scratch my scalp lightly

and my hair stood pleasantly on end. “So, he doesn’t want you
buggering the help? Is that it?”

“Well, there’s more to it than that,” I said, knowing that she

had probably seen something in my expression, “but that’s the
basic idea. He thinks I need to learn to control my appetites.” In
reality, he had never said such a thing to me, though I sensed he
disapproved of some of the excesses I had taken on Phynia.

“That’s quaint,” she said then. “I didn’t grow up here. I grew

up on Malakai, but in the Kylaran diplomatic compound. I thought
I knew what it would be like here. But the ‘appetites’ are stronger
here, don’t you think?”

“You think so?”
“Or the inhibitions are less—same result. I mean, really, your

father aside, how many times would you have sex per day if you
had your wish?”

This was possibly one of the oddest conversations I’d ever had.

The Kylar are not a chatty people. Even most of the teaching and
mentoring that goes on takes place through inference, indirection,
and practice. Analysis is something one keeps in one’s own head.

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But I answered. “If you count me having sex with myself, five or
six times a day, easily.”

“So this whole ‘not coming for a week’ is actually a

punishment for you.”

“Yes.”
“You’re really suffering.”
“Well, not at the moment, but overall, yes.” After what I had

just been through with Belse and Vorna I could say that with
complete truthfulness. I watched her eyes search the air in front
of her face while she thought about something. “Is something
wrong?”

She looked back at me. “You’re very... I like the way you look.”
“It’s okay to want me, Ghiba.” Don’t ask me what made me

use her name there, but I did. “It’s within your rights, and honestly,
I don’t mind.”

Now she said nothing.
“Is there something you want from me?” Now I did wriggle

out from the blankets so I could sit up. “You woke me up for a
reason.”

“Yes, I did.” Her eyes were downcast now as she had some

struggle within herself.

“Would it be easier if I got on my knees?” I suggested.
She shook her head and I suddenly had an inkling what this

was about. Surely Trella wasn’t the only noble-born who was
finding it impolitic or unfashionable to be something other than
utterly dominant?

“You can tell me,” I said, in my best, safe coaxing voice. She

glanced up and I realized that I might seem less than sincere.
“Swear me to silence. I will not hold it over you.” Still, she
hesitated. “Ghiba, I’ve guessed it already. So you had best swear
me to it for your own good.”

“Yes.” She stood then and pointed to the floor, I climbed out

of bed and we went through a brief ritual swearing that ended
with me kissing her on the mons. Then she sat down on the bed,
her face quite red and her ample breasts heaving. “You know I
haven’t come since I was eleven years old?”

Royal Treatment

I could barely speak I was so surprised. “What changed?”
“That was the last time my sire asserted himself. He spanked

me raw for something I had done and I came while he was
spanking me. Then he went on an ambassadorial trip to Maraghi
or somewhere and by the time he came back, I was of age.” She
drew a deep breath. “I’ve tried. I’ve had some of the best sex slaves
on the planet in my bed and not one has been able to get me to
let go.”

“You need to surrender.”
“I saw what you did to that slave girl. You took her apart

completely. I... I need that.”

“Let’s be clear. Do you need complete and utter humiliation,

debasement, and debauchery? Or do you just need your options
closed and your will subjugated?” I tipped her chin upward so she
had to look at me while she answered. “Because I can do either.”

“Not,” she swallowed, trying to get the words out. “Not

humiliation. But control. And... I respect you. I need to respect...”

“And be a little bit afraid?” I said into her ear as I snaked my

hand into her hair. I pulled, tipping her face toward mine and
exposing her neck. She trembled and I kissed her. “What are you
more afraid of, that I won’t stop if it’s too much, or that I will?”

She gasped, a lump in her throat making it impossible to speak.
“Because if you ask me to stop, I will. Irrevocably.” I said. Her

answer was a stiff nod, or as much of a nod as she could manage
with my hand in her hair. “Anything else I should know?”

She was hanging on that edge of terror, that fear of the

unknown, that I found so sweet. It was unfair of me to ask at this
point, since I knew she was wound too tight to say anything more.
I bent over and kissed her again, tasting the tension. I twisted and
lay her down on the bed, and put my mouth to her neck. She
arched with pleasure but I trapped her limbs from moving. She
was ticklish and responsive both.

Yes, the neck seemed a good place to start. It wasn’t long before

she was moaning in response, writhing under me, as I ramped up
the intensity of my licking and sucking. There would come a point,

Cecilia Tan

I knew, when the sensation would seem like too much to her,
where she would struggle at first with herself over it—after all, I
wasn’t hurting her—and then she would struggle with me
physically, trying to pull away, roll over, escape the intensity. Surely
any courtesan she had employed knew the basic ways to convince
her body to give up, but the clumsy fools probably tied her
formally and then flogged her. So artificial, so self-conscious, it
would never have the desired effect. Like this though, my body
against hers, my desire flaring across her skin, much more
effective. Her limbs were long but mine were longer, and my torso
wasn’t weakened by the fact that someone was licking the pressure
points in my neck. She had no chance to escape.

It was only a matter of time before she realized that.

Meanwhile, I feasted on her, on her struggling and on the sweet
sweat that sprang up on her skin as she fought. I waited for the
moment when not her mind, but her body, would give up, when
at a deep level below her conscious self, she would realize she was
entirely at my mercy.

I could almost feel her sinking into that state, as her writhing

became less focused, and I was able to worm her out of her
tightskin such that she barely noticed. She was slick with arousal
and I moved my body up and down hers as I held her down.

And there she went, the sudden resignation, the almost

unconscious choice to give in—I felt the slack move up her spine
and quickly plunged a hand between her legs. She cried out but
there was no physical struggle left in her. My mouth crept down
from her neck to her nipples while my fingers worked her clitoris,
and then I slid my fingers inside her and let my tongue take up
where they had left off.

She was quickening nicely, responding to my presence as much

as to my touch. As her arousal built I could hear the note of surprise
in her cries and gasps. She knew I could bring her off, and so did I.
So imagine her frustration when I withdrew, leaving her up on that
plateau with no way to climb higher. Her eyes opened in shock and
for a moment she looked as if she might have harsh words for me.

Royal Treatment

I silenced her with a gesture. “I still want to spank you.”
“But...?”
“Did you think this was entirely for you? Your body is mine

now, to do with as I please.”

She flushed and closed her eyes as I said it, nodding silently to

me. I crawled up her body then, as if to kiss her on the neck again,
but instead I held myself up as I insinuated my cock between her
legs. “Did you think it was only your neck I wanted?” I breathed
as I slid easily into her. “That was only the beginning.”

There was a tiny seed of doubt in my mind about this plan,

only because I had never suffered anything quite like the previous
two days and I wasn’t sure if that would affect me. But this was so
much easier than what I had just been through, there was no
noticeable lag in my abilities. There was an initial spike in her
resistance as I began fucking her, and then, much more quickly
than before, she gave in.

I rolled us over so that she was astride me and pulled her face

down to mine, my other hand cupping her ass to keep her moving.
“Good girl,” I whispered to her. Something in the words seemed
to break something inside her and she clutched at me. “Would my
girl like a spanking now?”

“Oh yes, plea...” she started to say but I didn’t let her finish

before my hand made hard contact with her ample ass. The motion
drove her onto me even harder of course, a delicious sensation for
both of us. I began spanking her with both hands then, matching
my pace to the driving of her hips, then gradually increasing it.
“Good girl,” I said again.

She came. Her orgasm, from what I could tell, had multiple

peaks, and she soon became oblivious to whether I was spanking
her or not, and threw her whole body into dragging her clit
through my pubic hair. At that point I simply hung on for the ride,
concentrating on my breathing in case my own arousal should get
the better of me. At last, she slumped.

She opened her eyes with a smile that was gratifying to see.

The look also told me she thought it was over. I flipped her onto

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her back then and drove myself into her with long, languid strokes.
“I’m not done with you, yet,” I whispered.

“But I thought...”
“I won’t come. I know the rules.” I relished her confusion, the

tension building in her midsection as she tried to partly sit up.
“But I want you to come once more, for me.”

“For you?”
“The last one was for you. Now, for me.” She bit her lip but

nodded her assent, closing her eyes and sinking back into the bed
covers. I hitched my knees partway under her thighs and knelt
upright, so now I could fuck her and my hands could get at her
clit again as well.

Thankfully it wasn’t difficult to make her come again. This time

when the shudders were finished, I let her pull me down to her
for a long kiss as I slid out.

“Thank you,” she said, when she could. I lay down next to her

and we enjoyed the feeling of each other’s limp, damp heat. She
pulled a blanket over us.

“You took a chance, asking me to do that,” I said, thinking

about what Jelan had done to Miera.

“What do you mean?”
“Please, Ghiba, if we’d met at some high society party and done

this would be one thing, but here? Where everyone is vying for
position? I could have...”

“I know.” Her fingers clutched at my chest. “But I wanted it...

needed it to be a little bit real.”

“But you trusted me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She nuzzled against me. “I can come up with an answer to that

question, but I would probably be lying.”

“Try it.”
“There’s a part of me that says I knew, deep down, that you

were a good man and wouldn’t ruin me. But I think that’s just the
story I tell myself to make myself feel better about it.”

Royal Treatment

“So, what was it really?”
“I just wanted you so much I’d tell myself anything.”
“Oh.” I stroked her hair. “I guess it worked out well for you,

then.”

“Rather.” I could feel the muscles in her face move as she

smiled against my breastbone. “It’s odd, the way my household
works, the people I trust are the ones I don’t respect, and the ones
I respect, I don’t trust.”

“Do you mean respect, or fear?”
She thought a moment. “You’re right. Respect isn’t the right

word at all.”

There were old words for these nuances, these differences,

words my father had taught me but which were out of fashion,
barely spoken since the priesthood had been disbanded. Words she
might never have heard on Malakai. I decided I was too tired for a
linguistics lesson, though. “But you respect me.”

“Yes.” She pushed herself up on one elbow. “Which is why I

want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”
Now, she hesitated. “I don’t want to ask for too much, but I

really would like to do this again some time.”

“Me, too. If I survive the next few days,” I said it flippantly. I

was not truly trying to manipulate her into a position of fealty. Or
was I? I liked her, she was sweet, and she would be fun to play
with again. I didn’t expect a declaration of loyalty on her part to
follow.

But that is what I got. “I’ll help you. Anyway I can.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” She hushed me with her fingers on my lips. “To

do otherwise would be to dishonor the feeling you gave me.”

That momentary feeling that I controlled her, owned her. I

wanted to tell her that feeling would probably fade with time, but
that would have been belittling. “Very well,” I said. “You can
actually help me right now with two things.”

“Anything.”

Cecilia Tan

“First, fill me in on what has been happening between the

others, and second, let me sleep as long as possible before you
hand me off.”

She told me what she could before post-coital drowsiness and

fatigue finally dragged me down. As I began to doze I counted off
the members of the circle. Eight days, eight of us if we included
Trella, but did we include her? Tomorrow had to be Miera, the
only one I had not yet seen, and then, I found myself praying with
my eyes closed, Zal, Kyl, please Trella take over once I had been
with each of them once. If not, Kessa would have me again on the
final day. For if what Ghiba told me held true, Kessa was atop the
ladder, and surely she would enjoy another crack at me.

Royal Treatment

Ghiba was as good as her word, and when I awoke deep into the
next day she was there with food. There was also a strong pungent
smell in the air and I wondered at it.

“I took care of some of your bruises,” she said. “You were still

black and blue from where we worked you over that first day.” Her
nose twitched as I took a piece of fruit off the tray, but it wasn’t
the fruit that bothered her. “There are a few places where you may
scar.”

I laughed and she asked what I found so funny. “Nothing. Just...

that was the easiest day of this whole... ordeal.”

“Some would be ashamed of such scars.”
“Some lack my innate sense of superiority.” Yes, I said it as a

joke, but it was true, too. “Besides, don’t I have a few old ones?” I
rolled onto my stomach and bit into the fruit. She trailed her hands
over the skin of my back, and rubbed some more of the anti-bruise
medicine into it. “There should be one across my left shoulder, a
diagonal slash, and one like a curve under my right shoulder
blade.”

Her fingers were cool and pleasant. “I can just barely make

them out.”

“Damn. And I was so proud of those, too.” I rolled back over

to face her. Juice from the fruit ran down my chin and I ignored
it, but she didn’t, licking it from my face. “They’re from when I
trained in one of the high houses when I was a teenager.”

“Seriously?”
I nodded. “My father thought it would be good for me to learn

the protocols, the way of things. I spent a year when I was fourteen
serving in the capital.”

“My father wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me come here

until two years ago.”

Part Eight

“It was a lark to me,” I said. “I’d been at an all male boarding

school on Prosadz for a few years at that point, not a Kylaran
school mind you, and so sending me here, even though it was for
strict training, was like setting the cat among the birds. I took to
it like I’d lived here all my life.”

After we ate, she took me to wash—another thing I presumed

had been done to me while the implant held me unconscious—
and got all the liniments out of my skin. I was just contemplating
whether we might have time for a quick fuck in the shower when
a red uniformed guard appeared at the door.

“Come with me,” he said, to me, of course, and so naked and

dripping, I went.

He walked me all the way back to the discipline chamber

where they had held me the first day of my punishment, and put
me back in the featureless cubicle with the blue walls. I wondered
if something had changed. Had Siksie changed her mind about
letting this play out? Had the emperor found out the truth about
his heir? Or was this just another mind game—Miera’s, I
supposed?

My impression of Miera was not that she was randomly

cruel—I remembered her eyes rolling when Jelan had made me
crawl. Perhaps what I had taken for sympathy was only snobbery
about Jelan’s crude methods. What was she likely to demand? I
knew it was a mistake to sit there and dwell on it, which was no
doubt what was intended by isolating me there alone. Fear of the
unknown is the hardest of most fears to conquer. I meditated on
something Siksie had said, about me being like water. Whatever
came, I would flow with it.

Time passed. A guard came and brought me a meal, then later

took way the dishes. Still later he brought the device that forced
me to eliminate and cleaned me at the same time. And then I
waited some more.

When she appeared in the doorway I was contemplating

dozing off. It was Miera there, her face stern and closed, her
posture almost military with her hands behind her back. I

Royal Treatment

composed myself into a submissive posture. Something had turned
her hard and I had a good guess what.

“I’m not sure I want to touch you,” she said. “But the least I

can do is carry out your punishment in good faith.”

“Yes, my lady.”
“I am not yours and never will be. The correct term of address

is ‘mistress.’”

“Yes, mistress. My apologies.”
“You dare to continue referring to yourself in the first person?”
So it was that type of game, if indeed, it was a game. “No,

mistress. This humble slave apologizes.”

“You are not humble,” she said, her voice quiet with menace.

“But you will be.” She was wearing only the same black tightskin
suit and tunic the others had worn but her voice carried a regal
weight. “Explain the rules of engagement to me.”

“Pardon, m... mistress?” I had almost said ‘me.’
“The limits of your punishment, as you understand them.”
I took a deep breath before answering. “This humble slave is

being punished for transgressions against his father’s word. The
punishment is to last eight days, of which this is the sixth, and
during that time I... this humble slave is not to come. I...” Zal’s
whip is was hard to keep from using the first person. “This humble
slave knows of no other rules or limits... other than the general
standards of conduct.” I must have been more nervous than usual
or I never would have dared tack that little reminder on.

She ignored it for the moment. “So you submit willingly to

what I do.”

I almost said “I do.” But thankfully it came out “I-Yes, mistress.”
“And I suppose by general standards of conduct you mean it

would be frowned on if you lost a limb during your
chastisement.” Her eyes flared.

“This humble slave’s father expects him to come home whole,” I

said with a slight stammer. Because I realized he didn’t. He had
warned me as much that I might come back to him in pieces, if at all.

She clucked her tongue. “I doubt very much he expects that,”

Cecilia Tan

she said. “Your father knows what can happen in the palaces.” She
brought her hands around to where I could see them, and she had
a knife in one, triangular and gleaming, and something that looked
like a loop of thick cord, perhaps braided leather, attached to a
handle.

I was not going to beg. What good would it do? She had

unnerved me, but not that much. Instead I tilted my head upward
and said, “As you wish, mistress.”

Her eyebrow twitched. “Up. To the table.”
I obeyed. She stood where she was and I walked past her into

the main room, where the same table rack I had been restrained
to on that first day waited for me, upright.

“Put your hands against the surface.”
I swallowed. She had paid attention that first day, when I had

taken everything they could throw at me without much flinching.
It’s so easy when one is restrained to let the blows fall like rain.
Not so when one’s hands are free. I pressed my palms to the soft
surface, spread my legs slightly, and waited.

She took a step closer to me, and I guessed she was going to

start with the loop I had seen, something close range. I heard it
hiss through the air the moment before it bit into my back. It fell
heavily enough to bruise and yet also burned at the same time. I
swallowed a grunt and wished for less bony shoulder blades. I
expected the next blow to fall near the first, but this time she
caught me at the top of my thighs, and my body bowed backward,
involuntarily.

“Hold still.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Holding still meant I had to tense for each blow, which made

them hurt more, or so it seemed until she began to vary her
rhythm and catch me off guard, so that I could not help but duck
to one side or the other, sometimes moving into the blow so that
the looped strap caught me around the ribs or on my hip.

It’s not adequate to say it hurt. It hurt enough after long

enough that some vestigial part of my brain kept trying to react,

Royal Treatment

to fight or to run... or to surrender. I tamped it down with deep
breaths when I could get them and thoughts of Audan, and
training. But I could hear Kessa’s voice, doubting my humanity. We
all have that animal side. that old part of our brains. It was the part
I had subdued in Ghiba. It was the part that hungered and lusted
and drove us to do things that weren’t rational. It was the part that
the spiritual teachings of Zal and Kyl were supposed to help us to
master, in ourselves and in our slaves.

She paused to drink some water and I spoke. “Mistress, may

this humble slave ask you a question?”

“No,” she said simply, and began to lay the blows on me again

with renewed ferocity. This time she did not seem to care that my
arms buckled and I ended up with my chest pressed against the
table, strangling a cry in my throat. I knew if I screamed, the
animal would be out of the cage, and I did not want to find out
what I would be like then.

She whipped me that way until she decided to change. I don’t

know if her arm was tired or what, but suddenly she was behind
me, the loop went around my neck and she brought me to the
ground. I struggled. I didn’t mean to, but I pulled against the cord
with my hands even as she dropped me in a flash onto my knees.
Apparently the handle on that thing could split in two, and now she
could use it as a kind of choke-submission collar. That my brain was
still noticing things like this I took as a good sign. She had not forced
me down into bottom space completely.

“I hate you,” she said as she kept both handles in one hand and

reached for something with the other. I felt the cold flat of the blade
between my shoulders, which hurt only because the skin was now
so raw. “Hold still or I may cut too deep.”

It was impossible to be completely still, as my lungs were gasping

for air through my constricted throat, but I tried. It was easier, when
she started to cut. That animal part of me knew what was happening
and muscles I didn’t think could go rigid, did. The knife was sharp
enough to shave with, and all she had to do was press it lightly to
my ravaged skin and it parted with a burning sensation.

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I let out a hiss. The sensation was painful, yes, but sublime. No

one had ever cut me that way before. The animal part of my brain
began to panic—I could feel the blood trickling down my skin—
but another part had opened my eyes wide and unseeing.
Something about the sensation of the metal touching my skin,
parting it, withdrawing with a slow burn and a lingering blossom
of intensity, it was akin to orgasm. Maybe the fact that I had not
come in a week had something to do with that? Each cut was like
a small release, and I found myself holding my breath to increase
the sensation, letting it out as she would withdraw.

I certainly had not expected that to be my reaction. As I have

said before, a healthy masochistic streak is a necessary trait. But
this? It was not her intent to be making love to me with a knife,
but that is what it felt like. You never know until you try, I suppose.

Just when I thought I was regaining control, adjusting to the

sensation, she began to sink the blade a bit deeper, or perhaps just
more quickly, with more of a slash—I’m really not sure—and after
two or three cuts like that I went blank. My mind went somewhere
else. After what seemed like only a moment to me, I came to
myself and found I was crying, my head hidden in my arms and
my legs tucked under me in a protective position.

She had pushed me over or through some wall I hadn’t even

known was there. I looked up at her wondering what she would
do next. The strangest part was that I was no longer the least bit
fearful. If anything, there was a part of me that was grateful to her.
It sounds strange, I know, but there you have it. I suppose Ghiba
felt a little that way toward me. I sat up on my knees, turned my
palms upward and said, “Thank you, mistress.”

She was standing there with her arms folded over her chest,

the undone strap hanging in one hand. She shook her head slowly
from side to side, barely looking at me. “Can you take more?”

“Whatever you wish, mistress.”
“No, seriously, can you take more?”
I nodded. “This humble slave is yours to command.”
She clenched her fist then and walloped me across the face

Royal Treatment

with it. When I fell, it wasn’t an act. I sprawled on the floor and
put a hand to where she had connected with my cheek.

She made me sit back up, and compose myself again, before

she hit me again. This time her swing caught me in the jaw. She
was right handed and so it was the left side of my face again. After
three or four more blows like this, I began to realize that the reason
she was making me set myself again between each blow was so
that she could keep her rage from running out of control.

“Mistress does not have to be so nice,” I said then, trying to

keep any hint of sarcasm out of my voice. “If she is angry, she does
not have to hold back.”

The next blow was right-handed slap which jerked my head

to the side and made me momentarily dizzy. “Shut up. I don’t take
orders from you.”

“No, mistress. But I can feel you are holding back.”
She slapped me again, harder, but she didn’t seem to notice

that I had used the first person for myself. She came back with a
left this time, and a quick right. I saw her rub the knuckles of her
right hand in her left palm. It was hurting her as much as it was
me—no wonder she had switched to an open hand.

I took a guess. “Why are you so angry? Who is it you hate?”
“What does it matter?” she hissed at me. “All males are alike.”
“You are wishing it was Jelan here at your feet.”
That earned me the choke collar again. “Who told you?” she

demanded, but I could not answer she was choking me so hard.
“Who told you? Did you think you were going to have a chance
to do the same?”

I tried to shake my head no, but then she released me. “No,

never, Miera...”

“Who said you could use my name?” And she began to beat

me with the loop where I was balled on the floor with a fury I
hadn’t yet experienced. The wounds on my back sprayed blood
and I protected my face between my forearms.

“Miera,” I insisted, “listen to me! What Jelan did was wrong!

There is a price to be paid for that!”

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“What price and who pays!” she said through gritted teeth as

she flayed me. “The one with the club wins the battle, isn’t that so?”

This was possibly the most difficult circumstance I could think

of for an argument or a negotiation, since I had to get bursts of
words in between her blows. “Does it... make you feel better... to
beat me this way?”

“Yes!”
“Is that... why you asked... if I could take more?”
“Yes!” She tossed away the strap and began to pound her fists

into my back.

“Then please, Miera, please... do your worst!”
“What?” She paused for a moment.
I lifted one arm so I could look her in the eye. “Justice for him

may be a long time in coming,” I said. “But rest assured that if I
am standing in as proxy for him right now, someday, I will deliver
every blow you’ve given me.”

She sagged back on her heels and closed her eyes, her anger

spent.

“I know it’s a poor promise, compared to what you’ve been

through. But it’s all I have.” I returned to my submissive posture
in front of her, so we were now face to face. She looked skeptical,
to say the least. “Miera,” I said, “I’ve already beaten him once.”

Her mouth opened in shock. “I don’t believe you.”
“How else do you think I know? I’ve already turned the tables

on him once; he answers to me now.”

She nodded with a bitter expression on her face.
“I thought that would make you happy.”
“It does. But it is too little, too late.” She still had a hint of

contempt in her eye as she spat out. “He wasn’t the first.”

I must have looked surprised at that, because she laughed even

more bitterly. I was surprised, that a woman as seemingly strong
and capable as she could have fallen prey to such treatment, not to
mention that there were such predators with such disregard for
the rules in her life. I was more than surprised, actually. I was
affronted. This wasn’t the Kylaran way no matter what offworlders

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thought. “Who else?” I said, beginning to clench my fists.

She shook her head. “You do not really want to know.”
“I do.”
“I said no. Your chivalry is appreciated, though.” She put an

open hand on my wrist and my fist opened. “No one has ever
offered to defend me before.”

I was about to speak, what about your sire? your family priest

or healer? when it occurred to me that these were probably the
men who had forced themselves on her already. What was it Siksie
had said? That like my father I had unusual powers of perception?
Or maybe it should have been more obvious to me before. “I want
to do more than defend you. I want to... make things right.”

She kissed my bruised lip then. “Like a hero in the old stories?”
“Why not?” I thought about it. “Do you realize that every

member of the circle now owes me their allegiance save two?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Me and who else?”
“Kessa.” Just saying her name, it seemed to burn in my throat.
“Every...?”
Zal’s whip, I was sloppy. “Well, except for Trella herself. But

Jelan, Belse, Vorna, and Ghiba are all at my call.”

“The hero who never breaks,” she said. “I’ve heard that story.”
“Well, you did bring me to tears.”
She brushed it off. “You weren’t close to really giving in,

though.”

“No, I suppose I wasn’t. I don’t know. You brought me a place

I had never been before.” I was trying to remember the feeling of
it now, but it was slipping away like a delicious smell in the wind.
“Thank you for that, and my apologies.”

“Apologies?”
“For not being able to bring you the pleasure you deserve.”
“Arshan...”
“Truly, Miera, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that to

you, this,” I held my flaccid penis in my hand, “is a just a weapon.”
I held out my hand. “The same hand that can strike can heal,” I said.

“Speaking of which,” she stood, and moved to the edge of the

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room where there were cabinets and shelves. “Here we are.” She
came back and sat on the floor behind me, opened a jar of sweet-
smelling ointment, and began to gingerly stroke the skin on my
back.

“Zal’s whip, that hurts,” I said.
“More than what caused it?” she asked.
“No, but only for one reason.”
“What’s that?”
“The blows and cuts were laid on with hate. The medicine with

love.” Even so, I asked her to pause between each application,
because it stung and burned enough to make me see stars. “I thank
you for that.”

“You’re thanking me an awful lot, tonight.”
“So, where does that put us in the hierarchy?”
She blew a huff through her nose. “I’m just not adept at this game,

Arshan. I should be better at it, I know. But I lose patience. I feel dirty
when I am devious, yet that’s the only way to protect myself.”

“You need someone to be devious for you. To protect you.”
“Like Zal did for Kyl when Kyl would have sacrificed himself?”
“Well, yes.”
“You can’t promise me that kind of protection.”
“I’m not saying it should be me, but that you have to find

someone. That person doesn’t have to own you...”

“So you’re a hero and bonding counselor?”
“I try.” I shrugged, then hissed in pain as that opened a just-sealed

wound. “But seriously, Miera. I will do whatever I can for you.”

“You realize,” she said, putting down the jar and turning me to

face her, “that every part of me is screaming not to give in to you.”

“I’m not trying to make you give in...”
“Except my conscience which says I’ve wronged you badly.”
“Why, for beating me as a stand-in for every male you’ve

hated?” I kept the shrug to my face alone. “I’m none the worse
for wear. You were within your rights.”

“I still feel it was wrong. And now I feel guilty, and seeing you

like this...”

“How bad is it?” I, of course, had not seen my own back.

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“Bad. If I owned you, I’d be ashamed of what I’d done.”
“It sounds like you are anyway.”
She dropped her eyes at that. “Will you shut up and take my

allegiance already?”

“Will it make you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Then I accept.” I kissed her on the mouth then, a cradling kiss

with her face held softly between my hands, and then let her go.
“So, is there a mirror somewhere? I want to see what you’ve
done.”

We got up and explored the chamber more thoroughly, and I

was perhaps glad I had not seen what some of the things available
there were earlier. And we did find a mirror, rolled scroll-fashion
on a shelf, which she stretched out for me. And yes, it was as bad
as she’d said. There were places where the force of the strap alone
had brought blood to the surface, the cuts though clean were
crusted with blood, and the bruising was deep and pervasive.

“So,” I said, trying to sound conversational, “has Trella arrived

yet?”

“I don’t know.” She rolled the mirror back into a tube and put

it back on the shelf. She squeezed my arm. “Are you expecting her
to take over your punishment?”

I nodded. “It’s either Trella or back to Kessa.”
“Oh Zal, I’ve left you in bad shape...”
“Please, no more guilt. You’ve already sworn yourself to me.

That’s enough.”

She bit her lip and continued to worry silently.
“What happens now?” I asked. “Remember, you were

supposed to be in charge.”

“Come back to my room. I can’t imagine you sleeping in that

cell.” She rubbed her forehead. “We’ve been here all night. I
wonder if we can get some breakfast before we go to sleep?”

“As it happens,” I said, following her to the exit of the

chamber, “I have friends in the kitchens.”

So it was that we reached her room around the time dawn was

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breaking, full of food and sleepy as winter beasts, and she did not
mind curling naked into the bed with me. She blacked the
windows to make us think it was night, still, and the blankets were
soft and comfortable.

I was surprised without being surprised that some hours later

I woke up with her atop me, her hips grinding against mine and
her pubic bone stroking me to hardness. “Miera,” I whispered, but
she didn’t answer. “Are you awake?”

She whimpered against me and I held her close. “Do you even

know what you are doing?”

Her hand went over my mouth then, and I decided enough of

her brain was awake to know what it wanted. I concentrated on
my erection then, trying to make it hard but not overly large for
her. She slid onto my prick easily and I let her do the moving, my
consciousness floating halfway between sleep and wakefulness so
that it seemed almost like the sex were in a dream and not real.
She shuddered and came with a soft cry, then slumped on top of
me, breathing deeply with me still inside her. I rolled her gently
over and slid out, and we both returned to sleep. I wondered if
she would remember it in the morning.

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Real sleep was without a doubt more restorative than the
unconsciousness the implant could induce. When I woke, Miera was
gone but she had let the afternoon light through the windows. I
cursed as I sat up, and the bed clothes tore at the wounds that had
opened during the night and then dried against the cloth. I wished
Miera were here to help me wash, but she was not in the room and
there was no sound of her voice from nearby. She had a shower stall
attached to her room, another one of those places in the castle where
the ancient stone incongruously supported a modern convenience. I
stepped into the warm spray, ducking my head and scrubbing my
chest, but I could not bring myself to turn around and take the spray
directly on the welts and cuts. I know, I’m soft.

I stepped back into the bedroom, toweling myself carefully. But

if I had thought I might have an agonizing wait to find out whose I
would be today, I was wrong.

Her voice froze me in my tracks. “Arshan.”
Kessa was seated in the shadowy niche against the stone wall. I

turned to face her.

“I’ve been waiting so patiently to have another go at you,” she

said. Her legs were crossed and between her black hair and black
tunic her face seemed to glow in the ambient sunlight. “I’m amazed
you were able to stay hard through what I put you through. But now
that I know what you’ve been through this week, I see staying hard
really isn’t a problem for you under any circumstances.”

Be like water, I told myself, but my knees would not bend. Her

eyes flashed as she found my silence insolent. “You will address me
today as... caishen.”

The ancient and formal word for owner and not a term one

batted about in jest. I simply stared at her.

“It’s time you got used to using it.” She stood and stretched.

Part Nine

“I’m training you for Trella, after all, isn’t that what we agreed?
It’s well within my rights. And you are being punished, still, isn’t
that right, too?”

“Yes.”
“Yes, caishen,” she corrected. “That’s one infraction. Now tell

me, why you are not on your knees?”

“I... I don’t know, caishen.” I nearly choked on the word. I got

down, one knee at a time, my back stiff with anger and with the
ravages of the previous night.

“Follow me,” she said, and swept past me into the hallway. “On

your knees,” she added, as I tried to rise.

I knee-walked after her down a stone-flagged corridor and into

a parlor-type room. There were soft chairs around the edges, a
shelf of books, and the afternoon sun poured full onto the floor.
The ceiling was vaulted in the old style, and at the very center of
the room was a rectangular piece of furniture. It was too big for a
tuffet, too small and low for a bed. It was knee high, covered in
brown leather, and about as long as my torso, perhaps a bit longer.

Yes, a bit longer, as it turned out, as she draped me over it, and

I found it had grooves on the bottom for someone in my position
to grip onto.

“Tut, tut, caitan,” she said, using the word for bonded slave.

“Your back is a bloody mess. Thankfully, I like blood.” She bade
me stay still and then walked away. Part of me was saying that
anything was better than her electro-fuck or whatever she called
it, but that little voice was stilled when she began to whip me with
a long thin metal wire.

I don’t know how long or how thin. I just heard the whipping

sound it made through the air, and then felt it cut. Whether it really
cut my skin or opened the old wounds, I don’t know. It felt like it
cut. This had none of the orgasmic build and burn of the knife cut,
though. Instead it was a pain so sharp I felt as if my heart skipped
a beat.

But a beating was a beating, and she was letting me off easy

by slumping me over this platform. I closed my eyes and tried to

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pretend I deserved what she was dishing out. Whenever Mirell had
disciplined me, that thought had often helped me through it. But
I rebelled at the thought this time. Kessa was not doing this for
my good. She didn’t care for me, wasn’t improving me by this
treatment, and the pretense of why I was being punished was a
lie to begin with. She was doing it merely to be brutal and cruel,
and because she could.

And because I was letting her. Was there a way for me to fight

back? To assert my own rights or my own will on the situation? I
had not come up with anything, and I was suffering.

The suffering would be finite, I thought. Even if she flayed me

for a full day, tomorrow it would be over, and I would come up
with some way to insure Kessa never touched me again.

That was the thought I was hanging onto when she ceased

with the wire and began licking the blood off my back. I heard a
crunching sound—she was chewing something—and then she
would lick. Whatever she was eating, it was every bit as
excruciating as the liniment Miera had used.

“Zal’s whip, I love it when you hurt,” she whispered.
“At least one of us is pleased,” I answered. What was wrong

with me? Why was I determined to inflame her? My water nature,
it seemed, had hardened. I was having trouble even pretending I
respected her.

Maybe I was just tired.
“That is your second infraction,” she purred. “On your back.”
I turned over with difficulty. Whatever she had been eating, my

guess was some kind of mints, she had left crumbs of on my skin
which ground into me as I lay down on the platform, my knees over
the bottom edge and my head hanging just slightly over the top.

I stifled the urge to close my eyes when I heard the crackle.

She stood over me, still wearing her tunic but the bottom of her
bare, with a thin rod about six inches long in each hand. Sparks
seemed to leap from the tip of one to the other. “Two infractions,”
she said. She held them both in one hand then, and kneeling
beside me, reached between my legs. Her finger played around

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my anus for a few moments and then she shifted until she was
sitting between my knees. I felt the tip of the rod at the entrance
and then only a slight sensation of cold as she slid it into me.

“Hold up your cock, pretty little slave,” she said.
One often hears penises described as angry red, and in my case

it was fitting. I stiffened partly in my hand and then lay back,
waiting to see what she would do. She ran the rod between her
lips, coating it generously with her saliva, and then she touched it
to the tip of my penis.

I jumped at the jolt but it was only momentary. She brushed

the length of the rod along the slit of my urethra. Then she
changed the angle so the rod was parallel with my erection, and
began to slip it inside. I held my breath but she did not force it,
merely letting the weight of the rod itself carry it downward and
inside me.

Then she activated it—I don’t know how but I assume with

the same neural implant control she used for her other device—
and I felt that each rod had turned into a spinning saw inside me.
I screamed. Without any thought for dignity or preserving my
sanity, I screamed.

It’s only a neural stimulus, I told myself, but I thought about

the man Siksie said she had killed, by making him think his insides
were on fire. All the nerves from my belly button town to my knees
were hers to control, and my cock hardened against my will.

“Strong, isn’t it?” She then climbed on top of me and the agony

abated for a moment. “Each new device doubles the intensity.
Guess where the third one is?”

I didn’t have to guess. I knew she was going to fuck me with

that damned electro-fuck thing. I must have had a desperate look
in my eye because she then calmly reached over me, produced two
wristwraps which she pulled tight, trapping my hands at my
armpits and securing me to the platform all at once. She didn’t
draw it out any longer, though. She guided me into her with one
hand, and sank back.

I did not scream this time. I held my jaw closed through sheer

Royal Treatment

force of will, and clamped my eyes closed as well. What could I
do? I might be able to make myself larger but I doubted it would
bother her. And now that I had the rod inside me, I was afraid to
change much.

Yes, afraid. I didn’t think she would stop even if she were doing

permanent damage to me. That and I knew the pain was going to
get worse as her arousal grew. I wondered if it was possible for
the force of her orgasm to knock me unconscious. I didn’t know
if I would last that long.

I spat at her and received a blow to the temple, but I felt a kind

of joy at knowing I had shown her she had yet to subjugate me.
“Zal’s tits,” I croaked at her, “is that the worst you can do?” I spat
again.

Her anger flared and the pain with it, forcing a short cry from

my throat, but I kept on. “Who’s the animal now?” I ad-libbed.
“Who couldn’t wait to get off? That machine has you trained, that’s
what it is...”

And then she was choking me. She had both hands wrapped

around my throat even as her vaginal muscles clamped down
around me. If she was going to kill me, I wasn’t afraid. Besides, I
knew that she would probably stop as soon as I lost
consciousness—I doubted she had ever actually strangled a man
to death. Such was the serenity of my thoughts when quite
abruptly, the pain stopped.

No, not because I lost consciousness, but because she did. She

slumped forward onto me, and I looked up to see Trella standing
over us, a rod of office in her hand. I didn’t know if the rod had
the power to stun or if she had simply walloped Kessa over the
head with it. Trella’s face was suffused with rage and she stepped
back and took a deep breath.

“Here.” Siksie undid my bonds and began to lift the limp form

of Kessa off me. “Carefully, hold yourself upright,” she said,
meaning my cock. She tossed Kessa aside and then teased the rod
inside my urethra out. It and the one between my legs joined Kessa
on the floor with tiny clangs.

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And then Trella was in my arms, squeezing me tight.
“What a stupid bitch,” Siksie said.
“Why did you stop her?” I asked. I mean yes, she was acting

like she wanted to kill me, but technically as long as she didn’t,
she was within her rights.

“She dared...” It was Trella who spoke now, her voice trembling

with anger. “When it was my turn...”

I glanced at Siksie. “Kessa was told Trella would be arriving

tonight.” Siksie shrugged. I was sure she had not told Kessa
explicitly that Trella would feel wronged. Her word is law.

“I see.” I disentangled myself partway from Trella and got a

good look at her for the first time. Her hair was twisted elaborately
atop her head, her eyes painted heavily so that she looked older.
“Thank you.”

Trella stood then and looked at Siksie. “Leave us.”
“But your excellence...”
“I said leave.” Trella sounded older, too, when she tried.
“As you wish.” Siksie shot me a glance as she turned, and

walked out, the heavy wood of the door closing with a thud.

Trella turned to me. With me sitting on the punishment tuffet

and her standing, she only had to look slightly downward. “I
would have been here sooner, but...” She bit her lip. “You don’t
know how hard this has been.”

“How hard what has been?”
“Watching you with the others. When I... I want you so much.”
“Trella...” But then she was kissing me and I couldn’t finish my

thought until she broke away. “I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.” She shrugged out of her robe and ran

her hands over my bare chest.

“Your excellence,” I said, looking her in the eye, “I am of

course yours to command.”

It was, of course, completely the wrong thing to say, when

what she wanted was for me to ravish her. I knew it would be, but
what I hadn’t guessed was what her reaction would be. She burst
into tears.

Royal Treatment

And call me a fool, but I figured the only way to get her to

stop was to kiss her. And the kiss led to a touch, which led to her
lying back, which led to me opening her tightskin, and so on. And
my poor ravaged body answered the call once again and I slipped
inside her, fucking her thoroughly, from in front at first and then
from behind so I could reach around to her clit and make her
come. And after I had lost count of the number of times she had
come, and I had maneuvered her to where she was on top of me,
I had to do it. I had to burst her bubble again.

“May I come, your excellence?” I asked.
“Why are you asking me that?” she said, with a shake of

frustration.

“Because you are the crown princess,” I said. “I will never be

more than a minor lord. And no matter what games we play, that
fact will never change.”

“If I take you for my consort, you will have to do as I say,”

she said.

“Yes, your excellence. But that is not what you want from

me, is it?”

“No.” She bit her lip in frustration, now seeing the circular

nature of the problem. She rocked up and down on me as if she
might get me to come without having to give permission. “I’ve
been watching you for a long time...”

“And I know what you want, your excellence. I have been your

dream lover, the one you wanted when you were secluded from
all others.” I reached up to tweak her nipple and she gasped. “And
I can give you that, for a day or a night, I can give you pleasure,
and pain, and everything you crave.”

Her eyes were closed as she rode me, listening to my voice. “I

can make you crawl, and service me, and take you when you least
expect it.” I expanded inside her as I said that and she gasped.

“But it will never be real, your excellence, It will always be a

fantasy. Because the reality is that I would be your slave, not the
other way around.”

She wailed and collapsed in tears on my chest. “But I want to

be yours!”

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“I know you do. But you need to find someone who can be

yours, your excellence.”

“But I’m not dominant like you.”
“Everyone has someone they can dominate. I saw you order

Siksie out of the room. Where did that strength come from?” I
placed my hands on her hips. “Tell me what to do.”

“Make yourself bigger. I want it to hurt.”
“As you wish,” I said, and complied, ramming her down onto

me so that she moaned.

“Oh yes, yes,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “I want you

to fuck me until you lose control.”

“Yes, your excellence.” I turned her over then, her knees up

around my neck, and did as she said. I had eight days of pent up
frustration to draw on, and although at first I merely tried to make
a good show of it, ultimately I obeyed her. I lost control completely
and ejaculated deep into her. I maintained my erection after that
long enough to have a second, smaller orgasm, and then slipped
free of her.

She was glowing.
“Was that what you wanted, your excellence?” I picked her up

and carried her to one of the soft chairs at the side of the room.
Her hair was completely undone, her eye makeup smudged and
streaked. I wrapped her discarded robe around the two of us.

She eyed me dreamily. “So, what am I to do now?”
I sighed. “As I was saying before, you need to find someone

who can be yours.”

“And who will be yours?” she asked, unable to keep a petulant

edge out of her voice.

“I don’t know, your excellence. I have not yet met the person

who calls to me.” If, indeed, I ever would. I saw the
disappointment on her face and it was as if I could read the fairy
tale she had written for herself. In which I would fall in love with
her, make her my own, battle her father for the throne, and in the
end, triumph with her at my side. Hadn’t Miera called me the hero
who never breaks? It seemed more likely that the Arshan whose

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name I carried would simply have me killed long before I could
rival him. “I am sorry to disappoint you.”

She stood then, taking the robe with her. “Then this has all

been for nothing. Do you think I don’t know that every one of
them is either loyal to you or beholden to you? Not to me, you.
You are the one who has made a circle here, not me. And it is your
fault, for nearly exposing me on that first night. You are to blame.”

I hurried to my knees. So she did have it in her, after all.
“They would all be mine, if you were mine,” she said, pulling

the robe tight and turning her back to me. “If you were consort,
after all.”

“Trella, your excellence, please...”
“Are you begging? Is that begging I hear?” She turned on her

heel and stalked over to me. “Maybe you could be a slave after all.”

I let a hint of anger into my voice. “You know that it won’t

work.”

At that, she simply hissed in anger, and bolted from the room.
I had a few minutes to sit there, wondering if there was

anything I could have said or done differently and what was to
happen now. Then a man I did not recognize stuck his head in the
door. He was in a flyer’s suit and his sandy brown hair was cropped
at his shoulders. “We had best be going,” he said, tossing me a
suit similar to his.

When I hesitated he added, “Siksie sent me. Now come on. She

says we’ll have an hour or so before they start searching for you.”
He reached out and shook my hand, a gesture I had only ever seen
offworld before. “My name’s Chosay.”

I silently thanked Siksie and said a prayer for mitigating

whatever punishment letting me escape might entail for her.

Chosay’s flyer was docked at the water’s edge, and within the

hour we were skimming the dark sea toward the mid-oceanic
launch platform. He changed with me there to a cargo ship headed
for Audan’s orbital station, and just like that, my adventure at the
Sunset Palace was at an end.

Cecilia Tan

I arrived back on the orbital platform my father called home
during the middle of his sleep cycle. Chosay went off to the mess
hall to eat while one of Audan’s men begged me to wait in the
audience chamber while he went to wake him. While I stood there,
I replayed my last conversation with Trella in my mind. I had
thought that surely we could come to some kind of an
understanding, that we would at least be friends. Other than that
though, I thought it would be interesting to see my father’s
reaction to the news that I had, essentially, subjugated Trella’s entire
court.

Only a few minutes later Audan came in, habitually naked and

not looking the least bit vulnerable for it. He also looked angry, so
angry that I did not resist the instinct to drop to my knees in front
of him. That seemed to incense him even more, and he threw
himself into his chair with a strangled cry. “I thought it would take
longer than ten days to break you,” he said.

“What?” I said. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”
He seemed to clear a little bit at the sound of my voice, but he

was still in his own world of conclusions when he said, “I thought
you would be stronger than that.” He swallowed hard and I
thought about what Siksie had said about him being stone. “Tell
me.”

“No one broke me, Piri,” I said, using the formal Kylish title

for one’s sire. I was surprised at how hurt I felt that he could
believe it so easily.

“I told you to tell me,” he said again, the command

unmistakable in his voice and the title unacknowledged.

So I began the tale, describing to him the group assembled.

My father was not stupid, even if his emotions did sometimes
cloud his logical sense. When I told him Trella was masquerading

Part Ten

as a slave girl he knew immediately the direction my story would
take. “Tell me you didn’t,” he said wearily.

“Unfortunately, I did.” I shifted on my sore knees. The flyer’s

suit I wore had seams in inconvenient places. “I felt it, Piri. I felt
the moment she... gave herself to me.”

“Not quite like the Phynians,” he said, half to himself. “And

then what? Did she abase herself in front of you? The others?”

I reddened. “No, that was when Siksie appeared. I don’t think

the others quite figured out what was going on. They just knew
she was... upset with me.”

Audan stared at me. “And yet, here you are, whole and

unscarred. Do not try to tell me that carnivore didn’t take a bite
out of you.”

Of course, I wasn’t unscarred. I somehow did not think the

sight of my scars would please him. I tried to continue the story.
“Siksie used the agony bomb on me. But she helped me...”

“I don’t believe it.”
“She and I hatched a plan to distract the others, while we

figured out...”

“She made you think you were plotting together? What kind

of fool are you?” He looked away, like he did not want to hear any
more. “I still don’t believe it. This is some story she cooked up for
you to feed me. You don’t go from playing harem games with
Phynian virgins to enslaving royalty.”

“You’ve taught me well, Piri. And we cannot be other than we

are.” And that includes Trella, I thought. “Siksie also said...” I
hesitated because I wasn’t sure if what I was about to say would
anger him. “I am like water where you are like stone.”

“You kneel easily enough,” he said with ice in his voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I felt my anger trying to

flare up to match his. Wasn’t I expecting him to be proud of me?
What was I missing this time?

“She broke you, and she sent you to me to do her bidding, the

snake.” He was looking at me suddenly as if I were not even his
son. He stepped down from the dais and gripped me by the chin,

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turning my head aside. He fingered the suture and the lump
underneath it and I sagged. The full explanation was a long way
from complete.

Now I had two choices, be like water and let his anger pass

right through me like a stone sinking in a pond, staying on my
knees, or I could be like him, like the stone mountain rising up
from the ground. I froze. I had always had a sense of which way
to go with these things before. I had been fostered at age seven in
another noble’s home for a year, before being sent off to Helleron,
and another one at age fourteen, and each time I had always
known when to yield and when to push back. Now I was caught
between the two, needing his respect and unsure which would be
the path to earn it. Should I stand up and fight him? Or cower
down as he was clearly about to explode with rage?

Then I blinked, and it was almost like my mother’s voice in my

head telling me there must be a third way. “Test me,” I said.

“What?” He acted like I couldn’t have said what I just did.
“Test me,” I repeated. Now I stood. “I can bend any female to

my will, and most males, too. And I am not broken.”

He grunted.
“Come on, Piri. You have the most advanced testing facility in

the entire system right here on this platform. Haven’t you ever
wondered what the scan would show on me?” I had wondered
about that myself, but the psych scanning tests were considered
nearly taboo for native Kylar. Thinking about Trella, hiding her urge
to submit for her entire life, it was obvious to me why. No one
wanted to suddenly find out their place in the power structure
should be at the bottom according to some measure of their innate
tendencies. That was fine for slave stock brought from other
planets, but not for our kind.

“The scans are unworthy,” he said then. “The old ways are

best.”

Once upon a time, before he met my mother and the

priesthood was disbanded, before I was born and politics drove
him into the offworld slave trade, my father had a reputation for

Royal Treatment

being one of the best at the “old way” of telling whether someone
was inherently a master or a slave. The old way was through
interaction, observation, and intuition.

Then again, the “old ways” also said each master should have

only one slave, as Kyl was bound to Zal, and that slaves be valued
and treasured as equals to keep the universe in balance. But Kylar
had not been in balance since a long time before I was born. We
had an Emperor who was far from the first who would murder
his own child for being submissive. Audan hated how far we had
come from the old teachings, but at the same time, he was ready
to disown me, or worse, if it seemed I had broken.

“Test me,” I said again.
He turned on me in an instant, his arms pinning mine back,

forcing me to the floor. I had forgotten he could move so fast. I
was thin and whipcord, while he was stockier, but not slow. Never
slow. “You mock me,” he growled in my ear.

“No, Piri,” I said as he almost choked me. “We both have to

know.”

He threw me down then, and stood over me. “I wanted to raise

an equal. I wanted you to grow up someone your mother would
have respected.” His voice softened. “But there’s too much of the
Kylaran parent-child bond between us, Arshan.”

“What do you mean?”
“Deep down, a father owns his son the way a master owns his

slave. I could break you, Arshan.” He looked at his hands. “I could
break you even if no one else in the universe could break you.”

He was right, and it was chilling to hear him say it that way,

when I didn’t know where that line of thought was going.

“I could break you, and find out beyond any doubt, what Siksie

did to you and what she told you to say to me.”

My voice was shaking as I replied from the floor. “What would

break me is to discover that your paranoia was greater than your
love for me.”

To my utter shock, my father fell to his knees beside me,

weeping in his hands.

Cecilia Tan

All I could do was stare. I was afraid to touch him, thinking he

might not find it comforting, but humiliating. I had no idea why
what I had said had caused this reaction.

Finally he spoke, as if a great pain had been rising up inside

him and burst free when it reached his mouth. “How did you
know?” he cried. “How did you know that was what she said to
me?”

I was about to ask “what who said?” when I realized who he

meant. My mother. My mother who, he sometimes told me, could
read his mind. I blinked. Was I reading his mind now? I didn’t
think so. I had merely spoken the bald truth.

Now I did put a hand on his shoulder. “Piri...”
He pulled himself together faster than I expected. It was only

a few seconds before he said, in a tired voice, “My paranoia was
greater than my love for her. And it broke her. I’m sorry.”

Today was just one shock after another. “Then I, too, know

how to break you, Piri.”

He nodded. “As did she.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, and then he stood

and helped me to my feet. “If I ever had any doubts about you
being your mother’s child, about inheriting her gifts as well as
mine, they are gone.”

I waited a few more seconds, to make sure clarity had really

returned to him before I said “I need to have this removed.” I
touched the spot where the implant was.

“We have the facilities here, of course,” he said, leading me

out of the room. “I am not sure I am ready to hear the story of
how it got there in the first place, though.”

“It’s a good story, Piri. You’ll enjoy most of it.” Except the part

about me and Siksie becoming allies. He was never going to see
her he way I now did. I realized I regretted not being able to say
goodbye to her and wondered whether I would ever see her again.
For some reason the thing I remembered most was how she had
caressed my forehead after releasing me from Belse and Vorna. Like
she had cared.

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He took me into the medical wing and ordered everyone else

out. He settled me into onto a suspension chair, my face in a cradle
and my limbs hanging. “You won’t feel this,” he said as he
activated the anesthetic.

He was right. I woke up what seemed like seconds later but

was probably hours, in a different room, sitting up in a reclining
chair. He was sitting there and his face looked haggard. He held
up a clear container with a small metallic thing clinking inside it.
“Very state of the art,” he said. “Not only a top of the line monitor
of your physiology, sleep controller and transmitter,” he tossed the
jar to me, “but also a recorder.”

“Recorder?”
“It has stored about six days worth of logs.” He grimaced. “Not

quite what you are imagining. It’s not like a film. But it does have
a record of everything you said, as well as all your physiological
responses, with occasional snapshots from your visual cortex.”

I looked at the device. “Have you played the recording?”
He nodded and I blushed without meaning to.
“I’ll tell you everything.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to.” Now I saw the glint

of pride in his eye. “I knew you were strong, Arshan, but...” He
shook his head again. “You went through them...”

“Like the cat through the bird house. I know.”
“They never would have invited you there if they thought you

were going to wreak such havoc.” He chuckled a little. “They
thought they could handle you. It’s a pity the princess is as irra-
tional as her father or you might have really had a life at court.”

“Why would I want a life at court?” I asked.
He pulled a chair up next to mine. “What kind of life do you

want, kiri?” he asked, using, for the first time, the Kylish title for
one’s son.

I thought about something Trella had said. But who will be

yours? I had not often thought about it, but it seemed obvious to
me that I would not be complete until I owned someone, body
and soul. But that was for Fate to decide, not me. “It would appear

Cecilia Tan

I am a child of Zal and Kyl,” I said, “No matter what aspirations
mother might have had.”

He nodded. “Until now, you’ve always gone where I told you.

But that time is over.”

“I think I should get away from politics for a while,” I pointed

out. We still didn’t know what story was going to surface or what
retribution the emperor might exact, if any, based on recent events.
“Maybe it’s time I finally visited where mother was from.”

“Yes.” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “It is time you knew

her people, at least. Lhysa is a good destination for you for now.
The Emperor’s hand won’t reach easily there.”

“Ironic, though, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That I’ve finally proven beyond any doubt that I am your son

and I belong among the Kylar, and here I am going as far away as
possible.”

“That might not be such a bad thing right now.” He sounded

sad and tired as he said it. “This empire is not what it once was.”

I thought about the questions I had, about his conscience,

about how he could support a morally corrupt slave trade that
went against everything he once believed. But I could not bring
myself to confront him with them now. “Chosay can get me to the
next hub,” I said. “I’ll find my way to Ardria from there.”

“You’ll be back,” Audan said. As usual, he would turn out right.

Royal Treatment

Cecilia Tan is “simply one of the most important writers, editors,
and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature,”
according to Susie Bright. Tan is the author of many books,
including the ground-breaking erotic short story collections Black
Feathers (HarperCollins), White Flames (Running Press), and Edge Plays
(Circlet Press), and the erotica romances Mind Games, The Prince’s Boy,
The Hot Streak, and the Magic University series. Forthcoming she has a
three-book BDSM erotic romance series from Grand Central
Publishing entitled Slow Surrender.

Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Nerve, Best American

Erotica, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and tons of other places. She was
inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers
in 2010, was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from
the National Leather Association in 2001, and won the inaugural
Rose & Bay Awards for crowdfunded fiction in 2010 for Daron’s
Guitar Chronicles. The Prince’s Boy won honorable mention in both the
NLA Writing Awards and the Rainbow Awards. She lives in the
Boston area with her lifelong partner corwin and three cats.

About the Author

sample chapter from Cecilia Tan’s

The Velderet

Kobi tried not to hurry. He was vain, he knew it, and he knew how
silly he looked when he tried to walk too fast, but the scrap of
paper in his pocket felt like a white hot star; surely everyone could
see it. In reality, it was Kobi’s curiosity that was burning. He gave
up trying to look graceful and broke into a jog.

The street was nearly deserted at this hour, anyway. The red

moon had set and the white moon was rising behind him. He had
spent a long time at the Velderet after his cybersex session, thinking
and drinking. Most of the windows were dark in the clean, white
domiciles he passed; even the buildings seemed like they were
asleep. For Kobi, it only reinforced the feeling that he was no
longer a part of the Bellonian mainstream. By his own admission
he was different, a kind of sexual outlaw. He had desires and
dreams and fantasies that were inadmissible to others; he was now
an outsider. He decided he liked this feeling.

Besides, he wasn’t alone. He wondered if Merin would be

asleep when he came home, or if she would be waiting up with
eager questions about his cybersex experiment. He almost jogged
past their building. The door recognized him and opened onto the
dimmed hallway. Lights flickered up to show him the way to his
door, but he ran ahead of them and burst in.

“Merin?” He saw her jacket hanging by the door, and her

shoes, but there was no answer.

She was asleep in front of the media wall, a stylus still in her

hand. Kobi looked at the figure rotating slowly on the screen. It
was of indeterminate gender and was wearing some kind of well-
fitted clothing, something tailored to sit close to the body, angular
and severe. “What’s this?”

Merin lifted her head and blinked at him. “Something I was

working on. Does it remind you of something?”

He pursed his lips. “Yes, but I can’t decide what. It sure doesn’t

look like anything you can get off the rack at the Garment Center.”
He shook the lapels of the loose, robelike jacket he was wearing,
and then froze. His hand slipped in to the pocket and he brought
out the scrap Mica had given him.

Merin looked disappointed. “It doesn’t remind you of

anything?”

Kobi sat down next to her on the couch and handed her the

piece of paper. “Maybe I’m too tired...”

Her fingers flew over the control pad. On the screen a second

figure appeared, kneeling in front of the first one.

“Oh,” Kobi said. “Of course.” Now that he looked at it again,

the outfit was very suggestive of some kind of archaic military
uniform, without being too obvious. These days, ever since the
Age of Equality was declared, there was no military hierarchy, and
no law enforcement other than the consensus crews and the
Evaluators. Uniforms were something they only saw in history
class. “Very subtle.”

“Not too subtle, I hope,” she said. But her fingers were already

entering the code from the paper. There was a pause while their
home system accessed whatever data it was. Merin’s mannequin
figures disappeared as a new clip began, with bold letters fading
into view on the media wall.

THE GREAT CRIME
The Story of the Gerrish
Part Three
“It’s an educational drama,” Kobi whispered. “I remember

seeing this when I was a kid.”

Merin shushed him. She had seen it, too. They were starting in

the middle, though, skipping over the dry, historical parts about
how the Gerrish were enslaved and what important figures in the
government had done which thing. It began right from the
segment depicting how terrible life was for a Gerrish slave.

All the Gerrish in the clip were sleeping in a ramshackle hut

with no windows when an overseer of some kind came to wake

Cecilia Tan

them for the work day. He wore a uniform that looked a little like
what Merin had sketched and Kobi pointed in excitement. The
slaves who were slow to move from their sleeping pallets were
slapped or prodded with a long, thin rod the overseer carried. The
camera followed them as they scattered to different tasks.

Merin whispered. “There’s something weird about this.”
Kobi kept his eyes on the screen, where a Gerrish woman who

had made an error in her weaving was being beaten. Of course,
what the screen showed was the rod being lifted high, then the
empty air, while a sound effect of it swishing through the air and
a woman screaming in pain came from off-camera. This was, after
all, meant to be watched by young people in school. “What?”

“I’ll tell you after it’s done.”
The scene had already jumped to another example of how

mistreated the Gerrish were. It was a catalog of the horrors visited
upon them, with a lot of beatings and confinements for
misbehavior. The clip ended before the chapter about how the gene
plague that killed off the remaining Gerrish might have been
prevented.

Kobi was ashiver, thinking about that rod whistling through

the air.

Merin touched him on the shoulder. “The weird thing about

this is, we’ve seen this before.”

He nodded. “But?”
“But when you’re a kid you don’t realize things like, for

example, all this film footage wasn’t actual real footage. The camera
hadn’t been invented yet during the Gerrish enslavement. It was a
dramatization made with modern actors.” She tapped the control
pad. “These people played out these roles, just like we do, only
they did it as part of their job.”

“I never thought of that before.”
“Do you think any of them were really eager to play the parts?”
“Are you saying you want to become a dramat?”
Merin sighed. “No. But it makes me wonder if maybe there

aren’t plenty of Bellonians who are... like us, but who just find

Royal Treatment

other ways, allowable ways, to get what they want.” She twisted
one of her curls around a finger. “Think about this. It was supposed
to be a documentary aimed at convincing kids that what we did
to the Gerrish was the most awful, horrible thing, right? Is that
why they harp on the beatings and bondage so much? Or was
somebody in charge of this production really having a good time
with it?”

Kobi rubbed his eyes. “This is too deep for me. And now I’m

all horny again, after I used up my sexual satisfaction quota at the
Velderet, already, too.”

Merin poked him in the ribs. “You really would happily have

sex all day every day, wouldn’t you.”

“Of course! That’s why I’m perfect for the job of Kylaran love

slave.” Kobi was already slipping out of his clothes.

“Of course you are.” Merin pushed a button on the control

pad and the time appeared on the screen. “You know, I have to be
at the legislature in four hours.”

Kobi thought about the ways he could handle this. He could

get on his knees and beg like the slave he wanted to be. But then
she could always pretend to order him to wait until the morning
or something. He could try telling her how unsatisfying the trip
to the Velderet had actually been. But Merin wasn’t the kind who
would fuck just because she felt sorry for him. She’s probably horny,
too, he thought. After seeing that drama, she probably wants to do it, it’s just
she’s thinking about her responsibilities.

Merin started to get up.
“Stay where you are.”
She turned away from him, toward her bedroom. “I have to

get up in the morning.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, trying to put a bark into his voice

like the overseer in the drama. “Your only responsibility is to serve
me.” He held her fast by the arm and pulled her back toward him.

She struggled just a little, like the woman trying to escape her

punishment had done.

“You are a slave,” he said as he forced her to her knees. “What

Cecilia Tan

you want is of no concern to me. I am the overseer and my word
is law.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a throaty whisper as he laid her down

onto the floor and spread her legs with his own.

He watched in a moment’s fascination as some milky fluid

began to drip from her cunt. He lowered his pelvis until the hot
tip of his penis felt the wetness. He rocked it back and forth until
he was sliding up against her, coating his cock with her juices and
making her moan and writhe. She thrust her hips at him and he
slid deep into her. Her own fingers went to her clit as he pumped
in and out of her, and when she began to come, he held himself
back, pulling out of her so he could wait. But she wrapped her
legs around him and pulled him back in, slamming up against him
and making him come, too.

He looked at the screen, which was still blinking the time. “See,

that didn’t take very long at all.”

Merin went to work rather sleepy, but she hurried through some
of the paperwork so she could do some more digging in the
legislative database. Part of the whole basis of the Age of Equality
was the fact that there were no penalties for breaking the Anti-
inequality laws. Someone exhibiting dominant behavior was
supposed to be counseled first, reconditioned second, and
hospitalized as a last resort only. The last case of hospitalization
Merin could find in the public record was before she had even
been born: a government official.

The incident had been the final straw for the legislature, which

had been in civic rotation ever since. Citizens chosen at random
served two or three years at a time in the Legislative Conclave to
prevent anyone from becoming too accustomed to the position.
Final legislative changes were always passed by public vote,
anyway. Out of the entire population, there were four or five cases
per year sent for reconditioning, always people who had exhibited

Royal Treatment

dominant tendencies. After two hours of searching, she could find
no cases where someone exhibiting submissive or subservient
tendencies had been counseled or retrained. “We All Serve Each
Other,” she murmured to herself, quoting an Age of Equality
motto.

That night Kobi filled her in on how his session at the Velderet

had gone, how he’d filled out the profile questionnaire hoping to
match up with someone who shared his proclivity. “I was afraid
to say anything too obvious,” he said, “because I was afraid the
guy would freak out. So I just lay there, hoping he’d be kind of
demanding. And he kept saying things like—’Oh, oh, are you okay?
Oh, I’m sorry.’ “

Merin laughed. “Well, no one said finding others through

cybersex would work on the first try.” They were sitting on the
couch again, and Merin had put up a landscape on the media wall
for atmosphere, a gray-and-blue mountain range with white
clouds slowly forming at the top. She wished they had one of the
full wall-size screens—the standard issue system they had didn’t
extend to the corners and ruined the effect that they were actually
looking out over the hills. “Maybe it’s just luck.”

Kobi tucked his feet under him on the couch. “What are you

going to do? It’s your turn next.”

Merin tapped her fingers against her chin. “I guess I’ll try the

same way you did, and maybe I’ll have better luck,” she said.
“Maybe tweak the settings slightly differently. Ultimately it’s not
the computer profile that will do it, it is finding the right person
on the other side.”

“So when are you going to try it? Will you choose a night that

I’m working?”

She smiled at him. “I was thinking at the end of this legislative

session. It’ll be four more days on, then I get three days off.”

Kobi could hardly contain his anticipation. “And what are you

going to do until then?”

Merin squeezed his hand. “I’ll have to be satisfied with you

until then.”

Cecilia Tan

On the designated night, Merin closed up the files in her office,
said good-bye to Nazir and the other legislators in her working
group, and went home an hour early so she could have a long bath.
Since she’d been sleeping with Kobi, she hadn’t been to the
Velderet seeking sex, and this felt like a special occasion. She
scented her skin even though her partner, whoever he or she may
be, wouldn’t be able to smell it through the cybersex connection.
She brushed out her curly damp locks and they framed her face.
Her hair wasn’t long enough to be able to pile up like the slave in
the Kylaran propaganda clip, so she hoped that the outfit she had
designed based on the clip would be enough of a hint to whoever
she would connect with. It hadn’t worked for Kobi, but then again,
the slave in the clip had been a woman, and the first one in the
educational drama had been a woman, too. As she walked from
the domicile to the sex house, she wondered if that would make
any difference. They said that before the Age of Equality men used
to dominate women more often than the other way around, and
she thought about the female caitan in the clip being penetrated
from behind. Was that all because of anatomical differences? The
thought amazed her. They had really been like animals back then.
The evening was warm and the white moon rose like a big eye in
the sky, watching to see what would happen.

When she arrived at the Velderet, she went first to the lounge

where Kobi was tending the bar. She stood at the top of the large
oval of a room and saw Kobi down at the circular bar in its center.
Around the top wall were dim alcoves, and the sloping sides of
the room were dotted with soft cushions and sitting pits, the
perfect place to lounge after fulfillment of quota or while hoping
to meet someone. She went down the stairs to the bar and slid into
a seat at Kobi’s elbow. He poured her some of the sweet wine he
knew she liked.

“Ready?” He put the glass on a throwaway.

Royal Treatment

“I suppose,” she said and took a sip. “Ah.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t come in a little bit earlier. I could have

introduced you to Mica.”

When she looked blank, he made a motion toward the paper

under her glass. She gave a little nod—the fellow who had been
giving them the access codes for the clips and dramas.

“He just left,” Kobi said. “Already done for the night, I think.”
Merin pondered that. “I wonder how he does it?” Meets

someone, she meant.

Kobi understood, but shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to. He seems

pretty dissatisfied with what he gets. And he doesn’t usually
cybersex.”

Merin swirled the wine in her mouth. “Maybe if we get this

to work, you can tell him about it, and we can return him the favor
of the dramas.”

Kobi nodded. “Good plan. Except that it hasn’t worked yet.”
Merin stood up. “Well, maybe it will.”

Merin checked in to the cyber suite and adjusted the temperature.
She preferred it warm for sex. With cybersex one could feel any
temperature desired, but she liked the real feeling of damp sweat
on naked skin. There wasn’t anything else to do but put her clothes
into the bin provided and sit down at the console. Just as Kobi had
done, she entered her preferences into the system’s questionnaire,
trying to second-guess what someone who would be willing to
play along with an inequality game would want so that the com-
puter could unwittingly match them up. She wavered on whether
to prefer a tall or short partner. Anatomical differences? Someone
tall might seem appropriate, she thought, as the slave types in the
dramas had always been cowering low, but growing up in
Bellonian society, someone who was too tall might have been
socialized to be timid to compensate for it. No Inequality in the
Age of Equality. In the end she left that entry “no preference” and

Cecilia Tan

moved on to various sexual activities. Like Kobi she decided that
being penetrated was more slavelike than being the penetrator, and
she set preferences for male partners and concentrated on various
other aspects. In the hierarchy of menus she also found a sub-
category that Kobi hadn’t, about prior and post-coital activities.
She entered that she liked to give sensual massage but not receive
it. That seemed like a possible proper slave activity, to get the knots
out of one’s master’s back. As a final step, she fed the sketch of the
Kylaran slave woman into the scanner and the computer clothed
her cyber figure in it.

She put on the leads and sat on the bed to wait for a

connection. Now she could feel the black stretch fabric pulling
tight around her breasts but leaving them open to the air or the
touch of eager hands.

A naked man materialized next to her, no computer pretense

of the door opening, which she thought odd. Cybersex was
supposed to simulate the real thing as much as possible, but maybe
he was in his suite in this position already. It didn’t really matter.
She looked up at him.

He was thin, with dark hair that was neither very long nor very

short, and had a scraggly sort of beard that would not grow in
fully. “Hello,” he said as he looked at her, his eyes following the
curve of the tight outfit she wore with intense interest.

She inclined her head in greeting.
He hooked a finger under the edge of the garment and met

her eyes. Merin felt a thrill run through her—he likes it, she thought.
His finger continued along the edge of the fabric until he slid it
across the smoothness of her skin, that one finger tracing a path
across her exposed breasts, over one nipple and then the other. She
held still, but a tiny sound of pleasure came out of her throat.

“The costume suits you,” he breathed, his mouth close by her

ear. He was pressing her back into the bed, inch by inch, until she
lay under him.

But does he know what it is? she wondered. “I designed it from

something I saw...”

Royal Treatment

He nodded. “I’ve seen it, too.” And he put a finger to her lips

as if they mustn’t say any more about it. He reared up on his knees
instead and traced the edges of her nipples with both hands.
Around and around his fingers circled as Merin began to moan,
then thrust her chest upward as he kept at it with the lightest of
touches, never making firm contact on the nipples. Merin twisted
under him a little as her skin craved a more direct touch, but he
could easily pull his fingers back. He played with her that way for
a long time, until she began to really thrash.

He held her by the chin to still her and make her look at him,

then he shook his head. “Lie still,” he whispered, “or I’ll stop
altogether.”

Merin blinked. Had he just given her an order? Having never

been ordered to do anything in her life, Merin wanted to be sure.
Well, it wasn’t an order, exactly, it was a choice, and she could
choose to go along with it. Still, it fit with the game they were
playing, didn’t it? And yet it didn’t feel like what they always said
oppression would feel like... she lay as still as she could and the
dark, thin, man lowered his tongue to her nipples. She moaned,
awash in the delayed pleasure. I did what he said and now he’s rewarding
me, she thought. “Ooooh.”

“I like you,” he said, as he turned her until she was on all fours

and his hands stroked her back and her buttocks. She had
redesigned the bottom half of the costume so that her bottom was
bare but some material still gripped her legs as a short skirt.

One hand slid over the bare curve of her ass and down to

where the outer lips of her cunt were pressed between her legs.
His fingers brushed lightly at the hot, loose flesh there.

Ah, Merin thought, he’s going to tease me again.
He stroked her a few more times, then instructed the computer

to remove the clothing from the scenario. The instant Merin was
naked, he pushed her legs apart and forced her down flat on the
bed, his one hand searching her cunt roughly now, pushing aside
folds of labia and seeking the correct angle and position to plunge
two fingers inside of her.

Cecilia Tan

100

She gasped, the shock of the rough treatment making her go

rigid. His fingers sank deep and began pumping. In her mind’s eye
she conjured the image of one of the Gerrish slave girls from the
edu-drama. She thought of the fantasy Kobi had shared with her,
about the master who had a strange sexual affliction that required
him to have continuous sex. He’s going to fuck me next whether I’m ready
or not, she told herself. Of course, she was ready, more than ready.
If she hadn’t been, she could always disconnect from the program,
anyway.

He pulled his fingers out of her and slicked his penis with the

wetness. “Good to know you’re ready to take what I’m going to
give,” he said.

Merin didn’t want it to end. She wanted to stay in the fantasy

as long as possible. “I am eager to please you in any fashion that
you wish,” she said, hoping that he would draw this out a bit more
and not go for the quick finish.

“Very good,” he whispered. “But there is only one thing I

require of you, now.” He pressed his wet penis between her
buttocks and slid it there for a few moments before letting it slip
downward toward her waiting hole. Ever since his fingers had left
it, she felt empty, and wanted to be filled.

He spoke another few words to the computer and the room

reoriented so that the bed platform was a bit higher off the floor.
He pulled her by her thighs to the edge and stepped off. Holding
her thighs, he hoisted her hips up until she was in an easily
accessible position. He slipped into her.

“Ah,” she whispered, as he began stroking in and out of her.

With each thrust in, his flesh met hers with a slapping sound. He
began to speed up, pulling her toward him faster while his hips
worked, then slowing down again, leaving her thrusting herself
backwards, trying to get him to go deeper.

“What would happen,” he said in a soft voice, “if I stopped

now? What would you do?”

Merin thought for a moment. “I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”

101

Royal Treatment

“Because...” She was distracted for a moment while the

stroking got faster again, but then regained her train of thought.
“Because I’m not really sure what would be appropriate for this...”

“Role?” he offered.
“Yes—” She grunted as he began fucking her harder than

before. “I mean, what, uh...” Her thought was lost again as his
fingers slid around her waist and sought out her clit. After the long
fucking, she began to come almost instantly, her back rippling
with each wave of pleasure, throwing her head back and gasping
as the orgasm passed through her.

After it subsided, he continued to saw at her clit, making her

twitch and thrash. Her hands pushed weakly at his, but he refused
to let up the pressure.

“Don’t you like it when I touch you there?” he whispered.
“Not, not after...”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“It hurts...” she said, but even as she did, she was thinking

about it. It wasn’t pain, exactly, just uncomfortable. She’d always
told her lovers to stop and they, of course, always had. But this was
a new set of rules.

His fingers were massaging her clit and her whole cunt while

his cock still slid in and out of her.

“I’ll stop,” he said “after you come again.”
She nodded. “I’ll try.”
“Good.”
She could already feel the second orgasm building, under the

strange discomfort of having her clit touched when it was so
sensitive. Eventually the pleasure grew greater than any other
sensation and exploded through her again.

His fingers withdrew. And still he was fucking her. “Do you

think you’ve had enough?”

Merin thought about Kobi’s partner, the guy who’d kept asking,

“Are you okay?” who hadn’t caught on to the little game at all.
But somehow when this man asked her if she’d had enough, it
didn’t sound out of place. It’s a cue, she thought, another chance for me
to play my role, whatever that is. “I’ll only be finished when you’ve had
your pleasure,” she said.

Cecilia Tan

102

He laughed. “You’re good.”
“So are you.”
He was still chuckling a bit as he sped up again, then forced

himself deep inside with four strong thrusts and grunted. “Ah,”
he said with satisfaction.

He slipped out and helped her to turn over, then lay down on

the bed next to her. “You... seem like you’ve done this before.”

Merin smirked a little. “I was going to say the same thing about

you.”

“Well—” he shrugged “—here or there. I wasn’t sure what to

say when I saw you wearing the... whatever that was. From the...”
He skirted around mentioning the propaganda clip about the
Kylaran love slave. “You know.”

Merin pressed on. “But do you know others who... play roles

like this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to contact them. I mean,

it’s always by chance.”

“What if we could increase the chances?”
Curiosity and caution flickered across his face as he looked at

her. “How?”

“Say we always connect to cybersex on the same day of the

week, same hours. Anyone else we meet who might... you know...
we encourage them to do the same.”

He lay perfectly still. “I suppose it could help. And what night

should we choose?”

She thought about her walk over to the Velderet, about the

white moon rising. “What about every time the two moons are in
juxtaposition?”

“Hmm, that’d be about every twenty-two days? It just might

work.”

Merin rolled over and rested her head on his chest. “Besides,”

she said “that way there’s some chance that you and I will be
paired up again.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said, as he stroked her hair. And

he mouthed a word silently, the Kylaran word for slave: caitan.

103

Royal Treatment

The Velderet by Cecilia Tan
Price: $7.49

ISBN: 1-885865-27-9

The Velderet is the story of Kobi and
Merin, two roomies on the peaceful world
of Bellonia, world where “equality” rules.
But they each harbor taboo fantasies of
BDSM, and when they world is colonized
by the warlike Kylar, who worship the
gods of dominance and submission,
everything changes.

Edge Plays by Cecilia Tan
Price: $3.99

ISBN: 978-1-885865-74-8

Five erotic fantasies of female submission
on faraway worlds from BDSM science
fiction maven Cecilia Tan. Collecting five
pieces of fiction that all take place in the
same universe as Tan’s classic story
“Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords,” EDGE
PLAYS explores the boundaries between
pain and pleasure, love and loyalty, and
dominance and submission.

Black Feathers by Cecilia Tan
Price: $7.99

ISBN: 978-1-61390-027-7

This new ebook edition of BLACK
FEATHERS: EROTIC DREAMS contains the
original 23 erotic short stories plus a new
foreword by author Cecilia Tan. A ground-
breaking book of “sex-positive” erotica in
the 1990s, BLACK FEATHERS combines
BDSM, pansexuality, fantasy, science
fiction, and dream-like realism in a
panoply of stories by the founder of Circlet
Press.

more books you may enjoy from Circlet Press!

The Prince’s Boy, vol. 1 by Cecilia Tan
paperback: $19.95
paperback ISBN: 78-1-61390-009-3
ebook: $9.99
ebook ISBN: 978-1-61390-013-0

In a fantasy world where male/male lust
fuels Night Magic, Prince Kenet lives a
sheltered life. Isolated from the war that
threatens the kingdom, he and his whipping
boy Jorin are of age, but still sneak
forbidden pleasures in their bed at night.
When a dark mage tries to bespell Kenet
into sexual submission, the prince and his
boy are thrust into the world of intrigue,
sex, and war.

The Prince’s Boy, vol. 2 by Cecilia Tan
paperback: $19.95
paperback ISBN: 978-1-61390-010-9
ebook: $9.99
ebook ISBMN: 978-1-61390-014-7

In this conclusion to the gay fantasy saga
thwarted lovers Jorin and Kenet must
reunite in order to defeat their common
enemy, the scheming mage Seroi. Seroi has
twisted Kenet's father's mind and is set on
ruling the country for himself... as well as
making Kenet into his magically bonded sex
slave. But the bonds of love, not only
between Kenet and Jorin, but between other
characters as well, may be stronger than the
magical chains Seroi would use to enslave
them all.

more books you may enjoy from Circlet Press!

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