Kink, Love, and Galactic Domination

Note: story contains graphic sexual and BDSM depictions, primarily femdom, including paddling, improvised pegging, strangling, roleplay, 69-ing and other oral sex. All of these activities are enthusiastically consensual, although the strangling may be unsafe to recreate. There is also some forced chastity and a threat of serious bodily harm, imposed by a villainous outside force. To my regulars, be aware that this story experiments with a longer form for more character, world, and relationship building, so it'll take a little longer to get to the action. I personally think it's worth the wait, and I hope you'll agree :)

***

"He's going to adore you," Flissom murmured, painting Leora's lips a committee-approved shade of plum, designed to stand out fetchingly against her light brown skin.

"Yeah," said Leora. "Obviously."

From both of them, it sounded more like a prayer than an assurance.

"He won't be able to help himself," Flissom reasoned, low and fast. "Who could? You've got the recipe. You've got the magic. Before he knows what's happening, he'll be clay in your hands."

The blur outside the windows sharpened into a view of slowly passing stars as the convoy slowed and prepared to dock with the Palace Ship.

"Review time," Flissom announced. "List Prince Trisque's top three hobbies in descending order of importance."

"Dance, botany, poetry," Leora recited easily.

#

"What is Princess Leora most afraid of in the universe?" Aidrom quizzed Trisque, running a lint roller over his back.

"Well, she's about to be co-ruling an empire," said Trisque. "So, judging from personal experience, I'd say, probably failure."

"What is she most abnormally afraid of, then?" said Aidrom, bringing the roller around to Trisque's chest.

Lint rolling was a bizarrely mundane task for a spymaster to perform, Trisque thought, even on this most important of days to have a lint-free suit. Usually, when Aidrom was bombarding him with these kinds of questions, he was also correcting his grip on a weapon, or knocking his feet out from under him in the gym.

"Surgery," Trisque recited the tidy little answer Aidrom's network had delivered in their files on the princess. "And sedation in general."

#

Flissom paused in the middle of applying Leora's mascara and looked past the lashes into her eyes.

"You haven't been touching yourself, have you?"

"Not for weeks," said Leora, fighting the urge to snap at the question. She buried her discomfort instead in the same capable, all-business tone she used for almost everything.

"Because he won't attach to you if he can't sense your interest," Flissom went on. "And you can't make yourself take an interest in a stranger on command if you're satiated. When the two of you lock eyes for the first time on that ship, you need to be positively dewy for him already."

"But also forceful, right?" Leora put in.

"Yes, of course, forceful," said Flissom, brushing powder off of Leora's sleeves. "We got incredibly lucky, with his proclivity for forceful women. That'll make it much easier to guide him without interrupting the fantasy when the time comes. But remember, he's still Litani. The mellowest Parusan woman probably seems 'forceful' to him. Go slow. Focus on forging the bond first."

#

"What are you going to do when you get to your suite with her?"

"Oh, you know, I was planning on hiding behind the couch and treating her to an all-sock-puppet rendition of Gravity's Rainbow," said Trisque. "Then we can take things down a notch with a build-your-own-hotdog bar. I just think it's a classier way to mark a sexual milestone than the old public performance with the virginal white cake and big scary knife—"

Aidrom slapped him hard across the face.

There, that was more like the Aidrom he knew.

Trisque brought his fingers to his cheekbone and glared at Aidrom.

Glaring at Aidrom was never satisfying. It usually happened when Aidrom wanted Trisque silent, serious, and focused on him, and a glare checked all of those boxes.

"I'm going to make sure she's as comfortable as possible," Trisque started over, while Aidrom ran a pocket regenerator over the new potential bruise. "I'll offer to make dinner, and then act surprised when it turns out Kedujian mollusks are her favorite. I won't mention sex at all, and if she does, I'll assure her that I have no expectations, partly because we just met, and I'm not a delusional dickhead."

"And—"

"And I'll make sure to find a polite way to slip into the conversation that she's more beautiful than I expected, so she won't be self-conscious about approaching me. It's really not a lot to remember. Pretty fucking intuitive, actually."

#

"On the first night, I fuck his brains out," Leora recounted the plan. "Let him know up front that I can give him all his favorites."

"Right, and how are you going to segue into his favorites?"

"Start by waiting for him to make a faux pas, or bait him into one if necessary. Playfully slap his ass, and escalate if he responds well."

"And what are you not going to do?" Flissom prompted, setting the makeup wands aside and grabbing Leora painfully hard by both arms. "Now or ever?"

This time Leora did sigh, which prompted Flissom to shake her.

"What are you not going to do?"

"Fall in love," said Leora.

"Damn right," said Flissom. "You're one of the first women to co-rule our people—"

"And the first ever to co-rule his," Leora finished. "I know. I know how much this means."

"It won't mean anything if you don't rule," said Flissom. "The moment you start to care about his feelings, his opinions, as soon as keeping the peace at home becomes more important to you than bringing justice, real justice, to the new empire, we're all lost. The pomp and luxury, the seat at the table, they mean nothing if you let yourself become his pet. You'll just be another non-ruling 'empress' with a courtesy title that's gentler on the ears than 'the emperor's whore.'"

"I would never let that happen," Leora insisted.

#

"I'm not going to end up as her lapdog," said Trisque. "How could I? I mean, after all the painstaking hours you've spent teaching me critical thinking skills, encouraging my questions, respecting my input... Oh, wait."

Aidrom fumed, and Trisque tried to brace for another hit without looking like he was bracing.

"But it's okay," Trisque went on, when it seemed like he was in the clear. "It's okay that you didn't spend the last ten years doing any of those things. Because instead, you spent them complaining. About what? About the fact that I questioned everything anyway, and there was nothing you could do to stop me. I was born for this. You can trust me."

#

"Trust me," Leora squeezed Flissom's hand. "I'm not a person who tosses their identity out the window the moment they see a pretty face."

Flissom smiled tightly, only half comforted. "You're not," she agreed. "So far."

"Fliss—"

"No one has ever tried to make you into that person as hard as they'll try now." Flissom insisted. "It would be foolish to believe the Litani don't have spies of their own. Anything the prince says or does that threatens to win your sympathies, it was probably constructed by committee for exactly that purpose. Assume that none of it is real."

#

"This isn't a joke," Aidrom gripped Trisque by the shirt, underneath the jacket where the wrinkles wouldn't show. "And it's not a fucking intellectual exercise. You're the only defense we have against these people. If you fold, their laws end up being the ones that engulf every habitable planet from here to Andromeda. Imagine one of their drafts sweeping every continent, every home, snatching up every able citizen it can get its greedy mitts on, shattering minds and bodies and families, leaving children and the sick to fend—"

"I won't forget," Trisque stopped him, humorlessly.

#

With the final touches in place, Leora and Flissom were ushered along a transparent connective walkway, away from Leora's family yacht, toward the new Palace Ship.

Under their feet, they could see Earth, the scorched, dead world that was currently holding the diplomatic formation of ships in its orbit. It had been five generations since anyone had been born on that rock, but as the shared origin point of both the Litani and Parusan peoples, it had been the obvious symbolic place to conduct their supposed rejoining.

"You're happy," Flissom coached, in the last seconds outside the event hall entrance. She waved her fingers in little starbursts near Leora's face, as if that would make her words manifest themselves in her expression. "Today, all your dreams come true. You're the empress. You're a goddess in human form. You're finally about to give your people the universe they deserve to live in, and nothing is going to stop you. You're about to marry a man you've loved from afar since the moment you learned of his existence, and you just can't wait to teach him ever so gently how much better everything will be with your help. You're giddy. Unshakeable. Loving. Unattainable. Ruthless. Brimming with kindness."

"Wait," said Leora, trying to settle all these layers onto her demeanor and getting lost half way.

Too late. The music cue sounded, and Flissom pushed her out onto the aisle with a final, whispered directive to "smile!"

#

"You'll do... fine," said Aidrom, managing not to clench his teeth around the word. "After all, you're the emperor. You'll let her know who's boss."

"You keep saying stuff like that," said Trisque. "But in any of the intel you've brought me on this woman, have you ever seen anything, and I mean anything, to suggest that she responds well to men who 'show her who's boss'?"

"She may not think it's what she likes, but—"

"Maybe you're mixing her up with one of your exes. They were all wild about that alpha stuff, weren't they? I mean, that's what you told me. Say, have you heard from any of them lately?"

"Your marriage is the one with the fate of the galaxy resting on it, kid."

"Exactly," said Trisque. He clapped Aidrom on the shoulder, enjoying the convenient lack of time to patch up a new facial injury. "Good talk, man."

With a light spin on the ball of his foot, Trisque stepped out into the reception hall.

#

Everything about the ceremony, the hall, the Palace Ship itself, had been designed with balance in mind.

The seats, carpeting, and runners were all an even mix of the colors of the Litani and Parusan flags, muted to reduce their garishness.

Princess Leora and Prince Trisque walked in from opposite sides, traversing aisles of equal length to meet in the middle.

She wore a traditional bridal gown widely associated with Parusan culture, borne of a religious trend that none of her direct ancestors had ever been a part of.

He wore a suit from one of the Litani's most famous designers, which was visually indistinguishable from any other high-end suit made in the last twenty years.

The heels of her shoes were cut to bring her precisely to his height and no higher.

Two officiants, one for each of the merging governments, spoke a few words in a few dozen languages, about unity and cooperation and new beginnings.

The new ruling couple co-signed the document, as they would have to co-sign on all major matters of law going forward. Then they joined hands, held them up to the cameras, and it was done.

#

There was no party at the reception, only a series of wedding-themed photo ops and news interviews full of the same talking points that had been covered to death in the leadup to the event.

"Empress Leora, is it true you intend to impose sweeping, equality-at-all-costs gender reforms?"

"Emperor Trisque, do you believe this union will be enough to quell the Parusan habit of aggressive expansion?"

"Empress, are you concerned at all for your safety—"

"Emperor, do you anticipate your new domestic life being different from what you're used to?"

"Empress, did King Dagget really step down voluntarily to allow you to execute the treaty?"

"Emperor, if your parents were alive, how do you think they'd feel about—"

"What immediate changes can citizens living on disputed worlds expect? Are there any plans in place for doleum replenishment?"

For a celebration of Leora and Trisque's union, they spent remarkably little of it together. Even had they not been inundated with separate demands for their attention, the media coverage hardly created a conducive atmosphere for a first conversation.

Leora did take note of Trisque sneaking a few playful solo moves on his way across the dance floor photo set.

Trisque took note of Leora dodging multiple opportunities for conversation with her uncle Dagget, the former king who had presided over.... Well, a lack of patience for that man was a positive trait in Trisque's book.

It was three hours before the happy couple and their entourages were allowed to retire, his to the port side, hers to the starboard, and the two of them to the private royal suite in the middle, which took up most of the Palace Ship's aft section.

#

Leora sat at the bar of the suite's kitchen, watching Trisque fuss over the welcome dinner he'd insisted on preparing himself.

As Flissom had advised, Leora contemplated her deprivation of the past few weeks while she watched Trisque bounce from counter to counter, telling herself that she was looking at her only potential source of relief.

It was a trick the spies used on themselves, when they needed to induce temporary, believable lust.

So far, it was working like a charm, or at least, something was. It was hard to say whether it was working so well because Trisque was so handsome, or whether he looked so handsome because it was working so well.

Looking at his pictures had never done much for Leora. His skin had the semitranslucent pallor common among the five or six Litani noble families who had passed the crown back and forth amongst themselves for the past five hundred years. He had a long, narrow, healthy-looking frame that she liked well enough, but it hardly set him apart from hundreds of other men who were not Litani noblemen. His face, while not unattractive, was a bit oddly proportioned, the features set unusually close together in the center of his head. The sunken lines between his nose and cheeks had always looked to her as if they would lend themselves to either smarm or rage with unsettling ease.

Seeing him live and in motion was an entirely different experience. The way he carried himself matched none of the physical features he'd inherited. His footsteps did not harangue the floor to acknowledge his presence. His casual gestures took up more space than necessary, but gracefully, joyfully, like a friend waving across a crowded port, rather than a small, ornery animal challenging a bear.

Of course, everything, even his seemingly unconscious mannerisms, might have been rehearsed for this moment.

"I hope you like it," he said as he scooped the contents of the skillet on top of the two prepared plates of linguini. "I've been making this dish since... oof, feels like forever, but I know it's originally from your side of space, so I thought maybe...."

"Kedujian mollusks," said Leora, when he set the plate in front of her.

Flissom's voice blared in her mind, telling her to brush a lock of hair demurely behind her ear and gush with gratitude and awe.

A contrary instinct wrestled its way up from somewhere deeper, and suddenly, Flissom's absence from the room presented too great a temptation to bear.

"My favorite," Leora said dryly. "What a coincidence."

She watched Trisque carefully for his response.

He put a hand to his chest. "Really? That's fantastic. This is like a sign. This is... yeah, you're right, it's way too obvious, isn't it? I'm sorry. They insisted. Now, me, I told them they should set me up to learn your second favorite dish, but you know how spymasters are."

Leora laughed, unplanned. It might have been the first unplanned thing she'd done all month. She, unlike the vast majority of beings in the known universe, did know exactly how spymasters were.

"You'd think they'd be better at subtlety," said Leora. "Persuasion. Spy stuff."

"I know!" exclaimed Trisque. "But it's like, the moment they stop doing fieldwork and start managing a network, they forget everything they ever knew about how people actually work."

"Or they just don't trust anyone else with anything but the bluntest script they can come up with."

"So instead, they set us up to fail before we ever start."

Without changing the subject to draw attention to it out loud, Trisque made a point of showing Leora the sealed cap of a wine bottle before unscrewing it and pouring a pair of glasses.

Leora had no doubt that the Litani nobles had the resources to manufacture a drugged, sealed bottle of wine if they wanted to, and he could just as easily have poisoned something in the linguini and mollusks before showing them to her.

She was going to have to take a certain amount on faith, living alone with him here in this suite.

Still, it was a nice habit for a gentleman to have, acknowledging the perfectly reasonable absence of trust between them and trying to work around it without blame.

She wondered where a Litani man would have learned it.

He took the seat on the opposite side of the bar and raised his glass.

"Let's see, uh, to—"

"I don't think I can salute 'new beginnings' one more time this evening," Leora stopped him.

"Fair enough, fair enough." He swirled the jewel-red liquid thoughtfully around his glass. "How about, 'to improvisation?'"

"Improvisation?"

"Yeah, improvisation. No plan survives the battlefield, right?"

"Well." Leora thought for a moment, and then clinked her glass to his. "I suppose it's better than 'may the best man win.'"

"I would never," said Trisque, scandalized. He took a sip. "My best man is a dick."

Leora rolled her eyes, speared a mollusk, and cocooned it with linguini on her fork.

As soon as she had begun to chew, she brough her other hand to her mouth.

Trisque watched her nervously, beginning to stand. "Is it all right?"

Leora could not force herself to rush through the rich, perfectly textured bite.

"It's delicious," she told him when her mouth was finally clear.

Trisque sighed, settled back down, and picked up his own fork. "Oh, good. I've honestly practiced this recipe so many times, I can't stop overthinking it."

"Good thing too," said Leora. "Because I was totally ready to throw this whole treaty in the garbage if the pasta was too sticky."

His relief escaped in a sharp little laugh.

The two ate in silence for a while. It was less awkward than it could have been with a lesser dish. They could almost pretend that this one was occupying so much of their senses that they had no awareness left for each other.

That excuse could only last so long, however.

"So, I guess you probably know my favorite food too," said Trisque. "Mind telling me what it is? I've always wondered."

"You don't have a favorite food," said Leora. "Or at least, it changes too often to track. But you consistently enjoy fried criddle roots with bleu cheese when you're under pressure, mava berries when you want to feel healthy in a hurry, and heirloom chocolate ice cream when you're sad."

Trisque's eyes widened slightly as her answer went on. When she had finished, he returned to his plate with a nod. "I asked. That's on me."