The Shard's Favor Ch. 001

I finally regained control of my limbs as I passed through the doorway and back into the empresses' suite.

"You certainly took your time," the voluptuous, bronzed woman murmured teasingly, sitting up so that she knelt on the bed with her hands flat on the mattress between her spread knees. "What did you bring to play with?"

I could tell she was eager, even from here my acute sense of smell picking up on her arousal, but when I looked down at my hands I wasn't quite sure what to say. "What is this?" I asked, half-lifting the broken collar into the light.

The woman frowned slightly, a furrow appearing between her slim, blonde eyebrows. She beckoned me closer and I approached, holding up the collar like it was some sort of offering. "I'm not sure..." she murmured wonderingly, taking it from my hands. She turned it this way and that, eyeing it in the light and squinting at the glyph at the front. "I've never seen it before."

I couldn't ignore how cute her face got when she was focused intensely on something, and I wondered at the intense feeling that shot through my gut. Are you... developing a crush on her? I asked myself, surprised at my own insanity. As foolish as it seemed, I knew I couldn't form any sort of attachment to this powerful, seductive woman. Her traditions demanded my death after one night and one favor. But still, somehow...

"Why do you do this?" I asked abruptly, interrupting the slim empress as she examined the broken collar from all angles. "The Trials. A thousand deaths. A night with the empress..." I trailed off. "Not that I'm complaining about the last part," I added hastily as she smirked at me and eyed my cock, which had regained its former state of rock hard anticipation as I admired her sultry figure.

"The Shard demands payment," the empress replied, reaching out to grasp me by the base of my shaft. Her hand stroked me slowly and I could almost feel a sweat break out on my skin as heat rushed through me.

"Are you the Shard?" I asked, but she was already shaking her head.

"Enough questions." She reached out with her other hand and drew my head down until my lips met hers. While one hand stroked up and down my shaft her mouth pressed up against mine and seared into it with kiss after kiss. Then, she was laying back with a playful smile gliding across her full lips and guiding my cock to her hot entrance.

I could sense her arousal in the heat radiating from her body, the broad tip of my length just barely spreading apart her outer folds.

"Fuck me," she murmured, arching her back and offering her curvy young body up to me. "Make the Empress your whore for the night."

Can't say no to an invitation like that... I decided. Grabbing both of her slim wrists in one hand, I pinned them above her head and thrust inside of her in a single movement.

My captor cried out at the sensation of my thick manhood entering her body, writhing under my hands at her inner walls were stretched wide open to accommodate me. Her body wasn't used to my size, and I slowed after the initial plunge. The woman's big breasts brushed against my chest with every deep, heaving breath as I hovered over her, slowly easing back out and enjoying the rippling of her inner muscles as they massaged my entire length until only the head was still buried in her warm folds. Her eyes were glazed as she panted and her body urged me to continue. Her hands traced my chiseled abs and grabbed at my buttocks, pulling me back inside of her. Her tight, wet walls clenched me tightly as she rocked her hips up into mine with every thrust.

We began to establish a rhythm, our bodies moving in sync as I sped up and began to move more quickly. I sheathed myself over and over inside of her, my balls slapping against her with every thrust.

On a whim, I reached across the mattress and picked up the discarded collar, holding it against one side of her neck to imagine how it might have looked had she been wearing it unbroken. I gasped with surprise as the thing suddenly leapt under my fingers, the smooth grey metal twisting like an organic thing as one end lengthened and grew. In seconds, the collar had completed itself, wrapping in an unbroken ring around the woman's neck. At the hollow of her throat, the glyph flashed once, blinding me and making me lean back, shaking my head to clear it. I felt something deep within me twitch and then go still. What the hells is going on?

Beneath me, the xeno empress went still, her body relaxing and her eyes opening wide.

"Are you okay?" I demanded, my breath rasping in my throat as I slowed. The collar didn't look to be hurting her or restricting her breath, and I was more surprised than anything.

"Yes, Master..." the woman's voice had changed. Before it had been playful and teasing, with an undercurrent of confidence that told me she knew she was actually the one in command. Now it was submissive. Docile.

Like a slave addressing her... My cock throbbed. Master? I felt a primal satisfaction at the title, an age-old gratification that came from a woman submitting entirely to her mate. It's the collar... I suddenly realized. It has to be. There was no other explanation. I recalled the flashing glyph that had imprinted a single word in my mind... Obedience, I remembered. Staring down at the lithe body of the alien princess, her globular tits now rising and falling slowly with each deep breath and her starlit blue eyes wide and empty, I felt myself grow hard as a rod of Terrus steel inside of her.

"Are you ready?" I asked, gathering myself. There was no way I was missing an opportunity like this.

"Yes, Master," replied the empress, her lips curving into a soft smile as her pelvis ground up against mine, driving me even deeper inside. "I'm ready for you to fuck your slave until you cum."

Fuck. Me. I drove inside of her, eliciting an excited gasp and then a groan as I bottomed out in her pussy, deeper than I'd ever been before.

"Yes, Master!" my captor urged me on, hooking her slim legs around my hips and pulling me closer. "Fuck me hard and long until I cum all over your massive cock."

I rammed inside of her mercilessly, pounding her dripping snatch as she moaned softly and took every thick inch of my length up to the hilt. Then, flipping her over onto all fours, I entered her from behind. Shoving myself inside her tight body, even tighter from this angle, I admired the view of her bouncing ass as I thrust over and over and over.

I felt a powerful wave rising within me, and I suddenly knew that I was about to have the first climax I would ever remember. "I'm close," I grunted, lengthening my strokes so that I was impaling my captor's body with every stroke, sinking deep into her core.

"Yes, Master," she whimpered with pleasure. "Cum for me. Cum inside of me. Fill me up with your seed until I'm overflowing."

I came with a roar, burying myself to the hilt in the alien queen and pulsing spurt after spurt of hot, sticky cum deep into her womb. Her body trembled as she joined me in climax, crying out and burying her face in my chest. Her soft hair tickled my skin as she panted and trembled and shook, clutching me tightly.

"Ohfuck ohfuck ohfuckkkk!" she gasped, another massive orgasm following on the heels of the first. She fell back onto the bed, still impaled on my thick length, her body clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Her mouth was open in an unending moan of pleasure and her slim fingers made fists in the red sheets.

As her pussy clamped down on my cock it felt like she was milking every drop of cum from my clenching balls, and I felt the air whoosh out of my lungs, leaving me gasping. I thrust one final time, her body squeezing together around me so I could barely fit, and then I was spent.

Beneath me the gorgeous, tawny-skinned woman collapsed and went still, her fingers still twitching every few seconds as aftershocks jolted through her.

I slid out with a shuddering sigh, my cock drooping slightly as it began its recovery. As I watched the silent woman, the collar surged once with light at the hollow of her throat and then unraveled, falling free of her neck and returning to its worn, broken-down state. I stared at it silently. You can't fool me, I thought. Now I know your secret.

There was a soft moan and the empress blinked, her eyelids fluttering as she raised a hand to her forehead. She was suddenly nervous, running her fingers along her skin where the collar had encircled her neck as though she could still feel it. "What happened?" she asked, eyes wide.

Don't you remember? I wanted to say, but held my tongue. I shrugged noncommittally instead. Then, I smiled slowly. It was the first relaxed, genuine smile that I remembered ever having experienced. I bent to kiss the empress on the lips and, after a moment's hesitation, she melted into my embrace. "That," I said, planting one kiss after another on her upturned mouth. "Was." Another kiss. "Incredible."

She smiled up at me, and I swear she blushed. For a moment, I saw how young she was. Not that age means much to a man about to die, but she couldn't have been much younger than me. Which meant she had probably just passed her twentieth year. Not that you know how old you are, I reminded myself. It was a sobering thought. I realized, suddenly, that I had resigned myself to my fate. Another sobering thought. I was distracted from my melancholy feelings as the empress suddenly threw her arms around my neck. I was surprised, and apparently so was she.

She drew back an instant later, biting her lip. Something flashed in her eyes, too quick for me to properly identify.

Was it pain? I asked myself. Longing? I couldn't tell.

She spoke, then, her smooth, confident mask sliding back into place as she rose to her knees and her lips kissed sensually down my ear. "Did you like that?" she whispered. "You can have me any way you want." Her tongue flicking out and caressing the point of my ear.

I shot a glance over at the collar, shining a dull grey in the rumpled red sheets. Then, I turned my head to my conquest and my mouth met hers. I don't need you. I had fucked a slave. Now I wanted to fuck an empress.

Some time later, I lay with my captor sprawled loosely in my arms. Her blonde head lay cushioned on my uninjured shoulder and her hair was splayed across my broad chest.

"My name is Verra." The woman spoke softly, her voice simple and unadorned. "Verra, Living Shard and Empress of Namar Thuun." She shifted in the bed and turned to look at me with her bright blue eyes.

Verra... I rolled the name around my thoughts, tasting it. It suited her. "I don't have one," I told her, just as simply. Nothing but 'Carnage,' I thought. And that always felt wrong... I felt a welling up of emotions in my chest, emotions I didn't recognize, and it suddenly seemed very sad, though it was quite a small, silly thing in the scale of things. What does a dead man want with a name? I wondered grimly. It's wasted on me.

Verra pushed herself up on one arm to look down at me, tucking her hair behind one ear when it fell across her face. She considered me carefully for several moments, and I was about to ask her what she was thinking when she nodded, suddenly.

"Joris Carn." Her voice was soft and, somehow, reverent.

I squinted up at her and flicked one of my ears. "What?"

"Your name. Joris Carn. In the Old Tongue, it means 'Last Survivor.'" She looked at me with those eyes, and I could tell that something in them wanted me to respond, to accept it, to care that she had tried to fulfill my need.

I scratched the pointed tip of my ear. Joris Carn, I thought, feeling the name settle around me like a familiar friend. I doubted I had ever heard those words before, but they seemed to fit. I supposed being the last survivor of the Trials was my sole life accomplishment, after all. "You're the one killing me," I groaned softly, shifting in bed to take weight off of a bruise on my back. "Seems fitting you're also the one to name me." It just so happened that my shift of weight put my back to the young, beautiful empress who was going to kill me in the morning.

Behind me, I heard Verra sigh quietly. It was a soft, sad sound, but I didn't turn back around. I was tired. Exhausted, in fact. Thirty days of killing didn't do you in, I thought with black humor. It was one night of fucking. I decided I would apologize in the morning for my slight. Then, I realized I might be dead before I got the chance. I fell asleep before I could tell Verra that she had chosen a good name.

***

Two suns shone overhead, but when I stepped out into the center of the arena there were no challengers. I looked around, but there was only the crowd staring down at me.

I could tell they wanted something from me. They wanted me to do what I did best — to kill and keep on killing until everything before me was dead. I couldn't tell them that there was no one there to fight.

So instead, they began to rumble. At first it was just a low buzzing. Then, a rolling thunder. Then, I could make out what they were saying. "...carnage..." Thousands of lips murmuring a single word. "Carnage..."

It was wrong. "That's not my name!" I tried to yell, but there was nothing I could do as their voices overwhelmed me.

The sound grew until the xeno crowd of thousands was all chanting with one voice. "Car-nage! Car-nage! Car-nage!" Their words drowned out my voice, drowned out my thoughts, drowned out my true name so that no matter how hard I struggled it always slipped from my grasp. "Car-nage! Car-nage! Car-"

My eyes snapped open. I knew what I wanted.

I sat up and shook Verra's slim shoulder until she woke, only realizing a moment later that in my sleep I had rolled over and wrapped my arm around the young empress, her warm body snuggled back against my chest.

"I know what I need you to do for me before you kill me," I told her, my tone intense and my eyes blazing with a sudden certainty. "The Shard's favor."

Verra looked at me, her blue eyes confused with sleep, but at the mention of the favor she shook herself awake. Her beautiful face gazed up at me with an intensity of focus that surprised me.

My voice was hard and sure when I told her what I had decided. "I need you to tell me who I am."

***

The Joris Carn saga will be continued in Chapter 002, coming out in a few days. To keep up to date with my stories as soon as they're published, you can follow me here on Literotica.

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