Page 94 of A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment

“She is here,” he calls out. “Take me to her.”

The green faery hops down from the palanquin to stand beside it. She grasps my foot and plants it flat, bending my knee up slightly. The purple faery pulls my knee back, and the other two faeries mirror their position, holding me open as Cassan is brough forward, arms still bound behind him. The four faeries who carry him are all fully nude, with impressive, thick cocks and bodies that look chiseled from stone. I’m not certain that one of them isn’t truly made of alabaster, like the statues in the library, for there seems to be no pigment to any part of him. Two of them look as Cassan does, golden tan, but with shining blonde hair, and the fourth is the same sea foam green of the faery from earlier. They lift Cassan up as they mount the dais to lower him over me.

The faeries holding me are strong. Though I want to reach out for Cassan with my legs, pull him into my body, I cannot. Neither can he control his own motion; one of his blond attendants grasps the prince’s raw, sensitive cock and moves it into position.

A drumbeat begins. Slow, at first, but gaining speed as the blond faery slicks Cassan’s tip back and forth over my clit, then moves it down to rest at my opening.

“Please,” I chant, my eyes squeezed shut tight. “Please, please.”

“Look at him,” the purple faery whispers. “You’ll want to see his face the moment he enters you.”

She’s right. It’s something of a triumph, that a prince has waited so long to have me. That he’s allowed himself to be tortured relentlessly in preparation.

“Look at me, Cenere,” Cassan gasps. “I can feel you clutching at me already.”

I am; my opening flutters desperately, making wet, sucking kisses against the head of his cock. My body trembles. The drum speeds up. The pink faery reaches between us and takes Cassan in her hand, pumping the length of his shaft while the tip rests against me, every motion stimulating me a little more. She strokes him to the beat of the drum, growing faster and faster while he squirms in the hold of his captor. My pulse speeds to match the drum, too, and I’m getting closer, closer than I’ve been all day.

Courtiers have moved forward to watch. Some are bold enough to touch us. Hands pet Cassan’s back, my arms, my breasts. The moans and cries of the faeries lost to their own pleasures crescendo with the ever-increasing throb of the drum.

“Let me fuck her,” Cassan growls, struggling against the faeries who hold him. He’s a wild thing, truly broken by the torment, as I am.

Torment. This is exactly what Luthian prepared me for. Not the pain and humiliation Arcus inflicted upon me. This is the type of torment the court’s name implies. I understand it. Cassan understands it.

We are the perfect rulers for this court.

The faeries holding Cassan rock him against my opening, not penetrating me but simply dipping the very crown of his cock past the rim of my cunt. I try with all my might to bring him inside, but I am mortal, and no match for the strength of the fae. I’m so close, so close... I feel all the denied pleasure, every orgasm that’s been withheld from me, building from my toes up, from the top of my head down. My muscles tense. The drum beats faster, louder. Cassan roars and bucks and begs. It’s going to happen this time. I’m going to come. They’re going to let me. Finally, finally, I’m going to...

The drumbeat stops. The faeries shove Cassan’s hips forward. He thrusts deep.

My vision blurs, stains with a wash of red as I freeze, not breathing, in the grips of the strongest, most agonizing climax I’ve ever felt. Vaguely, I feel Cassan erupt inside of me, feel his hips battering my inner thighs as he moans like he’s dying.

The courtiers clap and hoot their approval as I spiral back to my body, too sensitive to bear another moment. But the faeries still hold us. Cassan gasps, “Wait!” but they ignore him, ignore both of our pleas as they continue to mash us together like obscene dolls. Cassan whimpers and cries actual tears as his sensitive member is thrust into me again and again, each stroke hitting my clit. His cum drips out of me, and courtiers reach between and beneath us to scoop it up and taste it or smear it playfully on each other. Some of those fingers enter me alongside Cassan’s cock, making the fit tighter.

Cassan thrashes and kicks, but he is powerless in the grasp of his attendants, and they fuck me with his cock ruthlessly, ignoring his ascending cries until he stiffens again, a guttural noise of raw despair tearing from his throat. He fills me again to overflowing, sobbing as his hips pound the last few thrusts of his own volition. I arch my back and cry out with another climax, and the cuffs release me. So, too, do the bonds holding Cassan. He sags forward and collapses over me, his cock still twitching as our sweat-and-cum-slick bodies entwine.

He kisses my forehead, skims the tip of my nose with his own, and holds me as if we are not surrounded by a room full of leering fae.

Weakly, I lift my face and smile. “Happy birthday, Your Majesty.”

He laughs, stirs to life inside me again, and moves against me slowly. “I could not have wished for a better present, my queen.”

Chapter Forty

Life with Cassan is so much better than I imagined it would be. When Luthian and I embarked on this plan, I had visions of strict propriety and ceremony, and a selfish, cruel prince I would need to simper for and lavish praise upon. But Cassan is respectful. He doesn’t order me about—unless we’re playing a naughty game—or desire my fear. He simply enjoys me, my body and company, and we often stay awake long into the night talking. He likes stories of my human life and expresses envy at times when I describe my home and the long days of innocent play I had as a child.

“It’s difficult,” he tells me one night, lazily stroking my hair as I snuggle at his side. “Faeries are never children. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to let go of all my knowledge and simply experience wonder.”

And so, it becomes my mission, in the days before our official coronation, to teach him wonder.

“Look closer,” I urge him when he picks a flower from the grass and I part its petals to reveal the daisywing asleep inside. “Listen,” I tell him on one of our walks through the forest, silencing him so he can hear the songbirds calling out to each other. And Cassan marvels at every small, inconsequential thing I show him, for he has never been taught to appreciate them.

But at night, when he’s well-fucked and happily asleep, I often can’t make my mind rest. I can be happy with Cassan, but I will never love him.

For I love Luthian.

And I love Kathras.

I don’t understand how it is that I can love them both, but the mere thought of either of them brings tears to my eyes and raises a gnawing disappointment that threatens to consume me. I hold all of this inside, though I do consider the possibility of a diary, until I remember Parphia’s journal sitting in my trunk. I am not immortal, destined to live out my days until some misfortune befalls me from which I cannot recover. I am mortal, and no matter how safe I am kept, I die more every day. When that time comes, will I want the next queen to read my innermost thoughts? Will I want her to read about my great, unrequited loves when they might be perfectly happy with my king?

---