Daemon & Sunny Ch. 02

Daemon started to chuckle at her plaintive tone, contrasting with her sensual shifting as he lathered her backside, then trailed the rag around to the front of her hips. Then her words caught up with his mind.She still thinks she’s drugged? Her responses are thatstrong to me? Bright Astor! His breath caught in the back of his throat. His own responses were incredible, and he was a male Astorran, considered to be highly sexed compared to the majority of the males on the other humanoid worlds out there.

“—Well?” Sunny demanded impatiently.

He debated telling her the truth. Debated not telling her the truth. Deliberately, he soaped her crevasse, rubbing gently, aware of how tender her flesh had to be. “Do you feel that?”

How can I not? Sunny asked silently, rhetorically as she squirmed and gasped, half from raw soreness, half from instant, hot arousal. “…Yes!”

Keeping up his touching, he roused her until she was gasping with every breath, her hands braced on the rim of the tub behind her. Daemon rose to his feet, his hand still gently busy, and kissed her mouth. “That is entirely natural, Sunny;you want me. The drug you were given actually wore off before we finished…last night.”

Her eyes, almost closed in her pleasure, snapped open. Her lips parted, closed, parted, closed, her throat swallowed—and she shoved him. “You—!”

Daemon laughed, catching and sliding his fingers along her soapy arms and wrists. She jerked free to pummel him and he twisted her assault aside and pushed her face-first into the water. Sunny came up gasping, still furious, still embarrassed, intent on denying everything. She splashed water back at him, he flinched, still laughing, and pushed her under again, dunking her a second time. Hauling her upright, he held her soft, slick curves against his hard, wet body and kissed her streaming-wet protests away. Those shoving hands became resting ones that quickly turned into caressing ones. It was hard to think of her tenderness, but Daemon managed to put space between them again.

Taking her hand as soon as she was out of her daze enough to stand, he turned her palm up and placed the soapy raw silk rag in her grasp. His paler gaze met her brighter blue. “Bathe me, Sunny.”

It was not an order. It wasn’t a plea, either, and it wasn’t exactly a request. Sunny wasn’t sure what it was…but it didn’t rile her, for all it was phrased as a command. Hesitating a moment, she lifted her rag-filled hand, paused a moment more, then laid the lathered scrap on his shoulder. He backed up, hitched himself onto the edge of the broad basin where she had sat only a few moments before, and lifted one masculine, muscular leg from the water. Like everything else about him, even his foot was masculinely attractive. Trained from childhood to look upon the nude form as something holy, something to be praised and enjoyed and worshipped as a part of the magnificence of nature, Sunny had to admit he had a magnificent body.

She scrubbed between his toes, over the calluses and arch of his foot, and up around his ankle to his calf, feeling the muscles there. “Do you exercise a lot?”

“I’m an Astorran prince…Iwas an Astorran prince,” Daemon corrected with a slight grimace. Half from knowing he was now the king, and that the next best candidate was a second cousin at best, and half from the relaxing, arousing massage of her scrubbing.

“So? I’m a Craidan, and an Imperial Free Citizen—and I still am,” Sunny added with an edge to her voice, meeting his gaze boldly.

Daemon chose to ignore her challenge, her deliberate pattern of thought. If he didn’t think she was still so interested in gaining her freedom, which looked like she meant leaving him…he’d give her that freedom. Until he was sure she would stay of her own will, however, he didn’t want to risk it; not when he’d found a woman who could satisfy the emptiness inside of him. At least for the moment. “An Astorran prince is required to be proficient in all forms of combat, from starship weaponry to weaponless battle.” He sighed. “Not necessarily expert, but proficient as in familiar and somewhat accurate and skilled, at the very least.”

“You’re not very skilled, I take it?” Sunny asked with a touch of humor, remembering how easily she had downed him that first time with the carafe.

“Actually, I’m very good at it. I was going to become Assistant Warlord within another year or two…if my father and brother hadn’t died like they did.”

Sunny shook her head, still smiling to herself as she worked on his other leg next, avoiding the joint of his groin. She still wasn’t convinced it was something natural, the powerful attraction between them; Sunny didn’t want to chance rousing it again while she was still very sore. “I knocked you out with one blow—and I’m about as far from a warrior as you can get. I wouldn’t call that very skilled.”

Daemon hooked his finger under her collar and hauled her close. “Your acting skills are superb,” he murmured, reluctantly praising her for them. “You caught me by surprise. The queen-like slave who refused to kneel before me, even under the duress of pain, would never have stooped to bashing a fellow monarch on the head.”

Sunny blushed and ducked her head. She’d been pretending she was some ancient queen, some equal of his, to preserve and retain her dignity.And I still am, she reminded herself firmly, lifting her head and her gaze stubbornly. “I am a Free Citizen—as far as I’m concerned, I’m yourequal. The equal of any queen in this galaxy.”

Lifting her chin a little higher with the edge of his finger, Daemon whispered his lips over her mouth, teasing at its edges until she was following him, seeking harder contact. Subduing her with her own desire for him was a heady thing. “You are my love slave.”

Just like that, she was snapped from desire to outrage. Sunny punched his muscular stomach. She didn’t even make a bruising dent as he caught her arms and held her still. “I am not your slave!”

“Oh, you are,” he assured her, searching her furious gaze, thrilling to the war between the turquoise of her outrage and the aquamarine of her desire. “The day you prove things the other way is the day I set you free.”

Sunny frowned. “What do you mean?”

Smiling, he picked up her soapy, rag-clenched hand and slid it over his chest. “Bathe me. And we’ll see.”

She hit him in the chest. He grinned, barely rocked by her efforts. She attacked him, scrubbing hard, finding the dispenser and creating so much in the way of suds that his tanned skin disappeared beneath a thick coating of lathered white. His arms, his chest, his back, his buttocks—he grabbed her wrists when it looked like she was going to be just as ungentle with his gentlemanly parts, then coached her hands in how to scrub him, coaxed her into scrubbing him gently. And moaned deep in his throat, an almost purring sound, as she slowly lathered his shaft and its sack.

This was what he had meant. If she was willingly his concubine, willingly encouraged his passion because she wanted that passion, the fire that lay between them…he would set her free. Because she would be willing to stay for their combined passion. When he had suffered enough of her touch, he pulled her hand free and submerged himself out in the middle of the broad, deep bathing pool. Once, twice, then came up and wiped the water from his face, pushing back his long, wet, black hair.

Sunny, unable to help herself, watched his magnificent male body streaming with water. The sun was on the other side of the palace from the bathing room window, but there was enough reflected light from the whitewashed garden walls to make his shoulder gleam in one long, dappled line down to mid-arm, wrap around his bicep with a sprinkling of light, and trail down past…his…elbow…

Her gasp distracted him. Wiping a second time at the water on his face, Daemon looked over at her just as she grabbed his arm. “What?”

“Your arm! Look!”

He followed her gaze. Saw a raggedly inch-wide ribbon of small, pale flecks marring his formerly smooth, uniform, rich Astorran tan. Saw the way they came around from behind his shoulder, looped around his muscled upper arm, and trailed down over his elbow to the outer edge of his wrist. They looked like anti-freckles, pale on his tanned skin instead of the other way around.

“You’ve got it, too!” Sunny exclaimed tightly. “It has to be some sort of virus…”

Glancing down at his chest, Daemon saw that instead of a spiral like the pair circling her breasts, his chest muscles were outlined with a simple, single curve below his nipples. The line did continue down from his collarbone, no doubt from his face, and slipped down the sides of his hips into the water.

Sunny caught his chin and scrubbed at the side of his hairline. Scooping up a palmful of water, she rinsed the suds away. Revealing the same faint ouline of freckles there, too. Only his were pale on light brown skin, and hers were light brown on pale skin. She waded through the bathwater to look behind him. The same up the spine and split pattern prevailed there…but something about his arms nagged at her. Catching one, she laced her fingers in his and compared their upper arms, stretched out side-by-side.

“What is it?” Daemon asked. “It’s almost exactly like yours, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly—mine spirals this way, on my arm, and yours…that way,” she stated softly, eyeing their counter-spiraled flesh. “I think your thighs might be the same way. But…none of the slaves serving in the slavehouse got these lines—neither of the two women attending me on the two-week trip here got these lines.”

“I’ve shared bodily fluids with you; some infections are transmitted that way,” Daemon reminded her, studying his arm a moment more. He looked up at her, then freed his hand and climbed out of the tub.

Sunny leaned on the rim of the tub and watched him cross to a metallic closet door. Only it wasn’t a closet, she realized in shock—it was a medbox door! She blinked in shock, forgetting just for a moment how he could afford something like that. He stepped inside, murmuring instructions to its control pickups for a full medical scan and sweep, leaned back against the padded, angled interior, and stayed there as the door swung shut over him. Only the wealthiest could afford a personal medbox; major hospitals could sometimes afford one, but the technology was so difficult, secretive, and expensive, that only kings, nobles and extremely wealthy businessmen and –women could readily afford them for personal use…Natura, you’re slow! Sunny thought at herself in disgust.Of course he can afford it! He is a king, after all.

It took several minutes for the diagnostic scan and health-sweep to run. She used the time to shampoo her hair, and had started draining the tub of its soapy water when the medbox door beeped and swung open again. Glancing his way, she watched him step out, look at the control panel, and bow his head a moment. Shaking it, he faced her.

“Nothing.Nothing at all—unless you count the fact that, according to the medbox, I’m in the best health of my life,” Daemon muttered, confused. His concubine looked just as confused. “I even asked the damned thing to cross-reference with my last checkup, to check for any anomalies such as a toxin or a virus…” He frowned, holding her stare, then crossed to her and held out his hand. “Come.”

Sunny climbed out, stood beside him on the tiled floor, then balked as he started to lead her towards the medbox. “Oh, no!”

“It’s just a medbox—it won’t harm you.”

“I’m a Craidan,” she protested, resisting him as he tucked an arm behind her back and urged her forward. “It’ll hurt!”

“It didn’t hurt me,” he pointed out. “I’ve used medboxes dozens, hundreds of times. They’re quite safe—really!”

She balked when he got her to the door. “Can you program that thing for Craidan physiological responses?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it.”

“Why?” Daemon asked her, growing impatient.

“Because I’m a Craidan. We’resensitive to our bodies,” she explained as he gave her a dark look. “I nearly lost my lunch yesterday after being shot with that contraceptive one of your palace servants gave me. Climbing into one of those things is going to drive me out of my mind with prickling, even anesthetized—it does that to every Craidan who enters a medbox!”

Daemon hadn’t heard of such a thing, but then, he hadn’t heard much about Craidans, either, given that their world lay halfway across the Imperium from his royal empire, and they were but a single, independent world, not very important in Imperium politics where royal rank was counted by the number of worlds held within each smaller empire within and without the Imperium. Impatient, he programmed the box, and ushered her inside.

The machine beeped halfway through, informing him it was giving its current subject a sedative to keep her still inside. On top of the tranquilizing anesthetic used to put its occupants out to give the scanners time and immobility to function. The door swung open a few minutes after that, and a bemused, drugged Sunny blinked at him. The display screen announced in Astorran characters that her vaginal soreness had been repaired, and the contraceptive left in her system, if toned down to an acceptable level for her world and race. She smiled at him from inside the padded box.

His heart skipped a beat, it was such a sweet, calm smile. Serene. The ravages of his own body had been removed, leaving him ready, and that welcoming smile was making him randy. She, too, had an extraordinarily clean bill of health. There was nothing that the medbox’s sophisticated sensors could detect, and this particular model, made on Deducia—the world where medboxes and other such rare, high technological marvels were made—was only a year old, a top-of-the-line model.

“We’re both healthy,” he murmured. She smiled serenely at him, under the effects of the lingering sedative.

“…That’s nice.”

“There’s nothing wrong with either of us.”

“…That’s nice.”

Daemon studied her. “I’m really a purple frog in disguise.”

“…That’s nice.”

He tried a different tactic. “Sunny?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you want me?”

“Mm-hmm.” She came out of the box and looped her arms around his neck, slouching into him. “You’regreat. Shoulda gone to Temple and had the ritual just for you…”

He didn’t know exactly what she meant—he’d have to get some research on her homeworld’s culture—but her tone was quite lascivious. Sultry, even. When she leaned in and inhaled the clean scent of his body, cleaned to microscopic level during the scan and sweep, one that had apparently removed the rest of the false tan clinging to his hairline as her own normal freckles clung to hers, he thought it was the most sensual act she had done with him yet. Because she moaned softly and buried her nose and mouth against his skin, inhaling deeply, devouring his personal scent like it was a feast. Resolving to get to his questions again—another time, much, much later—Daemon picked her up and carried her back into the bedroom.

She giggled when he laid her on the bed, and rolled across the sheets, sprawling on her stomach. The sight of her backside, with its dipped spine and round buttocks, called to him. Daemon grabbed a spare robe from his wardrobe and quickly went out to the sitting room. The tray of food ordered from earlier was in there on one of the tables. Picking it up, he carried it back into his royal bedroom, and relocked the double doors behind him.

They would need privacy for a little while longer. Daemon was going to take advantage of her current, relaxed willingness. He was also going to feed her, because the medbox had done nothing about their respective hungers…and food was definitely considered a part of foreplay in his kingdom.