Flame of the Alpha (12 page)

“How much of this are you willing to endure, Priestess?” Captain
Jolen
asked, sliding the tip of his index finger along the length of her slit. She shuddered as stubborn desire made its way into her clit, pulsing there like a living beast.

“I’ve endured worse,” she said between gritted teeth.

The captain chuckled.
“No doubt.”
He paused for a moment and she heard him snap his fingers. “Come. Kneel. Right here beside me. I want you to watch this carefully. Consider it your first real lesson in female anatomy.”

Sophia saw Dante’s lip curl before he walked past her cage and disappeared from view. “I know my way around a woman’s body.”

“Again, no doubt.
But this lesson is different.”

Someone -- the captain again, most likely -- spread the lips of her sex apart. She squirmed and the tiny bars etched deeper into her skin. Sucking in a deep breath, she forced herself to relax while the men inspected the most intimate secrets of her body.

She could imagine what she looked like, her
cunt
spread open for their thorough inspection, her folds pulled back, her opening gaping and pulsing with need. Another drop of cream trickled from her entrance and she swallowed back the shred of shame that tickled her throat and made her cheeks burn.

“So wet,” the captain murmured, swiping the trickle of cream from her labia with his thumb.
“Such a good little whore.”

Sophia’s head jerked up so hard her neck strained under the pressure of the metal lid. She wasn’t used to being talked to as though she was beneath a common pleasure servant. She was a Priestess, damn it.
The High Priestess.
No one spoke to her in that way.

Except the captain clearly wasn’t speaking to her.
He was instructing his student -- his property.

Desire and frustration warred within Sophia, making her tremble. How much longer would she have to subject herself to this humiliation? Why couldn’t the damned man just wait two short weeks?

Saints, what if he came back the next day?
And the next?
How was she supposed to keep up this charade? Worse yet, how could she expect Dante to hold back his release when inevitably the game would grow more heated with each day that passed?

“Tell us, Priestess…when was the last time you had your pussy whipped?”

Sophia drew her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down.
Hard.
She wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

The low, throaty chuckle drifting through the room told her the captain didn’t care much whether or not she responded with words. Her labia fluttered, pulsing with barely contained arousal.

Something soft flickered across her slit. She swallowed hard, recognizing the instrument as a supple suede whip. She knew it well. She’d picked it out herself, though she’d never had it used on her.

The students had no reason to discipline their instructors, even if one of them would dare to attempt such a thing. She knew the way the whip felt in her hand, though. She’d flicked her wrist often enough while gripping the wooden handle and hearing a female servant’s strangled cries of pleasure as the slender edges bit into her outer lips and scraped across the pink flesh of her inner folds.

She’d delivered those blows with careful consideration, always certain of the exact spot the one would land even before she lifted the whip. Now, flanked by two men on either side of her
cunt
, she knew she wouldn’t have the luxury of knowing where the next blow came from.

“Gently at first.
Lift your wrist and bring the whip down. Let the surface of the tails thud across her pussy. That’s it. Good.”

Sophia’s
cunt
throbbed as the sensation of the first blow careened through her. Her mind reeled from the feeling of being spanked. It hadn’t been painful -- not yet -- but the blow had caused a renewed surge of adrenaline and lust to pour through her veins.

Her clit ached, desperately needing to be touched. She’d have done it herself if her wrists hadn’t been bound behind her back. As it was, even writhing against the cage brought no relief. The nearest bar crossed the top of her mound, leaving the rest of her
cunt
completely devoid of stimulation, with the exception of any the men chose to apply.

“Keep going. She’s practically trembling with need.”

Sophia bit her lip to keep from protesting. She wasn’t trembling. She was…

Trembling
.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she focused her gaze on the serene face of Saint Valentine. Her thighs and ass muscles tensed as another blow landed across her labia, harder this time.

On the third smack, she cried out at the exact moment that something hard and heavy clamped across both nipples. Her head whipped to her right as sharp, biting pain dug into both breasts. She could barely make out the edge of the captain’s shoulder, but the feel of the toothed nipple clamps he attached was unmistakable.

A heavy chain rattled between them, and she realized she knew this instrument of pleasure/pain, too. A weight had been attached to the center of the chain, dragging it down, tugging on her nipples hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. The added sensation of being wrenched toward the floor while being supported by the metal cage caused another stab of pain to lance through her. Warmth chased the agony, seeping through her skin and settling low in her
cunt
.

Another blow landed on the skin between her anus and her pussy opening, drawing a gasp from her throat. The tears that filled her eyes threatened to spill over her lower lash line. She sniffed them back and Dante froze, a breeze cooling her nether lips from the motion of the swaying whip.

“She’s in pain. We’ll have to stop.”

“That’s not pain, my pet. It’s pure ecstasy.” As though to prove his point, the Captain moved to stand behind her and thrust two fingers inside her pussy.

Sophia cried out. No man had invaded her channel outside the confines of the Temple during a ceremony. It was forbidden. She was pure…meant for Saint Valentine’s chosen alone.

The Flame
.

“Dante.”
His name came out as a low whimper. “Let Dante touch me.”

“You heard her. Fuck her with your fingers, but don’t stop the spanking. You see the way her labia’s turning a deep shade of red? Keep an eye on that and make sure the blows don’t land in the same spot. Flick the whip so the edges of the tails caress her clit, and your fingers.”

His words swirled around Sophia, making little sense until Dante followed through with the man’s orders. She felt the Captain withdraw his fingers from her soaked depths and she sighed in relief, and then held her breath as Dante’s fingers took their rightful place inside her body.

She shuddered, pleasure and relief streaming through her veins. His fingers moved in and out of her with a steady rhythm, while the blows continued to fall on her thighs, her ass,
her
open pussy. As instructed, Dante jerked his wrist at the last moment so the suede tips of the flogger bent around her pussy and caressed her swollen nub.

In and out…In and out…

She closed her eyes. Her breath came out in harsh, ragged pants, streaming between her lips with wild abandon. The captain said something else, gave some other instruction she could barely make out.

It didn’t matter what he was telling Dante to do. The only thing she cared about was how good his fingers felt stretching her to capacity, her inner walls squeezing down on the intrusion, widening to accommodate the thick, delicious invasion.

The strokes of the whip grew farther apart. For long minutes, she felt nothing but Dante’s fingers as he toyed with her soaked
cunt
, tracing a long swathe across her slit then plunging into her depths again. Each lengthy caress was punctuated by another sharp smack, bringing with it a new flash of pain, just sharp enough to awaken her nerve endings to the delectable bliss flowing across her skin.

Stroke and soothe…stroke and soothe…

She clung on to those words, drifting through her mind like a mantra. Her back arched as far as the lid of the cage would allow; she pushed her ass and pussy out farther toward him, begging him to give her more, to touch her clit, to send her over the edge.

Just because he wasn’t allowed to come didn’t mean she couldn’t.

A sharp yank on her hair had her eyes blinking open in a flurry.

“What are you hiding, Priestess?” The captain’s mouth was close enough to hers to feel his warm breath flutter across her lips.

She swept the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip instinctively as another blow landed, grazing her fevered nub.
“Nothing.”

A squeak echoed back at her. Saints, she wasn’t even sure she’d uttered a coherent word.

“Not good enough.” He flicked his gaze up, over her head. “Harder.”

The next blow landed perilously close to her anus, smacking the tender skin around the puckered nub.

She inhaled deeply and blinked back more tears even as her pussy squeezed down on Dante’s fingers, begging him to fuck her, just like the Captain said.

Harder.
More…Saints
.

Her head swam in a cloud of euphoria. The clamps dug into her nipples, sending streams of painful convulsions through her breasts, making her aware of every single pain and pleasure receptor situated there.

“Tell me. Tell me what I need to know, or I swear to your Saint, Priestess, I will have Dante fuck you.”

The blows had stopped, she realized belatedly. She wasn’t sure what Dante was doing, but she knew he couldn’t have taken the threat well. Her climax continued to build around Dante’s thick fingers, calling to her with the flames of the need he’d been fanning.

If she could just come, she could think…could reason out a way to keep the captain from continuing this line of questioning.

“But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Captain
Jolen
said, a mocking smile curving the corners of his mouth. “You’d like Dante’s cock embedded in that sweet, tight, unused pussy of yours.”

She shook her head and her hair streamed into her eyes.
“N-no.”

Yes. Yes, oh, Saints! Yes
.

“Of course you would. Your patron trained such a good little whore.”

He moved to stand and a fresh wave of hysteria jammed itself in her chest. “Wait, no. You can’t --
I
can’t --”

A low chuckle was her only reply. Tears clouded her vision, making Saint Valentine’s statue once again waver and ripple before her eyes. Lust and agony merged inside her, swirling low in her belly, thrumming through her
cunt
. She could barely think.

Lifting her gaze skyward, she focused on her Patron’s calm visage, trying to draw strength from his beautiful face.

Then, through the haze of tears, she saw the statue’s head move. She froze even as Dante began his ministrations anew, delving his fingers deep inside her core and curling them, touching a spot inside her that made pleasure swirl, hard and fast, into her clit.

You’ve already chosen him
, ma petite.
Take him. Take your Flame and let it burn
.

She watched, unable to breathe, as the statue’s head swiveled back around to its proper position. And then, a perfect smack across her spread lips took her over the edge.

For a moment, she hung there, suspended in confusion and pure bliss, hovering on the precipice of the kind of offering she’d never made to Saint Valentine in all her years of worship.

Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as her body
spasmed
and her clit pulsed, finally free to pour all that pent-up need into every inch of her body. She sagged against the cage, her head drooping until her cheek hit the metal panel, her body shuddering with aftershocks of streaming ecstasy.

Captain
Jolen
grasped her chin in his hand, lifting it until she was forced to look into his sapphire eyes. “Or maybe you’d prefer if I fucked you?”

Terror plunged ice into her veins. “No.
Him.
It has to be him.”

For a heart-stopping moment, she thought the captain might refuse, choosing to take her himself as a way to prove his dominance over her. Then he grinned, and her muscles loosened once more as relief made its way into her limbs.

“Luckily for you, Priestess, I could care less who fucks you as long as you tell me what I need to know. And you
will
tell me what I need to know.”

Chapter Seven

Dante’s self-control was slipping. It had been steadily lapsing ever since he’d applied the first tender smack to Sophia’s delightfully pink pussy, turning the delicate folds a rosy red.

He’d thought licking her delicious
cunt
was as good as it got, short of plunging his cock deep into her and feeling that tight channel close around his shaft, milking him with each shudder of her orgasm. Now he knew better.

It was as though the captain had known all along what would make Dante tick. The longer he pushed, the more Sophia gave in -- and the harder Dante became.

And now he was supposed to fuck her, too?

“No way,” he said, pulling his fingers out of Sophia’s pussy. Her cream dripped down the back of his hand, and he couldn’t resist the impulse to bring it up to his mouth and swipe his tongue over the trickling drop.

Her taste -- musky and sharp -- assaulted his senses, causing his cock to jerk hard against his stomach. The familiar onslaught of impending orgasm gathered low in his balls, churning with agitated hunger.

To banish the desire, he turned his head and fixed his gaze on his pants, hanging from the statue’s massive dick, and bit the inside of his cheek.
Hard.

The metallic taste of blood trickled down the back of his throat, chasing Sophia’s heady miasma of raw, feminine flavor. “I won’t do it,” he repeated, wondering if anyone was even listening to him.

“You seem to think I’m giving you a choice,” Captain
Jolen
said. “I’m not. I have plans for you. Yet, if you choose to be difficult and refuse, I’ll chain you over there by the opposite wall, and you’ll watch me as I fuck your Priestess.”

Dante’s nostrils flared as he ground his teeth together, trying to keep his temper under control. It would be so easy to unleash the inner beast and tackle this man to the ground, to let his claws dig deep into the captain’s tender flesh. He’d be dead before his head knocked against the marble floor.

Dante fisted his hands. His nails dug into his right palm, while the fingers of his left hand gripped the wooden handle of the whip so hard his knuckles turned white. He couldn’t allow his animalistic urges to get the better of him, whether they were inciting violence or lust in his soul.

Thanks to Sophia, he now knew what was really at stake. Images of joyous, innocent children flittered across the surface of his mind. Killing Captain
Jolen
would guarantee a formal investigation. The safety of the little ones depended on the Academy’s ability to not draw any unwanted attention upon itself. It operated as a profitable business, which was good enough for the
Terran
government. If they had reason to believe otherwise, however, they’d storm the place in the blink of an eye.

On the way back from the children’s quarters, Sophia had told him everything he’d wanted to know about the Lighting of the Flame ceremony. He knew those kids had been born, not created in laboratories. Even if they didn’t carry Alpha genes, they were an abomination in the eye of government officials. And if they were unlucky enough to have mutated DNA running through their bloodstream, they’d be killed instantly.

A shudder ran up his spine, cooling some of the outpouring of lust raging through his system. He could do this. He could do whatever Captain
Jolen
asked of him. And then he could find a way to draw the captain’s attention away from the Academy.
Even if it meant going home with the man.

“She’s sacred,” Dante said, trying again to dissuade the captain from the course he’d chosen. He might have agreed to go along with the man’s plan, but that didn’t mean he was going to allow Sophia to be defiled. She’d made it clear that only High Priestesses bore children, and that those offspring were created by the grace of Saint Valentine, who blessed the union during the ceremony. One day, the female progeny would grow to become priestesses themselves, while the male children would eventually be sent to off-world colonies where they could live the rest of their lives free from
Terran
persecution.

The Lighting of the Flame only happened once a year. For the other three hundred and sixty-four days, the High Priestess remained pure.
Untouched.
Ready to receive a man’s offering and grant her own to the Saint when the time came.

“Right.”
The mocking tone in Captain
Jolen’s
voice didn’t escape Dante.
“So sacred that she works in a whorehouse, leading the troops.”

“The Academy isn’t --”

“Isn’t what?
A place where you train people how to be good little submissive sex slaves?”
Captain
Jolen
grabbed a fistful of Sophia’s hair and yanked her head up again, forcing her to look into his eyes.

Rage surged in Dante’s veins, reminding him that he was doing this to keep her safe, too. “It’s me you want. Leave her alone.”

The captain’s lip quirked upward in a wry smile.
“Ah, so you do have a backbone. Good. Do as I
say,
and she won’t get hurt.”

Dante grimaced. “What is it you want from me?”

“Fuck her. Drive her to the brink of madness,
then
ask her again what secrets the Academy’s hiding. Withhold that next orgasm she needs so much, if you have to. Then do it again and again, for an entire week if she doesn’t talk. You know as well as I do no one would interrupt our games for longer than it would take to deliver food.”

“That’s torture.”

“The sweetest kind,” Captain
Jolen
agreed. “Consider this your second lesson.”

“
It’s
fine, Dante.” Sophia’s voice was hoarse, gritty. She tried to turn her head to stare at him, but the cage around her shoulders limited her movements. “Do as he says.”

“I won’t --”

“You can hold out. So can
I
.”

He stifled the words of protest that rose to the tip of his tongue and gritted his teeth. She was right, of course. He’d promised her he could hold back his own release, since she seemed so intent on convincing him that he lost control of his shifting abilities when he came.

That wasn’t true, of course. He’d come thousands of times. On his own, in front of a mirror…he’d have noticed if he changed without initiating the transformation himself. Still, he’d agreed to go along with her plan. For some reason, she seemed to wholeheartedly believe in what she was saying.

Dante squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The scent of her arousal wafted around him, enveloping him in the sweet odor of feminine heat. His erection raged, pulsing against his stomach as he kneeled.

He could hold out. He prided himself on his self-control. Hell, he’d learned enough about controlling his urges in the Mars General Alliance. He knew those drills would come in handy some day.

“What about the rest of it?” he asked.
“The ceremony?”

She hesitated for a moment. “This is it.”

Dante gaped in confusion. The Festival he’d been able to handle. This…this entire experience bordered on the surreal.

He shook his head, knowing he was too far gone to back out now.

Dante’s palm traveled up the metal wrapped around Sophia’s thigh, making brief contact with her flesh. She trembled slightly, her head tilting at an angle as her breathing quickened while his fingers trailed closer and closer to her pussy. The folds were deep red now, and heat emanated from her core.

“Good decision. Mount the cage, Dante.”

Grabbing his cock in his right hand, Dante rose and bent over the cage. For the first time, he noticed the lid was slightly indented on the sides that didn’t reach Sophia’s body. His left arm slid easily in one of the depressions, and he gripped the edge of the cage with his fingers.

He nudged Sophia’s folds with the tip of his cock and she gasped. He pulled back slightly, knowing he’d hurt her. “I can stop. I can --”

“No,” Sophia and Captain
Jolen
said in unison.

Dante shook his head and pulsed his hips a fraction of an inch. Sophia cried out, but the sound was pure pleasure this time. He felt her pussy muscles squeeze, inviting him to delve deeper.

“See? That wasn’t difficult, was it?” Captain
Jolen
reached for a small plastic bottle at the edge of one of the tables, which was laid out with a variety of leather crops. “Remember what I said. She can’t come.”

“Yeah.
I heard you.”

The head of Dante’s cock slipped easily between her nether lips and into her channel, stretching her inner muscles as he thrust himself inside her in slow, rhythmic strokes.

He gritted his teeth as pure pleasure streamed down his veins. Saints, she felt even better than he’d imagined. Soft and hotter than
Enigma’s
furnace, her
cunt
gripped him tight and trembled around his cock, driving him to the brink of distraction.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Captain
Jolen
stroke his cock.
Fine.
If the guy wanted to watch, Dante wasn’t about to stop him.

Leaning deeper onto the cage, Dante stretched his body across the metal grills and placed a soft kiss on top of Sophia’s head, then tucked her long hair behind her ear and grabbed her earlobe between his teeth, swirling his tongue around the tender flesh. Her moan turned into a whimper and she thrust her hips back against him as far as her restraints would allow.

Closing his eyes, he gave himself over to what it felt like to be inside her, knowing this was likely the only time he’d get to experience such bliss. After today, he’d convince Sophia to let him go with the captain. From there, he could figure out a way off the planet on his own. Hell, he was resourceful. He’d gotten himself out of worse binds in the past.

He couldn’t expect her to continue to shelter him. It was too dangerous.
For her, for the children.
For him.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. He thrust hard, his cock reaching deep inside her core. Where had that last thought come from? It wasn’t any more dangerous for him to be here than with Captain
Jolen
. If the captain learned of what he was, he was just as dead there as he’d be here.

Except… He sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. Emotions swirled through him, fast and furious. He yearned to reach out and hold Sophia as he delved within her sweet folds, to kiss her mouth and stroke his tongue over that full bottom lip.

He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to give her more pleasure than she’d ever possibly imagined, with his hands, his mouth, his cock. He wanted her to scream his name in the midst of climax, again and again and again.

He craved more than sex. The inner beast needed -- no,
demanded
 -- a deeper intimacy.

His cock pulsed, hardening to impossible proportions as she writhed inside the cage, her cries filling the air.

He wanted her.
As his friend.
His lover.

His mate.

Saints! He blinked his eyes open, focusing his gaze on the blissful face of Saint Valentine. If he stayed here, the danger wasn’t to his life.

It was to his heart.

The captain placed both hands on Dante’s hips, taking him by surprise. With skilled fingers, he spread his ass cheeks and nudged the tip of his cock against Dante’s back entrance.

Dante sucked in a gasp as his head reeled from the impact of what was taking place. “Ugh!” He grunted loudly as the Captain’s cock stretched him, filled him.

“I own you, Dante,” Captain
Jolen
said, his voice a booming contrast to Sophia’s frenzied moans. “This is just a sample of what’s to come.”

He thrust harder, plunging his shaft deeper into Dante’s ass. A wet substance coated the inside of his back entrance and Captain
Jolen’s
rod. With a groan, Dante remembered the bottle and the man stroking his cock. He’d been preparing for this all along.

The captain’s balls smacked against his ass, making Dante grip the cage harder and pump his own needy shaft into Sophia’s pussy.

“Dante!
Oh, Saints!”

His name spilling from her lips was still the most erotic sound he’d ever heard. He wanted to hear it again, to make her scream it a thousand times while he toyed with her pussy in myriad ways, bringing her to the brink of pure erotic sensation before letting her tumble over the edge into sheer ecstasy.

Captain
Jolen’s
fingers dug into Dante’s hips, keeping him steady while he worked his shaft in and out of his entrance.

He’d been with men before. This wasn’t an entirely new sensation, but being sandwiched between a dominant male intent on possessing him and a submissive woman who’d captured his heart was utterly overwhelming.

He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to think of something other than the pleasure streaming through his cock, his balls, and his ass. The captain was gentler than he’d expected, fucking him with slow, easy strokes, never pushing or demanding, just enforcing his authority and claiming his property.

The familiar tingle in Dante’s balls intensified. Sophia’s pussy clamped around him,
spasming
in a way he recognized. She was close.
As close as he was.

He couldn’t let her come. Couldn’t let
himself
come. He couldn’t --

Every coherent thought flew from his mind when Sophia tilted her head at an angle and rubbed her hair against his cheek. The feel of those silky tresses against his skin was so sudden and unexpected, so
intimate
, it reminded him of feeling her hair across his abdomen and thighs as she’d sucked his cock into her mouth the night before. Then, her attention had lingered on the tip of his shaft before she took the engorged length between her lips and flicked it with her tongue.

Erotic images poured across his mind’s eye. And just when he thought he could force himself to shut down that train of thought, Sophia did something she definitely shouldn’t have.

She arched her neck, swung her head back toward him as far as she could and brushed her lips against his jaw as her pussy clamped down hard on his cock.