The room is vast and the bed is equally large, covered in turquoise satin sheets and ornate pillows. The entire thing is a scene set for seduction, but though I gave into his talented pleasure aboard the ship, I will not be going further.
“I will not be one of your brides,” I tell him. My teeth may be chattering, my very soul might be numb from fear, but I will not become one of many. I refuse to be his plaything.
He smiles indulgently, as if he has heard those objections before. I am sure this room has seen the refusal of many brave women and heard their cries of submission too.
“Come with me,” he says, leading me through the bedroom to a rich bathing chamber with a bath big enough to swim in. It has been filled in anticipation of our arrival with both water and exotic flower petals. It smells divine.
“In,” he says.
I climb up the steps as he indicates and immerse myself in the bath. I want to hide beneath the petal layer. I want to hide and to be warmed and comforted. The bath does that all.
I watch, then, as Sithren also strips. He is twice the monster I thought him to be. His fine clothing slides from his body, the second skin of his chest and torso armor removed to show a muscular abdominal plane and broad chest that both look almost human.
He smiles as I avert my gaze. He is now revealing the part of his anatomy which I find the most curious and fear the most too. His genitals. His fucking cock. It is thick and rises from the crux of his thighs like a… like a fucking cock. Green and blue with scaling at the base, it is a weapon in its own right, a massive, scary, hot fucking…
I have to look away. It is making my mouth water, and other parts of me besides.
I hear the water ripple as he gets in and feel the circlets of the pressure wave left in the wake of his presence. I don't know why, but he seems even larger without his armor. His hair falls in a dark cascade down his back, and now the water has that too, fanning it out like a cloak.
He’s hot.
I intellectually knew he was hot before. But I also knew he was alien, and my enemy, and evil, and far too old for me. He has offspring older than I am.
His powerful, scaled arms encircle me, that agile forked tongue of his finding the side of my neck and lapping against my skin. He is being tender and gentle. He is lulling me into a sense of arousal that I cannot fight because I need so badly to relax.
“Do you think those thousands of men you just paraded me in front of think you are bathing with me now?”
“I am sure they believe I am ravaging you,” he smiles. “And soon I will be.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he insists, rubbing his hands over my shoulders. The water is slightly viscous either with flower oils or some kind of moisturizer. All I know for sure is that it makes for an incredible massage fluid. But he cannot rub all my objections away. I know who I am. I know what I want. And I know I will not allow myself to be seduced by a monster who just put me on public display as an act of vengeance.
“Never. Not after what you just did.”
“Are you so offended? So traumatized?” His words are soft, his gaze intense. His fingers are agile and the warmth of the bath and the scent of the petals is already making me forget…
“Are these hallucinogenic?” I grasp a handful of them and shove them under his nose. “Are you trying to drug me?”
He laughs. “If I were going to drug you, you would be insensate, little human. Do you think I would bother with the ruse of aromatics?”
No. I don’t. I let the flowers fall, my expression falling with them.
“I don’t want to relax with you.”
“No. You don’t want to trust me. Don’t want to be with me. Don’t want to be mine. Don’t want to submit to what fate and desire have in store for you. You’ll fight it all to the end. But that only makes it more enjoyable for me. The conquest means nothing if it does not follow a battle.”
I splash him in the face and not in the playful sense. I splash him with intention. He tosses his head and laughs at my ineffectual aggression.
“Is that what you have in store for me? Small amounts of water delivered at low velocity? Poor girl, you don’t even want to pretend to fight.”
“I know you are keeping dozens, maybe hundreds of women captive inside the walls of your home,” I tell him. “I will not become one of them.”