I throw myself into the work, both analyzing Tyrant’s records, which are still lacking even with a magical technological translator lodged somewhere inside me, and referring to the ultra thick manual of regulations.
The DICK guidelines are particularly scintillating to me. For every regulation, there is a codicil which explicits undermines it, and for every codicil there is a multitude of amendments. It is almost impossible to comply with the guidelines, and I love them. Some of them are explicitly self-serving.
If profits are made from the sale of explicit content, they are exempt from tax if the content is shared with the representatives of DICK.
“Free porn for tax agents. Sounds fair,” I muse to myself.
I am used to taxation agendas which lack much in the way of morality, or which are at times explicitly unfair. I am not so naive to think that any of this is about right or wrong. It is about what is, and what is not.
“Human.”
Tyrant appears by my side just as I am adding up the three hundredth line item in a series of six hundred. I haven’t seen him since he made me orgasm like a wild thing by installing his hardware in my rear port. I keep my head down.
“You have not eaten in almost eighteen of your earth hours. You require nutrition.”
“Not hungry,” I say, my fingers flying over the calculator. “No time. I’m seven years behind the most complicated set of books I’ve ever seen. You have kinds of income I haven’t even heard of before. What is Grulksnickle?”
“It is when I am gifted a set amount of earnings in return for not destroying the homes of a rebel colony.”
“Oh. So just run-of-the-mill blackmail? Protection racket?”
“Basically.”
“Uh huh. Okay. Protection rackets are actually codified in the tax code here at an extra 1%. Unless the protection racket is the main source of your income, in which case there is a rebate available if your services are offered to the DICK. They want porn and muscle.”
Tyrant makes a grumbling sound, but I am not in the mindset to pay attention to anything outside my bubble of concentration. I’m in the zone, a place of accounting perfection where I don’t see numbers. I see wars. I see plunder. I see the flow of financial energy from one place to another. I see opportunities to write off expenses that haven’t even been thought of yet.
“Hey!”
I have been lifted from my seat bodily, and now I am being hauled through multiple walls by the king himself. This is the first time I have been let out of the room since I arrived in it.
“What are you doing?”
The question is redundant because it is quite evident what he is doing. He is abducting me from my work.
“I am going to ensure that you are fed, human. If you die before you finish, I will fall even further behind on my obligations.”
I do feel a little lightheaded, now he mentions it. Though that could be because I am being carried practically upside down in his massive arms. He’s not used to holding a human, I think. He doesn’t know where the grip points are. One of his hands is on my left breast, his arm underneath my chest keeping it from being a completely unstable hold. The other is wrapped around my waist and has ended up between my thighs cupping a very sensitive part of my anatomy.
Every time Tyrant touches me, I find myself sparked into lust. Even in this awkward position where I am being carried like a sack of sexy potatoes, I feel myself reacting to his presence, his scent, every bit of his muscularity and his power — which reaches far beyond the mere physical.
He carries me through the final veil to a space so much vaster than I realized was even possible for this ship to contain. It must be as large as a city, or perhaps even larger.
“These are my chambers. You will eat here, and then you will be returned to your place of work.”
“These are… this is amazing.”
His chambers are large. Very large. The size of a small football field. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but that’s what this feels like. The ceiling is miles above my head, and the walls are so far away I would run out of breath if I tried to run between them. One side of the room is entirely open to the universe. I can see an endless dancing array of stars and nebulae, coating the cosmos in pink and blue clusters of eternity.
The sight makes me stop struggling, stop squirming, and simply stare. This is truly awesome.
He lets me down, but I don’t go anywhere. I just stand there, pressed against him, forgetting the impropriety of being snuggled up to the sheltering body of King Tyrant.