“Your Royal Highness, what is your pleasure?” I asked, eyes downcast but teeth clenched.
“I just came to wish you well on your voyage, dear brother,” he said, his voice making my skin crawl.
He stood and moved toward me, his hand reaching out to caress my cheek and I felt myself pale. Maalik had been unhealthily fascinated with me for years. Before he had been named CrownPrince, I had been able to avoid him; as a child of a slave he was almost beneath the notice of a true blooded prince. However, once he had developed his Elusian powers, he was, at least technically, of higher status than I was until I was acknowledged as human. A human true blooded heir outranked an Elusian bastard. That was the future, though. I needed to survive today.
Less than a week after he had established as an Elusian I had woken to a drunken Maalik pawing at my clothes in the middle of the night, the servants who normally waited on me shockingly absent. I had been able to fend him off that night, but there had been many others. I forced that memory down and swallowed hard. I couldn’t afford to think about those nights right now. I had to focus on surviving this moment, on dodging Maalik’s disgusting advances.
I couldn’t fight, so I’d learned to hide. I rarely actually slept in my quarters anymore. I hid in the libraries, the endless offices that made up my father’s palace, or sometimes the gardens. I think my mother knew, or at least suspected what was happening. She had ordered her staff to grant me access to her quarters any hour of the day or night and I sometimes saw members of her staff shadowing me at a distance.
Today, however, there was no such shadow. All of Mother’s staff and my own were preparing for our departure. Maalik’s oily voice made me wince.
“As to my pleasure…” he stroked his hands through my hair and I tried to force myself not to react, but I couldn’t control the shudder of disgust that shot through me. His fingers tightened in my hair painfully and he jerked my head back. “Why, brother… One might think that you didn’t like me.”
I glared up at him from where I kneeled. He was pulling on my hair so hard that my eyes stung with tears, but I refused to cry out. It would only make him worse.
“He is such beautiful boy, isn’t he, Your Highness?” Aurelius asked as he approached me.
“He’s pretty enough,” Maalik said in disgust, tightening his hold on my hair. “Too bad he’s not a girl. He might have been some use to us if we’d been able to marry him off. Now all I care about is having those pouty pink lips wrapped around my cock.”
He forced my head closer to him. His crotch was level with my face, and I could see the evidence of his arousal just inches from my nose as he yanked on my hair.
“Do it!” He hissed.
I glanced wildly at the two guards he had brought with him, but there was no help there. They were watching with evident glee as he manhandled me.
“Please stop, Maalik,” I begged.
He simply laughed and used his grip on my hair to force my face into his crotch, the thick length of his arousal crushing against my face.
“You know you want this,mikros prinkipus,” he whispered into my ear. “Little Prince” was his favorite name for me, and just hearing the words made we want to vomit. He ground his erection into my face as I struggled to pull away from him. While I had started getting taller over the last few years Maalik still outweighed me two to one, and his grip on my hair was punishing.
“No, I don’t!” I yelled, jerking backward out of his grasp. I fell on my ass and scrambled backward on hands and knees until I felt my back hit against the trunks at the foot of my bed, where I lay gasping for a moment, my heart pounding frantically. For the first time I wished that I had access to my Mageian powers because the idea of dropping Maalik into the center of the earth was very tempting.
He took a step toward me, and I knew what he planned on doing, because he’d done it before, and the thought of it sickened me, especially when I was so close to escaping him for a time.
Maalik grinned evilly as his hands dropped to remove his belt, but at that moment the door to the room opened and Captain Allard of the King’s guard entered the room.
He took in the tableau for a moment with keen eyes, Maalik standing in a fairly obvious state of arousal, me on the floor with my back to the trunks in obvious terror.
He just looked at us for a moment before speaking.
“I apologize for interrupting your…discussion…Your Highness, but the King is requiring the presence of Prince Lucien.”
Maalik flushed angrily. Captain Allard was one of the few people in the household that Maalik couldn’t intimidate. He was the King’s personal Weapons Master and had the complete backing of my father. More so than either Maalik or I, in truth. At the order of the King he had punished both of us upon occasion, though he had never been vicious. His punishments tended to drive home a point and not be simply sadistic.
“Fine.” Maalik muttered as he released his hold on my hair. “We’ll finish thisdiscussionlater, Lucien. I promise.”
With that final threat he left the room, his guards following along behind him. As Captain Allard approached me, I let out a shuddering breath.
“Might I assist you, Your Highness?” he asked, holding his hand out to me, his voice carefully neutral.
I took his hand and struggled to my feet, straightening my clothes.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly. While stern, Allard had always been kind to me. He was one of the few people other than my mother who I felt safe with.
I just nodded, my heart still racing. That had been one of the closest calls I’d had with Maalik. He usually wasn’t so brazen as to enter my chambers when others were present, but my personal servants were busy loading our luggage on the ship that would take us to Greece. They weren’t much protection, but I knew I could rely on them to at least tell my mother if Maalik came after me.
“Then come, your fatherdoeswant to see you,” he said.
