Claiming Crystal (17 page)

He also walked into a bedroom that was already occupied by two other men, Rafael and Lamous, and this troubled him with the easy intimidation any fellow without balls experienced around potent others.

‘You are a wealthy man,’ Crystal began at once, before he could flee. ‘I have a way to make you even
wealthier. I have proposed that I be married to several men, which is not customary, but possible under the edicts of the land.’

His expression wavered. She had not exchanged very many words with him in the past, and he found a talkative woman to be a conniving woman. The Dilmuth son treasured Crystal for her body and her possession, and was faintly bored to be hearing about her thoughts.

‘I’m tired,’ he explained quickly. ‘Perhaps you should speak with me in the morning.’

The suitor turned up his nose.

Even when she reached to kiss him he pulled away.

He resisted her more than a normal man, but she had already known this and taken it into account.

‘If I won’t sway you with my body,’ Crystal told him, ‘let me sway you with my words. Your kingdom will not find a sister in my kingdom. If I am sold to you my kingdom and its powers will absorb you and your family whole. We have more soldiers than you and more land, and more allies than you could hope to find in the next century. You will become another extension of us, and you will lose your culture as a result.

‘If, however, you are one of several husbands I take, the number of powers joined will prevent my kingdom from wholly taking over your province. My father only cares to ensure his power over this place he has spent the better part of his life overtaking. He is an ambitious man, but he knows the dangers of greed.

‘With each marriage I accept, I am bonded into peace with the kingdom my new husband represents. Should I take you all as my husbands, my father will have no one else to fear, and because he will have no one else to fear, he will not be so inclined to subjugate your kingdom in order to protect himself.’

The Dilmuth son blinked stupidly. He looked rather shocked to be hearing a woman speaking so clearly of the political realm that was never suited to a woman in the first place – and especially not suited to an object like Crystal, who was only supposed to be presented as a jewel of unrivaled beauty, and coveted for nothing more, nothing less. The Dilmuth son wanted her as all the suitors wanted her, and a part of him acknowledged that this proposal would at least give him a part of her.

Should he deny her plan and continue with the ceremony with traditions in mind, he ran the risk of losing out on her company completely. He was not much competition with the other suitors on looks alone. He had grown bald at a young age, and though his wig was a fine fashion, he did not have the scrotum to pleasure a woman in the more sinful arts that all marriages decreed by the controversy of their joining sin together into a holy union.

‘I should have you know,’ Crystal suddenly said, as if reading his mind, ‘that should you deny my proposal, I will not choose you.’

She turned around to face Victor Lamous now as well, her face stern and serious, a gorgeous replica of her mother’s famed beauty.

‘Nor will I choose you,’ she continued.

‘I will choose this man,’ she said, pointing to Rafael. ‘His name is Rafael Giovia. He has no wealth to speak of. He will not benefit my kingdom. But if I must choose one, I will choose him. All of you will return home empty-handed, and I am sure that your home will not be pleased with that.’

Lamous and the Dilmuth son met each other’s stares. They looked uneasy, but more importantly, calculating. They were both still weighing the potential benefits of this arrangement against the promised controversies of turning this ceremony on its head with something entirely untraditional and frankly more than a little lascivious.

‘This is the only way you can have our cake and eat it too,’ Crystal reasoned. ‘This is the only way you get to taste me for the rest of your lives. Submit to me as one of many husbands, and together we will usher in new prosperity and peace that cannot be sustained so long as we are picking favorites.’

It was an oddly democratic thing for a woman of nobility to say, and it gave the suitors something to think about as she opened the door to her bedroom and sent the guards out to fetch the remaining suitors from their rooms and escort them here. One by one Crystal beckoned for the suitors that had been arranged to present to her, and with each new arrival she proposed in a slightly different way. Crystal quite liked the shocked expressions on their faces, enjoying the notion that she was more capable than first impressions eluded to, and she found herself changing her stories and reasoning with wild improvisation that would have tripped up a less skilled orator, but only emboldened her cause.

Crystal had never truly had an opportunity to explore her manipulations before. Her small realm had begun and ended with her confines that became her prison, her only prison mates the servants and maids, her only options hidden within the orders they made them bedmates or gossipers.

Even Sir Jonathan Cleston, the old holy man whose age had unsettled her when she first came upon it, seemed capable of being plied by her scheming. Rafael had explained that Cleston was in danger of going to war with the very same kingdom Bashir represented, which meant that a marriage union joining both Bashir and Cleston under a single woman, and
that woman’s contract of peace would benefit Cleston so such ends that he might be moved from his strict religious ethics about the polygamy of men under women, rather than a single man to rule his dozens of wives.

Much to her surprise, the unsettling older man who was scarcely less decrepit than her father was the only suitor to readily agree to the proposal. She barely had to prod him before he was excitedly agreeing with her points, and adding his own on top of them.

‘Thank God,’ he delighted.

It had taken a woman that everyone desired to convince men such as these to get along – if only to ensure that they would be given a piece of her,
however diminished the symbolism of that piece might be. Crystal had arranged a harem for herself, but the situation had been ripe for it, and the means with which she convinced these men was as fluid as the strokes she used to subdue them against the ministrations of her moist body. Upon each agreement, she took that man to bed, and rewarded him in the carnal ways.

She sucked on cocks young and old.

She kissed men who were practiced in kissing and those who seemed entirely unsure of how to move their lips and hold back their teeth, and she taught these men how to enjoy her, and she subdued her loins so as not to scare any of them with the power of her nearly supernatural lust.

‘If you do not want me now,’ she cooed, ‘you will want me tomorrow, and again after that, and again after that.’

Then she was stopped from talking by putting her mouth to better means.

Before the end of the midnight hour she had broken most of the most promising bachelors in all of the land. They became supplicants, each taking a part of her body and enjoying it to the fullest taste of the flesh.

One was given a single leg to caress and kiss and lick.

One was given a single arm to kiss and hold.

One was given a single breast to cup and knead, while another was given the gold between her legs to enter into with breathless expectation.

Like her late sister Ruby, who had discovered more power with her body to subvert the powers of the traditional authorities around her, Crystal used her objectification to her advantage, and she ambitioned to seize control of her destiny in a way that would not end with the sad story of her elder sister. She would not be content to survive, but rather wanted to thrive, and with many powerful men underneath her feet.

Once they were rewarded personally Crystal showed them how to be awarded together, cooperatively, and it was the first orgy she had taken part in. Those suitors who could not keep pace with the youngest among them began eating certain select foods from the baskets Bashir had brought Crystal, which had their own stimulating properties. Everything seemed laced with sexual prowess, as if the very atmosphere of the kingdom was pressing these people towards an erotic conjoining.

By the time the queen who had presented her cooking skills to Crystal the night before arrived, carting with her another banquet for sumptuous lovers, several of the suitors had been driven into such a frenzy that they were kissing one another, stroking one another, and climaxing against hard bodies with a shamelessness that would please even the jailers underground.

‘I do not know what you are hosting,’ the queen said. ‘May I join you?’

She provided her own food in turn, offering her own unique brand of aphrodisiacs to make the men hard and Crystal wet for them. Although Crystal had pegged her as one of the more difficult suitors to convince into this new arrangement, now it seemed that her caution might be silenced by an offering of what she might gain to own even a part of Crystal’s body and worth. She practically fell into the pile of naked men, and they covered her swiftly, prodding against her body and begging for her wetter regions to douse their hot fires.

But Crystal’s hopes were quickly dashed once the queen had her share of the enjoyment and stepped away, her body smeared with sweat and seed, her face glowing like a teenager’s. When Crystal approached her with the plotting she immediately revealed herself to be hardest case to crack, and that largely stemmed from the fact that she seemed displeased to be relegated to the same ranking as numerous other men who would be married to Crystal in the same way that she was. This matriarch desired nothing more than to watch Crystal walk away with a harem of noble people, but she did not want to be part of it.

‘I am no one’s slave,’ the queen insisted. ‘Not even yours.’

Crystal was at a loss for words. Rafael had failed to turn up anything that might put this queen’s dynasty at risk. She was far too powerful to be quite as power hungry as the others, and indeed it seemed that she had traveled her simply to see Crystal in person and perhaps taste of her flesh as a once in a lifetime experience.

‘I am not a gluttonous woman,’ the queen said with a smile.

For each suitor who protected his dynasty by marrying Crystal, there were dozens of potential problems that remained with the tensions and conflicts that would arise as a part of the marriage. Although these men would have been flattered and prideful to be granted sole ownership over the Crystal jewel, they also knew in the back of their minds that the other suitors would begrudge their victory in wooing over the crowned gem of this kingdom. This cooperative solved more problems than it caused, yet it had taken a woman to present because only a woman would be able to see past the grandstanding of male egos bumping brows like cocks, and similarly, it had taken a woman to deny the proposal because she saw through its schemes or simply did not see the point of the convolution.

‘But I will cause you no further problems as a result of this,’ the queen promised Crystal. ‘I am a progressive women. I want to see where this leads. Furthermore, I do not accede to your demands, but I would like to enjoy one more night would you all the same.’

‘So be it,’ Crystal said.

There was power in being wanted; power in being an object of someone’s desire. As Crystal allowed the queen to hold her and part her most delicate seams, she found herself imagining the marriage ceremony that might come to fruition from this night of plotting. She thought up a unique occasion that was filled with the typical celebrations and confetti, the only real difference being in the size of the crowds which packed the largest courtyard of the kingdom - filled with the royal families of five exceptionally royal men and one matriarch whose wealth reached such heights that she could marry another woman without offending the God or people’s delicate sensibilities. The suitors would each be dressed in their best attire, and the rogue Rafael, garbed in finer clothes than a man of his station had ever owned before. He would not wait in the line of suitors, of course, because he was not arranged to be a suitor. He would actually wait behind Crystal, the bride, owned by her and her alone, given over to none of these flagrant ceremonies.

She supposed in a way that all of this had come about by the selfishness of her hungers, and she paused on this supposition, wondering after its true natures and intentions. She felt the warm kisses of the queen work their way down her body and drifted off into the euphoria of someone who felt truly powerful for the first time in her life, having transitioned from the possessed to the possessor, without sacrificing either position. The key was not moderation, as the wise philosophers said, but needless, pleasurable excess on both sides of the pendulum. Crystal would not merely allow herself to be possessed, but allow herself to be owned, enslaved, and she would not merely possess her suitors, but enslave them in turn. The perverted jailers who roamed about the firelight of the dungeon had encountered this secret of the truly experienced life the moment they found themselves in a position of power over the prisoners, and that same strange metaphor of slavery and imprisonment which encapsulated every single person Crystal had ever met returned to frame the situation with enough poetry to smooth over the rough edges.

She felt tongues – more than one. She felt many different hands of different shapes and textures – they pinched her, squeezed her
, and lightly tickled her most sensitive areas. She felt the hard bodies of their own sculpt as different muscles and men rubbed her, their bodies shifting positions in the orgy, rearranging the penetrator for the penetrated with a dizzying flexibility.