Prince of Ice: a tale of the demon world

Author's Note

For those who are new to my demon stories, the race humans term demons call themselves yama. Up until their recent discovery by human explorers, the yama lived in scrupulous isolation. Now the races share an alternate Victorian Earth, but the yama are far more technologically advanced. Thanks to genetic tinkering, they are also stronger, more attractive, smarter, and longer lived. Their culture values emotional control above all else.

Naturally, yama view humans as inferior, though many can’t help being fascinated by human passions. Complicating matters is the fact that human energy, or chi, is easily absorbed by yamishkind. The transfer produces a relaxed euphoria that is sweeter than any drug—and potentially addictive. Worst of all, human emotion accompanies the imbibing of human chi. As a result, the practice is frowned upon.

Chapter One

Humans say the Yama aren’t like you or I. Allow me to assure you, however, that as different as the average
Yama is from the average human, they are not half so peculiar as the average Yamish royal.

—Maxwell Philips, The True and Irreverent History of Demonkind

The emperor of the yama was coming into heat; he simply was too drunk to know it.

His humble maidservant, Xoushou, was the reason for both conditions. It was she who had slipped the pharmaceutic accelerator into his meals for the past two weeks, she who kept his silver goblet brimming tonight. Most importantly, she had timed everything so that his sexual cycle would reach its peak while the empress and her clique were unreachable. The emperor himself did not dare interrupt his wife when she was at her private mountain spa. She had made that icily clear the first time he tried.

Theirs was not a love match—at least not on the empress’s side. Xoushou had come to think the emperor had a yen for his wife, a yen the empress almost never gratified.

Xoushou hid her satisfaction under hooded eyes, fighting not to squirm on her embroidered pillow in the shadowed corner where she sat awaiting further orders. The empress’s withholding nature was to the good. Her husband’s signs of restlessness were rising, and Xoushou could not deny she was looking forward to enacting every aspect of her revenge. True, the emperor’s father had been responsible for banishing Xoushou’s family from its rightful place in the inner court, but like all the royal line, Emperor Songyam was a handsome man: tall, slender, and, when his rut was on him, virile as a bull.

His strength was apparent in his pacing, back and forth, back and forth, kicking his lavishly embroidered bed robes away from long, muscled calves. Whatever disadvantages came with the royals’ peculiar, inbred genetics, the advantages were obvious. No other yama were as physically perfect, and none had minds as sharp. It took a finely honed intuition to survive among the intrigues of the court, and never mind to hold the throne for as many generations as this dynasty had. The power Songyam’s bloodline represented was an aphrodisiac even to one who had suffered at its ruthless hands. Fascinated, Xoushou watched the emperor’s organ rise, the thickening arch of flesh pushing against his thin sleeping silks.

She wet her lips with anticipation, but he seemed not to notice the change in his body as he passed the deep-set windows. The Forbidden City’s moonlit mansions comprised the view, none of them as high or huge as the emperor’s. Below his eyrie, the Silver River snaked through the large, walled complex of royal houses, its frozen surface powdered by recent snows. The swooping silver rooftops had been powdered, too—still as Death, their scheming inhabitants presumably asleep within.

One lone aircar, the crest for a royal house glowing on its side, banked west to avoid the strict no-fly zone above the emperor’s home.

Though warmer than the scene outside, the imperial apartments echoed it. Set in a marble palace on the highest of the city’s hills, the emperor’s rooms were furnished in the delicate blue and white of snow at dusk. Their floors were lacquered, also white, with scrolling patterns of platinum and gems inlaid into the shining surface. Wherever he stepped the emperor trod upon his own riches. The gems, primarily sapphires and diamonds, twinkled in the candles Xoushou had lit.

She had chosen their illumination not for nostalgia or romance, but to prevent the emperor from noticing his eyes had grown more sensitive to light. This was one of the first signs that a royal was going into heat. Had Xoushou not been born a daughter of the blood herself, she would not have known this; such secrets were closely held from the inferior ranks. But Xoushou was royal, despite her present lowly status, and she did not wish the emperor to realize what was happening until it was too late.

He stopped pacing, startling her as he turned to speak. “You are sure the empress will not return for another week?”

Xoushou was pleased to hear his words were slurred by drink. Her plan required his powerful intellect be dulled.

“I am certain, Your Magnificence,” she responded in the sweet, low voice she knew to be her greatest seduction. “The empress’s chief of staff was very clear about her schedule.”

The emperor pulled a face at his favorite pet, a yellow-tufted angelbird that was nibbling on a cricket in its silver cage. Never in a million years would he have shown his frown to Xoushou. To display so great a crack in his self-command, and before a supposed servant, would entail a loss of face no royal yama could recover from. Had he not had two bottles of strong provincial rice wine in his royal belly, he wouldn’t have frowned at the bird, either.

“I don’t see why Nala has to travel so much,” he said with the slightest hint of petulance. “You’d think there was nothing to do here in the capital.”

Empress Nala traveled so much because she liked to be alone with her lovers. Unlike her husband, she had no trouble reaching a satisfying climax without her biologically congenial mate.

Rather than share a breath of this awareness, Xoushou lifted the bottle that sat wrapped in its warmer by her side. “Would Your Magnificence like another glass of wine?”

“Had too much already.” The emperor leaned his brow against the nearest window’s winter-cool glass. “My head hurts. And I’m aroused. Not that she would care.”

The last was muttered, but Xoushou knew she could respond.

“Does Your Magnificence need me to summon a pillow girl?”

Her choice of words—“need” rather than “wish”—guaranteed he would refuse. No emperor “needed” a bedpartner when he wasn’t, so far as he knew, in rut.

“It is nothing.” He waved his slender hand dismissively, despite his erection being stiff enough to stick straight out.

“Perhaps you would like me to massage you,” Xoushou suggested, “so that you may relax enough to sleep.”

He looked at her, his pupils glittering in his rim-to-rim silver eyes. Despite his drunkenness, the glance was sharp . . . and perhaps suspicious, as if her offer had been too quick. Xoushou cursed herself and dropped her head respectfully, but her luck was still running gold. The emperor shifted from foot to foot in his beautiful embroidered slippers. His cock had begun to jerk against his robes at the thought of female hands close to it—never dreaming that the blood which ran through those hands was as blue as his. He rubbed his neck, thumb and fingers stroking idly down the strong tendons.

Or not so idly, as it happened. The glands that nestled beside those tendons, the two that signaled his kith was rising, showed streaks of red. Fortunately, he could not see the telltale sign, nor were the structures swollen yet. He thought what he felt was normal, inter-peak arousal. His cycle was not, after all, due to reach its height for twelve more days. If no self-respecting emperor would need a pillow girl outside of that time, neither would he stoop to the services of his own hand. Whatever part of him wanted massaging, Songyam had people to do that.

“You have the oil I like?” he asked, as if his answer truly depended on this, rather than the desire swelling in his loins. “The one that smells like oranges and cloves?”

“Always, Your Magnificence. I keep it ready in your cabinet.”

Good,” he said, the word husky.

As Xoushou rose from her cushion on the floor, Songyam stumbled into a wide, throne-shaped chair. His knees sprawled to its white, silk-upholstered arms. The head of his cock poked unnoticed through his robes, as ripe and dark as a plum. He rubbed his palms up and down his thighs, his tongue flicking out to wet his upper lip. The gesture exposed the dark forked marking at its sharp red tip. The coloration, known as a lamril, was natural to all yama. The shape of the emperor’s was especially elegant. Xoushou shivered. To bare one’s lamril to a member of the other gender was a flirtatious act—though she suspected this was not intended by Songyam.

He was drunk indeed to show himself to her this way.

Xoushou turned before he could see the heat in her cheeks. Determinedly, she stepped to the carved teakwood cabinet that held his favorite oil. Xoushou had massaged her emperor many times before, though never with the intent to gratify him sexually. Theirs was a rigid society. Maidservants were for waiting on one hand and foot; pillow girls were for sex. Maidservants weren’t supposed to know about heat and kith, but pillow girls had to. With little hands-on instruction behind her, Xoushou prayed her touch would please the emperor when employed like this.

Her hands shook as she removed an etched crystal flask filled with golden fluid. Within the flask shivered a concoction different from that she’d always used. Tonight, the orange-scented oil was spiked. Xoushou’s cousin, who clerked at the Long Life Pharmacy outside the walls, had contrived to steal a vial of artificial female essence, the precise female essence that matched the empress’s.

The substance was intended only for emergencies, when the emperor was in heat and the empress unavailable. Such things happened even in the closest marriages; women did have other things to do, but no emperor was expected to suffer the maddening, week-long effects of rut without release. To prevent this possibility, the royal physicians devised the artificial essence. To insure no one but the empress could claim the issue of her husband’s seed, the essence always included a powerful spermicide.

Always, that is, except tonight.

Xoushou’s sex blazed with longing, and not only at the thought of what she was about to do. Along with drugging the emperor, she had dosed herself to guarantee she’d come to him fertile. Hormones circulated in her body, double their normal strength. Xoushou pressed her thighs together, abruptly finding it hard to bear her desire.

She must not betray herself. She must lull the emperor into thinking he burned alone.

“Why do you linger there?” he demanded now. “I do not wish to wait tonight.”

“Forgive me, Your Magnificence,” she said, turning hurriedly. “I was contemplating how best to please you.”

“You always please me,” he said gruffly as she approached. She noticed he had covered his cock again with his robe, though the silk could hardly hide its huge, rampant state. “You may be rohn, Xoushou, but your hands have their own simple genius.”

Xoushou gritted her teeth at being referred to as a member of the lower class. To her relief, the annoyance steadied her hands. She knelt in front of the emperor’s thronelike chair, between his still sprawled thighs. Another wash of excitement threatened to overwhelm her. She could smell the musky scent of his arousal, could feel her heart thump faster in response. She looked into his handsome face with what she hoped was a shy expression. The emperor leaned toward her, probably unwittingly. She had never massaged him in this position. Before, he always lay on his front on a special table while she soothed his back.

“Is this what you wish?” she asked softly. “For me to start with your feet and legs?”

His eyes had darkened, their pupils swelling with anticipation. The black disks receded when she specified what she meant.

“Yes,” he said, remembering the face-saving pretense that he did not require a genital massage. “We will do that instead tonight. I am certain it will relax me sufficiently.”

Breath held, she poured the oil into her palms, warmed it by rubbing them together, then took his left foot from its pointed slipper and placed it on her thigh.

As she began to work the oil into his arch, a long, soft sigh escaped him. He sagged back in the white silk chair. When she glanced up, his eyes were closed. He appeared utterly blissful. Too blissful. Xoushou hoped her cousin had been right about what the vial of the empress’s essence would do. Fortunately, she needn’t have worried. By the time she lifted his second foot, the emperor was squirming, his buttocks tightening with discomfort on the chair cushion.

“Enough of that,” he ordered, almost gasping it. “Proceed to my legs.”

“Of course,” she said, shifting her well-oiled strokes to his muscled calves. Her own body was alive with lust. This was really happening. After a lifetime of machinations to reach this place, after years of assuming a false identify, of slaving in the palace kitchens, of slowly working her way up the ranks and earning trust, Xoushou was finally where her mother had always meant her to be. Soon the House of Huon would have its revenge—mere minutes from now to judge by the emperor’s look of erotic strain.

He groaned as she squeezed a fresh palmful of oil over his knees. Very close to losing control completely, he crooned her name like an old-fashioned prayer. “Xoushou. Ah, Xoushou, your chi is always sweet, but tonight it is magnificent!”

She almost let go in shock. He had never mentioned that he liked the feel of her energy before. Yama were sensitive to chi. They could read and send emotions through their auras. The emperor’s praise, however, seemed indecently fervent—as if her energy were not the ordinary sort, as if it were as pleasing as a human’s.

Xoushou pushed the unthinkable suggestion away, unwilling to let it even form in her mind. She must not let those old lies weaken her, because lies were all they were. This praise was just the emperor’s rut talking, and perhaps the instruction her mother had given her in the royals’ private bed arts. Her hands were simply more skilled than the emperor expected. She tightened her grip on his knees again, only to have him clamp his hands on hers.

“Thighs,” he rasped, sitting now. “Rub the full length of my thighs.”

She did as he asked, feeling the heavy muscles twitch and tense beneath her oily strokes. She put her weight behind each push, letting intuition lead her, the intensity of her own arousal precluding subtlety. The emperor was still leaning forward, and both their lips were parted, both their breaths shallow and fast. When her fingers slid up to his hipbones, his gaze locked onto hers.

It was said humans could not tell one yama’s eyes from another’s, but the emperor’s were the soft, blurred silver of a coastal sky at dawn. His pupils were swollen with excitement, but had not swallowed his whole iris. Each eye matched the other, each slanting cheek, each chiseled side of his jaw—a crowning example of facial harmony. Instincts wired into Xoushou’s genes responded helplessly to his perfection, joining the drugs she’d taken earlier. Hot, creamy fluid welled from her sex. Here, right in front of her, was an ideal sire for any female’s child.

The emperor’s nostrils flared at her scent. “You like this,” he whispered, heat pouring off him in successive waves. “The little rohn likes touching her emperor.”

“Yes,” she admitted, because it could not be denied. “I would touch you more if Your Magnificence would deign to allow it.”

Her strokes had pushed his robe off his cock and balls. She did not need to look to count its forceful pulsing, did not need to see to guess its raging height. She could not drop her gaze in any case. His fiery stare held her prisoner.

“You are not properly trained,” he murmured—but as if he wished her to argue.

“No, Your Magnificence, but I am here and you could guide me. It is my duty to give you ease in any way I can.”

The emperor’s lips curved in a tiny smile. “Your words are as honeyed as your voice. I believe I could allow you to move your caresses to my testicles.”

“More oil might make that better. In case I am awkward.”

“Do it.” He leaned back, pushing his thighs even wider to let her in.

Xoushou poured another measure of adulterated oil into her palm. Then she hesitated. She could not quite reach all she wanted to.

“Your Magnificence,” she said in her humblest tone. “Do you suppose you could slide farther forward and sling one leg over the chair arm? To help your servant in her inexperience.”

The emperor’s grunt of acquiescence sounded suspiciously like a laugh, but if he doubted her artlessness, he forgot that doubt the instant she surrounded his testicles in her hands. His groan was loud and heartfelt.

“Drunk,” he muttered even as he tilted his pelvis closer. “Must be very, very drunk.”

Unlike other yama, the royals’ seed accumulated over their cycle, not being reabsorbed by their bodies when it built up. Xoushou knew the emperor must be tender from the swelling and heat she felt, but it wasn’t more than a minute before he curled his hand over hers and urged her to squeeze harder.

“Pull, too,” he said, his fingers hot, his voice nearly all breath. “Pull the sack as far as it will go and squeeze with plenty of pressure. You need to loosen the deep tension.”

His head rolled from side to side against the chairback as she obeyed. Sensing his distraction, she dropped her pretense of awkwardness, letting her fingers be as clever as her mother’s training allowed.

“Yes,” he sighed. “Yes. Get those damn reservoirs of seed warmed up.”

A thrill rolled up Xoushou’s spine. He was forgetting who he was talking to, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to be able to spill without his empress. She pulled his sack upward instead of down, kneading and squeezing with one hand while her second reached behind to his perineum. Here, where his penis rooted into his body, was a pressure sensitive ridge of flesh. Beneath it was his final kith gland, the one they called the kingmaster. It was russet now, pushing out from the silky skin as if a walnut had been buried there.

Xoushou slid three oiled fingers over it hard, knowing that if his kith could be coaxed into his seminal vesicles, Songyam would grow too aroused to resist anything she did. Kith was an aphrodisiac to royals, male and female, a physiological guarantee that they’d never lack incentive to procreate with their genetically ideal partners.

“Harder,” he gasped, his back arching violently as the oil sank in. “Rub me there harder.” His hand had formed a fist on his bare hipbone. Xoushou knew he was longing to stroke his neglected stalk. A lifetime of arrogance was all that kept him from giving in.

“You need more oil,” she said, releasing everything she held at once.

He blinked at her, glassy-eyed and shamefully flushed. “Yes,” he said with dreamy impatience. “I need your oil on me. I need your hands hard and oiled all over me.”

Without warning, he came out of the chair, looming over her and forcing her to shift back. The move alarmed her, but he simply tore off his robe and lay on his back unthreateningly, his body writhing naked on the cool white floor. Xoushou found this unabashed display of sensuality oddly exciting. Songyam seemed not to care that the sapphire and diamond inlay dug into his skin. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy the smooth friction.

“Kneel between my legs,” he said. “I want you to—” He swallowed and licked his lips, his lamril flashing again. “I grant you leave to put your hands on my phallus.”

She was glad he was too lost in rut to watch her face as she complied. She doubted her sense of triumph was well hidden. She was so close now.A single hurdle remained to guide him over, and she’d have everything she and her mother had ever dreamed.

She poured one long stream of oil onto his cock, biting her lip as three rich runnels parted over the crimson head. The slit in its center appeared to gape, as if hungry to soak in its own downfall. With loving slowness, she fisted the oil down and up his rut-fattened shaft. The pumping motion had exactly the effect she’d hoped. His thighs tightened dramatically a second before the clear, warm fluid of his kith let loose a fountaining spurt.

The relief this entailed, along with the attendant aphrodisiac effect, at last alerted Songyam—if only dimly—to his danger. He was now much wetter than the oil alone could have made him.

“Wha—?” he murmured, his head coming off the floor.

“Oh, Your Magnificence, I am sorry,” Xoushou said, already prepared for this. “I must have thinned this batch of oil too much, and now you are overly slippery. I fear it is difficult to maintain my grip.”

She feigned a loosened hold, distracting him from whatever he suspected was happening.

“Need it . . . harder,” he insisted. He tried to press her fingers closer, but being royal—and sober—she was as strong as he was.

“Perhaps I should stop,” she said, letting the worry a rohn might have betrayed sound in her voice. “Perhaps it is wrong to continue an activity that cannot culminate in release.”

“No, no,” he protested through gritted teeth, clearly determined to have that release, even if he expected it to be dry. “What you’re doing is perfectly pleasant. I believe I can reach a peak if you keep it up.”

Had he truly been between heats, a dry climax would have relieved him. While he was in rut, it would only wind up his tension more. Xoushou was tempted to try to give him one, to guarantee her control over him, but feared any orgasm now would involve ejaculation and lots of it. Already his testicles were rucking up, swollen and twitching with their stored-up load. His hand crept toward his sack, instinctively wanting to knead it, but he held back and made a fist an inch away. Xoushou lightened her grip even more.

Frustration flashed in the emperor’s eyes. His gaze slid from her face to her breasts, which were shaking with her efforts behind her traditional gray servant’s robes. As he stared, mesmerized, a deepened flush crept into his face—perhaps because he was thinking what she hoped he was, or perhaps because he’d noticed how very pointed her nipples were.

Come on, Xoushou thought. Don’t make me suggest it. Let your body tell you what it wants to do.

Xoushou knew he wanted to be inside her, between her legs and thrust in her sex. It was the strongest instinct royal males possessed. Songyam’s conscious mind might not realize his seed was set to explode, but his body could have no doubt. His body knew it could impregnate someone tonight and wanted desperately to seize the chance, no matter if that someone was a lowly maid. The problem was, if Xoushou suggested they copulate, she was bound to make him suspicious. Worse, if she didn’t suggest it and waited much longer for him to voice the idea, he’d spill his seed anyway. All her risks would be for nothing. She’d be charged with treason without having accomplished it.

Xoushou cursed him in her mind. She hadn’t expected Songyam to be so responsive to her loosened grip. He was nearly thrashing now, grinding his teeth and straining for the ejaculation he didn’t even know was coming. When his gaze slid yearningly from her bouncing breasts to the tie of her servants’ robes, she knew she had to take a chance.

“I am sorry,” she said, praying her low, mellow voice would work the magic it did on most men. She slowed her strokes a fraction more. “I am not doing this well enough. I am only a maidservant, untrained for sexual pleasures. If I were a pillow girl, I could . . . But I am only frustrating you.”

“You are fine!” the emperor gritted out.

Pretending to be overcome with shame, Xoushou released his organ and covered his face.

Songyam swore with a coarseness she was surprised to hear him capable of. He sat up, winced at the discomfort this caused his genitals, and gripped her shoulders in both hands. She opened her eyes when he shook her. He was so far into heat only the slimmest rim of silver kept his eyes from being wholly black. Xoushou shivered deep inside, part fear, part unbridled thrill. She’d never seen a male this aroused.

“All right,” he admitted. “Maybe I do need a tighter friction, but I wager I know where to find it.” His gaze slid to her abdomen, and this time she couldn’t contain her shiver. “Are you small, Xoushou? You look as if you would be.”

“I do not know,” she said, her trepidation unfeigned. “I am a virgin.”

His eyes did go black then, the highest sign of excitement their kind could display. Apparently, taking a virgin sounded good to him.

“Lie back on the floor,” he said, his voice like gravel. “You are not going to be one much longer.”

He did not wait for her to spread her legs, but yanked them apart himself. He settled between her thighs without delay, grunting as he took his shaft in hand. As soon as he’d positioned the knoblike head against her gate, he shoved inside.

A streak of pain shot through her, but to her amazement, he was the one who cried out.

“Xoushou,” he said, gripping her hip to wedge himself deeper. “I am sorry to hurt you. The chi in your pussy is so sweet. And you are tight. So, so hot and tight.”

He began to move inside her, long, hard strokes he seemed unable to restrain. Xoushou clutched his broad shoulders. The pain was fading, and his kith was gushing inside her. His genetic profile must have been a near enough match to hers to spur a reaction. Her sex contracted hard around his cock and began to burn. The itch was both delicious and unbearable. Frantic to ease it, she pushed her hips to meet his.

“Yes,” he said, his next stroke kicking in harder. “Yes, thrust with me.”

Faster and faster they went, until Xoushou feared she would scream. The friction couldn’t be enough for her, the heat, the impossible pleasure that rose and rose. She couldn’t control herself. The strength with which she met him soon grew violent. Happy now that his body’s needs were finally being met, the emperor gloated over her struggles.

“It’s true what they say then,” he mocked between panting breaths. “The lower classes are more passionate.”

Xoushou did scream then, partly in fury and partly because her orgasm was breaking in a wave of ecstasy so huge it seized her entire body and blanked her mind. She was lucky these rooms were soundproofed, or the other staff would have come running. Her only comfort in her disgrace was that a moment later emperor was screaming, too, his pelvis slamming so deeply into hers she thought she felt his seed shooting to her throat.

Songyam’s climax was massive, even more dramatic than her mother warned. Spume after spume of royal seed shot toward her womb as the emperor caught her to him with claws of steel. His groans of enjoyment could have been a beast’s. Xoushou came through all of it, even when his eyes rolled up and his body—especially the part that was locked inside her—turned to stone.

He remained in this position for at least a minute, quivering with helpless pleasure while his pent-up seed overflowed her pussy and spilled out.

He collapsed then, not merely exhausted but actually passed out. Shaken, Xoushou took a moment to find the strength to squirm out from under him. She stood gaping down at his unconscious form. If he hadn’t been breathing, she’d have feared she’d killed him. She knew the empress liked to deny him, but surely this reaction was extreme!

Telling herself it didn’t matter, Xoushou covered her perspiring belly with a trembling hand. Thick, warm semen ran down her thighs. Though she knew it was too soon to tell, she fancied her chi had changed. Did it not hum through her stronger than before? And wasn’t this increase in life force an auspicious sign?

One thing seemed certain. Soundly pleasured as he was, the emperor would not be complaining that his humble maid had mistreated him—assuming, of course, that he remembered it.

Either way, she would be fine. The empress had already approved Xoushou’s transfer to one of their distant and rarely visited summer palaces. The empress liked the idea that women who worked for her husband could not wait to leave. If Xoushou was pregnant, she would gestate far away, returning to the Forbidden City only after she’d delivered. The baby would enable her to enact the second phase of her plan. If she wasn’t breeding, she and her mother would know they had done their best, but Xoushou doubted that was the case.

The emperor had taken her with such power a rock could have conceived.

COPYRIGHT 2006 BY EMMA HOLLY. IT IS ILLEGAL TO REPRODUCE
OR DISTRIBUTE THIS WORK IN ANY MANNER OR MEDIUM
WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.