“Well, my pretty little one,” Demeti said. “Seems you have bite to your bark.” He focused the power back on Lucas.
The other Dire backed away as the Torshin pummeled the Morph with blast after blast. Aria tried to get her feet beneath her, to do something to help, but they refused to obey.
Lucas screamed, his face contorting. And then a final blast hit him, and he slumped to the stone.
Demeti’s eyes had gone incandescent with a sickening mix of pleasure and hate. He gestured to someone outside the room. “Come and get him. And take your idiot pack member to the infirmary.”
There was a quick scurry of clawed feet, and more Dires appeared to drag Lucas and the incapacitated Dire away.
Aria’s attempts to stand met with failure. She could only lie there and shake.
“I’ll bring him back,” Demeti stated. “Can’t promise he won’t be changed by the experience. But as you two have had time to bond, perhaps you can counsel him through it.” The eyes flashed at her. “I am, after all, a big pill to swallow.”
With that, he left and took Lucas with him.
* * *
Lucas didn’t awaken in stages, blinking his way to the surface. He woke up like a tiger, teeth bared in a snarl and body surging to full awareness.
He crashed straight up against chains. They held him upright with his legs spread. His arms already ached with the strain of suspending him.
For a moment, he lost his mind. Screamed as much with rage as fear, his body morphing, flying through transitions as it attempted to pull free. But he was too depleted to take them very far. And the manacles, like the collar, adapted to his efforts, keeping him strapped despite the narrowing of his wrists and ankles.
Demeti strode into view, grinning wide enough to reveal the shark teeth. “It took quite a bit of ingenuity to come up with those restraints. I warn you though—they will hold you through a reduction in size, but will not accommodate any alteration upward. If you try that, you will break something.”
Panting, Lucas stopped morphing and snarled at the Torshin. “Let me go.”
“Oh, I might. Eventually. If I tire of you.” Demeti stepped close. He was tall enough that he stood eye to eye with Lucas, despite him being suspended well above the ground. The Torshin trailed a sharp fingernail along Lucas’s jaw. “But that might take a while.” The crimson eyes gleamed.
Lucas wrenched his head away. He hung in the center of an ornate room that clearly served the Torshin’s every sadistic need. Various devices lined the walls, the purposes of which he hardly dared to guess. Two windows let in natural sunlight, but both were heavily barred.
His gut twisted as he met Demeti’s gaze. He’d been so worried about saving Aria, when it wasn’t her Demeti wanted. At least, not in that way.
The finger returned, tracing its way down his throat, tweaking a nipple, and moving lower. It danced along his belly, as the Torshin walked behind him, then over his hip...
Lucas thrashed once, frantically, but the fingers knew the path to take—straight to the sensory hairs at the base of his spine, where it played among them, sending pulses through his core as he gritted his teeth.
Male Morphs had long been treasured as sex slaves for a valid reason—there was no fighting the effect of those nerve endings. A few seconds of fondling and his body was quivering with need. And it could rise to the occasion time and again, until he eventually collapsed.
It was something his stepmother had explored with the many friends she’d brought home to use him. And it was knowledge Demeti put to effective use now as he stroked the hairs, before pulling the fingers away as he continued his circling maneuver. He paused in front of Lucas to survey the results with his shark-tooth grin.
He reached down and cupped Lucas. Or at least, part of him. It wasn’t just the hairs that were built to accommodate repeated breedings. “Ah. So much of what I’ve heard is true. Your talents are going to be put to good use, I assure you. Over and over and over again.”
Lucas fought to keep himself completely still, as though the touch meant nothing—but his entire body shook with humiliation. He’d been violated before, and survived. But glaring into eyes the color of old blood, he wasn’t sure he’d manage it this time.
His stepmother might be a twisted person. But Demeti was a monster.
The Torshin moved back behind Lucas. The fingers played again with the hairs. Lucas couldn’t suppress a shudder, but his body didn’t care that he was revolted.
“You stick anything in me”—his voice came out as a hoarse rasp—“And I’ll morph and crush it to powder.”
He’d done it before. Not to powder, but the man he’d done it to had never returned. Lucas only wished he’d had the courage to do it sooner. Would have made for fewer nightmares.
Demeti’s hand curled around his waist to pull him close, and he breathed onto the back of Lucas’s neck. “Don’t be like that.” He ground his hips against Lucas’s nakedness, and one hand drifted around to stroke him.
Another shudder passed through the Morph, a mixture of loathing and lust. In desperation, his mind fastened on an image, and his body made it a reality. A millisecond later, a tail whipped up between Demeti’s legs, striking like a snake.
The Torshin was damned fast. He flinched away, and at the same instant sent a blast through the collar. It scorched through Lucas’s brain, and he screamed.
