Evil Is a Man

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

If you like what you're reading, let me know: SellarDhor@gmail.com. And let me know where you want the story to go and who you want Jake to end up with. And if you have any ideas for the future, let me know, I might include them.

APRIL 16th

I woke up in Marutuk's muscular, tan arms. We were in his room again, in his bed, even if I had no memory of how I had gotten there. Daylight was in the room, windows with red screens were all around letting in diffused light. Marutuk was sleeping, holding onto me. Both of us were covered in dried seed.

I still felt a bit numb, but I shook my head awake even if my body lingered in slumber. I was too excited to sleep. Had the spell been successful?

Nothing felt different about my body except for that numbness. Was it all a failure? I started to panic, jamming my finger inside me but not being able to feel anything much because I was just too numb.

"Marutuk, wake up."

"Mmm." He started to open his eyes.

"I don't feel any different. It was all a failure, wasn't it?"

"Let me see."

He put me on my stomach and stuck a finger inside me.

"Anything?"

"No, you don't feel any different."

I was devastated. "I must have said the spell wrong. Or maybe I just wasn't powerful enough."

"Wait, before you kill yourself over this, I don't think my finger is long enough to be sure. There is another part of me that is long enough to do an excellent evaluation, if you are dying to know."

I looked over at his huge penis. It had gone soft then, the tan stalk still looking very scary covered with its jewelry.

"Yes, do it. I'm still numb down there so I don't care. But take off your cobra piece first. Last night I felt like I needed you to wear that, but today it will just hurt me."

He pulled off the cobra carving around his stalk and put it aside. And then he started to stroke himself hard. He started to push himself inside me. Normally I would have felt pain, especially since he wasn't using any lube and he was so big, but the spell made me not even feel the pain at all.

"Hmm," he said.

"That's not a good sign. It's bad news, isn't it?"

"Oh wait. Sorry, just had to keep on pushing. Can you feel this?"

"No, I'm totally numb."

"This is me pushing the tip of me cobra against your cervix. That was definitely not there last night. Everything seems to be in order, I'd say."

"I'm so happy, I could kiss you."

He took that as an invitation, his lips moving to mine and his tongue entering my mouth. He tasted incredible. At the same time, he moved from just holding himself in me to starting to pump.

I pushed his mouth away. "Listen, I owe you more than you can possibly know, and as much as I wish I could show my gratitude in this way, I can't. We are still family, after all."

"What about last night?"

"Last night I was under the influence of those spells. They took me over and did what was required of me, which was to use your body. But that's no longer necessary. Can you please pull out of me now?"

"Alright." His face seemed disappointed, but he did as I asked. "Listen, there's just one part of you that must never be harmed. Your ovaries are your one weakness. But they are so high up in your body, it's almost impossible for you to damage those. You could screw yourself everyday with one of the Arabian swords everyday for the rest of your life, and any cuts you did to any of your new parts could be healed by vampire blood. But your ovaries cannot be healed. So, it's important that you keep anyone from stabbing you in the stomach or lower back. They could inadvertently kill your ability to procreate."

"Uh, I can think of a thousand other reasons why I wouldn't want someone to stab my in the stomach or back than that. No thanks. But if that did happen, couldn't we just do the spell again?"

"This spell is only a one time deal. Which means that if you damage your ovaries, that's it."

"I understand." I suddenly remembered that I had been swimming in snakes the night before. "I absolutely need a shower, right this moment. Are you going to come along to keep the snakes away?"

He agreed. He was just as filthy as I was. We entered the bathroom, which was a lot better lit during the day, and started to share a shower. He left his cobra off as he showered, but his hardon persisted as we started to wash ourselves.

"I'd love to spend the day with you, Marutuk. Get to know you better."

"I'd love that too. Too bad you've already slept half the day away."

"Have I really? I promise I'm not always this lazy."

"It's the side effects of what took place and nothing more. How were you suggesting getting to know me?"

"I would love to have you show me one of your favorite places in town."

"Are you so eager to escape the palace so soon?"

"I just want to spend a couple hours without any snakes in sight."

"And I'm guessing swallowing live rodents isn't your preferred method of eating tonight?"

"Even eating dead ones isn't too appetizing for me, I'm afraid. But first, let's meet with Vizier Bazzi and let him know he needs to cancel the birthday offerings from now on."

"Right, thanks for reminding me. You know, I think we can manage to separate for a bit."

"It's true, the snakes haven't bothered me at all today."

"I think they still consider you my mate. While I'm taking care of boring matters, there's a track underneath the castle that I built when I was obsessed with running. No one ever goes down there but me, so you could workout down there without drawing attention and creating potential danger. And I think sweating would be the perfect remedy to your numbness."

"While I think you are overestimating my lack of attention during serious matters of government, I'm never going to turn down a workout. Oh hey, wait a second, I seem to have misplaced my wallet. Would you mind if I borrowed some of your money for tonight?"

"My rupees are at your disposal." He tossed a stack of bills at me. "No need to pay me back, I have plenty."

"I refuse to ride in that," I said to Marutuk.

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's a shaded room being carried by men!"

"It's called a litter."

"I know what it's called. I don't want to ride around on the backs of your poor servants. Can't we just walk?"

"It's a bit too far to the restaurant to walk."

"Well there must be some other means of locomotion available beside human servant muscle. How would you have gone if I was a vampire like you?"

"Well, by Arabian horse, I suppose. Camels are beneath my dignity."

"I can go by horse. I know how to ride."

"Feel how oppressive the heat still is, even in the evening. I'm not having you in the sunlight. You'll get heat stroke."

"Better me get heat stroke than a bunch of poor servants."

"Would it ease your mind at all if I told you all of the servants manning this litter are vampire males in a Blood that is extra durable to hot weather?"

"Gentlemen," I said to the shirtless vampires. "I leave this up to you. Is it a burden to carry us like this?"

One of them answered. "We all love our jobs, the litter is not heavy for us, and we get too little opportunity to do this for the Shah. We would be honored to have you ride in the litter." The others nodded agreement.

I hopped into the litter, stretching out amongst pillows and silks. Marutuk.got in next to me. The thing was small enough so that two people were a bit cramped, and he put his arm around my neck to help support me.

With the still warm, shaded sun coming in that evening and the smells of the desert as we moved, I felt super romantic, lying next to such a stud of a man. But that only made me feel guilty, as I knew what my body wanted to do was wrong.

Even though I had spent the afternoon exercising, the serenity of the litter ride and the lingering effects of that hallucinogenic spell lulled me to sleep.

When I woke up, still mid trip, I felt cradled by his naked arms. He was spooning me from behind, and he, not wearing anymore clothes that day than before, was somehow touching me with more of his gorgeous brown skin than I ever would have thought possible considering I was fully clothed. His spicy smell was intoxicating. I wanted to get mad about his hard cobra pushed against me, getting my pants went, but I was embarrassed to admit I was almost as hard. The fact that the sun was setting, casting whole new shades of romantic light into our litter, only made things worse for me.

I felt like this was all my fault. I couldn't go from begging him to screw me the night before, as intoxicated as I was, and even to asking him to go inside me just hours earlier to not being understanding of his touches. And I was the one who sort of asked him on a date, I realized now. I wasn't going to have sex with him again, I knew that much. Or even kiss the man again. But if he wanted to touch me here and there tonight, I wasn't going to fight him off. Tomorrow, when my head had settled, I could set up a stronger line for my attractive half-granduncle.

As much as I tried to deny it to myself, I felt sad when we arrived at our destination sooner than I expected, and I had to leave his muscular caress for the outside. His frown as he helped me out of the litter seemed to show he was just as disappointed.

We were at a large, beautiful restaurant on the edge of the city, fashioned out of gorgeous sandy stone and filled with horseshoe arches. Another stone building close by housed a large group of Arabian horses and camels. Even outside the place, people were lingering around.

"Welcome to Sabeen's," Marutuk said.

While the outside of the building had smooth, simple walls, the inside was filled with Arabian tile and calligraphy, all of it beautiful. The place was lively and fairly loud. Though the place certainly wasn't a dive or anything sleazy, the clientele looked like average city-folk, not anything super fancy, but the large number of happy people around us seemed to imply this place was known for excellent food. There was a marvelous band playing in one corner, full of old Arabian instruments. The rebab, al-zurna, naqareh, quitara all made a lovely, lively Arabian sound, filling up the restaurant.

We were seated in an intimate table under something that I would never have seen in Russia: a large hole in the ceiling that had no trace of glass showing off the moon and stars.

"I'm noticing most of these tables don't have opposite facing seats."

"I suppose you'll just have to suffer and sit next to me here."

"Couldn't we ask them to bring a chair?"

"I want to save my Shah orders for matters of real importance."

"Fine, I'll sit next to you." I sat beside him, the rather tight seating forcing our thighs together. "This place is great, thanks for taking me here," I said after we had placed our orders.

"I chose this place because I thought you would love it. The people here are so different than the people in my palace. They are much too, much too, what's the word I'm looking for?"

"Insane?" I asked.

"No."

"Strange? Weird?"

"No."

"Here, why don't you use my device?" I pulled up a translator on my phone and handed it to him. "You type your word here and it will show the English word."

"This is amazing. Every time I wake up, I'm astounded how much technology changes. Can this translate from Sumerian to English?"

I laughed. "It's not THAT amazing, at least not yet. You'll have to settle for Arabic."

"That will do." He punched in the word, and hit the button.

"Oh, sycophantic!"

"Yes, that's the word!"

"I agree with you completely. That's the perfect way to describe the groupies you're surrounded with there."

"I brought you here because I thought you might appreciate the realness of this place."

"That's very sweet of you."

I realized at one point that he was holding my hand. I didn't even consciously feel him do it. I thought about pulling away, but the touch felt so good, I realized I was slightly hard.

Our food came, and it was all very spicy and completely delicious.

The band started up a new song that was a lot faster and more rhythmic than previous songs, and I heard some patrons shouting in delight at this new music. But then I realized they weren't shouting at the music, they were shouting at three attractive belly dancers who were making their way into the dining room, drawing everyone's attention to them.

"Oh, now I see just how real this place can get," I teased. "And I see the real reason you wanted to come here. Not for my sake, but so you could enjoy the sight of three scantily clad dancers."

He looked at the women dancing around the tables and he frowned, his face looking mortified. "They've added the belly dancers to their staff since the last time I was here, which was, oh, just a couple hundred years ago. I'm terribly upset at this new addition, and if Sabeen herself hadn't been dead for a good half century, I'd be in the back right now complaining about this base form of entertainment. I feel like a camel's behind, taking you to something like this when I'm supposed to be impressing you. I'll pay for this meal, and let's go get a better one at a more suitable place."

"I was only teasing you," I said. "They are very skilled dancers, that is easy to see. I don't need to leave."

"Well, I suppose there's a big difference between scantily clad and clad, period. I'll just try to ignore them and focus on you."

Shortly later, one of the belly dancers seemed to have quite a strong admirer, who was cheering loudly for her. She went over to the man and danced just for him, while he hollered. And then she let him kiss her belly button. He pulled out some bill, a tip of some sort, and flashed it at her. She let him lift up her top, exposing her breast, and stick the money inside, before covering her again.

"Whoa, there goes any last remnant of being clad," said Marutuk. "Should we be on our way?"

"I don't think it's right of you to judge a naked belly dancer when you are dressed only in a turban, slippers, and enough jewelry to break a metal detector."

"I know just the trick I need to focus only on you." He pulled me into his lap, so I was sitting on his right thigh, facing his left. "This is perfect. Now I have the most beautiful face in this city filling up my whole field of vision."

"Because your compliment was sweet, I'm going to let you get away with putting me in your lap."

"Look at you. You are even more beautiful than my beloved brother."

"So, if you are my half-great uncle, what would he have been to me?"

"He would have been your full um, grandfather."

"So that means that the spell you helped him with worked well enough for him to bear children?"

"He had ten children. Four boys and three girls, before he died." One of them must have been my father.

"Who fathered the children?" I asked.

"Who fathered them? Why, me of course."

"Wait, you are the father of all of his children?"

"Of course. I told you how in love we were. He would have never let anyone else impregnate him. He would have sooner died."

I went slack jawed. "Marutuk, if you are the father, that means you can't be my half-granduncle. I mean, technically you are that as well, but since you are the father, that means you are my grandfather."

"Grandfather? Yes, I suppose it does. Half grandfather?"

"There is no such thing as a half grandfather! You are my full grandfather!"

"I suppose I am."

I jumped off his lap. "Doesn't this repulse you?"

"No. I don't feel any different about you now than I did yesterday. I still know you are the one for me."

"No, I am not the one for you! I cannot be the one for you! You are my grandpa! That is so much more related to me than a half- granduncle!"

"Alright, just please calm down." He squeezed my leg.

"No, get your hand off me. Don't you see? You can't ever touch me again, it would be wrong. And I'm certainly not ever sleeping in your bed again, so if I cannot safely sleep in your palace without you, I'll need to sleep in the city."

"Don't be ridiculous, you are not sleeping in the city when you are my family. If you truly insist on having your own room..."

"I do!"

"Then that can be arranged. As long as the people in the house know you aren't vying for my affections."

"I'm not!"

"Then I don't believe they will have any cause to harm you. And I don't believe the snakes will try to harm you again after what we did last night."

"Oh my goodness, what we did last night! That is just nauseating! I probably still have your seed inside me."

"Undoubtedly so."

"I have your genetically similar sperm cells swimming around inside me right this very second. Ah heck, I'm going to be sick. Where's the bathroom?"

"I'll take you and help you."

"No, that sounds like something a lover would do! No, you stay here."

"Holding your head up while you vomit could be considered Grandfatherly."

"That's just as disturbing. I don't want you around me, in any capacity. You can just wait here."

He looked sad and rejected as I ran off to the bathroom. I puked up all the contents of my stomach before I started to feel better.

Still, when I looked at myself in the mirror, all I saw was a black Oedipus. I had brought my toothbrush along in case I'd be eating garlic-filled foods, thank goodness. I brushed all the vomit away from my mouth, not that I would ever be kissing Marutuk ever again, but still.

When I left the bathroom, I could see the belly dancers were just ending their set. There was applause as they all went past me to some dressing room door. I followed them back there.

"Are you three done for the night?"

"Nope, we are just on a break, and you aren't allowed back here," said the bossiest member of the three.

I didn't listen to her and made my way in. "Listen, I need one of you ladies to do me an important favor. The man I came with is all over me, and I need to make him stop. I need to get him to forget about me and notice one of you fine women. He's a very attractive man."

"We know he's the Shah, we're not stupid."

"Would any of you be willing to help me out by flirting with him tonight?"

They all shook their heads.

I pulled out my stack of rupees. "I could give one of you a lot of rupees. What about you?"

"As handsome as the Shah is, I'm their leader, I need to set an example for them," said the bossy one.

I went to the next girl. "What about you? You look very friendly."

"I'm only attracted to women. Is there a hot woman you are paying me to flirt with?"

"No."

"Then I'm clearly not interested."

I went to the third girl. "And you? You have to do this. I'm paying you way more than the guy who tipped you in order to grab your boob, and my grandfather is way better looking than that guy."

She turned offended. "Hey, that man you're knocking happens to be my husband. At least I can get a guy who I'm not related to. Yes, you were talking fucking loudly at your table. And no, I would never flirt with anyone besides my husband. Sorry, this just isn't that kind of place."

"There's the exit."

As soon as I turned around, I felt something wet splashed in my face. I spun to see that woman Jalila from the day before, who must have snuck in behind me, surprising me with her presence. All trace of her red spots were washed clean, but the same level of hatred she had for me the day before remained intact. I thought at first she had spit on me.

"Come here to throw more spots on me, have you? Or are you trying to sabotage my new job at the restaurant as well?"

"I had no idea you were even here."

"Oh, I'm sure. I heard about how you woke the Shah up with the taste of your blood. That was supposed to be me!"

"Yes, I woke him up, but the truth is, I found out he is actually my grandfather. He doesn't really seem to care about incest, but the idea of us together disgusts me. I need someone like you to steal him away from me. Please help me."

"You really want me to be with him?"

"Yes."

"Why are you giving me the chance to prove to him we were meant to be together? Is it because you feel guilty for ruining my chances with him yesterday?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"Well then, I'm sorry for throwing ink all over your face just now!"

I looked in the mirror, and saw my face was covered with black ink spots. "That's okay."

"Too bad these three have banned me from belly dancing as soon as I arrived," said Jalila. "That would be the perfect way to seduce him."

"Yes, can you go out with these three when they continue and give him a private dance?"

"Absolutely not," said the bossy leader. "She tried out as a belly dancer as soon as she got here and she is terrible. So we had to make her the dishwasher instead."

"I was not that bad."

"She was awful. Lost, attractive women always come here because we are known for belly dancing. But, just like this one, they don't really have any interest in dancing. She just wants to be somewhere where a lot of attractive, wealthy men might come in search of attractive women."

"I'll pay all three of you to let her dance just for tonight."

"Done," said the bossy one. "Get dressed, girl."

I walked back out and retook my seat, this time making extra sure my leg never even brushed up against his.

"Where did all those spots come from?" asked Marutuk.

"Hmm, spots?" I followed his gaze to my face. "Oh, these. Uh, you know. Must be stress related. Honestly they are here more than they aren't, so you'd better get used to them."

"Spots or none, you are still the best looking person here."

The three belly dancers appeared again from the dressing room, this time being followed by Jalila. The restaurant-goers cheered.

"I'm certainly no longer the most beautiful face in the room, not now that new belly dancer has come out. No wonder they say they save the best for last. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen."

"She is quite striking."

"You should not let tonight slip by without talking to her," I said.

"I came here with you, and it's you that I want. Forever."

I turned mad. "You will never, ever have me. You need to put our future out of your head entirely. I will never be yours again. You need to start looking for someone else. I mean, I'm not going to be able to give you my blood, you need someone else at home that can provide that for you. And this woman is so gorgeous, she would be perfect."

"I haven't said one word to this woman."

"Who needs words when your bodies are so clearly drawn to each other?"

At first, Jalila's beauty was inspiring oohs from the audience. But as soon as she really started to dance, all of those happy sighs turned into shocked faces. And it was true, she made my horrible dancing look professional in caliber. Her attempts to move her body with any sort of smooth rhythm came out more like she was having epileptic seizures.

"She may be beautiful, but her dancing is atrocious," said Marutuk.

"It looked great until she got a sight of you sitting there."

"She must be so disgusted by the sight of me that I've created seizures of panic in the poor woman."

"She's not afraid of you, she's in so much lust that her body just will not function anymore."

"Jalila is going to give a lap dance to whomever she deems the hottest guy in the room," said the bossy leader.

Jalilia pretended to be looking around the room thoroughly before her eyes fell onto Marutuk and she pointed to him.

"Alright everyone, give her some encouragement with her lap dance!" yelled their leader.

People started to clap as she danced/stumbled towards us. Seeing her try to give a sexy lap dance was so pathetic I almost couldn't stop myself from laughing. And it didn't last long, as she ended up tripping and falling right into his cobra-covered penis, with him having to hold her up.

"Look at that folks, she is so overwhelmed with lust for this man that she decided to cut right to the chase and go straight for her favorite part of him. Let's give the happy couple a round of applause."

Everyone clapped, and she whispered to him that she would continue her dance for him in his bedroom if he invited her home for the night.

"I'm sorry, but I'm with someone here," he said.

"Well, yeah I may be accompanying you, but I am certainly not WITH you," I said. "I think you should for sure bring her home tonight. How else will you ever get to know each other?"

"Are you sure that's really what you want me to do?"

"Yes! As your grandson, I will be nothing but happy for you."

"Well then, I guess you can come with us."

I made one more trip to the bathroom, and while I was there I scrubbed off all the black ink spots, and then the three of us were off, being carried by the shirtless vampires in our litter.

I had to constantly concentrate on keeping my body pressed against the edge of the litter as we went in order to keep out of their way. His attempts to talk to her had been thwarted by her kisses, and she was kissing him harder and harder. I saw her hand go down and grab his cobra.

He pulled away from the kiss, grabbed her hand, and pulled it off him. "Whoa, whoa, not so fast."

"Don't you like that?"

"Yes, but I feel like I barely know you. Don't you feel the same? Don't you have any questions about me?"

"You are His Esteemed Shah Jibril Bahar. I have studied you every day since I was a little girl. I know everything about you."

"Well, can I ask you some questions about you then?"

"You are the Shah. You give the orders."

"Uh, okay. So, do you have any cool talents?"

"My oral skills are unsurpassed, and I've been stretching out my vagina to get it ready for such a massive penis as yours."

"That's not what I meant, exactly. Do you have any hobbies?"

"I have a painting of you that I like to masturbate to every day. That's really about it for the hobbies."

"What about dreams or aspirations? What are your long term plans?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Of course."

"Well," she said, "to be honest, my absolute dream come true would be for you to marry me, and for me to have your baby, who would be heir to the throne. Someone I could live vicariously through."

He shook his head. "I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I only have protected sex with women."

"Is it because you are worried about getting killer viruses? I've had a doctor write a note that I'm healthy."

"At this age, viruses are nothing to me. No, I cannot risk impregnating woman with a female baby. As soon as I did, I would lose my Shah status and my daughter would rule, no doubt with the pesky guidance of those Shankar women. I've kept my rule status all these years by not having a single female baby."

"We could have a male baby," she said.

"It's just not worth the risk of having a female."

"But I've just known for years that when I get pregnant, I'm going to have all boys. I'm not going to have girls."

"I cannot trust your hunches as fact. I just cannot trust the promises of women. I've been burned before by women who I thought I loved, who told me they would love me and never betray me. I just can't ever trust a woman again, I'm sorry. And since I cannot marry you without the expectation that we'd be breeding, I cannot marry you ever either. The most I could ever tell you was possible was for you to be a girlfriend."

"I don't want to be just a girlfriend. If I cannot be your mate, then I want you to kill me."

"What?!"

"Yes, kill me. Tonight, while we are having sex. I want you to tell everyone that I was so beautiful, you couldn't help but kill me."

"No, that's crazy! I'm not going to kill you."

"I see. Well then, let's just have some fun tonight."

Pretty soon, she announced that she had to go to the bathroom and asked our litter carriers to stop somewhere private. Before she left, I saw her go into her bag and come out with like 8 pills, which she put in her mouth before leaving her bag and stepping outside.

"I'm sorry, but there's something really suspicious about this," I said to Marutuk. "I would normally never invade someone's privacy like this, but I feel I have to."

"Invade ahead."

I opened up her bag. The only bottle of pills was a prescription bottle labeled Urokinase. I didn't know what that was, so I pulled out my phone and looked it up.

"Wow, your translating device can translate drug names too?"

"It sure can. And this one is a powerful anticoagulant."

"Whoa, what are you dong looking through my bag, you creep?" asked Jalila, surprising me by popping back into the litter without warning.

"I found this," I said, showing her the bottle. "It's an anticoagulant."

"I know what it is," she said. "I have an indulgence for unhealthy foods, and it's made me at risk for heart attacks. My doctor gave it to me."

"You took like eight times the recommended dose!"

"I've one big, walking heart attack with the amount of cholesterol I eat."

"I don't believe you, you look totally healthy. And your name isn't even on this prescription bottle, it's someone else."

"Tell us the truth! That's an order!"

She sighed. "Alright. I was taking those pills to try and cause you to accidentally bleed me to death when you fed on me tonight."

"You're mentally unhinged, clearly. I want you to get out of this litter, and never pursue me or my loved ones again."

"You are destroying my life!"

"And the Shah is giving you more orders," I said,

"I am?"

"Yes. He wants you to never rely on rich suitors to take care of you. He orders you fine a career that you love that has nothing to do with your beauty. And if you choose to be with anyone romantically, it will be because of love, not because of what other people will think of you."

"Yes, what he said. All of those are orders to you too. And you are not allowed to kill yourself, obviously."

She grabbed her bag. "I hate both of you."

"Will you follow all my orders as my subject?"

"Yes, I will," she agreed finally.

She grabbed her bag and left the litter, storming off towards some nearby buildings.

"Thank you for rescuing me from such a nearly horrifying situation," Marutuk said, after our litter was moving again. "I'm going to reward you by taking a detour to a place I love that I designed myself."

"I'd love that," I said.

"Take us to the Sandfalls, please."

"Yes, Shah."

We ended up passing the palace, so beautifully lit up at night, and ending up close to the palace but facing the empty desert, not the city. We reached a lonely structure in the sand. The litter carriers went in and lit the lanterns of the place, and then carried the litter off without us. Luckily, the walk back would be very short.

He held my hand and took me into the Sandfalls, and seeing it took my breath away.

The centerpiece was an octagonal, hollow basin filled with sand. Above this, eight beautiful aqueducts rose up from the ground, each about twenty feet high. They ended above the basin, and instead of pouring out water, they poured sand, which came down those twenty feet in beautiful sand arches and landed in the basin. All the stone and sand was lit up by the lanterns, making it all glow in gorgeous light.

"I love it!"

He threw off his turban and slippers, and jumped into the basin. He walked under the spray of the sand just like it was water. Watching him from behind, the sand started to hit the top of his head, covering his black hair in sand. As he stepped forwards, the sand started to fall all over his muscled back and hard, muscular butt. Soon he had disappeared entirely in sand.

He started to come through the sand falls again back into view, but this time he had turned around to face me. His huge dick seemed like the first part to spear through the sand, and for a second I watched as the sand poured all along it's huge size. Even though it was soft, it was truly intimidating, and the sand was sticking to it, turning it a lighter color than normal.

He kept moving forward, and those muscled thighs and knees appeared. The sand was sticking to every part of him, especially to all his black leg hair and pubes. His taut, muscled abs appeared, sand clinging to the hair on his sculpted abs. His huge arms came through, equally sandy. And that weighty chest, sand clinging to him there, sticking to all of his fur. His head came through, and his handsome, bearded face was totally covered.

"You have to come in here with me," he said, outstretching a sandy hand.

"I'll get all sandy!"

"Well, take your clothes off then! This is not optional!"

I carefully removed my clothes and then he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the basin. My feet sank in about two feet of warm sand before hitting the bottom, which I could feel was actually a grate. Sand was falling through the grate, pulling it back out so that the basin never overflowed onto the gorgeous tile floor. It was a smart design.

He started to pull me backwards, under the first sand fall, and I shut my eyes as warm sand poured all over my body. When he had pulled me through to the other side, I opened my eyes again. We were in the center of the octagon. Once he was actually out of falling sand, most of the sand fell off his body, as it seemed to do to mine. But any place either of us had hair, the sand clung to. Since he was much more hairy than me, he has a good amount of it on him.

I looked at the sand falls completely surrounding me on every side with their lit up, gorgeous colors. "You were right, I absolutely had to come into the basin to really experience this. And I love it."

He put his muscled arms around my back. "I designed this place as an expression of my passion, my love, my romance. At the time, I didn't understand my drive. But now I realize, I built this for you. I must have instinctually known you would be coming."

"It is incredibly romantic here, yes."

"Are you sure I can't show you the affection I desire to here?" he asked me.

"Not when you are my grandfather, you can't."

"Wait a second," he said. "Can I look at your translator again?"

"Sure." I reached over to my pants, pulled out my phone, and handed him it to him.

"Ooh," he said after a bit. "What exactly does `great' mean?" He tossed the phone back on my clothes.

"It's even better than good."

"Even when it applies family relationships?"

"No! Wait a second, are you actually my great grandfather?"

"I don't really understand that term."

"Well, how many generations was it between you and I?"

"I was the father of my brother's human son with the One gene."

"And he was my father?"

"No. There was more between us."

"How many more?"

"Several thousand years worth of human lives. I couldn't possibly estimate this. None of your ancestors has ever lived more than an average human lifespan, I believe."

"Oh crap! You'd use a great' for every generation beyond a grandfather that separates us. So, basically, great' to the power of infinity."

"Sorry, my English is not good. I did not mean to imply we were of close relation at all."

"We probably share so few genes we are practically not related," I said.

"Does that mean you'll let me romance you as I desired to this whole time?"

"Yes! And it means I can finally accept how crazy your body makes me without feeling the least bit guilty than my lusts are improper or sinful! I'm so happy!"

And then it was me who grabbed him, embracing his muscles. I looked at his head.

"For the first time, I can tell you how much masculine beauty your face has, without any guilt." I reached up and tried shaking the sand off his thick head hair and beard, but had little luck. "Now I know what you would look like if you ever died your hair blonde."

Instead of answering me, he leaned forward and kissed me. His strong lips pushed against mine as his tongue invaded my mouth, exploring every nook. "Did that make you feel guilty?" he asked.

"Not at all. In the future, feel free to give me as many of those as you possibly can. And I've never been able to worship your upper body like you deserve."

I used my hands to brush the sand off the black fur on his muscled, vein-popping arms. I kissed each of those biceps, and then was drawn to his chest. Those perfect brown pecs, had sand deep inside the black fur and his chains. I tried to rub them off, but they would not get clean. Still, the rubbing was fun to do. His abs were similarly covered, though that didn't stop me from kissing them as I made my way down.

"My cobra wants so bad for you to pet him."

"Wait, first I need to get a good look at him. Just to make sure he's safe to handle."

Marutuk shook his snake with his hand. "He's one of the deadliest creatures on earth. He has a venomous bite that can paralyze you. And even without the venom, he can strangle any man to death in seconds, or crush bones. And yet, for you, he is absolutely charmed. You need not fear him."

I dropped my knees into the sand, and was face to face with his monster, soft dick. Sand was clinging all over his black pubes. Since he had some hairs on his huge brown balls, those ended up particularly sandy as well. So did the base of his dick, where the fur was. The rest of his soft, cut shaft was less sandy. The cobra jewelry was in the middle of his stalk, while the head was glistening. I could see that there was a little bit of precum leaking out of the pissslit, even though he hadn't yet gotten hard.

"How come you are circumcised? You must be older than circumcision, right?"

"Yes. There was a time thousands of years ago when it became popular, and I had it done. Now, and then instead of following a trend, I started to set one, as still to this day pretty much all men in Raajya West are circumcised while those in Raajya East almost never are."

"That really sounds like the influence of humanity's religious norms. While Muslims in this area circumcise, Hindus in India do not."

"I won't claim to be an expert on humanity, but the correlation does seem strong. However, it wouldn't surprise me if we were the ones culturally influencing them and not the other way around."

"Perhaps. Anyway, you're in luck. It seems your cobra has passed the safety analysis. I should be free to touch it now."

Almost as soon as my hands were on his dick, he was totally erect and dripping. I loved seeing the sand gather around the pissslit of his plump, eager dickhead. He started to kiss me again, and soon we were tumbling into the sand pit, our naked bodies seeking each other out.

He lifted my knees up and placed his hungry dick into my crack.

"My monster cobra is so hungry. He absolutely needs to devour this beautiful hole."

He pushed his plump, shiny head into my hole, causing me pain.

"Wait, no!"

He pulled back out. "What is it?"

"I don't like getting topped. It's too painful."

"We can cast another numbing spell on you."

"No, I don't want to get addicted to mind-altering solutions, whether they are spell based or drug based. And I could become pregnant, couldn't I?"

"I could use protection this time."

"No, I'm just not into bottoming. It turns me off. I hope that's okay with you."

"You are who you are," he said. "But wait a second. Does that mean the spell we did last night to change you was all for nothing? Because you won't bottom anyway?"

"I plan to bottom when I want to have kids. When I do, I might try another one of those spells to help me bottom without pain."

"I want to be the father of your children," he said, his eyes burrowing into my soul.

"You do? So soon after meeting me?"

"I just know that's what we were meant to do."

"But what about you worrying that you'll have a girl? Because I'm not going to abort no matter what sex the baby is."

"With you as my match, that's not something I need to worry about."

"I don't understand."

"Let me describe to you what happened after I helped change my little brother to give him female parts. We quickly had five children together. I am such a great father; I hope dearly you'll be able to see that for yourself. These five children were vampires, which makes sense since all fanged vampires give birth to other vampires."

"Were there girls?"

"Yes, but I am so strong, I only give birth to special females. But the pairing of the One with the father of the vampires was more than I anticipated. I am what is known now as the Shankar Blood. But the five vampires he gave birth to were all brand new Bloods. We created together the ancestors of all five of the other vampire Bloods."

"That's incredible! But then you had five more children?"

"We did. You see, he came up with a spell that allowed our young to not be vampires, as if I was a human. I'm sorry it's not a spell he shared with me. But after that, we were able to have five children that were human, like him, with the males getting the One gene. That's how your line eventually came to be. He died before we could have anymore children, and I've never procreated since."

"I'm sorry."

"The wound is so old it's all scabbed away by now. Anyway, when I see this delicious hole of yours, all I can think of is breeding it, of us together creating a whole new vampire Blood, or even a few more. Because no other pairing on earth is capable of this."

"I would never have kids unless I was married and in love."

"No? No, I wouldn't either. Of course we can get married. We'll have legitimate children."

"But I don't want to get married for some time, and even longer on the having kids part. We're talking years down the line."

"I can wait however long you need to. What are a few more years to someone who is thousands of years old?"

"But there's no guarantee that I'll end up thinking we should be together. I need to get to know every little piece of you and then decide if we are compatible. And you should be doing the same with me."

"Of course. But while we are getting to know each other, can I ask that we be monogamous? I don't want you touching another lesser cobra when you have the father of cobras right here."

"I promise not to touch another guy, sure. If we end up not being compatible, I'll let you know of course it's over before I jump into bed with anyone."

"And I will swear the same to you. I will not touch anyone, but you will need to help keep me fed."

"That's not a problem."

"I think it would be very romantic if we slept out here tonight, wrapped up in each other," he said.

"You're lucky I just recently brushed my teeth. Alright, I can do that. I'm always up for romance."

He went around and turned out all the lamplights until we were just in the light of the stars. And then he curled behind me on the sand, spooning me.

"There's one gesture you could do for me that would make me feel the romance so much more tonight."

"What is that?"

I felt him rub his finger on my hole. "I can't help but be drawn to this wonderful new addition to your body that I must take some credit for."

"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have ever figured that out on my own. I owe you so much thanks."

"Well, try to keep that in mind when I ask you this. I've noticed it doesn't seem to cause you much pain if I just stick my head inside you."

"I suppose not."

"Would you agree to let me sleep like that?"

"If you promise not to go any farther than the head and if you won't use your cobra piece at night."

"I promise. Will you promise to let me keep my head inside you until sunrise?"

"I promise."

He kissed me on the earlobe appreciatively.

His head was super wet, whether still from him coming so soon or from precum, I couldn't know. But he pushed himself slowly into me.

At first, pain hit me, and all those traumatic incidents flashed though me again. But then the pain passed quickly as I was able to get used to just having just his head in me. Soon, it became pleasant.

"I admit, this is a romantic way to sleep under the stars, listening to the Sandfalls all around us."

"We are going to make each other so happy." He kissed my lips.

He fell asleep by the time I said my prayers.

I fell asleep, my body being caressed by him and the sand.

APRIL 17th

Marutuk woke me up in the pale light of pre-dawn, still inside me. The sand falling all around us looked so pretty in that early light. We had actually sunk in the sand over the course of the night, and were almost totally submerged. We started to push out of the sand.

"Oh my goodness, look how covered we are with sand. Every single inch of us has sand plastered to it." We must have been sweating during the warm night, leading the sand to stick to us like glue.

"I think sand suits your body."

"It suits you much better. But I won't be able to put on my clothes without ruining them. How lucky you are that your normal outfit consists of just some body jewelry. What am I saying? I would be absolutely mortified if I had to wear that around in public. I am much too modest for that."

"Since you still have your youthful modesty, I'd suggest we sneak into the palace now, before the day-shift people arrive from the city. The night staff is really bare bones, we will easily be able to slip unseen to my room. That way you don't have to ruin your clothes."

"You're sure we can make it to your room unseen?"

"If we leave now, all but certain."

Getting to our feet without him slipping out of me was the hardest part. I walked with his arms wrapped around me from behind. I grabbed our clothes in my hands, careful not to brush it against out body.

As we left the Sandfalls, the palace came into view, gorgeous in the morning light. We snuck through the courtyard and entered the palace through a side door, all the while creeping along and making sure no one was around before proceeding.

"Die!" yelled a woman, flying around a corner at me and sticking the sharp, curved blade of an Arabian sword in my face.

So surprised, I jumped backwards out of the way of her sword. But apparently Marutuk wasn't as impressed by her attack, because he did not jump backwards. What that meant is that I ended up pushing back on him, skewering myself with his unit, which pushed all the way inside, sending awful pain through me that made me jump in surprise again.

"Butler Ajam, we are not intruders, it's your Shah and his boyfriend!"

She looked past me to see him, and put her sword down. "I'm so sorry, my liege." She dropped to her knees. "I beg you do not impale me with my own sword for this oversight."

"Please stand up," he said. "I don't know how many times I've asked you never to get on your knees. My boyfriend and I were just going to bed."

"I heard noises, so I came defending the palace. I should have looked before I slashed, I'm sorry. It's nice to meet you, uh.."

"Jake Groves. Nice to meet you, Butler Ajam."

She looked down at my obvious nudity, and I slipped the clothes in front of me to block my crotch. "I'm so, so happy the Shah has finally found someone to share his bed, after all these centuries of serving him as his head Butler. The Esteemed Shah is the best catch in the world, and it's a shame for him to be alone. I'm so pleased he has finally found love." There was something oddly manic about her, she spoke very quickly.

"Thank you, Butler. Carry on, and good day." Marutuk waved to her and we continued along.

As soon as we were in the room, I said, "Look at you! Your balls are hitting mine, you're so deep in me right now. It hurts! Get it out, please."

"Alright, here it comes." He pulled out of me. "You were the one who pushed back onto me, not vice versa."

"I know, I know."

I felt much happier as soon as he was out of me and the pain was gone. I pulled him into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. I gave him a water shower that time, washing him with care, and he did the same to me.

"Before bed last night I looked on my mobile device," I said as I scrubbed the sand off his wonderful penis.

"The translator?"

"Yes. I looked up your name, and found something very interesting. You are named after the Babylonian god known as Marduk."

"That's how they spell it in English, yes. And I wasn't named after that god. I AM that god."

"What do you mean?" I asked as I scrubbed the sand out of his black pubes.

"Those people took my supernatural greatness, were so impressed be me, that they turned me into a god. That's one of the reasons why we decided to separate from humanity, keep our society a secret from theirs. Because when we intermixed, they ended up not being able to handle our god-like power without actually deifying us. The Babylonians all knew I existed, knew I was supernatural. But it was the smart, devious ones who decided to use my supernatural existence to their advantage by creating a religion around me, a religion in which these people profited greatly off of my strength, with absolutely no blessing from me. They used it to control and abuse the average Babylonian. They made up stories about me that are completely false."

"I can't even imagine how awful that must have been for you. This is one of the first times I really understand why all of you work so hard to keep us humans in the dark."

I kissed him, wanting to know I was there for him. He was hard, but I was still tired, so I toweled us off.

"It seems like if you're going to be telling me I'm your boyfriend and I'm going to be living with you, that I deserve to have a place to unpack and hang up my clothes."

He showed me to his closet. "I really don't use this at all, so feel free to take it over."

"Wait a second, why are there so many nice clothes in here in your size?"

He looked at the clothes. "Huh. These weren't here last time I was awake."

"I bet these are some of the tribute gifts people gave you while you were all statue-like."

"What a waste, I'm not going to use any of them."

Later in the day, while Marutuk was off being a Shah, I came to the horrible conclusion that the last time I had my wallet was when I was in the snake-pit. It must have fallen out of my pants when I removed them; it had to be where I left it. There was too much important stuff in that wallet just to forget about it, so I decided to try and retrieve it, figuring the snakes would still remember me and not hurt me, as it had been with any of the snakes in the palace I had come across since Marutuk topped me. If their behavior had changed, I could always change my mind.

I walked out into the sunlight of the beautiful palace courtyard. Vizier Bazzi was walking, and he waved to me. "Hello, Vizier."

"What a pleasant day for an outside stroll, isn't it?" he said to me.

"It's burning hot out here, actually."

"Well, for us Shankar Blood vampires it's quite pleasant. It's so nice to be able to take walks again now that our Esteemed Shah has taken back so many of the leadership functions." He had a weird glint in his eye.

"I'm happy for you. Take care."

"You be sure to take care yourself, Jake."

I walked out to where the pit was and I pulled the lever on the wall to make the circular top pull back, opening the hatch. There wasn't direct light shining into it, so I would need to go down and explore to be sure my wallet was down there. I wasn't going to lose anything else this time, so I stripped down to my underwear, just to be sure.

I stepped onto the ladder and started to slowly climb down. About a story down and I could start to hear the sounds of snakes. Far below, the ground seemed to be moving, and I knew I was seeing snakes crawling all over everything.

I kept climbing farther and farther down. When the ladder disappeared into a mass of twisting snake flesh at the bottom, I carefully leapt from the ladder to the dais in the center of the pit, being careful to avoid all those spikes.

I turned around, looking for any sign of my wallet among all of the snakes around and beneath me.

"Bingo."

I saw brown leather amongst all the colorful scales a couple feet away. Now it was just a matter of pushing myself through the snakes without being bitten.

"Okay snakes, remember, I'm your friend."

I put my hand against a couple of snakes carefully, ready to pull back at the slightest sign of unease. But the snakes paid me no mind.

I stepped off the dais and put my right foot through a mass of snakes until it touched the sand floor of the pit. I put my left foot farther out, pushing through snakes until that one touched the ground as well. I was thigh-deep in snakes.

"Remember, I'm your family." I refused to tell them I was their mother, as that was so emasculating.

They showed no sign of unhappiness, so I took another labored step. Pulling my foot up, shaking the snakes off it, and then lowering it again without stepping on any snakes was all very difficult.

Unfortunately, a couple spikes ended up blocking my forward progress, keeping me from walking to my wallet. Would I still be able to reach it with just my arm?

I pushed my right hand through the spikes and started to pull it through the mounds of snakes, to where I could see the wallet.

I became alarmed when I realized ahead of me was a particularly large snake with its mouth open. I tried to get it to move out of the way, but it wouldn't. The only way to grab my wallet was to push my hand through its open mouth.

It just had to be done. I didn't want to have to go begging to Marutuk to solve my problems for me when I was perfectly capable of solving them myself.

I pushed my hand into the open jaws of the fierce snake. "Please don't bite me." After that I held my breath, hoping it would stay tame.

Amazingly, it did, and my hand reached the brown leather of the wallet. I grabbed it with my fingers and pulled it towards me. I pulled my arm back out of the spikes.

I got my hand back into a ray of sunlight from above before I really was able to really see the wallet. And it took only a fraction of a second before I realized that it didn't look anything like the wallet I had been expecting.

But it took a second or two to realize I was holding onto a severed, human hand.

I screamed, my adrenaline kicking in, and I threw it back in the direction it came from. I took a couple sudden jumps backwards until I lost my footing among the snakes and fell into them.

Part of my face felt moving snake scales, as I suspected, but the other part was resting on something smooth and black. Long hair.

I panicked, turning around to look at what it was I had stumbled into.

My forehead hit the forehead of a woman. I realized the snakes were biting into this lady. One was devouring her left eye, another her earlobe, and a couple were fighting over her lips.

I almost fainted right there, but somehow I found the inner strength to jump off the woman's body, which was totally impaled on the spikes, and scramble over these awful snakes back to the dais.

"Marutuk! There's bodies down here, Marutuk! Come quick! The snake pit!"

I had seen the remnants of two bodies, but there was another unexplored corner where a bunch of spikes lay than seems to be attacking a huge mound of snakes, and I realized there were three bodies.

But I wasn't stupid enough to investigate to be certain. Nor did I care one bit about my lost wallet at that point. I jumped on the ladder and started to climb up as fast as I could.

"Someone come quick!" I yelled again.

I started to hear what sounded like church bells. Did the palace have a bell tower somewhere?

I was about halfway up the ladder when I heard someone walking above me.

"Yes, whoever that is, I need help!"

I heard a strange metallic clanking.

Above me, the disc top started to close in on me. Someone had pulled the lever on me.

"No, don't lock me in here!"

I had about ten seconds to get out of the pit before it shut me inside. Up until that point, I had been walking up the ladder slowly, worried I would feel faint and stumble. I started to run up the ladder as fast as I possibly could, recklessly.

I was able to move much faster than I expected, reaching the top JUST before the top closed.

BUT, I realized if I kept moving, the closing top would likely cut me in two, or make me lose an arm. I could not move forward, and had to watch helplessly as I had to watch the lid shut on me, sealing me in a tomb of total darkness.

I pounded on the metal lid above me. "Let me out, you bastard! You cannot shut me in here!"

No amount of pounding was having any affect. I heard no other footsteps or sounds above me. Whoever it was had long gone.

I was on a very tall ladder that I didn't trust to stay on more than absolutely necessary. If I had been of a sensible mind, I would have climbed back down and stepped on the dais on the ground where I would be safe until help came, but fear would not let me go back down there. So, I stayed at the top of the ladder, trying to feel around for any sign of any way to get the hatch open from below. But I came up empty handed.

After calling for Marutuk and banging on the lid for a while, I gave my voice a rest. In the silence, I could hear the snakes hissing, even from where I was.

Wait a second. When I had come into the pit, it had taken some descent time before I started to hear the snakes. Did this just mean my hearing was more acute? Maybe that was a side effect of the adrenaline.

And so I listened carefully for a little bit, just listening to the snakes.

I was positive they were getting louder on me. Did that mean more of them were hissing down there, making a larger sound than before? Had I made them angry finally?

I felt a tingle of fear run down my spine.

I pounded again on the lid. "Please, please let me out! Anybody!"

I stopped to listen again, and once more, it sounded like the hissing was getting louder. Trouble was, with it being pitch black, I couldn't see the snakes beneath me at all.

I decided to climb down the ladder to try and figure out if I was just tricking myself or not. I began to take step after step down, moving slowly. The farther I went, the louder the snakes sounded, but that was to be expected. I figured I was just scaring myself over nothing. Probably just my ears working extra hard to make up for the blackness.

I took another step down on the ladder, and got surprised when my toe hit something scaly. I must have been at the bottom already, yet somehow in my judgment, I seemed to be just two-thirds of the way down the ladder. My judgment must be askew in the dark.

That snake that had touched my toe quickly wrapped around my ankle.

"Get off me, stupid! I'm your friend!"

But the snake would not let my ankle free. It coiled around me tighter than I could have imagined was possible, and suddenly it was yanking my leg down, towards the bottom of the pit. I held on with my hands on the ladder rung, keeping from falling down.

I kicked the snake with my other foot, over and over, stunning it. But it wasn't until I reached down with my right hand was I able to wrest my foot from its embrace.

I took a couple steps up the ladder to make sure I was out of range of any of the others. And then I started to inspect my ankle to make sure I didn't feel a bite. It seemed okay.

That's when I felt that snake coil come up the ladder and grab my ankle again. This time, I grabbed it with my hand, wrestling it off my ankle, and throwing it down and all the way across the pit. "That should teach you to leave me alone."

That's when my eyes adjusted a bit to the light.

I had been right, I wasn't even close to the bottom of the pit. So how had that one snake gotten ahold of me?

I looked down, and let my eyes focus. I realized I was seeing a huge mound of snakes, actually climbing up the ladder towards me, their mouths open and hissing, clearly out for blood. They moved slowly but steadily up the rungs.

Newly terrified, I climbed up the ladder as fast as I could. When I reached the top, I pounded with new urgency, shouting for help as loud as I could.

Just as my voice started to go hoarse, I felt something on my feet, and I looked beneath me to see the snakes had climbed up all the way to the top.

"You're supposed to love me, I'm supposed to be your mother!" I yelled, no longer worrying about my masculinity when I was in such danger.

I pulled my body up so that I was absolutely scrunched against the ceiling.

But they kept climbing, and I felt them on my knees and legs. I grabbed one before it could bite me and threw it down off the ladder. Another one went for my elbow, and I was able to throw it as well.

But then two attacked my ankles at the same time, wrapping around them. I tried to kick them off, but more snakes were holding me down, reinforcing their friends with their strength.

They pulled my legs free until I was just holding onto the ladder with my hands. They started to encircle every part of my body, even getting up to my neck, but I wasn't going to let go of this ladder.

I felt the horrible pain of a bite on my thigh, and I cried out. When my limbs started to feel numb and my head weak, I realized I had been bit by something venomous.

I grasped that the venom was going to make my hands give out in a matter of seconds, and I would fall off the ladder and skewer myself on the spikes below, just like those bodies.

My only means of survival meant doing what all my fears were telling me was wrong: I had to climb down to the bottom.

I started to take steps down the ladder. The snakes seemed to like that I was moving down towards their friends, as they stopped fighting me as long as I was descending.

About three-quarters of the way down, the poison took hold even more, and my limbs gave out. I ended up landing on the dais, hitting it hard enough to be quite painful but not enough to any serious damage.

But the serious damage was what the snakes were for: as soon as I landed, they had absolutely covered my body. They wrapped around every limb first, covering nearly every bare spot on my skin, until I had to struggle to breathe underneath them.

And then they started to bite me. Not just to poison me this time, but to devour me. I started to get more and more bites all over my body.

I barely heard the sound above me of the metal lid opening.

"Jake!" It was Marutuk! "Are you down there?"

"Yes, I'm on the bottom, and they're eating me! Please help!"

I couldn't see whether he slid down the ladder or just jumped, but either way, he was down at the bottom of the pit with me.

"Who did this to you?!"

"I came down here looking for my wallet, and I found bodies down here on the spikes. I yelled for help, and someone shut the door on me to kill me."

"Probably whoever left the bodies down here. I'm going to find out who did that and I'm going to kill them."

He started to pull the snakes away from my body.

"It's not helping," I said. "I can feel more and more of them biting me! The poisonous ones will kill me quickly!"

"I can't get them to stop hurting you. They've stopped any notion they once had that you were their mother. There's only one way I can be sure they won't kill you, but you aren't going to like it. I need to get inside you again."

"That's fine."

"I know how much it hurts you when you do that, are you sure?"

"Yes, it hurts much, much worse being devoured by snakes that to be screwed by a cobra."

He ripped off my underwear. "I don't even have time to lube you up or take my jewelry off."

"I don't care. The venom is making me numb anyway."

He pushed his face through the snakes and kissed my lips, almost biting my tongue. At the same time, he pushed his huge, hard member inside me. Regardless of the venom, it made me cringe in pain, and was not pleasurable.

"Is that enough? Are they off me?"

"They still don't seem to be convinced you're my mate. I'm going to actually have to fuck you."

"Yes, do whatever you need to."

And he did as he threatened, starting to attack my hole with his dick. He was bucking back and forth, in and out of me, so quickly, he moved at a blur. I couldn't tell if that was his supernatural speed or the venom making time all distorted, but it seemed like only moments passed before I felt hot cream gush into me.

"You just came inside me! I'll get pregnant!"

"Seeing my snake seed spilt inside you was the only way they would believe that you were my mate again. And see? Now it's worked."

The snakes biting into me all let go and backed off. The snakes finally started to pull off me.

Soon, it was just Marutuk and I who were left naked on the dais.

He kissed me. "It's so good to be able to see that beautiful face again."

"Even better to see yours, considering I thought the last view I would ever have is of coiled snake scales and possibly snake teeth as they started to devour my eyes."

He bit into his hand and rubbed his blood over my bites, healing them instantly.

"Do you want to try and leave? Or do you want to linger here in my arms for a bit?"

"You'll forgive me if I can't feel romantic when there are dead bodies decaying just feet from us."

"You know, its weird, but I can't smell the bodies. Perhaps its because the snakes have their own smell that covers it up. The bodies must have been down here the last time too, but I didn't notice them at all."

"I didn't either."

"I'm going to carry you to bed in my room. I don't want you walking. Do you want me try to stay inside you while we go upstairs? I'd imagine that pulling my cobra out now could hurt more than putting it in."

"No, please just take it out now."

He yanked himself out, and it did hurt a lot as his cobra jewelry scratched against my hole. An incredible amount of goo spread from his softening unit to make a huge pool all over the dais.

He lifted me up pulled me against his body. I grabbed his chest so he was able to climb the ladder with his hands.

He carried me into the palace. "Butler Ajam! Butler Ajam!"

The vampire butler came running, her face looking panicked.

"There are bodies decaying in the snake pit."

"Oh my, Shah."

"You wouldn't have any idea who locked poor Jake in with them just now, almost killing him?"

"No, I have no idea at all, Shah. Of course not."

"Well tell the guards to start an investigation over both matters, as they must be linked. But let me pull out the bodies for the guards, I don't want any of them dying of snake bites.

"Yes, Shah."

He carried me into his bedroom and put me on his bed. Suddenly, the last thing I wanted to see was all the snake carvings all over his room, most notably his cobra-head bed, but it was much preferable to the snake pit. He set me down.

"You just sleep. I'm going to go find the palace doctor."

I got up off the bed and stumbled to my feet.

"What are you doing?! You should not be walking!"

"I need to do this. And I'm surprisingly feeling okay. Just really tired and weak."

I walked to the shower and turned it on.

"Are you such a clean freak that you can't get into bed without washing the snake smell off you?"

"That's part of it, but more importantly, I need to do this."

I stuck my fingers into myself and pulled out all the warm whiteness that was all over me there.

"You're risking injury to yourself just to clean yourself out?"

"I can't risk getting pregnant."

"You won't get pregnant after one time, I told you that. Stop doing this to yourself and come back to bed where you belong!"

"I'm almost done."

He groaned in displeasure as I soaped myself out and then finished soaping myself.

I went over and kissed him as I dried off. "You know this has nothing to do with you. You are my boyfriend, and every part of your body drives me crazy, your cum included. And I love the idea of keeping it inside me. But I just cannot risk me getting pregnant before I'm ready to become a parent."

"Alright, I understand."

He helped me back to bed. I fell asleep right away.

"What do you think, Dr. Farhat?" asked Marutuk.

I opened my eyes. Dr. Farhat looked very different from Marutuk, even though they had the same light-brown skin tone and were clearly of the same race, with the same eye color. Where Marutuk basically walked around naked all the time, Dr. Farhat was fully clothed in pressed, clean garments. Instead of a white doctor's coat, he wore a handsome white kaftan, which was tight and thin enough to show off his body underneath, probably totally unintentionally. The collar of the kaftan open up so wide and low in the front that the cleft of his large pecs were visible, the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows showing off his thick forearms, and the skirt part of the kaftan came down to his knees, showing his muscled calves. All of these bare parts showed a man muscled more like the traditional vampire body I was used to, like a muscular wide-receiver or rugby player, not as bulky as a bodybuilder, like Maratuk. And where Marutuk was covered in fur, Dr. Farhat's muscles were smooth. It did excite me that the kaftan was so clingy, it showed off his muscles underneath. The cuts and grooves of his upper arms were visible through the fabric, as well as his nipple-capped pecs and even his abs. And beneath the kaftan's belt sash, his muscled thighs could be seen as well as a very sizable package. On his head, unlike the huge, fancy turban Marutuk wore, the doctor wore just a very simple fez.

Their faces were equally dissimilar. Where Marutuk had a bushy beard, the doctor was clean shaven. Where Marutuk had thick, unruly hair that was cut short, the doctor had long, smooth, very controlled hair. Marutuk's facial structure was thick, sturdy, and intimidating; Dr. Farhat had more of a carved handsomeness to it. His nose was the largest part of his delicate face, but it was still very handsomely shaped with middle-eastern beauty. His lips looked like they were made for kissing, not fighting, and those eyes! Squinted and dark, long-eyelashed but thick eyebrowed, they grabbed me as soon as he looked at me. Their beauty came in part from vulnerability and pain. The sad feeling they put in me as we locked glances for the first time was almost alarming.

He was actively looking over my body, but only as a doctor might, not as a lover. "I see that you've closed all the wounds already, Shah."

"That's right."

"But I was bit many times by those things," I said.

"Oh, you're awake. Good to meet you, sir, I'm Dr. Farhat."

I shook his hand. "Please just Jake. Nice to meet you."

"The Shah and I were just discussing that you aren't showing any serious physical signs of suffering from a poisonous snake bite. The Shah is really the expert on snake bites, and we believe you were probably bitten by one of the species in there that has a very mild venom. As well as snakes without venom. Which was lucky, considering how many deadly species there were in there. I think you'll be fine by tomorrow. Just get plenty of rest tonight."

"Thank you, Dr. Farhat," I said.

"Yes, thanks Doctor. Please take care."

The doctor said goodbye and left.

Somebody brought me dinner, which I ate without problem, and then I was asleep again.

"Did you miss this?"

I opened my eyes and saw Marutuk drop my wallet on the bed. It was late evening.

"You found it! It was in the snakepit?"

"It was. I came across it when I pulled out the other bodies. It was lodged on one of the men's elbows."

"I'd rather not hear any of the gory details. Just thanks so much for my wallet!"

"The next time you decide to do any sort of exploring, please tell me and I'll come with you. Stick with me, and you won't die."

"I'll remember that, thanks. Getting undressed for bed?"

He was taking off his slippers and turban. "I am."

I laughed. "The upside about having almost no clothes is that you get undressed faster than anyone I've ever known."

"That's just one upside of many." He jumped into bed beside me. "You know, I haven't fed yet today. Are you up to that tonight?"

"Oh yeah, sorry, I totally forgot. No, I feel good enough for that. Go for it."

"Thanks. You know there's no way I'm going to be able to drink your blood, which makes me more horny than anything I've ever tasted besides my brother, without getting off at the same time. Do you feel up to us having sex again tonight?"

"I don't feel up to it, I'm sorry. Tomorrow I swear I'll be back to my old self. But if you need to jack off while you feed from me, please go right ahead. It'll help you sleep, I'm sure."

"You know what would absolutely drive me crazy? If you let me put just my head inside you, like last night. That would totally make me come."

"No, I don't want you cuming inside me again! I'll get pregnant."

"You are not going to get pregnant with just my head inside you. I would need to be all the way inside you and against your cervix for that to happen."

"I don't want to risk it."

He looked seriously sad.

"Listen, I'll let you stick just your head inside me again, but only if you put a condom on."

"I got some the first day I was awake."

He walked over to the bathroom, and came out with his huge, hard member covered by latex.

Soon enough, he was drinking down my blood, yelling and hollering as he did, while pushing his head into me.

"Uh, what was that?"

"What?"

"I felt my entire insides get flooded by hot stickiness."

"It can't be so. I have on a condom. Perhaps you were fantasizing that."

"It wasn't a delusion, I really feel it. Pull out of me."

He did as I asked, and I looked at the latex-covered, softening unit. I realized that there was a tear right at the tip.

"Look at that, a rip!"

"Wow," he said. "I guess my shots were so powerful they tore through the tip."

"Well then, condoms won't work for you."

I stood up, got off the bed, and started to stumble to the bathroom.

"Please tell me you aren't endangering your health so recklessly all just to needlessly wash yourself out in there. You are not going to get pregnant that easy!"

"I also need to brush my teeth."

I cleaned myself out in the shower, brushed my teeth, and then stumbled back to bed.

"Are you mad at me for the condom botch?"

"No, I know it wasn't intentional."

He kissed me romantically. "I'm so happy you've come into my life. It gives me purpose to a life that has been directionless for centuries. Do you know how good that makes me feel?"

"You are a good guy, Marutuk."

"Good enough that you'll let me sleep with my head inside you again?" I felt him poking me again.

"How can you be hard again so soon? Do you swear not to cum inside me this time?"

"I do."

"Then yes, you can."

Again there was pain when he stuck himself inside me, but with his stillness, I got used to it after a while and started to drift off to sleep.

"Oh, wait a second."

"Hmm?"

"Wasn't there something you were going to tell me?"

"Yes, I didn't tell you right off the bat because I didn't know you enough to trust you then."

"You have your dickhead inside me right now. I hope you can say you trust me enough to tell me this."

"Alright, I'll tell you. Though this topic is anything but sexy or romantic."

"I think I can handle it."

"Alright. So the thing most people don't know about me is that I have a twin sister."

"You do? That's great!"

"Well, I haven't seen her for many centuries, so it's not that exciting news."

"Is she a vampire too?" I was thinking of Maxim and Helina.

"Yes. She is a special, Shankar Blood vampire with my exact special skills. She is basically a female version of me."

"Your tone of voice isn't exactly loving."

"Remember when I told you I was in love with my little brother?"

"The first One?"

"Yes. And we really did change his body to make him able to bear children, as I told you. And he told me the two of us were going to father children together."

"So what happened?"

"Instead of choosing to have me be the father of his children, he chose my twin sister. He and her procreated."

"Wait a second. I don't understand how that is even possible considering as the One, his sperm wasn't working."

"Fanged females are born without an anus or a lower digestive system. In the place of them there are internal testicles that provide them with sperm. This sperm is released as clear liquid through the clitoris when the female comes, but only if she desires it. She can then gather it with her fingers and use to impregnate a woman's eggs. No, they cannot impregnate themselves, the body absolutely prevents this."

"So, your twin sister impregnated your little brother. Why would he choose her over you?"

"He must have been convinced that she was more powerful than I was. Anyway, they ended up having five children together, and each one was a new Blood."

"Did you and him ever end up having kids together?"

"No. He had five more kids, but all of them with humans that so he was able to pass on his One gene to the males."

"So, your sister is really the mother of all the vampires? Not you?"

"Well, I am for the Shankar Blood, since I'm the one who turned some middle eastern folks into vampires, creating that line. It's that Blood that will die off if I am killed. But the other five Bloodlines will only die when my sister dies."

"How come you don't just tell people this right away? Why did you have to trust me first?"

"Because I've always been worried that a group of non-Shankar Blood vamps will try to kill me in order to kill the entire Shankar Bloodline."

"Who would want to kill that many people?"

"We've been at war with other Bloods before. I wouldn't put it past them."

"Have you ever had children, then?"

"My little brother sort of soured me on the whole idea. That's why I'm so thrilled to have you. With you, I'll finally get to be the father that I always dreamed about being for all these millennia."

"If I decide to become a parent with you, that is."

"Yes, of course." He kissed me. "You would make the best mother throughout all history."

"I'd prefer you call me a father, not a mother, in spite of me having some female parts in me."

"As you wish. You were right, I feel so much better getting all of this off my chest. I'm going to sleep even better tonight."

"I'm touched you shared that with me, thanks."

I said my prayers quickly as we lay there and we fell asleep.

APRIL 18th

The next day I was late waking up, but otherwise felt no effects of the snake venom. After lunch, Marutuk left for the throne room to do Shah duties while I decided I was healthy enough for a run downstairs.

After my run and a shower downstairs, I made my way back up through the palace to Marutuk's room.

I felt an eerie chill down my spine when I started to hear church bells again. I realized that instead of a deep, heavy bass you'd expect to hear from bells, this sounded faint and tinny, like some far off bell towers somehow, and yet I could hear the sound was very close.

And then it sounded like sound was moving away from me. What was that?

I started to run down the hall towards the bells.

I found Butler Ajam, walking quickly away from me. The sound was coming from her, I realized. It must have been a phone with a unique ringtone.

She saw me, saw that I knew, and she started to run.

I almost didn't catch up to her, she was so fast. But I was just a bit faster, and finally reached over and grabbed her, keeping her from running.

"You shut that cover on me and locked me in there! I'm taking you to the Shah!"

I started to push her towards the nearby throne room.

She shocked me by pulling out a concealed Arabian-style dagger from her pants and using it to try and slash at me. I let her go, not having any way to disarm her, and she ran away from me.

I ran over towards the throne room. Two guards in the hallway were blocking the entrance.

"You are not allowed in here," said one of them. "You are not to disturb the Shah."

"I am not here to see the Shah. I need your help. The butler has gone crazy, and is trying to conspire against the Shah. She's armed and dangerous, and she's trying to make her escape from the palace. Please, hurry and apprehend her."

"You follow us," they said.

They watched me as I followed them down the hall. We found the butler, and she started to fight them with her dagger, and they had to draw their swords.

I used the commotion to slip away without the guards realizing, and I ran back to the now unguarded side door of the throne room and I went inside to get Marutuk.

I entered on the side door of the room, and there he was, sitting on his throne. I was about to run straight for him when something made me stop.

I realized there was a line of people waiting to see him that looked an awful lot like birthday tributes. I figured these were probably just people who were in line asking for his help. But I hid behind a snake pillar just to observe.

A human middle-aged man came up and bowed deeply before handing the Shah rolled up, fine carpets.

"That'll do until next year," Marutuk said to him. He left the room.

A young human woman came up and stripped naked. She bowed and swore herself to him. And then she got up, sat on his lap, used his dagger to cut her throat, and then pressed the wound to his lips.

"Get off me," he said, pushing her off his lap. "Next year, you'd better have more to offer me than just your body and blood, both of which are useless to me."

She agreed, and then left.

A handsome vampire man was next. He vowed obedience to the Shah as he bowed, and then pulled up a fine camel as his offering.

"This is what I think of your gift." Marutuk pulled his knife out and easily cut the head off the camel, shocking me and the vampire. I had to avert my eyes from the blood. "I hate camels. They are dirty, spitting animals. Camels are good enough for the likes of you, but not nearly good enough for a royal tribute."

I looked back at him.

"You are a vampire." He stuck his dagger against his own throat. "I might be so enraged by your paltry offering that I've decided to kill myself. Is that what you want? For me to die, so that you and everyone you love die with me?"

"No, Your Eminence. Please don't do it, I'm begging you. I will come back tomorrow with a proper tribute."

"You'd better."

The vampire left, and he lowered the dagger and sat back on his throne.

A vampire woman dropped off a fancy vase as an offering, which he was fine with. And then an older human woman came up with a bundle of cash.

"Here's all the money I've earned in the past year, my Shah."

"Come up here and hand it to me."

She climbed up to the throne and handed the bills to him. Instead of taking them, he pulled out his dagger again and quickly slashed her throat open, killing her and once again making me sick with horrible shock. I had to look away again to keep from fainting.

"You humans, let this be a lesson to you. You cannot fool me by giving me a paltry sum of money and claiming its all you earned when you are dressed in expensive clothing. This money is useless to me." He threw the bills into the blood on the ground. "What is useful is her body, which I'll feed to my hungry snakes. Unless you want to be snake food, come with a tribute for me that truly worth my eminence."

I turned around and I snuck towards the side door, trying to get out of there without being seen.

Just when I was about to congratulate myself on the other side of the door, those two guards appeared. They pushed me through the door into the throne room.

"Your Shah, sir, we have a spy here." He pushed me out into the open.

Marutuk looked at my face, saw that I knew everything, and he got even angrier. "I ordered you never to let him in here."

"He snuck past us, Shah."

Marutuk approached the guard, pulled out his sword, and beheaded him before he even knew when was happening. He turned towards the second guard. The funny thing was, the guard didn't even try to run, he just stood there and willingly let himself be beheaded as well. I felt so horrible, knowing I had caused their deaths.

"Let that be a lesson to all you other guards. My orders are not optional, and I do not suffer stupidity!"

And that's when I fainted.

When I woke up again, I was in Marutuk's room. He was carrying me in his arms, and set me on the bed.

"I'm sorry, I never wanted you to see that side of me," he told me. "You are too good to understand it."

"I understand completely," I said.

"You do?"

"Yes. Your kingdom needs to be held under tight control. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. The only way to protect yourself is if they truly respect you."

"Right. That's exactly right, maybe you are mature enough to understand me."

"Of course I do, and knowing you even better just makes me care for you more."

I got up to my feet and kissed him, as romantically as I could muster.

"Mmm, your kisses taste almost as good as your blood."

He pushed me by my shoulders down to my knees.

"I want to make good on your rain check from yesterday right now. Look how hard and ready my cobra is. The bloodshed has made it yearn for you."

"It's beautiful," I said.

He pushed the tip of it into my mouth, and started to push so much of himself into me I felt like I was choking.

"Wait, before we do this, there's one other matter," I said.

"Yes?"

"You butler has gone mad. She tried to kill me, and she's on the loose. I don't think we'd be safe until she's captured."

"I'd better go apprehend her, then. If this turns into an interrogation, this could take a while."

"That's fine, I'll be waiting."

"I'm locking the door for your own protection."

He left, and I heard the bedroom door locking.

I thought about my options. I could wait for him to come back and then pretend to be his loyal boyfriend until I was able to kill the man myself somehow. Clearly, he deserved to die. But he had said he couldn't be killed by viruses, so I wasn't sure how to kill him. I could message all my vampire friends for advice. Even if there was a chance it would end up in my death, if there was a good shot he would die too, it would be worth it to save these people.

But he was the father of the Shankar Blood, which meant if I killed him, I'd kill a sixth of the vampires in the world. It wasn't worth that price, clearly. And I couldn't think of any other benefit to pretending to be his boyfriend, since doing so would absolutely drive me crazy. It was all I could do to kiss him like that and to give him oral without biting him.

So, I would escape instead. Escape the palace, find Big Horn and Helina, and get the heck out of this Blood. Sajan's advice to me had been right after all. Being in this hell was certainly not worth one measly vote to kill me at the Vampire Council.

Did I need to endanger Big Horn and Helina in order to try to break me out of the palace, or could I escape myself?

I went over to the window. It opened up from the inside, and we were just one story off the back courtyard of the grounds. Bingo.

I turned around and started for the closet when I jumped, seeing a snake right at my ankles. But then I noticed it was just a small, harmless breed, a sort of garter snake. I pushed it off me.

I went into his closet and used some of the clothes there that seemed to be made very securely. I shredded the fabric into sturdy rope, tying it all together with very careful knots. I tied it to the windowsill, which was sturdy enough to hold my weight.

I packed all my things in my bag. And I packed anything that could be useful. There were snacks in the room that I stole, first aid supplies from the bathroom, and I filled every container with a top to it with water.

I put my pack on and started to descend on the rope, rappelling down the stone wall beneath me. Luckily, I was not afraid of heights.

I felt proud of myself when I hit the ground safely. I was on the back side of the grounds, facing the desert and not the city, so I wouldn't be able to easily get to the city from here.

I looked out into the desert. I could see the sporadic guard patrolling the perimeter of the grounds. I could sneak into the desert on the outside, but I'd be too visible during the daylight hours.

I was right next to the snake pit, and that would make a good hiding spot if I could close the hatch from the inside, but there was no way in hell I was going to do that again.

And then I remembered the Sandfalls.

I walked as silently as I could towards the Sandfalls. I was leaving footsteps in the sand, so I used my bag to brush away each mark behind me before going on. Because of that, it took forever to get to the Sandfalls, but I finally made it.

I pulled myself and my bag into the central basin, going under one edge of the falls. From that point, the sand falling all around me protected me from sight, and I'd just have to hang there until night.

That's when I thought about my mother and brother. I realized that with me running off, Marutuk would just go and hunt them down.

But then something occurred to me. I had never told him about them. It was because he never asked about them, I realized. He only really ever talked about himself. That was proof that he never really cared about me, he just wanted to use me as a breeding object. Perhaps he believed he cared for me, but what he cared for was just an invention, as he never knew the real me.

How different he was from Maxim, who had desired to know every little thing about me and me about him. When he told me he loved me, I believed him, even if he did things that I could not forgive.

Soon enough, the hot sun was making me sweat, and I was worried I would run out of water with so much heat on me. I decided to get under the sand's top surface in the basin to avoid the direct sunlight as much as I could. I began burrowing myself under the sand.

My hand touched something solid under the sand, which didn't make any sense to me. Two days ago this sand had been totally smooth. Had rocks gotten in there somehow?

I reached farther to try and grab the rock, when I felt that it wasn't as hard as I was expecting. Something eerily familiar about the feel of it ran through me.

I grabbed it and I pulled it towards me. Only then did I see it had fingers on it, and two fingertips popped out of the sand into view.

I stifled a scream as I realized there was another dead body down there. That psychopath hadn't only dumped the bodies in the snakepit, he decided to throw some in the sand pit for good measure. I was so disturbed, I wanted so bad to leave this place, but that was not an option.

I pulled at the hand. At least it was connected to an arm this time, and not severed on its own like the last body.

That's when the dead hand moved and started to grab onto my face. My first thought was that it was some sort of terrible zombie attacking me. But my sensibility returned and I reasoned that the body must actually still be alive. I had to dig it out of the sane before it suffocated under there.

I pushed the sand free of the hand and the arm. I reached a chest, and I frantically tried to pull up the head once I got my hands around it.

I pushed away the sand from the face, and then I really did scream out loud.

"Surprise!" said the snarling mouth of Marutuk.

He grabbed me and kept me from running.

"I was hoping you would have enough sense to find my cobra first in the sand, but you had to grab my boring old hand."

He pushed himself out of the sand, his massive rod coming up like a flagpole out of the sand.

"How did you know I would come here?"

"Because I know what a romantic you are, always returning to places where we've been together. You see between my legs I have the largest cobra ever? Well, it gives me more of a control over snakes than I ever previously let on. Basically, any nearby snake, like any of them in the palace, I'm in communication with."

"You were behind that cobra being put in my food, weren't you?"

"Yes, but it was also me who kept that cobra from actually biting you. And it was me who made the snakes threaten you in the bathroom, because I wanted an excuse to keep you afraid to be away from me."

"And in the snake pit?"

"The first time, you really did use the snakes to harness your spell, but I could have kept you safe down there without fucking you. And the second time, as soon as my staff told me you were in the snake pit discovering the bodies, I had my butler lock you in there. No, she did not betray me, she was just following orders. And I made the snakes go after you because I wanted you to learn your lesson not to go where you aren't wanted. I was never going to kill you."

"I could have fallen off that ladder!"

"I knew you were never going to fall. But I did use the snakes to bite you so you would agree to let me top you again."

"You just wanted to get me pregnant sooner, didn't you?"

"Exactly. Well, aside from the fact that topping you, along with feeding on you, is the greatest pleasure I've known."

"And the condom?"

"I actually ripped it right before I stuck it in you. My fingers moved so fast, you didn't notice."

"I should have known. Snakes don't feed on dead human bodies like that. You've been making them eat those bodies up, haven't you?"

"I have. And that garter snake you kicked aside in the bedroom just now? It let me know of your escape. Now, enough chatter. You can see that my cobra is just as hard for you as ever. It hasn't gone down ever since you started giving me a licking that you never followed through on. And we are back in our most romantic location, so let's make the most of it."

"No way. I'm not going to just follow orders. You can't threaten me by putting your dagger to your throat. You're not going to kill yourself, I just know it. You are not the suicidal type."

"You know me so well. I'm touched."

"And you can't threaten me with my own life like you do the other humans because I'm the last One. Yes, you know it's true. With the gene activating in one as young as me, and no one younger than me in my family, it means I'm going to be the last One. I represent your dreams of creating a new Blood. So, you won't kill me."

"You know what, Jake? I hate to say this, but I realize I prefer you best when you are drugged up on snake-venom."

His huge fangs came out, and there was nothing sexy about them. Thy just looked absolutely terrifying.

"See? Daddy King Cobra has got the biggest fangs too."

He lunged forward and bit onto my throat, took a drink of me, and then pulled off again, leering at me with bloody fangs.

"And you'll be pleased to know that the Daddy cobra is venomous as well. Can you feel it take ahold?"

I realized I couldn't move. I was totally paralyzed.

"Now, don't worry. I'm not going to kill you. My venom just paralyzes temporarily. And this is a trait I've passed along to all of my Shankar Blood fanged vampires, but to most of them, it just lasts a few minutes. Luckily for me, I've been honing this skill for a few thousand years, so I've gotten it about as good as possible. So, this bite should last all day."

I tried to move my body, but nothing happened. It was hugely frustrating experience. I was trying to make my muscles respond, but they just would not budge. I could feel myself breathing, my heart beating, and my eyes blinking. But other than that, no movement at all. I already could not imagine having to suffer through this awfulness for an entire day.

"Now that you are incapable of talking back to me or fighting me off, I enjoy your company so much better. No more having to try and impress you, I can just be myself and take what I want from you."

He put his hand to my face. The weird thing was there wasn't any numbing sensation to his touch.

"Because your romantic heart returned to the scene of our first night together as a couple, I'm going to give you all the romance here that you can handle. But last time, I was so disappointed that you wouldn't let me fuck you. This time, I'm going to make amends for that oversight. I'm so touched that you've had a change of heart."

He flipped me over in the sand so I was face down.

"Look at that gorgeous snake hole."

As he started to finger me, I tried so hard to regain control over my body, but with absolutely no effect.

"Since we both love sand so much, I thought we could use it as lube."

He pushed huge amounts of sand into me with his fingers, with me wanting to scream in agony, but nothing coming out.

He pushed his dick into me so hard and fast, I could actually feel the sand-covered unit rip through my flesh and cause me to bleed. As he started to rape me harder and harder, all I could do was try futiley to break out of his spell and try not to focus on the agonizing pain each thrust brought me. Part of me wished that I would choke and die on the sand my face was pushed in just to save myself from the pain.

When he shot inside me, somehow his copious seed only made the sand-cuts sting even more.

"And guess what you won't be running off and doing for the first time after we have sex? That's right, washing every last of my cobra sperm out of you. You cannot even begin how good it feels to be able to fill you with seed. Never again will you keep my snake juice out of you."

He lifted me up into his arms. At one point, it might have been sweet and romantic, but at that point, it was the last thing I wanted. He carried me in the direction of the place I had never wanted to go back to: the palace.

On our way there, he asked the crazy butler to have Dr. Farhat come and visit. When he brought us into his room, he carried me into the bathroom and started the shower.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to wash any of my precious cobra juice out of you. I'm just washing off all the sand from both of us."

I wanted to tell him that was the last thing I would ever worry about, but of course, nothing came.

He rinsed the sand off, as he said. And then he set me naked on the bed.

Dr. Farhat knocked and let us know it was him politely. Marutuk let him in.

The handsome doctor seemed to try to stifle a moment of surprise as he saw me, frozen on the bed. I was trying so hard to call out for help, just in case he didn't know I was unable to move. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not do it. I hated Marutuk for doing this to me.

"Dr. Farhat, thanks for coming. I'm trying to get Jake pregnant as soon as possible, while at the same time, constantly keep him under the effects of my venom."

"Uh, I see."

"Can you think of any reason why my venom would interfere with the pregnancy? And please keep in mind, I have other doctors I can contact to verify your advice. If I find you've been lying to me, I'll kill you and replace you with a more honest doctor."

"I'm not going to lie to you. The answer is no. It shouldn't keep Jake from getting pregnant in any way."

I was so disappointed to hear that.

"I'll need you to perform whatever pregnancy test you can do."

"A blood test will work. Assuming his reproductive system is like a male vampire's, it will be able to show a positive test 24 hours after fertilization."

"Excellent. There's already a chance he'll be positive. If not, I want you to run that twice a day."

"Yes, my Shah."

"How long will it take him to get pregnant? I'm going to be topping him several times a day."

"It shouldn't take long at all. Unlike non-fanged women, he's constantly ovulating, so all the time is fine. And you have extremely strong sperm."

The last thing I wanted for myself was to be impregnated by this monster. I was so frustrated, I wanted to cry. But nothing came out, which just made me more frustrated.

"How long do you plan on keeping him paralyzed, My Liege?" asked the doctor.

"After he is pregnant, is there any fear he can induce a miscarriage?"

"The newest studies are showing that fanged vampire fetuses really don't miscarry. They are too resilient."

"That's what we'll be conceiving. So, once he's pregnant, he's either going to kill himself or he's going to give birth to my child. And I don't think he's the suicidal type. But he is a bit of an escape artist. I'm going to talk to Butler Ajam and get her to start working on turning the bedroom into a prison for when I'm not here. Only the room modifications have been built will I feel like I am free to stop paralyzing him."

"But that could take weeks or months." For the first time, the doctor let his carefully professional tone of voice go a bit strained.

"Whatever it takes. And if he starts to be destructive or do anything I don't approve of, I'll start paralyzing him again until the baby is born."

"And then will you let him go?"

"I want him to do his part in the mothering of the baby, since I won't be able to be a father all the time. If he refuses, I'm going to need you to be the nanny."

"Me?"

"Why do you sound so shocked? Yes, you. In fact, this is a guarantee, you will take on this new role. You've done it before when we've had children in the palace."

"We haven't had children for ages."

"Are you not capable of child-rearing and teaching? Because if you think I am going to have the time for those matters with any of my kids, you are mistaken."

"Isn't there someone else more suited to that role, Shah? Besides the only member of the palace with an MD?"

"How busy is your patent load these days?"

He grumbled. "Very low, Your Excellency."

"I'm not going to trust some brute guard of mine to teach my children. I need someone smart. Everyone else who is qualified is just too busy, therefore you will serve as nanny, and that is my final say."

"Yes, Your Excellency"

"So, both you and he will be taking care of the children. I absolutely refuse to have them here in our lovenest. Nothing even our own children will get in between our lovemaking. Of course, if Jake should refuse to cooperate, you will need to do this full time, as I'll just keep him paralyzed indefinitely. We're not stopping at just one child, are we, love? There will be at least a few kids, but I haven't decided if I want that them to come back to back or if I want to spread it out over decades."

"So, potentially he could be paralyzed for many years."

"Yes."

This was starting to sound like it was potentially worse than death. But I couldn't even shut my eyes to show displeasure.

"You know, he can't eat or drink when he's paralyzed. Are you going to let the effects wear off to fulfil those needs?"

"No way. I don't trust him even to eat on his own."

"Then I'm going to need to put an IV in. Twice a day."

"Okay, better go get the equipment now then."

"And he's going to need a nasogastric feeding tube put in once a day to give him his solids."

"He's already eaten enough today, he doesn't need any food until tomorrow. It's not like he's going to be burning a lot of calories anymore just lying around all the time."

"I can't bring the feeding equipment up here. We'll need to take him down to my clinic."

"But this is so time consuming. I'm a busy man."

"There are a number of other services he'll need. Since he won't be moving anywhere, you'll need to check for pressure ulcers. He'll need regular sunlight. He'll need physical therapy every day. He'll need to be bathed. He'll need his teeth brushed. He'll need a special cream to help keep his skin from getting irritated in the bed. He'll need a catheter put in so he can urinate."

"My god, these humans are sickeningly fragile, aren't they?"

"They are. But he is going to be the mother of your baby, so this is all very critical, Esteemed Shah."

"Let's make a deal. I'll have him all night. You pick him up late morning from this room and take him to a bed in your clinic. That way, I don't have to see the hospital equipment in my room."

"What time should I return him?"

"Late evening. Be sure not to be late because that's when I'll need to give him his daily paralysis bite."

"I won't be late, Shah."

"Oh, and I'm not going to let him go all day without getting bit by my cobra. I want you to carry him to my throne room during midday so I can fill him with my seed."

"Even after he is pregnant?"

"Even then."

"Yes, Esteemed Shah."

Marutuk dismissed him, and he was just gone momentarily before returning with a couple awful needles. Good thing I was lying down when he stuck in the first awful one and started to draw my blood. That was the only thing keeping me from passing out. Not that passing out wouldn't have been preferable to my suddenly awful reality. He also put an IV line in.

An hour later, he returned. "I'm sorry, Shah, but the test is negative."

"Damn. Well, I suppose that doesn't surprise me considering he was always deviously washing my cobra seed out of his body every time I tried to put it in there before. Now that he's no longer interfering with my wishes, it should go fast."

Dr. Farhat removed my IV.

"Alright Esteemed Shah, I will return tomorrow morning, then. Goodbye."

"You aren't going to wish the two of us a wonderful night fucking?"

He almost couldn't say anything, and then he forced it out. "Have a wonderful time fucking."

"Thanks, you are dismissed."

Dr. Farhat left me alone with that cruel creature.

Soon enough, I found his whole dick, jewelry and all, being forced into my open lips and down my slack jaw. There was nothing I could do to stop him from using me like that, so I had to put up with the taste of his dick in my mouth. A flavor that once turned me on now wanted to make me cringe.

He pulled out of my mouth, pushed me over on the bed, and started to push in his dick into my hole again, cutting me all anew with his rough jewelry, the pain torrential.

He screwed me endlessly, only biting me at the very end, knowing that bite would smother my pain. He drank my blood as he exploded inside me.

Even after has was finished with me, he didn't bother pulling out. So, I had the pain of his dick chains and cobra jewelry hurting my insides all night long, while I was too frozen to ever disturb his peaceful sleep.

At least he had enough sense to shut my eyes before he fell asleep. After an hour or so, I was able to forget the pain and fall asleep.

But he woke me up in the middle of the night sometime and started to screw me again. Once again, I had the excruciating pain of his jewelry scratching my insides. That time, he didn't ever remove himself from me, he just screwed me until he was done with me, which was way too long. He came inside me again and then fell back asleep.

APRIL 19th

I woke up in the morning the same way I had gone to bed, with Marutuk the demon screwing me into tears if my eyes were still capable of those.

"Good morning, love." He opened my eyes. "Given how romantic you are, I thought I'd wake you up in your favorite way possible, with a little romance. It's in the name of romance that my cobra is going to absolutely destroy your hole."

While that might have been an empty promise coming from some guys who just ended up having intense sex, Marutuk actually made good on his promise because of the jewelry on his unit, which tore into my insides once again painfully. I wanted to brace myself and bite down, but I again was reminded that I was still paralyzed. All I could do was wait it through and pray for it to end.

The was a knock on the door. "Come in," said Marutuk.

I was expecting the doctor, but was surprised when Vizier Bazzi came through the door.

"Good morning Esteemed Shah and Mr. Groves." That was when he actually saw us on the bed. "Oh, it looks like I've intruded too early. My apologies, I'll give you your privacy and come back later."

"It's okay, Bazzi. We were just finishing here. The truth is, this happy couple is trying hard to get pregnant, aren't we, love? And even though my cobra has already let loose its snake seed, I'm waiting until my snake has gone completely limp before I remove myself so that every single sperm is inside Jake."

"Well, congratulations on the impending pregnancy, then."

"You're probably wondering why I summoned you here this morning. I have a legal question for you."

"I am here to please you, Esteemed Shah."

"Jake and I have been discussing marriage," Marutuk said.

I wanted so badly to roll my eyes right then.

"How sweet! I don't believe you have ever been married before. Did you remember that in our side of the Shankar Blood, marriage is basically forever, unless your partner does or is convicted of a serious crime? Neither of you would be allowed to have sex with anyone else while you are married."

"I remember all of that. I've got the tastiest blood in the world right here, as well as the most fuckable ass. Why would I ever want anything else? And that way our children would be legitimate. But that's not my question. My question is, since it looks like Jake here will be paralyzed for a long, long time, can I legally wed him without him speaking his vows?"

Vizier Bazzi looked anxious. "Shah, I'm not going to answer that unless your sword is nowhere in sight." He played with his left hand defensively, and that's when I noticed he was missing a finger.

"I'm not going to cut off your finger this time. I'm too busy oozing snake seed inside Jake for that, you need not be worried. Please, answer me truthfully."

"I'm sorry Shah, but the law forbids you to marry someone unless they say their own vows." He flinched, as if expecting to be hit, but Marutuk hadn't moved from behind me.

"Even though he is physically unable to say his vows? What if a person their tongue chopped out were to marry?"

"The legal entity is required to write and sign their vows."

"Hmm. So, there's no way we are getting married until he stops being paralyzed."

"That's right, Esteemed One."

"Well, love, you heard the man. It's not like I didn't try. If need be, we'll just have to have children out of wedlock. It won't mean we won't love them any less. Bazzi, you're executed."

"Executed?! Please no, I beg your forgiveness!"

"Sorry, misspoke. You know how I am with English. I meant to say, you are excused now, Bazzi."

He looked extremely relieved. "Yes, Esteemed Shah."

After a couple minutes, Marutuk said, "I think all of my cobra juice is out of me."

He pulled his soft unit out of me, wiping all the liquid off of it with his fingers, and pushing the last little drop at the tip into me. And then he wiped his wet fingers into me as well, until every little bit was inside me.

There was a knock at the door. "Good morning, Esteemed Shah, its Dr. Farhat."

"Come in, Doctor."

I felt somehow a bit more positive when I saw Dr. Farhat's handsome face. He came in and looked me in the eye with those dark, sad, beautiful eyes. When Marutuk did that, it was to show dominance. When Dr. Farhat did it, there was concern in his eyes.

"He's ready for you." Marutuk gave me a slap on the butt and then jumped off the bed. He walked into the bathroom and started to shower.

"Yes, Shah, I'll carry him out of here and take him down to the clinic."

"Just make sure you deliver him to my throne room at lunchtime."

"Of course, Esteemed Shah."

"Then go ahead and take him."

He looked me over. "He's naked at the moment. Where are his clothes? I can dress him before I take him."

"You are not allowed to put him in his clothes. They are hideous outsider wear."

"Should I give him something of mine?"

"No piece of clothing is good enough for him. He is the going to be my match. He is to be the mother of all snakes, the mother of all vampires. No normal clothes will ever do. I am going to have jewelry made for him to match my own. But instead of decorating his penis, the focus will be on his most beautiful body part on the other side of him. But it will take some time for that the jewelry to come in, so until then, he is to stay naked."

"Alright, Esteemed Shah. Should I just wrap him in a sheet or a towel and carry him down?"

"No, no. You are to keep him naked at all times. That's an order."

"Um, alright, Esteemed Shah."

The doctor came and looked down at me. He didn't say anything, but his face seemed to say he was deeply sorry to have to do that to me.

He lifted me gently into his arms, cradling me against his chest. Even through his white kaftan, he smelled sweet. He left Marutuk to his shower and carried me out of the room.

When we were in the hall, he whispered, "The Shah never has had a grasp on other's dignity. I'm going to try to lessen your embarrassment as we walk through the busy parts of the palace by shutting your eyes."

He reached over and closed my eyelids, which was sweet of him.

I could still hear people around us as Dr. Farhat hurried me through the palace. He set me down on a hospital bed, and then opened my eyes.

He smiled at me and pulled his long hair out of his face. "Welcome to my clinic, Jake. The palace clinic is on the south wing of the building, the most remote part of the palace. This little wing was built as an addendum to the palace much later, used before I came here as guest rooms for important dignitaries before the Shah stopped inviting them to stay in his palace, becoming less trust worthy with age. He converted this wing into the hospital clinic, and brought me on board. Right now, you are the only patient I have, and I'm the only staff member since my last nurse died on my a few years ago. I'm not sure why, but I always get nurses assigned to me that are well over sixty and don't last long as far as us vampires are concerned. Well, except for the one time close to when I first started that the Shah assigned a highly attractive, young nurse to me. She claimed to be only interested in medicine, yet her behavior in the clinic to the patients clearly showed otherwise. I soon discovered that the Shah was feeding from her, as it was before blood packets came into being. He would drink from these people, and because he was worried about getting a woman pregnant, he would never have intercourse with them. Still, he would always brag about how he could use the women's mouths just as easily. Anyway, I realized that the Shah had appointed this woman as nurse because he was using her to spy on me. Now that my last nurse died, there's a certain amount of freedom I feel, knowing there's no one anywhere close enough to hear me talk openly to you."

I wanted to warn him about the snakes in the palace, but of course I could not say anything.

"Oh, I'm sorry, how rude of me. I've been calling you by your first name this entire time but have failed to give you my own. It's Tahir. Please just call me that."

He shook my hand, of course him providing all of the movement.

"It's so nice to meet you formally."

He let go of my hand.

"Oh, I'll be right back. I have to make a quick stop at my apartment."

His apartment must have been close, because he was back in a flash. He showed me a really nice, silk robe, Arabian in style. Dark blue in color.

"Don't utter a word to the Shah about this, obviously. I feel that it is inhumane not to clothe you, at least while you are under my care. And the hospital gowns they give me here are cheap and too rough against the skin. So I got my favorite robe. It will be here for you when you are in the clinic."

He gently moved me around to get the robe on me.

"It looks much better on you than it ever did on me." His smile turned serious. "Wait a second, that comment was unprofessional, wasn't it? I shouldn't be speaking of your attractiveness. I want you to know I am here only with your best interests in mind. Your real best interests. I am just as much as slave to the Shah as you, but if I can get away with treating you well in ways he'll never suspect, I will. I am not doing it because I find you attractive. I am doing it because it's the right thing to do, and I'm an ethical being. You do not have to worry that I'm going to use your current vulnerability to my advantage like he is. I'm not going to rape you, I would never rape anyone, no matter how attracted I was to them. And I'm going to shake your hand on that. Isn't that what you Americans do?"

He shook my hand again with his strong, tan hand.

"I get the feeling you're the type of person who wants to get the worst part of today's visit with me out of the way first. That would be this feeding tube business. It is most unpleasant, I'm afraid, but necessary for your health."

He pulled out some supplies, and put on latex gloves.

"I'm going to be using a nasogastric intubation tube on you. That means it needs to go through your nose, down your esophagus, and into your stomach. I know, like I said, this isn't a pleasant task at all. I'm going to start administering some anesthetic spray around your nostrils. There, all done."

He grabbed the feeding tube.

"This is xylocaine gel I'm lubricating the end of the tube with. And now, I'm inserting the tube down your right anterior nare."

He was right, the feeling of the tube being stuck up my nose was beyond unpleasant. Even though I couldn't react in any way, he seemed to understand how much it hurt. He grabbed my hand with his left hand and squeezed it in support while he continued to push the tube through.

"Just concentrate on the touch of my hand. Not on the tube. Oh wait, I guess it would be helpful if I took my glove off, sorry."

He removed his glove from just that hand and started to hold mine again, squeezing me hard. I focused on the sweet firmness of his hand just as he asked, and kept my mind off the tube as he finished pushing it into me.

He got the package of liquid food and hooked the tube into it. "While the feeding is going on, I'm going to get the other unpleasantries aside too."

He pulled out a needle and drew blood for his pregnancy test. And then he hooked me into an IV line to give me liquids. I hated all of it but lying down kept me from fainting.

"The food's all in now, do you feel stronger?"

I did feel much stronger and more energized than before. My stomach had stopped growling.

"Good," he said as if I had answered. "I'm going to remove the tube. I promise it will hurt far less going out than it did going in."

Still, he grabbed onto my hand again, which made me feel much better as he carefully pulled on the tube with his other hand.

"Since you've been on that IV for an hour now, you'll probably feel like your bladder is very full, but you are unable to actually urinate. If you were actually unconscious, I'd need to install a catheter in your penis, but bite-induced paralysis is different. There's actually sort of an on button created that allows me to force you to urinate. It's at the base of your penis. This is the first time that I've had to touch a private area of yours, so I apologize for that unpleasant intrusion."

He used a plastic container and put it around my penis. And then he used his gloved hand to poke at me deep into my pubic area. He was right, I suddenly was peeing, completely out of my control. I emptied my bladder, and then the function seemed to reset, ready to hold in new urine.

"Wow, that's a lot of beautiful urine there. You really had to go. I'll do this again in the afternoon, don't worry."

He emptied out the urine, removed his gloves, and washed his hands.

"I'm going to pull out the IV now because I want to get you outside for some sunshine before it gets too hot. A person of your complexion needs plenty of direct sunlight for vitamin D absorption, and I like to get sun as well."

This time, when he lifted me and put me against his chest to carry me out of the room, his mood was totally different. Instead of being ashamed, he carried me with pride. Of course, there was no one in that clinic to see us.

He carried me out into a beautiful, Islamic style courtyard.

"This is the center of the clinic," he said.

The place would have taken my breath away if I was capable. The old buildings were two stories high in this area, and the upper area had balconies looking down at us. There wasn't a single plant in the courtyard. The walls were filled with gorgeous Arabic calligraphy.

What was most impressive though were the numerous fountains around the yard. They made beautiful sounds as they poured down pillars and walls and ended up making Arabian patterns of water all over the ground, all meeting in the center. What was amazing about this water is that it wasn't at all blue. Because it was flowing over brown stone, it took on the color of the stone.

"The fountains are gorgeous here, aren't they? It's kind of an egotistical move when the Shah had them built, however. You see, this area was meant to be for these dignitaries. Water is more precious to us desert folk than any other treasure, especially back when he built this place. He wanted such elaborate fountains here, which are always flowing, to prove just how rich and powerful he was, to be able to waste freely so much water that might have supported so many desert people. But I try not to think about all that and just enjoy the beauty."

He had a blanket that he lay out in the courtyard, and he set me down on it. He lay beside me and put his arm behind my head, making me look upward.

"See there? That's my apartment. It's been a long time since I've had a patient here, and it feels nice. I'm sort of a prisoner here, at duty day and night, the only royal doctor. But with so few patients, I end up with a lot of time to kill. And a lot of that is spent lying here in this courtyard, reading old novels. I'm so lucky that the palace is much larger than it needs to be. Everyone has so much space, me included. It affords me the privacy of having a wing to myself, so no one can report to the Shah that I put a silk robe on you. And now I have you to share this with."

He set me down on the blanket.

"Most of my novels are in Arabic, but I have a few in English. Let me grab one and I can read to you."

He literally ran off into his apartment again, and reappeared with a book. Treasure Island.

"Given that I've always been surrounded by sand, I feel especially compelled by novels that take place on the sea. One day, if the Shah ever dismissed me, I'm going to buy a sail boat and learn how to sail. That is my absolute dream."

He sat beside me and started to read. Novels weren't my favorite things to read by any stretch, but I still found myself having such a good time with him. I totally forgot about my reality and just melted into his beautiful face.

That is, until reality came crashing back in. "I hate to tell you this, but it's lunchtime. I promised I would have you in the throne room in a few minutes."

He set the book down.

"Oh, almost forgot, it would not end up well for me if I delivered you in my robe. I'm afraid I'll have to take it from you."

He pulled it off me.

"I'm going to close your eyes again just until we get to the room. I want you to know that I absolutely wish I didn't have to willingly hand you into that monster's arms. It's something no doctor should have to do, and it brings me to tears at night all the time, but it's out of my control."

He shut my eyes, lifted me against his chest, and walked me through the halls. When he opened my eyes again, I knew he was near the throne room. The guards let us in.

Marutuk was having a conversation with Vizier Bazzi and a few others I didn't know, mostly women. He saw me and waved. "Aw, there's my future Mother of vampires right there. Doctor, bring him in. and hand him to me."

Tahir came and delivered me to Marutuk's waiting arms, who was seated on his throne. I felt him hesitate just a moment before he handed me over, almost as if his body could not physically keep moving for a second.

"I've got a huge load of cobra seed to fill your hole. I've been dreaming about you all morning, and I can't wait another second to have you."

"Your Excellence, would you like us to leave and come back later?" asked the Vizier.

"No, stay. We can keep working while I give Jake just what he needs."

"Uh, alright," said the Vizier and the other folks, who were clearly all very disturbed by this yet too terrified to say anything.

"I'll leave you to it, Your Greatness," said Tahir. "I'll come back to pick him up in a while, as we discussed before."

"Doctor, I'd like you to stay most of all."

"You would?"

"Yes. I won't be more than an hour with him. I'd love for you to watch."

"You want me to watch you top Mr. Groves?"

"Yes. No doubt having his naked body so close to you all day has done nothing but make your phallus harden. I know you've smelled his wonderful blood. Well, you're probably just itching to see me fuck his ass into oblivion."

"That is a most tempting offer, but I'll have to pass."

"Oh, I get it. You drive a hard bargain. Well, okay. To pay up for all your loyalty, I'm going to let you fuck him too."

"You are?"

"Not his butt, because I obviously cannot have anyone's seed in there but my own. But you can fuck his mouth while I take care of the real business down south. Blow your load in him. Of course, the offer only stands for right now. You can't start getting blowjobs from him while you're looking after him."

"No, I'll have to pass."

"Wow, you really drive a hard bargain. Okay, I'll let you take taste a single drop of his magic blood to get your juices flowing. It will change your life, just one drop."

"That sounds like a very generous offer of you, Your Excellence, but really I cannot stay. You see, I've got his blood sample to test for pregnancy, and if I don't test it within this short window, the sample will go bad. I'm very sorry to disappoint you."

"No, I do need you to perform those tests, so you are making the right call. I'll just have to fuck him all alone. Want to pick him up in an hour?"

"Yes, my Shah."

And he left the room.

I expected Marutuk to get up off his lazy butt in order to give me my midday rape. Instead, he stayed on his throne the whole time. While he talked business, he had me straddle his lap. He held my body in place with his muscular arms as he screwed me mercilessly, thrusting up and down in his seat. His jewelry once again totally tore apart my insides. And he sure was stingy with the biting, seemingly to cause me more pain.

While I was in agony, he was talking about taxes.

"Tell me how severe the income tax is here?"

"Just moderate," said a woman that seemed like she was trying not to look directly at what he was doing. "But that's because people give so much on their birthdays to the Shah that it hasn't been needed."

"Look around this room. How much riches do you see?"

"Quite a bit," she said.

"Quite a bit? Quite a bit? There are places where I can see the floor still. There's been many years where the treasure came up four feet high from the ground. The crown needs more, desperately. Raise the taxes as much as you can. I'd better see money flying in or I will take out my anger on you and your family."

"Yes, Your Greatness."

It took him a whole agonizing hour to finish. When he finally came, he still showed no sign of distraction, as he continued to bully his poor ministers throughout. Once again, he waited a good ten minutes after that for him to go soft and to get every last drop inside me. Only then did he pull out of me.

Right then, Tahir returned. "I'm sorry, Your Excellence, but the test again came back negative. I'll perform it again this afternoon."

Marutuk was too busy to be bothered. He continued to argue while he handed me off to Tahir. The Doctor took me in his arm out of the room and once again closed my eyes.

He laid me out on my bed and opened my eyes as he put his robe on me again, all smiles.

"So glad to have my favorite patient back," he said to me. "I'm afraid there's something this afternoon we have to do that's all too unpleasant, but necessary. And that's getting you clean. Because something tells me you'd far better prefer your doctor do that for you than let the Shah take care of it. Now, we unfortunately don't have much in the way of bathing facilities in the clinic. The least invasive option we have is me giving you a sponge bath, but that's not very cleansing. It's sort of like putting a Band-Aid on a sword wound. I would normally consider it, but I've been told you are a bit of an anally clean person, so my guess is this just wouldn't be sufficient for you. Am I right?"

He was right. But of course I had no way to answer.

"Just as I thought," he said anyway, apparently letting the question get answered in his head. "The clinic has plenty of showers. But they don't have removable heads, and so the only way I could manage that is to let myself get soaked. Our laundry guy would never forgive me, he's not the least bit friendly. I could manage if I stripped naked in order to do this, of course. How would you feel about that?"

I tried to nod my assent, but of course nothing came out.

"No, of course. That's just too unprofessional, I totally understand. That leaves us with one option. I have a comfortable bathtub, but it's only in my apartment. I'm hoping you'll forgive the unprofessionalism of showing you my living quarters, but it will have to serve. But taking you into my apartment will mean you are privy to the contraband I store in there. I am trusting you not to tell the Shah any of this when you finally can speak again. Something about you makes me trust you with my life, Jake."

He lifted me up and carried me in his arms. Once again, I could tell just having me in his robe changed his mood completely from ashamed to content. He took me upstairs to his apartment door entrance.

As soon as it was open, I felt like we were under attack from some strange creatures hiding within. If I could have jumped, I would have, assuming we were being attacked by snakes.

But I realized these things were not snakes, but mammals. Cats? Werebeasts? Instead of attacking, they seemed happy to see us.

"Ah yes, I need to introduce you to my family," he said. "I hope you aren't afraid of mongooses. If so, I'd imagine my apartment would be quite the nightmare for you. Don't worry, these are a special, domesticated mongoose breed that was created by the Shankar Blood. They are totally friendly and tame."

The mongooses were larger than I expected, looking like large housecats. I supposed they would be considered to be cute by someone who found small mammals as such. There appeared to be three of them. They were jumping around us, very curious. He sat down, still holding me.

"Lady and gentlemen, I'd like to meet Mr. Jake Groves. Our newest, most honored patient here. Give him all the love you show me."

The mongooses sniffed me at first, and then started to lick me in approval.

"I keep them inside at night, but they usually are out at this time. I actually locked them in here this morning because I didn't want them to scare you, running around the clinic. But really, there's nothing to be scared of. They are quite loving and very well-trained."

Right then, one of them jumped on Tahir's shoulder and started to lick into his ear, knocking off his fez at the same time. His long, black hair came out all over the place.

"Well, all except him. That one is an untrainable terror called Blackbeard. I know what you're asking, and the answer is, yes. They all have nautical themed names."

It wasn't what I was thinking at all, but that was okay.

"Alright Blackbeard, you and the rest of you pirates need to leave the apartment and go hunting."

He opened the door and shuffled them all outside.

"You see, the breed of mongoose we've created is a superb snake hunter. They live entirely off snake here. I suppose getting a litter of mongooses was a proverbial middle finger to the Shah's animal of choice. I knew that he used the snakes to spy, and that was my number one reason for getting the mongooses. They sniff out every snake in this whole clinic and eat them, as they are immune to snake venom. If a snake wanders in here that's too big for them to kill, they'll surround it and bark at me, waking me up if need be, and I can dispose of it for them. Before I brought them in, snakes were terrorizing and biting my patients. That was how I convinced the palace to let me bring them in, but honestly I did it just as much because I didn't want the Shah to be able to spy on me here, and I wanted pets of my own."

I thought it was brilliant, and it eliminated my earlier worry that he wasn't aware that Marutuk could spy through the snakes.

"Jake, meet my apartment. It's modest, but it's fine."

Even though the furniture was sparse and his possessions modest, the actual structure of the room was still beautiful, filled with horseshoe arches and Islamic columns. Of course, the first thing I looked for was how clean it was. It certainly wasn't up to my standards, but it was still pretty darned clean considering he had three mongooses as pets. Mostly, there were books all over the place. It was really more a library than an apartment.

"Half of these books are medical in nature and therefor Shah approved. If for some reason he was to come in here, he would have no cause for concern, as long as he didn't actually read the all the books. I've used the covers of medical books to disguise my banned pleasure books about sailing. He does not allow anyone in Raajya West to have books that aren't Arabian in nature and written about our culture and time period. Books about pirates most definitely do not qualify. He also doesn't allow modern devices of any kind, unless they are absolutely necessary, like my medical equipment. But computers have not been given to me, even for medical reasons. The only photographs I've ever seen are in medical books, as they are otherwise punishable by death."

He moved me into his bedroom, and I was totally amazed. The room wasn't exactly small, but every space was filled up with objects, making it much smaller than it should have been.

"If the Shah ever came in here, I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up cutting off my finger as a result. I built those ship models in my spare time. The rest of the items on display are actual pieces of old ships that I've come across and collected over the years. And the painting of the sea? That's the only visual I have ever seen of what it's like. Too bad the painting itself is rough and anything but realistic. I have never seen a photograph of the ocean."

He took me into his elegant but simple bathroom. He turned on his bathtub water and filled it halfway.

"I'm turning down the lights," he said, turning the knob. "No, not because I'm trying to set a romantic mood. Because I figure you will be more comfortable with your nudity if the lights are low. Okay, the water is ready for you, are you ready for me to take your robe off now, Jake?"

Again, he seemed to hear an imagined response.

"Good."

He took off the robe and set it aside. And then he lowered me back first into the tub. He set a towel down under my head to keep it from hitting the floor. The warm water felt so good, I loved the thought of getting clean. He brushed my teeth first, washed my hair second, and then he started to soap up the front of my body.

"You probably think I'm insane, having nothing but a family of mongooses. I guess being so isolated has made me a little eccentric. I regret becoming a doctor, because even though I've always loved this career, it's what drew the Shah's attention to me. You should have seen me before he interfered, back when he was frozen on the throne for decades. My family wasn't of noble lineage, but we were happy. And I was so glad to give back with my profession. I was totally alive. But then the Shah woke up, killed his current doctor for lying to him, and then found me. He made me give up my life and loved ones completely. And so, in my position, you take what little gifts are given to you very seriously. Like those mongooses."

He smiled at me.

"I'm going to warn you, I need wash your penis now. I'll try to be quick."

He washed off that part of me, his face looking embarrassed, but me not feeling bothered at all.

"Alright, I'm going to turn you over so I can clean your back now."

He gently tilted me up so that the left side of my face was on the towel and my back was sort of tilted up. He started to wash that side of me, my back, my legs.

"I'm going to need to wash off your buttocks now. Just to give you fair warning."

His manly hands started to wash my butt off with such gentleness, I worried he wasn't being thorough enough. He got to my hole last, just grazing his wet thumb against it lightly.

"Oh my," he said, his face becoming alarmed and focused. "What is this? Why is your anus so red and irritated?"

He gently pushed against it, moving in for a closer look.

Suddenly, his face looked almost terrified as he jumped back. "There's blood, it's bleeding!"

He inhaled through his nose, and I realized for the first time, the smell of my blood on the outside of me hit his senses. His fangs came out of his gentle lips, and his hand when up to block his mouth from view.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me," he said. "Even during the most bloody surgical procedure, I never have that happen. There's something very unusual about your blood. Don't be afraid, I am still in full control of my actions."

He could cover up his mouth, but he couldn't cover up his new erection. I could see his very huge dick as hard as iron through the outline of his kaftan, a bit of precum staining soaking through around the head. But he showed no sign that I could see that, as he would have been covering more than his mouth.

"Sometimes a human male bottom's anus will bleed like that because their partner is so well- endowed, and since us vampires are notorious for that feature, I've seen this symptom before. I recommend using more lubrication. I have just the remedy."

He rinsed me off, dried me off, put the robe back on me, and then carried me back to my bed in his clinic. He pulled up the robe to be around my waist and he went off in search of something. "Since you're American, I wonder if you're familiar with the Logan Blood. In the late-nineteenth century, I met one of the Logan princes, Parker Logan, as he was traveling through Europe and a bit into this area."

The name was like a dagger to the heart.

"He was such a good man, we became instant friends, and kept in touch by mail for many years. And he was a world class chemist, so my friendship with him was far more fruitful for me than it was for him, as he was always sending me his inventions which were useful to my practice. I hear he is dead now, murdered by his own big brother. Terribly tragic, what an awful loss to the world."

He came back in the room with a vial of clear liquid.

"This is one of the fruits of our friendship, something I asked him to create for me. It's a strong liquid anesthetic for anuses like yours, but I can put it on you without worry, because it doesn't affect other body parts that the Shah might try to touch you with there. Plus, it serves as a lubricant, as well as being totally odorless and tasteless."

I wondered why Parker had never mentioned that invention to me before, or not used it any of the times he topped me.

"Parker did warn me, perhaps a little too adamantly, that the medicine in the salve was highly chemically addictive to non-fanged folks such as you, and so advised me never to use it on anyone more than a couple times."

And that explained it, he didn't want me getting chemically addicted to any of his creations.

"Even so, I think this merits the risk."

Tahir put a latex glove on and dipped the finger into his salve, which had the look and consistency of precum. As his face got close to the blood on my hole, his fangs popped out this time, and his boner reappeared under his kaftan. He warned me before he touched my hole, and then he gently massaged his gloved index finger into me. Instantly, the liquid brought cool relief to the pain there.

"Wait a second," he said with worry.

He pulled open my anus by pulling apart the flesh around it with his fingers and looked inside me for the first time.

He took a deep breath of horror. "This bleeding doesn't stop at your anus. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to stick a finger inside you to investigate."

He did as he said, using his finger to open up my hole to his eyes.

"You are scraped and bleeding all over your insides. This is not simply because the Shah is well- endowed. He's doing something awful to you, isn't he?"

I again tried to nod, but nothing came.

"Yes, he is. Is he not taking off his snake penis-ring and chains when he tops you? That would account for this. Yes, that's it. So, he's not just raping you, he is knowingly inflicting this damage on you each time. I cannot even begin to understand him." His sad eyes got even sadder. "You do not deserve this. No one does. Well, I'm going to administer this medication your entire rectum."

He poured a lot more liquid all over his gloved index finger and stuck it inside me. As soon as the liquid touched me there, I started to feel sweet relief.

"There, all done," he said, pulling his finger out of me, taking off and disposing his glove.

That was the sexiest moment of the afternoon. After that, his fangs went down and his dick softened, though I could still see his soft, large unit against the kaftan. He put me on an IV again and used that weird technique to make me urinate, all the while keeping me entertained with funny stories about his mongooses.

"I'm afraid it's almost time for me to take you back. Which means I'll need to draw your blood again."

He started to take his sample again, something I absolutely hated. I noticed he was very careful to get all the blood inside the vial and never spill a single drop, making his teeth stay retracted.

When it was finally time for us to leave, he again told me over and over how much he hated to carry me back to the Shah. He removed the robe, closed my eyes, and carried me to Marutuk's bedroom a bit after the sun went down.

He handed me to Marutuk, and told him he was about to start working on the latest blood sample. After Marutuk kicked Tahir out of the room, he announced he was hungry and went to get dinner for himself, leaving me alone on the bed. As boring as it was to sit on the bed alone for an hour, it far was preferable to having Marutuk there with me. He came back just before Tahir came knocking again.

"Come in, Doctor."

Tahir opened the door. "Your Excellency, I'm afraid this evening's test still came back negative."

I rejoiced, obviously in silence.

"Well then, we'll just have to fuck even more times tonight. Doctor, you are dismissed."

"Yes, Your Shah." He left with those sad eyes looking even sadder.

Marutuk smiled at me. "You heard the man. We have one long night of screwing to get started. And since I haven't really been very romantic with you today, just giving you all business fuckings because I've been so busy, I'm going to take you back to the most romantic spot on the grounds. The Sandfalls."

He carried me naked out of the palace and into the warm night, walking us to the Sandfalls. And as soon as we were surrounded by sand, he started to rape me.

That night was absolutely atrocious. Even though the first time he screwed me, I felt like I had one up on him because Parker's salve inside me cut the pain of his jewelry scraping my insides, by the second time, he got sand all inside me, scratching away all effects of numbing effects that had previously been there. The sand ended up scraping me much worse than ever, and he screwed me over and over again, absolutely overflowing my sides with his seed.

Almost as bad as the raping itself was hearing him talk, boasting of his huge cobra and calling me his love and his mother of vampires. It drove me crazy not to be able to shoot all the snide rebuttals I had back at him.