“Per­fectly fine.” Ko­rkla’s smile was huge at the mo­men­tous news.

  Govi added, “She has Flen­cik for an Imdiko.”

  “You can’t do bet­ter,” Egilka said. “I re­al­ize surgery is his spe­cialty, but I’d like him to at­tend Jes­sica’s preg­nancy and the birth of our child.”

  The door slid open be­fore them. They crowded into a small, dimly lit room, and the door whis­pered shut be­hind them. Ko­rkla said to Michaela, “The house con­veyance is voice ac­ti­vated. To get to our rooms, sim­ply say ‘Clan Ko­rkla’s liv­ing quar­ters’.”

  A low hum sounded, and Jes­sica felt an al­most im­per­cep­ti­ble shift be­neath her feet.

  Ko­rkla con­tin­ued. “Michaela, we’ll put you in the sys­tem as soon as we reach our rooms. You’ll be able to use your own name then.”

  “This is like an el­e­va­tor,” Jes­sica said to her friend in Eng­lish.

  Cla­jak rubbed her back. “You can use the house con­veyance to ac­cess any room you have clear­ance for. As princess, you have un­lim­ited free­dom ex­cept for the Im­pe­rial suite. No doubt Zarl will per­mit you ac­cess to his rooms. He’s quite taken with you.”

  Be­vau gave her a proud smile. “All the em­per­ors are. They’re im­pressed with how quickly you’ve picked up our lan­guage.”

  The hum­ming stopped, and the door opened to a small, fea­ture­less room, not much dif­fer­ent from the con­veyance it­self. A closed door waited on the other side.

  Ko­rkla ad­dressed Cla­jak. “If you need us for noth­ing else, my prince?”

  Cla­jak gave him a very Earther wink. It amused Jes­sica to see him do it. “En­joy your home­com­ing. We will meet in two days.”

  The men of Ko­rkla’s clan bowed to Cla­jak’s. Michaela hugged Jes­sica. “See you later.”

  Jes­sica grinned. “Have fun. Be­have your­self!”

  Govi took the dancer’s hand and led her out of the con­veyance. Michaela couldn’t re­sist a part­ing shot. “Make up my mind — which one?” The door closed be­tween them.

  “Cla­jak’s suite,” the Dramok chuck­led. The con­veyance hummed again.

  “Can Michaela have ac­cess to our suite?” Jes­sica asked.

  Egilka an­swered. “All her clan does. She’ll be given the same clear­ance they pos­sess.”

  The hum ended, and the door opened to an­other empty room ex­actly like the one Michaela’s clan had en­tered. Cla­jak gave Jes­sica a gen­tle push to­ward it. “Step for­ward, my sweet.”

  She did so, look­ing around at the un­re­lieved bland­ness of the space. Be­hind her Cla­jak com­manded, “Scan and iden­tify Matara Jes­sica, Princess of Kalquor.”

  A male voice, click­ing with elec­tronic pre­ci­sion, an­swered. “Scan com­plete. Matara Jes­sica, Princess of Kalquor logged into sys­tem. Warn­ing. There are two Mataras cur­rently with princess level ac­cess to heir suite. Princess Jes­sica has ac­cess. Princess des­ig­nate Nar­pok has ac­cess.”

  “Noted.” Cla­jak sighed.

  Be­vau snorted. “Nar­pok won’t eas­ily give up her clear­ance. We may have to trick her into the re­moval scan.”

  “We’ll get to that.” Cla­jak stepped close to the suite door and it opened. He ex­e­cuted a courtly bow for Jes­sica. “En­ter, your High­ness.”

  Her heart thump­ing with ex­cite­ment, Jes­sica stepped into her new home.

  Chap­ter 14

  “Lights, medium,” Cla­jak called, and the dark room bright­ened.

  Jes­sica was amazed once again. No hint be­trayed she stood in­side a rocky cliff. With its golden beige walls and mar­ble floor, the room could have been in an Earth man­sion. Am­ber il­lu­mi­na­tion lit the room from the ceil­ing over­head.

  Pol­ished wood ta­bles and over­sized plush seat­ing were ar­ranged in small con­ver­sa­tion ar­eas. A thick rug lay in the mid­dle of the room, the Kalquo­rian seascape wo­ven into its de­sign. An ab­stract piece of sculp­ture, made up of del­i­cate twists of pol­ished white stone, took up one cor­ner. A ta­pes­try hung from the long­est wall in the room, its sub­ject an­other wo­ven pink and green seascape.

  “This is the greet­ing room,” Cla­jak said. “We en­ter­tain small par­ties in here. There is a larger hall for pub­lic func­tions on an­other level.”

  “It’s lovely,” Jes­sica mur­mured. She’d only toured such places on Earth. To now live in such lux­u­ri­ous ac­com­mo­da­tions over­whelmed her. She felt like a peas­ant in her sim­ple white lace blouse and match­ing skirt. She cursed her­self for not buy­ing more el­e­gant cloth­ing while on Pla­sius.

  Be­vau nudged her with a rogu­ish grin. “We’ll have to build a stage in here so you can dance for our guests.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t think so.”

  Egilka’s voice was wist­ful. “Hope­fully there will be many pri­vate dances.”

  Jes­sica rolled her eyes in pre­tend ex­as­per­a­tion, but she couldn’t help but gig­gle.

  They took her on a tour, show­ing her the for­mal din­ing area with its fif­teen foot long pol­ished dark wood ta­ble (“Again for per­sonal en­ter­tain­ing,” Cla­jak told her), and the more in­ti­mate but no less richly ap­pointed pri­vate eat­ing area for the clan.

  “How big is this place?” Jes­sica asked.

  Cla­jak shrugged. “It’s the same size as my fa­thers’ apart­ments.”

  Egilka and Be­vau ex­changed grins. The Imdiko told Jes­sica, “As the di­rect heir to the throne, Cla­jak has never known the av­er­age-sized home, my love. To him, this is nor­mal. How­ever, we do have a great deal of space.”

  “More than we use,” Be­vau added. “That re­minds me, you might want to meet with the clean­ing and main­te­nance staff once you fig­ure out what your de­mands on them will be.”

  Jes­sica blinked at him. Clean­ing and main­te­nance staff? Then she re­mem­bered that as the fu­ture em­press, her sta­tus had been el­e­vated quite a bit. The thought made her reel.

  There was one room Jes­sica thought she would en­joy, given how big ev­ery­thing else was. How­ever, it turned out to be huge only in its abil­ity to dis­ap­point. The tiny kitchen, with only a quick-heat­ing sur­face and cold cham­ber, was a shock.

  “The main kitchen is sev­eral lev­els down,” Egilka said. “Re­lay your re­quests us­ing this menu list.” He tapped a con­sole set in the wall and a vid screen ap­peared in mid-air. A list of Kalquo­rian writ­ing scrolled across the screen. “Eng­lish,” Egilka said, and Jes­sica’s fa­mil­iar lan­guage re­placed the Kalquo­rian char­ac­ters, de­tail­ing the pho­netic names of dishes with a de­scrip­tion of what they con­tained.

  “Since we’ve brought so many Earth women to our planet, you’ll find a few fa­mil­iar things on the menu. It’s hard to get real Earth in­gre­di­ents here, but our chefs have made an ef­fort. They’ve repli­cated sev­eral fa­vorites, in­clud­ing from your par­tic­u­lar re­gion of Earth. You’ll find things like pikza, ham­mer burgs and spa—” Be­vau stum­bled over the un­fa­mil­iar words, “spa-tegg-lee?”

  “Do you mean pizza, ham­burg­ers, and spaghetti?” Jes­sica fought not to laugh.

  “I guess.”

  “It’s very con­ve­nient,” she said, her hu­mor evap­o­rat­ing. She looked around the space with dis­ap­point­ment.

  Cla­jak hugged her. “You are one of those who en­joys cook­ing for your­self, aren’t you?”

  Jes­sica nod­ded. She’d never had a staff of house­hold ser­vants be­fore. It was hard to imag­ine not do­ing her own chores or cook­ing. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a princess.

  She told the men, “I’ve been think­ing it would be fun to learn to make some Kalquo­rian dishes and even cook for you three once in awhile.”

  “Then we’ll have a real kitchen put in for you.” Cla­jak guided her out of the room, the other two fol­low­ing.

  “Won’t that be a big bother?”

  “Of course not, if it makes you happy.”

  The tour con­tin­ued, with many more rooms than Jes­sica had seen in any home. There was an im­mense room for loung­ing around, one wall com­pletely open to the out­side and look­ing out over the pink beach and ocean. Jes­sica in­haled deeply of the sea-salt air. Once again she thought of her Flor­ida home and won­dered how her par­ents and sis­ter were do­ing. The bass roar of the sea and hum of the wind out­side only added to her mo­men­tary twinge of home­sick­ness.

  The li­brary was a happy sur­prise, its com­puter banks filled with the ma­jor writ­ings of ev­ery known planet and trans­lated into all lan­guages. The mu­seum-sized art gallery made Jes­sica gasp. “You’ve got a copy of Bernini’s ‘Hades and Perse­phone’,” she ex­claimed, look­ing at the vi­o­lently pas­sion­ate sculp­ture.

  “That’s not a copy,” Cla­jak said.

  She stared at him. “I thought all Earth art­work deemed sin­ful was de­stroyed.”

  “Many of the mas­ters’ pieces were smug­gled off your planet and placed in the care of the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil of Plan­ets. Sev­eral worlds hold the mas­ter­pieces to pre­vent their de­struc­tion, in­clud­ing Kalquor. The Royal House has nearly two dozen Michelan­ge­los, Da Vin­cis, and Rem­brandts, among oth­ers.”

  Jes­sica was moved. “Lind­sey would love to see this.”

  The tour con­tin­ued. Sump­tu­ous guest ac­com­mo­da­tions were spa­cious, each with their own sit­ting rooms and lava­to­ries. Each clan mem­ber had his own of­fice with banks of vids, com­puter in­ter­faces, and other equip­ment Jes­sica couldn’t guess at.

  “This is my room,” Be­vau an­nounced, the door to yet an­other cham­ber open­ing. Jes­sica stepped in, mar­veling at the ar­ray of weaponry dis­played on the walls. Ev­ery­thing from crude stone knives to the lat­est tech­nol­ogy of crowd-con­trol guns had its place. It was a per­sonal ar­mory fit to make any bat­tal­ion com­man­der jeal­ous.

  She wan­dered around, star­tled when a thin slice of wall slid out in front of her. Sus­pended within it were sev­eral form­suits and other items of cloth­ing. Be­vau growled in frus­tra­tion.

  “That closet was sup­posed to be fixed while we were away. The damned thing pops out any time some­one gets near it.”

  “You have no bed in here,” Jes­sica said. She looked at the seat­ing area with Kalquo­rian-sized chairs and a ta­ble, a long cush­ioned bench and a vid-screen, but in­deed it seemed as though Be­vau had nowhere to sleep.

  “This is my per­sonal room, not the sleep­ing room,” he ex­plained, slam­ming his open palm against the edge of the closet. It slid back into the wall with a com­plain­ing whine.

  “Oh.”

  Cla­jak ush­ered her out into the cor­ri­dor. “There are sev­eral rooms you can choose from for your own per­sonal use. Take as many as you wish.”

  “Sev­eral rooms?” Jes­sica asked. “For me?”

  Egilka showed her his room, stacks of charts and mad sci­en­tist-look­ing equip­ment clut­ter­ing the many work sur­faces. “This whole level be­longs to us. I think we only use about half of it.”

  A de­spon­dent ex­pres­sion cov­ered the Imdiko’s face as he looked about the room. He picked up a thin leaf of parch­ment, notes scrib­bled slop­pily on its sur­face. “I sup­pose there’s no point in keep­ing these things any­more,” he mut­tered, let­ting it go to drift lazily to the floor.

  “Is all this part of your re­search?” Jes­sica asked.

  “It was.” Egilka turned on his heel and walked out.

  They fol­lowed him silently to Cla­jak’s room. In con­trast to Egilka’s clut­ter, Cla­jak kept his per­sonal space ob­ses­sively neat. Small arche­o­log­i­cal ar­ti­facts from ev­ery known cul­ture lined the walls on lighted shelves. Jes­sica whis­tled in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the vast col­lec­tion and the mu­seum pre­ci­sion in which it was dis­played. “Such or­der from a man who leaves his dirty form­suits scat­tered all over the floor,” she teased.

  A sleek black ta­ble with two match­ing chairs sat in one cor­ner, and an over­sized curved Plasian-style lounger was placed on the op­po­site side of the room.

  Cla­jak frowned at the shelves and ad­justed a Gui­din­ion tribal mask made of bone. He moved it a bare frac­tion of an inch. “Feel free to re­dec­o­rate our liv­ing suite how­ever you choose. Our per­sonal rooms are the only ones we pre­fer you leave un­touched. These are our sanc­tu­ar­ies, par­tic­u­larly when we’re pissed off at each other.”

  Jes­sica didn’t think she’d have the courage to tackle any­thing but her own space. She was still over­whelmed by the over­all op­u­lence of the suite. “I can’t fill your room with pink ruf­fles, Cla­jak?” she pouted as he ad­justed a carved wooden piece that looked sus­pi­ciously like a Plasian phal­lus.

  He snick­ered and gave up on his ar­rang­ing. Lead­ing them out of his room, he said, “That would be bet­ter suited to Be­vau.”

  Be­vau took a half­hearted swing at his clan­mate, nearly con­nect­ing with Cla­jak’s smirk­ing face. They stopped at yet an­other door that opened sound­lessly.

  “This is the sleep­ing room,” Egilka an­nounced. His grin looked pos­i­tively evil.

  An open­ing on the far wall led out to a bal­cony over­look­ing the sea vista. Golden sun­light filled the room, and Jes­sica gasped. “Oh my.”

  Thick red­dish-brown furs cov­ered the floor. She stepped on them, and her slip­pered feet sank down an inch. An im­mense bed sat squarely in the mid­dle of the room, large enough to eas­ily ac­com­mo­date two Kalquo­rian clans. Its sur­face was cloud bil­lowy, the gold vel­vet linens on it en­treat­ing her to climb on and roll around. The walls and ceil­ing were lined with mir­rors and mid­night blue draperies. Jes­sica could see her­self and the men be­hind her from ev­ery pos­si­ble an­gle.

  “Do you ac­tu­ally get any sleep in here?” she won­dered. The room was an in­vi­ta­tion to in­dulge in ev­ery sex­ual plea­sure imag­in­able.

  “It helps to be ex­hausted,” Be­vau said, his chuckle rum­bling through his chest.

  “I think we should in­tro­duce you to this room prop­erly,” Cla­jak said, push­ing her to­wards the bed. “Mu­sic. Mis­trieko’s ‘Ode to the Sweet Arms of Sim­ber­tay’.”

  A melody drifted in the air, weav­ing it­self in the low roar of the surf out­side. Jes­sica saw dozens of Jes­si­cas move to­wards dozens of beds with an in­nu­mer­able num­ber of Cla­jaks, Egilkas, and Be­vaus fol­low­ing them. Her re­flec­tions all had the same round-eyed ex­pres­sion as she ap­pre­ci­ated how small and weak she ap­peared next to her gar­gan­tuan clan.

  Egilka said, “Per­haps the fra­grance of Plasian flow­ers Jes­sica likes so well? It won’t pos­sess the aphro­disi­a­cal prop­er­ties of the real thing, but the as­so­ci­a­tion will have an ef­fect just the same.”

  The aroma Jes­sica re­mem­bered from her stay on Pla­sius mixed with the sea-salt air. The mix­ture of the two was oddly fa­mil­iar. It re­minded her of the min­gled scents of Kalquo­rian and Earther arousal, but with sweeter notes.

  Her fin­gers trailed over the soft bed­ding. The room was a sen­sual feast un­matched by any­thing she’d seen, smelled, heard, or felt on Pla­sius.

  Cla­jak’s hands reached around her to cup her breasts. Jes­sica fell against him, her head rest­ing against his chest. Her re­peated im­age greeted her eyes. The men sur­rounded her, and again she was shaken to see how small she was next to them. She shiv­ered.

  Cla­jak slowly un­but­toned her blouse. In the mir­ror, his hands were like bear paws. How had she never seen how big the Kalquo­ri­ans were? She’d never felt so help­less. She’d never been so turned on.

  Be­vau sat on the edge of the bed and lifted one of Jes­sica’s feet to slide a bal­let-style slip­per off. His wrists were thicker than her an­kles. He took her other shoe off the same way.

  Egilka knelt on the other side of her to strip her of her skirt. He tugged it down, let­ting it whis­per to the floor.

  Cla­jak fin­ished un­but­ton­ing the blouse. He opened it to re­veal her white-lace bra. Jes­sica was dressed all in white, like a vir­gin sac­ri­fice. In con­trast to the men’s black form­suits and dark skin she was the vi­sion of un­spoiled pu­rity.

  While Cla­jak un­hooked her bra, Be­vau pulled her panties off, again lift­ing her feet one at a time to free her from the fab­ric. Cla­jak slipped the bra straps over her arms, leav­ing her naked.

  Their dark hands roamed her body. Jes­sica’s gaze drifted from one re­flec­tion to an­other, see­ing how they de­voured her with touch. They too watched the se­duc­tion in the mir­rors, their wet lips parted.

  Cla­jak whis­pered, “When we are in our suite and no guests are around, I wish you to re­main nude. You are too beau­ti­ful to be cov­ered.” His hands rhyth­mi­cally squeezed her breasts.

  Egilka groaned, his hands rub­bing Jes­sica’s but­tocks. “I’ll get noth­ing done when I’m home.”

  “That’s the idea,” Be­vau said, his fin­ger­tips trac­ing through the honey damp­en­ing the in­sides of her thighs.

  Jes­sica said noth­ing. She was too caught up in her sur­round­ings and the sen­sa­tions to speak.

  They laid her on the bed and un­dressed. She stared up at her re­flec­tion on the ceil­ing, try­ing to see her­self as her mates did.

  Her slight body was taut with lithe mus­cle from danc­ing. Her breasts were round and firm, the rosy nip­ples hard from arousal. Her hair was a chest­nut cloud, soft waves cradling her head. Be­tween her legs, match­ing pu­bic hair curled in a tri­an­gle, the low­est point darker from mois­ture.

  The men, glo­ri­ously naked, crawled up onto the bed to sur­round her. Their size com­pared to hers shocked Jes­sica anew. Their thighs were big­ger around than her waist. She’d had sex with them more times than she could count, yet she felt a stab of fear at the thought of be­ing taken by these be­he­moths.