Kaspar Voss had never felt so devastatingly powerful in his entire life.
It wasn't the superficial, brittle power won with a sword or borrowed through hollow noble titles. It was the raw, primal power of a man who, in this exact moment, held the survival and the carnal ruin of one of the Empire's highest women entirely in his grasp.
The mercenary's rigid arousal was still trapped outside of her, wedged hard between her soft thighs, but he was far from merciful. Kaspar growled deep in his throat, driving his hips downward with brutal weight, grinding the blazing-hot head of his cock directly against her slick, swollen center. Every savage slide crushed another shard of her aristocratic pride, rubbing relentlessly over her most hypersensitive peak.
The obscene squelching of wet friction echoed in a frantic rhythm through the stifling tent, mingling with the Imperial Countess's broken, breathless moans.
Kaspar leaned over her, his nose dragging along the scorching skin of her neck. He drank in the scent of snow and cedar, now saturated with the heavy, intoxicating musk of her lust. His rough hands never rested. He seized her left breast in a crushing grip, pinching the stiffened peak viciously, twisting it with cruel precision. He loved watching her flawless porcelain skin bloom with angry red welts under his violence.
"Uhm … haa …"
Helene flung her head back helplessly against the furs. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her crimson lips parted just a fraction as trembling gasps escaped her. Her face—twisted in exquisite, agonizing pleasure—was the perfect portrait of an all-out war: the brutal clash between the tormenting shame of her noble mind and the starving lust devouring her body.
Kaspar licked his cracked lips. He ached to hurl himself onto her like a feral beast, to bite those soft lips until they bled, to defile her mouth exactly the way he wanted to ram himself deep inside her core right now. But he clamped his jaw shut. He wouldn't ruin this feast with one stupid, fatal mistake.
He slid lower. Both of his scarred hands dove greedily beneath her, clamping onto the soft curves of her arse and wrenching her hips upward with crude force. He angled himself to sink his rigid length deeper into her juice-drenched cleft without crossing the absolute line.
Deliberately, torturously slow, he let himself glide back and forth across her slick, gaping entrance. Sometimes he held his breath, thrusting his hips forward aggressively as if he were about to pierce the wet barrier—only to yank back at the last possible microsecond, a hair's breadth from fatal penetration.
It was a filthy, infinitely cruel torment of body and mind.
Helene shuddered beneath him. Her fingers clawed desperately into the fur rug, her toes curling tight. Her slender waist arched upward, silently begging for exactly what he was withholding with every scorching rub.
"Uhm …!"
A broken, dripping moan tore from her lips. It sounded like a shattered plea for instant release, the final, crumbling resistance of her humanity.
Kaspar laughed darkly, continuing to grind his hips against her without an ounce of mercy. He felt it with brutal, maddening clarity—the way the wet, frantic heat of her core twitched and clamped around him, like starving roots trying to drag him down into ecstasy.
The devastating wave of her climax was surging uncontrollably through Helene's body, and Kaspar was sinking deeper into the intoxicating high of his absolute power over her.
Neither of them noticed the catastrophic magical shift happening in the frenzy.
Right on the sweat-slick skin of her lower belly—exactly where Kaspar's scar-riddled abdomen ground savagely against her—the magical serpent mark began to move.
The indigo-blue serpent writhed beneath her pale skin, coil by heavy coil, like an archaic deity waking from a blood-slumber. An eerie, sickly violet light blazed from the scales buried deep in her flesh, pulsing in perfect, terrifying time with Helene's racing heart.
Kaspar froze for a split second.
And in that single blink—
The physical world around the mercenary shattered.
It didn't vanish entirely. The raw, carnal sensations remained. He still felt the blazing, wet heat of Helene's body beneath his hips. He still felt the slick friction of her juices. He still heard her sobbing breaths right against his ear.
But simultaneously… his conscious mind was ripped out of his skull.
It felt as though a demonic hand had reached into his chest and torn half his soul straight out of reality.
The space plunged into bottomless, suffocating black. Thick, violet fog poured in like poison gas from the void, swallowing the lantern's light, devouring the canvas walls, and finally erasing the image of Helene's moaning, naked beauty beneath him.
Kaspar saw himself—his soul standing entirely alone in a freezing void.
And then, he heard the slithering.
Sss … sss …
The bone-dry rasp of thousands of hard scales dragging over ice-cold stone made the hairs on his arms stand straight up.
From the violet fog directly in front of him, a nightmarish silhouette rose slowly.
A serpent.
Its massive body was endlessly long. The pitch-black scales shimmered with a sickly violet gleam, towering before him like organic pillars holding up the vault of hell. The colossal beast glided silently closer, and in a fraction of a second, coiled tightly around Kaspar's ethereal body.
Ice-cold. Slimy. Heavy as forged iron chains, instantly crushing the oxygen from his lungs.
He couldn't twitch a single muscle. His body was petrified by the creature's horrifying aura. Only his eyes could dart around in blind panic.
The upper half of the demonic entity rose from the mist.
It didn't have the flat, soulless head of a reptile. It possessed the breathtakingly beautiful face of a human woman.
Her skin was pale as the light of a dead moon, flawless in its cruel beauty. Long, raven-black hair floated weightlessly in the void. Half her face was hidden behind a sheer veil, leaving only blood-red lips and glowing, emerald-green eyes visible—exactly the same arrogant, calculating eyes as Helene's.
A forked tongue, thick with deadly venom, hissed out from between her red lips. It slithered slowly forward, dragging a wet, freezing trail directly across Kaspar's throat.
"You are afraid."
The uncanny voice, layered in a thousand overlapping, echoing tones, drove into his brain like a rusty spike.
Kaspar ground his teeth, fighting in vain to snap the crushing coils.
You fucking monster… what the hell are you? Kaspar forced the thought out.
The grotesque deity laughed softly—a chilling, melodic sound that flash-froze the blood in his veins.
"You fear her."
The cold, forked tongue slid higher, licking tenderly over the shell of his ear.
"You fear that this lofty, arrogant lady will freeze your heart to dust if you dare plunge deep inside her."
The violet fog thickened, twisting into a hyper-realistic illusion. Helene's image materialized in the mist. Her naked body writhed lewdly beneath him. Her white thighs were spread invitingly, desperately wide. Her dripping, flushed core quivered in spasms, silently begging him for total carnal ruin.
Kaspar swallowed hard. The back of his throat tasted like hot copper.
"But she will not kill you,"
The colossal serpent whispered, her voice as sweet as the most expensive poison.
"You know that perfectly well, Kaspar. That little icy threat earlier… she is only lying to herself to mask her own starving greed for you."
Kaspar bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Yes. She desperately needs me to survive this night. She can't possibly execute her only lifeline.
The serpent tightened its icy coils around his ribs by the tiniest, agonizing fraction.
"Just one single, decisive thrust."
The filthy illusion in the fog zoomed in. Helene's bare, wet entrance. Incredibly soft. Flushed deep pink. Burning hot. It opened and closed greedily, pulsing in exact rhythm with her panting breaths.
"You can already feel it,"
The cooing, demonic voice continued, stroking his darkest urges while tearing his sanity apart.
"How those hot, wet walls of flesh would devour you… clamp around you… milk your hard cock so tightly until your mind shatters."
The illusion shifted abruptly. Kaspar suddenly saw himself roaring like a feral beast as he slammed to the hilt, buried deep inside Helene. The Imperial Countess's slender white thighs locked desperately around his thrusting hips. Her manicured nails dug bloody trenches into his sweating back. Broken, unrestrained screams of pure, agonizing pleasure echoed endlessly through the darkness.
"You will make a true Imperial Countess tremble and weep,"
The serpent breathed directly into his mind.
"You will make this arrogant, highborn whore moan your name in absolute submission. Kaspar Voss. Not that useless, captured idiot Thomas."
Kaspar felt a massive surge race down his spine. In the waking world, his hips were still grinding wildly over her overstimulated peak.
Just a tiny pull back for momentum. One single, devastating thrust.
"You have always wanted it. You hate and envy the fine Count Thomas for his power, and for his wife. Or am I wrong?"
Kaspar exhaled heavily, his breath shaking visibly in the freezing void.
Shut your fucking mouth.
The serpent laughed sharply. The shrill, piercing sound shattered the dark space like a mirror.
"But I can give you a reward a thousand times greater than just a simple fuck. Something a street dog like you has envied his entire pathetic life."
The violet fog exploded silently. A new, grandiose illusion materialized.
Kaspar saw himself—proud, overwhelmingly powerful, clad in terrifying golden armor—standing at the epicenter of a burning battlefield. All around him, tens of thousands of armored warriors threw themselves humbly into the blood-soaked dirt. Swords and spears stood planted in the earth as absolute signs of surrender. The Empire's most arrogant knights, the wisest, most untouchable mages, and even the monstrous Beast Kings of the forest knelt whimpering at his steel-shod feet.
"You thirst for true power."
The demon's voice suddenly grew impossibly deep, thundering through the void.
"Just thrust deep inside her. Take her with all your violence. Shatter her iron will and her ridiculous aristocratic pride forever."
The icy coils constricted so mercilessly that Kaspar heard his own ribs begin to crack.
"I will transfer her divine power directly into you."
Kaspar's brown eyes gleamed. A raw, blinding greed ignited in the depths of his pupils.
What the hell are you saying?
"Her magic. The pure, ancient blood of House Auen."
The violet light in the enormous serpent's eyes burned like hellfire.
"You will ruthlessly plunder it through the deep act of intercourse and absorb it into your own veins. You will ascend to the Legendary class."
The beautiful, veiled woman's head drew even closer. Her full, blood-red lips parted slowly, breathing the ultimate temptation against his skin.
"And you will have everything. Royal power, the highest status in the known Empire, and… the naked Lady Helene. She will be your devoted, mindless sex slave until the end of time."
A violent shiver, carried by the absolute darkest lust of the human soul, ran down Kaspar's spine.
Legendary. I will never again be a kicked dog in the gutters. I will stand at the very peak of the continent. And Helene von Auen will kneel naked in the mud before me, sucking my cock with the most depraved devotion.
Just… one single, brutal thrust of his hips.
The serpent whispered, its gigantic, echoing voice slowly dissolving back into the darkness:
"Pierce her. Deep. Right now."
Kaspar's conscious mind was yanked back into the sweltering, musk-choked reality of the tent with a sickening jolt.
His breath came in ragged, tearing gasps. He felt the boiling, slick heat of Helene's body with excruciating clarity. She trembled violently beneath him. The moist, frantic walls of her core cramped and sucked inward, demanding him. The catastrophic wave of her approaching climax was on the absolute verge of shattering everything around them.
Just one single thrust. A tiny shift of his hips to take it all.
Kaspar squeezed his eyes shut tight, every single muscle in his wiry body tensed to the breaking point as he fought the demon's screaming temptation in his blood.
Several seconds of agonizing, breathless silence passed.
Then…
He ripped his eyes open. He bared his yellowish teeth in the dim light and smiled. It was a raw, calculating, filthy smile that felt all too familiar.
"Good."