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The bearded Aurelian roars, bellowing out, and a new rush of shame goes through me as I imagine my staff hearing it and peering down, and she screams in ecstasy matching his as they cum in unison.

Gallien reaches around my body, groping my breasts as he fucks me, and I press back against him, our bodies finding a natural rhythm, writhing against each other as the bearded Aurelian pulls out, his thick, heavy cock dangling and dripping with the last drops of seed.

The woman turns easily, pushing her long hair back and wrapping her lips around his slick cock, wet with her juices and his jism, cleaning it off as he groans in satisfaction.

I watch as a huge torrent of cum drips from her stretched slit, and my eyes widen as I imagine Gallien filling me with hot torrents of his alien cum, seed that will flow down my legs just as it did with the woman with the pierced nipples.

He wraps her up in a huge hug, peering down at her with obvious adoration, while she giggles in satisfaction.

Gallien loses himself in the moment, growling, his grip tightening painfully around my nipples, and I ache for him to unleash inside me, ache for him to rip off the ring and fully claim me, and the thought of it sends an exhilarating rush as I cum hard, clenching tightly against his cock as he embeds himself deep inside me, stretching me to the limit and throbbing as he seeds me.

I come back to reality, on my knees in public on a sidewalk, and my heart pounds.

The bearded Aurelian starts walking, and the woman with the pierced nipples looks back, blowing a kiss at me, then follows her man, her hips rolling as cum drips from her, completely unashamed of her desires.

I was never a prude, but I get up quickly, my hand between my legs, stopping the flow of Gallien’s cum before it can soil his robe.

I look up at him, searching for any trace of judgment in his slate-grey eyes, but he has this little smile on his face, and he leans in, kissing me, his huge hand against mine, covering my slit protectively as he pulls me close to him.

He breaks off the kiss, running his other hand through my hair as he pulls me against his chest, and I can hear his steady heartbeat, so certain, the wall of muscle and strength of my protector.

We break off the embrace, and he grabs his battle robes, taking a handkerchief from a pocket and handing it to me. I’m embarrassed as I use it to clean myself.

“I can’t go in like this,” I gasp, my hair a mess, my cheeks flushed, the warmth of his seed inside me.

“Your staff went through the Rift with you. They trust you, and they’d follow you wherever you lead. They won’t care.”

“These are your customs, not ours.”

Gallien shrugs, pulling his robe around him and tightening the belt.

“Loyalty and respect are not the exclusive domain of my species.” He grabs my pants from the perch on the stone wall and hands them to me as I smooth my top.

I hold the handkerchief awkwardly, and he takes it, completely unbothered that it is soaked with his cum, and I get dressed, looking around to see if anyone else was watching the scene.

But the streets are empty, devoid of life, perfectly laid cobblestone without a speck of dust. Once this great Empire was full of vitality, but now we’re the only living souls standing in front of the office building which rises over a hundred stories, casting its shadow over emptiness.

Other buildings are lined up in the row, architectural wonders molding marble pillars with gleaming glass, skyscrapers that pierce the heavens yet stand like monuments to a dead civilization.

Gallien takes my hand, and together we walk up the steps and through the sliding doors into the lobby. It is a high-ceilinged, empty expanse of polished marble with a circular desk in the center, where an attentive blonde with perfect posture smiles politely at our entrance.

“Prime Minister Hart. Welcome.” Her voice echoes as we approach, Gallien’s heavy boots deafening in the silence. “Your staff awaits you on the sixtieth, wing B. Shall I have anything sent up?”

“No, that’s quite alright. Is there a washroom?”

“Just that way,” she points, and as I get closer, I see she’s older than I thought, yet aging gracefully, a striking beauty in her time.

Was she once a woman in a harem? Or did she come to Colossus for work and never leave, stuck in a ghost town greeting no one and getting paid so handsomely she couldn’t justify quitting?

Gallien leans against the counter of the desk, positioning himself so he has a view of the entrance and me as I follow her directions and enter the washroom.

It’s made in human proportions, which is reassuring.

This office tower must have been created for business between my species and theirs, in a time past. I get cleaned up as best as I can at the sink, freshening up and splashing water on my flushed face.

Worry gnaws. My legal team sent the message at four in the morning to come in. They’ve been up all night on whatever pressing issue threatens us.

The brief interlude with Gallien was an escape.

Turning my mind off, letting my body surrender to the alien prince.

Now, reality is coming back, and I steel myself as I leave the bathroom, striding quickly to the long row of elevators that lay dormant.

Gallien and I enter, and as the doors close, I look at us in the mirror.

Him, towering and noble, his features sharp, angular, me, with bags under my eyes in the drab beige uniform that looks so dull next to the pure white of his robes.

The elevator shoots us up in an instant, and we get out on the sixtieth floor. There’s a desk with no one manning it. “Could you wait for me here? There won’t be any threat, it’s just my staff.”

Gallien pauses for a moment, thinking. Then he nods, glancing through the offices to the walkway that rings the building. Being in a building in the heart of the Empire is below his risk parameter to need to always be an inch away from me, as long as he can constantly watch me.

I steel myself, staring down the door to the offices where my legal team is set up. It looks claustrophobic, but only because I have been used to spaces designed for the towering alien species.

Since leaving Pentaris space, I’ve felt different.

My world has been less filled with the daily irritations of leading the herd of cats that are the five planets and more focused on the one thing that matters: ending this war and restoring the universe to peace.

When I was on the Imperator, cut off from all communications, I had the time and mental space to truly be for the first time in years.

Now the mantle of responsibility and the drudgery of leadership is back. I wave my watch, which has my security credentials stored, and the doors hiss open, giving me a view of the workspace. It’s open concept, more like a library than an office building.

The floor is covered by thick ivory shag carpet seemingly designed to trip you up, impractical for a workspace, especially next to a counter featuring an eclectic mix of nearly a dozen coffee makers.

They range from a contraption that looks like it comes from Italy in Old-Earth, a region famed for its coffee, to a replicator system that would have been modern a century ago.

I hope they worked out the issues with the black brew coming out chewy.

I’ve walked into the surrealness of an office designed for my species by another.

They did figure out that we’ve loved coffee for nearly the entire history of our species, and designed the space accordingly, but the carpeting is impractical. One spilt cup would stain the ivory rug for eternity. It hits me as I wade through the thick shag.

Aurelians don’t spill or slip up. Not when they spend the first hundred years of their life getting mistakes beaten out of them.

The final decade of their training, squiring in pure white robes, where a drop of red wine staining their garments would warrant a whipping, was undertaken by every Aurelian, even the architect who designed the office buildings for visiting humans.

The ceiling is high, desks in neat rows with computing link ups, and the rear of the sprawling room has an oval window which lets in natural light.

Hunched in the corner, as if vampirically avoiding the sun, is my staff.

They are crowded around a table with half-filled mugs of what must now be stagnant brew.

The Administrative legal council, the finest minds of Pentaris.

They don’t just have legal knowledge. To get this high, they’ve got to be skilled at politicking as well.

I think of them as my staff, but they are representatives of the independent body that interpret actions of government through our founding constitution, the governing documents that have kept us alive and sovereign over countless millennia surrounded on all sides by Toads, Aurelians, and wild, pirate space.

They’ve seen Prime Ministers come and go.

Three are present at the table. Helena, the most senior, with pure white hair in a no-nonsense bun — who I’ve never seen smile — terrified me during my clerkship.

Caius, fleshy, has hospitably ruddy cheeks and a perfectly groomed mustache of inky black, dyed at the first sign of grey.

He would fit in as the proprietor of a comfortable pub, and that appearance has lulled many into a false sense of security.