Page 17 of The Bride Contract (Princes of Xaavia #1)

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Chapter 17 - Niska

When I open my bleary eyes, an excited looking Vel is standing in front of me, that tablet she loves to carry around clutched to her chest again. “Huh?” I mumble, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, giving my brain a little more time to catch up with itself.

“He’s already signed it!” she tells me, beaming so wide, I think her face might crack into two if she carries on. “No one - and particularly princes - ever just blindly signs a contract without first hearing the other party’s demands,” she continues, hopping onto the bed and shimmying her back up to the headboard while I stretch and sit up. “But look, the big dummy has just outright agreed to any demand you want to make,” she says, tilting her tablet for me to look at it.

He…

Oh…

Kiahn. Kiahn has agreed for me to have… anything I want?

I can feel my face begin to heat as memories of last night flood my mind. Particularly the part where he stroked his cock to promises of spoiling me. Is this a kink he has?

Is this a kink I have? The fierce independence in me bristles at the thought.

But I can’t deny, there is something there, for sure.

“What’s going on?” Jaya pokes her head out from the blankets, her voice still thick with sleep and her hair looking chaotic.

“Niska’s Prince Charming is eager and all signed up to be her sugar daddy by the sounds of things,” Lois answers for me, leaning her hip on the door frame of the bathroom as she towel-dries her wet hair. “So, what were you up to with him last night?”

“I-” I gape at her like the proverbial deer in the headlights. “I wasn’t-”

Lois raises a brow at me in an expression so reminiscent of a mom who knows her teenager is lying out of her ass, I almost feel like I need to apologize and promise I’ll never sneak out with a boy again. “I heard him wish you goodnight at the door, and then you were sneaking in all dripping wet,” she accuses.

Busted.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up to go swimming,” I stammer out, sounding guilty as hell. “Kiahn - Prince Kiahn - was there as well. We just swam, I-”

Lois holds up a hand. “I don’t want the details. But you must have some kind of mind blowing ‘swimming’ skills. It sounds like he’s ready to offer up the keys to the kingdom.”

Before I can even dignify that with a barefaced lie, Vel leans forward beside me and interrupts. “If this is true, we need to get a contract drawn up before that idiot cousin of mine decides to spend more time alone with you. He could have lost control and bit you, Niska. This is a serious matter.”

Suddenly, I start to feel a little guilty for pushing him the way I did last night. It’s like I’ve just tattled on a friend and now they’re in trouble with the principal or something.

“He didn’t mean for us to be alone,” I add, watching Vel hop off the bed.

“It’s fine,” Vel dismisses. I watch as she turns and places her tablet down on the nearby desk so that she can lift the folded pile of clothes she must have brought into the room with her. “You will be given proper clothing once we arrive in Xaavia tomorrow, but for now, these will have to suffice,” she says, doling out three piles of fabric in different shades of blue. “They are rather plain, but the only thing I could muster up while we’re travelling. Besides, they have got to be better than the sacks that slave trader forced you to wear.”

Vel leaves us to get dressed and ready for the day on board the ship. And, as it turns out, we’ve already missed a lot of the morning since our internal clocks are a bit screwy right now - oh, and due to the fact that we’ve been living our lives as part of a slave trader’s stock for the past however many months. Yeah - that’s probably gonna mess you up a bit.

Anyway, we’re washed, and dressed in our new dresses that all sport high necklines, making sure we cover our throats. What’s strange, is that they also have a plunging peekaboo cut away on the chest - a patch of missing fabric that dangerously shows off our cleavage. Apparently necks are a no-go, but boobs are all the rage. The skirts are full and swish when we walk, but that fullness conceals a seductively high slit on one side that somehow reminds me of the scraps of fabric Mama Z’rykby had put me in and dared to call it an outfit. The sleeves are long and fluted, and the corset has some kind of self-tightening technology, even if it still looks like a good ol’ fashioned lace up - we hadn’t needed to do a thing, somehow the dress knew when to tighten itself and how tight to go. Vel had said she’d had some of her own ‘leisure dresses’ modified to be able to give us these, and, feeling the butter-soft fabric, I can believe that - even though the designs are a far cry from the sweats us humans would call leisurewear.

We still don’t have shoes, though, since leather boots are a lot harder to modify from Xaviann proportions to human ones. Vel had promised us that we won’t need to worry on that count, since she is aware that the prince has already sent our measurements to his personal assistants to make sure we have everything we need by the time we land in Xaavia tomorrow.

So, I kind of feel like a child, trying on ‘dress up’ clothes and padding barefoot downstairs to show my parents as we walk to the dining room, the soft carpet of the hallways beneath the soles of our feet.

Once we reach the room, two forms shoot up from their seated positions to greet us. Prince Kiahn, and his brother, Az. Vel strolls right in ahead of us, but Lois, Jaya and I stay stood in the doorway at the sight before us.

The huge table is covered in various dishes, with foods piled so high, it kind of resembles a medieval feast.

“Good morning,” Prince Kiahn says, tipping his horns and bowing low.

Vel takes a seat and scoffs. “It’s gone midday.”

I can feel Lois bristle a little beside me - can sense that she’s opened her mouth about to say something when Az steps forward and pulls out a chair. “Your sleep schedule would be messed up too if you’d gone through what they have,” he quips on our behalf before gesturing for Lois to take the chair he’d offered.

She hesitates, but ultimately decides to sit.

The way Az wears a beaming smile as he tucks her chair in for her is kind of adorable if I’m honest. He’s even still looking over at her when he pulls the next seat out for Jaya. The goofy look on his face gets interrupted when Kiahn slaps a hand on his chest as he goes to pull out the next chair - presumably for me - stopping him in his tracks. The two of them don’t say a word, but Kiahn looks very serious, and a little pissed that his brother would dare offer me a seat. Which is… I don’t know… kind of hot in a broody, possessive way, but also kind of weird, in a territorial, asshole kind of way.

Az doesn’t even bother to call his brother on it. He simply rolls his eyes and delights at sitting next to Lois.

The prince then goes to the seat I had occupied last night, the one beside his at the head of the table. He pulls it out and looks to me expectantly.

So, I go to sit next to Vel instead.

I don’t know why I do it, to be honest. It was completely impulsive and childish. Maybe I just wanted to see what he would do?

Vel snorts again beside me. Az had started to offer Lois items from the various dishes in front of us, but he stops to watch his brother. Something tells me, Prince Kiahn isn’t used to being denied things, and everyone wants to see his reaction.

His jaw ticks as he stares at me, the high back of the chair he’d offered still in his grasp. But a look of interest flares in his eyes, and I can feel his gaze on me as he comes around the back of my seat and sits the other side of me, instead of at the head where I guess he’s used to being placed.

Az smirks at his brother from the opposite side.

“This is a lot of food,” Jaya comments, apparently completely oblivious to everything else. “Why is there so much? It’s only breakfast.”

“Oh,” Vel says, looking down at her table. “I… I’ve been informed that a human breakfast is the most important of the day, so I made sure to include a full spectrum of nutrition.”

“And I made ice cream,” Az declares proudly, holding up a bowl of what looks like a creamy soup. “Granted, I made it hours ago, but, it’s still good,” he says, taking a ‘sporkful’ and slurping it down before seemingly offering to spork-feed Lois himself.

I stifle a giggle watching them, but Kiahn doesn’t seem to be following the display in front of us, since when Lois grimaces and shakes her head, he leans into my space and whispers, “ you challenged me just then .”

Goosebumps stand erect over my skin at the silky-smooth timbre of his voice. “Did I?”

“You did,” he says, reaching over and using golden-tipped tongs to select various food items that look like they might be sweet pastries and fruits, placing them on the plate in front of me. “You should keep doing that,” he adds, filling his own plate, too.

“Maybe I will,” I mutter under my breath, picking at a golden pastry that has some kind of bright green, jam-like substance in the middle of it. The first mouthful tastes good, so I continue, all too aware of how Kiahn is still watching me from my side. “This must be your lunch now, considering we woke so late,” I say, trying to shake off that tension between us and just make normal small talk.

“ Oh ,” Az mumbles before swallowing a big mouthful, “Kiahn and I waited for you. Vel, Aunt Zalora and Zann already ate.”

I don’t know why, but I can feel my cheeks bloom with heat at hearing that. It’s so… sweet. And unnecessary. “You didn’t have to do that.” I murmur without looking at the huge male beside me.

Prince Kiahn grunts and leans over me with a small, teaspoon-sized spork to take a dollop of something with the sticky consistency of honey. But instead of a golden color, this stuff is a deep, plum purple. “Open,” he demands, offering to feed me the substance himself. His green eyes glint with memories of him offering me his own venom last night, and how I’d so quickly obeyed.

My lips part as per his instruction, and I can’t help but delight in the way his gaze gets fixated on my mouth as he feeds me the strange, sticky purple honey. The taste bursts on my tongue, all at once sweet and tart, with an underlying flavor of something vaguely warm and spicy like cinnamon or nutmeg. “ Good girl ,” Kiahn rumbles just for me as he slowly slides the spoon from between my lips. “You should eat. You have a contract to sign today.”

* * *

The rest of breakfast turned out to be fairly uneventful - even if I spent most of the time too aware of Kiahn right beside me. He and Az stayed right up until the time it became very obvious that Az wasn’t going to stop offering to hand-feed one of everything laid out on the table to Lois - who definitely did not want that.

“Come, brother,” Kiahn had said, standing once he’d clearly witnessed enough. “Let us leave the females to their meal. We have work to attend to.”

Az had looked at his brother with a clear look of confusion, like the concept of any kind of work with Prince Kiahn is a foreign one. But one stern look from the prince, and Az relented, leaving us be - even if he’d looked a little sad about the whole thing.

Once they’d left, Lois, Jaya and I felt like we could finally go to town on all this food.

And I’m paying for it now.

The food was delicious. Some of it was strange, and I couldn’t liken it to anything from back on Earth, and some of it was clearly the result of Vel trying to replicate different human foods with the chef again. Either way, I am stuffed , and kind of regretting pigging out now that I sit here in the conference-like room again, feeling as bloated as a parade balloon.

Vel sits beside me, sipping on a hot drink that is definitely not coffee, since it’s firetruck red with a pink froth on top. She has a small plate of what the Xavianns call ‘pippicakes’, too. Though, to me, they just look like mini sugared donuts. “So, the contract is pretty standard,” she tells me, her finger slowly swiping on her tablet as she reads through what Kiahn has already signed. “The only thing that he seems to have amended on his end is the period of active breeding.”

My brows pinch together as I look at her. The what?

The amount of time he’ll be fucking me.

As soon as I think it, my face feels like it’s suddenly on fire.

Vel glances at me before going back to her tablet and continuing. “The standard starting time for one of these things is for three of your fertility cycles, then, if there’s no sign of the contract bearing fruit, it’s either ended or extended. Kiahn, however, has asked for a period of active breeding that lasts for twenty of your fertility cycles.” She looks up at me again, scoffing this time, like we’re both in on some kind of joke. “The audacity of that male! No contract has ever started out that long in the whole of Xaviann history!”

“Oh,” is all I can muster up to say before I shake myself. “It’s probably because he’s comfortable with me. He doesn’t want to move on so quickly and risk biting someone.”

Vel snorts as she shakes her head, tapping here and there on her screen. “Yeah, well, I’m sure he won’t be complaining once he finally gets down to business,” she dismisses. My gut does this weird little uncomfortable roll at her words. “What shall we amend it to? Two fertility cycles? He’s already signed the thing so we could do one if you only want to endure it for a short while.”

I gulp as I look at her, waiting for my reply with her fingers hovering over the tablet screen, ready to action anything I say. “Put down three,” I rush out, “since that’s the usual length. I don’t want it to look suspicious to him.”

Vel looks like she’s contemplating my reasoning before she shrugs and calls for one of the ‘command’ orbs. The floating sphere comes from a little hidden nook in the wall by the doors and stops to hover by Vel’s shoulder. “ Project ,” she commands, and the orb does as instructed, projecting the info from Vel’s tablet in front of us like a levitating cinema screen. “Ok, so I need you to sign this part for the agreed upon period of active breeding,” she says, reaching out and touching the hologram in front of us, making part of the text glow in green font.

I wait to be offered a pen of some sort, but instead, Vel nods down to my hand. “Just touch the highlighted section of the contract and say, ‘agreed’.

“Oh.” Lifting my hand, I’m surprised to feel an odd sort of resistance when I touch the projection of the contract. “Agreed.”

We carry on like that for a while, with Vel explaining various parts of the contract so I know what I’m signing up to. When we reach the part about my compensation, she shakes her head as she reads that Kiahn has made sure that I’m given a residence in his palace. “Let’s keep the residence,” she says, “and add an estate on the outskirts of the city. You won’t be bothered by people so much there.”

The section that mentioned an allowance had apparently been adjusted from the standard amount to one that apparently is very generous - generous enough to make Vel’s eyebrows rise high on her forehead. Vel was also surprised to read that Kiahn had waived his right to add an end date to said allowance.

The process of going through the whole contract is a long one. These guys have made this document robust . There’s parts that mention the female’s involvement with any resulting offspring. Vel had explained that Xaviann women normally share the parenting, and further contracts are then signed to set out what exactly that will mean. That is, unless the female is what she called ‘a career breeder’ - someone who fulfils a few contracts before retiring with multiple allowances financing their lives but not getting involved with the mothering aspect of it all.

I signed the section that stated I would agree to fifty percent parenting duties to a child that I know won’t ever come into existence and start to feel that horrible churning in my gut again.

The unease gets exacerbated when Vel suggests I do not sign the section that lays out that I would not take any action that would diminish the likelihood of Kiahn’s ‘seed taking root’.

“Won’t he notice that I didn’t sign that part?”

“I doubt he’ll go over the document once he knows you’ve signed the important sections - mainly the ones where you’re agreeing to let him mount you on the breeding bench.”

She’d said the words so casually as she continued to scroll on her tablet. But I sit there, my mouth hanging open as I gape at her.

“What?” she finally says when she catches the expression on my face. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I shake myself out of it. This is fine. Maybe I didn’t hear what I thought I heard? “I just… a breeding bench ?!”

Vel smirks. “Oh yeah, his Royal Highness was already fretting over sizing and fabric swatches for your bench just this morning.”

“I…”

I stare at the contract hovering in mid-air before me, and reach out to scroll down, clumps of important-looking text whizzing past me as I keep going. It’s starting to feel like I can’t breathe. There’s a ringing in my ears. There’s still so much to get through and that particular little tidbit has kind of thrown me.

Vel gently touches my arm, making the ringing suddenly stop as I turn to face her. “It’s for your own safety.”

“Huh?”

“The bench. When females are strapped to a bench, it limits their movement, and decreases the chance that the male will get over-stimulated, causing a higher bite risk. It’s standard practice.”

I stare at her, swallowing thickly. Standard practice .

How far away from ‘standard practice’ had we gotten last night when we masturbated in the pool together?

Vel seems to take my silence for hesitation, so she takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “He won’t hurt you. And if you’re uncomfortable at any time, there will be attendees who will come to you at the push of a button, ready to zap the ever-loving shit out of their prince to get him off you.”

“Oh my God ,” I blurt, reaching across her to nab the strange, red-colored not-coffee drink. I take a gulp and holy shit - it’s good . It tastes kind of like a spicy hot chocolate. I down the rest as Vel watches in amusement. “I might need something stronger,” I tell her, wiping the pink froth from my upper lip.

She chuckles beside me. “No hard liquor while signing official documents, I’m afraid. You can get as inebriated as you like once we’re done with this.” She takes a moment to pause and sets her tablet down on the table before covering my hand with her, much larger gray one. “Niska, I know this is all very strange for you, but I need you to know that I have yours and your friends best interests at heart. We know what you are doing for us - for Kiahn, and his principality.”

My eyes prick, and my tongue feels heavy and useless. I know we don’t really know each other properly yet, but, just like with Kiahn, I trust that what she’s telling me is true. I turn away, not really focusing on the projected contract in front of me, but staring, unfixed through the plethora of legal jargon that I’m to agree to. “I know,” I tell her. “It’s just… a lot .”

After that, Vel orders us more of the red drink, and a few snacks. It takes almost two more hours for us to go through the rest of the contract, and by the end of it, my brain has kind of checked out and I end up agreeing to… whatever it is that Kiahn wants.

The main thing as far as I am concerned, is that once this is all over and he’s merrily skipping off to his next contract, me, Jaya and Lois will be safe.

We’ll be able to start a whole new life.

We’ll be free.