“But I was just trying to help!”

The excuse, delivered with a whine that ended in a sniffle, brought a grimace to Lex’s lips.

“Spice, I’m aware that Shami-Amourae let you do whatever you wanted when she didn’t need your powers. But if you want to remain in my service, you’ll conduct yourself according to my rules, and that means that when someone who isn’t an enemy says ‘don’t!’ or ‘stop!’ you’ll cease what you’re doing immediately!”

Held aloft in his telekinesis, the half-naked succubus pouted, still dripping wet from having been hauled out of the bathing area where she’d been raising a ruckus. “They were saying ‘don’t stop!’”

The fact that she actually believed that did nothing to alleviate Lex’s irritation, knowing he’d need to apologize to the Pimao Jingzhi again...or at least, to the castrated todds that Spice had been molesting. “If that were the case, they wouldn’t have been struggling so hard to get away from you.”

Spice shook her head, and once again Lex could tell from her thoughts that her rejection of his words was genuine. “They weren’t trying to get away! They were spasming from how good they felt!”

“Let me make this simpler,” hissed Lex through gritted teeth. “The next time you activate the curse I put on you against sexual contact with someone else-”

“Ooh, the one that makes my body feel creepy and crawly all over?!” squealed Spice, her eyes lighting up. “I like that even more than Sugar’s tentacles!”

Giggling, she leaned her head closer to him, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Don’t tell them I said that, though! Just between you and me, I think you make them feel inadequate!”

She winked at him then, and Lex didn’t bother finishing his warning, knowing that it would have been futile.

When he’d bound Spice and those other six emissaries to his service, he’d used a variety of different powers to enforce their obedience. Curses, geases, enchantments, and more had been laid on all seven to make sure that they would obey him first and foremost.

What all of those restrictions shared, however, was being coercive in nature; all of them either encouraged or discouraged certain thoughts, actions, and behaviors through a series of complex feedback responses, ranging from tactile to emotional in nature, the intensity of which could range from barely perceptible to near-overwhelming.

But while the overall effect was pronounced in how thoroughly those seven were under his power, Lex was nevertheless aware that his control over them was less than absolute. None of the powers he’d used on them took away their ability to make their own choices, even if some choices were made more palatable than others. To go further than that would have impinged on their ability to think independently, which would not only have flown in the face of Lex’s moral code, but would have severely compromised the emissaries’ effectiveness.

With so many enemies arrayed against him, Lex knew that he needed to expand his roster of capable servants.

That remained true even if those servants had their own agendas, which they would pursue to the best of their ability regardless of the restrictions he’d placed on them.

Agapay, for instance, was highly invested in using him to advance the Council of Wings’ goal of reconciliation between fiends and empyreals. Being, like her mistress, a member of that organization, the chasmalim was extremely interested in his ability to keep a diverse group of planar beings in close proximity without things descending into infighting. To that end, she’d play peacemaker regardless of what it cost her personally.

Dima, by contrast, wanted to secure the welfare of Almina – the genie princess whose virginity he’d taken – as well as the other veela who’d been part of her guard. She’d elected to stay by his side largely to keep an eye on him, uncertain whether his own ambitions made him an ally or an enemy of the princess that she still considered herself to be in service to. In that regard, Dima would stay loyal to him simply to avoid her conduct being used as an excuse for him to turn against Almina; but if she decided that he was acting against the genie’s best interests, Lex knew that Dima would abandon him – or even turn against him – without hesitation.

All of the emissaries had their own considerations and motivations...but Spice was by far the one Lex found hardest to deal with.

It wasn’t that her goal was anything particularly complex; quite the opposite, the only thing she succubus cared about was her own gratification. Nor was her mercurial nature anything Lex hadn’t dealt with before. If anything, her penchant for simply going along with whatever whim seized her reminded him – to his profound vexation – of Sonata, albeit with a markedly prurient slant.

Rather, what made Spice so difficult was that her predilections were focused entirely on transgressing boundaries.

Which was to say, she derived joy from using sexuality to make other people uncomfortable.

As a succubus, that was only to be expected. Demons – as beings that were composed of both anarchic and malevolent numinous forces – were beings that existed to break down cohesion in all things, ranging from social norms to life itself, with different kinds of demons striving to tear different aspects of existence asunder. Anything which could be relied upon was something they felt compelled to end.

Succubi served that calling by eroding not just sexual morality – using their beauty to not only lure people away from healthy relationships and bonds of propriety, but encouraging their victims to engage in progressively more deviant acts – but the very nature of carnality itself. Rather than being a procreative act, coupling with a succubus whittled away at their partner’s life force, killing them the more they fornicated rather than increasing the odds that the she-demon would conceive (though, at least according to the Libram of Ineffable Damnation, that was still possible; the treacherous nature of succubi was such that sometimes their own bodies betrayed them, resulting in an unexpected pregnancy).

Spice’s sexual heterodoxy, however, was notable even among her own kind, for one reason:

She didn’t understand that what she was doing was wrong.

All of the other succubi Lex had ever met – which was, admittedly, limited to those that Shami-Amourae had summoned during their battle-royale-turned-orgy – had taken sadistic delight in the dissonance they made others feel as a result of their ministrations, loving nothing more than forcing someone else to derive carnal satisfaction from something they knew they shouldn’t, and didn’t want to, enjoy. To them, making others dislike pleasure was proof that they were tearing down boundaries that were meant to be inviolable, which was their entire reason for being. Even being so victimized themselves was perceived as a victory, since someone else becoming sexually aggressive – or even violent – with them was seen as enticing them to delight in breaking a taboo.

But Spice saw herself not as an agent of torment, but liberation.

While she could both perceive and appreciate the discomfort that she caused others, she saw herself not as violating intensely personal boundaries, but freeing others from shackles that they’d been brainwashed into accepting. To her, saying “no” was nothing less than a cry for help, and a negative reaction only meant that more such “help” was needed. In her warped worldview, every urge, impulse, and instinct for pleasure was meant to be fulfilled, regardless of how perverse it was.

Spice was a libertine who believed that everyone else was a libertine and simply didn’t know it.

It was an outlook which made her difficult to control, simply because most forms of punishment had no effect on her. Quite the opposite, she reveled in being denigrated. When she’d evinced complete disregard for Branwen’s death, Lex had struck her and publicly called her his sex toy knowing full well that she’d love it. It had been his way of quieting her down, akin to how one would stroke the fur of a yowling cat in order to pacify it.

This time, however, she’d gone too far.

Most forms of punishment had no effect on her, but there were some that did.

And Lex knew precisely what they were.

“Spice.”

“Hey, can we stop by another bathroom somewhere?” Still carried aloft in his telekinesis, the succubus twisted around to look at her backside. “Sugar and I broke the one attached to my room, and while it was fun playing with those fox-boys, I’ve still got some gunk in my trunk-”

A thought was all it took on Lex’s part to render Spice clean – inside and out – and dry, as well as mend and sanitize her clothing as it slid onto her body. At the same time, he released her from his telekinesis, instead sliding one foreleg around her waist and pulling her against him. “Spice, listen to me.”

Her eyes glittered as she brought one hand up to her cheek, blushing as she looked up at him with a coy grin even as she lowered her head, shuffling one foot to complete the coquettish act. “Yes, daddy?”

Suppressing the urge to snap at her for calling him that, Lex instead forced himself to keep eye contact with her. “I don’t want you to do anything that could start a fight with anyone here-”

“Aw, I wasn’t trying to be a bad girl, daddy!”

“-because it would break my heart if someone hurt you.”

That was enough to throw Spice off her game, her cutesy pout suddenly morphing into a look of confusion. “Huh?”

Lex didn’t hesitate to press forward. “You’re precious to me, Spice. Not just for sex, or because I vowed to protect you, but because I’ve started to develop feelings for you.”

“H-hey, Lex, come on!” The succubus had already begun leaning away from him, her face twisted in a grimace. “This isn’t funny!”

“I know, because I’m not joking.” He brought his free claw around to caress the side of her face. “I want us to be more than just paramours. I respect you-”

“You don’t mean that!” she gasped, trying to wriggle out of his grasp without success.

“-and to me it’s enough simply to hold you, look into your eyes, and feel your heart beat against mine like this.”

She tried to teleport away then, but it was a simple matter to disrupt her spell before it could take effect. She didn’t stop there either, trying to call in reinforcements – she was a summoner of extraordinary skill, when she put in the effort, which had been a large part of why Lex had chosen her from Shami-Amourae’s retinue – but the demiplane he’d created was reinforced against planar intrusions, and her conjuration magic shattered against his wards.

“I can’t hold back anymore, Spice,” Lex murmured as her struggling grew more frantic, her tiny fists beating against his chest in a futile effort to escape. “I-”

“NO!!!”

“-love you.”

She shrieked then, arching her back as she put her hands over her ears too late. Releasing her at last, Lex watched as she stumbled away from him, moaning in a way that – for once – wasn’t the least bit erotic as she knelt down in the middle of the hallway...

And proceeded to be violently ill.

He waited while she finished disgorging the contents of her stomach, watching impassively as she slumped over and sobbed softly. “How could you?” she whimpered, finally looking back at him with a stricken expression. “How could you say that to me?”

Lex had to resist the urge to smirk. Despite – or, more likely, because – she was a creature that found stimulation in transgressive pleasure, genuine expressions of love were anathema to her. Particularly when she was the recipient of those feelings...or at least, when she was the recipient of a low-level psychic suggestion that made his words more believable to her.

“I told you,” answered Lex flatly, ending the subtle assault on her mind. Now that he was through punishing her for what she’d done to those foxes, there was no justification to keep manipulating her perceptions. “While you’re in my service, you’ll behave how I tell you to. Or else.”

Sniffling, she rubbed her arm under her nose. “So...does that mean...?”

“That means,” Lex replied, “that your next task is to go outside and help Carnelia secure the village’s safety. And if you do a good job, and don’t cause any trouble-”

He strode past her then, letting his tail smack her hard across the ass as he left.

“-I’ll make sure to chastise you properly for ignoring what I told you before about having your mouth open in my presence.”

Behind him, Spice gave a relieved gasp. “Th-thank you, daddy! Please penalize me a lot later!”

She scampered away then, little feet pattering across the carpeting as she ran for the exit.

Sighing, Lex willed away the mess she’d made before heading deeper into the extradimensional mansion, feeling a sudden urge to spend more time with his wives.

Author's Note

Intervening when his succubus servant goes too far, Lex puts Spice in her place!

With things remaining quiet, will Lex have a chance to accomplish anything else before his meeting with Mihr? Or is another disruption imminent?