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Yennes rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Only a man could turn an insult into an invitation.”

“An invitation, ay?” said the man darkly, but the rising colour of his cheeks detracted from the malice, and in her uninhibited state, Yennes was unafraid. He was just another man, incensed by the gall of truthful women. “I ain’t got a lick o’ interest in a virgin. Yer cunt’s likely as uptight as yer countenance. Yeh couldn’t take me.” He turned from her, a sneer covering his indignity.

Yennes let loose a bark of laughter. It wasn’t true mirth, but drunken, unfettered incredulity. How cruel fate was to have her survive the unimaginable and be accused of frigidity. Yennes met the man’s ruddy complexion with a glare of her own. His face swam before her. “Even if you’d summoned a god to bless you with something to impress me, I promise you, that cock of yours would never make measure.”

As the men laughed raucously and the lout turned puce, Yennes drained the rest of her cup, then she swung her legs from the bar stool and stood. She said nothing more to the men, but she stopped to look over her shoulder at the handsome one. She had the pleasure of watching a blush creep up his neck before she turned away.

It only took moments for Yennes to find herself pressed against a badly papered wall in a badly lit hallway. The back of the tavern was quieter, but she was still surrounded by the cacophony of clinking and laughing and singing. She found that she liked the volume of it – so much louder than any sound within her mind.

Lips ran over her neck, then down to her collarbone. Hands gripped her waist tightly, then ventured to her bodice. Practiced fingers pulled at the strings that held it taut, then tugged it downward until her bosom was free of it, encased only by the borrowed blouse of thin, flimsy make. A hand took the weight of her breast, kneading it pleasantly. She moaned.

She could not see the man, could no longer remember what his face looked like. It was difficult to remember how she’d found herself here, in this corner. But the lips pressing to her flesh were warm, the touches were pleasing. Yennes didn’t much care to stop. She found she could easily replace the smells and touches with the memory of another.

“God,”the man groaned, pressing his hips into hers and grinding them. She could feel the extent of his arousal pressing against her and she arched her back slightly.

“Touch me.”

He obeyed enthusiastically, slipping his hands between their stomachs and downward until he could find the split in her skirts. He pushed them aside and brought his fingers to her thighs. “You gonna repay me?” he asked, caressing closer to her sex, where all her nerve endings seemed focussed, waiting.

Yennes’ vision was uneven, her hearing dulled. She did not know if she’d answered him, only that his fingers were suddenly on her, making gentle circles, and her breaths were coming heavier. Without a mind to, she brought her leg up to rest on his hip, and felt his fingers sink inside her. “More,” she told him, letting her fingernails bite into his shoulders.

His lips were everywhere. She could not keep track of them, could barely feel them. She let him take of her what he wanted, so long as he kept touching her, kept making her feel. When he wrenched the seam of her blouse over the peak of her breast she welcomed his mouth, not caring that someone might interrupt them.

The volts of pleasure coursing through her were quickening, consuming her. She bit her lip to keep from groaning. She chased its inevitable combustion, moving her hips against his hand. “Fuck,” he growled against her flesh, hastening the precise strokes with which he coaxed her nerve endings, bringing them to the edge of bliss. “That’s it,” he panted in her ear, pressing his lips to her neck. “You taste divine.”

Yennes’ eyes snapped open.Divine,she heard in her mind. It echoed back to her again and again, in the voice of another.

She halted in her movements, her hips stilling against the wall. Her lips trembled.

She felt suddenly too hot. There was not enough air to breathe. Her body was trapped between a man she did not recognise and the wall behind her and it made her bones scream, made her lungs ache. “Get off me,” she expelled on a breath. The words came broken, shaky.

The man kept moving, unperturbed by the change in atmosphere. Could he not feel how the air had been sucked from the room? “Get off me!” she said again, louder now, panicked.

His hand stilled. His face came before hers. It was difficult to make out. His features distorted. “What?”

“Let me go,” she panted. She sucked at air that did not find her lungs. “Please. Stop.”

His hands left her completely. She felt herself fall to the floor, her knees bouncing off the hardwood on impact, but if there was pain, she was spared of its bloom. There was already pain within. It had her lungs in a vice.

Yennes heard the enraged cursing of the man above her and she held up a hand to ward him off. But the man only muttered some more, then meandered away, swaying as he went.

Later, she would count herself lucky he hadn’t stayed.

The liquor was finally overcoming her. A wave of sudden nausea impeded every other sense, and she stumbled for the back door behind her, opening it in time to heave onto the threshold.

Cool air hit her face. It lifted the coils of hair away from her cheeks and she gulped it in.

“Mother above,” she panted, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Mercy.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

Dawsyn’s head snaps back against the ground. The abrupt unfolding of her body is not enough warning to catch her fall. The breath that had been squeezed from her lungs suddenly returns, and it hurts to have them filled again.

She should feel splintered. Pain ought to blossom at every imaginable site. Her shoulder, punctured and untendered, should be pulsing an incessant beat. Her head should be swimming, her throat scorched, her feet battered and bruised by relentless travel.

She should be dead.

The lack of appropriate pain certainly suggests she is. But for the small ache at the back of her skull and the burn of new breath, she feels whole.