Page 7

CHAPTER 7

S asha

Another stinging blow shortly follows the first one, then another. My brain is too stunned to react, but by the third blow, it finally catches on to what’s happening.

“Bastard! Stop that!” I screech, redoubling my effort to get free. “Don’t you dare lay your hands on me.”

The Huugwor doesn’t answer, doesn’t even pause as he walks away with my body slumped over his shoulder like a ragdoll. He keeps punishing my bottom as he walks, one side at a time, his large palm covering the entire cheek, the long fingers leaving trails of fire and pain behind. I peer over to the side and see that he stands by the head of his massive bed.

I know what he’s about to do before he does it, but I don’t have the time to react.

He flings me down on the mattress without ceremony and I bounce, disoriented for just a moment. But a moment is all it takes.

As I come to my senses, Eirik’s large form is already on me, and the sound of something metallic clicks above my head. A cold contact around my wrists confirms what I already know.

Eirik just shackled me to his bed.

“Let me go!” I scream as I tug on the shackles, hard. Pain answers, fast and direct as I pull on the metallic restraints with all my strength. “You can’t do this.”

Eirik pulls back from the bed as I struggle and scream like a banshee. He says nothing as he watches me fight all by myself, kicking and spewing insults that would make a seasoned sailor blush. For a long time, I wriggle and kick until I finally exhaust myself and understand the reality of my situation.

I’m not getting out.

As I settle down, my chest heaving fast and deep, my arms and wrists painful, the depth of my trouble becomes starkly clear. This man isn’t Chancellor Ry, or even Commander Rager, the commander of the Enforcers in the city. No, this man is an alien born and raised far from our barely civilized city.

I have no idea what passes for justice for his kind. Or what passes as acceptable punishment.

“Are you done with your tantrum?” he asks, his head cocking to the side like a freaking puppy. His chest glistens under a fine layer of sweat, all those muscles on display as the low light casts soft shadows on him. The sharp features of his otherworldly face seem even sharper, even more sadistic than before, with not an ounce of mercy inside them. As my gaze trails down, I can see his powerful erection is still there, pushing on his leather pants.

“Just send me to jail and be done with it.” I grit the words between clenched teeth.

“You’re not going to jail. You’re not going anywhere.” Eirik sits down on the bed beside me and it takes all my control not to scuttle away like a frightened animal. I’m already defeated. The only thing I can do now is not to break down. “You are mine now, little thief.”

This can’t be happening.

“Those aren’t the laws of Tartarus,” I counter, unable to look away as the Huugwor bends over my body, his face unreadable.

“Your laws don’t apply to me.” He speaks softly, without a trace of doubt. “Only the laws of the desert do.”

A chill creeps up my spine at the dead seriousness of his face. The way he looks at me like that, tied up and at his mercy. He may as well be a snake, looking down at a mouse.

“Then what will you do to me?”

“It depends.” The corner of his mouth lifts in a devious smirk and his hand comes to rest in the middle of my stomach. The contact sends a jolt of electricity throughout my entire body.

All of a sudden, Eirik’s eyes turn feral and any illusion I had that he’s a civilized man is wiped clean from my mind.

What remains of my mind, anyway.

Long fingers spread across my stomach, the heat penetrating through my clothing. Arousal floods my entire body, spreading liquid heat between my thighs. My core clenches and my clit pulses to life.

Maybe I’m really a pervert, after all.

“Interesting.” Eirik’s eyes lower from my face and glide down my body as his hand on my stomach moves. His long fingers reach from my midsection to just underneath my breast, then slide back down my front, past my navel and my pubic bone until he cups my pussy with his large, warm hand. He never takes his gaze off my face as he does this, and I find I can’t look away, either. His lips hang partly open as he presses his palm on my wet, engorged pussy through my pants.

More heat, more wetness spills inside my folds, drenching me with unwanted arousal as my clit pulses under his touch. Eirik’s smirk widens, exposing his fangs and somehow, I just know.

This man. This impossibly tall, strong alien man is a predator.

And I just turned into his prey.

“What are you doing?” My voice has the shaky tone of a weak woman. A woman I can’t be. A woman I’m not. “Take your hands off me.”

“What would a Tartarus man do with you, I wonder?” Eirik’s hand moves up to the waist of my pants and, to my complete horror, a single long spike grows along his wrist. The weapon is deadly and black, at least twelve inches long and even under the low light, I can see how sharp it is. How lethal. My throat closes up and pure, sheer terror chokes me. I can’t take my eyes off that spike as he brings it down to my navel.

“Would a Tartarus man throw you in the darkest jail and leave you there to rot?” Eirik muses as the tip of his spike digs into the supple black fabric of my pants, then tears inside it. “What about a man from that Empire I’ve heard so much about?”

He doesn’t look up as his spike moves down the front and then the right leg of my pants, ripping the fabric like it offers no resistance at all, all the way to my ankle.

My brain is too numb to formulate a thought as he moves to the other leg of my pants. I try to swallow as I arch my head between my arms, restrained by my shackled wrists, but it’s no use.

Eirik turns his head up and we lock gazes as he moves, using his spike to ruin my form-molding top. When he is done, he peels the fabric from my body, his movements strangely soft, his fingers barely brushing my skin.

Then I lie there, shackled with my wrists high above my head, bared except for my panties. That doesn’t last long. Eirik’s spike slices the thin fabric at its thinner point on each side of my hips and pulls the panties away from me, the contact of his finger brief and hot like a branding iron on my skin. Then I just lie, silent and completely helpless as the alien man looks up and down my body, his face unreadable as he studies me.

“Do you want to know what we do to females who break the law in the desert?” Eirik finally lifts his gaze to my face and a dangerous glint brims in his eyes.

“You’re a sick bastard.” My voice is small and shaky, and as the corner of his lips lift in the most terrifying grin I ever saw, my treacherous body responds with a surge of wet slick between my thighs. There’s so much of it I can feel it drip down my pussy and between my ass cheeks.

“We train them,” Eirik says as his hand flattens on the now naked skin of my stomach. “And we keep training them until they can’t take it anymore. Then, just then, do they get their reward.”

The contact is like an electric shock and my breath hitches, my heart beating impossibly hard inside my ribcage. I know what he means, but I just can’t accept it. My mind refuses to consider the possibility, but my swollen, eager pussy hums a steady tune of wetness as my core clenches.

He’s going to touch me.

I should fight. I should rebel against it, but I don’t. Instead, I whimper as more wetness spills between my legs. Eirik’s nostrils flare in awareness and my face burns with shame, but I’m powerless to stop it. Just as powerless as I am to stop him.

“Oh, little thief, how I will enjoy training you.” Eirik’s face is dead serious as he reaches for my throat, caressing the supple skin. His index finger brushes underneath my right ear, then comes down slowly, almost too slowly, to tease the base of my throat at that place right in the middle where my jugular pulses a frenzied beat.

“Do you want me to stop?” His eyes go to my face as he speaks, all the while his fingers travel down in a torturous slow pace to rest between my breasts. “All you have to do is give me the name of those who hired you. Then I’ll give you what your body needs. I’ll give it to you over and over until you can’t take it anymore.”

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Even if I wanted to speak, I couldn’t. I shake my head in response, but I’m not sure if it’s to tell him I don’t want him to stop or to tell him I will never give up my family.

Both, maybe.

“No?” Eirik’s hand moves to my right breast, his index finger and thumb closing on my nipple, pinching and rolling the sensitive bud slowly.

I whimper again as the sensation shoots through my body. He keeps playing with my nipple until it’s so hard and sensitive it hurts. Then he moves to the other breast and repeats his slow torture until I moan and twist under his hands. My entire body is on fire and my clit pulses, begging for attention, but all I can do is wriggle and pant, clenching my thighs together to relieve some of the pressure. It does little to help, and I feel the tension growing.

I should tell him to stop. My mind tells me to. I should tell him he has no right to touch me.

But I can’t. I need him to continue. There’s no turning back.

Just when I’m ready to beg him, he releases my nipple and his hand moves to rest between my breasts. His blue on blue eyes paralyze me and I’m unable to look away. I’m a prisoner of his gaze, of the way he touches me.

Like ownership. Like I’m his.

“So responsive,” he muses as his hand trails down and down, past my navel and to the soft cover of curls hiding my sex from view. “So soft and sweet.”

He reaches for my legs, pushing one thigh sideways and then the other, parting them wide. My breathing is fast and shallow as he moves on the bed, coming to kneel between my parted legs, my sex in full view.

And me? I do nothing. I’m nothing. I’m just a lump of flesh full of need. There’s nothing left of the woman I was before. And I don’t even care.

“Pink,” he says, his blue alien gaze on my vulnerable flesh like a predator. An all too male hunger spreads on his face as he runs two fingers down my slit. The contact makes my hips buck and my mouth opens as I gape like a fish out of water. He parts my already drenched pussy lips to his view. “And so wet. I wonder if you taste as good as you smell, little thief.”

My breath catches as he pushes inside my folds, a long, thick digit entering me without warning. Sensations shoot inside my pussy as he presses against my inner walls, stretching my body. More wetness spills out of me as my mind draws a blank.

Then he brings his finger out and to his mouth, sucking on it with a loud noise that resonates all the way into my core. He shuts his eyes as he tastes my cream and I see the way his muscles tense, his entire body radiating power. When he opens his eyes again, they’re hungry and savage. I’m shocked at how turned on his reaction makes me and I just stare, needing him to touch me again.

“You taste so good.” His voice is a low, husky growl, and as a ripple of tension travels under his dark gray skin, I’m reminded once more that he is not human. And that he’s dangerous. “I’m sure you’ll sound just as good when you beg me to let you come.”

Oh, shit. Holy shit, I’m completely fucked.

Even if I could have said something, I wouldn’t. Not if it means risking Eirik not touching me where I need it most, where my clit begs for attention and my core pulses, needing to be filled.

Eirik puts his hands on the inside of my thighs, opening my legs wide as he looks down on my sex, then up to me again. Then he smiles and it’s the cruelest sight I ever saw.

Cruel and arousing to no end.