Page 12 of What Fury Brings (Wrath and Fury #1)

“If you put that gods-awful wax on my face, I swear I will gut you,” Sanos said.

“The wax, My Prince, is only used on the chest. It doesn’t grow back as quickly that way, you see. We will use a razor on your chin and testicles.”

“My—”

The outrage was silenced as a thin blade was brought close to his throat. “If you don’t wish to be cut, I suggest you hold very still.”

He endured it. The cutting of his beard. The trimming of his intimate parts. What the hell was wrong with these women that they wanted their men naked as wee babes?

They threw more water over him to rinse off the trimmings, and he almost choked on it. Almost yelped as cold water was flung onto his cock and balls.

They dressed him in very little. Some sort of cloth that wrapped around his waist and tied at the side. A skirt. It was flimsy. White. Too exposing.

He hated everything about it.

The gag was replaced as he was escorted through hallways and stairways that he now managed to observe with a careful eye. Escape was his foremost concern, and he would memorize every passage they took him through, though the trip didn’t take long.

They stopped at a bedroom.

Her bedroom, no doubt.

There was a grand bed more than big enough for two. An unlit hearth took up one wall, while a thick white rug was laid out before it. The room was strangely bare other than that, as though it had been recently gutted. Because of his arrival?

They didn’t take him to the bed. No, they opened one of the many adjoining doors and brought him into a smaller room with an equally grand bed.

That was where they tied him, spread-eagle. Arms and legs secured to the posts with knots he didn’t know how to form. He thought he might know what came next. That dreadful toxin that would render him paralyzed and harden his cock, but the eunuchs left him without so much as a word of farewell.

Sanos couldn’t say how long he waited strapped to that bed. It was at least an hour. Perhaps two, and there was a horrid itch on his left foot that he couldn’t reach.

When the door opened and she walked in, he ceased moving.

She was… different.

She’d bathed from their time on the road.

Her hair was pulled half back, smoothed into some intricacy, and the rest fell around her shoulders in dark luscious waves.

There was black ink around her eyes. Red paint on her lips.

A hint of her breasts was exposed despite the robe she wore.

The rest of her was a silhouette through the fine silk.

For some reason, his mouth watered, though he could barely swallow around the gag.

She approached slowly and touched his gag. “I’m going to remove this now, and you’re not going to make any awful sounds. If you do, I will administer the vyra again. Do you understand?”

He nodded, and his body rose in temperature from the fervor of his hatred for this woman.

Olerra removed his gag and set it on the bedside table.

She seated herself on the bed, and it dipped under her weight.

She offered him a glass of water, tilting it to his mouth, and he was too thirsty to refuse it.

When done, she drew her legs up onto the bed beside her, lounging like a queen as she settled herself back and observed him.

The look-over she gave him heated his blood, but he kept his anger to the forefront.

“If you can overpower me, then why am I tied to this bed?” he asked. If he could trick her into untying him, then he could attempt escaping. He was fast. Surely faster than her.

“Being unchained is a right you have not yet earned. As I said before. Good behavior is rewarded. Poor behavior is punished.”

He swallowed. “The eunuchs? Is that what you do to men who misbehave?”

“Gods, no,” she said, looking baffled by the question. “No, the men choose it. It is an honor to serve in the palace, one of the highest positions a common man can attain in Amarra. Many apply for the chance but few are chosen.”

“They apply to lose their manhood?” He could not believe any man would choose that.

“Yes, it is a simple procedure, done under anesthetic. They don’t feel a thing. They forsake sex for honor and wealth and high standing.”

“This place is horrific.”

She ran one hand over the soft cotton sheets, and Sanos wondered if she was still listening to the conversation at hand.

Then she said, “I can see why you would think so, but I promise it’s not.

All will be well, Prince. You needn’t fear.

” She lowered her eyes to his chest, taking in all his exposed skin.

His voice rang out like thunder. “Whatever you think is going to happen tonight, forget it. You will not touch me.”

He ignored the excitement that mingled with his fury. That couldn’t be helped and had nothing to do with her. He was used to going a year without sex. But tied up as he’d been for the past week, without the relief of his own hand?

He’d never gone more than a night or two without that.

And she was wearing transparent silk, for gods’ sakes.

“Unlike the men in your country,” she said, “I do not force myself upon those who do not wish it. You needn’t fear that kind of violation from me, Andrastus.”

“Then why are you dressed like that?”

She looked down at herself and even took a moment to admire the silk.

When she returned her gaze to his, he wasn’t sure what look was there.

His breath stuttered out of him as she left the room, and he thought perhaps that was it.

But she returned a moment later, some sort of box in her hands.

“What is that?” he asked.

“So many questions… We could have covered all of this on the road had you not been so difficult. Do they not teach anything of the laws and customs of Amarra to you Brutish royals?”

They did. The Amarrans kidnapped men and made mockeries of them. Forced men to lie with them. And apparently cut parts of them off. What more could she possibly be referring to?

She took his silence as answer. “In Amarra, it is an offense punishable by death for a man to cause a woman to bleed. There are exceptions, of course. Accidents are often overlooked. Men in the army are given a pass during training. Injuries taken during battle don’t count.

The queen wouldn’t have time for anything else if she had to track down every man who’d ever killed one of her soldiers. ”

“Death?” he echoed, catching on the most important word.

“Yes. You can see how the First Night must be treaded carefully.”

“First Night?”

She rolled her eyes. “I had hoped you at least had some idea of what would happen between us tonight. No matter. I’ll explain it as we do to our children once they start to mature. Do you know what happens to some women the first time they have sex?”

“They bleed,” Sanos answered, not liking her tone. He wasn’t stupid. Or inexperienced.

“You seemed to frequent brothels. I thought perhaps you’d never taken a virgin.”

“I haven’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t know about sex .”

“It is hard to tell where the gaps in your knowledge lie.”

“I know women.”

“Just not our women, it would seem.” Her eyes promised that would change.

It took him a moment before he finally put her words together. “You kill the men who bed virgins for making them bleed?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

His eyes widened.

“If a man is patient and slow, he can perform the First Night without blood. But since most men are eager fools too intent on their own pleasure, we’ve found a way not to lose any more of the male population.”

Then she opened the box and presented it to him. Sanos could not say what he expected to be contained within, but it certainly wasn’t a dozen phalluses.

“What are those for?” he asked.

“Before a woman beds her first man, she can purchase such a kit to get the nasty business of widening her opening over with. Then she need not experience any pain nor bleed.”

“Why would— You’re a virgin?”

Her face didn’t change. She said, “Obviously. Have you listened to nothing I’ve said?”

She set down the kit, walked forward until she was level with his waist, then drew off the skirt covering his nakedness with one swift tug.

He felt a twinge go through him at the stirring of cloth over sensitive flesh.

Then he could do no more than stare at her staring at him.

She didn’t seem… surprised by the look of him.

Or… impressed, as she’d been when examining his bulge on the road.

Not that he wanted her to be impressed. He was large for a Brutish man—or so the women at the brothel had told him frequently. Wait, were they paid to say that?

“Why am I naked?” he asked.

“I need to gauge your size so that I might know the correct phallus to work myself up to.”

Blood thundered in his ears, but he managed, “You said you wouldn’t force me.”

“And I won’t. But it won’t be long before you’re ready. I had best be prepared for that eventuality.”

“Cocksure, are you?”

“I don’t have a cock, but I told you that it is only a matter of time before you want me, before you ache for me. That is a promise I intend to fulfill.”

He hated the way she seemed so sure of the future. Like he was predictable. Sanos promised himself right then that no matter how long he was stuck on Amarran soil, he would not ask her. Even if he couldn’t see to his own needs with his hand.

“I hate to break it to you, Princess, but my cock is much bigger when it’s aroused.”

“I know.”

He wanted to know how she knew how cocks worked if she’d never bedded a man, but that wasn’t foremost on his mind. No, it was her plans for the evening that most concerned him.

“Obviously,” she said simply, “I need to see you aroused. Then I can select the correct phallus, and we’ll be done for the evening, Prince.”

They both looked down at the cock that was perfectly flaccid, and he laughed. “Good luck with that. I’m hungry, angry, and in pain from the tortures your men put me through.” His chest still had a light pink tint to it. Then he stilled. “Don’t give me that foul toxin again. I don’t—”

“Shhh,” she said gently.

Then she drew open her robe.