Jennifer Horseman

by GnomeWonderland

  The pain seized her and she welcomed it, a diversion against helplessness, shame, terror. She wished it would never stop, that she would die of it. She did not know she had his flesh in her mouth, drawing blood just above the neat line of a dagger cut, that the small mark of her teeth would remind him of this day the rest of his life.

  Yet his enormous size stretched her, forcing the pain to diminish, dissipating into a searing hot warmth just as she felt his lips touch her damp forehead. "Your last surrender, Juliet: I won't move until you look at me."

  The sound of her name crashed into consciousness. He called her name. He knew her now. ... Of course, she was a virgin and it was taken as proof.

  She wanted desperately to deny him this last, as if somehow she knew what it meant, and she said in a whisper of passionate denial, "No . . . no."

  "Look at me ... now."

  "No," she shook her head, and enraged, she used every ounce of her last strength to push desperately against his shoulders,twisting beneath him.Yet the movement brought a shocking warmth that set her nails hard into his shoulders. The shock of it opened her eyes to him.

  He said nothing as he stared down at her, but then, no words could contain his emotions now. For any and all words would deny the magnitude of what he had done to her and they both knew it. She saw everything, though— her own pain reflected in the mesmerizing dark eyes, magnified tenfold with an unworldly compassion she could only wonder at, the depth of it quite beyond her experience. Yet for all of what he made her see of his heart and mind and soul, there was no regret.

  Emotion surged through her, sending her small fists pummeling against his chest again. "I hate you!" she said, "I hate you!"

  He caught her fists and held them to the bed. Still he did not move, exercising unnatural control over the demands of his body—and only to meet the emotion in those eyes. "If only you could, love. Yet as I have taken your innocence, I shall destroy your hate. I will have all of you—"

  She shook her head frantically, as if she knew what he meant. "No!"

  "Yes, love. Yes." And he moved within her, overcoming the maddening pleasure spilling into him. He exercised the most exquisite gentleness, repeating the measure over and over again. She turned her head from side to side in negation as he brought her ever closer to the edge of that steep cliff until the moment the miracle of the flesh seized the whole of her. He released her hands as she dung desperately to his neck, hurled into a joyless abyss of hot swirling pleasure, returning only to feel the last great thrust of his body within hers, the violence of his release washing through him with an unearthly pleasure he had never before felt.

  Garrett turned over and gathered her unresisting form back in his arms. His thoughts were many, traveling in a hundred different directions all at once, and he tried to clear his mind, seeking the peace that forever strayed from his reach, as far as that was. He had to help her, he knew, yet everything rested uneasily on the shocking force of his physical demands; he could not escape it. There was no satiation with her. Demands of the flesh were normally the easiest part of his life, satisfied by the laughter and play of a hundred women whose names and faces merged in his mind's eye as an indistinguishable image, one forgotten soon after parting. For the first time in his life, desire was woven with the dark streak, the streak of violence and war and dissatisfaction, so that the whole of this rape felt like but a taste of her, leaving him hard and stiff, with a raging need to claim her again. A need, he had no doubt, that could destroy her.

  He was afraid it already had.

  Juliet felt nothing, not the great warmth of his body, a warmth surrounding and enclosing her to him, not the gentle caress of his hands through her hair, not the swift steady beat of his heart against which he held her head. Nor were any thoughts to interrupt the profound satiation of her body as her heartbeat spiraled slowly down and his very warmth seemed to absorb the moisture of her love-soaked body. She almost fell asleep in this long stretch of time; she actually would have if her mind had not produced Tomas's face, and with that came the sudden realization it was over.

  It was over. . . . Dear God, it was over. ... He was through. . . .

  A sick cold dread crept between them; Garrett knew the exact moment it happened. She first tensed, then started to tremble. He took her face to see the tears springing in those dark pools, but then, dear God, he hoped to live long enough to forget her first desperate plea: "May I ; . . oh please, may I move from you now?"

  The hardest thing he ever did in the whole of his life was force himself to become passive as she scrabbled to the edge of the bed and held herself in a tight ball against the wall. She Sid not notice Garrett rising and moving to the bell, ringing it thrice in close succession, before coming back to stand near her. She didn't notice the shades of twilight sweeping the room, marking the passage of time that would forever change her life. Her entire consciousness focused on an effort to stop shaking long enough to ask the question about the only thing that mattered to her. She didn't quite understand; she knew. The experience she had just survived was a shadow spreading over the bits and pieces, the fragments of her understanding of men and women, enough to make her afraid.

  "Tomas ... oh please, Tomas," she began, trying very hard to make sense and only hazily aware of the fragments of her thoughts. "I ... need, do you know? Will he still want me now?"

  She did not see the changed shape to his expression upon hearing this. "The boy I found you with?"

  She nodded through tears.

  "Were you betrothed?"

  "Yes, in secret. . . but now ... I need, I need very badly to know if it will matter?"

  The silence stretched indefinitely until she heard: "I would be lying if I said it didn't matter to most men."

  She looked to where he stood nearby and but briefly met the emotions in his gaze, just long enough to see that the questions were far harder for him to answer than they were for her to ask. "Does it matter to you?"

  He shook his head, his voice a gentle echo of his emotions. "Until now it has never mattered to me."

  She turned from him to face the wall as she held her sides, as if to contain her trembling. A cold numbness began creeping into her, a desperate means to save herself from feeling anything more. He might have reached to her and forced her into his arms for comfort, but as her hair fell into a pile on the bed, it parted slightly, and offered a shocking view.

  Garrett found himself staring at thin red marks laid across scars, scars that covered the whole of her slender back. "Merciful God, what—" He lifted her up. She cried weakly as he brought her to the edge of the bed and into the light. He swept the hair from her back to stare, seeing the marks for what they were: the thin marks of a whip put to her skin, over and over again, raw slashes laid over marks of other beatings, so that a three-inch-thick scar marked the center of her back and lines covered the rest.

  Gayle entered to hear a heated string of the most vicious curses as Garrett emerged from the dressing room with a basin of water and a cloth. The young man could not see Juliet as the drapes were drawn at the end of the bed, but he saw the rage still on Garrett's face. Rage that told him it was not over yet.

  "Gayle, I need your medicine for the marks of a whip and I need it now." His voice lowered to an ominous whisper as he added, "I also need a potion that will ease the terror of a young girl who just lost her innocence by an act of rape. Yet she must not sleep yet; I need to talk to her."

  Gayle's face briefly registered shock, but understanding the urgency, he promptly left to make the medicines. Some of the waxy salve for the crack of the whip sat on the top shelf of his room, left over from the last slaver they had captured and burned. The potion would take more time to create.

  She felt too weak to offer anything more than a small cry as he gently positioned her on her stomach with her hands above her head. "No, love, don't fight me now," he whispered when she tried weakly to twist free. "I don't think you knowiiow bad off you are." He then gathered her hair into a strea
m that fell off the bed. A cool cloth came over the red marks and the wish that he could absorb her pain sang so loudly in his mind that he cursed the fact that Stoddard could die but once.

  Gayle set the cream at Garrett's side and left immediately to ready the potion. He stopped at the door, meeting Tona-li's golden gaze outside again, lit, it seemed, with the very colors of the setting sun off starboard. The panther paced in a state of extreme agitation in front of Garrett's door, agitation that was making everyone wonder if he had tasted human blood this day. If so, his father, Leif, vowed to damn Garrett and make his cat into a skin after all. "Move aside, Tonali," he said with Garrett's own reverence for the mystical creature. "I cannot let you in."

  Tonali stopped and bared razor-sharp teeth, teeth the young man was keenly aware could tear a man to pieces, hissing angrily at him. Tonali liked no one except Garrett, and even Garrett he seemed only to tolerate for reasons no one understood. A mutual return of affection, for Garrett saw his unusual companion as the manifestation of the dark force woven into his fate. One would have to know Garrett well indeed before one understood his strange love for the wild beast.

  Restless with the knowledge she was in there, Tonali moved aside and began pacing again.

  Garrett gently laid the cloth to her trembling form. She tried to hold still without flinching and it reminded him of her unnatural courage, a courage he had seen many times this day as she had tried so desperately to fight him. Juliet, Juliet, her name echoed in his mind as if it were Edric's own as he began to feel the magnitude of the transformation she caused in him. The waves of his rage retreated, subsiding bit by bit to reveal the great depths of his grief for his lost brother.

  "Juliet? Love, can you still understand me?" She nodded slightly.

  "I'm going to put the salve on you now. It's going to sting badly for a bit, then burn through your skin. The burning brings a great relief, though. You won't be able to feel the pain, while its wax will protect the wounds so they'll heal without marks."

  She tensed as his fingers smeared the salve over her back in quick, deft strokes. The brief sting it brought subsided to a burning sensation, and just as he said, the burning was a relief so intense as almost to bring tears to her eyes. The burning went only so deep though, not enough, he saw, to offset her uncontrollable shivering.

  "Can you feel this?" he asked as the wax hardened and he ran a fingertip over the edge of her cut.

  She shook her head. Her back felt numb, as if she had no back at all. She wished to apply the salve to the rest of her person: "I ... I am so ... cold."

  The soft sound of her pain cut through his very heart and he cursed as he laid a thick quilt over her form. She thought he would leave her then, but no, his arms came under her and he lifted her into the air and carried her to a chair, positioning her on his lap. She was too weak to protest, far too weak; he could kill her now and she'd not make a sound.

  Garrett held her tightly, getting only a brief glimpse of her features before she hid her face in his chest, still shivering despite the great warmth he offered her. He had a hundred questions, maybe more: How often had Stoddard done this to her? What hellish reasons did he give? Was there nothing or no one to stop him? Why didn't she tell this boy she loved? What other fears did she live with in Stoddard's house—and for how long?

  He didn't think she could speak, and he would not ask these questions now. Yet as with all things, she surprised him, not just by speaking first but by voicing his very thoughts. "It doesn't matter, you know. I mean, that you thought I was Clarissa .... It doesn't change anything."

  "Yes, I know."

  The emotion in his voice made her look at him, where she saw it was true. She still trembled and felt disoriented, as if part of herself was sinking away from this world. "I am so scared. ..."

  Garrett's hand stopped halfway through her hair and his fingers tightened over her head to hold her closer to him. "I do not wonder why. By all the saints, girl, you know I will not hurt you more?"

  She nodded slowly, then with certainty. It was over; it was one of the few thoughts she could hold. Her uncle was dead and she had survived. Garrett would not hurt her now. It was over. . . .

  Gayle quietly opened and closed the door. She remained ignorant of his presence until she saw his hand set a glass on the table by Garrett's side, for she had been lost in the unfathomable depth of his gaze.

  Garrett picked up the glass and brought it to her lips. She studied the potion with mistrust, then turned her head. "You need this badly," he said. "Don't make me force you."

  She took a tentative sip but he kept it pouring into her mouth until it was gone. It tasted hot and strangely delicious—like brandy, molasses, and unidentifiable spices, all ending in a hot, burning fire in her stomach.

  He watched her eyes lower, but he didn't expect to see those pools very often this night. A night that had now begun, he saw, seeing nightfall darkening the room. While the quilt hid her naked beauty from him, he felt the maddening tease of her small form held against him, the growing torment of it. Heat gathered every place her soft form nestled against his, hardly the least of it being the place where the curve of her buttocks touched the hard shaft of his desire. He half wished for her own innocence that kept her ignorant of the threat.

  The long hair fell in a stream off his arm, too, and he could not stop touching it, this hair that covered her marks. What if he had caught sight of them? A pointless but compelling game, he knew. Until suddenly he remembered her hair in his dream, long like a rope and the color of burnt sable, it was all he ever got to see of her. Had it been Juliet? Dear God, but she had to be ...

  The questions still pressed on his thoughts; he knew he had to wait until the morrow, but still he wished to force some things from his mind. One of these questions arose from the image of Juliet courageously placing herself in front of that boy, the same boy who tried to abandon her minutes later.

  That boy left her alone and defenseless against a group of men without so much as raising a hand in her defense. . . . Where was he as she was being so badly abused, and if she kept him ignorant—if ignorance was an excuse, a concession he'd not willingly make—why didn't she tell him? Why didnt she appeal to someone for help? Which in turn led him to wonder what threats Stoddard had used to terrorize her—

  Garrett closed his eyes, a futile attempt to shut out the unpleasant emotions aroused by this stream of thoughts. A powerful sweeping warmth came between them, one he felt but could not begin to explain. She had suffered dearly from the dark power and force woven into his being, he knew, a force that had claimed her long before he could know what he did. Yet the very same force brought Stod-dard's death. Aye, fate wanted a heavy price for their joining. Yet if she was this girl haunting his dreams, then after seeing her slender back and knowing the vicious sadism her uncle was capable of, he could not help but wonder if by Stoddard's death her very life had been saved.

  The next thought came out loud without his realizing it at first: "You must have hated him very much."

  She brought her eyes to his face. How strange that she knew exactly what he asked, that it seemed natural that he know. "No," she whispered softly, shaking her head. "I didn't .... I think I rather thought of him much like the pious think of the devil: I could not fathom his malevolence; I did not try. It seemed too large to attach simple human sentiments to."

  And so Garrett first glimpsed the poetry of her mind, though the exact meaning of those words were not at first clear to him, not until Vespa leapt onto her lap. Juliet started with the surprise of it. Watching as she reached a trembling hand through the quilt to touch the small cat's silky white fur, Garrett had the strangest sense that the cat meant a good deal to her. He saw his own great love of creatures in the touch of her hand, but there was something more, too, something revealed in her voice touched with tears again as she asked: "Is she your cat? Does she belong to you?"

  "As much as any creature belongs to another."

  Juliet petted Vespa
until the cat curled into a purring ball of contentment. A strange heat began to fill her, moving through her limbs, and she voiced her thoughts out loud, only vaguely aware she did so. "I had a great many cats at the bakery when I was a young girl. I have always loved them so. There is such comfort in touching them, their own pleasure returned twice more to us, I think."

  Garrett watched her carefully, knowing she didn't realize the potion was taking effect. She stopped shivering and bit by bit relaxed in his arms. Her face flushed with the heat growing between them and her eyes, God those eyes, filled with a sadness touched by terror as she remembered something. "What thoughts are running through your mind now?"

  She shook her head slowly. " Tis just that I haven't laid my hand on a cat for ... for so long now. They made Clarissa sneeze and my uncle"—her voice lowered more— "he would shoot them when he saw one." "Oh, love-"

  She bit her lip and tears filled her eyes but never fell. Garrett wondered, how tears could fill her eyes but stop there, as if the sadness was too deep to surface.

  "I tried not to want one .... I did try ... and I ... I didn't mean to," she slipped into a strange incoherency as she remembered the kitten she found. "I found her one day in the stables. She was so small and orange and sweet, shy, but not to me. She met me on the walks I was allowed each day, and I'd spend my minutes petting her, feeding her small scraps stolen from the supper table. She was for her short life a sad joy to me, reminding me of the happier times of my life and I . . .1 remember I tried not to love her, as if I knew or was afraid of doing so—"

  "He found out. Someone must have told him. That very day he called me down from my room. We shall go for a walk, he said to me, and find us this cat I've been told you are feeding. I was so frightened, and I tried to dissuade him, saying I would get rid of her myself, and oh, please, for mercy sake, just don't shoot her. He said he wouldn't shoot her if I called her to us. I was so relieved I thanked him over and over again as I called her to come to us. He picked her up with two fingers and told me to follow him. I thought he would set her outside the area, but no, he headed towards the kennels—the kennels," her voice lowered to a small gasp and her eyes grew wide, staring off into the darkness of the room as she remembered. Garrett braced, afraid himself—a grown man in his twenty-ninth year and he was afraid to hear the awful end of the story of a young girl's kitten. "The kennels where he had a dozen dogs, each mad and miserable and ferocious, trapped as they were in those small cages. He never said what he would do and I watched, not believing until the moment he opened the cage. Then he screamed at me to watch but I couldn't... I couldn't, and I just knelt in the dust, covering my ears until nightfall when Stella finally found me—"