by Alison Aimes
She forced her eyes to remain narrowed with disgust. Inside, her façade was cracking, a different kind of heat overtaking her.
“W-why you not beat?” She could not help the rush of words. Or the desperation that shaded her tone.
His hand stilled, the intensity of his stare as tangible as a finger’s touch. “A little pain so you can shut down? No. I prefer you with me every step of the way.”
She shuddered.
His smile widened.
In the previous scuffles, she hadn’t noticed what made his savage eyes so eerie. Bright green around the pupil, they were edged by a circle of gold as beautiful as the sacred stain used to bring the Ancestors’ teachings to life, but it was the outer ring of black that showed his true self, revealing the dark spirit within.
“Anazi is a strange word.” Relentless, he trailed the pelt down her neck and over her ribs, his extraordinary muscles shifting beneath his skin, his touch featherlight. “Are your people originally from New Earth?”
He was trying to get her to talk, to spill things she shouldn’t.
“My guess?” He skimmed the fur over her other armpit and up the inside of her arm, making skin she’d never noticed come roaring to life. “I think your kind arrived here long before the wars while there was still substantial space travel.”
Her stomach pitched. He was closer to the truth than he knew.
His hand dipped lower. The silky wet fur glided over her belly and mons and then across the tops of her thighs.
A fire was building inside her, liquifying her insides like whalh metal when thrust into the forge.
A whimper lodged in her throat as he dragged the material along the back of her knees and calves.
“It’s getting hard to think, isn’t it? Harder even to hold yourself up?” His dark voice was her anchor and her torment. His knowledge of exactly what was happening soothing her even as it made her feel helpless and small.
“I learned from the best.” He skimmed the soft fur along the rise of her buttocks and she trembled harder. “I might have spent my work rotations training to be a warrior, but I spent my nights at the underground pleasure district.” His blunt fingertips slipped beneath a knot fastened just beneath her chest and he moved it slightly, the slight shift in pressure sending a rush of blood to her breasts, making the punished areas all the more sensitive.
She didn’t understand so many of his words, but her body responded nonetheless. Her nipples swelled, suddenly aching and desperate for some kind of relief—that never came.
“I absorbed. Experimented. Refined.” His tone was almost conversational, but the way he studied each of her body’s reactions was the opposite: intense. His emerald gaze attuned to every response she tried to hide. It was as frightening as it was addictive.
“I know exactly where to place my ropes to maximize pain—or pleasure.” He dragged the pelt just beneath the lines of his harness, the mix of rough and gentle only inflaming her need. “I understand exactly what a body can take before it shatters in agony, or arousal. We’re going to work our way there together.”
Together. There was something almost mesmerizing about his words and the way he mastered her.
He was in control. Clothed, while she was naked and bound in rope. Dry, while she was wet and shivering. Calm and calculating, while she quivered and panted.
Like wet Dragath clay, he was molding her into a mess of raw sensations, her hair matted to her forehead, her ears twitching, her nipples shimmering hard points, her body streaked with patterned stripes of clean skin and smeared dirt.
She would be broken apart, reduced to the wild thing he’d called her.
For all she’d endured at Talg’s command, she had never experienced anything like this.
“You won’t climax until I allow it. I won’t allow it,” the soft, slick pelt dipped between her thighs to tease her swollen center, “until you give me what I need.”
“I don’t…I can’t.” Her mind fragmented as the agonizing burn consumed her alive. She didn’t even know what climaxing was and yet she wanted desperately for him to allow it. Anything to stop the fire ripping through her.
“Beg me.” His voice had dropped to a near growl. “Like those missing females begged you.” He paused, his expression hardening. “But you didn’t leave them with their families, did you?”
Whack. Her wet pelt slapped against the outside of her breast, making a squelching sound that shocked more than it stung.
Her spine arched, her breath rushing out as sensation zipped from her tender breast to her core, a wave of pleasure that threatened to drag her under. Worse, with every movement, the rough ropes dug deeper into the flesh, making her blood pound hotter, as if there was a direct line from the press of his ropes to her core.
“You didn’t listen to their pleas.” Whack. He repeated the light slap. Her body shook, every nerve roaring to life as he mastered her flesh.
“N-no.”
“Good captives get rewards.” Satisfaction gleamed in his monstrous green eyes as he pushed the fur between her thighs once more. “Bad captives suffer.”
Whack. This time the wet pelt slapped her swollen folds.
Pride gone, she cried out, her hips thrusting in humiliating time with the slap of the fur. Frantic need driving her to chase after the sensation she both hated and craved.
“You still with me, wild thing?” He worked the pelt faster between her thighs. “You still so sure you can withstand?”
Her breath caught on a sob. No, she was no longer so sure.
Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. Her arms and legs shook. Her belly quivered. The terrible heat inside her a firestorm threatening to burn her alive.
She had to do something before she gave in and begged him never to stop.
“They dead,” she screamed.
8
Grif rocked back on his heels. “Dead?”
His captive’s breath came hard and fast, her gorgeous tits heaving. A single tear dripped from her flushed cheek onto her swollen nipple. “Yes. The slaves. I-I killed them.”
“You killed them? You? Alone?”
“Yes.” Her gaze never met his. “I-I am fault.”
Exactly what he’d expected to hear. Except, now, when she was finally claiming to be what he’d assumed, he no longer believed that, either.
“If you’re a killer why didn’t you take me out when you had the chance in the pit?”
“I-I…” She scrambled to respond. “I need to escape. Spear broken. I a-afraid and just…act.”
His bullshit radar wailed loudly. “The spear might have broken, but it was still deadly. You could have stabbed it through my heart or my eye. Instead you smashed it against my temple.”
She blinked up at him.
He pushed further. “Same goes for our first meeting. You could have skewered me with your spear. Instead, you left it to 223’s men to take me down.”
He’d recognized the inconsistencies at the time, but they hadn’t seemed as significant as the acts of treachery she had committed. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
“I-I…” that kitten tongue of hers peeked out, swiped at her lips. “I—”
“Don’t bother.” He cut her off. “You’re lying. You don’t have the killer’s instinct. I see that now.” He took a shot. “I think you’ve never struck down another soul in your life.”
The slight widening of her eyes told him he’d scored a direct hit.
“I’m right.” He leaned in. “Like recognizes like and what a predator like me scents in you is something else altogether.”
She shuddered at the implication.
“Which means,” he continued, “those women may very well still be alive.”
Her face blanked, but it wasn’t defense enough. Her expanding pupils, an involuntary reflex, told him all he needed to know. Plus, she had a tell. Her ears twitched every damn time she tried to hide a strong reaction from him.
He was right. The missing females were still alive.
Something close to joy slammed through him.
Melody and Hope could still get their mother back. He could do better for them than closure and its fucking forever pain.
The possibility of becoming second-in-command also just got a whole lot closer.
“That’s good, wild thing,” he told her, all the while reminding himself not to get too far ahead of himself. “The fact that they’re alive means you’ve got a chance at making it out alive, too.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “But for every heartbeat you draw this interrogation out and they suffer, you’ll suffer, too.”
“You not know what suffering is.” Her pretty eyes flashed with defiance, turning them an even more vivid blue.
He was annoyed that he noticed.
He needed to get a grip. She might not have killed the missing females, but she’d still taken them. She was still holding them prisoner for some unknown purpose.
Just because she looked innocent as hells bound in his ropes, thrust her hips at him as if she’d never been touched in her young life, and she hadn’t killed the females, didn’t change what she was: an enemy that needed to be broken.
“Why are you keeping them alive? For what reason?”
Silence.
“I will have my answers, wild thing,” he told her. “I will figure out what makes you tick and I will take you apart. All my interrogation subjects cave in the end.”
She snarled, those small incisors flashing against her plump upper lip. “I figure you out, too.” She mirrored his intent stare, studying him as he did her. “You no kill me. Not such predator, either.”
His laugh caught him by surprise. She was a lot less compliant when the anazi wasn’t between her thighs working her swollen clit.
“Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because you’re still alive, I’m harmless. I’m not. I’m a killer through and through.” He held up his scarred hands, the humor leaving as quickly as it had come. “These have slaughtered more men that I can remember—and one I’ll never forget.”
He wasn’t sure why he told her. Or even why he’d mentioned the training he’d undertaken. He usually worked in relative silence. But there was something about the honesty of her body’s responses that had him wanting to give a little back in return.
Her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat at his claim.
“You’re right to be scared. You’ve been caught by the worst of beasts.” His gaze drilled into hers. “Lucky for you, I’m not interested in your death right now. Before we’re done, though, you might wish I’d made it so easy.”
Her ears twitched. He had to fight not to stroke the damn things.
Where the hells had that impulse come from?
He cleared his throat. “We’ve established you’re not a killer. You are, however, a liar.” He hooked the harness at her waist and pulled her toward him, hips and pussy first, her bound arms stretching as her back arched. “With critical information about people I care very much about. That puts you in a problematic position.”
He tugged the waist rope right and left, a barely noticeable flicker of movement, but the impact was intense.
She moaned, her body shuddering.
As intended. The small shift increased the blood flow and sent the cords rubbing against her already sensitive, slippery cunt.
“Move and the burn will only grow worse.” A tiny shift and he repositioned the rope once more.
Her thighs trembled, her body shook. He could see her fighting the impulse, and yet her legs spread wider, her hips thrusting toward him. The pleasure too intense to ignore.
She sobbed. “I-I tell you nothing more.”
“Wrong.” He plucked at the rope again, a musician playing his favorite song. “You’ve already told me so much. Soon you’ll give up everything.”
A tapping noise echoed through the cave.
For the first time he saw something besides disgust, desire, and defiance in her gaze. He saw panic.
“N-no hurt.” She clearly knew more than he did about what was out there.
“Quiet.” He seized his ax. “I can’t protect you if I can’t assess the threat.”
Her eyes went wide, her startled gaze probing his, as if she’d learned something from him rather than the other way around.
He fought the climb of heat up the back of his neck. Of course, he had to protect her. She had critical information he needed.
Still, maybe he’d been a bit too vigorous in his defense.
Habit. It didn’t help that she was small and innocent-looking, or that she shuddered with pleasure every time he brought his hand near her skin or the rope tightened against her cunt.
The knocking sound came again, a welcome distraction from his thoughts.
The odd noise was followed by the drag of something sharp against the rocks.
Widening his stance, he gripped his weapon tighter. Didn’t sound human. “What’s out there?”
“Sharluff.”
Well, now everything was crystal clear. “Explain.”
“Sharluff, pack service guide.” Her chains rattled as she strained toward him, genuine concern in her voice, her pointed ears twitching, suddenly a thousand times more cooperative than she’d been moments ago. “L-looking for me. Not danger to you.”
Was she talking about the massive six-legged, feathered creature she’d had with her at the camp? If so, that thing hadn’t appeared harmless. He remembered a tanklike body with a sharp beak and even sharper claws.
Worse, it had tracked its owner straight to the hideout, creating an easy path for someone else to follow.
Weapon raised, he stalked closer to the big rock blocking the exit.
“What you do?”
Ignoring her, he pressed his ear to a small crack, the swish of a big body pacing, the occasional peck of rock, and the musky scent of animal unmistakable.
He listened for more clues. He didn’t hear anything human, but if it was someone as well trained as he was, he wouldn’t.
Only one way to find out for sure.
Propping his ax to the side, he gripped the edge of the rock.
“H-he innocent.” Her tone was sharper than before, her worried expression the opposite of the evil villain she was supposed to be. “L-leave alone.”
He briefly considered using her concern to his advantage, but dismissed the idea. The animal was too much of an immediate threat, its presence equivalent to a neon sign saying look for my captive here. He needed to get rid of it before it attracted attention.
Putting his back into it, he slid the stone along the track. Slowly.
“No hurt!”
Her concern for the animal was almost touching, but then again, several corrupt, murderous Councilmen back on New Earth were known vegetarians.
A bellow issued from the creature. As if it had caught the sound of his master’s voice along with her scent and wanted in.
Perfect.
He inched the stone farther to the side. He wanted an opening large enough for the creature to slip its head through, but too narrow for the rest of its body to follow.
Right on cue, a brown beak shoved through the crack, nostrils at the end of the beak flaring wide.
Grif reached for his ax.
“Females not hurt. Th-they alive and o-okay.” His captive’s words reached him in a rush. “Used for mining whalh metal. N-nothing else.”
His arm stalled in midstrike. Could that be true? Could that really be why she’d taken them?
A sharp piercing whistle erupted from his captive, followed by a series of clicks.
The creature’s beak reared upward, scrapping the rocks. Grif jumped back just in time, barely missing getting lanced in the stomach.
Recovering, he swept his weapon downward.
Not fast enough. The beak disappeared.
“Shit.” Ignoring the shouts from his captive, Grif gripped the rock once more and slid it open enough to slip through.
The grounds in front of the cave were
empty.
He surveyed the surrounding area. His interrogation spot was three quarters of the way up the cliffside, perched on a barely there, inhospitable narrow lip of rock. He’d chosen this site precisely because it didn’t look like the kind of cave anyone in their right mind would investigate, much less set foot in.
Unless you were this Sharluff. Then you found it with ease.
And left just as effortlessly.
Several large, dragging paw prints scuffed the sand, a clear indicator of just how fast the creature had taken off.
Too fast to follow easily. Not that he couldn’t track it, but it would take time. Time better spent elsewhere.
Reentering the cave, he locked eyes with his captive. “So, the missing females are alive and being forced to mine for metal? That’s a very good start, but there’s far more I need to learn.”
Her chest rose and fell, but she didn’t answer. Now that the beast was gone, so was her cooperation.
“I bet it feels pretty good to know your beast got away.” He slid the rock into place, blanketing the cave in shadows. “Just remember though…you’re still here.”
9
Her breathing rushed out in low, animalistic pants.
He’d moved so fast, altering his ropes, her struggles useless even as he’d taken her wrist from the ceiling restraints, and re-bound them together clasped behind her neck. Then, he’d looped more rope through both elbows and threaded it through a circular chain in the ceiling. The new position left her even more off balance, her upper body exposed as her back arched and her elbows were forced upward.
With her legs still spread wide, the rope harness pulled tighter against her core with every pull of her wrists.
It was torment. It was pleasure like she’d never known.
“This is a favorite position of mine.” He’s stepped back to survey his work, the way his gaze drank in the cross of ropes making her core throb harder. “It’s elegant and effective. The ropes perfectly placed to press on your erogenous zones and amplify your reactions. It also leaves you completely open to whatever I want to do.” His tone was once more matter of fact. “What you’re feeling now will only get more intense as the blood flows and your body heats.”