by Alison Aimes
“I-I am in comfort in water, but…” She held up her bound wrists. “This is how pack p-punish and cleanse Gazi.” She swallowed hard. “Hold under water. I-I prefer beating as punishment. P-please.”
Her captor stilled. The lines in his forehead deepened until they were sharp, angry slashes across his forehead.
“Fuck.” He cleared his throat, his hold still firm as his wild green eyes bored into hers. “I just wanted us to cool off and get clean.” He blew out a breath. Unwinding the rope at her wrist, his thumb gliding over the faint marks in her skin. “I’ll make you a promise, wild thing, and you know by now, I always do what I say, right?”
She gave a nod. She did know that. She might not trust much about him, but he had proven this to be true.
“No matter what goes on between us, I will never strike you. I will never hold you under water. I will never cause you extreme physical pain. In return, you’ve got to agree to trust me on this—and react in ways that won’t risk yourself.”
Shocked, she turned his words over in her mind. He couldn’t mean it. Not the promise not to hurt her. Nor the suggestion that he cared about preventing her from harming herself. And yet he had never lied to her. Not once.
“Why you make promise?”
“I know what it is to survive that kind of brutality. I refuse to have you fucking terrified of me.”
It took her a moment to find her voice. “H-how you know that brutality?”
Of all the unfathomable things he’d just said to her, she found that part especially impossible to comprehend. He was so strong and powerful.
“I was a little boy once.” Again, it was as if he knew her thoughts. “My sister and I had to deal with an asshole who was a lot like Talg,” His eyes dulled as he spoke, the vivid green leaching away. “I survived him. My sister did not.”
As if her body had a will of its own, it leaned forward, an unwelcome tie cinching the connection between them tighter. He might be a savage Other from a different world, but they were not so unalike, after all.
He, too, knew suffering.
“My father liked to hurt my sister and me.” He swallowed hard, looked away. “It’s why I am how I am. The monster inside…the one you see? It’s because of him.” He cleared his throat. “Now you know one of my secrets, too.”
“I sorry.” Her heart ached. She’d never had direct kin, but how much more terrible would it have been to be tortured alongside a loved one and know their agony? To know exactly how they suffered and be helpless to protect them?
“It’s not your fault.” His arms wrapped tighter around her. “I’m beginning to suspect none of this fucking is.”
Until now she had only seen him as her enemy. For the first time, she saw him as far more.
“You’re sweet, aren’t you, Nayla? As sweet as you look.”
She started to shake her head. Gazi were defective. She—
He gripped her chin, his finger wet and warm against her skin. “You have worth.”
She stilled.
“Give me your promise,” he demanded, “so I can give you mine.”
The promise. She replayed the words in her mind. He hadn’t promised to stop touching her to the point of madness or pushing her to give him the information he wanted, but he had offered her a bargain she’d never expected him to make.
“I promise.”
His eyes crinkled. His lips pulled back. Two small indents appeared on his cheeks. This time it reached his eyes, making them an even richer green.
Her heart stuttered. Even for a flat-tooth, he was beautiful. His soulful eyes and dark hair a shocking, stunning contrast.
“I’m glad you trusted me enough to give me your promise.” He carried her closer to the edge of the pool. The water lapping at her waist, then her hips. His skin so hot against hers she was surprised it didn’t sizzle. “Before we’re through, wild thing, you’ll trust me with everything.”
Heart heavy, she looked away. As much as some twisted part of her might like that idea, she wasn’t sure it could ever happen.
Her captor might be a worthy male and far better than any Other she’d encountered, but he was only one among many. All the Others she’d come across were worse than larvesh vermin. They had to be eradicated. Her pack would not survive otherwise. Already, the Others had destroyed so many and stolen critical pack territories and main food sources.
The future of the pack depended on her staying silent, and the health and well-being of the whole was always more important than one soul, even her own.
16
“W-what you doing?” Nayla rose to her feet, her voice sharp.
Grif didn’t even look up. The hem of her dirty pelt dragging in the dirt, he stalked toward the fire.
He’d been mulling over his options since he’d carried her back to the main room and put her in front of the fire to dry off, not even bothering with so much as an ankle restraint.
It was strange to recall the first time he’d seen Nayla in the pelt and how wrong he’d been about the female obscured inside, the one hiding from him even now.
But that withholding was about to come to an end.
What had happened at the pool had decided him. Nayla needed what was about to happen as much as he did. Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind—and he could tell after what he’d learned about the hell she’d suffered that his usual tactics would never break the loggerhead between them.
It was time for something else altogether.
He reached the fire.
“Th-that mine.” She skittered toward him, her hand outstretched.
“It’s ruined. You’ll never wear it again.”
“Yes. I wear it.” She nodded, her voice rising. “M-must.”
The interrogator in him roared in triumph, his nostrils flaring at the scent of weakness. Her New English deteriorated when she was upset. He’d noticed that about her. Hells, he noticed everything about her.
He scanned the rag, turning it over in his hands. Behind him, the fire crackled and hissed, its heat warming his back.
He’d initially assumed the shroud was a crude protection used to shield herself from the planet’s inmates and hot suns, but like everything with Nayla, he was learning many of his assumptions didn’t come close to the horrible truth.
He suspected now that the ruined pelt was far more important than it looked—at least to her.
“Tell me where the missing females are and I won’t burn it.”
“D-don’t.” Chest heaving, she stutter-stepped in his direction, the anguish in her tiny features enough to spark another pang of guilt low in Grif’s belly. He pushed it aside.
Interrogators used whatever was at their disposal. And, despite all she’d been through, she wasn’t simply some poor innocent. She’d taken a mother away from her children.
If he wanted to protect Nayla, and save the missing females, he needed to be the brutal monster he’d been molded to be.
Holding Nayla in that pool, feeling her tremble in sheer panic against him, had only driven that home. Dragging things out would only hurt her more. He needed to end this here and now.
“P-please.” She stretched out an arm, but she didn’t tell him what he needed most to hear.
“I do not make hollow threats.” He tossed it into the flames.
“No!” She dove for it.
“Nayla!” He caught her in time, his arm banding around her waist as he yanked her away from the fire.
“No!” She screamed again.
He’d thought her reaction at the bathing spring was bad. This was a whole higher level of anguish.
Kicking and screaming, she fought his hold.
He held tight.
All this over a dirty pelt. But the interrogator in him recognized the signs.
She’d been so strong until now, nearly unbreakable, but there were thresholds in each person, small fissures that served as trigger points that could easily be ripped into large, gaping holes—and, like at the pool, he’d just stu
mbled on another one of his girl’s.
This time, however, she was safe and dry and in no danger of physical harm.
Dragging her farther away from the fire, he pushed her up against the wall, pinning her to it with his body. He had no doubt that if he let her go, she’d dive for the pelt again and burn herself in the process.
“No, no, no!” Her screams echoed off the walls as the edges of the pelt curled and burned.
He gripped her chin, forcing her to lock eyes with him. “You wear what I say you wear. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Cruel? Maybe. Ruthless? For sure. But he needed to find the Achilles heel that would have her spilling her secrets.
He was honest enough to admit he also wanted to lance the wounds he sensed in her so she could heal.
She believed she deserved to be punished and rejected. He knew because he’d seen the same certainty in his sister’s gaze. Raina’s body might have survived that first rape by his father, but her spirit hadn’t. She’d stopped fighting. Stopped caring. Stopped thinking she deserved anything but more pain, seeking it out even when it wasn’t warranted. And he’d been too young and too weak to save her from their father, much less herself.
But he wasn’t now. So, until he made Nayla see otherwise, he’d never ease her torment, or get her to tell him what she knew.
She’d just suffer until she broke, and that he refused to allow.
She shook in his hold, her gorgeous blue eyes even brighter as rage sparked within, her small hands clenching and unclenching by her sides. “You ruin me. D-destroy everything.”
“That’s not true. I burned a pelt.”
“Talg not let me back without anazi. Everything I done not matter. I stay outcast forever.”
“Fucking Talg, again. That bastard keeps popping up. He isn’t worthy of your loyalty. That pelt was a thing. I’m trying to save people here, Nayla. You included. Help me fix this situation before those females start dying, my people blame you, and this whole situation gets more screwed up.”
Her head snapped back, her pretty features twisting with rage. “Save people?” With a scream, she pummeled his chest. “My people dying! Starving. Because of Other destruction.” Her voice cracked. “You think you only one trying save people? I try save mine, too. You ruin everything! Without anazi, there no hope Talg remove outcast status and a-accept me as pack member.”
He held onto his cool with a ruthless grip. “I’m sorry for whatever suffering your people are enduring, but my people didn’t realize they were harming yours.”
“Lies.” She shoved at him, trying to escape his grasp. “Others destroy.”
He seized her flailing wrists. Pinned them to his chest. “Either way, those missing females don’t deserve what you did to them. They should not be used as revenge. They need to come home.”
“Home? To beatings? Chains?” Her voice shook. “Rutting? Pain? Never!”
“I don’t want to hurt them. I want to save them.”
“I see how your people treat females. I know truth.”
The hair at the back of his neck rose.
Another suspicion confirmed. Originally, he’d assumed Nayla had a broad, nuanced view of his kind and she saw them as he did, some good, some bad. It was a stupid error that was glaringly obvious now that he learned the extent of her isolation.
All she knew of his kind was what she’d seen for herself at the camps—and maybe experienced firsthand. She’d said her father was an Other, but never what the relationship was between her parents. Grif had a feeling it hadn’t been a love match.
No wonder she thought every Other was a savage brute. His treatment of her had only confirmed the worst.
“All Others are not like the ones you’ve seen. The females you saw were like me, prisoners. Where I live there are many females who are free and unharmed. At the settlement, they are protected and cared for. They have loved ones who miss them.”
“Lies,” she hissed. “You say things trick me.”
“The majority of my kind on this planet are bad, it’s true. But there are some that are not. There are some who cherish females. Where I live they are not chained or forced to do what they don’t want to do. We are part of a group of Others trying to build a life here, same as you and your pack.”
“At expense of my people.”
His frown deepened. “We do not have to be a threat to your pack and we will not hurt the returned women. We will protect them.”
She bucked against his hold. “Like you done me?”
“No, not like you,” he growled. “I thought you were the enemy.”
“I am enemy,” she shouted. “Now, in revenge, you destroy me.” Then, she broke. Her body flailing as she sobbed, her cries louder than the crackle of the burning pelt. Keening, mournful sounds. Childlike. Animalistic. Her agony so near the surface it scraped across his skin. Sharp enough to have him bleeding right alongside.
Without warning, she flew at him, fangs bared. “I tell you nothing more!”
He dodged easily. Pulling her arms behind her back, he transferred her wrists into one hand and locked her body against his. “You are not to blame for the loss of your anazi.”
She thrashed and screamed louder. A true wild thing. “You know nothing. Nothing!”
She’d only hurt herself if he let her continue.
Jaw tight, he dragged her to his rope, grabbing it with his free hand while he kept her imprisoned with the other.
“Enough.” He snapped the rope. Still not entirely dry, the sound was sharper and harder than usual.
She jerked to attention, her gaze flying to his. Her sobs cut off.
“Good girl.” There wasn’t much anymore that bothered him, but each of her tears struck like daggers through the chest. “Now, you will put your arms down and then you will listen to what I have to say. Otherwise, we will begin the next session before you’ve had the rest you earned.”
Her ears quivered as her chin lifted. “Fuck. You!”
Something she’d clearly picked up from 223’s camps.
“Wrong answer.” He coiled the rope into a lasso even as the twisted part of him howled with relief. He’d take her anger and defiance over despair any rotation.
He didn’t know why or when it had happened, but getting the information without shattering her spirit had become his top priority.
The primal urge to prove he was strong enough to be there for her beat like a drum through his veins.
“No.” She tried to fight him off, but it was impossible. He was three times her size. All her fight did was knock her off balance, sending her toppling into him, her soft breasts smashing into his chest as he took firm control of her arms and locked them behind her back.
He roped her wrist to forearm in the next heartbeat, a diamond wrap with jagged edges as beautiful as her broken pieces.
“Rasketh deske, Other.” She was back to being a spitfire.
Hold as gentle as he could make it, he half carried, half pulled her across the room until they were in front of some of his other supplies. Hooking his foot behind the leg of a rock bench, he dragged it closer to the fire. No easy feat with her hissing and bucking against him.
Still, it was worth it. The bench would do just right for what he had in mind.
“Easy now.” He pressed the flat of his hand to her lower back. Despite her resistance, it was easy to fold her over the bench. A heartbeat later, he let the rope flow over her skin, creating a star harness that wrapped around her waist and her chest, restraining her to the bench even as it worshiped her flesh.
She shrieked.
He took a step back. The urge to fuck her a primitive roar in his brain.
Golden skin lit by fire. Round ass in the air. Legs spread and restrained at the ankles. Her wrists, waist, and chest were tied and roped, too. Bound in an intricate diamond design that mirrored the complicated knots twisting deeper into his soul. Her sweet, swollen clit—still engorged from their last session—peeked out at him from the spread f
olds of her wet pussy. Her hair was a wild, tangled halo around her angelic face while her skin flushed with fury and she struggled against his bounds.
It was hard for him to believe he’d once thought she’d be easy to tame. She was so much stronger than she looked.
But even someone as forged in fire and pain as she was needed another to take charge once in a while. Because something was seething inside her, something they both needed to wade through if he was going to wipe that distrust and suspicion from her gaze and discover what he needed to know.
He was man enough to stay in control, to do what needed to be done. For her.
He moved to face her, crouching down to her eye level. “You ready to calm down and answer my questions?”
“Rasketh deske, tuveshta!” The sharp bite of each word made it clear she was only winding up.
He ran a finger from the base of her delicate neck down the bumps of her spine to the perfect crease of her ass. “I’m going to need you to speak New English, wild thing.”
Standing once more, he moved out of her line of vision and raised his hand.
17
Nayla waited for the sharp bite of pain. Strapped down over the hard bench, she was so filled with hate and despair she doubted she’d even feel the rutting or beating.
She knew both were coming. This wasn’t the first time she’d been punished like this. It was the first time, however, she welcomed it. Craved the obliteration.
It was no less than she deserved. For getting caught in the Other’s pit. For her traitorous responses to a nonpack male. For revealing more than she should to the enemy. For imagining, even for a heartbeat, that someone from the same people as her father would ever be anything but a violent monster.
She was a fool.
Her captor had destroyed her when he burned her anazi. Ruined her chances of ever gaining pack acceptance.
His words were lies. His praise, false. He didn’t really think she was good or courageous or worthy. Who would? She was Gazi. A mistake. A defect. The blended blood that pulsed inside her veins made her an outsider in both worlds. The Ancients had decreed it so.