When he stepped away, chill air passed over her skin. Her gaze rose to meet with his and she found once again that he was watching her closely, expression thoughtful.
“I understand that you have had to remain strong in the face of true adversity.” His voice was speculative but there was little warmth there. “And you have carried a weight heavier than most could bear.”
A flutter of emotion stirred inside of her, making her momentarily forget that she was tied to the chair. At least, until he spoke again.
“But what you sorely need is discipline.”
Momentarily wise, Ianthe chose not to respond and stared out into the darkness, waiting for him to just be done with whatever it was he was going to do. To her surprise, he sat down again and picked up his fork.
He speared a small piece of the fish and then brought it to her lips. “Open.”
She let him place the morsel on her tongue, her eyes wary.
“And you will learn to control that mouth, even if it’s the last thing that you ever do.”
A spark of fear shot through her, but Ianthe didn’t recoil as he leaned closer. The napkins at her wrists were not intended to be a true restraint, she could get out of them if she really wanted to. No, it was meant to be a physical reminder that she was under his control and she was choosing not to fight.
Fighting wouldn’t do her any good.
Her hands curled around the wooden arms of the chair as he stroked the back of one finger down her cheek.
“Have you had enough?” Legion asked. He glanced down at her half-empty plate with a raised eyebrow, but his words were heavy with additional meaning.
She just shrugged, avoiding his gaze.
Stroking fingers moved down the angle of her chin to trace the fragile skin in the hollow of her throat where her pulse beat like a trapped bird. When she swallowed, his palm made an uncomfortable pressure against her throat.
An unrecognizable emotion swirled in his eyes like storm clouds over the wasted forests of the Forbidden Zone.
“You need this,” he murmured, voice rough with barely concealed desire. “I need it, too.”
Legion kissed her hard, pressing down so his teeth bit into her lips. He ate at her mouth, like he would crawl inside of her or devour her alive.
When he pulled away, she instinctively tried to follow him and was caught up short by the restraints.
“So impetuous,” he said with a dark chuckle. “Patience is a virtue.”
She bit her tongue on an acid reply. He clearly wanted to provoke a response out of her so she deliberately kept her mouth shut, wholly unwilling to provide him the satisfaction.
Reaching past her shoulder, Legion picked up one the precious candles and brought it closer. The tiny flame flickered and shifted as he slowly held it up in front of her face. Unlike the steady gleam of a glowlight, the candle seemed to have a life of its own, dancing from the small force of air as he spoke.
“Do you know what this is?”
“It‘s a candle, obviously." She glared at him, momentarily forgetting her determination not to respond. “I attended the education program, you know. I’m not slow-witted.”
He raised an eyebrow at her tone but did not chastise her. “My apologies. I’ll assume then that you also know why I prefer them to the glowlights.”
“Because you’re wasteful, just like everyone else in the upper levels.”
“That’s a fair point. But it’s not entirely correct.”
Legion tilted the squat candle closer so she could see the pool of wax that had gathered under the flame. The way it moved was almost mesmerizing and she imagined it like a tiny ocean with its own perfect waves, cast in blood red.
She pulled her gaze away from the candle flame. When her attention returned to his face, she found that he was again staring at her. She had never in her life been this much the focus of someone’s undivided attention. It unnerved her, but it also made it hard to remember that they were not the only two people left in the entire world. Any words she wanted to speak died in her throat.
“Glowlights are utilitarian. They have little use beyond providing light. The same cannot be said for a candle. Fire is what first allowed humanity to create true civilization, you know. It is primal. It creates and it destroys.” His free hand gently caressed one of her bound wrists. “This is a reminder to keep very still. It would be a shame to ruin that lovely dress.”
Ianthe swallowed hard against the protest forming in her throat. She had some small idea of what he had planned. And she understood that fighting him would only make it worse. She made an involuntary sound, one that was equal parts fear and anticipation.
His hand came up again to stroke the side of her neck, kneading into the tight muscle there until she was forced by her body’s responses to relax the smallest fraction.
She heard the rustling sound of movement at the same moment that a searing hot flash from a few dots of candle wax hit her shoulder. The heat of it overwhelmed her senses, centering everything on the flaring spot as she screeched in pain. For a brief moment, she imagined herself horribly maimed, skin curling and blackened as it burned to the bone.
“The wax feels very hot against your skin, almost burning but not quite.” His voice was calm, full of surety, as if they were discussing the weather and not the fact that he tortured her with hot wax. “Just remember to keep breathing and you’ll be just fine. It’s already better, isn’t?”
Her breath whooshed out of her in a large exhale as she forced the taut muscles of her body to relax. Legion’s observation was correct, bastard that he was, and the shock of pain had already faded to a dull throb. She looked down at her shoulder, expecting the worse, but the skin of her shoulder was only slightly reddened around the blob of wax and did not appear to be broken.
“That hurt,” she bit out, voice full of accusation.
“Relax,” he breathed, a lightly rumbling purr in his throat. He set the candle down so both hands could catch in her hair, pressing and massaging at her scalp. “The first bit always feels worse than it is because you’re not expecting it. You just have to breathe through it.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
His face grew pensive. “I will admit that I enjoy hurting you.” He bent so that their eyes met. “Not in any sort of dramatic way, but the urge is there just the same. I will try to be gentle and sometimes I will fail.”
“Please…”
“But I promise that you will like the things that I do to you. At least, most of the time.”
“I don’t like this,” she spat. He laughed at that, which just made her more aggrieved. “You’re a monster.”
His lips quirked but the expression on his face had sobered. “I’m your monster.”
She didn’t care how many times he said those words, it didn’t make it true.
“Now hold still,” he murmured, picking up the candle again.
The second splash of wax did not hurt nearly as much, perhaps because she was prepared for it. He had also raised the hand holding the candle a small amount higher, giving the wax more time to drip through the air so it cooled faster. Perhaps he was taking pity on her.
She stopped pulling at the restraints on her wrist, forcing herself to relax. Perhaps she could pretend that she was somewhere else, he could force her body but she still controlled her own mind. Her eyes closed as her mind drifted away.
Legion rewarded her attempt to mentally flee with a trail of fire across the skin of her throat. He held the candle low enough to the skin that the flame almost touched her flesh.
Ianthe hissed through her teeth but did not cry out again. “Please, stop this.”
He lifted the straps of her dress so they slid down her shoulders, leaving them bare. Gravity did more of the work as the cloth dipped lower. The bodice was tight enough to partially stay up on its own but revealed enough of her chest to expose a fresh expanse of skin.
His eyes played over her as if he had trouble figuring out which p
atch of flesh to mark next.
“Beg me again.”
She refused to respond as he lifted the candle so it hovered above her barely covered breasts. She squeezed her eyes shut as liquid wax hit the center of her breastbone and slid down the cleft between her breasts and pooled in the little hollow above her stomach.
“I’ll do anything you want.” He watched the gasping pain travel across her face, his expression one of mild interest. “Just beg me for it.”
When she deliberately looked away, strong fingers gripped one of her nipples and squeezed hard. She helped and swung her face back to meet his smirk.
“Not in the mood to beg?” He asked, voice deceptively pleasant. He pushed the dress down the front of her chest so that it pooled around her waist, exposing her bare chest and belly. His gaze flicked downward and a low growl escaped his lips. “Arch your back.”
Her head fell against the back of the chair. She stared up into the black sky as a shock of heat hit her nipples, sending streaks of fire rocketing through her. She moaned, from pain and other things, as her fingers dug into the wooden chair arms.
“Beg me to stop. I won’t until you do.”
Because as always, she was the arbiter of her own destruction. It was the illusion of choice that had trapped her in the first place. He was just setting the hooks in a little deeper by forcing her to give him what he wanted.
Forcing her to submit.
She moaned as another dollop of wax dropped onto the tender skin of her belly.
“Just a little more of that,” he murmured, continue to move the candle in swirls over her skin, making nonsense patterns with the crimson wax. “You look very lovely painted, pet.”
He continued to coat her in wax, seeming impervious to the little moans and shrieks that spilled from her lips. She no longer felt the individual heat of each droplet of wax. Instead, her entire body felt as if it were being warmed by flames as the heat settled into places that wax had not even touched.
As if sensing the change in her, Legion’s low purr changed in pitch and seemed to resonate down to her very bones, calling up something very different from fear.
Confirming her lowest opinion of herself, her body responded to her Alpha’s growl. A puddle of slick leaked from between her thighs even as he upended the candle, spilling a painfully hot glob of wax just above her pubic bone.
“Tell me, little one. What sort of girl gets off on being splashed with hot wax?”
She shook her head at the provocative tone in his voice, so much like the night that they had first met. And suddenly she was back in that moment, so aroused and afraid that it was impossible to separate the two emotions.
“You don’t remember?” he prompted, growling again until her belly tightened in response.
There was no estrous high this time that she could blame for her responses. This was simply how it was between them and he would ensure she understood that.
Her squirming had pushed the dress further down her body, until it gathered around the shadowy hollow between her thighs.
Legion held the candle above her lap, tilted so that a bead of wax suspended on the edge, just sort of falling. The bare skin of her sex twitched in the cool air, anticipating the searing pain to come when the wax hit her flesh.
“Tell me, Ianthe. Tell me what I want to hear and this will all be over. What kind of girl are you?”
He tilted the candle again and she responded without thinking.
“A slut!”
She didn’t mean it, Ianthe told herself. They were only words.
But that didn’t seem to matter to Legion as he set the candle down, a smug smile playing at his lips. One of his hands ripped the napkins away as the other swept across the table, sending plates and glassware crashing to the floor.
Legion plucked her out of the chair as if she weighed nothing at all and then pushed her down onto the table. His growl came immediately after, further preparing her passage that was already coated in slick.
And as much as she wanted to resist, her legs spread of their own accord as her arms rose to meet his looming form.
He would control her: with pain, with pleasure, with the unwilling responses of her body.
“You didn’t win,” she whispered as he entered her. The salty tang of the tears tracking down to her face to catch in the corner of her mouth tasted like lies on her tongue. “I didn’t beg.”
“You will.”
Chapter Ten
“The investigation into Prince Castor’s death has officially been reopened.”
Adrian’s pinched face filled the screen, with the bustle of whatever public terminal station he currently occupied barely visible in the background.
“And that information is important enough to interrupt me at this hour?” Legion had left his sleeping mate in bed, wrung out and exhausted from having unwilling submission inflicted on her over and over again. He was confident that if he could compel her body to accept him often enough that eventually the rest of her would follow. And she was weakening, although slower than he liked. The girl was amazingly strong-willed.
“Tintori’s execution has been indefinitely delayed while he cooperates with investigators. Apparently, he is somehow now willing to identify his co-conspirators despite no official offer of leniency.” Adrian’s lips thinned in displeasure. “Horace Vadona has been identified as a person of interest in the investigation. I understand an order has been placed for his arrest.”
“Truly? Are you sure you did not mishear the name?”
Adrian’s lips thinned. “I’ll ignore the insult to my intelligence and assure you that I speak correctly. My sources were confident that Vadona has been named.”
“That fat knothead is no more a terrorist than King Rolan, himself. He isn’t a physical threat to anything but his dinner plate.” But Horace Vadona was a business associate and another Alpha who often operated outside of the strictest letter of the law in his dealings. And if a man like that could be accused of terrorism then all of them were vulnerable. “Just him alone? Do we believe that he is actually involved with the assassination?”
“The Crown has linked what happened to Castor with this more recent spate of terrorist attacks. Based on what I’ve heard from my contacts, there are some in the Central Command who see this as an opportunity to wrest control from private interests.”
Private interests. That was one word for the handful of ruthless Alphas operating completely outside the bounds of government who truly controlled Pandora. The crown had tried to in the past to wrest control back from the syndicates but to little avail. The corruption ran deep and any attempts to cut it out only spread the infection.
But it seemed King Rolan had become determined to try again.
Legion’s tone had changed to one of wariness. “Are these other attacks — the bombings, truly connected.”
“They are grasping at reeds. But that does not mean real damage can’t be done to our business interests. If Horace is arrested, there is no telling how many more dominoes will fall.”
“Have you discussed this with the Undersecretary.”
“The little toadstool has been refusing my calls for the past several days. He’s hiding behind the shroud of this investigation to avoid his responsibility to the people paying him. If the Crown truly is bent on rooting out corruption, the Undersecretary would obviously want to keep as much distance between us and him as possible.”
“And what of my latest payment?”
“We’ve received the past-due amount with accrued interest.” Adrian pitched his voice lower, careful of being overheard. “But it was transferred from a different account than the usual, one that did not carry the Undersecretary’s name. It’s suspicious.”
“Whose name was on the account?”
“I didn’t recognize it.”
Their business relationship with the Crown, providing the air processers that made most of the city habitable was technically legal, but frankly extortionist. Which was putting i
t mildly. Before his disappearance, the reformer Prince Castor had built a political platform out of dismantling the privatization of public goods. The man had made many enemies with those radical ideas.
But Legion had not considered himself to be one of them. Prince Castor held many fringe ideas about the rights of the underclasses, but those views weren’t shared by anyone with true power.
“Do not claim the funds, for now.” Fear was not an emotion that he recognized himself capable of feeling, but he was able to acknowledge the need for caution. “It may be nothing but the timing of all of this is suspicious. Keep your ears to the ground.”
“Don’t I always?” Adrian asked, expression slightly peevish
“Is there any other news?”
“The attacks have continued, mostly small scale. Central Command has yet to attribute them to any specific group. There have been a handful of deaths, mostly in the lower levels.”
“Do you have any theories?”
“I’ve heard rumors, that’s all.” Adrian shrugged, although the concern did not ease from his expression. “Rebel groups always rise for a time before being stamped out.”
“Has there been an identifiable pattern in the incidents?”
“Not really. Whichever group is responsible for this hasn’t been targeting infrastructure, strangely enough. Most recently there was a bombing at a textile factory that provides raw material for fine furnishings. A few days ago, I think, there was a hotel on the midlevels that was targeted with smoke grenades. Several people were trapped and died from inhalation. The only politically motivated attack in recent memory was the one that killed Prince Castor.”
“And no group has claimed responsibility for any of it?”
“Correct.”
“So it is entirely possible that none of these attacks are related at all.”
“Castor’s death does create a convenient cover for other party’s interested in sowing chaos.”
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