“You don’t like me using it.” His predator eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Why?”
She pressed her lips tighter together.
His smile widened. “It’s as soiled as you.” Eyes locked on her, he grabbed the waterskin from the rocky ledge and poured some onto her pelt, soaking it. “I aim to get you both clean.”
Impossible. A Gazi’s taint could never be fully removed.
The edges of her throat rasped painfully as the excess water dripped onto the floor, taunting her as it stained the ground crimson
“Thirsty, huh?” He caught everything. “Well, you know how to end that.”
She glared at him.
The soft fur, now wet and firmer in texture, danced across her nipple.
To her horror, the golden peak tightened, crinkling into a hard bud.
“Very nice.” He skimmed the pelt along the underside of her breast.
Her flesh tingled, and it wasn’t simply from the astonishing sensation of being dirt free. It was the gentleness of the anazi against her flesh that rocked her to her core.
Her body was used to pain, sharp grabs, and strikes. She had no idea how to guard against pleasure.
“I’m curious about your body art.” He traced the pelt over the Ancient blessings for purity and courage drawn on her stomach, smearing as he went. “It’s very similar to what’s on the glowing spear you like to swing at my head.”
If only she’d swung harder.
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.