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 folds 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.