A swirl of air at her upper back left her bracing. Part of her hoped this time she never woke up from what was coming.
A hand landed on her skin. Except the touch was soft, not hard.
Her breath left her in a rush. Goose bumps rose on her skin.
“You expecting something else, wild thing?” Her captor’s fingers danced across her shoulder blades.
“W-what you do?”
“You know exactly what I’m doing—and why.”
Her eyes went wide. Not that. Not now.
“Hit me!” she screamed. They were enemies. He was a deceiver. They could never be on the same side. He was making her doubt. Making her question Talg and her loyalty. She wanted a return to her clarity of purpose. She wanted judgment for her failures.
“Always so quick to hide. Behind pain. Behind that damn pelt.” His fingers trailed the inside of each rope design on her back, the contrast between the gentleness of his caress and the coarseness of the rope making her arousal burn even brighter. “But you don’t deserve to be punished for your origins, Nayla.”
She screamed in rage.
She resented his decree, and the kindness in his gaze as he delivered it.
She hated, too, how the rasp of his rough hands slipping beneath the coils made her body sing. It wasn’t right when he’d ground her soul to nothing.
“Why should you be punished for something you can’t control?”
Her skin tingled as his skillful fingers skated over the curve at her hips and the rise of her lower back.
She held back a moan and glared at him instead.
“You’ll answer me eventually.” His fingers played across the crease where her bottom met her leg. “I’m under your skin now, baby. In those cells and sinew. Deeper even than Talg, and I’m not stopping until I’ve ripped that bastard’s influence from your soul like the roots of a weed.”
She pressed her cheek to the flat of the bench, trying to absorb the coolness. It didn’t work. His fingertips descended in long, slow strokes that ghosted over her loins and down the outside of her thighs. “Can you feel me, beautiful? Touching you. Sinking into your skin. Worshipping you.”
His big calloused hands encircled her ankles spreading her wider, increasing her vulnerability. Her breathing hitched.
“This is the only kind of punishment you deserve.” He trailed the back of his hand up the inside of her thigh, rousing the sensitive inner flesh to life. Her body jerked against the rough ropes, helpless to do anything but feel. Her core throbbing with need once more.
He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t. And yet…all he’d ever brought her was exquisite pleasure.
His hand skimmed upward, past where she needed it most, to lay across the base of her neck in a light but firm hold.
“You still with me, Nayla?”
She snarled up at him. She would not let him confuse her. She would not let him reduce her to sensation alone.
He smiled. “There’s my girl. Back with me. Fierce as ever.” The hand not pinning her neck to the bench petted her hair like she was a wild Sharluff baby. Soft. Coaxing. “I think you’re ready to push a few more of those fault lines you’re so desperate to cling to.”
He gave her no more warning than that.
Slap. She cried out, the smack of flesh against flesh echoed through the cave as his hand connected with her bottom—only to realize it hadn’t hurt at all.
All he’d given her was a slight tap, followed by a caress of heavy pressure as he kneaded her flesh. Coaxing forward that same terrible throbbing heat she’d only just managed to bring under heel.
Stretched at she was, his one hand still holding her neck, his other working the flesh near her core, she was completely mastered, totally at his mercy, and yet there was no agony.
All that savage strength and brutality and he’d…tempered it. Transformed it into something shocking and pleasurable.
Her breathing hitched. “I don’t… What you do? Th-that not pain.”
“That’s right. I know a thousand ways to cause pain, and a thousand more ways to touch you that will only bring pleasure. The latter is all you’ll ever get from me.”
Her body started to shake. “N-no. Th-that’s not how it should be.”
“Talg’s not here now. It’s only you and me.” Another tap. Not painful. Just forceful. Dominant. Attention-grabbing. Enticing. “I handle things differently.”
She bit back a moan.
“I’m not like him.” His fingers danced over the rosy heat of her bottom, her skin as hot and sensitive as a thousand suns. “I will never deliberately cause you pain. Until you believe that, you and I will keep running around in circles.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs, confusion a wild riot inside her chest.
“If you truly believe there is punishment to be doled out,” continued Grif, “it will come from me. My way.”
Slap. This tap carried a bit more heft. But no pain. Only white-hot heat that seared through her body and left her gasping.
“Do you know why I’m chastising you with pleasure, Nayla?” He squatted by her head, his fingers brushing back a stray hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Because you refuse to see that you don’t owe that Talg bastard a heartbeat more of your suffering and pain. He does not deserve your loyalty or your strength. You don’t need to endure pain to prove yourself to him. You don’t need to endure punishment at all.”
“Y-you try to trick me. Make me tell you.”
“Yes, I want the location of those missing females. But I want a hells of a lot more from you than that.”
His demands scared her. No one had ever wanted much from her at all.
She snarled up at him.
Instead of anger, she saw only sympathy in his gaze. “You’re angry and lost and scared. At me. At Talg. At your Ancients.” Each decisive word struck her chest like an arrow. “We all fucking deserve it. But that anger you’re carrying against yourself? That self-contempt and blame that’s keeping you from seeing that trying to please that bastard is never going to give you the outcome you want? You’ve got to let go of that.”
Her eyes went wide. “S-stop.”
“It will always be the truth between us.” A warm hand glided up and down her back. Anchoring her even as it fanned the flames she never could extinguish when he was near. “A part of you already knows what I’m going to say is true. Has known since I touched you and survived Talg’s curse. Maybe even before. But you never had a safe place to land before. Now you do.”
Her breathing hitched. How could she hate and want his touch all at once? How could she crave his words and yet feel enraged by them at the same time?
He nudged her feet apart, spreading her legs wider, making her thighs tremble.
“It’s gonna hurt, baby.” Grif’s voice was a dark whisper near her ear. “Wrestling with the truth always does. More than a strike. But it’s what happens after you break that matters most. Remember that. Remember, too, that I’ll be here every step of the way. Me and my savage Other blood, the same kind that flows through your veins.”
She wailed—her body flashing hot, then cold, despite the fact he hadn’t moved his hands.
Could it be?
The cracks inside her chest spread as if the ground itself would give way any moment.