Passion Untamed (Feral Warriors #3)(14)

The implications rocked him. He almost hoped it was just enchantment. Just a lie. Because if it wasn't, if this easing of the torment he'd lived with for centuries was somehow coming from her...

A witch.

Heaven help him. The last thing he wanted was to need her. More than he did already.

Paenther woke to the sound of footsteps moments before the steel door crashed in against the rock. The witch startled awake, rearing up, filling him with the scent of sleep-warmed violets and the acrid tang of fear.

In the doorway stood a man with the slim build of a Mage and hair a dozen shades paler than his skin. His face was long, his lips thin, and his copper-ringed eyes blazed with a cold fury.

Paenther's muscles tensed for a battle he wouldn't be able to fight, fury of his own raging through his body as he strained against his shackles until they bit into his flesh. The strange peace he'd felt when he woke during the night had vanished with the woman's fear.

"Birik," the witch breathed, her eyes wide, her voice tight with dread.

"I warned you," the Mage said coldly, and started toward them.

"But..."

The Mage latched onto her upper arm and yanked her off the rock. As the witch stumbled, he pulled her to the wall, grabbed her shoulders, and slammed her back until her skull collided with stone with a sharp crack.

Paenther's body went taut with outrage, but the bastard wasn't through. He grabbed her face, holding on until the witch's eyes widened with pain and the smells of burning flesh and blood assailed his sensitive nose.

Finally, the Mage released her. As the fragile woman sunk to the ground, he leveled several hard kicks to her ribs and one to the side of her head, then strode out of the room without a backward glance.

Paenther stared at the woman lying on the damp, rocky floor like a broken doll, blood running down her cheek from where the bastard must have cracked her skull. For long moments, the only sound in the room was the drip, drip, drip from the rock daggers and the faint, thready beat of her heart.

"Witch?" he called softly. But she gave no indication she heard him.

Minute by minute, her heartbeat strengthened as her immortal body healed the ravages of the assault until, finally, she stirred. Slowly, painfully, she curled into a ball as if to protect herself from further attack. But like the attack itself, she took the pain without a groan, without a cry. Her suffering was somehow all the more difficult to bear for its terrible silence.

His gut contracted as he remembered tearing at her arm. And how she'd suffered that time, too, without a sound.

He wasn't sure what to make of her. She'd hidden what she was, enthralled him, and captured him. She was everything he hated. Yet now he was forced to wonder if she'd had any choice in the matter.

Had he misjudged her? Was there really such a thing as a gentle witch? One thing was certain, this one was nothing like Ancreta.

His muscles bunched as she pushed herself onto her elbows, as if he could somehow lend her strength. She struggled to sit up, then collapsed back against the wall with a grimace that told him what the move had cost her. He looked at her smudged and bloodied face and wanted to beat the hell out of the man who'd done this to her. Birik.

"Why did he beat you, little witch?" He didn't know her name.

She opened her eyes slowly, the blue depths dark with pain. "I don't know." Her expression tightened. "I do know. I just don't know why he'd punish me for it now." She met his gaze. "He wants me to mount you."

Paenther jerked, his hands fisting. "No," he snarled.

Like hell she'd mount him. His body quaked with the remembered fury and bitter helplessness of all those times beneath Ancreta.

The dark-haired witch, so unlike Ancreta, sighed and tipped her head back, her gaze reaching the ceiling. Perhaps beyond. "I wanted to give you time to accept me, warrior. He's not going to allow it." Her voice broke as she met his gaze, suffering in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

She pushed herself to her feet, then stumbled back against the wall with a grimace before lurching forward, slowly, painfully. Blood matted her hair and streaked her face.

"Don't." No way in hell was he accepting this. His fingertips began to tingle with the imminent eruption of his claws.

But when she reached him, all she did was curl her arm around his waist and lay her head on his chest, her face turned away.

He stared down at the top of her head, confounded. She never did what he expected. He felt her body trembling and felt the drip of hot tears onto his abdomen. If his hands had been free, he'd have been hard-pressed not to stroke her back. She was about to take him against his will, yet his overwhelming need was to offer her some small measure of comfort.

Sniffling, she stood and wiped her eyes, then moved down to the end of the stone and climbed up between his legs without meeting his gaze. Her misery was so sharp, it cut him.

She wasn't Ancreta. The fury at what she was planning to do to him...what she'd been ordered to do to him...began to lose its grip on his mind and slip away.

His body was flaccid. He'd found her pain anything but arousing. If she was going to use him, she was going to have to get him up first. But as she began to dip that ripe mouth toward his shaft, his body froze.

"Don't."

She looked up, defeat in every line of her body. "I have to."

"Use your hand."