Passion Untamed (Feral Warriors #3)(28)

Her heart began to pound in hard, erratic thuds. Trembling, she met his hard gaze.

Fire burned in his eyes. And the promise of pain.

As many times as Birik had hurt her, she knew this would be worse. Because Birik was without a soul. He got no more pleasure from hurting her than he did anyone else. In a strange way, it wasn't personal. And because of that, the pain he inflicted never touched her mind or her heart.

But Paenther wasn't like Birik. She knew he had kindness in him. She'd felt it. Been warmed by it.

Whatever punishment Paenther chose to mete out would be very, very personal.

When he hurt her, she was going to bleed all the way to her soul.

Chapter Eight

"It's payback time," Paenther snarled. Leaving Skye in the cage, pressed against the wall with her dress clutched to her chest, he grabbed a small coil of rope off the wall. He was so damned mad at her. He knew what she was! Yet she simpered and pleaded and tugged at his sympathies. Playing him. She was still playing him! "It's time I rode you as you rode me, witch. But you like it bloody, don't you? I wonder how you'll like it when the blood's your own."

With the knife he'd taken from the farmhouse, he started cutting lengths of rope and tying them to the eyebolts fastened at the base of the walls at regular intervals for just this purpose. When he'd tied the last length, he rose and stared down at her as she stood covering herself in a pretense of modesty, trembling.

Creamy shoulders sloped from a long, graceful neck. A swell of bare hip peeked out from behind the dress, heating his blood.

"Quit pretending, Skye. I know what you are. Lie down. It's time you felt what it's like to be the one staked, your legs spread for another's pleasure."

Goddess, the thought of parting those silken legs, of finally, finally, being able to touch her fully, sent blood throbbing deep and low.

"I know what it feels like." Her voice vibrated with fear and echoed with hollowness. "Those chains weren't put on that rock for you."

His gaze snapped to hers as her words registered. That rock where he'd lain, strapped for six days. Her dresses hanging on the wall as if that miserable bit of rock were her cell and not his.

Shit. He would not feel sorry for her! It was what she wanted. Just an act.

But as he stared at her, at those copper-and-blue eyes, he'd be damned if he could see any cunning. She had to be enchanting him, because all he saw in her was a terrible bleakness. And it chilled him to the bone.

What if I'm wrong about her?

As she watched him, a sheen of tears began to glisten in her eyes. Tears just like the ones that had streaked Ancreta's cheeks as she'd run to him that day, her gown torn, her heavy br**sts on full view. She'd kept her eyes downcast so he wouldn't see the Mage copper in them, but those tears on her cheeks had slain him. And gotten him captured.

Tears. Just like Ancreta, Skye was playing on his sympathies.

"Lie down!"

Her jaw clenched, her head jerking in a tiny, defiant movement.

He closed the distance between them, pressing his hands on the wall on either side of her head. Her chest heaved, her body shook, but she didn't plead, she didn't cower. Instead, she closed her eyes on a hopeless sweep of dark lashes. "I'm not what you think."

Her scent enveloped him, stirring his blood. He wanted her beneath him, yet everything inside him demanded revenge on her for enthralling him, for leading him into that hellhole. For making him feel sorry for her so that he'd help her...help her...use him.

A single tear broke free from the cage of her lashes, and she quickly brushed it away with her bare shoulder. The light caught the teardrop. Somehow that single, glistening drop on her perfect shoulder damned him.

He fought the tug of pity, that misguided need to protect her all over again.

It was a lie!

He grabbed her face, making her look at him. "Open your eyes, witch. I bought this act once before. The poor little victim. I know better. Open your eyes!"

To his surprise, her lashes flew up, temper heating the tears. "I don't know what you want from me! How could my fear of you possibly be an act? Even if I were as soulless as you think I am, I'd be afraid right now. Any woman would. I can't fight you."

"Yet you defy me when you refuse to lie down."

She looked away, then back, glaring at him even as her bottom lip began to quiver. "I won't help you rape me."

His stomach cramped. Never, in more than four hundred years, had he taken a woman against her will. He'd killed others for doing just that.

Dammit. She was a witch! Just like Ancreta.

No. She wasn't.

Ancreta had tortured him for the joy of it for months. Skye had never hurt him.

He released her and whirled away, slamming his fists into the stone of her cage. That was the problem. In all the time she'd had him at her mercy, she'd never once caused him an ounce of pain. Even after he attacked her.

If the witch in here with him were Ancreta, he'd have no trouble hurting her just as she'd hurt him all those months with her eyes filled with malicious glee.

But Skye wasn't Ancreta. He hated her for her lies, for making him think she was being abused so he'd f**k her. He despised the way she'd led the animals in her care to slaughter. Most of all, he hated the way she'd made him care about her, forcing this need in him to protect her.