“Lift. Your. Arms.”
Rona lifted her arms, and in a flash her shirt was gone, yanked up and off by Murdok’s impossibly quick hands. Rona gasped and covered her naked breasts. The Merc gave the sweat-stained top a quick sniff, then he tossed it into the corner with her other clothes.
“Put your arms down, woman. I’m not done searching you.”
“You think I’m smuggling a weapon in my boobs?”
Jesus, why did she keep doing that? She was alone with the biggest, most dangerous man she’d ever laid eyes on, leashed, collared, and half naked—yet she couldn’t seem to stop backtalking him.
“Keep it up,” Murdok said. “And you’re gonna get yourself hogtied.”
Rona didn’t want that. She dropped her arms to her sides. Murdok smiled and nodded appreciatively.
“Aeron sure knows how to pick ’em,” he said.
He pulled off his combat gloves and stuffed them in the back pocket of his pants. Then he reached out and touched her, skin-on-skin. He didn’t go for her breasts, however. Not right away. Instead, he ran the backs of his fingers down the flesh of her right arm.
His knuckles felt as rough as rhino skin, like he spent his days punching rocks for fun. Rona trembled at that touch, and she tried to ignore the goosebumps that lifted in its wake, as if her skin was literally reaching out to him, begging for more.
“Nice tats,” he said.
Murdok was referring to the ink on Rona’s right arm, a reminder of more prosperous times, when her wages from the mine had afforded her such luxuries as tattoos. The image was of a viper, its scaled body coiling around her arm, its fangs bared on her upper chest. It wasn’t just a decoration, it was also a warning for any man who might try to put his hands on her, and it had worked reasonably well against the miners back in the village.
With Murdok, not so much.
“Nice tits too…”
The Merc was clearly a man who took what he wanted and brooked no disobedience. When he turned his attention to Rona’s naked breasts, she resisted the urge to cover herself. When he touched them, she did her best not to flinch.
CHAPTER 6
The palms of the Merc’s hands were nearly as callused as his knuckles. It shouldn’t have felt good to be fondled by such hands, especially when the fondling was done without permission, yet there was something about that contrast of rough and smooth that set Rona’s senses on fire.
She was a worker. A miner. She’d never thought of herself as feminine or soft, but in Murdok’s hands she felt about as soft as those women who hung the red lanterns in their windows and helped the miners get rid of their stress and wages. Sometimes, when Rona had passed by the district where those women plied their trade, she’d heard the low, needful moans drifting out of their dwellings. Often, those sounds of pleasure were obviously counterfeit. Other times, it was harder to tell. As for the sounds welling up inside her now, those were very real indeed, and it took every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep them tamped down inside.
“Stop that,” she whispered.
“What’s the matter, woman? You don’t like it?”
“No.”
The man apparently didn’t know the meaning of the word, or if he did, he didn’t respect it. His hands remained firmly planted on her chest.
“Your nipples are telling a different story.”
He brushed his thumbs across the tips of Rona’s breasts, the same way Aeron had done back in the Common Hall. Only this time, there was no fabric covering her erect nubs.
“They’re always like that,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
Murdok pinched both of her nipples—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to get her attention—and he pulled, stretching her breasts into sharp cones. For a moment, Rona let her defenses falter, and a shameful moan of pleasure escaped from her trembling lips.
“Yeah,” Murdok said, smirking. “You don’t like that at all.”
He let go abruptly, and Rona’s nipples snapped back, eliciting another sharp gasp. The Merc dropped his hands to Rona’s belt and started to unfasten the buckle.
“Wait!” Rona cried. “What are you doing?”
