A wave of humiliation swept through Leona as she felt her nipples harden, though she could not say whether it was the command or the cold. Sedrak’s gaze burned through her, and an unfamiliar heat coiled and uncoiled in her abdomen.
From somewhere in the darkness someone shouted, “Seems she likes it!” and a wave of laughter rolled through the men.
“Silence!” Sedrak roared, holding up a hand.
The quiet that followed was immediate and deafening. Leona shivered. Sedrak’s power over such a legion of men was terrifying, and yet inside her, the snaking heat flared.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to raise her arms and pull the last vestige of her dignity over her head.
Sedrak eyed her for what felt like an eternity. When he took a step forward she stumbled back. He caught her by the wrist and leaned in so his nose was three finger lengths from hers. “Stand,” he growled.
She stood stock still.
It happened in an instant. His hand curled into a fist with a clump of shirt inside it. He yanked. The fabric tore.
She felt cold air against her skin. Skin that never saw the light of day unless she was with Datharia or by herself. She glanced down to confirm what she felt. Her breasts were bare. On full display for the leering stares of Sedrak’s men. Her womanhood, too, could be seen by all of them.
She wished the earth would open and swallow her whole.
Stepping around her, Sedrak pulled what remained of the shirt off her shoulders, exposing her completely.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him appraising her. His eyes pausing at the soft curve of her hips, her breasts, then wandering back toward her behind. Through it all her face grew hotter until she thought a fire would start on her cheeks. She could feel tears threatening to brim her eyes, and she wished them away.
“You will make a handsome prize,” Sedrak said. “I ask you again: you wish to atone for your uncle’s bad behavior?”
She swallowed again and somehow managed to force herself to nod. “Yes,” she whimpered.
His voice was low, close to her ear, as if he wished that only she heard what he said next. “Then you must be humiliated, and punished, so that my men may have the satisfaction of seeing your uncle bear witness to the fruits of his foolishness. There is no greater humiliation for a real man than to see his women pay for his misdeeds.”
Leola stared at Sedrak, cold fear snaking through her body.
“He does not cry out for you,” Sedrak told her, his voice still low. “And yet you still wish to give of yourself, in exchange for this coward?”
Leola blinked slowly. As Sedrak spoke to her, his fierce eyes burning into her own, it was as if the entire army had disappeared. She was cold, but she felt that cold as though from far away. The same twisting knife of heat turned over and over in her stomach, and further down.
What was he telling her? To let Ryken die?
Her lips trembled. They stared at each other for an eternity, and she jutted her chin defiantly, hoping that she would not be required to speak again. She had already given herself for Ryken. She could not go back upon it.
Sedrak grunted, and stepped back from her. “So be it. Bend over.”
There was little that could come from such a command than a whipping. She had seen the servants and soldiers whipped for their misdeeds. And when she did, a similar heat had burned inside of her, but she had pushed it from her mind as quickly as possible, for it was improper.
That same heat, curiously, burned inside of her now. But it wasshewho would be whipped. Her own flesh that would feel the burn on the other end of the cracking noise that would not leave her ears for days when she heard it.
She had no choice, she thought, almost numbly. Whatever her feelings about it, there was no escape from Sedrak, no escape from whatever wicked things he might choose to do with her now. She would be whipped like a servant, there before all of his men, and she had no choice but to comply.
She bent forward, conscious of the way her breasts hung beneath her chest and of all the eyes on them. She could feel, in the cold, that between her legs a slickness had gathered, an aching tickle wandering somewhere between the bottom of her belly and her pelvis. The more she thought of her humiliation the more persistent it became.
Her thoughts were devoured, immediately, by the sound of skin upon skin. It pierced the night air, sharp and distinct. Hot pain, in the shape of his hand, nipped her immediately afterward. She inhaled sharply, and stumbled forward a little.
But the second spank landed before she could steady herself completely, and she gasped as the bright, hot pain stung her from her bottom to her eyes. A third crack pierced the air, then a fourth, and with them came waves of intense heat, spreading out throughout her entire lower body. She cried out when he spanked her again, and balled her hands to fists. She had taken a few steps forward, impelled by Sedrak’s strength.
Sedrak paused his punishment. He was standing behind her but she could feel his hard stare on her bright red cheeks. “If you give yourself in exchange for mercy for such a coward, you shall endure the harshest punishment. You will learn to obey me, Leola Grace, first lady of these walls and this realm,” he growled. “Tell me that you understand your proper place now.”
A tightness formed between her legs at the way he said her name. “I understand,” she whispered, her voice shattered by the heat rolling over her skin. She began to rise, hoping her punishment had ended.
He smacked her behind again, barking a sharp “No!” He kept his hand upon her burning flesh, as if he were petting his favorite pet. “You will do what I command, and nothing that I do not,” he growled. “Remain bent over.”
