Csilla’s hands shook so hard she fumbled with the buttons, and the cloth fell in a pool of ivory around her ankles as cold covered her in gooseflesh. Ilan pulled her hair off her neck and over her shoulder, and she shivered at the brush of his fingers on her throat as he bared her. His thumb scraped a place behind her ear; a dried fleck of blood she’d missed?
Run, every instinct screamed.
You deserve this, another voice said.
Before she could obey the primal pulse, Sandor seized her wrists and tied them to the bar with worn leather straps.
‘Tighter,’ Ilan said, leaning over her shoulder close enough his breath warmed her neck. ‘If she faints, I don’t want her to fall.’
‘So I dislocate my shoulders?’ Her dead weight would wrench bone from socket. She’d seen that kind of injury before, grotesque bulging beneath bruised skin and screams as mercy workers tried to push everything back into place.
‘Better than accidentally striking you across the neck,’ Ilan replied, but the tension in his voice undercut the calm words. His fear stoked hers.
Sandor’s second attempt still wasn’t to Ilan’s liking, and he redid them with quick and practiced knots, then ran his hand down her forearm. The gentleness was a small comfort against the scratch of rope on wrists.
Sandor stepped back, only visible as a shadow in the side crack of her vision. Further than he had stood before.
Ilan spread his palm between her shoulder blades, then skimmed it further down.
He drew his index finger across her shoulder blades, rubbing the skin through the cloth of her under dress.
‘This is where I’m going to hit you.’ He paused, tracing another line beneath the first. ‘It is going to hurt.’
She winced at the whistle of the cane, but it was another practice blow. The actual pain couldn’t be worse than the anticipation burrowing in her stomach.
‘Get on with it.’ Sandor’s voice was tight. His gaze darted between them, trying to watch both at once.
Ilan bent close to her. ‘I need you to scream.’
‘What?’ Csilla’s heart was lodged in her throat. She’d heard what came out of this room and seen Ilan’s face when he finished a session. Screaming was not going to be a problem.
He pressed his palm against her back, warm and solid. ‘Trust me.’
She nodded. Despite the squeeze of leather on her wrists and blows she knew were coming, she did. He’d never been anything but honest with her, even when she was hurting.
He stepped back. ‘One.’
She shrieked and dug her palms into the bar as the cane whipped down on her back, a white-hot line of cracking pain.
But not unbearable.
She turned to look at Ilan again. His jaw was set, his arm trembling. And Sandor was still behind, watching for any sign that Ilan wasn’t doing his duty.
‘Two. Is there anything we should know?’
Nothing you don’t know already.‘No.’
The wood came down again. Csilla screamed through another set of strokes, the sharp sting sending her rigid and tears squeezing out of the corner of her eyes as he continued, blow byblow. He was unfailing in his warnings, followed by pauses to let her gasping cries turn back to easier breaths.
Three more, with questions she couldn’t answer accompanying each blow. She was shivering, sinking into the surrender. Her mouth was dry, her ears hurt with the sound of her own moans echoing off the unflinching stone, but she was still standing. There was pride in bearing the pain and comfort in the confidence with which he applied it. She’d done a miracle worthy of any saint. She could be a martyr.
He touched her side as if to adjust her, but she could feel the assurance behind it. A smile ghosted over her cracked lips, and she readied herself to be struck again.
32
Ilan
Ilan clenched his teeth as he rolled Csilla onto his bed. She whimpered and buried her face in his pillow. At least she wouldn’t see the sick guilt mixing with his gratitude. She shouldn’t have offered to submit. He shouldn’t have accepted. There hadn’t been a choice.
