“No?” he whispered, and pressed a kiss to my collarbone. “Come now, Mila. You can do better than that. Fight me, pet. Show me the brave warrior priestess whose greedy little pussy woke me up with such a ferocious need.”
“That’s not”—I shivered—“that’s not what happened.”
He laughed. “Ah, yes. I forgot. This is all me, isn’t it? All my fault.”
Straining, my stomach grew taut. Concave,hollowas I curled around myself—towardhim.
“I’ll admit, it’s quite something,” he mused, assaulting me with a bolt of pure, unfiltered lust. Prodding at the shield as if it were nothing to do so. To split himself in two and leave me in ruins. “Ingenious, really. But what’s it for?”
I blinked. Trembling, my skin slick with arousal and sweat. Asher held me in thrall and filled me with a sense of overwhelming compliance. “It’s a shield,” I whispered, caught in the bottomless pools of inky black. Ensnared somewhere too deep to name, my lips loosened.
Forcing my neck to bend, he pressed a kiss to the hollow at the base of my throat. “Mmhmm.”
“For protection. To”—I panted, licking at the points of my teeth and wet parched lips—“to keep me separate from… from the hunger. The thirst for…more.”
Teeth dragged along the tight lines bunched and corded down the length of my throat. “The empath.”
“Yesss,” I hissed, squirming against his heat. “I’m not… not a priestess. ‘M nothing.Nothing.Can’t win with no power. No talent… no…” I gasped, and tried to pull my wrists free from the handcuffs. “No skills. Daddy wouldn’t—he said—he said the temple was for commoners who had no options. No connections. That I would be wasted in a life of worship… But now”—I hiccuped around a sob—“I’m a tool of war. To be passed around. Fought over.Used. A-and not even the shield can save me,” I rasped, shaking somewhere deep inside, where a crack had become a canyon.
For the space of several long breaths, the captain merely continued to run his lips along my flesh. Leaving me to tremble beneath him. Overcome by a torrent of emotions I hadn’t known were there.
Grief I would never have voiced had he not mucked about inside my head… cracked open my heart.
A soft knock at the door shattered the moment, and in one fluid motion, he unlocked my handcuffs, rolled, and stepped into a rumpled pair of pants. “Come in,” he called, not bothering to find himself a shirt.
Reeling, I stayed where I’d been abandoned. Spread and exposed. The sheets tangled about my nudity serving only to paint a picture of what had transpired here.
It was Alicia.
It wasalwaysAlicia.
“Breakfast!” she chirped, hands laden with a tray of food piled high. Her cheeks over-bright as she arranged her delivery on the captain’s desk without glancing in my direction. “Is there anything else you need, sir?”
“We’re headed to the bathhouse today,” the captain returned, hopping to adjust his pant—where he was swollen enough to take extra care with the zipper. “See that one of the private baths is prepared?”
She inclined her head, said, “Of course,” and left without another word. Rushing off to please her master in a swirl of skirts and lingering perfume.
Plucking a folded square from the top of the pile, the captain’s eyes flicked over a note. His brow drawn and bunched by the time he said down, he scowled at the fruit as if it had personally offended him.
But through a thunderous scowl, he said, “Hungry?” and tucked into the platter.
I swallowed, struggling to force myself upright for the feeling of being too full. Bloated not in body, but in spirit. Elite energy sloshing around in my head.
“Come,” he drawled, and flicked a serviette open. “Eat. It would seem Sasha went to a lot of trouble to feed you something other than my energy.” With a sneer, he crumpled the note and tossed it aside.
Dizzy, I staggered from the bed in a show of naked, jiggling skin. Drawing the captain’s attention away from his meal as I reached for the bed sheets once more. Padding over on the balls of my feet, I inhaled the scent of bacon, sausage, and an assortment of fried things that churned my stomach.
Without a word, he set two fingers to the edge of the tray and spun it, offering me a selection of fried mashed potatoes. A pile of fruit and vegetables of every type and color I hadn’t seen even before the war.
My stomach rumbled in loud anticipation, and despiteeverything… I blushed.
Grinning, he brought a forkful to his lips. “Bashful, hmm?”
I rolled my eyes. Sinking into the chair opposite, one hand clutching at bunched fabric, I dug in to the first palatable meal I’d had on Caledonian soil. Seized by a sudden ravenous hunger, I ate with reckless abandon. Hardly bothering to take the time to chew before swallowing and moving on to the next mouthful.
It wasn’t long before my side of the tray was picked clean—barring the wall of things left behind that had been touching charred flesh and the rinds of my feast.
I hiccuped, unable to recall a time in which I’d been so full. So… utterly sated.
