Kristen felt like crying, she was so frustrated, but she would not. “You had best kill me when you are done, Saxon, for I will see you in hell for this!”
Royce did not speak. Her legs were spread wide on the bed, her feet tightly secured to the posts. He got up and came to stand near the last post yet to be used.
Kristen glared at him, holding her right arm away from him. When he leaned forward to reach for it, her fist flew at his face, and he did not duck back quick enough this time.
She felt a surge of satisfaction, even though her knuckles throbbed where they scraped against his teeth. But his lip was smeared with blood, and his features were no longer inscrutable. Angrily he caught her last free limb and wrapped the cloth around it, tying an extra-tight knot on this hand. Then he stood back, and those eyes she had thought so beautifully green seemed filled with menace now as they locked with hers. Slowly he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
She closed her eyes against his triumph. It had been too easy for him. And now he would whip her, or whatever it was he had planned, to punish her for resisting his will. What he did next, however, was to strip away her clothes with his dagger.
Kristen groaned inwardly, but kept her features carefully blank and her eyes tightly closed. She was not going to scream when the pain began, nor cry, nor beg for mercy, for if he could do this to her, then he had none.
“Open your eyes, Kristen.”
She refused. She felt the bed sag and knew he had sat down beside her. Finally, when he didn’t say anything else, or move at all, she became too unnerved not to look. She found his eyes gazing into hers, then deliberately they moved down the length of her. She followed his gaze and felt a swift rush of heat.
Seeing herself like this brought home more clearly her helplessness. She could bend her knees slightly, but not much. Her arms were not stretched out tightly, but were bent at the elbows. They were useless to her, as were her legs, yet surprisingly, she was not uncomfortable in this position. The strips of cloth did not cut into her skin unless she tugged on them. It was her inability to continue fighting that made her miserable, and not knowing the manner of her punishment.
“Your promise held true, until now.”
His voice drew her eyes back to his. “What promise?” she demanded.
“That I would get no pleasure from you if you fought me. I assure you ’tis a pleasure seeing you like this.”
God help her, he was going to gloat now. “Bring out your whip and have done with it, Saxon!” she hissed.
He smiled. “Ah, you did mention my practicing cruelties on you. Good of you to remind me.”
He eased her long braid out from under her as he said this, and devoted entirely too much attention to it. “You mean to whip me with that?” she asked incredulously.
“An interesting idea.” He laughed, letting the braid slip through his hand until the tail end was caught by his fingers. “Mayhap—like this?”
The ends of her hair spread out like a fan between his fingers and flicked at the point of one breast. Blood rushed to that area, firming the mound, and turning the tip into a hard little nub.
Goose bumps spread over different parts of Kristen’s body. Noticing her body’s unwilling response, Royce continued to smile as he trailed the fan down the valley of her breasts to whip with feather softness at the other peak.
Her body told its own story to him, but he could not know what was happening inside her. What had been a very real, though unacknowledged fear in the pit of her belly, had now burgeoned into excitement. To be completely helpless in the power of a man who knew well how to please her…She had not considered that.
“You—you do not mean to beat me?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?” he asked softly, railing the fan of hair down and across her stomach, making the muscles jerk and contract. “I like your skin as is. Did you truly think I would mar it?”
“You were angry enough—”
“With reason. You made a liar of me this day. I swore to your friend Thorolf that I did not have to force you to my bed, yet here I have had to do just that.”
“You told him…oh!”
Royce shrugged negligently. “He was concerned and needed reassurance that I was not taking undue advantage of my power over you.”
“Are you not?” she snapped, looking meaningfully down at herself.
He chuckled. “Aye, mayhap I am now. But you will agree, by your own admittance, vixen, that yestereve I did not take advantage of you.”
“Did you have to tell Thorolf that?”
“You would rather he worry about you?”
“I would rather he not think what he must think now!” she cried furiously.
