Rapture. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ prick should have tied her ass up, because there was no way she was going to allow—

      Strong hands wrapped around her arms from behind. He hauled her to her feet, for which she mentally thanked the moron as she got her vacillating strength underneath herself. It was probably only a matter of time before he jolted her into a coma, but she would be damned if she was going to be conscious for what he was planning. Grounding herself on braced feet, she windmilled back and around to the left, her elbows rising high and whipping out of his grip. One caught him hard in a cheekbone, and the second came full around to his lower jaw. She heard the harsh sound of teeth clacking together and an angry bellow of pain just before she swung her fist into his throat.

      I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m so dead, she thought frantically even as she added insult to his injuries when she watched him fall gagging onto his knees and hauled back to kick him full force in his crotch. But before she could commit, she was grabbed from behind, whirled around, and belted hard across her face.

      It was a good punch. Enough to stop her dead, seeing as how she was working on borrowed strength to begin with. She felt blood explode out of her mouth even as fiery pain burned across her cheeks and sinuses. She’d be shocked if she didn’t lose a tooth, she thought, even as her body flung back with the momentum of the punch’s follow-through. Off balance and flying, she hit the floor in a skid. The smooth surface sent her skating several feet before she bumped to a stop against something.

      “Sua vec’a!”

      The roar burst into the room like holy thunder. Head spinning, stomach sick from it, half blind and half deaf from pain and worse, Daenaira knew she had never heard anything like the power of that voice in all her life. It was like the rising roar of a mighty lion, the power of which you never understood if you only ever heard it from a distance. But this was the voice of a beast who knew he was at the top of the food chain. He knew he was king.

      She felt something move against her and realized she had come up against the feet of the voice’s owner. In fact, they had stopped her progress across the floor. She curled her body instinctively, readying for the kick in the ribs or back that would follow, bracing as best she could even though she knew she should relax instead. It hurt less if she could make herself relax.

      Remembering that helped and she let herself go lax, though remaining curled to protect her vitals.

      “What in the burning Light of day are you doing?” the terrible voice demanded from above her. “Get out of my sight! Go before my katana meets my hand!”

      The threat was clear enough, except she didn’t know where she should go. Regardless, the way she was feeling, she didn’t want any more trouble. Dismissal was just as good as winning in her book. She rolled onto her hands and knees and tried to crawl, but she couldn’t support her own weight. Even a baby could crawl, and yet she couldn’t drag herself an inch. Plus, she was drooling blood all over the place, and she had learned the hard way that bleeding on things was frowned upon.

      She barely noticed the sound of receding feet, but she did hear the echoing clack of a shutting door that told her she was in a hell of a big room. She still couldn’t move, so she was fairly close to the angry male above her when he crouched down. She saw him looming near her in silhouette only, details blurred completely away. She heard the creaking sound of leather from his clothing, and the telltale tap of wood against the floor. Hollow wood, with something inside it.

      A sword. The threatened katana, no doubt. But on the plus side, she hadn’t heard the sound of drawn steel, so she still had time to get her act together if she was lucky. Daenaira tried again to move, and again remained in a motionless pile.

      She felt the heat of him as he leaned over her, reaching across her back. Dae should have kept still, just like she always should keep still and never seemed to manage it, but instinct made her grab the arm of the hand about to touch her, her nails gouging deeply into—

      Holy Light, she thought with a mental gasp, is all of that muscle?

      It was more like flesh made steel! She could hardly get her hand around the width of that thick bicep. Gods help her if he was left-handed, because if what she was feeling wasn’t his sword arm, she was completely screwed.

      To her never-ending surprise, she felt his opposite hand come to rest on the one she was digging into him. Winifred liked to cut Dae’s nails off when she was out cold after a battle. She must have forgotten, because Dae made pretty good purchase. The thing was, instead of ripping her away from him, he simply held her fingers under his, keeping her from stripping his flesh but tolerating her injury to him.

      This guy could be a bigger degenerate than she had anticipated. If he liked getting hurt…

      She took note of the thick, hard calluses on the hand covering hers. There was years’ worth of hard work at something; it was not soft and fat like her relatives’ had been. Not in the least. Yet, she slowly became cognizant of the gentleness of his touch against her fingers. She suspected a trick, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it was. Eventually she just let go, collapsing into an exhausted pile of panting, dizzy flesh. As if she’d never even touched him, he continued to reach for her, cupping her shoulder in his wide palm. Slowly he rolled her toward him, letting her flop loosely onto her back.

      On the plus side, she could make out that he was in a low squat, his knees wide apart enough to give her a great shot at his vulnerable testicles.

      “I am sorry for this,” he said, the large voice spinning away into a kindness she could almost believe because it was so vastly opposite to the tone of earlier. “That will not happen again.”

      Wanna bet? She wanted to sneer at him, but her lip hurt an awful lot. Just wait until she got a second wind. All kinds of shit would be happening again.

      Meanwhile, she was pretty much as dangerous as a ball of fluff under the furniture right then. Still, there was that rather attractive testicular target within reach. It could be fun. At the very least it could get her belted into unconsciousness. That’d buy her a few more hours, and she usually healed pretty fast, just like any other ’Dweller could. Provided she could go a few hours without shock therapy, that is. It tended to jar her healing molecules all out of whack or something.

      She felt his hand slide up from her shoulder to her throat. Dae swallowed, feeling his fingers on the gold collar to the hurish. Not that she was a treasured pet or anything; the fortified gold was just the best conductor of electricity around. The built-in remote circuitry also had a delightful feature that humans used to keep their dogs within the bounds of an electrified fence—except it was jacked up to less than humane standards. Of course, humans called it something else. Humans didn’t even know Shadowdwellers existed, never mind that they shared technology. Well, lightless technology at least.

      She felt him probing at the collar, trying to turn it or have it give way a bit more, she supposed. But she was swollen around it now, not that there was any leeway to begin with.

      “What is this? Why do you wear your jewelry so tightly?”

      She laughed, a sloppy snort that conveyed she was much less than amused. Her contempt mixed with her fury and the impotence of the moment, making things increasingly dangerous for the idiot touching her. The higher her temper spiked, the stronger she would feel. It was probably an adrenaline thing, but whatever worked…

      “Please answer me when I ask you a question.”

      “Fuck you. I’m not your parrot, your dog, or anything else.”

      Daenaira had never learned when to keep СКАЧАТЬ