Rapture. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ than you are on top of you, wouldn’t you fight, too?”

      His hand went still against her bruised cheek and she heard him draw a slow breath. “Yes, I would. Can you tell me, was he touching you inappropriately?”

      “No one has touched me appropriately in eight years,” she countered in a cold, bitter voice. “I haven’t given my permission for so much as a finger to be laid on my person in all of that time, yet it happens quite frequently.”

      Daenaira was taken completely by surprise when he suddenly lifted his touch off her knees, clearly realizing he was doing the very same thing. Confused by his seeming kindness and the show of respect, she became suspicious of whatever game he was playing.

      “You are right, of course,” he said, his tone grim. “I am sorry. It was wrong of me to presume. Without excuse I will say I am used to touching others for my work and it is a habit. I will be more thoughtful in the future if it truly bothers you.” He paused while Daenaira tried to figure out what in burning Light was going on. “What is your name?”

      “My name?” she echoed. Hmm. Girl. Bitch. Stupid. Idiot. He could take his pick. She hadn’t heard someone use her given name in years. “I suppose it’s whatever you are going to want it to be,” she said with a shrug. She’d keep her name, thanks. It was better than hearing it in contempt or in insult. She had a pretty name, actually, and she wanted to keep it that way.

      “What does your family call you?” he demanded.

      “Slut,” she retorted sharply. “Or ‘useless whore.’ There are also combinations that include both.”

      He was silent for a long minute, and then the cloth was cleaning off her chin and jaw. “I see,” he said, his low voice resonant with a hard sound that actually gave her goose bumps. She remembered then that, for all his tenderness of the moment, there was a deadly man in the form before her. How he reconciled the two was beyond her. Again, she suspected it was a tactic, meant to take her off her guard. “I could compel you to give me your real name,” he informed her quietly. It wasn’t so much a threat as it was a fact he was convinced of, and Dae caught another chill. This one raced down her chest, the sensation making her nipples tighten in painful response. She crossed her arms over her chest, knowing how thin the worn-out sari she wore was. “However, I would much rather you tell me for yourself. In the meanwhile, I think I need something to call you by. Jei li is too familiar for us at this point, and it would be an insult to use it when you do not trust me as yet.”

      “I am no man’s jei li,” she countered sharply. She might as well let him know that she wasn’t the soft and cuddly type anyone could ever call “sweetheart.”

      “‘Slut’ and ‘whore’ are out of the question,” he said firmly.

      “Fine with me. Always did prefer ‘you fucking bitch’ anyway. It’s so American slang.”

      “Gods, you are a little spitfire, aren’t you?” he remarked as though both pleased and surprised. “No weeping or fear that you’d want to show, though I know you are feeling that fear. These snide, sharp retorts tempting trouble for you had I been of a different temperament. You pissed off the guards enough to make them forget themselves.”

      “No one fucks with me,” she said through her teeth, the words colder than the Alaska winter above them. “I’ll warn you now, if you think you’re coming anywhere near my tits or my ass, you better be prepared to like it while I’m out cold, because so long as I am conscious it isn’t going to happen.”

      Again there was that long silence, filled in by the stroke of the cloth along her throat and neck. He stopped at the edge of the hurish collar, and she was glad because it stung like a bitch.

      “I see,” he said once more, his tone just as cold as hers was now. Well, she thought, too bad if he didn’t like it. Playing nice-nice with her wasn’t going to win him any points. “It is my guess that this has been your experience in the past?”

      “Is that your guess?” she asked sarcastically. “Wow. Bright guy.”

      “And who would try this with you?”

      “My pig uncle, for one. But he got tired after a while.”

      She heard him swallow, but it didn’t release the deadly danger she heard in his voice when he said, “Tired?”

      “Of this.”

      She extended her leg forward, her foot catching him actually quite gently beneath where his scrotum would be. The top of her ankle fit snugly to his balls through his slacks, and her shin nudged against his penis. She was good at making as full a contact as she possibly could, making certain she caught all the goodies at once. Usually quite hard.

      But this time she was making a point, so she just bumped him with a little slide to make him wholly aware of her positioning…and his. She had to smile when the automatic male reaction to grab hold of her leg to control her came over him. His grip closed tight around her calf and shin, but instead of pushing away as most would do to deflect her, he held her tightly in place against himself. Clever boy. He was taking away the power of her momentum this way, something most idiots never realized. She couldn’t get up enough steam to castrate him if she was already in contact with him.

      “Resourceful,” he said, the sound of his smile in his voice surprising her just as much as the realization she could just about make out that smile. “But a kick in the balls has been known to simply piss some men off. To make them more violent.”

      “Is that a warning?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and trying to make out his features. Dark skin, dark hair, and a white smile described every Shadowdweller male alive.

      Well, maybe not the smile.

      “Yes. Not as pertains to me, per se—though I would be quite angry, I assure you—but I can teach you other ways that will take a man down in a single blow. Then you can run and get help freely.”

      “Freely.” She snorted and flicked a finger against her collar, turning her foot so the ankle cuff pressed through his pants. “Oh right, because I’m so free.”

      She saw him shake his head and then realized she could see the shine of smooth ebony. It was long and loose, waved and curled to his shoulders. She looked up quickly and found his eyes. Under fine dark brows and the shelf of a serious-looking forehead, she found golden eyes. Almost as gold as her collar, but darker and deeper than that. Those eyes, and the strong aristocratic features they were set in, looked quite convincingly confused.

      “What does that mean?” he demanded.

      “Oh, please. Are you going to sit there and pretend I’m not a slave you just bought for gods know what? You can be all sweet if you like, but—”

      “What?”

      He surged up to his full height, which with her cleared vision Daenaira got to appreciate for the very first time. He was well over six feet, which towered over her as she sat. She hated sitting in front of a standing male. Too often they liked to try to grab her by her hair and try—

      “I did not buy a slave,” he ground out with a fiery affront and in a booming voice that gave her the chills. “I paid a bride price for a handmaiden. A dowry, just like any man who takes another man’s daughter would do!”

      Handmaiden?

      Dae СКАЧАТЬ