Part 10 (2/2)
d.a.m.n him for tying a good knot. And d.a.m.n him for making her want to laugh.
Laugh! Now!
She used all her weight to drag herself up the bed, but the rope held, and while she moved up he held the legs of the jeans and pulled them down.
”Youare a pig.”
”A panther.”
”Donat flatter yourself.”
”And yet the pants are off.”
They werenat really. They were caught at the top of her thighs, and when he teased the feather over her hips, she wanted to kick the c.r.a.p out of him.
She couldnat, because head managed to imprison her legs as efficiently as head imprisoned her hands. And her.
Frustration scorched her, so she gave a warrioras yell and walked out of the pants.
What did it matter? He would have her out of them at his pleasure, and she would not lie there while he did with her as he wished. In a frenzy of temper she kicked at his chest, hoping to catch him unaware and knock him backward and breathless. Instead he snagged her ankle and used her motion to leverage her up and onto her stomach. Her wrists crossed. Her face pressed into the pillows, and she bounded up onto her elbows and knees to scream her defiance.
Immediately he was behind her, between her legs, catching and holding her hips close to his. His erection probed, found, entered, glided.
She grabbed the bra.s.s bars. The cold metal against her palms and the heat of his hard-on formed an electric current through her body, making her arch as lightning shot through her spine. ”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You lousy jerk. You sc.u.mbag.”
”Thatas right.” He thrust hard and deep. ”Hate me. Call me names. Be fierce.” He reached around, under her belly, and used his fingers to manipulate her c.l.i.t until she undulated beneath him. ”But care. By G.o.d. Feel.”
Feel? She couldnat stop feeling. He was deep inside her, controlling her motions with his arm around her hips, making her move for him, with him. Fruitlessly she fought him, trying to establish her own rhythm, to use him like a vibrator, to bring herself to o.r.g.a.s.m.
He would have none of that. His motion inside her was deep, small, controlled, inciting yet not satisfying.
Her breath rasped in her lungs. She fought her way forward on the beda”and he let hera” until she could pull herself up onto the bra.s.s bars on the headboard. Her cheek, her shoulders, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her belly rested against the cold metal, and still he remained below her, thrusting up into her body in those slow, hot, forbidden motions that made the lightning spread along each nerve. She no longer called him names. She begged him. ”Please, Warlord. Please. Deeper. Now. Faster.”
”No.” His voice trembled as he fought his desires. ”You wait. You yield. You call me your master and then Iall let you come.”
She was frenzied with l.u.s.t, but she hadnat lost her mind. ”I wonat.”
He pulled almost all the way out. He leaned against her back and whispered in her ear, ”One of us will win. Both of us will suffer.”
”I donat give a d.a.m.n if we both die.”
He laughed, his amus.e.m.e.nt vibrating from his chest to her back, his breath lifting the hairs on her neck. ”But what a sweet death it will be.”
Chapter Twelve.
What was it Warlord had said? Every time you think of pleasure, youall think of me.
Head made good on his threat. Karen had no idea how long shead been confined in Warlordas tent. She no longer knew if it was day or night. She knew only that she waged an endless, constant, sensuous battle to keep her pride . . . and if something didnat happen soon, she would give him what he wanted. She would yield. She would call him master. She would be not Karen Sonnet but Warlordas slave.
Because no matter what they were doing, she thought of pleasure. When he fed her the meals Mingma fixed them, she watched his long fingers and thought how skillfully they feathered along her spine. When he talked to her, she watched his glorious lips and remembered how they felt as they moved against her mouth in long, leisurely, damp kisses. When he walked away from her, she watched the firm, concave muscles of his b.u.t.t and remembered how his cheeks felt under her palms as he thrust in and out and in and out.
And when she stared at the bracelets he had placed on her wrists, she thought them beautiful. . . . Oh, G.o.d. He had drugged her with s.e.x.
She hated him. She hated this place. She hated herself and her own weakness.
Today, as every day, she woke with a single thoughta”she had to get away. She had to escape before winter set in, for then she would be trapped forever.
Normally in the morning she heard nothing but Mingmaas soft murmur speaking to Warlord, and the wind as it whistled a mocking tune. But today she lay very still, listening to a strange man speak from a position just inside the door. ”Yeave got to come out, man. Thereas trouble breaking out among the ranks. The last raid went so well it left some of the men hungry for more. The others are nervous, worried about the reports of trouble.”
”Which group are you in, Magnus?” Warlordas smooth, menacing drawl raised the hair on the back of her neck.
Karen heard the sharp sound of fist against flesh, and flipped over in shock.
Magnus was short, stocky, balding, with bandy legs and a wide stance. He had a thin red scar on one cheek, and he was missing the little finger on both hands. He held his fists close to his chest like a boxer in a prizefight waiting for a fatal blow.
Warlord was a head taller, barefoot, dressed in his half-b.u.t.toned jeans. He was staring, narrow eyed, at Magnus, and wiping the blood from his mouth. ”Shall I kill you now, or should we go outside?”
”Yeall not kill me.” Magnus lifted his chin at him. ”Ye know Iam in the right.”
Warlord still stared, poised on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, ready to spring. Then gradually, deliberately, he relaxed. ”All right. Talk to me.”
”Two weeks yeave been in here, man, shaking the tent night and day.”
Karen stealthily pulled the covers over her crimson face.
”Yeave got responsibilities. These men follow ye because ye keep them safe and make them rich. But riches will do them no good if the rumors are true.”
”What rumors?”
”That the enforcers, the ones the militaries hired to get rid of us . . . that theyare led by another like you.” Magnus lowered his voice, but she could still hear him. ”A beastie who wanders the mountains in animal form.”
Magnus thought Warlord was a werewolf? Oh, brother. Warlord really had him conned.
”Benjie and Dehqan disappeared while on patrol, and I found a trail of blood headed toward the army camp just over the border. I got close enough to hear screaming down there. They were racking someone. Then Benjie showed up here.”
”Unharmed?”
”Hale and hearty. He said Dehqan decided to head home to Afghanistan.”
”You donat believe him.”
”Not for a minute. No one does. Heas jumpy as a cat, and Dae-Jung caught him signaling into the mountains with a mirror.”
Karen peeked at the two men. They stood with their heads together, intent on their discussion, and while she didnat know for sure who Magnus was, it was clear to her that Warlord respected and liked him.
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