Page 26 of Feast

That’s how she felt now. Utterly destroyed. Broken. A shattered egg, fallen from the nest and oozing wetly on the ground.

And the ukkur had done all that with just two fingers.

Yes, part of her wanted to cry, and she did a little.

But part of her wanted him to do it again. Wanted all four of these brutal ukkur to shove their thick fingers inside her and force her to feel that pleasure that she could not give herself.

Yes, she had brought herself to a kind of climax on the riverbank the night before. But that outer stimulation had paled in comparison to what the bearded ukkur had just done to her. Gods, he had been so deep inside her, exploring her insides without permission and without mercy. Ika had touched herself inside before, she had explored herself at night, but always just inside the rim of her opening. Never so deep. Never so roughly.

Ika mentally chastised herself. She needed to be thinking of only one thing right now.

Escape.

She needed to get free and get back to Rolf, who was no doubt searching for her this very minute.

But how would Ika get free? She was still bound and caged. Her mouth was still gagged, precluding her from making any noises beyond a soft moan. And on top of all that, she had no clue where she even was. This cave was unfamiliar to her, and she had been disoriented when the ukkur had brought her here.

“I want to try it,” a voice growled. “I want to put my finger in the hole.”

Ika recognized that as the youngest looking member of the ukkur pack. Though his voice was youthful, it still had that deep growling accent that all the ukkur spoke with. Far deeper and more aggressive than Ika’s puny voice.

“Not now.”

That was the leader. The one she had seen on the shore of the river.

He came around to the front of the cage and crouched, studying her with dark, intense eyes. His facial scar shone in the flickering glow of the fire. For the space of a breath, Ika’s eyes locked with his, and a spark of connection passed between her and the ukkur leader.

Surely he must have recognized her scent from the night before. He must have known that she had been watching him.

She was a little fool. If she had only listened to Rolf and stayed in the den, she would never have gotten into this mess.

“Get it out of the cage,” the leader said. “Remove the bindings too.”

“Are you sure?” Gunnar asked. “You saw what it did to those nith.”

Damn straight. Ika felt a little warm spot of pride hearing these ukkur talk about that. It was insulting that they thought of her as an animal, but at least they recognized that she was no pushover. She was dangerous, and she wouldn’t lay down without a fight.

But how could she ever hope to fight four powerful ukkur.

Her best bet was to run for it, the first chance she got.

“I remember,” the scarred leader said. “But I think the four of us can handle this creature if it comes to that.”

Echoing Ika’s thoughts exactly.

The bearded ukkur, the one who had touched her inside and forced her into spasms of pleasure, reached into the cage again and gripped her by the meat of her hips, dragging her carefully out of the cage. A couple of times, her butt bumped against something long and hard. When Ika realized what that was, a blush of shame scorched her cheeks and ears.

The ukkur’s stick. It was still hard and throbbing back there.

Why did that excite her so?

As soon as she was fully clear of the cage, Ika tried to stand up, tried to make a break for it, but her legs were weak from staying in that cramped position for hours. Those intense convulsions that the bearded ukkur had subjected her to hadn’t helped matters either.

Her legs buckled, and she toppled toward the cavern floor.

With her arms bound behind her back, Ika had no means to catch her fall. The stone floor rushed up toward her face, and she winced in anticipation of the painful impact.

At the last instant, powerful hands caught her, arresting her fall a mere hair’s breadth from the ground.