Page 72 of Bound

“Well what?” Shiraz asked.

“This is the part where you apologize too.”

Her brother shied back. “Whatever the hell for?”

“For what you insinuated about Brickham. For mincing his honor and character without even knowing him.”

He went full-bore glower. “I will jump into the Tahreuse lava hole first.”

“’Raz!”

“Dare not, sister,” he snarled. “Dare. Not. Go. There.”

“There being the hell where?” she countered. “You mean back to the land of consideration, kindness, truth, and granting the benefit of a doubt to the stranger who saved your fembla’s life?”

“After helping himself to her mind and body?” he spat. “Now we can only pray he had no aspirations on anything else.”

Jayd blinked hard though kept her head high. She did not dare give away that his prayers would already be in vain. That Brickham had already claimed more than her virginity and sanity.

He had taken her heart as well.

He had to know that by now. But did he want to? Did she want him—or any of them—to?

She yearned to scream for lack of an answer.

Instead, she charged with shocking composure, “Aspirations, brother? To exactly what? I am a princess stripped of her birthright, and the whole world now knows it. I might remain a figurehead but will likely not have financial gains beyond what the high council agrees to pay me. By the same stroke, neither I nor my children will have any viable claim to the throne. So what is your point again?”

Shiraz jabbed his hands into his pockets. Kicked at an invisible pebble on the shiny floor. She almost guessed that he was…fidgeting. But she knew better of the brother to whom she was closest, chronologically and emotionally.

“You are…tender…about him right now, fembla,” he finally ventured. “And I understand that. But after a while, I hope that you will see things—see him—more accurately.”

“The way you see him, then?” she flung. “Because—what?—you are wiser, worldlier? Because your experiences make you an expert about all men now?”

He jerked his hands out of his pockets. “I am not a seer, sister. Of course I know not everything in the way of men. But I have spent time around more of them than you—and I know what it looks like when a male does not merely desire a woman. I recognize it when he wants to…”

“What?” Jayd demanded when he trailed off for too long. Once more, her air was tight in her chest and her limbs felt slammed into high-voltage chargers. “When he wants to what, damn it?”

“Eviscerate her.” He winced as if hating himself for spewing it. But he did not back off. If anything, the spill emboldened his commitment to the comparison. “’Tis an ugly verity, but a truth all the same. Men like Brickham—”

“You mean Dominants?”

So she could throw him off his game. But not for long.

He quickly recovered from his clutched choke before offering, “You are aware of more than I assumed.”

“Well.” She kept it smooth, cautious about overplaying the preen. “You know what they say about assumptions.”

“Excellent point,” he returned. “Especially because my point has nothing to do with a disposition for the lifestyle.”

Thankfully, he did not go for the obvious gloat either. But Jayd could not summon any demonstrable gratitude. “So your point is about what?”

“Men—destroyers—like Brickham are everywhere.”

Her spine, already a ramrod, stiffened more. Her temples throbbed, but this time she let them. Perhaps they would lend to the intensity of the glare she whipped at his watchful face.

“I am not destroyed, brother.”

Could he not see that it was just the opposite? That because of Maximillian Brickham, she was a woman more aware of her power than she had ever been? More aware of what she could endure and be stronger for it? Braver about the risks she could dream of, the fears she could face—and overcome?