Page 70

It was the first he had ever given me. The first attempt he had ever made to right any of the litany of wrongs he had done me.

“Just another glimpse under the sheepskin, eh, Raven?”

I wasn’t letting him win. I had let him win so many times with no apology at all. This one time he gave me one was not enough to cool my ire. I would let him choke on the smoke from my rage.

“More than you know, little bug.” His breath was hot on my shoulder as he moved my long braid out of the way. “I am not a good man, Cricket. I have tried to be a good man for you. You deserve that from me. But I am who I am. I am bound by duty and oaths as you are bound to this castle. I can only bend them so far.”

“Get fucked, Raven. That’s a fucking excuse, and you know it. If you didn’t want to do any of this shit, you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, dear sweet little bug, if only that were true.” He sighed and traced the line of one of the more healed slashes in my skin.

I bit down hard on my lip, not letting him have the satisfaction of my hissing moan that wanted so desperately to reward him. His thumbs rested on the dimples at the small of my back and massaged there for a long while. “I am who I am, Cricket . . . and it’s about time you met him. I had hoped that you would never meet him. I had hoped that you would be the balm to the beast, but you’ll have to burn with me.”

His fingers slid away from me, and there was nothing again. Even the soft lights had flickered out. Darkness swept in to stroke me like a waiting lover.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out soon.”

The sound of the teeth of the Maw was the last that echoed in my mind as he left me there in the dark again.

Chapter 27

My anger did not settle in the hours after he left me there to hang. It only burned brighter and brighter until I was incandescent with rage. There were even times I would swear the shadows recoiled from a spark that flew from me. It simmered and crackled away within me.

When I heard the Maw open again, I was ready to take whatever he threw at me and burn the two of us down with it. I was, however, not ready for the strap of leather that was slipped down the center of my head, across my face, and a clump of it stuffed into my mouth. I was mumbling my shocked recriminations into the hunk when I felt the other straps wrench down around the sides of my head, pressing my naked tipped ears flat against my skull. It was too tight for me to spit it out, but I had caught the bit right in time not to have it slide too far back into my mouth.

“Open your mouth, Cricket. Or I will force it, and that will probably chip your teeth.” Even the threat was mild and steady in that deep rumbling bass of his. I flailed, trying to kick him away from me, using the chains as leverage. He dodged me easily, not even trying, and my foot sailed past him with ease. Two fingers wriggled in between my cheek and teeth, hooked there as he controlled my head. “Open.”

I thrashed as much as I could against the bit, but it was no use. Even if I could get him away from me, it was stuck on my head. So, I relented, letting the large wedge of leather slide back and press flat onto my tongue. My lips were spread wide to the point of immobility. I felt the straps tighten once more and then he come around in front of me to adjust the gag that kept me from speaking.

“I will not tongue lock you, but this is just as good. At the front of this bridle is a ring. I will be leading you on a leash. You will follow, or you will be dragged by your head. You will behave and do as you are told, or you will be corrected with the leash. You will do more damage to yourself than you will to me. Do you understand?”

I hated the soft, even tone he used. I thrust a foot out, aimed for around where I expected his balls to be, but encountered nothing but a protective knee.

“You wanted to see the beast, little bug. I won’t keep you from him any longer. If I have poisoned what could have been between us with the whole truth of me, then it was never meant to be.”

The last part was whispered and sounded almost . . . regretful, as if he had lost something he wished he could keep hold of.

Something snapped to the front of the gag and then the shackles released me, and I crumpled to the floor. The warmth of a cloak was spread around me, laying heavy and painfully across my back full of slashed cuts. The leash pulled up on the gag, and I had no choice but to rise or be dragged along by the face. When I had come to stand fully, I felt him moving around me, doing up what I assumed were buttons that covered the cloak’s face from throat to floor.

My hair was stuffed back into the deep hood and then it was pulled over my head. It was warm, at least, and as much as I wish I could hate it, the warmth felt good on my aching body.

I didn’t have long to enjoy it, though. The back of the cloak was flipped over my head, and he was kneeling behind me, his breath hot on the globes of my ass as he drew my arms back and shackled them together. The supple leather of his gloves roamed over the captive flesh of my arms as if exploring them for the first time. I felt ice drip into the inferno of my fury and jerked away, feeling him stiffen with shock.

Deciding he was done with his bindings, he let the cloak fall to my feet and came back around to reclaim the lead.

The leash was gently tugged, and I took hesitant, careful steps toward where it was leading. “Good. Now, raise your left foot and step up and over the lip. Then your right. Good.”

He guided me over a threshold, and light flooded back in. It wasn’t much, wasn’t daylight, but the torches that burned around me felt like the surface of the sun compared to the abyssal darkness that I had come from. It was but a second of inconvenience, though, as he cupped his hands around my eyes, metering in the light to ease me into the transition.

I hated how tender even in this brutality he was being. I gritted my teeth as much as I could, letting my eyes adjust once more until I could see the dank, stagnant, moldy water-covered black stone in front of me. I tried to turn my head to look back, to see what The Raven had been able to this entire time, but he flicked the leash to prevent me from doing so.

“Keep your eyes on the ground. It will keep you from stumbling. And I will keep a short leash on you. You will hurt yourself if you stumble.”

I could hear it now, the slight razor that undercut the previously gentle thunder that rolled across thirsty plains. It had not been there before, I was sure of it. It set my skin on fire and cast ice down my spine. It was danger incarnate, and had I heard it, I would have handled him differently. I would have avoided him, for there was no surviving a person who could pirouette on the edges of extremes with agile grace like this. They would be the undoing of any who found themselves in their path, and I had been fool enough to not notice it.

I had not feared something or someone in a very long time, but that tone in The Raven’s voice was terrifying. I didn’t know who he was anymore. I didn’t know what he was capable of anymore. I didn’t know how easily he could slip from one extreme to another. And yet I felt as if I had always seen it at the edges lurking, like moss threatening to overtake the trunk of a tree. I wanted to see a soft man, a man I could rely on to be sweet and tender with me. I had ignored the careful ease he had used in his threats. I had seen them at the time and let them fall by the wayside as I slowly let him wriggle bit by bit under my skin.