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“A good lesson for you. You must learn to think, no matter what is being done to you. Remember that I can do plenty to you, lovely Gwynn, despite your little rules.” Rogue slid a hand down to cup my breast through the robe, thumbing the stiff nipple, sharpening the pleasure. He’d bent down now, warm breath feathering against my ear.
“Please,” I whispered.
“What are you begging me for?”
I clamped my lips together and closed my eyes. I also couldn’t afford to ask for anything from Rogue, being fresh out of anything more to give.
I tried to think about the formula for the circumference of a circle. 2πR. Diameter multiplied by pi. Too easy. The wet core of me ached. π was equal to 3.14 and what else?
3.14792. No that couldn’t be because the 7 would round up to 3.15. So what was the fourth digit?
“Gwynn.” Rogue sighed, the feel of it teasing my skin. “You are meant to be thinking about magic, not numbers.”
My eyes popped open. “You could hear me? I thought I was being quiet.”
“When we’re this close—” he squeezed my breast and I choked back a moan, “—I can hear you better. Also, I know you want me.”
“Do you?”
“Your body doesn’t lie.” He inhaled. “You smell of sex. Like wine and roses, mixed.”
“What I want and what my body wants are not the same thing, Rogue. Haven’t we had this conversation?”
“But it’s so entertaining to debate with you.” He switched to the other breast. I thanked my foresight for insisting on one hand at a time. “Now, answer the question, like a good girl.”
My head swam for a second. He wasn’t asking about pi. I rewound the conversation, no, not what I was begging for—that was obviously rhetorical.
“Because of the…” Orgasm. Climax. Because I came. Just words to say.
“There you are,” Rogue murmured, stroking my breast with a tender affection that undid me even more. “I’ll allow the thought to answer, since you’re shy to say it aloud.”
He sounded satisfied in that and it reminded me that no one seemed to think it odd that Rogue essentially demanded sexual favors from me in exchange for saving my life.
“Now you learn the why of it.”
“Only a superficial why.” I rose also, moving out from under his devastating touch and needing to bleed off some of the tension. Surprisingly, he let me. “I already knew my magic comes from sex—Marquise and Scourge said as much when they thought I wasn’t listening.”
“Clever girl.” Rogue waited, watching me pace. “Tell me—how much did you manage to hide from them?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I stalked over to my workbench and fiddled with a rubber ducky I’d found in the tribute tent. People here gave me so many gifts that Larch had finally set up a separate tent, just to house all the shiny stuff. The rubber ducky looked exactly like one from my world, a conundrum that continued to puzzle me. And no, I didn’t know who’d given it to me. I didn’t know who had given any of that stuff to me.
“I would like to know.” His hand stroked down the fall of my hair, a caress meant to soothe, not stimulate. “Clearly their claws did not sink so deeply as they’d hoped. How did you slip the leash?”
“Are you asking so you can collar me more effectively?” The words came out bitter. My time in that palace of torture was not something I revisited easily. Probably I needed serious therapy to deal with the PTSD. Not a casual chat about the worst time of my life with one of the people who’d put me there.
“I would comfort you, my Gwynn.” Rogue’s voice was soft. Not at all like him.
I set the ducky back in its place and turned to search his face. “Why now?”
“You never let me before.”
“You put me there. I haven’t forgotten.”
“No,” he corrected, his face icing into his more usual implacability. “I was simply unable to prevent it. I’ve told you—even I am constrained. I did the best I could do to prevent the worst for you.”
“The worst?” I nearly choked on my gasp. “Do you haveanyidea what they did to me?”
“Yes.” His midnight blue eyes were grave. “And I know it could have been worse. By staking my claim on you, I prevented them from having you in every way. Believe me, your teachers are quite effective at rape and all forms of sexual torture.”
