by Nya Rawlyns
How could he, she wondered. How could he look down, when they were so evenly matched in height, yet he seemed to levitate, his control so complete. Once again he forced her to feel insignificant, insecure.
I am nothing, no one.
“You aren’t.”
Startled, Caitlin backed up a step. The bizarre dialog was the most loquacious her handler had been since their frantic rush through the Portal, that thing that passed for salvation in a time-space that no longer computed for her.
He carefully adjusted the straps on the panniers, then shifted what little remained of their provisions so that both sides carried roughly equal amounts of weight. The loose packing threatened to throw the poor animal off balance on the steep descents.
Caitlin despised that he was right, that he always was. She simply could not perform to his expectations so she added disappointment to her laundry list of woes, with unrequited love being the least of her concerns.
Curious, she touched his elbow to draw his attention, never a safe act, but one she rather enjoyed, just to see how far she could drive him, as if his irritation would net her a badge of merit. He’d rolled the sleeves above his elbows as the heat of the day had taken its toll on all of them, humans and animals alike. As she fingered bare skin, he tensed but let his right arm lay quiet on the mule, in silent invitation; for what, she wasn’t sure.
“Can I ask a question?”
“You can,” he murmured, “but you know the answer, don’t you?” With preternatural speed he spun around and drove her to the rocky ground. Her spine screamed in agony as sharp points bit into bony flesh and elbows ricocheted off loose rock, leaving them to cannon down the slope. The horses shifted nervously but he paid them no heed, too intent on making his point.
Caitlin held her breath, as breathing caused far too much pain, her ribs and tailbone screaming in agony. He would pay little heed to her discomfort, unconcerned that the healing would take time, though heal it would. Nothing and everything lasted forever in that time-space. Her penance was to bear his weight, to feel his burly chest flatten her breasts and his legs pry her thighs apart until rough denim braked against coarse homespun. She shuddered with anxiety, praying, hoping.
“You know, don’t you?” he breathed in her ear, insistent. “And what is the answer?”
Caitlin prayed for relief from the pressure as he crushed the life out of her. Dead weight. Yet she’d dreamt of it every night. Consuming her, wrapping her in hard muscle, sinew and bone. The rocks and stones and gravel cushioned her battered body like the softest duvet as he spread her arms wide and pinioned them to the ground. Her fists curled reflexively, the knuckles raw from scraping against jagged stone, bloody, but still he pressed his advantage.
She mouthed fuck you and arched into him, seeking relief, fighting the unholy wash of lust and longing that threatened to drown her. She had only moments left, then he would lift off her body and that ache, that glorious throbbing in her gut and groin would leave her bereft, unfulfilled and stagnating. Then she could hate him once again.
The man smirked as he mercilessly hefted his solid bulk off her wiry frame using her bruised wrists as leverage.
“Get up. We need to make the flats before moonrise.” He extended a hand, coated with sticky blood, already drying to a dull patina in the unrelenting heat.
Caitlin gritted her teeth and allowed him to pull her upright. She swayed unsteadily but he turned away, ignoring her once again, leaving her to fight through the agony as her nerves fired in a healing frenzy. She longed to undo the tight leather laces on the bodice, to let her lungs expand and suck in the superheated molecules of stagnant air. She glanced up at the white-hot single pinprick of light and marvelled at how such a tiny object could send a tsunami of crushing heat across the barren landscape.
Her captor busied himself with adjusting the saddle pads and tightening the girths. Caitlin approached cautiously. This was a dangerous time in their relationship. He’d exerted his dominance as usual but now he had an additional opportunity to inflict—if not pain—then humiliation as she attempted to mount the squirrelly steed.
He moved aside to allow her to place a booted foot into the stirrup. Caitlin prayed to every deity she could think of as the beast sidestepped coyly, leaving her gasping and cursing under her breath. His smile of derision, sensed but not seen, burned into her back as she hopped awkwardly over the loose stones. Her sweaty palm quickly lost purchase on the high pommel and she fell backwards on a sob.
She stuttered, desperate to avoid punishment, “I-I’m sorry. I’ll do better...”
“You will, but not today. Here, let me help.” He held his hands at stirrup level, cupped to cradle her foot. “Gather your skirts, woman. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
Caitlin quickly pulled the rough cotton layers up to her hips, her face flaming. She would need to carefully adjust the fabric to cushion sensitive skin. How he could possibly overlook a necessity as basic as knickers, or whatever undergarments were called in this dimension, escaped her. Setting her foot onto his locked fingers she allowed him to hoist her onto the horse. The only thing saving her from permanent damage to her nether regions was the sheepskin cover on the saddle. Even then, the rough fabric grated and pulled and tormented her irritated skin until it seeped and oozed. She carefully lowered herself while frantically stuffing the skirt between her legs.
The man watched with a small smile before turning quickly away to mount his own steed. He tied the lead line from the mule to a ring attached to the pommel of his saddle, then urged his horse onto a barely discernible path leading down a steep slope that canted to the left between jutting granite outcrops.
Caitlin allowed her mount to move at its own pace. The animal had an uncanny knack of picking his way down the impossible slope. She wriggled in the saddle, pressing her legs forward to brace against the high-backed cantle. Keeping her eyes glued to the ground ahead of the horse, she anticipated his movements as best she could. The man led the mule through the narrow opening and disappeared from view. Caitlin fought against the urge to turn away from the path, to bolt upslope, away from her handler and toward ... freedom? She had no idea what that word meant anymore. She’d been locked in a hell not of her own making for so many weeks that she barely fathomed a life outside of the daily torment that was her desire and ultimate downfall.
Escaping into the weak surcease of memory, she knew the gods surely laughed at her.
****
“Wake up.”
Caitlin’s head snapped back as the man slapped her cheekbone, a single hard smack that shot a bolt of pain through her left eyeball.
“We’re not going to make it.”
“I-I’m sorry.” Again, with a pleading, begging note, she tried to come to terms with the here and now, but her brain refused to function. She could barely see in the dim light. How had it gotten dark so soon? Where were they?
“You fell asleep. I told you, never go to sleep out in the open. Not here. Not ever.” He clasped her upper arm in a vicious grip that immediately cut off her circulation.
“W-what time is it?”
“Time? Time has no meaning here. Light, dark. That’s all you need to know.” He released her arm and spun his horse in a circle. The mule was nowhere to be seen.
“Please. Wait. What do we do?”
“I found a cave on the other side of this ridge. It’s just big enough to hold the horses. Otherwise...”
“Otherwise, what?”
“It’s not easily defensible.” He tried to hide the worry but the pronounced crease to his brow gave away his concern.
Caitlin tried to hide her dismay. She’d relied on this stranger to protect her, to clothe and feed her in return for her utter obedience to his every whim. She had no doubt that he was all that stood between her and chaos, despite the pain and sweet caresses doled out in exquisite disharmonies. The harsh landscape robbed the eye of color and definition, and behind it all lurked the predators, caught in a menta
l freeze frame, ever present and lethal. They’d drawn blood, his blood. The thought of abandonment in this alien hell churned her gut, taking the small step beyond fear into a world of terror and helplessness.
They were in danger, both of them, for he put himself at risk on her behalf. He asked for nothing from her—and everything. She had little to offer, her powers useless, gone dormant, inexplicably so. From the first moment he touched her, he owned her. Given the chance, she would run, run fast, run far, yet she would never leave him for that empty space inside her belonged to him alone.
She husked, “Where?”
He pointed slightly uphill. Caitlin urged her horse toward a notch, black on gunmetal grey, etched into the side of the ridge about two hundred meters to her left. The man hung back, guarding their flank. She smelled the mule long before she heard the restless stirring as his hooves shifted loose gravel at the entrance. The heat and the hard going had them all in a lather, with the stench of sweaty equines overpowering all other odors. She had no idea how disgusting she must look, let alone smell. The last passing attempt at hygiene had been at a sluggish trickle of a stream thick with red algae that clogged her sinuses and left her skin itchy and blotched. That had been days ago, though time seemed to pass with irregular beats. She threaded raw and swollen fingers through her hair, a nervous gesture from her younger days that would leave her fine flyaway white blond locks in a tangled mass. Time and exposure had darkened and dried the filthy mass into dreadlocks that slapped annoyingly at her chin or neck whenever she, or the horse, made an abrupt move.
The man rode up beside her and dismounted. He reached over to take her horse’s reins, smugly leering as she unfolded the skirt fabric from between her legs and wrapped the material around her waist. Even now, with nightfall and the full moons poised to snap above the horizon, and danger lurking under every rock or behind every stunted bush, he still stared with unabashed interest as she ‘put propriety at naught’ as her favourite author was wont to say. She had no choice. She could either sit on the beast all night, or dismount and expose her raw flesh to his prurient interest, if indeed that’s what it was. Perhaps he merely enjoyed seeing the evidence of her discomfort. She drew a small degree of satisfaction from the brief encounter. It was the only time he seemed interested, perverse as that interest might be.
Caitlin swung her right leg over the cantle and dropped heavily to the ground. Her ribs felt like ground glass in a blender, swirling and slicing every shred of tissue in her torso. She grappled with the stirrup, using the cool metal to steady and adjust her battered body into a normal walking position. He quickly pulled tack and settled the animals for the evening, dispensing what little grain and concentrated hay pellets remained in the panniers.
“Don’t give them too much of that,” she cautioned.
He looked up and frowned.
She explained, “We have no water. They could choke on the dry feed.”
He nodded and removed a portion of the hay pellets from each animal. The mule dug in with gusto but the two horses turned away from the grain, sides still heaving from the effort of negotiating the wicked terrain. Assessing each with a critical eye, he shook his head and approached Caitlin with a puzzled expression. She tried to shrink away, fearful that he would somehow blame her for the sorry state of their transportation.
“Good call.”
Caitlin nodded, dumbstruck, as he slid past her, disappearing into the bowels of the shallow cavern. The smaller moon had already risen out of the northeast quadrant, if she understood direction on this strange world to be similar to what she would recognize on Earth. Pale yellow ambient light poured through the opening, illuminating almost the entire interior. Caitlin heard her captor setting out bedrolls and their meagre stash of camping supplies. They were down to a few bits of dried jerky and one precious tin of fruit in heavy syrup made with some exotic sweetener she couldn’t identify. It was the last bit of fluid they had, and they would need to hoard it carefully. The man had said nothing about when they would find water, possibly to taunt her, but more likely because he had little or no knowledge of the area they traversed as if the devil himself were after them.
“Come.”
Caitlin limped with an odd rolling gait, her inner thighs a mass of abrasions from losing her grip in the saddle during her ill-timed nap. She settled onto the bedroll and shivered in the rapidly cooling night air. She recalled that caves often stayed in the fifty-degree range, though this one, being so shallow, should have had at least some residual heat from the furnace of midday.
The man handed her a piece of jerky but she waved it off. Her jaw and cheekbone still stung from his strike, and she doubted she could swallow anything without suffering a great deal of pain from her cracked ribs. Depression and shock gripped her with a vengeance and she collapsed onto the thin cover, shaking violently.
The man crouched low and gently touched her brow, moving the lank strands off her face and running a fingertip around the abused eye socket. She barely felt the touch for the swelling and soreness.
“I can help you,” he said, not unkindly, “if you will allow me.”
The strangeness of that offer hardly registered as he slipped beside her and began to slowly unlace the bodice that bound her ribs. Caitlin thought her insides would tear apart as the leather released the ribs from relative stasis into a new, excruciatingly painful configuration. She moaned softly, conscious of their situation and the need for absolute quiet but the agony tripled as he pulled the lacing through the final hole. Unable to bear it any longer she choked back the scream, releasing it on a low growl that crescendoed and echoed around the walls.
Before she blacked out, she sensed his hot breath on her face, imagined his full lips tracing a path along her chin, his tongue trailing heat and moisture over her cracked lips, probing gently, and finally demanding.
Chapter Nine
Trey cursed under his breath as he assessed the woman’s injuries. He despised what he had to do to keep her under control. He cursed his father and his brothers and his gods for the ease with which he connected with the anger and hate he’d tried to bury. The violence rose like bile, sharp, acrid, throat gagging; yet he embraced it with almost a sensuous joy. It was familiar, an avowal of his worth and a measure of the respect accorded his status and bloodlines. He had entered manhood with scars on his back and blood on his hands.
Take her; she is ripe.
She calls me Aiden.
Take her.
I haven’t the right.
Smell her desire.
Only fear.
She wants you.
I know.
Take her ... now.
Trey gasped at the overpowering rush of desire, the descent into madness that would drive him insane with greedy hunger, for he longed to touch her. Not with the healing strokes that would restore balance to her chi but with passion and power and dominance, shared pleasure, a release from the constant pangs of loneliness and the emptiness of his tortured existence.
The woman moaned softly as he explored her ribcage. How could he have done so much damage? He rolled her thin blouse above her small breasts, each rib protruding through skin like parchment, brittle and dry. Athletic in build when he’d first encountered her, he saw that now she was whip thin, almost skeletal. His long fingers gently manipulated each fracture, adjusting the position, while knitting the bones with brief bursts of energy. Bones were easy. The bruising and severe hematomas would require time to be reabsorbed into her system. He could only give her immune system a boost. The rest was up to her.
Trey traced a thumb along the waistband of the rough cotton homespun of the skirt. He quickly untied the cord belting the fabric about her waist and slid it down over narrow hips, taking care not to dislodge the ribs or to further aggravate the tailbone which was not broken, only badly bruised.
He whispered, “Oh sweet Freyja...” when he saw the damage done to her inner thighs and calves from the weeks of riding without proper protection. At
the time he’d given little thought to the mechanics of riding, never having had to consider a woman’s special needs, so he’d gone with what had been handy. That she’d suffered unbearable agony was clear to him now. His face flamed as he recalled how he’d used his power to humiliate her and to feed his own burgeoning lust with glimpses of her womanhood.
He wondered if she were a virgin. Could he be her first? Unlikely, but that thought morphed into a waking dream. He would spread her thighs, ease into her tight heat, and succumb to the tension and quick release as he thrust to the hilt. Cries of pain followed by whispers of pleasure, moans of joy. He ached with need, his desires swamping reason with passion.
With a growl he spread her damaged legs and roughly squeezed the hard muscle, kneading with vicious strokes, until the deep purple and blues and greens faded to a liverish yellow stain. Exhausted he rocked back on his heels, nearly spent from the outflow of energies. He was no longer strong enough to deal with such extensive injuries. While genetically superior to most humans, he still had physical limits. The lack of food and water would eventually debilitate him to the point where he could no longer fulfill his mission. If he did not provide for them soon, he would lose the woman, the final piece on the board—game, set ... match.
He hesitated to touch the swollen inner folds, splotched with open sores, oozing pus. He’d seen worse so the sight did not disgust, though in truth he was taken aback by the frailty of the female form. What he feared was losing the little self-control he had left. The whispers of his mind, the exhortations by his brothers, his father, his cadre mates take her, she’s yours, take her roiled through his system, a Greek chorus of self-indulgence.
“Damn you, woman.” Trey lunged to his feet, his body aching and his mind reeling. He stared at her for a long moment. She shivered once, involuntarily, but settled back into a dreamless state. She would heal during this extended moon phase if he could keep her unconscious long enough.
