by J. E.
Slowly he began to bend down towards her, and instead of feeling comforted by his sudden tenderness, his seeming desire to kiss her neck, she felt impending doom instead. The kind she’d felt not long ago in the presence of that masked killer.
As he was poised there, but inches from her neck, a knock came to the door, interrupting them. And he ceased.
Her breathing had stopped, and she hadn’t noticed until he pulled back. It was like the wind was knocked out of her, and even though she tried to gulp in breath, it didn’t come easily. He’d turned so quickly from his condescending ‘hun’s to malicious ‘bitch’, and her mind reeled.
Pulling away from her he did up his pants and went to the door. He opened it, not acting annoyed with the interruption, which seemed odd to her. Though when she heard the deep, dark voice of Jaral she thought she understood. “It’s taken care of.”
“And the bitch?”
“She did her job diligently,” he responded, his voice cool and composed, but a slight tinge of surprise there.
“Good,” responded Zarach, but then he went back to the bed and grabbed Anjasa by the hair again and yanked her off the bed, dragging her across the floor to the door. “Take her out of my sight. The dawn’s approaching,” he said, nearly tossing her out into the hall.
To her credit, she didn’t stumble. Her grace was both innate and cultivated, though it was impossible to see it as she was treated like some animal. Her body burned with anger as she moved out through the door, standing up straight as if she couldn’t be cowed.
Her nudity didn’t bother her, but she refused to glance back at Zarach, even as she felt his cum begin to caress the curve of her ass.
“I’ll put her away for the time being,” responded Jaral, reaching out and taking her arm as he turned and guided her down the hall. She heard the door slam behind her as the pair rounded the bannisters and climbed down the steps.
Jaral quietly told her, “Be silent,” as he led her past the thug Berro at the door—who stared at her nude form lasciviously—then down to another door into the basement and another barred door at the bottom.
It wasn’t until they had that second metal reinforced door between them and the thug above that he stopped and looked to her. He inspected her in the dark stone basement in her nudity, satisfying himself it seemed with her state of being. “I arrived too late to do the deed this time. But not too late to save you from his reckless hunger,” and his hold released on her arm, his hand rising as he meticulously adjusted her dishevelled black hair upon her forehead and face.
Her eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment at that tenderness, starved for affection already. The slightest amount of it made her blossom after such humiliation and her smile was genuine. Even if he did frighten her.
How was it that someone with such a foreboding presence became the lesser of two evils?
“Too late?” she tilted her head, finally opening her eyes to look at him curiously. “Hunger?”
“You don’t know what he is yet?” he asked, his thickly muscled arm twitching just a bit as he continued his delicate grooming, returning her to her usual state of beauty after her harsh use. “I will kill him. But with what he is becoming, it shall be no easy task, Anjasa,” he stated in that dark, exotic voice of his. Even through the fog of fear that he caused, she knew that combination was something that would set most any woman’s knees to quivering.
She swallowed and her gaze dropped towards the ground as her finger rose to her neck and touched the flesh there. “You know, when a guy says he wants to taste you, it’s usually a good thing.” How did her voice sound so weak and tired?
It was then she remembered she hadn’t slept in far too long, and she sucked in a breath. Why didn’t she want to leave him? Spirits, even hearing her name was like a tender caress.
“Not in this case,” he said to her deeply, the last of her hairs into place and he used his cool fingers to caress her cheek on down along to her chin. “I will clean you,” he stated, slipping around her, lighting a lamp then wetting a cloth in a wash basin.
The basement was dingy, cold and unpleasant. Though she saw there was a mattress in one corner, simply laid upon the stonework floor.
As she studied her surroundings he returned. He laid a hand upon her shoulder as with the other he used a lukewarm wash cloth to wipe the mess of Zarach’s seed from her back in gentle strokes. “Your friend is safe. Though he will not awake for some time,” he stated. “And as for the dancer... the physician told me her fate rests on whether she can keep food down. She has lost a great deal of blood.”
“What did she do?” she asked weakly, barely wanting to know the answer. She’d seen girls die before, and had to beat more than one for the pleasure of her bosses. She suppressed it all deep within her and it was unpleasant confronting those memories once more, confronting the fact that she wasn’t as good of a person as she wanted to believe.
His dextrous hands guided the moist cloth over her backside, along the clefts and valley of her round, shapely rear. He cleaned the foul spunk of the man above off her skin before he put the cloth aside.
“Nothing,” he replied at last, standing so very tall over her. “He used her to feed. Callously, and without regard for her life or his own safety.” The foreign man walked about her, standing in front of her once more, “I thought he had promise once. But I learned his restraint only came from fear. As his power has grown, his fear has gone, and with it... all restraint and thought for everything. Even his own life and safety.” His dark eyes seemed to soften as they met her emerald gaze. “He could have seduced that girl. Made her give him what he wanted willingly. But he has gone past that point. He forgets how to be clever as his power grows with each passing night.”
Anjasa stopped biting her lower lip and gave him a soft smile, “Yea, I noticed that much. Were you the one who told him of my deception?”
Slowly he nodded to her. “He was still aware enough to know your arrival was a ruse. But he thought you merely another woman seeking fortune from him, and he intended to use you as a feature attraction for his club, doubtlessly. But when I told him of your likely dealings with his cousin...” he shrugged lightly. “His reason failed him.”
His gaze slipped away from her at last, and he looked about. “It will be an uncomfortable stay here. But I will see to it you last it through unharmed.” He locked eyes with her once more, “I can do that much, at least.”
She snorted a bit, her smirk growing, “Fuck, he treated me better when he thought I was a nobody. What kind of rationale is that?” She looked back towards the bed, and her words were soft, “I’ve slept in worse.”
That mask hid his lips, but she knew he smiled beneath it. His hand lifted again, and he traced the backs of his fingers over her jawline, up to her cheek. “He was too much the fool to realize he could have cultivated a bond between you and him that would have lasted lifetimes. A beautiful, Elvish siren to serve an immortal lord,” he shook his head, feeling the shame in lost opportunity. “He would spit on the finest of opportunities over his own ego at being fooled.”
“I barely know Loren, you know. Just met him last night in a bar. I just wanted a free drink.” And then it spiralled into something so much darker. She looked to Jaral and there was some hint of recognition and respect for him, for his awareness and understanding off her.
Of who she was. What she was.
It sent a shiver down her spine and left heat in its wake, her nipples tightening atop her large breasts. Suddenly she felt naked in a way she hadn’t, even as he wiped her free of another man’s seed.
Jaral was a man of contradictions. She detected such an aura of death and danger from him, on some instinctual level she’d honed over years of courting such threats. Yet he exuded those things that provoked attraction and lust in her: the power, the confidence, the control, the physical beauty—in what she could see of him. Even his speech and looks went that bit beyond. For he was stunningly gorgeous in his physique, she could
see that in how the leather outlined his figure so tightly, how his bare arms showed off well—honed muscles. Yet his words and looks were hued by the exotic, the foreign, making him all that much more intriguing.
And intrigue always added to appeal.
“Good,” he said simply, his fingers gingerly feeling out her skin, back across her flawless features. The cool digits a comfort, even in the cold dark of the basement. “That foppish boy has his uses, but he is not a man that could hold your attention for long.” His eyes flickered back from her hair, where his fingers tangled “Am I not right?”
“I led him to his doom, didn’t I? I wouldn’t do that for someone I had faith in.” It was true. She didn’t warn Loren because she didn’t trust him not to mess it up, to get them both caught and killed. And she didn’t expect he’d be able to start over from squalor, not like she could. He wasn’t someone who could survive outside of wealth.
Jaral shifted his position somehow. It was almost like he was going to move in and kiss her, take her. Instead he said, “With his circumstances, you could cultivate him into something advantageous. I suspect you had intended to already, before things went sour.” He stepped in nearer to her, their bodies so close that her stiff nipples brushed his leather. “Just as a powerful and properly capable man could cultivate a bond with you, to put your skills and assets to great advantage.” She was so close to him she could feel the air through his mask from his words as he spoke, “Zarach should have been that man.”
“What do you know about my skills and assets?” Her head tilted to the side as a pulse of heat spread out from her belly, making her skin prickle and feel more receptive to touch. She was cautious, though. She’d forgotten just how quickly she could get out of control, and her encounter with Zarach was a stern reminder.
“Charming,” he said in that way of speaking he had which was charming in and of itself, “you could wrap a man about your little finger. Silent. Stealthy,” he remarked, his fingers moving down from her jaw across her neck, only grazing her skin lightly as he moved . “A consummate actress. And last but not least,” he paused, his knuckles tracing her collarbone, “beauty beyond compare.”
She drew her lower lip into her mouth to stop it from trembling, but it was hard. Standing in the dingy basement, a prisoner to a cruel man, and something else entirely to the killer that touched her so gently. Her mind grew a bit hazy and she shut her eyes, inhaling deeply to try to still her thoughts. Instead, she just smelled his masculine scent and her body shuddered.
“And yet your... boss is still immune to me. A shame.”
Jaral laughed. It wasn’t curt or derisive, it was just amused. “Boss,” he repeated, his fingers dipping down and grazing her ample breasts, so large and bare as they rested to her chest. “He is not my boss, and never has been.” She could see the hints of a smile at the corner of his exposed eyes. Those exotically shaped, coal lined eyes of his. “Associates. Business partners in some manners, perhaps. But never was he my boss, fair elven lady.”
As his knuckles curved about the swell of her breast he said. “You are weary. You need rest.” He didn’t pull away then though, simply let his eyes dip low, observe her perked nipples as his fingers strayed near without touching them. “When next Zarach comes for you, capture his attention. I will end him,” he stated so casually in that deep, foreign voice of his. “I will end him and his injustice at spurning your uniqueness and value will be righted.”
“You act like you know me so well,” she said cautiously, noting that she felt a bit breathless. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she stared at him. “You know things no person ought to know, even watching me from afar. How do you see these things?”
His gaze was slow to travel back to hers, his dark hazel coloured eyes locking onto her emerald. “I am... observant,” he said, though she knew that it wasn’t that simple. There was something not quite right about him. A less travelled woman might not have noticed it, might have taken the mental influence when she was on her knees before Zarach as just animal attraction. But it was beyond that. Anjasa was mistress of lust and desire, after all.
“I shall make time for your questions once this situation is resolved. I know you have much time to lavish in such things,” he said, lowering his hand away from her but with a final motion just barely brushing against her nipple and areola. “But events are in motion, and should be resolved promptly. Rest, sweet elven beauty. Rest and be ready. For Zarach. For his doom. For your future. For me.”
He leaned in then, and though his thin dark mask still covered his lips he kissed upon her forehead in a tender motion, his strong, dextrous hand upon her shoulder lightly.
In a day that was less fraught with bad decisions, she might have begged him. Seduced him. Made him hers.
Yet, for once in her life, she waited. She felt that tingle down her spine, the way her sex pulsed with need, and tried to calm herself. She could be patient. She wanted to prove something to herself, that she wasn’t as stupid as she’d been all day. Even as she let out a sigh of need at that light touch, and the barest whispers of his flesh on hers.
“Thank you,” she murmured into his chest.
His cool, sandy brown fingers slipped from her shoulder, leaving a strange tingle in his wake as he pulled away to the door. He paused there and looked to her before she could slink off to the dingy, lonesome mattress upon the floor. “Do not fret. When Zarach comes for you, I will not be far. No matter what it seems. Rest well, for things are assured with my hand in it.” With that he opened the door and vanished through it, leaving her alone in the manor’s strange basement.
When finally she curled up on the bed that was stuffed with something far too uncomfortable, she realized just how exhausted she was. All of her troubled thoughts and concerns slipped away, and even her worries and fears couldn’t keep her awake.
Chapter 8
Awaking in a dark dungeon of a basement to the sound of approaching footsteps down the stairs was not a pleasant experience. Yet for Anjasa, it was somehow all too recognizable. She had faced imprisonment before, and the tortures that accompanied it.
It was hard to say how long she had been there, but she felt as if she had slept long, albeit uncomfortably on the uneven mattress. The eye slot in the heavy, metal reinforced door slid open. “Get up,” a gravelly, brutish voice demanded.
She stood and stretched, more provocatively than she knew she should. It came naturally to her though and she didn’t realize how she was arching her back. Even as she worked to remove the tension in her muscles from the long slumber, she was a trained seductress, against her instincts.
The locks on the door slid across, and with a noise that contrasted so starkly the silence with which Jaral had done it, the door slammed open. “Here,” Berro said, the low class brute tossing some trashy dancer number to her feet. “The boss might want some entertainment before he heads out tonight. See to it you’re ready if he does. I’ll take ya up to the parlour once yer dressed.”
“I can dress and walk.” Anjasa didn’t want to spend another minute down there that she didn’t have to. Even though she’d slept well, now that she was awake, she didn’t want to be left alone. Too many memories of her past were waking up with her, and she scooped up the outfit eagerly. It wasn’t much, just a belt that passed for a skirt and a slinky top that barely contained her breasts, but she pulled it on as she walked towards the door.
The thug Berro had no compunction about ogling her as he prodded her up the stairs. He took her back through the manor and up to the parlour where Zarach had first shown her his impatience and cruel disregard for her. “Wait in here,” he growled, giving her a shove into the room with his grimy hand, and staring at her ass as he did.
He didn’t leave her right away though; he lingered at the door, blocking her way and staring. Staring in that way she’d seen countless men do over the years as they calculated their odds at getting away with something.
It made her skin crawl, and she moved to the
sofa, but didn’t sit.
Anjasa was a fairly short woman, even for an elf, and far curvier than most. She was unarmed and only wore those tiny strips of white fabric, but it didn’t matter. She was dangerous, and she knew how to defend herself from men like him.
Years of practice had taught her how to hurt them in the most brutal ways, with only her nails and teeth.
She didn’t do much, but just those slight motions, almost imperceptible, readied her to fight as she took in the room around her, all while seeming as placid and docile as possible. “Thanks.”
The gears turned in Berro’s head slowly, but ultimately her caution was unnecessary. He calculated the cost of taking her to be too high, and knowing Zarach as she’d come to in so short a time, she wasn’t surprised.
He grunted something to her in return, gestured to a tray on the bar. “Food there,” he said and stood in the doorway, apparently intending on going nowhere right away.
She found it to be some lukewarm porridge of some sort, with a piece of bread and some water. Utterly unimpressive fair, and a testament to the disregard Zarach had for everyone.
She rolled her eyes when her back was turned on Berro. He reminded her of an orc. And an unattractive one at that.
She also noted, of course, that there was no beautiful emerald next to her bowl. The idea that he had taken her out and spoiled her only to turn on her so quickly made her body flush. Would he have let her keep it if Jaral hadn’t told him about Loren? She doubted it.
His kindness only existed to make it worse when he yanked it away. She had known too many men like that in her life not to recognize it. Even when he was buying her the world, she knew why.
So why had she returned back to his home?
She could see through the thick drapes that the sun was set or already setting, the day spent in sleep it seemed.
The porridge was tasteless, but for an odd tang. It was as unpleasant as the gruel she was forced to eat back in that dungeon so long ago.
