still substantial space travel.”
Her stomach pitched. He was closer to the truth than he knew.
His hand dipped lower. The silky wet fur glided over her belly and mons and then across the tops of her thighs.
A fire was building inside her, liquifying her insides like whalh metal when thrust into the forge.
A whimper lodged in her throat as he dragged the material along the back of her knees and calves.
“It’s getting hard to think, isn’t it? Harder even to hold yourself up?” His dark voice was her anchor and her torment. His knowledge of exactly what was happening soothing her even as it made her feel helpless and small.
“I learned from the best.” He skimmed the soft fur along the rise of her buttocks and she trembled harder. “I might have spent my work rotations training to be a warrior, but I spent my nights at the underground pleasure district.” His blunt fingertips slipped beneath a knot fastened just beneath her chest and he moved it slightly, the slight shift in pressure sending a rush of blood to her breasts, making the punished areas all the more sensitive.
She didn’t understand so many of his words, but her body responded nonetheless. Her nipples swelled, suddenly aching and desperate for some kind of relief—that never came.
“I absorbed. Experimented. Refined.” His tone was almost conversational, but the way he studied each of her body’s reactions was the opposite: intense. His emerald gaze attuned to every response she tried to hide. It was as frightening as it was addictive.
“I know exactly where to place my ropes to maximize pain—or pleasure.” He dragged the pelt just beneath the lines of his harness, the mix of rough and gentle only inflaming her need. “I understand exactly what a body can take before it shatters in agony, or arousal. We’re going to work our way there together.”
Together. There was something almost mesmerizing about his words and the way he mastered her.
He was in control. Clothed, while she was naked and bound in rope. Dry, while she was wet and shivering. Calm and calculating, while she quivered and panted.
Like wet Dragath clay, he was molding her into a mess of raw sensations, her hair matted to her forehead, her ears twitching, her nipples shimmering hard points, her body streaked with patterned stripes of clean skin and smeared dirt.
She would be broken apart, reduced to the wild thing he’d called her.
For all she’d endured at Talg’s command, she had never experienced anything like this.
“You won’t climax until I allow it. I won’t allow it,” the soft, slick pelt dipped between her thighs to tease her swollen center, “until you give me what I need.”
“I don’t…I can’t.” Her mind fragmented as the agonizing burn consumed her alive. She didn’t even know what climaxing was and yet she wanted desperately for him to allow it. Anything to stop the fire ripping through her.
“Beg me.” His voice had dropped to a near growl. “Like those missing females begged you.” He paused, his expression hardening. “But you didn’t leave them with their families, did you?”
Whack. Her wet pelt slapped against the outside of her breast, making a squelching sound that shocked more than it stung.
Her spine arched, her breath rushing out as sensation zipped from her tender breast to her core, a wave of pleasure that threatened to drag her under. Worse, with every movement, the rough ropes dug deeper into the flesh, making her blood pound hotter, as if there was a direct line from the press of his ropes to her core.
“You didn’t listen to their pleas.” Whack. He repeated the light slap. Her body shook, every nerve roaring to life as he mastered her flesh.
“N-no.”
“Good captives get rewards.” Satisfaction gleamed in his monstrous green eyes as he pushed the fur between her thighs once more. “Bad captives suffer.”
Whack. This time the wet pelt slapped her swollen folds.
Pride gone, she cried out, her hips thrusting in humiliating time with the slap of the fur. Frantic need driving her to chase after the sensation she both hated and craved.
“You still with me, wild thing?” He worked the pelt faster between her thighs. “You still so sure you can withstand?”
Her breath caught on a sob. No, she was no longer so sure.
Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. Her arms and legs shook. Her belly quivered. The terrible heat inside her a firestorm threatening to burn her alive.
She had to do something before she gave in and begged him never to stop.
“They dead,”