chin. Her head dropped, her neck too exhausted to hold her up.
Except, before she could recover, his hands were back, toying with her nipples. Ratcheting her need higher.
“So thirsty.” The water he’d given her had long since ceased to suffice.
“You want to drink more. Tell me where the females are.”
“I-I need make water.” A small flash of shame shot through her at the admission, proving she hadn’t lost all her sense of pride. Yet.
“Hold it. The urge to pee only makes the arousal more intense.”
She bit back a howl. “You are as bad as Talg say. I wish you to the Void.”
“You respond like this to everyone you wish dead?”
“I-I don’t know. I never feel anything like this. No one ever touch me skin-to-skin before.”
Strong fingers tangled in her hair, jerking her dazed gaze to his. “What did you just say?”
Panic slammed through her. What had she said? She was so dazed and lost to the hunger, she hadn’t even realized she’d spoken aloud.
His hold tightened. “Explain the meaning of your last statement.”
She shivered in her binds.
His gaze narrowed, that probing glare taking in everything she fought to hide. “That sounded like truth.”
Horror slammed through her.
She wasn’t a good deceiver. She had no practice at it.
Because she was Gazi, Talg kept her isolated. Pack was not supposed to look at her or talk to her without permission. The anazi a reminder to all that she was not one of them.
Only Talg, strengthened by the Ancients, spoke or interacted with her directly, and even he had never touched her skin-to-skin. He slapped, pinched, and forced himself inside her, but always with some block between his skin and hers.
“Shit.” Her captor reared back, whatever he read in her expression shifting his to shock. “You’re not lying. It is true.” His hands fisted by his sides. “I knew something wasn’t adding up. But to never have been touched… Who would do that to you?”
He knew nothing. Understood nothing. Swallowing hard, she looked away.
There was a long pause. Then a curse. “Dragath hells.” He spun. Paced to the end of the cave.
It was enough to pull her from her own shame and fury.
She watched in fascination. She’d never seen her captor in anything but complete control before.
He stood with his back to her, shoulders tensed. He plowed a hand through his hair, blowing out a long breath. Then, without warning, he swiveled, his long legs eating up the distance until he was looming over her. “Tell me who you are.”
“W-why you care? N-nothing to do with females or weapon.”
“Tell me.”
She could try and lie, but he always seemed to know. Plus, no one had ever wanted to know before. No one had ever cared.
“I am Gazi.” There. She’d admitted it aloud.
She waited for his recoil.
His forehead wrinkled instead. “Gazi? What is that?”
Her heart beat fast. Could he truly not know? Was it so easy to leave her shame behind?
The silence stretched.
Jaw tight, he studied her. “You’re telling me something important, but I don’t know enough yet to understand.”
If it was up to her he never would.
His nostrils flared as if he scented her veiled defiance. “If you don’t answer the fucking question, I’ll start back up and I won’t stop until you’re so riled up you beg for my cock.”
She shivered at the thought, and the part of her that ached for him to do just that. “Gazi means unnamed.”
“Unnamed?” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he turned her words over in his mind. She could tell the exact moment he put two and two together. Two red spots flashed high on his cheekbones.
“Are you telling me you don’t have an actual name?”
“Yes.”
His chest rose and fell faster. “What did your pack call you when you were born? What do your friends call you now?”
She could tell he was looking for a way to discount her claim.
Her tongue ghosted over lips gone dry and cracked. She did not recognize the word friends, but she knew the answer to his first question. “I always known as Unnamed, or Gazi.”
“Are you part of some religious order?” His questions came quick. “I remember reading about one back on Old Earth that didn’t speak the name of those they worshipped out of respect.” He shook his head as if displeased with his own idea, his voice dropping as he spoke to himself. “But if you were so precious to them, why would they leave you alone and unprotected? That can’t be it.”
It was too many rushed, rumbled