fold her over the bench. A heartbeat later, he let the rope flow over her skin, creating a star harness that wrapped around her waist and her chest, restraining her to the bench even as it worshiped her flesh.
She shrieked.
He took a step back. The urge to fuck her a primitive roar in his brain.
Golden skin lit by fire. Round ass in the air. Legs spread and restrained at the ankles. Her wrists, waist, and chest were tied and roped, too. Bound in an intricate diamond design that mirrored the complicated knots twisting deeper into his soul. Her sweet, swollen clit—still engorged from their last session—peeked out at him from the spread folds of her wet pussy. Her hair was a wild, tangled halo around her angelic face while her skin flushed with fury and she struggled against his bounds.
It was hard for him to believe he’d once thought she’d be easy to tame. She was so much stronger than she looked.
But even someone as forged in fire and pain as she was needed another to take charge once in a while. Because something was seething inside her, something they both needed to wade through if he was going to wipe that distrust and suspicion from her gaze and discover what he needed to know.
He was man enough to stay in control, to do what needed to be done. For her.
He moved to face her, crouching down to her eye level. “You ready to calm down and answer my questions?”
“Rasketh deske, tuveshta!” The sharp bite of each word made it clear she was only winding up.
He ran a finger from the base of her delicate neck down the bumps of her spine to the perfect crease of her ass. “I’m going to need you to speak New English, wild thing.”
Standing once more, he moved out of her line of vision and raised his hand.
17
Nayla waited for the sharp bite of pain. Strapped down over the hard bench, she was so filled with hate and despair she doubted she’d even feel the rutting or beating.
She knew both were coming. This wasn’t the first time she’d been punished like this. It was the first time, however, she welcomed it. Craved the obliteration.
It was no less than she deserved. For getting caught in the Other’s pit. For her traitorous responses to a nonpack male. For revealing more than she should to the enemy. For imagining, even for a heartbeat, that someone from the same people as her father would ever be anything but a violent monster.
She was a fool.
Her captor had destroyed her when he burned her anazi. Ruined her chances of ever gaining pack acceptance.
His words were lies. His praise, false. He didn’t really think she was good or courageous or worthy. Who would? She was Gazi. A mistake. A defect. The blended blood that pulsed inside her veins made her an outsider in both worlds. The Ancients had decreed it so.
A swirl of air at her upper back left her bracing. Part of her hoped this time she never woke up from what was coming.
A hand landed on her skin. Except the touch was soft, not hard.
Her breath left her in a rush. Goose bumps rose on her skin.
“You expecting something else, wild thing?” Her captor’s fingers danced across her shoulder blades.
“W-what you do?”
“You know exactly what I’m doing—and why.”
Her eyes went wide. Not that. Not now.
“Hit me!” she screamed. They were enemies. He was a deceiver. They could never be on the same side. He was making her doubt. Making her question Talg and her loyalty. She wanted a return to her clarity of purpose. She wanted judgment for her failures.
“Always so quick to hide. Behind pain. Behind that damn pelt.” His fingers trailed the inside of each rope design on her back, the contrast between the gentleness of his caress and the coarseness of the rope making her arousal burn even brighter. “But you don’t deserve to be punished for your origins, Nayla.”
She screamed in rage.
She resented his decree, and the kindness in his gaze as he delivered it.
She hated, too, how the rasp of his rough hands slipping beneath the coils made her body sing. It wasn’t right when he’d ground her soul to nothing.
“Why should you be punished for something you can’t control?”
Her skin tingled as his skillful fingers skated over the curve at her hips and the rise of her lower back.
She held back a moan and glared at him instead.
“You’ll answer me eventually.” His fingers