Born to Wound Him
He seized both her shoulders without warning. Elona had barely flinched when he spun her and drove her toward the wall. Her face met the stone. She dragged in a ragged breath, and he came up behind her, his mouth at her ear.
“So take the price.”
Kazan pinned her hard and hauled her skirt up. The moment she understood what he meant to do, she shook her head, a sob caught in her throat. She braced both arms against the wall and fought to push herself free. It did nothing.
“W-wait, I’m not ready—aah!”
He drove into her in one rough stroke, fully hard. Crushed between the wall and his body, Elona could not move. What had felt painfully tight at first began to slide more easily as he opened her, and she was horrified to realize she was already wet. He had done little more than mouth her neck.
“Spread your legs properly.”
“Hah—this feels wrong, this is—mmph…”
“Useless noise.”
He pushed two fingers into her mouth. They were hard against her tongue, against the soft inside of her mouth and the roof of it, and she could not close her lips. Her breath came short and broken. When she finally went quiet, he began to snap his hips, thrusting into her without mercy.
“Ah—hah—mm—!”
“Don’t close your mouth. You’ll do as you’re told.”
With his right hand Kazan caught one of her thighs and forced it wider. His left was slick to the wrist with her saliva. Shame, and the slight lack of air, gathered tears in Elona’s eyes. He licked lightly at the corner of one eye and bit the flushed rim of her ear. Every time he drove his hips, his hot breath broke against her with a low sound.
“Elona. Can you feel it?”
“Nnh… ah…”
“What a waste. You’re spilling all of it.”
He stroked the inside of her thigh, soaked with her slick. The moment his fingers met that slippery wetness, Elona squeezed her eyes shut, burning with humiliation. Kazan took his hands from her mouth and from between her legs. She had only just drawn a full breath, freed of that gag, when he slid both hands beneath her disordered clothes and closed them over her breasts.
“Ah—nnh—!”
“You like this, don’t you. Being touched here.”
She wanted to say no. All that left her was a moan. His wet fingers found her stiffened nipples, and her whole body shuddered. He twisted the tips of her breasts and flicked them, working her with a cruel, practiced skill. Held there by the chest, Elona began, without quite noticing, to lean not into the wall but into him. Each time he rocked his hips, her body followed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Kazan… stop, please…”
She barely caught his arm and set her nails. He seized her wrist and drew out of her, the length he had buried deep. When that rigid heat touched her backside she tried at last to pull away, but he lifted her and laid her down on the marble table beside them. Caught utterly off guard, Elona went rigid with panic.
“Wait—this isn’t—”
“What. You don’t like it because it isn’t a bed?”
Kazan tore away the undergarment that had been irritating him all along. The long fall of Elona’s skirt spilled off the table and covered the tops of his feet. He settled between her legs where they hung in the air, braced both arms on the marble, and looked down at her.
His broad body threw a shadow over her disordered gold hair and the rumpled folds of her clothes. Tear-wet lashes, cheeks gone red, lips a moist pink—the sight of her made him ache until he thought he would lose his mind. He rubbed his mouth against hers and whispered.
“I can’t hold back anymore.”
“Nnh—aah—!”
Already slick from moving inside her, he drove in without hesitation. The wet, brutal sound of each thrust shook her until the room seemed to tilt. Pleasure forced on her left Elona unable even to moan. Her mouth hung open. She could barely drag in air, and her body was pushed farther and farther up the table. Kazan caught her by the shoulders, hauled her into his arms, and seated himself in her to the root.
“Hhk… please… let me go…”
She had barely sobbed it against his chest when he filled one hand with her breast and snapped his hips up hard. The violence of it left Elona gasping.
“Hah—stop—th—ah, aah!”
Every time a moan broke from her, the thick arms around her tightened. Elona screamed as if she might come apart and beat at his chest, clawing. As if none of it mattered, he only held her harder and drove himself into her. She thrashed until she had no resistance left, and in the end she took everything he poured into her.
“Nnh… hhk…”
Kazan held the crying Elona for a long moment. She wiped at her tears, then shuddered when she felt him withdraw. What he had spilled inside her ran hot down over her backside and soaked the fall of her skirt. Ruined all over again, Elona bit down hard on her lip. She prayed he would be satisfied with once.
But Kazan stripped away every piece of her wet clothing. He lifted her, not a thread left on her, and the moment she was thrown onto the bed Elona’s eyes went, of their own accord, to the door. The bolt beneath the latch hung open.
“Thinking of running?”
The low question snapped her back to herself, and she tore her gaze away. He had cast off his nightclothes and was climbing over her. Still wrapped in lust, the hard body meeting hers was terribly hot. Elona looked up into his eyes and asked, her voice shaking.
“If I ran, what would you do?”
Kazan stayed crouched over her and said nothing. Elona spoke as if she no longer cared what came of it.
“Would you chase me down and kill me? The way you did my brother?”
“In Ashatra.”
He reached down and closed a hand around her slender ankle, as if it were already a shackle.
“They cut the ankle from a slave who runs.”
Elona swallowed, silent. He looked straight at the fear on her face and whispered.
“So don’t run. I like your body as it is. I rather liked taking you standing up.”
Tears gathered in Elona’s eyes again. Kazan would never have said something so cruel. She looked at a man she could no longer recognize, and her voice broke.
“You hate me that much… so why are you keeping me alive?”
Kazan gently brushed the stray gold hair back from her forehead. He looked down at the tear-tracks on her cheek.
“In the Temple of Lu, god of water and life, these words are carved.”
Every person is born carrying a purpose they must fulfill in the world.
“Elona. I know why you came to this land.”
She shook her head. I don’t want to hear it. She tried to cover her ears, but he caught her rising hands first. Kazan said it plainly.
“You were born to wound me.”
“No…”
“Don’t deny it. You’ve already succeeded.”
“No… I never wanted that. Not once…”
“You pushed me away. You insulted me. You drove me to my death. I’ll make sure you know exactly how that felt.”
While Elona wept in misery, Kazan reached toward the foot of the bed. Chain clinked. Cold metal closed around her left ankle. Caught in a true shackle, she shut her eyes, wretched. With an indifferent motion in which she could feel not a trace of affection, he spread her legs. Through the bleak sound of the chain, she heard a voice that was not there.
“I’ll set you free.”
“So that nothing can bind you.”
At fifteen, Kazan had promised her that.
The Farcion Slave Market opened its gates twice a day.
Like a fish market at the harbor, the merchants came mostly in the early dawn to buy the Ashatran slaves newly arrived. At that hour the blocks held sturdy bodies fit for hard labor or farm work, looks notwithstanding.
Those who failed to sell after that first showing were dragged down to the underground market in human flesh. Where the law could not reach, a body might be traded in any manner imaginable, and a slaver never took a loss.
Once the leftover stock was cleared and a short rest taken, the gates opened again in the afternoon, when the sun stood at its height. The customers of that second market were chiefly nobles and royalty. The slaves who mounted the blocks were therefore handsome, and as varied in their peculiarities as the tastes of the people who came to buy them.
“So you have to choose as carefully as you can. I’ve already bought one, and it’s infuriating if the one I actually want comes out afterward. You hear me, Elona?”
“Yes, Brother… ow!”
“Damn it, keep up! You’re a nuisance.”
Prince Antonio, white hood drawn up, turned with open irritation. In the press of bodies at the market entrance, a young girl had fallen. His younger sister wore a white hood as well. She was only fifteen—far too young to be sightseeing in a slave market.
“We keep running late because of you. I’m going on ahead.”
“W-wait, let’s go together!”
The fallen girl, Princess Elona, scrambled her hood back into place and pushed herself up. Her knee was scraped and bleeding a little, but she hurried after him in a fluster.
Her half-brother, Prince Antonio, was twenty, five years older than she was. He never looked after his younger sister.
He brought her along only because he could not get permission to leave the palace unless she was with him, and he habitually behaved as if Elona were not there at all. An ordinary older brother would not have dragged a sister who was not yet of age through taverns, gambling dens, and slave markets.
“Brother, just a moment…”
In the end Elona lost Antonio in the crowd. Wandering, she was shoved out toward the edge of the road, where the people thinned. She caught her breath. All at once, she was lost.