19. Maren
19
Maren
M arik’s weight leaned against me as his mouth dug into mine, his knuckles a sharp lump driving into my low waist as he worked his belt buckle free.
I pulled away to grant my lungs air. “When will Captain Cenek be done with his meeting?”
The stupid man misunderstood me, shaking his uniformed pants down his hips and standing before me in a pair of white briefs. “He’s interrogating a prisoner, we have time.” He came for me again, thrusting his knees on either side of me. “I’ve never been with a woman like you.”
“That’s nice,” I murmured, scrutinizing the room. Two windows on either side of the fireplace, a low ceiling over our heads, and water drifting through the air, trapped in every pore of the stone walls. No weapons mounted nearby. I’d strapped my knife to my hip, and if he continued the invasion of his brash pelvic bones against my frame, he’d no doubt find it.
I pulled my mouth from his again. “I’m thirsty. Could I have some water?”
Mihauna help me, I didn’t want to hurt the poor idiot simply for falling into my trap. But his moon-damned hands burrowed into the laces of my corset, pulling it free. It fell to the floor, my unlaced dress hanging open without it.
“Wait—”
He shuddered, his palms breaching the boundaries of my dress and splaying roughly across my stomach, driving up to my breasts.
Stone walls became wooden.
“Stop,” I commanded him, batting one of his hands away with the swing of my arm.
Wooden walls. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. Stale breath over my neck.
He acted as though he couldn’t hear me, suddenly drunk with my flesh. A growl vibrated within me. To Perpetuum and back. Just minutes ago, I’d wondered if using my siren body had been a flimsy strategy against the mind of a human man.
Now I wondered if it hadn’t quite been flimsy enough.
His hand slid down the narrow path of my belly toward the intersection of my thighs, and all too suddenly, I was finished with the entire experiment.
Hands shoved my knees apart.
My arm shot out, cupping his manhood with my fingers.
He let out a full-bodied sigh at my touch. In the center of my palm, I clutched his precious cargo, drawing every drop of blood within his veins into them. They grew, the water within him obedient to my call. And grew. And grew.
I’m not sure what it feels like when one’s testicles suddenly expand. But whatever it was, it finally cut through his arousal and made him go still as a corpse.
Through gritted teeth, I hissed, “I said, ‘stop.’ Remove your hands.”
Marik did so at once, raising both palms in the air, his eyes wide. “What—”
“Back up,” I said, pushing off the wall. I walked him in reverse to the nearest chair so forcefully he fell into the seat. Face pale, he spread his legs, desperate to see what I was doing. “When a lady tells you to stop, you need to listen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, breathless. “Please—”
But I barely heard him over the rasp of oily skin against my ear. Rough hands across my thighs. The walls around me wooden and flexing. The room tiny. The air damp.
Not to worry. I will make it fast.
“Do not move,” I warned, shaking the memory away as I reached with a blind arm for his pants. Iron cuffs hung from his belt, and I stripped them free.
“Don’t—don’t burst them,” he cried, staring down at his crotch in horror.
“I won’t if you sit still.”
“They’re going to burst.”
I prodded at the water within him, ensuring they wouldn’t, but there seemed to be plenty of room left for them to swell. “You’re fine,” I snapped, propping a knee onto his lap to better reach the back of the chair over his head. “Put your hands up.”
His breath turned shallow, his body tensing against mine. I suppose that should have been warning enough, but suddenly he flew forward. My tailbone cracked against the stone floor as he caught my wrists, scrambling to secure me beneath him.
“You whore ,” he gasped into my face. “What in Aalto’s name—”
I wrestled my arms away. “If you think that just because I’m not touching you, I can’t—”
“Attacking a guard is punishable by death!” He shot for the iron cuffs still in my hand. I whipped them away, and they lashed against his face with a heavy thwack . An angry grunt rolled from his chest. He slammed the sharp point of his elbow into my throat as he jostled for the cuffs.
I sputtered, though the pressure was nowhere near what Burian’s had been. We grappled for a moment, shoving each other’s hands away until he finally caught both my wrists in a single fist, wrenching the cuffs from my grip.
A drop of blood streaked down his cheek where the sharp edge of the iron had sliced into him. He lifted a shoulder to wipe it away, scooting on his knees to sit higher over my waist. I’d be damned to the stars if I let Kye hang tomorrow just because I lost my confidence now.
“I’m warning you,” I growled. “You put me in those cuffs, and I’ll make sure you never bed another woman.”
Marik let out a disbelieving chuckle, and the cold metal clanged as he snapped it against my left wrist.
“The last man I warned didn’t listen, either.”
“Stand up, whore.”
“He called me that, too.”
Indecision flickered in Marik’s eyes.
“Last chance,” I snarled.
His fingers closed around my free wrist, readying the empty cuff. I grabbed the back of his hand.
Knuckles. Forearm. Shoulder. Waist. I tracked his blood like a bolt of electricity, flashing straight down to his groin. A small pop met my ears, muffled under his weight.
His eyes met mine. He screamed.
We’d both been quiet until that moment, each of us intent on avoiding discovery. But the threat of his comrades uncovering his illicit activity with an unknown woman who’d been sent as a gift to his captain seemed to vanish from his mind as he pulled his hands into his lap and rolled away.
I shoved him off my legs and stood, snatching the knife from my hip and thrusting it under his chin. “How many men are in Cenek’s office?”
He gaped at me, understanding snapping into his gaze. But boots sounded on the other side of the door. It opened, and I threw an arm in its direction, the moisture in the air slamming it closed.
“How many?” I shouted.
“ You’re the pirate girl we left behind?”
The door rattled, angry voices on the other side. “Marik!”
They shoved. The door wavered against my call. I couldn’t hold it for long.
“You say a word to them, and I’ll do to your tongue what I did to your balls,” I threatened.
“Help me!” he shouted. A final thrust came from the other side of the door, and I dropped the moisture to the floor and froze it as the first set of boots charged inside. The intruder’s feet slid out from under him. He went down hard over the clear, shining surface. Another tumbled in after him, a third on top.
Now or never.
I shoved the door open, climbing over them to the hallway, only to run into three more.
And Kye.
They stared at me in surprise—dress unlaced and open, hair and eyes wild. The closest one reached for me. I threw a sharp shard of water up his nose.
He choked as it shot down his windpipe, and another one took his place, this one blue-eyed and stern, his uniform more embellished than the others. Captain Cenek. He grabbed my shoulders, bracing me in the door frame as he stepped close.
Mihauna , I didn’t have the reserves for this fight. My power shuttered in my fingertips, running thinner each time I called to it. I shoved at him, but he shoved me back, the corner of the jamb scraping my skull.
“Do you know why that man is laying on the floor?” I asked him, indicating Marik with my chin as he moaned a few feet away. “He wouldn’t let me leave. I suggest you avoid making the same mistake.”
“Turn around,” Cenek ordered, fumbling for the knife in my hands. A guard bounced into Cenek from the side, hands flung out to catch himself. Surprised, Cenek glanced toward the man, who had landed on the floor and was already pushing to his feet.
Kye blazed in, kicking the fallen man in the side of his head with a heavy boot, then slammed his forehead into Cenek’s.
The captain’s neck snapped backward. He tripped over the men who were still furiously escaping my patch of ice.
For an instant, the hallway was littered with men on the floor, scrambling to find their feet. Without a word, Kye spun around, offering me his hands tied behind his back.
Knife ready, I cut the rope.
And then we were running.