38. Lenna
38
Lenna
D ays, hours, or mere minutes had passed by the time Lenna recovered consciousness.
Something soft was against her back. Something soft and warm. And the pain… it wasn’t as bad. As if someone had Healed her. Lenna opened her eyes to find Jake next to her, facing up with a hand behind his head. With the state of his back, that had to be a painful position for sure. And that soft thing on her back… That was a fluffy blanket.
“I wouldn’t have thought your father’s cells came with these sorts of amenities and silver-eyed panoms willing to Heal the prisoners,” Lenna said.
“They don’t,” Jake said, not looking at her. Only now she saw they were in a not-big-enough panom-shaped cell. Shock.
She moved her shambles of a body until she was sitting, trying her best at not stretching her back with any movement, and kept her bare chest covered with the blanket.
“Why?” Lenna asked, her voice cutting at the memory of the pain inflicted by the Organ Mandor.
“Why,” Jake snorted. “Why did I bother protecting someone who doesn’t want to be protected? Or why did I think you would shut your smart-ass damned mouth when I told you so?”
“Both.”
“I knew you couldn’t keep that mouth of yours shut, but it was worth a try. As for asking him to stop hurting you…” He sighed. “That was fucking stupid.” He swallowed, as if he was resisting the urge to say something else.
“He was going to kill my friend.”
“He will kill him. You know that already. But your fucking pride couldn’t resist arguing with the Cardinals-damned Organ Mandor,” he finally looked at her, his jaw clenched.
“Look, I’m sorry about him slicing you because of me,” Lenna started, and Jake was shaking his head as he sat down, biting his lip at whatever pain the movements caused. “I don’t want to imagine—”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he cut her, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t care about him hitting me . He’s been hitting me all my existence. But you ? You shouldn't have given him any reason to hurt you.”
“It was only five strikes. It could have been worse,” she lied. She didn’t want to even imagine how twenty-three had felt on Ciaran. If he had even stayed conscious for all of them, unlike her weak body. She didn’t dare ask Jake what his father had meant when by “his favorite number”. She wasn’t sure she could bear what the answer would be.
“Have you ever seen the Lawful Stabs used on a female?” he simply asked.
“I had never seen them used before. But I had heard of them.”
“Yet you say it was only five strikes? Blood of the five Cardinals was used to create the Red Lawful Stab, Brachyan,” Jake said. “Female blood for female pain. It doesn’t affect males nearly as much as females. If my father had hit you with it twenty-five times, you would be dead right now.”
Lenna exhaled softly, a part of her relieved at the fact that maybe she wasn’t a pitiful coward after all. Or not as much as she had feared she was.
“How many times did he hit you?” the question left Lenna’s lips before she could stop it.
Jake looked at the floor in front of him, his bare shoulders tensing and marking every muscle on his torso. He flinched, as if that had made his back react.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Lenna put her hand on his cheek, and he lifted his eyes to meet hers again. His skin felt cool against the warmth of her fingers, and she wondered if the rest of his body was as cold, since he hadn’t cared to Give himself a blanket.
“How many?” she insisted.
“Fifty. Always fifty,” he said, leaning into her touch.
Lenna bit her lips to resist the urging tears. There would not be more tears caused by that piece of shit of a Mandor, she had promised herself.
“I’m so sorry,” was all she managed to whisper, dropping her hand.
“Don’t be. Sooner or later, he will pay. I will make him pay,” he said. She couldn't take her amber eyes from his silver ones. From the anger and determination in them, as he added, “For hurting you.”
It wasn’t a hopeful wish, Lenna realized. It was a fact. A statement.
“I don’t mind the pain. I only wish I could find a way to help Raoul. To save him,” she swallowed. To help you from a father like yours , she wanted to add. But she continued, “The only thing I ever wanted was to become a panom, to access my full powers. I thought they would make me whole. I was convinced they were the missing part that I had been lacking all my life. Even now, being barely capable of using two powers, I don’t know what I would do if I lost them. What the purpose of my life would be. I believed they would give me some sort of control over my life and the lives of those around me. But that was a foolish, ridiculous thought. These powers make no difference against someone like your father.”
“The Cardinal powers can change lives. For the better, and for the worse,” Jake said. “But the Organ Mandor will always surpass the power and ability of any other panom. The only actual way to protect oneself against him is by controlling the Fifth Power, and getting it is extremely difficult, and extremely dangerous.”
“If I ever master the four Cardinal powers, maybe it would be worth considering,” Lenna said, and a glimpse of navy sparks flickered in his eyes.
“My back would appreciate some Healing, Brachyan,” Jake said, turning his destroyed back to her. She held her shudder at the sight of what that monster had done to his son. Jake added, “Hover your hand over the wounds in small circles, visualizing how the skin should look in normal conditions.”
It should look very muscled. Very damned muscled and terse and distracting.
Lenna extended her hand over his broken skin, tracing circles slowly over it. Jake added, “Try thinking about the West petal of your mark as if it was the medicine, and you were applying it to my skin to Heal it.”
So she did. Slowly, his wounds started closing one by one, as if they were being sewn by an invisible but experienced healer. The muscles on his shoulders were tense.
Lenna felt her heart tighten in her chest. She was glad that she could somehow Heal this man. This man, who had endured this torture in a failed attempt at stopping her own. One circle of her hand, another wound closed. He who had challenged the Organ Mandor of Thyria in front of all the other panoms of the nation. Another circle, and another wound closed. This man, who maybe wasn’t as evil as she wanted to believe he was.
A few minutes later, she placed her hand on his now scarred back. He breathed deeply at the touch. She stroked it softly, careful to not press her palm against it too hard should the wounds reopen again. Should his pain return.
He turned his body around until he was facing her. “You now own three Cardinal powers, Brachyan.” He lifted his hand to her face and his thumb stroked her bottom lip, slowly. She opened her mouth slightly.
His hand continued stroking down the skin behind her ear, down her neck. There was something very different in his eyes now. Something that made her core tighten.
“You are playing a very dangerous game,” Lenna said, unable to take her eyes from his full lips as he slowly bit his bottom one.
Her blood was boiling, speeding through her veins as she felt her heartbeat fastening. She wanted this so badly. She had wanted it for weeks. For months, even. But it was not just desire, the game being played here. There was something deeper, something meaningful. Something she should truly be scared about. But somehow, the need wanted to overcome the fear. Even if she knew, she was going to regret it.
Jake’s hand continued moving down her chest, the blanket dropping to the floor as his fingers pushed it away, revealing her breasts, her peaked nipples. His eyes darkened into a gray shade as he inhaled sharply at the sight.
“I warned you. I told you I love to test the limits, to push and break established boundaries. I don't give a shit if the land collapses underneath us. All I want is to play this dangerous game with you, sweet fire. I don't mind getting burned.”
Because two heirs would make the land collapse, but Lenna couldn’t find a part of her that gave a shit about that either. Not as she saw the powerful length hardening against his pants. Not as he moved his other hand until both were circling her breasts. His fingers gently pinched her nipples, making her back arch. She felt a slight pain in her back, but she didn’t care. She needed more.
She grabbed his hands and pulled them towards the floor, making him lay down where the blanket spread on the stone floor of the cell. She pushed a few dark strands of his hair away from his face as she lay above him, their exposed chests touching, their fast breaths joining.
His hands gripped her ass tightly, her core aching against the clothes that separated her from his very hard cock. The cock she needed to taste. The cock she needed to feel in so many places.
His silver eyes penetrated her as he said, the corner of his lips curling upwards, “You want more, sweet fire?”
Lenna licked his neck and pushed harder against his cock, making him grab her ass tighter. She squeezed a hand between their bodies and stroked all his length through his clothes, making Jake gasp. “Didn’t you say you want to play with fire?”
“I would love to,” he said as she continued stroking his hardness, over and over. “But you need to beg first. I want you to beg me to fuck you.”
“Entitled asshole,” Lenna spat, removing her hand from his pants.
Jake chuckled, holding her arms with his and turning Lenna around gently, carefully dropping her onto the blanket so she didn’t feel the pain in her wounds. He spoke into her ear, making her shiver, “I’m waiting, Brachyan.”
“Wait all you want,” she spat. Her back arched as his head lowered and his tongue played with her nipple. His tongue was deliciously warm and wet, and she immediately wanted it somewhere else. Everywhere else. He kept circling her nipple with his tongue, his hand sliding under her laced underwear to where she needed him most. But the hand stayed there, waiting.
Her hands grabbed the muscles on his chest and pulled him towards her face. “I don’t beg,” she said as her hands admired his pectorals and abs. Cardinals spare her if this man wasn’t the hottest she had ever touched. But even for him, she wouldn’t beg. There was no reason to.
As if he had read her mind, he pushed his waist against hers, that extraordinary hardness moving up and down against her clit, masturbating her across the Cardinals-damned clothes. She couldn’t resist her moan.
“You don’t beg, you don’t get, sweet fire,” he whispered, his lips so close to hers that she felt them moving with each word.
She grabbed his head with both hands and pushed his mouth into hers, both tongues greeting each other in a wet dance of challenge and heat. Jake moved his cock against her core faster, deeper, and Lenna needed to get the fucking clothes out of the way.
But a panomquake shook the ground as if it the world was going to end, chunks of the ceiling falling around them. On them. Jake jumped to the side to avoid dropping his weight into her body, and that sound—that was his skin ripping again, and that was blood dripping.