Chapter 13
Sasha found herself in holding once again, but this time, her arms were stretched over her head and bound in chains suspended from the ceiling.
The chains worked just like she’d thought they would, except she felt certain that most guests of the torture chamber didn't get small, perfectly fitted cuffs to keep their skin from becoming bruised or broken.
The chains had been used for someone else before, but the buckled cuffs smelled new, like fresh leather and rabbit fur.
He made her wait until her arms went numb and her feet hurt. She'd started to hum lullabies to herself when the icy calm of Constantine Kane's fury seeped through the frame of the metal door, his invisible frost curling around her.
She wondered if he was out there counting to ten.
He opened the door—a primal beast of sculpted muscles—hard curves and edges looking at her. Silent.
Head tipped to the side and looking at her feet, Sasha offered him the submission due an alpha. This had always come naturally to her, an ability to pretend what she didn't feel.
Kane was an alpha who didn't care, anyway. He would be more than happy to dominate her by using her desire for him. Somewhere between their first encounter and now, chained up in his torture chamber, all her fear and uncertainty of him had evaporated. She’d grown.
Lowering her eyes to the black leather shoes on his huge feet was a courtesy to a man who had been kind to her and sheltered her. There wasn't a submissive bone in Sasha's body otherwise. They both knew it.
"You don't want a bride-mate." She said the words slowly, reminding him.
He had no right to do this to her. Emotion wanted to sneak out of her chest, into her throat, from out her eyes in the form of tears and sobs.
But she'd done enough of that just yesterday.
All that wet, snotty weakness never got her anywhere.
She watched his feet move forward. The door closed. Her nose itched from his ice. It added a burn to the spice of male pheromones. She'd have to ask someone if they'd ever felt this from him, too. Was this what made him so terrifying to weaker breed?
He didn't speak.
The silence made her feel like she had to fill it with explanations. "You already have an omega breeder and others in reserve waiting for you. There is no reason for me to stay here. I need to get home, get back to my people, and pick my husband. Someone who values what I have to offer."
Kane crouched, his head of tousled black hair coming into view. With practiced ease, he lifted his pant leg and pulled a knife from the sheath strapped there in one graceful move. She didn't even have time to contemplate how badly she wanted her fingers in his hair.
"I have no connections, no political advantage, no wealth to speak of that a male like you could want.
I know that now. It's silly to keep me here.
I want to go. And don't go killing any of the guards because I slipped away.
It's not Zinanno's fault. They are dependent on their sense of smell to help them see, that's how they're trained. And don't kill that enforcer either."
"Too. Late." Kane bit out the words, flashing his incisors at her.
Sasha groaned. When that stupid male touched her with lust, he’d signed his death warrant. Sasha was leaving a body count in her wake.
"It is good that his weakness can no longer risk others," he told her. "You have a way of doing that to breed, Sasha. You reveal who we really are." On silent feet, he stood and moved behind her, a dangerous monster at her back.
His entrance had made her innermost tissues swell. She could feel it happening, the ripening between her legs, the presence of her slick. He was going to make her drip.
"But he would be alive if you had stayed where you were supposed to. Yes?"
"Yes."
He moved her braid over her shoulder, standing close enough that she imagined she could feel the buttons on his shirt brush her back as he breathed.
There was a tug at her tunic, then a swish of fabric falling away as he cut it in half. One by one, he cut the sleeves. Linen fell to the concrete floor.
She hadn't been naked in front of him with this new body. Did he like it? Would she please him?
He wrapped one of his hands around her right arm, his massive paw rough and warm as it slid over the fine bones and slender muscles of her forearm, up to her elbow, then coming to rest on her shoulder.
She moaned. A flood filled her underwear. One did not become accustomed to this kind of arousal. Desire overruled her pride, intentions, and emotions. It got her in its grip and owned her.
Kane was the instigator.
Kane was a hundred times worse than that poor guard.
"You do not understand who you are." His voice came from over her head, a furious, gorgeous snarl. "You do not understand how you look, how you smell, how you call to the animal nature of a beast overcome by instinct instead of intellect. You don't fucking know your own value.
"And just months after your first heat, at your most vulnerable, when you smell sweet and available like the answer to every desire a man has ever had, you leave the safety I have provided for you."
The back of her white support top went taut against her chest when he pulled at the back of it. She didn't like to wear it, but her new breasts swelled and hurt when she went without the uncomfortable, itchy thing. Her nipples would become oversensitive little points.
But because it was Kane hovering, Kane tugging at the fabric, lifting her breasts, making her aware of herself, it felt good.
Sounds of want escaped her. His knife was a breath of air she couldn't see, and then the fabric was on the floor. More agonized, wanting little noises came out of her throat. She couldn’t help herself.
"Breed train for control," Kane said. "But it is impossible to know if one can overcome the ultimate temptation.
We fire rubber bullets at them, throw knives at them, bomb them, make them fight each other, and stress test for every combat situation we can, but it is fucking impossible to train for the smell of fresh omega cunt. "
His hand snaked around her belly, open wide from the base of her breast line to her pelvis. He drew her close to him and she melted, slick leaking out of her as ice turned to heat and she felt him all along her back.
His big hands. His big body. His face went to her neck, mouth touching her.
A jagged, hungry sob found its way out of Sasha's mouth. In her head she was asking, begging for more.
I need more. Touch me.
He let go, his presence shifting, lowering. The waistband of her pants tightened as he pulled and sliced until she was in her basic wear. She felt his breath right at the base of her spine, over the curve of her bottom.
Her skin was changing with maturation, but the scars of her past remained.
He would be at eye level with a few of the worst ones.
Sasha could barely register the idea. The king's heir was on his knees behind her, his breath a tingling pleasure that made her muscles clench and release, awakening every feminine nerve with pure need.
Wet released. She was beyond embarrassment when she felt it dripping down her thighs. He was going to make it spatter and splash like rain on the floor. She knew it.
Kane caressed the dip just above the crack of her curved bottom with a knuckle, and Sasha cried out, a tender touch before he hooked his finger in her underwear.
He drew the fabric up, pulled it uncomfortably between the separation of her cheeks, and manipulated it between the lips of her sex until it was a soaked torture device he could pull back and forth.
He used it to tease her swollen clit, brushing it against her hole, tormenting the tight pucker of her anus. Sasha whimpered between clenched teeth as he tormented her sensitive flesh with the gentlest of sensations.
Back and forth. His breathing increased, hers matching his.
Back and forth—the perfect amount of pressure to torment her.
"Alpha," she whispered. Something was happening to her. Her slick increased. She heard the splatter drip to the concrete floor. Oh, how she needed, but wouldn't ask.
The word was like a signal. The knife moved; her panties joined the rest of her clothes on the floor.
But then he got up and went to the door.
He was leaving her again.
"No, please!" It was the first time she had weakened. He could do anything to her, but she needed his presence like she needed air.
He leveled a glare at her with violent gold eyes.
Setting his fist to the door, he pounded noisily several times before opening it, a warning that he was coming out and for anyone in the hall to disappear, she guessed.
She let out a choked cry of pure relief when he just grabbed up two buckets and a cloth, then went back for a hose that he attached to a spigot from the wall.
He attached the hose and turned it on, water flowing.
"Kane, what—"
He cut her off with the impact of the chilly blast of water. There was no mercy when he sprayed the hose at her aroused body.
She shrieked with the angry shock of it, then let all the pent up emotion and desire loose by screaming her head off. He had heated her body to a frenzy, only to freeze her to death.
The lowering of his brows was the only warning she got before he spanked her bottom hard with the flat of his hand.
"No!" he barked.
"It's cold!" she yelled, wild and angry.
Another stinging spank in the same spot made her body jerk forward in the chains.
"No!"
Sasha let out a throaty grumbling noise, but kept the volume low.
Kane soaked her with the hose, head to toe. He unbound her braid, then did it again.
She was shivering when he brought over the bucket with warm water and a cloth. He lathered it with a cake of his soap and starting at her chained hands, he washed her.
It was a slow, sensual glide, warm contrasting with cold, rough cloth contrasting with his exquisitely gentle touch.