Chapter 16 #2
“No!” I spit. “You can’t just leash me!”
I yank hard again, causing the horse to cant its head and pull up short.
The Piper looks down at me with darkening anger. “If you didn’t want to be leashed, then you should’ve come to heel like I told you to.”
Notching his foot into the horse’s ribs, he urges the animal to lunge forward. I shriek as my arm nearly pulls right out of its socket. No more slow walk. The horse is trotting now, going fast enough that I can barely keep up. I start to run, arm awkwardly pulled as I struggle not to fall.
My hatred overflows. Soaking from gullet to gut.
Within seconds, I’m out of breath, muscles screaming, the rope pulling me dangerously close to the animal’s legs.
Panic sets in.
I’m going to fall and he’ll probably let me be dragged behind him until all the skin is scraped from my body and I’m nothing but a bleeding corpse.
“Okay!” I shout up at him, sweat burning my eyes. “I’ll ride with you.”
He looks over at me as he slows, and there’s the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. “Say please.”
I’ve never considered committing murder until this very second.
My voice snaps out, hot with fury. “I will grab your pipe and stab it through your eye.”
I hear someone behind us gasp.
He bares his teeth at me in the deadliest, cruelest mockery of a smile I’ve ever seen. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about handling my pipe.”
Oily embarrassment slicks through me. I glare at him, but since I’m not watching where I’m going, I stumble over a fallen branch.
I start to trip forward, but before I can fall, he hooks an arm around me and lifts me clear off my feet.
Unlike Frid, the Piper doesn’t have strength magic. He’s just annoyingly strong.
My bottom slams onto the saddle in front of him, and my hands fling out to grab hold of the horn. I breathe so hard I fear I’ll use up all the air.
I hope he suffocates first.
“If you weren’t so difficult and obstinate, this would be easier,” he growls behind me.
“If you’d left me alone and not kidnapped me, it would have been a complete breeze.”
I can practically hear him grind his teeth, until we’re both chewing on tense silence. I sit in the saddle rigidly, leaning forward so I don’t have to touch him more than I already am. Within minutes, my legs and back begin to ache.
Maybe I should’ve just let the horse drag me.
“Why were you on that whipping post?”
His sudden question catches me off guard. “Because I was whipped,” I answer mockingly.
“Yes, I can see that,” he grits out. “Why?”
My lips press together, refusing to answer him. I honestly don’t know what’s come over me. There’s just something about him that gets under my skin and makes me want to lash out just as much as I’ve been lashed. I’ve never been so combative in my life, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
I hear him make a noise of disgust. “You still reek.” I can practically feel his eyes crawl up my back. “You’re damaged goods for a very expensive debt.”
Just when I think he can’t be any more horrible, he proves me wrong.
“Then you should’ve left me on that pole,” I retort.
“Maybe I should have.”
My hand tightens into a fist. “Was your mother a dog?” I ask.
“Excuse me?”
“Is that why you’re such a son of a bitch?”
He’s stunned into silence. To be honest, I’m a bit stunned too. I brace myself, readying in case he flings me off his horse.
Instead, he yanks on the reins, making the animal jerk to the side just in time for a low-hanging branch to smack right into my face.
I’m shoved back against the Piper’s chest as the tree assaults me. Spitting mad, I jam my elbow into his gut, but he doesn’t so much as exhale. His stomach is rock hard.
His arm comes around, roping against my middle, pulling me against him. My breath catches as I anticipate my wounds ripping further, but they don’t. His movement wasn’t at all gentle, but he did brace me, so my back isn’t scraping against or bouncing off his chest.
But he’s also taken my ability to lean away from him.
His voice pitches into my ear with dark warning. “Keep up the temper tantrum. I dare you.”
“Don’t degrade me,” I seethe, shoving away a leaf that got stuck to the fringe on my forehead. “You stole me. I am not a debt. I am a person. You had no right to take me.”
“Your city certainly had no qualms letting you be collected as payment. Or chaining you to a post and whipping you, for that matter.”
“That’s no worse than you kidnapping people—including children.”
“Not kidnapping. Collecting.”
“We aren’t rocks.”
He says nothing to that, and in the silence, he seems to boil.
The heat from his chest unfurls, curling over my back, coating my skin.
I’m crammed between his two muscular legs, his arm branding my stomach as he grips the reins.
The horse sways with its walk, making my body move with his.
Abrading my insides. Leaving my nerves entirely too raw.
My mother was right. Core fae are power-hungry snakes.
“I hate you.”
“Your feelings hold no impact,” he tells me, tone flat. “So mind yourself, fiend. Settle into this new circumstance. This is your reality now.”
A sense of grief washes over me.
Every step takes me farther and farther away from my home. From my family.
Oh, Aunt Lenna. I never should have walked out that door. I never should have left my mother’s side.
My eyes sting, but I keep my tone steady and change tactics. “You said it yourself, I’m damaged goods. So let me go back to Hamelyn.”
“No.”
I scrub a dirty hand down my face, trying to wipe away my urge to sob. “Why?” I cry out. “Why are you doing this?”
The Piper leans forward, his much larger body bending over mine. A subtle, silent gesture, reminding me how large his presence is. How looming. How utterly small and weak I am in comparison.
When I feel his breath against my horns, a shiver grips my spine, his dark voice making it scatter. “Because unlike Lord Havlon, I keep what’s mine. And you, fiend, are never getting away from me.”