Page 2 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Durian desired me.

I drew in his impulses, his wants and fantasies, and through the crushing heartbreak, hopelessness, and physical torture—I was at least able to breathe again.

Durian walked me like a dog through the palace. I’d been commanded to crawl at his heel, and on several occasions, I’d been beaten with what I now knew to be a cane for falling out of pace.

Several born were milling about the halls. They all stopped to watch the show with gleaming eyes and aching fangs. I felt their eyes on my ass and what they could glimpse underneath my far too transparent lace panties.

My skin burned. My knees ached as they treaded over marble, and my thighs scabbed with blood blisters from the cane. The only thing keeping me from falling unconscious again was the fear that doing so would leave me even more vulnerable. The idea of not knowing what was done to me while I was asleep made me violently ill, pumping just enough adrenaline into my blood to keep me awake.

Warm witch light reflected off the marble floor, tiny sparks of magick crackling through the specks of gold. The magick in this place was different from what I sensed surrounded by Rune’s turned vampires. Born vampire magick was more ancient, more animalistic. It was the cyclone of a natural storm; predators feasting on weaker prey; wild, brutal sex; vengeful spirits rising from the grave. This was Lillian’s magick. Dark, mysterious, sensual, and brutal.

The same magick inside of me.

When I glanced up, meeting the eyes of two born men across the hall, Durian halted. I flinched, quickly averting my eyes to his sleek black shoes.

I assumed I was about to be punished again for taking a wrong step or lifting my head.

Durian yanked me up to my knees by my collar, forcing me to sit back and look out at the gathered crowd that continued to pour out from some large room.

I caught a glimpse of Liza with a couple of other born women. I homed in on the triumphant gleam in her amber eyes, the slow spread of a vicious smile.

And despite my brokenness, a glimmer of something downright feral rushed up from my feet to my burning face. When Durian’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, it grew like the hiss of a spitting snake.

“Please welcome our newest member of court—my human pet, an innocent child of Helia, born and raised on dry lands,” Durian said.

My eyes darted around, noticing several intakes of breath and crazed looks. The born prized humans from dry lands—mortal lands that were protected, vampire-free safe zones established after the war—above all others. Because the sick fucks wanted us childlike, frightened, and naive when they enslaved and abused us.

“Our lost little lamb found herself serving the godless bastard, Rune.” Durian paused, and the crowd echoed back vitriol until he spoke again. “But I have reclaimed her for Lillian. Just as I will reclaim everything else the turned have stolen through blasphemy and the perversion of the Dark Goddess’s natural order.”

I wanted to lash out. I fought to keep my face neutral, even as my thighs screamed as they leaned back against my calves and vertigo tilted my world on a spinning axis. All I could do was grab ahold of the threads of desire lancing into my skin, twirl them around my knuckles, and yank.

Dark power erupted in the air, and several vampires rushed toward me from the crowd.

Rabid, hungry, and desperate, they slammed up against Durian’s guards. I met the gazes of the vampires in bloodlust, and I played as dumb, frightened, and innocent as they believed I was. This only drove them wilder.

Durian’s grip on my shoulder tightened as he had the unruly vampires subdued and dragged away. He looked down at me, and his satisfaction was a palpable flood of warmth.

“It would appear my pet attracts quite the attention. To keep her safe and pure, I will need to employ the strictest of slave protocol.”

When he grabbed my chin, the flare of power slithered out of my reach. My heart sunk. He shoved me back down on all fours.

I thought of Snow. Of Penn. Jaxon. Eli, Winnifred, Tera, and the other witches of Lumina.

Their faces disappeared the moment the cane struck again, this time on my bare ass, the fabric of my sweaterdress clenched in Durian’s fist.

“I said, heel, you stupid whore,” he hissed.

I watched my tears fall freely to the beautiful marble floors all the way to my new home.

2

SCARLETT

“Remove all blemishes from her skin except the marks of my divine correction,” Durian instructed an older witch dressed in simple black. Her long, black hair was streaked with silver, fashioned into twists.

The tip of his cane was underneath my chin as I stayed rigid and still on the floor.

“And you,” he spat at me, “will take care of my property. You will eat, drink, and sleep. I will not have a weak, useless, ugly little girl for a pet.”

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