Page 6 of Taken By Touch and Torment

I had become the throne room’s centerpiece, and I could sense without turning that over one hundred pairs of eyes were trained on me. Or on my biteable ass, if we wanted to be specific.

Durian’s cane came down over the bruises and scabs from last night, and my scream pierced through the hall.

With it, a wave of desire from the crowd. Powerful desire from powerful men and women, and it sunk into my skin like silk, fanning my spark with new air. I heard moans and screams echo back to me. I was in a room full of nothing but violence and sex. And whether I liked it or not, it was an energy that felt like home.

But then Durian struck again, and my knees buckled.

“If you fall, you lose,” Durian said, his voice the crack of a whip.

I lost my ability to feel my magick and its threads of connection to the surrounding vampires. Humiliation, shame, and agony snuffed out my tiny, stubborn flame.

I cried, and the vampires laughed, making mocking noises of faux pity.

“Aw, poor thing,” someone said, laughter in his voice.

“She’ll learn,” another said, throaty and lustful.

After three more blows, Durian grabbed me and pulled me up to rest against his chest. His grip was tight, his thumb fingering the O-ring of my collar. “Are you willfully disobedient, or are you just stupid?”

I didn’t hesitate this time. “I’m just stupid.”

He spun me around, wiping the tears from my cheeks as if they were mold on a piece of bread. “Bark.”

I barked.

“Louder.”

I trembled, my cheeks flushing even more than they already had been. I barked louder.

Durian grinned. “Good pet.”

Cruel laughter billowed toward me. I breathed in deeply. I smelled hints of jasmine and florals from my perfume. I smelled copper and the crisp sweetness of elixir.

I wiggled my toes, rooting myself to my body. I pretended I wasn’t one wrong move away from breaking irreparably.

“Now I’m going to give you a proper inspection. You will not move or make a sound.”

My trembling didn’t cease as Durian circled me. When his long, cold fingers trailed down my spine, I shivered.

Please stop touching me, I begged internally. But no one was listening. The gods had abandoned me the same as Rune.

“That flinch counted as movement,” Durian said. “One more misstep and you fail.”

He didn’t punish me this time. But the threat of failing was enough to have me stock still, my heart pumping hard. I had the intuition that weeks of crawling wouldn’t be my only punishment for failing my first test.

His fingers trailed around my torso to my hip bone, where he poked painfully. I didn’t make a sound.

Then his fingers moved lower as he stared hard into my eyes. And I wanted to run. I wanted to break.

They halted an inch above my pussy. He grinned. “Bad pets don’t get to be played with.”

Was his lack of assault supposed to be a punishment? I stayed perfectly neutral, even as relief flooded through me.

He grabbed my throat and squeezed over the collar. As my oxygen depleted, I prayed once again for this to be over.

But prayer wasn’t giving me shit. If the gods didn’t care, then the only person who could save me was me.

I wasn’t a defenseless human. I had claws, even if I didn’t quite know how to use them.

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