Page 18 of Prohibited

Evie sagged against her bonds, still breathing heavily. The leather tightened uncomfortably, but her legs were like liquid and not at all cooperating with her efforts to stand up straight.

Pain radiated from her bare backside, hot and grating. Looking over her shoulder, she could make out a smear of swollen red on either side of her ass with just a few distinct fingerprint marks leaking out of the mass.

She moaned at the sight of it, still not understanding the feeling that was stirring up inside of her. She put her head against her arm and closed her eyes. A strangely euphoric feeling had settled over her. It started up when he started to strike her and stayed with her through the deep loops of pain he coiled around her over and over again.

The violence of his hand smashing into her. Just the thought made her shudder and it wasn’t entirely out of fear. She had never been struck sohard. Not ever. No one had ever used the full force of their body against hers in that way.

Fury and humiliation had totally overcome her when he’d torn her skirt off and exposed her. Terror that he was going to force himself on her. Instead, he’d started to beat her. And god, it had enraged her. His presumption to beat her like a dog or a child. But pleasure had come nosing in, as out of place as a clown at a funeral, and had eased back the pain and given her the reins to ride it, to milk it while he struck her again and again. A strange, horrifying thought that such a thing could happen. Perhaps because it was him.

In the middle of it, she’d had to bite down on her tongue to keep from begging him to enter her.

Was she insane?

And when he was done, he’d pressed himself against her, pressed his face into her hair and inhaled the scent of her, stoking the desire that burned through her hotter than hellfire. The hot, rock hard press of his cock against her bare ass. She didn’t know that she wanted that closeness, his body encircling hers in a moment of stillness and strange tenderness born of the violence between them. Had he felt it, too, the air crackling?

Ryan.

Ryan.

After all this time, here he was. Like a dream manifesting. An angel returned to gather her into his heavenly arms. A memory that lingered like a pleasant dream. Remote, but never forgotten. The golden specter who hadhaunted all of her romances, radiating in the background, drowning out all of them, except for Etian.

Oh, she couldn’t think about Etian.

She was with Ryan now. Ryan’s prisoner. But to what end?

Ryan beating her. Ryan manhandling her. Ryan trapping her here in this cell like an animal in a cage.

A lump stopped up her throat and stole the breath from her lungs. She bit down on her lip to keep it from trembling while she leaned her face into her arms, wishing with all her might that she could free herself. Now that the fog was fading, she was becoming acutely aware of being exposed from the waist down. Humiliating. Try as she might to free herself, all she did was make her hands go even more numb.

Memories from the night before flickered through her mind, patched and unclear.

Something woke her. She’d gotten out of bed. For what? The washroom, yes. And when she’d returned to her bedroom the door was open. Heart stopping terror, she was certain it had been closed. And then hands came out of the darkness. Chlorophyll choking her into the darkness of sleep.

Then she woke here, inside a cell. More terror. Disbelief. How could such a thing happen to her? And where was she? Who had done this? A riot of unanswered questions that spun fear around her mind tighter and tighter, like a tangled string.

Then she’d laid there, quiet and still as the dead when she heard footsteps at the door. The door unlatching. Waiting for her chance to escape.

Only to discover that it was Ryan. Ryan.

Her first love. She could still close her eyes and remembered their spiced, hot kisses. The way he’d held her with his big, warm hands and melted all of her inhibitions away with the sure, delicious way that he kissed her. The way they’d pawed at each other until she couldn’t take it anymore and she’d begged him to make love to her in the potting shed. Her first. And god, hadn’t he done it. Making love to her first with his lips, worshipful and gluttonous. And then slipping his big cock into her cunt, splitting her open with an ache that didn’t at all detract from the pleasure it also wrought. How hungry all of her had been for him.

And then they’d gotten caught.

She never saw him again. She kept all of the letters he sent and hid them away, tempted over and over again to respond. But the way her father had raged at her, spitting mad and reassuring her that he would have Ryan killed if he ever so much heard his name again, she didn’t dare.

To see him again. Even under these circumstances. To feel the weight of his body. To feel the violence of his touch. It turned her inside out with pleasure and anguish.

She shuddered thinking about the strike of his hand against her flesh and felt the back of her eyes sting.

Was this revenge after all of this time? A disturbing thought, but not one that made any sense at all. She’dput up a good fight, exhausting as it was, and he’d still handled her like he would a doll, stretching her to his will. It was certain that he could have done worse. Anything he wanted, really. And yet he hadn’t. In fact, he’d fled from her. The look on his face when she’d looked over her shoulder at him. A strange expression. Astonishment. A revelation. And, certainly, shame. As if none of this was part of his plan.

So what, exactly, was the plan?

She shook her head and then tilted it back to look up at her hands, gone prickly and mostly numb from her bonds. In the very midst of wishing he’d come back at the very least to release her, the door to the room opened. A deep thump in her chest pushed her up onto her feet and she wondered immediately if she should have regretted her wish.

Her face flushed deeply as the footsteps drew nearer, though she couldn’t crane her head far enough to see around the rock wall that blocked the view of the door.

She flinched as a man came into view.

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