Page 46 of Kept to Kill
She glanced behind her, knowing she wasn’t meant to be here. They hadn’t expressly told her she couldn’t leave her room, but she assumed they wouldn’t be happy that she was roaming about by herself when the sun would soon set. She wasn’t even sure why she had come, but when she’d seen the path up from the casement in the inn, she’d been drawn to it.
Still reeling from what they’d done to her, holding her, making her drink theirblood, she’d had to get out of that room. She wasn’t safe there. She wasn’t safe anywhere. Yet a part of her was glad that she couldn’t kill them now. She thought back to Quin sitting on her bed, how she’d touched him. The experience had been … sublime. And his kiss … She’d never felt anything so intoxicating. She hadn’t wanted it to stop.
In truth, she wasn’t sure what she thought about what the Brothers had done, binding her into their unit, as well as how they’d gone about it. She wasn’t surprised they hadn’t asked her, or even told her what they had planned. She was long inured to having most decisions made for her, from what she wore to what she would eat, from being little more than Vineri’s instrument. No one had ever asked her what she wanted before, so it stood to reason that she wouldn’t expect it now, but maybe she should. She was more than a tool. She needed to begin acting like it.
She began to ascend the stone steps, tilting her head up. Birds circled crumbling towers that wouldn’t be safe to climb, though she wanted to explore them. It was an ominous building, but it reminded her a little of Vineri’s fortress. It had once been a monastery as well before he’d turned it into his home … and hers.
She was breathing hard by the time she reached the top of the steps, finding what remained of the main door blackened and half off its hinges. Steps not faltering, she walked into the structure slowly. It looked like no one had been here in a very long time. She’d overheard someone in the tavern mention that the fire had killed almost everyone in their beds while they slept. No one had sounded an alarm until the whole place was ablaze and the inferno was too hot for anyone to get close enough.
Inside, there was just blackened stone in the main hall, dust and ash on the floor, and lots of cobwebs. It still smelled faintly of smoke. She walked around, unafraid and in complete silence. Finding an opening, she was led down a level towards the back of the keep and found herself in the kitchens, still largely intact. She opened a cupboard here and there but found little of significance.
Lily’s curiosity began to wane and she turned to go, but a noise echoed down a corridor. She followed it, finding rooms, probably larders and the like, she thought, coming to a small door that looked like it had hardly been touched by flames. It was ajar and she peered inside, finding, to her surprise, a candle flickering on an old wooden crate and a small bed.
Creeping in, she looked around. Someone had been here, or they still were. Feeling as if she’d outstayed her welcome, she turned to leave, only to be confronted by a shadow. She gasped, lurching away. He reached for her at the same time as she realized it was Mal.
If anything, it made her fear more acute. She shouldn’t be alone with this man. She knew that instinctively. He was a hunter, a killer, a bully. Yet a traitorous voice in her head asked if he was going to do again what he’d done to her the other night. Unbidden, her eyes flicked to the knife on his belt and back to his face. She wet her dry lips.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t move, as if he was in shock that she was here.
And then he pushed her hard and she staggered back, her head thudding against the stone wall. He pinned her there with his body, a hand at her throat, on her bare skin. Her breath hitched as she felt his fingers like a brand, but whereas in the past the feeling would be followed by his harrowing death, now it simply made her tingle low in her stomach.
She searched his face for any sign of humanity, but he was blank, his dark eyes pitiless as he squeezed.
She clawed at his hand, but it was useless. He was just too strong. But just when she started to see spots, his grip eased and she could breathe again. She sank against the wall, her body going limp, wondering what he was going to do with her, knowing that she could do nothing to stop him now. She was helpless and she found that although she was terrified that she was completely in his power to do with whatever he willed, she also felt free in a strange way.
His hand stayed around her throat, but his thumb began to trace the welts left from the rash that were well on their way to healing. She saw something flicker in his expression but didn’t know what to make of it. Shame?
Her hand fluttered up to his where he held her, but instead of trying to pull him away, she laid her hand on his wrist, lightly caressing, thinking of how his skin felt under her fingers. She loved the texture, the warmth of him.
His other hand flew to her core, roughly pushing up at the apex of her thighs and making her gasp as she rose to her toes to escape his forceful fingers that would have pressed into her if not for the barrier of her breeches.
Her eyes pleaded with him, but in that moment she wasn’t sure if she was silently begging him to stop or keep going. The pressure on her core eased as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do.
‘Why?’ He leant in, whispering into her ear.
She shuddered at his closeness, feeling his breath on her cheek and knowing she’d never been as close to anyone before leaving that tower, and now she had been with three men who definitely didn’t have her best interests at heart. Yet she was so lured in by them; their looks, their hands on her, the peril of being in their presence. She was a fool. This wouldn’t end well for her. She knew it, and yet …
His fingers popped one of the buttons on her breeches and then another, and she felt her body heating.
‘Why am I here?’ she asked, her voice unnaturally high.
‘Aye,’ he breathed.
‘I saw this place from the casement.’
She gasped as he unfastened the last button and felt a need to try anything to keep him talking, coward that she was.
‘I’ve been watching it get closer and closer since we left the mountains,’ she yammered on, ‘and I needed to see it.’ Her eyes fell on the bed. ‘You’ve been sleeping here.’
He didn’t reply to her unspoken question, but his hand stopped its advance. Instead his fingers stroked her abdomen lightly, making her quiver.
He nodded once.
‘Why?’
‘Born here.’
She gaped at him. ‘Here?’ She looked around again and then she understood. ‘This was your room.’
