Page 50 of Trapped to Tame
‘Can you skin the rabbit?’ he asked.
Again, she shook her head.
He sighed.
Eve stood up, finally deciding she’d had enough.
‘I am not foolish,’ she snarled. ‘I am not addled either. Am I not meant to be your Fourth? Do I not deserve some small amount of respect?’
He stood up with her, throwing down what he was doing as he stomped towards her.
‘Enough!’ He drew a hand through his dark hair, considering something.
‘Might as well try it,’ he said seemingly to himself, then he turned on her.
‘You think yourmyFourth?’ he snarled. ‘You might be Drax’s, but you aren’t mine. You never will be. What was done at the Camp was done because we had to do it, because you left us with no other choice, because you are a stupid, useless female.’
He advanced on her, making her step back.
‘If you hadn't run to the Dark Army with your pathetic notions, we would have arrived at the Ice Plains already. We’d have gone through into the Underhill, and we would know what happened to our kin. But, because of you, we are constantly delayed!’
He picked her up by the scruff of the neck and shook her. She pushed him back, her body readying for the fight. It wouldn’t be in a ring, but she didn’t care. She needed the violence of it. Now.
But instead of hitting her, he kicked her legs out from under her, sending her to the forest floor on her back and, before she could do anything to counter, he had somehow immobilized her hands over her head. They were stuck to the hard earth, and she couldn’t move them. He leaned over her with a sneer.
‘Is this how he did it?’
Eve’s heart began to thud in her chest, her lungs becoming tighter with each quick breath she took.
‘W-Who?’ she whispered.
‘The Bull.’
All at once, she recalled him making her tell him about her past in their room in that Dark Realm, about all the things the Bull did, about how he had hurt her, tortured her, raped her countless times while she’d been bound and weak and at his mercy. Priest had made her forget what he’d forced her to tell him, but she remembered now what he’d done … after he’d tricked her into his bed.
She stifled a sob, but traitorous tears came to her eyes and spilled down her temples as she lay on the cold ground. He must truly hate her. How else could he have done these things to her?
He knelt down, straddling her body, and ripped her tunic apart roughly, untying her chemise as well. He stared at her chest that she could feel was exposed, though she couldn’t raise her head to see, and he loosened her breeches. Then, he hesitated for a breath, his eyes impossible to read, before one hand took hold of her throat and the other grazed the sensitive part between her legs where she’d confessed to him that the Bull had always hurt her first.
Memories of being crushed beneath the Bull’s great, hulking form beset her and Eve shut her eyes and screamed as she fell head-long into them.
She vaguely heard him yell, ‘the Ice Plains’.
And then they were dropping out of the sky into deep snow. She blinked. Priest was on top of her, but his hand wasn’tonher anymore. Everything as far as the eye could see was white. It was snowing and the wind was bitter.
He deftly retied her chemise and pulled her tunic together while she shook beneath him with cold … and with fear, but he no longer seemed interested in doing what he’d been about to do. He touched his forehead to hers and sighed, stilling over her for a moment.
Then, he stood, pulling her up by her tunic when she didn’t take his outstretched hand.
‘Well,’ he looked around. ‘Itlookslike the Ice Plains.’
He pulled his hood up and then hers as well, almost a protective gesture which confused her considering what he’d done.
She didn’t speak, her mind whirling, her body shaking so badly she could scarcely walk.
‘Come,’ he said, trudging ahead through the snow.
Not knowing what else to do, Eve tried to keep up. The snow was too deep though, coming up to her thighs in places whereas for him it was only up to his knees.
