Page 31 of Marked By the Dark Lord
And a third I knew very,verywell.
Something very weird was going on. Very weird, indeed. My suspicions were growing.
If the book itself was no longer magical, however, then where had the magic gone?
The answer slammed into my forehead along with my palm.Of course. Mila had been without the book when she used the magic again in the courtyard. If it wasn’t in the book, it had to be in her! And I had missed it.
I had no idea what was happening, but it was quickly becoming apparent that Mila was more important to me than I’d realized. Two things needed to happen. First, I needed to visit Dannorax and have Mila’s trial moved up immediately.
Secondly, I would have to ensure that when it came time for her punishment, I was the one who Marked her.
Chapter Fifteen
Mila
My lips still burned the next morning where he’d kissed me. Running a finger over them as I lay in a ball on my side, I expected them to be puffy and tender. Instead, they were normal. Yet the tingling burn didn’t go away.
I had barely slept, a mixture of the horrifically uncomfortable posture I was forced to assume within the tiny cell and the constant sexual slideshow that filled my brain. It had taken me hours to calm myself from a state of sexual delirium. No number of self-inflicted orgasms had been able to help either. Nothing had sated my need. Nothing could.
Except for Korr’ok.
“Who the hell are you?” I whispered to the empty box—calling it a “room” was far too generous. “And what are you doing to me?”
I pondered those questions for an unknown amount of time. There was no light, no way to tell what time of day it was or how long had passed. Five minutes? Three hours? A day? I didn’tknow. I tried to keep track but holding onto a single thought that wasn’t about Korr’ok was infuriatingly difficult.
It always came back to him, to the pressure of his fingers on my waist, the searing, burning heat of his tongue as he ran it softly over the inside my mouth, exploring, touching,taking. I hadn’t been myself. The real me would have stopped it. Turned my head aside.Anythingbut thrust my hips at him as I had, inviting him to fuck me in my prison cell where anyone could see or hear if they passed by.
Since when had I ever beenthathorny?
The answer was never. Nobody in my life had ever awoken such need between my legs as the horned monster. I suspected nobody ever would, either. There was something different about Korr’ok. And it wasn’t just that he apparently went by two different names. Which was the real him?
Being on the ground, I felt more than heard the approaching footsteps. They paused outside and were followed by the metal ratcheting of a key. Slowly, aware that my body wouldn’t like me after not moving for so long, I started to unfold my limbs as best I could to assume a crouch.
The door swung open.
“Time’s up, tiny witch,” the guard growled. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah. Give me a sec—Aaiiii.”
The scream tore from my throat as the guard hauled me out of the cell without delay, forcing muscles and tendons to assume positions they’d been locked out of for hours. Pain lanced through my skull, and I thrashed wildly, piercing shrieks filling the hallway.
A meaty fist backhanded me, and I fell to the ground, sobbing in agony.
“Dumb bitch,” one of them grunted, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me.
Another took the other side, and they hauled me off to a square room while I shuddered in pain.
“Hey!” I shouted as my meager clothing was ripped from my body. “What the fuck is that for?”
I stumbled in a circle—legs still only partially responding—only to be greeted by a blast of frigid ice water from a hose. I fell to the floor as tiny ice daggers stabbed across my skin. The guards stood and laughed while I bleated for them to stop. They didn’t listen.
The water mercifully cut off. I started to recover, only for them to dump a bucket of soap over my head. It dripped down my naked body.
“Scrub,” someone said. “You have thirty seconds.”
Not sure when the next chance to “clean” myself would come, I did as instructed, trying to keep my back to the guards.
On what must have been precisely second thirty, the water blasted me again, removing all the soap. Then, finally, it stopped.
