Page 28 of What Fury Brings
The man in the skirt grabbed another section and pulled. Sanos was suddenly grateful for the gag; otherwise he’d likely bite off his own tongue.
Gods, but it hurt. Way worse than his birthday hair-ripping. This was fire. He’d swear it hurt worse than the time a sword tore through him during his first training practice with sharpened blades.
Uncontrollable tears ran down his cheeks, and it was only when they removed the gag that he realized what was next.
“If you put that gods-awful wax on my face, I swear I will gut you,” Sanos said.
“The wax, My Prince, is only used on the chest. It doesn’t grow back as quickly that way, you see. We will use a razor on your chin and testicles.”
“My—”
The outrage was silenced as a thin blade was brought close to his throat. “If you don’t wish to be cut, I suggest you hold very still.”
He endured it. The cutting of his beard. The trimming of his intimate parts. What the hell was wrong with these women that they wanted their men naked as wee babes?
They threw more water over him to rinse off the trimmings, and he almost choked on it. Almost yelped as cold water was flung onto his cock and balls.
They dressed him in very little. Some sort of cloth that wrapped around his waist and tied at the side. A skirt. It was flimsy. White. Too exposing.
He hated everything about it.
The gag was replaced as he was escorted through hallways and stairways that he now managed to observe with a careful eye. Escape was his foremost concern, and he would memorize every passage they took him through, though the trip didn’t take long.
They stopped at a bedroom.
Herbedroom, no doubt.
There was a grand bed more than big enough for two. An unlit hearth took up one wall, while a thick white rug was laid out before it. The room was strangely bare other than that, as though it had been recently gutted. Because of his arrival?
They didn’t take him to the bed. No, they opened one of the many adjoining doors and brought him into a smaller room with an equally grand bed.
That was where they tied him, spread-eagle. Arms and legs securedto the posts with knots he didn’t know how to form. He thought he might know what came next. That dreadful toxin that would render him paralyzed and harden his cock, but the eunuchs left him without so much as a word of farewell.
Sanos couldn’t say how long he waited strapped to that bed. It was at least an hour. Perhaps two, and there was a horrid itch on his left foot that he couldn’t reach.
When the door opened andshewalked in, he ceased moving.
She was… different.
She’d bathed from their time on the road. Her hair was pulled half back, smoothed into some intricacy, and the rest fell around her shoulders in dark luscious waves. There was black ink around her eyes. Red paint on her lips. A hint of her breasts was exposed despite the robe she wore. The rest of her was a silhouette through the fine silk.
For some reason, his mouth watered, though he could barely swallow around the gag.
She approached slowly and touched his gag. “I’m going to remove this now, and you’re not going to make any awful sounds. If you do, I will administer the vyra again. Do you understand?”
He nodded, and his body rose in temperature from the fervor of his hatred for this woman.
Olerra removed his gag and set it on the bedside table. She seated herself on the bed, and it dipped under her weight. She offered him a glass of water, tilting it to his mouth, and he was too thirsty to refuse it. When done, she drew her legs up onto the bed beside her, lounging like a queen as she settled herself back and observed him.
The look-over she gave him heated his blood, but he kept his anger to the forefront.
“If you can overpower me, then why am I tied to this bed?” heasked. If he could trick her into untying him, then he could attempt escaping. He was fast. Surely faster than her.
“Being unchained is a right you have not yet earned. As I said before. Good behavior is rewarded. Poor behavior is punished.”
He swallowed. “The eunuchs? Is that what you do to men who misbehave?”
“Gods, no,” she said, looking baffled by the question. “No, the menchooseit. It is an honor to serve in the palace, one of the highest positions a common man can attain in Amarra. Many apply for the chance but few are chosen.”
