Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers
4
Itook a breath of fresh evening air, a tiny smile spreading across my lips, for with every step, General Tilcot’s stolen manse grew smaller. His threats and lingering glances a problem for another day, as the stink of elites was washed from my sinuses.
All except one.
The very worst—the one I couldn’t escape.
“Mila.” Fingers bracketing either side of my throat, the captain took the back of my neck in his rough palm. A possessive collar stiff with the simmering promise of violence. His shoulders still rigid, despite the distance his long-legged strides put between us and the manse.
I tried to shake him off and failed.
“Feeling brave again, I see,” the captain drawled, but his grip only tightened.
“And why not?” I replied, flush with a newfound arrogance and adrenaline. “You’ve lost your leverage, Asher. And until I find a way to free my people, I take solace in knowing that pig of a general won’t kill the Head Priestess.”
Tension rippled through him, into me. A tight, “Is that so?” said in an aristocratic purr the only indication of the nerve I’d struck. The weakness I’d found that might be exploited.
“You’re parasites,” I added as we rounded a corner and the captain’s residence came into view, clinging to what remained of the confidence I’d found in ruining Carina’s pretty shoes. “And without a host, the parasite is nothing. It’s you who need us.”
The captain said nothing. Made no effort to interject and showed no reaction, except for the bulging muscle twitching at the corner of his jaw. It wasn’t until he’d driven us through the front door of his townhouse that I felt a tingle in my wrists and throat—the only warning of the captain’s influence surging in my veins before I was held immobile.
“Have you forgotten?” he said, and pressed my pliant body against the nearest wall, kicking the door closed with a snap. “I don’t need leverage to bend you to my will.” Heated breath traced the shell of my ear, his head dipping low so full lips might brush my skin. So the rasp of teeth could leave my skin scored with a trail of reddened gooseflesh in their wake.
I swallowed, trembling in his shadow, but that was all. Held still, unable to speak with my jaws sealed shut.
“Even before you were mine,” he murmured, and let his fingers trail down my throat. Over each bump of my windpipe, before he paused to trace the hollow between my collar bones. “Irrevocably mine…” Rough hands slipped down, traced the crease between my breasts, then found purchase beneath. Thumbs and forefingers teasing the underside of my breasts, he squeezed my ribs and trapped my breath in a tight band of compression that made me feel grounded and untethered all at once. And then, through a smirk, he whispered, “You were made to kneel, Mila.”
With the fuse on my temper lit, his influence faded away, leaving me free to hurl, “Is that so?” back in his face, but with only half the sinister intention.
A smile flicked against the edge of my jaw, just beneath my ear. Drawing up a cascading wave of shivers that pimpled my nape. My scalp. “Mmhmm. No matter how hard you fight to deny it,” he hummed, and drove me back with his hands still tight around my ribs, “it’s where you long to be.”
Despite everything—the press of his body against mine, the humiliation and anguish, the loss of all control—I laughed. “I long to see the empire fall. To see—”
His fingertips trailed along the skin peeking above my waist, at the base of my spine where I was bare and vulnerable. A ticklish invasion that saw me lurch away from his touch, our hips bumping together.
A dark smile lit his features, but I pressed on, forcing my words through clenched and pointed teeth. “I long to see every filthy Caledonian parasite brought low. Everything you’ve stolen returned and made whole.”
He hummed, pressing his lips to my temple, and said, “Because you’re a little ball of fire, Mila.” At the press of his thickly muscled thigh between my legs, I gasped. Tried to buck his influence and failed. “All fire and fury,” he said, stroking the delicate skin of my throat. “Just begging to be tamed.”
“Even if that were true,” I said as he dipped his head to lick my collarbone, a lock of his silky black hair teasing the underside of my jaw, my cheek, “it will never be you.”
“Mmm, yes, you hate me,” he said in a voice that sent wicked amusement rumbling through my chest.
My reply rolled off my tongue without an instant of hesitation. “With every fiber of my being.”
He straightened, all sharp angles and hard lines. A predator closing on the kill. “And that, my dear Mila, is the most passionate emotion of them all,” he whispered, and, lips moving against my ear, he cupped my bottom. Spread my cheeks and pulled my core against his thigh before bending at the knee. He lifted me, left me to ride his thigh while his hands remained free to roam. “It’ll take nothing to flip that coin and turn your hatred into devotion.” Making a fist in the hair at my nape, he angled my head back. Exposing my throat to his lips and teeth. “It’s a challenge I relish. One you are unequal to, priestess.”
Voice breaking, I said, “Don’t touch me.”
“Frightened?” he murmured, lips tracing my thrashing pulse.
“Nauseated,” I snapped, trying not to squirm. My feet dangling, body useless. Disobedient to my silent commands.
At that, he withdrew with a devious chuckle. Issuing a pithy tsk as he said, “Mmm. Then I know just what you need.”
“Oh? Like I need a good steak, Asher?”
“And that,” he said in a deadly whisper, “is the third time you’ve used my name. A privilege I have not granted you.”
A chill spilled down my back. “So it’s to be another whipping then?” I asked, voice trembling despite the nerve I’d struck. Because of it.
“No, my beautiful, wild pet.” He kissed the shell of my ear. “I’m going to fuck you on every piece of furniture in this house. Show you what it means to be a priestess bound to an elite.”
But before I could respond, he hiked my skirts, jerked me away from the wall, and spun me. Giving me barely enough time to get my feet beneath me before he had me bent over a hall-stand topped with a vase full of drooping, cut flowers.
I gasped, scrambling for purchase and sent the vase flying with a careless backhand. An instant later, the small desperate noises he’d torn from my throat were swallowed up by the sounds of shattering glass.
The full weight of an aroused, Caledonian elite fell across my back. Pinning me more effectively than even his influence might, and at my ear, he breathed a husky, “That was my favorite vase, Mila.”
Squirming, I tried to drag a breath through clenched teeth—and my eyes caught on the edge of an ornate picture frame. “And I suppose this is your favorite painting?” I snarled, and tore it from the wall in a shower of paint chips and dust.
A heavy hand fell between my shoulder blades, forcing me flat. His grin spreading across my nape, where his lips teased. “Nothing more than trashy Eloran art, pet.” At this, both of his hands slid down my back. He found purchase around my ribs once more, before they slipped forward. Beneath the flimsy illusion of modesty that was my silk dressing, he took liberties that stole my breath.
Cupping my breasts, squeezing the fat, he pinched my nipples between forefinger and thumb, rolling until he drew the points into tight little beads of aching tension. Before he released me and shoved my dress clear, both sides pushed down and forward. The material gathered in a single fist that rested in a rope between my breasts, his fist bunched in the hollow spot where my ribs met my sternum. My breasts hanging free, nipples grazing the chill wood of the tabletop beneath me.
But it was his free hand that made me whine, terror and something without name lodged high at the back of my throat. “Wait, please—”
His grip landed on my right hip. Fingers clenching hard enough to bruise, the captain pressed his nose into my hair and drew in a ragged breath. And on his exhale, a raspy, “Intoxicating,” ruffled the fine hairs shielding my ear, leaving me coated in a layer of gooseflesh and shame.
Straining for breath, for sanctuary, I shouted a desperate, “I have diseases!” in a voice that tasted of splintered glass.
His hand trailed down my hip, twisting in the fluttery loose fabric that kissed my ankles. Drawing it up, higher with every bunching twist. “Mmm. What kind of diseases, pet?”
Choking on an anguished sob, I whispered, “The sexual kind.”
The puff of a sinister chuckle kissed the back of my neck. “Very convincing.” And, kicking my ankles apart, he exposed the flesh at the top of my thighs. Leaving a heap of fabric bunched on the shelf of my bottom, where I was bent and vulnerable. Laid bare, when a moment later, the captain wrenched the last of my dress clear. Leaving me exposed to the evening chill. Unwrapped only enough to suit his lewd intentions.
One fist anchoring me to the hall-stand, he leaned back and I felt the heat of that obsidian glare ravaging my most intimate parts. “Such beauty,” he cooed as his fingers trailed over the curve of my hip. Thumb hooking the right cheek of my bottom, he spread me. Groaning at what he saw. “It’s a wonder you managed to evade us for so long.”
Wheezing, I squeezed my eyes shut and heard the ominous whirr of a zipper.
And then I knew.
He was right.
It didn’t matter how hard I fought, the strength of my logic, nor how valiantly I might struggle—Captain Asher Rawlings could simply take whatever he wanted. With nothing but an errant thought, he had my submission. The dark flames of poisonous elite energy an infection that spread through my veins and left me too hot. Flesh aching with alien need, despite the way my heart thrashed at the back of my throat, the organ panicked and trying to escape. To spare me this final horror.
“Please,” I breathed, and felt something blunt press against my core. Making me throb. Clench. “Please, don’t—”
“I can feel it, Mila,” he rasped, and leaned back. Releasing the fabric at my front, he left my breasts swinging free and claimed one cheek of my bottom in either hand. Peeled me apart so he might have an unobstructed view at the thing he meant to ruin. “Your fear.” Thumbs sliding in tandem, he caught the lips of my sex and made them gape around what was blunt and foreign. “The intoxicating sweetness of your helpless curiosity. The way you ache…” I felt his hips shift, the burning stretch of secret flesh yielding to a force greater than any I’d ever dared imagine. “I’m already inside you, and I can feel it all. That’s how I know—you were born to serve an elite,” he whispered, not unaffected by the weight of this moment. Poised at my entrance, hanging on the edge of something unforgivable as if to savor what I’d never willingly give.
The front door banged open.
Startled, the captain’s hips sluiced forward a fraction of an inch, making me hiss in shock. Frozen by his influence, my breasts rippling with the tension snapping taut between us both. Every inch of my flesh on full, lewd display to an intruder I couldn’t see.
“Holy shit, captain,” came a voice I recognized, but couldn’t place. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean—”
“What are you doing here, Marco,” the captain drawled, unhurried, despite the strain I could feel vibrating through his muscle. “And why,” he added, and stroked the length of my spine with the flat of one hand, “can’t it wait for morning?”
“The rebels are attacking, sir.” Marco cleared his throat, not totally able to mask the edge of excitement when he said, “They’ve got something new. And General Tilcot wants you on the frontlines to test out the new girl. Now.”
“She hasn’t even been assessed yet,” the captain spat, pushing just a little more of himself through the slick ache of swollen lips.
Marco chuckled. “Tilcot said he’d bring Sasha so, and this is a direct quote, mind, ‘You have nothing to worry about, boy.’”
At this, the captain huffed a deep, frustrated sigh and let my dress fall. “Insufferable prick.” Shifting forward, he adjusted my front and hid my breasts from view before tucking himself away.
Released from his compulsion, I sank to the floor amid the shards of broken glass and plaster. My breath hitching, cheeks wet. Back pressed to the wall where I cowered and shook with relief. Adrenaline burning in my veins.
“Come along, priestess,” the captain said, extending his hand—the very same extremity I could still feel on my hip. On my chest and in the lingering ache throbbing between my thighs. “Let’s test out my new power.”
I shook my head, teeth bared. Confidence in tatters, but still, a defiant, “No,” rolled off my tongue with spiteful ease.
“Wasn’t a question, Mila,” he replied as Marco handed him a jacket.
“You know… we could always stay,” Marco said, eyebrows waggling. A lewd grin spread across his lips to reveal slightly crooked teeth. “Just for a little while. Wouldn’t mind a free show…”
Hissing, I scrambled to my feet in a rush that left me dizzy. Swaying without daring to tear my scowl from Marco’s face, I opted for open conflict between warring nations over a private show. “I’d prefer death.”
Marco clutched at his chest as if wounded, and the captain reclaimed his grip on my nape, pressed his lips into my hair, and said, “How easy the coin turns.”