Fire Witch Read Online Free Page B

pain, and then set to winding a strip of leather around his torso, effectively tourniquetting the wound. She had the feeling that if he had fire nearby, he would have seared the wound shut.
    The man was an animal. They all were, obviously.
    "Do as I say," Chelan said, tearing her attention away from the grizzled man. Something odd in his voice made her stomach clench and she stiffened her own spine as she looked at him.
    "The Goddess take you," she bit out, and he shook her again until she thought her head would fall off her shoulders. When he stopped, she couldn't tell whether the trembling that had taken over her body was an echo of his aggression or her own fear.
    "Damn you," he said. "Just do it." He ran a hand through his bushy curls and she could see that his fingers were bloodstained and calloused.
    She realized this was the last moment she would ever feel unspoiled. A different kind of panic bloomed in her throat, nearly choking off her air.
    "Just you, " she begged, hating to hear the beseeching tone in her voice, but hoping that at least she would be spared the humiliation of having to take on the entire group of men.
    "Perhaps not even me," he whispered, fisting the bottom of her shift. She bat at his hands like her own fingers had become part of someone else's body, with as much control over them.
    He gave her one piercing look that seized her muscles entirely. Then he forced her back to, pulling her bottom against his hips in one movement. He leaned in so that his mouth was against the back of her ear.
    "Scream now," he said.
     
    She obliged him until her voice was hoarse, but for the life of her, she couldn't understand why she was doing so. He had an erection, certainly. It was as solid and unyielding against her bottom as the limb of an ironwood tree. Even so, he made no move to penetrate her. Instead, he let it but up against her bottom almost chastely. She had thought this hardened warrior would force himself on her right there in the woods with that disgusting brute just on the other side of the tree. She thought she would have to steel herself against the invasion and then do so again and again until she was nothing but a husk of flesh with no spirit within.
    She didn't expect the man clutching her hips to pantomime the intimate act or to send his calloused thumb over the cleft of her bottom like a whisper promising gentler intimacy. That changed when he hissed into her ear.
    "I told you to scream," he said. He balled his hand into her shift and he used the material to yank her against him rhythmically, bucking against her and forcing her to pantomime the act with him.
    She thought she had been screaming, but evidently she hadn't sounded frightened enough. His elbow snaked around the front of her neck and he yanked her forcefully against his chest, crushing her voice box with the crook of his arm as he did so, and then she did scream. It came out as a curdled warble, but at least it seemed to have been appropriate affect. He grunted in her ear with satisfaction and then after one final thrust, pulled her shift down, smoothing it over her thighs before throwing her onto the moss just in sight of the brute who had by then taken a seat on a smooth boulder nearby.
    Chelan rounded the tree, making a great show of buckling his leathers. She wasn't certain what had just happened, or why, but she was grateful. When she met his eyes, she realized she couldn't keep his mossy gaze and instead collapsed on her side on the forest floor, hoping that the ordeal was well and truly over. Now that she'd apparently given one of them what he wanted, they'd leave her and flee these woods that lined the village her mother ruled before she sent men out to fetch the bastards who dared invade her town. She tried to keep her eyes on the ground, hoping for their departure, but when the brutish man made a sound like he was disappointed, she flicked her gaze in his direction without meaning to.
    "What a waste," he said, picking at his