Miles screamed with pain and rage. He squatted over, clutching himself. "Bitch! Unnatural mongrel bitch!"
In outraged masculine fury, he threw himself onto me, forgetting himself, his hands wrapped around my throat. The weight of him over my flesh, the rub of his fabric over my nipples—God. I needed that more than I needed air. If my body had its way, it would have gladly let me strangle to death as long as he didn't move off me. I writhed and rubbed against him uncontrollably, wetting him with the excess oil from my body while he glared down at me, that once beautiful face now a twisted, evil grimacing mask as he squeezed and squeezed and shook me with violent rage.
"Miles!" Aquila said sharply.
"Do not worry," Miles snarled, breathing rapidly. "I won't kill her. I'm just choking some of the fight out of her."
That's true, came a distant floating logic. Choking couldn't kill one of our kind. But I wasn't entirely Monère. I was also part human. And humans could be choked to death. It took longer, since I didn't breathe as much, but I began to feel the lack of air—a desperate clawing sensation. I was gasping, trying to draw in air. Suffocating. And over it all, I was burning, burning, burning!
That terrible aching, throbbing need was only worsened, not relieved, the more I rubbed against him. My vision began to fade. I pushed weakly against his chest, my strength ebbing as the tremendous need for air and the desperate need of my body to be filled built and built and became too much. Something had to give.
My hands tingled, burned, brightened with true heat. Every electric, pulsing desperate sensation that I felt poured out of me in a frothing rushing gush through my palms.
The smell of burning fabric and singed flesh polluted the air. Someone was screaming. My throat was suddenly free and I gasped in sweet, life-sustaining air. My vision cleared and I lifted my head and saw Miles rolling madly on the ground a few feet away. The red imprint of my palms were seared into the pale flesh of his chest like a horrendous macabre brand. The fabric of his shirt was whole but for a neat outline where my hands had burned through, like two imprints of cookie dough that had been cut out with a cookie cutter.
"See how long it takes you to heal that, prick." I gasped, using up the last of my strength. My head fell back onto the ground and my eyes closed. I felt that hot, burning torment creep back over my limp body, tightening it once again, and I wanted to weep and cry and throw myself onto the nearest man.
I heard the others gather Miles up and leave. His cursing and weeping grew fainter.
When I opened my eyes, Aquila stood above me, the other seven men a safe distance away. He was handsome in a severe, stern-looking fashion, older, with short, dark curly hair. The neat appearance of his thin mustache and Van Dyke beard was at peculiar odds with his ragged clothing.
If he raped me now I wouldn't be able to resist. Frankly, I might even welcome him with open legs. But he didn't fall on me as I expected, to my sharp relief and despair. There was no lust in his eyes, just a nicker almost of pity.
He showed me the hand restraints he held. Had been holding all along, actually. Only I hadn't noticed them until he drew attention to them, so fractured was my concentration on the desperate clamoring of my traitorous body.
"Are you able to hold out your hands, Lady?" Aquila asked.
I didn't know. Could I? I grunted and lifted one hand up to sway feebly in the air. Aquila clamped the cold metal around it and I gratefully let my arm sag back down, leaving him with the burden of holding up the obscenely heavy weight my arm had suddenly become.
"The other," Aquila said. He enunciated his words in a gentleman's precise, clipped manner. What the hell was he doing with these bandits?
Making a Herculean effort, I lifted the other arm to waver in the air. Aquila snapped the restraint closed and used them to pull me to my feet. I teetered but didn't fall. He pulled gently, keeping five long feet of chain between us, and my legs moved.
The slitted dress had fallen almost completely off, held up only by where it caught at my arms. It didn't matter that my breasts hung free in their meager glory or that the only things covering me down below were my inadequate curls. It took all of my dwindling strength just to hang on to the fast unraveling threads of my control. To keep from begging and pleading to be fucked. To just put one damned foot in front of the other in what seemed an endless march.
We finally halted and the sound I had heard for some time registered at last. Water. We were at a small brook, a different one from where I had met Halcyon a short lifetime ago.
I stood, swaying, not knowing what else to do.
Amber's voice drifted distantly to me. "Release me. I pledge my solemn oath that I shall not attempt to escape or resist when you restrain me once again. I just wish to care for her."
A short man with a large head and wide shoulders snorted. "Like we would take your word."
"Do you wish to care for her, Greeves?" Aquila asked blandly.
Greeves shook his head and remained sullen and silent.
"Your pledge," Aquila demanded of Amber.
"My solemn oath," Amber rumbled, "upon my honor as a warrior."
His chains fell away and he walked to me.
"Amber," I whispered, need huge and monumental in my eyes.
He waited patiently for Aquila to unshackle me. Then, grasping my wrist, led me to the little brook. He slid the gown off my arms and ripped off a clean piece, untainted by the oil. Methodically, Amber removed his shoes and socks, and then mine. With rag in hand, he led me into the shallow streaming water.
I gasped. The sensation of cold, prickling water flowing over my flushed, heated skin was almost beyond bearing. He urged me to sit and I resisted him for one useless second before my strength gave out and I collapsed. Supporting me by my arms, he sat me carefully down in the running water. Cool, tickling droplets ran over that most heated, most sensitive part of me, licking me like a thousand wickedly soft tongues. I convulsed in an explosive orgasm and cried out helplessly. I felt the solid presence of Amber squatting behind me, shielding me from the others' eyes, and slumped against him, tears leaking out from beneath my closed lids.
Amber's arms bunched and moved and the wet cloth smoothed down my chest. I gasped as he rubbed over the excruciatingly sensitive tips of my breasts. He washed me thoroughly while I dug my fingers into his knees until my knuckles whitened and threatened to split, trying to make neither sound nor movement. He cupped water and splashed it over me and I endured it in silence but when the cloth dipped down to that part of me immersed in water, electric shocks stabbed me and I could not help the moan that escaped my lips. I leaned back harder, and opened my legs wider in desperate plea. He stopped before I reached my peak and I whimpered, wildly shaking my head. No! I wanted to plead. Don't stop! He dropped the cloth in the water and guided my hand down into the water to stroke myself. I jerked and resisted him for a moment, then let my head fall back heavily against him in surrendering need. Let him guide my other hand up to squeeze and pinch my nipple. I exploded, literally. A brilliant shower of light fell behind my closed lids. He eased two of my fingers inside me while I was still yet convulsing and pressed my palm against my painfully oversensitive, swollen clitoris, where it seemed every nerve in my body had gathered. That light contact, that touch, was almost too much. My head thrashed and my third orgasm ripped through my body, hard. Then I fell blessedly limp, free for a moment from that terrible racking tension. I tasted blood and vaguely realized that I'd bitten my lips. Amber swung me into his arms and set me down on the grass, still shielding me from the others. He took off his shirt, slid my arms into the shirt and buttoned it back up. I was asleep before he had finished, unaware, unknowing, unfeeling when he swung me into his arms and carried me.