Shattered (10 page)

Robin touched him on the shoulder and tried to lift him, but the wei
ght of his semi-unconscious body was too much for her.  He slumped back down onto his side when her strength failed and groaned as the bruises across his front came to life.

“
Sit up,” she commanded.  He could hear her frustration at him and, if he didn’t know better, he might think she was using it to cover concern.

Nathan got his arms beneath his body but it was an effort.  It felt like he hadn’t moved in ages.  His wrists were still bound
together and the long length of rope that had tied him to the ceiling trailed away from his hands.  It was the first thing he saw as he forced his eyes open.

Next was Robin. 
He had to blink a few times to clear the dark haze from his sight, but he was glad when he did.  Though her dress was different, loose and simple, she was as he remembered her.  She leaned over him, crouched there on the floor beside him, a few loose curls of hair hanging down around her face.  Her brows were drawn together in a frown and her lips pursed together just as tight.

“You’re beautiful,”
Nathan mumbled.  He had to force the words out and the breath of them burned his throat.  A second later he was coughing.

“You’re speaking when you shouldn’t and disobeying me by not rising,” Robin warned, though the severity of her words didn’t match
up to her tone.  “Do you really want to resume hurting that badly prince?”

Nathan couldn’t help himself.  Though coughing wracked his tender chest and ached against his diaphragm he couldn’t keep the words in.
  He had nothing at all to lose.  A weak smirk upturned the corner of his mouth.  “But Mistress, you said you wouldn’t hurt me any more today.”

“
I said I didn’t feel like it, not that I wouldn’t.  And besides, that was yesterday.  You’ve been asleep an entire day.  I’m not going to tolerate any more backtalk – sit up.”

That surprised him, th
ough it explained the stiffness.  Nathan pushed his hands down against the ground and lifted off his side.  The floor seemed to rock beneath him as he moved away from it.

Robin held a very full goblet out to him
then but Nathan didn’t immediately know what to do with it.  She didn’t place it near enough to drink from and it took him a long moment to realize he should take it from her.  His hand trembled up from his side and around the handle, and she released the weight of that cup to him.  That little act of independence was heavy.

Nathan sipped it slowly
.  The water eased his throat and his small sips served a dual purpose; it let him savor the relief to his enflamed throat and allowed him delay until he could figure out what she wanted of him.  Something awkward and heavy hung between them in their silence and it was entirely brought on by Robin.

She
was conflicted and Nathan could sense it.  He could see it in her face and more, he could feel it in the center of his chest.  It made the urge to please her so much greater, but he knew better.  She had said it plainly enough, there was nothing she needed from him.

Nathan handed the empty cup back to her and held her stare.  An uncomfortably long second passed before she took it.
  The moment where she might say something passed too, he could see it in her face as her expression turned hard once again.

“Your handlers will tend to you in my absence
, prince.  Twice a day you will be given food and water, and an opportunity to relieve yourself.  Otherwise you will remain here, unbothered.  I expect you to use that time to heal.”

The idea that she was leaving him alone here hurt.  Nathan opened his mouth to speak, but Robin had a finger to his lips just as fast.

“None of that needs a response.  You know better,” she said, and her gloved hand lingered near his face.  If he leaned forward a little it might cup his cheek, but Nathan remained still and she didn’t touch him again. “I’m only telling you this so you don’t cause trouble.  You’ll be blindfolded the entire time. I don’t know how long I will be gone for, but you have to promise me you won’t fight them.  I don’t want to have to put you back in that cage, not in your condition.”

Nathan nodded
without breaking eye contact.

“Promise me,” she repeated and h
er finger came away from his lips.

It was harder to force the words out than it ha
d been to simply nod, but he managed.  Only then did Robin relax some.  Nathan realized she was worried about him, or at least, worried about leaving him here alone.  Worried he might try something.

R
obin stood and brought a plate of food over.  That too she set down before him, but she didn’t sit again.  Instead she fished out the blindfold from a large pocket in her traveling dress and tossed it down beside him.

“When you’re done eating put tha
t on.”  She didn’t look at him again before turning towards the door.  “By the time I get back I expect you to be well enough that we can start again.”

***

The first day passed so slowly behind the blindfold and it was made worse by the
lack of direction Robin was leaving him with.  Nathan wasn’t sure if he was expected to stand, kneel, or simply lay down while he waited.  Sitting up had been bad enough and after a time he carefully lowered himself back onto his side.  His back was alive with fire and his middle felt like one large bruise as he worked himself into a position that made those aches tolerable.

He
counted the progression of days by his handlers’ appearances.  Twice a day, though he knew it only because Robin had told him.  Time passed strangely in between their visits.  Sometimes it felt like only a few hours, other times it could have been days.  It was so difficult to piece together time when much of it was spent sleeping.

The first time the handlers
took him from the room was the hardest.  He felt lost without Robin.  There was no one to give him any direction or tell him what was going on.  He didn’t know what was expected of him, and his handlers simply pulled and prodded until they accomplished some goal.  They were completely indifferent to him.  At least Robin hated him.

When they returned him to her room they didn’t string him up or restrain him.  They simply dropped him back to the floor and left.  Only the rope around his wrists rema
ined, but after a few days they even took that off.

Eating twice a day was a challenge, at first.  Robin’s aim to keep him hungry, to make him suffer, had shrunk his stomach more than a little.  His handlers didn’t care about that though.  They pressed more and more food into his mouth, until it became a pain all its own.

But as the days went on Nathan felt his strength returning.  Regular meals and an abundance of rest hastened the mend of his broken body.  He began to feel alive again, and that scared him.  The little freedoms Robin had given him before she left and the absence of her command now put cracks in his surrender.  Loneliness and doubt were quick to fill in.

It didn’t take long before
Nathan yearned for Robin’s return in equal parts to his dread.  He didn’t want to admit it to himself, yet in that denial he knew it to be true.  He missed her.

Six
days after Robin left, just as Nathan was growing accustom to the long hours in isolation behind the blindfold, it was taken from him.

No one came for him that morning and
he was surprised at how quickly he grew hungry.  Two meals a day would have seemed meager, back in his old life, but he was spoiled by them now.

For his handlers to break their routine was the worst.  Nathan had been wrestling with his feelings all week and it was only the sameness of every day that made it possible to stay as Robin left him.  Without her, without the handlers, the urge to strip away the blindfold and rise was pressing.  He had so many questions that could be answered if only he stood.

Those deaf and silent specters returned with dinner.  They pulled him up from the ground and led him to the bath room, where they scrubbed him down more thoroughly than usual.  His beard was shaved off and, for the first time in weeks, he felt the cool air on his naked chin.  It reminded him of who he had been, before this place.

When they returned him to Robin’s bedroom they forced him to his knees.  A strong hand went down on the back of his head and pushed until he faced the floor.  And that was when they stripped away the last thing Robin left him with.  It was sudden and unexpected.  The light that streamed i
n forced his eyes shut and Nathan heard the last set of footsteps leave the room.  His eyes stayed shut, even after the door closed, and it took a few minutes before he was ready to open them.

After all his conflict this was too tempting.  He knew better than to look around, yet soon
enough his eyes were wandering over every last inch of her space.  He didn’t have the courage to rise, but the urge was there.  If he was given a little longer it would have developed into action for sure.

Luckily the cre
ak of her door gave him warning and he dropped his face back to the floor.  He wasn’t supposed to see the handlers, he understood that.  He wasn’t so bold as to break that rule, yet.

Nathan stared down at his
hands as the person approached.  He listened to the muffled sound of soft-soled slippers across the floor and the swish of a dress as the specter came directly at him.  The rich, dark blue of a silk gown fell into his field of vision.  He drank in the color around his hands, like it was the first color he had seen in a week.

“
Eyes up prince,” a familiar voice spoke and his attention shot upward.

“I…  I’m sorry, I didn’t know you
Mistress.  It’s your boots… The clicking, that’s how I know it’s you.”  He was rambling, he knew it, but in that instant he felt such a surge of relief he didn’t know what else to do.  He wanted to hug her.

Robin
shook her head and placed her thumb lightly against his mouth.  Where usually she wore leather her gloves now felt to be silk.  They carried the warmth of her hand through to his lips.

“Still talking when you shouldn’t,” she chastised, though she didn’t sound upset by it.  She sounded tired.

Nathan was learning to see all of her without taking his eyes from hers.  Even as she stared down at him he made little notes on her dress.  The dark color was bold against her skin and open above her breasts.  It fit her curves snug until her waist, but instead of flaring out sharply, as was the fashion at court, it flowed off her hips and around her legs in smooth sheets.  Even standing still it gave the illusion of deep, moving water.

Her black hair billowed off her shoulders and her large curls framed
her face.  That too contrasted the norm.  Where most women pinned their hair up, pulling it every which way until not even a strand lay out of place, hers hung free.  Everything about her seemed free.

“What are you thinking about prince?”

Nathan snapped back to this place, this reality, and he realized Robin was still staring down at him.  He resisted the urge to drop his eyes as he drew in a quick, steadying breath.  “You look beautiful.”

Robin
let out a soft snort and shook her head again, dismissing his compliment as usual, but at least this time she glanced down at her body as she did so.  She held up one of the long, loose sheets of fabric that flowed off her.

“Help me get out of this
thing,” she said.  She turned her back to him and knelt down.

Black ribbon crisscrossed from her waist to the top of her dress. 
Nathan pulled one end of the loose bow at her waist and unlaced it upward, one section at a time, until both long ends of the ribbon hung from a single hole at the top.  He could see the curves of her hips where the dress gathered on the floor.  Her entire back was exposed to him and he yearned to touch it.

Nathan placed his hands on his thighs to keep them off her naked back.  He could feel the heat gathered there in his lap as his erection tented his pants. 
As his strength returned so too had his lust, for their play in the pool and its abrupt end left him yearning for release.  More than a small part of his mind hoped she had the energy tonight to hurt him.

Her dress hung loosely
from one shoulder but she didn’t move, not even now that Nathan was done.  She just stared ahead at the door for a long time.

“I was told you behaved,” Robin said at last.  Her voice was quiet
though, like she was somehow disappointed.

“I promised you I w
ould, Mistress.”

“Y
ou did.”

Nathan
couldn’t understand why she didn’t sound more pleased by that.  He hated not knowing what she wanted of him, but right now he sensed that her words and her desires were not one.  Or perhaps he was simply projecting his own clashing feelings.  He knew he was going through the motion of submission without feeling it, doing what was expected without desire, for he had felt alive in her absence and only pain could kill that again.  He wanted her to hurt him, to end his conflict.

“You asked me to,” Nathan continued on.  He couldn’t let silence fill in right now.  Everything was far too
fragile and he didn’t even understand why.  “Did I do something wrong?”