The Vixen Torn (12 page)

The basement was dingy, cold and unpleasant. Though she saw there
was a mattress in one corner, simply laid upon the stonework floor.

As she studied her surroundings he returned. He laid a hand upon
her shoulder as with the other he used a lukewarm wash cloth to wipe
the mess of Zarach’s seed from her back in gentle strokes.
“Your friend is safe. Though he will not awake for some time,”
he stated. “And as for the dancer... the physician told me her
fate rests on whether she can keep food down. She has lost a great
deal of blood.”

“What did she do?” she asked weakly, barely wanting to
know the answer. She’d seen girls die before, and had to beat
more than one for the pleasure of her bosses. She suppressed it all
deep within her and it was unpleasant confronting those memories once
more, confronting the fact that she wasn’t as good of a person
as she wanted to believe.

His dextrous hands guided the moist cloth over her backside, along
the clefts and valley of her round, shapely rear. He cleaned the foul
spunk of the man above off her skin before he put the cloth aside.

“Nothing,” he replied at last, standing so very tall
over her. “He used her to feed. Callously, and without regard
for her life or his own safety.” The foreign man walked about
her, standing in front of her once more, “I thought he had
promise once. But I learned his restraint only came from fear. As his
power has grown, his fear has gone, and with it... all restraint and
thought for everything. Even his own life and safety.” His dark
eyes seemed to soften as they met her emerald gaze. “He could
have seduced that girl. Made her give him what he wanted willingly.
But he has gone past that point. He forgets how to be clever as his
power grows with each passing night.”

Anjasa stopped biting her lower lip and gave him a soft smile,
“Yea, I noticed that much. Were you the one who told him of my
deception?”

Slowly he nodded to her. “He was still aware enough to know
your arrival was a ruse. But he thought you merely another woman
seeking fortune from him, and he intended to use you as a feature
attraction for his club, doubtlessly. But when I told him of your
likely dealings with his cousin...” he shrugged lightly. “His
reason failed him.”

His gaze slipped away from her at last, and he looked about. “It
will be an uncomfortable stay here. But I will see to it you last it
through unharmed.” He locked eyes with her once more, “I
can do that much, at least.”

She snorted a bit, her smirk growing, “Fuck, he treated me
better when he thought I was a nobody. What kind of rationale is
that?” She looked back towards the bed, and her words were
soft, “I’ve slept in worse.”

That mask hid his lips, but she knew he smiled beneath it. His
hand lifted again, and he traced the backs of his fingers over her
jawline, up to her cheek. “He was too much the fool to realize
he could have cultivated a bond between you and him that would have
lasted lifetimes. A beautiful, Elvish siren to serve an immortal
lord,” he shook his head, feeling the shame in lost
opportunity. “He would spit on the finest of opportunities over
his own ego at being fooled.”

“I barely know Loren, you know. Just met him last night in a
bar. I just wanted a free drink.” And then it spiralled into
something so much darker. She looked to Jaral and there was some hint
of recognition and respect for him, for his awareness and
understanding off her.

Of who she was. What she was.

It sent a shiver down her spine and left heat in its wake, her
nipples tightening atop her large breasts. Suddenly she felt naked in
a way she hadn’t, even as he wiped her free of another man’s
seed.

Jaral was a man of contradictions. She detected such an aura of
death and danger from him, on some instinctual level she’d
honed over years of courting such threats. Yet he exuded those things
that provoked attraction and lust in her: the power, the confidence,
the control, the physical beauty—in what she could see of him.
Even his speech and looks went that bit beyond. For he was stunningly
gorgeous in his physique, she could see that in how the leather
outlined his figure so tightly, how his bare arms showed off well—honed muscles. Yet his words and looks were hued by the exotic, the
foreign, making him all that much more intriguing.

And intrigue always added to appeal.

“Good,” he said simply, his fingers gingerly feeling
out her skin, back across her flawless features. The cool digits a
comfort, even in the cold dark of the basement. “That foppish
boy has his uses, but he is not a man that could hold your attention
for long.” His eyes flickered back from her hair, where his
fingers tangled “Am I not right?”

“I led him to his doom, didn’t I? I wouldn’t do
that for someone I had faith in.” It was true. She didn’t
warn Loren because she didn’t trust him not to mess it up, to
get them both caught and killed. And she didn’t expect he’d
be able to start over from squalor, not like she could. He wasn’t
someone who could survive outside of wealth.

Jaral shifted his position somehow. It was almost like he was
going to move in and kiss her, take her. Instead he said, “With
his circumstances, you could cultivate him into something
advantageous. I suspect you had intended to already, before things
went sour.” He stepped in nearer to her, their bodies so close
that her stiff nipples brushed his leather. “Just as a powerful
and properly capable man could cultivate a bond with you, to put your
skills and assets to great advantage.” She was so close to him
she could feel the air through his mask from his words as he spoke,
“Zarach should have been that man.”

“What do you know about my skills and assets?” Her
head tilted to the side as a pulse of heat spread out from her belly,
making her skin prickle and feel more receptive to touch. She was
cautious, though. She’d forgotten just how quickly she could
get out of control, and her encounter with Zarach was a stern
reminder.

“Charming,” he said in that way of speaking he had
which was charming in and of itself, “you could wrap a man
about your little finger. Silent. Stealthy,” he remarked, his
fingers moving down from her jaw across her neck, only grazing her
skin lightly as he moved . “A consummate actress. And last but
not least,” he paused, his knuckles tracing her collarbone,
“beauty beyond compare.”

She drew her lower lip into her mouth to stop it from trembling,
but it was hard. Standing in the dingy basement, a prisoner to a
cruel man, and something else entirely to the killer that touched her
so gently. Her mind grew a bit hazy and she shut her eyes, inhaling
deeply to try to still her thoughts. Instead, she just smelled his
masculine scent and her body shuddered.

“And yet your... boss is still immune to me. A shame.”

Jaral laughed. It wasn’t curt or derisive, it was just
amused. “Boss,” he repeated, his fingers dipping down and
grazing her ample breasts, so large and bare as they rested to her
chest. “He is not my boss, and never has been.” She could
see the hints of a smile at the corner of his exposed eyes. Those
exotically shaped, coal lined eyes of his. “Associates.
Business partners in some manners, perhaps. But never was he my boss,
fair elven lady.”

As his knuckles curved about the swell of her breast he said. “You
are weary. You need rest.” He didn’t pull away then
though, simply let his eyes dip low, observe her perked nipples as
his fingers strayed near without touching them. “When next
Zarach comes for you, capture his attention. I will end him,”
he stated so casually in that deep, foreign voice of his. “I
will end him and his injustice at spurning your uniqueness and value
will be righted.”

“You act like you know me so well,” she said
cautiously, noting that she felt a bit breathless. Her eyes narrowed
suspiciously as she stared at him. “You know things no person
ought to know, even watching me from afar. How do you see these
things?”

His gaze was slow to travel back to hers, his dark hazel coloured
eyes locking onto her emerald. “I am... observant,” he
said, though she knew that it wasn’t that simple. There was
something not quite right about him. A less travelled woman might not
have noticed it, might have taken the mental influence when she was
on her knees before Zarach as just animal attraction. But it was
beyond that. Anjasa was mistress of lust and desire, after all.

“I shall make time for your questions once this situation is
resolved. I know you have much time to lavish in such things,”
he said, lowering his hand away from her but with a final motion just
barely brushing against her nipple and areola. “But events are
in motion, and should be resolved promptly. Rest, sweet elven beauty.
Rest and be ready. For Zarach. For his doom. For your future. For
me.”

He leaned in then, and though his thin dark mask still covered his
lips he kissed upon her forehead in a tender motion, his strong,
dextrous hand upon her shoulder lightly.

In a day that was less fraught with bad decisions, she might have
begged him. Seduced him. Made him hers.

Yet, for once in her life, she waited. She felt that tingle down
her spine, the way her sex pulsed with need, and tried to calm
herself. She could be patient. She wanted to prove something to
herself, that she wasn’t as stupid as she’d been all day.
Even as she let out a sigh of need at that light touch, and the
barest whispers of his flesh on hers.

“Thank you,” she murmured into his chest.

His cool, sandy brown fingers slipped from her shoulder, leaving a
strange tingle in his wake as he pulled away to the door. He paused
there and looked to her before she could slink off to the dingy,
lonesome mattress upon the floor. “Do not fret. When Zarach
comes for you, I will not be far. No matter what it seems. Rest well,
for things are assured with my hand in it.” With that he opened
the door and vanished through it, leaving her alone in the manor’s
strange basement.

When finally she curled up on the bed that was stuffed with
something far too uncomfortable, she realized just how exhausted she
was. All of her troubled thoughts and concerns slipped away, and even
her worries and fears couldn’t keep her awake.

Awaking in a dark dungeon of a basement to the sound of
approaching footsteps down the stairs was not a pleasant experience.
Yet for Anjasa, it was somehow all too recognizable. She had faced
imprisonment before, and the tortures that accompanied it.

It was hard to say how long she had been there, but she felt as if
she had slept long, albeit uncomfortably on the uneven mattress. The
eye slot in the heavy, metal reinforced door slid open. “Get
up,” a gravelly, brutish voice demanded.

She stood and stretched, more provocatively than she knew she
should. It came naturally to her though and she didn’t realize
how she was arching her back. Even as she worked to remove the
tension in her muscles from the long slumber, she was a trained
seductress, against her instincts.

The locks on the door slid across, and with a noise that
contrasted so starkly the silence with which Jaral had done it, the
door slammed open. “Here,” Berro said, the low class
brute tossing some trashy dancer number to her feet. “The boss
might want some entertainment before he heads out tonight. See to it
you’re ready if he does. I’ll take ya up to the parlour
once yer dressed.”

“I can dress and walk.” Anjasa didn’t want to
spend another minute down there that she didn’t have to. Even
though she’d slept well, now that she was awake, she didn’t
want to be left alone. Too many memories of her past were waking up
with her, and she scooped up the outfit eagerly. It wasn’t
much, just a belt that passed for a skirt and a slinky top that
barely contained her breasts, but she pulled it on as she walked
towards the door.

The thug Berro had no compunction about ogling her as he prodded
her up the stairs. He took her back through the manor and up to the
parlour where Zarach had first shown her his impatience and cruel
disregard for her. “Wait in here,” he growled, giving her
a shove into the room with his grimy hand, and staring at her ass as
he did.

He didn’t leave her right away though; he lingered at the
door, blocking her way and staring. Staring in that way she’d
seen countless men do over the years as they calculated their odds at
getting away with something.

It made her skin crawl, and she moved to the sofa, but didn’t
sit.

Anjasa was a fairly short woman, even for an elf, and far curvier
than most. She was unarmed and only wore those tiny strips of white
fabric, but it didn’t matter. She was dangerous, and she knew
how to defend herself from men like him.

Years of practice had taught her how to hurt them in the most
brutal ways, with only her nails and teeth.

She didn’t do much, but just those slight motions, almost
imperceptible, readied her to fight as she took in the room around
her, all while seeming as placid and docile as possible. “Thanks.”

The gears turned in Berro’s head slowly, but ultimately her
caution was unnecessary. He calculated the cost of taking her to be
too high, and knowing Zarach as she’d come to in so short a
time, she wasn’t surprised.

He grunted something to her in return, gestured to a tray on the
bar. “Food there,” he said and stood in the doorway,
apparently intending on going nowhere right away.

She found it to be some lukewarm porridge of some sort, with a
piece of bread and some water. Utterly unimpressive fair, and a
testament to the disregard Zarach had for everyone.

She rolled her eyes when her back was turned on Berro. He reminded
her of an orc. And an unattractive one at that.

She also noted, of course, that there was no beautiful emerald
next to her bowl. The idea that he had taken her out and spoiled her
only to turn on her so quickly made her body flush. Would he have let
her keep it if Jaral hadn’t told him about Loren? She doubted
it.