Mona Lisa Awakening

Chapter Eleven

Back in my room, once I had revived, I celebrated the small victory with a big, bloody T-bone steak prepared for me by Jamie's mother. My five men winced as I chewed the beefy chunks with relish and licked the plate clean. I had let myself get dangerously weak. Not a smart thing to do among a crowd of carnivores.

I stripped out of my bloody gown and showered, lathering up and scrubbing myself completely from top to toe three times. Too bad I couldn't wash away the stain within me as easily. There was a cruel, sadistic part of me that was emerging that scared me to death.

The dirty gown was gone when I stepped out of the bathroom. Adrenaline still pumped in my veins and the room was suddenly too small; I had to get out. I threw the other black gown over my head and knocked on the adjoining door. Miles opened the door, his eyes wary. "Milady?"

"I'm going for a walk," I informed him curtly.

"We will accompany you," Amber said from behind Miles, towering over the other man.

There was no smell of blood in the forest, just the clean scent of pine and the earthy smell of damp leaves and woods. It should have made me feel better. Instead, I began to cry, uncontrollable sobs that choked my breath and jerked my body. Amber's strong arms swept me up. He sat down on a fallen tree trunk and cradled me against his chest. The comfort and bigness of him reminded me of Helen, my human mother, and I wept even harder.

"It's all right," Amber murmured, awkwardly patting my back. The Four Colors, what I called my loaned guards, stood a cautious distance away. Men either wanted me or were afraid of me. No middle ground, it seemed.

"No, it's not," I gasped. "They hurt her because of me."

"You returned the pain doublefold back to the assailant."

"I'm glad," I said with ferocious pleasure. "I wanted to kill him!"

"Next time," was Amber's calm reply.

"I don't want there to be a next time." I sobbed and buried my face against him. "I hate it here. I thought coming here would give me everything I wanted. Instead, it's taken everything away."

A twig snapped, jarring me from my grieving, careless disregard of the area around me. I expanded my senses and heard it—seven, no, eight other slow heartbeats. Amber set me on my feet, drew his sword, and moved silently forward, signaling to the other four guards who surrounded me in a circle as the intruders glided into view. Eight of them armed with knives, dressed with tattered, patched tunics and worn boots. A ragged lot.

"Amber," I said, my voice tight and peculiar.

He glanced back and froze as he saw the silver blade held to my throat over where my pulse beat. Miles stood behind me, holding the knife. Another man, Gilford, I think was his name, stripped me of my knives while the other two held my wrists.

We were outnumbered and betrayed. "Run," I said roughly to Amber. "Get out of here."

Amber hesitated, his face as hard as stone. Instead of running, he came rushing toward us. Damn it! The stubborn gallant fool never listened to me.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," Miles said with silky menace, "or we shall test how fast she can heal silver."

The threat halted Amber.

"Drop the sword," Miles instructed. When Amber didn't move, the blade sliced lightly, professionally, and my blood sang in the air.

Amber threw down his sword.

"Very good," Miles said, praising Amber as if he was a dog being trained. "Now kneel. Lace your hands behind your head."

Amber dropped to his knees and one of the bandits moved quickly behind him, clamping a silver cuff around his wrist. Twisting his arms roughly down behind his back, he fastened the remaining cuff. They'd had it all planned. Bastards.

"Hand her over," said the bandit who had secured Amber so efficiently.

"Patience, Aquila. You shall have her as promised after we have sampled her charms first. It is our Queen's most ardent wish. She greatly desires the ability to withstand the sun." And it seemed the way they were going to acquire that gift was by having Mona Louisa's men mate with me and carry my potency back to her.

Miles yanked my hair back and swiped his sharp blade down my front. My dress parted open almost down to the knees, the fabric yielding like butter to the slicing knife.

"Fancy yourself an artist with the blade, huh?" I gritted.

"Oh, yes." Two more swift movements and my bra and panties fell away. "And I am as much an artist with my other knife."

"See, that's your trouble. Too much emphasis on your dick."

"With good reason, as you shall soon see."

Not liking the sound of that, I started to struggle. Miles squeezed his arm around my neck and hooked a leg around one of mine. Rupert, to my right, trapped my other leg. Arms and legs held open, I was on wide display. At least I was still standing up.

Rupert, the carrot-top, approached me holding a small vial similar to the one I had found in Mona Sera's bedroom. The one thai Gryphon had made me wash my hands three times after touching. Uh oh. I squirmed, wriggled, and twisted, but was held fast.

"No!" Amber roared, lunging. Aquila jerked his chain back ruthlessly, throwing Amber to the ground.

With great care, Rupert opened the vial. Ensuring that none of the fluid touched him, he carefully swiped the stopper over my nipples and between my silt. The men all looked at me with avid expectancy, Amber, with anguish. I swallowed, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did.

"Give her more," Miles ordered harshly.

Rupert looked at him with wide eyes.

"Uh, you really don't have to. I'm starting to feel something," I lied.

"Do it!" Miles screamed.

Rupert jumped, spilling half the bottle onto my chest.

"Sweet Goddess," Amber whispered.

The oily, sweet-smelling substance dribbled down to soak in the hollow between my legs. Nothing for one blissful second. And then heat engulfed me like a rabid fire. I was surprised I didn't burst into flames. It felt as if fiery ants were crawling all over my entire flesh, stinging me, eating me alive.

I gasped and collapsed, held up only by the men restraining me. They lowered me to my knees and stepped back.

"Wipe the excess oil off of her!" Amber said hoarsely. "Quickly!"

Gilford sliced off a chunk of my hem—I guess the dress was already ruined—wadded it up, and wiped it down between my breasts, down my stomach, so close to that area that was suddenly the focus of all that heat and burning fire, a place that throbbed and wept demandingly. I moaned and whimpered. Gilford threw the cloth hastily away from him.

"You feel it now, don't you, whore?" Miles shoved me from behind and I fell forward onto my knees and hands. "Unnatural cunt. Even the Demon Prince lusts for you."

I heard the rasp of his zipper going down.

"That's right. On your hands and knees like the bitch in heat you are." His hand trailed down my back, over the curve of my buttock, and I nearly wept at his touch. It felt so good, so necessary.

"Light up for me, you mongrel strumpet."

I felt the head of him probe me in an unimaginable spot. And it felt so good, stretching me. Pleasure that edged into pain. My body screamed for him. I needed him in me. Now. Any way. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life, to roll onto the ground, away from him, onto my back. To stare up at that beautiful, hard, ready cock that my body so desperately craved. I wept, above and below, shaking with need.

Grabbing me by the hair, Miles yanked me to my knees and jerked my head to the side where he stood waving before me in rampant glory. "Open up." He nudged my lips with his hard staff. "Be a good girl and I might touch you. You would like that, would you not?"

I whimpered. My lips parted and he pushed in a little.

"That's a good little whore. Suck me."

I gathered myself—how hard it was to do so—and slammed my clasped hands up hard into his balls. "Suck that," I panted and fell limply onto my side.

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.