Akraz reached between her legs and found her already slick. He slid his fingers into her. At first, she yielded. Then her eyes widened, and she pushed him away.
“No! How can you expect me to make love to the murderer of my friend? He was my friend, Akraz! Does that mean nothing to you? Do my people mean nothing to you?”
“Less than nothing. Now come back here and kiss me.”
“Never!” she scrambled off the cushions, onto her feet. She lifted a heavy brass candlestick from the table. “Stay away from me! You disgust me. I never want you to touch me again!”
Akraz settled back against the pillows with his hands clasped behind his head. He crossed his legs up on the low table.
“There is the door to my den.” He pointed with his chin. “It is locked from the inside. You can open it if you like. Beyond are the warrens of ten thousand goblins. In this wing, mostly soldiers. Go ahead. Brave the corridors. See how far you get before you are dragged into some drunkard’s den and gang raped, if you are lucky, or dragged before Zathstragomal, if you are not.” His eyes narrowed. “But if you stay here, you will obey me as your master, no matter how trivial or perverse my whim.”
Laya took a step toward the door. She peeked at Akraz. He smiled at her with indolent confidence. She took another step toward the door. Paused. Trembled.
“I’m only a thing to you, aren’t I?” she asked, her huge green eyes filled with unshed tears. She gestured to the room with the candlestick. “Part of your collection. No more important to you than this brass candlestick.”
He could not let himself drown in those eyes, or he would break down and confess everything. She thought he had killed her handsome friend, Lathaniel. Her concern ignited his jealousy and his protectiveness at the same time. He dared not tell her that he had only knocked the elf unconscious, in order that the man would be left for dead by the other goblins.
His only hope was to lose them both in a wordless haze of passion. Fortunately, he knew her weaknesses well enough by now. As she knew his. They would be damned together, as they had been from the very first.
“Come here,” he commanded. “Bring the candlestick.”
Laya came to him, as he had known she would.
“You must be punished for your impudence,” Akraz told her sternly. “First, take off your clothes. Next. Lie back across the table and grasp the legs with your hands. Lock your ankles around the legs on this side. If you move from that position, I will have to tie you down. Give me the candlestick.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“It occurs to me that in the caves, all slaves are branded. You, however, have not yet received a brand. I will rectify that now. I will burn my mark into your flesh.”
Laya had started to lie back against the table, but this announcement brought her back upright in a blink.
“You will not!”
“Shall I tie you down?” he asked mildly.
“Akraz, please. Don’t hurt me.”
He stood up and strolled to the wall where a coiled rope hung on an ugly hook.
“Don’t!” Laya exclaimed. “I will obey.”
Shivering, she stretched back against the table, which was just long and narrow enough to support her slender frame. Her bare white skin stood out against the polished black mahogany. Her hair spilled down to the floor off to one side. She looked terribly young and vulnerable.
Akraz hefted the candlestick from hand to hand. The candle was long and smooth red beeswax. Smooth ripples of brass formed the design of the holder itself, which although much heavier, was not much thicker than the candle.
He lit the candle. At his leisure, he encircled the table where Laya offered up her naked body like a sacrifice to the Dark God. She entreated him with a mute movement, half plea, half shudder, that cascaded through her entire body.
“You are a virgin to the fire, Laya,” Akraz said softly. “This night I will take you as a virgin again, as I did that first night. This time you will be sacrificed to the flame.”
He knelt beside the table, showing her the burning candle. From this position, he could hear the wild beating of her heart.
When he deemed that the candle had burned down far enough to accumulate a pool of hot wax at the tiptop, he cupped Laya’s left breast in his hand and tilted the candle over her flesh.
A cry wrenched from her mouth as the hot wax dropped directly onto her nipple.
Chapter Five
When the wax hit her nipple, Laya lost control of her voice and her body. She screamed and spasmed, more in surprise than real pain. The burning sensation lasted only a flash, followed by a cool coating sensation that hardened around her nipple. The wax stimulated and tantalized the sensitive nub.
Before she could recover from the sensory overload, Akraz dipped the candle again, now over her right breast. This time she only whimpered when the liquid wax flash burned and began to cool and ooze around her nipple.
She felt the low, sexy rumble of Akraz’s baritone purr against her neck. “I burn for you, Laya. I will make you burn for me just as hotly, so I swear.”
He dribbled more hot wax onto each breast, coating them in twin shells of molten red. The sting was less and less each time, as the already cooled wax shielded her against the new, hot drips, but as the wax rolled like slow lava down the slopes of her breasts, it brought her flesh alive with heightened sensation. The heat forced all Laya’s attention onto her breasts, her nipples, until her universe condensed around this feeling of intense erotic stimulation.
She had shut her eyes against anything outside the feel of her own body. Therefore she sensed rather than saw when Akraz left a cool space beside her, and reappeared again with something new. Her eyes flew open when she felt him press something hard into the soft wax mountain over her left breast.
It was the stub of another candle, no taller than one knuckle of a finger remaining to the beeswax. Akraz pressed another, equally stubby candle onto the wax over her other nipple. When he had satisfied himself of their secure purchase, he lit both. The tiny candles began to sweat wax.
“You are not to let the candles go out by upsetting them,” said Akraz. “No matter what.”
He took up the original candle again and moved between her widespread legs.
Laya could guess his wicked plans. It took all her willpower not to squeeze her knees together to deny him access to that softest and most vulnerable part of herself. She wished now that she had allowed him to bind her to the table, to spare her the ignominy of disobeying his command not to move. She was not sure she could endure it.
His cool fingers parted her nether lips. Laya moaned in fearful anticipation. She watched, mesmerized, as he tilted the candle over her cunt. A bead of glowing hot wax, luminous red like blood, oozed from between the flame and the rim of the candle tip. The tiny drop fell in agonizing slow motion.
And then it exploded onto her clit.
She could not help herself from slamming her hips up and down against the table in reaction. The lit candles on her breasts jiggled in reaction, sprinkling more speckles of hot wax onto breast flesh yet bare, causing her to thrash again before she finally gritted her teeth and regained her composure.
“Keep still!” barked Akraz.
“Oh but it burns,” she wailed.
“Remember this branding, Laya,” he said in satisfaction. “Whatever burns now belongs to me and me alone.”
He dripped another sizzling tear of wax onto her clit. It seared her with heated pleasure that shot out lightning bolts of echoing ecstasy throughout her body.
If before she had become nothing but breasts, now her whole being pooled in the heat between her legs. The burning, cooling, dripping, oozing wax awakened her need without fulfilling it. Her clit yearned for harder use. Her sheath ached to be filled. Instead, the wax hardened into a shell around her clit and labia, trapping the flesh into an itch that could not be scratched. She prayed he would tire of his game and take her himself, hard and fast, here on the table. From the bulge in his black leather pants, he felt the need as urgently as she.