“What is that?” he asked, eying the jars. “Poison? Acid? Scorpions, perhaps.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Laya. “What would I want with scorpions? Nasty little things. I told you, it’s a salve for your wounds. It will reduce the time it takes your wounds to heal from weeks to mere hours. The magic of my people is in such lotions.”
“Why bother to heal me, when you only intend to torture me afterward?” he asked. From his casual tone, one would have thought he had only a passing curiosity in the matter.
“I have no intention of torturing you,” Laya said. She scooped out a dollop of cold cream onto her fingers and began to sooth it into the puncture wounds where the arrows had bruised him through his armor. The magic arrow that she hit him with had left no physical mark, as that was part of its enchantment.
“Ach,” he gasped in response to the cream.
“Does it sting?” Laya asked. Elven cures were not supposed to sting, but she did not know what effect they might have on a goblin.
“It…feels strange,” he said. “Unlike anything.”
Laya didn’t know what to say to that. She continued with her ministrations. He squirmed beneath her fingers. When she reached down to stroke a bruise along his inner thigh, his already impressive cock began to swell. She paused. In an effort to avoid staring at the fascinating organ, she inadvertently met his gaze. His inexcusably handsome face was flushed, with what emotion she could not tell.
“You said I was to be your pet, your toy,” he said in a low, rough voice. “Did you not mean that you wished to force information from me, or did you only want to degrade me for the amusement of your elf friends? The great goblin general brought to his knees and made to beg and grovel?”
Her heart hammered in her chest. Was she as terrible as all that? Was she as horrid as any goblin had ever been to a helpless captive?
Yes, she reminded herself. She must be. She must treat him exactly as he would have treated her had their positions been reversed. She must mete out to him exactly the sort of sexual humiliation which he had forced upon all the captive women he had taken after his every successful raid.
“Perhaps you will find it degrading,” she said, forcing herself to speak callously. “But it is no different than what you have done to hundreds of helpless women. Perhaps you will not enjoy it so much when you are in the position of the captive.”
Steeling her determination, Laya reached out and took his cock in her hand.
He drew in a sharp breath. His member instantly came alive in her hand, throbbing and growing in her palm. Tentatively, she began to stroke up and down, which elicited a further hardening and reddening of the excited cock. Akraz groaned. He began to strain against his chains, rattling the whole bed with his effort.
Frightened by her own audacity, Laya released the cock. It bobbed after her, as if hungry for her to renew her touch.
Somehow he had wrenched the twines enough to lift himself up onto his elbows. “Is that what you meant? You mean to use me for sex?”
He sounded incredulous. For some ridiculous reason, his disbelief affronted Laya. Did she not seem dominating enough, or sensuous enough to him to be the kind of woman who could force a man to be her sexual plaything?
“I do,” she said, trying not to sound rebellious or uncertain. “You have no choice in the matter.”
His eyes narrowed. “Will I have to service just you, or will others, perhaps some of the elf lords, see fit to use me as they wish as well?”
“Just me.” Laya was scandalized by his suggestion at first. Then she tried to imagine gentle Lathaniel trying to use the magnificent hunk of a goblin as a sex toy, and the absurd impossibility of it made her smile. “Unless,” she concluded loftily, just to keep the goblin in his place, “You displease me. In that case, I might share you with my minions as a punishment.”
Akraz’s lips tightened. He took her threat much more seriously than she had issued it, which made Laya recall that among goblins, such a threat would not have been a joke, but an all too real possibility. He judged elves by the same vile standards.
However, if he felt any fear, he did not show it. Instead, he ran his tongue salaciously around the edge of his mouth and leered at her.
“If that is all you want of me, there is no need to tie me up, Mistress.”
“Laya.”
“Laya.” He laved his tongue around her name as though it were a luscious fruit in his mouth. “I will gladly pleasure you according to your every whim, without chains or whips.” His smile grew ironic. “Unless, of course, whips and chains are your tastes.”
“No…”
He raised a skeptical brow, glancing at his own bindings. “Then untie me. I will do no more to you than what you want anyway.”
“No,” she said, more firmly. “I do not trust you, goblin. You will pleasure me on my terms. I won’t let you hurt me.”
“Is that what you fear? Or what you desire?”
Laya refused to answer. She finished applying the salve to his body, rubbing the cream over his smooth, hard skin. When she finished, and knew that his wounds would no longer be paining him, she began to caress the rest of his body. She ran her hands up and down his broad chest and powerful thighs. His breath came quicker under her brushing fingers. His cock remained upright, shiny and pulsing with need.
Laya wondered what it would taste like in her mouth. Would she hate it, as poor Taniya had? Or, if she took it of her own accord, with herself in control and not the naked brute shackled before her, would she enjoy the exotic feel of that male essence in her mouth?
She bent over his cock, her breath hot against the head, yet not touching it. A drop of liquid emerged, glistening, from the head of the cock, like a drop of dew on a dawn flower.
“Dark God of the Thirteen Hells!” cursed Akraz, thrashing in his bonds.
Laya jumped back guiltily. He stared at her with such fervent emotion in his dark eyes, she suddenly knew she could not go through with it. She couldn’t take him against his will, with him staring at her with such wordless hate.
What a mess. What could she do with him now? She could not simply let him go to wreak vengeance upon her and her people. Nor could she kill him in cold blood.
“Akraz,” she began, but stopped. He would throw any attempt at apology back in her face. She bit her lip. Without his armor and his weapons, especially with that all too fair face, he looked like an ordinary man, only more man than most. A part of her longed to unbind him as he had requested, and let their union be one of mutual desire.
That, however, was a dangerous line of thought. She must never forget what he was, despite his handsome face.
This line of musing made her curious, and helped her wrench her mind from the thought of taking his cock into her mouth. She moved forward enough to stroke his cheek with her finger.
“There is something I must know,” she said.
Ah, here it comes, he thought. The request for information I cannot provide, followed by days or weeks or years of torture.
The real reason she captured me.
During her sweet torment of his body and cock, he had almost begged her to torture him with whips and brands instead. Her innocent caresses had driven him to the brink of desperate desire.
Now that she had stopped, leaving him in an agony of unfulfilled arousal, he cynically decided she could not actually want him for that purpose. A woman such as Laya could have any man, human or elf, that she wanted, on his feet, on his knees, in chains or in armor, however she wanted. Men would die for her just to receive one smile from those pink lips, never mind the heat of her mouth on their cocks.
If their positions were reversed—if she were my slave—what a lot of uses she could be put to by a goblin willing to exploit her. Only, Akraz knew that he could never bear to see those pretty green eyes filled with pain. He knew of no other way to be with a woman. Goblin women held no appeal for him, and no other woman, certainly no elf or even human, would ever willingly surrender herself to a goblin.