My Lady Series Bundle (54 page)

Joelle grasped the five-inch base of the candlestick between her bound hands, ignoring the burn of the hot wax as she wheeled her body around. In the same instant, she braced her back against the wall, swinging the candle before her without really seeing. She fully expected Incubus to have recovered and be lurching toward her. However, her overwrought swing met nothing but air and nearly toppled her over. Shock raced through her like fire, as she heard Incubus' tenor voice.

"Magnificent!"

Joelle's eyes popped open and she saw Incubus standing across the room, completely out of range of the slinging liquid wax. She screamed her frustration against the gag in her mouth, while Incubus lifted a white linen to his nose as though dallying leisurely in a ballroom. But his charred eyes held glints of excitement and wickedness.
Oh spirits,
how she had wished to brand him, mark him with the hot wax and fire as he was determined to do evil to her. She stood with the desire of it shaking through her body as the now useless candles weight slid through her fingers and the candle thudded to the floor.

Incubus' gaze bore into hers, never leaving her gaze as he dropped one hand from his cocked hip. Then, he snapped his lean fingers and the midget Yojo bounced up on his toes, handing Incubus a wadded piece of white cloth. Incubus took the cloth and started toward her with an evil smirk on his features.

"You, my little mare, will be a pleasure to watch Lord Hellion tame." His voice dripped with drawling depravity from each word.

Hellion?Incubus?Tame?
It was so much more than murder or rape, Joelle realized, as she curled her fingers preparing to fight the snake approaching her.

"T
ime was wasted. However, I would not have missed that performance. Now, I will just have to check her virginity and endowments here."

Joelle tried to listen to Incubus' words, fighting through the sleep that he had produced with the vaporous rag he'd earlier wrestled to her nose.

"Time, time, time," Yojo chirped, and then Joelle heard a slapping sound, and she heard Yojo yelping.

"Quiet or you will receive worse, troll."

"Yes, yes, master," Yojo squeaked. Then all was quiet except for the rattle of a moving carriage. That is when Joelle realized that she was in a moving carriage, laying the length of a seat with blankness in her mind as to how she got there.

Slap. Slap.
"Wake up!"

Joelle moaned at the sharp stinging on her cheeks.
Slap. Slap.
"No," she half exclaimed, half mumbled.

"I want you awake for this! Open your eyes!" Joelle felt the painful harshness of her body being shaken as she willed her eyes open, to make it stop. Incubus' blurry face bounced above her. "Ah, that's better, little mare. Welcome back."

She moaned and when she heard the sound she realized that she was not gagged. She tried desperately to clear her thoughts. "Bastard," she rasped. The sound was scarcely audible through her parched mouth.

"Ah, so you think I am a bastard. Really, mare, that is so much nicer than what I actually am. Can you feel that?"

Joelle choked on what should have been a gasp at the feel of rough fingers clawing her bare breast, twisting the mound.
Bare? Naked. Oh my God
, she was naked and tied with her arms above her head and her ankles below.

"I see you realize your position suddenly," Incubus said, nastily. "Answer me!"

Joelle felt the sudden spike of pain piercing her tender nipple tip from Incubus' pinching fingers, as she yelped involuntarily. "Yes!"

"Pain could tame you," he sneered, with his face leaning over hers, so close she could feel his humid breath emitting the odors of mint and liquor. Then, she felt the tip of his fingers on her other exposed nipple and she knew the pain would come again. He smashed his fingertips together tightly as he twisted them.

"No,"
she cried at the pain. But she also cried more at his claims about her and pain.

Incubus knew that, as he chuckled. "Excellent, my succulent little Joelle. There are worse things than pain to break you."

Joelle clamped her top teeth over her bottom lip trying to fight the lingering lethargy from the drug she had inhaled and also trying desperately to hold back her reactions. She knew Incubus fed on her. He gorged himself on her responses. Then, horribly she felt the scratchy heat of his fingers, his hands circling each breast, lifting them upward. Massaging, not painfully. He was examining her.

"Firm, young, not too big," he drawled. "Are you too innocent to know that these hard nipples show how aroused you are? Like any, bitch-animal in heat."

Joelle groaned low in her throat searching for saliva in her mouth, wishing that she could spit it in Incubus' face. He leaned forward more as her body betrayed her and she squirmed in revulsion. He pressed his nasty and hot lips to her cheek as he spoke.

"But if your cunt is wet, little mare, then we will
really
know."

One of his hands jerked from her breast and she felt it clamp roughly over her naked and exposed sex. She cried out at the horrifying invasion, while instinct made her desperately try to close her thighs. Nevertheless, the ropes holding her ankles apart would not allow it, and for the first time in the shocking ordeal, tears burned on her eyelashes. She tottered into hysteria with her breath panting as she felt Incubus worming his fingers through the lips of her cowering sex.

"Wet, hot, and ready as any bitch in heat," he rasped.

Joelle's mind splintered as she felt the repulsive groping of his harsh fingers in the most vulnerable place she had.
No! No!
Her mind shrieked as she choked on the dryness of her panting breath. And she
was
dry. Her sexual being was
not
aroused. Those were just words the bastard used to break her. She would never be aroused by his touch. The pig!
Never!
Let him touch her. It meant nothing. Nothing!

"Full cunt lips. Too much hair, we need to bare that." Suddenly, Incubus moved and Joelle felt the fingers from both his hands pulling the lips of her sex apart. She gritted her teeth trying not to pass out, or move, or give any reaction. "Pink labia and dark rosy hole. Are you a virgin, little mare?"

Despite all her efforts. Despite the strong willpower that she'd always hoped that she possessed, she screamed. She knew she fed Incubus' perversions with her cries of revulsion and terror as he prodded his finger inside her. Raping the virgin entrance with his rough scraping fingers and eroding sensations inside her that had never been touched before. She tried to keep him out, clamping hard around his finger, surprised that she had muscles there to control. Yet, he shoved through with his dry clawing fingers, dragging along tender tissue, initiating scratching pain where she had never felt pain before. Her body bowed upward in agony and through her hysteria she heard Incubus rasping.

"Ah, there it is, the maidenhead of life. The perfect Bacchus sacrifice for our Lord Hellion's favor," he finished, withdrawing his trespassing fingers, satisfied of her virginity.

Through the warping in her mind, Joelle wondered senselessly and beyond her understanding whether she truly was supposed to be some primitive virgin sacrifice? Then, Incubus left her, nude and violated, a virgin by definition, but no longer a virgin of reality as he sat on the other side of the rolling carriage, with Yojo crouched on the floor boards.

She tried to gather her thoughts, her courage, or even the will to live. Anything! She tried to think past the shame and revulsion she felt. Those feelings were worthless commodities and they would not do her any good as she tried to outwit and escape the horrifying situation that she'd been kidnapped into. But the fear was the worst. The fear of the countless possibilities of what more could happen. Of what they intended. That gnawing terror tried to steal her wits, but she fought it back with her anger. Letting her rage build and grow. It was a powerful emotion and it chased away the talons of terror clawing within her. How dare they?
How dare they?

But her rage was too volatile and uncontrollable. However, her rage turned to hate, and then turned to stubborn contempt that was more manageable. Then, she twisted it to calculated vengeance, reprisal, and escape.
Yes,
she could think now. She walled the unusable reactions behind her anger, and as ever before, her quick mind started triggering again, and she breathed shallowly. To understand what they wanted could be power in a powerless situation. And it was, "They."

Just the names, Incubus, Hellion, Bacchus, and sacrifice, suggested a group. That Incubus would say he was going to examine her, and that he talked of breaking her, and he searched for proof of her virginity told her clearly this involved some type of sexual rite. Her exposed nudity quelled against that comprehension, but she stubbornly willed it back.

They, he, it, Incubus, Hellion, or some false macabre deity wanted her virginity. Her virginity was the coveted prize. Suddenly, the carriage bounced to a halt, jerking her against the restraints at her wrists and ankles.

"Troll, give her the potion before the others see her," Incubus snapped. "I have preparations to make." Then with curt swiftness, he left the carriage slamming the door closed behind him, while the midget Yojo bounced on his heels muttering.

Joelle strained to hear what the little man was saying. It sounded like Yojo said, "Blame me, blame me," over and over again. Joelle thought quickly about everything she'd heard since they kidnapped her. She anxiously looked for any little tidbits. It came to her abruptly. At least there was a good chance that she was right.

"Sir Yojo," she started to say, trying to wet the aridness of her mouth. "I will swear that it was Incubus that gave me the potion and I spit it out. Not, Sir Yojo." She paused. "Incubus slapped me also, just like he slapped you."

Yojo turned his black jeweled eyes to her as he rocked now from side to side. "Sir Yojo? Sir? Sir?"

Joelle had hoped it would work. She could only imagine that they treated Yojo less than humanly. "Yes, I am, Lady Joelle, and you are, Sir Yojo, and I will not struggle, if you do not give me the potion. Y-You have my word."

Yojo toddled forward with a lopsided smile as he raised his hand. His stubby fingers touched her hair. "So pretty," he sighed. "Pretty, pretty, lady."

Joelle thought hard. She thought with all her might, struggling to find the right words, with so little information. "I have never seen a wee little God like you before," she tried carefully.

Yojo's flat and out of proportion face lit up, with sudden enchanting expressions of delight. And, Joelle knew that she'd chosen right. Had she tried calling him handsome, she would not have been able to woo him at all. But she had to imagine that he aspired to be as godlike as people he served. And so, she trundled forward with more confidence.

"You never hurt me," she said softly. "And you called me pretty. I want to serve you. I want to be your good lady."

Yojo's teeth were a gnarled line as he grinned, moving the cracked tips of his fingers to touch her cheek. "Serve, Sir Yojo?"

Joelle nodded. "Yes, darling sir. No blame for either of us."

Yojo's gaze edged to her bare breasts, then back quickly. "I picked you." He nodded eagerly.

Then suddenly, there was a voice, outside the carriage, and Yojo's face crumbled into near panic as his black eyes darted from the door to her. His hand dropped with awkward swiftness to a small wine skin hooked onto his belt as he nervously bounced up and down on his toes.

"No
blame," Joelle said quickly. "I won't struggle. Just to be near, my Yojo..." Joelle snapped her mouth shut as the carriage door opened and she shut her eyes, while taking up the form of false limpness.

"I
t's a red-haired cunt."

The voice was male with a thick German accent. It was a young man's voice, not a nobleman but common. Joelle tried not to shudder at the crude opinion these men carried for women in their words and what more that foretold. She simply overrode her panic with inward congratulations at keeping Yojo occupied long enough with a convoluted and really senseless conversation, until he had no time to try to dose her with the potion. Nonetheless, she had planted the seeds with her praise of Yojo, to perhaps use and build on later.

Yes.
She went over and over her triumph of being aware, when she was supposed to be incoherent, as male hands untied her, disgustingly groped her through a series of jumbles moving her body, and then a cloak was thrown over her, carrying her to the next unknown destination. She remained limp through the entire ordeal, never a more shining example of her renewed willpower. She prayed that she was acting near to the lethargy of the drug, having no clue as to what it would have produced.

"She's da queer looking one. Ja, Yojo?"

"Gypsy queen!" Yojo exclaimed.

"Queen is it, you little runt? Nice on da eyes. Ja, I'll agree. Can't wait to see da new initiate, that long haired Marquess and his fat dong, raping her cunt."

It was a miracle that Joelle held back most of her response to the German's words. The small sound that did escape was lost with the sudden jostling of her body. The movements took precedence over her response to the German's revelations as she worked to keep her body limp, while also trying to sense where she was and what was happening. It was considerably darker where they were now, she could tell that behind her closed eyelids. It had been getting increasingly darker the further they traveled and she knew at one point, moments ago, they had descended what felt like, and sounded like, a set of stairs.

In the jostling, Joelle felt her body being lowered by the German, and she fought to keep relaxed when her instinct was to stiffen against the unknown of what she was going to touch next. Then, she heard light crackling and she felt a momentary cushion that gave way to a hard flat support beneath her. A tick mattress on a wood frame, she guessed.