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Without comprehending why, he found himself kissing her back just as passionately, just as savagely. The pain was altering his perception of everything. He had never kissed anyone with this kind of lust. Desperately, he wanted her to stop. Desperately, he didn't.
The strange power awakened again. He tried to reach for it, grasp for it, hold on to it. But it slipped from him and was gone.
The pain was overwhelming him as De
As he was about to lose consciousness, she pulled away from him, still gripping his hair in her fists. Tears ran from her eyes as she looked into his, not two inches away. She rolled the Agiel into her mouth with her tongue and held it there with her teeth as she shook with the pain, as if to show him she was stronger than he. Her hand came slowly and took away the Agiel as her eyes rolled back in her head. She gasped for air.
Her brow wrinkled together. Tears from the pain, and from something else, flooded from her eyes. She gave him a kiss. The tenderness, the gentleness, of it, shocked him.
"We are bonded," she whispered intimately. "Bonded in the pain of the Agiel. I am sorry, Richard." She brushed his cheek with trembling fingers, the glaze of pain still in her eyes. "Sorry for what I will do to you. You are my mate for life."
Richard was stu
She put a hand to his chest, to steady herself as she recovered. "Do you think I do not understand what I am doing to you?" Her eyes had an empty gloss to them. "Your training and service will last for mere weeks, before you die. The training of a Mord-Sith lasts for years. Everything I do to you, and more, has been done to me, a thousand times over. A Mord-Sith must know her Agiel better than she knows herself. My first trainer took me for his mate when I was fifteen, after he had trained me since I was twelve. There is no way I could ever live up to his cruelty, or his ability to keep a person on the cusp between life and death. He trained me until I was eighteen, when I killed him. For that, I was punished with the Agiel every day for the next two years. This Agiel. The very same one I use on you was the one used to train me. It was presented to me when I was proclaimed Mord-Sith. I live for nothing else but to use it."
"Mistress De
The steel returned to her eyes. She nodded. "You will be
There is no one who will help you. That includes me. You will find that being the mate to a Mord-Sith brings you no added privileges, only a great deal of added pain."
Richard hung helpless in the shackles, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Understanding her a little only increased his hopelessness. There was no escape for him. He was the mate of a madwoman.
The frown and the smile returned. "Why would you be so foolish as to do what you did? Surely, you must know I will hurt you for doing it."
He looked at her puzzlement for a moment. "Mistress De
Her lip curled in a sneer. "Oh, my love, you have a very limited imagination."
He felt her grab the tongue of his belt and yank the buckle open.
She gritted her teeth. "It is time we found some new places on you to hurt. It is time to see what you are really made of." The look in her eyes made him go cold. "Thank you, my love, for giving me the excuse to do this to you. I have never before done it to another, but it has been done to me enough times. It is what broke me when I was fourteen. Tonight," she whispered, "neither of us is going to get any sleep."