The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

abruptness that sent his senses reeling. He forced himself to remain upright, still, blank-faced. Escape would be doubly difficult if the guards suspected he was aware.

Chapter 18
     
    ‘ R espond to me!” Neeles Brunix screamed at Katrina, withdrawing his hand from her naked breast. “I’ve had your maidenhead. You have nothing left to lose. Respond to me like the whore you are.”
    She turned her face away, biting her lip against her tears of humiliation. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of evoking any emotion in her.
    Owner Brunix heaved his long, naked body off the bed. Frustration radiated from him as he paced his private suite on the topmost floor of his factory. He seemed oblivious to his nakedness, concerned only with the emotions that roiled within him.
    “You just lie there, pale and elegant, beautiful beyond imagination and numb. Making love to you is like fucking a corpse.”
    Katrina resisted the urge to recoil from his lecherous stare at the tuft of pale hair between her legs.
    Brunix paused in his rapid prowl to stare at himself. Limp. As unresponsive as Katrina.
    “All true-blooded women are whores at heart—titillated by sex because it is forbidden outside the bonds of marriage. But you refuse to show your true feelings out of some perverted need to punish me. You punish me because I have saved your life, fed you, clothed you, and allowed you to make lace for three years. Why should I keep a slave who can’t satisfy me in bed?”
    “Do what you will. I don’t have to enjoy your rape of my body.”
    “ ’Twasn’t rape, Katrina. You came to me willingly, or out of duty, I don’t care. But I didn’t rape you, and you can’t take this to my clan. Besides, you enjoyed it. Didn’t you!”
    She turned her face away from him. His touch reminded her too much of King Simeon’s erotic caress and lewd suggestion that she might do this with P’pa.
    “Tell me you enjoyed it!”
    “How could I?”
    “Like all true whores, you’re holding out for marriage.” He snapped his fingers as the idea occurred to him. “I could invoke the ancient laws of my mother’s people, the natural laws that governed this land before the pale-eyed northerns conquered all. I told the palace guards that you are my wife, a clear declaration before witnesses. Your virgin’s blood stains my sheets. The two make a legal marriage.”
    “I am required by law to make myself available to you. Marriage would not change my feelings,” she whispered, afraid he would see her inner pain and become aroused by even that small display of emotion.
    “I have no trouble with the whores I can buy on any street corner. I perform admirably with the other women in my factory. But with you, the only one I really want . . . nothing,” he raised his hands over his head in exasperation and dropped them limply to his side. “I should have ignored my bargain with The Simeon and taken you the first day you came into this factory, taught you to enjoy my body while you were too young to know differently.”
    “A bar . . . gain?” Katrina tried very hard not to stammer. Hesitancy was an emotion Brunix could latch onto.
    “The Simeon made me vow not to touch you so that you would return to him as pure as when he sold you to work in my factory. I have saved you from his ritual at least. He needed you virginal to tap some unknown power he sensed in you. A power my Rover instincts cannot find.” To emphasize his words, he leaned over her and pinched her nipples hard.
    She refused to flinch or recoil.
    “But The Simeon has broken his part of the bargain in pursuing you.” Disgusted, Brunix returned to his pacing. “Therefore, I do not have to honor my part of the bargain. You are mine by right. Mine! I have wanted you for a very long time, and I have had you and you don’t satisfy me.”
    “I see.” She remained stone still. Inside, questions plagued her. What had triggered this new round of persecution from Simeon? The man at the parade, was he an agent of the king? Perhaps he owned a lace factory and wanted to deprive Brunix of his premier lacemaker. No, if he wanted that, he would have promised Katrina employment.
    “Is there nothing that excites you? Nothing that raises your passion?” Brunix leaned over her, his eyes nearly glowing red with his frustration.
    Katrina didn’t respond. She had worked so hard at controlling her anger and hatred toward Simeon and the fate that sent her into slavery that she doubted she