The Nechi's Wife

✣ chapter seventeen ✣

I've been working on this chapter for months. Hope it is everything it was meant to be.

...

I spun around. "What is this? Where's your son? And the piano?"

Sir Declan stepped closer, and I intuitively stepped back. "I know you haven't been rooming with the Prince," He said quietly. "After dinner, I saw him walking you to your room. He's such a stupid bastard, if only he knew what he had."

"W-What?" I managed to squeak past my dry, constricting throat.

He grinned wickedly. "I can help create that heir for you."

"Sir Declan," I said with a steely calm that belied the fear in my heart. "There is no need for that."

He ignored me, stepping closer again. I was acutely aware of the bed behind me—if I stepped too far back, I would fall on it, dooming myself. "They told me to kill you. But I always thought you were too beautiful for that. At least, not before I have some fun."

Why hadn't I been smarter? The son, the piano lessons—it had all been a ploy. I had no idea who he was referring to, or why this was happening to me, but I knew what he wanted. And I couldn't let him have it.

"Just humor me," Sir Declan murmured. "Only for one night."

How had I thought this man was sincere? This man who was still walking to me. Who wouldn't stop coming closer and closer. Who with my every exhale, he inhaled. Who was stealing my breath, making it his own. Trying to take everything from me and make it his own. "Please," I begged. "Leave me alone."

His hands slithered down my arms like preying snakes, sending terrified shivers up my skin. "But we're not finished yet," He rasped with a sickening leer. Closing the little space I'd tried to create between us, he pushed me backward.

I stumbled on my skirts, crashing onto the mattress. I couldn't breathe—I couldn't' breathe. I wanted to roll off and run away, but my gown weighed down on my legs like lead. Without a distraction, he'd be fully capable of capturing me again.

His dry lips sneered by my face, and as they neared me, I turned my head, so I could breathe, but he took the opportunity to plunge himself into my neck. I screamed and thrashed against him.

"Stop struggling, no one can hear you." He snapped, his slick nose gliding across my skin like oil. His body, that was oppressively larger than mine, constrained me against the bed making my resistance futile.

I gasped for air, unable to breathe in his thickening heat. A heat that emanated off his body, filled the air, clogged my throat. I was becoming weak, darkness edged at my vision, and my oncoming tears blurred the rest. "Getting tired?" He crooned on my cheek.

I couldn't let him take me this way. He didn't deserve to win like this.

He grabbed my wrists with his large fingers, clenching them with one hand, while the other hand slinked around my back, tugging at the ribbons that kept my dress wrapped around my body. The only thing protecting me from him. "No, please." I pleaded, my voice no louder than a squeak.

Why had no one come to save me? Could they not hear my desperate pleas from the corridors?

When they had loosened to his liking, he released my hands and began to unbutton his shirt. His chest hair peeked through the opening. I tried not to vomit.

His heavy breaths felt like gusts of wind against my face. As he leaned down, aiming for my partly revealed chest, I swallowed my gag reflex and did the only thing I could think of. If he was going to do this, then I would make sure he only felt agony.

I bit his ear. Tore through the skin, crushed through the flesh.

He shrieked and tried to pull away, but it was only when I tasted the metallic tinge of blood that I released him. He rolled over, groaning, crying, and clutching his bleeding appendage.

I scrambled off the bed with great effort but a surge of adrenaline and racing heart to match, sobbing as I managed to burst through the door.

As I rushed through the hallway, the only thought on my mind was to find Flynd. I didn't know if he'd comfort me or protect me or be angry, but I didn't care.

I just needed him.