Release(20)

“But why tie me up? Why drug me? Why chase me?”

“Oh.” Risiciter made a sympathetic face. “Everyone always wants to know why, Ariana. I can call you that now, can’t I? You’d want your last moments to be intimate, wouldn’t you?”

Her heart stopped. Her last moments? He was going to kill her. She thrashed, clawing at him.

Risciter calmly grasped her wrists and pinned them above her head. “Shh. There’s no real point in struggling.” He leaned close to her. “I don’t know why, Ariana. But I have to do it. Usually I have to use prostitutes and beggars so that no one will notice they’re gone. I’ve always wanted a real woman. Someone like you. I wonder if it will be different.” And then his lips were covering hers and his tongue was sweeping into her mouth.

She bit down hard on it. He was insane, just like Keirth had said.

And another horrible thought occurred to her. Where was Keirth? Had Risciter gotten to him too?

Risciter drew back, snarling. “You bitch.” He slapped her.

Ariana sobbed again. She was shaking all over.

“If you hurt me,” Risciter was saying, his fingers trailing over her face, over the place he’d just struck her, “I will make it much worse for you, do you understand?” His hand moved lower, to the place where her jumpsuit was fastened.

Oh. Ariana thought she was going to be violently ill.

Risciter unclasped the jumpsuit fastener and the smartclasp parted in the middle, opening up all the way down her torso. He grinned. “I do like these jumpsuits. Easy in. Easy out.”

The night air felt cold against her bare skin. Dread and fear knotted themselves inside Ariana. Her worst nightmares weren’t nearly as awful as this. He was Risciter. She’d loved him once. And now...

Risciter’s hand crept underneath the fabric of her jumpsuit, his hand closing over her breast.

No.

And then another feeling burst through Ariana’s body. Pure rage. She was the daughter of a duke. No man had the right to do this to her. And if Risciter was going to kill her anyway, she didn’t see what she had to lose.

With a shriek of anger, she tore one of her arms out of Risciter’s grasp. He’d been so interested in touching her, he seemed to have forgotten he was holding her arms over her head and had loosened his hold. Making a fist, she slammed it into Risciter’s crotch as hard as she could.

His expression froze in a grimace.

She punched him between his legs again.

Risciter’s grip loosened on her other arm. He howled.

Ariana rolled back over onto her stomach. She slithered out from under Risciter and staggered to her feet.

Risciter’s arm shot out and grabbed her wrist. “I’ll make you pay for that.”

Ariana reached for the first thing she could find with her free hand. Her fingers closed over a thick branch. She heaved it around, expecting to need to wrench it free from a tree. But it was a fallen tree branch. She swung it in a wide arc, and it crunched into Risciter’s forehead.

Risciter’s grip on her arm loosened. He looked dazed.

Screaming, Ariana raised the branch—really a log—over her head and brought it down on Risciter’s head again and again. When she pulled it back, it was bloody. And Risciter’s body was crumpled on the ground. He wasn’t moving.

She’d killed him.

Ariana dropped the branch and ran back in the direction of the ship.

* * *

Keirth was furiously trying to find Risciter when he saw Ariana. He’d nearly had Risciter when he’d gone back into the ship, but Risciter had gotten away from him, run off into the woods, and Keirth had been searching for him ever since. He was frustrated, because his revenge scheme had, yet again, gone wrong.

Then he saw Ariana. Her jumpsuit gaped open, her hair was messy and full of twigs. Her face was red from crying. She half-stumbled, half-ran out of the woods.

What had happened to her?

He rushed to her, his first instinct to gather her in his arms, she looked so pitiful, but when he got to her, he suddenly realized it wasn’t really appropriate for him to touch the daughter of a duke, especially when her clothes weren’t exactly fastened and he could see—

He yanked the jumpsuit together instead, fastening the smartclasp so that it closed over her skin, leaving behind a seamless swath of fabric. “Sweetheart? Are you...?”

She gave him a dazed look. “I killed him.”

What? No. She couldn’t have killed Risciter. Keirth was supposed to kill Risciter. He’d been planning to kill Risciter for seven years.

Keirth checked himself. It wasn’t revenge he should be thinking about right now. It was this woman. Something had happened to her, and Risciter had done it. “What happened? What did he do to you?”