Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

responded quickly, afraid of what the countess would do if she

were ignored.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

“She’s a witch!” the chief steward had told Bevyn in a shaky voice. “A daughter of

the Abyss!”

Upon meeting the woman who was now mistress of Rathlin, Bevyn had seen the

fires of hell gleaming in Kennocha Tramont’s gaze. He had felt a shiver travel down his

spine the moment her hand had touched his cheek, her pale pink tongue sweeping

across a thin upper lip as she assessed him.

Despite his vehement protests, she had put her hands to his arms, his shoulders, his

thighs, had ordered him stripped naked, staring avidly at his utter humiliation as he

was held steady for her perusal.

“Good legs,” she’d remarked, walking around him. “A goodly sized staff.”

“Milady!” he had gasped, his face flame-red.

“You’ll do,” she’d declared, and turned her back on him, going back to the chamber

in which her husband’s still body lay upon its death bier.

He would learn a few days later that she had taken a war ax and had chopped her

dead mate into a hundred pieces, venting her rage upon him until his bedchamber was

a sea of gore.

Held captive in the dungeon for over a week—as naked as the day on which he had

been born—Bevyn had finally been brought before the countess and once more she had

put her hands to him. This time it had been his staff she had wrapped her fingers

around.

“Give yourself freely to me and I will let you live,” she had told him. “Deny me and

you will meet your doom in the bonfire.”

Bevyn had reminded her he was a priest, a man of the cloth who had taken vows of

poverty and chastity, but she had merely laughed at him.

“If you want to live, Bevyn Coure, you will give yourself to me and service me as I

wish to be serviced. Unlike your fellow priests, you will be mine and not Cul’s.”

The whole of the tale would be told to Bevyn on the night before his torment began.

Those who had come before him had been nothing more than playthings to the lord of

the keep. Count Culbert had sodomized and tortured the men then murdered them to

keep the news of his atrocities from reaching the ears of the Brotherhood. The dead

were dropped into the moat to feed the denizens that slithered and snapped there, all

traces of their existence wiped away in the scaled bellies of the crocs.

“You will meet the same fate, boy, unless you give her what she wants.”

“I am a man of the cloth,” he had protested. “I can not—”

“Make her yours,” the jailer had cut in. “Please her and you might live a day or so

longer.”

“I will not do that,” Bevyn had sworn.

“Then you’ll die a terrible death,” his jailer had declared.

For weeks on end he had been tortured, and at the end of each session had come the

question—“Will you give yourself to me now?”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The answer had always been the same no matter how much had been inflicted

upon his body, how much blood he had shed. He would not forsake his vows to satisfy

the lust of a crazed woman, for it had become a test of wills—his and hers.

She had taken delight in pouring and rubbing salt into his wounds. She had

laughed at his screams of pain, his tears and his trembling body. She had enjoyed

watching him barely able to crawl from the rack to his pallet where he would lie

senseless until the next session began.

“And now, Bevyn?” she had whispered in her silky voice on the morning he had

been condemned to die. She caressed his genitals, stroking him suggestively. “Will you

forego the agony of the flames and take my body unto yours?”

“No, milady, I can not,” he had forced himself to say, and thought for just a

moment he saw respect in her insane gaze before she pronounced his death sentence.

“Take him out and burn the little bastard! I will show him who is mistress of his

useless life!”

Too weak to speak, in too much pain to do anything save draw shallow breaths in

and out of his lacerated chest, he had been taken to the courtyard to meet his fate. There

he had been lashed to the column and Kennocha had come out to watch him die.

“But I didn’t stay dead, did I, milady?” he asked aloud.

Ahead of him was Orson and the sweet arms to which he would ride for as long as

the goddess allowed him, and then in a sudden bright burst of awareness—reining in

Préachán because that awareness hit him squarely between the eyes like a ton of brick—

he realized that at last he had something, someone, to live for.

“Sweet, merciful Alel,” he whispered as tears gathered in his eyes.

He sat there trembling as that realization took hold of him, wrapping him in

warmth he had never known, soothing him with a peacefulness he did not know could

exist. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Lea.”

Her name on his lips was the sweetest sound, the most glorious feeling. He ached to

see her, to hold her, to hear her gentle voice.

“My Lea,” he said, and a smile broke across his handsome face.

Putting heels to his mount, he raced down the hill and into town, striving not to

whoop like a wild man as he drew his horse to a skidding stop and vaulted from the

saddle, running up the little fieldstone walkway to Cornelia’s front porch, taking the

four steps two at a time and snatching open the door.

“Lea?” he called out, and when he saw her at the top of the stairs, he grinned like an

idiot.

“You’re home,” she said, hurrying down the steps.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

“I am home!” he said. He opened his arms and she threw herself in them, laughing

gaily as he swung her around, set her down for a moment then picked her up in his

arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked as he headed for the door.

“We’re going to Mable’s where a man can show his woman he loves her,” he said

determinedly.

“All her rooms are taken,” she said.

He paused at the door, swiveling her back and