Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Her fingers tightened around his muscled arms.

“Make love to me,” she whispered.

His brow drew down. “What?”

“Richard, I want you to make love to me. Now.”

He appraised her eyes for an eternity. Her heart thundered in her ears. Every fiber of her being screamed out for him to take her. She teetered on the edge, waiting, her life suspended in the exquisite anguish of expectation.

His voice came, not at all harsh. If anything, it was tender, but it was also resolute. “No.”

Nicci felt as if a thousand needles of ice were dancing up her arms. His refusal stunned her. No man had ever refused her.

It hurt to her core—worse than anything Jagang or any other man had ever done. She had thought…

Blood rushed to her face, melting the ice in a flash of heat. Nicci flung open the door. “Come out into the hall and wait,” she commanded in a shaky voice.

He was standing in the center of their room, looking into her eyes. The lamp on the table cast harsh shadows across his face. His shoulders looked so broad, tapering down to his waist, a waist she ached to encircle with her arms. She wanted to scream. Instead she spoke softly, but with authority he could not mistake.

“You will come out into the hall and wait, or…”

Nicci made a snipping gesture with two fingers.

By the look in his eyes, he knew that she was not bluffing. Kahlan’s life now hung by a thread, and if he didn’t do as she ordered, she would not hesitate to cut that thread.

With his gray eyes on her the whole time, Richard stepped out into the hall. She put a finger to the center of his chest and pushed until his back was against the wall beside their door.

“You are to wait right there, on that spot, until I tell you that you may move from it.” She gritted her teeth. “Or Kahlan will die. Do you understand?”

“Nicci, you’re better than this. Think about what you’re—”

“Or Kahlan will die. Do you understand?”

He let out a breath. “Yes.”

Nicci marched to the stairwell. Gadi stood halfway up the stairs, his dark eyes watching. He arrogantly descended toward her, until he was at the bottom with her. He had a fine form, she supposed, displayed as it was without a shirt. He was close enough to feel the heat of him.

Nicci looked him in the eye. He was the same height as she.

“I want you to have sex with me.”

“What?”

“My husband does not adequately take care of my needs. I wish you to.”

A smirk spread on his face as his gaze slid to Richard. He looked back at her bosom, at what was within his power to possess.

Gadi was young and bold and stupid enough to believe himself irresistible to her, to believe his puerile primping had swept away her inhibitions to the point of helpless lust for what he had to offer.

One arm pulled her to him. With his other hand, he swept her hair out of the way. His thin lips kissed her neck. When his teeth raked her flesh, she moaned to encourage him to be rough. The last thing in the world she wanted was tenderness. There could be no retribution in tenderness. Tenderness would not cleave Richard’s soul with anguish. Tenderness would not hurt him.

Gadi’s hands squeezed her bottom, pulling her hard against his groin. He moved against her in a lewd fashion. She panted in his ear to encourage his confidence in his dominion over her body.

“Tell me why.”

“I’m sick of his gentle nature, his kind touch, his caring ways. That’s not what a real woman needs. I want him to know what a real man can do—I want what he can’t give me.”

She nearly cried out in pain when he twisted her nipple.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I want what a real man like you can do for a woman.”

His rough hands squeezed her breast. She performed another moan. He smiled.

“My pleasure.”

His smirk sickened her. “No, mine,” she whispered in breathy submission.

He cast one more hateful glare at Richard, then bent to slip a hand up the front of her dress to see if she really meant it, if she would really let him have his way with her. His hand slid up the inside of her bare thigh, commanding surrender. She obediently parted her legs for him.

Nicci held on to his shoulders as he groped her. His upper lip curled in a haughty grin. His fingers worked without mercy. Her eyes watered. She trembled and bit the inside of her cheek

to hold back her cry. Mistaking agony for lust, he was inflamed by her whimpers.

Jagang and his friend Kadar Kardeef, to name but a few, took her without her consent. None of it had ever approached the sense of violation she felt at that moment as she stood there in the hall letting that smirking little thug do to her as he would.

She forced her hand down between them and seized him.

“Gadi, are you afraid of Richard? Are you man enough to take me while he is outside the room, listening to us, knowing you are his better with me?”

“Afraid? Of him?” His voice came in a husky growl. “Just tell me when.”

“Right now. I need it from you now, Gadi.”

“I thought so.”

Nicci smiled inwardly at his solemn look of lust.

“Say ‘please,’ first, you little whore.”

“Please.” She ached only to crush his worthless skull. “Please, Gadi.”

With his arm around her waist, Gadi gave Richard a taunting sneer as he swaggered past. Nicci’s fingers on Gadi’s back urged him to go on into their room and wait. He smiled over his shoulder and did as she wanted. Nicci paused to glare into Richard’s eyes.

“We are linked. What happens to me, happens to her. I hope you are not foolish enough to think I wouldn’t make you sorry for the rest of your days if you don’t stay right there. I swear to you, she will die this night if you don’t stay there.”

“Nicci, please don’t do this. You’re only hurting yourself.”

His voice was so tender, so compassionate. She almost threw her arms around him to beg him to stop her…but the flame of his refusal still burned shamefully in her heart.

Nicci turned back from the doorway and gave Richard a vicious grin. “I hope your Kahlan enjoys this as much as I’m going to enjoy it. After tonight, she will never believe in you again.”

Kahlan gasped. Her eyes opened. She could only make out obscure shapes in the swirling darkness. She gasped again.

A feeling she couldn’t define, couldn’t interpret, couldn’t put a nature to, welled up in her. It was something totally foreign, yet at the same time bewitchingly familiar. Something inappropriate, yet longed for. It filled her with a kind of passionate terror that undulated seductively to indecent pleasure, pushing before it a sense of shapeless dread.