Had the Beta behind the glass taken the time to test his cage, he would have learned that enough force near either wall would damage his containment to a point it would have eventually shattered.
The clarity of that glass, a sure sign that Ambassador Jules Havel had not attempted to fight his way out.
He’d allowed what was being done to him.
Why?
Brenya had seen that specific shade of blue before, the flashing indigo of Jules Havel’s eyes—at the center of a lightning strike. It had been one of the most catastrophic storms to smash against the Dome. Two long days by reinforcing a great deal of damage from the inside of the glass, ignoring the amber glow of fire where the woods smoldered in the rain.
It was the blue of impending destruction, Jules saying nothing so loudly, it was as if he acknowledged her assessment.
She had not been prepared to find a willing prisoner who starved voluntarily, but it seemed this male—this Thólosen terrorist—was plotting. All the more reason to finish this now.
Setting golden tools back between her teeth, Brenya poured out of the hole she had created in the ceiling. Unfolding until her body was in alignment for an easy landing.
Fingers setting her free of the cramped space, she fell, landing softly in a crouch.
Glancing up, it finally sank in what her view from above had distorted, the source of flickering light.
There was something in the room far uglier than a man incarcerated or the ramshackle prison itself.
She was there. Every last ugly inch of her was on display in morbid obscenity—her body writhing while it was forcibly dragged down a cock that didn’t fit. Until it did.
The size of her made to seem so tiny in comparison to the man who bounced her on his cock. The woman in the projection threw back her head, bowed her back as if inviting the villain deeper. She had parted her lips, sucking down air in a silent, telling gasp.
The gold utensils fell from Brenya’s teeth, clanging against standard concrete as they bounced about her naked toes.
“Don’t look at it, Brenya.”
How could she possibly look away?
Hands with the power to climb across the side of a palace, to have found and held the cable of a moving lift, crept around her middle. As if she might hold in the shame.
The woman in the ongoing display of sexual aggression enjoyed herself. Rocking her hips in time with the onslaught, bracing and angling so labia stretched and seeped slick down a pulsating male part, displaying her engorged clitoris for the man to address.
How could she have done what played in that projection? Hair wild, chest heaving, hips circling as if starved for more… she invited the very thing she loathed. How could she have behaved in such a way, when Jacques did what he did?
Twin tears warmed Brenya’s cheeks, her breath caught on an uneven inhale.
“Look at me. Look at me, Brenya.”
What difference would that make?
“He can make you think its pleasure—an unfair biological advantage.”
That silently moaning, unrestrained creature … was a betrayal to Brenya’s very being. Action in the exact opposite of feeling. That hideous thing came on a burgeoning knot, shaking as if she had touched a livewire. To see the muscles in her abdomen ripple, to know what was taking place inside her even as the projection’s belly began to gently expand.
There was wetness even then between her bare legs. There was always something dripping out of her, because Jacques shot deep and he shot often enough that her very womb had adapted to drink down the deluge.
Old and new seed was in her, growing more liquid by the hour and escaping in a telling, awful trail in that very moment right down her thigh. Pressing her legs together as if that might actually hold it in, Brenya turned wet honey eyes to the man waiting for the rebuke she deserved.
Jules spoke. “Your neck is bleeding.”
It was not a question, so it required no answer. It required no attention.
Licking dry lips, unsure where to begin, Brenya cocked her head, aware her expression was one of despondent confusion.
So he spoke for her. “This is where you beg me to spare the people of Bernard Dome.”
Exactly. She had made her way to Ambassador Jules Havel for that reason alone.
The cork holding back her voice popped, Brenya stepping closer to the glass. “If I could find humor in this situation, it would be in knowing that we share a secret that shouldn’t be a secret at all.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t emote. But he conveyed an ocean of danger. “And what would that be?”
Fingers working the knots she had created in the stolen shirt, the parcel of food she had brought for him was set free. It was in doing that task, in focusing on something other than the strange way the man looked at her, that Brenya was able to tell the truth. “From the moment my life was infected by Jacques Bernard, he has inflicted pain upon me every single day. Resisting led to no alteration in this pattern. Surrender led to no change. The pair-bond…”