Author's Note: so I haven't updated this in a while, because I only work on this fic when I've had a cruddy day. So I finally have enough for a chapter. Here it is. Hope you enjoy. Is that the right word for reading this kind of fic? Enjoy? Eh, whatevs.

By the way, I got the idea for the torture device in this chapter from an episode of Criminal Minds.

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Chapter Four

Golden Ropes, Crimson Blood

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Nuada's eyes came open with a snap as wakefulness crashed down on him with sudden, violent clarity. He'd been dreaming, he thought. Dreaming something terrible. Even now, the hazy memory of screams and cruel laughter made his stomach churn and bile scald the back of his throat. The Elven warrior squeezed his eyes shut tight—not to better recall the memory, but to push down the rising nausea. He hadn't the strength to race to the privy if his sickness overcame his control. So Nuada clenched his jaw as a tremor raced through his body, then relaxed. The nausea faded. Whatever he'd been dreaming had been…something terrible. That was all he could remember.

After a few minutes with his eyes closed, he knew the knowledge of the dream hovering just on the edges of sleep would prevent him from finding rest again. Slowly he drew his arms in until he could brace his hands on either side of his body. He tensed his legs. This was really, really going to hurt.

When he could put it off no longer, Nuada pushed up with his hands and at once drew in his knees and pushed off the bed with them, so that he rose slowly off the mattress. The healing flesh on his back blazed with red-hot stripes of fire as the movement reopened a few of the lashes. He sucked in a breath and gritted his teeth. He needed to get out of bed. He needed to be up and about, training, getting stronger. Something—some sense of urgency—told him he needed to get better, needed to get well, and he needed to do it as soon as possible. He just didn't know why.

But he was a warrior, trained for countless centuries in the practice field and in battle. Throughout the centuries Nuada had learned to trust his instincts. If they were clamoring at him to get up and move, he would do it…even if he could feel blood running in tiny rivulets down his back to soak the waistband of his loose black sleeping trousers.

And always in the back of his mind, like a clock ticking down to some far-off event, was the thought of Dylan.

Was she worried for him? Had she tried to find him? There was no chance she'd be able to find the sanctuary without a guide. What if she had attempted to locate him, to see if he needed help? Nuada thought the pain would be more bearable with Dylan tending to his injuries; she had a way about her that no other human possessed. It was bizarre, but it was also the truth. No other human would've been able to keep him alive after being shot more than half a dozen times, especially with poison and illness racking his body as well. Only Dylan. And her small, deft hands would serve as the tools of a better nursemaid than Wink with his large, three-fingered hands untrained in aught but field medicine.

In a few days, Nuada told himself as he slowly got off the bed and stood on unsteady feet. In a few days he would be strong enough to make the journey back to her cottage and make sure she was safe, as honor demanded. And if the healing didn't go as he desired, perhaps he would have her take a look at his back, as well. Surely her salves and tinctures could do something for the pain.

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Her world was nothing but pain. Agony burned through Dylan's shoulders, radiating up her bound arms and down her back. She was so tired, but the pain kept her from being able to sleep. She could only hand her head as Eamonn prowled around her, speaking quietly to her as she hung from the makeshift torture device he'd erected in the middle of her bedroom using the frame of the bed and whatever else he'd been able to find.

"I will stop if you ask, sweetness," the dark Elf crooned, coming so close that the warm puff of his breath ruffled her sweat-dampened hair. "All you need to do is ask, and this pain stops." His touch was mockingly gentle as he caressed her face, tracing the ridge of eyebrow and the smoothness of temple, the delicate edge of cheekbone and the fullness of lower lip. "Surely it would be better to submit and come to my bed than for me to hurt you like this. It has only been an hour. Can you last six more?"

She didn't speak. Her throat ached from holding in her screams for the past sixty minutes. Eamonn had managed to drag a few raw shrieks of pain from her, but they'd been muffled behind her clenched teeth. When Eamonn's lips touched the cut on her cheek, she jerked away from him. His fingers clamped down hard on her chin and jaw.

"Now, now," he said reprovingly. "You said you would submit to me so long as I didn't force myself on you. I have not. Now hold still."

Dylan bit back a whimper as Eamonn's lips, disturbingly soft and warm, slid across the curve of her cheek and along her jaw before he nipped ever so gently on her lower lip. He nuzzled that lip almost lovingly before he whispered against Dylan's lips, "Give me your mouth."

She shook her head. Silver ice burned in Eamonn's eyes. He lowered his head slightly, so that he looked at the woman before him from beneath furrowed black brows. Dylan clenched her teeth and didn't look away.

At last, the Elf of Zwezda sighed. "It seems I must remind you that breaking your word to the fae is a dangerous thing to do."

Releasing her jaw, he stepped away from to untie the rope twisted and knotted around the post of Dylan's bed. The mortal couldn't hold back a whimper this time. The rope. That rope. No, no, no…She gazed at Eamonn beseechingly, fear stealing her voice. Fear and the memory of pain. The dark Elf ignored her. Wrapping the rope around both hands to give him better leverage, he yanked on it once with a grunt of effort.

Dylan screamed as the improvised device wrenched her arms—tied behind her back and, until then, forced upward as high as they could go—even further up and away from her back. Tendons and ligaments in her shoulders strained and popped. The ball-joints threatened to dislocate from their sockets. Sickening, dizzying pain ripped through her shoulders, arms and back. She screamed again when Eamonn gave an experimental tug on the rope.

Eamonn tied off the rope around the bedpost again, keeping her arms in the agonizing position. Then he came to her and cupped her face in his hands. His palms were red and irritated from the burning salt of her tears, but he didn't seem to care about that. His brushed his thumbs across her cheeks in an obscene imitation of intimacy and tenderness.

"Now, sweetness," he murmured, leaning in. "Give me your mouth like a good girl."

He touched his mouth to hers, still obscenely gentle. His lips were warm and coaxing, as if she were his innocent paramour instead of his victim. With her arms still shrieking, she didn't dare keep her lips pressed together when Eamonn's tongue swept across them. Instead, she gave him her mouth, as ordered. His hands slid into her hair, tangling and fisting to keep her head still as he kissed her. She tasted blood, but couldn't be sure if he'd bitten her or if she'd bitten her tongue when he'd hurt her. When he drew back, a drop of crimson stained his bottom lip. He licked it away.

"Gods, you try my patience," Eamonn whispered, nuzzling her cheek. Dylan bit her lip until more hot copper blood flooded her mouth. "And my control. I want you, you know—Nuada's truelove. His very heartbeat. His wanton little human whore. I want to feel you under me. Taste your blood on my tongue, burning with salt and iron. Hear you scream." He licked her cheek. Shuddered. "Gods. How did Silverlance resist the temptation of your body? He loves you, and you're ripe for the taking, and yet he has not claimed you completely. The more fool, he."

His hand clamped down on her thigh, which was already bruised from his cruel fingers. He squeezed hard, his fingers fitting to the raw black marks already marring her skin. She bit back a gasp of pain. His teeth scraped the side of her throat and she tried to jerk back, but the ropes holding her arms prevented her. His fingers slid around to the inside of her thigh. Slid upward, skimming over her flesh. The needle-prickles of Branwen's Tears, only half-dormant now, tracked his progress, heating her flesh where he touched her.

"Stop it," she gasped. Eamonn's hand stopped its progress, though he stroked over the same inch of skin with the backs of his fingers. "You said you wouldn't force yourself on me."

The chuckle rumbling in his throat was like rich, dark chocolate. Dylan loathed dark chocolate. Eamonn's fingers slipped a little higher on her thigh.

"I did promise that," he whispered. "I never said I wouldn't touch you." He sighed against her throat. "I want to touch you. The flesh here," he added, stroking, "your flesh…it is so very soft. Like satin. You swore that Silverlance has never bedded you, but…" The hot, rough fingers slid a fraction of an inch higher. Dylan could feel her pulse pounding against the pads of Eamonn's fingers. "Has Silverlance ever touched you like this, sweetness? Has he shown you what pleasures can be had simply from a man's touch?"

Dylan bit back the word please. She wouldn't beg him to stop. She wouldn't beg. But her gasp came out strangled and terrified when Eamonn's fingers found the hollow of her inner thigh, the shallow concave dip just before her leg met her pelvis. He wasn't really touching anything. Yet. But he was close, too close…It took everything she had not to scream.

"You'll like it, sweetness," Eamonn crooned against her ear. "You will. You'll beg me not to stop, I promise you. And is not pleasure so much sweeter than pain?" He suddenly froze. Pulling his head away from her neck, he stared at her. A droplet of moisture ran down his cheek from his temple. He swiped at it and studied the tear on his fingertip. Dark brows furrowed. He looked at her. "Why are you crying?" She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away, biting hard on her lip. She despised herself when a quiet sniffle escaped. Eamonn turned her face back to him with inexorable pressure. Stroked her cheeks with the backs of his fingers.

"I can be gentle when given the right motivation, Dylan," Eamonn said softly. Her eyes flew open. He'd never used her name before. He spoke it almost tenderly. With the tip of one long finger he traced a tear-track on her cheek. "Why do you fear such a small thing even more than what I will do to you if you refuse me? Is it faithfulness to your prince? You fear him thinking you disloyal even more than you fear," here he grabbed one distorted shoulder and squeezed, so that she half-sobbed a cry of pain, "what else I can do to you?"

He traced her trembling bottom lip with his thumb. It smeared blood from her bitten lip across the fullness of her mouth. She tasted copper and salt, new pennies. Eamonn leaned in, his face unreadable, and kissed her softly. He didn't seem to care that the iron in her blood stung his mouth. His lips whispered over hers, tracing delicately, exploring; the sort of kiss one might expect from a generous and considerate lover. Fresh tears spilled down Dylan's face.

Eamonn drew back, licking her blood from his lips. He cocked his head to one side. "Why are you so afraid of coming to my bed?" Eamonn whispered, eyes roving over her face, searching for some clue. "What about being my leman frightens you so? Do you perhaps fear getting with child? Is that it?" The hand he stroked her cheek with slid downward, calloused knuckles grazing jaw and throat and fragile collarbone before skating along the lace edge of her black nightgown. "Surely you're not a virgin."

She tried to kick him, but she only succeeded in knocking herself off-balance and wrenching her arms. She gasped, sobbed. The dark-haired Elf steadied her.

"You are," he said, almost wonderingly. "No wonder Silverlance courted you so carefully. You're yet a virgin. You want Silverlance to be your first." A dark light flared to life in his cat-slit silver eyes and he twined an arm around her waist, yanking her flush to him. She yelped at the sudden hot wrench on her screaming arms. "Perhaps I might even oblige your wish. And yet...that does not preclude me from..." He reached for the hem of her nightgown.

This time Dylan managed to kick him, her knee connecting with his groin. Eamonn grunted and staggered back, wheezing, pale face nearly gray. His back hit the bedroom wall and he hunched over, struggling to breathe. Dylan wondered if she'd enraged him enough to just forget his sick games and kill her. She'd prefer that to being manhandled and pawed at.

"You little bitch," Eamonn rasped thickly. He managed to straighten up with visible effort. "Oh, you'll pay for that. And so will Silverlance when he arrives." Without another word, or even a sound save a vicious snarl, he went to the rope tied around the bedpost again. The mortal squeezed her eyes shut and tried to brace herself. The slither of the rope against the polished wood made her heart pound. She felt Eamonn tug the rope a little in experimentation. Dylan clenched her teeth, pain making her nauseous. Rolling waves of sharp pain crashed against her back with every pull of the rope.

She felt Eamonn's breath on the back of her neck as he whispered, "Oh, sweetness, you should have spread your legs for me instead of trying to unman me…because what I intend to have your precious prince do to you will be so much worse. Now brace yourself, pet, because this is really going to hurt."

With a savage grunt, Eamonn heaved on the rope. Shards of molten agony stabbed deep into Dylan's shoulders, arms, and back as the rope yanked her arms straight over her head. Tendons stretched with low groans of protest, ligaments straining under the pressure. The balls of her shoulders dislocated with sickening pops.

Dylan screamed. Screamed until she had no more voice, screamed until her throat was raw and she could only rasp and wheeze. Screamed until she could no longer fill her lungs with air.

Then she blacked out.

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John Myers scratched the back of his shoulder irritably. Both shoulders had been itching and prickling for the last hour or so, and he couldn't figure out why. He couldn't do anything about it, either. He was on assignment, and he was supposed to keep things low-key—which meant he couldn't take his suit-coat off, because then people would be able to see the gun he wore in a holster under his arm, black against the white of his button-down shirt. So instead, he rolled his shoulders and tried to focus on the job at hand.

Earlier in the evening, he'd gotten a cramp in his hand something fierce. The pain had been enough to make his eyes water. He still didn't know what had happened there. And now his shoulders were bothering him. After he got off-shift, John thought he might make an appointment with his doctor. Anything could be screwing with him—some kind of disease, like cancer or something, or an injury he hadn't known about.

Or, he thought with some venom, the Fair Folk might be screwing with him. He couldn't see through their glamour as well as his sister could, by any stretch, but John Thaddeus Myers knew the Fair Ones were out there, screwing with people. His twin sister's rather hectic schedule was testament to that. She slaved away day after day helping the fae and the humans blessed—or cursed—to be able to see them. He'd seen what kind of impact they'd had on Dylan's life. He knew they could really mess a person up if they chose.

He just hoped they hadn't chosen to really hassle him, because if they did, he'd probably end up dead. Who knew what kind of crap the Hidden Ones might pull on him?

At least his twin sister was safe. Her cottage was warded by the presence of elder and rowan trees, rosemary bushes, and a little house sprite that could keep away anything crazy. And besides all of that, she had that Elf prince who came to visit. Dylan had said he'd look after her, and John saw no reason to doubt her.

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Dylan came awake slowly, as waves of pain lapped at the shore of her consciousness. Beneath her cheek was something soft, something that smelled of night-blooming jasmine and chamomile. It was also slightly damp. She was lying on something soft, too. A mattress? A steady, warm hand stroked the damp hair back from her face. The touch left trails of poisonous golden heat beneath her skin. Her shoulders ached abominably.

Suddenly memory flooded her mind: Eamonn, the rope contrivance, the touching and her knee in his groin, his fury. Dylan tried to shoot upright, but her arms wouldn't support her weight. Even trying to move her arms at all sent agony lancing through them, and her shoulders spasmed. Dylan fell to her belly on the bed—that was what she was lying on—with a cry.

"Do not move too quickly," a familiar and chilling voice whispered. A hand pressed down on her shoulders, sending darts of pain biting through the abused, protesting joints. She bit back a whimper of pain. "Relocating your shoulders was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Mortals are so very fragile."

She flexed her hands, which had been numb when she'd passed out. The feeling had returned, and her wrists burned from the chafing of the ropes. A glance told her that the rough hemp ropes had rubbed the flesh raw.

Eamonn grasped one of her hands and straightened out Dylan's arm. Sudden throbbing made her gasp. The Elf ignored her and raised her arm straight up from the mattress, tormenting the inflamed joint and sending nauseating pain through her arm. Dylan's fingers twisted in the sheet beneath her. Eamonn's free hand was a heavy warmth as it smoothed over her hair and down her back to rest at the small of her back, just before the curve of her hips.

"If you're going to kill me, please just do it," Dylan whispered, her voice muffled by the tear-dampened pillow beneath her cheek. "You've had your kicks."

"Mmm," Eamonn hummed against where he pressed a kiss to Dylan's palm. "Perhaps I have taken a perverse sort of liking to you."

"I don't care," she mumbled.

In a flash, Eamonn had levered Dylan up and flipped her onto her back, yanking her arms over her head and clasping her wrists in one implacable hand. Immediately she began to kick at him, even with her bad leg. He solved the problem by straddling her thighs. His weight held her pinned to the mattress. Dylan saw, as bile rose in her throat, that he'd taken his tunic and shirt off while she was unconscious, leaving his pale chest bare. Rough hands made the raw flesh of her wrists burn.

"Please don't squirm, sweetness," Eamonn growled low in his throat, leaning over her. The lace overlay of her black nightgown scraped his chest. The heat of his body was scalding. "It distracts me." He pressed his nose to the juncture of her neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply. "You smell like fear," he groaned. "Fear and need. The Tears are taking effect. When Silverlance arrives, he won't be able to resist you. I can scarcely keep myself in check. I can smell your desire."

She shook her head, struggling against mindless panic even as her skin flushed at his nearness. He'd drugged her; the monster had drugged her. It didn't mean anything that her body strained toward him. "No," Dylan gasped. "You're delusional."

"Oh, no, I am not," Eamonn whispered, licking the spot over her pulse. A whimper escaped her clenched teeth and pursed lips. "I will prove it to you."

With deliberate and cruel slowness, he slid his free hand from where it had pressed into the mattress to the protruding bones of her hip, then up, over the sleek quivering belly clad in lace and satin. Dylan whimpered again when, with sickening deliberation, Eamonn cupped her breast in his palm. She'd expected him to be rough, but he wasn't. He massaged her gently, reveling in her humiliation as her body responded to him against her will.

"Stop it," she hissed as he nuzzled her throat. Mortal tears burned her eyes and spilled in ice-cold rivulets from the corners of her eyes to trickle across her temples. "Stop it."

"Your body does not wish me to stop," Eamonn breathed, his tongue swirling over her pulse. He brushed his palm over her breast. A soft, needy mewing sound escaped her. "Thanks to the Tears, your body desires my touch now. It needs my body to give it peace, to ease its torment. You need me to claim you, to make you mine. Otherwise the ache I've begun in you will never stop. Unless..." He added, brushing his thumb across the lace and satin. "Unless it is Silverlance you prefer. Is that what you wish? You want him to take you in my place? Because I can give you what you want. I can make him crave you like a drug."

His mouth latched onto the soft flesh at her throat and he sucked, drawing the flesh into his ravenous mouth, sinking his teeth into the vulnerable skin, biting hard. Even as Dylan pleaded with him to stop, he drove his teeth deep into her flesh. She cried out, a sound of mingled pleasure and pain. When he pulled back, he licked her blood from his lips and teeth. Crimson trickled from the bite across her skin to soak into the pillow and sheet beneath her.

"You said you wouldn't rape me!" Dylan cried desperately as his hand slid higher to find the strap of her nightgown. He toyed with it as she sobbed, "You swore on the Darkness!"

He leaned down and kissed her, tongue sliding in slowly like a poisonous snake making its way through tall grass. To her horror, Dylan found herself responding even as a distant part of her mind screamed at her to stop. Eamonn kissed her thoroughly, exploring her mouth as he hadn't dared to do before, for fear she would bite him. And as he kissed her, his fingers tugged insistently at the lace and satin strap once more. A moan welled up in her throat and tears spilled from her eyes as Eamonn forced her hands down a little to slide the strap over her shoulder.

The dark Elf wrenched away from her to gaze down at the panting, weeping woman trapped half-under him. Eamonn smiled. Kissed her again, gentle as a lover. She sobbed aloud even as she found herself opening her mouth for him once more.

"By the time Silverlance and I have finished with you, sweetness," he whispered against her lips, spilling terror through her soul, "it won't be anything so base as rape."

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Author's Note: of course there's going to be more torture, because of course our girl isn't going to give in that easily. If he pushes her hard enough, she'll fight back even harder. So stay tuned. Let's see if Eamonn's mind-games affect just Dylan, or if they have even more far-reaching effects that he could never have foreseen.