Free Hold by Zannie Adams Page B

terror and shock. One part of her mind knew what was happening. But the rest of it couldn’t even register it.
    She felt a brutish hand jerking down her pants and panties until she felt the cold metal against her bare skin.
    She tried to scream again. And it was the worst part of the whole experience. Her mouth opened but couldn’t shape any sound at all.
    With what was left of her mind, she tried to prepare herself for what was going to occur, even as she futilely kept trying to struggle against the powerful grip.
    Then suddenly the hands were gone. She heard a primal growling sound and the body behind her was pulled away.
    She sucked in a desperate breath through her aching windpipe as she managed to push her bruised body off the table so she could see what was happening.
    Cain had found her.
    He must have torn the man off her and thrown him bodily out of the cell and into the public area in the middle of the Hold.
    Riana now recognized her attacker as Asp, the tattooed man who’d confronted her when she first arrived.
    But she could hardly recognize Cain at all in the snarling, primitive beast he seemed to have transformed into.
    She managed to pull up her pants before she stepped, shaking, out of the cell and huddled by the wall as she watched.
    Asp wasn’t a weakling. He was big and violent and he knew what he was doing.
    But he didn’t have a chance against Cain.
    Cain had worked himself up into a frenzy. Riana had never seem him—seen anyone—look like that before. He pounded the other man into the ground, never pausing or giving respite for a moment. Soon there was blood. And then the other man stopped putting up a fight.
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    But Cain didn’t stop his brutal attack until Asp lay in a mass of bloody pulp on the ground.
    Riana knew without doubt he was dead.
    And she wasn’t even sorry. Part of her was shocked and nauseating by the sudden, violent turn of events over the last few minutes. But part of her—a tiny, instinctive part she didn’t like to acknowledge—thrilled to see Cain react so primally, so territorially, so animalistically.
    Over her.
    Mostly, though, she was dizzy and dazed—too much having happened for her to keep up.
    So when Cain dropped the other man to the ground and stood up with his hands, arms and shirt bloodied and his skin soaked with grimy perspiration, she still couldn’t bring herself to move.
    Cain looked around the Hold. The whole place had grown silent as everyone had moved to watch the violent altercation. Cain’s expression seemed to dare anyone else to challenge him.
    Or to lay a hand on what was his.
    No one moved. No one dared to approach.
    Until Cain finally stalked away from his kill.
    When he reached Riana, he took her by the back of her torn shirt and used his grip to guide her back to their cell.
    His touch wasn’t gentle and it smeared blood on her shirt, but she appreciated the support since she wasn’t sure she would have been able to walk otherwise.
    When they reached the cell and Cain locked the door behind them, Riana crumpled onto the bed, hugging her arms to her stomach.
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    Cain stared down at her for a moment. Then he made a guttural sound and jerked away. He strode to the sink and turned the water on. He splashed water on his bloody hands and sweaty face.
    Water streaming down his skin, he turned back toward her. “Did he—”
    “No,” she gasped, the first word she’d been able to utter since the attack. “You got there in time.”
    His face twisted strangely and he turned back to the sink. Leaned down to splash more water on his face.
    He turned back toward her—still looking feral and powerful in his tension and bloody shirt—and opened his mouth again. But this time he didn’t speak. Instead, he turned on his heel with a jerk and made a move like he was going to leave the cell.
    But he stopped himself. And instead he moved back to here she was huddled on the bed.
    But he stopped himself again.
    Riana had no idea what