Free Breaking Brandi by Stacey St. James

were nothing
more than fear inspired speculation. She didn’t have a clue of how
things ‘worked’ here beyond the fact that they had a damned temple
erected, from what she’d seen, in or near virtually every tiny
hamlet and no more than two days’ ride apart.
    And she was expected to ‘give’ at
every single damned one!
    Maybe Ulrick wasn’t supposed to sample in
between?
    She thought that notion probably wasn’t just
her imagination given the way the priests had acted upon their
arrival when Ulrick had made no attempt to hide the fact that he’d
made use of her. In fact, had made such a display that it was
almost as if he wanted them to know rather than just that he
was indifferent as to whether they found out or not.
    He’d provoked them, she thought angrily!
    And she was the one they were going
to punish!
    She thought for several moments that she was
going to puke from the emotions roiling in her belly.
    She’d finally begun to make some headway,
she thought, with Ulrick! He at least seemed to have reached a
point where he desired her enough to begin to let down his guard,
but what little power that might give her over him, if any, would
be of no use to her if the priests demanded her in sacrifice to
appease their angry god. She stood no chance of escaping if that
was the case.
    It occurred to her after a while that she
hadn’t even tried the door to see if it was locked. She knew it
must be, but she moved to it and tried it anyway. Without much
surprise, but with a great deal of disappointment, she found that
it was.
    “Damn it!”
    Moving away from the door, she began to pace
once more, glancing now and then at the tray. Finally, she settled
to watching the door, deciding when it opened, if only one priest
stood there, she would see if she could catch him off guard and
escape.
    She would’ve felt better for her chances if
she were closer to the outer door to the temple, but she realized
fairly quickly that her chances were virtually nil any way she
looked at it. As long as she had felt that she had some chance of
coaxing Ulrick into lowering his guard, she had thought patience
the wisest course. Any attempt to escape would put him on guard and
make another attempt useless. She had to wait until the most
opportune moment. Then maybe she would have a chance of escaping
and … she could figure out the rest after she got away, if she got away.
    Despite her fear, or perhaps because of it,
exhaustion finally got the better of her once she’d stopped pacing
the room and settled to watch the door, but it was the sound of the
door opening that woke her. She surged to her feet at once, swaying
slightly with the grogginess of sleep. Two priests entered.
Ignoring the tray, they seized her and dragged her from the room,
down the long corridor that led to the bathing chamber.
    She had already learned that trying to fight
them was useless and yet she could not command herself not
to—possibly because she couldn’t rid herself of the fear that this
time would be horribly different. She struggled as they forced her
down on a stone bench beside the pool. They held her, anointing her
body with oils and scraping her skin until she throbbed all over.
When they had bathed her, they led her from the pool and dried
her.
    As they left the chamber, they turned and
followed the steps downward to the offering room. Below, she could
hear the priests chanting and an almost hissing noise as they
shuffled their feet across the stone floor. Brandi’s dread grew
with each step. As relieved as she was that it seemed that they
would perform the offering anyway, she feared what she would have
to face in the chamber. It might have frightened her less if the
ritual had been exactly the same each time, but each time it
differed except that the priests, she knew by now, would whip
themselves into a frenzy of carnality and that they would wring
pleasure from her until they’d sapped her of all strength.
    As in the other temples, she saw that