Free Savage Want (Wicked Wants, #3) by Annice Sands

at the Duke’s words. Did he mean...death? Imprisonment? Stoning? Hanging? Dozens of unpleasant endings for me raced through my mind.
    Duke Penbroke turned to his guards. “I want the little bitch out of my sight. Take her to a cell while we decide what to do with her.”
    Arms hooked under mine to lift me up. Why wasn’t my father stopping this? Didn’t they care that Cecil had tried to force himself on me? What had I done wrong?
    I gripped the fabric of my dress tighter, but it was pulled from my hands. Half-naked, I was then dragged out the front doors before the entire manor and thrown into a cart usually reserved for swine when taken to market. The beautiful irony that Torsten’s blade had drawn Cecil’s blood after all was not lost on me.

Chapter Seven
    I was fitted with an iron collar that was nearly too big for me, as it was fashioned for a man’s neck. The metal was cold, heavy and the rusted bits dug into my neck almost immediately. The warden was a large brutish sort of creature, trapped halfway between swine and human, it seemed. His meaty hands lingered longer on my body than they should have, but it did not matter. With Cecil, I was protected. As his attacker, I was more vulnerable than ever before. By being a woman, I was lost.
    The smell of the cell pen reeked, familiar to my nose from only a few nights before. Now, it was I who was marched in like a common criminal, not even granted the opportunity to have proper covering. My beautiful dress had been ripped to shreds and stained with blood. More than once, my hair was pulled to steer me a direction or another, instead of given verbal command.
    Across the corridor, if it could be called that, was Torsten’s cell. Perhaps it was a special cruelty paid upon me by the Penbrokes, for to look upon a man who had once been a power leader and warrior, brought to his knees in chains and starved, was a special kind of hell.
    I dared not speak to him until the cells had fallen silent and the guard was patrolling elsewhere. Torsten had finally been relieved of his time in the stocks and now lay on his side, facing away from me. His dark hair trickled over one sweating, heaving shoulder, but he made no sound.
    I called his name again, but he still did not answer. Even in our pathetic, desperate situation, the torches kissed his bronzed skin with masculine beauty. His wolf tattoo stood out in stark contrast, little red flame-tongue just within view. My heart fluttered at the memory of nights together, seemingly lost forever. He might not die, but I surely would be relieved of my head or worse, once the bedlam had died down in the manor. Fright gripped me for certain, but hurt was far more prevalent in my person. My father had not defended me. He’d hardly said a word in my favor, except to ask what was expected of him. As if what I’d done was his responsibility. The question remained seared in my head, how could I be his responsibility if I belonged to Cecil?
    In a hushed whisper that I hoped only Torsten could hear, I told him what I’d done. When I’d finished my story, he moved slowly to roll onto his back to stare at the low ceiling. His profile stood in sharp contrast to the back wall and he licked his cracked and split lips.
    Why wouldn’t he respond? Had he given up on me as well? Had I risked everything for nothing? Perhaps I had just been a fun playmate for him as his Northmen destroyed villages. I highly doubted much of my beauty was intact, especially after the treatment suffered at the hands of Penbroke’s awful men. Perhaps the Penbrokes should have flown the banner of the Needle. I laughed nervously. My mind was breaking already.
    Torsten cleared his throat, the first sound to come from him since I’d arrived. I froze, waiting for him to speak. When he did, it was only in two words, uttered hoarsely.
    “Patience, woman,” he said.
    Through the bars of the tiny window my cell afforded to the sky, the moon gazed down in indignant and cold