Free Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) by Dawn Steele Page B

walls, screaming skulls.
    Gorm was right. She was beginning to wish she had never been born.
    They were thrown into a medium-sized chamber. She noted the instruments there with mounting dread – a torture rack, an iron chair with its seat hollowed out, a stone pyramid with a blood-stained iron tip, a garrotte, and many other iron devices too terrible to contemplate. A brazier sat in a corner along with a bin of coal. She now understood what it was like to be filled with so much fear that she was completely emptied of everything else. The pervading stench of rotting meat flooded all her other senses, and every crevice of her skull was filled with the red glow of terror.
    Gorm and Metal Hat stripped Aein of all his newfound clothes. Just when he was getting used to wearing them too, a part of her brain noted abjectly. They strapped Aein to an upright rack, stretching his arms and legs to the limits before securing his wrists and ankles in leather bonds. Snow White felt her own joints popping as Aein’s face contorted.
    “No,” she whimpered softly.
    They ignored her.
    Milky Eye poured coals into the brazier and lit a fire. Another man, whom Snow White christened Scarface for his bad acne scars, wrenched her arms painfully behind her back. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the iron chair. He threw her down on it, and chained her arms to its back as she tried to maintain her balance above the hole in its seat. She could only thank her lucky stars that there weren’t any spikes embedded in the chair.
    Scarface turned her to face Aein’s bruised and stretched body, his washboard stomach heaving with each breath. Sweat beaded on Aein’s face. Milky Eye stoked the coals in the brazier with a poker. They began to glow a dangerous red.
    “No,” Snow White cried despite herself, “don’t hurt him!”
    Aein’s eyes arrested hers. His muscles were tensed and yet he held no terror.
    Scarface ran a hand across Snow White’s throat. “And what would you do for me, my beauty, if we don’t?” His breath was sour as he whispered in her ear. He worked one calloused hand into her torn tunic and squeezed her breast.
    My maidenhood is just a piece of flesh. If she had to give it up to save them, she would gladly do so. But on the other, what was to stop them from raping her, torturing Aein, and burning them at the stake thereafter for witchcraft? She had been warned about men like these by Hanna Cherry, who avowed that anyone who lived beyond the Enchanted Forest were brigands, thieves and murderers.
    “They would taste your flesh,” Hanna said, “then leave you with child. And cut the babe from your belly before you are due.”
    Seeing these men firsthand, Snow White could well believe that.
    “Please,” she said, tears blurring her eyes. It was now time to play her trump card. “I can make you rich.”
    Milky Eye picked up a glowing piece of coal with a tong. Aein flinched as he regarded the red-hot piece approaching his genitals. His thighs were clenched, braced for pain. He hates fire, Snow White abstractly remembered.
    “Keep talking,” Scarface said, his lips brushing her ear, “or your boyfriend loses everything that makes him interesting to you in the first place.”
    “I’m a princess,” Snow White said in a rush. “I’m a princess of Lapland. If you take me back there, the King will reward you greatly.”
    “If you’re a princess,” Gorm sneered, “what are you doing in these woods?”
    “Not to mention she speaks like a Bavarian native,” Milky Eye added.
    “Good try, my beauty,” Scarface said, his hand sliding down her belly and worming its way into her pants. “But it won’t save your boyfriend.”
    Aein’s glittering brown eyes held hers. He said, “She may not be a princess of Lapland, but she is right. We can make you rich.”
    Snow White caught her breath in surprise. She couldn’t recall telling him who she really was. Was this a ploy? She opened her mouth to say something, but his