“Wait,” I pleaded, surprised when he actually stopped moving.
I bent over, grabbing the hem of the dress and attempting to rip it, needing a little more room to move. Typically, it didn’t budge, and Coen grew tired of waiting. He was before me in a click, forcing me back to my feet as he leaned in close.
“Time’s up,” he announced, a small smirk in place.
His hands dropped onto my shoulders, sliding down to rest against my chest. The dress didn’t have much of a covering above the bodice, so his palms almost seemed to slide against my bare skin through the thin, mesh-like material, raising goosebumps all along my body. I tried not to hyperventilate, but I knew that my breathing had changed. He didn’t have his hands on my boobs, but I could still feel the swell of them—right above the top of the dress—pushing against his palms with each sudden, sharp breath. His massive fingers curled around my shoulders, digging in a little as his eyes darkened. The sparkling tendrils of weirdly addictive pain he’d used on me previously began running across my body again, only this time they were a million times stronger. It was like he was sticking hot needles into my skin, but the needles were coated in some kind of potion that just made me feel good. It was amazing that he could do that, but it seemed that the more he used his power, the more it began to resemble pain. The pleasure was still there, but the agony started to peek through, whispering against my bones and making me cringe.
I whimpered out a protest even as my body arched into him, reacting to the way his cloudy eyes were staring down at me. He dropped one of his hands to wrap tightly around my spine.
“Your fight is the thing which sets you apart from other dwellers,” he whispered into my ear as he held my trembling body. “But you have to learn to recognise when you can’t win.”
Oh no he didn’t.
I grabbed my skirt again, but I moved deliberately slowly this time, keeping myself pressed against him. I bunched it up into my hands, inch by inch, as his eyes flickered from my face, watching as the material climbed higher up my legs.
“Dweller…” he ground out.
For just a moment, unadulterated pain flashed through me, but as quickly as it happened, it was gone, leaving only an echo of it for me to react to. Coen blinked rapidly, once, twice, and then his gaze was back on my face. I had broken his concentration.
Willa for the win!
He frowned, obviously hearing that thought, but it was too late for him. My dress was up high enough now.
“What was that thing you said before?” I asked, as the gathered sols began to grow impatient, shouting things at us.
“You have to learn to recognise when you can’t—”
I swung my knee up into his balls.
His breath rushed from him and he stumbled back, his hands falling away from me. Whoops. I had intended to knee him; I just hadn’t intended to knee him there. I froze at the newly tinted green of his eyes, and in that moment, I was pretty sure that I was seeing death. Coen wasn’t a pain-gifted sol at all. He was death.
I held both hands up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to …” I was backing up, my hands still above me. The crowds were noisy around us now, and even though I never planned on it, I decided to surrender.
Just as I opened my mouth to shout it out, a zap of energy shot through me, and no sound emerged from my mouth. I tried again as Coen stalked toward me. He had recovered in a mere moment, which didn’t seem fair. I’d never get away with another underhanded shot like that again. It should have at least given me two clicks’ reprieve. I tried for a third time to speak, and still no sound emerged.
My eyes flicked across to the glass box and I just knew one of those assholes had done something to me. They wanted to see what Coen would do. How far he would go. Whether he would hurt me or not. Whether he would kill me or not. I, on the other hand, didn’t want to see what Coen would do at all. That wasn’t the kind of knowledge that I required. I would have happily flounced right out of the arena, shaved off all my hair, and slipped into the unassuming role of Will Knight, sans obvious nipples, to hide from the gods. But I couldn’t do that, because the guys felt some kind of obligation to the gods, or the gods had some kind of control over them. And I felt some kind of obligation to the Abcurses, or they had some kind of control over me. Really, obligation and control were becoming more or less synonymous to me.
And there was one more, tiny little thing.
The gods were cheating.
They were taking away my ability to surrender, and that was unfair. That made me mad. I stopped backing away from Coen, blinking as though I was about to start bawling like a little girl. He totally bought it. Idiot Abcurse. He frowned, some of the danger edging out of his walk as he approached me. I dropped to my knees, my hands tangling in the sand. I was really milking it.