Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

"You are mine, now," he said in a low, dangerous tone. "You belong to me — to no one else. To me alone. I can do whatever I wish with you. If I choose to cut your throat, then it is your duty to bleed to death for me. If I give you to those three men who can see you, then you will submit to them, whether you like it or not, whether you do so willingly or not.

"You belong to me, now. Your fate is what I choose for you. You have no choice in what happens to you. None. Everything that happens to you is by my choice alone."

"It's still rape."

He crossed the room in three angry strides and backhanded her, knocking her sprawling. He pulled her up by the hair and heaved her at the bed. The world spun as Kahlan tumbled through the air. She only missed the wooden post by inches.

"Of course it's rape! That's what I want it to be! That's what you have coming!"

He charged to the bed like an enraged bull. His black eyes were filled with wild storms of shapes. Before she knew it, he was above her. Kahlan had it all planned out. She wasn't going to try to stop him, to give him the satisfaction of having to use force to have her. But with him right there, on top of her, straddling her hips, those thoughts were lost in the sudden panic of events that she desperately didn't want to happen. She forgot all her plans and desperately tried to push his hands away, but in such a mood there was no stopping him. She had no strength to begin to match him. He didn't even bother to slap her to make her stop resisting. With one yank, he ripped her shirt open.

Kahlan went still as he stopped, her chest heaving from the effort. He stared down at her breasts.

She used the sudden quiet to school herself. She had just killed four brutes. She could do this. This was nothing compared with having a collar around her neck, having her memory stripped away from her, losing her identity, losing who she was, becoming the helpless slave to Sisters of the Dark and an emperor of a mob of thugs.

This was nothing. She was better than to fight him in such a foolish manner, like a schoolgirl trying to slap away the hands of a bully. She didn't fight like that. She wouldn't. She knew better. Yes, she was terrified, but she didn't have to surrender to panic. She was afraid when she'd killed those four men, but she had controlled her fear and acted.

She was better than he was. He was only stronger. He could only have her by force. That knowledge gave her a thread of power over him, and he knew it. He could never have her willingly because she was better than he was, and she deserved better by far. He could never have a woman like her except by force because he was weak and worthless as a man.

"Is your prize of prizes satisfactory, Excellency?" she mocked.

"Oh, yes." Jagang's wicked smile widened. "Now take off those traveling pants."

When she made no move to comply, he did it for her, opening the buttons one at time as if opening something valuable. She lay with her hands at her sides. He hooked his fingers over the waist of her pants, drew them down her legs, and pulled them inside out getting them off over her feet. He threw them aside as he paused to take in the length of her nearly bare body.

Kahlan silently bit the inside of her cheek to keep from pushing his hand away in a panic as he glided his hand up her leg, feeling the softness of her thigh. Kahlan fought back her tears. She would have given anything not to be there, to be anywhere else but at the mercy of this monster.

"Now, the rest of it," he said in a thick whisper. "Take off those underthings."

She could tell that pulling her clothes off had only excited him even more, so she did as he told her to do, trying to make it look anything but seductive as she did so.

As he watched her following his orders, he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots. He dropped his pants and kicked them off. As sickened as she was terrified by the sight of him naked, Kahlan gave in to weakness and turned her eyes away from him.

She wondered how she would ever be able to fall in love and let a man touch her after this. She reproached herself. She was never going to have the chance to fall in love. She was fretting over a problem she would never have.

The bed moved under his weight as he climbed up beside her and lay down. He paused to stare at her, to run his hand over her belly. She'd expected it to be a rough touch, a harsh grabbing of her, but instead it was a furtive touch, a slow, measured evaluation of something quite valuable. She didn't expect his gentle approach to last much longer.

"You really are quite extraordinary," he said in a husky voice, almost more to himself than to her. "Perceiving you through the eyes of others just wasn't the same — I can see that now."

His tone had changed. The anger had melted away under the heat of his desire for her. He was on the brink of surrendering to uninhibited lust.