Disclaimer: The below mentioned characters are the property and creation of Tamora Pierce

Submission

His hands are fisted in hair the colour of mahogany – soft, silky, but far too dark. Hazel eyes stare at him in terror, but they are too green. This woman is nothing, a mere replacement - a substitute for that which he cannot have. He yanks, exposing a long, clean line of a slender neck and the woman beneath him gasps half in pain. He revels in it. He pulls again, harder this time, shuddering in pleasure as a pained whimper tears itself from the woman's pale throat.

His hands move lower, touching, caressing, but holding tight enough to bruise. The woman is mewling now, high and pitiful and it still isn't enough. Her body is too slender, too fragile to truly meet his needs. He digs his fingers into delicate flesh, drinking in the feminine yelp of pain. Better. But still not enough.

Breathing deeply, he closes ice-blue eyes and imagines. The body under him is stronger, more muscled now, pitted with marks and scars – testimony to her training. The scent is no longer pale and flowering but something richer – spicy laced with the musky-bitterness of Yamani Tea. He pulls his fist back, punches, and now it is her voice that shrieks in agony as bone breaks and splinters under skin. His blows land again and again and he's so near release that it's a blissful agony. This is what he's needed, what he's craved – what has been denied to him since they were pages.

He used to live for those times when he could hope to cause her pain. When he would deliberately antagonise her, just for the chance of seeing her contorted under the weight of bruises and breaks. He had never felt so alive as when he was fighting Keladry of Mindelan. Garvey was the same. He had seen the fire in the other boy's eyes whenever The Girl had gasped or winced in pain. He'd lost count of the number of times he had stumbled back to his rooms after those fights, only to hear Garvey moaning his release in the room next to his. He had been the same – her pain was arousing, stimulating; the idea of her in submission to him, intoxicating.

Those images play before his mind now, dragging a moan of ecstasy from his throat. Every wince, every grimace, every minuscule expression that indicated her pain, are seared into his memory. He grinds his hips downward – delighting in the friction – not caring that the body beneath him is now still, splattered with blood that is starting to cool. His entire focus is on the scenes playing behind his closed eyelids.

With a shudder and a groan, he finds his release – the final image of Keladry of Mindelan with blood oozing down her lips, gently fading away in a post-orgasmic haze.