Thieves World 5 – The Face of Chaos by Asprin, Robert

the knots that bound the silk around her and undid them. Screams of outrage

echoed in her mind, but she clung silently, unprotestingly, to his powerful

arms.

‘You are still frightened?’ he asked after a while, running a finger over the

curve other hip as she lay limp on the pillows beside him. He was strong, as

Walegrin had said he would be, but she did not quite have the nerve to find out

if he was a coward as well.

She shook her head when he asked if she was afraid, but could not stop her hands

from coming to rest on top of his, stopping his incessant motion. He bent over

her, caressing her breast with his lips, tongue and teeth. With a strangled

whimper, she stiffened away from him.

‘You will see. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Just relax.’

He was staring at her: cold fish-eyes peering into her body and soul. All the

warnings that Myrtis, Walegrin, and even Ambutta had given her chorused out of

her memory and she wished she was Bekin: either dead or willing to love any man.

Her confidence went out like a guttered candle. She felt him loosening the heavy

belt that bound his pantaloons and knew she could not stifle the next screams

that would rise from her throat.

There would be no second chance. She would fall, and probably die here in this

room with her sister’s ghost hovering in her thoughts. But she was a master of

deceit, as she had claimed, which was much more than simple lying or pretending.

‘Yes, I’m frightened,’ she whispered in a coy, little girl’s voice she had just

discovered, using the truth to buy a few more moments. She shivered and clutched