Drak sent her a look as if she’d grown two heads.

“For once you and I are in complete agreement,” he growled, abruptly seizing her and tossing her across his shoulder. “And it’s pass time I taught you some respect for your monarch!”

Jules screamed and ran at Drak, pounding on him with his fists. “Put her down! You put her down! Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Drak did set her down—and he gave her a deadly look that took all the strength out of her knees. “You wait here. Don’t move … or you will regret it!”

He snatched Jules up under one arm and hauled him from the room, popping the child on his butt when he continued to fight.

He set Jules down when they reached the door to the vault. Crouching down in front of the child, he manacled his arms to his sides and pulled him against his chest until he stopped weeping so hard and fighting. When he’d calmed down, Drak held him away, forcing the child to meet his gaze. “A man who harms a woman is no man at all, son,” he growled. “A man who harms any innocent who is too weak and unskilled to defend themselves is not a man. He is a monster and I am a man. Man to man, I give you my word I will not harm her.”

Jules sniffed. “You promise?”

“Yes, Jules.” He studied his son for a long moment. “As your father I could not be more proud of any child of mine than I am of you at this moment. That was a brave and noble thing that you tried to do.” He paused to allow that to sink in. “That was also a display of poor judgment that distresses me no end. I am twice your size, son. If I had been any other man you might easily have been hurt very badly, or worse … and if I see that sort of poor judgment again there will not be a lecture. You will be punished.”

Again he paused. “As your sovereign, I am outraged at your betrayal. I expect your unwavering loyalty at all times. Is that understood?”

Jules gaped at him, nodding.

“Good! Because if you ever betray me again, the consequences will be five lashes across the bare buttocks—publicly. Understood?”

Jules swallowed with an effort. “We didn’t know we wasn’t allowed to go and talk to the teller,” he said after a moment. “You wouldn’t hurt him, would you?”

Drak shook his head. “Child! What did I just say to you?”

Jules frowned. “But you threatened to do horrible things to both of them.”

“Well, they both deserve to be punished—and they will be. Noelle knew she shouldn’t discuss me and so did the teller. They will not be injured, but I can guarantee they will regret discussing things they should not have.”

“What did you do with Jules?” Noelle demanded angrily when Drak returned without the child, grabbed her and tossed her across his shoulder as he had before. Turning and striding swiftly along the corridor to the stairs, he began to mount the treads in a rapid ascent.

“You should be concerned about your own hide,” he growled.

Fear tingled along Noelle’s spine. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll let your imagination work on that.”

OMG! Not that!

Thankfully, the rapid ascent distracted her and made it impossible for her imagination to take over and scare her witless. She was afraid to even move once he began to mount the stairs, fearful she might fall off his shoulder and plunge headfirst into the stone floor below, or overset him and make both of them roll to the bottom of the stairs.

She didn’t know whether feel hopeful or more frightened when, instead of leaving the stairwell at the first landing, he continued to the floor where his suite lay, strode purposefully down the corridor and into the suite before he slammed and bolted the door. He set her on her feet.

“Strip,” he said grimly.

Noelle gaped at him, blinking. “What?”

“Everything.”

“But ….”

He took a step closer. “Don’t make me say it again—or do it for you. You won’t like it.”

Noelle’s eyes widened. She glanced beyond him, gauging the distance to the door.

Chapter Fourteen

Noelle’s survival instincts warred with logic and hope. A wild idea of dashing past him and finding a place to hide vied with the certainty that she would never manage to get by him and also get the door unlatched and open, let alone outrun him and find a place to hide.

She’d probably only succeed in pissing him off more.

And she couldn’t accept that he would truly harm her. She might not like what he had in mind, but she couldn’t make herself believe she was in any actual danger.

She managed to convince herself of that right up until the point when she’d removed all of her clothes and he chained her to the bed—and not by one ankle as he had before.

This time after commanding her to lie down, he climbed on the mattress, straddled her, and then took her wrists and lifted both arms straight up over her head. She tried to resist then, but it was too late. He had no trouble at all forcing her arms to the bed over her head and manacling both wrists together.

She tried to bring her arms down when he released them. Discovering she couldn’t, she twisted to look up at her wrists and discovered that he’d manacled her to a short chain leading from the headboard.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed the chain before, but she’d thought it was just the point where the other had been attached, the long chain he’d manacled around her ankle when he’d first brought her.

She supposed she should have spent more time examining the damned thing when she had the chance. Then she would at least have had some inkling that he could chain her to the bed and do anything he wanted to her.

While she was making that discovery and tugging at her wrists—just in case she was wrong and the chain was just snagged—Drak caught one thigh, lifted it, and fastened something around her leg just above the knee. The distinct clink of metal snapped her attention from her wrists to her leg just as he grabbed the other leg and shoved it upward and into another manacle strap.

When he’d finished adjusting them, both legs were drawn upward and spread so wide she could feel cool air wafting all along her cleft.

She looked down at herself and the position he’d manacled her in, too shocked to fully assimilate the fact that he’d bound her so thoroughly and in a position that left her completely open to him and vulnerable.

Insanely, heat began to churn in her belly.

Trying to ignore the strange mixture of warmth and uneasiness and the escalating tempo of her heart beats, she glanced at Drak after studying the parted lips of her sex for several unnerving moments. She discovered that he was slowly stripping, his gaze fixed on the dark pink, gaping—to her mind anyway—lips of her sex.

She swallowed with an effort, wondering if it would do any good at this point to try to talk her way out of whatever he had in mind.

She was pretty sure she had a fair idea what he had in mind, but she was afraid to trust that it was anything that simple and unthreatening.

She supposed humiliation might be part of it.

And it would certainly be extreme torture if he simply left her like this.

But he was stripping and she didn’t think he planned to simply leave her.

She’d never actually had the chance to study him. The sex they had before had been mostly in bed at night when the room was dim, and it had been too frenzied to allow a lot of time to simply look and admire.

He had a beautifully sculpted chest and torso, rippling with muscle—and massive well defined arms.

And two cocks, she discovered with a stunning jolt of shock when he pushed his trousers down and straightened.

How the hell had she missed that?

She didn’t think it was an accident. He must have known if she only had one place for a cock that that was what she was accustomed to.

She gaped at them, watching both lift in erection.