The Prize

Teel held herself stiffly in Rogue's arms, knowing that she did not have the heart to harm a child, would never have the will to harm a child. Her threat was an empty one and Rogue was calling her on it. She did the only thing she could think of, relaxing her body in Rogue's arms praying for a moment of weakness.

The moment came nearly too late as Rogue responded to her relaxed posture by relaxing his hold on her arms, and it took Teel only a moment to slide out of his loosened grip and throw herself at the guard who was even then bringing the sword down in a swift arch towards Talia. There was a blur of movement wherein the guard tried to shake Teel off and the child attacked his legs. It was over in seconds with Teel's unconscious body on the floor and a crying Talia urging her to get up.

Rogue was powerless to stop the panic rising in his chest. Teel's pale cheeks and motionless body stabbed at the part of his heart that still cared deeply for her. His searching hand found a pulse, but it was weak and erratic. "Send for the physician," he instructed a servant off to his left.

He knew better than to show emotion in front of his people so he merely kneeled next to her unconscious body and prayed a silent prayer for her vibrancy to be returned to her. He sent Talia and her mother away. The blood thirst that had run through his veins earlier in the day had expired in light of this unfortunate turn. And the guard who was responsible for her current state had had enough presence of mind to remove himself before he found himself on the wrong end of a sword. Rogue ground his teeth together in impotent fury, having no outlet for his rage other than to exercise patience.

*********************

Teel jolted awake, not sure what had disturbed her sleep, only sure that something had. She lay motionless examining her environment with only the briefest flick of her eyes around the room. The bed she was in was unfamiliar, there was a pile of hand held weapons on the table next to her, and a stranger's weight depressing the bed on her left side.

Teel's arm silently slid towards the table and came back with a single bejeweled blade glinting in the moonlight. It would do. Her cold mind assimilated that pretty or not the blade would be sufficient for slicing a throat. Blending in with the quiet stillness of the night Teel flowed over the person next to her. He awoke only when she wanted him to. The tip of the knife pressing into his skin was warning enough that he should cooperate if he valued his life.

At last. Rogue felt a light laugh rumble through his chest, though he knew it contained no humor. The blade she had always promised to slide into his ribs was now resting against his throat. A fine end to their relationship, not that he intended to let this woman kill him.

"Is there a reason you have a knife against my throat?" he asked, managing to adopt a bored sort of pseudo-interested tone.

Teel pressed the blade in a little deeper, drawing a single drop of blood to let him know she meant business. "I will be asking the questions, not you sir."

Rogue couldn't help himself and failed to smother another laugh. Despite the seriousness of the situation, this one was filled with genuine amusement. She dared to call him 'sir' after all the intimacies they had shared?

"Stop laughing," Teel demanded in her coldest voice yet, "Or do you want my face to be the last thing you ever see?"

Rogue stopped laughing long enough to move with the animal quickness that had won him their first battle, taking the knife and bending her arm behind her back before she could even formulate how to counteract. Rogue settled his full weight on top of her leaving only one arm free.

"One would think after all this time you would remember how quick I am," he gently chided. "But I'm glad to see you've got your fighting spirit back. I must confess, the thought of making love to a semi-conscious woman held little appeal."

Teel struck out with her free hand at his provocative words landing a hard slap across his right cheek. "How dare you?"

That wiped the smile right off his face, but he made no move to capture her free hand. "If you hit me again, I will not be responsible for my actions."

Teel felt the hard edge of his arousal pressing against her and felt a tremor of fear go through her at what form his retaliation might take. She relaxed her free arm against the bed, not wanting to push him further, but her body remained tense against him.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

That brought the smile right back to his face. "Do you really need to ask? I would think the answer was obvious." He pressed his bulging arousal deeper into the cradle between her thighs.

Teel turned her face away from the warmth of his breath on her lips. She couldn't bear the intimacy and sought to shut him out. "Your vulgar displays of strength and humiliation do not answer my question. Who are you?"

Rogue felt his anger stir at her insolent tone. She should be thanking her God that he hadn't taken the knife from her hand and planted it in her heart. Instead she was speaking to him as though he were something disgusting she had scraped off her shoe.

"I'm surprised and a little shocked that you cannot remember your lover." Rogue was less than impressed by the little game she was insistent on playing, but if she wanted to play, then she would find that he was a more than capable opponent. As far as he was concerned this was just another one of her elaborate charades and he had been tricked one too many times to care about the web of lies she was spinning.

Her disbelieving, condemning eyes flew to his negating the lie. "Never."

"Never is a long time my sweet Teel." Rogue was hard pressed to keep his voice even when everything in him demanded he make her take that one word back. Demanding that he assert his authority over her. "A very long time." His finger trailed almost absentmindedly along the curve of her neck caressing the skin, grateful for the steady pulse after so many days with it being just a tiny flicker and at the same time wanting to strip the very breath from her lungs.

Teel tried to move her head away from his stroking finger, but found that she was as impotent in the face of his strength as a newborn. Her anger was riled all over again at her inability to express herself as she would have liked.

"I would rather die than submit my body to you. You would have to rape me to rob me of so precious a gift." Teel threw her words in his face daring him to touch her with the intent to take her virginity.

He laughed then. A cold, hard, flat sound drifting over her senses like a serrated edge. "Don't you remember?" he asked, certain she was baiting him, "I already have."

While he was prepared for her outrage at his inflammatory statement, knowing the point of how she came to be his was a sore one, he was caught completely off guard by the frustrated determination behind her attack. Teel struggled so hard against him she almost managed to knock him off balance. Between the fury of her struggles and her clawing hand steadily aiming for his eyes, he supposed he got off lucky with only a few scratches on his face and her curses ringing in his ears.

"You son of a bitch!" Her heaving chest pressed up against his as he leaned over her suppressing her further with his weight, but she paid it no mind, not even when her nipples hardened from the contact. "I will kill you for taking what was not yours to take."

"You haven't changed," he mocked. "Still determined to kill me for sins old and new." He stroked his finger across her cheek, at once enchanted and repelled by the vehemence emanating from her. Teel's head jerked towards his fingers and he just managed to move his hand away before her teeth snapped sharply closed where his finger would have been. "Still a tiger."

Teel shimmered underneath him with repressed rage and for once, despite all the threats in the past, all the wrongs she had committed against him, she managed to look aggrieved enough to actually take his life.

"Still the same old penchant to deny the truth," he castigated. "You were always mine, to take and do with as I please."

This latest provocation sparked no response from Teel. Her lips remained mutinously sealed, but her eyes made the promises she kept within.

"This is mine," he laid claim, his tone so soft it could have been mistaking for a lover's voice by a passerby, but this close up Teel knew it for what it was, the sort of soft tone used to lull an enemy into a false sense of security before you tortured them to death. His tone was at direct odds with the finger that slid between her thighs and was stroking around her clit. His questing finger was met with a pool of liquid heat. He kept his eyes locked with hers, reading correctly the horror in her eyes as he continued to make her body melt.

"No." Teel immediately denied the pleasure he was giving her, realizing that she might have something to fear from him after all.

"No?" Anger curled low in Rogue's belly right behind his desire. No matter how often he made it clear to her that he hated her refusals she persisted, uttering the word "no" as if it were a mantra that would keep him at bay. It only inflamed his passions and guaranteed a merciless night.

"Then surely you cannot deny that this is mine?" That same slick finger slid into the depths of her hot folds. She winced at the greedy, grasping motions her body made trying to keep him inside of her. He only laughed knowing her negations for the lies they were.

"And if none of that sounds correct," he panted, consumed with the need to claim her after so many nights of not being able to, "Then I'm sure this will trigger a memory or two," his low laugh was accompanied by his hand circling her thigh. As he lifted it she knew he was going to slide inside of her and both hated him for it and hungered for it, forgetting the reason behind her anger.

Teel made one last half-hearted effort to deny him, her hand reaching out to still his movements, but that one hand on his chest had barely any impact as he bent over her body and in one thrust claimed what was rightfully his. Teel's body bucked against the motion pushing him deeper.

Her cry of pleasure filled his ears and the fact that she was powerless to hold it back, though he knew she would have liked to with all her heart, acted as a strong aphrodisiac.

"This is how we are meant to be together Teel." His words in her ear were like poison awakening her to his possession and his interpretation of her surrender. Teel struggled to get herself under control, examining the feel of his thick penis sliding within the tight walls of her pussy. Could she deny that she needed that sweet feeling of falling outside herself? Her nails raked his back, but she said nothing, only raising her foot higher along his back so he could press in deeper.

Biting her lip, Teel was barely able to hold back the complaint that was on the tip of her tongue, certain he was doing it on purpose. Shallow thrusts, slow, almost gentle. Unsatisfying. Instinctually Teel brought her hand between their bodies and let her finger slide over her clit in a barely there caress. Her body reared up sharply as though her mind was not anticipating such pleasure to come from her own hand. She moved her hand to repeat the caress and found it was again restrained.

Didn't he want to pleasure her? Wasn't that the point of this whole exercise? Or did he want her to beg? Teel swore she wouldn't give him the pleasure.

Rogue kept on with his gentle lovemaking, knowing she could never climax at his current rate. He brushed his fingers over her nipples, her clit, her stomach, up her spine. But never with any real intent to please, only to arouse. He watched the drop of blood that appeared on her lip from the pressure of her teeth and swept his tongue over the small injury while continuing with his arduous task.

"Just say please when you are ready for the pleasure that only I can give you."

It was that mocking voice cutting through her pleasure fogged brain that gave Teel the strength to repeat her vow from earlier. "Never."

"I told you earlier Teel," he chastised as he pulled almost completely out of her, "Never is a long time." He eased back in, just the tip, before pulling out. And back in and back. Just the tip. Always just the tip, and she felt a gnawing itch between her thighs demanding he push further. Even if he picked back up his previous rhythm anything would be better than just the tip. Wanting him to fill her and feeling so empty.

Teel thrashed beneath him going out of her mind in agony, but he continued on with the sort of cold, single-minded purposes that he hadn't felt necessary since the night he had given her an overdose of pleasure. Teel began to fall into a sort of homeostasis whereby she was nearly passed out from mental turmoil, but was most definitely still conscious. Rogue monitored her very carefully making sure that she didn't fall into the void of escape where she had lived the last time he had punished her.

And he waited, so patiently like some jungle cat, until he saw her eyelids flutter closed and he pulled out and thrust all the way in. One hard, powerful thrust of control. Teel convulsed all around him screaming at the top of her lungs as she dragged him along with her. Rogue's body shuddered as wave after wave of pleasure closed over. He collapsed on top of her thinking he had never felt anything half so good as the completion of losing himself within Teel, ignoring the part of himself that said she might be the best lover, but she was also the worst betrayer.

What he couldn't ignore were the surprised gasps of pleasure falling from her lips as she fell apart in his arms. It distinctly reminded him of a woman receiving her first orgasm, but he knew that was impossible. He had gifted Teel with orgasm after orgasm during their time together. While he had been accused of being a brute many times, he would never be so remiss as to not pleasure the woman who was fortunate enough to share his bed.

When their breathing had slowed to a semi-normal pace Teel tried to pull away but Rogue did not loosen his hold.

Her wide eyes turned to him with a total lack of recognition of him as anything other than the man who had just turned her body against her. "Who are you?" The same words she had used earlier but this time she was looking for more than a simple title to explain who he was.

What she really wanted to ask was who are you that you can make my body respond so swiftly and so absolutely? Who are you to have such a comfortable familiarity with my body? Who are you that you are buried deep inside me and all I can think about is when you'll make my body betray me again by giving itself up to you? And it would. She knew that it would.

*****************

Teel sat trapped inside a room she was quickly growing to hate. His bedroom. Surrounded by his things. The room had been filled with servants trying to see to her every need since he had left her so swiftly in the middle of the night. She had tried to leave and found two guards blocking her way just outside the door. Another puff of frustrated air slipped from between her lips. Surely he couldn't leave her here all day.

Flashing her eyes covertly around the room, Teel looked for anything that could be fashioned into a weapon, any weaknesses in the masses surrounding her. After hours of waiting, being cosseted and cajoled into eating, Teel was fed up. The women didn't even engage her in conversation. If it was possible to take care of someone and avoid them at the same time then these women had made an art of it, keeping their eyes fixed to the floor as though staring directly into her eyes would turn them into stone. She maintained her outward façade of calm, but knew internally that she had to do something soon or risk losing her mind.

As the sky darkened a new group of women came, chattering around her as they cajoled her into another bath. The calm she had managed to adopt while bathing was quickly lost when she returned to the room to find a sheer cloth waiting on the bed.

"What is this?" she demanded, full of rage that anyone expected her to wear something so provocative, and for that man who had kept her imprisoned all day. The group of women surrounding her said nothing, only staring as she shook the offending cloth in their faces. Teel tore the thin fabric into shreds throwing the ruined strips at the women's feet. "You tell that man that I will not wear that-," Teel stumbled for a moment, unable to find the words to articulate how degrading she found the outfit. "That poor excuse for an outfit that wouldn't cover my arm, much less my entire body. You tell him I want to see him." Still the women did not move, and Teel, incandescent with fury, was forced to raise her voice further. "Now!"

The women scuttled away in fear. She had changed right in front of their eyes from a woman of reason to a woman of madness. Teel paced the floor with each step adding to her rage. A sound at the door alerted her that someone had come but it was not the someone she was expecting.

"Well?" Her inpatient greeting was met with a stony, cold glare that should have frozen the blood in her veins, but Teel was immune to his anger, too wrapped up in her own.

"No one summons my son!" the harsh voice condemned her. "You are but a servant here, an unwelcome one at that. You would do well to remember your place and not make trouble. You are in enough of it as it is."

"I am no servant." Teel stared him down, cold stare for cold stare, insolently running her eyes over him as he was running his over her, albeit she stood before him naked while he was fully clothed.

"Whatever else you are not, you are certainly your mother's daughter." His eyes slid over her breasts as he issued his insulting observation.

Teel immediately perked up at the mention of her parent. "What news of my mother?"

"You know the news of your mother," he snarled back. "You stole her from my bed in the dead of night with your deceitful lies and conniving ways. You may have ensnared my son with that body, but do not think you can do the same to me by flaunting it before me."

Teel barely heard his assessment of her body so focused was she on his earlier words. It wasn't possible. "You lying pig!" she spat at him, utilizing all her self control to stand still and not attack him as he so richly deserved. "You may darken my good name as you like, but if you speak ill of my mother again, I will have your heart for it."

Tazian visibly tensed at her bold insults. She clearly did not know the hatred he bore her or she would be afraid to even show her face before him. "How dare you speak to me in such a way? You who are no more than my son's whore."

"Whatever I am or am not, my mother is a good and kind woman, and she would never betray my father by surrendering her body to another." Teel couldn't defend herself because she honestly didn't know. Her body had betrayed her the night before and she was a stranger to herself, but she knew her mother and the love she held for her husband was stronger than a twine made of a hundred threads. "She would rather die than have him witness her perfidy." Of this Teel was sure.

"He has died," was his quiet rejoinder to her heated defense of her mother's honor. "Your father is dead."

A moment of such profound weakness infiltrated her body until she thought she would pass out. It only lasted a moment before blinding clarity provided her with the strength to take action. She advanced on Tazian so quickly he didn't even have a chance to move. Teel called on every lesson from her youth about speed, grace of movement, the power of the unexpected, the strength of acting with an animal's cold calculation and perfection before a kill. Her eyes glazed over as she bore level with him.