Chapter 781: 781. Since Celestina Reject Me... Then I Need To Have Some Relief!**
He pulled back just enough to look into her golden eyes, his expression shifting into that terrifying, lustful mask, the look of a man who intended to take everything and give nothing back.
"Celestina was too quiet," Rex said, a cocky, cruel smirk spreading across his face. "So you’re going to be my relief."
"You’re going to get raped today, Ignivara..."
"Not because you asked, and not because you’re ready, but because I need the release, and you are the most exquisite thing left standing in this graveyard."
Ignivara’s breath hitched, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The sheer audacity of it, the brutal, shameless honesty of his lust, made her blood boil with a mixture of rage and a terrifying, involuntary tremor.
He wasn’t even pretending to be a gentleman. He was a beast, and he was claiming his prize.
"You... you arrogant, godless bastard," she hissed, her hands clenching into fists against his chest, but she didn’t pull away.
She couldn’t.
"Perhaps," Rex chuckled, the sound dark and rich. "But you’ll find that my ’efficiency’ extends to the bedroom as well.".
The insult hit Ignivara harder than any physical blow. Her golden eyes flared with a primal, incandescent fury.
"You think because you’ve broken our walls, you can break our dignity?" she snarled, her voice trembling with the effort to keep from screaming.
She didn’t hesitate. Driven by a desperate need to reclaim some semblance of control, she lashed out.
Her fist, fueled by eight years of martial training and a lifetime of pride, swung toward Rex’s jaw with the force of a falling star.
CRACK!
But Rex didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even move his head.
He caught her wrist in mid air with a grip that felt like a hydraulic vise, the sound of her bones groaning under the pressure echoing through the quiet treeline.
"Is that it?" Rex asked, his voice dripping with a condescending, bored amusement. "Is that the ’warrior’ the Legion spent so much time polishing?"
Before she could even gasp, his other hand moved. It wasn’t a punch; it was a calculated, brutal strike.
THUD!
His fist buried itself into her cheek, the force of the impact snapping her head to the side and sending a spray of crimson from her lip. The world spun, a dizzying blur of green leaves and grey sky.
She tried to steady herself, to find her footing, but Rex wasn’t finished. He stepped into her guard, his massive frame looming over her like a mountain of dark muscle, and drove his fist deep into her solar plexus.
OOF!
The air was violently expelled from her lungs in a ragged, pathetic wheeze. The world turned white.
Her vision tunneled, and the strength drained from her limbs as if a plug had been pulled. She collapsed, her knees hitting the dirt with a sickening thud, her body forced into a submissive, broken bow directly at his feet.
She gasped for air, her lungs burning, her stomach churning with a dull, throbbing ache. She looked up through tear-blurred eyes, her face smeared with dirt and her own blood, only to find Rex looking down at her with the cold, satisfied gaze of a master looking at a well-tamed hound.
"Don’t fight the inevitable, Ignivara," Rex said, his voice a low, terrifying purr.
He reached down, his fingers tangling roughly in her white hair, forcing her head back so she had to look at him. "You want to play the hero? The hero is currently chained to a tree, bleeding out in silence..."
"You want to play the warrior? The warrior is too busy being broken to fight."
He leaned down, his face inches from hers, his eyes dark with an unquenchable, predatory lust.
"Look around you," he commanded, gesturing vaguely toward the distant, smoke-shrouded skyline of the city. "Aethelgard is in chaos."
"They aren’t mourning us; they are likely celebrating a ’victory’ they don’t even realize they’ve lost."
"They are distracted. They are loud. And we? We are here, in the middle of nowhere, where the only witnesses are the trees and the dead."
He tightened his grip on her hair, a sharp tug that made her wince. "We can have our fun right here... In the dirt... Under the open sky..."
"No one will hear your screams, and no one will come to save you. It will be just you, me, and the silence of your fallen gods."
A cold, paralyzing terror washed over Ignivara. It wasn’t the fear of the pain; she was a warrior; she knew pain.
It was the fear of the implication. Her eyes darted frantically toward the tree where Zane lay, still unconscious, his body bound by Rex’s unyielding, metallic chains.
Zane.
The thought of him was a knife in her heart. He was the only one who truly saw her, the only one whose love was a sanctuary in this violent world.
If Rex decided to move from her to him... if Rex decided to use his terrifying power to desecrate Zane while he was helpless...
"Please..." she whispered, her voice cracking, the bravado of the warrior completely stripped away, leaving only the vulnerable woman beneath. "Not... not like this. Not while he’s near us..."
"If you have any shred of honor, Rex... don’t do this in front of him..."
"Don’t make him wake up to see this."
Rex let out a dark, mocking chuckle, a sound that sent a fresh wave of dread through her soul.
"Honor?" he repeated, the word sounding foreign and ridiculous on his tongue. "You still think in terms of honor? How quaint."
He leaned in even closer, his scent a mixture of ozone, earth, and raw, masculine heat overwhelming her senses. "By the time he wakes up, Ignivara, he won’t be watching a tragedy."
"He’ll witness the man who shattered his world utterly and beautifully conquering his ’precious’ warrior."
Rex didn’t rush. A predator of his caliber knew that the struggle seasoned the finest meat.
He wanted to taste the salt of her tears and the heat of her indignation before he ever tasted her flesh.
He released her hair, but only to grab her chin, forcing her to maintain eye contact as he began a slow, methodical psychological and physical siege. His hands, calloused and massive, began to roam over her body, not with the tenderness of a lover, but with the heavy, possessive weight of a man claiming territory.
Skrrrrt...
The sound of his rough palms sliding against her sweat-slicked skin was loud in the oppressive silence of the forest.
"Stop... please..." Ignivara gasped, her voice a ragged melody of defiance and desperation.
She tried to twist her torso away, her muscles straining to break his hold, but Rex was an immovable object. Every time she attempted to lunge or strike, he was there, his movements fluid and terrifyingly efficient.
SLAP!
The sound of his palm meeting her cheek echoed like a gunshot. It wasn’t a blow meant to bruise but to humiliate.
Her head snapped to the side, her golden eyes watering instantly.
"I told you to stop fighting," Rex murmured, his voice a dark velvet caress. "Every time you resist, you only make the hunger sharper..."
"Do you really want to see how sharp it can get?"
He moved his hand from her chin, sliding it down the column of her throat, his thumb pressing firmly against her windpipe just enough to make her breath hitch, just enough to make her feel the fragility of her own life.
"Haaa... haaa..." Her breath came in shallow, panicked staccato bursts.
"You’re a monster," she hissed, her eyes burning with a mixture of hatred and a terrifying, involuntary arousal that she loathed herself for feeling.
The sheer, overwhelming masculinity of him, the raw power radiating from his tanned, muscular frame, was a sensory assault she couldn’t shut out.
SLAP!
Another strike, this one a stinging reprimand on her other cheek.
"A monster who is currently the only thing keeping you from being left to the wolves," Rex countered, his smirk widening.
He began to use his teeth. He didn’t kiss her; he bit.
He sank his teeth into the sensitive junction where her neck met her shoulder, a sharp, stinging nip that elicited a sharp, involuntary cry from her.
"Ah! Nngh..." The sound escaped her before she could choke it back, a soft, high-pitched moan of pain that sounded dangerously close to pleasure.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her face flushing a deep, humiliated crimson.
"There it is," Rex whispered against her skin, his hot breath sending tremors through her entire frame. "The body doesn’t lie, even when the mind is screaming ’no.’"
He moved lower, his large hands gripping her waist with such force that his fingers nearly met around her middle. He began to knead the flesh of her hips, his touch a brutal friction that felt like it was stripping the very skin from her bones.
Squelch... rub...
The sound of his hands working against her damp skin was rhythmic and maddening.
Ignivara felt a sickening, beautiful tension building in her lower abdomen. It was a torture of the senses.
He was denying her the release of a full assault, instead choosing to graze the edges of her sensation, pushing her to the brink of madness.
"Look at Zane, Ignivara," Rex commanded, his voice dropping to a predatory growl as he pulled her back against his firm, unyielding chest.
He forced her to look toward the chained man. "Look at him..."
"He’s so close, yet he’s in a world of his own... He can hear your breath hitching... He can hear the sound of my hands on your skin..."
"He can hear your little... ah!"
