OwnedbytheElf Read Free Page A

shivered, a soft, almost inaudible sigh of pleasure as he rested against
it. She bit back her annoyance. Even the fucking trees found him irresistible.
She had to admit they had a point.
    His smile pulled at the vicious scar over his cheek,
twisting it further. She wondered who had given it to him. A faery lucky enough
to land a blow, or another elf? Both were likely explanations. Looking at him,
she doubted either would have lived to tell the tale.
    The rope around her wrists unraveled, the magic whispering
against her skin as strand after strand worked loose. Pulling her legs up, she
hid the slight movement and met her captor’s gaze levelly.
    “I was behind enemy lines. You tell me.”
    “Yeah…let’s talk about that, shall we?”
    His smile widened, became calculating. She kicked herself,
hard. Talk about dropping herself in it. It didn’t matter, though. All that
mattered was keeping him talking until she could make a break for it.
    She wrinkled her nose and shook her head dismissively. In
her lap, another strand wriggled free. “We’ve done me, how about we talk about
you instead?”
    His eyes darkened a notch. “Oh, we haven’t done you
at all. But I might when we’ve finished talking. Depends if you’re a good girl
or not.”
    She shot him a glare. The hells would freeze over before she’d
allow an elf to touch her, even a hot-as-hells elf with a voice of pure
temptation. Ignoring his comment, she looked up from under her lashes and tried
to pull off cute. It was her last line of defense.
    If she could get him to think she was harmless, despite the
fact that she wore the green of a scout, then he wouldn’t be expecting
anything. The last thread started to unravel in her lap, the rope little more
than a mass of strands. Careful not to show her amusement on her face, she
gathered herself. As soon as the last knot unraveled, she had to move fast.
    “So…gonna tell me your name? Or do I have to guess?”
    He eyed her for a long moment, a strange look in his eyes.
For a moment, she thought he’d felt the small tug as she called power from the
earth, but then dismissed it. That wasn’t possible. Elves didn’t have the same
intimate connection to the elements that the fay did.
    Finally he spoke, the deep rumble of his voice distracting
her as the last knot snaked free.
    “Bane.”
    “What?”
    Shock ran through her, fear following swiftly on its heels.
Bane was the elf king’s attack dog. His second in command and the most feared
elf in the lands. Getting captured by an elf was bad, getting captured by Bane
was a death sentence.
    She managed a small, shaky laugh.
    “Don’t be stupid. Bane doesn’t have…” She waved in the vague
direction of his face.
    He just looked at her, his face impassive. Her stomach
dropped as she realized he wasn’t kidding. She was a dead woman.
    “Faery got lucky last week,” he ground out, his expression
forbidding. “Bastard had a poisoned blade which foiled the healing spells. I
was lucky to get away with this.”
    She caught her breath, fear for his narrow escape warring
with the swift instinctive regret the faery hadn’t succeeded. What the fuck…?
He was an elf, and the only good elf was a dead one.
    “Your healers did a good job. Couple of years, it’ll fade.”
    What the hells was she doing? Her hands were free, yet she
was sitting around chattering.
    “So, when are you going to try to run?”
    Shock held Tamryn immobile for a second. He knew that she
was free. How he knew, she didn’t have a clue, and right now she didn’t have
time to care. The need to escape consumed her, excluding everything else.
Energy flooded her body as she surged to her feet.
    Grabbing a handful of dirt, she threw it at the fire.
    “Nathrak!”
    The word of power cracked through the air like a whip. Flames
swelled with a loud whumph, roaring to well over her height and creating
a wall of fire between them. She got a glimpse of Bane’s shocked face on the
other side, but