Loving a Stranger Read online

  When her father had sold her to Harryx as a bride, it was with the understanding that Pitta and Patta would come with her for company, at least until she was blessed with children after her nightly sexual supplication to her new husband.

  The arrangement had lasted only one solar month into their marriage. One night when Nallah was pouring their food into a bowl and Pitta and Patta were mewing and curling themselves around her legs, Harryx had strode into the food-prep area and seized Pitta by the scruff.

  “Too much noise,” he’d snarled at the startled Nallah, who hadn’t yet learned of her new husband’s rages or how to prevent them.

  Wrapping his big fist around Pitta’s slender neck, he had squeezed until she screamed and Nallah heard a horrible cracking sound. Then the little furry body went limp in his hand and Harryx had dropped her to the floor, like trash that needed to be swept up. He pointed a finger at the stunned Nallah.

  “Keep it quieter in here or you’re next, wife.”

  He never called her Nallah or Nalli or any other pet nickname as she’d been called as a child. It was always just “wife.” And his eyes were so cold when he looked at her—it chilled her to the bone…

  “Oh, are you well, my dear?” The concerned voice of the sister-nurse who came around to check the comatose patience in the House of Healing startled Nallah out of her painful memories.

  “I thank you, sister—I am well,” she said quickly.

  “Oh, I just thought…you’re crying, dear. In public.” The sister-nurse was old and her ancient, faded blue eyes looked anxious above her black veil. “I just don’t want you to get into trouble,” she whispered kindly.

  “Oh…of course.” Surreptitiously, Nallah used her own white veil to dab at her eyes. It was hard not to cry when she thought of her poor Pitta’s fate, but it must not be done in public or, indeed, in the presence of any man. Her people believed that a woman’s tears made a male weak—the ultimate sin as far as most were concerned. “Forgive me,” she whispered to the kind sister.

  “It’s all right, my dear.” One wrinkled old hand came out from beneath the voluminous black robes the sister wore to pat her own. “I’m sure it’s hard for you, seeing your handsome young husband in such a state. And him so far up the ranks too! I heard he’s a General in the Forces of our glorious God-King.”

  “An Arch-General,” Nallah said, nodding. “Thank you for your concern.”

  “He’ll come around, dearie.” The sister-nurse patted her hand again. “You just wait and see if he doesn’t.”

  I hope not! Nallah thought and then felt bad for her unworthy emotion. Then a kind of defiance rose in her and she curled her small hands into fists. Why shouldn’t she feel that way when Harryx acted as he did? After what he had done to Pitta and all the other small and large cruelties he had visited on her, which went far beyond home discipline…

  She had been shocked to tears by his horrible act when he killed her pet—but somehow she managed not to shed those tears in front of her husband. She looked at him with new eyes from then on and fear began to fill her like cloudy water.

  The next day, while Harryx was at work, she’d gone back home to see her father. She’d been certain at least that Papa would understand.

  Her father was a kind man—doting on his daughters in a way that most men didn’t. He’d had sons as well to carry on his name, so he could afford to be caring to the females in his family. He hadn’t forced their mother to get rid of either Nallah or her sister, even though it would have been well within his rights to demand she abort the female fetuses. Instead, he had kept them and raised his daughters with a gentle hand.

  But even Papa could not help her now. Since the articles of marriage had been signed and she had been sold to Harryx as his wife in the sight of her family and the great God-King who watched over all, she was legally his property. She had no recourse against him—no way to better her situation.

  “You must have angered Harryx,” Papa had said sternly. “You must not anger your husband, Nalli. You have only yourself to blame if he is cruel.”

  “But I wasn’t doing anything Papa,” Nallah had explained, trying to speak though sobs threatened to choke her. “Poor Pitta was just mewing for her food—as she always does. As she always did, I mean,” she added, fresh tears rising to her eyes.

  “Well, Pitta is gone. And you must keep Patta quiet if you wish to keep her,” he father had answered, frowning. “And you must stop these tears. I have been too lenient with you all these years—you know a woman must not cry in front of a man.”

  “I…I know.” Nallah had drawn her breath in tight and swiped at her eyes, trying her best to end her sobbing.

  “Perhaps it would be best if you sent Patta back home to live with your mother and me,” her father said. “We can take care of her for you.”

  But Nallah couldn’t bear to send her one remaining pet away—her father’s house was so far from her own. She would never see Patta again! And she needed company in Harryx’s house. It was so still there—so forbidding.

  In the end, she put her pet out to live in the overgrown wilderness behind the back of the domicile. Patta knew to come home at mealtimes but Nallah fed her outside and the little lanna was safe, for she could climb a tree or a sweet-creeper vine before Harryx could get to her—assuming he wanted to. He mostly ignored her if she wasn’t bothering him—which was how he often treated Nallah herself, unless she made him mad.

  That night was the first time she learned what it was like to truly anger her husband—it was the first night he had beaten her, but not the last.

  She had come home later than expected from her visit to her father’s house—females were not allowed to ride on public transports and some of the footways had been blocked by a crumbled wall, forcing her to take a longer way.

  To her dismay, when she reached the house, her new husband had already been there, looming in the doorway. There had been a look like cold death on his handsome face. Of course she’d had no time to prepare dinner as a proper wife should but even that had not enraged Harryx as much as the fact that Nallah had left the house without his permission.

  “I only went to visit my father,” she tried to tell him. “Please, my husband—call him. He will vouch for my whereabouts all afternoon.”

  “Your father is part of the problem, wife,” he snarled at her as his fury turned from cold to hot. “He let you and your worthless sister go anywhere you wanted unaccompanied—let you run around like whores. Why should I take his word for where you were? How do I know you haven’t just been whoring yourself out to strange men while I’m at work?”

  The very idea had shocked Nallah.

  “My husband, please,” she begged, going down on her knees before him. “You know I would never do such a thing. You know I was a virgin when I came to your bed.”

  That was true and she knew Harryx knew it. It had been one of the few things she had been able to please him in—the fact that no man had touched her before him. It was evidenced by the way she had bled and cried out the first time he took her. He had not been gentle and the results had been painful and frightening though she knew well enough not to complain of it. A woman’s body was for her husband’s pleasure, after all—he could do whatever he chose with her.

  Nallah still shuddered when she remembered that first sexual submission. The thickness of Harryx’s shaft as he shoved himself inside her, the fierce, wild grin on his face as he sawed between her legs, battering her tender insides like a ram. He seemed to enjoy giving her pain and it was all she could do to hold back the tears that filled her throat like salty, choking seawater.

  Thank goodness he didn’t often take her that way.

  “Don’t want to put any pups in you—not yet,” he’d told Nallah roughly. Mostly, he was content to use her mouth which he did nightly when she sank to her knees and submitted to him.

  No more submissions. The very thought of it made her heart feel lighter. Of course, no wife was supposed to look