Read Online Midnight Soul by Kristen Ashley - Free Book Online Page B

learned that as well. In
the past, there needn’t even be a transgression for Kristian or I
to earn a punishment. No, our father simply had to be in the
mood.
    And to our misfortune, he was in the mood
often.
    “You endure, my daughter, she leaves him
alone,” he agreed.
    But I knew by his expression. I knew my
transgression, Kristian’s, had earned a punishment even I might not
be able to survive.
    Regardless, I nodded. On shaking legs I
focused all efforts on keeping me upright, I moved to the hook.
    I was twelve when they’d stopped binding my
wrists and hanging me from the hook. From that point, it was part
of the punishment to keep my fingers curled around, hold myself up,
not fall.
    Never fall.
    And tonight, I definitely could not fall.
    When I arrived below the hook, I turned my
back to my father and pulled the thin straps of my silk nightgown
down my shoulders and arms. I felt the material drift down my skin
to catch on my hips.
    Bare up top, I took in a deep breath, closed
my eyes tight then set my jaw.
    I opened my eyes, lifted my hands and curled
my fingers around the cold steel of the hook.
    “I begin, my sweet.” I heard my father say
and knew he was communicating with my mother. A mother who was not
there but could be in a blink if there weren’t enchantments
protecting the Winter Palace.
    No, she was close to Kristian, ready to
complete the punishment should I fall.
    On that thought, my fingers gripped the hook
tighter.
    He did not delay in doing as he said he
would.
    The first lash I barely felt. Years of this,
the scar tissue ran deep.
    He would get there, though. He always
did.
    No, at that point it was the whip whistling
through the air, the crack, the sinister whisper as it snaked
against my flesh that could unravel my mind.
    In order to fight it, I thought of Antoine.
His smile. The sound of his laughter. The change in his eyes when
I’d bare even an inch of flesh to him. The touch of his fingers as
they drifted over my skin.
    Another lash came and I kept hold of these
thoughts.
    Then another. And more.
    But I’d closed my eyes and I saw only
Antoine. Felt only Antoine’s touch.
    Until the first rivulet of blood glided over
the upper swell of my hip to soak into the silk of my
nightgown.
    Then, suddenly, I saw Noc and the fierceness
in his face when he’d said he wouldn’t even blink at turning
traitor to save the woman he loved.
    The next lash came, and the next, the pain
intensifying with each strike, but I focused on Noc and his
fierceness, focused further on something alien to me.
    Hope.
    In this instance it was the hope that he
found a woman he could love that much, but more, a woman worthy of
that kind of love.
    I kept this focus through the next lash.
    And the next.
    It continued and I could no longer think of
Noc. Or Antoine. Or anything but keeping my hands curled around
that hook, trying to block out the sweat of that effort mingling
with the blood trailing down my body. Attempting to force my
shallow panting into deeper breaths to beat back the pain. Blinking
rapidly as dull cloudbursts exploded behind my eyes threatening to
blind me, take me to a blissful, painless oblivion.
    There was none of that for me. Not Franka
Drakkar. I’d been born to agony and, as ever, simply had to
endure.
    More lashes and I feared I couldn’t withstand
it. It was worse than ever before. Far worse. As my transgression
had been.
    My hands had gone beyond clammy, they were
slipping on the hook and I was terrified I’d lose hold.
    I couldn’t lose hold.
    Mother was close to Kristian. She could be
with him in seconds.
    He’d never endure.
    Another lash and for the first time I cried
out as it hit, tearing through my flesh, feeling like it glanced
across my spine.
    When it was done, my heated body all of a
sudden iced over with fear that I’d lost consciousness when I heard
the impossibility of a shocked feminine gasp and right on its heels
an enraged, “Fucking hell. What the fuck ?”
    Noc’s