She would not be surprised nor show any sign of fear or remorse. She might have been able to pull it off, too if he hadn't moved so damned fast. One minute she was looking at him with her chin raised defiantly and her eyes practically begging him to do something in retaliation.
The next, he was standing directly in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms tightly. She didn't have to look down to know that the skin beneath the beds of his fingers was going white.
The moment he let her go that skin would turn bright red, and the next morning she would have five little bruises on each arm that looked like Marino's fingers. All of this in the time it took to blink her eyes and for the first time since waking up in the dungeon Juri was really, truly afraid.
"You're damned determined to have it the hard way, aren't you?" He snarled, most of the pretense of his Victorian-era gentility gone.
