“That song.” He stops. Turns his head, and I ask. “What was the song from last night?”
He pauses at the threshold. Doesn't turn around. I don't think he'll answer me, but he speaks. “A song my mother used to sing to me when I was young.”
He takes one step into the corridor. “The kitchen will send breakfast. The investigation continues at 0900.”
I should let him go. Should accept the retreat he's offering and the walls he's trying to rebuild between us. Should remember that he's still my captor and I'm still his property and everything that happened in this room changes nothing about the fundamental architecture of our situation. He needs me functional. That's all this was.
Instead, I say, “Thank you. For staying. For... all of it.”
His shoulders stiffen. I think he'll turn, will look at me and acknowledge what we both understand about the night we shared, but he's through the door without another word. The door shuts after him and the room is emptier without him. The carved stone ceiling stares back at me, unchanged by what happened beneath it, and I lie in sheets that still hold wherehis body pressed into the mattress, tracing the ghost of his heat across my skin.
I trace the scar on my forearm, that ridge of healed tissue that has grounded me through every loss. His heat is another scar now. Another reminder. I'll carry what he gave me last night for as long as I carry everything else I've survived.
A wall that should have held has crumbled between us, and I'm not certain whether what we're building in its place will save me or destroy me. Orange light fills my room with shades of rust and amber, and I let the morning settle into my bones alongside the truth I can no longer deny.
I'm not afraid of him anymore. That might be the most dangerous thing of all.
Chapter Eleven
DRAZEX
The reports blur on my display, numbers and logistics that should command my full attention dissolving into meaningless shapes while my thoughts circle back to where they have no business dwelling. Three hours since I left her quarters. Three hours since I walked away from the heat of her body pressed against mine, her breath evening into sleep while I held her through the dark hours and let myself be someone I barely recognized.
I hummed the song. My mother's song, the melody I haven't made since her blood stained the execution platform and my father's hand cracked across my face for weeping. The notes rose from a place I thought I'd sealed off decades ago, called forth by the trembling female in my arms who shattered against my chest and let me witness every jagged piece.
The memory lodges beneath my sternum now, heavier than any blade wound I've survived. Her scent clings to my skin despite the hours that pass, soap and heat and the particularsweetness that belongs only to her, and my body refuses to release the ghost of her weight against my chest.
Love makes you weak.My father's lessons carve through my thoughts, beaten into me before I understood what lessons cost.It made her betray us.
I am not in love. The denial rises automatic, reflexive, the same wall I've been reconstructing since dawn. The female is an asset. A complication. A debt contract with skills that serve House Draven's interests. Whatever happened in her quarters changes nothing about our arrangement.
The lie tastes bitter on my tongue.
I reach for the security controls, pulling up the feed from the medical bay because I cannot stop myself. She appears on my display in the glow of the medical bay's lighting, bent over the analysis equipment I acquired for her, her lips moving as she talks to herself.
The rigid tension that has defined her posture since her arrival has eased into stillness, her spine carrying less of the burden that had been pressing down on her. Settled. The word surfaces, and ice threads through my veins.
She should be more guarded after what passed between us. I should never show softness. It’s a side of me I'd thought dead.
She moves through the medical bay like a female who has stopped expecting the ground to collapse beneath her feet. She's staying. Not physically, not in any manner the contract doesn't already guarantee, but her spirit has ceased fighting to escape. Her gaze flicks to the camera I'm looking at her through and her plump lips curve before she goes back to her work.
I want her in my arms again. Want her to fall asleep knowing she's safest next to me, her body tucked against mine, her breath warm on my throat. I want to touch her through the night, scent her, taste the salt of her skin on my tongue. I want to bury my face between her thighs and coat my tongue with her pleasureuntil she shatters against my mouth. Bury my cock in her and never pull out. Let her live the rest of her years impaled on me, filled and claimed and ruined for anyone else.
My cock strains against my pants, the ridge of it pressing hard enough to ache.
I can't think this way. But she smiled at me, knowing I'd be watching, and I was powerless against the flood. A colder truth follows: if I can see the shift in her, others will too. They'll see that she matters to me and things that matter to me become weapons in the hands of those who would destroy me.
I close the feed before the hunger can sink its teeth any deeper. She needs to work. I need distance. I need the hours between now and whenever I next see her to rebuild the defenses she keeps dismantling. The distance lasts approximately three hours before I manufacture a reason to check on her.
The medical bay doors open at my approach, and she looks up from the console. Our gazes lock, and the air compresses into a density too thick to breathe.
“Progress?” The word scrapes out of me, raw from the effort of maintaining distance when my cock presses hard against the seam of my pants.
Her gaze narrows as it travels over me, lingering on the evidence of what she does to me before returning to my face. She sees. I can hide nothing from this female.
“Thank you for asking. I've made significant progress.” She turns back to the display, gesturing for me to join her at the console, and I close the distance because the investigation demands it. Not because her proximity makes the restless ache in my chest ease into a bearable rhythm. “The samples from the Bazaar allowed me to isolate the compound's molecular signature. Here.”
Her analysis fills the screen, chemical structures annotated in her neat hand. I track the data without comprehending it, tooaware of how close she stands, how her heat reaches me across the remaining inches, how the memory of her body pressed against mine keeps surfacing despite every effort to drown it.
