Finally, she couldn’t help but ask, “Do you like living on Rozun?”
Devix took a little while to answer but eventually he admitted, “I do.”
“Then I’m glad for you,” she murmured.
“How can you stand it?” he wondered, his voice edging on something.“How can you be glad for me when you know what I would do to secure my own freedom?”
Cara leveled him a look.“Because one of us deserves to be happy out of this situation.Why should we both be miserable?”
“Do not say that,” he rasped.“You know nothing of what I deserve but it certainly is not freedom.I should still be suffering on Petrika.Perhaps that is exactly what I deserve.”
Cara’s lips parted when she realized what she was witnessing.His guilt.
“I’m a pretty good judge of character,” she told him.“I’ve steered clear of the kindest of faces because I knew they masked a devil.And I’ve befriended people that would make others do a double-take, but my instincts have always been right.”Devix tensed.“And my instincts tell me that you are not the villain you believe yourself to be.”
“You do not know me,” he challenged.
“I’ve seen enough,” she shot back.“If you belonged on Petrika, you wouldn’t have cut off my chains or left the room when I wanted to bathe.You wouldn’t have let me roam around the ship when I told you I hated to be locked in.You wouldn’t have given into my request that you train me.And you certainly wouldn’t have praised me when I punched you in the balls.If you were the villain you think you are, you would’ve have done any of that.You would’ve shoved your hand up my cloak from the moment we met, just like that Baquarian.”
Cara realized, all at once, that she was treading in dangerous territory.Devix’s eyes were blazing and his shoulders were bunched so tight that she thought his muscles might snap.
He growled quietly, “What makes you think I do not want to?”
Cara inhaled a quiet, quick breath.But it wasn’t fear she felt.It was…unexpected desire.
“What?” she whispered.
He pushed out of his seat and Cara was more than aware of just how big he was.
His voice was almost mocking, dipped with rage.“What makes you think I have not thought about fucking you?Fucking you so hard that you feel me in your cunt for the rest of your life span,” he rasped, his gaze steady.Her blood roared in her ears and she couldn’t look away.“Stop telling me you think I am better than that Baquarian filth.I am not.I am worse.”
And with that, he turned to the elevator, leaving his goblet behind.
She felt a multitude of emotions, but when he turned away from her, she gave a husky bout of laughter, dipped in anger.Her voice sounded like sandpaper when she said, “Again, you prove me right, Devix.If you were worse, you would have fucked me already.”
“There is still time, female,” he warned.His voice curled around her insides.
And then he left.
Cara let out a long breath, staring straight into the darkness and seeing nothing.Eventually, she drained the goblet on the console, feeling it settle inside her.And then she returned to her quarters, briefly glancing at Devix’s closed door before she stepped into her own.
And whether it was the alcohol, or his words, or the jumble of strange, confusing emotions she felt inside, the moment she slid under the furs on her bed, her hand trailed between her legs.
And unlike in the shower, when she brushed over her clit and found her center dripping wet, this time she didn’t care.
She orgasmed in record time, biting her lip to muffle her gasp as her back arched off the bed from the pleasure of it.
Then, she fell into the most restless sleep of her life.
ELEVEN
Devix hardly slept that night, even though he’d hardly slept the previous night too…and the night before when he’d stayed awake on Petrika to watch over his female as she rested.He was running on low energy, but the beautiful peace of sleep would not come.
And he hadn’t had enough Brew to dull his senses.He hadn’t had enough Brew to stop the words repeating in his mind, the crude threats he’d made, the way Cara’s eyes glinted in the light as she said she was glad for his freedom, even when it meant her own, the way she told him he wasn’t a villain.
But he was.
Sleep wouldn’t come to him because self-hatred and disgust had taken hold, long before he’d ever met Cara.Now, it was growing, feeding off such a strong foundation, such deep, dark roots.
