Or all of those things?
“I can’t,” she whispered. “You know that.Wecan’t.”
She felt his jaw flex against her back at her words.
Then her hand was fumbling for the handle again, afraid that if she didn’t leave now…she might never want to.
Valerie got the door open and managed to wiggle through it, forcing Dravka to release her.
Then she fled from the Cluster like the coward she was.
Chapter Eleven
“Vauk,” Dravka cursed, leaning his forehead on the closed door that Valerie had escaped through.
Everything in him was telling him to go after her. To find her. To kiss her again. To hold her and never let her go.
But his mind was swimming—partly from the alcohol, partly from that kiss.
His hands shook when he pushed away from the door, stumbling back to his bed pushed against the wall.
We can’t.
That was the last thing she said before she left. Words that Dravka himself had told her. Words that didn’t make any sense to him now.
Because why couldn’t they?
Staring up at the ceiling, he groaned, feeling his unyielding cock throbbing against his belly. Then he cursed again, thinking he might have fucked everything up.
It was a selfish thing to kiss her.
So why didn’t he feel sorry?
* * *
The next morning came slowly.
The alcohol burned through his system quickly, leaving Dravka sober but morose. He remembered everything. He remembered everything about their kiss.
That following morning, he was annoyed and frustrated with himself.
In the light of day, with that fresh dawn that broke over Everton—a fake sunrise that he watched from the Cluster’s single window—he had never felt more caged.
For the first time, he realized that he hadn’t felt a fresh breeze on his skin in almost ten years. It had been twelve years since Kerivu had been destroyed but ten years since he’d come to Everton.
He hadn’t seen a real sunrise in ten years. Only artificial, programmed ones. He almost felt sorry for the Earth colonists. Because many of them had never known any different.
And Valerie…
His Valerie.
She had never seen a real sunrise either. She had a picture of one on the wall of her room downstairs, an old photograph of her home planet.
But she’d never seen one.
Dravka paced in front of the window, feeling like something was trying to crawl its way out of his skin. For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t stand being there. He couldn’t stand never being allowed to leave.
Ten years of his life were gone.
