Grunting at that, he returned to reading.
“So where do you intend to sleep, Captain Bane?”
With a deep growl, he slammed his book shut and set it on his desk. “Apparently, in my bed, as you seem to have no interest in using it for yourself. Am thinking one of us should get some use out of it in these wee hours. Aren’t you the least bit tired?”
For some reason she couldn’t even begin to fathom, an image of him in said bunk went through her mind. Followed by a thought so scandalous that it caused her entire face to heat up.
He stood slowly. “Careful where your thoughts lead you, lass.” As he headed for the door, she stopped him.
“Can you hear my thoughts?”
“I can read your expressions, and they lay bare everything in your mind.”
Heavens, he was astute and frightening. And still she dropped her gaze to his lips. She’d never kissed a man before. Had never wanted to.
Until now.
She didn’t even know why. Bane was completely unacceptable to her. He was a beast and a terror. A man who liked to intimidate and frighten others.
And yet …
“What made you marry a Deruvian if you hate them so?”
Devyl winced at a question that shredded what little blackened soul he had left. He didn’t intend to answer. He never answered such questions, as they offended him and were no one’s business.
But his lips didn’t listen. Like everything and everyone else in the universe, they betrayed him. “Vine was kind to me.”
Cameron scowled deeply at such a shocking, unexpected answer. “Kind?”
“Aye, Miss Jack. When you’ve never been fed anything save insults, degradation, and horror, a little kindness goes a long way.” And with that he left her to seek fresh air and a clear head.
That was what he intended. Unfortunately, the past was a treacherous bitch who forever sought to bring him to his knees. Tonight that whore was after him with a vengeance, churning up images he’d rather see buried for eternity.
Except for one.
It was the only comfort he’d ever known. And it’d come to him on the night he’d murdered his parents.
Or maybe “murdered” was a bit strong, given that it was self-preservation. After all, his bastard father had been trying to kill him first. And for what crime? Having the nerve to protect his sisters.
Even now, he could feel the heat of the fire on his face as his sisters had cried in the shadows.
While their mother’s shrieks as she begged for mercy echoed against stone walls, they’d come running to his room, where he’d been trying to ignore his mother’s pain. Not because he didn’t care, but because the one time he’d tried to stand up for his mother as a boy, she’d punished him for it far worse than his father had.
“He’s my husband, boy! And your father! You don’t ever raise a hand to your parents!”
So while he hated to see his mother beaten, he’d learned to leave his parents alone to deal with it.
Until that night.
He hadn’t known what the fight between his mother and father was about—it could have been anything from his father’s dinner hadn’t been salted properly to his mother had put her shoes in the wrong place.
At least not until Edyth and Elf had burst into his room to hide. Bemused by their peculiar act, he’d scowled at them. Though none of them liked the sounds of their parents fighting, they were well accustomed to the routine familiarity of it.
Like him, his sisters normally stayed in their beds and pretended to sleep through the cacophony.
Yet this night, everything was different. The fact that Edyth had come into his room was strange in and of itself. Barely a year older than him, she had never thought much of her younger brother. Other than to use him as a target for her acerbic tongue and ridicule. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when they’d gotten along.
So for her to seek him out was a rare event indeed. Elf, on the other hand, had run to his bed and thrown herself against him to weep such horrendous wails that he’d feared for her health.
