Ember choked at his words and the thoughtfulness. Bastien had always been that way—except for when he’d accepted Alura’s invitation to dinner.
You can’t hold that against him.
Well, she could. Yet in all fairness to him, he had called her first, and had she not been such a bitch when he asked about it, he wouldn’t have done it. So as much as she’d like to pin it all on his shoulders, she really couldn’t.
She shared as much blame in the fiasco as he did. Unlike the other men in her past, he hadn’t acted behind her back. He’d done everything above board. It’d always been one of his more endearing qualities.
And against her common sense, she leaned back in his arms so that she could touch the dimple on his chin that their son shared. In fact, they shared a lot of traits, which was strange given that they’d never met. “He knows what you look like, Bas.”
“How?”
How? Really? All he had to do was look in a mirror. The child was a clone of his father—which had been extremely painful for her at times. They even had the same warped sense of humor, and the need to lip off at the worst possible time. It’d given her a whole new respect for Bastien’s parents and the fact that they hadn’t drowned him as a child.
She smirked at him. “I gave him a photo of you, long ago. He keeps it in his room, next to his bed. And every night after he says his prayers where he asks the gods to watch over you, he kisses it goodnight and talks to you until he falls asleep.”
Raw torment shadowed his eyes before he reached to redo the settings.
Ember stopped him. “Don’t. Let him meet you. Just once. It’s all he’s ever wanted. You both need this, especially if you’re bent on suicide.”
Bastien wasn’t so sure about that, because as she said, he didn’t think he’d make it out of this alive, but he didn’t want to argue with her anymore. He’d done that enough for ten lifetimes.
Honestly, he just wanted to be inside her. To make love to her until the universe ceased to exist.
And every heartbeat that passed with her squeezed in front of him was its own version of hell.
“I should have taken a bigger ship.”
Ember smiled at the deepness of his tone. “That’ll teach you to be practical.”
She stared at how tense his grip was on the controls. “How long has it been?”
“Since?”
“You had sex?”
Was she serious? “With someone else?”
She squeaked at the question. “Of course. Why would I ask about solo practice?”
His cock jerked at the mere mention of the word as disgust filled him. “Hell, I don’t know.”
Scowling, she leaned back so that she could meet his gaze through his crash helmet as she had yet to put hers back on. “What do you mean you don’t know? You were there, weren’t you?”
He snorted at the ridiculous question that she should know the answer to. “I’m Ravin, Em. If anyone sees the mark on my stomach, they’ll know that I’m wanted. Can’t take the risk.”
“Are you telling me that you haven’t been with anyone since Alura divorced you?”
“Since long before that.”
Both her eyebrows shot up. “Pardon?”
“You have to know that we didn’t have an amicable marriage.” And their divorce had been spectacularly violent, given that her parting gift to him had been a death sentence.
“No… Alura never said anything other than how happy she was and how much you loved her.”
In her dreams only…
“Happy because I seldom went to where she lived and she had all the creds she could spend. We consummated the marriage and then I tried to make the marriage work, but…”
