His lips trembled for a split second before they were pursed again, a movement so minute, so quick, so real she’d have missed it had she not been standing so close to him.
His jaw clenched.
Morana let his chin go and looked down. “How can you even stand to look at me? God, how can you let me stay here when you hate me for…”
“I never hated you for that.”
Barely a whisper but the words reached her.
Her eyes swung up to his. His were still devoid of all emotions.
But she knew he was telling the truth. A man like him, who’d made his hatred so honest since the beginning wouldn’t lie about it when blatantly questioned.
“Then what do you hate me for?” she asked softly, all her speculations, confusions, crashing a hard death.
The light in the room dimmed even more, shadows elongating as the clouds took over the sky.
He broke their gaze, looking away.
She waited for him to take a few breaths, waited for him to look back at her, waited for him to speak. He didn’t.
Anger flooded her veins with surprising speed.
Grabbing a hold of his bicep, she shook it, tried to shake it, gritting her teeth. “Tell me, damn you! Tell me why you want to kill me. Tell me why you didn’t when you could have. Tell me why you’re so bothered with hurting me when you promise me my death with every word that you speak. Tell me!”
She was yelling by the end of her tirade, shaking his arm, her anger, her confusion, her frustration, her desire, all warring in a way she’d been so unfamiliar with before she’d met him, a way that had become her bedside companion now. She’d been abducted along with twenty-five other little girls, including his sister, and nobody had returned but her. She’d never been told this, never even had any indications, but clearly, it had been important enough for the anonymous person to tell her. And even though it could have been an understandable reason for his hatred, it wasn’t a reason at all.
What the fuck was then?
His blue eyes speared hers, a spark of anger in them giving them sudden life. His free hand came up to take a hold of her wrist as he pulled her hand away from that taut bicep, pulling her closer until suddenly they were nose to nose, his chest rising and falling as rapidly as hers, her heart pounding with a vengeance as she glared at him.
“I don’t owe you a fucking thing,” he growled inches away from her mouth. “I do what I do. Only I need to know the reasons for it.”
Morana growled back. “Not when they affect other people, which in this case happens to be me.”
“Not my problem.”
She narrowed her eyes. “It is if I start believing you’re just full of shit and hot air. You’re losing your touch, Predator.”
His lips curled slightly at her sneering tone even as his eyes bore down upon hers with unwavering intensity, without a hint of amusement.
“You forget I haven’t really touched you at all.”
Her breath hitched even as she understood his deflection. He released her hand and climbed the stairs three at a time, his taut ass flexing as Morana watched him disappear back inside his room, once again leaving her without any answer at all.
Morana closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and walked to her room, deciding, once and for all, that she was going to get some answers from somewhere no matter what she had to do. She needed those answers to keep hold on her sanity, which she could feel slipping away with multiple epiphanies sinking into her – the realization that she’d been a part of something so horrific at such a young age; the realization that only she had been lucky enough to have been recovered; the realization that everyone had deliberately kept her in the dark for some reason.
Her bed was a mess from tossing and turning all night. Quickly making the bed, she dressed in dark jeans and the first top she could find from Amara’s collection. Putting on flats, she knotted her hair on top, adjusted her glasses, grabbed her keys and her gun, and walked out.
Tristan Caine was in the kitchen, surprisingly dressed and freshly showered from the looks of it. He didn’t look up at her as he whipped eggs efficiently, his wrist moving at a quick speed, and she didn’t stop on the way to the elevator, not sparing him another glance.
“Going somewhere?”
Duh, asshole.
She stayed silent and kept walking, her keys digging into her palm.
“The guards won’t let you out until I say so.”