Page 81 of Bought to Break
‘Not the Collector, not yet, but the agent has him. He’s safe for now.’
‘Safe?’ she all but screamed.
‘Lower your voice, Lana!’ he snapped.
‘Safe?’ she asked in a lower voice. ‘The Collector did awful things to him. Awful things. He is not “safe”. We have to get him back!’
Kane let the reins go for a moment and grasped Lana by the shoulders gently. ‘He is safe for the moment. It will take time for them to reach their destination. Sorin will not be harmed – not yet.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know all this? Have you been spying?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘I … heard your plan on the ship. You thought I was asleep. The rest Sorin told me.’
‘Sorin told you?’ he asked incredulously, taking up the reins again. ‘He never speaks of that time. And Viktor? Do you know his sorry tale as well?’
Lana hesitated and then nodded. ‘He told me about his wife and his children.’ She looked back at him. ‘Yours is the only story I don’t know,’ she said softly, and he suddenly ached to tell her, speak to her about things he’d never said aloud to anyone. But he resisted.
‘You’ll ride with me to the Forge,’ he said gruffly. ‘I didn’t think to bring your horse. He will have gone with Viktor’s and Sorin’s by now.’
Her back straight, she nodded and turned her face back to the road in front of them. They rode well into the night, Kane estimating that if they did so every day, they’d catch up with Viktor by the fifth afternoon.
They dismounted and Lana immediately gathered some sticks and twigs for a fire while he unpacked their bedrolls and made them a simple dinner. They ate in silence, Kane glancing at her frequently while she stared into the flames.
‘What else did you hear on the ship?’ he finally asked.
‘Nothing else.’
‘Didn’t your parents teach you not to eavesdrop?’
‘Well, my mother died when I was a child, so if she did, I don’t remember. As for my father, well, we can’t really ask him, can we?’ she parried.
Of course, her mother died of an illness; Viktor had mentioned it. And he had killed her father, though the bastard had deserved it as far as he could tell. He changed the subject abruptly. ‘What happened at the cottage?’
‘Nothing.’
‘She didn’t do the ritual?’
‘Oh. The ritual. Yes. She did that and cured me, of course.’ She seemed flustered and didn’t look at him.
He leant forward and turned her face towards him. She looked down. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
‘Nothing,’ she said too quickly, pulling out of his grasp. ‘Though I suppose you could just make me tell you if you really thought I was hiding something.’
Kane took in the sight of her for a moment, from her plaited red hair to the durable hobnail shoes she wore – courtesy of the woman, he guessed – and felt his heart begin to pound in his chest. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you want me to tell you what to do? To command you? To give you no choice?’ He shifted closer. ‘What would you like me to make you do, I wonder,’ he murmured in her ear.
She retreated from him slightly, and he could tell that it excited as well as terrified her.
‘Nothing, Kane. I don’t want you to make me do anything.’
He let out a snort. ‘I should probably tell you that my gift doesn’t work on you. I should have before. Now that we are unit-bound it wouldn’t anyway, but even before that you fought me harder than anyone I’ve never met.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked softly.
‘Because I didn’t like the power you had over me.’
She sat back and looked at him and it was if she was really seeing him for the first time.
‘Will you answer me something?’
‘Ask.’
