Page 18 of Rogue: Planet Athion
Oh, God. Was he going to … yep, he was.
I stared, mesmerized, as he worked himself, his eyes on me. His chest began to heave, and then he strode into the tiny washroom, and his grunts and groans of release had me aching again.
Shit, what the fuck was wrong with me? Anton was dead, and I was trapped in my cell with a killer Trad, and all I could think about was touching myself. I was fucked up. So very fucked up. How the heck was I going to get through the next few days sharing a cell with Vex?
He reappeared a moment later, dressed and composed. “I’m sorry about your friend. But it’s kill or be killed in the arena. You know how it works.”
“Yeah, I know that your house is a bunch of sadistic monsters.”
He smiled wryly. “And yet here you are locked in a room with a sadistic monster and completely unharmed.”
There was no arguing with that. “What are you playing at?”
“I’m not playing at anything, Rogue. I’m just trying to survive like everyone else, and fear is a perfect deterrent. People fear you, and they leave you the fuck alone.”
Was he saying his ruthlessness was a façade?
He snorted. “Don’t look at me like that? I’m no saint, trust me. I will kill to survive, but there are some lines I will not cross.” He sat on my bed, his back braced against the wall.
“What kind of lines?”
“I won’t violate anyone, and I refuse to hurt a woman.”
My lips curled. “Tell that to the three human females your house killed.”
He swallowed hard. “I’m one man amidst eight sex-starved, drug-addled Trads. I did what I could, and when the time came, I ended their lives quickly to save them further pain.”
“Youkilled them?”
He met my gaze levelly. “Yes. And if it had looked like we were about to win the fight today, I would have killed you too.” He canted his head. “But I’d heard about your berserker move. The blind rage that turns you into a killing machine, and you were lucky it came out on the sand today.”
“Lucky?” Anger simmered in my veins. “I lost my best friend today. I lost …” My voice cracked as comprehension dawned on his features.
“You loved him.”
I closed my eyes. “There can be no love in this place. There can be no attachments. I know that, I know that, but still …”
“You should get some rest,” he said. “There are many more days of loss to come. Be grateful that for your friend the confinement is over. Your friend is now free.”
I couldn’t keep the disgust off my face. “I think he’d rather be alive because life means hope.”
He let out a sharp bark of laughter and then sobered when he saw I was deadly serious. “Be careful that your optimism doesn’t burn you, Rogue. After a decade in this place, you may want to use that same optimism to hang yourself.”
A decade? “Is that how long you’ve been here?”
His lips curled down. “I’m not into telling stories. Get some sleep. I won’t touch you, not unless you ask me to. But I warn you, when you do ask, I may not be able to stop.”
“Thanks for the warning, but I don’t think that will be an issue.”
We stared each other down for a moment, and then he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He could have taken me up against the wall. He could have allowed Ripper to kill me in the arena, but he hadn’t. He’d been playing a game, a game where he became the feared, where he managed to survive for a decade in this godforsaken shit hole.
He wouldn’t hurt me. The knowledge was now a certainty in my brain, but the bunk wasn’t built for two, and the thought of being squished up against him was not appealing … Okay, it was too appealing, especially when my body was being a horny, confused bitch. I needed alone time. I needed to grieve and cry. Yes, there were more tears, so many more. My chest began to ache.
I crossed my arms. “We can’t share it.”
His eyes remained closed. “In that case, you can sleep on the floor. I may not be into forcing myself on a woman, but I am most definitely into sleeping on a bed.”
Fuck. I picked the blanket Marlon had wrapped me in off the floor and draped it over my shoulders before walking past him to the closed hatch.
