Page 137 of Dancing for the Minotaur

“Not very far at all, as it happens,” Taurex rumbled. “You chose your hiding place poorly.”

Orlov leaned back in his chair. The human should have been frightened, but arrogance apparently outweighed survival instinct.

“I wondered whether you’d figure it out eventually.”

Taurex’s gaze sharpened.

“You knew where I lived.”

“Of course I knew.” Orlov gestured vaguely toward the wall, apparently referring to the surveillance room beyond it. “I know almost everything that happens in this building.”

“You have been watching my domicile.”

“Watching her,” Orlov corrected. “You just happened to be there.”

That distinction made Taurex’s Rage burn hotter. He felt a crimson curtain of pure fury dropping over his vision, turning everything a bloody red.

Orlov, oblivious to the danger he was in, reached for his glass and took a leisurely swallow as though there was not a nearly eight-foot-tall armed Monstrum standing in front of him.

“You made things inconvenient, I’ll give you that. I thought she’d keep dancing long enough for me to bring her around eventually, but then you played the rich alien benefactor and gave her a cushy little office job.” His thin mouth curved. “Very noble, Bull.”

Taurex said nothing. He was struggling to keep himself from throwing down the blaster and ripping this fucker apart with his bare hands. Just the thought that he’d been watching Terra and her family and plotting how to get to them made him so angry he could barely restrain himself.

“I watched you together, you know,” Orlov continued. “Every day she came up to your place. The lunches. The hand-holding. The way you stared at her ass every time she turned around.” He gave Taurex a knowing look. “You wanted her just as badly as I do.”

“Yes,” Taurex said simply, still holding himself back.

Orlov smiled as though Taurex had just confirmed some shared understanding between them.

“The difference is that you were too weak to take what you wanted.” He clenched his fist as though snatching and squeezing something vulnerable and fragile. “She was right there with you—you could have taken her at any time, Bull. Why didn’t you?”

Taurex’s expression did not change but the Rage inside him grew.

“Terra is not something to be taken,” he growled.

Orlov laughed mockingly.

“Oh, spare me the noble alien bullshit. You think because you bought her a few nice clothes and let her play accountant she suddenly became some respectable lady?” His pale eyes hardened. “She’s a stripper. A whore. She takes off her clothes for money and rubs herself all over men. Women like that know exactly what they’re offering.”

Somewhere inside Taurex, a switch flipped. He went suddenly from red hot Rage to cold, remorseless calculation. Orlov was going to die here today. The only question was when.

“She offered a dance,” he said, speaking of Terra. His voice had dropped until it was deeper than a growl. “Nothing more. Whatever you believed you were entitled to beyond that existed only in your own diseased mind.”

Orlov sneered at him.

“You sound just like her. Always drawing lines. Always setting rules. No touching here, no touching there, don’t call me this, don’t do that.” His fingers tightened around the glass. “She’s been teasing me for months.”

“She told you no.”

Orlov shrugged.

“Women say no all the time. That doesn’t mean you should believe them. We all know that ‘no’ really means ‘yes.’ They only put you off for a while to tease you. But all of them are for sale.”

Taurex’s golden eyes narrowed.

“Terra is not for sale,” he said.

Something in his tone finally made Orlov’s smile falter, but only for a second.