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He didn't say another word, not for a long time, just looked at her with that singular focus, his jaw tight, his skin warm against hers, his breath fanning over her face. His lips hovered just an inch from hers, that musky scent of his surrounding them in a deadly cocoon.
He slowly brought up his right hand and gripped her jaw in his palm, his fingers and thumb on her cheeks, not painfully but firmly. Tilting her head all the way back as her heart pounded in her chest, the two conflicted sides of her fighting inside herself about the small space between their mouths. Her hands trembled beside her as she clenched them into fists to control the shaking of her body.
"Mind that mouth of yours, wildcat," he spoke softly, lethally, erotically in the space between their lips, the movement almost making them touch. Almost. His voice dropped lower, his eyes glued to hers. "It makes me want to reciprocate. And you don't want my mouth anywhere near you, remember?"
Morana felt her heart thud, her chest rise and fall rapidly. "It wasn't a damn kiss. I bit you."
One side of his lips quirked up even as his eyes heated. "Doesn't matter. I get my mouth on you, and you'll never be the same."
He leaned closer, impossibly closer, his lips right there, right there, but still far away, his hand on her face keeping her from moving both forward and back.
"Choose wisely, Ms. Vitalio."
Before Morana could blink, he smoothly took a step back and let go of her face, inclining his head towards the open elevator, waiting for her to move without saying another word.
In that moment, when he stepped back and gave her the space to choose, between so, so many things, Morana realized that no matter how much she wanted to escape, she could not. She was so entwined into the mess she had created, she wouldn't have been able to go away for long without her conscience poking her. She was so curious, so lured by whatever this bizarre thing between them was, this thing that made her feel safe for the first time in her life even as he promised to kill her, that she could not leave.
She couldn't run.
He wouldn't let her.
Morana gulped and took the step, slowly walking towards the elevator, aware of his vigilant presence behind her, telling her silently that he wouldn't let her go. Not yet. And for some asinine reason, it thrilled her. She wondered if she'd sent him the message subconsciously because she'd been aware of this. Had she?
She didn't know.
That was exactly why Tristan Caine scared her so much. Not because he was killing her – the ‘her’ she had known her entire life.
She admitted the truth to herself as she stepped into the elevator that would take her up again beside him.
Tristan Caine terrified her, but it wasn't because of the death he was bringing her slowly, the death he would bring her one day, the death he raised in her.
No.
It was the life.
‘The more you know, the less you do.’
Morana remembered reading that quote somewhere a long time ago. The words had stuck to her brain, but she’d never truly understood it. Being a certified genius, she'd always believed knowledge was the ultimate power. It was her thirst for knowledge which had made her bold enough to step out of her defined norms, time and again. It was this very belief that had led her into putting in everything she had and making those codes she'd come to dread so much.
Knowledge was power, but in the wrong hands, it was a weapon.
The Alliance had ended twenty years ago. Twenty-two, to be precise.
Two days after her laughable escape attempt, two days of living inside the guest room like an actual guest and not someone despised, the seething mess of Morana's emotions were finally calm.
For the first time in a long, long time, Morana felt in control. She felt she was seeing things clearly and logically again, not letting her emotions run roughshod over her in raging waves. Whether that was because she'd come to face and accept some facts about herself or because Tristan Caine had been largely absent from his own house doing god-knew-what for the two days, Morana just knew her cool, composed head was back and she was grateful. She didn't like feeling off-kilter, uncontrolled by her own body.
And though his absence and lack of pursuit did confuse her to some extent, she'd learned not to put too much thought into what he did or didn't do. The fact was, she was the daughter of Gabriel Vitalio who'd never returned to her prison of a home after leaving. She was taking refuge in the enemy's camp instead. The fact was, that the said enemy had punched her father in full view of his people in his territory and refused to return back to his own when summoned. The fact was, knowing her father, she was getting antsy because he hadn't reacted to any of it.
That wasn't like him. Her father made statements; he retaliated in a way that set examples. To let Tristan Caine get away with something like this wasn't in his DNA. That was why Morana was a little worried, this silence from her father more unnerving than anything else, like the calm before the storm. And in their world, a storm could mean anything from a dead body to a street war. It wasn’t a soothing thought.
As for Lorenzo Maroni, she didn't know how he would react. From what she'd heard of the man, his hands were even dirtier than her father, and Dante had seemed worried about his reaction. But then again, what did she know? Maybe refusing his summons was a normal thing in the Caine-Maroni relationship. If Tristan Caine wasn't worried about it, which she didn't really know if he was, she wouldn't give it much thought either.
Her objective thoughts were focused on two very important things - finding the codes, and end of the Alliance.
Now that she was level-headed and mostly alone in the huge penthouse with the gorgeous view, Morana had a plan. She and the Outfit brothers had been focusing on trying to find the codes and then subsequently destroying them, but from their success so far, it didn't seem very plausible in the near future.
So, she changed the plans and decided she was going to write a new set of codes, and create a software that would completely undo the effects of the original codes the moment they were initialized. Although she wasn't really clear on how she was going to go about it, she knew she had both the capability and the incentive. And since Tristan Caine had been a ghost in his own house, Morana called Dante after waking up to discuss this with him.
