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Tears blurred her vision for a good couple of minutes. All she’d wanted was to swim in the river and rejuvenate! That Gray was keeping her from that made her hate him more than ever.
She’d never tell him anything! Not. One. Word.
At least she was clean now.
The bedroom door’s bolts clanged like a warning, and she wrapped a towel around her body before she padded back into the bedroom just as the door opened. The scent of meat hit her first before the vision of her captor hit her eyeballs next. It wasn’t fair he was so indecently hot. It would have been better if he’d had horns and a tail.
“Here’s some clothes for you,” he said, holding up a cloth bag as though he held up a peace offering.
She nodded, and took the bag off him before retreating back into the bathroom and shoving on the underwear he’d provided—how the hell had he worked out her sizing?—comfortable white cotton pants and a pink blouse.
She wrinkled her nose in the mirror. This was sonother style. So why did the colors suit her so perfectly along with the fit of the clothes? Annoyed somehow that he’d gotten it so right, she stomped back out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where Gray waited cross-legged for her on the floor.
“Hungry?” he asked, retrieving a takeout container from a bag. He lifted off its lid and a waft of peanut sauce, meat and cooked vegetables almost made her stagger, her stomach growling fitfully.
He looked at her with a wry smile as he handed her a plastic fork along with the container. “This one is satay lamb with vegetables. I also bought fried rice, and sweet and sour pork.”
She plonked herself down opposite him and the food, wishing it didn’t feel so intimate sitting so close to him while she took his offering and devoured it along with the lone prawn cracker that came with the order.
Gray ate a couple of mouthfuls from each container. He seemed more fascinated in watching her eat. “It’s a good thing I left Bongo in the kitchen, he would have begged you for half the food and made you go hungry.”
She leaned over and pronged some pieces of pork onto her fork. If he wasn’t hungry then she most certainly was! “I wouldn’t have let him starve,” she refuted sharply, before shoveling the meat into her mouth.
“Don’t worry, he’s not going hungry. He was demolishing his favorite dish when I left him to feed you.”
She tossed her fork into her empty dish, wishing he’d actually brought chopsticks instead of a plastic fork so that she had a weapon to use on him. He was clearly too smart to do that. Putting a hand to her mouth, she quietly belched, that it came out like a thunderclap told her she’d probably eaten too much.
Gray chuckled. “In some cultures on Earth, belching is considered polite.”
She leaned back on outspread hands, her arms propping her up. “What about on your planet?” she asked. “Do your people approve of eating like a pig and belching afterward?”
He dabbed at one corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. “I believe you’re here to answer my questions.”
She snorted. “You expect information out of me while being unwilling to impart anything about yourself. Sorry, that isn’t going to work with me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re my prisoner, Sienna. And I’m sure you’ll agree that so far I’ve treated you more than admirably.”
“What do you want, a medal?” she snapped. “You’re holding me here against my will! That doesn’t make you a hero.”
“If you look at it from my perspective, having you here means you’re safe from your enemy.”
“The only enemy I see here isyou! And what makes you think the Dronians aren’t even now ready to burst through the doors? Three little bolts on the door aren’t going to be enough to hold them back.”
He sighed heavily. “You need to have more faith in myself and my people’s technology. The Dronians will attack our planet next because of our powers, not because we haverares. Our power is our technology.”
“If you have such great technology, then why don’t you use it against the Dronians,” she snapped. “There is nothing I can tell you that will make the tiniest bit of difference in your fight against them.”
“Our technology can only do so much,” he said quietly. “While the Dronians have countless soldiers, the population of my people grows smaller every generation. There aren’t enough of us to fight back, not even with our superior technology.”
“Then let’s hope the remaining seven of us Strazanians don’t get killed anytime soon,” she said stiffly.
He nodded. “At least I know you’ll be safe.”
A shudder of something too close to grief moved through her. “I’d rather take my chances on the train, free to come and go as I pleased.”
“Butwereyou free?” he asked. “If you truly were you would never have chosen a carriage to live in, would you? You would never have had to use your powers to make people believe you were someone else.”
She gaped. “How much do you know about me?’
