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Voice catching, I thought to distract him. “You made this food?”
A short-lived rumble broke free of his chest, and I was certain that below the table thatthingbetween his legs pulsated in anticipation. “I wasn’t sure how long you might sleep, or I would have prepared more.”
There were so many dishes already. Enough food to feed ten women. “Was it hard to do?”
“Wild vorec males hunt for their mates, reserving the best parts of their kill for their female. Hybrid males are driven to serve their mate in a similar fashion. I’ve had over a century to hone my skills.”
Another reminder that he was so much older despite his ageless appearance. “Over a century? You must be disappointed I’m so young.”
The knocking in his chest was anything but disappointed. “I know my age is intimidating to you, my beloved Lorieyn. I’ll admit, our dynamic is complicated. I have beentheauthority figure in your life since you were a girl. When you were a child and required correction, it was my duty to provide it. Now, you are my mate. The shift in your perspective from seeing me as a strict overlord to accommodating lover will evolve naturally. As you get to know me, you may find that I do have some pleasant qualities.”
Doubtful.
Imagining a world where I might have affection for such a man was unthinkable. “You may have been a decent man before you heard my song, but you’ve used your obsession as justification to be a monster.”
“Only when pressed to be one,” he answered softly, the hinted warning clear.
A man like him would never have remorse for what took place on his office floor.
Staring at me with such open longing, Cyderial said, “There is so much misunderstanding between us. You may resent the rigors of academy life, but hard training assured your safety and survival. In my keeping, you remained untouched, unharmed, and became well-educated.”
Whatever was between us ran much deeper than something as common as misunderstandings. I felt real, burning hate in my hearts. “The harder you restricted my freedoms, the more I rebelled, Cyderial. Did you imagine I sat in my room behaving myself in the face of each injustice? Learning how to escape your vault didn’t take that long.” Eager to strike at him the only way I might, I challenged his precious concept of his little mate. “I was not untouched.”
Unflappable, he leaned back in his fancy chair. “You are uncomfortable with intimacy, so you’re trying to goad me into anger.”
Showing teeth, I hissed, “You terminated our annual visits with our birthmothers. You stole our brothers. You hung children. And now I find that all of it was done so you could keep me to yourself? Well, I wasn’t yours. I discovered ways to get out. I did walk in the dark, looking for comfort, and I found it.” Clawing white linen on that table set for two, I growled, “And I liked it.”
There was no roar or explosion of anger, no shouted castigation about the dangers of boys, just a long silence and unbroken stare.
“Did you hear me? I let anyone I found in the dark touch me in any way they wanted.” Why wasn’t he storming around the room and threatening me with pain?
Calm, his voice gentle, he said, “I could not be there for you in that way when you were younger. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
Reaching for a serving spoon, he began to fill his plate with the leftover food between us. “If you care about them at all, never let me know their names.”
I didn’t even know their names.
Filling his plate, he said, “I will admit there were errors regarding the mental effects of female containment.” The smile was gone, and his eyes dimmed. “At our last appointment, you claimed you had been trained to fear grown men, thus avoiding the listdespite the fact that you clearly had unmet physical needs. I’ve thought over your statement a great deal. Perhaps I should have seduced you once you came of age, instead of allowing you four more years to develop an unhealthy fear of men and a misinformed obsession with the fog.”
I had been trying to strike at him, but he had turned the blade and stabbed me straight in the hearts. “How dare you! You may have controlled my environment and watched me grow up, but don’t think you understand my desires at all. You may have mated me against my will, and I might be trapped in your house for now, but I will go into the fog. You can’t stop me forever!”
Still collected, despite my open hostility, he gently offered, “I do know you. Your favorite color is pink, a hard color to come by at the academy and the reason you stole that particular geode off my shelf when we first met. I know you will take any sweets offered to you by humans when you think no one is looking. You hum when you’re bored and manipulate your test scores for amusement. I know you lean to the left before you lunge and leave your side open every time you parry. I know you are deeply devoted to your sisters. Brave enough to confront me about the terms of their keeping. You think we keep the females stressed by forcing them to accommodate male training schedules and clothing standards. It’s never that I didn’t want you to embrace your feminine nature. It’s that my self-control extended only so far.”
His gaze grew starved, but not for the food on his plate. “Your presence has a power over me that you cannot imagine. The number of times I almost dragged you into the shadows to steal a kiss.... It was better for both of us if you were outfitted in a minimally appealing manner. And I know that, statistically, at least ten other males—both children and adults—at the academy are stalking their mate through her formative years. Protocols are in place to reduce the potential for incidents. Contrary to what you believe, I do not enjoy hanging recruits. You are lucky nothing happened when you experimented in the dark. Unlike you, I have seen the damage an inexperienced male can inflict, even when he is well-meaning, upon a girl. Not to mention males who rape just for the fun of it.”
Squaring my shoulders, I looked him dead in the eye. “Was it fun when you raped me?”
That caught him, stopped him right in his holier-than-thou tracks.
His next words were chosen with care. “I lured you and seduced you. I confused you and used force. You were frightened when I held you down, and cried when my cock worked its way inside a part of your body that had just known great pain. But when you were not resistant or afraid, you felt pleasure and were gloriously responsive. As your fear of me diminishes, you will find that nature knew exactly what it was doing when it created us for one another.”
I had no response to his convenient change of subject. Telling his side of a history that was supposed to… what? Impress me? “You should have chosen someone else.”
But it didn’t work that way. Ultimately, the sad irony was that he had no more choice than I had. The song chose for the male.
Looking at me with adoration, he said, “I am so sorry it could not have been a different way between us.”
