Page 86 of Fighting Gravity
Still, he wouldn’t look at me and I couldn’t help feeling like it was out of anger. But why the hell should he be angry with me? I wanted to ask, but my tongue was like a stone in my mouth. It took everything I had to form words.
“You spared them?” I said softly.
His face tightened like he was holding back a beast within, but he didn’t answer me. I dared to step closer to him, desperate to know exactly what happened.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in an eerily low tone. “What matters is that my crew is questioning me now. Almost as much as I’m questioning myself.”
I took a slow, deep breath to compose myself, beginning to understand his words. I thought I was starting to feel something for him and those feelings were crushed when I thought he was going to destroy a human vessel without a thought for me.
But then he surprised me by sparing them when he didn’t have to.
I did the unthinkable at that moment. I did something I never imagined I’d do for anyone, but with Rhone, I hadn’t felt like myself since day one.
I took one more step toward him and slowly lowered myself down onto my knees in front of him. My heart was racing because I knew what the gesture entailed and it terrified me beyond measure.
But it finally drew his gaze. The gold irises in his eyes flicked toward me, suddenly intrigued. I willed myself to keep my eyes up because I wasn’t surrendering. Not entirely. I was simply showing gratitude. At least, I thought I was.
Maybe it was more.
He stared at me for a long while, not moving a muscle, and then narrowed his eyes with suspicion. Then he finally unfolded from his chair and stood tall over my kneeling form. My heart was pounding loudly in my ears. His groin was level with my face and my fingers twitched to undo the leathers covering him. His Thel mildly thrummed between us and I let it in. I let it consume me and bring me back from the rage I was feeling only moments ago.
Rhone had shocked me again. He shattered my expectations and had proven himself more than a monster. I wanted to say so, but instead, I found myself craning my neck to look up at him, speechless.
He was a beast. A ferocious, deadly beast that could reach down and snap my neck if he wanted. Heat flooded my veins knowing that he had every opportunity since we met and hadn’t done it.
His head cocked slightly to one side as he regarded me on my knees before him. It was exactly where he wanted me from the beginning and it was like he didn’t believe me yet. When his hand slowly reached out to touch my face, I swallowed, the heat of his fingers like fire on my skin. Slowly, he ran his thumb over my cheek and then across my mouth, forcing me to part my lips so he could slip it inside. Erotic chills fluttered in my belly and made me shiver as I bit down lightly on him.
He took a sharp breath.
Of course, it would turn him on that I bit him.
Sliding his hand around the back of my neck, Rhone gripped my hair and urged me to my feet. I was pressed up against him, my hands flattened on his hard chest. He forced my head back to look at him and I felt so completely at his mercy.
His Thel pierced my thoughts and flooded my muscles.
I liked it.
I wanted it.
I stared up at his inhuman face, realizing finally how utterly handsome he was. He’d been handsome since the beginning, but hate had blindfolded me. The sharpness of his cheekbones. The strength of his jaw. The hypnotic colors of his eyes and the gold markings that framed them. Everything was so foreign and so attractive.
My gaze slid to Rhone’s lips and that familiar lust took hold. It hit me then that I’d never kissed him. Hell, I’d only kissed one man in my life and I swore off it ever since. It was mushy and too deeply intimate for my taste. No man had ever tempted me like that.
Not until that moment.
“I need a reason, Quinn,” Rhone spoke, his voice vibrating straight through to my core. “A reason that I did not blow that shuttle out of the sky alongside the nozun ship.”
“Nozun ship?”
He tugged a little harder on my hair and whispered, “Do not speak unless you are giving me a reason.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never been good with words. Nine times out of ten, my words just got me in more trouble.
So I didn’t use my words.
“Because of you, I—"
