Page 106 of Auctioned to the Convicts
He tugged the back of her hair, sending her chin high and exposing her neck. He kissed below her ear and trailed down her jaw.
“I meant leaving Narkos,” she said breathlessly as his mouth found hers and his hands settled on her hips.
His tongue was warm and sensual though somewhat jerky as if he wasn’t as confident about himself as he appeared in everything he did. Then again, he’d been here twelve years. Ren hadn’t been exaggerating. Dresden would destroy Ren before he’d ever let him leave.
Hannah grabbed the hem of his shirt and lifted it over his head. “There are a lot of risks involved, but I think I can convince the others,” she said as he discarded the shirt. She took a moment to admire his toned chest, lightly running her fingertips over his muscles, down into the valleys. Her hand kept moving lower.
Ren made her want to be more, better, push past convention and grab what she wanted.
And she wanted him.
His smile disappeared. “I don’t have room for the others. I originally designed the ship for one, but I’ve been ripping out unnecessary bulkheads to lighten the load and create space for one more. You.”
Her hand stopped at the top of his pants. “You’d leave them behind?”
“I don’t have a choice. I looked at this from every angle. Even if I ripped the hull apart to make it large enough for five people, the engine, the environmental components. . . everything is geared to support one. I’ve been spending most of my off-shifts adapting and pushing the systems as far as I could to fit one more. Making sure I could take you with me, but there’s no way I can take five.”
She withdrew her hand. Already, she felt the loss too keenly. Ren would be leaving them. “I can’t go with you.”
Blue eyes dimmed. “It’s Ky, isn’t it? You’d follow him anywhere, but not me. Ah, hell, and now I sound jealous. I swore I wouldn’t go down that road.”
She reached up to run her fingers through his hair. Soft and thick. He pressed his head into her palm. Why couldn’t she stop touching him? How was she going to watch him leave?
“It’s Ky and Vaughn and Sersieand you,” Hanna answered. “We’re a family now, or we would be if you’d let us in.”
“If I had room, I’d take them, but I don’t. Just you and me.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She stared into his eyes. They suddenly seemed distant, hard. He knew exactly what she’d meant. “You don’t care about them. About any of us,” she said, her voice falling off as the reality sank in.
“Don’t say that,” he practically growled. “I may not bring you flowers like Sersie, be able to defeat any asshole who dares touch you like Ky’Li or have Vaughn’s patience and even temper, but that doesn’t mean I love you any less than they do.”
“Love?” She laughed, a sickly, desperate laugh to keep from crying. She had to let him leave Narkos, but not like this, hardened to those who cared about him. He was as much a part of her now as the others and he was intentionally keeping them—her—out of his heart.
“You don’t know what love is,” she said, lifting her chin. “You’re surrounded by four people who care about and love you in their own way and you turn a blind eye to all of them unless it suits you to pay attention.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Vaughn placing himself between you and Ky’Li or drugging him when Ky’Li gets over-possessive—”
“A bit?”
“Or Sersie replanting the trees on the path inside the fence with slow-growing ones that won’t have the high maintenance as what you had there before.”
“He’s doing that for the group.”
“Is he? Because he doesn’t think that house is our home. You speak of it as being yours so often that while we all eat and sleep there, we all know it belongs to you, not the unit.”
“Fucking unit. I’m so sick and tired of hearing about the unit. I never wanted to be in one!”
“And now you’re leaving the unit. . . us. . .”me“behind,” Hannah said, trying to ignore the sharp pain in her gut. “I envy you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It must be nice not caring about other people and what happens to them.” She wasn’t being fair to him, especially since he’d put up with a lot since she’d met him, and he hadn’t asked for any of this.
“You’re not being reasonable,” he said, approaching her, his steely blue eyes flashing with an anger she knew all too well, one that hid emotions he no longer knew how to handle.
“Just how much thought will you give to any of us when you leave here?”
