Page 48 of Freedom Mine
“I don’t care how they see it.” He stepped closer. “When I first bought you, you thought I planned to use you, didn’t you, Alli?”
She nodded.
“Do you still think that of me?”
“No,” she said, her voice low. He’d never treated her as a slave. He even went out of his way to make her feel welcome, but something about last night had been different.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve dated a woman, and this set up here isn’t the way it should be done. Last night shouldn’t have happened. But I like you. I like you a lot. I have to know that when you let me touch you, it’s because you want me to. Not because you think you have to.”
Had she felt pressured into submitting to him last night? No. The way he touched her had feltright. Like he cared about her. The men in her past only knew how to take, despite how much she’d fight or beg them to leave her alone. Some even enjoyed themselves more when she fought, which is why she’d learn to let her mind drift until they were done with her.
“I can tell when you’re holding back, when you bite back a comment or turn your eyes so I can’t see the anger there,” Kayo said, his eyes darkening. “Can you honestly tell me that you wanted me to screw you right there in the kitchen of all places?”
His tone, more than his words, brought her focus back to him. Why was location part of this discussion? He wasn’t making any sense. When she failed to answer him, her mind still spinning, his lips thinned and he started walking away, toward the mine.
* * *
KAYO
Kayo’s emotions were all over the place. He couldn’t bear being apart from Alli, but he couldn’t trust himself to be near her. Never had he been so confused. He would move into the longhouse, leave her a list of chores each day that would keep her away from the men and him.
“Kayo!” she called.
He toyed with the idea of running ahead so he could avoid her, but what if she was in trouble? He couldn’t leave her out here by herself. He waited, scowling by the time she broke through the expanse of trees.
Her breathing was labored and she was sweaty from running, but there was a fire in her that caught his attention and filled him with pride. She wasn’t one to give up.
“If I’m a free woman, as you keep claiming, then I get to have my say too.”
She had him there.
“You’ve thought this all through, but there’s one thing you haven’t considered,” she said, her hands on her hips as she tried to catch her breath.
Gods, she was beautiful, and the fact that she was showing him how angry she was, no longer hiding her emotions from him, was a gift. “What haven’t I considered?”
“That I may want the same thing as you.”
“Do you?” he asked. She didn’t know what she wanted, she couldn’t. In her mind, she was still a slave and slaves only thought of survival.
“I’m not sure.”
He pushed past her. Want the same thing as he did? Part of him wanted to laugh at the idea while the other part wanted to hide from shame. He wanted her to be free, for all the men to be free, for her to be his, but mostly he wanted hertowanthim.
“Maybe I’d know if you were honest with me for once,” she said, panting heavily as she tried to match his stride.
That stopped him. “Honest with you?” he said, incredulous. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“What you’ve never done is tell me why you bought me.”
Suddenly, he felt drained to his core, dismayed that she still asked the question after all this time. “So you could be free, Alli. And I have told you, several times already, but you can’t seem to believe me, no matter what I say or do.”
“Well, yes,” she conceded, “but it feels like you’re hiding something from me, Kayo. I mean there’s got to be more to it. There were a lot of slaves in that pen. You could have saved five, six, maybe even seven male slaves for what you paid for me. But you didn’t. You bought the lone woman who couldn’t be of any real use in the mines, not like a larger man or five in this case.”
He paced. She had no business asking this of him. It was done and not something he’d undo no matter how many creditors were reaching up his ass for their money or how Jace or the others felt about her. She was his to protect and he’d do it whether anyone else approved or not, including her.
“Why, Kayo. Of all people, why me? You could have had several strong men instead of one useless woman.”
“You think you’re useless? Or that sacrificing you to save five others is justifiable because there were more of them?” he shouted, barely able to contain the pent-up anger and fear inside of him.
