Page 87 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
Leander, oh, Leander, how close we came.
She still smelled him on her skin, she still felt his hot breath in her ear and heard his moans of pleasure as he found his bliss inside her. She almost tasted the velvet sweetness of his tongue as he thrust it into her mouth.
But now it was gone, all gone with the blink of an eye, and nothing could ever bring all that sweetness back.
Christian continued to gaze at her with an inscrutable expression. His eyes and face were shadowed as the gray light from the windows flared into nimbus around his head.
“Do you love him?” he suddenly asked, his voice too loud.
It startled her. She stared at him across the silent room and realized there was a distinct possibility she would be sent to a traitor’s death within the hour. She wouldn’t be a coward now, here at the end of everything.
She wouldn’t lie. To him, or to herself.
“Yes,” she rasped, her throat closing around the word.
He only blinked and turned back to the window. He seemed to contract into himself, drawing down like a flame in an airless room, a phantom of a man fixed in a room of feminine frills and very tight locks.
“How do you know?” he murmured, gazing out upon the rain-swept day to some faraway point she couldn’t see.
Because every time I see his face, I feel like I could fly.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Christian slowly turned and sent her a small, pained smile. “Yes,” he said, holding still, his eyes fiercely bright. “That I understand.”
They stared at each other in weighted silence for a moment. He turned away once again.
“What will he do to Morgan?” Jenna heard her voice from the far-off dream place she still moved within.
I love him, oh, God help me, I do.
“Most likely kill her.”
This ripped through her waking dream like a knife through flesh. Blood flooded her cheeks. “Of course,” she said, hard. “Why not? After all, she’s disposable—she’s only a woman.”
“It has nothing to do with her gender,” he said, staring out the window. “She’s a traitor, Jenna. She admitted it herself. Because of her, at least one man has died—I expect she was the one responsible for the deaths in our sister colonies. And now, if the Expurgari know where we are, if they know of all our colonies around the world...we’re all in grave danger. She hasn’t only betrayed Viscount Weymouth. She’s betrayed us all.”
Jenna thought of betrayal, of revenge, of how much Morgan must have hated these men, the way they controlled every aspect of her life. She understood her anger, her powerlessness. She thought of her father and how he left this place because he wasn’t allowed to love as he pleased.
When she thought of Leander pain came stealing back, spiraling up from her gut to sink icy claws into her heart. She felt her nails digging into her palms and was glad for the pain there. It lessened it everywhere else.
“And what is it, I wonder, that you are going to do now?” Christian asked, interrupting her thoughts. He lifted his hand and trailed one tapered finger very slowly over a beveled pane of glass, leaving a trace of gathered mist from the warmth of his skin.
She looked away, found the familiar sight of her hands clenched pale in her lap. She drew in a deep, bitter breath and flexed her fists open. There were little red crescents where her nails had broken the skin.
“You say that like I have a choice in the matter. I’m probably going to sit here in this room, watched over like a bird in a cage, until the Assembly decides my fate.”
Maybe they would imprison her forever. Maybe they would kill her and bury her next to her father.
Or maybe...maybe they would torture her.
She imagined it would be Leander who would do it. She imagined his beautiful face hard as he beat her, as he whipped her and flayed her skin and made her blood run onto the ground.
And maybe they will all burn in hell. She fought back sudden, bitter tears.
“No,” Christian said. Jenna looked at him, blinking past the moisture in her eyes. “No, that simply won’t do.” He stared at her, fierce and hungry. “Not for you.”
He smoothed one hand over his mess of thick black hair, straightened his shoulders beneath his ivory linen shirt, and bent down to pick up a marble-topped accent table near his feet. He threw it straight through the wall of windows.
The room exploded into noise.
