And felt him in the room.
She should have turned around and stood up. She knew she definitely shouldn't give him her back, should not leave herself vulnerable. But in that moment, she couldn't get herself to move her eyes from the view and her hands from the glass. She couldn't get herself to tense.
She felt tired. Exhausted deeper than her bones.
And the fact that he'd told her she wouldn't be harmed told her she wouldn't be. She'd seen enough liars in her life to recognize a man who wasn't. He'd made no secret of his hatred for her, and that, conversely, was the very thing that told her that for this moment, she could believe his word.
So, she didn't tense, didn't turn, just waited for him to leave.
The back of her neck pricked as he watched her, and she felt him move. She didn't know how she knew. He made absolutely no sound, his feet completely silent on the floor. But she knew he'd moved.
She sat there in silence and saw his feet in her periphery.
She didn't look up. He didn't look down. The silence continued.
Morana kept her eyes on the raindrops, her heart pounding as he folded his legs and sat down a foot away from her, his eyes looking out.
Morana glanced at him from the corner of her eye, seeing his unbuttoned shirt teasing a strip of flesh she'd seen earlier, his weight resting on his palms that rested on the floor as he leaned back on them.
She caught sight of a small scar and felt her heart ache. She'd never really given a thought, in all the injustice that happened to women, to what happened to men in their world. She knew that power and survival were the two ultimates but never wondered about what the price of it was. Were the scars on him a norm or an anomaly like he was? Were they the price of being that anomaly in a family that valued blood? How many had been inflicted by enemies? How many had come at the hands of the family? Was this the cost of him coming to where he was in their world? What kind of a toll did it take on men? Was that why most of them were so detached? Because that became the only way to deal with the pain? Was that what had happened to her father? Was he detached because that was how he'd coped all his life, to keep his power?
Questions lingered in her mind, along with the memory of the gashes she'd seen across the flesh of the man beside her. She might hate him, but she respected strength. And his body, she realized, was more than a weapon. It was a temple of strength. It was a keeper of tales – tales of his survival, of things she couldn't even fathom in this ugly, ugly world.
Morana thought about Amara, about the torture she had resisted and survived for days at the hands of enemies, and realized how truly lucky she had been in comparison. She'd never been abducted, never been tortured, never been violated like so many other women in their world. And she wondered why. Was it because of her father? Or some other reason?
"My sister loved the rain."
The softly spoken words, in that husky, rough voice of whiskey and sin, broke through her thoughts.
And then the words sank in, stunning her. Not just because it was something supremely private he'd shared with her, but because of the deep, deep love she could hear in his tone.
She'd not thought him capable of the kind of love she heard in his voice, not for anyone. And that's what stunned her. Morana didn't turn to look at him, didn't even glance at him as he didn't at her, but her hands pressed into the glass, surprise coursing through her at his words, even as it confused her.
She swallowed, her heart pounding. "I didn't know you had a sister," she spoke in the same soft tone, never looking away from the view.
Silence.
"I don't anymore."
And the flat tone was back. But Morana didn't believe it. She'd heard that warmth, heard the love. Even he couldn't snap back to that detached mode that quickly. But she didn't call him out on it for some reason.
They sat in the complete darkness, facing the sky and the city and the sea, facing the quick droplets that fell in sync with heartbeats, the silence between them not thick but not brittle either. Just silence. She didn't know what to make of it.
Her mouth opened before she could think about it.
"My mother loved the rain."
A pause.
"I thought you had a mother."
A familiar knot constricted her throat. "I don't anymore."
She felt him glance at her then, and turned her head, her eyes locking with deep, deep blue. Something dark flashed in his eyes again and he looked away.
Morana swallowed. "Why did you want me to stay here?"
He sat there, not tensing, not looking at her, his gaze outwards. Silence.
"Dante was right. I could have been safe, comfortable there," she told him quietly.
"You are safe and comfortable here," he told her in an equally quiet voice, the words heavy with meaning.
"For tonight."
"For tonight."
Morana looked back out the window, seeing the rainfall, hearing it clap against the glass as she sat a foot away from him.
They sat in that utter darkness, with a kind of silent truce that she knew would lift the moment the sun came out, a silent truce they would never acknowledge in the light of the day, a dark stolen moment against a glass wall that she would remember but never speak of.
She would remember it because, in that moment, something inside her shifted. Shifted utterly, because in that moment, the enemy, the man who hated her more than anything, had done what no one had ever done.
In that moment, the man who'd claimed her death had given her a glimpse of life by doing something he probably didn't even realize he'd done.
In that moment, the enemy had done what no one had ever even tried to do for her.
He had made her feel a little less lonely.
The moment would be over when the sun came out.
But for that silent moment, something inside her beyond her own understanding, even as she hated him, shifted.
Indecision was weighing her down, where her own emotions were concerned.
Her father hadn't called again.
Not once.
Morana didn't know why that worried her, but for some reason, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to happen. Something she was not going to like by any means. She wouldn't anyway, not if her father was perpetrating it.
Taking a deep breath, and shaking off those thoughts for later, she opened the door of the guest bedroom and walked out into the penthouse.
After the previous night, had she been any regular girl in any other world, she wouldn't have known what to expect. But her normal wasn't regular, which was exactly the reason she knew what to expect.
She walked out of the guest bedroom, knowing she was alone in the penthouse. He'd left as soon as dawn had struck, and so had she, retreating into the guestroom for the remainder of the night, a few hours ago.
They hadn't spoken a word after that initial conversation, but she knew, as she walked towards the kitchen, that whatever silent truce had existed with those fragile raindrops had disappeared along with the rain. The sun shone brightly in the sky, the light cutting through the glass wall and lighting up the entire room, every dark inch of space touched with fire, the conditioned air keeping away the heat. The view, that gorgeous view, lay bare before her eyes, the sunlight glinting off the water at one end and climbing over the buildings at the other.