Dante’s mouth flattened in a hard line, his eyes dimming slightly. “That’s how this world works, Morana. I wish it didn’t. I’d give anything for it not to, but that’s how it is. You are truly lucky you could escape. Not everyone is.”
Morana looked at him, her heart softening as she remembered what Amara had told her in similar words.
Taking a deep breath before she could respond, he pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly done with whatever emotion he’d expressed. “Okay, so we have to consider the possibility, which is large, that these are all connected events and not isolated like we had been treating them to be. Thank you for that. Anything else?”
Morana shook off her own gloomy thoughts and inhaled. “Yes. I’m going to write a failsafe software that will prevent any consequences of the original codes since we can’t get it and destroy it. So this software will undo anything that one does once I initialize it.”
Dante raised his eyebrows. “Will it work?”
“In theory, it already does. Writing it is going to be a bit of a job though.”
He nodded. “Great. If that works, we’ll all sleep much better.”
Morana bit her lip, her hands wanting to wring each other for this next part. “But, to write this, I’m going to need my own stuff. My laptop and hard drives, mainly. Which, by the way, is still in my office. In my suite. In my house. Which I left a few nights ago.”
Dante nodded, standing up. “It’ll be handled. Do you need anything else?”
Morana shook her head. “Thank you. I’m good.”
“Good. Call me if you think of anything else.”
With another polite nod to her, he strode out towards the elevators just as the doors opened, and Tristan Caine, in a suit without the tie, walked out, coming to an abrupt stop upon seeing Dante.
So, the ice between them had not cooled since the disastrous lunch. Good to know.
His eyes never moved in her direction from the other man, and Morana forced herself not to move, not to attract his attention, not to allow him to influence her emotions. She liked her level-headed self a lot, thanks very much. And this man made her want to scream like a banshee on crack, which although wasn’t the most enticing imagery, was very appropriate.
It also helped to know that first – he had avoided her for two days – and second – that he usually never addressed her as long as there were other human beings in the room. She didn’t know his policy on cats or puppies so far. So, she was safe from her banshee self for a little while longer, and if all worked the way it had been, he’d be gone and she’d be rational.
“We need to talk, Tristan.”
Not the most inviting of statements. But at least Dante’s even voice cut through the tension between the two men enough to make her look up at them – two tall, broad, handsome men who were as lethal as men could be.
“Yes, we do,” Tristan Caine replied, the warning in his tone clear for her to hear, warning for Dante not to open his mouth with her ears glued to them. As if. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone, aware of both men leaving the apartment and getting into the elevator. The doors closed with a soft ‘ding’, and Morana felt the tension she hadn’t been aware of seeping in leave her body on a loud exhale.
So, new codes out of the way till she got her stuff, Morana unlocked her phone and got back to researching the mysterious break of the twenty-two years ago Alliance.
Morana woke up abruptly, disoriented, her neck in an odd position on the back of the couch, her legs numb and curled under her, her hair sprawled all over the place as her hands held her phone, lost somewhere on her lap. She straightened her neck, a dull ache throbbing where she‘d given herself a crick, her eyes going to the gorgeous windows, to see dusk settle across the city in a fiery embrace, losing itself to the dark velvet of the coming night. The twinkling lights of the city and the cool waves of the sea on the opposite side were a cool contrast to her senses.
This was a view she’d been seeing for the past few nights without fail, these windows becoming a part of her since that rainy night in a way her car was. And yet, she didn’t think she’d ever tire of watching this same thing over and over and over again. It wasn’t just the beauty of it all. It was more than that. It was the memory of what had accompanied this beauty, the memory of a sad, lonely night that hadn’t been so lonely anymore.
Would she have felt the same way about these windows had that memory not been there? Or would they have been like the windows of her own house? Just windows. Yet, every time she looked their way, every time she saw the city, saw the sea, saw the stars and the limitless sky, her breath caught in her throat.
Just as it was at the moment.
She suddenly became aware of her surroundings as sleep drifted further and further away from her mind.
The lights were still off, only the glow from the outside world penetrating inside, seducing the shadows inside, the sound of her own breath lingering around her in the stillness.
But she knew she wasn’t alone.
He was there. Somewhere in the dark. Watching her.
She didn’t know where he was, didn’t turn her head to feel him in those seduced shadows, didn’t do anything but sit still, letting him watch, letting herself thrill in being watched. It was twisted. It was wrong in so many ways. It had never felt so right.
And this, right here, was exactly what she didn’t understand about herself, about them. This need to give and seek attention from each other while loathing it. This thrill that shot through her even as she knew it shouldn’t. This heightened awareness inside every pore of her body as soon as he came into the vicinity.
Had it been like this since that first night in Tenebrae? Or had it happened later? Where had she lost her body, her senses to his? At what point had being watched by someone in the dark from behind become not something threatening but thrilling? And only by him, because Morana knew, was it someone else, she’d be running for the knife.
Her heart pounded in the silence, as she stayed unmoving, barely breathing, nerves stretching tighter and tighter with every single breath, her nipples hardening under the constraining fabric of her bra, heat pooling between her legs. Good lord, she was ready to combust and she didn’t even know where he was. Didn’t know how he was affected. She was going to change that. Make sure he got as affected as she did. She wasn’t going to be burning alone, not if she could help it. If he afflicted her with this insane lust, the least she could do was return the favor.
He liked to watch? She’d give him a fucking show.
Trusting her instincts, which had worked pretty well for her so far, Morana slowly uncoiled her body from its slumberous position, stretching her arms above her head and her legs out before her, arching her spine, playing his game. She was caught unawares by the sudden rush of blood to her sleeping legs, the sudden million pinpricks bursting across her skin.
A moan of relief escaped her lips unbidden before she could call it back, and she suddenly tensed.
That one sound in the silence had been loud as a scream. It hadn’t broken the tension. It had thickened it.
Morana could feel his eyes drift leisurely, heatedly all over her, examining her with a scrutiny that should have been disturbing but wasn’t, would have been disturbing but wasn’t. The thickened silence hung over her like a thunder cloud. She held her breath, her heart pounding, for the lightning to split the air between them, for the thunder to roar in her body, for the electricity to singe them and leave its mark.