9
Atlanta
When I was younger, and probably a lot more naive, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about falling in love. What it would look like. Who it might be with. How it would feel.
But if this was love—and it sure as hell didn’t feel like love—I never would have expected that it would be like this.
Apex and I spent the rest of the day together. We walked through the gardens for hours. He took me down every twist and turn, every single path, over and over again until I practically had them all memorized. Sometimes, we were silent. Sometimes, we talked.
I told him all about my family, my life on Earth, the sectors and the way I’d been forced to serve them. When he told me about his own life, so many little ways that he’d had to serve Lady Idria and her noble house, I felt a little silly about the fact that my service to my masters had been in the form of ridiculous viral dance videos. He’d fought for Lady Idria. Killed for her. Followed her every command. What were a few hundred dance videos and a little government propaganda, compared to being forced to commit murder?
He spoke so candidly of the people he’d killed that sometimes, I wondered if he didn’t see any difference between my life and his at all.
With every story he told me, I could feel myself growing closer to him. In my fantasies, it had been like that too. Me, clinging to the arm of a handsome man, getting to know him and slowly but surely feeling my heart open to him as a result. That was what love was supposed to be like, wasn’t it? That’s how it worked in the books and the movies, anyway.
But in the books and the movies, at least the ones I knew, the hero usually wasn’t a killer. The heroine certainly wasn’t a slave.
By the end of the day, I’d at least managed to work my way through one thing: whatever this was, it sure as heck wasn’t love. Love involved tenderness, I was pretty sure, and Apex’s sense of gentleness was touch and go at best. It involved trust, too—and no matter how many times Apex walked me around the gardens, trust wasn’t going to come of it.
If anything, the more he told me about his loyalty to Lady Idria, the more I doubted him. From the way Lieja talked about Idria, if Apex’s mistress had wanted me rescued from Nightmoor, she could have had this whole situation taken care of with just a wave of her hand.
So why was he so insistent that he was on my side? Why had he even bothered pretending that he wanted to set me free? That he was here to help me escape?
There was only one real answer to those questions.
I was being lied to. Given everything else that Apex had confessed to, it was far from the worst thing he’d ever done.
But if he was lying to me—and he had to be—then what did he think would be gained from it?
And worse—why did my entire body tingle when his hand brushed against mine? Why did my heart race when he looked at me?
Was I really so dumb to be thinking about love when he was obviously playing me?
Why the hell did I still want him so much?
I may not have known what love really felt like, but lust? Oh, I knew that one very well. I’d felt it for a few of my security guards back on Earth, though none of them would have ever acted on it, even if they’d felt it back. When I’d made out with that handsome influencer from Sector Four at my eighteenth birthday party, I’d gotten so wet that by the time I got back to my room that night, my panties had been soaked clear through. And when it came to Apex—tall, mysterious, handsome in that alien way that made him terrifying and exotic all at once—lust only made sense.
He was hot. Duh. He was dangerous, which only made him hotter.
He might have been a liar, and a scoundrel, and a bastard through and through…
But I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, either here on Nightmoor or wherever I’d end up if I really could escape this place.
He could lie to me all he wanted.
I was a woman, and he was…not a man, but male. Definitely male. I’d seen his cock get stiff for me a dozen different times that day. It was big enough that I could literally see it through his pants. Long, thick, and hard for me. Only for me.
You should get used to being taken from, Atlanta, he’d told me. And after far too many years of maintaining a virginity I’d never really wanted in the first place, when I finally saw a chance for something I wanted…
Maybe I could be a taker, too.
“You must be exhausted, Atlanta. Time escaped me. We were out all day. I hope I did not push you too hard.” Apex guided me into his room with his hand pressed to the small of my back. Just that one point of contact, his fingers against my bare skin just over the waistband of my pants, sent little shivers of electricity through my entire body. “Would you like a shower?”
“Maybe.” I turned and made a big show of sniffing him delicately. A coy little smile played on my lips. “But I can shower in the morning. It smells like you need one more.”
“Do I?” Apex raised an eyebrow, then lowered his nose to his shoulder to sniff himself as well. “Hm. Perhaps you are right. You do not mind?”
“Not at all.” I moved to the bed and placed myself on it. “I’m tired. Go right ahead. Maybe I’ll just try to get some sleep.”
Apex closed the door behind
