Captive (11 page)

* * * * *

Mikayla had been on the Destroyer for twenty days now and had pretty much settled into a routine. She missed home a lot and worried about her mother even more, but she tried to keep herself busy. If she didn
'
t, she'd go crazy thinking about what was happening on Earth. She tried to listen to the men to see if she could find out anything, but they usually talked about something else, or in a language she didn't understand. Desperate for any kind of news, she'd asked one of the soldiers how the battle was going. He'd shaken his head, told her she didn't want to know, and then walked off without telling her anything. That certainly hadn't made her feel any better.

That was days ago, and unfortunately, she'd received the same response from several others since then. Eventually, she would just have to bite the bullet and ask Sidious, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She needed to avoid him, not find ways to be near him. But she had to know what was happening, even if it meant bargaining with the devil himself.

And Sidious Marcone was definitely a devil. He had to be to affect her the way he did. Every time he looked at her with his seductive gray eyes, she couldn
'
t breathe, not to mention what his touch did to her.

With a sigh, she tried to get her mind off his seductive presence and gazed around at the empty lounge. It seemed unusually quiet, and a shiver ran through her. They needed some music or something. This dead silence gave her the creeps.

Agnus had left with Celine right after breakfast to pick up a shipment of supplies.

Her heart had beaten faster at the thought this might be her opportunity to escape. But apparently her plan to make them think she
'
d accepted her situation hadn't worked.

The second Agnus had gone, he locked the door from the outside, which meant she was locked inside.

Once she cleaned off the last table, she decided to go into the storeroom and start pulling bottles. She stood on the ladder getting some liqueur off the top shelf, when she heard his deep voice from behind her. “You know you really shouldn't try to carry so many of those at once.”

She screamed and dropped two of the bottles. They shattered, spreading green liquor and glass all over the floor. She set the other three bottles on the shelf in front of her with a
thud
, then turned to glare at him.

He looked incredible. Even more so than the last time she saw him, with his wide shoulder leaning against the doorjamb and his arms crossed in front of his chest. His hair hung around his shoulders in a thick white mass that her fingers itched to slide through again. The desire that immediately began to swirl low in her stomach only made her glare all the harder.

“Didn't your mother ever tell you that it wasn't nice to sneak up on people?” she snapped, as she climbed down the ladder.

“All the time,” he replied with a mischievous smile. “But I was a rotten child and never listened.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she mumbled as she turned to start picking up the broken glass.

“Mikayla, don't pick that up with your bare hands; you're going to cut yourself.” He pushed away from the door and walked over to get the broom from the corner.

“I'll be fine,” she said. “I do this all the -- ouch…son of a bitch!” Mikayla looked down at her bloody hand in disgust, a hiss of pain shooting past her teeth. A large gash cut across her palm to the base of her thumb. How the hell had she done that?

Squatting down on the floor next to her, Sidious shot her a look that clearly read,
I
told you so
, then turned to grab one of the rags from the shelf behind him. Grasping her hand, he used the rag to apply pressure to the wound. She gasped at the sting of pain that sprang up her arm.

“Come on, let's get this cleaned up.”

He pulled her back out into the bar and over to the sink. Holding her hand under the cool running water, he took a closer look at the cut. “You have to be careful of the glass they use to make those bottles. They can cut off a finger before you even realize it.” He replaced the rag against her palm. “Hold that there.” She did and watched through her lashes as he searched through his pocket.

Eventually, he pulled out what looked like a fat silver ink pen. As he took her hand back, she tried to ignore the heat traveling up her arm. In silence, she watched as he removed the bloody rag and dropped it into the sink.

“You
'
ve cut it pretty deep, so I'm going to have to seal it.” She pointed skeptically to the device he held in his hand. “With that thing?”

“Yes.” His gaze met hers, and she almost stopped breathing at its intensity. God, he was so gorgeous. “Trust me,” he said with a slight smile.

She swallowed. “You don't ask for much, do you?”

His stare held hers captive. “Would it be so difficult a thing to do?”

“Considering who you are and what you're doing to my world? Yes.” He still held her hand and, as far as she was concerned, stood way too close. He was so close, she could feel the heat off his flesh, and her whole body responded with stunning speed.

“Things are not always as you see them. You should trust what your heart tells you.”

She looked into his gray eyes and wondered if she really could trust him. There was something about him that made her think she could, but she couldn
'
t get past who he was. She'd made the mistake of trusting her heart once before. She couldn't do it again. The price was too high.

Thankfully, he turned his attention back to her hand. “You'll feel heat and a little tingling, but it won't hurt.”

He pointed the red beam at the cut running across her palm, and starting at the thumb, he worked his way slowly across to the other end. She tensed, waiting for the pain, but just as he said, there was none. The tingling felt like tiny needle pricks, but it didn
'
t hurt. She watched in silent amazement as the cut disappeared -- the only thing to remain a barely visible pink line where the cut had been.

“There, all better.” Bringing the palm of her hand to his mouth, he softly kissed where the cut had been.

The kiss made her hand tingle more than the beam, and she quickly jerked it from his grasp. When she looked back at him, he smiled seductively and a whole lot more than her arm began to tingle. She couldn't tear her eyes away from him as he took a step closer.

Noticing what he did, she immediately took a step back toward the bar. This man had way too strong an effect on her. She couldn't let him get too close. Not again.

Reaching out, he grabbed her hand and tugged her against him. She gasped, arching back slightly as his palm splayed at the small of her back, holding her close.

“Don't,” she said, barely above a whisper.

He tipped her chin up with his other hand and brought his mouth to within mere inches of hers. She inhaled the scent of Korniga and spice and hot, musky male, and every part of her flared to life. Even her nipples, which were flattened against his chest.

“Why?” His lips brushed across her softly, barely touching hers. “What are you afraid of, Mikayla? It's not like we haven't done this before. ” She swallowed. “I'm not afraid.”

Liar, she told herself. She was afraid of plenty. But most of all, she was afraid of what he made her feel -- what he made her want to do to him and have him to do to her. “We shouldn't…” she began, but he placed his finger over her lips, stopping her.

“Shhh. Can I not kiss you just once without you fighting me?”

As he dipped his head to kiss her, she backed away. Her heart hammered in her chest, her pussy pulsing with a need she found harder and harder to ignore. If he kissed her, she
'
d be lost, she knew it.

“Don't do this,” she whispered.

Swallowing nervously, she stood stiff as a rod, waiting to see what he was going to do. Would he stop? What terrified her most was the knowledge that deep down she really didn't want him to. It wouldn't take much to make her melt. He'd proven that already.

He pulled back and gazed at her. His eyes darkened with desire, but something else sparked from their depths. Something she had been fighting herself. She looked away and tried to pull back from him, but he refused to loosen the grip he had around her waist. Her focus shifted to her right hand, still held by his larger one.

“Why do you fight this, Mikayla?” His breath fanned across her lips, and she swallowed down a lump.

“I have to,” she whispered, fighting the desire to press her lips to his. She closed her eyes against the tears and shook her head. “This is wrong.”

“It just looks wrong.” His lips brushed across hers again, and she sucked in a breath, trying to resist the pull to fall into him, to deepen the kiss.

She shook her head more firmly this time, determined to get through to him, as well as herself. “We can't do this.
I
can't do this. You're destroying my world, my home.

I can't do this with you anymore. Why can't you understand that?”

“Things are not always as they appear, Mikayla”

The hand at the small of her back pressed her closer, squeezing her breasts against his chest. She placed her palm on his shoulder to try and keep some distance between them. Breathing had become difficult, not from the tightness of his hold, but the proximity of his lips to hers.

All she could do was watch in anticipation as his mouth lowered to hers. With a tenderness that took her breath away, he sipped at her lips until she opened them, her body melting into his. He tightened his arms as his tongue leisurely explored and teased.

He was gentle and patient, his lips soft against hers. In his arms, she felt cherished and protected. So different than her ex-boyfriend, who took brutality to new levels.

Sidious was everything Greg wasn
'
t. He was also the man in charge of the alien army invading her home. He was the enemy.
Her enemy
. God help her, at the moment she didn't care.