Born of Fire

He felt himself harden to the point of pain. What he wouldn’t give to trail his fingers over her breasts, her tight stomach and plunge them straight into . . .

Damn it boy, get your head in the game. If he didn’t stop this, he’d burst his seams.

Clearing his throat, he compromised by trailing his fingers over her soft, parted lips. “The only thing left that I haven’t faced is death and, after all I’ve been through, it would probably be a relief. So no, there’s honestly nothing left that scares me.”

Shahara thought about that while her body turned liquid in his arms.

What would it feel like to fear nothing? Her multitudinous fears ate at her constantly.

“Tell me a story, Syn. Tell me how a ten-year-old child survives alone in a world like ours.”

His body turned rigid and his hand stopped moving. “That’s an old story that’s best forgotten.”

Suddenly she knew what made him afraid. “You lied to me. You are afraid. You’re afraid of letting anyone close to you, aren’t you?”

“That’s ridiculous. I have plenty of people who are close to me.”

“Name me one person you confide in. One person who knows all about you.”

Silence answered her.

“Well?”

“Nykyrian.”

She shook her head. “No. You just told me something he doesn’t know about you. How many other things have you kept from him?”

Syn dropped his gaze to the ground as he realized the truth. “You’re right. As a rule, I don’t let people get too close to me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because when they look at me, they don’t see me. They only see my father’s son.”

Shahara had to strain to hear those words. Even in the dim light she could see the torment in his eyes. “I don’t hold you accountable for your father’s crimes. And I want to know you. I want to know why you, who have more reason than anyone I have ever met, have never turned into the animal your father was.”

He offered her a quirky grin. “I could have sworn you accused me of that.”

“Well, I say a lot of things I don’t mean and you’re trying to change the subject.”

“All right, fine,” he said, his eyes turning dull. “You want to hear a story, then a story you shall have.”

Swallowing hard, he turned his gaze up to the ceiling. “There was once a little boy who was born on a cold rainy day to parents who’d learned to hate each other. He was told that his mother had been a good girl who’d fallen in love with a bad boy who ruined her. But the truth was, she was every bit as heartless.”

His deadpan voice tore through her and she noted the way he omitted referring to them as his parents. It was as if he recited a book he’d once read, or talked about a stranger.

“One day, the mother tried to kill the baby and the father beat her so bad, she took off.”

Shahara froze as she remembered what Digger had said to her. “How do you know that?”

“My father rammed it down my throat every time he got angry at me. ‘You worthless bastard. I should have let your mother drown you, instead of saving you.’ ”

His voice was still hollow, but she knew he had to feel the bite of that. “You hate your mother, don’t you?”

He looked down at her and sighed. “I don’t know her well enough to hate her. The only memory I have of her is when she threw me out the door and threatened to call the enforcers on me if I ever darkened her threshold again.”

She wanted to weep over his mother’s cruelty. “So what happened after your father was executed?”

He took a deep breath. “You know the answer. I was sent to prison.”

“I still don’t see how they could have done that to you. Couldn’t they tell that you were different?”

He shook his head. “The child wasn’t all that different from its father in those days. All he knew was violence. How to take pain and how to give it. The boy was angry and bitter, and he lashed out at anyone dumb enough to get in his way. Believe me. That little bastard took down three grown pedophiles without even flinching. He cut their throats and stabbed them until they were dead at his feet. He was so violent and cold in their execution that none of the other prisoners would even look at him after that.”

No easy feat and it said a lot for what he’d done.

But it didn’t change the fact that Syn wasn’t cold-blooded or cruel. She knew better.

As Digger had said, he’d only attacked them after they’d brutalized him.

“The boy didn’t listen to anyone. Not even the guards, and since the beatings didn’t curb the boy’s mouthy comebacks, they started locking him up in solitary. One day they made the mistake of choosing a cell with an electronic lock. The boy had been trained well and in no time, he had it deactivated and was out of there.”

“It must have been so hard on your own.”

He shrugged. “It could have been worse.”

“Worse?” she asked in disbelief. “You slept under Dumpsters.”

“Digger told you that, eh?”

She nodded.