She ignored his warning tone, but then, he didn’t expect anything else. “He seriously pissed off Deth by taking you away like that. He’s going to be tortured.”
Idess felt sick to her stomach as Lore ushered Sin out the door with instructions to bring Wraith back to Lore’s place. When he turned around, she stood, though not without effort. His couch must be a hundred years old, and if it had springs, they were dead. He truly didn’t care about his comfort. Or maybe he couldn’t afford nice things.
Or personal things, she noted with a frown. The walls were achingly bare. He had no knicknacks. Nothing that revealed anything about him—except what the lack of personal effects revealed about him; the house was set up so an intruder would learn nothing crucial about him or his sister. He could leave forever in a matter of minutes.
“Lore? Tell me what Sin said about you being tortured wasn’t true.”
He didn’t look at her as he moved toward the bathroom. “It wasn’t true.”
“You’re lying.”
“You told me to.”
“Damn you!” she snapped. “Stop!”
He halted, but he still didn’t look at her. “It’s all right, Idess. It’s not like Deth hasn’t done it before.”
The way he said it, as if it was no big deal because he was used to it, broke her heart. How many beatings did it take before one grew numb to it? Way too many, she suspected.
“I won’t let him do this.” She took a deep, ragged breath. “I’ll go to my father. I’ll—”
“Stop.” Lore rounded on her, but he didn’t look angry. If she had to pick a look, she’d say he seemed startled by her vow to help him. “I have to do this. I knew what I was getting into, and I’ll deal with it.”
“But why? Why did you do it? After what I’ve done to you, you should enjoy seeing me enslaved.”
“You really believe that?” He took a step toward her. “I’m risking Sin’s life by putting off what I have to do to Kynan. I’m doing that for you. Not for Kynan or my brothers. I took a knife for you. I’ve kissed you over and over when I never kiss anyone. So why the hell would I want to see you suffer?”
Her mouth dropped open in shock, and her stomach fluttered. Some idiotic feminine instinct she didn’t even know she had went tail-wagging stupid at his admission. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” He swiped the jug of liquor off the coffee table, where Sin had left it. “Fuck. I have no idea. Forget I said anything.”
Fat chance of that. She moved closer to him, not wanting to miss even the slightest nuances in his expression when she hit him with her sudden suspicion. “You don’t kiss anyone because you’re afraid of killing them, aren’t you? Same with sex, right?”
He turned away again, and she grabbed his arm—the right one, protected by his thick leather coat. “Lore? Tell me.”
“Yeah, okay? Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch your partner drop dead because you got off? No,” he said nastily, “I’m guessing you don’t.”
“But if you wear a sleeve and glove—”
“When I climax, my power punches right through it.”
She thought about how he’d stroked himself to completion over her and realized that he’d pinned her legs between his and held himself away from her—to keep her from thrashing and accidentally touching his arm when he came.
“Have you ever been with a woman safely?”
He swallowed, and now probably wasn’t the time to notice how sexy his throat was as the muscles worked beneath his tan skin, but whoa. “Just once. A long time ago.”
“Did you love her?”
He snorted. “I didn’t know her name. She blew me in an alley while I braced my arms above my head against a building.”
“Oh.” She could have gone all day without knowing that.
“You disgusted now? Because I am. Not because I paid some whore for sex, but because I was so fucking lonely that I risked killing her. I told you, I’m a selfish piece of shit.”
It broke her heart to hear him say that, because she’d seen a lot of evidence to the contrary. “A selfish person wouldn’t have signed up to be a slave to save his sister. A selfish person wouldn’t have locked himself away from society in order to protect them. You’re not selfish. You’ve slipped, like everyone else.”
He threw the jug across the room, shattering it against the wall. “My slips kill people, Idess!”
She looked down at his scuffed hardwood floor, at the wetness spreading across it like spilled blood. “Have you ever loved anyone? Besides your sister, I mean.” Say no.
“Why the hell are we talking about this?”
“I’m curious.”
“Because this is such great pretorture talk.”
The reminder dropped a bowling ball right into the pit of her stomach. “Please,” she begged. “I have to do something to stop it. I’ll go to my father and see if Deth can be given a heart attack or something.”
“Seriously?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “That’s what your father does?”