Valuable? Me? What is this guy playing at?
There was more going on here than she knew about. That much was obvious. To be honest, curiosity was getting the better of her. She wanted answers now, more than she wanted to escape. She could always escape once she got what she wanted. She hoped. She could lull him into a false sense of comfort. Later. Maggie huffed out a breath, stirring the loose tendrils of hair tickling her skin. Irritated, she scraped her cheek along her raised shoulder to swipe her hair back.
He watched her movements, his features…hungry? She had no other word for the look on his face. His expressions were doing odd things to her insides. Things she’d been working hard to ignore since the moment she’d first noticed him in the nightclub. It wasn’t getting any easier.
Grudgingly she nodded acceptance of his deal, quickly adding, “Untie me. If you expect me to trust you, it has to go both ways.”
He stared at her, hard. Trust did not come easily to this man—demon, she corrected—any more than it did to her. He leaned toward her. A long, wicked looking knife appeared in his hand in the blink of an eye. She didn’t even have time to flinch. With a flick of his hand, her bindings fell to the floor. Maggie clasped her hands over her wrists. It was more the idea of the bindings she rubbed away rather than pain since the bindings had never been tight enough to cause hurt.
Gideon crossed his arms over the back of his chair and asked once more, “Why keep the name of a man you clearly hate? And, speaking of, why do you hate him so much?”
“I kept the name because it was all I had.”
At his arched eyebrow, she bit the bullet and let it all out. Trust went both ways, she’d told him. Then she needed to keep her end of the bargain. “Clarisse Michaels was the name listed on my birth certificate as my mother. My father was listed as unknown. I didn’t know, didn’t understand until I was twenty-one that Michael was my—the sperm donor’s given name, not my mother’s surname. My mother changed her last name to reflect his possession.” She couldn’t help the sneer of disgust that crept into her voice, did nothing to hide it.
“My mother died within hours of my birth.” She flexed her fingers, fisting her hands in her lap. “She stayed alive long enough to name me, long enough to leave specific instructions for my adoption, instructions that required my name never be changed. By the time I realized the truth, it was just too much trouble to change it.”
“So that explains the name. What about the hate?”
That tangled jumble of emotions that surfaced whenever she thought of the sperm donor came roaring to the surface. And so she combated it the only way she knew how. With bitterness and anger, because those were her strongest emotions, the strongest emotions she would let herself feel.
“Angels are supposed to be these benevolent, compassionate beings, right?” At Gideon’s nod, she barreled on. “So if my…the sperm donor…is an angel, a being of light and love, why would he leave his…his offspring alone and defenseless? Dependent on the charity of others? Just another file in a system that’s flawed and overburdened already?”
She could feel the weight of his stare upon her, but she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “Where was Michael while I was dumped in one foster home after another? Where was he when—” She abruptly cut herself off. Shame filled her, flooding heat into her cheeks. She wouldn’t be a victim. She was not a victim. And she wouldn’t wallow in self-pity. There were a lot of other people out there who’d had it much worse than she.
“When what?” Gideon’s voice was so gentle Maggie had to blink to keep the tears at bay.
“The last foster home I was placed with was a real treasure. There were already three other foster kids in place when I got there. The kind of kids that gave the rest of us a bad rap. Patty, the foster mom, liked to drink. A lot. And…” She had to stop, force a swallow as the memory of groping hands and fetid breath came back to haunt her. “Randy, the foster dad, he liked his girls young and too weak to fight back.”
Just like that Gideon sat up straight in his chair, fury rolling from him in waves. Enough fury to level a small city. The force of it pushed her back in her own chair. Here was that scary demon feeling she’d recognized in the others. The promise of death. Slow and excruciatingly painful. The only thing that kept her from running off screaming into the night was the fact that his fury wasn’t directed at her.
His voice was a deep raspy growl, barely discernible. “Did he—”