She bit her tongue, holding in the scream that was threatening to escape. He could see her face, her eyes, so why didn’t he recognize her? Why didn’t he remember her?
“You understand that until I know what I’m protecting you from, I cannot let you leave this room?”
Her lips pulled inward, her teeth clamping tight on the inner skin as she nodded.
His hand dropped away from her face. “So, if you won’t tell me who did this to you, why don’t you tell me what is it that you want most in life?”
An odd change of topic. But a question she could at least answer.
Her lips parted. “I want to be strong.”
His head snapped back, his brow furrowed. “Strong?”
“I want to be strong.” She nodded, taking a tiny step toward him. “To know that if I fight back, I can survive on my terms. Not because I was weak. Not because I curled up in a ball and took a beating like a coward. I want to be strong.”
Silence stretched into the room. Talen’s blue eyes had locked onto her, his face an impenetrable mask. Silence that stretched for so long, she regretted the words. Regretted ever uttering them out loud.
The smallest smile suddenly curved onto the corners of his lips. “I can make you strong.”
That, she hadn’t expected from him. But she was one to recognize an opportunity when she saw it.
Determination set into her features. “I want to start tonight. Now.”
He shook his head. “I can’t teach you anything with your arm broken. It will have to wait.”
She jumped another step forward, almost bumping into him. “But what better time than now? That’s exactly why I want to start tonight. If I can fend off an attack with one arm broken, imagine what I could do with two working arms.”
He laughed, a deep chortle that held remnants of the cadence of the laugh from the boy she once knew. His right brow arched. “You are positive you are up to it?”
She pointed to her face. “I can see out of both eyes. I can breathe. Move. The bruises may still ache, but the sharp pain is gone. If you can teach me, I can learn. I swear I can.”
He stared at her for an excruciating moment—judging her words, her worth.
Decision made, he sighed. “Come with me.”
{ Chapter 6 }
As much as he wanted to, Talen refused to look over his shoulder at Ness trailing behind him through the halls of the Alabaster.
She was either following or she wasn’t, either action would tell him volumes.
She wanted to be strong.
What woman wanted that? Women wanted safety. Food. Clothing. Shelter. Children. That was what women wanted.
They wanted a champion. They didn’t want to be strong.
Yet here was this sprite of a woman, following in his footsteps, looking for that very thing. To meet life on her own terms, as preposterous a notion as that was. Though his respect for her just increased tenfold.
This, he could work with.
He set the key into the lock of his office and opened the door, ushering her past him before closing the door behind them.
As she moved into the room, Ness’s gaze centered on the long wall of windows, eight of them, that looked down into the main gaming room of the Alabaster. She walked past the long length of his desk to look out the far right one.
The patronage below would be in full debauchery mode by now. With the constant hum of the many voices, the smoke of cheroots hung thick in the air directly in front of the windows and the alcohol flowed freely at this time of night.
Her gaze remained on the gambling several floors below. “What is this room?”