Page 47 of The Steel Rogue

A slight gasp, and she recoiled slightly on the bed. “Why?”

“It was who I was at that time, Tor. I can explain, but I cannot excuse it. Who I was—there was no weakness in my world. It was never allowed. Weakness was death. So when I see it I react.”

“You react with what?” Her words were slow, careful.

“With disgust.” His lips pulled into a tight line, his head shaking at what he was. “Weakness meant death in my childhood and you either stomped it out or you got as far away from it as you could. You had to, to survive. And that was how I reacted when I saw you in flames. I reacted with disgust. With wanting to get far, far away.”

His head dropped, his fingers rubbing his dark eyes. It took long, silent seconds for him to lift his gaze to her again. “And then that disgust instantly turned inward—what sort of a monster am I to walk away from an innocent in pain like that.”

Her mouth opened to say something, but no words manifested. He couldn’t blame her.

“That was the most grievous failing of my life. The moment I walked away from you in flames. I know that—hell, I have been haunted by that one moment in time every day, every hour, every second since then.”

“Why are you telling me this, Roe?”

“You need to know who you’re dealing with.” For all that he wanted to look away from her, he held fast to his stare. He would face this, no matter what. “What I’m capable of. The darkness that is so ingrained in me I can never rid myself of it. I’ve tried—tried so hard to distance myself from my visceral reactions. In prison I spent years helping the doctor there—stitching wounds closed, availing as much mercy to the weak and broken as I could so that I would never again react as I did with you. But it’s inside of me—it always will be.”

Her right hand had crawled up her chest to clutch her neck, her left hand tangled in the sheet barely covering her bare breasts. And there, shining in her green eyes, the shock of it, the horrification.

Yet still she was beautiful. Repulsed by him and she still held him transfixed.

“Why are you telling me this, Roe?” She repeated the question, forcing him to say what he was avoiding.

“I’m telling you because we need to stop this, Torrie. Whatever this is between us. I want you—make no mistake—I want you in ways that border on the unholy.” He swallowed hard. “But you need better than me. I cannot give you what you need—what you deserve.”

Torrie’s head dropped forward, dark strands of her hair falling in front of her face, hiding her eyes from him.

He sat frozen, unable to talk, to move. Ready for every hateful thing he could ever imagine forming on her lips to be hurled at him.

But silence.

Silence for so very long.

Her head popped up, her golden green eyes piercing him. “What were you dreaming of?”

“What? When?”

“Minutes ago—just before you awoke,” she said. “You were terrorized in your sleep, but then you opened your eyes and you saw me and you calmed.”

“That?” He turned his head from her, his look centering on the chest of weapons at the end of the bed. “That was nothing.”

“No. You do not get away with that answer.” The gold flecks in her green eyes hardened. “You know I dream of the fire, I told you that, and now I want to know what it is that haunts your dreams.”

He shook his head, his gaze dropping to the floor.

“Tell me.”

He let the silence stretch in the room, but she didn’t speak. She only looked at him, waiting.

He drew in a heavy breath. “Too many years—too many years to count that I dream this.”

“What is it?”

His look, but not his head lifted to her. “You visited me in prison, in Newgate.”

Her eyes went wide. “You remember that?”

“I do.”