“Damn it, baby, I didn’t wear a glove. I’m clean, I swear I am. I would have gotten that confirmed before I ever went without one. Are you on birth control?” She was a virgin. He doubted it. She’d been one of Whitney’s experiments. Maybe she didn’t even know about birth control. “I wouldn’t mind if you got pregnant, Amaryllis, other than I’d prefer to have some time with you alone, but we’d make it work.”
“I’m on birth control,” she said. “The minute I got away, I went to a clinic. I was afraid he would haul me back and throw me in with Owen Starks.”
He stiffened. “Owen Starks?” He repeated the name. “When did you meet Owen Starks?”
“He was one of Whitney’s top guards. Whitney never went anywhere without him for a while. I think he showed up when I was about seventeen. He was good-looking and some of the girls would flirt with him. At the time, we were training as soldiers. Hand-to-hand combat. Weapons training. There were always new weapons. Bomb making and taking them apart. Any gifts we had we worked on to use in the field. Starks became one of the main trainers.”
Very slowly, keeping a hand on her back, Malichai pulled out of her. Her body gave him up reluctantly, still clamping down, still holding on, so as he slowly dragged his cock from her, the action sent flames licking up his spine and caused more explosions to go off in her body. He felt every one of them. She made a little sound, catching her breath, while he cleaned off with his T-shirt and then cleaned between her legs.
“Tell me more about Starks.” It was an order. He’d been a Ghost-Walker too long and was used to being obeyed. His voice was harsher than he intended.
She pulled up her yoga pants and turned to face him, half sitting on the bed. “Is it important? Do you know him?”
“I know him. I want the information, Amaryllis, anything you can tell me about him and what you were to him in the time you’ve known him. He was declared dead about six years ago. Supposedly he was killed in action, but there was a lot of controversy around his career in the military. Quite a few believed he killed some of those he served with. It shouldn’t surprise me that Whitney would take a man like Starks to work for him, but it still does. He tried for the program and failed.”
She sat all the way up on the bed and pulled her legs up tailor-fashion. She often did that, even in the dining room, he’d noticed.
“Starks didn’t seem to pay attention to the girls, although, like I said, they flirted outrageously with him. When it came to training, he was very strict. We learned to listen first time out with him. I didn’t like him at all. I don’t know why. The feeling was so strong, I would have to label it an aversion. I thought he was unnecessarily cruel, especially to the girls who flirted with him. Almost every single training session with him, someone ended up in tears. Often they carried these horrendous bruises.”
“And you?” He kept his eyes on her face, wanting to read her every expression.
“I didn’t talk much. I was quiet and I worked hard to learn everything. I practiced with anyone who would practice with me. There were a couple of the guys who were decent. Starks didn’t pay much attention because I did the work and didn’t flirt. He noticed I was good, but that was about it. The better I was, the harsher he got, but I didn’t care because it made me better. I knew not to challenge his ego.”
Malichai kept his gaze fixed on her face. There was so much more, and she was trying to sound matter-of-fact when there was so much pent-up emotion, she could barely contain it.
“Douglas Hines, one of the trainers, was nice. He worked with me most of the time. Over the years, I liked partnering with him because he was fast, and I had to be faster if I wasn’t going to get hit. Sometimes we practiced with rubber knives. In the beginning he’d raise welts all over me where he could slip through my guard, but eventually, he couldn’t do that anymore.”
She rubbed her chin and then stroked three fingers over her throat. Both were nervous gestures. “That was important to tell you. I’m not just rambling. One day Starks came outside where we were working with those practice knives. The rubber ones. I loved those workouts.”
There were tears in her voice and he wanted to comfort her. He made himself stay where he was. He needed to know everything about Starks she could give him.
“He was angry with Douglas and told him that training with rubber knives was for pussies and I would never learn anything unless I felt the blade go in. He pulled out his knife and indicated Douglas do the same. They went at it, and it wasn’t a training session anymore. Starks meant to kill him. Douglas knew it too. Starks was the head man in the yard, and there was no one to protest.”