Page 32 of Claiming Starlight
He must have taken it off Sophie, ridding her of the sharp edges after laying her on the seat. She didn’t understand him. That act was kind and caring. But playing with her breasts while they shared the car with the others felt degrading, shameful—like she had no value. How could he treat her like she was important and then treat her like a toy?
She closed her eyes again, fighting off the burn of confused tears.
His hand moved to her face again, his fingers picking up the wet on their pads. When the door closed behind the exiting shifters, he spoke. “Why you crying, Sophie?”
“Why do you treat me like I’m nothing?” she blurted out.
“News to me. When did I do that?”
“You touch me like I’m a thing, use me—hurt me—with your friends right there. They could see. It’s embarrassing. They must think I’m just like a blood slut.”
“Oh? Why?” he asked, his tone deceptively mild. With her eyes closed, she could hear all the distinct notes and inflections of his tone. Micah had a hundred tiny sounds and cues that signaled his mood, and she was only just starting to learn them.
These notes were cool. Well, who cared if he was? He didn’t have trouble offending her she thought indignantly. “You touch me out in the open, expose my secrets to them, what I think, feel, my shame, how much it hurts, how much—”
She stopped. She wouldn’t say that last part out loud.
“How much, what?” he prompted.
She cried harder. What he wanted her to say made it all worse. She couldn’t, wouldn’t. He was going to make her, though, and who would she be after she admitted it?
“Sophie.” He barked her name, a subdued warning.
“How much I like it! You touch me out in the open and expose how much I like it… How it doesn’t matter if it hurts or feels good, as long as it’s your hand. You, some man I barely even know.” She rushed through it, spit it out, tried to push the confession away from herself by drawing her knees up tight and covering her eyes with her hands. But it was right there, hot and sticky as honey, inescapable.
“When I touched you in my room, you felt like a blood slut?”
“No.” she admitted reluctantly.
“When I touched you with them in the car, when it happened, did you feel like I was going to pass you around or something?”
“No.”
“Did my touch turn you into something you are not?” he asked.
Why did his questions make her feel small and as if she’d missed something obvious? She admitted, “I… I don’t know anymore.”
“And was your pussy getting wet from what I did to you?”
She hated this one. “Yes.”
“And do you think, with everything between us, that I would let Dante or Jumper make fun of you? Touch you? Sayanythingto you about what we do? Look at my girl like she was less than? Do you think I’d like that?”
Sophie moaned. She tried to find a better answer than the one on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t know him. They’d spent hours together, not years. He practically kidnapped her off the street and barred her path back home, claimed she had a new life now, with him, a stranger. How could she answer? She didn’t know the answers to any of her questions, and she certainly didn’t know enough about him to say how he’d behave. It was a lot to expect from her, wasn’t it? “I don’t—”
“If you try to lie to me, little girl, you will not sit for a week.” He interrupted, as if he could tell she was trying to think of something to appease him. “I was easy on you before, but you will not disrespect me with a lie.”
Sophie thought hard and restructured what she was going to say. “No, I don’t think you would like that. But I haven’t known you very long.”
“So instead of listening to what your body was telling you—that you like my touch. Instead of listening to what your heart is telling you—that you are mine and I don’t share. And finally, instead of listening to what your brief experience has told you, that I won’t let others harm you, you thought I’d treat you like some soulless vampir, and not care about your feelings or value?” Micah asked.
Sophie shrank in on herself. He was right. She assumed.
He pushed her hand away from her face, cupped her chin, his thumb brushing over her bottom lip. “Poor little Starlight. You’ve lived your life in a cold clay jar, trapped by a race of predatory narcissists that kept you down, made you feel worthless, so you’d think you were lucky for what little they gave. I am not them. I touch you because it is fucking hard to keep my hands off you, and I only touched you because I knew the boys wouldn’t seeandthat they wouldn’t dare look even if they could, ‘cause they know who you belong to. I ain’t heartless, Sophie. I can read you, your body, your scent. Better than you can. Don’t you think I’d stop if it was telling me you didn’t like it?”
Now she felt like she was in the wrong. She wasn’t sure how she got there, but it was the worst kind of feeling. She caught the back of his hand against her mouth and kissed his star-tattooed knuckles. “You are right. You’re different from anyone I know. Anyone I’ve ever met, but I let those other experiences mess up my head. I’m sorry. Everything is so new and confusing.”
He grunted. “I give you this one with no schooling, but you better remember. Do you think you can remember, Sophie?”
