The Battle for Black (Juxtapose City 3) by Tricia Owens

Author:Tricia Owens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, sci fi, dominance, calyx starr

8

Black listened to the sound of bubbles breaking around Wyre's body as it sank into the bay. They hadn't weighed the body down except for the few rocks Black had tucked into the man's pants as an afterthought. Captain Dickerson wasn't concerned with anyone finding the body. He was the captain of the police department; any investigation could be swiftly, quietly closed.

As Dickerson walked off a few yards to speak to someone on his PRU, Black wrapped his arms across his stomach and fought down the need to be sick. At this point the urge was only a nagging one, a little stronger than the flutter of a nervous stomach, but it would be undeniable after Black hit the bar before heading home.

The sharp tang of rust and salt water made him dizzy. He shut his eyes, his face awash with sweat as the smell brought back memories he didn't want to deal with right now. His fingers traced the scabs that were healing around the circumference of his wrists. He wanted to scream.

It wasn't as if the Consortium disaster was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Black didn't want to analyze what earned that honor. There were too many candidates. What he could bear to consider was the sobering reality that thanks to the terrible things he had witnessed and thanks to those acts he had committed on his own, he had ceased long ago to be a human being.

Human beings didn't do the things he did. Not the kind of human that Anna believed him to be, who deserved to be loved and treated as though he would be a source of pride as he matured. Not the kind that Starr hoped he was, worth turning his back on his own kind for the sake of obsession, if not lust.

Black listened to Dickerson's distant voice, trying to ground himself on the calm way in which the captain spoke into the PRU, but again and again images flashed in Black's head, each more stomach-churning than the last...

-- holding his hand to the glass of his window, listening to Starr confess his feelings and wanting to do the same...

-- all but begging Starr to seduce him in the kitchen...

-- and worst of all, acting as if he had a right to be excited about a new relationship, as if he had a right to hope for anything that didn't involve ugliness and pain.

He was sickened by how naive he'd been. The promise of a new life had been dangled before him like a carrot and he'd bitten. He thought by now he would know better than that.

He pressed his fists to his eyes and he heaved a shaky breath. The smoky acridness of gunpowder lingered on his hands and it burned his brain with images that wouldn't go away. He had hated many people in the course of his life, people who had done unforgivable things to him. But as terribly as those men and women had treated him, at the moment he could hate no one more than he hated himself.

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