Page 71 of Dishonored

“Yeah, Raffe, they told me,” he murmured. “And now that your father is out of the picture, I bet it’s your husband that’ll be heading your little clan.”

Heat colored her cheeks with a light red.

Anger flashed in her eyes.

Still, she stayed quiet, and unmoving.

“Was that it—all your work was to move your husband along in your business while you had the chance?”

He got nothing in response.

Not even a blink of those long, dark lashes.

Goddammit.

“I wonder,” Caesar drawled, going for broke, “how he would feel then to know that you did everything you possibly could for his cause—including getting on your back for me, and spreading those legs of yours as wide as you could? Would he care that I know what your pussy tastes like, or how you sound when you’re screaming my name? Would he, Aria? Do you care to find out?”

Her throat constricted beneath that silk scarf at the same time her eyes closed. A tic showed in her cheek, but just as quickly, she relaxed and opened her eyes again. Only this time, she wasn’t staring out the window.

No, she was looking at him.

Caesar didn’t see the anger or fear he had hoped to find looking back in her gaze, but there was a threat. A silent promise of violence coming his way, and fast, if he continued to stay in her path.

Hurricane Aria.

Beautiful.

Enthralling.

Dangerous.

It was fitting.

Finally, something.

He had gotten something from her.

Caesar flashed her one of his grins. “You know, it’s better he learns now what kind of woman you are—that all women are exactly the same when it comes right down to it. They’ll do whatever they want to get what they want. They don’t give a fuck who they harm in the process. You’re not any different. You’ll still get on your knees or spread your legs for a man the same way the next one will.”

He couldn’t hide the heat in his words.

The hate.

Not even his pain.

Not pain because of her, no, but pain nonetheless. Pain he refused to indulge because it all too often left him in a terrible and desperate place. A place that led him to bad and rash decisions, and left him with a deep need to hurt others just to get rid of his own ache; to get rid of his own shame.

No one could possibly understand.

But he was right.

“All women do this,” he told her, “just in different ways.”

Aria was silent for a long stretch before she finally spoke again. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Women,” she clarified. “For you, that’s what it is. You hate women. Why do you hate them so much, Caesar? What woman hurt you this badly that this is the first place your mind goes when you feel slighted by a female—to a place where you have to hurt her, and humiliate her with something like sex?”