“You might as well have used your credit card.” He moved out from the bathroom—still naked. “They found you. I found you.” He plucked a pair of boxers and jeans from a wingback chair near the window. “You were tracked.”
She flashed a bitter smile, not liking the truth, especially when she thought she had done a fairly good job covering her trail.
He snapped the fly shut on his jeans and looked up at her. “You were bugged.”
“Bugged?” She felt her eyes widen. “How? When could they have…” She shook her head; her voice faded.
He shrugged a broad shoulder. “Don’t know. I didn’t have the time to rummage through your stuff last night. Just thought it safe to discard your belongings altogether.”
Her gaze shot around the room. “You left all my stuff back there!” Her clothes, ammo, hard-earned money.
“Too risky to keep any of it. I didn’t want them following us.”
Her fingers tightened on the sheet. Escaping this room, him, suddenly posed more difficulty. She pushed to her feet, careful to wrap herself in the sheet. “I don’t have any clothes.”
A smile tugged at his hard lips. “We’ll find you something to wear.” His dark gaze slid over her. “I suppose we must.”
Her cheeks burned, then she remembered something else.
“My necklace!”
He glanced at her throat. “You’re still wearing it.”
“No, my mother’s necklace. I don’t wear it. I just keep it close. I…sleep with it next to me.”
He stared at her, frowning. “We had to leave your things behind.”
“Then we have to go back.”
“Kit, there’s no going back there.” Even though his voice was gentle, his gaze was hard, inflexible.
“Damn you! I have to have it!” Her throat grew thick.
He lifted one shoulder. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” A desperate sort of anger swirled through her. She would never see her mother’s cross again. And the blame rested with him. “You couldn’t give a shit!”
A muscle in his jaw tensed. Without saying a word, he turned to dig through his bag on the dresser, his back muscles flexing with his movements.
“What about my guns?” she demanded. As a man, he would probably understand that better than the sentimental value of a keepsake. “They’re not so easy to replace.” Especially her cache of silver bullets. She quivered with indignation. It had taken years and money to acquire those guns and bullets.
“You’re with me now.” He pulled a black T-shirt from his bag, snapping it once in the air. “You don’t need them.”
Her fingers grew numb from clutching the sheet. “Why? Because you’re my big, bad protector?” She advanced slowly, glaring at the smooth expanse of his back. “Hard to believe, considering you’re charged with terminating me.” Her gaze fell on the gleaming crystal vase sitting atop the dresser. “Why didn’t you just let them finish me off?” she demanded, never forgetting that although he had helped her, he was not an ally. She inched closer to the vase, a sudden plan taking over. “Letting them have me could have saved you the trouble. That’s your job, isn’t it? What EFLA wants? Me. Dead. Why else did your people release my identity to the lycan population?”
“That wasn’t my idea,” he replied, slipping his arms into the sleeves of the T-shirt. “There’s dying and then there’s what they would have done to you. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“Oh, you have principles about the manner in which I die?” she sneered, closing her hand around the smooth crystal vase, watching as his dark head popped through his shirt, not really caring about his answer, knowing what she had to do.
She lifted the vase, noting with satisfaction that it felt heavy as lead in her hands.
He began to turn, saying, “I’ve never said that I want you—”
With a heart that felt surprisingly tight in her chest, she swung, jaw clenched so tightly her teeth ached.
Horror mingled with satisfaction as the vase crashed against his head in a shatter of glittering glass. Rafe dropped heavily to his knees. He remained there, swaying unsteadily, head bent.
She flattened a hand over his shoulder, preparing to push him the rest of the way to the floor, thinking it should be an easy matter to overpower him now. Staring at the dark hair curling against his nape, she muttered crossly, resenting him, resenting herself for doing this to him, even if she had no choice, “You should have listened. I warned you not to underestimate me.”
Then she shoved at his firm shoulder, her fingers resisting the urge to caress all the muscled flesh beneath her palm. To her surprise, he didn’t budge. In his weakened condition, he should have dropped like a fly.
Frowning, she pushed even harder against the muscle, gasping when hard fingers flew to her wrist with the speed of lightning. His hand flexed around her until she feared her bones might snap, brittle as a branch in his grasp.
Dark eyes shot to hers, alert. Furious.
Alert as they shouldn’t have been.
He should have been halfway to unconsciousness on the floor by now.
Lightness gleamed behind the rich brown of his eyes, like something trapped beneath the surface of a dark ocean, a wild animal swimming wrathfully, searching for a way out.
Dread scraped her spine like the drag of an icy cold fingernail. She tried to tug her arm free, desperate to break free. No luck. His grip grew tighter, bruising. She swallowed a whimper of pain, but held that livid stare, unable to look away.
“Impossible,” she whispered, her voice a hoarse croak.
“I’ve never underestimated you, Kit,” his voice rumbled over the air, thick and foreign, coiling like a flame in the pit of her stomach. “It is you who have underestimated me.”
CHAPTER 14
Rafe sucked in a deep breath and waited for the stinging pain in his head to subside. The pain did.
Unfortunately, the deep breath did nothing to cool his fury, a fury that threatened to suck him under, pull him into the darkness that always tempted, begging for free rein.
With a hand on his knee, he pushed himself to his feet, struggling to reel in his temper.
Her green eyes flew from him to the tiny bits of crystal on the carpet, blinking like diamonds. He shook his head, sending more shards raining down.
She lifted her gaze back to him, muttering, “You shouldn’t be standing.”
“My apologies,” he mocked. “Should I have allowed you to kill me?”
Defiance sparked in her bottle-green eyes. “If I’d been trying to kill you, you would be dead.”
His gaze crawled over her, prowling, hungry. The way she clutched the sheet molded the thin fabric to her breasts perfectly. His mouth watered. He remembered rolling his fingers over the turgid little peaks, remembered the mewling cries he had wrung from her. She had been so incredibly responsive. His cock hard, he quickly looked away and dragged in a deep breath before looking back at her.
He heard her breath quicken, and he responded, his body tightening, coiling with an animal readiness. “When you can’t even knock me unconscious? Somehow I doubt that.”
Color heated her cheeks. “I hit you hard enough.” Her voice dropped to a petulant mutter. “Your skull must be steel-plated.”
“Something like that.” With his hand still on her wrist, he pulled her closer. She stumbled against him. “Let’s get a few things straight.”
“Such as?” she snapped, struggling against his chest.
“You’re not going anywhere without me.” He released her wrist to wrap both his arms around her. Her female flesh pressed so close to him. “So get that thought out of your head. No more vases.”
“No vases.” She gave a sharp nod. “Duly noted. I’ll look for something else next time.” She cocked her head in mock contemplation. “Maybe a television set.”
“There won’t be a next time, Kit,” he warned, tightening his arms around her. The press of her small breasts against his chest was damne
d exciting. “You’re taking me to your brother.” The sooner she did, the sooner all of this could be over. And he could be free of this misery.
The green of her eyes hardened, deepening to polished malachite. “Never.”
“Then you’re stuck with me.”
“Forever?” she mocked. “I don’t think so.”
“It won’t take forever to get what I want out of you.” His gaze lowered, assessing the golden slopes of her shoulders, the shadowed dip of cleavage below the bunched sheet. He remembered clearly every curve and angle. The small, perfect breasts with coral-tipped nipples. Those he would never forget. “I generally get what I want from women.”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “My, aren’t you the charmer. Women must drop at your feet.” Her mocking words shook on the air, lacking their usual ring of bravado. For all her toughness, there was a woman at her core, vulnerable and sensitive. This only made his reaction to her more visceral. More dangerous—to both of them.
“But let me assure you I’m not like any woman you’ve met before,” she added. “I won’t drop at your feet.”
“I can believe that.” His hands slid down her back, shifting to the gentle swell of her hips. A reckless move. Foolish. He’d been treading dangerous ground since the moment she woke, attuned to her every move and sound, from the slight shift of her weight on the mattress to the faint rasp of her breath.
He should release her. Should set her from him and drop his hands. Never touch her again.
He’d never touched the others. Never been tempted. And there had been several attractive women over the years. Nice, agreeable ones who never gave him half so much trouble as this one. They had even looked at him with invitation in their eyes. He had no idea what the ramifications would have been if he had mated with a Marshan descendant and a child resulted, but he was not about to risk finding out.
Yet here he was. With his hands all over her. With his thoughts wrapped up in her.
Of course, he could tell her the truth. But somehow he did not think that would make her more agreeable. If anything, she would fight him all the harder.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. The full bottom lip. Her tongue darted out to moisten it nervously, and something tightened and cramped in his gut.
Her gaze slid from his, moving to his mouth. “Let me go,” she whispered.
There were a million reasons why he should have accommodated her, but the sensation of her nipples hardening beneath the thin sheet kept him from obliging her.
“You don’t want me to do that.”
Eyes wide at his blunt declaration, she shook her head, tossing her unruly curls around her face. The clean scent of her hair drifted to him. He detected no perfume, which only let him smell her all the better. Clean woman with a hint of mint.
“Yes, I do.” She paused, groping for words, her brow wrinkling. “You want me dead.”
She still believed that? Believed he could hurt her?
“You don’t think that.”
She renewed her struggles, her eyes sparks of green fire in her flushed face. “Let me go.”
He hauled her higher against him. Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth near her ear, demanding thickly, “Do I act like someone who wants you dead?”
She stilled. He felt every inch of her quiver.
“That’s the way of it then? You’re like them. An animal.”
He sucked in his breath.
“You want your fun before taking care of business, is that it?”
Her scathing words struck a nerve. He flinched, fingers digging through the sheet and into her back. She winced, and he forced himself to remember his strength and ease his hold before he showed her just how close to the truth she was.
Pulling back, he looked into her eyes, his voice dropping into the charged air. “I’m nothing like them.” He had to believe that. He must.
“You’re no better! You’re just like them,” she shot back. “Your methods might vary, but your goals are the same.”
You’re just like them.
His mother’s voice came back to haunt him then, the mantra she had drilled into him and Sebastian echoing through his head as if she were standing beside him. You must never be like them. Never. Never. The mantra had become his own.
“I am nothing like them. You want me to prove it,” he challenged, dark fury rolling through his veins like molten lava, thick and scorching.
Her lip curled. “You can’t—”
One of his hands slid up from her back to tangle in her short hair. He gripped the back of her skull, fingers curling into the soft flesh just beneath one tiny shell of an ear. He could feel her life pulse there, dancing madly, leaping against his touch.
He was so close now, his lips a hairsbreadth from hers.
“What are you doing?” The soft words feathered across his lips.
“Showing you that I’m different from them.” His fingers shifted, stroking the soft skin behind her ear in a caress.
The words barely left his mouth before he was pressing his lips to hers, covering her warm lips with his own. And discovering true wildness. True, blood-burning animal hunger.
Swallowing her startled cry in his mouth, he deepened the kiss, working to coax a response from her.
She gasped against his open mouth, and he took advantage, delving his tongue inside the warm recesses of her mouth, tasting the wet heat of her. Sweet as wine. And just as intoxicating.
With one taste, he knew it would never be enough. He would never be satisfied until he possessed all of her.
Casting aside the restraint on which he’d prided himself, he growled low in his throat and pulled her closer. But not close enough. Never close enough. His arms lifted her off her feet. Starved, denied too long, he drank from the mouth that had tormented him from the first time he saw it.
Groaning, he let himself go, gave in to the impossible impulses he had felt from the start, since the moment he’d laid eyes on her—a sexy, sweet, vanilla-smelling huntress stalking and battling her prey, her smart mouth lashing out at him, daring him to conquer her in the most primitive of ways.
Mouth still fastened on hers, he gave a single tug on the sheet until it puddled to the floor, leaving her body delicious and bare against him.
He slid his hand from her silken back to her front, dancing his fingers up her quivering belly to cup one breast, kneading the small mound. The soft flesh fit perfectly in his hand. Like he knew it would. Her nipple pebbled against his palm, and she whimpered, kissing him back. Tentatively at first, then more aggressively, sliding her tongue against his as he rolled her nipple between thumb and index finger. He yearned to taste the sweetness of her breasts, to bite and nip at the rigid little peaks until she cried out.
He wedged his knee between her legs, pushing her higher against him. To his delight, she pressed herself down against his thigh.
The core of her burned through his jeans and into the flesh of his thigh, branding him. Releasing her breast, he cupped her face to angle her head better for his hungry tongue, the line of her jaw delicate and smooth in his hands.
She kissed him back more feverishly, matching the thrusts and parries of his tongue, her small hands clutching his shoulders, sharp nails digging through the thin cotton of his T-shirt.
He tangled his fingers through her hair, luxuriating in the silken tresses.
He couldn’t stop. Couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t prevent his hands from roaming every bare inch.
Down again they slid, skimming the slim line of her spine to cup the deliciously full ass. He groaned and massaged the smooth cheeks, bringing her burning sex against him. Her moistness scalded him through the denim of his jeans. His cock throbbed painfully, aching to be free, to bury itself within her.
But the restraint and discipline that had ruled him through his life obediently reared its head. He withdrew. Slowly, with great pain, he removed his leg from between hers. Then his hands. Then his mouth.
Glassy green eyes gaze
d up at him, fortunately too dazed to witness any change in his own eyes. And he knew they must be altered—evidence of his desire, proof of what she did to him.
She raised her hand to touch her lips, moist and bruised beneath her fingertips.
“Enough,” he managed to get out, the thick, strangled sound of his voice betraying him, threatening to expose him. Then she would see just how much of an animal he in fact was.
He swallowed past the thickness in his throat, struggling to regain control.
He had set out to prove he was not like those beasts, and had only ended up proving to himself that he was perhaps more like them than he wished to be. Never had he come so close to losing himself with a woman. Always before he had been in control.
She shook her head, her fair hair crazy and wild, mussed from his hands. “No,” she spat out. Moistening her lips, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and tugged him close. “Not enough.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. The last of his willpower vanished. No matter what he was. What she was. His mouth slammed back over hers.
CHAPTER 15
He was kissing her.
Her eyes drifted shut, lost to the sensation of it, powerless to resist. In that instance, her body’s needs outweighed her logic.
Too long. It had been too long since a man had his mouth on hers, his tongue dancing along her own. And his hands. Never had a man roamed his hands so thoroughly, so possessively, over her body.
Now, she decided. This moment, she would take what she could get. Just once. It would be enough. She would make it so.
His warm tongue tangled with hers as his fingers slid into her hair, running through the knots and snarls with a fierceness that rivaled the blood hammering through her veins.
A lick of heat curled low in her belly, tightening and twisting until she grew wet.
His hands slid lower, seizing each cheek, lifting her higher against him.
She moaned into his mouth, winding her arms around his neck, marveling at the insistent ache throbbing between her legs. She’d never felt anything like it. Never had she burned.
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