"Something's wrong with me." She whispered the confession to him, her eyes avoiding his. He scented her. The age-old call. The need rising in her. Her breasts lifted, her nipples peaked beneath the thin tank. Her legs moved restlessly and color swept through her body.
The moment she admitted it, tension filled the room. He almost groaned aloud. His cat roared at him, desperate to get at his mate. His body flooded with hunger, the need so strong it shook him. He'd blown it with her once already; he wasn't about to do it again by stripping the clothes from her body and pounding into her.
He took a breath and forced calm into his leopard. "It's not wrong, Kitten, it's the Han Vol Dan. It's as natural as breathing. She's close to emerging and she's giving you a little taste of what it will be like."
"I don't want it."
He winced. Not wanting your leopard was denying who and what you were. Leopard was pure freedom. Once she experienced that, no one, not even her mate, could take that from her.
"You don't want it because you don't understand it. Your experience with shifters hasn't been good, but you're wrong. We're not all killers. We can kill when we have to, but we can choose not to. We don't hunt for fun. Those that do are considered rogues, living outside our laws. Our kind goes after them and removes them from society. Like the police would do." Only rather more permanently, but he didn't add that.
He took her hand gently and tugged, leading her to the bed. With one hand he pulled back the covers. "Get in, Cat. She'll subside in a minute and that need will go away. Just breathe."
"It's strong. Very strong." She frowned and lifted her gaze to his.
He caught his breath at what he saw there. Hunger glittered in the deep blue of her eyes. Speculation.
"I know because I'm looking at you and suddenly wondering what it would be like to have you touching me," she continued honestly. "And I despise you. I don't trust you. I don't want anything at all to do with you. But I'm still wondering."
She had always been honest, or tried to. That was one of the things he admired in her. She'd been frank about what was going on with her when she hadn't been able to share much else of her life. He swept his hand over her hair. "I know, baby. It can be like that. Just breathe. She'll calm down and you'll be able to sleep."
She slipped into the bed.
"Lay on your tummy, Kitten."
"I don't like you calling me that."
She sounded so hurt his heart ached. "I know. You don't have a defense when I do, but I'm not going to stop. I know you think none of it was real between us, but you're wrong about that too. I don't blame you for not believing me, but that doesn't make my feelings for you any less true, or any less strong."
"You're right, I don't believe you."
"Just lay on your tummy for me." He pushed a little more command into his voice. His hands went to her shoulders, urging her to turn over.
Catarina was too tired to fight him, too stressed and the leopard inside her too close. She was terrified of the monster getting out of her, but now, with the burning between her legs and the heat rushing through her body, she feared she might throw herself at this man she didn't know or like and she would never, ever, get over that humiliation.
She lay on her belly, her hands under her face, her eyes closed, shutting him out. He was a lot to shut out. He took up space. A lot of space. And he wasn't any less gorgeous. She thought if you didn't like someone they became ugly to you, but that hadn't happened with Ridley--Eli--whatever.
She was aware of every little detail about him. Especially his scent. It called to something wild in her. Something needy and so hot. She wanted to squirm around on the sheets, and it took discipline not to give in to that need. She liked the wide width of his shoulders and the way he moved, the flow of his muscles and the way his eyes went from amber to gold and then molten gold. She'd even dared for one supremely frightening second to drop her gaze to the front of his jeans. It was impossible to miss the impressive bulge there and that just plain freaked her out.
She felt his weight on the bed as he sank down beside her. Her heart began to pound. She couldn't just lay there with him next to her, not feeling the way she was. Her nipples were on fire, moving against the tank and sheets with every tiny shift of her body. She couldn't stop her hips from their restless movements either.
His hand skimmed down her back. "I'm just going to take a look at what he did to you. This was your punishment for running from him, wasn't it?"
She tried not to react to his hand. It felt good, almost a caress, and she didn't want anything good from him. She didn't want gentle or sweet. She wanted him to be mean so she could never associate him with the fantasy man she'd fallen for.
"You heard. You watched." She made it an accusation. Of course he'd listened to Tuttle interrogating her.
"Cordeau did this because you ran from him, didn't he? He showed you his leopard." He ignored her accusation.
She couldn't stop the shudder that had gone through her body. He wanted to know so she told him the stark truth. What did it matter anyway?
"He stripped right there in front of me, his hard body naked, his eyes glittering. I was terrified that he intended to rape me. There was nothing to stop him."
Eli swore aloud, biting out ugly words between his teeth, but his hand never once stopped that gentle stroking. Maybe she wanted to shock him. Maybe she just wanted him to know why she despised that entity inside of her. Either way, she told him the truth.
"His body contorted horribly and then he was all teeth and claws and fur, stalking me across the length of my bedroom. I tried to run but the leopard caught me easily, bringing me down like prey. I felt the hot breath against my skin and knew I was dead, that he was going to kill me."
She turned her head to look up at Eli. "The strange thing was, I didn't care if he did. I wanted it all to be over. But he didn't kill me. He hurt me so bad." She turned her face into the pillow. "So bad," she whispered.
His hand moved under her tank, over her bare skin, his fingers finding each rake scar as he pushed the tank all the way up and out of his way. He shifted the hair off her back to expose the scars even more. She felt the skim of his mouth against each mark and tears burned again. She wanted to roll over, push him away, but she couldn't move.
Her body was no longer her own. The touch of his hands and his mouth proved she had no real defense against him.
"What he did was wrong, sweetheart." He stretched out beside her, his hands continuing
to massage her back and shoulders. "All male leopards are affected when a woman goes into the Han Vol Dan, but you don't take what doesn't belong to you. He knows the rules. He knew better."
She kept her eyes closed. His hands felt wonderful and that terrible burning need was subsiding just as he'd said it would. She felt him shift position again, moving almost over the top of her back, and now his mouth trailed kisses over the rake marks again. She should have stopped him, but she didn't. She couldn't. She felt tension coiling tight inside of her. She felt the leopard inside of her leaping toward him.
There was the slide of fur against her bare skin. She felt hot breath against the nape of her neck. Still she couldn't move, not even when the leopard sank his teeth into her shoulder in the holding bite of his kind. Her leopard surged forward toward the male and she felt the larger male's response.
Her body went up in flames as her female neared the surface in answer to the male's call. She cried out, writhing beneath him, but he moved one strong thigh over her, pinning her down, holding her until her female accepted his male. More hot tears soaked the pillow. She went from never crying to a flood she couldn't stop.
The fur was gone, replaced by Eli's mouth moving over the bite with small kisses and a soothing tongue. He didn't bother to try to hide the urgent hunger in his body from her.
"What did you do?" she whispered.
"What I had to do. It's over. There's no need to hurt you, Catarina. Your female will accept my male. She's going to emerge whether you like it or not and you'll need a man, a male shifter to take care of you."
She rolled then, expecting him to move away from her but he didn't. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her body into his. She held her head back, glaring at him.
"If I have to choose between you and Rafe, I choose Rafe." She ignored the fingers digging into her midriff. She ignored the warning in his glittering eyes. "At least he's honest. I know what I'm getting. You're all deception, and you don't care about me any more than he does. Neither choice is ideal but better the devil you know than the one you don't."
His golden eyes moved over her face. Brooding. Moody. Scary. She found herself holding her breath.