Timur reached out and covered her hands with one of his own as he easily steered the car toward her house. “Talk to me, Ashe. I want to know what you’re thinking.”
She didn’t pull away from him, and he almost wished she had. It would have been better than her sitting there so meekly. There wasn’t anything meek about Ashe, so he wasn’t buying her performance. But the hurt was real. Her leopard’s anger was real.
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
As lies went, that was a whopper. His leopard flagged that immediately. He took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her again. “Baby, I’d rather you not say anything than have you lying to me. Whatever this is, we can make it right.”
She took a deep breath, and he braced himself. The storm was about to break. He considered that a good thing.
“I don’t want you staying at the house with me. I know you think I’m in danger, and I’ll take precautions, but it’s too hard to have you there.”
“Hard to have me there?” he echoed. “You mean you used me for sex and now you want me to go away.”
She scowled at him. “How many women have you used for sex and then made go away? You don’t get to judge me. And you don’t get to be sarcastic. You know you’ve done just that a hundred times, probably more. We’re not in a relationship. We had sex in the street. Great sex, but still, it was just sex.”
“My leopard claimed your leopard.” He turned onto the quiet little cul-de-sac where the house was located. He really liked the house. Mansions weren’t his thing. He thought his brother’s home was extremely cool, and right for Fyodor, but this much smaller house suited him. He pulled into the driveway and hit the remote that opened the two-car garage. Her car was already parked on one side and he liked that. He liked that his car made up the second part of the garage. Hers was a shit car, and really banged up. It had so many dings and dents in it, he wondered how it could actually be on the road.
She shrugged. “Your leopard will be fine. He’s been fine the last few years, and he’ll be okay until some other woman comes along.”
“You know better than that. Your parents shared information with you. You know that a leopard shifter mates with his only. You’re my only.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. I’m not your only. I just look at you and know you’re one of those men who go through women like they’re candy and leave a trail of broken hearts behind.”
He turned off the engine. “Their hearts can’t be broken if I have one-night stands, Ashe. We have sex and we walk away.”
“No woman walks away from the kind of sex we had, Timur. You broke hearts.”
It was an accusation. He couldn’t defend his position, because she told the truth. He had broken hearts, but he hadn’t meant to. On the other hand, he did have to set her straight on one issue. “We had off-the-charts, amazing sex together, Ashe. It wasn’t all me. It was a combination of the two of us. I’ve never had that with another woman.”
That meant something to her. Her eyes went soft and there was a flash of awareness. Then she was pushing the heavy car door open and sliding off the seat. He followed. She wasn’t kicking him out that easily. He glanced down at his watch.
After Temnyy, Timur’s leopard, and Logan’s leopard had defeated the other two men who had been after his woman, Jeremiah, who’d been assigned to watch the motel, announced the arrival of another group of men. There were six of them. He had Logan take the phones of the dead men to Vitaly and he’d gotten past their codes as usual. Their phones had blown up with messages to regroup back at the hotel, that their original mission was terminated, and it was imperative they break off immediately. Too bad they hadn’t gotten that message before he’d killed them.
“You aren’t going to persuade me,” Ashe said, resolution in her voice.
He followed her right into the house. “I’m not going to try to persuade you. There’s no need.” And there wasn’t, not as far as he was concerned. The decision had been made the moment he’d set eyes on her. The moment he’d inhaled and taken the scent of her deep into his lungs. He’d deepened that promise by tasting her mouth. The commitment had been made right then, at that moment, when his mouth came down on hers. That was long before his cock was involved. His resolve was permanent.
She looked at him over her shoulder, her long, feathery lashes capturing his attention. He liked those little details about her. The way she moved. The sound of her voice. Those little glances she gave him as if just looking at him hurt. “Why do I not believe you?”