Now, Flambé rolled over and pushed herself into a sitting position. She’d made a bed for herself in the closet. The main room was just too big for her. A part of her wanted to sneak away and go back to her small studio that felt safe, homey and hers. This place was too large and masculine for her and it smelled like Sevastyan. He was everywhere. Stamped into the walls and floor. He might not reside in the rooms, but his presence was everywhere and she found it too overpowering. She hadn’t counted on that.
She wasn’t a weak person. She could stand up to anyone and often had to when it came to her business and the people she brought into the country to save. Her species of leopard was very submissive to their mate, but they were ferocious fighters and extremely protective of their children. Still, those things Sevastyan had made her feel when she’d been at a distance from him in the club were a thousand times more intense this close to him.
She forced herself to her feet and out into the main bedroom. The privacy screens had been lowered on all the windows, blacking out any light from the moon, but she could see easily in the dark. Pacing, Flambé thought about what to do. She had to be practical. Really assess who she was and what she could do now that she’d met Sevastyan in person. When she’d gotten the request for work, she’d been thrilled. She was going to get the chance she wanted.
The first meeting had to be cancelled because Flamme had made her presence known in a big way. Already, Flambé’s body had been crawling with need, her nerve endings alive and raw with a kind of fiery burn that translated to a sexual heat of its own. Her leopard’s sudden appearance added even more of an urgency, so much so that she couldn’t trust herself to go out of her room. Her body was in a frenzy of need. Hot and aching. She’d called and cancelled, because she couldn’t trust herself around him.
At the same time, Franco had contacted her and tried to set up a meeting with her. He let her know he was watching her. That was really frightening and she had been extremely careful, making certain she stuck close to her crew whenever she left her offices or home after that.
The second meeting she was supposed to have with Sevastyan had gone way wrong as well. Her leopard was spinning out of control. Completely. Flambé had found herself on the floor of her room when she’d been so carefully dressing for her meeting with Sevastyan. She’d been thinking of him, fantasizing, and the next thing she knew, she was burning up, her blood so hot, pounding with need so intense she was on the floor on her hands and knees sobbing, hips bucking out of control. Nothing had helped. Toys had made the sensation worse. It had taken what seemed like forever for the terrible sensation to ease enough for her to even text an apology to him. She knew he wasn’t a man to be very forgiving.
Now that she’d met him, she realized she should have taken into consideration what kind of person she was. Who she was. Wild sex was what she totally needed, but not with a man like Sevastyan. Sevastyan was the kind of man who could own a woman with his brand of sex. She should have been paying more attention to how many of those
women came back night after night in the hopes of being Sevastyan’s choice for the night, even though they had permanent partners.
Sex was a powerful weapon if it was used that way—and it could be wielded as a weapon. Sevastyan clearly was adept at using sex for whatever the reason. She was in so much trouble. “It’s not your fault, Flamme,” she whispered aloud, and rubbed the swelling on her head for the hundredth time. “You were trying to protect us.”
The last thing she expected was for his leopard to claim hers. She paced restlessly again. Her leopard was in her first life cycle. Mistakes were made. She knew that. This had to be a mistake because no way in hell was Flambé going to be claimed by a shifter. She’d be trapped by Sevastyan.
“What do you want, Flambé? What are you doing here? You think things through. Plan things carefully. Since the first time you laid eyes on that man, you’ve been out of control. You have to pull back and figure this out, because if you don’t, it will be too late and you’ll never get out of this mess.”
She had always talked aloud when she planned anything. She was an only child and most often alone. She lived in the studio because her father took in so many strangers, so her “room” had been the studio to “give her privacy,” even as a child. Which really meant give her father many rooms in the house for his women.
She had talked aloud to hear sound. She played music, filling the room with the soothing rhythms so she didn’t feel so lonely. Talking to herself in times of stress had become a habit. She was used to small spaces and they comforted her.
“You like him. That was unexpected. You didn’t think in terms of liking him. It was supposed to be all about sex.” She crossed to the large bed and stared down at it. She hadn’t gotten on it so the blankets had remained untouched. There wasn’t so much as a wrinkle on the comforter. “He didn’t want you upstairs in his personal space and that’s good.” She looked around the room, a long slow sweep through her leopard’s eyes. “This is a nice room that any guest would be happy to be in. He’s treating you so politely. Perfect manners.”
Restlessness had her pacing again. The room was so large and she was able to walk the length, using the sitting room area as well. “You don’t matter any more than those women mattered to him. Your leopard matters to his leopard. You know that. You felt it when they connected. If you stay here with him, you’ll have that amazing sex you dreamt of, and your leopard will be happy. So will his leopard. This is a great property for the leopards to run free. He wants you for his leopard and to have his children, just the way the other shifters wanted the women for their leopards and to have children. What happened to them? In the end? What happened to your mother? What kind of lives did they have? You know better than to fall for this bullshit.”
She paused by the low table and flung herself into the sitting chair so she could drum her fingers on the tabletop, hearing a musical beat in her head. She had to hear something along with the sound of her own voice. “I’m not certain if he’s capable of being happy, no matter what he says. He has that place inside him he retreats to where only he can go. I would never really be a part of his life. I’d be . . . lonely. Just the way I’ve always been. I’m so damn tired of being alone. I hurt all the time now. My body is burning up, even before your rising, Flamme. I’m not complaining about you. I’m not. It was already happening. I wanted him. You know I did. Now, having met him, I know one time would never have been enough.”
Her head was pounding again and she wanted to cry. Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. They were in a mess. She’d seen too many other shifter women in a mess. Most didn’t make it out. She had to find a way.
“Flamme, even for you, I don’t know if I can do this. I thought it would be one time with him and then it became something else because we were so scattered and afraid of Franco. I shouldn’t have come here, but he was chasing me and he had others close by.”
She dropped her forehead into her hand and rubbed at her temples. She couldn’t leave now, not with Franco’s men watching the place. Not unless . . . Her head went up. She could go out the garage and into the tunnel, the one Sevastyan had driven them through. She would end up at Mitya’s. She could text one of her workers to come get her and text Ania that she had an emergency at her home and one of the workers was there to pick her up. The timing would have to be perfect so Ania wouldn’t have a chance to call Sevastyan. Once she was back at her house, she could protect herself.
She took a deep breath. “That’s plain bullshit and you know it. Franco and Sevastyan are not the kind of men you can fight by locking yourself in your studio and pretending they’re just going to go away. If you do this, you’ll have to take the first flight out of here. You’ll have to set that up as well. Have someone pack a bag and when they pick you up, drive you straight to the airport. You’d have to fly out immediately. That would only be the first step. Sevastyan might let it go, but Franco likes to chase. The hunt is half the fun to him. You might need help in disappearing. Who to go to? And if you go, what about Shanty? The woman coming in from South Africa with her children?”
She was up again, pacing across the room. She had to work her entire escape out step by step and then implement it. She was extremely good at planning. She had planned dozens of flights for men, women and children from other countries, taking them out from under the noses of hunters and bringing them to safety. Surely she could do it for herself.
But if she did, then she’d have to leave a shifter woman with children, one counting on her, out there alone. She’d have to shut down the only underground abused shifter women had available to them because in the end, she’d have to use it for herself. That would be so selfish. She had made such a mess of everything because of her runaway hormones.
She was disciplined. She could surely figure out a way to fix this without ruining everything she’d put in place. When a shifter male abused his mate, he was more brutal and crueler than could be conceived. She’d seen that over and over. She wasn’t about to let it happen to her, nor was she going to let others down because she had been so careless in a moment of weakness. She’d find a way out.
* * *
* * *
SEVASTYAN signaled to Kirill and Matvei to separate. The two leopards went up and over the roof of the house in order to come down on the back side of it to get to the heavier brush where they could more easily conceal themselves. Sevastyan’s leopard, a big brute of a male, a vicious fighter, was scarred and deadly. He had thick white fur scattered with large, widely spaced black rosettes over his head, back, legs and tail.
In the advance sketches Flambé had sent to him for consideration, she had included plants that would help his leopard blend in with more natural cover. Kirill and Matvei both had larger Amur leopards with the same wider spaced black rosettes, but their background fur was creamier colored rather than a stark white. Sevastyan hadn’t thought in terms of needing cover for the leopards other than the trees and heavier brush. Flambé had included color to match their actual breed of leopards. She had also tried to give them as many varied shades as possible, knowing the leopards, although shifters, preferred the cooler weather.
He spotted the first of Franco’s spies. The leopard had eyes on the windows of the master bedroom where Flambé was staying. A prickle of uneasiness went down his spine. He turned his head slowly, very carefully, just enough to bring her bank of windows into his sight. No light leaked out from under the privacy screens. What had attracted the spy’s attention? He waited a heartbeat. Two. It wasn’t that he saw movement behind those screens. He sensed it. Flambé wasn’t fast asleep in the closet. She was up and moving in that room.
Cursing under his breath to himself, Sevastyan took advantage of the spy’s inattention to his surroundings and began a freeze-frame stalking. It was a slow process, but he was moving out into the open behind the leopard. At any moment the other cat might turn its head and see him, but the closer Sevastyan got, the more of an advantage he would have. He wanted to get this kill over fast so he had more time for the next. The longer it took before the others knew they were being hunted, the easier it would be for him and his men.
The leopard lifted its head, stretching its neck high toward the house, testing the air. Sevastyan rushed the last few feet and was on the other cat, slamming his weight down hard on the spine while he sank his teeth into the throat, driving deep for the killing bite. The spy desperately tried to throw him off, bucking and throwing himself to the ground, trying to roll, but Shturm was an extremely heavy leopard, all roped muscle, an experienced killing machine, and he never once let up with the suffocating bite.