Catarina blinked sleepily up at him. “I really need to be alone for a few minutes.”
She had no clue. He dropped his hands, and it was a difficult thing to do with his leopard so close. He didn’t speak because he knew his voice would be too much of a growl. She was exhausted and he’d wanted to get her in bed. Now he had one more thing to do, and she wasn’t going to like it.
He turned away from her and hurried out of the house to retrieve her bags and put the truck in the garage.
Catarina’s emergence was close. She was at her time – the Han Vol Dan of his people – where the human’s and cat’s cycles came together, allowing the leopard to emerge. That couldn’t happen until he knew her leopard would accept his as her mate.
Cordeau would be frantic to get to her. Eli knew he would pull out all the stops to find her. Eli knew that because, again, Catarina had been right about him. He was like Cordeau in some ways and if a man took his woman, he would hunt that man to the ends of the earth. Eli knew if he wanted to keep Catarina Benoit, he would have to kill Rafe Cordeau, and he was definitely keeping Catarina.
She was standing in the middle of the bedroom looking around her a little helplessly when he returned. He walked up to her and took her hands, turning them over to examine the bruised ring on her skin. “Fucking Tuttle put the cuffs on too tight, didn’t he?”
She gave a halfhearted attempt to pull her hands away but subsided when he tightened his fingers around hers. She nodded.
“I’m going to beat the crap out of him.”
He slid the pad of his thumb over the bruises on her inner wrist lightly. She shivered. She definitely wasn’t immune to him. She was every bit as aware of him as he was her, but she didn’t like it. He had to find a way to change that. Right now, she was too sleepy, too exhausted to protest anything he did so he took full advantage.
He brought her wrists to his mouth and brushed a kiss over each. Her cobalt blue eyes went wider. Darker. Shades of violet. Again he felt her tug and he allowed her fingers to slip from his. She pressed both wrists to her thighs, but he didn’t rub his kisses away. He reached out and tucked strands of hair behind her ear.
“You need to climb in bed, sweetheart. You’re so exhausted you’re nearly falling over.” He kept his voice gentle.
Tenderness crept in and that shocked him. He didn’t know he knew how to be tender. She stripped him bare, looking so young, the terrible bruise standing out so starkly on her pale skin.
“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.