He ran his debit card over the reader built into the table and rose. "Let's go."
Nodding, she took a quick sip of water, then followed, staying close to him. They met Dorian just outside. The blond sentinel was in the process of getting off his sleek black motorcycle. "That your rabbit?" Hanging up his helmet, he smiled at Talin and it was a charming smile with a hint of the feral. Clay had seen women throw themselves at Dorian after being on the receiving end of that smile. "She's kind of bitesized for you. Why don't you give her to me?"
Clay waited to see what Talin would do, well aware the other sentinel was simply messing with her. According to Pack law, Talin was Clay's because she had come to him. Until and unless she wanted out - Clay's hands fisted again - no packmate would touch her.
"What do you say, little rabbit?"
"I'm sorry," Talin replied, sweet as honey. "I don't do pretty boys. In fact, I don't do boys at all."
Dorian choked on a laugh, then glanced at Clay's shocked face. "Well, shit. She's all yours, buddy."
Clay hustled Talin to her Jeep and pinned her to the passenger door with his hands on either side of her body. Her fear was a live thing between them, a slimy intruder that had no place being there. He fought to contain the leopard's corresponding rage and knew from the look in her eyes that he'd only been partially successful.
"You like girls?" he asked very, very quietly.
She shook her head, eyes big.
"I can still tell when you're lying and you weren't lying to Dorian."
"No, I wasn't." She bit her lower lip. "I was jerking his chain 'cause he was jerking mine. I said I don't like pretty boys."
The leopard was too wound up to see the logic. "What do you like?"
"Men."
Time stopped as he digested the knowledge in her eyes. "You've been with men." He felt as if she'd cut him off at the knees and he shouldn't have. Leopard changelings were sensual creatures - regular sexual contact was considered healthy and natural. He had never before judged a woman for who or how many others she'd been with.
"Yes." Her skin paled. "Lots of men. So many I can't remember their faces, much less their names. Too many for even my memory to handle."
Was she trying to hurt him on purpose? That she had the ability to do so enraged the leopard. Keeping that anger at bay only by dint of years of experience, he pushed off the car. "Why? You weren't like that."
"You knew me before puberty hit," she said, a tight bitterness to her tone. "Can we go now or would you like a blow-by-blow?"
"Get the hell in!"
Talin got in, conscious of a deep sense of self-loathing. She'd never intended for Clay to know the depths to which she had sunk, but it had been like someone else was controlling her mouth, as if some defiant part of her wanted him to know. Now he did. And whatever chance they had had, it was gone.
Talin couldn't blame him for his reaction. The counselor she had finally gone to for a short period after beginning her work for Shine, had assured her that her acting out as a teenager and as a young adult had been an understandable reaction, something often exhibited by victims of childhood abuse. The woman had classified it as a kind of self-harm, said there was no need for Talin to feel shame. But even after eight years of celibacy, except for -
No, she wouldn't think of those times. Her fists turned bloodless. It had been eight years since the final therapy session, eight years since she had begun to try to treat her body as something good, something worth holding precious, eight years...but Talin still wasn't sure she believed the counselor.
Maybe she was the slut Orrin had tried to make her. Maybe that defect was built into her genes. The clinic where she'd been abandoned as a baby had been a free one, utilized almost exclusively by prostitutes after all. Orrin had called her the daughter of a whore. Like mother, like daughter.
"Where's your apartment?"
Snapping upright at that cold question, she realized they had reached the outskirts of San Francisco. Lips dry, mouth full of cotton wool, she gave him directions to the small high-rise where Shine had leased her an apartment. "Thank you," she said when he parked on the street out front.
"Here." He threw her the key. A split second later, he had opened the door and was gone, a lethal shadow invisible against the rising fog. Eyes stinging, she shifted into the driver's seat and drove the Jeep down into the underground parking area.
Clay had been disgusted by her.
A sob caught in her throat as she sat in the dimly lit garage. Even when Clay had first discovered her grim childhood secret - only seconds before he'd killed Orrin - he had never looked at her with blame in his eyes. Instead, he had written her letters from juvie, telling her that she was still his Tally, still the best thing in his life. Those letters had gotten her through more years than Clay would ever know.
But now...now he blamed her for what she'd become. How could he not? He'd spent four years in a cage so she wouldn't have to live in a nightmare and what had she done? She'd spit on his gift, cheapened it to tawdriness. No wonder he hated her.
That she had been close to insane during those lost, tormented years didn't sound like a particularly good excuse.
Giving in, she pressed her head against the steering wheel and cried.