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her trembling mouth.

Abruptly he went to his knees in front of her. She couldn't move. Couldn't find breath. What was a man like Dominic doing on his knees in front of her? It was so wrong. She could fight side by side with him, and she would consider herself his equal, no matter that he was a warrior unsurpassed. But she wasn't his equal here. Not when they were alone. She wanted to protest, to back away, to serve him, but she had no idea how.

"I can't do this," she managed to get out. Her voice wasn't her own, just a thread of shivery sound that could have been taken for fear.

He looked up at her with eyes darkened with desire. Her heart clenched hard in her chest. There was something so compelling in the way he looked at her. She was jaguar, used to direct stares--but that was the locked-on gaze of a predator. Dominic looked at her as if she were the most desirable woman in the world--and she was his. She shook her head, biting down hard on her lip to keep from upsetting him again by blurting out that she wasn't.

"You deserve . . ." Her fingers tentatively touched the silky strands of that hair, so black, like the wing of a great bird shining in the sky. ". . . so much more. I can't be what you need." "I deserve you," he said, his voice as gentle as ever. "I need this." He leaned forward and captured droplets of water running down her hip right over the jagged, ugly wound.

She cried out, the shock of his mouth on her sending waves of heat through her body. The brush of his hair against her thighs sent a thousand streaks of arousal burning through her legs so that she might have fallen if she hadn't gripped his shoulders. He felt solid, like a rock, someone she could lean on if she just let herself break. And maybe that was what he had been after all along.

His hands spread her thighs. He didn't say a word, simply positioned her with his hands. His breath touched her first. The sound of her heart echoed through the cavern. He carefully lapped at every single laceration, every scratch, and when he once again found the puncture wounds on her back and buttocks, she wanted to weep with the care he took.

"What happened?"

She had to search to find her vocal cords. He hadn't touched her sexually, not really, yet her body was no longer hers. Pliant and soft, it belonged to him--she belonged to him. She didn't know what kind of claiming the Carpathians did with their lifemates, but she felt claimed. She felt as if he cared for her like a rare and precious jewel. Nothing had ever come close to such a feeling before.

"I set a trap and he was waiting for me. He sacrificed his men, left them out in the open, and I took the shots. I was about to run when he dropped down out of nowhere. It's difficult to fool my jaguar. She's very alert, especially to any male in the area. She's had to be. But he was there and now he has the scent of my blood."

"Who is he?" Dominic bent his head forward to place a kiss on the puncture wounds, his hair making her shiver as it brushed against her skin.

"He's called Brodrick. Brodrick the Terrible. He's my father."

Dominic was silent a moment, taking his time rising. He enveloped her body in the warm towel and drew her into his arms. "Tell me about him."

Solange rested her head against his chest and allowed herself the pleasure of circling his waist with her arms. She could hear the steady rhythm of his heart, a reassuring beat. Where had all the men like Dominic gone? She doubted that she deserved such a man, not when she didn't even know how to be a woman. But there were so many other women, good and loving, who would care and nurture and partner a man in the world. How had this happened? A mistake? Perhaps, but she was willing to accept the gift she had been given. Her time was past and maybe his was as well.

"He killed every person my cousins and I loved. He kills any woman or child who can't shift. He kills every male jaguar child who has human blood in their veins. The men who follow him are not royals,