that would be the ultimate erotic practice for her.
“You’re doing it again, Flambé. When we’re talking together, especially about a subject as important as this one, you stay focused. You can’t let your mind wander.”
She nodded her head. He was right. He spoke in that soft, almost predatory way he had, not threatening exactly, not at all. It was just that his eyes held this piercing, fierce gaze. She knew a leopard’s focused stare was disconcerting and Sevastyan had that same stare even in human form. Some shifters had much more animalistic qualities than others, and Sevastyan definitely had the predatory instincts of his fierce counterpart.
“Can you do splits?”
She frowned. No one had ever asked her that before. “I stretch every day and I get close.”
“I want you to work at it until you are able to. You also need stamina. We’ll go running and work out together. This isn’t a practice for the weak. If you enjoy it, Flambé, you have to be in shape and I mean that. It isn’t about size or what women perceive as looking good. I’ve tied all sorts of body sizes and found them beautiful. If you aren’t fit, you can be injured or worse.”
“I understand.” She did. That made sense to her.
“You need to stretch every day. You have to be limber. Do you get motion sickness? Are you afraid of heights?”
She shook her head. “Why would that matter?”
“I find suspension bondage sexy. With you, several very erotic images come to mind. I wouldn’t be able to use those scenarios if you had a problem with either, no matter how sensual I found the ideas.”
Another wave of heat rushed over her. She hugged herself tighter. It took a great deal of discipline to keep from looking at the tree he had constructed out of knots with the very small hammock hanging from a branch high up.
“Have there been a lot of women here in your bedroom?” She didn’t know why she asked, she didn’t really want to know the answer. She had watched Sevastyan. He didn’t get caught up with the women. It was about the art, the scene, and then the power of the sex. The woman belonged to someone else, who got off on watching her get off on doing something she enjoyed that her partner couldn’t provide.
“You are the only woman to come in here. You are the only woman to ever be welcome in this room.”
Her heart stuttered. There was an underlying ferocious note to his tone, although he hadn’t raised his voice at all.
“Do you share women?” That mattered. She couldn’t live with that. She just couldn’t.
He studied her face for so long she found herself beginning to tremble. He hadn’t changed expression. He still wore that same impossible-to-read mask, but now something flickered in the depths of his eyes, something terrifying. Something that wasn’t cat, yet was just as bad as cat. That predatory trait ran deep in him.
Sevastyan suddenly moved then, with the shocking speed of a leopard, covering the distance between them in seconds so that he was towering over her. He caught her chin and tipped her face up, forcing her to look into the flickering flames that were his eyes. “Flambé, if you hear nothing else tonight, you hear this. You are going to be my wife. I will not share you—not ever. No man will put his hands on you and live. That is as plain as I can make it. What we do together is between us and stays that way. Do you understand me? You need to acknowledge to me that you do, because make no mistake, plamya, I would kill a man over you just as fast as Shturm would kill a rival over Flamme.”
There was no looking away from the fierce fire blazing in his eyes. He meant exactly what he said. There was relief in knowing he didn’t intend to suddenly start bringing her to Cain’s club and deciding to share her with other men. That would be a deal breaker.
As if he could read her mind, the pad of his thumb swept gently over her lower lip and then he released her chin and stepped away. “The club was an outlet for me when I needed release. I’m a dominant, pure and simple. You recognized that in me the first time you saw me and you reacted to that.”
She had. A part of her knew it was more than that. Cain was a dominant, but