He watched her face, her eyes, the entire time, needing to see, to read her expression. He wanted Shturm to be alert. Did she love and need sex so much that he wasn’t enough for her? Was that what was putting that niggling doubt that had been so slowly growing in his mind? Was that what was making his leopard restless? He couldn’t believe that he was even entertaining the idea.
Relief crept into her eyes. Relaxed the tension in her face. She didn’t want another partner. That helped with the knots in his gut, but there was something elusive about her, something he wasn’t quite getting.
“Matherson seems to have a pattern, malen’koye plamya. He left his lair when the elders ran him off because, even though with his money he could have hired an army of mercenary shifters to take one of the women and run with her, it was too dangerous. Too much trouble. He goes hunting for easier prey.”
She frowned and shook her head, resting one hand on her desk, leaning her weight on her palm and one hip. That small shift in her stance gave him an intriguing view of her body, pushing her bare breasts and one rounded hip forward so that he could just glimpse the fiery curls covering her mound. His body tightened the way it always did when he looked at her. Hot blood roiled in his balls and pounded through his cock. He forced himself to stay in complete control, refusing to react, even though her nipples stood out in stark relief, tempting, enticing him to stop all conversation and just go to her.
“It isn’t exactly easy to find women shifters, Sevastyan, as you well know. Most of those people in that club aren’t shifters. Cain may own it and he may be a shifter, but the vast majority of his clients are just regular humans. Even going to the rain forests or Africa won’t guarantee Franco finding a female shifter.”
“That’s true, but he found a few. Unfortunately, while he was looking, he got a taste for hunting. We’re all leopard, Flambé, never forget that. We aren’t human. We may look civilized, but we aren’t. Some may be more than others, but the bottom line is, we’re leopard and we’re predators.”
He could see the goose bumps rise on her skin. The heat in her eyes. Her body responded in spite of her determination not to at his declaration. She was a female leopard and there was no doubt that she was wired to find the male who could see to the survival of her children. She might not want to have that trait, but she did. Like him, she was very strong in many of her leopard’s attributes.
“Matherson should have moved on. He shouldn’t have sent his men against me once he had me investigated, and when his men disappeared, believe me, he had me investigated. The name Amurov, as you know, is very suspect. He had to think in terms of a crime family, yet he still attacked us and tried to get you away from me. I had to wonder why he would do that.”
Her gaze dropped to the floor. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Leopards were oral and their shifter counterparts were equally so. He refused to let his gaze linger on that perfect sinful temptation. The image of her lips stretched around his cock might be in his mind, but he wouldn’t let it show on his face. She had to believe he was in control at all times. They seemed to be in some kind of battle and he’d missed the reason why altogether.
“Why would that be, Sevastyan?”
Her voice had gone very soft, but he heard her and was very tuned to her. She didn’t seem to realize that the more he tied her, the more he had to learn to read her body, her face, all the little nuances that made up Flambé Carver. He had memorized her body, every damn inch of her. That beautiful face, the bone structure that lay beneath it. He heard the small note of fear and his leopard heard it as well. Shturm clawed and raked, furious. They both knew what that note meant.
“No man would just walk away after fucking you, Flambé. You set up a craving in a man. He gets addicted.”
He stalked her with slow, measured steps, purposefully giving her the impression of danger. Letting her see