One of the Coyotes must have lived. She had hoped she had taken them out. There had been two, merciless and bloodthirsty.
"I don't know about that." She shook her head firmly. "I just know I escaped. That was all that mattered to me."
"You were fifteen years old, severely wounded and alone," he pointed out. "Yet you survived."
"What's your point?"
Harmony watched Lance warily now. He was fishing for information, which meant he knew something. Something more than her file had provided for him.
She remembered well the fight between those two Coyotes. Running on nerves alone, hungry, exhausted, they had nearly taken her. Instead, she had escaped when two shadowed figures had jumped into the fray.
The knife wounds she had carried had nearly been fatal once infection and fever had set in. The wounds had been too deep, and her body too weak to fight. She would have died if Dane hadn't found her.
He was the son of an African industrialist, a rogue and a man who followed his own rules. At that time, he had been tracking the Coyote Breed who had been sent to kill a friend of his, a young man who knew more than he should have. His death had not been easy. And neither had the Coyote's after Dane had caught up with him. The secretiveness of his work was imperative for him to succeed in his goal of helping the Breeds destroy the Genetics Council. If it were ever learned that the heir to the vast holdings of Vanderale Enterprises was no more than a vigilante, it could destroy all his family held. It was a secret Harmony had sworn to carry to her grave.
"How did you escape, Harmony?" He lay there asking the question as though the subject meant no more than the weather. He wasn't demanding answers, he wasn't interrogating her. He was asking.
"I had help," she whispered. "Two men heard the fight. I ran while they distracted the Coyotes."
"Why did the Coyotes say they didn't have a scent?" A light frown furrowed his brow.
"The interrogation reports stated that the Coyotes swore there was no identifying scent. Does everyone have a scent to the Breeds?"
"Yes." She nodded slowly. "Everyone has a scent."
"Is it unique, or can it be disguised by perfumes and whatnot?"
"It's unique," she answered carefully, watching him warily. She knew where this was going and was helpless to prevent it.
"So, why would the two men who saved your butt have no scent?" He frowned as he laid the remote on the floor and scratched, rather absently, at the hard, well-muscled flesh of his abdomen.
The movement lifted his T-shirt, flashing the dark tough skin before he allowed his hand to rest there. Harmony fought to drag in enough oxygen to make her brain work again. Dammit, she was a cold-blooded assassin, not his sex kitten. But at the moment, the sex kitten was definitely making itself known.
"I'm not certain." She really didn't understand the process, so she wasn't technically lying to him. Right?
"But you have an idea?"
Harmony stared back at him suspiciously.
"Why all the questions? What does this have to do with the fact that a mate is a weakness and I'm not willing to play the sex kitten for you?"
"Sex kitten?" Wicked amusement lit his eyes then. "I hadn't thought of that one, but I like the idea. I like it a whole lot."
"You are not making sense." She held her hand up to halt the words his lips were parting for. "These myriad little subjects of yours are not going together well, Lance."
"Hey, you brought up the sex kitten thing, not me. It just happened to interest me, that's all. Tell me." His brows lifted then lowered suggestively. "How does a Breed sex kitten do it?"
"With claws?" she suggested in irritation.
His lips pursed as his eyes gleamed with playful lust.
"I like claws," he whispered as he raised his hand to rub absently at his shoulder, the area next to his neck. The exact area where she had bit him. "You could come over here and show me how it's done."
She actually moved to go to him. Harmony stared down at her feet in alarm when she took that first step; then she stopped and glared back at him furiously. She hissed.
Without thought, without realizing the sound was moving through her chest, she really hissed. She had never hissed in her life. Not the catlike, growling hiss that came out of her mouth now.
She stared back at Lance in shock.