"I'm new at this," he bantered back. "You'll have to forgive me my mistakes." She sniffed in apparent disdain. "I think I'd drop it, if I were you. Its one of those things you either have a talent for, or you don't."
"Perhaps you're right. I'll give it some thought."
Silence descended between them once again. Matthias was forced to curl his fingers into fists to keep them in his pockets, to keep from touching her. She had no idea about the forces that were beating inside him. The hormonal changes in his body were ripping him apart, the taste of the aphrodisiac filling his mouth reminding him by the second that she was his mate.
It would take so little to ensure she never left him, he thought. So little. A lick to her neck as she slept, perhaps. The scrape of his canines against her skin. A kiss. Just the softest kiss, and he would have her forever.
Her body anyway. But it wasn't just her body he wanted, it was her heart, her woman's spirit, and her capacity to love. He didn't want more of her condemnation, or her hatred. And she would hate him, if he stole the choice from hershe would never forgive him. And he would never forgive himself. Prison would be preferable to that. Or death.
"Why did you target me to get to Albrecht?" she finally asked, though now her voice was devoid of anger.
"It gave me an excuse to get close to you," he admitted. "I had been watching several of the hotel's employees. You were just one of them. But you were the one that fascinated me." Being honest with this woman about such things would never be easy. She looked out toward the lake for long seconds, following his stance and shoving her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs.
How forlorn she looked. He would give anything, everything to go back and change that moment that she had seen him kill.
"I was falling in love with you, Matthias," she finally whispered.
"I know." He nodded. "I already love you, Grace." And he did. He loved her so much it was ripping his guts to pieces.
"I've never loved before," he told her quietly. "It wasn't hard to realize what you meant to me. You made me laugh, you lightened my soul."
"And you set out to destroy it." Anger flashed in her gaze. Mathias sighed bleakly. Perhaps he should just leave, give her a chance to think, to consider being without him. But God help him, he was terrified to do that.
"I won't explain my actions again." He shook his head before staring up at the deep blue of the sky.
When he looked back at her, she was watching him somberly once again.
"Go back into the cabin, Grace," he finally told her. "Or work in your flowers or whatever it is you do on vacation. You're straining my control."
A frown snapped between her brow, and her eyes darkened in anger. "I can't relax. I can't do that while you're kidnapping me. Maybe someone will return the favor on your next vacation."
"I would first have to experience such a thing," he growled. He had never had a vacation. There was still too much to do. There were ten council directors still free, funding the pure-blood societies and training them to kill Breeds. There were trainers still at large and coyote soldiers still lurking. Who had time for a vacation?
"You've never had a vacation?" Disbelief colored her voice. As though it were yet another crime that she marked against him.
"I wasn't taught vacations in the lab," he snarled. "Remember?"
"As though that's an excuse." She sniffed with such ladylike disdain that she fascinated him.
"Grace, I'm going to warn you one last time," he ground out between clenched teeth. "Remove yourself from me, or you are going to regret it."
"It's my property. You remove yourself from me ." Her hands went to her hips, as her little chin tilted stubbornly. "I did not kidnap you, Matthias. It was the other way around."
" Fine !" He knew he flashed the sharp canines at the side of his mouth as he snarled the word out, because her gaze narrowed, and her lips tightened. "Then you can accept the consequences if you stand there so defiantly, much longer."
"What consequences? Are you going to tie me up again and restrain me to my seat? Oh wait, why don't you just re-kidnap me, that was scary enough."
"Why don't I kiss you?" he suggested ferally. "Why don't I cover your lips with mine, shove my tongue in your mouth, and force this be-damned hormone into your system, to torture you as well? Why don't I make your pu**y so wet, so hot, that you would use your own fingers to tempt me to f**k you? That you would beg me to be inside you? Why don't I do that, Grace?"
He could feel the blood pumping harder, faster inside him now. Adrenaline was mixing with the hormone, and that wasn't a good thing, pumping the effects through his body, straight to his cock. He was so ready to f**k, his c**k was about to rupture.
His hands had torn from his pockets and gripped her shoulders now, as he glared down at her.
"My dick is so hard it's agony. I think of nothing but being inside you. Of feeling you, hot and melting around my cock, as you did my fingers. Perhaps you should remember exactly what will happen if I do that."
Grace pressed her hands into Matthias's chest, feeling the thundering of his heart beneath her hands, the tension in his body. She stared into his eyes, feeling as though she were drowning in them as he snarled
down at her. What was she supposed to remember? Oh yeah, uncontrolled nympho-sex. Needing him so badly it hurt.