She was going to have to figure out what this was, and how to deal with it, if she was going to find a way to live with it.
“Why does a person have to be up to something simply because they’re not bending to their knees to kiss your ass?” she asked, wondering just what it would take to distract him.
“I don’t require that, as you well know,” he stated flatly as he pulled his shirt on and began buttoning it. “But I know you, Mica. I know you well. You’re definitely up to something, and I want to know what it is.”
“Really? Can you smell it?” Okay, she sounded definitely mocking, perhaps just a little bit snide, but she assured herself she had the right. After all, it wasn’t every day a woman got tied to a man in the way she was tied to him, right?
“I can smell the anger.”
The anger? Oh, he just had no idea. If he could smell the anger, then it was a hell of a lot stronger than she thought she was.
Or rather, she wasn’t hiding it as well as she hoped. He was breaking her control, and she hated that, because it was evident she wasn’t touching his in the least.
She wasn’t to him what he was to her.
She stared back at him, wondering how that could be? How had it happened? Why did nature hate her this much? She couldn’t understand that. Why was she the only woman mated to a Breed who wasn’t mated to her?
Well, at least not fully mated.
“What the hell have you managed to pull off here?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. And once she’d started, she finished. “How did you get so lucky to have escaped the mating heat, the symptoms and the ties you forced on me, Navarro? Tell me, how did I get lucky enough to get the only Breed who could beat mating heat?”
She couldn’t believe it had happened to her, and she wanted to know why. She wanted to know how.
And she wanted to know how to fix it, one way or the other.
Either he mated her fully, became as desperate for her as she for him, loved her as deeply, or she wanted a cure. And she wanted it now.
CHAPTER 14
The only Breed that could beat mating heat?
Where the bloody hell did Mica and Ely come up with this crap? Simply because the hormones in his blood weren’t at the level they should be didn’t mean he wasn’t being driven insane by it.
“I’d like to know how the hell you and Ely can assume I’ve beaten anything.” Navarro glared back at her, amazed at the scientist’s deductions and Mica’s assumptions. “Wolf Breeds only knot their mates, or have you forgotten that?”
He sure as hell hadn’t forgotten it, and he was damned tired of feeling guilty over something they were only assuming. Or imagining.
Damn them, he felt mated, didn’t that count for something?
Evidently it didn’t.
“And Wolf Breed males show the hormone in their own systems, they feel the same pain their mates feel.” She stopped, swallowed tightly and told herself she wasn’t becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
He could almost feel her pain himself as it sliced across his senses, sharper than a scent, more intense than any smell could ever become. It dug sharp, vicious claws into his chest, clenched it, and made him wonder if it wasn’t physically tearing into his heart.
Never had he felt another’s pain as he felt hers now. He hadn’t even had a connection this sharp with his twin. “And you think I don’t feel your pain?” Then what the hell was he feeling? It damn sure wasn’t warm and fuzzy.
Rather than answering him, Mica shot him a glare as she forced herself not to rage at him before swinging around and heading to the large walk-in closet that held all the clothes a girl could want, and they were all in her size. There were shoes, stockings and boots. There were scraps of lace and silk parading as panties, bras, leather belts and lacy socks. Merinus had always taken care of Cassie and Mica whenever they were here, and she had done so once again.
It was too bad a cookie couldn’t fix her hurt feelings anymore though.
It was too bad one of Merinus’s warm hugs couldn’t make her feel like everything was going to be good again. And it was really too damned bad that Navarro couldn’t get a clue and wouldn’t hold her himself and at least attempt to comfort her.
“Stop!” His fingers curved around her upper arm, drawing her to a stop. “I don’t understand why I didn’t sense, didn’t feel your arousal last night. I assumed your reaction to the mating heat would be the same as mine. I assumed it had calmed and eased for you as well.”
“Then you assumed wrong, didn’t you, Navarro?” Her voice was rough, and she hated it. Her emotions were there; that meant she wasn’t hiding them. She wasn’t as calm and controlled as she had hoped she was.
She was hurt and she was angry, and she felt betrayed. She felt as though everything had been taken away from her when she had learned she was suffering alone and Navarro was as content as he had been before he had ever supposedly mated her.