“This wasn’t your life.” He leaned lazily against the doorframe then. “It is now. You take the scraps life throws at you and make the best of it. You’re a smart woman, smart enough to know this isn’t something that’s just going to go away.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to just bow down and give in to it,” she argued fiercely. “Scientists created this curse you have, they can fix it.”
He laughed at that.
“Do you think your eggheaded God-complex scientists had any clue what they were doing?” he asked mockingly. “Do you have any idea the strong, vital men and women who died, created to be killers, but born with such honor and intelligence that their creators knew they could never let them live? No, Amanda, the world’s best and brightest are currently living in a secluded lab beneath the estate here, trying to just understand how this works. There is no cure. They admit that. The best they are hoping for is to ease the symptoms.”
She wanted to scream in denial, but her body was burning so hot she couldn’t think of anything much past getting his c**k out of his pants. The heat was consuming her, making her want, making her need things that brought a flush of humiliation to her entire body.
“Kiowa, it hurts,” she finally whispered desperately, flinching as another powerful spasm rippled through her womb.
“What do you want me to do, Amanda?” he whispered. “If I take you, you know what’s going to happen. Do you know, when I’m locked inside you, my c**k is pressed flush against your cervix, my seed shooting into it. You’re ovulating,” he reminded her. “Do you want to take that chance again?”
“Do I have a choice?” she screamed back at him, gasping as the anger seemed to build, to feed the sexual desperation climbing within her.
“You have a choice,” he snarled in reply. “You can admit you can’t run from it, Amanda.”
“In less than twenty-four hours you’ve destroyed every dream I ever had.” She was shaking with fury, with lust. “And you expect me to just give up? Oh yes, the great and might Kiowa, king of Coyotes has knotted my cunt, my world is finally right. Damn you, I didn’t ask you for this. I didn’t ask those bastards to attempt to kidnap me and I didn’t ask you to f**k me.”
“No, you begged me to,” he shot back at her, making her grit her teeth at the memory. “You screamed it, Amanda, you demanded it. And lady, I didn’t ask for you any more than you asked for me. At least I have the God-given sense to realize that fighting is a waste of strength.”
“I don’t belong to you!”
She was screaming. The anger pouring through her was like a spark to the building, surging tide of lusts she couldn’t control. She hated it. She needed it more than breath.
“Wrong, baby,” he snapped, finally moving toward her, his long-legged stride eating up the short distance, powerful muscles flexing along his upper body, his eyes hot, singeing her. “You do belong to me. Every inch of that sweet, hot little body is mine now. If you don’t believe that, try to let another touch you.”
She remembered Callan Lyons touching her, catching her as her legs faltered beneath her earlier. The pain had been excruciating.
“You bastard!” she raged.
“Yeah, I am,” he agreed as he walked around her, not touching her, letting her smell the intriguing scent of man, honey and spice. “But your bastard it would seem.”
She shuddered at the feel of his warmth surrounding her as he passed her on the way to the kitchen.
“God, what a mess.” She sighed deeply pushing her fingers roughly through her hair as she watched his lips quirk. Not really a smile, but almost.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said softly. “Some things look pretty damned good from where I’m standing. You clean up real fine, Ms. Marion, I have to say that for you.”
“I clean up fine?” She rolled her eyes, fighting the arousal as she watched the slow amusement dawn in his eyes. “You are a nutcase. Has anyone mentioned that to you?”
He shrugged powerful muscles. “I think that was Simon’s line the night I caught him trying to break into the bar I worked as bouncer for. He wanted to blow the place up. It was my bread-and-butter at the time so I took exception.”
“A bouncer?” Oh, her father was going to love this one, but suddenly, it made him seem more real, less of a puppet.
“Yep. Bouncer in a rough-assed brothel/bar called the Raging Lilly just inside this dirty little French town. Filled with terrorists, low-lifes and pond scum. He was itching to blow it to hell and back. Took me a few minutes to convince him of the error of his ways.”
“Simon is the guy who drove the jeep?” She fought to concentrate as he handed her a glass of chilled water.
“Drink that. Dehydration is a problem sometimes with these damned matings I was told. And yes, Simon was driving the jeep.”
She drank the water, but it did nothing to stem the fever running rampant through her body.
“So, how did you become friends of the Feline Breeds? The last reports I heard, Coyotes were the most feared Breed.”
“Not the most feared, the most hated.” He shrugged. “Somehow, Simon must have figured out what I was. My best guess is he got a glimpse of that birthmark low on my back. It’s a genetic marker of some sort. He was friends with Sinclair, and when he learned the significance of it, he and Sinclair dragged me out of my life of disuse and into this. I’ll have to thank him for that. Again.”
There was a wry amusement in his gaze. He had a way of making her want to laugh, even when she wanted to hit him with something.