He brought her wrists to his mouth and brushed a kiss over each. Her cobalt blue eyes went wider. Darker. Shades of violet. Again he felt her tug and he allowed her fingers to slip from his. She pressed both wrists to her thighs, but he didn’t rub his kisses away. He reached out and tucked strands of hair behind her ear.

“You need to climb in bed, sweetheart. You’re so exhausted you’re nearly falling over.” He kept his voice gentle.

Tenderness crept in and that shocked him. He didn’t know he knew how to be tender. She stripped him bare, looking so young, the terrible bruise standing out so starkly on her pale skin.

“Something’s wrong with me.” She whispered the confession to him, her eyes avoiding his. He scented her. The age-old call. The need rising in her. Her breasts lifted, her nipples peaked beneath the thin tank. Her legs moved restlessly and color swept through her body.

The moment she admitted it, tension filled the room. He almost groaned aloud. His cat roared at him, desperate to get at his mate. His body flooded with hunger, the need so strong it shook him. He’d blown it with her once already; he wasn’t about to do it again by stripping the clothes from her body and pounding into her.

He took a breath and forced calm into his leopard. “It’s not wrong, Kitten, it’s the Han Vol Dan. It’s as natural as breathing. She’s close to emerging and she’s giving you a little taste of what it will be like.”

“I don’t want it.”

He winced. Not wanting your leopard was denying who and what you were. Leopard was pure freedom. Once she experienced that, no one, not even her mate, could take that from her.

“You don’t want it because you don’t understand it. Your experience with shifters hasn’t been good, but you’re wrong. We’re not all killers. We can kill when we have to, but we can choose not to. We don’t hunt for fun. Those that do are considered rogues, living outside our laws. Our kind goes after them and removes them from society. Like the police would do.” Only rather more permanently, but he didn’t add that.

He took her hand gently and tugged, leading her to the bed. With one hand he pulled back the covers. “Get in, Cat. She’ll subside in a minute and that need will go away. Just breathe.”

“It’s strong. Very strong.” She frowned and lifted her gaze to his.

He caught his breath at what he saw there. Hunger glittered in the deep blue of her eyes. Speculation.

“I know because I’m looking at you and suddenly wondering what it would be like to have you touching me,” she continued honestly. “And I despise you. I don’t trust you. I don’t want anything at all to do with you. But I’m still wondering.”

She had always been honest, or tried to. That was one of the things he admired in her. She’d been frank about what was going on with her when she hadn’t been able to share much else of her life. He swept his hand over her hair. “I know, baby. It can be like that. Just breathe. She’ll calm down and you’ll be able to sleep.”

She slipped into the bed.

“Lay on your tummy, Kitten.”

“I don’t like you calling me that.”

She sounded so hurt his heart ached. “I know. You don’t have a defense when I do, but I’m not going to stop. I know you think none of it was real between us, but you’re wrong about that too. I don’t blame you for not believing me, but that doesn’t make my feelings for you any less true, or any less strong.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

“Just lay on your tummy for me.” He pushed a little more command into his voice. His hands went to her shoulders, urging her to turn over.

Catarina was too tired to fight him, too stressed and the leopard inside her too close. She was terrified of the monster getting out of her, but now, with the burning between her legs and the heat rushing through her body, she feared she might throw herself at this man she didn’t know or like and she would never, ever, get over that humiliation.

She lay on her belly, her hands under her face, her eyes closed, shutting him out. He was a lot to shut out. He took up space. A lot of space. And he wasn’t any less gorgeous. She thought if you didn’t like someone they became ugly to you, but that hadn’t happened with Ridley – Eli – whatever.

She was aware of every little detail about him. Especially his scent. It called to something wild in her. Something needy and so hot. She wanted to squirm around on the sheets, and it took discipline not to give in to that need. She liked the wide width of his shoulders and the way he moved, the flow of his muscles and the way his eyes went from amber to gold and then molten gold. She’d even dared for one supremely frightening second to drop her gaze to the front of his jeans. It was impossible to miss the impressive bulge there and that just plain freaked her out.

She felt his weight on the bed as he sank down beside her. Her heart began to pound. She couldn’t just lay there with him next to her, not feeling the way she was. Her nipples were on fire, moving against the tank and sheets with every tiny shift of her body. She couldn’t stop her hips from their restless movements either.

His hand skimmed down her back. “I’m just going to take a look at what he did to you. This was your punishment for running from him, wasn’t it?”

She tried not to react to his hand. It felt good, almost a caress, and she didn’t want anything good from him. She didn’t want gentle or sweet. She wanted him to be mean so she could never associate him with the fantasy man she’d fallen for.