Catarina tilted her head to one side and her long, gleaming hair fell around her shoulder and tumbled down her back making his cock jump. He loved that simple little gesture and she did it a lot when her hair was down. He liked her hair down.

“Just how does one get ready for a man like Rafe Cordeau?”

“In a fight, Kitten, sometimes it comes down to conditioning. I know that sounds simple, but whoever is in shape is sometimes the one left standing. So we’re going to start training camp today. We’ll run, work on the bags, kicking, punching, crunches, push-ups and the medicine ball. I want you shooting a gun every day and I’ve got a couple of practice knives we can use. You get hit with one, it raises a hell of a welt and you know you would have gotten cut.”

“Sounds fun,” she said, and took another sip of coffee.

His eyes narrowed on her face. “This isn’t a game we’re playing with Cordeau.”

“I’m not complaining. I was already training,” she pointed out. “It’s just that, well, I can’t see me besting Rafe at hand-to-hand combat.”

Eli frowned. She’d grown up with Rafe being the sole authority around her. Everyone was afraid of the man. Everyone. Especially Catarina. To her, Cordeau was the ultimate, invincible monster. Eli hunted monsters, both human and shifter. He’d been doing it a long while, and the other shifters he knew had been doing it even longer.

“He isn’t invincible, Cat. He’s dangerous, but he isn’t invincible. I’ve met quite a few men – and rogues – just like him. I’m still alive and they’re not. I put the humans in cages if I can and the shifter into the ground because we can’t afford a rogue loose on the world.”

She dropped one hand under the table where he could see her anxiously rubbing her thigh with her palm. “I know you’re all macho, Eli. I can even tell you know how to fight. But he’s not right. He isn’t. I never really wanted to look too closely because he’s all I had, but there’s something not right about him.”

He knew what she meant. Rafe Cordeau was a sociopath, and it made it all the worse that he was a shifter. His leopard craved the hunt for humans and Cordeau gave that to him. He enjoyed the power of life and death over those around him. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for a young girl to grow up in Cordeau’s house. Or the courage it had taken for her to leave.

“I’m truly sorry the bastards gave him your location, Cat. I didn’t agree with the decision, but still, I was a part of it.”

She shrugged. “I was too comfortable there. In the end I would have stayed too long, and I would have made a mistake. That’s the worst part, figuring out when you have to make the move, after all the time and effort you put into a new life.”

“Not here,” he said. “Not now. This is going to be your home. Right here. My Cat’s Lair. It’s all yours, Catarina, so do whatever you want to it.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“I want a home. I figure you know what you’re doing in that department a whole hell of a lot more than I do. And baby, working in the coffee-house, I don’t care how loose you wore your clothes, every man for miles was already lining up trying to figure out how to get in your pants. With your face and body and all that hair, hell woman, men were leaving the bar early to come to the coffee-house just to see you. Most of them were jacking off in the restroom at the sound of your voice, and the image of you in their heads.”

She gasped. “That is so not true. I was flying under the radar. And men don’t see me like that.”

“I’m a man, Kitten. What the hell do you think I was doing every night after leaving you?”

She blushed again. “Seriously, Eli, the way you talk to me is so crude sometimes.”

He kept his eyes on her face. “That bother you, baby? The way I talk?”

She opened her mouth to say something quickly, a fast answer, but then she stopped herself and shook her head. “Not really.”

“Growing up the way you did, I figured maybe the way I talk wouldn’t bother you so much. I go undercover for months at a time, Cat. The places I go, the people I rub shoulders with, they aren’t the kind that talk polite. I talk this way because if I don’t think this way, I’m a dead man.”

“I understand. It doesn’t bother me. I just never thought in terms of a man looking at me and needing to go into a restroom for… um… relief.”

“It’s the truth. You wouldn’t have lasted another two weeks without drama. I was going to have to kick some ass, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“You would have kicked ass for me?”

“Baby, I would kill for you. Man touches you, he isn’t going to live long. Not then and not now.”

“Don’t say that, Eli. He said that. I don’t want you to say that ever again.”

“I know, Cat, I know he said it, but I mean it in a different way. I mean any man who tries to harm you.”

She let her breath out slowly, clearly not wanting to continue the subject. “Why has my leopard gone so quiet all of a sudden? Could I have missed her emerging window? I didn’t want her to appear. Maybe I repressed her with all my doubts.”

“I don’t know if that’s actually possible, Cat,” he admitted. He hadn’t thought of that. “I figured she was resting up for the big event.”

He finished what was left on his plate because no way was he going to leave one bite of food that Catarina had cooked for him. He leaned back in his chair and reached for a beignet to go with his coffee.