How ironic was that?
“You are very stubborn,” Ashley observed then, her gaze once again compassionate.
“I’m stubborn?” She had to laugh at that one. “Maybe I’m not stubborn enough, because for years I’ve let myself care about people who couldn’t give a damn about me either way, it seems.”
She hated the ache that burned deep inside her chest, filled her senses and weakened the strength she was fighting so hard to find.
“We care for you, Cat, or I would not be here.” Ashley sighed.
“You’ve known him a year.” Her fists clenched at her sides, anger pouring through her. “A year, Ashley, but you stand here and tell me how displeased you would be if he were brought to his knees? How raw do you think my knees are because of him?”
She had cried for him.
For years, even after she’d been given Claire’s identity, in those years when she should have been allowing someone else to face the world while she hid. Still, she’d awakened while Claire slept, just to cry. To sob into a pillow that wasn’t hers, in a bed that wasn’t hers, in a life that wasn’t hers, for a Bengal who had turned his back on her.
“You think he has drawn such loyalty from only a year, Cat?” Ashley stared back at her in surprise. “When we first came to this desert, a crazed Bengal saved my and Emma’s lives when a sniper would have buried his bullets in our heads. He brought us the sniper’s rifle, snapped in two like a twig, and threw it at us. The stripes on his face were like scars of rage as he snarled at us in fury and ordered us back to the safe zone around Window Rock. We ran back like frightened pups. Not fear of the sniper, but the instinctive fear of a guardian’s reprisal. Not six months later he saved our alpha, who we adore more than others adore a father or brother. He has saved friends, and done so without a price.”
How little they knew that crazed Bengal. Like Jonas, nothing was free.
“He just hasn’t informed you of that price yet,” Cat snapped painfully. “Give him time.”
“And we would gladly pay it, many times over.” Ashley rose slowly to her feet. “You are a friend, Cat, and I do like you very much. But we owe him our lives and the lives of those we love. I, for one, would be very upset should Jonas learn who he was because his mate was not loyal to him.”
Not loyal to him?
How little they knew her as well.
“He left me to die when I was twelve years old,” she cried out furiously, the anger she kept locked inside her burning through her senses. “He left me alone when I knew nothing but his protection. Depended on nothing or no one but him,” she sneered. “I was fucking twelve, and he was my world. So don’t stand here and lecture me on the lives he’s saved, because he destroyed my life. He destroyed me.”
The bitterness, the years of loss and fear ravaged her now. Everything she’d kept locked inside her soul burst through the walls she’d placed around it.
“Cat . . .” The compassion in Ashley’s gaze, in her voice, infuriated her.
Graeme had made certain Ashley had known he’d taken out the sniper, but Cat had never told the Breed female who had sliced the throats of two Council soldiers stalking them more than a year ago. She’d never told anyone the countless times she’d maneuvered their enemies into sight, ensuring they were revealed. Or ensuring they disappeared.
“Forget it. I don’t need your pity.” She was shaking, the strain of too many years of living a life of solitude and aching fear rising inside her.
And why had she done it? Why had she lived as someone she wasn’t? Not for her own damned protection, that was for sure. She’d done it for him. Because she knew to the last reaches of her soul if she was taken then he would come for her. And that when he did, the chances of his destruction, of his death, were too high.
“Pity isn’t a bad thing.” Ashley sighed. “To feel compassion for one who sees only her own anger . . .”
“Give me a fucking break,” Cat cried out, amazed fury pulsing through her. “You’re damned right I only see my own anger, and you’re not helping it in the least. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ashley, or who you’re talking to, so don’t presume you do. And don’t make the mistake of coming back here to insult me again with your precious advice, because I don’t need it.”
“You will need more than advice if you are the cause of Jonas learning who he is,” Ashley snapped. “You will need a miracle to remain living should that happen.”
Cat flinched, but not from what Ashley said or how she said it. Pain sliced across her senses, raged through her soul. Because she would give her own life to protect him from Jonas or anyone else.
“Sorry, Ashley, but there’s really not enough of me left to give a damn.” The bitterness was like a corrosive eating through her soul. “I gave my life for him thirteen years ago. Every breath I drew, every beat of my heart, every particle of my being was sacrificed for him when I remained as Claire Martinez rather than escaping the hell I found myself in here. There hasn’t been anything left of me in a long time. And I don’t think you or anyone else, especially Graeme Parker, has the right to ask anything more of me.”
Yet they continued to ask for more and nothing, not even friendship or loyalty, was offered in return and the isolation facing her only enraged her.
“You blame Graeme for what saved you?” Ashley questioned her in disbelief. The conclusion the Breed female drew from the agony lancing through Cat’s soul shouldn’t have been a surprise.
It wasn’t a surprise, she assured herself.
Lifting her hand to rub at her temple and the headache brewing there, she tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. The Martinez household had been far better than the research center, but then, homelessness would have been better than that hell.
She’d stayed, though, because she knew Raymond would carry out the threat to contact the Genetics Council and tell them exactly where she was and who she was. If she’d been taken, then Honor and Judd would have been found and captured as well. Gideon would have come for her. And the Council would have been waiting for him. She couldn’t bear the thought of it.
“I blame Graeme for a lot of things, Ashley,” she admitted painfully. “Things that are none of your business. Don’t worry—unfortunately for me, I’m just as stupid as the rest of you, it seems, because I’d protect his identity with my last breath. But I don’t have to like it, and I don’t have to deal with his friends while I’m doing it.”
Turning, she all but ran from the kitchen. She didn’t care if Ashley stayed or if she left. It didn’t matter. Years of searching for him, of waiting for him, of silently spilling blood to save those who would turn on her now gouged another jagged scar on her soul.
And here, she hadn’t thought there was room for more scars. Or more pain. She’d believed she’d hurt as much as she could ever hurt for the losses she’d suffered.
She was wrong. And she realized she was more alone than she’d ever imagined she could be.
• CHAPTER 12 •
Intuition. The mating bond.
Graeme wasn’t sure what had caused the sudden certainty that Cat needed him. It was strong enough, though, to make him abruptly leave the meeting with Jonas and Lobo and race to her. He arrived just in time to hear, to feel, the blinding pain and betrayal ripping through her as she informed Ashley of the life she’d lived to protect him.
Stepping silently into the kitchen as she raced from it, he faced Ashley and the regret that filled her. A regret she hadn’t allowed to stand in her way.
This little Coyote female was about as easy to predict as Cat, because he hadn’t anticipated whatever had happened here.
She turned slowly to face him as he stood in the arched entrance to the dining room. Crossing his arms, he leaned against the door frame, watching her silently, forcing back the furious growls that threatened to rumble from his chest.
Brushing back the multihued strands of blond hair that escaped her braid, she sighed heavily, her gaze resigned as she face
d him.
“She’s upset with me now.” That was a bit of an understatement.
“What did you do, Ashley?” The warning in his voice was one he didn’t attempt to hold back.
Perfectly arched brows snapped into a frown. “Jonas is convinced she’s the way to learning your location. I only informed her how displeased your friends would be to learn that was true.”
“Son of a bitch. Ashley . . . !” Straightening from the door frame, Graeme bit off a vicious growl. “You’re supposed to be her friend as well.”
“I am her friend.” Defiance waged in her expression and her stance as her hands went to her hips and her chin lifted as her gray eyes darkened and narrowed. “Only a friend would test her anger in such a way and force her to see how that anger colors her life.”
The Russian accent thickened and, despite her declaration, he saw the flash of indecision in her eyes.
“Maybe you should think about that definition of friendship.” Stemming the hard rumble of his displeasure was impossible.
“Why should I think about it? Her anger is nearly hatred, Graeme. Should Jonas learn who you are . . .”
“There’s no doubt that will happen, Ashley,” he snarled back. Hell, maybe he was keeping too many secrets from too many people, especially where Jonas we concerned. It could be time for a meeting. “And it will be none of her doing, it will be mine. Stay out of this fight.”
“I hate felines,” she snapped furiously, glaring at him. “All of you are far too stubborn and you make no damned sense. Just as she makes no sense.” She growled then. “She does not even yell. She just closes herself up inside. How does she think she will ever survive mating with one like you?” One hand flipped out toward him as a feminine sneer of disgust curled at her lips. “I would have shot you by now.”
Graeme didn’t bother arguing with her or defending himself. A snap of his teeth and a hard rumble of command had her turning tail and vacating the house quickly, though. And why that worked he still wasn’t certain. Because she knew damned good and well he would never risk the combined forces of feline, Wolf and Coyote Breeds should he dare to actually turn her over his knee and tan her little ass. Something her alpha should have already taken care of to curb her recklessness.
Moving quickly through the house to Cat’s bedroom, he found her standing at the wide balcony doors, arms crossed over her breasts, as she stared out past the walled property.
“And how did I know you would be here?” The anger that filled her voice was a cover. Graeme could sense the pain that roiled like a gathering storm through her small body. “Why don’t you leave too? I don’t want you here.”
But she did. What she wanted and what she needed were so twisted inside her, though, that tugging at either emotion only reminded her of what she’d suffered in feeling them.
And she had suffered. He knew that.
Healing that pain may be impossible, but he was helpless in the desire to do just that. Unfortunately, he knew what Ashley sensed. Facing this emerging feline Breed with soft emotion and gentle understanding would never resolve the conflicts inside her.
“Such a pretty little liar,” he growled, giving the door a hard push to close it. “Do you think I don’t know better, Cat? Do you think I don’t know you better than that?”
So much anger and hurt. God knew he’d never meant to cause it. The need to protect her had been far greater than any consideration where hurting her was concerned, though.
And now, it wasn’t just her protection that concerned him.
“No, Graeme, I don’t think you know me better than that,” she retorted as she turned to him, glaring with all the flame and fury of an enraged Bengal female. “It’s been a lot of years since you’ve been a part of my life. I’m not twelve any longer. And I sure as hell don’t worship the ground you walk on now.”
But she wanted to. The aching need to trust and to love him freely battled inside her, just as he battled with a past he couldn’t change.
He could feel her, her need to step away from that anger like a flame reaching out to him. The scent of it intoxicated him, pulling him into the sensual hunger and emotional storm that raged in him as well. Subtle, a hint of spice and alluring sweetness, her scent infused his senses and spiked the already dark sexuality he possessed.
• • •
The scent of male lust had been building in the room since the second he’d stepped inside it. A scent she’d been attempting to ignore.
Just as she fought her own need and the memory of his touch. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought painfully. The inability to remain completely aloof from him, to make herself remember how much it had hurt when he’d betrayed her.
How much it had changed her. And it had changed her. Once, she’d known she could trust that he’d always be there, watching over her. Accepting that she had no one to watch over her but herself had been a hard, bitter lesson to learn.
“Stop.” The order was a hoarse growl, the anger in it flashing in his jungle green eyes.
“Stop what?” Her fists clenched, unclenched, the restlessness she couldn’t ease like an itch beneath her flesh.
“Stop remembering,” he ordered, his voice stark, dark with whatever emotion flashed in his gaze.
Cat felt that heavy thud of her heart, the pulse of adrenaline that hit her bloodstream and the breathlessness that always seemed to afflict her whenever she saw the somberness in his gaze as she did now.
“Stop remembering,” she repeated softly with a shake of her head.
Clenching her teeth against the anger that tore at her, she had to glance away. She had to stop looking at him, stop weakening.
“Is that easy for you to do, Graeme? Is it easy for you to just push back what you don’t want to affect the moment or the mission? How do you just not remember?” Was it so easy to just forget her?
Of course it was. She was just a child when he’d deserted her.
Twelve years of work he didn’t want to see destroyed. And now she was a potential biological match that had his Breed genetics in an uproar.
Just another form of an experiment, nothing more.
He was on her before she could move. The jungle green of his eyes obliterated the whites, the primal instincts of his extraordinary genetics making themselves known in the fierce, furious glitter of amber pinpoints of light amid the dark green. “We’re not going back. The past is just that, and it can’t be undone.” Savage anger filled his voice as well as his face. “There are too many things I can’t explain, too many I can’t revisit without risking the control I’ve gained over the months, Cat. That doesn’t mean you’re not more important to me than you ever were. Nothing means to me what you mean.”
No explanations. Now, wasn’t that just like Graeme?
“Not going back?” She tried to jerk away from him, only to find herself pulled against the hard, muscular frame of his body. “Graeme, I never moved forward. My life was stolen before I was able to live it, and my safety came in the form of living another girl’s life and suffering the hell no one knew she lived in.” Her hands flattened against his chest, claws emerging to prick the shirt he wore. “To save you. Because no matter how much you hated me, you would have come for me if they took me. No one would be allowed to own the experiment you created but you,” she cried painfully, staring up into the harsh features above her. “That’s all I am to you or anyone else. A fucking experiment. A means to an end. And I hate it.”
Her claws dug into his chest, all the anger and pain she’d been forced to hold in over the years rising inside her like a storm she couldn’t avoid.
Hard hands gripped her wrists, pulled her around and pushed her against the wall, her hands pulled above her head, body arched into him.
The feel of his erection, hard, heavy, pressed into her lower belly and set off a heated response she wanted no part of. She couldn’t want it, but her body did.
“I won’t give you explanations,” he bit out, his voice low and
hoarse. “Believe what you need to about the past, Cat, I won’t fight it. But you damned well better believe this about your present and your future. You are mine. And not because of the genetics included in that fucking therapy either.”
The declaration of ownership was a growl of primal intent that had her eyes widening and her senses sharpening.
He did that. He made the genetics she fought to keep under control rise inside her with a strength she’d never felt until he’d touched her the first time.
“I was your experiment,” she cried furiously. “Just your experiment.”
“My mate. Mine.” His free hand moved to the back of her head, strong fingers pulling the pin free that held her braid secure. Then he was raking through the heavy strands, gripping them and pulling her head back as he stared down at her.
Swiping her tongue over her dry lips, she raked it against her teeth as she pulled it back, the slight itch beneath it as irritating now as it had been for the past year.
“I’ll never belong to you like that, Graeme,” she swore fiercely despite the need to give in, to be just that. Anything, everything he needed her to be. “Not now and not ever.”
His eyes narrowed on her lips.
“Your tongue itches,” he whispered, tightening his grip on her wrists as she struggled against him. “When I touch you, your flesh aches for more but you want my kiss first, don’t you, little cat? You want my lips covering yours, my tongue touching yours . . .”
Her dreams were filled with that hunger. Since she’d come into her sexuality just after her eighteenth birthday her dreams, her sexual dreams, had always featured Graeme.
But how did he know? How did he know her tongue itched, that she ached, hungered for his kiss?
“I can smell the sweet scent of your need.” Head lowering, his lips brushed against the lobe of her ear. “It becomes sweeter, more intoxicating, each time I see you. Each time I touch you.”
“You need to run a diagnostic on that smeller of yours, Graeme. I think it’s malfunctioning.” Her lips lifted in a sneer.
She hated it that her body betrayed her anger for pleasure. Hated memories she couldn’t forget and the pain she couldn’t release.
“Do I, Cat?” The suggestive whisper was followed by a lick along the side of her neck. Slightly rough, a rasp of pure pleasure that had her biting her lip to hold back a cry of pleasure. “Or do I need to reach beneath your skirt and see how damp the silk of your panties is? Feel the moist heat preparing you for me?” His teeth raked against the bend of her neck as her breathing became harder, her need for him sharper.
“Do you know what’s going to happen when I kiss you?” His lips drifted to her jaw. “I could kiss your breasts and only make them more sensitive. I could taste the swollen bud of your clit, draw it in my mouth or push my tongue into the aching flesh between your thighs, and you could still bear the added sensitivity you’d feel.” Sharp teeth nipped at the side of her neck. “But if I kiss you again, if I rub my tongue against yours, then it will be far more than sensitivity, little cat. For both of us. It will become a necessity . . .” His lips brushed over hers, just the faintest caress that had them parting, pulling a moan from her lips that she couldn’t hold back. “A fucking drug we can’t bear living without.”
“I don’t trust you. No bond is strong enough to reach past that, Graeme. Nothing can change it,” she protested even as she tried to get closer to him, forced herself not to beg him for everything he’d just described.
“Are you sure?” His breathing was harder now, his voice deeper, rougher. “Your body trusts me. It aches for me. Doesn’t it? Would your body be so hungry for me if there was no trust, Cat?”
“It’s called lust,” she protested breathlessly, her head falling back against the wall as his hand lowered and he began dragging her blouse from the band of the skirt she’d changed into along with a cami top just before Ashley entered the house.
“Just lust?” His hand, broad and callused and so warm, cupped her side beneath the material. “Are you sure of that?”
His lips brushed against hers again, teasing her as her lips parted, a helpless moan falling from them.
“I ache with the need to kiss you. Burn with it,” he growled as he released the catch at the side of her skirt, eased the zipper down and let the material fall to her feet. “I burn for you, Cat.”
A second later her top and his shirt followed, leaving her clad in only the lacy white bra and matching panties that barely covered any flesh at all.
She was helpless. She couldn’t fight him, couldn’t fight the need, the hunger, or the emotions for him that were so tangled in the pain of betrayal.
How was she supposed to defend herself against the man who’d protected her, seen to her safety as a child and become the fantasy that followed her into womanhood? How was she supposed to protect herself against the man she had loved in one way or another for all her life?
“Gideon,” she whispered, her voice breaking as his body pressed hard and tight against her own.
“No, Cat,” he growled, the sound dangerous, warning. “What’s my name? Say it.”
“Now, or when you’re sane?” She whispered the question, arching against the wide, muscular warmth of his bare chest.
All he wore were the tan pants the Reever Breeds wore, with matching shirts, as uniforms.
Her nails flexed against his fingers as he continued to hold her to the wall, then, staring back at him, she gave in to the rush of wild, adrenaline-laced genetics rising inside her.
She was primal as well, but in a far different way. She controlled the primal impulses, she controlled what she showed and the power she fed to it. The base animal DNA that infused her, that ensured her survival and marked her as one of the most least predictable breeds, a Bengal, was becoming stronger by the day.
For far too long she’d been forced to hide who she was. First, she’d had to sleep, to hide, remember that there were others besides her at risk if she allowed herself to awaken. Then, once again, she’d had to pretend, to make everyone, even Raymond and Maria, believe she was Claire.
She didn’t have to pretend with Graeme. She didn’t have to submit, she refused to submit.
Why should she submit beneath him or bury the confidence she’d built over the past thirteen years? she asked herself as the primal awareness, that primal power, filled her.
He had created what she had become. He had worked with the lead scientist, he had dictated the genetic typing placed within her.
Now he could deal with it.
She would never stand behind him, she would stand beside him. And he might own her sexuality, but she would own his as well. And she’d make damned sure no other woman could claim it.
No other would ever have a right to touch him, to belong to him, but her.
Her incisors lengthened. She could feel them, top and bottom, pushing to their natural length. The need to bite, to mark him, was growing inside her. To rake the hard column of his neck, to lick away any hurt the bite might have left.
Sensuality and her emerging sexuality rushed through her. The need to fight who she was, what she was, didn’t exist here. Here, she could be the woman she had been forced to hide, the Breed she’d been forced to deny.
There was no fighting whatever bond the heat reinforced inside her; she knew it on a level so deep, so primal, that she didn’t even try to fight it. Just as there was no fighting the hunger that only rose by the day.
She didn’t