Dymka was always rough when he took Jewel, but when he wasn’t on her, he nuzzled and licked her, showing affection in the way he cared for her. He wasn’t the type of cat to play, so running with her through creeks and leaping over logs, rolling together in leaves, was a huge expression of how the leopard felt about his partner. Still, that roughness transferred to Mitya.
He liked rough sex. He wasn’t a man to play either, unless he was playing sexually with his partner. But he tried. For Ania, he tried. Dymka was a dangerous animal and always on edge. That meant Mitya was as well. Now that Dymka had a mate, he wanted her every moment, and Mitya was no different.
The leopards slept on and off in between mating sessions. Eventually, Mitya had directed Dymka to take Jewel back to the house. Once there, he had carried an extremely tired Ania upstairs, bathed her and then put her in bed, pulling the blackout, privacy screens to allow them to sleep, which they did, for most of the day.
The emergence, he realized, was extremely hard on the female. Ania had circles under her eyes and bruises on her body. She had teeth marks on her. With her pale skin, those dark smudges really showed. She looked tired but determined. With everything else going on as well, and the losses she’d suffered, Mitya couldn’t blame her if she wanted to lock herself away from everyone, but Ania wasn’t like that. She had good old-fashioned grit. She just kept picking herself up when life knocked her down.
“Would you mind if we went into your grandfather’s apartment?”
She turned slowly from smoothing out a pair of jeans and sank onto the edge of the bed. He couldn’t help but notice how the shirt rode up on her hips and she rubbed her thighs together to relieve the burning that just wouldn’t quit for either of them.
“I don’t mind, Mitya, but the apartment’s been cleaned. After they died, Annalise went in and packed everything. She gave clothes and things like that to the thrift stores. There was nothing in the apartment that indicated a package taken from his job. He never said a word that there was a problem to any of us, including my father.”
“Do you remember how he acted?”
She nodded. “He was different. All of us noticed it. Very withdrawn. When my grandmother tried to talk to him, he snapped at her, which, believe me, he never did. Looking back, I think he didn’t know what to do, but he didn’t want to involve anyone else in what he thought was a problem with one or more of the families.”
She tapped her thigh, the only sign of nerves, and then closed the suitcase. “We can go down there now. You have to remember, at the time, none of us knew he had kept something he shouldn’t have. Even after my father was shot, we didn’t put it together right away. We knew they’d been run off the road, and that their deaths weren’t really an accident, but we didn’t know why. For all we knew, some crazy person had gone after them and they were randomly chosen.”
“Where is Annalise?” He tried not to be suspicious of the woman. She was leopard, yet she had acted as if she hadn’t known what had been happening when Antosha had struggled with his leopard to keep it from emerging. She had cleaned the apartment and would have found the book had Ania’s grandfather hidden it there.
“Annalise has the apartment I found for her, you know that. I told her she could stay here, but she didn’t want to stay alone. I can’t blame her.” She looked around the room and then sighed. “It doesn’t feel like home anymore. Annalise feels like family to me, and I want to make certain she’s always taken care of.”
He had no problem with that. If Annalise was really what she seemed, then he hoped to offer her a position in his household. Once Ania started having his children, they would need a nanny. Annalise could be quite helpful.
“Baby, leave that,” Mitya said when Ania began to go through her drawers again. “I’ve got movers coming to pack up your things.”
“I don’t like the idea of strangers touching my clothes.” Ania ran her hands down her body, clearly unaware she was doing so. Twice she cupped her breasts and brushed her fingers over her nipples through the material of the shirt she wore. Both times she gasped and flushed.
His cock was so hard he thought he might not live if he took a step. It was difficult to think, but one of them had to remain sane. They just had to get this done and then he could figure out how to make love to his woman without bruising her. She needed care, not more rough sex, although watching her, he wasn’t certain if that was true either. Trying to do the right thing wasn’t easy.