“Don’t try to distract me, Taber.” She was draped halfway across his chest, her breath a warm caress against his skin, stirring senses better left resting for the time being.
He had hoped to still this conversation for a while yet. He could pretend male outrage, he figured. It wasn’t every day a man was accused of having a problem with that particular portion of his anatomy. But he had a feeling Roni wouldn’t be fooled. His instincts warned him to step lightly where this subject was concerned, or at least in his deliberate attempts to avoid it.
“When are you going to go to sleep?” he mumbled, ignoring her question as he lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes, determined to sleep himself.
“You didn’t answer me.” Her voice was reflective, the very softness of it warning him that soon it would breach the anger point.
Her fingers danced over his chest, her nails scraping lightly, the pads of her fingers feeling, he knew, the tiny hairs that covered his body. Nearly invisible, soft as down, the light pelt was yet another reminder of his DNA.
Taber opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling as he breathed in deeply. How many years had he longed just for one day to forget who and what he was? Yet the knowledge was always there, never far enough away to give him the ease he often prayed for. And now, Roni needed answers, which he was more than reluctant to give her just yet. He didn’t know if he was ready to face the possible consequences and her horror of learning just how closely he resembled the animal his genetics had been mixed with.
“I know I didn’t answer you,” he finally said softly, curving his arm under her body so his fingers could play absently with the long waves of silken, golden hair.
He loved her hair. It was thick and soft, curling gently around her shoulders and framing her heart-shaped face seductively. He noticed with distant amazement that it was rather comforting to smooth it between his fingers, to feel the cool, gentle weight of it.
“Are you going to?” Taber glanced over as she sat up in the bed, pulling her hair free of his fingers as she tucked the sheet around her until she could shield her full, naked breasts.
His lips quirked at her modesty. He knew every inch of her body, yet still she would blush the prettiest pink if he saw her nude while not engaged in their lusty play. The pressing subject of her sudden need for answers weighed on him, though. Answers he had no intention of giving her yet.
“Let it go.” He sighed deeply, moving to rise from the bed. Dammit, he wasn’t sleepy. He was fooling himself thinking he could rest now. “I need to check security outside…”
“You’re avoiding the question now, Taber,” she snapped, her eyes glittering with blue fire as he glanced back at her.
She sat on her knees, watching as he moved to the bottom of the bed. He was more than aware that by refusing to answer her, rather than feigning ignorance, was a dangerous proposition. He could avoid her questions, but he’d be damned if he would lie in response to them. He had little else to give her but honesty, in those areas where he could answer at all.
“Guess you’re right.” He shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned, to hide the aching loneliness that rose in the pit of his soul.
She had every right to know the answer, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to explain to her the animal that found such satisfaction in the tight depths of her rippling pussy.
“And you think you’re just going to walk out of here with no explanation?” she asked him, her voice rising with anger and an edge of hurt.
Taber stared back at her, steeling himself against her pain. She needed so much more to hold onto than she was being given, and he knew it. Everything in her life had been stripped away from her in one blow.
Her home, her job, a chance to be free and safe, and he couldn’t even give her answers. There was no fairness in it, and yet neither could he bring himself to fix it.
“Let it go, Roni.” He padded to the bathroom door, intending to pull a change of clothes from the walk-in closet in the other room.
As he reached the bathroom door, with no warning whatsoever, the shattering of a crystal bowl from the nightstand had him stopping in disbelief. The dim lights of the room gleamed dully on the crystal shards, mocking him with his belief that she would have allowed him to walk away so easily. If nothing else, his Roni could be a tempestuous little spitfire. Had she been Feline, she would have made a perfect wildcat mix.
“You leave this room and I’ll take your head off with the next one,” she snarled.
His cock leapt to life. Taber glanced down at the heavy erection with a sense of resigned amusement. It said a lot about a man who got a hard-on from such an event. It said even less about him that his female’s rage could trigger it. Damn. He wanted nothing more than t
o turn around, go back to that bed and fuck her silly. His skin itched with the need. In a single second every cell in his body was screaming for hard, driving sex.
He turned back to her, watching her broodingly as he crossed his arms over his chest. Her gaze flickered to his erection, and damned if she didn’t blush again. That added color only seemed to make him harder.
She had moved from the bed. In one hand she clutched the sheet to her chest, in the other she held the matching bowl from his nightstand. Evidently the state of his arousal held no bearing on her determination for answers. It figured.
“You know, those came with the house,” he sighed, nodding at the small, decorative item. “I imagine they cost quite a bit.”
“Who gives a damn?” She was spitting mad now. “I’m sick of you running out on me, Taber. I’ll be damned if I’ll be tied to you while you waltz on your merry way, avoiding me whenever you feel like it.” He watched her in amazement. Emotion, thick and hot, colored her voice while her eyes snapped with fury and stubbornness. Her slender body vibrated with emotion, her frown darkening her brow, thinning her full, luscious lips. She was tempting him to mount her there and then.
“I have never run out on you, Roni…” Her words finally sank past his lust-crazed brain and in the next second, his eyes widened as he jumped out of the way of her next flying missile. “Son of a bitch, Roni.” He sprinted toward her, jerking her back from the heavy candlestick that sat on the table as well. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her against him, restraining the violence he could feel shuddering through her body.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He released her as he tossed her to the bed, but he didn’t attempt to follow her. He was tired of this. Tired of the fury that filled her—the distrust, the shadows that haunted her eyes. “I’m sick to damned hell of you accusing me of leaving you when it was your own decision to break off whatever relationship was beginning.”
She scrambled across the bed, landing on her feet on the other side. Better, he thought. The further she was from him, the more of his common sense he seemed able to maintain.