She would have been insulted if the sudden image that shot through her head didn’t have her pussy pulsing in response instead. Pulsing? Hell, it was throbbing like a raw, open wound, begging to be filled. But that didn’t mean she had to let him know that.
“Oh, aren’t you brave?” She lifted a brow disdainfully. She would be damned if she would go to the trouble to actually get pissed off. Like she needed the blood rushing harder to her clit, carrying the faint traces of the hormone that escaped the glands in her tongue to the rest of her body faster. “You know, Kane, I could claw your eyes out easily. I’m a Feline. Remember?”
He grunted sarcastically. “I’ll pretend to be your wolf and eat you then,” he sniped. “Spread out. ”
Her arm moved before she really put any thought into it, her hand aiming for his face. Remarkably, he caught it a second before impact.
“You are out of line,” she spat furiously. “I’m sick of your sniping and your veiled insults, Kane. ”
“And I’m damned sick and tired of being tied physically and emotionally to a hellcat who doesn’t have the sense to take care of herself,” he snarled back. “Do you think I haven’t learned just what you’ve gone through over the years, Sherra? How bad the heat gets and the lengths you’ll go to in denying it?
You could have found me at any time. ”
Rage glittered in his eyes now. The deep blue flashed with fury as his lips tightened with it. It excited her, infuriated her.
“Oh yeah, I was really going to do that. ” She jerked her arm back, her body tingling, her heart aching from even that touch. “Come crying to you fresh out of that compound, believing you had betrayed me to begin with. I was just going to march right up to your door and ask you prettily to fuck me and make it easier. Even if I had known what the heat was, there wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening. ” Keeping her voice low, keeping the rage tempered behind a harsh growl was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life. She needed to scream, to rage, to strike out and hurt him as badly as she had been hurt when she believed he had deserted her.
“You knew I wouldn’t just walk away from you, Sherra. ” He wasn’t backing down. He was right in her face, the heat of his anger and his lust wrapping around her like invisible chains as his hands gripped her arms. “Damn you, you knew I hadn’t betrayed you. ”
His flesh burned into hers. She could feel each individual finger, every cell as they came into contact with her body and became inordinately sensitized. She fought to drag in enough air to clear her head, to reinforce her self-control, but all she could smell was Kane and hot male lust. Sherra stared at him, drawing in the scent of him, intoxicated by the sudden, overwhelming need to touch him. She was trembling with it, she realized. He was staring down as her as though he wanted to shake her senseless. His eyes were narrowed, thick lashes shadowing his cheeks, his usually sensually full lips pressed into a thin line of anger. And she wanted his kiss.
Her tongue throbbed as she strained away from him. She could taste the hormone spilling into her mouth as the engorged glands began to fill and demand the sharing.
“Get away from me. ” She tried to pull back from him, to deny the need and the hunger sweeping through her, and the rage that lingered just under the surface. “If you had cared you would have taken me with you as I begged you to, Kane, but you left me instead. ” Even she was surprised by the guttural sound of her voice, the harsh unbidden pain that echoed in it.
“God, do you think I don’t hate myself for that enough, Sherra?” His eyes were bleak, filled with his own pain, his own regret. “Do you think I haven’t literally prayed to go back and do it differently? To make sure you got out of there?”
He released her, as though he couldn’t bear to touch her any longer. His hands pushed through the short strands of his thick hair as he blew out a ragged breath. He was fighting for control just as much as she was.
“Look, Kane. ” Sherra moved back, fighting to breathe past the emotions ripping through her and pouring off him. “It’s too late to go back, and too much has happened to go forward…”
“The hell it has,” he growled, staring back at her implacably. “Do you think I searched all these years,
Sherra, risked my life and my family’s and drove myself insane so you could wave me away as though none of it fucking matters?” A harsh laugh echoed through the night. “I don’t think so, baby. And I think you know it’s not going to happen as well. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be running like a scared little cat in the opposite direction every time I come near. ”
His voice had risen, but even more, he had moved. Sherra backed away, realizing she was retreating a second before she bumped into the boulder behind her.
“I’m trying to be sensible,” she snapped. “Something you aren’t, Kane. You have no idea what could happen. You don’t know how it will affect you…”
“I know how you affect me,” he growled. “I know my cock is like steel in my pants ninety percent of the time, I’m so hot to get inside you. I know every time I see so much as a scratch on your flesh I want to take someone apart. A bruise makes me rabid. I know whatever the fuck happened in that lab that night, I’ve never gotten over it. I’ve never forgotten. And, by God, I never gave up. You gave up. ”
“I accepted. ” Ragged, hoarse, her voice reflected all the pain and rage of the past years. “And now it’s your turn, Kane. It’s time to accept it’s over. It was over the night those bastards raped me… Oh, God. ”
She pressed her hand over her mouth as she watched him pale, watched the pain that washed over his face.
Pushing herself violently away from the boulder, she moved far enough away from him to avoid his touch, to breathe in the sultry night air rather than the bitter tinge of his pain. She barely remembered that night. It had been hazy, misty. The drugs had reacted against the hormones that were surging through her system. The scientists had no idea the mistake they had made until she began going into convulsions beneath the bastard raping her.
“Sherra. I would give my own life to have saved you from that,” he whispered behind her. “And that’s the God’s truth. ”
She shook her head with a sense of fatality. “No, Kane. You nearly gave your life, anyway, and we never knew it. It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for it. ” And she didn’t. She merely accepted it.
“I’m not the girl you loved then. The girl who loved you doesn’t exist anymore. She died with the child she lost. All that’s left is the killer. ” She couldn’t allow anything more. “I’m a Breed, Kane. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I’m in heat. It’s physical. It’s biological. And we have no idea how it could affect you. I’m not willing to risk it. ”
She could feel him behind her as though the heat of his body were a physical caress in and of itself. Then he was touching her, his hands sliding down her arms, stealing her strength with his touch as she heard the whimper that left her lips.
His touch.
Her breasts were so sensitive they ached, the flesh of her arms transmitting each calloused inch of his hands directly to her straining nipples, her engorged clit.