Flambé sent him a brief smile and then turned back to look out the window. She looked so alone he wanted to gather her up in his arms. It took effort to stay in his chair and just observe her.
Shturm, pay close attention. She is guarding herself. Holding herself so close. He wanted the impression of his leopard as well. More than once he had been forced to interrogate prisoners and Shturm’s observations had been helpful. This was more important to his life—and his leopard’s—than anything else.
“Keep going, baby. Tell me about them.”
“He wanted children and he never found his mate. The species was nearly extinct. He said it stood to reason that his mate had already been killed. She was in her first cycle.”
She turned and looked at him again. Straight. Her eyes meeting his. Her eyes were nearly emerald. Was there hostility there? Some kind of accusation? Her lashes lowered and she turned her head before he could read her.
Shturm?
She doesn’t trust us. Either one of us.
He waited a heartbeat, turning his leopard’s assessment over and over in his mind, letting it process. “Your father told you that your mother was in her first life cycle but that he had another mate?”
“Yes.”
Short. Clipped. By all accounts, Flambé and her father had gotten along very well. They didn’t argue. They were good friends. The only thing she’d gone against her father on had been continuing with her rescuing of the leopard species going extinct. Other than that one thing, everyone, including Flambé, said she didn’t fight with her father. But then, Flambé didn’t argue with Sevastyan either.
“Did he talk to you about their life together?” He pushed her just a little bit when he knew she was re
luctant to talk to him about her parents.
She took another drink of water and then swung her legs off the little bench seat to stand up, stretching. “He didn’t. I asked a couple of other people I knew, friends of hers, and they told me things. They weren’t exactly nice things. I want to go for a run.”
“That’s a good idea.” He stood up as well. “I think after this morning, we both need a little action.” He gathered the plates from the table.
Flambé instantly cleared the silverware and mugs. She began washing the dishes as he scraped the food she didn’t eat into the compost she’d set up for the plants.
“What did her friends tell you?”
She shrugged. “Nothing good. They’re both gone so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He went hot inside. Red hot. Raging. It mattered. “He didn’t hit her—or you, did he?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
He could barely hear her and she was standing right beside him. Close. She smelled like cinnamon and Egyptian jasmine. At once he got that taste for her in his mouth. On his tongue. She set up a craving there was no denying. Franco Matherson was going to be a big problem sometime in the future as much as they both might want to think he was gone. There was no getting a woman like Flambé out of one’s mind.
Her parents. He needed to do some digging into what life had been like for her mother with her father. “When did you move out to that little studio? How old were you?”
The Carver property was fairly extensive, landscaped beautifully, so much so that it was a showpiece. The house was a long, U-shaped, single-story dwelling with many bedrooms and a wide covered verandah. There were two other houses, both of which had been built as dwellings for the male shifters who worked for them or the rescues who were training under her father. The studio was off by itself a distance from the main house.
She finished washing the dishes and wandered back to the window, avoiding his gaze. “I was seven. He needed the bedroom.”
Sevastyan felt like Shturm did most of the time, wanting to claw and rake, to break free and murder something or someone. She was very subdued, no expression in her voice, but he had been to her property with her to get her things.
The studio was situated right next to a koi pond where lavender and lacy ferns sprang around the wide bluish-black rock and tree limbs wept long green fringe into the water. The walkway leading to the studio was paved in the same bluish-black stones and the building fit perfectly with the setting, a small artsy one-bedroom cottage with a kitchenette and bathroom. The porch overlooked the pond, as did the front windows, giving Flambé a wonderful view, but that view would be far different as an adult than it would be as a child, not to mention it wouldn’t have been all that safe for a child alone.
“Get your shoes, baby,” he said softly.
He was the one who needed to run now. His body raged at him. Normally he would have turned to sex, going to Cain’s club, losing himself in the sheer beauty of tying the ropes, laying down a masterpiece on a blank canvas, and after, giving his body the release it needed, a totally unsatisfying mindless fuck that never did anything but let some of the volcanic rage go long enough to get by for a few days or, if he was lucky, weeks.
Now that he had Flambé, everything was different. His art was personal. Her body was the perfect canvas and each time he tied her, no matter how he decided to lay the ropes on her body, the color or texture, the pattern, it had to be on her because she was the one who made his art a masterpiece. She made it come alive. She took his cock and actually, in spite of his addiction to her, sated him enough that he could sleep. She managed to quiet the ferocious rage in him that he had thought was impossible to ever tame. Sadly, whatever she needed from him he wasn’t giving her—yet. He was determined to figure it out. His little strawberry leopard mattered to him, whether she thought so or not.
He waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. She hadn’t tried to change one thing in the house. She hadn’t asked for her own office. She’d barely moved her clothes into their bedroom. Each time he’d named a day to get married, she’d come up with an excuse why she couldn’t make that work. He was so busy with Mitya’s business, so used to being at his cousin’s beck and call, that he’d let that all slide. The only thing he’d really demanded of Flambé was for her to work at Mitya’s estate when she was drawing up plans and to sleep in their bedroom. She’d given him both.
He gave a low growl as he paced back and forth. How was he different than anyone else in her life? He was truly neglectful of her. He needed to find a way to spend more time with her, to make her know she was his priority. They had sex. Crazy, kinky, hot, wild, insane, insatiable sex. She distracted him with sex and he let her. He distracted her with sex and she let him. Their relationship was founded on sex and seemed to be about sex. She was comfortable with that and wanted to keep it that way. She hid herself from him unless . . .