“And you enjoy encouraging that belief,” Cat guessed with a smile.
“Of course I do.” Widening her eyes with charming innocence Khi batted her lashes demurely. “What would be the point in beginning the rumor otherwise.”
Shaking her head, Cat finished her tea then watched as Khi refilled both glasses. She didn’t miss the subtle little addition Khi made to her own glass. The scent of the strong liquor wasn’t in the least subtle. Cat didn’t comment on it, rather she merely filed the information away to broach another day.
For now, she let Khi find what relief she could from the emotions Cat sensed were far too confusing for the young woman filled with them. Who was she to judge what solace another could find from their demons? She only wished she could find a bit of solace from her own. Because she could feel the confrontation with her own personal demon nearing, and she was terribly afraid there was no preparing herself for it.
? ? ?
She was incredible.
His little cat.
Slipping into her bedroom through the open balcony door the next night, Graeme couldn’t help but marvel at the young woman she’d become.
Twenty-five years before, when Phillip Brandenmore had laid her in his arms and informed him coldly that her survival was his responsibility, Graeme had never imagined the exceptional creation she would become—even the arrogant Brandenmore hadn’t realized. Graeme had ensured it. Every therapy, every drug, every second in that godforsaken hellhole had created this wondrous creature.
Long, burnished gold and deep earth brown strands of silky hair spilled over her pillow and around her face, framing the dark cream flesh of her face perfectly. Her features were feline enough to give her expressions a shadow of mystery, the tilt of her eyes hinting at the exotic.
Her lips. They were sweetly curved, tempting, and made him want to taste.
The need, the hunger to taste her had tormented him since finding her. It haunted his dreams, his fantasies. It kept him aroused, iron hard and ready to mate.
There were days he hated her for that need to possess her, the certainty that once he had her, protecting her would become more hazardous than it had been in the past.
She was a weakness.
She was pure and certain destruction if he wasn’t extremely careful.
No one had accused him of being careful in years, though, and he saw no reason to give them cause to do so now. He was what they had created. If they didn’t like it, then they had only themselves to blame.
Breeds were created to be master manipulators, tacticians, guerrilla fighters and highly tactile lovers. Graeme was all those, yet, in his creation they’d somehow missed the fact that they’d created a Breed whose aptitude in their scientific deviations far exceeded their own. He’d taken what had been done in Brandenmore’s research center, watched, manipulated the scientists and techs and, in the end, had almost run the labs himself.
Until Brandenmore had brought in a new head researcher and geneticist. One who had somehow sensed the hold one Bengal male had over everyone there.
Good ol’ Dr. Bennett. Skinny-assed bastard.
Rubbing at his chest, he remembered the feel of Bennett’s fingers wrapped around his beating heart as he gave the soldiers their orders to find “the girl.”
The girl.
He focused his gaze on her once again.
She was the girl. The one who had forced her blood into his veins and allowed the madness to overtake him. That madness had then given birth to the monster as a scientist ordered her recapture with the express intention of lifting her beating heart from her chest as well.
Bennett hadn’t held a beating heart for five years, even his own, and he never would again. Graeme had ripped that organ from Bennett’s chest. Digging his claw-tipped fingers through flesh and cartilage, he’d gripped the pulsing flesh and, as the good doctor watched in helpless horror, ripped it from him.
That memory was one of the best he possessed, though the night it had occurred, when he’d gone through the labs on a killing spree that left few within them alive, was often hazy.
The monster he’d become that night had been a final, welcome relief. Because that creature had no mercy, no regrets or recriminations. He was pure superior intelligence and primal instinct.
When the monster retreated and the Breed found a measure of sanity, there she had been, the cat that had begun his downfall. And the knowledge that she would always be his downfall.
Gripping the sheet covering her, Graeme eased it slowly down her body, his lips quirking as the frown deepened at her brow.
She should have already awakened.
Were he a Council soldier or Breed, then she would have already been dead. Or raped. Possibly both. Probably both.