She stared back at him, remembering how helpless she’d felt during those first years after she’d awakened to awareness and realized the life Claire lived.
“Why didn’t Claire tell you?” She asked him sadly, watching the dark pain that flashed in his gaze. “There was no way for you to help, Linc. You were in the military. Any attempts to help would have only put you at odds there,” she breathed out wearily. “If you don’t want to believe me, then don’t. Either way, get that bastard out of this house before he infects it with the evil inside him. He’s a malignancy and I don’t want him anywhere around me.”
Linc flinched.
It was painful to see the sudden flash of indecision in his gaze, the glimmer of suspicion. He knew. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew the truth. What he decided to do was another matter.
His lips parted, but whatever he meant to say was disrupted by a sudden snarl and the sound of a man’s squeak of terror.
Linc moved, fast. So fast that Cat found herself behind him as they rushed into the foyer and came to a sudden, stunned stop.
Pure fury filled Graeme’s face. The stripes that would have revealed his true nature as well as his true identity weren’t apparent, but she had a feeling they weren’t far behind.
One hand was wrapped around Raymond’s throat, the other the side of the door as he suddenly heaved the older man out of the entrance to the pebbled yard right on his ass. Then he swung around, clearly prepared to do the same to Linc.
Coming to a stop, Linc lifted his hands, his expression closed as he faced what he believed was an enraged Lion Breed.
“I’m just leaving, Graeme,” he assured him. “I should have never listened when he begged to come with me. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.”
The fact that he seemed to know Graeme was surprising. She hadn’t expected that at all.
“You should have never brought him here,” Graeme snarled. “It’s a mistake I promise you’ll regret.”
Glancing through the door at Raymond as he lay on his back, groaning as though he’d been sliced open rather than just thrown out, Linc shook his head wearily.
“It’s already one I regret,” he said softly. “And one I apologize for.”
With that, he moved from the house. This time, Cat flinched as Graeme slammed the door with violence that nearly rocked the small house.
“Well, that was really mature, wasn’t it?” she sneered as she crossed her arms over her breasts for the second time that morning. “Think you impressed them with all that Breed strength in beating Lobo’s door against the frame?”
The stripes suddenly shadowed his face. Jagged dark marks beneath his flesh, extending over one eye, across his arrogant nose and opposite cheek. A sharp point ended at the corner of the other eye. Others curled around the side of his neck.
Cat stepped back warily as the green of his eyes, normally amber flecked, became green-flecked amber, filling the whites of his eyes and obliterating the pupils.
“Now, Graeme, all this fury is just uncalled for,” she informed him with far more bravado than she felt. “It would be a really good time to just chill out and calm down.”
She didn’t know this Breed. Even his scent was tinged with something different, something elusive and so wild it went far beyond primal.
“Calm down?” he snarled, the deeper, rougher growl causing her to wonder if perhaps she should have just remained quiet.
“Yes, calm down.” In for a penny, in for a pound. Right? “I had all this completely under control and Linc would have never allowed him to attempt to do anything.”
“‘Linc’?” His gaze narrowed on her. The predatory look was almost scary. “Now, mate, what is that scent of affection I can smell coming from you?”
Oh, he really wasn’t going there. And what business was it of his who she was fond of and who she wasn’t fond of? As for this mate crap of his . . .
“‘Mate’?” Propping her hands on her hips, she let anger override wariness. “Are you fucking crazy . . .”
“Fucking bet on it.” He moved before she could anticipate it, before she could jump away from him.
She found her back against the wall, lifted from her feet, thighs spread and gripping his as the fully erect proof of his arousal that strained his jeans pressed into the sensitive flesh between her thighs.
Aroused?
“Does manhandling me really turn you on?” Fingers gripping his shoulders, she wondered why the hell she wasn’t trying to rip him apart with the claws that emerged to hold to the hard flesh beneath his shirt.
Because he felt so good.
So hot and strong, his hands holding her hips, his muscular thighs parting hers, holding them open as his hips shifted to rub the denim-covered erection firmer against her.