She’d never known pleasure like this. She’d never ached like this or found herself so helpless against a man.
And it was Graeme. Graeme who had destroyed her, who had taken everything she could have fooled herself into believing might actually be hers.
“Enough.” Her voice was weak, faint. She’d had to force the protest past her lips.
She’d be damned if she would reward him for tearing her life apart.
“Stop, Graeme. Just stop . . .”
His head jerked up, his lips swollen and sexy as hell. And she hated herself for noticing it.
“I won’t regret it,” he suddenly snarled in answer to her earlier declaration. “But I have no doubt you will regret letting that nonsense that just passed your lips free.”
Before she realized what he intended, he released her.
Holding her hips until she was standing on her own, he moved back, amber fire still filling his eyes as he stared at her, his breathing hard, erratic.
No doubt she would regret it. Hell, she already regretted it.
“You need to leave.” She might never get her breathing back under control. The breathless sound of it was something she’d never heard from her own lips before.
Her claws were digging into the wall behind her, her bare breasts still holding his gaze, her nipples still tight and hard, as though begging him to ignore her words.
Her body was betraying her just as eagerly as Graeme had betrayed her years before.
“Of course I do,” he snarled. “God forbid you might have second thoughts, right?”
“Exactly,” she hissed back at him, the feline sound harsh and filled with her own inner conflict. “God forbid I should actually depend upon you to do anything but make my life hell, is more like it. Why should I reward you for that?”
“Reward me?” Amazement filled his voice as well as his expression. “Trust me, baby, you were the one about to get the reward.”
“Really?” she all but purred as she slid away from the wall, her gaze sliding over him slowly as she passed him, knowing better; the scent of his lust was far stronger, far hungrier than her awakening senses and she knew it. “Then it won’t bother you a bit to know how I’ve fantasized about having a lover.” Fantasized about him while she slept, helpless against the images. “And all the ways I’ve imagined rewarding him for being the man I’ve ached to have.”
The shadows of the primal Bengal pulsed beneath his flesh as a growl rumbled in his throat.
“Don’t push me, Cat,” he warned her, his tone guttural as she gripped the step railing and started up the stairs.
“How I wondered what it would be like to taste his flesh, to lick over hard, hot flesh like I would lick a favorite treat. Or to rise above him and lower myself . . .”
The snarl that left his lips sent her racing up the stairs, all thought of teasing him fleeing beneath the sound of a fully aroused, lust-filled Bengal Breed intent on one thing and one thing only. Pure mindless sex.
She slammed the bedroom door behind her, locked it and stepped back from it warily, wondering if he would dare to breach it.
“You like to play very dangerous games, mate,” he called out through the door.
“Go mate yourself. I wouldn’t have you on a bet,” she informed him mutinously. “Sorry, asshole, go find someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do.”
A dark male chuckle met the dare. “Think you know me, little cat? Is that really what you think?”
“That’s what I know.” Retrieving another bra from the drawer, she hurriedly clipped it in place before reaching for a shirt to cover it.
Damn him, that was a new bra he’d destroyed too.
“Then you should be well aware of the fact that what I claim, I keep.” The low, furious warning in his voice had a chill racing up her spine. “Don’t test me on this. Let another touch you, let another spill the scent of his lust around you, and you’ll see just why those stupid Council scientists whimper at the very thought of me.”
“Because you’re fucking crazy?” she suggested mockingly, glaring at the door. “Because they know the strain of rabies they coded into your defective genetics?”
He made her so mad it was all she could do to keep from jerking the door open and confronting him again. The problem was, she’d probably find herself begging him to touch her again instead.
“Because I have no problem reaching inside their chests and allowing them to watch as I rip their hearts out.” Animalistic, so primal and rough, his voice had chills racing up her spine and filled her with a heavy sense of dread. “Remember that, my little cat, if that bastard Lincoln Martinez ever even thinks to touch you. Except I’ll rip his dick off first and shove it down his throat.”
She blinked at the threat, almost allowing the sudden spurt of humor she felt to slip free at the final threat.
And Jonas had called her overdramatic? He hadn’t heard drama yet.
The slamming of the kitchen door assured her the enraged Bengal was gone. Thankfully.