“I can smell the sweet scent of your need.” Head lowering, his lips brushed against the lobe of her ear. “It becomes sweeter, more intoxicating, each time I see you. Each time I touch you.”
“You need to run a diagnostic on that smeller of yours, Graeme. I think it’s malfunctioning.” Her lips lifted in a sneer.
She hated it that her body betrayed her anger for pleasure. Hated memories she couldn’t forget and the pain she couldn’t release.
“Do I, Cat?” The suggestive whisper was followed by a lick along the side of her neck. Slightly rough, a rasp of pure pleasure that had her biting her lip to hold back a cry of pleasure. “Or do I need to reach beneath your skirt and see how damp the silk of your panties is? Feel the moist heat preparing you for me?” His teeth raked against the bend of her neck as her breathing became harder, her need for him sharper.
“Do you know what’s going to happen when I kiss you?” His lips drifted to her jaw. “I could kiss your breasts and only make them more sensitive. I could taste the swollen bud of your clit, draw it in my mouth or push my tongue into the aching flesh between your thighs, and you could still bear the added sensitivity you’d feel.” Sharp teeth nipped at the side of her neck. “But if I kiss you again, if I rub my tongue against yours, then it will be far more than sensitivity, little cat. For both of us. It will become a necessity . . .” His lips brushed over hers, just the faintest caress that had them parting, pulling a moan from her lips that she couldn’t hold back. “A fucking drug we can’t bear living without.”
“I don’t trust you. No bond is strong enough to reach past that, Graeme. Nothing can change it,” she protested even as she tried to get closer to him, forced herself not to beg him for everything he’d just described.
“Are you sure?” His breathing was harder now, his voice deeper, rougher. “Your body trusts me. It aches for me. Doesn’t it? Would your body be so hungry for me if there was no trust, Cat?”
“It’s called lust,” she protested breathlessly, her head falling back against the wall as his hand lowered and he began dragging her blouse from the band of the skirt she’d changed into along with a cami top just before Ashley entered the house.
“Just lust?” His hand, broad and callused and so warm, cupped her side beneath the material. “Are you sure of that?”
His lips brushed against hers again, teasing her as her lips parted, a helpless moan falling from them.
“I ache with the need to kiss you. Burn with it,” he growled as he released the catch at the side of her skirt, eased the zipper down and let the material fall to her feet. “I burn for you, Cat.”
A second later her top and his shirt followed, leaving her clad in only the lacy white bra and matching panties that barely covered any flesh at all.
She was helpless. She couldn’t fight him, couldn’t fight the need, the hunger, or the emotions for him that were so tangled in the pain of betrayal.
How was she supposed to defend herself against the man who’d protected her, seen to her safety as a child and become the fantasy that followed her into womanhood? How was she supposed to protect herself against the man she had loved in one way or another for all her life?
“Gideon,” she whispered, her voice breaking as his body pressed hard and tight against her own.
“No, Cat,” he growled, the sound dangerous, warning. “What’s my name? Say it.”
“Now, or when you’re sane?” She whispered the question, arching against the wide, muscular warmth of his bare chest.
All he wore were the tan pants the Reever Breeds wore, with matching shirts, as uniforms.
Her nails flexed against his fingers as he continued to hold her to the wall, then, staring back at him, she gave in to the rush of wild, adrenaline-laced genetics rising inside her.
She was primal as well, but in a far different way. She controlled the primal impulses, she controlled what she showed and the power she fed to it. The base animal DNA that infused her, that ensured her survival and marked her as one of the most least predictable breeds, a Bengal, was becoming stronger by the day.
For far too long she’d been forced to hide who she was. First, she’d had to sleep, to hide, remember that there were others besides her at risk if she allowed herself to awaken. Then, once again, she’d had to pretend, to make everyone, even Raymond and Maria, believe she was Claire.
She didn’t have to pretend with Graeme. She didn’t have to submit, she refused to submit.
Why should she submit beneath him or bury the confidence she’d built over the past thirteen years? she asked herself as the primal awareness, that primal power, filled her.
He had created what she had become. He had worked with the lead scientist, he had dictated the genetic typing placed within her.
Now he could deal with it.
She would never stand behind him, she would stand beside him. And he might own her sexuality, but she would own his as well. And she’d make damned sure no other woman could claim it.