“You might have been here, but you didn’t come to me.” Her fist pressed hard between her breasts, the emotions that tore through her razing her senses. “You didn’t come to me, Graeme. You didn’t let me see you. You didn’t hold me . . .” She whirled away from him, the betrayal she’d felt then almost as bad as that she’d felt when she was twelve. “You created me to long for you, to love you . . .”
“The hell I did. If I’d had such knowledge, I’d have created you to fucking obey me,” he snapped back furiously. “I’d have created that code before creating anything else.”
The bitterness in the laugh that escaped her might have surprised her if she wasn’t so furious. “Perhaps you simply miscalculated there.”
His head jerked up with such a look of superiority she rolled her eyes in amazement.
“I do not miscalculate.” The very arrogance in that statement was a testament to the power and confidence that had only grown in him over the years.
Had she expected anything else? Really?
“So you thought it was enough to simply be here?” She spread her arms for a second before dropping them to her sides. “To just be wandering around playing your games when I asked you to come to me? What did you think that meant, Graeme? I asked you to come to me, not to camp your fucking ass out in the desert and watch me.”
“I was so fucking primal you wanted no part of me,” he snarled then, his incisors flashing in the darkness. “You called me to you when I was nothing but pure instinct. An animal, enraged and covered in blood, but I came when you called, Cat. I might have been unable to hold you, but by God I was here. I was here and I watched over you every night from the moment I arrived.”
“Really, Graeme . . .”
“Do you think I didn’t hear your sobs? Smell your tears?” The deepening of his voice, the primal rasp in it, had her watching him curiously now. “Do you think I wanted to touch you while I looked like this?”
He stepped into the small amount of light spilling from the house, and the sight of him had her breath catching.
“Gideon . . .” She whispered his name, the joy that flooded her reaching into a part of her being she hadn’t known existed.
This was who she had longed for.
Graeme was his safety, it was the face he showed the world. This was the Breed that belonged to her, though. The one she belonged to . . .
Reaching up, she touched the dark gold and black stripes along his neck with the tips of her fingers and stared into eyes of hammered gold streaked with a wild, jungle green.
The animal pulsed just beneath the man’s flesh, the wildness of the creature let free for her to see.
And she loved him.
She’d loved him as a child and dreamed of him as a woman. And when he’d come to her as Graeme, she’d feared he was lost forever.
“Damn you, mate.” The hiss was filled with exasperation rather than anger. “You see the nightmare that plagues men’s fears and sigh as though he were a long-lost friend.”
Clawed fingers gripped her hips, pulling her to him with a gentleness she had only barely remembered him using when she was a child, screaming out in pain.
“I missed you.” Her breath caught as emotion swamped her. “I didn’t mean to make you so angry.” A sob tore at her voice. “I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t . . .”
She’d had no one else to call her own, then suddenly, she hadn’t had him either.
“You left me . . .”
“I never left you.” The tormented whisper at her ear sent a rush of pleasure racing down her spine. Of course, the feel of those claws scraping up her back in a sensuous caress might have had something to do with it as well. “Until they took me again, Cat, I never left you. I was always watching over you. Even after Orrin managed to hide you, even from me.”
“But I didn’t know . . .” A gasp ended the protest as the feel of his incisors raking over her shoulder sent a shaft of pure pleasure and longing racing through her.
Weakness flooded her entire being.
“You knew,” he growled. “You want to deny it. You want to absolve yourself, to hold on to the anger and the pain that’s so much a part of you. You sacrificed yourself for your vision of protecting me, Judd, even Claire, and when I learned of that, I wanted to kill everyone involved.” His hold tightened on her, the scent of his frustrated rage surrounding her. “Sacrifice yourself again in such a manner, even risk yourself for another, and I promise you, if I survive the terror of it, I will make certain you never do so again.”
She almost smiled when she should have taken the warning to heart. But this was Gideon. It wasn’t Graeme or any other name he’d used over the years to evade capture or detection. It was Gideon.
Her Gideon.
Her fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt.
“Do the stripes still cover your body?” She breathed out, anticipation like a sizzle of electricity racing through her senses.
Leaning back in his hold, she watched, releasing each button and smoothing the parted material to the sides until she reached the snug band of his pants. Once there, she didn’t hesitate. She didn’t bother with just pulling the shirt from the band, but released the button and slid the zipper of the dark-colored denim open.