“House,” he corrected. “You grew up in his house. That was no home, Cat, any more than the number of foster homes I was in were homes.”
She hadn’t known he’d been in foster homes. His parents had been murdered but he hadn’t said what happened to him after that. “I’m sorry, Eli, I didn’t realize.”
“It was a house.”
“It was my house,” she said. “I didn’t know any other way of life.”
“Do you love him?” he asked, his fork halfway to his mouth. His body still. Utterly still. His eyes on her face.
Something moved under her skin, rolling through her like a wave. It left behind prickling as if it had agitated her nerve endings.
“Cat?” he prompted.
“I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you mean. It was never like that between us. He didn’t kiss me or show affection, at least not like other people. I don’t know if Rafe is capable of actually loving anyone. I think he wants to, and if he does, I’m probably the one person he does.”
He put a forkful of food in his mouth, still regarding her steadily. “That’s not an answer. Do you love him? Do you feel loyalty to him?”
Her first reaction was a resounding “no,” but something stopped her. He was asking not as the DEA, but as Eli, sitting across from her at the breakfast table. At least she thought that’s who it was.
“No. I feel sorry for him. I do. I don’t know what his life was like when he was a child, but it wasn’t good. I think his leopard is hard to control and enjoys violence. But he does things that are wrong. Morally wrong. More than that. So wrong there’s no redemption.”
“You know this for a fact? I ask because appearances are often deceiving, especially when it comes to shifters.”
“I don’t. But women would be brought to the house, prostitutes, always on his bad days. He would come to my room first and just stare at me. I was always afraid. Something in his eyes, feral. Not right.”
She shivered and put down her fork. Her thighs tingled. Burned. She rubbed her palms up and down them.
“Did he say anything to you?”
She shook her head. “Never. Not those nights. He left and then the prostitute would come. He would spend hours with her and then he would go out into the swamp in his leopard form.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I think he hunted and then killed her.”
He leaned toward her. “Why would you think that?”
She took a breath. It didn’t matter what she told him, she couldn’t prove any of it and neither could the DEA. “I would see missing persons signs tacked to telephone poles and the sides of buildings. I recognized more than one of them. I just didn’t think it could be coincidence.”
There was no way to explain Rafe and the way he was, or the difference in him when he came back from his trips to the swamp. He was more relaxed for a short period of time, less likely to retaliate with violence for some infraction among his business acquaintances or his men.
She pushed at the heavy fall of hair hanging down her back. She should have put it up. The room was too warm. She lifted the heavy mass off her neck and felt the rise of her breasts. Her nipples rubbed against the flannel and the air left her lungs in a gasp as a wave of heat rushed over her to settle between her legs. Burning. The fire came fast, hot and ferocious, a hungry, blistering blaze that ignited before she could catch her breath. Her breasts seemed to swell to an aching need, her nipples pressing against the flannel, liking the feel of the material pushing against their hardened tips.
Her gaze went to Eli across the table from her, taking in his wide shoulders, his thick, heavily muscled chest. Everything in her urged her to slide from her chair and crawl under the table, pull at his sweats and feast on her prize. Her mouth actually watered, remembering the taste and feel of him. She wanted to drive him out of control, to be the one to bring him to the very edge and push him over.
She gripped the edge of the table, hard. She didn’t even know how to feast on him, and yet the erotic images were in her head refusing to go away. Her skin hurt, the weight of the shirt pressing into the raw nerve endings. It was happening again and this time felt even worse. She had to be able to stay in control.
She dropped her head and took several deep breaths, struggling with the need to claw at Eli, to rake at him, ravage him, devour him. Her body shuddered and her legs moved restlessly, unable to stop that terrible burning that demanded to be sated.
She wasn’t like this. She wasn’t. She didn’t know the first thing about sex and she didn’t want it like this. Not without love. Not without caring. Just tearing at each other, a wild, hard mating that meant nothing at all. She couldn’t do this.
“Baby.” His voice was soft. “It will be all right. We’ll handle it.”
He knew. He saw her state, probably smelled her call. He knew – that was even more humiliating than being so out of control.