Catarina sighed and lifted her gaze to his once more. “You don’t understand. I realized that I can’t go back with Rafe, not after everything between us, which essentially means I’m staying with you. But you hurt me. I let you in so deep, and I didn’t even know I was doing it. You hurt me far worse than he ever did. I have to get to a place where I can let that go. I don’t want to be the type of person who brings up the past and throws it in someone’s face, and that means I have to deal with it and forgive you or I can’t be with you. More, I have to trust you again. To do that, I’d be giving you everything, stripping myself bare. And if I do that…” She trailed off.
He kept his face blank, but it was a body blow. You hurt me worse than he ever did. He wanted to roar with rage. He’d handled everything the wrong way with her. I don’t want to be the type of person who brings up the past and throws it in someone’s face, and that means I have to deal with it and forgive you. She’d delivered that in her soft little confessional voice as if she was the one who had sinned, not him. Giving you everything. Stripping myself bare.
She was definitely going to kill him if she kept saying things like that in a voice that penetrated through all of his armor and pierced him straight through the heart. He pressed one hand to his chest, hoping he wasn’t having a heart attack and it was just penance for betraying her. She had been such a damn innocent and he’d ripped that away from her as well.
“If I trust you again, Eli, you could destroy me. That’s what I’d be giving to you. The power to destroy me. That’s what you’re really asking of me.”
There it was. She saw what he was asking – no, demanding – of her. She knew what the ultimate price would be. She was going in with both eyes open, no rose-colored glasses like she’d had in the warehouse. She knew what he was and now, what he was capable of. Still, Catarina was holding out the world to him. That was the one piece she didn’t get. What she would be giving to him.
She could bring him to his knees without even trying. He didn’t deserve her. He had a hell of a lot of sins on his soul, and she didn’t. She was clean and good and damn it all, he was keeping her anyway, even when he knew he shouldn’t. That wasn’t his leopard talking, that was the man.
“I know that, baby, I know what you’d be handing me. All I can do is tell you I’d cherish that gift.” He poured sincerity into his voice. She was leopard enough to hear it.
“I don’t want to be like him.” She rushed the second confession, the words tumbling out fast. “If I’m like him, I want your leopard to kill me. I do, Eli. I don’t want any part of him inside me.”
“Cat.” He framed her face with both hands. Now his heart broke for her. “You’re nothing like him. Neither is your leopard.”
“You can’t know that. You said there are rogues. What if my leopard is like that? The first time when I was with you, it hurt. Really hurt and I didn’t even slow down. And then I wanted more. That isn’t normal, and no matter what you tell me, I know it isn’t.”
He winced. There it was again. Cat blaming herself for something he did. Her first time should have been slow and gentle, not ruled by two leopards coming so close to the surface. He was the one who was supposed to have control. He was the one with a lifetime of experience dealing with his savage, brutal, very alpha leopard. Catarina still had no way of knowing what to expect, let alone learning how to deal with her leopard.
“Kitten, if you don’t listen to anything else I have to say to you this afternoon, hear this. You’re sweet and kind and good. You’re an innocent in all this. That leopard inside you, she’s just as confused and afraid as you are. She’s being driven by nature just the way you are right now. You’ll control her because you have to. You’ll feel her needs and you’ll take care of her. She’ll do the same for you.”
Her teeth tugged on her lower lip and he stopped himself from groaning, stopped his body from reacting. She needed care. Gentle handling. While their leopards were settled, he knew it was the only time he’d have to give her those things.
“This all happened to me because of her – my leopard. All of it. My mother handing me over to Rafe. Rafe killing April and the others. You taking a job in the dojo and befriending me. All of it, because of her.”
He shook his head. “No, none of that was her fault. That was all Rafe Cordeau and your mother.” He wasn’t going to soft-soap any of that for her. Her mother was just as guilty as Rafe was. “She sold you to a man who took a chance on what you were. He couldn’t know for certain and that’s why you had more freedom at first but he began watching you closer as you got older.”
“If my leopard hadn’t emerged, he would have hunted me in the swamp.”