“I meant you don’t have to do this because you think you can seduce me. I don’t want that from you. Just because I don’t have a last name, and I’m a failure as a soldier, a seductress and an assassin doesn’t mean I have such low self-esteem I’d take a man who loves another woman and thinks of me with such contempt. More than contempt. With suspicion. I have no intentions of seducing you. You’re perfectly safe and so are your friends.”
He winced. He deserved every word she said. He wanted her attention centered on him, not looking at any other man, yet he didn’t want to feel anything back for her, not real emotion, but it wasn’t for the reasons she thought. He told himself it was her enhancements that drew him, that sexual lure she wove – except she didn’t seem to be weaving it for him or anyone else. At least she claimed she wasn’t and that meant some – or most – of it could be coming from him. She was the kind of woman a man didn’t walk away from – ever. She would always have the upper hand whether or not she knew it – if he loved her. And he would love her if he let himself.
“I’m not in love with her,” he denied. “Where did you get that?”
“No, you just feel you threw your entire life away for her and she got you into this mess. The children aren’t your ‘mess.’ They’re human beings, no matter what Braden or anyone else did to them. I don’t want them anywhere near someone who feels they’re a ‘mess,’ just a responsibility one has to clean up. They’re children and they deserve a happy life.”
Her hot little temper made him want to smile. That wasn’t a good idea when he was so close to her. He knew she could be lethal, and he didn’t want to test her until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. He hid the grin. “I didn’ mean the children.”
She shrugged and turned away from him, subsiding against the pillows. “I’m tired. I need to sleep.”
Dismissing him. “No way, sugar. That doesn’ happen. We talk thin’s out in my world. Pepper, you’re not goin’ to run off with these kids because you’re angry with me. That would be sheer stupidity, and you’re not stupid.”
“Maybe not, but I’d rather they feel loved than be with someone just hanging around because they feel they have to. That’s not the way to raise a child.”
“You caught a small glimpse of my thoughts and you’re condemin’ me. That’s not right. When I first came home, that first night, I stood lookin’ at this house, Grand-mere’s house, my home, and I knew then what a fool I’d been over Joy. And then, long before I knew about the children, I acknowledged I was in a mess. When I joined the program to be enhanced, it was for a psychic enhancement, not a genetic one. I received both. I was goin’ to have to go to ma grand-mere and let her see what I was – what I’d become – and I was ashamed of myself for doin’ such a stupid thing over a woman who didn’ want me and worse, and more importantly – I didn’t want her. I was never in love with her, only the childish illusion of rescuing her.”
“You mean like you’re rescuing me?”
Her long lashes fluttered. He could see the sweep of them, feathery and full, sending little shock waves through his stomach straight to his groin. Her profile was beautiful, a work of art, and he realized no man could have produced that even with heavy sculpting. She had a small white scar on her neck just below her ear, but her face was flawless, rose petal skin smoothed over perfect bone structure.
Revelations were the very devil, and he didn’t like where his mind, his brilliant mind, was taking him. All along, from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Practically from the moment when he’d been aware on some level that the Rougarou in the swamp was really a woman. From the time he’d seen those small fingers curled around the hilt of a knife. The parlor floor had trembled under his feet and it had nothing at all to do with his temper and everything to do with this woman’s impact on him.
He wanted to believe Whitney had created her for him. He wanted that excuse. He wanted to blame her for the sexual lure he felt every time he was close to her. He thought about her all the time, and he’d tried to make her less than human so he could believe himself superior to her. He even wanted the excuse she just handed him – that he wanted to rescue her. Even if it were true, there was far more to it than that.
Wyatt sank down onto the side of the bed, pushing one hand through his thick, wavy hair. He wanted to grab it and pull, to feel the shock of reality. “It’s interestin’ to me how humans manage to delude themselves into believin’ the things they want to believe. You aren’t tryin’ to seduce me, Pepper. But I’m still bein’ seduced. And no, I didn’t want that. I wanted to believe I was madly in love with a woman who was heartless. But she’s not. She just wanted somethin’ different, somethin’ that wasn’t me. I realized I never loved her. I made up a fantasy and never saw who she was or what she needed.”