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“That doesn’t help when it’s burning you alive,” she informed him furiously. “And that’s besides the fact it was none of your business. It was my choice. ”
“Then make another choice. “
“Then leave again. ”
He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, his shoulders flexing beneath the light gray shirt he wore.
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“I think I’ll stay, thank you,” he finally said mildly.
Amanda shook her head as amazement cascaded along her senses.
“Do you think I’m just going to accept this, Kiowa?” she finally asked him softly, knowing she never would.
“I really don’t think you have a choice. Now we need to discuss your father and what you cannot say. ”
He stared back at her unblinking then, and for a moment she wondered if he did have a soul.
Chapter Eighteen
She refused to just accept.
Amanda made her way as quietly as possible from the cabin, staying in the shadows as she forced herself to move into the darkness of the mountain the cabin sat within. She had listened to Kiowa, Kane Tyler and Callan Lyons discussing the security of the compound earlier, before Kiowa left to help Kane with some kind of computer malfunction. After she had talked to her father and reassured him she was fine. Not that she could do anything else with Kiowa standing over her like an avenging angel. She had even whispered their code phrase— I’m fine, Poppa—rather than Father…and she still couldn’t explain to herself why she had done that. Perhaps because the independence she had won from her family had been so very hard to achieve. Her father and brother were just waiting on the excuse to haul her back into the fold, marry her to a nice, staid, dependable young man and see her become the perfect Washington wife. She didn’t think so. Fighting it out with Kiowa would be easier. And she was about to show him here and now that she wasn’t someone he could so casually order around. She would get herself off this damned mountain, out of the Breed Compound and back to the White House on her own. It wouldn’t be so difficult. By rescuing herself, she could assert her independence even in the face of the danger surrounding her.
Escape wouldn’t be that hard. All she had to do was hit the old logging road and head to the county road several miles away.
She could flag a car down, get a ride to the nearest phone and call her father. He wouldn’t have left her in the Breeds’ care if he had known the truth. And she knew Kiowa was desperate to keep that truth hidden until he could convince her to accept the mating as it stood. She snorted at that as she sprinted past the clearing at the back of the house and headed into the tree line. Nature could get as ugly as it wanted to. Amanda hadn’t chosen Kiowa, and having the choice forced on her wasn’t her idea of a perfect relationship.
There had to be a way to cure it. A way to make the heat go away and give her a chance to decide for herself the man she wanted.
Would she have chosen Kiowa if she had a choice? Her body screamed yes, her heart ached. Love didn’t come in a day, did it? No matter what she had read or how she had fantasized, she knew reality was a different matter entirely. Kiowa was a loner, a Coyote Breed, bred to manipulate and to deceive. But didn’t humans, whether Breed or not, do those very same things?
Confusion was a morass of thoughts and feelings inside her head that she couldn’t make sense of. Couldn’t control. Fear was as overriding as the building arousal, and safety could only be found in the normal. She needed to go home. She had to talk to Alexander. As coldly furious as he would get, he would help her.
She stumbled through the forest, the long flannel shirt she wore snagging on the brush she passed. The jeans and sneakers protected her from the chill in the air, but nothing could protect her from the internal heat. It was building. She had prayed that by separating herself from Kiowa and the scent that seemed to fill the cabin that she could survive the need.
She would survive it, she told herself fiercely. All she had to do was get home. Clouds moved slowly over the night sky, dimming the moonlight and increasing the darkness of the forest. Dammit, she hated the dark. This was why she lived in the city rather than her father’s estate in upper Pennsylvania.
It wasn’t that she was scared of the dark; she just didn’t like it. It was filled with sounds she couldn’t identify, sounds that sent chills up her spine and made her think of every horror movie Alexander had ever dared her to watch.
The scream of a cat, a big cat, echoed through the mountain now. She paused, breathing roughly, her eyes wide as she attempted to see through the darkness. Okay, what was it Kiowa said? If you didn’t smell like a cat, they would eat you.
Oh God. This was just great. Wild wolves and big cats, a mating heat that was making her crazy and God only knew what else was coming. She didn’t need any of this. She moved faster, no longer worrying about silence or stealth. What the hell was the point?
“Kane, we have unauthorized movement in Sector Three C,” the female Breed communications expert, Tamber, reported quietly as Kane and Kiowa worked on the quirky program they were trying to install to intercept web traffic from blood supremacist members.
Kiowa’s head came up, his eyes narrowing. Three C was the area the small cabin he and Amanda were using was located.
“There’s no electronic indicator and the cats are heading that way. ”
“Fuck!” Kiowa came quickly to his feet. “It’s Amanda. Call them back. ”
He should have known her easy capitulation earlier that night had been no more than a ruse. He had smelled her fury, her sense of betrayal at his refusal to allow the tests or to explain why. How was he supposed to tell her that the sight of her enduring such pain stripped him of pride and nearly brought tears to his eyes? That his chest had tightened and rage like nothing he had never known had filled his mind?
“Have Dawn’s unit intercept,” Kane ordered quickly. “We’re heading there now. ”
He threw Kiowa one of the comm units they used as he attached his own to his ear.
