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Dawn blinked at Cassie. She was watching the dance floor, her eyes restless, her cheeks flushed. The scents coming from the other girl were contradictory. Fear and confusion, anticipation.
“Elizabeth.” Dash’s voice was warning, the voice of a man begging his wife to do something with his teenage progeny, since he sure as hell didn’t know what to do with her.
“Dawn, you’ve walked into a family feud,” Elizabeth sighed as Dawn watched Seth finish his discussion with Jason Phelps before heading back to her.
Her eyes narrowed on him, and she didn’t understand why she was so furious.
“Don’t worry, Elizabeth, I think it’s something in the water,” she snorted. “All the men are acting weird around this place.”
Cassie smothered a laugh, and when her blue eyes turned to Dawn, there was a sense of thankfulness in them. Her father was obviously stressing over all the male attention she was receiving, and responding to the scents of his daughter’s confusion and awakened womanhood. It had to be hard on him. Every day that Cassie lived was a miracle to them. She had a price on her head set by the Council scientists, a price that would fund a small nation.
“Dash.” Seth nodded at the other man as his fingers loosely circled Dawn’s wrist. “If you’ll excuse us, Dawn and I have a bit more circulating to do before the evening is over.”
She glared at him as he gave her a hard look. “Circulating?” she asked sweetly. “Is that another word for flirting with the pretty boys you invited? What, Seth, I didn’t perform as expected?”
He stopped, his expression surprised, angry as he stared down at her.
Dawn grimaced, knowing she had gone too far. Knowing and not certain why. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I don’t know—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head wearily then. “No apologies needed, Dawn. We’ll just say good night to a few friends and then go to bed.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Whatever’s wrong, we’ll work it out there. All right?”
She wanted to cry. She knew there should be tears, but her eyes were dry, painful from the need to shed the poison that seemed to be consuming her.
“I’m losing my mind, Seth,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”
“No, sweetheart, not your mind.” He sighed, his gaze heavy and filled with regret. “Just your control. And, sometimes, that’s almost worse.”
CHAPTER 20
The party waned in the early hours of the morning, and the house took on a heavy silence, almost as though it were waiting for some unforeseen event.
Or he was.
Seth lay beside his woman, his mate. That term should have been uncomfortable, yet it wasn’t.
She lay against his chest sleeping deeply, her breath light and easy against his chest as he held her and stared at the ceiling above her.
The dreams were there, he knew. He’d eased her from several of them, stroking her back gently until she lapsed into a more comfortable sleep.
He felt the heavy tension of the house in his heart, his soul. As though he were waiting on that final boom. For the storm to strike and wipe away everything that had come before it.
The cougar was an incredibly strong, adaptable creature. It roamed the high places, the deserts and forgotten cliffs, the forests and boundaries that man tried to impose. It survived
on its own rules, and Dawn had done the same.
She was as graceful as the cougar, as adaptable, as incredibly beautiful and dangerous as the creature she had been created from.
But even with that strength, he didn’t know if she could survive what he feared he had been the catalyst for.
He stroked her hair as she shifted restlessly in her sleep, a muttered growl, a sound that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck, coming from her throat.
Seth closed his eyes and fought the agony building inside him. He admitted he was terrified for her to remember that past, terrified of what it would do to the woman and to the future he could have with her.
He’d had her now. He’d stroked that incredibly body, felt her passion and her hunger and carried the primal mark she had never given to another man. He didn’t want to live his life without the woman who had given him those gifts. Hell, he couldn’t imagine life without her now. He hadn’t even realized how much she was a part of him until she stepped into his life and took her place in his soul. As though it had been waiting on her, and opened for her with an ease that amazed him.
“Oh God…Oh God…” The words whispered from her as he grimaced tightly and pulled her closer to him, stroking her back, his lips touching her forehead.
He couldn’t stop what was coming and he knew it, but his prayer echoed hers as she whispered the words.
