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He stilled. His muscles locked in place, holding her beneath him effortlessly as surprise—fuck no, it was pure shock—had him staring down at her intently.
“Do I have all of you, Kita?” he growled back at her, knowing he should be wary of the sudden primal quality in his voice. “Because it will require your very soul, Kita, to accept the animal you’re tempting.”
She snorted at that, censure gleaming her eyes. “You’re listening to your own Breed press too closely, Creed. You’re a man. A man with a few added qualities and a hell of a lot more primal arrogance, but you still bleed. You still hurt and hope.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “You can still love, can’t you?”
And there was the crux of Kita’s fears. Staring back at her, Creed sensed, scented, felt all the emotions tearing through her for the first time. As though she had finally allowed a barrier of some sort between her and the world, between her and Creed, to slide open.
Kita loved.
She loved her father, and he wasn’t the hero she wanted to see him as. But still, she loved him, even though Creed knew there were times she wondered whether her father returned her love.
She loved the sister that had disowned her family. She loved the mother she had lost and the friends that had deserted her when the press had revealed her father’s duplicity against the Breeds.
And he knew now, she loved him.
“I love you, Kita.” And he was damning her in the same sentence. Because he couldn’t tell her what his soul held without giving her the truth, all of the truth, and all of the creature he truly was.
Part man, a primal animal, a creature that burned for her, that hurt clear to his spirit to give her the mating that would always mark her as his.
His.
She belonged to him, the same as he belonged to her.
Nature was gifting him with a strength far greater than the superb male body he had been created to have. She had given him more than the advanced instincts man had coded into his genetics. She was giving him the woman who would stoke the fires to fight, to protect. A woman who would ease the horrors of battle, who would soothe the desperation when darkness strengthened it.
Yet, at the same time, she was giving him his greatest weakness as well. A weakness that would pull him from covert duty to stay at her side. A weakness that would make him fear for the first time in his life. Creed had something far more important to fear than death. Now, fear of death would be a meager second to the fear of losing her.
Breeds didn’t just mate for life. Couples mated for life. If he lost her, if she lost him, life would become a horrible, bleak existence he never wanted to face.
“Do you love me, Creed?” A small tear slipped from the corner of her eye. “If you love me, then you won’t hide from me. You’ll give me who you are, the same as I give it to you. Isn’t that real love? You can’t love me if you’re willing to take from me the parts of you that make you a Breed.”
He swallowed tightly. “And if those parts of me change you somehow?” he whispered, his teeth clenching as the demand to kiss her, to mate her, ripped at his senses, tearing at the control he was fighting so desperately to hold on to. “If I fear those changes will change that love to hate?”
She licked her lips. Soft, silken, a pink temptation he was dying to taste, her tongue licked over her lips. “Love isn’t like that,” she whispered roughly, the movement of her hips suddenly far more than an attempt to escape. “If even part of the tabloid stories are true, Creed, then it seems to me you’ll only complete me.” For a second, her eyes flickered with shadowed pain. “You have all of me now. Shouldn’t I have the same from you?”
Complete her? He remembered when he had first come to the Engalls estate, hearing her confide to her friend Beth that she felt incomplete. That she felt as though a part of her were detached, distant, unable to reach out and find what it was she could feel missing.
He knew she was his mate. Knew she was his life. But he also knew his fear of turning that love to hate.
God knew, she was the part of his life that had been missing until the day he stared into the pure, sweet, chocolate depths of her gaze. From that moment, he had centered his entire being on drawing her to him, fascinating her, teasing her, encouraging the most minute emotional and sensual responses short of actually allowing her to touch him.
Because he knew once he touched her, holding back would be hell.
And he was in hell.
“Kiss me, Creed.” She strained against him, tempting him, destroying him. “Unless you don’t really want me?” For a second, fear flickered in her gaze.
“Not want you?” he groaned. “Kita. God. Sweetheart. For the past year, I’ve lived for you.”
EIGHT
The kiss, when it came, she hadn’t believed would be as good as the first. Surely it couldn’t have been as good as she remembered the first.
But it was better.
If possible, it was hotter, wilder, more all-consuming than any kiss before it, even that first kiss he had given her four days before.
His lips parted hers, his tongue stroking inside, licking at hers, tempting her to lick back, to play, to tease in a sensual, wicked dance that combined lips and tongues in a manner far more wickedly erotic than she’d ever expected a kiss could be. So erotic it seriously should have been illegal.
