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But she did. What she wanted and what she needed were so twisted inside her, though, that tugging at either emotion only reminded her of what she’d suffered in feeling them.
And she had suffered. He knew that.
Healing that pain may be impossible, but he was helpless in the desire to do just that. Unfortunately, he knew what Ashley sensed. Facing this emerging feline Breed with soft emotion and gentle understanding would never resolve the conflicts inside her.
“Such a pretty little liar,” he growled, giving the door a hard push to close it. “Do you think I don’t know better, Cat? Do you think I don’t know you better than that?”
So much anger and hurt. God knew he’d never meant to cause it. The need to protect her had been far greater than any consideration where hurting her was concerned, though.
And now, it wasn’t just her protection that concerned him.
“No, Graeme, I don’t think you know me better than that,” she retorted as she turned to him, glaring with all the flame and fury of an enraged Bengal female. “It’s been a lot of years since you’ve been a part of my life. I’m not twelve any longer. And I sure as hell don’t worship the ground you walk on now.”
But she wanted to. The aching need to trust and to love him freely battled inside her, just as he battled with a past he couldn’t change.
He could feel her, her need to step away from that anger like a flame reaching out to him. The scent of it intoxicated him, pulling him into the sensual hunger and emotional storm that raged in him as well. Subtle, a hint of spice and alluring sweetness, her scent infused his senses and spiked the already dark sexuality he possessed.
• • •
The scent of male lust had been building in the room since the second he’d stepped inside it. A scent she’d been attempting to ignore.
Just as she fought her own need and the memory of his touch. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought painfully. The inability to remain completely aloof from him, to make herself remember how much it had hurt when he’d betrayed her.
How much it had changed her. And it had changed her. Once, she’d known she could trust that he’d always be there, watching over her. Accepting that she had no one to watch over her but herself had been a hard, bitter lesson to learn.
“Stop.” The order was a hoarse growl, the anger in it flashing in his jungle green eyes.
“Stop what?” Her fists clenched, unclenched, the restlessness she couldn’t ease like an itch beneath her flesh.
“Stop remembering,” he ordered, his voice stark, dark with whatever emotion flashed in his gaze.
Cat felt that heavy thud of her heart, the pulse of adrenaline that hit her bloodstream and the breathlessness that always seemed to afflict her whenever she saw the somberness in his gaze as she did now.
“Stop remembering,” she repeated softly with a shake of her head.
Clenching her teeth against the anger that tore at her, she had to glance away. She had to stop looking at him, stop weakening.
“Is that easy for you to do, Graeme? Is it easy for you to just push back what you don’t want to affect the moment or the mission? How do you just not remember?” Was it so easy to just forget her?
Of course it was. She was just a child when he’d deserted her.
Twelve years of work he didn’t want to see destroyed. And now she was a potential biological match that had his Breed genetics in an uproar.
Just another form of an experiment, nothing more.
He was on her before she could move. The jungle green of his eyes obliterated the whites, the primal instincts of his extraordinary genetics making themselves known in the fierce, furious glitter of amber pinpoints of light amid the dark green. “We’re not going back. The past is just that, and it can’t be undone.” Savage anger filled his voice as well as his face. “There are too many things I can’t explain, too many I can’t revisit without risking the control I’ve gained over the months, Cat. That doesn’t mean you’re not more important to me than you ever were. Nothing means to me what you mean.”
No explanations. Now, wasn’t that just like Graeme?
“Not going back?” She tried to jerk away from him, only to find herself pulled against the hard, muscular frame of his body. “Graeme, I never moved forward. My life was stolen before I was able to live it, and my safety came in the form of living another girl’s life and suffering the hell no one knew she lived in.” Her hands flattened against his chest, claws emerging to prick the shirt he wore. “To save you. Because no matter how much you hated me, you would have come for me if they took me. No one would be allowed to own the experiment you created but you,” she cried painfully, staring up into the harsh features above her. “That’s all I am to you or anyone else. A fucking experiment. A means to an end. And I hate it.”
Her claws dug into his chest, all the anger and pain she’d been forced to hold in over the years rising inside her like a storm she couldn’t avoid.
Hard hands gripped her wrists, pulled her around and pushed her against the wall, her hands pulled above her head, body arched into him.
The feel of his erection, hard, heavy, pressed into her lower belly and set off a heated response she wanted no part of. She couldn’t want it, but her body did.
“I won’t give you explanations,” he bit out, his voice low and
