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And she loved him.
She’d loved him as a child and dreamed of him as a woman. And when he’d come to her as Graeme, she’d feared he was lost forever.
“Damn you, mate.” The hiss was filled with exasperation rather than anger. “You see the nightmare that plagues men’s fears and sigh as though he were a long-lost friend.”
Clawed fingers gripped her hips, pulling her to him with a gentleness she had only barely remembered him using when she was a child, screaming out in pain.
“I missed you.” Her breath caught as emotion swamped her. “I didn’t mean to make you so angry.” A sob tore at her voice. “I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t . . .”
She’d had no one else to call her own, then suddenly, she hadn’t had him either.
“You left me . . .”
“I never left you.” The tormented whisper at her ear sent a rush of pleasure racing down her spine. Of course, the feel of those claws scraping up her back in a sensuous caress might have had something to do with it as well. “Until they took me again, Cat, I never left you. I was always watching over you. Even after Orrin managed to hide you, even from me.”
“But I didn’t know . . .” A gasp ended the protest as the feel of his incisors raking over her shoulder sent a shaft of pure pleasure and longing racing through her.
Weakness flooded her entire being.
“You knew,” he growled. “You want to deny it. You want to absolve yourself, to hold on to the anger and the pain that’s so much a part of you. You sacrificed yourself for your vision of protecting me, Judd, even Claire, and when I learned of that, I wanted to kill everyone involved.” His hold tightened on her, the scent of his frustrated rage surrounding her. “Sacrifice yourself again in such a manner, even risk yourself for another, and I promise you, if I survive the terror of it, I will make certain you never do so again.”
She almost smiled when she should have taken the warning to heart. But this was Gideon. It wasn’t Graeme or any other name he’d used over the years to evade capture or detection. It was Gideon.
Her Gideon.
Her fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt.
“Do the stripes still cover your body?” She breathed out, anticipation like a sizzle of electricity racing through her senses.
Leaning back in his hold, she watched, releasing each button and smoothing the parted material to the sides until she reached the snug band of his pants. Once there, she didn’t hesitate. She didn’t bother with just pulling the shirt from the band, but released the button and slid the zipper of the dark-colored denim open.
Freeing the last button, she smoothed her hands to his shoulders to push the material over them and down his arms.
Her breath caught at the sight of him.
He’d taken her, sent her to heights of pleasure she’d never imagined could be reached, but she hadn’t really looked at the body capable of loving her for hours at a time.
In his primal state the stripes covering him weren’t black. They were a mix of black and tiger gold. Curling over his shoulders to his collarbone, over hard biceps, around his waist, across the tight, bunched muscles of his abs, they marked his body with animalistic beauty.
“I’ve dreamed of you coming to me like this,” she revealed softly as he stood tense and waiting before her. “This was all I knew. The beauty of the man and the beast. When I recognized you as Graeme, I nearly cried for the loss of who I’d known.”
As he’d grown older, even in the labs, the primal markings had eased until they’d disappeared entirely. The last year he’d been with them they’d gone entirely.
“There’s no sanity in who I am here, Cat,” he said, and the sound of his voice, the hard, deep rasp of it, stroked over her senses, drawing her into a place where only they existed, along with the hunger building between them.
“There’s no sanity in the world we have to face as others,” she corrected him softly. “Be my Gideon now, just for a little while? And I’ll be the Cat I’ve wanted to be for you for so long. Just for this moment? Let me have my Gideon.”
• • •
Jonas listened to Cat’s plea across the lines established by the communications nano-nit he’d managed to get in place. Staring at the holo-board controlling the almost microscopic device, he slowing reached out and deactivated it.
Damn, he should feel a measure of satisfaction. He’d suspected Graeme was Gideon for months and hadn’t been able to prove it. There were nights it had nearly driven him crazy, that uncertainty, the need to know.
Now, it was regret he felt.
“She loves him, Jonas,” Rachel stated softly from where she stood behind him while he was testing the nit. “And he loves her.”
Hell, he hadn’t expected it to work. Everything he’d had placed in Graeme’s vicinity seemed to malfunction.
