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Closing her eyes tight for several seconds, she willed herself awake, willed herself away from the sad, waifish vision that showed far more backbone in hell than she’d shown in life.
“Hell?” Claire whispered. “This isn’t hell, Cat. This is what shaped you. This is where he saved you. Where he realized what you were to him . . . Before you took the first therapy, that enraged animal realized it and quieted, calming the maddened boy and allowing him to learn far more than any young mind should be able to learn. But he learned. For you.”
She would open her eyes and she would be awake. She’d be lying in Graeme’s arms, naked, his body warm against hers, his arrogant superiority infuriating her. All she had to do was open her eyes.
“Yes,” Claire whispered, sounding strangely distant now. “All you have to do is open your eyes, Cat. But even open, they’re closed. Poor Graeme, he’ll always be Gideon in your eyes, no matter how much he’s changed, no matter how much he loves . . .”
She didn’t want to hear any more. She couldn’t bear it. She would wake up now!
Opening her eyes quickly, she found herself staring up at Graeme, the gold swirling in those dark green Bengal eyes of his. The fires of fury, she thought. The madness. That part of himself he called the monster.
A low, warning growl sounded in his throat. “That presence will cause me to become violent.” The low, vicious snarl was one she’d never heard from him. Even when he’d warned her that the monstrous part of himself was roused, still he hadn’t sounded so powerful, so enraged.
“A dream . . .” she whispered desperately. It had to have been just a dream.
“Mine.” Moving over her, his legs parting hers with dominant strength as he came over her.
There were no preliminaries, but she didn’t need any. Her body answered his hunger, his need, just that quickly.
“Graeme . . .” Her gasp was followed by a low moan as his hands caught her wrists. Securing them to the bed next to her shoulders, he pushed inside her with a hard thrust.
“Oh God. Graeme!” Crying out his name, she was shocked at the sudden, answering slickness that filled her inner flesh, that met him, aiding the penetrating of his swollen cock.
“My mate,” he snarled, bending his head to her ear, nipping at the lobe with his teeth. “Fucking mine.”
Securing her wrists above her head with one hand, he moved the other to one thigh, dragging her knee to his hip as he began pounding inside her. Each fierce push inside the clamping heat of her pussy sent striking flames of response rushing through her. Her fingers curled against his hold, desperate for something to hold on to. Desperate to hold on to him as he moved inside her like a man possessed by arousal, by possessive lust. He was determined to somehow mark her more than he already had.
His hips slammed between her thighs repeatedly, driving himself to the hilt inside her, pushing to her cervix, rasping over flesh so sensitive that each penetration rode the boundary between pleasure and pain and drove her wild with the complete eroticism of his loss of control.
The feel of his lips moving down her neck sent a rush of dizzying pleasure surging through her, making her pliant, driving a rush of sensation through her already sensitized body.
Down her neck, nipping at her collarbone, his head bending, his lips covered the tight peak of her breast, sucking it into his mouth and drawing on it with hungry pulls of his mouth as his tongue lashed at it, pushing her higher.
Pleasure whipped through her with hurricane force. It drove through her senses, arching her body closer; each thrust inside her tightening channel was met with an answering arch of her hips. She took him deeper, harder. Strangled cries tore from her lips until the rush of complete rapture exploded through her. The violence of the pleasure stole her breath. Her hips arched, her thighs tight around his hips, she held on to him, held on to reality the only way she knew how. By holding on to him the only way she could.
• CHAPTER 19 •
Graeme waited unt
il they had completed breakfast before considering bringing up the night before with Cat. She would no doubt be expecting it, which would make it harder to breach her defenses.
Leaning back in the metal chair that matched the metal and glass breakfast table sitting in the little alcove just off the kitchen, he watched her curiously. She drank her coffee as she went over the news pages she read each day on her e-pad. Cat was curious as hell, not just about everything surrounding her, but about the world itself. And it wasn’t likely she’d forget so much as a word that she saw, let alone read.
The information she retained with that unique memory of hers had never failed to amaze him, even in the research center. She might not understand exactly what she took in sometimes, but she could quote it word for word.
Understanding science hadn’t been her strong suit. She’d been confused by it in the center even though she’d managed to retain everything he’d shown her. Cat’s strong suit was people, strangely enough, though Cat detested crowds and rarely made friends as he understood it.
“Why did you give me Bengal DNA?” The question had him blinking back at her in surprise as her eyes lifted from the e-pad in asking it.
So much for quizzing her first.
“You read Dr. Foster’s reports.” Lifting his coffee, he sipped at the decaffeinated brew thoughtfully as he watched her, seeing her mind work despite her closed expression.
“Your reasons for it weren’t in the report,” she pointed out, her tone a little too calm. “I want to know what you were thinking when you decided to use Bengal DNA in my therapy. Were you looking for a sister, or had you already decided I was your mate?”
What was he thinking? He had no other thought at that time beyond saving her life. The missing genes in her makeup would have killed her within weeks of the base injection used to keep her alive until Dr. Foster could come up with a therapy. Graeme hadn’t consciously made the decision to mark her with his genetics, but he had no doubt his animal instincts had.
“I’m Bengal,” he finally answered, deciding on the truth rather than sugarcoating it as he felt she so often needed. “Brandenmore gave you to me. I felt that made you mine. I was eleven, Cat, why would I have considered any other DNA to introduce into the therapy of a child given to me for safekeeping?”
