The Man Within (16 page)

He had hoped to still this conversation for a while yet. He could pretend male outrage, he figured. It wasn’t every day a man was accused of having a problem with that particular portion of his anatomy. But he had a feeling Roni wouldn’t be fooled. His instincts warned him to step lightly where this subject was concerned, or at least in his deliberate attempts to avoid it.

“When are you going to go to sleep?” he mumbled, ignoring her question as he lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes, determined to sleep himself.

“You didn’t answer me.” Her voice was reflective, the very softness of it warning him that soon it would breach the anger point.

Her fingers danced over his chest, her nails scraping lightly, the pads of her fingers feeling, he knew, the tiny hairs that covered his body. Nearly invisible, soft as down, the light pelt was yet another reminder of his DNA.

Taber opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling as he breathed in deeply. How many years had he longed just for one day to forget who and what he was? Yet the knowledge was always there, never far enough away to give him the ease he often prayed for. And now, Roni needed answers, which he was more than reluctant to give her just yet. He didn’t know if he was ready to face the possible consequences and her horror of learning just how closely he resembled the animal his genetics had been mixed with.

“I know I didn’t answer you,” he finally said softly, curving his arm under her body so his fingers could play absently with the long waves of silken, golden hair.

He loved her hair. It was thick and soft, curling gently around her shoulders and framing her heart-shaped face seductively. He noticed with distant amazement that it was rather comforting to smooth it between his fingers, to feel the cool, gentle weight of it.

“Are you going to?” Taber glanced over as she sat up in the bed, pulling her hair free of his fingers as she tucked the sheet around her until she could shield her full, naked breasts.

His lips quirked at her modesty. He knew every inch of her body, yet still she would blush the prettiest pink if he saw her nude while not engaged in their lusty play. The pressing subject of her sudden need for answers weighed on him, though. Answers he had no intention of giving her yet.

“Let it go.” He sighed deeply, moving to rise from the bed. Dammit, he wasn’t sleepy. He was fooling himself thinking he could rest now. “I need to check security outside…”

“You’re avoiding the question now, Taber,” she snapped, her eyes glittering with blue fire as he glanced back at her.

She sat on her knees, watching as he moved to the bottom of the bed. He was more than aware that by refusing to answer her, rather than feigning ignorance, was a dangerous proposition. He could avoid her questions, but he’d be damned if he would lie in response to them. He had little else to give her but honesty, in those areas where he could answer at all.

“Guess you’re right.” He shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned, to hide the aching loneliness that rose in the pit of his soul.

She had every right to know the answer, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to explain to her the animal that found such satisfaction in the tight depths of her rippling pussy.

“And you think you’re just going to walk out of here with no explanation?” she asked him, her voice rising with anger and an edge of hurt.

Taber stared back at her, steeling himself against her pain. She needed so much more to hold onto than she was being given, and he knew it. Everything in her life had been stripped away from her in one blow. Her home, her job, a chance to be free and safe, and he couldn’t even give her answers. There was no fairness in it, and yet neither could he bring himself to fix it.

“Let it go, Roni.” He padded to the bathroom door, intending to pull a change of clothes from the walk-in closet in the other room.

As he reached the bathroom door, with no warning whatsoever, the shattering of a crystal bowl from the nightstand had him stopping in disbelief. The dim lights of the room gleamed dully on the crystal shards, mocking him with his belief that she would have allowed him to walk away so easily. If nothing else, his Roni could be a tempestuous little spitfire. Had she been Feline, she would have made a perfect wildcat mix.

“You leave this room and I’ll take your head off with the next one,” she snarled.

His cock leapt to life. Taber glanced down at the heavy erection with a sense of resigned amusement. It said a lot about a man who got a hard-on from such an event. It said even less about him that his female’s rage could trigger it. Damn. He wanted nothing more than to turn around, go back to that bed and fuck her silly. His skin itched with the need. In a single second every cell in his body was screaming for hard, driving sex.

He turned back to her, watching her broodingly as he crossed his arms over his chest. Her gaze flickered to his erection, and damned if she didn’t blush again. That added color only seemed to make him harder.

She had moved from the bed. In one hand she clutched the sheet to her chest, in the other she held the matching bowl from his nightstand. Evidently the state of his arousal held no bearing on her determination for answers. It figured.

“You know, those came with the house,” he sighed, nodding at the small, decorative item. “I imagine they cost quite a bit.”

“Who gives a damn?” She was spitting mad now. “I’m sick of you running out on me, Taber. I’ll be damned if I’ll be tied to you while you waltz on your merry way, avoiding me whenever you feel like it.”

He watched her in amazement. Emotion, thick and hot, colored her voice while her eyes snapped with fury and stubbornness. Her slender body vibrated with emotion, her frown darkening her brow, thinning her full, luscious lips. She was tempting him to mount her there and then.

“I have never run out on you, Roni…” Her words finally sank past his lust-crazed brain and in the next second, his eyes widened as he jumped out of the way of her next flying missile. “Son of a bitch, Roni.”

He sprinted toward her, jerking her back from the heavy candlestick that sat on the table as well. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her against him, restraining the violence he could feel shuddering through her body.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He released her as he tossed her to the bed, but he didn’t attempt to follow her. He was tired of this. Tired of the fury that filled her—the distrust, the shadows that haunted her eyes. “I’m sick to damned hell of you accusing me of leaving you when it was your own decision to break off whatever relationship was beginning.”

She scrambled across the bed, landing on her feet on the other side. Better, he thought. The further she was from him, the more of his common sense he seemed able to maintain.

“Oh, come on, Taber, I never took you for a liar, too,” she yelled back, a sneer on her lips. Something else he was tired of, that sneer. Condescending, offending. “Stop playing so innocent. You don’t have to pretend with me. Not here while we’re alone. The only reason I’m here is because of this damned mark you put on my neck. Otherwise, I’d still be sitting in Sandy Hook wondering why the hell you changed your mind so quickly last year.”

He stilled, his instincts kicking in as logic began to take over. What couldn’t be understood must be examined. Studied, stalked or hunted. And he sure as hell didn’t understand this.

“Why
I
changed
my
mind?” he asked her carefully, his chest tightening at the pain that had been reflected in her voice and her expression. It came much too close to the pain he had felt when he received her letter over a year ago, mere hours after he had placed that mark on her neck.

And yet, by her own furious words, she believed he had broken off the relationship, new as it had been, himself. Roni wasn’t a liar. She didn’t play games and she didn’t pass the blame on something she was responsible for herself.

His body had been a mess that day, he admitted. Arousal unlike anything he had ever known, a hard-on damned near strong enough to split his jeans, and here came Dayan with…he stopped. Dayan. Son of a bitch. He wiped his hand across his face, staring over at her, fighting a betrayal he had prayed had been over with the death of his brother.

Dayan’s determination to destroy the rest of them had nearly killed Merinus and the child she now carried. His death was too well remembered. His betrayal burned too deeply into Taber’s brain to discount his senses. Dayan had lied. And Taber had fallen for it.

“Don’t answer that.” He hated the hoarse, tired sound of his own voice as he stalked over to his dresser.

He opened the middle drawer, pushing back several thick envelopes and a few mementos. In the back, near the corner, was a small wooden box. He removed it, flipped it open and removed the folded square of paper.

I’m quitting the garage and you, Taber. I’ve realized, after that scene in the truck, how easily you’ll try to take me over. I won’t be a puppet for you any longer. You’re too blunt, too crude, too rough. I need someone who touches me softly. Someone I don’t have to be frightened of. Someone closer to my own age. You’ll be old while I’m still young, and I just don’t want to deal with it. Please afford me the courtesy of staying the hell away from me. That’s surely not too much to ask! Roni

He had the letter memorized. He was barely eight years older than she was, but at times, it felt like centuries.

“Read this.” He handed her the letter, watching her confused expression closely.

Taber kept his gaze locked with hers as she took the folded square, watching her closer, his soul bleeding. Instinctively, he knew she hadn’t written that letter now. Knew that the past fifteen hellish months, needing her, aching for her until he thought he would die from the need, had all been for nothing.

She unfolded the letter, her gaze moving to the words. Her eyes widened. Her lips trembled. The pain that crossed her expression tore at his soul.

“I thought I was respecting your wishes, Roni,” he whispered, feeling wearier now than he had in years. Dayan had been a trusted, much loved member of the family. “I will assume you received a letter as well, since I know Dayan’s only true gift was that of forgery.”

She crumpled the note in her hand, tears shining in her eyes, spiking her lashes as her gaze returned to his.

“I didn’t write this,” she whispered bleakly, trembling. “But I received one as well.” A fine shudder rippled over her body as she stared back at him. “It was your handwriting.” She looked at the letter again, her breath hitching as she fought a sob, realizing as Taber did, just how close to her handwriting that letter was.

“And I didn’t write you one, either,” he said gently. “I was fighting desperately to give you time to think, to know what we were about to do was what you wanted. I knew what I was, Roni. I knew the danger I was putting you in. I was trying to be certain, beyond all doubt, that I could protect you if somehow my existence was revealed to the Council. As far as they knew, I was long dead. I had all intentions of returning to you.”

“When you didn’t show up, I waited.” There was so much pain, so much regret in the dark depths of her eyes that he wanted to scream out in rejection of such misery. He had fought for so long to protect her, only to have one he considered his brother deal her the final blow to her confidence. “The next morning, he brought the letter. He pushed me against the wall with his body…” She broke off painfully, swallowing tightly before continuing. “He offered to train me for you.”

Rage ate at his soul and Taber knew that if Dayan wasn’t dead then he would have killed him personally for daring to touch Roni in any manner, let alone saying anything so hurtful to her. He remembered well the bright dreams, the need and emotion that sparkled in her eyes when she looked at him all those months ago. That letter, and Dayan’s attack, had nearly destroyed a part of her soul.

Taber reached out, unable to keep from touching her, from needing her. God, he needed her like he needed to breathe. Or worse. His fingers smoothed over her satiny cheek, his thumb caressing her lips. She had the softest lips he had ever known, and eyes that pierced every corner of his soul with sunlight when she was happy. Yet when she hurt, as she did now, it was like a knife plunging into his chest.

“I would have given my life to be with you that night,” he swore, knowing it was no more than the truth. “At the same time, the Council’s mercenaries were moving in on Callan, and rather than let that rage loose where you might see it, I let it loose on them instead. I should have come to you.” He had known that then. It had taken all he had at the time not to do exactly that. “I should have fought for what I knew was mine.”

A tear slid down her cheek. “I loved you,” she whispered, breaking his heart with the aching emotion in her voice. “I still love you, but I’m not pleased with you, Taber.”

His hand dropped as she moved away from him, frowning in surprise. “I had no idea you hadn’t written that letter, Roni,” he argued.

“Oh not that,” she snapped as she tossed the wadded-up ball of paper across the room before casting him a dark look. “I’m as guilty as you are in letting that bastard trick me.” She turned back to him, the anger slowly returning. “I haven’t forgotten my original question, and don’t you think I have. Fine, we were tricked. We’ll deal with it. But we have other things to deal with as well. I’ll ask you once again. What happens to your cock when you climax? And I want to know now.”

Thankfully, blessedly, strange as that thought was, the security alarms began to blare.

“Get dressed.” He picked her up quickly, ignoring her gasp of surprise as he strode around the glass by the bathroom door and carried her to the walk-in closet.

“What the hell is that?” she yelled over the din of the sirens, catching the clothing he threw her way as he jerked his own jeans and T-shirt from their hangers.

They dressed in seconds, pulling on leather sneakers then rushing from the room. Taber worriedly eyed the revolver she insisted on carrying. To be honest, he wouldn’t blame her, or be surprised if she turned it on him. And he knew damned good and well her aim was almost fucking perfect. He had taught her how to shoot himself.