She wondered for a moment who this man was, this Breed whose eyes were so somber, whose expression wasn’t dominating but rather filled with quiet pride and confidence.
She lifted her hand and placed it against his, feeling the roughness of his palm, the strength of his fingers as he clasped it and led her to the kitchen.
“A young Breed teenager, the daughter of a mated pair, she knew you were coming into my life,” he said as he led her to the kitchen table and held her chair out for her.
Natalie sat, uncertain now what to say.
“She’s psychic or something.” He shrugged. “Cassie Sinclair has gifts none of us have really been able to determine, but sometimes she knows things. She told me more than a year ago that you were coming into my life.” He turned from the freezer and cast her an amused, baffled smile. “I didn’t believe her. But she pushed dozens of books off on me: How to Charm Today’s Woman, Sex and the New Generation.” He shrugged before pulling the steaks from the freezer and moving to the counter. “Asinine.”
“But you read them?” Natalie pushed her hair back from her head and tried to breathe through the flash of heat that suddenly tore from her.
And he knew. His head jerked around, a frown pulling at his brows as his eyes suddenly flashed with primal awareness.
“I read them.” His voice was harder, thicker. “If you were going to arrive in my life, then I wanted to be ready.”
The heat tore through her vagina then, causing her to tighten her thighs and hold her breath against it.
Saban’s fists clenched on the counter as his body tightened.
“Saban, I need to go upstairs.”
She moved to rise from the table.
“You need me.” He kept his back to her, but he snarled the words, a declaration, an agonized certainty.
“Not like this.” She breathed out roughly, then tried to draw enough breath into her lungs to breathe through the building contraction of heat tightening in her abdomen. “I trusted you enough to allow you to stay in my home. I trusted Lyons and Wyatt enough to make certain nothing happened to me. You’ve forced me into this.”
He shook his head slowly.
“You know you did,” she whispered, tears finally thickening her voice. “You knew when you kissed me what you were doing.”
“You belong to me.” He turned then, his eyes glowing in his face, hunger and need tightening his features into savagely hewn lines. “You’ve had one day to feel what has grown inside me for weeks. One fucking day, Natalie. I’ve burned for you through the days and the nights. I’ve ached for your touch, and even that you would not give me. I flirted, I teased. I did everything those fucking books said a man should do, and nothing worked.”
Natalie stared back at him, confused, uncertain. “And you thought throwing me into this would?” she finally asked bitterly. “That forcing my compliance was the only step left? You forced this on me, Saban. How is it any different from rape?”
How was it different? His lips opened, fury pounded in his head that she would think such a thing, that she could ever believe he would force such a choice from—
Saban felt it then, the knowledge, the certainty, from her point of view, that it was exactly what he had done. He had given in to his own frustration, his anger at her defiance, his hunger, and he had unleashed it on her in a way she could never fight, one she could never escape.
He had never raped a woman in his life. The Cajun swamp rat who had raised him would have been horrified that the young man he had such pride in at his death, had done something so vile.
The sickness of it clogged his throat, tore at his conscience.
“Ely gave you the hormonal treatment, didn’t she?” he finally asked.
“That injection? Yeah, she shoved something up my veins and slapped a bottle of pills in my hand before we left. Wyatt didn’t give her much of a chance to explain them though.”
He nodded quickly. That sounded like Jonas. Jonas would do that for him, but he had done Saban no favors, no matter what he thought.
“They ease the heat.” His throat was so tight he could barely speak now. “They adjust the hormones during this phase, allow you some ease.” He grabbed the steaks and stalked to the door. “I’ll fix your dinner. Take them. Bath, shower, whatever you need.”
He slammed the door behind him and took a hard breath of fresh air, fighting to push the scent of her need and her anger from his head.
God help him, it was the same as rape.
He slapped the steaks in their protective containers on the narrow table beside the new grill before bracing his hands on the wood and staring along the forests that bordered the house.
He needed to run. He needed the mountains and the silence, he needed the peace that came with it to clear his mind, to think.
God in heaven, he hadn’t meant to do this to her. To make her feel this way. She was everything he had dreamed of for so long. Gentleness, sweetness, intelligence, and determination—and his. Something meant just for him. A gift, an affirmation that he wasn’t a freak of science but instead a product of nature and God’s mercy.
He had waited for her for so long.
Deep into the darkness of night his arms ached for her, even when another woman had lain within them. His heart had beat for her, his soul had burned for her. He hadn’t known who she was, where to find her, but he had known she was there. Known that she belonged to him.
And what had he done to this gift he had so wanted to cherish?
He had taken her will, her control, with a kiss that he still remembered with the greatest of pleasure. A kiss she had met with equal force. One she had been waiting for; he knew she had been waiting for that kiss. But it didn’t excuse it. He had known what he was doing, what would happen; she hadn’t.
“I’m sorry.” The back door opened, and the scent of her wrapped around him then.
“For what?” Rather than looking at her, he lifted the lid to the grill and ignited the flames that curled over the ceramic briquettes inside.
“It’s not the same as rape.”
Saban clenched his teeth and fought the need to fist his hands.
“You decided this for what reason?” He lowered the grill lid and watched it, as though in watching it he could make it heat and burn away the shame inside him.
“Because I already suspected the truth of it,” she finally said. “I knew it existed, and I pushed anyway because you were frustrating the hell out of me. It wasn’t rape, Saban, but neither was it right. And now we’ll both have to deal with this. But I won’t deal with it with lies between us. Not from either side.”
FOUR
How could she have said something so vile to him?
Natalie felt everything inside her cringing, searing from the knowledge that she had struck out in the most unacceptable way and accused him of something so vicious.
This man, who had set aside his pride to read those stupid dating books, who had tried to charm her, tried to ease her into his arms rather than taking what he wanted.
And it had almost worked. Hell, it was working, and she had known it; it was the reason she had been confrontational. It was the reason she had fought each overture he made so fiercely. Because he was making her feel, making her want things she told herself didn’t exist.
She had suspected, in some ways she had known after she met Callan Lyons and his mate/wife, Merinus, that the rumors of a strange mating hormone/bond, and the deceleration of aging that the tabloids ran such stories around, were true.
Neither Callan nor Merinus had aged so much as a year in the past ten years; the same went for the others who had played prominent roles in the Breed freedoms and had married. Or mated, as the Breeds referred to it.