“Well, obviously, I’ve read this many times. I understand perfectly the need for the male of this species to wander. I’m telling you I accept the inevitable and don’t want you to feel bad about it.” Even as she spoke, she took a small step backward, her hand going protectively to her throat. Her pulse beat frantically as if calling to him. The spot where he had left his mark the night before throbbed and burned.
“There is an inevitable, but I doubt it is what you envision.” He reached out casually, almost lazily, and circled the nape of her neck with his palm, drawing her toward him. She went reluctantly, taking one small step at his urging, then another until she could feel the heat of his body right through the thin barrier of her clothing.
Both hands found his chest. “Why are you angry?”
He was smoldering with anger, with the thought that she was certain he would leave her. That he would want to leave her. That she seemed totally accepting, even grateful that he would leave her. Byron made an effort to tamp down the seething cauldron of emotions. That way lay disaster. “What it says on this wall is that a group of women and children arrived, seeking sanctuary. There were a few males, old mostly, or very young, but the women had no men to protect them. They wanted permission to live on Scarletti land, under the protection of the Scarletti family. They were foreigners, come from a distant land with strange ways. It is said these women had tremendous psychic abilities. They were telepaths. Healers. And all of them were shape-shifters.”
Antonietta nodded. He wasn’t holding her in place, his fingers were very light, almost gentle around her neck, but she still felt the tension vibrating in the air between them. “The picture clearly shows a large cat of some kind.”
“The Jaguar,” he supplied. “I have heard of this species. They are all but extinct. The males refused to stay with the females, and eventually the females took on human husbands. The bloodline thinned over the centuries.”
She nodded her head in agreement. “I feel the cat inside of me at times. Warning me. I have an acute sense of smell. I’m blind, yet at times when the wildness inside of me is growing, I see in colors of red and yellow and white. Heat images. I thought when you smelled the cat last night perhaps one of my cousins is the same, and I’m not such a freak. It’s true, Byron. This is the reason the Scarlettis made a bargain with the women in the village. They wanted the gift of the Jaguar people for their own. Some of the Scarletti men intermarried with those women, and some have the blood strong and some don’t. I read the wall carefully. You are so correct about the men leaving. The women were willing to stay with humans because their males never stayed. They got them pregnant, and they left, even during times of war and hunger and plague. So the women turned to our race for companionship and love and a family.”
“As they did in other places as well,” Byron said.
“In the old days, women had few rights and little protection, but in the world today, we’re quite capable of caring for our children and providing for them. I have a good life, and I never expected to meet someone I was so attracted to. Honestly, Byron, I’m just saying I didn’t expect nor want a lover for more than a short period of time.”
His breath escaped in a long, slow hiss of annoyance. “Unfortunately, that is not what I expect or want, Antonietta. I am not Jaguar. My people do not leave one another for reasons of convenience or wanderlust. We mate for life. For eternity. I do not want less, nor will I accept less. You have much to learn of who and what I am.” His dark gaze roamed possessively over her face.
She could feel the impact, the intensity, as his gaze burned over her. She was immediately reminded of the suffocating darkness she lived in. Alone in the close confines of the room, it was too late to remember she knew very little of this man standing so close to her. She knew nothing of his family or his heritage or even his heart. He was always alone and very quiet, very polite, but he could be shockingly violent in an instant if need be.
“Who are you, Byron?” Her voice came out a husky whisper of fear when she needed her confidence most. “Tell me who you are then. Tell me what you are. If not Jaguar, like me, what are you then?” She held her breath, pressed her hand to her somersaulting stomach.
Byron’s thumb tipped her chin up. She felt his breath on her face. Warm. Inviting. His lips skimmed the corner of her mouth. Velvet soft. So persuasive her heart leapt. “I am your lifemate. Keeper of your heart as you are the keeper of mine.” The words were whispered against her eyes. His lips trailed down her face to find her mouth again. Soft. Insistent. Feather light, yet with all the power to rob her of breath. Of speech. Of sanity. Her brain refused to think of anything other than wanting him. Having him for her own.
His words sounded foreign and even formal, but it still didn’t stop her from turning her mouth up to his. Of wanting him with every cell in her body. Byron. She had dreamt of him for so many lonely nights. Erotic, passionate dreams of wild sex and heights of pleasure she didn’t believe really existed. His lips crushed hers, and he was devouring her, his mouth hot and male and exciting there in the dark of the hidden room where the bizarre secrets of her ancestors decorated the wall.
They simply melted together, two halves of the same whole. There was fire and electricity. There was a curious rippling of the earth beneath their feet. He pulled her closer, fit her body tightly against his, imprinting his every muscle on her soft flesh. He knew how she would feel, all soft curves and mesmerizing heat. The flood of passion welling up in her to meet his darkest cravings. Byron had known almost from the moment he had heard the first exquisite note of her music.
Antonietta circled his neck with her arms. Byron took her into a world of hunger and passion and light. Where her music came from. Her deepest joys and sorrows and erotic dreams. Her every want. She couldn’t help wanting to be closer, wanting to feel the incredible heat of his skin. She slipped her hands beneath his shirt to feel his defined muscles. She ached with wanting him, her body already turning liquid and needy.
“Byron,” she whispered his name, the voice of a siren. An invitation to paradise.
His teeth nipped her full lower lip. “Do you want me to make love to you, Antonietta? That would be so simple for you. No attachment. No love between us to get in the way.” His hand shaped her breast, his thumb leasing her nipple into a hard peak. He bent his head to the temptation right through the thin fabric of her blouse. Her breasts were luxuriously soft and full. She had a woman’s curving body and was generously endowed. His mouth closed over the soft, luscious mound, hot and moist and suckling strongly so that Antonietta arched back and caught his hair in her hands to drag him closer to her.
Her knees went weak, and she cried out, afraid she would have an orgasm right there, just from his mouth on her breast. His tongue licked along the valley between her breasts up toward her throat. “Is this what you want? Just a physical relationship?” He lifted his head, and she felt his eyes burning like lasers. “This is good enough for you?”
Antonietta’s fingers bunched in his hair, nearly desperate to pull him back to her. There was no reason to feel guilty, but she did. “It has always been good enough in the past,” she said defiantly, and then was instantly ashamed that he had managed to rattle her when it was none of his business what she did or even what she preferred.
Byron straightened slowly, his hands slowly releasing her. His body withdrew from hers, leaving her feeling cold and alone and bereft. “It is not good enough for me.”