His lips twitched, as amusement flooded him for a brief second.
"I'm new at this," he bantered back. "You'll have to forgive me my mistakes."
She sniffed in apparent disdain. "I think I'd drop it, if I were you. Its one of those things you either have a talent for, or you don't."
"Perhaps you're right. I'll give it some thought."
Silence descended between them once again. Matthias was forced to curl his fingers into fists to keep them in his pockets, to keep from touching her. She had no idea about the forces that were beating inside him. The hormonal changes in his body were ripping him apart, the taste of the aphrodisiac filling his mouth reminding him by the second that she was his mate.
It would take so little to ensure she never left him, he thought. So little. A lick to her neck as she slept, perhaps. The scrape of his canines against her skin. A kiss. Just the softest kiss, and he would have her forever.
Her body anyway. But it wasn't just her body he wanted, it was her heart, her woman's spirit, and her capacity to love. He didn't want more of her condemnation, or her hatred. And she would hate him, if he stole the choice from her—she would never forgive him. And he would never forgive himself. Prison would be preferable to that. Or death.
"Why did you target me to get to Albrecht?" she finally asked, though now her voice was devoid of anger.
"It gave me an excuse to get close to you," he admitted. "I had been watching several of the hotel's employees. You were just one of them. But you were the one that fascinated me."
Being honest with this woman about such things would never be easy.
She looked out toward the lake for long seconds, following his stance and shoving her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs.
How forlorn she looked. He would give anything, everything to go back and change that moment that she had seen him kill.
"I was falling in love with you, Matthias," she finally whispered.
"I know." He nodded. "I already love you, Grace."
And he did. He loved her so much it was ripping his guts to pieces.
"I've never loved before," he told her quietly. "It wasn't hard to realize what you meant to me. You made me laugh, you lightened my soul."
"And you set out to destroy it." Anger flashed in her gaze.
Mathias sighed bleakly. Perhaps he should just leave, give her a chance to think, to consider being without him. But God help him, he was terrified to do that.
"I won't explain my actions again." He shook his head before staring up at the deep blue of the sky. When he looked back at her, she was watching him somberly once again.
"Go back into the cabin, Grace," he finally told her. "Or work in your flowers or whatever it is you do on vacation. You're straining my control."
A frown snapped between her brow, and her eyes darkened in anger. "I can't relax. I can't do that while you're kidnapping me. Maybe someone will return the favor on your next vacation."
"I would first have to experience such a thing," he growled.
He had never had a vacation. There was still too much to do. There were ten council directors still free, funding the pure-blood societies and training them to kill Breeds. There were trainers still at large and coyote soldiers still lurking. Who had time for a vacation?
"You've never had a vacation?" Disbelief colored her voice. As though it were yet another crime that she marked against him.
"I wasn't taught vacations in the lab," he snarled. "Remember?"
"As though that's an excuse." She sniffed with such ladylike disdain that she fascinated him.
"Grace, I'm going to warn you one last time," he ground out between clenched teeth. "Remove yourself from me, or you are going to regret it."
"It's my property. You remove yourself from me." Her hands went to her hips, as her little chin tilted stubbornly. "I did not kidnap you, Matthias. It was the other way around."
"Fine!" He knew he flashed the sharp canines at the side of his mouth as he snarled the word out, because her gaze narrowed, and her lips tightened. "Then you can accept the consequences if you stand there so defiantly, much longer."
"What consequences? Are you going to tie me up again and restrain me to my seat? Oh wait, why don't you just re-kidnap me, that was scary enough."
"Why don't I kiss you?" he suggested ferally. "Why don't I cover your lips with mine, shove my tongue in your mouth, and force this be-damned hormone into your system, to torture you as well? Why don't I make your pussy so wet, so hot, that you would use your own fingers to tempt me to fuck you? That you would beg me to be inside you? Why don't I do that, Grace?"
He could feel the blood pumping harder, faster inside him now. Adrenaline was mixing with the hormone, and that wasn't a good thing, pumping the effects through his body, straight to his cock. He was so ready to fuck, his cock was about to rupture.
His hands had torn from his pockets and gripped her shoulders now, as he glared down at her.
"My dick is so hard it's agony. I think of nothing but being inside you. Of feeling you, hot and melting around my cock, as you did my fingers. Perhaps you should remember exactly what will happen if I do that."
Grace pressed her hands into Matthias's chest, feeling the thundering of his heart beneath her hands, the tension in his body. She stared into his eyes, feeling as though she were drowning in them as he snarled down at her. What was she supposed to remember? Oh yeah, uncontrolled nympho-sex. Needing him so badly it hurt.
Hell, it hurt now.
"What, Matthias, all that incredible control you've had over the last three weeks is finally fraying? Poor baby. So much for all that Breed training to control your baser impulses."
Had she really said that? Obviously she had, because he was staring at her as though she were crazy.
"Have you lost your mind?" He asked her slowly. "Do you think that now in any way resembles the last three weeks? Sorry, baby, I hadn't tasted that hot little pussy then. I have now, and trust me, the need for more is wearing my control thin."
"It was a decision you made, not me." Her finger poked into his chest. "How many low-cut blouses did I wear? Would you like to know how many times I didn't wear panties under my skirt or took my bra off after we came to my apartment? It didn't bother you then, why should it bother you now?"
And he was right, she was crazy. She was aroused, and she was mad. This was her damned vacation, and he was messing it up. What was worse, he had been messing her life up for three weeks, and now she found out that she couldn't even have a hot one-night stand with him without committing for life.
She would be damned if that was fair. Because she knew he was right. Sex with another man would never satisfy her, because he held her heart. She was in love with a killer, and she wanted to kill him for it.
"Do you think I didn't know what you were doing?" His head lowered, his lips only inches from hers as he scowled down at her.
"Do you think it was easy to try to be one of the good guys? To not take advantage of you and force you into this heat?"
"One of the good guys?" Her eyes widened, as her voice rose. "Where in the hell do you see yourself as a good guy? You are so fucking bad, you give the word a new meaning."
CHAPTER NINE
Grace stared at Matthias in shock, as the words slipped past her lips. Amazingly, he didn't become angry. He didn't take her accusation in the worst light, and that wasn't how she had meant it.
Though, she wasn't certain how she had meant it. She just hadn't meant it in the sense of the killing she had witnessed. The thought of that had her sobering further.