Harley surprised him by throwing back her head and cracking him on the chin as she viciously jabbed her elbow into his stomach. Blaise took a step back as he grunted in pain. That was all she’d needed to wrench open the car door, clamber into the driver’s seat, then lock herself inside. She fumbled with her keys and eventually stuck them into the ignition and managed to get the engine turned over.
Blaise pounded on the window. “Harley, I want to make you understand. You can’t leave.”
“Move, Blaise,” she yelled through the glass.
“Or I’ll run you over.”
He quickly jumped out of the way as Harley backed the car up almost on him. She then gunned it as she sped down the lane to the main road.
Blaise watched her go, the overwhelming need to be with her increasing.
He ran his hands through his hair and bent over, taking deep breaths as he tried to calm himself down. This kind of behavior wasn’t normal for him. It was then he caught a flash of red in his gaze. He looked down at his pendant and saw the cougar’s ruby eyes glowed. Harley had set the magic off inside it. She was his mate.
And she’d just rejected him.
Now he understood the throbbing arousal that coursed through him. Seeing her fear of him, he realized he couldn’t lose her—that he loved her —which set off the magic inside the pendant. That in turn caused a spike in his testosterone level.
Her not accepting him caused his body to react in the only way it knew how to convince her he was the one for her—with sex.
“Blaise,” Taylor called as he came up behind him. “The bastard got away. He must have thought something was up. His car isn’t parked here so he had to have left it somewhere else in case he felt he needed to make a run for it. We’ll find him though. Where’s Harley?”
Blaise straightened. “She left me.”
“Well, at least she didn’t set off your pendant.
You won’t have to go through what I did while you try to win her back.”
Blaise turned around and faced his brother.
With the coming twilight, there was no mistaking the glowing ruby eyes of his cougar head pendant.
“She did.”
Taylor’s gaze flicked to Blaise’s necklace before he looked up at him with pity showing on his face. “Shit. She’s your mate.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” he said with a growl.
“You have it bad. Come inside. We’d best tell Mom and Dad. We’ll put our heads together and see what we can come up with to help you get Harley back. I don’t think you have to worry about Dad being upset with the idea of her as your mate. She did save his life, after all. Without her, we never would have known what Caleb was doing.”
Blaise followed Taylor into the house, even though every fiber in his being called out for him to chase Harley down. He prayed like hell she would come to realize they were better off together than apart.
It’d been almost a week since Harley found out about Blaise being a cougar shifter. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to talk to or see him, even though he’d constantly called and left messages on her cell over the course of the days.
He’d even sent long text messages, explaining everything about his kind. All the things he probably would have said in person if she’d allowed him to come near her.
Her initial fear of what he was had long since dimmed. What remained was a kind of numbness.
Harley went about her normal daily routine, going to work, coming home to her empty apartment and eating only because her body needed the food. When she slept, most of the time her dreams were filled with Blaise, of when they’d been together and how good it’d been to be in his arms.
By the end of her work week, Harley had to admit she felt as if a part of her was missing, and that it was Blaise who was that piece. She’d already come to the conclusion she loved him before finding out what he was, but now she realized her feelings for him hadn’t changed. She could get over the fact he was able to shift into a cougar.
She’d let so much time pass since that fateful day, she was afraid to make the first step to let him back into her life. The text messages and phone calls had stopped the day before. What if Blaise had decided to give up on her? What if he no longer wanted to be with her because she couldn’t accept what he was? She only had herself to blame. She was the one who’d run from him, was the one who held him away.
Harley jumped at the sound of her cell phone ringing. She picked it up off the coffee table, her heart thumping at the thought it could be Blaise.
The display showed it was someone buzzing from downstairs in the lobby.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Harley? Good, you’re home. It’s Taylor.”
“Is Blaise with you?”
“No, it’s just me.”
Harley’s heart dropped, but she pushed it away. “What can I do for you, Taylor?”
“I need you to come home with me. Blaise isn’t doing well.”
She sat up straighter on the couch. A number of things flew through her mind. Had Caleb done something to Blaise? Had he injured himself?
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I think it best you see for yourself. Will you come downstairs?”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
Harley disconnected the call. Fear made her rush around the apartment as she grabbed her purse, then put on her sneakers. She was out the door and at the elevator in a matter of minutes.
Downstairs in the lobby, she saw Taylor standing in the vestibule, waiting for her. She pushed open the first glass door to where he stood. “How bad is he?”
“Bad. Thanks for deciding to come. I’m parked in the visitors parking, but if you prefer, you can always follow me in your car.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll go with you.” Seeing Taylor again made Harley realize how much she’d missed Blaise.
Once they were on the road, Taylor glanced at her. “How are you doing? You’re not nervous to be around me, are you? I’m harmless.”
“I know. I didn’t answer Blaise’s calls or his texts explaining everything about cougar shifters, but I did get them. I read all the messages.”
“So you’ve decided we aren’t so scary after all?”
“I guess so. I never felt as if I had anything to fear from Blaise before I knew.”
“Then why haven’t you let him see you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I held him off for so long, I was afraid to take the step to let him back into my life.”
“Then I’m glad I came today.”
They spent the rest of the drive in silence. As Taylor stopped the car in front of the garage, all that had happened the last time Harley had been there came rushing into her mind.
“Did you end up catching Caleb?” she asked as she and Taylor walked to the front door.
“No. He got away. We’re still looking for him. My cousin Jase has taken on the job of hunting Caleb down. He’ll be found. Don’t worry about that.”
Inside the house, Taylor guided her up the stairs. Once they reached the top, he led her to Blaise’s closed bedroom door.
“Blaise is in there,” Taylor said. “Go right in.”
Harley was about to ask him why he wasn’t going to come in with her, but by the time she’d turned her head to look at him, Taylor was gone.
She figured he had to have used the preternatural speed all cougar shifters had. Blaise had told her in his texts that they were faster than humans.
She focused on the closed door, took a deep breath and opened it. Harley had expected to find Blaise in bed. Instead she found him walking out of the en suite, naked, his hair damp as if he’d just gotten out of the shower. He came to a sudden standstill once he spotted her.