“You do enjoy staring at me.” Rio smiled in spite of himself. She was very open about her appreciation of his body.
Rachael answered him with her usual candor. “Well, I’ll admit you’re beautiful to look at, but it’s beginning to make me uncomfortable. Why do you do it?”
His eyebrow shot up. “It makes it so much easier to Shift into leopard form and go running in the forest.”
She made a face at him. “Ha ha, are you always this funny? I suppose you’re never going to let me live that down. I think it’s perfectly logical to have nightmares over men turning into vicious leopards after what happened.”
“Vicious leopards?” He rummaged through a small wooden closet and came out with a pair of jeans. “Leopards aren’t vicious. They might be natural predators, but they aren’t vicious.”
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Christine Feehan
“Thanks for making that distinction. I had no idea there was a difference. It felt the same when they were chewing my leg off.”
“That was my fault. I was focused on the idea of someone waiting to kill me.”
“Why would someone want to kill you?”
He laughed softly. “Now don’t you think it seems more logical for someone to want to kill a man like me than a woman like you?”
She wanted to look away from him, but she was fascinated by the play of his muscles beneath his skin. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him step into the jeans and casually pull them up the strong column of his thighs and over his narrow hips. He carelessly buttoned a couple of buttons and left the rest undone as if it were too much of a bother.
She moistened her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue before she could speak. “Rio, this is your home. I’m the intruder. If you’re more comfortable without clothes, I can live with it.” It touched her that he would cover up for her—and part of her didn’t want him clothed. There was something primitive and sensual about the way he padded so silently through the small tree house, barefoot, in the nude.
“I don’t mind, Rachael. You’re stuck in bed and I know you hurt like hell. I appreciate that you don’t complain.” He let a heartbeat slip by. Two. “Much.”
“Much!” She glared at him. “I haven’t said one word about shooting your precious little kittens when I get off this bed. But I’m considering it. You spoil them rotten, by the way, and it shreds your image of a tough guy all to pieces.”
The cats, in the midst of the rough-and-tumble game, slammed into the edge of the bed and all of Rachael’s hard-earned bravado disappeared completely. She gasped with alarm and lunged sideways away from them. Rio, standing beside the small closet, covered the distance between them with one leap, pinning her down, his green eyes suddenly a
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blazing yellow-gold. His face was inches from hers. Rachael stared up at him, clutching the blanket to her bare breasts, looking frightened, trying to look brave, tempting him almost beyond his endurance.
He gathered her into his arms, careful to keep her leg from moving. “You have to keep it in your mind at all times that you cannot move. I’ve just about run out of antibiotics and that leg can’t open up again. Give it a couple more days.”
Rachael was all too aware of his naked chest pressed against her breasts, of his hands sliding up and down her back in a soothing motion. Most of all she was aware of the distance he had covered in a single leap. An impossible distance. She tilted her head to look up at him, really examine his features. He had scars, yes. His nose had been broken more than once, but she found nun the most compelling man she’d ever met. His eyes were different. More like a cat’s.
“You’re doing it again.” He lifted his chin, breaking eye contact, to rub his jaw along the top of her head. “I can see the fear on your face. Rachael, if I were going to harm you, wouldn’t I have done it already?” There was exasperation in his voice.