He backed farther away. “I’m Species, Jeanie. Do your human men have my teeth? Do they appear as I do? Do you not see me for what I am?”

“I see you’re being an ass,” Jeanie ground out. “You’re insulting both of us and it’s pissing me off. I couldn’t care less about your mixed DNA or your sharp teeth. Excuse me for taking this mate thing seriously and not jumping into something we might regret down the road.”

“Regret?”

“Yes. You know, wake up one morning and realize becoming mated was a mistake. It could happen. We could end up hating each other.”

His expression closed down and all emotion disappeared behind a cold mask. “I’m going for a run. There is an officer outside the door if you need anything.”

She couldn’t believe he planned to leave. “We’re arguing and you’re just going to walk away in the middle of it?”

His hands clenched at his sides. “Yes. It’s taking every ounce of my control to do that. I need to put space between us now.”

He turned, striding toward the front door. She rushed after him and grabbed his arm. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do but she didn’t want him to go. They needed to work things out and she didn’t understand why he’d exploded into a rage.

“True! Wait.”

He came to an abrupt stop and she actually ran into his back. He turned his head, staring down at her. “Let go, Jeanie.”

The gravity of his demand wasn’t lost on her. Anger glinted in his beautiful eyes and he threw off deadly vibes but she wasn’t afraid. “I don’t want to fight with you. Why are you so angry?”

He seemed very unsettled. “I am being unreasonable. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to hate me.” He turned to face her, twisting his wrist enough to break the connection with her hand.

“I couldn’t. I’m just confused. You just…blew up.”

He slowly inhaled then exhaled, as if reaching for calm. “I realize that. No one affects me the way you do, Jeanie. I need space to calm down and running helps me think. You keep refusing to mate me. It hurts. I’ll be back.”

He spun on his heel and unlocked the door.

“You don’t have shoes or a shirt on,” she tried as a last-ditch effort to keep him in the apartment.

“I don’t need them.” He didn’t even glance back before he was gone and the door closed behind him.

* * * * *

True sipped his soda and grimly watched Darkness. “I came here to cool down.”

The male sighed. “Females are complicated. I knew something had happened when I saw you enter the bar dressed in so little.” He glanced down at True’s bare chest. “We don’t require shoes or shirts in our establishments but most of us prefer to be fully dressed in public.”

“I apologize.” He took another sip and put it down. “I should return. I made accusations I shouldn’t have.”

“You have doubts about her story?”

“No. I became insecure. I was only bred once at Mercile, never at Drackwood, after they discovered I’ve got a low sperm count. My experience with females is limited. Flirt and Jinx have feelings for my Jeanie and both of them were used often in breeding experiments and are very friendly with our females since they were freed. Perhaps if I were more skilled I could convince her to be my mate.” It injured his pride to admit it but Darkness was a male he felt comfortable speaking to about his problem. “I allowed that to cause an argument with her.”

He winced. “You didn’t tell her that, did you?”

“I asked her if she wanted to share sex with them first in order to make a choice.”

“Shit.” The male leaned back in his chair. “Let me tell you something, True. I’m very skilled.” He glanced around and then held his gaze as his voice lowered. “This information stays between us. You heard I was taken from Mercile for other experiments because they wanted to see how we’d do in a military setting. They sent me and a handful of other males to be trained by what the humans call mercenaries. They were heartless humans without honor. One of the things I learned besides how to kill by human standards was how to effectively interrogate information from an unwilling participant. They brought in a female who showed me the most effective ways to gain information from other females.” He paused. “How to terrify a female by using sexual threats or by forced seduction.”

True hurt for the male. “They made you hurt females?”

“This female…” His tone turned gruff and he dropped his gaze to his drink. “She was colder than the ice in my glass. First she showed me what she was capable of doing and then I was ordered to turn the tables on her by the human male in charge. The student-surpassing-the-teacher kind of thing.” He looked up then, his dark eyes appearing haunted. “She deserved it for the cruel things she’d done to me but I was told to kill her in the end.”

“That’s the female you spoke of?”

Darkness hesitated for a long moment. “The commander in charge of the project had hired her to teach me and the other Species males how to use sex against females. That was her purpose and she did her job well. I could force an unwilling female to beg me to f**k her by the end of my training and confess to even a crime she hadn’t committed. The commander then ordered me to use that knowledge to gain information from her. She’d been lying to the commander and plotting something bad. Mercenaries kill other ones who betray their trust. They demanded I take her out.”