“Isabeau, look at me.”

The sound of his voice made her close her eyes like a child trying to block out the ghost that always haunted her. “Just let go.” Because if he didn’t, she was going to burst into tears and sob loud enough for any enemy in the vicinity to come running.

“Relax. We’re not out of the woods yet, honey. I can’t have you fighting with me when we’re in the middle of enemy territory. Just calm down for me.”

“I’m perfectly calm.” Shattered. Broken. But calm.

5

“EVERYTHING will be all right, Isabeau.”

The devil’s whisper. That sinful, sexy, lying voice. She’d succumbed to his power the first time she was tested. At that moment, she despised the cat inside of her nearly as much as she hated her human self. Isabeau forced her body to relax, showing him the fight was gone.

Conner loosened his hold on her reluctantly, as if he didn’t quite trust her surrender. She glanced at his face and saw herself as a shadow in the reflection of his eyes. She felt like a shadow, insubstantial beside his power. She ducked her head, unable to face even just the shadow of herself. She never wanted to look in the mirror again.

“I’m your mate, Isabeau. There’s no shame between mates.”

She lifted her chin and stepped away from him, her knees rubbery, her heart still thundering. “You’re nothing to me. And whatever is happening to my body, has nothing to do with you. Any man would have been satisfactory.”

She made the mistake of looking at him. The amber in his eyes crystallized, turned gold and then yellow. Flecks of green merged, his pupils fully dilated and his stare focused and deadly. He stepped close to her, invading her space. If there was rage, it smoldered beneath the surface. His face was hard, mouth firm. A muscle bunched in his jaw, but his gaze held steady, a clear warning.

“Say whatever you have to say to keep your pride, Isabeau. Words don’t matter much. But you think long and hard before you endanger someone’s life. That’s on you. Mating is a higher law and there’s no getting around it. You can’t pretend it away. This is between us, no one else. We’ll work it out.”

She blinked rapidly to stop the burning tears. Damn him. He’d destroyed her. He couldn’t have known how deep a blow he’d struck. She wasn’t the kind of girl boys had flocked to when she’d been growing up. There were no dates or dances in school. Boys had rushed to her friends but never to her. Same with college. She had never discovered why others avoided her. She tried to learn the art of flirting, of conversation. She’d made it a point to be friendly, but she was always pushed aside and had finally accepted she wasn’t attractive to the opposite sex and women found her too intimidating to be her friend.

Conner had come along and made her feel beautiful. He’d made her feel wanted. Of course, his name hadn’t been Conner and he’d been lying to her about his feelings for her. And she should have known. Men like Conner, dangerous, magnetic, charming and sexy, simply didn’t look at women like Isabeau. He’d made love to her over and over, and all the time he’d been doing his job. Someone had paid him to seduce her in order to get close to her father.

The shame was overpowering. She felt like such a fool. To believe, after all the years of knowing that men didn’t find her attractive, that a man like him would fall head over heels for her was ridiculous. She felt almost like she deserved what happened to her for her own stupidity.

“You killed my father.” She flung the accusation at him, so mixed up she couldn’t breathe properly. Her breath came in ragged, harsh gasps, her lungs burning, as if she was starved for air. He sounded so calm. So in control. She wanted to slap his face all over again.

“I had nothing to do with your father’s death. That was his choice and you damn well know it. I told you before, I have enough sins on my soul, Isabeau, without you adding things I’m not responsible for.” He towered over her for a long moment, his expression grim, his eyes deadly, and then he drew in a breath and touched her hair with gentle fingers. “I know it’s difficult to be with me, but you’re doing fine.”

“You call this fine? I’m a wreck. I’m so mixed up,” she admitted. Because her pride was already long gone. He could smell her arousal, her body’s call to him. There were no secrets between leopards. “I can’t even think straight.” She pushed a shaky hand through her hair—the strands he’d just brushed a caress over. She couldn’t deny the mating thing, not really, not when her body was insane for his, but she was still human and she had a brain. She had to find control. “Maybe everything you’re saying about the leopard and the mate is the truth, but I refuse to allow it to rule me.”

“You have so much more power than you realize, Isabeau, but it will come to you,” he assured.

She hated the gentleness in his voice—the caress—that sexy note that stroked her already raw nerves. Now that she knew it was practice, a tool of his trade, one would think she wouldn’t be susceptible, but it seemed her body believed him in spite of her brain.

“I’ll teach you the things you need to know to live with your cat. You’ll find you already have the strength and power to deal with her. She won’t accept any other male and she’ll drive you toward me, but you already know that.”

“She isn’t going to get her way.”

“Look at me.”

The quiet command in his voice was impossible to resist. She found herself looking into the eyes of his cat and it was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. His eyes had gone so yellow they were golden and lethal, a cat’s deadly stare, wholly focused and possessive.