Predator's Refuge (15 page)

“You look thirsty,” he said, clearly trying to reroute the conversation. He handed her a bottle of water. “Here. Drink.”

Her heart doing a queer vibration in her chest, she reached for the bottle and downed half of it. Anton’s appraising eye was on her the whole time.

“Look,” he continued in his imperious voice. “You didn’t come here to discuss my lack of companionship. You are here because of the demands of your lynx.”

She inhaled deeply and then it all poured out of her. “I’ve been trying to keep it together, trying to run a business for my boss. I want to show him he didn’t make a mistake by putting me in charge. But it’s all gone horribly wrong. My friends and colleagues aren’t safe here, and on top of it all, I appear to be a sex maniac!”

Anton’s quiet laughter landed on her ear and somehow wormed its way into her sex, making everything in her pulse and throb even harder. Her lynx purred. The animal stood on its hind legs, hip jutting out like a horny woman, and extended a sexy claw out toward Anton.

Meow
.

“Oh, Anton. I need to go away,” she whispered, more horrified with each passing second. “Far, far away from you. You’re not safe around me.”

“Marci, forgive me for asking, but why don’t you just have sex with … someone?”

Why indeed? Killian had offered. In fact, he’d offered again just a day ago, and she’d turned him down again. It was all because she and her lynx only wanted one man, the one who was so obviously wrong for her. And she was afraid to ask him. “Because … I’m a chicken.”

He gazed at her, sighed, and sat back down on the log next to her. She felt so small next to his expansive torso, felt so dainty and inconsequential next to his enormous biceps. She wanted to curl up into him and disappear for a while. A good, long while.

“This is not something to be scared of, little lynx. Sex should be a pleasurable experience.” He stared at her, his jewel-green eyes burning her with the force of the sun, considering. He then looked away, as if forcibly changing his mind about what he wanted to say.

“What?” she prompted. “What are you thinking?” When he didn’t turn back, she touched his arm with a finger. Unable to stop herself, she scratched her nail over his bicep, luxuriating in the hard bulge, marveling at his size.

He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them and turned on her with vehemence. “I’m thinking the right man would make it incredible for you. The right man would love you properly, so that you forgot you were ever with another. The right man would take all your fear away and would make you blind with euphoria.”

Why did she get the distinct impression Anton Gaspar was the right man? It was wrong on so many levels, and Ryland would likely send her packing without a reference, but she just knew the tiger man would fill her lynx and fuck her like she needed to be fucked. Hard. Forcefully. Against a wall until she unraveled, screaming his name.

Marci reached deep inside for every ounce of bravery she possessed. The same bravery that had led her to the Ursa Lodge as a shy teenager and helped her beg a job from the intimidating Ryland Snow. At the same time, she thought of Charlotte and her advice to just let go for once and try to enjoy life. She certainly couldn’t continue this way, a hard-up mess of a woman. If she didn’t give her animal what it needed, her whole life would fall apart, and soon.

“Anton,” she murmured, her voice barely audible to her own ears. She raised her eyes to his. “I know we haven’t known each other long. And what I’m about to say makes a mockery of my sense of professionalism. But … I want to have sex with you.”

The shock in his eyes hit her like a cinderblock to the forehead. But something else lingered in his gaze, something he was trying to keep hidden, and she could see it ran deep. With his tight lips and the vein pulsing at his brow, it looked an awful lot like desire. Marci almost breathed a sigh of relief.

He would do this for her. He would say yes.

“Marci,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”

“Right.” She gave him a curt nod, as she couldn’t seem to move from the chin down. His refusal hit home with a savagery she hadn’t thought possible, making her heart grow brittle inside her.
Don’t you fall apart here, Marci! What did you think the stud muffin would say?
“I understand.”

As her lynx issued a grievous cry, Marci bolted off the log and ran into the woods. What was she thinking? She knew she was naive in ways, but to show it like that was unforgiveable. Of course, a man like Anton had to have a lover. He must be spoken for, despite all his talk of being alone.

And then again, maybe he just didn’t want to sleep with her after all. Maybe he’d finally recognized her for the desperate buffoon she was.

How could her animal instincts be so wrong? How could she be so stupid?

Not daring to answer her own unmerciful questions, she ran as far from Anton as her legs would allow, knowing her shame would still follow.

Chapter 8

Anton fumbled as he grabbed his things. Damn. He never fumbled.

He cursed as he chased Marci through the woods. Shit. He’d never chased anyone.

This blasted little lynx had turned his whole world upside down in a matter of a week, and he didn’t like it one bit.

She’d offered him her body on a silver platter, and he could no longer deny having sex with her was the thing he desired above all else. Since meeting her, all his good sense had flown out the window into the fucking tranquil Ontario woodland. And he had lost any sense of his own inner peace. All the hard work he had done at Pannonhalma was destroyed the second he smelled Marci’s scent. Even though Brother Ferenc trained him to treat his body like a temple, to forgo the baser pleasures in life, he was now ready to transform back into the rutting creature who had shown up at the monastery, begging assistance and guidance. Ferenc had made him see his sexual depravity was the root of all his sins.

Right now, he wanted to wring Ferenc’s scrawny neck.

No. He couldn’t be that man again. Hard and cold, a slave to vicious desire, just like Istvan, and in some measure, Gabi too. He wanted to be better than that. Needed it.

And he needed Marci to understand. He wasn’t rejecting her. Holy Father, how could he ever reject such a sweet morsel?

He spotted her up ahead and increased his speed. The lynx woman might be fast, but he was faster. As the perfume from her pussy slammed back into his senses, he caught up to her and grabbed her arm. He jerked her back, not quite as gently as he’d planned. “Stop running from me.”

She turned, her eyes big and bright. “I’m not running from you. I just need to get back to work. I need to make sure the chef ordered enough supplies for the dinner service. Last night, they ran out of potatoes for the poutine—”

“Marci, shut up about fucking poutine!”

She stood still. Her lips drew together in a tight ball and she glared at him. Damn, he wanted to trace her lips with his tongue and coax them open. He wanted to see her relaxed, splayed out in front of him, her body open and receptive. He bit his lip, trying to figure out what to say next. She startled him by giggling. “What are you laughing at, lynx?”

“You. With your accent, it sounds funny when you say poutine.” And then she giggled some more, making him even angrier.

“First you throw yourself at me and now you make fun of my accent? Dear God, take me back to the monastery!”

Her jaw dropped. “Monastery? I thought you lived in a castle.”

“I did, all my life. But the past two years, I’ve been holed up with an order of monks. By choice, you understand. A pathetic attempt to atone for my sins.” He let her arm go, even though his tiger growled at him to take it back. It wanted to lick her arm. He swallowed back the desire that was now threatening to incinerate him.

What was he thinking, going without sex for two years? It was a wonder he hadn’t hanged himself by now. If anyone understood Marci’s sexual frustration, it was he.

“What sins?” she asked, her temper now dissolved.

He looked at her, fighting the urge to draw her in for a long, deep kiss. And everything that followed. “Never mind.” He rubbed his nose. “Look, when you offered yourself to me, please believe I was flattered. More than flattered. But the fact is, I’m celibate, and have been for two years. And I need to stay that way. When I kissed you in the boat, it was a mistake.”

He’d already thought her eyes were wide. They got wider now, with the whites almost encircling the golden brown. “Celibate? Are you a priest?” She moaned and ran her hands through her hair. “Oh my God, I offered to have sex with a priest!” She proceeded to run around in a frantic circle in front of him. “I’m going to hell!”

He let out a laugh in spite of himself, knowing the only one of them with a chance to relocate to hell was him. He reached for her flailing hands and made her stop moving. He held her still in front of him, and took a step closer to her. God help him, dangerously close to her. “You’re not going to hell,
cicuskám
.”

He watched as she sucked in a quick breath at the term. “Would you please tell me what that means? For all I know, you keep calling me ‘shithead.’”

Ah, damn. He was going to hell anyway, it seemed. “It means ‘kitten.’
My
kitten.”

Marci’s mouth wiggled on her face and she frowned, not understanding. “But … I don’t…”

Against his better judgment, Anton pulled her close and let her feel the erection inside his shorts. The one she couldn’t have missed because he’d sported it since he first saw her. “Marci, my father taught me many horrible lessons. However, he taught me one that I follow to this day. Speak your mind.” He leaned in and put his nose close to her cheek, inhaling her, drawing her deep inside him. “I would love to have sex with you, angel. I can think of nothing but running my tongue through your wet pussy and swallowing you whole. I want you to come in my mouth, under my fingers. And more than anything, I want to take you so hard you won’t be able to see for pleasure. I would fuck you so effectively, Marci, you would doubt you’d ever been fucked before.”

The strangled cry that erupted from her throat made him want to hurl her to the ground and cover her body with his. “Do it. Please.”

He released her and almost shook with disappointment. “I can’t. I made a vow. I swore I’d do penance.” He motioned at the air between them. “It wasn’t hard before I met you, but now. Oh, now, I feel the weight of my penance.”

Her eyes crinkled in sympathy, making him hate himself even more. “Why on earth should you do penance? It sounds so … so medieval.”

He couldn’t look her in the eye. “I was a very bad man once. A selfish man.”

She closed the distance between them, putting a small hand on his chest. “Anton, it can’t be that bad. You shouldn’t punish yourself.”

He dared to glance at her, and the wave of his sins came crashing down on him once more. “You don’t understand. From the time I could speak, my father raised me to be a brute and a snob. And even though I grew to abhor his cruel punishments and tricks, it was hard for me not to absorb some of his messages.” He clasped her hand as it rested on his chest, feeling such comfort in her soft fingers. “In many ways, I was my father’s son. I believed life was for the taking … that people were for the taking. We all took after our father in some way. Istvan became the heartless dictator, happy to dole out punishments to our people. Gabi and I became womanizers. Women were nothing more to me than pretty instruments I could play.”

He could not miss the disappointed cast to her eyes. “Okay, so you have a past. Lots of people do. It sounds as if you learned from your mistakes.”

“Perhaps, but it was too late.” He gazed at her, loving the golden flecks in her brown eyes, wishing he could disappear into those warm pools and luxuriate there forever. “My brother Istvan was married. His wife, Mariska, was a good match for him, probably the only woman alive who could handle him and his sour moods. She was from another old tiger shifter family, and was just as cold and calculating in many ways. She was also very beautiful.”

Marci looked down, and he knew she saw where he was headed. She removed her hand from his chest, and he felt her loss immediately.

Steeling himself, he continued. “Mariska had a string of lovers, but was always discreet so Istvan never knew. One day, she offered herself to me. And because I was a selfish bastard, I happily accepted, eager to get back at my brother in some way.”

“I take it you didn’t just have a one-night stand?”

He clenched his jaw and had to force himself to relax it. “No, it was much more than that. We embarked on an affair, right under Istvan’s nose. We made fun of his ignorance and I suppose we both enjoyed seeing him get a dose of his own medicine. He’d cheated on her too, you see. Mariska was wild and uninhibited, and she excited me. We grew careless.”

“What happened?”

He sighed. “She became pregnant, perhaps with my child. I don’t know whose it was for sure. Not long after, while having an argument with Istvan, she told him everything. How he’d been cuckolded by his own brother. He flew into a rage to rival even some of my father’s fits of fury.” He closed his eyes, hating the memory of the awful scene. “He killed her. And left her bloodied body in my quarters one night, so I could see what he’d done to my lover and her child. I can still see her now, the horrible wounds at the back of her neck.”

Marci just stared, unblinking. The morning light emphasized the dark circles under her eyes, and Anton could swear the circles grew darker with each horrendous word of his tale.

“Because of my pride and greed, because of my sins, a woman and her baby died. And I will never forgive myself.” As he stood there with Marci, sharing his agony, he felt the wall around his heart begin to crumble. And even though he knew she must despise him, he felt a bit better for having shared it.

She didn’t say anything for a long time and seemed numb, she stood so still. Finally, a whisper. “It wasn’t your fault she died. Your brother made that choice.”

“I contributed to it.”

“Oh, no, Anton,” she said, pulling away and pacing in a line before him. “Don’t go down that road. You can’t be responsible for your brother’s actions. That’s like saying I’m responsible for Charlotte’s injuries.”