Purrfect Protector (12 page)

Kale pulled away and this time Aleksi let the human go.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Aleksi admitted. He didn’t elaborate.

The bed moved and he heard Kale’s footsteps even on the soft, carpeted floor. Aleksi’s curiosity got the better of him. He had to see where Kale had gone. Aleksi could lie and say it was because of his bodyguard responsibilities, but that would be a farce, considering he had just slept with his protectee. He was almost certain that he would be asked to leave when the man digested everything he’d said.

Kale was looking out of the widow, giving Aleksi a side profile that made his cock take notice. Kale was stunningly handsome and had a body to die for.

He ignored how irresistible Kale was. That was why he in this trouble to begin with.

“So you’re saying, after we agreed to take this slow and not put any expectations on whatever it is, that you now want to mate me?”

“I don’t
want
to.”

Kale’s snapped his head in Aleksi’s direction. Aleksi leaped out of bed to try to stop the vicious barbs ready to fly from Kale’s tongue. Aleksi slowly approached Kale and tried to find a better way to voice the complicated feelings he was having.

“It’s not a conscious decision. To say my cat
wants
you is like saying I
want
to breathe. I like you…and I was hoping that after you didn’t need me to protect you anymore that we could date. I know it’s too soon to even begin thinking about mating—”

Kale snorted and lifted his hands in the universal sign for
exactly.

“But I cannot deny that I wish to know you better or that the thought of you with another does not result in my wanting to kill something.”

He knew he was reverting to the Russian accent he’d lost over the years living in America. When he was stressed or anxious, he couldn’t help it. The formal speech let him claw back some control and composure, even though inside he was anything but calm.

“We haven’t even had sex yet!”

His cat didn’t like the reminder but he managed to quash the hiss and disguise the noise with a cough. A deadly glare from Kale let him know he hadn’t gotten away with it.

Where was all his stoic calm? The few lovers he’d had over the years had labeled him cold and emotionless. Aleksi would trade everything he owned to be that way now. All these feelings and talking about feelings had him ready to peel off his own skin just so he had something else less painful to deal with.

A knot of insecurity tightened in his chest. “Did you feel nothing when we pleased each other? Was this truly casual to you?”

He could see the answer on Kale’s face and it was like a knife to the back. No, it was worse. He’d actually had a dagger in his back once and it had hurt less than this.

“So it would not bother you at all if I were to fuck the next person I meet? You wouldn’t care if I found a hot blond to take home and fucked him up against the door or if I picked up a stacked brunette and carried her to my bed and gave her as much pleasure as her pert, tight body could stand, satisfying myself thoroughly in the arms and body of another.”

Kale flinched with every one of Aleksi’s descriptions, but he still didn’t say anything.

He’d never really been attracted to women, but Aleksi wanted drive his point home. The mere thought of sleeping with someone other than Kale was excruciating but admitting that wouldn’t help him plead his case.

Aleksi narrowed his gaze in on Kale’s face, noting the pinch around the man’s lips and the frown trying to form between his eyes. He took that as encouragement. It gave him hope he wasn’t alone in this mess.

He waited until Kale’s gaze met his before continuing and forcing his eyes to change.

Every time he’d climaxed with Kale he hadn’t been able to stop the small shift. In hindsight, it should have been a clue for him to take extra precautions. But he’d also noticed how hot it made Kale when he did it and how much he liked it when Aleksi lost control.

“Or your brother. I understand he’s straight, but I’m sure I could persuade him to experiment. He is very attractive and I scented his appreciation of my body when I entered the office, just as I did yours. I could…”

Kale shot his hand up as if to ward off his words. “Stop! You’ve made your point. I wouldn’t be fine with it.”

Secretly, Aleksi breathed a sigh of relief. He’d had nothing after that. He’d played all the cards he could think of. He let his eyes change back to human.

“Fine. We’ll give this a go—the dating part, not the irrevocable mating part. And I can’t believe I’m saying this…but I want strings.” Kale stalked back to the bed, grabbing Aleksi’s hand and dragging him along.

Immediately wary and cautious at the sudden surrender, Aleksi sat next to Kale and watched him fuss with his hair that was standing up at all angles.

“Strings?”

“Yes. Monogamy is the main one. Don’t you ever make a move on my brother or I’ll shave you in tiger form. Cohabitation is another condition.”

Ignoring the threat, Aleksi lowered his eyebrows. “You want to move in?” He hadn’t lived with anyone since he was a small child and the thought of someone constantly in his space was unsettling.

Kale shook his head. “No. I want to know I
can
one day, if our dating relationship goes well.”

Aleksi frowned. This was getting confusing. They’d started with from him trying to convince Kale to agree to some sort of commitment and relationship. Now it looked like the tables had turned.

Aleksi searched for any sign of deceit or anything suspicious—as though Kale was hiding something—but he found nothing. He had no choice. “I agree to both terms.” His tiger would accept nothing less.

“Then I guess you’re my boyfriend,” Kale announced in to the silence of the room, sounding shocked and a little confused.

Aleksi knew the feeling.

* * * *

Aleksi was still trying to figure out whether he’d won the argument when they went down for breakfast. To make matters worse, Kale seemed overly cheerful, as if he was trying to compensate for something and kept giving Aleksi thoughtful glances. The tense atmosphere between them had gotten so bad that both of them had tried to engage the waiter in conversation to break the painful silence, all the while pretending that everything was fine and that they weren’t
freaking the fuck out
as Jazz, Robert and Scott’s little brother said far too often.

Even his cat was unusually quiet. Aleksi knew it wasn’t satisfied with the agreement to date exclusively and explore feelings to see if they were compatible before rushing into a mating. The cat wanted Kale claimed right now.

He’d long since finished his morning fix of tea but he still held the cup until he was certain he looked ridiculous using the piece of tiny china as a shield.

Kale was the first one to address the saber-tooth tiger in the room.

“So, this is awkward.”

“Yes, it is.” Aleksi sighed and gave up the pretense that he was still drinking. He placed the cup down with a soft clink as it rattle on the saucer. “I didn’t want to ruin the easy friendship we had before, but unfortunately I cannot change the circumstances.” His Russian was showing again
.

Kale became very quiet and tense.

Aleksi couldn’t explain why. He surveyed the hotel breakfast lounge but nothing seemed amiss and his cat didn’t sense any danger or threats. The other guests were too involved with themselves or their companions to pay them any mind. “What is it?”

“You would change it.” The light, seductive quality to Kale’s voice that Aleksi had come to enjoy was gone. It could have been a robot speaking

What was Kale talking about? “I don’t understand.”

Kale fiddled with the used cutlery on the dirty plate the waiter had yet to take away. The man was clearly upset about something.

“You said that you couldn’t change the circumstances. So, you’d rather your tiger be set on having someone else,” Kale concluded in that same toneless voice that made Aleksi want to hit things. Why had his cat decided they should suddenly be in a relationship? Aleksi was no good at navigating the unfamiliar pitfalls. Apart from his family at the company and his protectee, he had very little contact with people—he didn’t like them.

“I—”

Kale jumped up from the table before Aleksi could finish his thought.

“I need to check on Caleb. He probably has a killer hangover.” Kale took off, leaving Aleksi struggling to get out from the small table and follow his protectee without knocking everything over. He still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to break the awkward, but friendly, truce between them.

The confusing man entered the elevator as soon as it opened, despite Aleksi’s numerous warnings about doing such things. If not for his shifter speed, Aleksi doubted he would have made the elevator before the doors closed. Thankfully his brain caught up with his mouth before he could say anything to make the situation worse.

As the car rode up through the floor levels, Aleksi replayed the conversation at the table in his head. When he figured out what he’d said to set Kale off, he could have kicked himself at his stupidity. Perhaps shifters weren’t the superior species.

Despite Kale being a successful model and in demand from designers and fans alike, there was an insecurity there. Aleksi had noticed underneath Kale’s public face the man believed that no one could really want him for anything other than his body or take him seriously.

By the time they reached Caleb’s room, Kale was working up a bad mood. When he was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, someone was interested in him and not his body, that a man like Aleksi could want something solid with him, reality came over to kick him in the nuts. Then the bitch backed over him with a car to be sure he knew his place and not to expect anything more.

On the surface, what Aleksi said might have been innocent but the shifter had been quite vocal upstairs that morning about not wanting to mate with Kale. At first, it had freaked him out. Commitment and Kale didn’t exactly go hand in hand.

After the initial shock had worn off, there had been the beginning of something stirring in his chest that he now refused to look at or think about. He should have known better than to become emotionally invested. It only led to getting hurt.

He shook his head in disappointment and knocked on his brother’s door. Frowning, he knocked again when there was no answer and checked his watch. Caleb was usually an early riser, even when he was suffering the morning-after effects of the night before. Caleb’s cheeriness in the morning had caused many an argument between them while Kale had tried to sleep the day away in the past.

“Perhaps Mr. Andrews is still asleep. You did say he was having a good night last night,” Aleksi offered, no doubt trying to be helpful but only succeeding in pissing Kale off more.

“Caleb doesn’t do sleeping in—the same way I don’t do getting up with the sun.” His response might have been a bit more clipped than what was called for, but he couldn’t help the frosty attitude. The ice persona was taking over.

This always happened—at least it had when he was younger. Caleb and he had had another brother, Garrick. Garrick had been his older brother by seven years, Caleb’s by six, and a through-and-through bad boy. But he’d always made time for them, whether it was picking them up from school or teaching them how to drive, despite the fact that they were years too young to actually do it legally.

One day Garrick didn’t come home. It had been Kale’s thirteenth birthday and they’d waited hours for Garrick to get back to base, returning from some classified operation. Garrick had signed up for the Army when he was eighteen and had been head hunted by a new team under the Marine Corps. Kale remembered everything about the day his brother’s teammate came over to them, his uniform splattered in red, something silver dangling from his hands.

“We were ambushed. I’m so unbelievably sorry for your loss,” the man had said. Since then, Kale, commitment and emotions didn’t mix. The only person he let himself love was Caleb. Everyone else was a passing acquaintance or a distraction. He didn’t even have friends, just people he worked with.

So he couldn’t blame Aleksi for not wanting to bind himself to Kale for the rest of his life. Hell, Kale wouldn’t want to either. He’d gotten caught up in the moment and let his guard down around the shifter.

It would not happen again.

Aleksi pushed him out of the way and cocked his head, obviously listening for something. Kale raised his eyebrows when the shifter’s face turned slightly pink.

Curious, Kale shoved Aleksi and pressed his ear to the door. He snapped back when he heard a guttural moan and recognized the telltale sound of furniture hitting a wall. Even after he’d pulled away from the door, Kale could hear a scream and someone calling for God. He could have lived a long and happy life having never heard his brother having sex or making someone cry for Jesus. “Holy shit. Is there such a thing as ear bleach? Because I need some.”

“Your brother sounds preoccupied. We can call back later, if you want to.” Again, there was a slight note of apology in the shifter’s voice.