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"Yes," Malcolm agreed tightly. "Reiver is all those things. Worse, in fact. A pity you didn't realize that sooner, before everything went to hell tonight."
There wasn't much blame in that accusation. Rather, a stark dread. A fear in his eyes that his anger didn't quite mask. She searched that haunted gaze, hurting for him, wanting to understand who he'd become. "What happened to you, Malcolm? What happened to your face, to your name ... to the man you used to be?"
"He's gone, as dead as you are now." His mouth was a grim line, a muscle ticking in the side of his savaged, beard-shadowed jaw. "A hell of a lot can happen in a few hundred years, lass."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it can. I never thought I'd see the day that Malcolm MacBain tossed away his honor and his good name in order to serve someone like Reiver."
"We all make choices. And I have my reasons," he murmured. With that hissed reply, he finally did withdraw from her. Dark lashes shuttering his gaze, he rose to his feet.
She stood with him, nose to nose, refusing to let him shut her out. "Tell me."
"Let it go, Danika." The words were a deep rumble, coming from his chest.
But she couldn't let him walk away. She stared at him harder, pushing her wayward talent in his direction. "You hate him."
He didn't answer; but then, he didn't have to. His big body radiated loathing.
"It's not loyalty that makes you serve Reiver," she said. "It's rage. Isn't it?"
His thoughts answered her like a reflex: He took something precious from me. Everything I had. I will stop at nothing to make him pay.
Danika closed her eyes as the grief of that pledge sank into her consciousness. "Mal, I'm sorry."
He roared a dark curse, and then his hand Cthe1C;Mal,s were on her arms, gripping her firmly, hauling her into the shadow of his powerful body. Into the face of his fury. "Goddamn it, woman! Stay out of my thoughts." His grasp held tighter, his eyes bright and wild now, lips peeled back from his enormous fangs. "Why couldn't you have stayed the bloody fuck out of my life?"
Danika had never cowered before a man, not Conlan or any other Breed male. Not even Reiver, or the brutal messengers he'd sent to her cottage earlier that night. But Malcolm's fury was a storm that slammed into her, stripping her of her courage. Buffeting her with a ferocity that left her shaking, breathless.
He was a dangerous man. Even more so because he was wounded, deep down. Festering with a hatred that was eating him alive. She saw that now. And something more in the searing amber fire of his eyes.
Desire.
The interest that had sparked between them before was burned away now. Turned into something far more consuming as Malcolm's hot gaze bore into her, then slowly settled on her parted lips. Another thought arrowed from his mind into hers, uninvited this time, dark and startling in its carnality.
She could have told him to release her. As formidable as he was, as volatile and strong as she knew him to be, he would have taken his hands off her in an instant if she'd wanted him to.
But that wasn't what she wanted.
And he knew it as well as she did.
"Danika," he rasped thickly, eyes flaring hotly. Then his mouth was on hers.
The contact was explosive, staggering. It had been so long since she'd been touched, kissed, desired. Malcolm's lips seduced, demanded, claiming hers with a passion that stole all the breath from her lungs. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the feeling, and even though a part of her had not let go of Conlan-might never fully let him go-the part of her that was still vital, still alive and warm and female, could not deny this need for comforting. For physical, intimate contact.
The fact that it was Malcolm kissing her now, his hands stroking her arms and throat, strong fingers slipping into the fine hair at her nape as he pulled her deeper into his embrace, deeper into his dizzying kiss, only made her need quicken even more.
He dragged his mouth to the sensitive skin below her ear, breath scorching, voice gravelly and dark. "Christ, lass. You shouldn't feel this good. I shouldn't want you like this."
She moaned her reply, lost to the same overwhelming need. For Malcolm. For the feel of his strong hands on her, familiar and yet so very new. No stranger could have stirred her the way he did now, and she let him sweep her into the current of his passion.
The edge of the table pressed into her backside; Malcolm's hard, masculine body hemmed her in from the front. Even through their clothes, the heat between them was undeniable. The thick jut of his arousal was a heavy demand against her hip, a delicious friction that ground into her in a primal rhythm, his palms and fingers stroking her C sthe he breasts over the soft knit of her sweater.
Her hands craved to explore him too. She ran them up his broad chest, following the taut slabs of muscle that felt like iron beneath his dark T-shirt. The dermaglyphs on his bared biceps surged with the colors of his need. Dark wine, burnished gold, and deepest indigo pulsed like living tattoos, intensifying with each fevered beat of his heart.
When she lifted her gaze back to Malcolm's face, she found his expression fierce, his fangs stretched long and sharp, his pupils transformed to catlike slits, all but eclipsed by scorching pools of amber. That light flashed hotter when he reached between her thighs and rubbed the seat of his palm against the aching core of her body. Danika arched into his touch, panting as he stroked her, every nerve ending exploding in waves of hot need.
"Tell me to stop," he whispered thickly against her mouth, the sharp points of his fangs grazing her lips. "Tell me you don't want this."
But she could say no such thing. Her cry of mounting release was all she could manage as a dam inside her crumbled away like rubble under the skill of his touch. She broke apart, gasping his name and holding on to his thick shoulders as he pressed her spine down onto the table and covered her with his body.
