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I felt him move and heard the door shut behind him, but I kept my attention on Olaf.
“Where has your lioness gone, Anita?”
“She’s still in there, here, and she has a message for you. We both do.”
He smiled so arrogantly. He’d been the biggest kid on the playground for most of his life, and now he was a werelion. There’s a certain arrogance that runs in them, too, because they’re usually the biggest, baddest animals on the playground. I wondered if his attitude would have been better if he’d been turned into a wolf, or a leopard, but now we’d never know. The die was cast. Lion it was.
His smile was fading around the edges. I think I stared at him too long. He wasn’t sure what I was doing, and he cared what I did now. It was a chink in his armor, just like my fear of him had been for me.
“What is the message, Anita?”
“She likes you. She thinks you would be strong enough to be my lion to call, and her mate.”
The arrogant smile flared back. “Your inner lion is wise.”
“She didn’t understand why I didn’t just jump at the chance to have you in Florida, but she understands why I hesitated now. We can’t have a male that kills all the cubs. We’ll be alone before we let that happen.”
“Cubs? You have no children.”
“Kaitlin is a cub, or a fellow lioness, and we are not okay with you playing cat and mouse with her.”
“I was teasing. You know I do not like blondes.”
“You did the same kind of teasing with me once.”
“Are you jealous?”
I sighed and tried to think how to explain this to him. “Look, Moriarty. If I really am your Adler, then you know that I’m not okay with you threatening other women. You know that doing shit like that is not the way to my heart.”
He frowned up at me now. “So now I cannot even tease and taunt other women? I have given up doing other things with them, because I know you will not approve. You have no idea what it has cost me to give up certain . . . things.”
I took in a deeper breath and let it out even slower. “I have some idea, and I really appreciate that you’re trying to behave yourself.”
He stood up then, and he was angry. I had no idea why he was angry, but it made the heat in the room rise as if he?
?d turned up the thermostat. His beast’s energy prickled along my skin. Jesus, he was powerful. My lioness stirred inside me, flashing golden eyes at me. If we could tame him, she liked him, but she finally understood that I thought he was a cub killer, and that wasn’t okay with her either.
“I am not a child, Anita, to behave myself!”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Yes, you did. All your men are pussy-whipped, but I will not be unmanned, not even by you.”
Olaf took a stiff step toward me, his big hands in fists at his sides. I wanted to take a step back. The room wasn’t that big, but he was so angry. It made me sniff the air as if rage had a scent, and in a way, it did for me now. His beast was warm, but his anger was hotter. A heat that would feel so good to drink down. My stomach almost cramped with the nearness of such a bounty. All I had to do was touch his skin with mine, and I could feed on all that rage.
I hugged myself, not trusting that I wouldn’t do just that if he crossed the distance between us, because if anything would push me from would-be girlfriend to victim in his mind, it would be turning him into my gazelle.
I decided to try for truth between us. “You’re not the only one that’s trying not to make one of us into their victim, Olaf.” We were alone, so I could use his other name.
He took another slow step. I should have been afraid, but I knew he wouldn’t kill me just like that. He wanted too many things from me that a quick death wouldn’t satisfy. “I have tried so hard with you, Anita. Harder than with anyone else.”
“I know, and I’m trying to give you the same courtesy.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, and there was a growl in his voice now.
My lioness was crouched inside me, ready to spring, but would that hurt me more than him? “It means I can feed on things besides sex, and I’m trying very hard not to feed on you.”
“I know you are trying not to have sex with me.”
