Her lashes fluttered. A faint smile pulled at her full lips. It was all he could do not to stare at her mouth instead of her eyes. She was so beautiful when she smiled.
“I am afraid,” she suddenly admitted. “I was so shocked when Flamme enticed Shturm to claim her. She was terrified when Franco ran us off the road and he attacked me. He was so much bigger and even with my training, I barely was able to get away. He followed me off the road and into the woods. Had I not had prior knowledge of the terrain, he might have caught me. Flamme felt she put us in that position with her heat.”
“There was Shturm, the biggest badass leopard she’d ever come across,” he supplied.
“Exactly. She chose him and enticed him, luring him to her like a little hussy. She was determined that he would keep Franco and his leopard from claiming us or ever hurting us.”
Sevastyan narrowed his eyes at her, allowing Shturm close so she could see the merciless gold glaring at her. He reached for the bit again. “Don’t fucking talk to me if you’re going to mix lies with truth, Flambé.” He started to shove the knot in her mouth.
“Wait.” It came out muffled. Her eyes went wide. A little wild. A sheen of tears.
Ordinarily, he would have tied off that rope and walked away, allowing the sudden surge of rage-fueled adrenaline pouring through his body to be walked off, but those tears left him stripped of anger and very vulnerable to her. He yanked the knot away from her and just stood waiting.
“She did choose Shturm to protect us. She was so scared. I was too. I was disoriented from the blow to my head and I couldn’t stop her. After that, I suppressed her because I was too afraid to rely on her. I didn’t think she really knew what she was doing. You’re a big man and could easily hurt me, which meant your leopard was big and could really hurt her. She didn’t take that into consideration. I was just so shocked and didn’t know what to do or how to get out of a claiming. I knew mistakes could be made with a first time so there was a huge chance she was wrong.”
“But you didn’t think it was a good idea to share your confusion with me?” He kept his tone mild when that ever-present pool of rage threatened to swamp him.
“I wanted you even more than Flamme wanted Shturm,” she confessed in a small voice, her gaze sliding away from his.
There was no mistaking the ring of honesty or her embarrassment at the admission. She was giving him something back for all the truth he’d given her. He remained silent, waiting for her to gather her courage to speak again.
“As long as I just could keep what we had between us to great sex, I could handle things, but when we’d stop and I was with you, and you’d do nice things for me, or say things I didn’t expect, it was more terrifying than Franco’s attack.” The admission came in a small voice. “I knew better than to let myself believe in you. Shifter men use women and then throw them away. I see it all the time. Maybe it’s just the way shifter men are so primal—I don’t know, and I really don’t care, but I’m not going to get caught in that horrible emotional mess that keeps women in a place they shouldn’t be.” Now there was defiance and anger creeping into her tone.
Sevastyan paced across the room while he turned over and over in his mind what she’d revealed to him. It wasn’t anything entirely unexpected. Ania had prepared him for Flambé’s opinion of shifter males. He’d reinforced that belief when Mitya had told her in front of his men to go back to the office and instead of reprimanding Mitya, Sevastyan had sided with his cousin against her—or at least it had looked that way. He’d explained his reasonings to her, but already he’d had too many sins against him.
He stayed silent, willing her to tell him more. To show her that he expected more, he returned to the spot just a few feet from her and crouched down, looking up at her, his gaze meeting hers. Waiting. She pressed her lips together. He knew it was difficult. He had opened up to her. Told her his truth. The worst of him, knowing he would never have her fully, but accepting it because his leopard deserved to have his mate, and, as humbling as the truth was, he would take Flambé on any terms.
“My father rescued shifters, that much is true,” Flambé said, her voice very low and hesitant. “I think, in the beginning, his heart was in the right place. Maybe it always was. So many of the shifter species’ numbers are so low it’s scary. He thought if he could bring some to the United States and give them a good start here, they could bring others and it would set up a chain to help. The landscaping business thrived and he bought the property so he could build dorms and the big house with multiple bedrooms.”
Her voice broke and she coughed as if to keep from crying. It took discipline not to go to her and wrap his arms around her. He consoled himself with the fact that the ropes were the substitute for his arms. She accepted the ropes when she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—accept his arms.
“He slept with a lot of the female shifters. They were given rooms in his home and sometimes they went into heat, or they were attracted to him. In any case, however it started, for whatever reason, he found himself surrounded with women and he didn’t want to give that up. He became addicted to all that ready sex. He told himself they were willing. Whether they were or just thought they had to give him whatever he wanted because they were afraid in a new country, who knows?”
“Did you hear differently?” He couldn’t let that go.
She took a breath. A deep one. He moved closer to her, again acting as if he was checking the ropes, her temperature, but more to offer comfort. Running his hand over her hair, down the nape of her neck, along her shoulder. Brief touches, but ones he knew she responded to when she was tied.
“Yes. Later. When I asked about my mother. She was a strawberry leopard and he apparently was quite enamored with her.”
Sevastyan could well imagine if she was anything like her daughter. Hot like the sun, all fiery passion in bed. She would have been irresistible to a man like Flambé’s father.
“He had several women housed there, but she was his favorite. He put her through culinary school but when she got a job, he wanted her to mate with him, marry him. He talked her into it. She was . . . like me. She needed sex all the time. It was getting worse, according to her friends, so she said yes. He got her pregnant, but he was never faithful. He kept other shifter women in the house and carried on with them while she was pregnant. It was quite horrible for her because her need never let up.”
Sevastyan could see the stark fear in her. Not only could he see it on her face, but he felt it pouring off of her in waves. She was terrified of that same fate. It was all making sense to him. It hurt that she would think that of him, but if her own father would do such a thing, why would he think she should trust a complete stranger, one she’d first seen at a sex club?
“He put me out of the house when I was seven because he wanted my room. He had several rooms for his women but it wasn’t enough and he wanted me out of the way. What was the difference between taking their passports and forcing them to work for nothing, and making them think they had to have sex and do whatever was asked of them? Because he did that. He never beat them and he always treated them the same, paid for educations, got them started in business, that sort of thing. If anything, he might have been slower to help the ones sleeping with him. But many of the women still felt as if they had no choice.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“After his death, not when I was a child.”
“Did you ever talk to him about it?”
“I tried once when I was talking about my mother and her medical history. He got very angry with me and denied that he ever forced any woman to sleep with him. He said he and my mother agreed to an open marriage and the arrangement wasn’t my business. That’s when he told me the clotting shots wouldn’t work and I wasn’t going to live long. He also told me to stop rescuing, that with the cameras now it was making things impossible to get in and out of countries without the poachers kn
owing we were coming. It was one long terrible argument. He died a couple of days later.”
“But you continue to insist on rescuing as many shifters as possible.” Sevastyan kept his voice very mild. He wanted to shift the conversation to what she was really doing, because something was going on that had nothing to do with what her father had been doing. He thought her father’s rescue operation had been used as a cover for her real operation.
“I can’t bring that many shifters in,” she denied. “Not if I want them legal.”
She wasn’t going to volunteer any information. She was too closed off. He was going to have to nudge her harder. Sevastyan sighed and shook his head. He draped himself casually against the opposite wall and let the silence stretch out between them. He knew each minute that went by, her anxiety rose. He let a good ten minutes pass.
“The problem with being tied to a man like me, baby, is you get it from both parts of me. The man raised in a lair with father who was a vor. That interrogator, trained to read everything around him. I had to pay attention to every detail so that nothing ever escaped me in Rolan’s territory as well as the territories in the surrounding lairs. You also have the dominant, who enjoys rope art. I have to be able to read every subtle nuance of my partner’s body. Every little tell of her body, her expression, her temperature, anything at all that changes. And then there’s Shturm. He’s Flamme’s mate. Animals, unlike humans, don’t lie to or deceive their mates. Put that all together and that makes it very difficult for you to hide anything from me for any length of time.”
She began to look alarmed. She was getting it. He went to her again and tipped up her face and took her mouth. His kiss was very gentle. Trying to keep it gentle was difficult when she was like kissing a flashfire, but he managed, because his woman deserved gentle. He trailed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip just once.
“Tell me what you’re doing, Flambé. I’m in a position to help you. I have resources all over the world. I won’t take over, I’ll just give you whatever you need. At some point, you’re going to have to trust someone. I want that someone to be me.”
He saw the very real struggle on her face. She wanted to believe him, but she had so much to lose if he wasn’t the man he had tried to show her he was.
She took a deep breath. “Get me out of the ropes, please, Sevastyan. If I’m going to take this chance, I’m going to have the courage myself without a crutch.”
He pulled her body against his, more so she couldn’t see his face than for any other reason. He wasn’t certain he could keep a mask when he’d been doing it his entire life. She had more courage than anyone he knew. The knot on her hands was a simple one. He had to be able to protect her by getting her hands loose if her circulation was cut off at any point or they had unexpected visitors. Once her hands were free, she put her arms around his neck as he worked through the knots.
Sevastyan lifted her into his arms and carried her to the wide armchair he found the most comfortable, settling there with her on his lap. She was trembling, not uncommon after she spent time in the ropes. He held her, rocking her gently, soothing her, letting her come back slowly, not pushing her to talk to him until she was ready.
Flambé snuggled into him and he pulled a blanket around her. Some models were hot when they came out of the ropes but Flambé always seemed cold, even after they had wild, crazy sex, with the exception of her leopard’s heat. He was never in a hurry when he had her in his arms. The fact that her body temperature was cool meant her female was resting as well.
Sevastyan couldn’t detect her nerve endings flaring up with the terrible burning that plagued Flambé, so he took advantage while he could, massaging her shoulders and arms and down her back, reveling in his ability to touch her freely without worrying that he might hurt her.
Eventually she began to rally, reaching for the water herself and sitting up on her own. She gave him a little half smile before she slipped off his lap and wrapped herself in the blanket, covering her body and taking the chair opposite his.
“This is hard for me to talk about, Sevastyan.”
“I know it is. I know it’s difficult to give anyone that level of trust, but I swear on my leopard, I won’t break faith with you, Flambé. Everything I’ve promised you, I meant.”
She was silent for so long he wasn’t positive she would be able to overcome her fears. “I started an underground system for shifter women to get away from abusive mates.” Flambé blurted it out all at once, no hedging.
Sevastyan had expected something like that, at least that she was attempting to set something up, but he still found her news shocking. He leaned toward her. “You have it up and running? You actually have a woman you’ve managed to hide from an abusive shifter?” He couldn’t keep the admiration from his voice.
Really? Who could do that? A woman could go to Drake Donovan and ask for his protection, but the leopard had the right to challenge Donovan to fight for her and the fight was to the death. Donovan had family and a lair. She could go to the head of her lair, but chances were good she would be told she had to go back to her mate. No one had ever been able to hide from one’s mate. A leopard could track their mate too easily.
“More than one. Several.”
His heart thudded. Now things were adding up much faster to him. “Franco Matherson. Tell me about him. Who is he really? Did he have a mate who ran from him?”
“Not him. He has a friend named Basil Andino. I brought Andino’s mate, Karisa, out about eighteen months ago, maybe a little longer. She was in bad shape. Basil isn’t a really nice man. He’d gone off with his friends thinking she was cowed and would stay put while he partied with other women. Karisa was pregnant, but she lost the babies because he beat her so badly. When he finally came home, he would have come home to lots of blood and clots and a big mess. It would have looked as if she might have died.”
“Did he know she was bleeding before he left? Possibly losing his children?” Sevastyan asked. He knew he sounded grim. He felt grim. He had friends he could reach out to. Basil Andino wasn’t going to be around much longer.
“He had to have.”
“It wasn’t an easy rescue by any means and I had to do it without my usual team. I could only use a few trusted women. She’s safe enough now, but Basil won’t stop looking for her. Franco apparently decided he could figure out how she got away. He started putting it together that I had helped shifters come to the United States and work here, although he had no idea if I was really involved in getting women away from abusive shifters. There just weren’t any other leads. I didn’t know he had anything to do with Basil.”
“You met at the bar.”
She nodded. “I was having a difficult time and needed sex. He thought he was so great at sex that if I was involved in Karisa’s disappearance, he could easily get me to talk. I don’t think he has an idea one way or the other if I’m involved, but he won’t let it go. This was months after I’d helped Karisa. He hadn’t been near Basil either or I would have smelled him.”
“Come on, baby, you need to eat something before the leopards decide to make another appearance. We can talk while I’m warming us dinner.”
“It has to be something light, Sevastyan. I don’t think I can eat much yet.” She stood up, one hand on the arm of the chair.
Sevastyan inspected her carefully in one swift, encompassing glance. She looked tired. He had been careful with the ropes, but the marks were on her body, her thighs and ankles, the marks of the breast harness. His mouth and teeth. Faint bruises from the leopards tussling. But there were no tears in her skin, no signs of bleeding under her skin. She wasn’t squirming uncomfortably or looking terrified or as if she might jump off the nearest bridge.
“What sounds good?” He held out his hand to her and was gratified when she didn’t hesitate to take it. “I can do a breakfast for you or soup, or just sandwiches.”
“S
oup sounds good, although that’s not going to do much for you.” There was a hint of worry in her voice.
That was one of the things he loved about her. She was nurturing by nature. She was always going to look out for him whether she was in love with him or not. She did little things no one else had ever done for him. He didn’t take anything for granted.
“I’ll have a sandwich with the soup, Flambé,” he assured, feeling her hand in his. She had a firm grip despite her hand being small. That was another thing about her he loved. She might look delicate, but she was leopard, her core was strong, her muscles, her backbone both flexible and steel.
“The moment I realized something was off about Franco, I got away from him, covered my tracks and made my way back home. I don’t think it was that hard for him to find me. We do bring shifters here legitimately all the time. They work here. Go to school. Become citizens. Set up their own businesses. He was trying to track Karisa. That’s what took so much time. I made certain there were multiple places for Basil and his leopard to hunt for her. Franco had to have gone to each of those places first.”
She perched on one of the high stools, her blanket slipping open to reveal her breasts with the faint marks of his mouth and teeth over the generous curves and the reddish marks of the rope knots in the valley between her breasts. His cock stirred in sheer male satisfaction. He opened the refrigerator and took out the cannister of homemade soup the chef had already prepared.
“You always prepare for every contingency. I noticed when you do your drawings for clients you make several, no matter how good the first one is. And when you were doing the ones for this property and you were creating escapes for the leopards, you made certain there were dozens of possibilities to choose from.”
He’d been proud of her for that way of thinking. She was like him in that regard, a general planning out a battle yet in a completely different way, he’d thought at the time. Now, he realized, she wasn’t all that different.
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