“You are risking your very sanity being here.” His breath caressed her ear, a shiver working over her skin once again as he spoke to her. “Your sanity and your life. You should leave.”
His voice throbbed with menace. It pulsed with heated arousal. Thick and husky, it rippled over her nerve endings, seared her cunt.
“So you’ve said.” She stared forward as he moved again, coming back to face her. “I told you, I’m not willing to let them continue to kill and maim, and you shouldn’t be either. We can stop them. My uncle, Samuel Tyler, is a Senator and close to the President. He’s waiting to do whatever is necessary. I have seven brothers, each one doing their part, and my father is willing to put every resource he has within his paper to back you. We have to make them stop.”
“And you think this will stop them?” he asked her incredulously. “Your innocence is to be envied, Ms. Tyler. It’s actually quite frightening. You can’t take these people down.”
She had to. She couldn’t stand to live if they managed to kill him. He was proud, determined and too damned remarkable in his very humanity to allow them to murder him. She had to convince him that his only safety lay in revealing the horrors he had escaped.
“You know who they are. You know what they are. You have the rest of the proof that we need to stop them,” she argued determinedly. “Your mother died because of this.”
“My mother was a victim of a random crime,” he growled. “Had the Council struck her, she would have disappeared and her body returned to me in pieces. The Council did not destroy her.”
“There was no sign of theft.” Merinus had read the police report. “It was a personal crime, Mr. Lyons. Whoever killed her wanted her dead.”
Merinus hadn’t come to this place unprepared. Her father had made certain she knew everything involving Maria Morales’ death and the evidence they had against the Council.
“And they succeeded. But it wasn’t the Council.” He stared down at her, his eyes hard, furious. “I know their scent, I know the stench of their evil. As cloying and cold as the scent of your arousal is sweet and hot.”
Merinus opened her mouth to argue until the last words penetrated her brain. She felt her face flush, her heart rate increase. She stared at him in surprise. How had he known?
“Explain to me why a young, innocent woman is standing here before me, her cunt wet and prepared for an animal? And I am an animal, sugar, unlike any you will ever know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Merinus trembled beneath Callan’s regard. His amber eyes almost glowed, his voice lowered, husky. A quick, very brief glance below his h*ps showed a bulge that made her more than nervous. Evidently, she wasn’t the only one afflicted. And an affliction more than described it. She felt fevered, her skin sensitive, ready for his touch. It was unlike anything she had ever known. It was unlike anything she ever wanted to know.
“I don’t know.” She heard the nervousness in her voice, the confusion. The longer she stayed in his presence, the worse the temptation to touch him was growing. She stared at his chest, no longer able to stare into his eyes. Those amber depths drew her in, made her want, made her need things she wasn’t certain she should want. She flinched when his fingers gripped her chin, uncertain, almost frightened now. Had he not been aware of the desires flaring in her body, she could have handled this. Could have handled the direct look from his eyes, the caress of his fingers against her chin. She ran her tongue nervously over her dry lips, aware of the sudden fullness in them, the ache, the throb just beneath the skin. His eyes narrowed. His thumb reached out, running experimentally over the soft curve, picking up the moisture from her mouth. Her chest tightened as she tried to breathe normally. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to fill her lungs sufficiently. She felt the need to fight for breath, to release the moan she held there.
“You’re dangerous.” There was that growl again, rumbling just beneath the surface of his words.
“Whatever this is, Merinus, could mean our lives.”
“Anomaly.” She bit her lip. She had no answers for this.
A mocking curve of his lips showed his disagreement.
“There is no such thing as an anomaly when dealing with one such as I,” he assured her. “I’m instinct, Merinus. An animal barely disguised. Any response is one to fear.”
“Not an animal.” She shook her head, seeing the bitterness in his eyes. She drew away from his touch quickly. He made her body weak, pliant. She needed all her wits about her now.
“What would you call it then?” There was a thread of anger running through his voice. “If I did as you asked, and by some miracle of God did not end up dead, then I would be known as America’s Freak. More experiments, more tests. At least this way, I’m free. As long as I can run faster than their soldiers and hide better than their trackers, then I can survive.”
“And is survival enough?” she asked him, angry that he didn’t want more. “What about those who will come later? The poor souls that meet their killing criteria? Don’t you feel in some way responsible to stop it?”
Cynicism washed over his expression.
“So passionate,” he murmured, leaning against the wall, his arms crossing over his chest as he watched her. “I’m one man—”
“With a nation that will back him,” she argued desperately.
“Your innocence is to be commended, Merinus,” he bit out, straightening now, stalking closer to her.
“As are your motives. But you have no idea of the piece you’ve bitten off here. It’s bound to choke you.”
He gripped her arm, jerking her against his body, allowing his erection to cushion against her stomach. Merinus breathed in harshly, her hands bracing against his chest as he locked her to him.
“You spout off with your morality and your ideas of justice, and all the while your juices froth from your cunt, tempting me, driving me insane with the scent. It’s not the story you want and it’s not justice. You want to be f**ked by the Cat Man. Admit it.”
He gripped her hips, ground himself against her. Merinus gasped out, fighting against the slow relaxation of her body against his, the needs suddenly swamping her. Where had they come from?
“I don’t know why,” she cried out hoarsely, shaking her head. “It wasn’t like this before I came here. I only wanted to help you.”