“The woman that bore you sent that dream catcher.” His grandfather pointed to the web, dripping with crystals and feathers that hung from the corner of the living room wall. “She made me promise I’d keep it here with you. Animals don’t have dreams though, do they, boy?” he snapped angrily. “It takes a soul to dream.”
Kiowa lowered his head, staring down at his hands. He had dreams, soft gentle dreams of a mother singing lullabies, her voice whispering around him.
“Be a good boy, Kiowa. Find your soul…”
His soul. “What was a soul?” the child he had been had questioned daily. It seemed to him that if one had a soul, they wouldn’t leave a child alone. They wouldn’t leave a child cold, shivering in a shack alone, uncaring of the fears that kept it from sleep.
Did mothers have a soul? he had wondered. How could they have and give their child into the care of such a man?
“You were created, Kiowa,” his grandfather had snarled. “Created and forced on a helpless woman. Evil created you and the evil they put in you will destroy you. I should have drowned you like an unwanted pup when you were born.”
Kiowa stood beneath the pounding spray of the shower and sighed wearily. The memories were brutal and ones he wished he could banish forever. He should have known better than to leave the life he had created for himself and taken a job that would give him time to reflect.
Amanda made him think of all the soft, gentle things he had once dreamed would be his. At fourteen, leaving the mountain, he had sworn that he would one day have everything his grandfather had made certain he had done without. Instead, Kiowa had learned that the dreams, the magic lives he had seen on the television, were all an illusion. And through the years, he hadn’t let himself forget it. Until Amanda.
Soft, gentle Amanda.
Her laughter had stolen his heart before he had ever touched her. The magic of her smile and the gentleness of her voice had soothed a part of him that he hadn’t known still ached. She had made him dream and damn if that didn’t hurt.
His lips quirked in wry mockery as he jerked the washrag from the small rack he had placed it on and soaped it quickly.
The mating was a biological, hormonal reaction. It wasn’t emotional. It wouldn’t miraculously make a woman love what she couldn’t accept. Just as motherhood didn’t.
“They told her the abomination they were placing in her body,” his grandfather raged at him when Kiowa had dared to suggest he was a child, not an animal. “They showed her the creatures they had whelped so far, mewling, disgusting little animals that looked like a babe and sounded like an animal. You’re no more than they were. Forced on her. She birthed you because her conscience wouldn’t allow her to do otherwise. But you sickened her from the day you were born…”
Kiowa flinched at that memory before scrubbing his face roughly with the soapy rag. It was over, but it still had the power to make him bleed. Amanda saw him as an animal, forced upon her by the mating heat, too hard, too rough for the dreams she had. She wanted more than she thought he could give her, and at the end of the day, Kiowa always prided himself on his honesty, if nothing else. There was very little he could give her.
He had enough money from the less than legitimate work he had done over the years, so she wouldn’t miss the material things she was used to, because he could provide them. But she was still President Vernon Marion’s daughter. Raised to marry an acceptable, elite member of society and to know she was not meant for the dregs of humanity. Kiowa was the dregs of humanity. Hell, some days, he wondered if there was even any humanity left within him.
Long minutes later, freshly showered and dressed in jeans and black t-shirt, he left the bathroom and stared at Amanda as she sat silently in the middle of the bed. She stared back at him with chilly silence, her hazel eyes resentful.
“I’ll fix breakfast. You have half an hour,” he informed her quietly, pushing the dark needs and his own anger deep into the place he had created for them years ago.
“You have half an hour to think then.” She rose from the bed, staring back at him with haughty distain.
“You can discuss this, and come to a reasonable solution, or you can start making plans on how best to lock me up. Because this is not going to continue.”
“I hope ham and eggs work for you,” he said calmly. “I’ll have to go down to the storehouse later.”
Her lips thinned furiously. “Fix whatever the hell you like. You’ll be eating it alone. And think about this, Kiowa. The vote on Breed Law comes up day after tomorrow. How long do you think you can force me to stay here after that?”
She swept past him, her head held high, her hair swirling around her like a short earthen cape as she stomped to the bathroom.
“Never thought I could keep you to begin with,” he murmured, quietly. “But that doesn’t keep a fool from trying.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
He was placing the eggs and ham on plates when she walked from the bedroom. Her long hair was still damp, her face pale as she flicked a glance at him.
“Call Dr. Grace back up here,” she stated her demand clearly, her voice snapping with authority. “I want those blood tests now.”
The arousal was feeding through her body; he could smell it, hotter, brighter than ever before and she was snapping orders at him like a general in the middle of a war zone. Unfortunately for her, Kiowa hadn’t joined the Armed Forces simply because he wasn’t enamored of orders.
“Eat your breakfast,” he growled instead. “Then we’ll see if we can’t do something to improve your mood.”
The smell of her heat was making his mouth water to taste it, to feel it consuming him. Her head raised slowly, her eyes glittering with fury, with lust when she straightened her shoulders and said, “Over my dead body. I refuse to f**k you again until I’ve finished those tests.”
He frowned at that. He knew how painful the arousal could become. Could she really keep the stubbornness intact that long?
He smiled slowly, remembering the first time, how she had pleaded so sweetly, so heatedly.
“No.”
Strangely, a look of hurt passed across her face, as though he had wounded her with that one word.
“I’m not hungry,” she said then and turned for the door, swinging it open forcibly before stalking out to the porch, and God only knew how much further.