"You're a strong woman," he finally said softly. "Megan said the heat is impossible to ignore, even with the hormones."
"What do you want me to say, Lance?" She swallowed tightly. "This isn't a comfortable situation for me."
"Why? You were comfortable enough that night in the bar to come home with me. What's changed, Harmony?"
"A one-night stand…"
"Have a lot of those, do you?" he asked mildly.
"No." She shook her head, confusion tearing through her. Where the hell was her selfcontrol, her ability to smack a man in place with no more than a look?
She stared back at him, his scent wrapping around her, affecting her senses in a way that threw her system into chaos. Nervous awareness sizzled along her nerve endings as her breathing began to roughen and the arousal began to grow.
"So why should it be different now?" he asked her.
"You weren't a weakness then," she snapped, jumping to her feet as she wrapped her arms over her br**sts and paced to the doorway. "You're a weakness now." He didn't move; he just lay there.
"Running away, Harmony?" he asked as though she intended to do just that.
"This conversation is pointless."
"You can't run away from yourself forever. Aren't you tired of running by now?" Harmony turned back to him, knowing she wasn't hiding the effect his accusation had on her.
"Hiding is the only way to survive," she whispered. "Do you believe Jonas was the only person searching for me the last ten years, Lance? Or the only one to get close?
Eventually, my enemies will find me. When they do, they'll strike where I'm weak."
"Chemistry doesn't bind you to another person, Harmony. Emotion binds." She stared back at him in shock. Emotion?
"I have no emotions," she snapped. "Unless you count vengeance."
"Then you have no weakness." He shrugged. "Your enemies can't use what you care nothing about."
She stared back at him, pressing her lips together as she clenched her teeth on the furious words threatening to fall from her lips.
"A one-night stand does not a lover make, darling." His smile was faintly sardonic.
"So I should just become your little bedmate and forget the danger in it?" she snapped. His brow arched slowly. "I wasn't asking you for sex, Harmony. I was trying to get to know you. I was pointing out how stubborn and willful you are. Not trying to find out how easy you would fall into my bed."
"I've had to be stubborn. Strong," she bit out. "I would have died that first year I escaped if I hadn't been."
The year Dane Vanderale had found her, broken, all but dead. He had saved her, just as he had saved her many times since.
"Yeah, there were a few notes in your file concerning that first year." He nodded as though the information were general knowledge. "The Coyotes sent after you reported you were wounded, severely. They would have caught you if they hadn't been diverted by an unknown team of men."
One of the Coyotes must have lived. She had hoped she had taken them out. There had been two, merciless and bloodthirsty.
"I don't know about that." She shook her head firmly. "I just know I escaped. That was all that mattered to me."
"You were fifteen years old, severely wounded and alone," he pointed out. "Yet you survived."
"What's your point?"
Harmony watched Lance warily now. He was fishing for information, which meant he knew something. Something more than her file had provided for him.
She remembered well the fight between those two Coyotes. Running on nerves alone, hungry, exhausted, they had nearly taken her. Instead, she had escaped when two shadowed figures had jumped into the fray.
The knife wounds she had carried had nearly been fatal once infection and fever had set in. The wounds had been too deep, and her body too weak to fight. She would have died if Dane hadn't found her.
He was the son of an African industrialist, a rogue and a man who followed his own rules. At that time, he had been tracking the Coyote Breed who had been sent to kill a friend of his, a young man who knew more than he should have. His death had not been easy. And neither had the Coyote's after Dane had caught up with him. The secretiveness of his work was imperative for him to succeed in his goal of helping the Breeds destroy the Genetics Council. If it were ever learned that the heir to the vast holdings of Vanderale Enterprises was no more than a vigilante, it could destroy all his family held. It was a secret Harmony had sworn to carry to her grave.
"How did you escape, Harmony?" He lay there asking the question as though the subject meant no more than the weather. He wasn't demanding answers, he wasn't interrogating her. He was asking.
"I had help," she whispered. "Two men heard the fight. I ran while they distracted the Coyotes."
"Why did the Coyotes say they didn't have a scent?" A light frown furrowed his brow.
"The interrogation reports stated that the Coyotes swore there was no identifying scent. Does everyone have a scent to the Breeds?"
"Yes." She nodded slowly. "Everyone has a scent."
"Is it unique, or can it be disguised by perfumes and whatnot?"
"It's unique," she answered carefully, watching him warily. She knew where this was going and was helpless to prevent it.
"So, why would the two men who saved your butt have no scent?" He frowned as he laid the remote on the floor and scratched, rather absently, at the hard, well-muscled flesh of his abdomen.
The movement lifted his T-shirt, flashing the dark tough skin before he allowed his hand to rest there. Harmony fought to drag in enough oxygen to make her brain work again. Dammit, she was a cold-blooded assassin, not his sex kitten. But at the moment, the sex kitten was definitely making itself known.
"I'm not certain." She really didn't understand the process, so she wasn't technically lying to him. Right?
"But you have an idea?"
Harmony stared back at him suspiciously.
"Why all the questions? What does this have to do with the fact that a mate is a weakness and I'm not willing to play the sex kitten for you?"
"Sex kitten?" Wicked amusement lit his eyes then. "I hadn't thought of that one, but I like the idea. I like it a whole lot."