“Not here,” he said. “Not now. This is going to be your home. Right here. My Cat’s Lair. It’s all yours, Catarina, so do whatever you want to it.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“I want a home. I figure you know what you’re doing in that department a whole hell of a lot more than I do. And baby, working in the coffee-house, I don’t care how loose you wore your clothes, every man for miles was already lining up trying to figure out how to get in your pants. With your face and body and all that hair, hell woman, men were leaving the bar early to come to the coffee-house just to see you. Most of them were jacking off in the restroom at the sound of your voice, and the image of you in their heads.”

She gasped. “That is so not true. I was flying under the radar. And men don’t see me like that.”

“I’m a man, Kitten. What the hell do you think I was doing every night after leaving you?”

She blushed again. “Seriously, Eli, the way you talk to me is so crude sometimes.”

He kept his eyes on her face. “That bother you, baby? The way I talk?”

She opened her mouth to say something quickly, a fast answer, but then she stopped herself and shook her head. “Not really.”

“Growing up the way you did, I figured maybe the way I talk wouldn’t bother you so much. I go undercover for months at a time, Cat. The places I go, the people I rub shoulders with, they aren’t the kind that talk polite. I talk this way because if I don’t think this way, I’m a dead man.”

“I understand. It doesn’t bother me. I just never thought in terms of a man looking at me and needing to go into a restroom for . . . um . . . relief.”

“It’s the truth. You wouldn’t have lasted another two weeks without drama. I was going to have to kick some ass, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“You would have kicked ass for me?”

“Baby, I would kill for you. Man touches you, he isn’t going to live long. Not then and not now.”

“Don’t say that, Eli. He said that. I don’t want you to say that ever again.”

“I know, Cat, I know he said it, but I mean it in a different way. I mean any man who tries to harm you.”

She let her breath out slowly, clearly not wanting to continue the subject. “Why has my leopard gone so quiet all of a sudden? Could I have missed her emerging window? I didn’t want her to appear. Maybe I repressed her with all my doubts.”