After the claiming bite of his leopard she doubted it would register. That brought her up short. She knew Alonzo was a scary, dangerous man. He was fast. He was some kind of crime lord leading other leopards, all scary, dangerous men. She knew his leopard was the same, even worse, driving him all the time, yet when the cat had claimed its mate, it had been weirdly gentle. Everything it had done had been done to soothe her while it held her pinned. It didn’t rake her or claw. It gave her a low purr that was strange in a leopard.

“You were goin’ to let me go.”

“I wanted to let you go. You deserve a white knight, Evangeline. I’m a dark knight, not like you deserve. I’ll never be that man. I can’t give you the life you crave. You made up your mind to live among humans and stay away from shifters. More, you were so determined to live clean you turned your back on your family name. I wanted that for you. I tried to give it to you, but I couldn’t stay away. When I’m close to you, my leopard is calm. In all the years of my life, he’s never been that way. I’ve never been that way. When I’m with you, there’s peace. I need that and crave it the way my body craves you.”

He couldn’t say those things to her. She didn’t want to hear them. She couldn’t hear them, not if she was going to stay strong. She knew what a vicious leopard could do to its human counterpart. Alonzo was a violent man. He just was. There was no getting around that. His leopard drove him, and once unleashed, the savagery of a leopard had few comparisons. It wouldn’t matter how calm she made him, he would go his own way. She could see that in him just like now, when she told him to leave and he didn’t.

She shook her head as he applied a triple antibiotic cream and then put a large round Band-Aid over the bite.

“You kissed me back.”

Her heart jerked hard in her chest. A thousand butterflies took wing in her stomach. She’d done that. She had. “I didn’t mean to.” She knew how absurd that sounded, but it was all she had. She truly hadn’t thought she would kiss him back. There’d been nothing else to do. Her mind had melted and there’d been only her body responding.