With the passenger door swinging open, the Jeep sped ahead and drove up onto the sidewalk, jerking to a stop several feet in front of her and blocking the driveway to her dry cleaner’s. Claire stopped and stared at those red parking lights warily. The driver’s door thrust open and Gideon climbed out. He marched toward her, his lean figure cutting through the rain like a blade, eyes unblinking against the deluge of water sluicing down the hard planes of his face. Hands fisted at his sides, he stopped in front of her. Her head fell back to glare at him.

“Are you getting in?”

She hesitated, staring at the unyielding set of his mouth and reading the determination in his face to have his way, to win. He wouldn’t accept anything less than her total surrender. She knew that. Just as she knew she could not—would not—give in to his bullying. She’d been bullied enough in her life. No more.

She found the will to lift her voice over the pounding rain. “No!”

Gideon had seen this in a movie before. Girl won’t get in the car. Guy demands she does. Girl tells him to go to hell right before guy flings her over his shoulder in a caveman display of dominance. If Claire wanted to play that girl, then he would be more than happy to oblige her and play his part.

Bending, he grabbed her by the knees and flung her over his shoulder. She screeched and pummeled the backs of his thighs with her fists. He was well aware she didn’t hit like a girl—not with the lycan blood coursing through her veins—and that first blow nearly brought him down.

“Let me go!” she demanded over the steady beat of rain.

“Can’t.” Grinning, he adjusted her more comfortably on his shoulder and suffered her punches. “You’d fall on your head and break your neck.”

She jabbed a fist into his back, grinding her knuckles into his spine and nearly upsetting his balance on the slippery sidewalk. He delivered a loud smack to her rear end. “Stop that or we’ll both fall and crack our heads.”

“Well, that wouldn’t kill me, would it?” she retorted.

“Smart-ass,” he grumbled, dumping her in the passenger seat.

He was half afraid she would bolt when he left her to walk around to the driver’s side, but she wisely stayed put. Slamming his door shut, he turned to look at her. With her wet hair plastered to her head, she reminded him of a drowned cat. Her chest rose and fell with ragged breaths, her dusky nipples pebble hard through her soaked shirt. His hands itched to take hold of them, to taste them through her wet bra and shirt.

She stared ahead, not looking his way, ignoring him.