He stroked a caress down her silky hair, his fingers lingering on the nape of her neck. “Of course you’re part of them, whether or not you have a leopard. You would still have all the instincts. I was injured some time back and couldn’t shift. I’ve been shifting since I was a boy. For the first time I experienced what it would be like for someone of our blood to have all the drives of a leopard without being able to unleash it.”

She took a sip of her water. Fascinated, he watched her throat work. The sun bathed her soft skin in a golden glow. He was fast becoming addicted to the sweep of her long lashes and her expressive face. He knew he was intrigued with her, drawn to her by more than the chemistry of their leopards. Her lack of guile appealed to him. The fact that he could occasionally catch glimpses of that sultry, sexy woman hidden beneath her innocent face only added to the appeal.

“What do you mean by that?” She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand and turned her head to look directly at him.

His heart lurched. Those enormous dark eyes seemed a deep well he was in danger of falling into. Drake would have laughed if someone had told him just a few days earlier how fast and hard he would fall for a woman, but now . . . He was so far under her spell he knew there was no way out. He wanted to be lost in her forever.

“Leopards are moody, cruel, cunning, and passionate. Trap all those intense emotions into a body without an outlet, and you could have a very disturbed individual.” His fingers settled on the nape of her neck a little possessively.

She didn’t move away from him, rather snuggled closer to him, her thigh sliding against his as she reached for Pauline’s famous sweet dough lemon pie. The container was chilled to keep the pie as cold as possible.

“I feel moody sometimes,” Saria admitted as she carefully extracted the pie from the container. “Especially when someone tries to tell me what to do.”

He laughed. He’d never seen anyone enjoy food the way she seemed to—she seemed to enjoy life more than anyone he’d been around. She just lived each moment, in the moment.

“It’s true,” she said and held out the lemon pie to him. “You have to taste this. No one does a sweet dough lemon pie the way Pauline does. She Paus amazing. When I was little I’d go to her house nearly every day and she’d teach me to cook. She never got annoyed with me, or impatient, and she made the lessons fun. I love to cook because of her.”