“Do you grill it in butter?”

His white teeth flashed and then disappeared. A small grin, but every cell in her body reacted. He was beautiful. Handsome.

“Is there any other way?”

“Nope.” She could look at him forever. When she was a teenager she’d stared at pictures of him, spent hours studying him from every angle. She especially liked his wild hair and his exotic, unusual eyes. Silver. Gray. Dark. He had so many different colors to his eyes depending on his mood. Now she knew part of that was his leopard.

“Elijah? Why would my grandfather want you dead? Why would he want any of them dead? When I confronted him, he said he had to strike before you did. What did that mean?”

She kept her eyes on him, leopard eyes, using the sight that allowed her to see six times better than her human eyes in the dark. She used her leopard senses to listen for a lie. She wanted to catch every change in his body language.

Elijah sighed. “These are things you don’t need to know or worry about, Siena. That life, that part of my life, should never touch you. It will, but I’d prefer to keep it to a minimum. You knowing anything puts you at risk.”

There was honesty in his voice. She didn’t hear the slightest hint of subterfuge, and she listened for it.

“I’m already at risk,” she pointed out. “I’m sitting here with you, Elijah, in your kitchen. In your shirt. Your baby in my womb. Your cock was just inside of me. I’m already at risk, and I want to know what risk there is for my child before I make any commitment to you.”

The moment the words came out of her mouth, his gaze jumped to hers. Glittery. Slashing. Silver this time. Dark silver. Cutting silver. His leopard was there, stamped on his face, a predatory animal, all male and very, very dominant. He had gone completely still. A statue, standing there on the other side of the aisle, frozen in place, a frying pan in his fist.

She didn’t fool herself that she was safe. She knew what a leopard could do. One jump could cover sixty feet easily. She was far less than sixty feet away from him.

“You’re sitting in my kitchen. In my shirt. My baby in your womb. My cock was just inside of you, and deep inside, you’ve still got my seed. Make no mistake, Siena. None. You’re already committed to me. You made that commitment when you gave your body to me. When I came inside you and your eyes went dazed and that beauty was on your face. Don’t think you can give that to me and then take it back. Because, baby, that shit is fucking not going to happen. Not ever.”