“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be here with me?” He kept his tone low, but the menace was there.

Her gaze flicked over him, filled with contempt, filled with revulsion. “Do you have any idea how dirty I feel standing here in this room with you?” she countered. “What am I supposed to call you this time? Do you have a name?”

He shouldn’t tell her, but what the hell difference did it make now? She belonged to him and she was in the jungle. She’d brought him to her—sent for him. “Conner Vega,” he answered, his gaze locked on hers, daring her to accuse him of lying. His voice wasn’t quite normal, but at least he hadn’t killed her companion. He’d held on long enough to get control and had allowed Rio to get the man out of harm’s way. Death was in his eyes. He knew that, just as pure loathing was in hers.

Her eyebrow shot up. She made a little moue with her lips. She radiated heat mixed with fury. His heart jumped. His cock reacted, engorged and hot. Need punched, hard and mean. His crime was unforgivable. He understood that intellectually, but the animal in him refused to accept it. She was his—that’s what the animal understood. She was alive, in the same world and she belonged to him. And right now, her body was throwing off enough pheromones to draw every male within a hundred miles. He drew a deep, shuddering breath of air into his lungs and held on grimly to his control.

“Is that your real name?”

“Yes. Why did you bring me here, Isabeau?”

Breath hissed out between her teeth. She had small white teeth. Her leopard was different—rare. A clouded leopard perhaps. There were so few of them. She was curvy, yet streamlined, muscles fluid beneath her skin, the mark of their species, her hair thick and long, nearly impossible to keep short. She didn’t know her own power; he recognized that as well. She didn’t know she was safe from him and her fear beat at him. Ugly. Like a sin. A man’s woman should never be afraid of him or his strength.

“I left Borneo because I didn’t want to take a chance of running into you. I can do my work here, the plants and species I’m looking for are in this rain forest. I needed a guide and the Embera tribe was kind enough to provide one for me.”

And her guide would have been a man. A growl rumbled in his throat and he turned away from her, unable to keep his leopard from leaping at the scent of her, at the idea of her in close proximity with a man. He closed his eyes, trying not to allow the vision of her body wrapped around someone other than him.