“You call this fine? I’m a wreck. I’m so mixed up,” she admitted. Because her pride was already long gone. He could smell her arousal, her body’s call to him. There were no secrets between leopards. “I can’t even think straight.” She pushed a shaky hand through her hair—the strands he’d just brushed a caress over. She couldn’t deny the mating thing, not really, not when her body was insane for his, but she was still human and she had a brain. She had to find control. “Maybe everything you’re saying about the leopard and the mate is the truth, but I refuse to allow it to rule me.”

“You have so much more power than you realize, Isabeau, but it will come to you,” he assured.

She hated the gentleness in his voice—the caress—that sexy note that stroked her already raw nerves. Now that she knew it was practice, a tool of his trade, one would think she wouldn’t be susceptible, but it seemed her body believed him in spite of her brain.

“I’ll teach you the things you need to know to live with your cat. You’ll find you already have the strength and power to deal with her. She won’t accept any other male and she’ll drive you toward me, but you already know that.”

“She isn’t going to get her way.”

“Look at me.”

The quiet command in his voice was impossible to resist. She found herself looking into the eyes of his cat and it was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. His eyes had gone so yellow they were golden and lethal, a cat’s deadly stare, wholly focused and possessive.

“It isn’t any different for me. No other woman would be accepted by my cat. When you slapped me you left your mark in my skin, on my bones. Your cat claimed me whether you knew what you were doing or not. I can’t sleep. I can barely function. I’m edgy and moody and two breaths away from fighting every moment of the day. That’s the reality, Isabeau. I have to accept it just as you do.”

He was telling the truth. She saw it in his eyes. Heard it in his voice. She shouldn’t have felt satisfaction, but it was there, as petty as that was. One more thing to hate about herself, but if she spent her life craving a man she could never be with, he could damn well pine away for her. She let her breath out and some of the tension eased from her taut muscles.

“I didn’t know. About the mark. I didn’t know.”

“I know. Your cat knew. She was angry and she had every right to be. Let’s call a truce until we get the children home safe. We’ll sort this out later.”