Instead of swearing in defeat, Clay bared his teeth in a ruthless grin, knowing something the driver didn't, something that turned his pursuit from stupid to sensible. The leopard might react on instinct, but the human side of Clay's mind was functioning just fine. As the driver would be discovering right about...now!
The Jeep screeched to a halt, probably avoiding the rubble blocking the road by bare centimeters. The landslide had occurred only forty-five minutes ago. Usually DarkRiver would have already taken care of it, but because another small landslide had occurred in almost the exact same spot two days ago, this one had been left until it - and the affected slope - could be assessed by experts. If she'd been inside the bar, she'd have heard the announcement and known to take a detour.
But she hadn't been in the bar. She'd been hiding outside.
By the time he reached the spot, the driver was trying to back out. But she kept stalling, her panic causing her to overload the computronics that controlled the vehicle. He could smell the sharp, clean bite of her fear, but it was the oddly familiar yet indefinably wrong scent under the fear mask that had him determined to see her face.
Breathing hard but not truly winded, he came to a stop in the middle of the road behind her, daring her to run him over. Because he wasn't letting her get away. He didn't know who the hell she was, but she smelled disturbingly like Tally and he wanted to know why.
Five minutes later, the driver stopped trying to restart the car. Dust settled, revealing the vehicle's rental plates. The birds started singing again. Still he waited...until, at last, the door slid open and back. A slender leg covered in dark blue denim and a black ankle-length boot touched the ground.
His beast went preternaturally quiet as a hand emerged to close over the door and slide it even farther back. Freckled skin, the barest hint of a tan. A small female form unfolding itself out of the Jeep. Even fully out, she stood with her back to him for several long minutes. He didn't do anything to force her to turn, didn't make any aggressive sounds. Instead, he took the chance to drink in the sight of her.
She was unquestionably small, but not fragile, not easily breakable. There was strength in the straight line of her spine, but also a softness that promised a cushion for a hard male body. The woman had curves. Lush, sweet, curves. Her butt filled out the seat of her jeans perfectly, arousing the deeply sexual instincts of both man and cat. He wanted to bite, to shape, to pet.
Clenching his fists, he stayed in place and forced his gaze upward. It would, he thought, be easy to lift her up by the waist so he could kiss her without getting a crick in his neck. And he planned to kiss this woman who smelled like Talin. His beast kept growling that she was his and, right this second, he wasn't feeling civilized enough to argue. That would come later, after he had discovered the truth about this ghost. Until then, he would drown in the rush of wild sexuality, in the familiar-yet-not scent of her.
Even her hair was that same unusual shade as Talin's - a deep, tawny gold streaked with chocolate brown. A mane, he'd always called it. Akin to the incredible variations of color in a leopard's fur, something that outsiders often missed. To a fellow leopard, however, those variations were as obvious as spotlights. As was this woman's hair. Beautiful. Thick. Unique.
"Talin," he said softly, surrendering completely to the madness.
Her spine stiffened, but at last, she turned.
And the entire world stopped breathing.
Chapter 2
"Hello, Clay."
Air rushed back into his body with the force of a body blow. A roar built in his throat, but he didn't release it, violently aware of the acrid fear scent coming off her in waves.
Son of a bitch! Tally was scared of him. She might as well have taken a knife to his heart. "Come here, Tally."
She rubbed her hands on her thighs, shook her head. "I came to talk to you, that's all."
"This is your way of talking to me? By taking off?" He told himself to shut it, to not snarl at her. This was the first conversation they had had in two decades. But it felt as if they had spoken yesterday, it was so natural, so effortless. Except for her fear. "Were you going to stop the car anytime soon?"
She swallowed. "I was planning to talk to you at the bar."
The leopard had had enough. Moving with the preternatural speed of his kind, he was an inch from her before she could draw in the breath to scream. "You're supposed to be dead." He let her see the rage inside of him, rage that had had twenty long years to ferment. Ferment and spread until it infused every vein in his body. "They lied to me."
"Yes, I know...I knew."
He froze in sheer disbelief. "You what?" All this time while he'd been tracking a ghost, he'd been absolutely certain that he had been lied to, and without Talin's knowledge. It had destroyed him that she was out there thinking he'd broken his promise to return to her. Never once had he considered that she might have been a willing participant.
Eyes the color of storm clouds met his. "I asked them to tell you I was killed in a car crash."
The knife twisted so deep, it carved a hole in his soul. "Why?"
"You wouldn't let me be, Clay," she whispered, torment a vicious beast in those big gray eyes ringed by a thin band of amber. "I was with a good family, trying to live a normal life" - her lips twisted - "or as normal as I knew how to live. But I couldn't relax. I could feel you hunting me the second you left juvie. Twelve years old and I didn't dare close my eyes in case you found me in my dreams!"
The leopard who lived inside of him bared its teeth in a growl. "You were mine to protect!"
"No!" She fisted her hands, rejection writ in every tense line of her body. "I was never yours!"
Beast and man both staggered under the vicious blow of her repudiation. Most people thought he was too much like the ice-cold Psy, that he didn't feel. At that moment, he wished that were the truth. The last time he'd hurt this badly - as if his soul was being lacerated by a thousand stinging whips - had been the day he'd gotten out of juvenile hall. His first act had been to call Social Services.
"I'm sorry, Clay. Talin died three months ago."
"What?" His mind a blank, his future dreams wiped out by a wall of black. "No."
"It was a car crash."
"No!"
It had driven him to his knees, torn him to pieces from the inside out. But the depth of that hurt, the cutting, tearing pain, was nothing to this rejection. Yet in spite of the blood she'd drawn, he still wanted to - no, needed to - touch her. However, when he raised a hand, she flinched.
She couldn't have done anything designed to cause more harm to his protective animal heart. He fought the pain as he always did - by shutting away the softness and letting the rage out to roam. These days, he rarely stopped being angry. But today, the hurt refused to die. It clawed through him, threatening to make him bleed.
"I never hurt you," he grit out between clenched teeth.
"I can't forget the blood, Clay." Her voice shook. "I can't forget."
Neither could he. "I saw your death certificate." After the first shock had passed, he'd known it for a lie. But..."I need to know that you're real, that you're alive."
This time, when he raised his hand to her cheek, she didn't flinch. But neither did she lean into his touch as she'd always done as a child. Her skin was delicate, honey-colored. Freckles danced across the bridge of her nose and along her cheekbones. "You haven't been staying out of the sun."
She gave him a startled look followed by a shy smile that hit him like a kick to the gut. "Never was much good at that."
At least she hadn't changed in that respect. But so much about her had changed. His Tally had come running into his arms every day for five of the happiest years of his life, looking to him as her protector and friend. Now, she pushed at his hand until he dropped it, the silent reiteration of her rejection searing a cold burn across his soul. It made his voice harsh when he said, "If you hate me so much, why did you find me?" Why couldn't she have left him his memories - of a girl who had seen in him only goodness?
Those memories were all he'd had left in his fight to stay in the light. He had always carried darkness inside his heart but now it beckoned every waking minute, whispering silvery promises of the peace to be found in not feeling, not hurting. Even the powerful bonds of Pack were no longer strong enough to hold him, not when the lure of violence beat at him night and day, hour after hour, second after excruciating second.
Talin's eyes widened. "I don't hate you. I could never hate you."
"Answer the question, Talin." He wouldn't call her Tally again. She wasn't his Tally, the sole human being who had ever loved his misbegotten soul before he'd been dragged into DarkRiver. This was Talin, a stranger. "You want something."
Her cheeks blazed with fire. "I need help."
He could never turn her away, no matter what. But he listened impassively, his tenderness for her threatening to twist into something that wanted to strike out and hurt. If he betrayed the depth of his fury, if he sent her running again, it might just push him over the final deadly edge.
"I need someone dangerous enough to take on a monster."
"So you came to a natural-born killer."
She flinched again, then snapped her spine straight. "I came to the strongest person I've ever known."
He snorted. "You wanted to talk. So talk."
She looked out past his shoulder. "Could we do it somewhere more private? People might drive up here."
"I don't take strangers to my lair." Clay was pissed and when he got pissed, he got mean.
Talin tipped up her chin in a gesture of bravado that sent flickers of memory arcing through his mind. "Fine. We can go to my apartment in San Francisco."
"Like hell." He occasionally worked in DarkRiver's business HQ near Chinatown, but that HQ was built for cats. It didn't hem him in. "I spent four years in a cage." That didn't count the fourteen he'd passed in the small boxlike apartments he and his mother had called home. "I don't do well inside walls."