CHAPTER TWELVE
Claudia~
She shouldn’t be finding his vow that he found Jimmy adorable so reassuring. But she did. She was having a hard time taking it in. She was married to this cougar. This tall, broad-shouldered, red-hot alpha male who rejoiced in being a hunter. And who had promised to teach her son to handle his inner beast.
Ever since her father had let slip to Jimmy that he was going to grow up to be a cougar, her son had been pretending to be a cat. And for the last few days all he had talked about was his new friend, Cat. The penny dropped.
“You played with Jimmy. In cougar.” Even to her own ears she sounded accusatory.
His gold eyes surveyed her for a long while. They narrowed a trifle and then he smiled his devastating smile. “Yup. We played hide and seek and then I brought him home. He’s a friendly little fellow. Fearless.” He obviously thought that last was desirable.
“Foolish. Reckless,” she snapped.
“Well, sure. He’s three. He’s smart but he needs to grow some common-sense. Nothing two parents can’t handle.” His words were reassuring and she felt reassured. They could be a team and raise Jimmy right.
What was wrong with this picture? For a start, she had difficulty imagining anyone, even the head of his clan, ordering Ryan to do anything he did not want to do. That meant that on some level he wanted this marriage. Why?
She already knew that he could perceive her shield. Her shield! When had she dropped it? Ryan was sitting beside her holding her hand in his huge one. Gently, delicately, possessively. He felt it the minute she became aware of his light clasp. He smiled that heart-melting, panty-wetting grin, kissed her knuckles, and released her hand.
Her panties were soaking. How mortifying. He was worse for her self-control than Dominic had been. Dominic! How closely related were Ryan and Jimmy’s father? She swallowed the frog in her throat.
“What are your brothers’ names?” she croaked.
His golden eyes sharpened. He got it at once. “That could be awkward. Adam, Brandon, Peter,” he articulated the names slowly, fearfully.
“Adam is the one who got married four years ago?”
“And bought this lighthouse. He and Paige have six-month-old twin boys.”
“Oh. Their first children?” she asked.
“Their first. I have ten other nieces and nephews. To say nothing of the children of my cousins.”
“Jimmy’s brothers and sisters,” she said sadly.
“Some of them. But it’s probably better he be friends with his siblings thinking they are cousins, than miss out altogether.”
Ryan was right. But he was leaving something out.
“Why are you willing to give up marrying your fated mate to marry me?” She asked what had to be asked.
He inhaled sharply as if she had blindsided him. Just how dumb did he think she was? She might have fallen for Dominic’s line, but she was four years older now. Four years wiser. His full lips compressed. He clutched his right thigh.
“I’m dying,” he said. The hand that had gripped his thigh made a fist. “I want a child before I go.”
She had not expected that. “Are you sure?”
“More or less. A cobra shifter pumped me full of venom. It’s destroying me from the inside out. I could have a decade. Or weeks. No one knows. No one has ever survived longer than ten minutes.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“Sure you do. You need everyone’s pity. Dying at – what? – thirty-five, is awful.”
“Thirty-four,” he muttered through his teeth.
“And you want a child of your own?” Her face heated.
“I do. That part’s non-negotiable.”
Out of nowhere, anger bloomed. “Let me see if I have this right. You are prepared to forgo having your very own mate in order to leave a genetic legacy. So you plan to leave me a widow with a couple of shifter kids?”
He thought. Nodded. “Pretty much. A rich widow. I’m a very rich man. From a very rich clan. They’ll look after you, help you to get the cubs raised right.”
“And if I want to remarry?”
He looked furious. As if he really was her lover. Her mate. How could she endure marriage to such a primitive?
But his voice was under control when he spoke. Clearly Ryan Rutherford had a lot of self-control. “My family will support your decision. Whatever it is. It would be up to the council whether they let you stay on the island as a widow embedded in the Rutherford clan. My guess is that they would.”
“So you’ll just shut your eyes and grit your teeth and screw your assigned wife until she gets pregnant?”
He brought her hand to his mouth. Held her eyes with his gleaming feral ones that were so like Jimmy’s and so like the stone on her hand. He kissed her fingers one at a time. Bit the tips lightly while her insides quivered. Licked her with a broad sweep of his tongue from fingertips to wrist.
“Making love to you would be no hardship, Claudia Rutherford.” He suckled the sensitive area above her wrist bone, and bent lower so he could trail kisses to her elbow. “More like the purest pleasure.”
Fire licked wherever his mouth went. She was breathing hard when his mouth found hers. She felt ravished, but his kiss was gentle. Sweet. Everything a first kiss should be. Delicate. Slow. An exchange of breath. A mutual tasting and exploration. He tasted of man, of testosterone, and something musky she remembered from Dominic.
He raised his mouth from hers. His wide chest rose and fell like he had run far and fast. Like her pulse. “What about you?” His eyes were hot. “Will you be closing your eyes and imagining I’m my own cousin?”
“No.” Her voice was a husky squawk. “No,” she said more clearly. “Whatever I felt for him burned itself out when I found out he was a faithless liar.” She held his eyes with her own and pushed all her power into getting her message across. “The one thing I won’t tolerate is lying.”
He relaxed. Smiled an easy smile. “That’s okay. I may be twenty kinds of a bastard, but I’m no liar.”