Meiling didn’t look away from the river. She didn’t turntoward him. He didn’t feel the terrible chasm between them lessen in the least.
“Slayer has been insane lately. Truly insane. Sometimes I thought he was going to tear me apart. Ever since we returned from San Antonio, his behavior has become more vicious than ever. He never sleeps. He rakes at me day and night, demanding blood. He seems to demand sex, but then wants to kill the woman I’m with, so I can’t really get any relief. He keeps me in a state of constant arousal all the time. Once I found a female leopard for him and he nearly killed her.”
He rubbed at his aching temples. “Unless you’re with me, I can’t sleep. Sometimes I go days without sleep, Meiling. That makes the situation worse. My brain starts to slow down. I’m afraid he’s going to gain control. I don’t know if I’ll be able to save us. Sometimes I think the right thing to do is put us both down.”
He wasn’t making a bid for her sympathy. He really didn’t know what to do. Meiling was the only way he’d gotten any respite at all. Slayer was quiet around her and gave him time to rest. If she was with him during the day, even with others close, the leopard remained fairly calm.
“The last couple of weeks, Slayer’s behavior has escalated even more. I’ve felt out of sorts as well. I don’t know if I’m affecting him, or if it’s been the other way around. I do know the need for sex tonight was horrific. I tried to stop it. I went down to the gym. I called for you, hoping you could calm Slayer and me both. When you couldn’t come, I thought Rene could line someone up at the club for me. You said you’d be able to come to me at two. I had plenty of time. Rene somehow mixed up the message and sent that woman to me.”
No response. Gedeon didn’t know how to reach her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, but he had just come to her from having sex with another woman. She wasn’t going to allow that.
“I can’t explain what was happening to me. I was burning up. Slayer was hotter than hell. Sweat was dripping off me. I couldn’t think straight. The moment she entered the room, she was stripping and climbing onto the bed, and I was pounding into her. Nothing was taking away that fire. It was raging out of control. I’d never felt anything like that. I felt like an animal, not a thinking being. I couldn’t think.”
He was telling her the strict truth and it was humiliating to do so. Blood thundered and roared in his ears. His body hadn’t felt like his own. Many times his sex drive had been wrapped up in his leopard’s relentless drive, but Gedeon had never encountered anything close to what had occurred.
“Meiling, you have to at least hear the truth in my voice. It’s important to me that you don’t think I would ask you to come to my room and then deliberately have another woman there.”
“I don’t believe you’re lying to me, Gedeon.”
She still didn’t look at him. The river seemed to hold her interest more than he did. He couldn’t tell from her tone what she was thinking.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know you didn’t. It was just unexpected. I always thought of that space as being ours.” She gave a delicate little shrug. “Sometimes it’s good to check things, establish boundaries. We haven’t done that in a while and maybe we needed to. I don’t think either of us expected to in the way it happened, but you’ve always been very clear about your lifestyle.”
There was no tone one way or the other. Meiling could have been reciting from a cookbook.
“That space is ours,” Gedeon assured her, but he knew it wasn’t ever going to be again. She had no intention of coming to his bedroom for their intimate late-night chats. She had put a wide chasm between them, and she meant to keep it there.
She didn’t reply to that.
“Come back to the house. We have a meeting with a client tomorrow and you need sleep.”
“You go ahead. I’m not sleepy. I’m going to watch the sun come up,” she said.
He didn’t move. He might not be able to sleep with her in the same bed, but he could sit with her on a bench in front of the river. His damn leopard would at least stay quiet and give him a reprieve.
“I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Lola Morales and Atwater,” Meiling said. “Do many leopards just have sex with one another during their heats and then walk away? Is that common?”
Gedeon had excellent night vision and he examined her profile very carefully. There had been no difference in her tone at all. She didn’t sound unduly interested in the answer, but given that he and his cat had been burning so sexually out of control and the condition was worsening each week since returning from San Antonio, there was a chance Meiling was asking the question for a reason.
“It is possible Lola’s leopard went into her first heat and that’s how she started the affair with Atwater. That would make him an even worse shifter morally than I think he is. When a female goes into heat and emerges for the first time, hopefully she finds her true mate. They recognize each other. He claims her and they only are with each other. They remain faithful to each other. Lola wasn’t Atwater’s mate. He never should have led her on like that.”
“I see.”
It was clear she didn’t see.
“Once in a great while, a female is on her first life cycle. When that happens, a shifter who has never found a true mate can claim her if they are compatible. If Lola’s leopard was on her first life cycle, she wouldn’t have known Atwater had a mate.”
“Why do you say ‘once in a great while’?”
Gedeon thought about how best to answer that. “It’srare to find female shifters who have not been claimed in a previous lifetime. Females will not accept a mate who is not her own.”
“But what you’re saying is that if Lola was in her first life cycle, she would have accepted anyone?”
“Not necessarily anyone, but someone her human companion was also attracted to.”
“Most likely neither of them had good sense because they were experiencing an actual heat for the first time,” Meiling said. “That doesn’t seem very fair to Lola or her leopard.”
