“A massive something, maybe, but I wouldn’t sayjudgment.”He dared to take a step forward and watched, eyes narrowed, as she took a matching step backward. She was nearly plastered to the car.
No part of him liked that.
Sure, the coyote and the man liked the chase, but the way the flush drained from her cheeks, the sight of the stark outlines of her neck muscles tensing under her collar… none of that was play. It wasn’t a game.
Camille really didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
He understood that he’d hurt her — and damn, if she’d just let himtalk to hermaybe they could start working through the thorny brambles of the past — but he didn’t think it warranted twenty feet of empty space between them.
Voice dropping into a growl, he pressed, “Why are you doing that, Cam? You came to talk tome,remember?”
“I did.” Camille braced one hand on the roof of the car, as if she needed the support, and announced, “You are going to withdraw your name from consideration.”
Viktor didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He didn’t even twitch. He simply stared at her, letting the silence stretch until she began to shift uneasily, before he answered,“No.”
Camille’s lip lifted in a snarl. “No? Why on Burden’s Earthnot?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“This isn’t agame,Viktor!” The hand clutching the car turned into a fist. Her voice rose, pitched high with fury and some other, desperate emotion that set his teeth on edge. “You can’t play with my life like this! Not again! Go satisfy whatever it is that makes you think torturing me is funsomewhere else!”
“Torturing you?”Gods, was that what she thought he was doing? When all he wanted was to talk to her? To kiss her? To tell her that a day hadn’t gone by in twenty fucking years when he did not think of her?
What did she know oftorture,anyway? Torture was giving up the thing shifters held most sacred for her own good. Torture was watching his mother slowly waste away and die under his father’s neglect, knowing that he had turned his back on his own mate. Torture was wondering every day if he’d made the right choice, if the pain of being without her was worth it, if she cried over the awful things he said.
She didn’t know torture. Elves took mates, but he knew nothing about the process. He doubted it came with even a little bit of the raw, agonizing want that wrackedhim.
There was no way she could comprehend what it was like to behim.
That didn’t mean he would take the comment laying down.
His shifter pride, the heart of him that loved her beyond anything the human mind could articulate, howled in outrage at the insult.
Viktor’s temper, already a problem in the grip of the fever, began to lick at his insides. A growl rumbled out of his chest. It was deep and furious, a sound that anyone in his pack would have known as a signal to stand down, to submit.
He watched as Camille’s eyes widened, her plush mouth parting in an astonished littleobefore she scrambled to circle the car. Only then did Viktor realize he’d begun to prowl toward her.
“Let me make one thing very clear, sweetheart,” he rasped, halting at the line where the sidewalk and the grass met, “I am nottorturing you.I’mcourtingyou. There is no one else. There will never be anyone else. This isn’t a game and I’m not fucking playing. Got it?”
From across the car, Camille sent him a wild-eyed look of disbelief. “You can’t be serious. You— you—Now?Why? Do you think that you can just decide that after—”
“Cam, we weresixteen,”he snapped, lifting a hand to rake his partially shifted claws through his hair.
“Exactly! You’ve had plenty of chances since then to make your move. So why now?”
Viktor tried to gather the frayed edges of his temper, but it was a losing battle. He hated fighting with her when all he wanted to do was soothe, but damn, she was the most stubborn woman he’d ever met. He wasn’t trying to cage her or swipe at her, but with the way she acted, one would think he’d been nipping at her damn heels.
Half snarling, he snapped back, “Why areyouso insistent on a union now, huh?”
“That’s none of your damn business!”
“Yeah, well, maybe my reasons are none of yours either!”
He didn’t see it, but heknewshe stomped her foot. “They are when they involve trying to sabotage my entire future!”
“Well,yourreasons are my damn business when they involve you selling yourself to some fucking elf who doesn’t even care about you!” Viktor fought the compulsion to charge across the sidewalk, prowl around the car, and kiss the fury right out of her. He didn’t think it would work, but he didn’t really want it to. He hated fighting with her, but he loved her fire, the way she was totally unafraid to snarl at him.
Camille looked like she wanted to lunge across the car, her claws curled and ready to tear into him when she hissed,“Remove. Yourself. From. The. List.”
