Total pages in book: 172
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Cain nodded. “I’ll talk to Flambé when you give me the go-ahead.”
Sevastyan saw him out, closed the door and watched him until the car had pulled down the driveway and he was certain the club owner had driven off the property. He stood for a time at the bottom of the stairs, feeling like he was starting all over again with Flambé. She had trust issues, big ones, and he hadn’t even scratched the surface with what the problems between them were. Now this happened.
Sighing, he went up to her. It felt like a hell of a long way up those stairs. Their bedroom was empty. He looked around. It was perfectly neat, not so much as a wrinkle in the perfectly made bed. Flambé didn’t throw tantrums. She didn’t yell. She didn’t fight. She retreated. She withdrew. She took herself far, far away. He could tell himself he had her, but he knew he didn’t.
He padded silently across the room, stalking her like the predator he was. He was leopard. A shifter. A very dominant alpha. She was a shifter and they lived by shifter law. No one broke those laws. She knew that. He crossed to the slider and stood for a moment regarding his elusive strawberry leopard.
Flambé sat outside on the balcony watching birds hopping from one branch to another in the trees, busy calling to one another as they flitted about. She didn’t look up or acknowledge him. She wasn’t drinking the fresh coffee he’d brewed. She had the same cold bottle of water. She preferred water to most drinks.
“I owe you an explanation.” Sevastyan pulled his chair around to sit facing her rather than beside her. He wanted to see her expression. Her eyes. Right now, she refused to look at him, even when he was right in front of her, larger than life. The night before, she had cried. He’d seen the evidence of her tears on her face, but she hadn’t talked to him. Hadn’t let him in. Now, she was more closed off than ever.
“I told you, I don’t need an explanation.”
There was no expression whatsoever in her voice.
He tried not to glance at his watch. He had to get to Mitya’s house soon. Time was getting away from them. He knew if he even mentioned his cousin’s home or his work, he wouldn’t have a chance to make things right with Flambé. “You’re going to get one. There was a reason I went to the club.”
She sighed. “Of course there was a reason you went to the club, Sevastyan. The first time I ever saw you it was at the club. I know what you do there. I knew you went there. I’m leopard, or did you forget that? I smelled it on you. All those men and women. The sex. It isn’t that difficult. I waited for you to give me an explanation and you didn’t. If you were going to, you would have at the time. Not now. Not when you humiliated me in front of your cousin and men by pointing out to me that I’m exactly what he said I was, a sex object to you and nothing more. Your toy, I believe I was called. I didn’t expect you to be going to the club already, but I knew, sooner or later, you’d go back to it.”
She shrugged and continued to stare straight ahead as if she was talking to the landscape. “Fortunately, I have a very strong sex drive and I’m familiar with the club and what goes on there. Had you just been honest in the first place and told me that was the kind of open relationship we were going to have, I would have understood the rules.”
In spite of his determination to work things out, that one little line and the casual way she said it sent crimson fire rushing through his veins. Shturm roared a challenge and leapt at him, clawing and raking wildly.
“What exactly does that mean, Flambé?” He kept his voice low, strictly velvet, back to the dominant in him.
She shrugged again and took a drink of water. “Don’t you have to go to work? Naturally, I prefer to work from home. We both know this house is extremely safe. You went out of your way to make certain no one could break into it and there’s a tunnel between the two properties no one knows about. I don’t want to set foot in your cousin’s home. It would be utterly humiliating to me.”
He was fucked any way he responded to that. If he forced her, he was the worst partner on the face of the earth, but if he didn’t, he would be seriously worried and divided constantly over her protection. And then there was the question of what the hell her statement about the club meant. They had a lot to clear up.