Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)(89)

He felt her body shudder against his. Remembering his own rapid, violent array of emotions as he watched her run toward him, he pressed his mouth to the thin, fine skin at her temple and told her, “You’re still fired. I mean it, Sophie. I won’t work with someone who disregards my orders so blatantly.”

“Pfft,” she said. “I don’t need your stupid consulting job. You can keep your money and your high-handed, arrogant assumption that you get to order me around however you like. I’m going to still do what I want and act as I think best. I meant what I said too—I’m not one of your foot soldiers. Screw you.”

As she told him off, she rubbed his back, the touch soothing and arousing at once.

“You are a truly horrible woman,” he growled. He slid the tips of his fingers underneath the edges of her sweater, connecting with the warm skin at her torso. The need to kiss her, to feel her full mouth pliant and moving under his, was pounding in his head. “Screwing sounds better and better all the time.”

“And I can’t believe you’re such an asshole.” She crooned the words, almost as if they made her happy.

He tilted her face up. “Sophie,” he whispered. “I’m no good for you. My life is desperate and violent all the time, not just tonight, and now you’ve gotten trapped in a conflict you can’t leave.”

“Oh Nik,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “It really is impossible for you to grasp that I am fully capable of making all my own choices. I am fully autonomous in my own right. I’m not going to agree with you all the time, and I’m not going to take your orders. I am my own sovereign state, and I’m standing right here in front of you because I want to be here. I’m beyond being insulted by you. Right now I’m just weary. If you can’t respect me enough to accept that, I don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”

As she talked, she slipped out of his arms and turned away. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t be standing here right now,” he growled. “Do you want to know the truth? You scared me tonight. I watched you running straight into danger, and I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. And when you don’t take orders, and when you act like a loose cannon, I don’t know how to plan my actions around you. That’s what orders and acting like a cohesive fighting unit are for.”

Her eyes flashed with shadowed fire. “All that would be true, and I could take it, except you ordered me back to the house like I was a delinquent child. Maybe I could accept your orders if you treated me like you treat your other men.”

“You’re not my other men!” he roared furiously. “I’m not in love with any of them!”

She froze, then whispered, “What?”

“I said I’m not in love with any of them!” he snapped. All but flinging her wrist away from him, he pivoted away to pace. “Everything about you drives me insane. We have been arguing and sniping at each other from the moment we met. But then I started to like you. You’re courageous, funny and generous, and more beautiful than any woman has any right to be, and when we first made love…” He stopped pacing to run his hands through his hair as he tried to gather his thoughts.

“Made love?” she murmured.

“Made love,” he repeated fiercely, turning to glare at her as if she might try to take the experience away from him. “When we first made love, I felt something I had never felt before. Instincts that I didn’t even know I had. I’m part Wyr, and I felt the drive to mate with you. So I left because that’s not what we said we were going to do that night. It was supposed to be an interlude of pleasure, nothing more. But then I couldn’t keep my damn hands off you. I still can’t.”

In the golden slant of light shining from the oil lantern, he could see the shock in her face. Her lips parted as if she would say something, but he couldn’t bear to hear it.

“Don’t worry,” he said bitterly. “I’ve thought it through. I’m not Wyr enough for the mating urge to kill me. You’re under no obligation to be concerned about it.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “So you’re not forced by the Wyr mating instinct to do something you’re not willing to do. You sound as if you don’t welcome it at all.”

“Everything I first said to you is still true.” Unable to look at her any longer and fight the pounding urge to take her back in his arms, he turned his back. “I’m in the middle of fighting a war, and I still don’t have anything to offer a lover—no safety, no home, not even the promise of my time and attention.”

Her breathing sounded harsh in the still of the courtyard. “Well, I guess we know where we stand now. You know what’s funny? I fell in love with you too, you jackass. Your commitment, your bravery, even your imperious attitude. It hurt when you walked out so quickly after we barely finished making love, but I went with it. You asked me to trust you when you said you had good reasons for walking away, and I went with that too. In fact, I’ve gone with all of it—the danger, the uncertainty, the fighting, and just so you know, your finer sensibilities for why you shouldn’t take a lover are outdated and delusional, because we’re probably not getting out of this house again alive. But you know what I can’t go with?”