Page 39 of Anna's Bounty
“I’m not trying to get rid of you,” he says. “I’m only trying to do what’s best.”
“What’s best?” A harsh laugh escapes my throat, and I shake my head. “For whom? Because it’s certainly not me!”
“Annah, please.”
“I can’t dothisanymore,” I cry. “I can’t keep pretending, or lying to myself, that the way you keep pushing and pulling at me doesn’t hurt like hell. What do you want from me?”
Rovos is silent, keeping his jade-colored eyes locked on the floor between us. I can see the muscle in his jaw flexing as he clenches his teeth.
“What do you want, Rovos?” I repeat. “Because one moment you’re saying you wantme. But the next you’re pushing me away. You can’t have both.” When he still doesn’t lift his eyes from the floor, I clench my fists and scream. “Tell me what you want!”
“I don’t know!” he shouts back, erupting from his chair and backing me against the wall. His eyes are such a dark green they look black, and he braces his arms on either side of me. “Vittu.I don’t know.”
“What did I do?” I don’t take my eyes off of him. “To make you hate me enough that you can’t get rid of me fast enough?”
Rovos is quiet for a long time, his breathing heavy and labored. His clenches his jaw and his eyes lock with mine. “Is that what you think?” he asks me. “That I hate you?”
“I don’t know what to think.” My lips tremble around my words. “Because you say one thing, but then you do the opposite.”
“You let me lick you until you screamed my name, and now you think you disgust me?” He leans in so the tips of our noses touch. “I told you I wanted to give you my mating bite, and you accuse me of hating you? Are these the actions you speak of?”
“No—yes!” God, I can’t think when he talks like that! When he’s so close, his clean scent invades my every breath. “You have it backward. It’s because of those things, the way you make me feel when you—when you’re touching me. You make me believe that you care about what happens to me, but then drop me off with a strange alien who wants to sell me. And now you’re leaving me on a strange planet where who knows what could happen to me.”
A roar erupts from Rovos, and he pushes himself away from me.
“What do you expect me to think, when you’re giving me whiplash from your mood swings?!”
“It’s not as simple as you make it seem,” Rovos growls.
“Not as simple—? What’s difficult about this?” I reach out, curling my fingers over his shoulder, and force him to face me. “Then explain it to me. Help me understand.”
Liquid gold takes over his dark green irises as he reaches for me. One hand slides up my neck, and he threads his fingers through my hair. My eyelids flutter, and a soft sigh escapes from between my lips. Without warning, he tightens his hand into a fist, gripping my hair hard enough to pull but not hurt. His mouth twists into a snarl, and he pulls me toward him, his eyes flashing with green and gold fire until our lips are only separated by a breath.
“Being a bounty hunter is the only thing I know—the only thing I’ve ever known. It’s dangerous, and any mission could be my last. I’m gone for spans at a time, sometimes even entire revolutions. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I stepped foot on my home planet. Is that the kind of life a mate of mine would want? The kind of life she would deserve?”
“You can’t just decide something like that for someone. How do you know—”
“I watched my mother live that life,” he cuts me off, letting go of my hair and turning away with a sigh. “Vesu, my home planet, is small. My people are not welcoming, or forgiving. They don’t accept outsiders, and anyone who leaves, or desires to leave the planet, is considered an outsider.
“That my father was a bounty hunter was one of many notches set against my mother and me. She was shunned by our people and abandoned by her mate, and I watched her light slowly dim until word came that my father would never be returning.”
Rovos takes a shaky breath. “I’ll never forget that day, because it was the day I watched my mother’s already dimming light blink out. I was just barely grown, old enough to strike out on my own, but not yet ready to do so. And then, in a matter of cycles, I lost her too.”
“Rovos,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
“I cannot—” Rovos turns to meet my eyes, his expression filled with cold resolve. “Irefuseto put my mate through that.”
I’m starting to understand at least some of why he is this way, and my heart breaks for him. How awful it must have been to lose both of his parents. And since he doesn’t want to ever relive that, he’s vowed to never take a mate instead of ensuring she is treated differently. No wonder… Wait.No!That still isn’t an excuse. I am not—weare not his parents.
“What if your mate wanted to stay with you?” I ask him. “What if she refused to be left behind?”
“I already said that is no life for a mate,” Rovos snorts, tossing his head back and forth. “What about kits?”
Kits?“First of all, who said anything about kids—kits?Where in the bounty hunter rule book does it say you have to knock your mate up straight away?”
“Kits and mating usually go together,” he scoffs as his hungry gaze wanders down my body. “And I suspect that once I’ve had you, I won’t be able to leave you alone.”
My hand goes to the back of my arm, where I run my fingers over the slight bump where my implant is. “I can’t have kits, at least not for the next couple years. I have a birth control implant.”
