Page 3 of Brody
The protective way he’d looked at me when he’d shifted back to human form, naked and fucking perfect.
The shocked expression on his face before he told me, “You’re my fated mate.”
Then the soul-crushing devastation when he rejected me and turned his back on me like I meant nothing.
No.Not mate.Never mate.Betrayer, I snarled back at her, forcing her down with a viciousness born of two decades of practice.My mental claws dug into her, shoving her back into the cage I’d built specially for her.
A wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to swallow bile.My hands began to shake, not with desire but with pure, undiluted rage that turned my vision red at the edges.Every old wound, every carefully formed piece of scar tissue over my heart, was suddenly ripped open, raw and bleeding.Years of careful healing undone in an instant.
What the hell?
No… No… It can’t be.
My jaw clenched so tight I could hear my teeth grinding.Heat flooded my body.Not the warmth of attraction but the burning fire of fury so intense I could taste metal on my tongue—copper and rage.I suddenly became aware I was standing completely still in the middle of the airport, my breathing so rapid and shallow I was on the verge of hyperventilating.A child gave me a curious look as he passed, tugging his mother’s hand.
“Get it together, Rozi,” I whispered to myself.Forcing my leaden legs to move, I exited the airport through the automatic doors that hissed open like a warning.And right outside the glass doors washim, leaning against a black SUV with beefy arms crossed, looking like he’d stepped straight out of my most conflicted dreams.
He towered next to the SUV, at least six foot four of solid muscle and barely contained power.His military-short black hair couldn’t disguise the wildness underneath, the predator lurking just beneath human skin.A black T-shirt stretched across his chest like a second skin, outlining planes and ridges that I remembered from a lifetime ago.His jeans hugged thick thighs that tensed slightly as our gazes met—gray eyes locking on mine with an intensity that stole my breath.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed him.Two women with rolling suitcases slowed their pace, openly staring as they passed.One of them actually licked her lips, whispering something to her friend that made them both laugh.My enhanced hearing caught her words, “I’d climb that like a tree.”A businesswoman in a crisp suit did a double take so dramatic she nearly walked into a pillar.Even the elderly lady waiting for her ride couldn’t help but steal appreciative glances, her weathered cheeks pinking slightly.
My cheetah snarled beneath my skin, and my hackles rose in territorial fury.Mine, she insisted, though I vehemently disagreed.The primal possessiveness that surged through me was as unwelcome as it was powerful, a biological imperative I couldn’t fully control.I had no claim on him.
I had no claim on him.
Wanted no claim on him.
Yet my fingers itched to claw the eyes out of every female whose gaze lingered too long, my nails extending slightly before I forced them back to human form with a painful effort of will.
Years of anger, and my treacherous body still recognized him as a mate, every cell vibrating in recognition, every sense heightened and focused solely on him.
My brain automatically cataloged the changes the time had carved into him—threads of silver at his temples that caught the late-afternoon sun, lines at the corners of his eyes that deepened as his pupils dilated, recognizing me across the distance and decades.His scent carried on the breeze that my body remembered even when my mind wished to forget.
My eye caught something else, a subtle tension in his left hand, the way he shifted his weight as if favoring that side.I noted it automatically.An old injury?A recent wound?But I couldn’t focus on those details, not when every cell in my body screamed in recognition of the mate who had rejected me, leaving me to piece myself together from fragments.
My vision tunneled until all I could see was him.The same man who had walked away, leaving me holding the tattered remains of what should have been unbreakable.
One heartbeat, he was a stranger.The next, he was the wound that had never fully healed.
Fuck.My.Life.
Years of building walls, of proving myself, of becoming someone who didn’t need anyone, especially not him.And now fate had thrown us back together with the subtlety of a wrecking ball.
Something primal and forgotten surged beneath my skin, a current of recognition that raced through nerve endings I’d numbed years ago.
My chest burned from the inside out, each heartbeat pumping fire through veins that suddenly felt too small to contain it.A vibration started low in my throat, unbidden and horrifying, the beginning of a purr—my body’s instinctive response to his presence before my brain could slam down on the emergency brake.I swallowed hard, choking off the sound before it could escape.
Inside my mind, my cheetah half stretched like she’d awakened from a long slumber.Her purr echoed between my ears, drowning out the airport announcements, my rationality, everything except the triumphant sound of her satisfaction.
Our fated mate has returned, she whispered through our mental link.
He’s not our mate, I snarled back, mental claws extended.He lost that right when he left me behind.
But my traitorous body wasn’t listening, already attuning itself to his presence like a compass finding true north.Blood rushed in my ears, and deep in my core, an ache began to build that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with a primal need I’d spent years pretending didn’t exist.My skin felt too tight, too hot, too sensitive, every nerve ending suddenly awake and screaming his name.
He’s back in my life.
And I’m so completely, utterly screwed.
