Dark Possession(95)

"You are my lifemate. I do not need your consent." There was dark emotion flickering in his eyes. Little amber lights began to glitter through the pure black obsidian.

Anger pulsed through her. "You know what? I don't need your consent to leave, and I'm going back to the house." She stood up, and her hands gripped the rail when he stood up, too. He towered over her, looking every inch a predator.

"Actually, you do need my permission. And you will stay here and hear what I have to say. I want to know the truth, MaryAnn."

She narrowed her gaze on him. "You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you in the butt."

"You did bite me. And I took your blood on several occasions."

She tilted her head at him. "Is that my fault? I didn't ask you to. In fact I didn't even know the first time you did it."

"What are you?"

"A very pissed-off woman."

He stepped closer to her, so close she could feel the heat of his anger. "You are werewolf. And you are infecting me with your blood."

Chapter Fifteen

M

^j ^

MaryAnn stared at him for several long seconds, and then she began to laugh. "You are totally crazy."

Manolito didn't look in the least amused. If anything, his expression hardened even more. "I am not crazy. I smell the wolf in you, and if you are honest with yourself, you can smell it all over me."

She shook her head, but the laughter faded. "This is insane. I know Carpathians are shapeshifters. I'm not. I've lived my entire life as a human being. My parents aren't werewolves. I doubt such a thing exists."

"Why would you doubt it when you have seen jaguar-men and vampires? When you know the Carpathian people exist? Why should you have trouble believing in werewolves?"

Perspiration beaded on his forehead. Carpathians sweated blood, she noted. He brushed at his temples.

"Then where are they? And if they really exist, and I'm one of them, why didn't you recognize it sooner?" The sweating blood thing was eww, and she so wasn't becoming Carpathian. She'd much rather be a wolf!

"Because I have not seen or heard of the lycans for centuries."

She put her hands on her hips. "So let me get this straight. You were all in love with me and ready to turn me into a Carpathian when you thought I was human, but now it's different because I might be turning you into something else." She raised her chin another inch in challenge. "What you mean is, it's perfectly okay for me to give up who and what I am, but not so much for you."

He frowned at her. "I was born to be Carpathian. It is who and what I am."

She pressed a hand to her churning stomach. "You hypocritical male chauvinist, Neanderthal, asinine idiot. I must have been out of my mind to think I could live with someone like you."

He waved her opinion of him aside. "We are lifemates. Of course I will do whatever is necessary to complete the conversion and bring you to my side completely, but I have to study this problem from every angle. I have never heard of a werewolf and a Carpathian mating. The blood of the wolf is as powerful as the blood of the Carpathian."

"I don't shapeshift."

"The wolf lives within you, part of you. It is not the same way I take another form. The wolf is your guardian and will emerge when needed. You have felt him close to you. That is why you have flashes of memory. And it is why both of us can take the early morning sunlight. Only my eyes were affected by the sunlight, not my entire body. You have not burned in the sun in spite of the fact that my blood flows in your veins. The change should have already begun to take hold."

"And you think I've known all along and somehow have tricked you? If there is a wolf in me, now is the time for it to come leaping out. I just might go for your throat." Furious, she shoved at his chest to move him out of her way. "You should hear yourself. Do you really think I'd want to spend the rest of my life with a man who has no regard for my feelings?"

"I have every regard for your feelings."

"Right! Which is why you accused me of 'infecting,' " she spat the word in a fury, "you! Like what I am is some taint. Some disease. You know what, Manolito De La Cruz? You deserve to be stuck in hell. And I'm

an idiot for even thinking a relationship with you could be anything more meaningful than hot sex."

She went to the edge of the deck and, gripping the rail, looked down. She'd jumped once, but now it seemed a very long way. The thing inside her, the wolf, he suspected, stirred, recognizing her anger. She swallowed the sudden fear in her throat and turned back to him, her heart pounding hard enough for him to hear it. Her own head was beginning to hurt, a buzzing sound, like thousands of insects driving her crazy, reverberated through her mind. Her skull felt too tight, and her brain began to pulse and throb in time to the surge of blood rushing in her veins.