His head tipped back, his lips curled back from his teeth, and this time the roar all but shook the rafters and might have actually caused dust to rain down from the cavern’s roof.
“Oh really, Graeme, what the hell did you think would happen?” Khileen propped her hands on her hips and watched the primal Bengal with a healthy dose of amused wariness. “Did you really believe you had us fooled? That we weren’t very well aware of exactly where the Bengal Gideon was hiding?”
Propped against the curve of the far entrance, she tilted her head and let a smile curl at her lips when he swung around to her, his head lowering, his amber eyes morphing to the most incredible green color.
It really was too bad she couldn’t stand another man’s touch, she thought regretfully, because Gideon was no doubt hell in bed. He was simply too much male, too much animal, not to be.
“Leave.” The order was ground out with the hoarse snarl that only an animal could have made.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and narrowed her gaze back at him. “No. We simply have to discuss this. Because I know what you’re going to do . . .” She gasped as she suddenly found herself face-to-face with the primal stripes and glittering, bloodthirsty gaze of a Bengal tiger staring back at her from the man’s face.
“Now.” The rumbled, deep-throated growl almost had her obeying.
“The show is quite impressive,” she promised him with an air of boredom. “But if I leave, then you’ll just pack up and disappear, and I can’t allow you to do so. It’s simply not in your best interests, nor is it in mine. So pull back that very savage, very impressive creature you’re trying to set free and let’s discuss this, shall we?”
Astonishment glittered in his eyes as they widened. A second later his hands shot up, clawed fingers raking through his hair as a truly horrid-sounding growling snarl erupted from his parted lips as he turned away from her.
She grimaced at the sight and sound of it. “Lobo does that rather often, you know. Is it just me?”
Tiberian had once done so as well, when he had been there. Before her life had gone to hell in a handbasket and he’d begun chasing the bitch who had destroyed them all.
“You are certifiable,” he snapped, turning back to her. “No wonder Tiberian left. He’s likely running for his life.”
“No doubt.” She nodded slowly, silently agreeing with him.
No doubt that was exactly what Tiberian was doing, in a way.
“Fuck!” A glass bowl shattered on the other side of the room as she lifted her brow at the rage inherent in the destruction.
“Really, Graeme-Gideon?” Her brows lifted in amusement. “It’s not so bad,” she chided him. “It’s not as though we turned you in or anything. No one knows you’re here.”
“You have got to be the craziest fucking female I have ever laid my eyes on,” he yelled at her, turning back to stare at her in amazement. “Fucking insane, Khileen.”
She had to laugh at that. “You haven’t met my good friend Claire yet,” she told him. “So sweet she’d give you a toothache until she dons this racy black little skin suit she wears whenever she tracks rogue Coyotes in the desert. It’s really quite amusing.”
He stilled, his head swinging back to her. “Who?”
“Claire Martinez.” A sudden thought struck her. “Oh, do tell me the two of you haven’t been after the same rogue? Let me guess, she beat you to him?” She had to laugh at that. “She’s exquisitely well trained, you know. I wish I were half as vicious as she can be when she’s tracking them. I love watching the show.”