Vision Revealed (18 page)

pale green eyes. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. For a moment the

smell of her emotions faded. It was taking a lot of effort on her part to shut herself down

to him.

He stroked her chin, feeling the damp warmth of her flesh and allowed her to smell the

desire he fought to restrain for her. She exhaled and her scent matched his, her craving at

least as strong, if not more powerful. Kane breathed in the rich, sweet scent of Jin’s lust.

If anything he swore it was more intoxicating than it had been before. Rich like chocolate

and sweet like honey, an incredibly desirable smell that would drive him mad the longer

he breathed it into his system.

“You’re telling me why you came here,” he began, allowing the vision he’d experienced

on more than once occasion to appear in his mind’s eye. “And as you share those details

about your den, who you are and why you’ve kept that knowledge from everyone you’ll

begin to start trusting me.”

“All along you’ve already known who and what I was.” Jin shook her head, keeping her

eyes closed. A blonde strand drifted across her forehead, stroking her arched brow. She

made no attempt to move it and instead pursed her lips, puckering them and showing off

their fullness.

Kane grew harder than stone staring at her ripe, sensual mouth. When he lowered his

attention to the length of her neck and then lower to the swell of her breasts, his blood

boiled. He couldn’t stand here, touching her but not having her, for another minute.

She must have smelled the truth in his scent. Jin opened her eyes wide, staring up at him

as she sucked in a deep breath. “Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered.

“You came to me, little cat.”

“No. You sniffed me out, chased me down, remember?”

“Only because you were already in my head.”

“That isn’t my fault,” she insisted, and tried turning her head.

Kane tightened his grip, refusing to allow her to look away from the truth. “It’s not a

fault, my little cat,” he growled, needing her to accept how things were before they

moved forward. “We are meant to be together. You are my mate and I am yours. Already

our scent is one and the same.”

“Because we’ve been fucking each other. It will go back to being our own scents. You

know that.” She stared at him stubbornly.

When she ran her tongue over her lips, moistening them, the swelling in his cock grew

painful. If he didn’t get inside her soon he would burst, and at the least no longer be able

to have an intelligent conversation with her. Jin would reduce him to growls and

demands, pulling the primal side of him forward.

“Our scents as they are now will be this way until we die, one and the same,” he

informed her, hearing the raspiness in his throat. When he realized he gripped her chin so

tight he must be hurting her, he let her go, but then dragged his fingers into her blonde

hair, pulling it away from her face. “Why are you fighting the obvious, Jin?”

“Because I don’t want you hurt,” she whispered, her aroma turning sad as her eyes grew

moist, filled with the emotions she seemed unable to continue hiding from him. “I came

here to tell the hunters the truth, and when I do they will kill me. It will be their right. If I

escape with my life, and that is a mighty big fucking if—but if I do escape with my life I

will restore honor to my name. If you’re still interested in me at that time maybe then you

can seek me out. But, Kane, you reek of too much honor to be seen with me right now.

I’ll destroy you and you don’t deserve that.”

She stepped backward and his hand tangled in her hair for a moment. Jin continued

moving until the strands slipped out of his fingers. Her hair was tousled and fell in

disarray around her face. She didn’t do anything to straighten it but instead moved around

the side of the bed.

“I deserve you,” he insisted, needing her to see he already knew what she needed to tell

the hunters. He’d known it before he came to Kenora, and if he’d been smart enough to

figure it out before now, he would have seen that he would find her when he came here.

“And you deserve me. I’m no more perfect than you, little cat. Do you believe you’re the

only one whose past smells jaded?”

She snorted and wrinkled her nose as she crawled onto the bed. He seriously doubted she

knew how incredibly sensual her movements were. Every muscle in his body screamed in

agony when he forced himself not to budge. Waiting, although not patiently at all, he

watched until she assumed the position of his visions. Jin faced him, sitting cross-legged

in the middle of the bed, wearing the outfit he’d picked out for her. When she shrugged

out of her coat, letting it crumple behind her, she was completely as she’d been when

she’d appeared in his mind, time and time again.

Kane didn’t move, ignoring the agony in his groin and the fever pumping through his

veins, but gazed upon the beautiful creature, who stared up at him imploringly.

“Is that what you want, Kane? Do you want to compare pasts to see which one of us has

fucked-up more? Because believe me, I’m sure it’s a game I’ll win.”

“It’s not a game.” He could barely speak. The need for her flooded his system, creating a

throbbing deep inside him, which soon became a pounding in his brain. If he fucked her

now, he would prevent the conversation they were about to have. And he had to allow it

to play out. More than most, Kane knew changing the fate of a vision always resulted in

destroying the destiny he was meant to have. Knowing the outcome of things quite often

sucked because as desperately as he wanted it, it meant running through the pain and

suffering that would get him to paradise. “If it were, changing the rules wouldn’t be so

devastating. This is very serious, my little cat. What you and I have now we will share

and love always. And I promise you I’ll keep as much of the pain we’re intended to

endure from you with all the strength I possess.”

She gave him an odd look and once again a surge of emotions attacked her. He was

learning when she felt something strongly her light green eyes radiated with a wash of

color that otherwise wasn’t usually there. It was normal for their breed to have very pale-

colored eyes. But Jin’s glowed at times, a sensual warm shade, sometimes laced with

silver, appearing and giving her a very unique, erotic look. As she studied him, not

commenting right away, he fought to understand what she might be feeling by sniffing

the air.

“If you know so much about me, as you claim to, why don’t you hate me?” she asked,

sounding sincere.

“Did you plan for your sire to try to manipulate and destroy our kind?”

Jin dropped her head, staring at her fingers as she stretched them out on the bed in front

of her.

“No,” she said. “Nor did I know his plan in full until it was too late. If I’d been smarter, I

would have run when my mother did.”

“She was a coward.”

“No.” Jin looked up quickly, shaking her head adamantly. “She was a beautiful creature,

a leopard my sire met while in the States. I admit I don’t remember a lot about her, but I

have pictures I’ve held on to that my sire never learned about.”

“You didn’t inherit her characteristic to run from danger instead of embracing it.” He

wouldn’t insult Jin’s litter. Already she felt the weight of the dishonor her sire brought on

her. But he needed her to see her actions as a result of her sire’s behavior were incredibly

honorable. “All of your past isn’t clear to me. There are things I’ve seen that I don’t

understand. In time, little cat, your trust for me will grow and you will share what you’ve

done. If it helps you, I can tell you about my past. It’s littered with mistakes I’ve worked

hard to overcome and some of them simply forget.”

“Sure. Tell me how terrible you are.” Jin smiled as she leaned against the pillows and

stretched out on the bed.

There wasn’t any way she didn’t know how tempting a dish she presented to him.

Remaining still wasn’t an option any longer. Kane moved to the bed, easing onto the

edge of it and facing her as he sat and forced himself to think of where to start in

explaining himself to her. All he wanted to think about were the different ways he wanted

to fuck her, but forcing himself to give her what she wanted at the moment helped keep

him grounded. The pain in his body increased as he sat closer to her and breathed in her

lustful scent. He wasn’t the only one who suffered from intense need. As much as it

should have consoled him, it only added to the incredible swelling and throbbing

ransacking his insides as he stared at her enticing body stretched out on the bed.

“I was whelped in the Canadian Rockies and grew up there,” he began, deciding it would

be a paraphrased version for now. It was hard as hell talking to her and he dug his nails

into his palms, focusing on the pain when he fisted his hands at his sides in an effort to

keep them off her. “It wasn’t my mother who ran from our litter, but my sire. I was ten

when he disappeared and never returned. After that, more males came sniffing around

than I can remember. My mother didn’t turn very many of them away either. It wasn’t

easy trying to become the male of the den when all these fucking males continually

fought me for the title.”

“So my mother was a coward and yours was a slut.” Jin focused on him, not blinking, as

if anxious to see how her harsh words would affect him.

“Pretty much sums it up,” he admitted, and then noticed his hand was on her ankle and

wondered when he’d moved to touch her. He felt her heart beat against his fingertips as

he touched her bare skin under her jeans and above her boot while struggling to keep his

brain focused to continue sharing his story. “The memories I have of my sire and mother

aren’t good ones. They fought terribly, destroying furniture and going at it tooth and claw

damn near on a daily basis.”

She didn’t say anything but simply waited for him to tell her more.

“I knew before I became a grown male I would never have a den that wasn’t one filled

with happiness. My mate would adore me and I would honor the ground she walked on.

Our cubs wouldn’t know the smell of anger and outrage. They would be feisty and

healthy and be surrounded by happiness.”

“Sounds pretty idealistic, don’t you think?”

“Which is why I never mated,” he told her, that and he knew who his mate would be and

up until the other day hadn’t met her yet. Telling Jin that would scare her and there was

too much for them to get through before they reached that space of prefect contentment

together. “I worked as a logger and even lowered myself to accepting jobs in Banff, the

town south of where our den was, in order to keep the bills paid.”

“You didn’t own your den?” It was a fair question since most leopards, especially those

living in the Canadian Mountains, were in dens that had been there for generations. Most

owned their homes outright.

“No. Mom enjoyed beautiful things. She took out a mortgage on the home my sire put

her in shortly after he took off. I think she did it to spite him, making sure if he ever

returned he would know his den was owned by a human bank and not by leopards. So

there was a mortgage to pay and it wasn’t a cheap one.”

“That sucks,” she said, moving her hands behind her head and relaxing further in the

pillows, appearing so relaxed she didn’t react when he started unlacing her boots. “My

sire sold our home in the mountains and took the money to buy a mansion in Arizona. It

was quite the climate shock, among other things,” she added, letting her words trail off.

“When I turned eighteen my mother pressed me to accept some of the dowries being

offered by neighboring litters. Maybe it was a good thing your sire took you out of the

mountains. There are some old-fashioned ways still regularly practiced back there, one of

them being the willingness of a litter to offer up their female cubs to desirable males and

in return offering those males land or homes, even money to mate with their daughters

and take them off their paws.”

“I’m sure you got many offers.”

Her words were meant to compliment and he saw it as such, also noting his little cat

wasn’t as skittish around him as she had been. It was true living through his visions, even

when they felt and smelled despicably of déjà vu, always resulted in life being easier

afterward.

“None worth sniffing after for a second. I left my mother’s den and never returned. I’d

worked enough in Banff to save up a decent amount of cash and headed deeper into the

mountains where I bought a small cabin.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Yup. It’s where I’ve lived and left to come here.”

“What made you come here?”

“The announcement on the PI website announcing a new hunter would be needed.”

“They are replacing me,” she said, and didn’t try hiding her sadness over the fact. “There

isn’t any way I can continue with the title, not and it be an honorable one.”

“What you’re doing is incredibly honorable.” He slid her boots off her feet and then

removed her socks. Then dragging his finger down the top of her foot, he noticed the

swelling in her ankle was completely gone. Not that he was surprised, leopards healed

quickly. He made quick work of taking off his boots but continued telling her about