Carpathian 10 - Dark Symphony

accept the inevitable and don't want you to feel bad about it." Even as she spoke, she took a small step backward, her hand going protectively to her throat. Her pulse beat frantically as if calling to him. The spot where he had left his mark the night before throbbed and burned.
    "There is an inevitable, but I doubt it is what you envision." He reached out casually, almost lazily, and circled the nape of her neck with his palm, drawing her toward him. She
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    9/13/2007

    Dark Symphony
    Page 56 of 188
    went reluctantly, taking one small step at his urging, then another until she could feel the heat of his body right through the thin barrier of her clothing.
    Both hands found his chest. "Why are you angry?"
    He was smoldering with anger, with the thought that she was certain he would leave her.
    That he would want to leave her. That she seemed totally accepting, even grateful that he would leave her. Byron made an effort to tamp down the seething cauldron of emotions. That way lay disaster. "What it says on this wall is that a group of women and children arrived, seeking sanctuary. There were a few males, old mostly, or very young, but the women had no men to protect them. They wanted permission to live on Scarletti land, under the protection of the Scarletti family. They were foreigners, come from a distant land with strange ways. It is said these women had tremendous psychic abilities. They were tele-paths. Healers. And all of them were shape-shifters."
    Antonietta nodded. He wasn't holding her in place, his fingers were very light, almost gentle around her neck, but she still felt the tension vibrating in the air between them. 'The picture clearly shows a large cat of some kind."
    "The Jaguar," he supplied. "I have heard of this species. They are all but extinct. The males refused to stay with the females, and eventually the females took on human husbands.
    The bloodline thinned over the centuries."
    She nodded her head in agreement. "I feel the cat inside of me at times. Warning me. I have an acute sense of smell. I'm blind, yet at times when the wildness inside of me is growing, I see in colors of red and yellow and white. Heat images. I thought when you smelled the cat last night perhaps one of my cousins is the same, and I'm not such a freak. It's true, Byron. This is the reason the Scarlettis made a bargain with the women in the village.
    They wanted the gift of the Jaguar people for their own. Some of the Scarletti men intermarried with those women, and some have the blood strong and some don't. I read the wall carefully. You are so correct about the men leaving. The women were willing to stay with humans because their males never stayed. They got them pregnant, and they left, even during times of war and hunger and plague. So the women turned to our race for companionship and love and a family."
    "As they did in other places as well," Byron said.
    "In the old days, women had few rights and little protection, but in the world today, we're quite capable of caring for our children and providing for them. I have a good life, and I never expected to meet someone I was so attracted to. Honestly, Byron, I'm just saying I didn't expect nor want a lover for more than a short period of time."
    His breath escaped in a long, slow hiss of annoyance. "Unfortunately, that is not what I expect or want, Antonietta. I am not Jaguar. My people do not leave one another for reasons of convenience or wanderlust. We mate for life. For eternity. I do not want less, nor will I accept less. You have much to learn of who and what I am." His dark gaze roamed possessively over her face.
    She could feel the impact, the intensity, as his gaze burned over her. She was immediately reminded of the suffocating darkness she lived in. Alone in the close confines of the room, it was too late to remember she knew very little of this man standing so close to her.
    She knew nothing of his family or his heritage or even his heart. He was always alone and very quiet, very polite, but he could be shockingly violent in an instant if need be.
    "Who are you, Byron?" Her voice came out a husky whisper of fear when she needed her confidence most. "Tell me who you are then. Tell me what you are. If not Jaguar, like me, what are you then?" She held her breath, pressed her