Moon Shifter 02 - Primal Possession

worse than anything else he could have said or done. “I’ve got to get to a meeting. I’ll let myself out, but make sure you reset the alarm.” His voice was quiet, unemotional.
    And that was it. Now he knew why she’d left him, and couldn’t even deny he’d been lying to her. A hollow, sick feeling welled up inside her. When she’d walked away from him before, it had given her some sense of control, knowing she’d been the one to cut ties. Now that he was here, in her kitchen, validating everything she’d known the past few months, it cut like a sharp razor.
    Once she heard the front door shut, she turned off the coffeemaker and dumped the food he’d cooked. Even looking at it made her want to puke. Though she hated doing anything Jayce said, she reset the alarm and headed back to bed with tears streaming down her cheeks. Getting up had clearly been a mistake this morning. As she pulled up her cover, her cell phone rang. For one insane moment hope flared inside her that it was Jayce. Which was stupid. When she saw December’s number, she brushed her tears away and pressed the talk button. If anyone could make her feel better, it was her friend.

    Jayce had never loathed himself more than he did at that moment. Kat deserved more than him. So much more. And she deserved an explanation. But he couldn’t explain to her why he was leaving, because she wouldn’t understand. She was too young, too innocent. She might have grown up on the outskirts of a violent environment, but her father, bastard that he was, had always protected Kat.
    As the enforcer, Jayce had too many enemies. Violent, vicious, sadistic enemies he’d racked up over the years. And they were powerful. By keeping Kat simply a human he slept with, she wasn’t a target. But if he bonded with her, turned her into a shifter, she would become a walking bull’s-eye overnight. The perception others had of her would change in an instant. She’d no longer be Kat Saburova. She’d be Jayce’s woman, the enforcer’s mate. With that tag she’d be hunted. Maybe not at first, but eventually someone would come for her.
    With his job he couldn’t protect her all the time. Almost five hundred years ago his father had attempted a relationship with a human a few years after Jayce’s own mother had died giving birth to him. While the human had been making her decision about whether to turn, she’d been killed by one of his father’s enemies. Then a couple hundred years later, Jayce’s older brother had gone bat-shit crazy after his mate was killed. That was two hundred years ago. And he was still torn up over it as far as Jayce knew. Hell, he didn’t even know where his brother was now.
    Jayce had known the time would eventually come when Kat would find out about the bonding process. He’d just been trying to figure out how the hell to walk away from her before that happened. When she’d done it instead, he’d felt as if she’d punched through the middleof his chest and ripped his heart out with her bare hands. If it hadn’t been for his job, he’d have gone insane. Now she knew the truth and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
    It was better to let her think he didn’t want to take her as his bondmate because she was human. If she knew the truth about how much power she wielded over him…He shuddered as he started the engine to his truck. She knew all his buttons and if she pressed the right ones hard enough, he’d eventually turn her. He had the willpower to keep her safe now, but the animal inside him was selfish. So fucking selfish it scared the shit out of him. His beast didn’t care about the dangers that Kat would face. It just knew that whenever she was around, it needed to be near her, to touch her, to get wrapped up in her sweet scent. Walking out of that kitchen had taken all his self-control. Only one thing had driven him out: fear. He shook his head, hating the weak emotion that clawed at him.
    It took a lot to scare Jayce. He wanted Kat by his side, in his bed, under him, on top of him, all the time. Right now he was barely hanging on to his humanity. The longer he was around her, the more he wanted to claim her. To mark and bond with her. To bring her directly into his world, consequences be damned. Somehow he closed the lid on his thoughts and focused on the road in front of him.
    After the turnoff to the Armstrong-Cordona ranch, he followed the single-lane paved road until he reached a dirt road. It wasn’t