“Okay, why is your embarrassment level spiking?” Tanner asked me.

“No reason. Now zip it.”

Several minutes passed before I successfully emptied my head. The rain, at long last, trickled to a halt.

“Good.” Satisfaction gleaming in his eyes, Rome nodded in approval. “Now make it rain again. Faster this time.”

My teeth gnashed together. How easy it was for him to issue the order. Following it, however, proved difficult. Emotions did not like being forced. A depressed person would have trouble laughing and smiling. An excited bride-to-be would have trouble shooting her fiancé in a killing rage. Well, unless he really deserved it.

“Come on, baby. You can do it. I know you can.”

“I’m trying, damn it,” I snapped.

“Uh, I think you’re about to start a fire,” Tanner said drily.

Bubble baths and chocolate. Champagne and roses. I inhaled slowly, exhaled loudly and long. Calm, I was calm, damn it. Wait. I needed to be sad. Being without Rome -although at the moment, that thought didn’t sadden me too much. He was so freaking bossy! Be sad, be happy. Blah, blah, blah. Why didn’t he get over here and try to command himself-

“Ow!” Tanner jerked away from me, breaking our connection. “You’re burning the shit out of me. If I scar, I’m suing your ass.”

I blinked down at my hands. Sure enough, the ends of my fingers blazed. Anger-crap. It would have been nice if Rome had once again swept through me and helped rid me of that. Though I still wasn’t sure how he’d done so before. I shook my hands and managed to extinguish the fire. “If you scar,” I told Tanner, “the ladies will love you.”

His face brightened. “Really?”

My eyes clashed with Rome ’s, hazel against blue. “This isn’t working. I’m an emotional person, but I can’t just force myself to feel a certain way. Damn it, I don’t want these powers.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, you’ve got them, so you need to learn how to use them.”

“It’s too hard.”

“The more you practice, the easier it will get.”

“That doesn’t help me now!”

“We’ve got plenty of time before we need to leave. We’ll keep at it. You’ll get it. I have confidence in you.”

His praise almost softened me. Almost. “A few more hours isn’t going to make a difference. I’ve connected with Tanner, and he’s doing wonderfully, gauging my emotions. But I can’t control them.”

“I am good, aren’t I?” Tanner interjected with a grin.

“Stop whining, Belle.” Rome showed me no mercy. “Just close your eyes and try again.”

Had he always been this much of a task master? This determined to get his way? “No.”

“Tanner isn’t giving up,” Rome said.

My eyes narrowed. Oh, how low. I didn’t appreciate being compared to someone else. Especially a smart-mouthed kid. I crossed my own arms over my chest. Let’s see if he liked payback. “You want me to keep at this, then you’ll damn well tell me about your own powers and how you mastered them.”

“Belle,” he said warningly.

I’d issued the ultimatum and I wasn’t backing down, wasn’t taking it back. I wanted to know. Hell, I deserved to know. And if I had to force his hand like this, I would. “Fine. Don’t tell me. We’ll see you inside the cabin.” After blowing him a saccharine-sweet kiss, I turned on my heel. I grabbed Tanner’s hand and moved toward the cabin.

Surprisingly, the kid followed me with dragging feet. “I want you to burn my hands again,” he whined. “I need a scar.”

“Keep it up and I’ll burn your entire body.”

Rome growled low in his throat. “You want to know, I’ll show you.”

I froze. Inch by inch, I turned and faced him. My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Go inside, Tanner,” he said, eyes leveled on me.

“I want to see, too.”

“Go in the house. You’ve mastered your job already. Now I’m going to master mine. I’m going to filter for her. Go in the house,” Rome repeated.

“Without me, you won’t know when or how much to filter.”

“Tanner. Go.”

“But I want to see your superpower. I’ll just look out the window, so you might as well-”

“I tried to be nice, Tanner.” Rome ’s face was dark with fury. His nostrils were flared, his irises were glowing crystalline blue and his pupils were a mere slash of black. “This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a game. Go in the house, or I’ll kick you in.”

Tanner raced inside without another word.

I had to force myself not to follow the kid. A lump formed in my throat as Rome stalked toward me. True frissons of fear unfurled, chilling the air around me.

“I’m going to show you my ability,” he said through suddenly sharp teeth, his tone deceptively quiet, “and you’re going to wish to God I hadn’t.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A SMALL PART OF ME (on some level) expected what Rome did next, and the rest of me, well, was an idiot. I should have figured it out. How had I not guessed? Selective common sense?

The fact that I should have known didn’t lessen the impact, though. My eyes widened in shock, and I inched cautiously away. My stomach bottomed out. “You’re-you’re-”

Changing. He was changing.

His face elongated. His bones rearranged themselves, until he was stooping over the ground. The clothes he wore ripped from his body, and shiny black fur sprouted from his skin, covering him in mere seconds. His teeth sharpened even further, and his pupils thinned, pointing at both ends.

Dear God, he was a jaguar. A jaguar! No, the jaguar. The one I’d seen in my apartment. The one who’d invaded Lexis’s home. The one who’d protected me against assassins.

The one I’d almost iced.

Had Rome simply told me of his ability, I might have tried to deny it. I might have called him a liar, might have told him to stop joking around. Seeing it, watching his transformation, offered irrefutable proof.

And it brought home the fact that there was an entire world out there I hadn’t known existed until a few days ago.

Rome growled up at me, the sound fierce and pure animal. Total danger. I backed another step away, my hand fluttering over my throat. Not once had he hurt me while in this form. But… a girl couldn’t be too cautious.

“Holy shit!” Tanner shouted from the cabin. “ Rome, the badass, is a pussy. Woohoo!”

The jaguar’s fierce attention never deviated from me. Its-his-gaze continued to pierce me, daring me to say something. Daring me to do something. He expected me to run, I realized, to rebuke him. He probably expected me to faint, as well.

No wonder he had been so adamant about keeping this part of himself secret. Did he fear rejection, too? Did he think I would find him disgusting? Silly man. This was weird, yes, but hardly a relationship killer.

I’d dated worse.

Besides, I started fires-with my freaking eyes. Like I really had room to judge. I crouched, lowering myself to his eye level. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come to sweet, sweet Belle.”

His long, black lashes swept down, back up. Then, slowly, he prowled toward me, closing the distance between us inch by animal inch. I reached out and stroked the softness of his fur. He purred.

“I guess this means I get to call you Cat Man. ”

He bared his teeth, his lips quivering over them as he uttered a feral snarl.

“No? What about Agent Fur Ball?”

Another snarl.

My own lips twitched. “You should have told me about this,” I admonished. “It would have saved me a near heart attack and you a near icing.”

His snarling ceased, and he blinked at me again. I scratched behind his ears. Hesitantly, he licked my arm. The warmth and smoothness of his tongue surprised me.

“Are you letting him lick you?” Tanner called. “Gross.”

“Shut up!”

“Belle and the pussycat sitting in a tree,” came the singsong reply.

With a roar, Rome prowled menacingly toward the cabin. Realizing he’d just been placed on the dessert menu, Tanner finally shut his big fat mouth.