Reapa suddenly leaps from the chair and over the bed towards me. I stagger back in surprise. He grabs my face and kisses me hard, forcing his tongue through my pursed lips. This kiss is far more aggressive than his first, but there’s no denying the electric current flowing between us. Reapa rumbles deep in his throat. This time, instead of snaking his tongue slowly around my tongue, it battles mine in a frenzy of dominance. My little tongue can hardly keep up, and although it’s a complete contrast to our first kiss, it’s still wonderful, and I feel my knees buckling.

Strong arms sweep me up, and he presses me against his powerful chest as he carries me over to the bed. My heart is booming in my chest. Do I want this intimacy? This quickly? We’ve barely known each other a third of a day. Isn’t this a little too much too soon? What happened to his earlier statement about taking it slow? I know I was thinking I wanted more, but do I want this much? Is this because I instigated our last kiss at Orb’loom? What am I saying? I do want this. We have a connection. I felt it from the moment we met. I’m a grown woman. I’m twenty-four for Christ’s sake. I’m not a child anymore.

Reapa all but throws me onto the bed and then falls down beside me, his face nuzzling into my neck as his hand roughly forces his hand underneath my vest and squeezes my breasts. My chest is heaving and my heart is thundering. This is the first time anyone has touched my breasts skin-on-skin. My nipples harden under his touch, pushing out through the layers of material, stopping this becoming even more intimate.

He suddenly backs up down the bed, his claws trailing down my body as he does, until I feel his face drop into my crotch. My heart shoots up into my mouth.

What the hell!

His large, powerful hands grab onto my thighs. I stiffen. But not enough to stop him from dragging them open. The heat of his breath penetrates my pants and sinks through them to join the heat building behind them.

He inhales deeply. “Ahhhhh! You want me—just as much as I want you.”

His hands come up to my waistband and start to yank it down. I grab hold of it and slow its progress. I can’t get naked…not yet.

I’m suddenly aware another person has come in the room. I freeze at a voice I recognise. “Boss?”

Reapa growls menacingly and I jump with a start at the unexpectedness of it. “WHAT?!”

“There’s a problem…erm, that needs sorting out immediately at the base.”

I scramble to cover myself. Who the hell is this bozo and why is he calling Reapa Boss?

Reapa leaps off me and roars as he punches the wall, then kicks at a chair which flies through the air and crashes into a weird 3D art sculpture sticking out of the wall. It shatters and the shards tinkle to the floor. My mouth drops open, aghast. This is not the Reapa I’ve known for the last eight hours. He’s like Jekyll and Hyde.

Reapa paces the room shrouded in darkness, his breath coming out thick and heavy as his enormous shoulders heave with ire. He stops abruptly and reaches into his pants. I look across at the man still hovering behind him. Surely he doesn’t think I’m going to continue to be intimate with him in the presence of him?

Something sails through the air and lands on the bed inbetween my legs. “A gift.”

I blink my eyes to try to make out the small object in the dim light. Picking it up, I place it in the palm of my hand for a better look. My spine turns to ice. It’s a gem. I scramble up the bed and over to the bedside lamp and feel for a knob, button, string…whatever contraption controls lights these days. But all I have to do is touch the base of the lamp. The room illuminates.

Bile rises into my throat. It’s not Reapa. It’s the masked man from the robbery. The voice from the alleyway. His golden hair shimmers in the brightly lit room. His dark eyes look like never ending pits. The only thing that hints a morsel of compassion is the golden slit pupils streaked across them.

“You! Who are you?”

“Your fated mate.”