"He is a good man," she agreed. "And he's good to me. He'll be a good father. He hasn't gotten to the stage where he talks to them yet, but he rubs my belly every night and goes to sleep with his hand over them."
"Them?" Catarina hitched forward in her chair. "You're having twins?"
"Unconfirmed," Siena said. "My leopard said more than one, but I haven't gone to Doc yet to have him corroborate."
Emma cleared her throat. "Um, honey? That's how she put it to you? More than one? She didn't indicate two or give you that image?"
Siena eyed her warily. "What does that mean?"
"Just that Doc should check you, Siena. Carrying more than one baby can be hard on you," Emma said. "Jake would have had a fit if I'd had more than one baby inside me. As it is . . ." She glanced at her watch. "He's due to check on me any minute. It's been fifteen minutes and he pretty much is like clockwork."
Catarina and Siena giggled like a couple of schoolgirls. Right on cue, Jake slid the door open. All three women burst into full-blown laughter.
Jake scowled at them. "What's so funny in here? Emma's supposed to be taking it easy." He pinned his wife with a steely gaze. "I don't think that's actually resting, Emma, you're sitting up. Doc says to lie down."
"Doc is overprotective because he's afraid you'll kill him if he doesn't do everything you say. You were the one who said I had to lie down. I don't like that woman in my kitchen and I don't like someone else taking care of our children. I'm not in danger of losing the baby."
Jake was undeterred. He stepped close to the lounge where Emma was tucked with a soft thin blanket around her. He loomed over the chaise, his expression like thunder. Glaring. Eyes all cat. Definitely the dominant. Emma didn't even blink. She glared right back.
"The danger isn't losing the baby, woman. The danger is losing you. It. Isn't. Happening. So keep your sweet ass in that lounge until I come to carry you to our bed. And stop giving me grief."
"Next time, I'm not listening to either one of you," Emma declared.
His eyebrow shot up. "If you think I'm going to go through another nine months of hell, Emma, you can damn well forget that," he snapped. His hands framed her face, his gaze roaming over her features. "You're going to give me this."
Her eyes softened. "I'm lying down, honey. But you have to stop making me crazy."
His grin was slow. Heart-stopping. "Why? You've been making me crazy since I first laid eyes on you." He brushed a kiss across her mouth. "Cat, thanks for bringing dinner. It smells delicious."
Siena wished she knew how to cook. She would have brought them a dinner. "That reminds me. I'm trying out a recipe I found for Elijah tonight. I'd better get going. I don't know the first thing about cooking so I'm sure it will take me some time." She stood up. "It was really nice to be able to visit you both. I enjoyed it." Well, except the part where she didn't know what Emma meant about her leopard not being clear about twins. Was she carrying twins or not? Now she'd have to go to Doc and find out.
"Call me if you need help. I can maybe talk you through the recipe," Catarina offered. "And if you want lessons, I'm a fairly good cook. And Emma's a really good one."
"Catarina's being humble," Emma said. "She's awesome."
"I'll take you both up on it," Siena said. "I want to learn. Elijah promised he'd help me too." She said her good-byes, finding herself happy. Actually happy. She'd never had that before, just going to another woman's home and sitting down and talking. Laughing. Discussing men and babies. Being normal. She'd lived in her world of boarding schools, isolated from everyone. Elijah had given her that.
Her bodyguards surrounded her on the way to their car and again when they walked her up to the front door. Trey and Tomas went inside with her, disarming the alarm and doing a walk-through before Tomas led her to the kitchen.
"Is that always going to be necessary?" she asked.
Tomas looked startled, as if he hadn't expected her to actually speak to him. "What?" He was soft-spoken, but had the same intimidating build most of the leopards had, with the roped, defined muscles. His tee was stretched tight across his chest, and his shaggy hair looked as if it needed cutting weeks ago.
Siena shook her head. "Nothing. We're good. Thanks for walking me in."
He lifted his chin and left her there in the kitchen. A foreign, alien place. That didn't matter. She was actually excited. She wanted to find ways to take care of her man. To do more than have sex with him--not that she didn't love having sex with him--that was utterly glorious--but she wanted Elijah to feel loved in every single aspect of his life. She wanted him happy and, more than anything, to know she thought he was the most beautiful, wonderful man in the world.
She'd always wanted to learn to cook. She'd contemplated taking classes, but she'd been so busy getting first a business degree and then studying oenology and viticulture, learning everything there was to know about grapes and wine making, that she kept putting off the cooking classes. Washing her hands, she tied a makeshift apron around her clothes, using a towel.
The first recipe she'd decided to try was starred. The page was worn and smudged so she knew it was one of Elijah's favorites. The recipe was titled Camarones a la Diabla: shrimp and spicy sauce. She liked shrimp, and spice was good.
The recipe itself didn't look that difficult. Once she got it going she was going to make avocado dip to go with the meal. She had tortilla chips from the store. She would learn to make them another day.
The recipe seemed fairly straightforward as she studied it. She was to put all the ingredients in a pot along with a cup of water and cook it for twenty minutes. Once it came to a boil, she would put it in the blender and blend it. Not difficult. She could do that. The raw and peeled shrimp was then sauteed in olive oil in a frying pan with garlic salt and pepper. The salsa was added and the shrimp was cooked in that for twenty to twenty-five minutes on low heat. Elated, she laid out all the ingredients. She could do this. It was totally easy.
She cut up the two tomatoes and the small bunch of cilantro, added three pinches of oregano, two cloves of garlic and then studied the five small chili de arbol and the five serrano chilies. She wasn't certain how she was supposed to chop them up. The recipe didn't give specific instructions, only that they needed to be in the salsa that went over the shrimp. Taking a deep breath, she began, determined that Elijah would come home to one of his favorite meals.
*
ELIJAH frowned at Trey. "What do you mean, you haven't seen or heard from her? You didn't check on her?" The moment he'd come home, he expected her to be there. Right fucking there. Waiting for him. Glad to see him. Greeting him. Siena was nowhere around and that pissed him off. He'd been thinking about her the entire plane ride home.
"She went into the kitchen with Tomas and that was the last I saw of her," Trey defended. "No one's been in the house. My guess, she's still in there, waiting for you."
"When I leave her alone here, I want her checked on every twenty minutes or so," Elijah snapped. He'd cleaned up on the plane, wanting to come to her fresh, without the smell of gunpowder, feral cat or blood. Drake had sewn up the two places he'd needed stitches. He was good to go. And she wasn't there. Greeting him. Kissing him with that sweet mouth of hers. He fucking needed her. Right. That. Minute.
The moment he'd entered the house he had a bad feeling. He had no idea why, only that it was too quiet. He just didn't like the way it felt. He didn't like the fact that Siena wasn't right there. Or that anyone hadn't had eyes on her since she'd come home from Jake and Emma's. He didn't have time to waste snapping at security, he'd call a meeting later and lay down the law.
Turning on his heel, he prowled down the hall and took the shortcut through the atrium to the kitchen. The door to the kitchen was closed and he jerked it open. Instantly he smelled the potent aroma of Camarones a la Diabla. "What the fuck?" he snapped. His leopard was riding him hard. He still had the battle pumping through his bloodstream, the aggression. The need to conquer. The need to dominate. More
, his cock was raging. Raging at him. None of that would disappear until he was buried inside his woman.
Siena didn't turn away from the counter where she was running the blender. And coughing. Choking. She obviously hadn't heard him come in over the blender, nor did she hear his angry question.
She was clearly affected by the potency of the peppers. Sometimes, when his grandmother had made the salsa to go over the shrimp, they'd had to clear out the kitchen and even a part of the house because it felt as if their throats were closing.
"Fucking chilies. What are you doing?" he demanded, stalking across the room toward her--not an easy thing to do when he was as hard as a rock. She half turned, and his heart nearly stopped. Even his raging cock settled. Tears streamed down her face. Dios. Dios. "What were you thinking? You didn't handle those chilies, did you?"
She turned all the way toward him, choking on the fumes. Tears spilled down her face, but she looked determined, still blending the salsa in the blender in spite of the fact that the fumes were closing off her airway.
He crossed to her, swept her up in his arms and turned off the blender. "Dios, Siena, what the hell are you doing?" Fury curled in his belly. Hard, tight knots that told him he hadn't taken care of her. He hadn't cautioned her not to use any of the starred recipes. The hotter-than-Hades recipes that a novice couldn't handle.
She buried her face against his shoulder, but she made no attempt to hang on. In fact she kept her open palms away from him. He could see they were bright red. He erupted into Spanish, cursing angrily. "Fucking hell." It was worse than he thought. "Dios, mi amorcito, you burned your hands."
Elijah stalked to the outside patio, carrying her away from the house and the fumes to set her down in the nearest chair. He took hold of her wrists, his hands gentle when the leopard was leaping close to the surface, raking and tearing at him for allowing her to be injured in any way. He turned her palms to face him. They weren't just bright red, they were actually swollen and inflamed. She'd still been trying to cook for him--with her hands like that.
Deep inside his heart stuttered. What the hell did a man do with a woman who loved him like that? Who would try to cook for him in spite of burns to her hands? In spite of her throat closing from the fumes? What did a man do with a woman who lapped at his cock to clean him after mind-blowing sex? A woman who enjoyed blowing him? Who swallowed for him? Who did what she could to show him she loved him, not just say the words?
His eyes burned, from the chilies he was certain, although that had never happened to him before. Along with burning eyes his throat felt raw. He knew anyone looking at him would see the stark fear on his face. Because Siena Arnotto could tear him apart easily. Rip him to shreds. She could do what no member of his family, no enemy, no one who had tried to hurt him had done. She could annihilate him. Destroy him.
"Damn it, Siena," he snapped. "Don't you fucking move. And don't touch your face. Keep your hands away from your body."
He rushed back into the kitchen, turned off the blender, yanked open the refrigerator, dumped a sizable amount of milk and ice into a large bowl and hurried back to her. He slammed the bowl onto the table hard enough that the milk splashed over the edges. Gripping her wrists, he yanked her hands over the bowl.
"Put your hands in that," he ordered. "You didn't run your hands under cold water, did you?"
She nodded, biting hard on her lip in an effort to control the tears streaming down her face.
He cursed more, tipping her face up toward him, inspecting her for any places she might have touched with her hands. "Is your face burning?"
She shook her head. "Just my hands. I was careful, once I realized they were burning, not to touch my skin anywhere else."
Dios, it could have been so much worse. The need for physical action was so great that he paced away, slammed his fist into the side of the house hard, three times.
She jumped, her hands coming out of the milk.
Instantly he was back at her side, forcing her palms into the ice-cold milk. "Fucking keep them there."
"Stop saying the f-word at me," she protested.
He ignored that. She had to stop crying. She had to. "Baby, what the hell were you thinking? Peppers contain capsicum. That's used in pepper spray. You can't get that shit on your skin, especially someone as sensitive as you. And sometimes when you blend those chilies the fumes can make you feel like you're choking. Seriously, Siena, what the hell?"
His hands actually itched to shake her. "I left for a few hours, baby. That's it. I come home to this. You could have really hurt yourself." He hit the tabletop with his fist, making the milk splash around her wrists. "Fuck. Don't you ever do something so stupid again."
"Elijah." She said his name. Low.
His gaze jumped to her face. He didn't want to look at her. He didn't want to see her tears, that just tore him up inside and the part of him that felt helpless because he fucking wasn't there when she needed him just pissed him off.
"Go away."
He scowled at her. "What did you just say to me?"
"I said, go away." She repeated it.
No remorse. Her chin wasn't even up defiantly. She just looked at him with soft green eyes. Eyes drowning in tears. Made his damn belly turn into hard knots.
"You did not just say that to me," he said. His male pushed closer to the surface. Raking at him. Clawing at his belly. Furious. Almost as furious as Elijah was at himself. They hadn't protected her. She was in pain, and it was such a simple thing to have avoided.
"I said it. I meant it. Now, go away."
"Siena," he warned. "You burned the crap out of your hands. You had no business cutting up those chilies without knowing how to properly handle them. What were you thinking?"
She lifted her chin. He'd been waiting for that little gesture of defiance. He liked it. It was perverse of him, but he did. She had attitude, and she could stand up to his foul temper. Still, everything dominant rose up to challenge her. To force compliance. To make her realize she was his, and he wasn't putting up with her hurting herself.
"I was thinking I would surprise you by fixing something that was a favorite dish of yours. A criminal offense, no doubt. Then I burned my hands and I was thinking my man was going to come home and comfort me--maybe tell me what to do to stop the burning and how to prevent it from happening again. But instead, my idiot man is a total bastardo."
Everything in him settled. The tight knots in his belly loosened just a little. He took a deep breath and studied her face. Most women looked like hell when they cried. Red, blotchy faces. Not Siena. No, she had to look even more beautiful. Her eyes looked greener than ever, brilliant, like gleaming polished emeralds. Tears sparkled on her lashes like tiny diamonds. Yeah. That was his Siena.
"My baby can say bastard but not fuck. Who knew?"
"Don't you dare laugh at me," she snapped. "I mean it, Elijah, I'll dump this bowl of milk over your head, although it is helping to take the burn away."
"Don't dump the milk over my head, mi vida. You can have words with me, though. I won't mind that. Although I don't have a clue what that might be since you can't say fuck or any other foul words beside bastardo."
"Apparently," she said in a very haughty tone, "your memory is going. I believe when I was very angry with you, I used extremely foul language and said the f-word several times, along with a few other choice words I was quoting from your extraordinary vocabulary."
"The f-word?" he repeated. "Extremely foul language?"
She glared at him. Gave a little sniff. The coughing and choking had stopped now that he had her out in the cool night air and away from the blender. The tears were drying up as well, because he'd gotten her angry.
"Go away, Elijah."
"It's not going to happen. I'll give you the world, baby, but not that. Besides, I have to cover your hands in aloe vera."
"I don't want your help. You're a total jerk. I don't know what I ever saw in you."
"That's not nice, Siena. And you're a
lways sweet."
"I was nice, now I'm not because you're rubbing off on me."
He leaned down to kiss her. She turned her head away. Something in him tightened. Coiled. Something not nice. Not sweet. Something scary and dangerous and feral. "Baby, fucking kiss me." All over again, his cock hardened. He had the urge to put his fist in her hair and yank her head down right over it.
"I don't like you. I'm not going to kiss you when I don't like you. You were mean when I needed you to be sweet and understanding."
"You hurt yourself," he accused. His fingers delved deep into her hair, but he resisted the need to put her mouth on him. "You had no business cutting up those chilies, Siena. None."
"You knew I was going to cook tonight."
"Sure, but not that dish. Something easy. Something that didn't burn the shit out of your hands."
"How was I supposed to know which would burn and which wouldn't?"
"Chilies." He snapped the word knowing this wasn't her fault. It was his. "I'm going to cut some fresh aloe vera stalks, but before I do, you are going to kiss me."
"I am not." She glared at him.
He smiled. A predator's smile. She blinked rapidly and tried to turn her face away. One hand kept her jaw in place. "Don't take your hands out of that milk," he warned, his lips against hers. She tried to turn her head again but he didn't allow it. Her lips remained stubbornly closed.
He smiled against her mouth, enjoying her defiance, enjoying the effect it had on his body. He was harder than ever. Throbbing. Her defiance wasn't real. Siena didn't have it in her to hold a grudge. He'd learned that about her immediately. He'd hurt her feelings, but it wouldn't take much for her to forgive him. He coaxed her gently, kissing her with tenderness, his teeth tugging at her lower lip. When she still refused, he bit down harder, nipping her until she gasped. His tongue slid in.
She tasted sweet. She tasted hot. Sexy. His. And she kissed him back. No hesitation. Drowning in him. Giving him everything. Giving him--her. His woman didn't hold grudges and she could kiss like fucking sin. He felt her kiss go straight to his heart. Straight to his soul. Straight to his aching cock.