Mick replied, increasing the pressure on her throat even though doing so made him cringe inside. Still, he achieved the result he’d wanted. Caterina’s fight-or-flight response kicked in. Her skin erupted with the deep maroon color of his cotton robe and her hands tightened on his wrist, almost painfully so. He could handle her like this, he thought. He could handle her when she wasn’t all soft enticing female. “You want me to believe you’re a killer, but you’re not,” Caterina said, her grip as firm as his. Reason told Mick to increase the pressure at her throat, to disprove her belief. But he couldn’t, because she was right. Caterina met his gaze as her heart thumped in quick allegro beats. She held fast to his wrist and as she did so, the weird halo sight she had battled earlier returned, outlining his body in a bright blue, while his center appeared as a combination of other colors, communicating to her brain the heat of his body. Like one of those cheap gum machine love-test strips, she saw the cooler outside edges of his limbs and the increasing warmth toward his core.
