Calder Read Online Free PDF

grabbed her sun-blocking robes, veils and breath mask. “I’m going,” she said to the air.
    The entrance to the greenery-lined walkway shot open. Katarina plunged into the garden she’d thought so beautiful, now finding it overly exotic, the scent of the flowers too strong.
    Soon she was running through the door that led to the dingy hall. The outside door opened for her as she hurried toward it, heat blasting her before she even made it outside.
    Katarina slithered into sun-blocking robes and veils, grateful for the ability to hide her face. Behind her the door slammed shut with finality, the rusting metal as unyielding as it had been when she’d arrived.
    Blinking back tears, Katarina pulled her veils over her face then walked into the street in search of a hovercab. Chapter Four
    Fuck.
    Calder, pent-up and furious, paced the small quarters of his apartment. He’d always liked the contrast of his functional, minimal living space with the exotic décor of his lair, but today he wished he had more room to pace.
    Damn her. The minute she’d walked in, his plan to show the nervous medic what a Shareem truly was evaporated. She and her condescending highborn attitude were supposed to crumble like dust—she was supposed to learn that Calder would have the upper hand the next time he had to visit her clinic.
    His plan had gone all to hell. Hence his frenzied pacing, like an animal in a cage.
    Shareem were made for sex; they needed sex. Any woman could get Calder hard, his body built to react instantly and strongly to a woman’s pheromones. If she wanted it, his body wanted it too.
    But that was a simple chemical reaction. What rarely happened was Calder looking at a woman and wanting to fuck her because of her , for the pure joy of it. This woman…
    Calder slammed his fists into the white wall. His Shareem chemicals had shot all kinds of joy through him, and he’d wanted to touch every inch of her.
    If she hadn’t been so damn curious he could still be in there, maybe with her on the padded platform, her legs around his hips while he enjoyed a good fuck.
    Why had she ripped the mask from his face and ruined everything?
    Women had seen him before—sometimes he decided they needed to see what kind of being they craved to be with. They’d scream in horror, those highborn, face-sculpted women, for whom physical beauty was easily purchased, and run from him. He’d hunt

them down and take them, which was what they wanted. That was the fantasy, to be ravished by The Beast.
    I don’t want this with you , he’d said to Katarina.
    He wanted to be with her, and not through the stupid game of predator and prey.
    Well, all right, he wouldn’t mind a little predator and prey fantasy with her, but he wanted the playing to be mutual. He wanted to hunt her, and when he caught her, have her laugh and kiss him and be happy to be caught.
    He wanted it to be real.
    What the fuck is the matter with me?
    Calder strode to his sparsely furnished bedroom and slid back a wall panel to reveal a full-length mirror. Barely glancing at it, he began to remove his clothes.
    “She’s just a woman who wanted The Beast,” he said out loud as he shucked his gloves and skin-tight tunic. “That’s why she came. No other reason.”
    There could have been no other reason. What Calder offered was unique and dangerous and spoke to needs women didn’t want to examine too closely.
    Calder didn’t ask women to examine their needs. He simply offered a way to let them put aside taboos and give in. If they didn’t give in, he taught them to.
    He touched primal fears and primal needs, and women flocked to him for it.
    Some left terrified, others more sated then they’d ever been in their lives. But he’d never had one complaint, never a threat of arrest or termination. No one ever talked about what happened in the lair of The Beast.
    He’d never, ever stopped the game and fled, leaving a woman bewildered and calling after him.
    Stupid, cock-brained