Shifter

by Lora Leigh

  stuff was killing her. It was bad enough before that kiss, but now it was tearing through her system, nearly making her ill.

  And he knew it, he could smell it, he could feel it.

  “Natalie, take the hormones,” he said, his voice gravelly as she watched his fingers form fists against the wood. “Go inside. I’ll fix the steaks, and I’ll be in in a bit.”

  “Has it been like this for you since the beginning?” She needed to know what she was dealing with, who she was dealing with.

  “A week before I came to your door and introduced myself, I watched you.” She jerked in surprise, watching as his head lifted to the soft breeze that fell from the mountains around them. “You were alone in the house, your bedroom window was open, and the scent of your arousal drifted down to me. You were masturbating.”

  Natalie felt her face flame and had no chance to hide her embarrassment as he swung around and crouched in front of her chair.

  “I could taste your sweet scent on the air,” he growled, his face only inches from hers. “Needy, aching, your pussy throbbed for satisfaction, and you found none.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in hunger, his eyes burned with it as his voice lowered. “And I knew I could ease you. I knew I longed to ease you with a strength that overcame even my need to kill the bastards who hunted us for so many years. And I knew, tasting the scent of your juices in the air, that you were my mate.”

  “How?” Desperation filled her, longing, fear, so many emotions, so many needs she couldn’t make sense of. “How could you have known, Saban?”

  He took her hand before she could draw back and flatted her palm over his heart. “That night was the first time in my life that I realized my heart beat. In my life I have never known fear, nor excitement, or nerves. I was always calm. Always steady. But that night, Natalie. That night, I felt all those things, cher. I felt them rip inside me, tear through my soul, and fill me. Without control. Without volition. I had no choice, because you’re the other part of me. My soul, boo. My mate.”

  He should have looked ridiculous, kneeling there in front of her, her hand pressed into his chest, unfortunately, he looked anything but ridiculous. He looked arrogant; he looked like a man determined to claim his woman.

  Sexy, savage, hungry. He wasn’t pleading, he wasn’t asking permission for her heart. He was claiming it, and as far as he was concerned, it was that simple.

  “It doesn’t work that way.” She could feel his heart beneath her hand, strong and steady. “Just because you want it—”

  “Doesn’t make it so.” His lips twisted with an edge of bitterness. “But the mating heat does make it so, Natalie. What you said, about the choice being taken from you, may be true from your perspective, at this moment. But it isn’t true of mine. If you weren’t meant to be my heart, and I yours, then it would not have happened.”

  “Saban, there are no guarantees in life,” she snapped, frustrated, feeling the pressure his certainty brought her. “I just walked out of a marriage that nearly destroyed me with one controlling man. I don’t need to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  As the last word left her lips, heat bloomed in her womb, between her thighs. Her teeth clenched on the agonizing pleasure. It wasn’t pain. It was a need for pleasure, and it was sharp, intense, destructive to her self-control.

  “I took the damned pills,” she groaned, wrapping her arms around her stomach, pressing, fighting against the clenching, spasming need that tore through it.

  “The hormone in the kiss raises the arousal level,” he said softly. “The hormone in the male semen eases it somewhat.”

  He pushed her hair back from her face, his hard hands stroking pure pleasure along the sides of her face.

  “I suspected.” She shook her head. “The tabloid stories, all those silly articles. When I came to Sanctuary and met Callan and Merinus, I suspected parts of them were true.”

  And she had been intrigued, curious about the Breed who watched her with hungry eyes and pretended to be something, someone he wasn’t.

  “Parts of them are true,” he agreed. “Let me ease you, Natalie. Let me take away the pain.”

  His lips touched hers, a butterfly kiss that had her own lips parting and a breath of need escaping her lips.

  “I’m going to regret this.” She knew she was.

  Natalie opened her eyes and stared back at him, desperation, need, and fear roiling together inside her. “I can’t handle shackles, Saban. I can’t be controlled.” The fear of it was ripping through her mind, destroying the balance she had found after her divorce.

  Because she was being controlled. By the mating hormone he had spilled into her system, by her own body, by needs she couldn’t deny because everything inside her was demanding his touch.

  “I’ll call Ely,” he growled. “She can strengthen the pills.”

  Natalie shook her head, her hands jerking up to cover his as he moved to straighten away from her.

  “Touch me. Just touch me.” She could feel the perspiration pouring from her face now, the weakness invading her body. “Saban, this is worse than she predicted. Oh God, this is bad.”

  Dr. Ely Morrey had explained what she could expect in the first stage of the mating heat. But she’d said it only got worse after mates had sex that first time. Before that, the arousal would stay steady, a little uncomfortable, until she and Saban actually had sex.

  If it was worse than this later, then she didn’t know if she would survive it.

  She stared back at Saban, seeing the agony in his eyes, the knowledge that he hadn’t expected this either.

  “Cher, Natalie.” His thumbs smoothed over her cheeks. “Go inside, away from me. I’ll finish this meal for you. You can eat.”

  She shook her head.

  “If we stay out here, bébé, we’ll end up fucking out here.” He was breathing hard, his chest moving fast and hard as his hands tightened around her face. “The scent of your arousal is making me insane. My control is thin enough as it is.”

  She licked her lips nervously. “Come in with me.”

  The fact that she had made the decision, that she was actually considering having sex with him at this point shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. This arousal wasn’t painful, not in the sense of levels or degrees of pain. Instead, it was imperative, desperate; her skin was crawling with the need to be touched, her mouth watering for the taste of him.

  “Go in,” he said tightly. “I’ll bring the food back in and come to you.”

  She shook her head.

  “Get away from me, Natalie,” he snarled, jerking to his feet, surprising her with his vehemence. “Go inside. Five minutes. Give yourself five minutes away from me, make certain without me that your wisest choice isn’t to call Ely first.”

  “You started this.” She jumped from the chair and faced him, anger rising inside her, pounding through her blood and spearing through her senses as it strengthened along with the lust. “You shot this freaky hormone into my system; now you can take care of it.”

  If she could just get past the need, just for a few minutes, just long enough to think again, then she could figure it out. But she knew, until he touched her, until he took her, there wasn’t going to be a clear thought in her head.

  A growl rumbled in his throat. “It’s too strong right now,” he grated. “I won’t take you easy.”

  “If you tried to take me easy, I might have to kill you,” she raged back, her hands fisting in his shirt as she felt the flames of need licking over her flesh. “Saban, please, just touch me. Do something, anything so I can think.”

  “So you can figure a way out of this?” Bitterness filled his voice, but he was touching her, easing her backward into the house, the steaks forgotten.

  “So I can figure out how to handle this.” Maybe she was accepting there was no way out of it, but she didn’t accept what she knew was coming from it.

  She liked Saban. She hadn’t realized how much she liked him until she had to
think about it, had to categorize the relationship that had developed. She cared for him. She would miss him, God, miss him so bad if he wasn’t here, but she didn’t love him. She didn’t want to love him. And she didn’t want to be controlled by him or some damned hormonal aphrodisiac.

  The door locked behind him, and Natalie found herself lifted against him, his arms like steel bands around her as his kiss became a tease. He licked and nibbled at her lips, giving her just a taste of the spicy, storm-laden essence of his kiss. He made her crave more. Made her moan, her arms tighten around his neck, her tongue dip past his lips to taste more of him.

  “We won’t make it to the bedroom if you keep this up,” he warned her, his voice dark, rough, a growling rasp that sent a shiver racing through her as one hand pushed beneath the elastic band of her pants to cup the curve of her cheek.

  “So?” She didn’t care.

  As he held her against him, her hands slid from around his neck to the buttons of his shirt. She wanted to feel him, wanted to touch him. The weeks he had followed her through the house that image had played out in her mind. Turning, ripping the buttons free and jerking the material from his body before rubbing against him like a cat. Like he had a habit of rubbing against her every chance he had.

  She wanted him. She didn’t have to fight that want now; something had forced her into it, taken the choice out of her hands, and she suddenly wondered if that wasn’t a good thing. Would she have ever gone after the powerful, sexual beast this man was on her own?

  Natalie tore her lips back from him, the teasing little tastes driving her insane. Her hands locked in the front of his shirt, and she ripped. Buttons scattered as a snarl left his lips, savage, animalistic, but his chest was finally bare. Sun-bronzed, hard, and tough, and free of hair except the nearly invisible, incredibly fine pelt that covered him.

  “Oh, God.” This was better than chest hair. Perspiration gleamed on it now, making the soft hairs easier to see, and Natalie realized nothing could be more sensual. The thought of it rubbing against her sensitive nipples made her pussy clench, her juices spilling between the swollen folds between her thighs.

  She had to taste him. As he carried her through the kitchen to the short hallway and the stairs, she licked his chest. His muscles jumped beneath the caress, his arms tightening as he stumbled against the wall.

  The taste was there, and she lapped at it, kissing and licking her way to the flat, hard disc of his male nipple. Her teeth raked it, nipped at it. Natalie wondered vaguely if she had needed the hormone to become addicted to him, to hunger, to ache for his touch until she thought she’d die without it. Saban could be addictive on his own, she decided.

  “Yes. Sweet mercy, cher.” He pressed her against the wall, his head falling back as she tongued the hard disc, licking at the stormy taste of perspiration, the heat and hardness of tough male flesh.

  “You taste like your kiss,” she whimpered, licking over his chest again, little small laps that tasted his flesh and fired her blood. “Kiss me, Saban. I need your taste.”

  The growl that came from his lips should have been frightening; it should have caused at least an edge of wariness to cool the lust burning inside her. Instead, it tightened her stomach, caused wet heat to spill from her vagina again. And when his lips covered hers, his tongue pushing inside, there was no room for wariness or for thought, only for hunger, only the desperate need inside her to replace the shadows in his eyes with light.

  That thought pierced her as she felt him stumble up the stairs. She had seen those shadows when she first met him, wondered at them, ached for them.

  She stroked her hands over his bare shoulders as her head bent, her lips suckling at the storm-ridden taste of his kiss. She loved storms. The smack of thunder, the flare of lightning, and it was all there in his kiss, in the desperate hunger she knew no other man had felt for her.

  “Not gonna make it to the bed,” he groaned, tearing his lips from hers to pull at her shirt. “Take it off.”

  She took it off and flung it behind them as he shed the scraps of his shirt and went to his knee on one step.

  Natalie’s eyes widened as she straddled his thigh, the heated muscle pressing into her pussy, the force of her weight against him applying a teasing pressure against her clit. And when he moved her—oh Lord, his hands rocked her on his thigh, stroking her clit as his lips covered an inflamed nipple.

  “Yes!” She hissed the word, her head falling back as she rode him in slow, undulating movements.

  The rasp against her clit was exquisite, if she could just get the right pressure, the right position.

  It was shockingly ecstatic, poised on the pinnacle of orgasm, certain when it came, it would take the top of her head off.

  “Not like this.” Hard hands gripped her hips. “Inside you. I’ll be inside you when you come for me, cher. I’ll be damned if you’ll go without me.”

  FIVE

  He had to make it to the bed. God, he couldn’t take her here on the stairs. He had promised himself, the first time, when he completed his claim on her he would do so in the bed he had made for her. The one he’d made certain was in place before she came to this house.

  The king-size bed made of heavy cypress posts, carved and detailed, made especially for the woman who would one day hold his soul.

  He dreamed of claiming her there. Not here, not on stairs where she couldn’t possibly know the comfort of soft sheets and the finest mattress he could provide.

  Growling, his lips still holding the tight, sweetly succulent flesh of her nipple captive, he forced himself to his feet then nearly lost all strength he possessed as her legs wrapped around his hips and the heat of her pussy seeped through his jeans to his cock.

  He locked his hands on her ass, and he forced himself down the short hall to her bedroom. He pushed his way through the doorway, slammed the door closed, and barely remembered to lock it before he stumbled across the room to the bed.

  He felt the power of it the minute he collapsed to the mattress with her. The comfort, the peace. Entwined with the prayers of the swamp rat that had saved him, carved into lightning-struck cypress were ancient symbols of protection and peace. It was a work of art by an artist the world had never known as he taught the craft to the strange boy he had rescued from the hurricane-ravaged bayou.

  It was the bed Saban had dreamed of building at an age when most boys were still tied to their mother’s apron strings. The bed where he knew he would one day create his family.

  “Here,” he sighed, lifting from her, giving her nipple one last lick before levering himself from the curvy sweetness of her supple body.

  He pulled her legs from around his waist, gripped the band of her capris, and pulled them quickly down her legs. Disposing of her strappy little sandals was easy, as was removing the silk of her damp panties.

  And then he paused, held himself still, and stared down at the perfection of the woman who was his mate.

  Her breasts that filled his hands perfectly, the flare of her hips, the gentle weight of her thighs, the smooth, curl-less folds of her sex. Her pussy was bare, silken, and beautiful. But how much more beautiful, he thought, if he could convince her to allow those soft curls to return?

  All the sweetness in the world was held there, and he was a man who thrived on his sweets.

  His head lowered, his tongue distending, and he swiped through the soft cream, a rough growl leaving his throat as he found the swollen little nub of her clit and her soft, needy cry filled the air.

  Sugar and cream, that was her taste, and he could become drunk on her. He licked through the slick juices, nectar, the wine of the gods, it had to be. His lips opened, and he kissed the delicate folds of flesh, licked at the taste of her, devouring the passion that flowed from her.

  And she loved it. He could feel the pleasure twisting, climbing through her body as she writhed beneath him. He had to clamp his hands on her hips to hold her still, but she lifted herself to him.

  Her knees bent,
her feet pressed into the mattress as he knelt beside the bed. Her hips angled, and his tongue found paradise. Rich, heady, living passion flowed to him as he heard her cries sinking into his head.

  He had never known lust this hot, this wild. He fucked his tongue into the gripping, heated depths of her pussy and growled. An involuntary sound, wild and primitive, as he fought to slake his hunger for her taste.

  The scent of her arousal had filled his head for weeks. Heated and mesmerizing, it had built a hunger for her that he feared he would never sate.

  Mating heat be damned. This woman had consumed him long before the mating heat had begun affecting him. And now he would consume her, become so much a part of her that she could no longer run, that she realized they were bound: bound in ways she didn’t want to escape.

  “I want you!” Natalie clawed at his shoulders as his tongue pumped into her pussy, driving her to the point of madness with the wicked, incredible pleasure tearing through her.

  She wanted to touch him, wanted to give him the same pleasure he was giving her, but she couldn’t think. She couldn’t push herself away, and she couldn’t help but beg, to plead for more of his wicked tongue and evil fingers.

  Fingers that were pressing inside her, filling her as his lips moved to the hard knot of her clit and surrounded it.

  Her eyes jerked open, stared down her body, met the dark green fire in his as he licked and suckled at the violently sensitive flesh.

  She was going to explode. She could feel it. She was right there. So close.

  “You taste like a dream.” He kissed her clit, once, twice, then licked around it slowly, his slumberous eyes locked with hers. “I could eat you forever.”

  She could barely breathe.

  “But I want to be inside you when you come for me the first time.” He pulled back, despite her attempt to tighten her legs and hold him in place.

  “I’ve dreamed of this, cher.” Anticipation filled his voice, his slumberous gaze as he jerked at the laces of his boots and quickly pulled them free.

  Licking her lips, Natalie moved as his hands went to his belt. She rose, sat on the side of the bed, and brushed his fingers away.

  “I want you now.” She slid the buckle free then went to work on the metal buttons, pulling them free, the hard, thick ridge of his cock making the task difficult at first.

  As the material parted, Natalie drew it down to his thighs, left it there, and cupped her palm over the thick flesh hidden only by the cotton briefs he wore.

  She heard his breath hiss from between his teeth as she gripped the band of the underwear and drew it slowly over the swollen length of his erection.

  Weakness flooded her. Her juices pooled on the ultrasensitive folds of her flesh, and she swore her womb was clenching in trepidation. Because he wasn’t a small man in any way.

  “Cher, leave me a little control, eh?” His voice was strained, but his hands were gentle as he brushed the hair back from her face.

  “No.” She gripped the hard flesh with both hands and brought it to her parted lips.

  He said something. Something foreign, thickly accented, but she didn’t catch it. The blood was thundering in her ears, rushing through her body, and her mouth was surrounding the wide, hot crest of his cock hungrily.

  She had dreamed, too. Dreamed of him taking her in this big bed, dreamed of taking him, just like this.

  She stared up at him, tasted the heat and male lust, the hunger and the need on his flesh. Sweat gleamed on his chest, ran in small rivulets along it, and added a subtle male fragrance to the air.

  It was his eyes that held her though. A green so dark now she wondered if they weren’t closer to black. They glowed in his face, as startling as the wicked white canines that gleamed at the side of his mouth as his lips pulled back in a desperate snarl.

  Hard hands were in her hair, twisting in it, tangling in it as she sucked his cock head inside and swirled her tongue over it slowly, tasting him.

  He wasn’t watching her in detachment, he wasn’t analyzing her performance, he was enjoying it. Enjoying it to the point that she moaned at the additional pleasure that the expression on his face brought her.

  Savage pleasure tightened his expression, pulled his lips back and had growls leaving his throat. It was the most exciting, erotic sight she had known in her life.

  “Ah, cher,” his voice whispered over her. “Sweet bébé.”

  She sucked him deep, tasting the subtle essence of pre-cum and wild, desperate lust.

  She tasted and teased, tempted and tormented until she felt the control she had always sensed inside him break.

  Between one second and the next she was pushed to her back, his jeans and briefs discarded, and he was moving purposely between her thighs. The length of his erection was iron-hard, throbbing, the prominent veins ridging the flesh, the engorged head darkened and pulsing in lust.

  “Saban, please—” She bit her lip, holding back her words. She wanted to ask him to go easy, to take her slowly at first, but she could see the hunger raging in him, brewing into a storm of lust that darkened his emerald eyes.

  “Do you think I would hurt you?” His jaw clenched, his chest heaved as he fought for breath, and the thick head of his cock tucked against the folds of her pussy.

  His voice lowered to a primal growl. “Do you think I don’t know, Natalie? That I didn’t feel more than your sweet, slick heat?”

  His hips bunched, tightened, pressed forward as his lips lowered, and he lifted her hands to his shoulders. “Hold on to me cher. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

  Small, stretching thrusts did just that. Eased inside her, parting the snug tissue gently, working his cock into her with fiery, delicious strokes that were both pleasure and pain.

  Ecstasy whipped through her system, fiery trails of lashing pleasure tore across sensitive nerve endings, and as Natalie stared up at Saban, she saw something she had never seen in her marriage to Mike: shared pleasure. The need to please her as well as to be pleasured.

  Saban wasn’t rushing. He wasn’t intent on pushing boundaries as much as he was intent on sharing the burning need, which was more erotic than any boundary she’d ever had pushed.

  “What are you doing to me?” It was more than pleasure. With her gaze locked with his, the patience in each thrust, the taut hunger on his face, sweat gleaming and running in slow rivulets down the side of his neck, he was the picture of a sex god at work. But his eyes. Emotions glowed in his eyes, emotions she didn’t want to face, didn’t want to battle, within him or within herself.

  “I’m loving you, cher. Whether you want the love or not.” He leaned forward, nipped her lips. “Just loving you, bébé.”

  One last thrust, slow and measured, buried him inside her as his lips took hers in a kiss that fired her soul. Her body she could have understood. The heated hormone spilling from his tongue hit her system like a fireball and began speeding through her bloodstream. But her soul? It should have been protected, closed away from any and all male influence.

  But she felt her chest tightening, her heart racing from more than excitement, and the almost hidden acknowledgment that this was more than she had ever dreamed loving could be.

  The growl in his chest deepe