Shifter

by Lora Leigh

  Who cared about control? This pleasure, the touch of her, the taste of her, the feel of her was all that mattered. Gripping her hips, Saban shifted and began to move inside her with hard, desperate thrusts. Nothing mattered but fucking her now. Fucking her so hard and deep, with such pleasure that she never forgot what it meant to belong to him.

  Natalie was wild above him, meeting him thrust for thrust. Sharp little nails pierced his back as her teeth bit into his shoulder.

  The tiny pinpricks of pain were nothing, more pleasure than anything else, but enough to tear away that last strip of control he had kept reined in. He gripped her hips harder, his cock shafting into her with furious strokes as he felt her orgasm rip through her body.

  He laid his mouth over the mark he had given her, his teeth scraping it as he gripped her flesh and let go his own release. The barb beneath the head of his cock thickened, hardened, the pleasure-pain of it drawing a snarl from his throat as ecstasy poured through him. Sweet heaven, the pleasure of it. The feel of her pussy against flesh so sensitive the agony was too much for him. He felt it pulse, throb, spilling more of the hormone into her even as he spilled his seed inside her.

  The barb locked his cock in place, caressed hidden flesh, and sent them both hurtling into a brilliant, burning sphere of pure pleasure.

  He would figure the rest of it out later, he promised himself as he bore her back against the couch cushions and came above her. As his release spilled inside her and the aftershocks of rapture tore through them both, he swore he would hold onto her, no matter the cost. Jealousy be damned, it wasn’t worth losing the faith she was finding in him. And it wasn’t worth losing the loyalty he could feel growing between them, a loyalty born of emotion and, he prayed, of love.

  He didn’t want to shackle her to him with sex. He wanted to hold her to him with love. Nothing more.

  ELEVEN

  Natalie had tried desperately not to think about Saban or the emotions twisting inside her where he was concerned. She’d used frustration and aggravation, she’d tried to hide, and she’d tried to deny them. She’d wanted to deny feeling anything for him, because otherwise she would have had to face the fact that within a matter of weeks, less than two months, she had let a man steal a part of her heart that even her ex-husband hadn’t possessed.

  And here she had been the one to promise herself she would never let another man affect her again.

  She almost snorted at the thought the next morning as she put on coffee and began preparing breakfast. Saban sat at the small kitchen table, dressed in his Breed Enforcer uniform.

  Strapped to his side in a shoulder holster was his weapon, to his left thigh a sheathed dagger. He would have more weapons hidden on him, she knew. Weapons she couldn’t see, weapons he knew how to use with deadly efficiency.

  And why that brought her comfort rather than freaking her out, she wasn’t certain. She should have been frightened of Saban from the day she learned he’d be living in her home with her, following her, protecting her.

  It was one of the reasons she had fought him so far, she realized as she finished the bacon, eggs, and toast. It was why she hadn’t wanted him here. Why she hadn’t wanted him to be a part of her life. Because she had known he would become a part of her heart.

  And he was. Right there in living color, bronze muscle covered by the military-type black uniform with the Jaguar insignia on his shoulder.

  She almost shook her head at herself as she poured two mugs of coffee and moved to set his on the table. Turning away from him, she couldn’t help it, she just couldn’t help but to let her fingers skim over the thick, black silk of his hair.

  “Hey.” He caught her hand, his head jerking up, his gaze connecting with her in lazy awareness of her. “You don’t have to try to sneak and touch me.”

  He placed her palm against his cheek, turned a kiss into it, then went back to work on the small electronice notepad he had attached to the palm Internet link he carried.

  Natalie threaded her fingers through his hair, a smile twitching at her lips as he leaned into the caress, even though his brow was furrowed with concentration.

  He didn’t mind being touched. And he didn’t think a light caress meant running straight to the bed as well. Mike hadn’t wanted to be touched unless he was ready for sex.

  She let her fingers linger a moment longer then moved back to the stove and breakfast.

  Strange, how easily Saban has slipped into her heart. She hadn’t wanted it, she had given it the good fight, but he was there.

  She paused at the stove, felt the sharp blow to her heart, and realized she loved it. It stole her breath, when she knew it shouldn’t have. It shook her to the core, even though she realized she should have known all along what was happening.

  She had fallen in love with a man a hundred times more dominant than her ex-husband had been, and he had managed to slip so much deeper inside her soul than Mike ever could have.

  She stared sightless down at the bacon and felt the anger that began to build inside her. It wasn’t an anger toward herself or toward Saban. But toward Mike.

  He had come to Buffalo Gap to destroy not just her independence but what she had found with Saban. He had left his bimbo, his job, and the home he had stolen from her to make certain she lost anything she could have found in this small community.

  He would do it, too, she realized. He wouldn’t physically hurt her, but he would destroy the respect and the good standing she was building here. He would make it impossible for her to teach the Breed children before he would make himself appear as a threat to her and to them.

  And he knew what he was doing. And she knew she was going to have to stop him before he destroyed this chance she had at happiness.

  “I need to check a few things in the truck.” Saban rose from his chair as she turned to him. “I’ll be right back.”

  He strode quickly from the room as she drew in a slow, hard breath. As she heard the front door close, she jerked the phone from the wall and punched in Mike’s cell phone number.

  She was going to take care of this between her and Mike. She wouldn’t have Saban’s hands bloodied because of her ex-husband’s stupidity, and she wasn’t giving him the chance to nearly destroy her career again.

  “Natalie, thank God you called.” He answered on the first ring. “Are you okay?”

  The pseudo concern in his voice was nearly too much.

  “Go home, Mike,” she snapped. “I divorced you for a reason. To get you out of my life. Don’t make me get another restraining order on you. You know how bad that’s going to look if you have to actually get another job.”

  “You didn’t used to be so hard, Natalie.” There was a wealth of sorrow in his voice. God, didn’t he ever see what he was doing to himself?

  “You didn’t used to be so stupid,” she hissed. “I left Tennessee to get away from you. I’m happy here, Mike. Happier than I ever was in our marriage. Go back to your bimbo and leave me the hell alone.”

  Silence filled the line for long moments.

  “I just want to see you first,” he finally said, his voice soft, regretful. “Is that so much to ask?”

  “Yes, it is.” Way too much to ask, because she couldn’t blame Saban for being concerned, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to agree to this.

  “Five minutes, Natalie. Anywhere. I don’t care. Just give me five minutes to say good-bye.”

  “And you’ll leave?”

  “I swear, I’ll leave.”

  “Five minutes,” she retorted. “I’ll be at the mall later today sometime around four. I’ll meet you at the outside entrance to Sally J’s.” Sally J’s was one of the women’s-only clothing stores in the large mall just outside town. “You’ll have five minutes. I’ll call you right before I step outside.”

  “Will your furry friend be with you?” he asked bitterly.

  “He’ll be around,” she finally sighed. “But I’ll talk to you alone. Be there at four, Mike. And rememb
er, five minutes. That’s it.”

  “Five minutes. That’s all I need, Nat.”

  She hung the phone up and moved back to the stove as the front door opened once again, and seconds later Saban strode back into the kitchen.

  As Saban sat back down at the kitchen table and took a healthy sip of the decaffeinated coffee he’d slipped into the canister days ago, he drew in a slow breath.

  Sometimes his sense of smell was a curse rather than a blessing. Times such as moments before, when he had smelled the emotion pouring from Natalie. Rich and saturated with arousal, tempestuous with need, and overlaying it all, the deep, heady scent of love.

  Love had a scent, though it varied from person to person and couple to couple. It wasn’t easy to detect and often wasn’t even apparent except in high-stress, personal moments.

  What was she thinking of? he wondered. What had caused that well of emotion to open inside her and break free and then to touch him. To touch him of her own volition, as though testing her ability to do so or his patience in allowing it.

  God help them both—he would lie at her feet until hell froze over to feel again what he had felt when she had touched him so timidly. Sensation, like an electrical current had run over his scalp and sizzled down his spine. He’d barely restrained a weakening shiver, and he cursed himself for it. For a second, he’d been like the pitiful cub he remembered himself as, so long ago. Staring at the scientists from his metal pen, hungry for something that went beyond the need for food. And now he knew what that hunger was, not for just a touch, but for one filled with emotion.

  That touch had set his nerve endings on fire, and now, long moments later, it had him on edge, off balance, and filled with his own emotions.

  “I’d like to postpone the trip to the mall that you planned for today,” he told her, keeping his voice level as she set the plate of food in front of him. “There are still some safety issues I’d like to have taken care of first.”

  His control not withstanding, the report Jonas had sent out via the eLink wasn’t happy news.

  “I can’t postpone it.”

  Saban’s head snapped up. Her voice was carefully bland, non-confrontational, but he heard the nervousness behind it. The same nervousness he sensed every damned time she disagreed with him. Did she think he was going to beat her for disagreeing with him? That son of a bitch, Claxton, had a lot to answer for; unfortunately, Saban had already come to the conclusion that he would have to allow Jonas and his team to take care of getting the bastard out of town, rather than taking care of it himself.

  Natalie might not like his methods.

  As he watched her, he noticed that she didn’t meet his eyes. She took her seat, salted and peppered her food, sipped her coffee, and said nothing more.

  He could see the pulse beating a ragged rhythm in her throat though, and he could smell her trepidation.

  “Very well.” He lowered his gaze to his own breakfast and dug in. “I’ll contact Jonas and have a few extra men assigned around the mall just to be on the safe side. An enforcer caught sight of a suspected Council soldier in town last night. The Council has been attempting to capture Breed mates for years, so we need to be careful.”

  “Why?” She lifted her head then, suspicion flickering in her gaze.

  Did she believe he would lie to her? Saban wanted to growl, he wanted to throw something, wanted to beat her ex-husband until he was nothing but bloody pulp.

  “Why are they attempting to capture our mates? Or why do we need to be careful?”

  Her lips pursed as mocking patience filled her expression. “What do you think?”

  Saban smiled, making certain to add just enough wicked sensuality to the look. “Many things, but I’ll concentrate on your question. They want our mates to experiment on the phenomenon, which by the way, they saw as early as the first Breed’s creation more than a century ago. Unfortunately for them, that first Leo escaped in his twenty-seventh year of creation. The mating hormone and the genetic viruslike condition it creates is of interest to them.”

  “What sort of interest?” She was eating, but her attention was caught, he could see.

  Natalie was a curious little thing, and that curiosity was rarely a problem. Until now.

  He finished his breakfast, pushed back his plate, and stared back at her coolly. “It creates a condition that decreases aging in both the Breed and his or her mate. In ten years, Merinus and Callan have aged perhaps a year. There are rumors the first Leo, who should be nearing the age of one hundred and thirty, is still alive and still in his prime. And that, my dear, is the reason the Council scientists would do anything to capture our mates.”

  TWELVE

  It was hard to take in. Hours later, as Natalie entered the huge, two-story indoor mall just outside the town’s limits, she felt as though she had been sucker punched with the information.

  Saban had answered all her questions, he had even offered to take her to Sanctuary to allow her to discuss some of the more advanced effects of the mating heat. Nothing dangerous, he had assured her. There was nothing life threatening in being a mate. Why, hell no, just an advanced life span and only God knew what problems in the future. Not to mention mentally defective, in her opinion, Council scientists and soldiers drooling for a chance to slice into a body verified as a mate, Breed or human.

  It amazed her at odd times, the destructiveness that men could force on each other. The horror and cruelties didn’t exist in the animal world. It was survival of the strongest there, and in some ways, that was how the Breeds saw living now. Survival of the fittest.

  Did nature see it that way as well? Was that the reason for the mating heat? The reason for the advanced life span once mated? She knew that women, Breeds and those who were married or mated to feline Breeds, conceived quickly without the hormonal treatments Dr. Morrey had worked up. But after the first conception, it then became much harder to conceive. And Saban had told her that the Wolf Breeds had had an even harder time of it until only recently, when their doctors had detected additional hormones, so far unknown, within one of their mates.

  The whole mating process was confusing as hell, but according to Saban, the one constant in it all was the emotion the mates shared. So far, in over eleven years since the announcement of their existence, a mating had always resulted in love. And the look he had given her as he related that information had been filled with heat, emotion, and the unvoiced question she wasn’t ready to answer yet.

  Yes, she loved him, and knowing it terrified the hell out of her.

  As they neared Sally J’s, Natalie checked the watch on her wrist surreptitiously and glanced around at the crowds mingling from store to store. She had ten minutes to meet Mike on the other side of the store.

  The restrooms were on the other side, with two entrances and exits into them. She was hoping she could enter from one side and move quickly to the exit on the other side, beside the doors that led to the outdoor parking.

  Five minutes. That was all she was giving Mike, and she intended to do that talking. Enough was enough. They were divorced, they had divorced for a reason, and she wasn’t going to turn the new life she wanted for herself into an international incident. Which was what it would become if he became the first recorded non-Breed to die from jealous rage.

  She trusted Saban, she did, with her own life. But Mike’s, she wasn’t so certain of.

  “I’m going to the ladies’ room.” She paused by the entrance. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  She had to force herself to tamp down nervousness, to hold back fear, which she was terrified was damned near impossible. But after one narrow-eyed look, Saban nodded slowly before leaning against the wall with all the resigned patience of any put-upon male.

  She almost smiled.

  Moving into the ladies’ room, she picked up her steps, walked quickly past the stalls, then out of the exit on the opposite side of the curved room. It was only a few steps to the outdoor exit through two sets of double doors a
nd onto the sidewalk that surrounded the mall.

  Mike was waiting for her directly across the small road, arms crossed over his chest, his expression causing her chest to clench with a spurt of familiar panic. He was angry. Mike wasn’t always rational when he was angry. He didn’t care if he caused a public spectacle of himself or her, and he rarely listened to reason. She almost turned and walked back into the mall.

  Instead, she glanced at her watch then back at Mike, a silent declaration that she wasn’t walking over there. At least this close to the doors, there was a handy escape route if one of those Council soldiers was lurking around the mall.

  She looked around just to be certain and saw no one suspicious. The parking lot was busy, the traffic fairly thick.

  She watched Mike curse before he moved across the street, his shoulders thrown back, his expression pugnacious.

  “We couldn’t do this in the shade?” He sneered. “You always have to be difficult, don’t you, Natalie? Big-time Breed teacher has to call all the shots.”

  “I can go back inside, and we can forget this,” she retorted. “Saban’s waiting just inside the doors, Mike. Make this fast.”

  “I want you to come home. Dammit, you have no business here. You’re my wife.”

  A sharp, amazed laugh left her throat. “Drop it, Mike. We both know this has nothing to do with you wanting me back and everything with losing control of me. I’m not your wife. I’ll never be your wife again, and if you don’t get that through your thick skull, then you’re going to end up dead.”

  “Siccing that rabid animal of yours on me, Nat?” Disgust filled his voice. “How can you let that thing touch you?”

  Natalie wanted to roll her eyes but knew it would only make this little fight run longer.

  “Mike, I agreed to meet you so you’ll see this isn’t happening with me.” She tried to keep her tone soft, gentle. Sometimes it worked. “Our marriage was over the first year; I just didn’t want to admit it. Now, let it go, and go back to Tennessee. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  His lips flattened, his face flushing with anger.

  “Don’t you see what those Breeds have done to you, Natalie?” He pushed his fingers through his hair as fury flashed in his eyes. “They’ve done something to you. They drugged you.” He reached for her, his teeth clenching violently as she jumped back. “Look at you, you can’t even stand to be touched by anyone but that bastard fucking you.”

  “Stop this, Mike. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s not a discussion we’re going to have. You need to leave. I didn’t want you before I came here, and I don’t want you now.”

  His nostrils flared, a telling sign. Only at his most furious had Natalie ever seen that. Those were the times he had wrapped his hand around her neck and pounded the wall beside her head. When he had smashed furniture and spent hours accusing her of screwing every man they both knew.

  “You’re my wife.” He advanced a step, and in his eyes Natalie saw something she had never seen before. A fury so violent she knew Mike would never keep his control.

  Had he truly been working his way up to this over the years? How had she not seen it, not suspected that he would retaliate like this the moment he knew he was no longer a part of her life? Forget the divorce, the bimbo; he had still controlled her. She hadn’t dated, she hadn’t sought out friends, because she knew Mike, and she knew he wouldn’t have tolerated it.

  And she hadn’t even suspected she knew until now.

  She stepped back warily toward the doors now, wishing she hadn’t slipped away from Saban, that she had just fought it out with him, made him at least let her try. She would have been safe. Or safely in her bed screaming in pleasure as Saban argued his side. Either one would have been preferable to this.

  “They drugged you, Natalie. The doctors that talked to me after you left told me all about it. This drug their bodies make. It makes you addicted, dependent.”

  Oh God. Oh God. She looked around frantically, knowing what was going on, certain Mike had set her up.

  She turned to push through the entrance doors into the mall, to run, to escape back to Saban.

  “You fucking bitch, you’re not running back to him.”

  Natalie almost screamed as his hand locked over her upper arm, pulling her back as she scrambled to grab the handle to the door, to get away from him.

  The pain, though not as severe at first, became mind-numbing as he dragged her back. She felt his arm lock around her waist, his chest against her back as she clawed at his flesh, guttural whimpers leaving her lips as she tried to scream for Saban.

  She heard screams, but they couldn’t be her own. A haze of pain covered her eyes, filled her brain, and with it came terror.

  Mike was cursing, raging. She could hear tires squealing and she knew, oh God, she knew he was taking her away. Taking her away from Saban and the dreams she hadn’t known she had.

  “You bastard!” Fury, rich with terror and mixed with adrenaline, spiked through her mind.

  Her hands curled back, her nails clawing back at Mike’s face as she tried to tangle her feet with his legs, throwing him off balance.

  They hit the street as horns blared and a siren began to scream through the air. As she rolled to her stomach, she felt hands grab her ankles, pulling at them, trying to drag her back as she kicked, screaming, trying to roll, fighting for release.

  There were too many voices. Too many hands touching her, and a second later she froze in a terror so thick, so horrible it nearly stopped her heart.

  A feline roar of rage split through the chaos of sound as she heard the rapid, staccato bursts of stunners and bullets ripping around her.

  One last kick, and she was free of the manacles at her feet. Crawling to her knees, she lifted her head, fighting to see. There were people everywhere. Black uniforms surrounded her. Someone was screaming from behind the barrier of enforcers, and she swore it sounded like Mike’s screams.

  “Saban! Oh God, Saban!”

  “Stay the hell where you are!” The growling roar from her right had her twisting, searching for him, her mind still dazed, the pain of Mike’s touch still ripping through her senses.

  But he was there. Through the blur of tears and pain, she saw him, then she felt him, one arm curling around her and pulling her into the mall as the gunfire behind them suddenly ceased.

  His eyes were blazing into hers, filled with rage, his expression twisted with it. “If you wanted him that fucking bad, I would have readily released you,” he snarled. “Now keep your goddamned ass here, and I’ll see if I can save the son of a bitch for you.” He turned around, stood aside for the two female Breed Enforcers who crowded into the small area. “Watch her and keep her here if it means shackling her to the fucking door.”

  Shock froze her, parted her lips on a cry, and left her staring at his retreating back as he left her sitting there between the street entrance and the mall entrance.

  She curled