The Magical Christmas Cat

by Lora Leigh

  days. Someone was trying to kill her. Someone who knew how to kill. Excuse me for taking a little initiative here.

  "Are you sure you want to know?" Sensually curved lips quirked knowingly.

  "Is it about that mating crap you tried to pull on me the other night?"

  She hadn't forgotten. It had been in the back of her mind, teasing her, taunting her, and following her into her dreams when she managed to sleep.

  His brow arched. "Mating crap?"

  She lifted her hand, indicating he should stay in place, then stomped to her bedroom, jerked several tabloids from beneath her bedstand, and moved back into the kitchen and slapped them on the table.

  MATING HEAT SWEEPS THROUGH

  THE BREED COMMUNITIES.

  BREED APHRODISIAC RUMORED

  TO CAUSE UNSTOPPABLE LUSTS.

  ARE THEY MORE ANIMAL THAN WE IMAGINED?

  MATING HEAT RUMORED

  TO PRODUCE ANIMALISTIC RESULTS.

  The headlines were ridiculous, but they all reported nearly the same phenomenon.

  "You read this trash?" he asked her, flipping his fingers over the magazines.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts. "How much of it is true?"

  He flipped through the magazines one by one. His brows arched a few times. Mockery tugged at his lips before he tossed the last one back to the stop.

  "I'd say ninety percent of it is fairly accurate."

  She blinked, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

  "You're lying to me."

  His grin was slow, and did nothing to still the nervous feelings rising inside her.

  "Yeah, I am." He shrugged. "Probably more like eighty percent."

  He pushed his hand into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a vial. Within it were several oddly colored pinkish pills. He tossed the vial to the table and stated. "One a day, starting tonight."

  She stared at it, wondering if the breeds were into poison.

  "For what?"

  He moved around the kitchen then, stalking closer as she refused to retreat. He came behind her, brushed the hair from her shoulder, and his head lowered, his lips brushing her ear.

  "When I kiss you, the taste of that kiss is going to make you crazy for more. The hormone in the small glands beneath my tongue will be released into your system, and the mating hormone will begin to fill your senses. It's like a drug for sex. It's like a need that only one thing will ease, and that's my semen pumping inside you. When that happens, a small, thumb-shaped extension will become erect from beneath the head of my cock. It will lock me inside you, spill another hormone into you, then, together, they'll prepare your body for the few viable sperm breeds possess. That pill will ease the effects of the heat. It might even ward off the pregnancy that will come, eventually. It takes a while sometimes for fertilization, for a child to be created. But it always happens, eventually. And the heat never goes away entirely. It grows, day by day, year by year, until mates are bound so closely together that life without each other is unimaginable.

  "Breeds only mate once, Haley. One time only. A breed has one chance, and one chance only to claim something in this world that belongs to him and to him alone. And my body is claiming yours."

  "You're crazy." She forced herself away from him, rounded on him incredulously, and stared back at him in shock. "That's not true."

  "Why do you think I kept such a careful distance between us?" he asked her, his expression imposing, his black eyes gleaming, glittering with hunger. "A year. I've tasted the need to kiss you, to fuck you, for a year. I've tried to drown my lust, ignore it, fight it. Nothing works, Haley. Nothing is going to work until I share it. With you."

  Her eyes were wide, shock resounding through her. His expression was tortured, almost agonized, almost convincing.

  "Why are you doing this?" She stared back at him furiously. "I like you, Noble. Have I ever been cruel to you? Why would you do this to me?"

  She was hurt. She stared back at him painfully, wondering why he would want to play with her in such a way. Okay, she gave the tabloids credit, there might be a glimmer of truth to some of it. But what he was saying was unreal.

  Noble stared back at her, his jaw clenching furiously, the muscle at the side ticking in a resounding rhythm of restraint.

  "You want me," he growled. "I can smell it. More than you've ever wanted another man, Haley. I'm betting on it."

  She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought back her embarrassment.

  "I know you can smell that I want you," she said uncomfortably, feeling the flush that worked up her neck and face. "I don't expect anything from you, but you don't have to lie to me."

  His expression tightened, the flesh seemed stretched over the bones and angles of his face, giving him a darker, more animal-like appearance.

  "Come here." He reached out for her.

  Haley stared at his hand suspiciously. It was broad, darkly tanned, strong. His fingers were powerful and graceful, and she couldn't stop the clenching of her stomach at the thought of his touching her.

  "Give me your hand, Haley." His voice hardened.

  She lifted her hand to him. Slowly, he took the tip of her finger and brought it to his mouth. "Let me show you."

  His lips parted, the heat of his mouth flushed over the tip of her finger and seemed to wash into her flesh. Then his tongue was curling around it, and there, beneath it, she felt the small, enflamed glands. They were hard, pulsing against her finger, hot and rasping against her.

  His thick, black lashes lowered, sensuality and hunger suffused his face. And all he was doing was suckling at her finger, licking it.

  Her finger heated, and she swore she felt a tingle of something more than simple pleasure move into her flesh. When he pulled her hand back, she stared at the dampened flesh, then back to him.

  "Give it an hour," he told her then, his voice rasping. "It doesn't take a kiss to make the hormone move into you, Haley. Something that simple." He nodded to her finger, and in his expression she could see a need for more of her. "A kiss to your neck. A gentle taste of your flesh, and it will burn inside you, it will warm your desire more than ever before. And the sweet, sensual smell of your cream will make me crazier." His hands clenched into fists at his side. "I want you. I've wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you a year ago. Want you until the need for you overwhelms everything else. That's why your security team is so large. Why you have six breeds rather than two working to make certain you're safe. Because here, in this house, the world outside isn't going to exist for either of us soon. Soon, nothing is going to exist except the hunger."

  She stared at her finger and back to him. She licked her lips nervously, her breath catching as his gaze sliced to the action.

  "I want to lick your lips, too." His voice sounded torn from his throat. "I want to lick your lips, your breasts, and the sweet wet heat between your thighs. I want to take you until you can't deny me, or deny the hunger feeding us both. And it's going to happen, Haley. Very very soon. The only question is, can you accept it?" Could she accept it?

  She stared back at him. "I'm not in love with you."

  She wanted him. She had wanted him for a year. She was fascinated with him, fantasized about him constantly, but that wasn't love.

  "Then we're in for a rocky ride, Haley." He sighed regretfully. "But it's very possible that I am in love with you. And I've never in my life had anything or anyone that belonged to me. Knowing you're my mate makes it damned hard to give you a warning, or a choice. But I'm trying to do that. In the next few hours, I want you to remember that. I'm trying, and for me, that's a hell of a concession."

  He turned and walked away from her then, his broad shoulders straight, his head held high as he moved back into the living room.

  There was so much pride in every movement of his body. Strength and determination, confidence definitely.

  Haley collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs beside her and stared at her finger.

  Was it a viru
s? Whatever that mating thing was? Just a hormone surely couldn't do what he said it could. She turned her gaze to the vial of pills on the table. There weren't a lot of them. One a day he had said. To help minimize the effects?

  There were so many questions pouring through her mind now. And so many sensations filling her. It wasn't the hormone he had licked onto her finger that had her heart racing. And it couldn't be causing her thighs to tingle. It was a mind game. And she wasn't so simple that she was going to allow herself to be played so easily.

  She rose from the table and moved quickly, angrily into the living room. He wasn't there. His bedroom door was open, and she moved there, determined to question him, to get the answers she needed. She stepped into the bedroom, where she came to a halt just inside the doorway.

  For some reason, he had pulled his shirt off. God, why had he pulled his shirt off? Because before he could turn to face her, she had glimpsed his back. There, across his shoulders, were spots. Not freckles. Not scarring, but a unique, fascinating pattern of dark rings, rather like the spots of the Jaguar whose DNA she knew he shared.

  She stepped forward. Her hands were tingling again, more strongly, the need to touch him almost driving her past common sense.

  "I need a shower." He faced her, and across his shoulders and upper chest those spots continued. They were faint, patterned across his chest and arrowing down into his jeans.

  She stepped forward and stopped. Then moved again. She had to touch them.

  As she got closer, she could see that it was more than just spots. It was a pattern of the fine, almost invisible hairs she knew covered the breed bodies. But they were darker in areas, creating the pattern of spots.

  Breeds appeared hairless, except for their eyebrows and the hair on their heads. Actually, according to her research they were covered in a thin, fine pelt almost undetectable, even to touch.

  "Haley, you don't want to touch me right now," he told her softly.

  She couldn't help it. She touched. She reached out, letting her palm smooth over his chest and feeling her breath catching in her chest as she felt the heat, the hard muscle rippling beneath his tough skin, and the ultrasoft feel of that darker pelt against her flesh.

  "It's beautiful," she whispered, lifting her gaze to his as she lifted her other hand and touched him more.

  "Don't. Haley, please." His hands gripped her wrists, but he held her in place, he didn't move her, didn't pull her from him. "You don't understand what that hormone does to me. You don't know how I burn for you."

  "Why me?" she whispered. "Why did you choose me?"

  His gaze was heavy, black eyes that swirled with dark color and hints of emotion. They gleamed with life, with hunger, and with more than lust.

  "I saw you," he said. "A smile on your face, your pretty eyes lit with laughter and hope and joy. And you dazzled me, Haley. You always dazzle me. Confuse me. Draw me. It doesn't take love for mating heat to begin, but if love truly does exist, then I knew that feeling the first moment I saw your smile. I claimed you, when I never meant to claim anything or anyone that could be taken from me. I claimed you, Haley. Now if you don't get the hell away from me, all choice I would have given you is going to be taken from you."

  Chapter 6

  Noble never would have believed that he had the strength to hold back as he did. To allow Haley to touch him, despite his hold on her wrists, to allow her to pet him.

  And she was petting him. Stroking her palms over his flesh, feeling the slight rasp of the darker hairs that made the spots covering his chest and arrowing down his abdomen before spreading out over his thighs.

  They weren't large spots. Some were oddly shaped, some smaller than others. They were not human, a glaring reminder of what he was. Part animal. Bred from the DNA of the jaguar.

  And at the moment he had never felt more like an animal. His cock was swollen in his jeans, thick and hard, throbbing in a hunger unlike anything he had known before he hungered for Haley.

  His fingers circled her wrists as he forced himself to watch her, to stare down at her. Watching the latent sensuality in her expression as she touched him. She was enjoying it. Touching him with stark innocence, discovery, and joy.

  "You're so warm," she whispered.

  "Haley, I'm burning," he warned her roughly.

  He didn't want her to stop touching him. He wanted it to continue forever. But he knew that wasn't possible. Not yet. He couldn't let her strip his control, because if she did, then he would take the choice from her. He would mate her, even knowing it was possible she didn't love him.

  She said she didn't. But he could smell her. He had smelled the emotions, the pheromones breeds and mates created together, and he could smell the subtle scent of it on her. It made him crazy, smelling it, knowing he couldn't have her, that she wouldn't understand the animal he was and that he couldn't force her into the mating.

  The animal that stretched inside him didn't care though. It wanted. It ached. It snarled relentlessly for the taste of her.

  "If you keep stroking me, you know what's going to happen," he told her.

  "Maybe I don't believe you." She looked up at him through her lashes, her gray eyes nearly blue as her features flushed with arousal.

  With true, pure arousal. This wasn't heat-induced. It wasn't hormone-induced. It was her hunger for him. Pure and sweet and filling his senses.

  "You believe me, Haley." He could see it in her eyes, in her expression. She didn't want to believe him, but she knew it was there. "You think I'll hold back. That I'll let you pet and stroke me and keep the need I have for you under control. What happens when I break? When I take that choice from you?"

  And he didn't want to. He wanted to luxuriate in the sensations of her hands on his flesh, touching him, stroking him. If only this.

  She stared up at him. "Is it that bad?" Worry filled her eyes and he saw her intentions to draw back, to move from him, to leave him.

  "I'll warn you when it gets that bad." Ah hell. He was insane. He had passed that point minutes ago, and he was encouraging her to go further?

  "Are you sure?" Hesitation filled her now, and he didn't want her hesitation.

  "I'm sure." He was crazy. That was exactly what he was, insane. The need for her touch outweighed everything else and made him insane to think he could control his response.

  "I've been dying to touch you," she whispered as he released her hands and reached behind him to the footboard of the bed, gripping the wood tightly with desperate fingers.

  He tipped his head back. He wasn't going to watch. He couldn't watch her.

  "Touch me then." He could feel the sweat gathering on his back.

  Her touch was like electric pleasure. It shimmered over his flesh, dug talons of exquisite need beneath if, and left him tight, tense, torn between stopping her and begging her for more. He would probably end up begging her for more, that was how damned crazy he was, a true glutton for punishment. Or for pleasure.

  "Tell me when it's too much," she whispered.

  "Gotcha." He gave her a sharp nod.

  Too much had already been done and gone. Too much was the feel of his balls drawn excruciatingly tight and the head of his cock flaring thick and hard, and throbbing like a damned wound.

  Too much was when he felt her lips touch his chest and her hot little tongue licking over a spot. That was too damned much.

  Haley let her senses become immersed in the need to just touch him. Touching should be okay, she told herself. It wasn't a kiss, at least, not his kiss. It was just his flesh, just those intriguing little spots and the dampness of his flesh as she felt his flesh heat.

  It was moving slowly, hesitantly into the desires that had never made sense where he was concerned. As though without even trying he touched a hidden part of her, drawing it free, and teasing it to be wild with him.

  Without saying a word. Without touching her, without tempting her with anything more than a look or the quirk of his lips. He tempted that unknown something insid
e her.

  "I love how you feel." She touched his hard, rippling abs with her hands, smoothed over them to the band of his jeans and back up.

  She tasted him. She kissed his chest, licked at several spots, feeling the ultrasoftness of the tiny hairs against her tongue. Then, in a move more daring than she had ever considered, she raked her teeth over the flesh beside a stiff, hard male nipple.

  As though she had flayed him with fire he jerked, a hard, primal growl tearing from his chest as his head jerked up, and he stared down at her.

  His eyes were like black velvet, studded with even darker glimmer of lights. How could anything be darker than black? But something was, and it flickered in his eyes, the color overtaking the pupil and giving him a primal, primitive look.

  As though the animal were so close to the surface that it would be hard to tell where human and jaguar separated. And she was tempting it. She knew she was.

  "Is it too much?" She didn't want to torture him. She just needed to touch him.

  "No." The word was short, the rasp in his voice was deep as his hands moved from behind him. "But if you can bite, then I can touch you as well."

  She hadn't counted on that. Just as she hadn't counted on the throbbing growl in his voice as he said the words.

  "How?" She needed to know. "No kisses."

  "No kisses. No little bites." He bared his teeth, and she should have been frightened of those canines, which flashed at the sides of his mouth. Instead, they intrigued her.

  How would they feel on her flesh? Raking over it, creating a flash point of pleasure and heat?

  She swallowed tightly as he gripped the hem of her shirt.

  "Let me take it off."

  Her breath caught in her throat. "Is that a good idea?"

  "Is any of it?" He tugged the hem upward. "Take it off or walk out of here. I can't stand here and not touch you as well, Haley. That's asking too much."

  "No kisses?" She was almost whimpering with the need for his kiss though. Her lips tingled, her tongue ached to twine with his.

  "No kisses," he promised.

  She lifted her hands from his chest and raised her arms slowly, allowing him to draw the shirt from her. Sensuality wrapped around them heavily, saturating the air with lust and hunger as he tossed the material aside and stared down at her.

  The white lace camisole she wore-in place of a bra adequately covered her, sort of.

  "That's cheating." There was no grin, there was only need in his eyes to see her. "Let me take it off, too."

  She could feel her nipples rasping against the lace, urging him to do just that. She licked her lips nervously and lifted her arms for him again.

  He drew the lace covering from her, the material stroking over her nipples drawing a ragged groan from her. As he tossed the material aside, his hands caught her wrists, holding them over her head as he stared down at her.

  "I want to suck your nipples." The blunt, blatant hunger in the words caused her womb to clench in response. Like a punch to her stomach, firing her nerve endings and sending pleasure streaking through her body.

  She wanted him to suck her nipples. Her nipples wanted his mouth on them. She ached for it. The flesh between her thighs heated for it. She felt weak, dazed, arousal pouring into every cell and whipping over her nerve endings.

  "If I weren't a breed," he told her then, "if I were just a man, I'd lay you down and tempt you with my mouth. I'd suck your pretty nipples until the dark pink blushed a pretty rose. Then I'd go between your thighs and lick the sweetest cream, and know your arousal is just for the pleasure I can give you."

  Haley watched the regret that filled him as he stared down at her. He held her wrists easily in one hand. With the other, he cupped the rounded mound of a breast, the tip of a finger stroking over the ultrasensitive, hardened peak.

  Haley shuddered. She leaned her head against one of her arms as he held them both over her head and stared up at him.

  "I'm going to melt to the floor," she whispered. "We need to stop this."

  "I'm still in control," he rasped.

  "But maybe I'm not," she gasped.

  "I'll keep you in control."

  His hand lowered from her breast to the elastic band of her lounging pants.

  "Let me." He pushed them over her hips.

  Haley stared up at his face. No man had ever stared at her with such need. Even in the height of sex, the few lovers she'd had hadn't looked at her like this.

  She trembled as she let him push the loose material over her hips. She watched his face as he stared at the white-lace panties she wore. The French-cut, hip-high panties matched her camisole, and they were damp, wet with her need.

  "Ah, Haley." His tone was guttural as she watched in shock as he knelt in front of her.

  He had released her hands, but what the hell was she supposed to do with them? The bed. She gripped the footboard as his hands clasped her hips. His face was only inches from her, her flesh covered only by the lace of the panties.

  "You don't shave here?" One hand lowered, the backs of his fingers stroking over her mound.

  "No." Shock gathered in her voice that he would ask her.

  She had tried it, once, and hadn't liked the sensation.