Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  Yeah, that was something else he did. He growled. He growled at the delivery guy, he growled at the mailman, and he actually snarled when one of the other Breed males had stopped to talk to her while she was in a department store in town.

  Natalie wiped her hand over her face and took her cart after paying for her purchases. She stalked outside to her car, fury pumping through her system.

  This was supposed to have been an independent move. Away from friends and family and her ex-husband. Away from preconceived notions of who or what she should be so she could just be herself for a change. Instead, she was babysitting a snarly Breed male who made zero sense to her and threatened to invade her heart as well as her life.

  “Here, boo, let me.” He took the keys from her hand as she pulled them from her purse and moved to open the back of the compact SUV the Breed Ruling Cabinet had given her to drive while employed to teach their children.

  She was the first teacher to be allowed to teach Breed children who wasn’t a Breed. This was also the first year a Breed child had been allowed in a public school. And she was going to have a nervous breakdown before the news of it ever hit the world.

  “I’ll follow you back to the house. I have one of those barbecue grills that I saw on television the other day. I could fix steaks tonight.” He gave her a mocking yet hopeful look.

  “You didn’t buy steaks.” She broke her silence, it was just too much. A Breed who was going to grill steaks, and he hadn’t even bought any.

  He smiled, satisfaction curving lips that were too damned eatable for her peace of mind. She wanted to take a bite out of them. Taste them. Devour them. And there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to allow that to happen.

  “They’re in the cooler in the truck.” He nodded to the black behemoth parked beside her little dove gray front-wheel-drive SUV. It gleamed, black and sinister. She almost smiled, almost softened.

  Natalie shook her head, jerked her keys from his hand, and stalked to the driver’s door of her own vehicle. She hit the lock release on the key and pulled the door open before stepping into the sweltering confines of the interior.

  She didn’t check to see where he was; checking meant she cared, and she wasn’t giving in to it. She drove back to the little two-story house just outside town, pulled into the driveway, and stormed to the house. She didn’t bother with the groceries; he was just going to beat her to them anyway.

  Instead, she left the door open and entered the house, aware of the disapproval that followed her inside. She wasn’t supposed to enter the house without him; she wasn’t supposed to breathe without him testing the air first; and by God, she was not supposed to melt inside because he did it with such subtle moves that she felt cuddled rather than smothered.

  “Chay, you and I are gonna have a talk.” Just as she suspected, he stomped into the house, six feet four inches of irritated male, decked out in denim and boots as he plopped the groceries on the table.

  Natalie stared at the bags and wondered if her eggs had a hope in hell of having survived intact. Anger surged inside her, but it was at herself more than at him. Anger that she was letting another man close, risking her heart and her independence on a man she knew would be impossible to get out of her system.

  “You know,” she finally said carefully, “I do have a name.”

  She lifted her gaze to him, adopting her most severe expression. The one she reserved for the most difficult of children. And it didn’t even seem to faze him.

  He glowered down at her, his head bent, his shoulder-length, straight black hair falling around the face of a fallen angel. Green eyes glittered with sparks of irritation, and his expression was too damned sensual to be scary in anything but the most primal of ways.

  Oh yeah, Saban Broussard terrified her. She was scared to death she was going to lose control and jump his bones one night when he was parading half-naked around her house. Wouldn’t that look good on her résumé?

  “I know your name, boo,” he growled. “As well I know who your bodyguard is. Me. You do not run from me like a scared little rabbit scurrying from sight. I won’t have it.”

  “You won’t have it?” She widened her eyes in amazement. “Excuse me, Mr. Broussard, but you do not have a leash around my neck or ownership papers with my name on them. I do as I please.”

  “You do not.” His head lowered, his nose nearly touching her, as anger sparked inside her like wildfire flaring out of control.

  Her hands pushed out, flattening against his chest and trying to push him back. Trying, because he wasn’t budging an inch.

  “You’re fired,” she snapped.

  “You can’t fire me; you can only quit.” He smirked. “Until that time you will obey the precautions made for your safety, or you will deal with me.”

  “I’m just real scared of you!” Her hands went to her hips, her lips flattened. “What are you going to do, growl me to death? Make me watch baseball until my eyes fall out of my head? Oh no, wait, you’re going to take all my TV dinners.” Mock fear rounded her eyes. “Oh, Saban, I’m so scared. Please don’t.”

  He growled. It wasn’t a hard vibration of sound, rather a subtle rumble that had the more cautious part of her brain urging wariness. And she might have paid attention if she weren’t so damned mad.

  “You are in my way.” She lifted herself until her nose touched his. “Get out of it.”

  His expression changed then, shifted. His eyes narrowed, and the savage, remorseless determination she’d heard all Breeds possessed flashed in his eyes.

  She should have run then and there. She should have turned tail and run as fast as those rabbits he’d mentioned earlier.

  The minute his hands latched on her upper arms, the second she realized his intention and his head lowered, she should have slammed her knee into his groin and had done with it.

  If she’d had time.

  Between one second and the next his lips covered hers, his tongue pushed between her lips as they parted in surprise, and oh hell in a handbasket, she was lost.

  Those eatable, kissable lips were devouring hers. His tongue stroked inside her mouth as the taste of heated spice filled her senses.

  His kiss had a taste. Not the normal tastes a kiss had, but the taste of a wild promise, a desert afternoon, heated and filled with mystery and hunger.

  Natalie found herself melting against him. She shivered. That hard, luscious body braced her weight as his hands cupped her rear and lifted her closer. His head slanted, the kiss grew deeper, a hard growl rasping his throat as she let her lips surround his probing tongue, and she sought more of his taste.

  It was there, each time she caressed the tongue twining with hers, subtle, urging her to consume more, to hold him closer, to devour this kiss.

  And it terrified her. She felt her independence, hard-won and imperative, fighting beneath the claiming she could feel coming, screaming out in warning until she jerked back, struggled, stumbled from his grip as she stared back at him, panting from the need suddenly tearing through her.

  She lifted her hand, touched his lips. Lips that mesmerized her, left her aching, a miracle of pleasure, just as she had known they would be.

  “You’re mine.” There was no sexy teasing in his voice, no flirty seductiveness. His dark eyes glittered with predatory awareness and with triumph.

  Her hand dropped away from him.

  “You’re insane,” she gasped.

  “Mine.”

  TWO

  Saban watched as Natalie’s eyes grew wider, a hint of fear flashing in the molasses depths, mixing with the anger and the arousal.

  He knew what he had done. Knew he had spilled the potent mating hormone to her system in that kiss, and he knew he should feel guilty. He should feel remorse pounding through his head rather than satisfaction.

  “You feel it now, don’t you, Natalie.” He drew her name out, tasted it on his tongue and relished the sound of it.

  He had kept himself from using it, held it back, know
ing he couldn’t say it without the breath of ownership in his tone, as it was now.

  And she heard it, as he had always known she would.

  “I feel your insanity.” She moved quickly away from him, wariness tightening her body.

  Saban watched her, letting his gaze track each movement as he inhaled the scent of her, tasted her against his tongue. He could still taste her; beneath the taste of the mating hormone was the taste of her passion, of the needs she kept tightly bottled inside her and the battle she waged to hold it all in.

  His Natalie, as intelligent as she was, as softly rounded and sensual as the feminine core of her was, was disillusioned, hurt, all because of one weak-minded, inept man that hadn’t the good sense to see the gift God had given him.

  And now he faced that woman, knowing he had committed the ultimate crime in her eyes once she learned what that kiss actually meant. He had taken her choice from her. He had begun something which tied her irrevocably to him and thereby took away the control she so highly revered.

  “I’m not insane,” he finally sighed. “At least no longer.” He swiped his hands through his loose hair and stared around the kitchen.

  Damn, he should have known better than to listen to Cassie and her lectures on women who did not possess Breed DNA. He had taken advice from an eighteen-year-old, had seriously considered every word she had said, and now he’d pay for it.

  “What do you mean? No longer?” Her eyes were narrowed, and her body was burning.

  The sweet, spicy scent of her desire wrapped around his senses and had him clenching his teeth at the need to taste it, to taste her.

  “What I mean doesn’t matter now.” Saban rubbed at the back of his neck before lowering his hand and staring back at her.

  She had the width of the kitchen between them, the scent of her coffee mixed with the soft fragrance of the apple pie she had baked yesterday morning and the scent of the woman herself. It was as powerful an aphrodisiac as the mating hormone.

  She watched him closely, perhaps too closely. He could see her mind working, see her sorting out the odd heat that came from his kiss, the taste of the hormone in her mouth and her need for more. And he watched as she began to suspect the truth.

  His chest actually ached, and regret shimmered in his soul as his Natalie swallowed tightly, and her eyes darkened.

  “The tabloids aren’t all bullshit, are they?” she whispered. “There is some kind of virus that you spread with a kiss.”

  Saban snorted at the simplicity of the statement.

  “The tabloids are the ones who are insane.” He shifted his shoulders, uncharacteristically nervous in the face of this explanation. “It’s called mating heat,” he finally said softly, wishing he was holding her, that he had just taken her, that he had bound her to him more fully before he had to explain this. “There’s no explanation for it, and so far, it seems it happens only once. Only one woman was meant to be my mate, and that woman is you.”

  She crossed her arms over her breasts, her lips pouting with instant denial, though she only said, simply, “Go on.”

  Go on. Hell, he was no good at this.

  “Simply put, you are my mate. The mating hormone ensures that you won’t deny me or my claim instantly. It’s rather like an aphrodisiac. Like an addictive aphrodisiac.”

  Her lips flattened. “It’s not a sickness? A virus?”

  “You will not become ill,” he snapped, more to distract her from this line of questioning than for any other reason. “Merely aroused. Very aroused.” Damn. He growled that last word, his anticipation thickening in his voice as he felt the need inside him burning hotter than before, flaming across his nerve endings.

  She was his. She may as well resign herself to this now. He would give her as much explanation as he had been cleared to give, but no more.

  “And if it’s not what I want?” Slow and precise, the words dripped from her lips like a death knell. He was very certain this was not what she wanted. And in ways, he couldn’t blame her, but unlike those who did not carry the Breed DNA, Saban had a very healthy respect for Nature and all her choices.

  “Once the heat begins, it can’t be reversed.” It could be eased, but he didn’t have to tell her that yet. There were many things he couldn’t tell her yet.

  “So anyone you kiss—”

  “No! Only my mate. Only one woman, Natalie, only you.”

  “I knew this was a bad idea!”

  Saban almost jumped back at the sharp, furious words and the sparks that lit her molasses eyes.

  “What was a bad idea?” he asked carefully.

  His senses were already prime to claim her, his teeth ached to mark her, and she stood, her angry, defiant, slender hands propping on her hips as her expression became outraged.

  “Letting you stay here. Listening to that insufferable, arrogant Jonas Wyatt, and allowing, for even one second, for your impossible, frustrating, completely insane ass to stay here.” Her voice rose, but it was the flush on her face, the scent of heat, both anger and arousal that whipped through the room that held him mesmerized.

  She was like a flame burning with incandescent beauty; even her dark, nearly black hair became brighter, shinier.

  Damn, there went his chest, clenching again, those emotions he hadn’t yet figured out rioting through his system.

  “So it would appear you were right.” He inclined his head in agreement. “But I wouldn’t have left, and Jonas knew it. Now, we can deal with this.”

  “Deal with this?” Her brows arched in angry mockery. “Oh Saban, we’re going to deal with this all right. Right now.”

  She stomped to the phone, jerked it off its base, and her finger stabbed at the button programmed to ring in Callan Lyons’s main office.

  Saban frowned. “Callan has nothing to do with this.”

  The look she flashed him would have silenced a lesser man. Hell, it almost silenced him.

  “Mr. Lyons.” Her voice was sugary sweet and lifted every hair on the back of Saban’s neck. He could only imagine Lyons’s expression and the frustration that would be twisting his savagely hewed features.

  “Oh yes, we do have a problem,” she said politely, her smile tight. “You’re going to have a dead Breed in, oh, I’d give him twenty minutes, if someone from Sanctuary doesn’t pick him up. I do believe he’s rabid. Someone needs to save him, or I’m going to put him out of his misery.”

  As she listened, the sides of her nose began to twitch, and Saban had to restrain his grimace.

  “I don’t care if Coyotes are swarming Sanctuary with grenade launchers. Get some of those badass Breeds you prize so highly out here to collect him, or I’m going to kill him. And after I kill him, I’ll hang his mangy, worthless hide in my front yard to show everyone else exactly how it’s done. Twenty minutes.” She slammed the phone down.

  “One of your handlers will be here to pick you up soon. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, and don’t find yourself anywhere near me after that.”

  She stalked across the kitchen, her pert little nose in the air, her face set in lines of rejection, denial, and fury.

  His mate was denying him. Not that he had expected anything less, but with a spirit as strong as his Natalie’s was, there was only one way to combat it.

  He caught her as she attempted to brush past him, swung her around, surrounded her with his arms, and before more than a gasp could pass her lips, he had them in a kiss.

  His arms tightened around her, lifted her, bore her through the doorway until he was able to find the couch and fall into it, one hand cupping the back of her head and holding her lips to his.

  She wasn’t fighting it.

  She was furious, enraged, but she wasn’t fighting his kiss. Her greedy lips were suckling at his tongue, and it was heaven. Her hands were in his hair, twining in it, tangling in it, and pulling him closer as a ragged female sound of hunger tore through his senses.

  She was like a flame burning in his arms, blistering with her kis
ses, with the ragged sound of her pleasure, tightening his cock, his balls, hell, every muscle in his body with the need to possess her, to claim her so deeply that she could never deny him again.

  “I hate this!” Snarling and filled with outrage, her voice stroked over him in shades of arousal and need as his lips lifted from hers.

  Saban framed her face, his hands relishing the feel of her flesh as he stared into her eyes, read her inability to deny the pulsing desperation of his touch.

  “I thank God for this…and for you,” he whispered, allowing his thumb to brush over her swollen lips, his tongue to taste her on his lips. “Hate me as you please, Natalie. Curse me, revile me until hell freezes over, but it changes nothing. It can change nothing. You’re mine.”

  Natalie struggled beneath the statement, fighting to refute it, to find some way to counter it. But how was she supposed to fight anything when desire clawed through her system with talons of fiery lust and pulsing heat?

  She had wanted him before; God knew she had. Fighting that need night after night had made her insane, snappy, frustrated. But now—now it was like some demon of lust clawed at her womb, tore at her clit, and tightened bands of wicked, agonizing heat around each.

  She arched, totally involuntarily, against his hips as they pressed between her thighs, the ridge of his erection digging into the tender flesh of her pussy as the subtle flexing of his powerful thighs stroked the denim-covered ridge against her.

  She could feel her juices spilling from her sex, moistening her panties and preparing her for him. Preparing her for something she knew would tie her to him forever.

  That was the warning her brain had been screaming for weeks. To get away, to escape while she could still run, and to put as much distance between her and the luscious Jaguar as possible.

  “You can’t do this,” she gasped as one of his hands smoothed down her neck and gripped the slender strap of her camisole top.

  “I was born to do this,” he growled.

  The feel of the small strap sliding over her shoulder had her lungs pumping for oxygen, her lips parting to draw more in. How was she supposed to breathe? He surrounded her, sucked all the air out of the room, and he was touching her. Undressing her.