Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  EIGHT

  It hurt. Natalie couldn’t stem the hurt rising inside her, the fear, the certainty that the loss of control where Saban was concerned would be her undoing.

  “I don’t need you to fight my battles.” She needed to fight her own battles, dammit. “Especially where Mike is concerned.”

  She turned to move away from him, only to be confronted by his broad chest once again.

  “Get out of my way, Saban.”

  “So you can run and hide?” he bit out. “Rather than facing this problem and fixing it, you’re going to run away.”

  “There’s no fixing it,” she pushed between gritted teeth as her fingers clenched at her side. “You think you’re right. You always think you’re right. Big, bad Breed knows it all.”

  Silence met her accusation. Natalie lifted her gaze then, met his, and had to fight the thickening in her throat as she saw not anger as she thought she would find, though there was a little of that there. Instead, he watched her broodingly, as though searching for an answer or trying to find the question that eluded him.

  “You didn’t smell what I smelled,” he finally said gently. “The rage, the need for violence that was filling him. You divorced him, Natalie, for a reason, and you know this. Just as you knew that violence was brewing within him before you forced him out of the home.”

  She wasn’t going to let him be right about this. She couldn’t. If she did, how could she ever stand up to him later? Mike had done this at first, used logic, used a shield of understanding and patience to tear down her self-confidence.

  “How my marriage ended in a divorce is my business. How I deal with Mike now is my business. Not yours.”

  “You don’t truly believe that, Natalie.” He shook his head as he shoved his hands in his back pockets, obviously restraining the need to touch her.

  Unlike Mike.

  Not that Mike had ever hit her, but it came close too many times. His temper could be ugly, hands bruising, his tongue sharp and cutting.

  “I said it, didn’t I?” She forced past clenched teeth as the irritation and the arousal combined into some funky kind of tingles that radiated from her womb outward to the rest of her body.

  She was certain that in another place and time, in any other situation, this could have been amusing. If it was happening to someone else maybe.

  “Why can’t you do just one thing like a normal, everyday person?” she snapped, wanting to pull at her own hair as frustration began to build in her.

  The anger was bad enough. But being angry and dying to fuck that hard body? No woman should have to deal with this.

  His expression eased slightly from the predatory determination, and sensual amusement darkened his eyes, lowered his lashes as he bent his head closer to her.

  “Cher, if you haven’t noticed yet, normal is not a part of my genetics. Should I give you another example of this?”

  She backed up as his hands came out of his pockets and rested comfortably at his sides instead.

  “Sex is not going to get you out of this,” she hissed. “There’s not enough sex to make up for deliberately attacking someone who hadn’t attacked you.”

  “He touched you. He caused you pain.” Saban shrugged, though his expression tightened. “That is all the reason I need.”

  Then he turned away. He turned away as though it didn’t matter, as though his decisions were all that mattered and were all that was important.

  “Don’t you do that.” Natalie could feel herself shaking inside and out.

  “Do what? Drop this little spat we’re having?” He turned back to her, a smooth, powerful flex of muscle as he faced her once again. “We won’t agree on this, Natalie. Whether you want to believe it or not, Mike Claxton means you harm, and I won’t allow it to happen. You disagree, and that’s fine. That doesn’t mean that I’ll not put a stop to it. Now, if you’re not willing to cool off that heat building inside you with a little therapeutic sex, then I could use a snack. Are you hungry?”

  Was she hungry?

  Her lips parted in shock. He didn’t want to argue? He wasn’t going to fight over it?

  “Since when?” She followed him rapidly. “Since when do you not want to fight? You’re male, right?”

  He flashed her a wicked grin over his shoulder. “You should know by now.”

  Oh God yes, she knew. She knew his hard, calloused hands holding her to him, the feel of his mouth devouring her, his cock destroying her. And she knew the cold, icy fury in his face when he had held Mike’s neck in his grip, slowly choking him to death.

  “You can’t just attack people who piss you off, Saban. Especially men. I have to deal with men daily at work, I can’t afford this.”

  “Then they’d best have the good sense to keep their hands off you.” He opened the door of the fridge, bent, and looked inside before pulling free a gallon of milk.

  Natalie stood and stared at him, anger shuddering through her body.

  “It doesn’t work that way, dammit,” she cursed.

  He set a glass on the counter, poured it full of milk, then, lifting the glass, turned and faced her.

  “Bet me.” His eyes gleamed in amusement as he lifted the glass and drank.

  A man drinking whiskey was sexy. A man with a bottle of beer could be sexy. But a man drinking a glass of milk should not have been sexy. Unfortunately, Saban could make it erotic, especially when he lowered the glass and licked over his lower lip with sensual male awareness.

  Natalie felt her stomach tighten, felt her pussy cream furiously as she remembered the enjoyment on his face as he licked her just like that.

  “You’re being unreasonable.” She forced her fingers to uncurl from the fists they were making, to stretch as she strove to make sense of this attitude. He’d been ready to kill Mike. Now he was watching her with amused playfulness.

  “You do not attack anyone for something so insane as touching me when they aren’t aware of this stupid mating heat,” she retorted, feeling off center, uncertain of her own anger now. It was damned hard for a woman to fight with a man when he was watching her like a piece of candy that he was dying to taste.

  “We’ll see.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “We’ll see?” she pushed through her teeth, that anger rising again, along with the need, the hunger. She hated this. It was insane. The madder she got at him, the hornier she got, and that wasn’t a good combination. “The next time you attack someone, I’ll have you arrested myself,” she threw out rashly. “I won’t allow it.”

  His expression changed then. Predatory, arrogant. This was the Jaguar Breed, the frightening, sensual animal she always felt lurking beneath the surface.

  “You won’t allow it?” His voice rumbled with a growl, slurring the words with just enough primal power that it sent a chill racing down her spine.

  “I won’t allow it.” She felt the shudder that tore through her body as the amusement fled his gaze, and savage arousal filled it instead.

  He moved toward her.

  Natalie wasn’t retreating. She wasn’t backing down on this, and she was not going to allow him to railroad her into agreeing that he could attack whenever and wherever he chose. If she didn’t put her foot down now, if she didn’t stop it now, then there would be no end to it. He would believe he could run over her anytime he wanted, however he wanted.

  Start as you mean to go on, her mother had always warned her. She had tried doing that with Mike, tried to stay firm, and he had run over her. He had frightened her, her love for him had excused him, and she had spent three miserable years trying to make a marriage work that was doomed from the start.

  “I pulled back for you,” he rumbled as he came closer. “I let the bastard go, because you said ‘please,’ because the pain in your voice for that piece of shit was more than I could bear. Did you see the look on his face when he gripped your arm, when he saw the pain it caused you?”

  Natalie shook her head, denying the question.

&n
bsp; “Oh, you saw all right, boo.” His lip curled in anger. “You saw the satisfaction, the glee in his eyes, and I smelled it. I smelled it, and I swore I would kill him for it.”

  “You can’t just go killing people over something like that.” She smacked her hands against his chest, tried to push him back.

  His hands lifted then, smoothed down her arms, and a shiver raced across her flesh.

  “He still breathes,” Saban snarled.

  “Barely!” she bit out. “Do you think that makes what you did okay?”

  “I think it made it very dissatisfying,” he said softly, dangerously. “Killing him would have been preferable at that time, but losing you over it wouldn’t have been worth it. That doesn’t mean I’ll allow him to get away with it. He’ll be more careful in the future, and so, mate, will you be more careful. The next man that comes at you in anger, get the hell out of my way. Because the more harm he causes you, the greater his chances of meeting his eternal maker.” Each word shortened, roughened, until he finished with a harsh, furious growl.

  Natalie opened her lips to blast him, to argue further, though the words tumbling in her head refused to find coherency. Before she could speak, his head lowered, his hands jerked her to his body, and he nipped at her lips.

  It wasn’t even a kiss. He nipped at them, then licked them, watching her through narrowed eyes as her tongue jumped to the lower curve of her lips to taste him. To savor the spicy, stormy essence that lingered there from the hormone that infused it.

  A broken little groan came from her throat.

  “You taste me.” He licked her again. “You feel me, Natalie. Tell me, tell me you know I’d do nothing to harm you. Including killing that miserable little bastard unless he actually endangered your life.”

  “You’d hurt him.” She tried to shake her head, tried to fight the need beginning to burn in her blood.

  “Oh, boo, for sure I would. I’d hurt him bad.” The Cajun slipped free, lazy, guttural, spiked with hunger and dangerous intent. “I’d make him run crying to his momma for daring to harm, to believe he could ever take what is mine alone. And you know, cher, you are mine alone.”

  His.

  Her lips parted, and his covered them, a weak, whimpering little moan leaving her lips as she tasted him fully. As he sucked her tongue into his mouth and then gave her leave to play. To lick at him, to tease until his tongue came to her, until she could suckle it, sweeping her tongue over it, drawing the taste of him into her mouth.

  “No!”

  Natalie jumped around him, ignoring the little growl that sounded behind her.

  “Don’t tell me no, mate,” he retorted heatedly. “I smell your need, and even more, I smell the fact that you know I’m right. You’ll not run from this or from me.”

  “I’ll run whenever or however I want to.” She pushed her fingers through her hair and backed out of the kitchen. “Leave me alone, Saban. Just leave me the hell alone.”

  She turned and stalked to the steps. She had to make sense of this; she had to find a way to balance the things she was learning about him.

  He couldn’t just attack people. This mating heat stuff was bad enough. How would either of them survive it without some control? Without one of them thinking sensibly, and it was real damned clear that the one thinking clearly wasn’t going to be him.

  All she had to do was get away from him, just for a little while. Away from the sight of him, the remembered taste of him, the aching need for him.

  She hit the stairs almost at a run, aware, so very aware that he was behind her, moving with lazy speed, gaining on her, his expression taut, hunger burning in his eyes.

  Her breath hitched in her throat; a ragged moan left her lips as she felt his hands grip her hips halfway up the steps, stopping her as his hands moved quickly to the front of her jeans and began working the snap and zipper loose.

  “What are you doing?” she screeched, scrambling to capture his wrists, his hands, to stop the quick release of her clothes even as he jerked the material over her hips. “Dammit Saban…”

  She went to her knees as a large hand pressed into her back, pushed her forward, and he came over her, dominant, forceful, his lips covering the wound he had left on her shoulder the night before.

  Natalie froze as pleasure streaked, exploded, tore through her from that single caress. The area was so sensitive, so violently receptive to his lips, to his stroking tongue, that it stole her breath.

  “This won’t solve anything,” she gasped as the head of his cock pressed between her thighs, slid through the slick moisture there, and found the entrance it sought.

  He didn’t move his lips; instead, he growled against the wound as his hips pressed forward, burying his erection inside her as Natalie felt needle points of ecstatic pleasure begin to attack every nerve ending he stroked.

  “This doesn’t change it,” she panted, fighting the pleasure, fighting her inability to refuse it. “It doesn’t make it right.”

  Her back arched as a mewling cry left her lips, and his cock pressed to the hilt inside her, filling her, overtaking her.

  “Tell me you’re mine.” He nipped at the wound, causing her head to jerk back against his shoulder, one hand to reach back for him, clamping on his hip as he held her to him.

  “I won’t let you control me.”

  “Tell me,” he snarled, licked the bite mark, sucked at it with a hungry growl.

  “I won’t let you do this.” Her cry was weak, a pitiful, pathetic attempt to defy what she knew, even now, was the truth. A certainty as nothing else in her life had ever been.

  His hips flexed, causing his cock to stroke her internally, to rasp against her inner flesh, the swollen, flared head caressing, enflaming tender, sensitive flesh with small thrusts. His lips grazed the wound at her neck once more, then his teeth raked over it, sending violent shudders to race down her back as her senses became overwhelmed, her common sense lost beneath the rush of pleasure.

  “Tell me.” Insidious, flavored with dark sensuality, rough and primal, his voice stole through her mind, as his touch stole her reason.

  “Yours.” Her cry was rewarded, her submission accepted, and the animal within him broke free.

  It was burning, pleasure-pain; each thrust was hard and heavy as control was lost for both of them. As though her admission of his conquest was all he needed to allow his own pleasure free rein.

  It was more pleasure than she could process; it was heated and liquid; it burned through flesh and bone and filled her soul where she hadn’t known she had been cold. Cold and lonely and searching for that something more, that reason to give her inner self to another.

  She didn’t have a reason, but that didn’t matter. She felt it melting, felt it flowing through her body, pouring from her cells, wrapping around him and drawing his essence into her. And breaking her heart.

  In the moment between agonizing pleasure and climax, Natalie admitted it to herself. It wasn’t Saban she was fighting; it was herself. Because she was losing herself in him, giving him parts of her soul that even Mike hadn’t known existed. Giving him parts of her that she hadn’t believed she could share.

  And when the climax exploded through her, when it sang through her senses and quaked through her body, she knew she was lost.

  Behind her, Saban jerked, snarled. The head of his cock throbbed, the barb, that thumb-sized extension, became erect, pushing past the underside of his cock head and stroking areas too sensitive for touch, already primed, already enflamed as his semen spurted inside her.

  He had marked her. Taken her. He possessed her. And unlike Mike, Natalie had a feeling Saban truly could destroy her.

  NINE

  There was a wariness between them, days later, that Natalie couldn’t figure out how to overcome. She didn’t know if she even wanted to overcome it at this point.

  The mating heat had her off balance; her emotions, her independence, and the fear Mike had instilled in her through their marriage of being control
led again all battled within her head and within her heart.

  A part of her wanted to reach out and take everything Saban seemed to be offering her, yet the other part held back, watched and waited. Nothing could be as easy as this. The mating heat, the sense of everything coming together when his body moved within hers.

  The new school season was coming closer by the day. Classes were on a year-round basis, but the six-week break between the final semester and the beginning of new classes gave students and teachers a much-needed vacation before classes began. And it was during that time that the Breed Cabinet had given Natalie a chance to get used to the town and to review the files she had been given on the students assigned to her.

  The classroom she had been given was one of the finest she had seen. The computers were state-of-the-art, the room was bright and airy, the tinted windows that lined one wall looked out on the green, well-manicured grounds that surrounded the school.

  She knew the glass to those windows was specially made to ensure an assassin’s bullet couldn’t find its way through. Just as she knew that the Board of Education had approved a variety of security measures that would place Breeds in close proximity in and around the school to ensure the protection of the Breed children who would be attending classes.

  It was a chance of a lifetime. She would always be known as the first non-Breed teacher to be a part of the education of the exceptional children rumored to have been born of the unions between Breeds and non-Breeds.

  That had been part of the excitement of having been chosen for the job, until she met Saban.

  Natalie paused in inputting the class schedules she was making up into her personal PC at that thought. Yeah, Saban had changed things. From the day he had arrived at her home, she had known he would change things within her, and because of it, she admitted, she had fought the attraction rising between them.

  She had fought him, snapped at him, acted like a shrew and a spoiled brat, searching for ways to irritate him past the wickedly sexy looks he had given her.