Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  She reveled in the power of taking the lead in their caress and lightly licked the seam of his lips. He groaned in the back of his throat and immediately opened his mouth, tilting his head to more fully meld his lips to hers. She twined her fingers in his thick, silky hair and pulled him even closer, making a quiet humming sound of contentment as the kiss deepened.

  The tiny sound seemed to unleash something in Ethan, because he burst into fervent motion, clasping her waist with his hands and lifting her back onto the edge of the kitchen table. He thrust one muscled thigh forward to part her legs, then moved so that he was wedged between them, all the while still kissing her. One of his big hands shifted down to her bottom and pulled her still closer so that her dress rolled up and he pressed firmly against the heat at the juncture of her thighs, nothing but his trousers and the silk of her underclothes between them.

  She put her arms around his neck and murmured some sound that meant, Yes, definitely yes, oh please yes, and he wrapped his other hand around the nape of her neck and deepened the kiss.

  When they finally broke free to catch their breath, Ethan wore the same shocked expression he’d had before when they kissed, and she hiccupped a little as her laughter fought its way out past her gasping breaths. “You look like I feel, shape-shifter. Did the world tilt on its axis a little for you, too? Or does my penchant for drama, as my brothers call it, overtake me?”

  His sensual lips curved into a smile, and she tried to stop thinking about how she’d like to feel those lips all over her body. She had to focus. They were in crisis from all sides, and thinking about how good all that lean muscle would look—totally nude—was not helping.

  Heat rushed through her at the thought, and her body convulsively jerked against him. He literally growled, like the panther that he was. “You need to stop doing that, or I’m going to take you right here on this table, ocean girl. And drama, hell. The world didn’t just tilt, it bounced clear off the damn axis.”

  She flashed a seductive smile at him, filling it with the promise of everything she wanted to do to him. She knew the timing was bad. She knew the adrenaline response might be responsible for his reaction to her.

  She wanted him anyway.

  “If circumstances were different, as you say, I might take you right here on the table,” she whispered.

  His eyes gleamed, then narrowed, and his hands tightened on her. “Just what am I? Some kind of vacation fling?”

  She blinked, dumbfounded, then began laughing helplessly. “Vacation fling? What does that even mean? This is the first occasion on which I have ever left Atlantis in the more than four centuries of my existence, so that would not say much for my powers of attraction, would it?”

  His jaw dropped open. “Four centuries? You’re more than four hundred years old?”

  Her laughter died in the face of his obvious disbelief. “I have four hundred and seven years. Are you disgusted with the idea of kissing one so much older than yourself?”

  “I suddenly find the idea of doing it with an older chick quite appealing,” he said, an evil grin lightening the planes and angles of his face.

  “An older chick? That cannot be an appropriate term, young man. Perhaps you should learn to respect your elders.” She tried for a stern voice, but the fact that she couldn’t seem to stop running her fingers through his hair may have ruined the effect.

  He put his hands on the bottoms of her thighs and lifted her up off the table, still grinning. “Can I respect you while you’re naked?”

  She heard the wildness in her laughter and realized she walked the edge of hysteria. “Ethan, please. We need to figure out what to do.”

  He gently let her down, still holding her so close that she had to slide down the length of his body. Both of them were breathing hard by the time her feet touched the floor. But he stepped back from her, evidently agreeing with her assessment. “You’re right. We need to figure out our plans. The first thing we need to do is get you out of here.”

  They both turned toward the kitchen doorway at the sound of pounding feet approaching. Ethan pushed Marie behind him and pulled a very lethal-looking dagger from a sheath at his side.

  William burst into the room. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Ethan, but we’ve got trouble. Travis called for reinforcements. He sent a message that the representatives of all the prides in the western region are on hand to make sure we follow the ancient rules of alpha challenge. Nobody gets in or out of pride lands until only one of you is left alive.”

  NINE

  Ethan held the phone a good six inches away from his ear. “Kat. Kat. Kat!”

  On the other end of the line, Kat finally quit yelling and took a breath. “Yeah. Sorry. But this ignorant fool says they aren’t going to let me back onto Big Cypress for two days! He actually had the nerve to knock me aside when I tried to get my Jeep past him. What exactly is going on?”

  Deadly rage raced through Ethan at the thought of one of them harming Kat. “Are you hurt?”

  “What? No. No, it was nothing. He just kept telling me to ‘phone home,’ for whatever that’s worth. What is going on, Ethan?”

  He filled her in on the attack on Marie, the alpha challenge, and the rules about any of them leaving or entering pride lands. Kat started swearing. In spite of everything, he had to laugh. “Kat, those are words I didn’t even know you knew.”

  There was a silence on the phone. “Do you really want to discuss my language right now?”

  The brief flicker of amusement died, and the alpha in him took command. “No, I don’t. But here’s what I want you to do. Can those thugs hear my side of this conversation?”

  “No,” she replied. “In fact, I’ve been walking back to my Jeep while we talk. What’s up?”

  “I want you to find somebody impartial. Maybe Jack. We need a witness who doesn’t belong to any of the factions that have wanted to take over pride lands in the past.”

  “Jack the weretiger? The one Bastien knows?” Her voice cracked on her mate’s name. “Oh, Gods. Bastien. When he finds out I allowed his sister to come to harm…”

  Ethan snarled. “I’m the one to blame, and I’ll take any punishment he wants to dish out. I deserve it. But believe me when I say that no one else will lay so much as the tip of a claw on her skin and live.”

  There was another silence on the line. “Ethan? I’ve known you since I was a child, and I’ve never heard that in your voice. What exactly is going on between you and Marie?”

  He turned his gaze toward the chair where Marie sat wrapped in the blanket from his bed, and she looked up at him at that instant, as if his thoughts had called to her. She was so beautiful it almost hurt him to look at her—art made flesh and infused with grace.

  He’d failed her.

  He could never deserve her.

  “Ethan?” Kat’s voice in his ear yanked him back to more pressing matters.

  “Find Jack,” he repeated. “I want a neutral observer. They’ll be forced to let him in. You’ve got less than twenty-four hours, Kat. Do your best.”

  “I’ll find him,” she promised. “If you hear from Bastien—”

  “Marie hasn’t been able to establish contact with him or with their priest. When she does, I’ll get a message to him to contact you.”

  He could almost hear through the phone lines her battle to focus on what needed to be done. “Fine. Call me if you can. I’ll get Jack here if he’s anywhere on the eastern seaboard, Ethan.”

  “I know I can count on you. You’ve always been one of the strongest of the pride, even before you discovered your ability to shift, Kat Fiero.”

  “Take care of her for me, Ethan. She’s my sister now.”

  He looked over at Marie again. “I will protect her with everything I am, Kat.”

  As Ethan clicked his phone closed, he repeated his promise. Turned it into a vow. “With everything I am.”

  Several hours later, Marie struggled to wake from a dark and terrifying dream in which bears battled pa
nthers, and the strange lizardlike creatures the landwalkers called alligators snapped at the flesh of the vanquished. She abruptly sat up on the couch where she lay, realizing that it would not take a dream-speaker to translate that dream for her. She was caught in a battle between opposing predators, and her gentle gifts of healing wouldn’t be of any assistance at all to him.

  To Ethan.

  She watched as he stood at the table in his starkly furnished strategy room. Other than the couch where she’d finally dozed off, only a few scattered chairs, a desk, and a large table covered with charts and papers decorated the spacious room. He’d called it his office, but she’d been in the palace war room and recognized this place as its twin in purpose. Ethan’s men surrounded him, discussing strategy and plans for the upcoming challenge. As if he felt the weight of her gaze upon him, he turned those golden eyes toward her, and his heated stare pinned her in place, stealing the very breath from her lungs.

  He’d spoken truly when he named attraction a tame word for what lay between them. If attraction were a single hearth flame, this was a conflagration. An inferno of raging desire. It made no sense at all, and yet it made all the sense in the world.

  Some attractions defied logic. Isn’t that what the women who came to the temple had told her time and again? Even her brother, when he’d described his newfound love for Kat, defiance mingled with hope that she might understand and embrace her new sister.

  Bastien, who’d always underestimated himself, finally came fully into his own when he found a warrior woman to stand at his side. But she, Marie, was no warrior. The best she could manage was a few simple tricks with the calling of water.

  Her gift was to heal and to aid in childbirth. So unless Travis decided to go into labor during the challenge, she thought bitterly, there would not be much she could offer.

  A noise alerted her to movement, and she looked up to see the pride members filing out of the room, nodding as Ethan issued last-minute instructions.

  “William, take a team and relieve the first watch,” Ethan said.

  William nodded. “Get some rest. You’ll need it. The intel says Travis is one of the most powerful alphas in the central part of the country.”

  Ethan bared his teeth in a terrifying mockery of a smile. “Then maybe he’ll offer some sport before he dies.”

  Marie gasped at the overt ferocity in his voice, and he stood, head bowed, for a long moment before he turned to face her. As he crossed the large room toward her, she shivered at the intent plain on his face. He wanted her and was prepared to lay siege to her defenses.

  She was unsure if she had any defenses left to raise against him.

  He sat next to her and lifted a hand to twine in her hair. “Did you get a little rest?”

  “I think I must have slept for a while. It has been a very long day, and I did not sleep well last night, with the excitement of the journey ahead of me.”

  His lips tightened. “Not exactly what you thought it would be, is it? I’m really sorry, ocean girl. Once we get this little problem out of the way, I’ll wine and dine you in the very best restaurants.”

  She considered the leap for a moment before deciding to brave it. Life was fraught with potential danger. This courageous man would fight for his pride members, his lands, and even his life in fewer than twenty hours.

  In the end, the leap was really only a very small step. She leaned her face into his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I don’t need the best restaurants, Ethan. Right now, I would be honored simply to be alone with you.”

  A crystalline moment stretched between them, lasting so long that she was afraid her offer had been misguided. Then something in him seemed to snap, and he lifted her onto his lap, pulling her to him so tightly that she could barely take a breath.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Marie?” he said, rasping out the words. “That you will be mine, if only for this night?”

  The moment was too huge to comprehend; too crucial to some inherent need in her soul to acknowledge. Instead, she found refuge in levity. “Well, perhaps. But only if you will respect me while I’m naked.”

  He shouted out his laughter and jumped up with her still in his arms, as though she weighed nothing at all. Then he bent to kiss her and poured so much longing and hunger and need into the kiss that she was dizzy long before he released her to stand on her feet.

  “I want you right now, ocean girl. But I won’t take you here in my office. I want you in my bed.”

  She nodded, and he caught her hand in his own and pulled her, half running, down the hallway to his rooms. When they arrived, he kicked the door shut behind him and then locked it. She caught her breath, transfixed at the predatory cast to his face as he stalked her across the room.

  “Wait,” she said, breathless with anticipation, with longing, with a trace of fear. “I want…” She ran to her bag and dug in the bottom for the colorful scarves of Atlantean silk she’d brought with her, thinking perhaps she would wear them to some event with Bastien and Kat.

  She tossed the scarves, rich with gold, silver, turquoise, and so many other jewel colors, onto his bed and spread them on his stark white pillows and sheets.

  “Let me bring some color to your life, Ethan of Florida, as you have brought heat and desire to mine.” Her words were brave, but she stood trembling. Afraid the flames that ignited in her body whenever he touched her would consume her.

  Afraid that one night would never be enough.

  Knowing that one night was very likely all they could ever have.

  But desire triumphed over fear, and she held up her arms to him. “Be mine for this night, Ethan. Let Atlantis meet the dual-natured, and both be the better for it.”

  He did not say a word but started toward her. Slowly, stalking her. Letting her see the full weight of his hunger on his face. He pulled his clothes off as he came, so that by the time he reached her he was entirely nude, his enormous erection jutting up between them. Her eyes widened at the sight of his powerful body sculpted into lean muscle.

  “It’s time, ocean girl,” he whispered. “I want to kiss every inch of your skin right this minute. In fact, I may very well die if I don’t get my hands and my mouth on you in the next sixty seconds.”

  She leaned forward and traced one finger down the planes of his chest and abdomen, and he shuddered. She bit her lip and took the leap over the precipice.

  “Then perhaps you should remove my dress.”

  Ethan stared at Marie, unable to believe his ears. Unable to believe that the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was offering herself to him with the same courage she’d shown when she’d questioned his authority. When she’d defied him. When she’d laughed at his attempt to order her around.

  Somehow, this gentle healer had displayed greater strength than the meanest and baddest of his pride-brothers. Maybe it was her gentle touch that had stolen its way into his heart.

  “Your dress. Right. I might be able to manage that.” He reached out for her, hoping she didn’t notice that his hands were shaking. Touched the silken folds of her dress and, underneath, the silken curves of her skin.

  “I love this dress,” he said. “But it has to go.”

  He bent to grasp the hem of the dress on both sides of her endless legs and then stood, pulling the fabric with him. She moved to make some adjustment, and the top of the dress fell open, helping his clumsy fingers complete the job. In seconds, the dress was up and over her head, and she stood in only a few tiny scraps of dark blue lace.

  The sight of her sent all the blood in his body rushing to his cock, which jerked and strained toward her. His inner cat agreed with the sentiment, growling its hunger and need.

  “Holy crap,” he said, grinning like a damn fool. “If that’s the Atlantean version of ladies’ underwear, I bow down to your superior race.”

  She tilted her head and flashed a smile filled with the power of ages-old feminine seduction and newly discovered heat. “Do you like it?”r />
  “It makes me want to purr.”

  Marie laughed. “I’d like to make you purr, warrior. But first, I’d like to feel you touch me.”

  He didn’t need to be asked again. Ethan swept her up and onto the bed, rolling with her as they fell so that she landed on top of him, trapped by his arms. “I plan to touch every part of you,” he promised.

  “Less talking, more touching,” she said, and then she nipped at his bottom lip. The sharp touch of her teeth ignited the flames that had been stirring in his blood, and he pulled her head down to his and took her mouth.

  The predatory heat in his eyes exhilarated Marie. No gentle coupling, this—she wanted flame and fury and the sea-struck lightning of tempest-force winds. He’d torn her undergarments from her body as if he had to see her totally nude or he’d die from the wanting. Then she’d taken the aggressor’s part, she who had never taken the initiative in bed sport, and actually bitten him. She felt as though the panther side of his nature had communicated itself to her soul, and she, too, wanted to snarl and bite and dig her nails into his back, leaving no doubt in his mind that she was laying claim to him as well.

  For one terrifying and thrilling moment she rose over him to conquer him, but then the predator in Ethan took command, and he growled low in his throat, then roared out a feral claim. He was alpha and master of his domain; he was fiercely primitive.

  He was everything she’d never wanted and never known, and she was drowning in the sensation of him.

  Ethan set his mouth on her and licked and kissed and bit her skin from her lips to her chin and then down to her neck. He bit the juncture where her neck met her shoulder, and she cried out at the electric current that sizzled down through her body. Her nipples tightened and hardened nearly to the point of pain, and then suddenly he moved down again and ran his tongue across one stiff point, and she cried out again. He lifted his head, a look of such fierce triumph on his face that the mere sight of it caused creamy heat to pool between her thighs.

  “I warned you I would taste every inch of you,” he repeated, his voice so rough that the sound of it rasped across her sensitized nerve endings. “I always make good on my promises.”