by Maddy Barone
His shrill scream sent shudders down her spine. “Kit—”
“Quieh!” he snarled, squeezing her throat so tightly she choked. “You come wih me now.”
He hauled her up into his arms and began running. Wind fluttered her hair. How could he run so fast? He was running uphill, carrying her in his arms like a baby. Even her wolf-born brothers and cousins couldn’t run like this. Over his shoulder, she could see Devlin, shaking his head, getting smaller and smaller.
“I told you not to challenge him,” he yelled, but Kit had carried her so far, so fast, that the words were very faint.
He was moving too quickly for her to try to throw herself out of his arms. A spill on the steep mountainside could be crippling. Nineteen was too young to die. Kit would get tired soon; he had to. Maybe then she could get away from him. His heart pounded calmly and steadily against her cheek, not seeming to labor at all. The wind created by his speed forced tears from her eyes. Yeah, it was the wind that made her cry. Olivia blinked away the hot tears, determined to fix landmarks in her memory to follow back home when she’d gotten away from him.
And she would get away. She might have been willing to allow him to court her, but the way he’d treated her showed her he’d be a terrible mate. Escape might be difficult, but she was her mother and father’s daughter. She could track and survive in the mountains as well as either of her brothers. Even if she wasn’t able to get away on her own, her father and brothers would come for her very soon. Grimly, she settled into the steely arms that held her against a warm chest, waiting for her opportunity to escape.
Chapter Two
Kit ran carefully with his precious burden. His feelings about this female confused him. He didn’t like people outside the pride. No, he feared and hated them. He didn’t get along even with his own pridemates, and they at least left him alone most of the time. Humans were cruel. Why this one smelled so fascinating, he didn’t know. He knew only that when he’d first seen her, he had wanted to break her neck. A minute later, he’d scented her, and then all he wanted was to get as close to her as possible. A year ago, one of his pridemates had claimed a human female as his mate and gone to live with her pride. Family, the humans called it. Kit had thought him crazy. But now he understood. This female was his. Utterly his, and he would keep her with him, never let her go, ever. Part of him, the sliver of human reason that dimmed when he was in his shift, whispered that he was acting crazy. Kit ignored the whisper. It didn’t matter what his human side thought.
“Kit!” the female said insistently, again. She had tried to talk to him from time to time, but now wasn’t the time to talk. He glanced down at her, inhaling her intoxicating scent, but didn’t respond. He needed to keep his attention on the rocks and trees. He was moving with all the speed he could muster, so he could have her in his lair before dark.
Maria might not like him bringing a human female into the Pride. She and Juanita and Tricia were the queens, and they shared all the males of the Pride between them. They might not like another female to share their males. He didn’t care. This human, Olivia, was his. He wouldn’t allow any other male to give her sex. Olivia would be his queen. If she objected to him giving sex to the other queens, he would forsake them. When Justin, his pridemate, found his human mate last year, the human female had demanded that he service only her. That must be exhausting for Justin. Maria sometimes required three or four of the males to satisfy her when she was in heat. Kit would be happy to spend all his time pleasing only Olivia. He snarled at the thought that she might want to invite other males to please her. He would kill any male who so much as sniffed at her. He was the youngest of the mature males, but they all feared him. Not only was he the fastest and strongest of them, in spite of only being able to take a half-form, but he was sometimes able to control their minds if he tried. His eyes could force them to surrender if he thought it hard enough. It was seldom worth it. His teeth and claws were easier to use. There were times, however, when it was good to have everyone walk away unbloodied.
He leapt from one spine of rock to another ten feet away and felt the female tense in his arms. A glance down showed her pale blue eyes staring up at him. He didn’t know what humans thought was beautiful, but in his eyes, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her hair was pale, lighter and shorter than his, and her face was narrow, with high cheekbones and a wide mouth. She must spend much time outdoors, because her skin was browned by the sun. He wondered if the skin that didn’t see sun would be pale. He would learn soon enough.
She tried to hide it, but he could smell her fear. Her neck was developing bruises from his fingers, speckled with tiny gouges from his claws. She bruised so easily. Humans were pitifully weak, and she was slender, with none of the fat padding her curves like the women he knew. Breaking her would be too easy. He regretted hurting her, but he had no time to sooth her fear now. After he had brought her to his lair, he would speak to her. There, he would be secure enough to resume his man form, and assure her she was safe with him. He would protect her and any kits they had. But first, he had to get her to his lair. He had to hide her so her pride couldn’t find her and take her away from him.
*
How long could he run like this? Olivia looked up at the sky and saw the sun was almost down. It had been at least four hours since Kit had picked her up and carried her away. His pace was faster than any racehorse, and his heart rate and breathing weren’t labored. Olivia estimated he had carried her at least sixty miles. She had tried to pull a few of her hairs out and let them drop on the ground along the way from time to time. Even her father would have trouble tracking her all this way with no scent markers from her. By now, her father, brothers, and cousins who were spending the summer at the ranch would be searching for her. They would easily track her horse to where Kit had attacked her. After that, she wasn’t sure how plain the trail would be, especially with Kit carrying her so her scent wouldn’t linger on the ground. But he was leaving some prints. Even though he crossed running water several times and moved over hard rock, surely her dad and brothers would be able to track him. She just had to leave some clues behind to help them.
Her dad would be disappointed in her. She wasn’t supposed to be more than a mile from the ranch house unless she had one of her brothers with her. According to Uncle Shadow, even that was too far for a woman alone. His daughter, Victoria, had to scheme to get any freedom at all. Luckily, Aunt Glory could stand up to Shadow better than anyone, so her cousin Victoria did get some freedom. Her own poor dad must be frantic to find her now. Olivia was sorry she’d pushed the limits of her freedom so far. When her dad and brothers caught up to her, they’d put her in lock down for sure.
“Kit!” She’d been trying to get him to pay attention to her for the past three hours, but he’d always ignored her. Since he was running on relatively level ground now, she dared to squirm gently in his grip. “Kit, please! Let me down just for a couple minutes. I have to… I need to go to the bathroom.” When he paid no heed she pinched him and screamed, “Kit, are you listening to me?”
He glanced down at her. His alien face was fiercely feral. He clamped his arms even tighter around her. “No.”
“Yes!” she snapped back. “Unless you want me to pee all over you.” She wasn’t making it up. She really did need to go, but the real reason was that her urine would be like a red flag to anyone tracking her. “Kit! Please!”
Maybe it was the “please.” He leapt up to a rock crevice and set her down. He waved a hand—paw—at the crevice. “Hurry.”
Olivia’s legs almost folded. She staggered and might have fallen if Kit hadn’t steadied her with a hand under her arm. After only a second, he let her go and took one half-step back. He wanted her to pee into the deep crack in the rock. The scent would be harder for her father and brothers to catch there. She unbuckled her belt and found those rabid golden green eyes watching her carefully. Honestly shocked, she stopped.
“Can’t you go away for a minute?”
she asked stiffly.
“No.”
“Then you have to turn around,” she demanded.
“Why?” he asked in apparent confusion.
“Because it’s not polite to watch someone go to the bathroom!”
That strange feline face showed bafflement. Was he totally uncivilized? Didn’t he know anything about common courtesy? Privacy? She felt suddenly cold. He really was feral. “Kit,” she began. Saying please seemed to help before. She tried it again. “Please step away and turn your back. It’s not like I’m stupid enough to try to run off. I know you’d catch me in two seconds. Okay? Please?”
After staring at her for a long minute, he did as she asked. It was embarrassing for her, but she quickly did her business and did her best to leave evidence for her father to find. Before she had even finished buckling her belt, Kit was back, swinging her up in his arms and sprinting off again. Even her father couldn’t cover ground this quickly. Her urine scent would be gone before he came this way. Helpless tears stung her eyes, and in spite of her efforts, she couldn’t force them back. Kit looked down at her as he ran. His eyes really were pretty, in a fierce, non-human sort of way. Intense and staring steadily in hers, his eyes filled her sight. She felt like he was trying to hypnotize her.
“Sleep,” he commanded in a fierce purr-growl. “Sleep, mahmade.”
And somehow, without her meaning for them to, her eyelids dropped and she slept.
*
Kit climbed the steep slope to his lair, carrying his mate tightly against his chest. His cave was a hundred yards from the rest of the Pride. They all knew he preferred to be alone. He brought his kills to the Pride to share, and occasionally went to them to give sex to one of the queens, but rarely did any of them come closer to him than the bottom of the slope. He would still share his kills with them, after he had set aside a portion for his human female, but he decided he wouldn’t be giving the queens sex any longer. He had a mate of his own now, like Justin. He wondered how Justin was doing living with his mate’s human pride. Kit could never live under such confining conditions. He was a cougar, for all that he couldn’t make a full change. Living in a human pride would kill him. Even if his human mate begged him to join her pride, he would refuse.
In his arms, Olivia was still deep in the sleep he’d laid on her. He walked into his lair and paused to inhale her scent. His. His mate. That scent made him want to roll around in it. He needed to have her scent on him, marking him as hers. He wanted her to smell of him. Gently he put her down on the tangle of woven wool blankets he habitually curled on to nap. When would she wake? When she did, would she want him to service her immediately? He put his nose close to her crotch to sniff. She was human, so he couldn’t tell if she were in heat. Often Maria, Tricia, and Juanita demanded sex even when they weren’t in heat. She smelled good there. It was a happy scent. He had trouble thinking clearly in his shift, and struggled to clarify his thoughts. Her scent made him happy, that was what he meant. He growled in anticipation.
What should he do until she woke? She needed grooming. That was something he could do for her. Carefully, gently, he licked over her face. Her face tasted of tears and her throat tasted of old blood from where he had accidently cut her skin with his claws. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Mates shouldn’t be hurt. That was clear in his mind. She had tried to deny him, but he should have been more careful. He would have to learn to control himself around her. As a human, she was frighteningly fragile.
His clawed fingers fumbled a little with the buttons on her shirt, but he was able to remove it and the thick undershirt she wore beneath it. He stared in confusion at the strips of fabric she had wrapped around her chest. Was it a bandage? He sniffed cautiously for injury and decided it must be something she used to protect her teats. He wanted to lick her there. Maria loved to have her teats licked and nipped. Better to wait until she woke, he decided. Leaving her chest wrappings in place, he carefully groomed her belly, shoulders, and back with slow swipes of his tongue.
How long would she sleep? Any of his pridemates would have thrown off his compulsion by now. Humans were weaker than cats. Maybe it would take her longer to wake up. He had to wait for her to wake to service her, but he wanted her right now. At least he could rub against her and absorb her scent while he waited for her. She wore boots and socks and heavy pants with a belt and a knife on the belt. He approved of the knife. As a human female, she had neither claws nor strong sharp teeth with which to defend herself. A knife was a good thing for her to have. He removed her pants, socks and boots, but decided to leave the cloth she wore around her hips in place, too. He would love to groom the pink flesh between her legs, but she might be angry if he did that without her invitation.
He pondered that. Did he have to wait for an invitation? She belonged to him. When he’d first found her, she had tried to deny him. Now that she was here, in his lair and wearing his scent, she would realize that she must submit to him. But he should at least wait until she woke. Females could sometimes be moody and unreasonable when it came to sex. So he satisfied himself with sniffing the rich scent from her female place and cleaning thoroughly between her toes and along the arches of her slender feet.
After he had finished grooming her, he realized that with the sun down, his lair was cooling rapidly and her body was chilled. She was human and would feel the cold more than he did. He had never had a fire in any of his lairs before, but he’d never had a weak human female to care for either. A small fire would be good for her. He could put her clothes back on her, but he didn’t want anything between their bodies when she woke and demanded sex. His pants joined hers on the floor beside them. Was she like Maria, who liked her lover to be rough and screamed at him to go faster, thrust into her harder? Would she buck against him, trying to throw him off to force him to dominate her? Or was she like Juanita, who liked to play during sex and cuddle after? Or was she like Tricia, who indulged in the act only when her need was riding her hard, and clawed the males away as soon as she was satisfied? He hoped she liked to play. She was so delicate he might break her if she demanded he be rough with her. It was in his nature to take control during sex. Maria loved that. For her, sex was a battle. But he liked to play and he liked cuddling. Cuddling Olivia was something he would love to do.
He searched out dry wood and hurried back to his lair to build the fire. Kit curled around his mate, reveling in her bare skin touching his. Cuddling soothed something wild inside him. She smelled right. She smelled like him. He lay on his side almost on top of her and put his chin on his fist to watch her sleep. The pain of the change was brief as he went from his half-form to human. He couldn’t smell her as well in his man form, but he could still feel her stomach where his arm lay over it, and her breath warm on his shoulder. In fact, he could feel her even better with his human hand. Her hair was almost as pale as her belly. It was shorter than his, soft and straight. He used his fingers to comb the tangles out of it.
Safe in his lair with his mate beside him, he was able to think more clearly. Maybe Olivia wouldn’t be happy to be his mate. He swallowed, considering that. She had seemed to resist at first. He hoped he was wrong and she would be glad he had taken her. He hadn’t had a choice either. All he knew was, she was his. Whether she was happy or angry didn’t change that fact.
“Olivia,” he breathed. Her name was strange, but easy to say when he was in man form. It was black in his lair, but he could see her well enough. He couldn’t tell if she was pretty as the humans viewed prettiness. She was beautiful to him. Her white skin almost glowed in the dark. Her belly was firm, the teats beneath their wrappings seemed firm also. Perhaps she hadn’t yet given birth to kits. That pleased him, although it seemed strange. She was fully mature, past the age where she would have dropped her first litter.
Maybe it was a human thing. Kit had watched them sometimes from a distance, but he didn’t understand their ways. Justin and Devlin had told him that some human females accepted only one male. Not just one mal
e at a time, but only one male for their entire lives. That was ridiculous. There were few females but many males among the humans he’d watched. The males must fight each other for the right to claim a female, just as his pride did sometimes when Maria or the others were in heat. Then the pride queens demanded sex from several of the males at a time.
Maybe the human males felt about their mates the way he felt about Olivia. They prevented any other males from servicing their mates and would kill any male who approached. That made sense. He would kill any male who came near Olivia. Devlin was First Male of the pride, but even he wouldn’t be allowed to touch her. Kit was the only one who would give Olivia sex.
Kit bent to inhale at her female spot. To have such an alluring scent, she must be in heat. He felt fierce and wild from it, just as he and the other males did when one of their females went into heat. She would wake up demanding he give her sex. He relaxed into her body, falling into a light catnap while he waited to please her so thoroughly she wouldn’t ask for another male.
Chapter Three
Olivia woke curled on her side. Her back was warm but her feet were freezing. She wondered sleepily if she had kicked the blankets free during the night. A slow, languorous stretch made her aware of an ache in her back and something warm and firm pressed against her. A glance over her shoulder froze her heart. A man with a bare chest leaned over her, so close their noses almost bumped. Confusion was partially banished by memory, but nothing reduced the terror that leapt into her throat. She was naked except for her underwear, and he —she darted a quick glance down his body— was completely naked.
They weren’t lying on a bed, only a couple of folded blankets on a dirt floor, in an irregularly shaped rock room. A cave? Light fell in a broad band from the narrow opening at one end, about six or seven yards away.
