Assassins Bite

by Mary Hughes

  “Dragan,” he murmured, somehow pulling me closer. The heat of his body licked flame-like up my side. I hissed and shifted my flute bag between us, but as a defense it backfired. Zajicek simply plucked the bag from my hands. “Shall I carry that?”

  “You don’t have to. No, wait—”

  “Nonsense. It is quite light.” He shifted my bag onto his own shoulder, not the one between us. The strap wrapped itself over his muscles like a second skin, and I swear it moaned happily.

  Then Zajicek curled one hand around my waist and pulled me so close I could barely breathe. I tried to, really I did. But every tentative inhale brought the scent of him, cotton and sandalwood and burning masculinity. Every movement of my ribcage scraped the side of my breast against his arm, until I was trembling with the need to rub blatantly against him. Every breath drew cool air over my tongue…yikes, I was lolling like a dog in heat.

  My glasses fogged up, and I stumbled again.

  Both Zajicek’s arms went around me. I felt incredibly clumsy and stupid, making him rescue me continually from my own feet. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Zajicek—”

  “Dragan,” he murmured, cupping my chin and lifting my face for another soft kiss. His lips touched mine, his mouth moving in tiny circles as if to warm my skin. He didn’t need to. I was plenty warm already—and a little buzzy.

  “You taste wonderful.” His mouth opened and his tongue teased the seam of my lips.

  I jumped at the touch but Zajicek held me, so securely I relaxed into his arms. It seemed to be some sort of cue for him to lick me and slide his tongue between my lips, encouraging me to part them.

  He asked so nicely, with tiny hot licks. So I did.

  The instant my mouth opened he devoured me. His mouth slanted over mine and his jaw dropped. Heat rushed in. I gasped. Shocked and a little scared, I fell back, but he stepped with me, wrapped his arm around my back and trapped me good. He had to bend quite a ways to do it.

  My back arched like a bow, my breasts crushed to his chest, my hips to his thighs. Something stirred against my belly, sending a jolt shearing through me. My mouth tingled and my breasts tingled and I was getting really tingly between my legs.

  I slid my hands between us to try to wedge open some space. All I succeeded in doing was fitting my palms to the hardest pectorals in the world.

  The tingling between my legs was starting to drive me insane.

  Zajicek’s mouth left mine to trail licks and nibbles down my jaw to my throat. He nuzzled me there, an odd dark rumble coming from his chest, almost a lion’s purr. “You smell divine. Ah, to taste you fully.” His tongue rasped over my pulse.

  Somewhere along the way his hand had found my breast and was kneading and cupping while he sucked gently on the tender skin of my neck until my head spun.

  Then his fingers found my raised nipple and plucked.

  A thousand Christmas lights went on in my head. I shrieked.

  When she’s in heat, there’s no cooling down…

  Taming the Lion

  © 2014 Vivi Andrews

  Lone Pine Pride, Book 2

  Wilderness guide and cougar-shifter Patricia “Patch” Fontaine has known the dangers of lone-shifter life since she was ten, when her parents mysteriously vanished. All grown up now, she thrives on her hard-won independence.

  When rumors of a new rash of shifter abductions crop up, she’s forced to come home to the Lone Pine Pride for protection—right as the man she’s always secretly wanted is about to marry her best friend. And right as she’s going into heat.

  Roman Jaeger values his role as Alpha heir apparent, but he isn’t thrilled about his arranged marriage to the Alpha’s daughter—especially when his bride is just as nonplussed as he is—but he’ll do his duty for the pride. Seeing Patch again challenges his noblest intentions. The wildness in her sets him on fire, and he can’t resist the chance for one last fling.

  Both know a future together is impossible. But when chemistry and sowing wild oats grows into a need deeper than lust, their bond could threaten the very heart of the pride they both love.

  Warning: This book contains a strong sexy Alpha-to-be, an independent cougar-shifter who knows her way around a lion’s heart, secret affairs, arranged marriages, politics, passion, and a pride full of lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Taming the Lion:

  “I thought you were going back to the Den,” Patch snapped, not backing down and yielding the space to him as any less dominant cat should.

  “I am.”

  “So why are you still following me?” She stopped so abruptly Roman would have crashed into her if he hadn’t been acutely attuned to her every move. “I’m a big girl. You don’t have to protect me on the pride lands.”

  He knew that. He was pretty sure Patch Fontaine didn’t need his protection anywhere—pride lands or no. But he wasn’t here to be her bodyguard. He was here because he literally couldn’t make himself walk away. There was fire in her and he wanted to warm himself against it. Cold for so long…

  She’s in heat.

  The thought was salvation, an explanation he could latch on to. Hormones, instinct, animalism. They were all reasonable excuses for this drive to chase her down and make her submit to him in the most basic way. It wasn’t insanity; it was instinct. Chemistry. A purely natural compulsion.

  He reached out, catching a lock of hair that had gotten loose and bobbed next to her ear. Her breath caught and she went still, her eyes, dark stars in the night, widening just a millimeter.

  “How close are you to the peak of your heat?” he asked, hearing the gravel roughness of arousal in his own voice.

  Her lips parted. It was invitation enough.

  Bad idea. Worst idea ever. Epically atrocious idea.

  She shouldn’t be here with him. Roman. Lila’s Roman. She should have run back to the Den at top speed. She should have stopped walking the second she realized he was following her. It should never have gotten to this point. The two of them. Alone. In the dark. With his strong, callused hand raised almost as if to cup her face, one lock of her hair caught around his finger. With his body so close to hers she could just lean a little and fall against all that delicious, rock hard strength. With his gaze locked on hers—Holy Hades, his eyes. No man should look at a woman like that unless she was beneath him and moaning. Which didn’t sound like a half bad place to be.

  “Roman.” She was going to tell him no. Tell him to leave her alone. To walk away. Hell, she was going to walk away herself. She was. But then he lowered his head and her hands were suddenly, of their own volition, splayed on the glorious firmness of his chest, and she was kissing him.

  Or she thought she was. It was so soft, so fleeting, so indescribably inadequate that it was hard to know for sure that she’d been properly kissed before he lifted his lips away from hers, and cool air washed away the fleeting sensation of warmth.

  No. If this was it, if this was what she’d been waiting for and dreaming about for the last decade it was not going to end like that. A peck. A brush. A tease. Hell no.

  A growl ripped out of Patch’s throat as she lurched up into his arms, nails raking into his hair, grasping his skull to hold him steady as she yanked his mouth to hers, their bodies colliding hard as she devoured his mouth. An answering growl rumbled against her body from Roman’s chest and the kiss caught fire—teeth and tongues and lips tangling wantonly. The iron bands of his arms pressed hard into her back, pulling her in closer than close, until she lost track of where she ended and he began. It was all heat and friction and a symphony of hungry growls.

  Her feet left the ground and she barely noticed. Who needed the ground when she had this?

  One of his hands plunged into her hair, angling her head for better access, as the other gripped her hip and ground her harder against the long, delicious length of his e
rection. Oh my. Her thighs clenched involuntarily. Yes, please.

  His teeth found her lower lip, the bite just shy of too hard, and she heard herself making noises she’d never heard before—high, breathy and feminine pants of need. Then his teeth were skimming the side of her throat and she tipped her face back to stare up at the lattice of black branches above, exposing her neck to him in perfect submission. She who had never submitted to anyone but the Alpha. His teeth scored deeper at the junction of her neck and shoulder and a rough gasp wrenched between her lips. Holy Hades, that spot. It was like a one-way ticket to her G-spot. If she hadn’t already been wet and aching, that bite alone would have done it. She was ready, so unbelievably ready…

  Then he was spinning them, pinning her back to the coarse bark of a nearby tree, the scent of crushed pine bark rising up to mix with the tangled scents of lust, Roman’s shaved-cedar-sunshine musk…

  …and beneath it all the faintest echo of scent on his clothes, barely-there traces of a cloying, medicinal sweet-and-sour tang…

  A tang that triggered something violent and terrified deep inside her. No.

  She threw out her hands, struggling with more panic than skill or finesse, but as soon as Roman sensed her resistance, he backed away, probably scenting the sudden surge of fear on her, his hands over his head in a gesture of innocence that was five minutes too late to be believable.

  As soon as she wasn’t drowning in his scent, the panic fled—replaced by a heavy weight of realization.

  Holy Hades. She’d kissed Roman. They’d almost done a lot more. If she hadn’t come to her senses, God only knew what they’d be doing now. What part of her he’d be nibbling on, caressing…

  Not a helpful line of thinking, Patch.

  She didn’t know what had triggered her freak-out—that scent, the horrible wrongness of it—but she was damn glad something had woken her up to what she was doing. Sure, she’d wanted to kiss Roman since she’d discovered boys, but he was Lila’s. She would never betray her best friend like that.

  Except for the fact that she just had. Crap.

  “Patch…” From the expression on Roman’s face, he was just as horrified by what they’d done as she was.

  “The heat,” she blurted, insanely grateful for the excuse. It couldn’t have just been her wanting him like she wanted to keep breathing. Not if she ever wanted to be able to look her best friend’s husband in the eye. “It was just the heat. My bad. No hard feelings.”

  He lowered his hands from his stick-em-up stance, shifting uncomfortably, and she realized he probably had some very hard feelings left over from their little bout of insanity.

  Don’t look. Do. Not. Look.

  She looked. And he was just as big as she’d felt. Just as deliciously hard. Oh, have mercy.

  “I—” She didn’t know what she would have said. I have to go? I-need-you-take-me-now? I can’t ever see you again? I want to lick you like a lollipop and swallow you whole? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. The words clogged in her throat and she gave up on pushing them past the shame.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. Didn’t want to know what color they were when they were drenched in need.

  Taking a page out of Lila’s book, Patch ran.

  Do not pass Go. Do not look back. Do not shift because the cat will say yes, no matter how badly she needs to say no. Patch ran.

  Thank God he didn’t follow her. She didn’t know what she would have done if he’d tried to come after her. To chase her down. If he’d caught her…

  Images crashed against one another in her brain, half-baked fantasies springing instantly to life. Roman catching her, those muscled arms sweeping her off her feet, taking her to the ground, his weight riding her down, hands stripping away her clothing, caressing, always just on that perfect borderline of too rough. So strong. So dominant. Leaving no question of whom she belonged to, body and soul.

  Holy Hades.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Assassins Bite

  Copyright © 2014 by Mary Hughes

  ISBN: 978-1-61922-254-0

  Edited by Christa Soule

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: November 2014

  www.samhainpublishing.com