The Magical Christmas Cat

by Lora Leigh

  And she had seen it in his as well. The pure pleasure, the hunger and the overriding primal lust that had filled him. A part of her was drawn to it. A part of her was terrified by it. And she knew, she couldn’t walk away from it again.

  He pushed his fingers through his hair before gripping his neck and glaring over at her. She stared at him with those solemn, stormy eyes, and he knew that the same torments plagued her. Not as intently, not as strong. But she needed him, she ached for him.

  “I want you until I don’t know how to breathe without thinking of it anymore,” she finally whispered, her voice echoing with the ache he felt inside his chest. “And I don’t know what to do, Noble. I never expected this. And now, I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “I’m not asking you to handle anything,” he stated harshly. “Look, don’t worry about it.” He forced a tight, hard smile to his lips. “I’ve lived with it for a year now and survived. It won’t kill me.”

  Maybe.

  He moved through the living room into the spare bedroom he used. The communications and sensor equipment was set up there. Thankfully, the snow wasn’t interfering with it too severely.

  The satellite imagery was a little corrupted, but it still pinpointed his team’s position. Three breeds on twelve-hour shifts, three resting but prepared for backup. Mordecai’s coyote paced the grounds, and there was nothing in the immediate vicinity to cause any alarms.

  Even more, whoever the breed was that had targeted her for Brackenmore and Engalls, they had no idea that Jonas was moving in. That would make it easier. And none besides himself, Jonas, and Callan were aware that there was a six-man force on constant detail.

  The mission rosters were listed and Blake, Shiloh, and Flint were listed as operational and out of country. Mordecai was listed as patrolling Buffalo Gap, which he did, sometimes. And John Talon and Micah Jones were listed as Noble’s outside security team only.

  The careful deception wouldn’t last for long, but perhaps long enough for the assassin to feel safe and confident enough to move in for the kill. Because Noble was also listed as “compromised,” the term used for a breed entering mating heat.

  Mating heat was known to compromise a breed’s ability to detect more subtle scents. The senses were so involved with the scent, the taste, and the need for the mate, that most breeds weren’t even operational during the first months of the phenomenon. Only after the mating heat had leveled off, allowing both mates to function without the near-constant need for sex, were mated breeds returned to operational status.

  They had laid the groundwork, and the opportunity for the assassin to show up. And he would, soon. Noble could feel it. And when the bastard made the move, they would be ready for it.

  “How bad is it for you?”

  He tensed as she stepped into the bedroom. He had been aware of her movement through the house, the scent of her, like summer in the mountains, flowing toward him.

  “Like I said, I’ll survive.” He shrugged.

  “Can I touch you then?”

  Agony ripped through him.

  “No.” He had to force the word out. “Not yet, Haley.”

  “If it’s not that bad, then you could stand for me to touch you,” she whispered. “Why are you lying to me, Noble?”

  He clenched his jaw as she moved closer.

  “Wrong time to push this,” he growled, turning on her, glaring down at her.

  There was no fear in her eyes, though he knew he must look more like an animal than the man he tried to be. The hunger was nearly out of control. As long as he kept a careful distance between them, then he survived it, but Haley wasn’t keeping that distance.

  She flowed toward him, dressed in soft pants and a softer sweater. She looked like an angel coming toward him, and he wanted her with a force that had nothing to do with innocence.

  “The wrong time to push it?” she asked him then. “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

  He’d gone past hurting last night. He was to the point that if she touched him, if she pushed him, he was going to take. And he wouldn’t stop taking until all the need burning inside him was sated.

  “Do I look like I’m hurting?” He wanted her, not her pity.

  “You look just as arrogant and as forceful as you ever have,” she told him as she trailed her fingers over the footboard of the bed and stared back at him. “Maybe I’m the one hurting, and I need to know if it’s the same for you.”

  He could smell her arousal. It wasn’t yet scented with mating heat, but the alluring scent of her, the sense of her need, the pulsing tension that seemed to throb through her body snared his senses like a carefully laid trap.

  “I ache to my back teeth to touch you,” he snarled back at her. “Is that what you want to hear? My cock feels like someone’s sliced it open I want you so damned bad. Is that hurting enough for you, Haley?”

  Her stormy eyes darkened, her breathing hitched. “I need…” she swallowed tightly. “I need you, Noble, and that need terrifies me. I’ve never ached for anyone like this. I’ve never wanted anyone like this. And I’m scared. I’m terrified you’ll walk away, be taken away, or decide later this wasn’t what you wanted, despite what you say about the hormone. I’m scared of reaching out to someone who might only want me because he has to protect me, or who may grow tired of having a woman weaker than he is. I’m not a breed.” She shook her head as her eyes glittered with dampness. “I’m not strong like a breed woman is, and I’m not as courageous, or as adventurous.”

  He jerked her to him. “Not courageous or adventurous?” he rasped. “What the hell are you then? You risked your life for Sanctuary, and now you’re standing here with me, knowing what I could do to you. What is that, Haley?”

  Her lips trembled. “Insanity. And I’ve been crazy about you since the moment you walked in the library and stared at me as though you knew me. As though you felt that same sense of knowledge that I did.”

  He stared back at her in shock.

  “I’ve never wanted anything, never needed anyone like I need you,” she told him, reaching up, her fingers touching his lips. “Show me, Noble. Show me how to be your mate.”

  Chapter 8

  She had spent the day going over it. She had thought it to death, reasoned it around every corner and curve she could reason it around, and come to the same ending each time. If she walked away from this, if she let him walk away, she would never forgive herself.

  Like Noble, she had feared for so long that she would never find that feeling that something or someone belonged just to her. That one heart beat for her, her heart for him.

  For a year she had kept her distance, but only because Noble had kept his. It would have taken very little for her to go into his arms.

  The mating heat was a frightening prospect. The tabloid stories, if they were even 80 percent true, were enough to make any woman pause. But at least she had an idea what to expect, she told herself as she stared back at him. At least she had a chance of finding that unknown something she had been waiting for so long.

  “This isn’t like last night, Haley,” he warned her. “There’s no stepping into this and pulling back. Do you understand me? Once I kiss you, it starts. I promise you, stopping won’t be a part of what comes later.”

  “I understand that.” She nodded. And she did, she hoped. Yet he still stood there, staring at her, his expression tight, arrogant, fierce.

  She gripped the hem of her sweater and, as he watched, pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a camisole today. She wasn’t even wearing a bra. Her breasts were swollen with need though, her nipples standing out, hard and desperate for his touch.

  She licked her lips and gripped the elastic band of her cotton pants.

  “Not the panties,” he growled. “Leave them on.”

  Her heart raced in her chest as she remembered the sight of him holding her panties to his face, inhaling the scent of her the night before.

  Gripping just the w
aist of the pants, she eased them over her legs and stood before him in nothing but the thin silk-and-lace panties she wore now.

  She shivered as the winds howled outside, and inside, the bedroom filled with steamy, erotic lust. His black eyes moved over her body as he sat down in the chair next to him slowly and lifted one booted foot to his knee.

  He unlaced his boots slowly, watching her, simply staring at her, stroking her body with his gaze as she felt her breathing constrict in her chest.

  No, no man had ever stared at her like Noble did.

  His boots thumped to the floor.

  “Do you ever touch yourself?” he asked her as he began unbuttoning his shirt, obviously forcing himself to do the chore slowly.

  Haley flushed at the question. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you think of me?”

  She licked her lips nervously. “Yes.”

  “You play with your nipples?”

  Oh Lord, she was going to melt to the floor. Each time he spoke, his voice was thicker, rougher.

  “I do,” she whispered through a moan.

  “Gently or rough?”

  She was going to turn into one huge blush at this rate. But she answered him, her breathless, “Both,” filling the room with another layer of tension.

  “Show me.” He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders, and she wanted to lick his spots rather than touch herself. “Let me see you touch your breasts, Haley.”

  She stared at his body as he slowly undressed, watching avidly as her hands lifted to her breasts. She cupped the mounds and imagined his hands. She fluttered her fingers on her nipples, rubbed against them, pinched them lightly as he loosened his belt and pulled the metal buttons of his jeans loose.

  She saw his cock before he shed his pants. It eased from between the flaps of his jeans, the flesh dark, thick veins raised along the shaft as the mushroomed head throbbed fiercely.

  She pinched her nipples and moaned. Between her thighs she felt her moisture gathering, saturating her flesh, dampening her panties.

  She wanted that. Wanted him. She could feel the ache in her sex growing now, the heat and the need almost painful as he quickly shed his jeans and socks.

  Another moan slipped past her lips as his fingers wrapped around the shaft, stroked it, once, twice.

  “I want to do that.” She couldn’t hold back the breathless words. “I want to feel you in my hands.”

  The need rising inside her was unlike any other she had ever felt. She had never wanted anything as she wanted to feel Noble inside her now.

  “On the mattress.” He nodded to the bed. “I’m not going to take you standing up, Haley. And if I touch you before you get in that bed, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

  “I want to touch you.” She moved to the bed, staring at him as she eased onto the mattress. “Just for a minute, Noble. I need to touch you.”

  She had to be kidding. Noble stared back at her, feeling the wash of white-hot arousal tearing through his system, and prayed to God she wasn’t a virgin. He couldn’t handle it. Right now, he wasn’t a fitting lover for a virgin.

  “Have you had a lover?” he asked moving closer to the bed.

  She blinked back at him. “I’m not a virgin.” She frowned then. “Does that matter?”

  “Thank God,” he muttered. “Move onto the bed. The middle of it.”

  “You’re not just going to take me, are you?” she whispered though she did as he asked.

  “Get real, Haley,” he growled. “I’ve waited a year for this. Do you think I’m going to do anything but take hours loving that sweet, hot little body of yours?”

  “First, I get to touch.” She reached out to him, her hands touching his hard abs, feeling them tighten painfully against her palms. As he knelt beside her, she ran them to his thighs and stared at the thick, heavy length of his cock.

  It only made sense that the dark flesh, fully engorged and ready for her, would be so damned sexy. He was sexy all over. He just couldn’t help himself.

  “Haley, the edge is close,” he warned her. “Trust me, you want me to love you before I do this.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she murmured absently, sitting up, her hands moving to touch him.

  “Fuck. You’re not listening to me.” His voice was strangled. She couldn’t breathe.

  She looked up at him, opened her lips and licked over the thick cock head.

  His response was almost violent. A primal growl tore from his throat as his hands went to her head, fingers threading through the strands of her hair, and he leaned his head back.

  She parted her lips farther, sucked him inside, and moaned again. Because his taste could be addictive. He tasted like a mountain storm. And she loved mountain storms. Like the lightning rolling over the forest and the wind picking up through the trees. Earthy and clean, natural.

  “Damn you.” He breathed out the curse, his voice harsh as his hips jerked. He buried the head inside her mouth as she sucked him, tasted him, and loved every second of it.

  She licked and consumed, sucked and moaned around his flesh and never knew a pleasure so great. As she sucked, she felt, tasted, the drops of pre-cum that beaded on the head. She consumed them eagerly. If it felt as though each taste warmed against her tongue, then she ignored it. If after a few minutes she could feel the need inside her raging hotter, then she went with it. Whatever his touch brought her, she would accept.

  “Touch yourself,” he snarled above her.

  Haley lifted her lashes and stared up at him. He was watching her, his gaze fierce, demanding.

  “Let me watch,” he groaned roughly. “Give me something to hold on to, Haley, or I’m going to lose control here.”

  Her hand lifted to her breast.

  “No,” the word snapped from between his teeth. “Not your breasts. Your pussy. Spread your legs. Let me watch you touch yourself.”

  She had never done that. Never allowed a lover to see her touch herself.

  “Lean back.”

  She moaned around his cock. She didn’t want to stop tasting him.

  “Lean back, Haley. So I can watch you. I promise, I won’t take away your pleasure.”

  The skin was stretched tight over his face, and as she leaned back, she realized the pillows of the bed cushioned her shoulders and head perfectly. She was elevated enough that she could still pleasure him, still touch him, and he could watch her touch herself.

  The eroticism of the act was nearly too much for her. Her fingers moved over the fabric of her panties as she touched herself through the silk and lace. She stared up at him, caught by his expression, held suspended by the hard jerk of his hips as he buried the head of his cock in her mouth.

  “Yeah. Stroke yourself,” he snarled, lust tightening his expression further as she stroked her fingers over her panties. “I can smell how hot that makes you. You’re wet, Haley. So wet and so sweet I can almost taste you on the air.”

  He held her head with one hand, moving against her, his eyes trained on her fingers.

  She gripped the elastic that circled her thigh, pulled it to the side, and touched her flesh. The tips of her fingers eased over the narrow slit as she pulled her panties farther to the side to allow for the careful circular strokes around her clit.

  It was too much. Noble nearly roared with the surge of lust that shot into his system. He pulled back from her, forcing her mouth from his cock, his other hand pulling her fingers from between her thighs and pushing those glistening tips to his lips.

  And he tasted. Soft, sweet cream. Haley’s cream.

  He tore the pillows from beneath her head and lowered his head to her as he pushed her arms over her head. His lips covered hers, his tongue sinking into her mouth.

  He heard her soft cry in a distant part of his brain. The cry of a woman who knows she has no more room to run. The cry of a woman immersing herself in the hunger feeding into her system.

  Her lips closed over his tongue, as though instinct guided her. Her tongue stroked
against his, rubbed against it, and then, the soft, sweet suction as the taste of the hormone began to fill her senses.

  His cum nearly pumped from his body as she began to suck his tongue. He felt his balls clench, spasm, and wrapped his fingers tight around the base of his cock to hold it back.

  Not yet. He wasn’t coming yet. Not until he could spill inside her. Not until he could feel the barb locking him to his mate, marking her, making her his. Just his. No matter what happened after tonight, she would always be his.

  Haley paused as the taste of his kiss hit her tongue. A wild, lust filled taste, dark and potent, spicy and filled with heat. And tempting. Tempting her to sate the sudden need for more that whipped through her senses.

  She drew on his tongue, feeling his lips slant over hers, the hard, drawn contours of his larger body moving over her. Had he just ripped her panties off her?

  He had, and she moaned at the sheer eroticism of the knowledge.

  He held her hands over her head as he kissed her, refusing to allow her to touch him. But that was okay, the taste of him was making her insane. She couldn’t think past the need for more of his kiss.

  To say the hormone pumping into her system now was potent was an understatement. She could feel it sinking into her, digging talons of need inside her and stoking the flames of arousal past an incendiary point.

  “Ah, Haley.” When he finally drew back, she was writhing beneath him, her legs clamped around the hard knee pressing between her legs as she moved against it. “I can feel you burning for me now.”

  “I’ve always burned for you,” she whimpered. “For too long, Noble.”

  And that had been the deciding factor in her decision. Noble had fascinated, drawn her, and held her attention, solely, for a year now. Each day, each time he spoke to her, each time she saw him, the fascination had only grown. She couldn’t walk away, not when so much of her had already become invested in this one man.

  Was it love? At this point, she suspected she had been wrong the night she told him she didn’t love him. What she felt for him went so far beyond what she knew love to be that she just hadn’t recognized it.