Wild Embrace

by Nalini Singh

  And then, as Vaughn pushed him aside and Mercy took his side so that they could bully the jaguar, while Clay and Lucas stood there with feline laughter in their eyes, he understood.

  No special favors.

  No expecting anything less from him.

  No being considered anything but capable.

  He was a sentinel. He was one of them. Always had been. Always would be.

  A crash of love down the mating bond, as if his mate had felt his elation. Laughing as he and Mercy managed to pin Vaughn, only to be attacked by Clay, who’d decided to turn traitor, Dorian thought his mate would surely help him devise a worse “foul” than a stinking slime pit or a snapping branch.

  And then he stopped thinking and let the leopard play.

  PARTNERS IN PERSUASION

  Chapter 1

  Felix looked up from checking a row of baby trees planted by a juvenile and found himself the target of a stunning smile. Bright green eyes, her hair in a million fine braids, and her skin bronze brushed with gold, she was more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen. She was also a senior DarkRiver soldier who’d likely make sentinel in the next year or two if the interpack scuttlebutt was to be believed.

  She raised a hand, wiggled her fingers, her eyes sparkling.

  Blushing, Felix looked down at the plant he was checking. The juvenile had done a good job, but the boy was new at this . . . and he could still feel her looking at him. Glancing up from below his lashes a minute later, he found her leather-clad legs angled away, so he looked up fully. She was talking to Hawke, Felix’s alpha having run down to see how things were going with the planting of the area that had been decimated during the battle with Pure Psy.

  The beautiful green-eyed soldier’s name was Desiree and, unlike Felix, she was a leopard changeling. The cats were pitching in to help keep the area secure during the replanting—the part of the forest that had been destroyed during the fight against Pure Psy was so open right now that they’d be sitting ducks otherwise. Similarly to the other wolves in SnowDancer, it had taken Felix a while to become accustomed to the fact that their pack now had a blood bond with the leopards; the feline changelings were as welcome in their territory as the wolves were in DarkRiver’s lower-elevation territory. Of course, it was still considered courteous to ask if you ran into a sentry, one predator to another.

  Laughing at something Hawke had said, Desiree nodded and waved good-bye to the alpha. Hawke had already spoken to Felix, so the other man just shot him a salute before heading out. Which left only Felix and Desiree in this section. Felix had wanted to spend some extra time prepping the soil for the next day’s planting after everyone else had left—everyone, that is, except for the evening security shift.

  “Hey.” Booted feet hunkering down on the other side of the seedlings he was checking. “I’m Desiree.”

  Felix knew he should be polite, reply with his own name, but Desiree’s dominance was so overwhelming that his wolf quivered, ready to run. It didn’t matter that she was leopard rather than wolf—she was a predator far stronger than him and his wolf knew it.

  Angling her head a little to the side, her braids falling over her shoulder, she attempted to catch his eye. “I don’t bite. Well, not until I’m asked, anyway.”

  He felt his skin heat again. Damn it. He’d worked in the world of high fashion modeling, dealt with plenty of strong personalities without problem. Of course, none of them had been an astonishingly beautiful leopard female who made him want to touch when he knew it would be a very, very bad idea. Dominants ate submissives like him alive for breakfast, then got hungry for lunch.

  A pause before Desiree rose to her feet. “I’ll let you get back to your work.”

  Felix watched her walk away, her body lithe with muscle, and had the strong urge to kick himself. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to know her . . . but he’d been down this road before. God, he’d been such a stupid kid, fallen so hard for the dominant who’d been visiting from another wolf pack, had been ready to give up everything for her, including his first big modeling gig.

  But after his heartfelt profession of love, every part of him vulnerable and laid out in the open, she’d patted him on the cheek, kissed him, and said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You’re gorgeous and a delight, but I need a dominant as a partner.”

  The thing was, she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She’d really believed they were simply sharing intimate skin privileges as friends and that Felix understood the facts of life: that while dominants often mated with submissives, it was usually a male dominant with a female submissive. The opposite direction was far rarer, and when it came to dominant leopard females, he’d never heard of it. They were so wild and independent that it took a stubbornly strong male to haul them into a long-term relationship, much less a mating.

  Riley’s courtship of Mercy was the perfect example. The leopard sentinel had run the wolf lieutenant a merry chase. Fascinated and delighted for them, Felix had watched from the sidelines along with the rest of the pack, but that kind of a dance wasn’t in his future. He’d make a wonderful mate, he knew that. He was loyal, good with his hands, and he adored children. However, that relationship wouldn’t be with a dominant female.

  No matter how beautiful.

  He was through with being used.

  • • •

  Desiree leaned up against a tree far enough into the shadows of the forest surrounding the denuded area that SnowDancer’s horticultural expert couldn’t see her, and watched him. Tall and muscled, with mink brown hair and thickly lashed brown eyes, he had strong hands that touched the seedlings with competent care, his expression intent.

  He’d folded the sleeves of his checked work shirt to just below his elbows, exposing golden skin with a powerful tracery of veins beneath. His skin made her want to lick; his hands made her want to feel their strong, callused heat on her skin. His touch would be rough, thorough, unhurried. It made her shiver just thinking about it.

  First, however, she had to get him to talk to her.

  Her cat stretched inside her, fur rubbing up against the insides of her skin. It, too, was fascinated by the man who worked among the newly planted trees with such total and quiet concentration. It wasn’t his looks that had first drawn her attention—though the man was certifiably hot—it was the way he worked with plants. She’d watched him without him noticing her for over an hour, seen him handle the fragile seedlings with a breathtaking gentleness.

  Yet the very hands that had done that had also lifted up a fifty-pound bag of soil as if it weighed nothing.

  The combination of raw physical strength and incredible gentleness was deeply compelling. Add in the clear respect he commanded from even the most hard-edged men and women in SnowDancer, and there was something about this brown-eyed wolf that had Desiree’s leopard padding inside her skin, wanting a taste.

  He looked up at a hail from a SnowDancer lieutenant right then.

  A jeans-and-T-shirt-clad Indigo crouched down beside him a moment later, her long black hair pulled into a ponytail, and the two of them fell into an easy conversation. He even laughed in response to something the wolf lieutenant said. So, he wasn’t worried about talking to dominant females. It was specifically Desiree that he didn’t want to talk to. That left her in a quandary. Leopard or wolf, some rules were written in stone.

  If a submissive said or even intimated no, a dominant backed off. Immediately.

  Submissives simply didn’t have the ability to fight against a dominant, especially not when it came to sexual aggression from someone they were meant to be able to trust—a packmate or an ally. The submissive would simply get more and more uncomfortable and distressed. Desiree scowled, hating the idea that she might hurt the beautiful man with the careful hands. She didn’t want to; she just wanted to know him. One more try, she told herself, and if he made it clear he didn’t want her, she’d clamp down on her need to
touch him and no damn argument.

  That thought was uppermost in her mind the next evening when she turned up before sunset to do a security shift. She liked the evening shifts up here—it was quiet, and thanks to the sizeable area they had to patrol, she rarely ran into the other soldiers. Desiree wasn’t a loner by any means, but she was feline enough to enjoy a touch of peace and quiet at times, especially when the starlit night sky was as stunning as it got up in the Sierra Nevada.

  Not that the sky was the focus of her attention tonight.

  Felix, however, was nowhere to be seen. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out his name—all she’d had to do was engage one of his packmates in conversation and it had popped out naturally enough, since Felix was in charge of this entire planting operation. Lips twisting in disappointment at not seeing him, she put down the gift she’d brought in the hope it would break the ice, and left to do a security sweep of her section.

  After the way the packs had been attacked, no one was taking any chances. Desiree had fought in San Francisco itself, come up against Pure Psy attackers in hand-to-hand combat, but it had been the most brutal here. The reason for the denuded ground, however, was a violent power that had saved the lives of SnowDancer’s soldiers and devastated the enemy.

  Hawke’s mate, Desiree thought, was one hell of a woman.

  When she finished her sweep, it was to find her gift sitting exactly where she’d left it. Sighing, she leaned back against a tree . . . and straightened almost immediately. There he was, on the very edge of the current planting area, using a shovel to turn some soil. She’d noticed that about him—even though he was technically the boss here, he liked to get his hands dirty.

  About to head over to him with her gift, she glanced around to make sure no one else was nearby. It wasn’t that she didn’t want people to know she was courting him—hell, she was as possessive as any dominant and she wanted him. But it might make him uncomfortable. Only when she was certain the coast was clear did she walk forward, keeping her stride easy so as not to make him feel hunted.

  • • •

  Felix had just bent down to plant a seedling in the new hole he’d created when the hairs rose on his arms, the scent on the air lemon spice and something wilder, more feline. Skin heating, he busied himself using his hands to scoop out a bit more soil and put it to the side.

  She crouched across from him the same as she’d done before, but instead of speaking, she placed a small pot between them. It was boat shaped with a pale blue glaze and planted in it was a tiny, beautifully shaped maple tree. He couldn’t help it; he reached out to touch the leaves of the masterful bonsai. He had nothing this stunning in his collection, having only begun to teach himself the art in the past year.

  “I’m sorry.” It was a quiet feminine murmur.

  Jerking up his head, he met the startling green of her gaze for a split second before breaking the eye contact. Dominant-to-submissive eye contact was difficult to hold at the best of times for a submissive; even more so when there was sexual desire involved.

  “For coming on so aggressively yesterday,” she added in that voice with its slight husky edge that made his skin prickle. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. My only excuse is that I wanted to get to know the man who’s coaxing this entire area back to life.”

  His wolf stirred, the human part of him intrigued that she’d mentioned his horticultural skill rather than his looks. He knew he was good-looking—it wasn’t something to be proud of, wasn’t something he’d achieved. It was genetic luck. But this, the plants, the earth? He’d earned this through sheer hard work.

  “If you want me to back off, I will.” It was a solemn statement. “I hope you like the plant—one of the other soldiers mentioned you had miniature trees and I figured they must be bonsai. My dad’s into them.” She waited for a second before rising to her feet, and he knew she’d taken his silence as a response.

  Desiree wouldn’t bother him again.

  “Did you get it from him?” he said before he could stop himself.

  It would’ve been far more sensible to let her go, but he couldn’t bear the thought that she’d believe he didn’t find her attractive. He’d heard that, beneath their tough skins, dominant leopard females were touchy about things like that. No matter how much he wanted to protect himself, it didn’t mean he had to hurt her.

  A smile he could hear in her voice as she came back down on her haunches, the jeans she wore today taut over her thighs. “Yeah. He actually gave it to me for my birthday. I’ve been terrified I’d kill it the entire month it sat on the table in my aerie—I swear the thing chases me in my nightmares.”

  His lips curved. “Won’t your father miss it when he visits?”

  “Actually, I’m fairly certain he’s sorry he gave it to me.” Unhidden love in her tone when she spoke of her father. “It’s one of his babies, you know.”

  Felix nodded, as attached to his own plants.

  “I think he’d be much happier to know it’s with you.” Her braids brushed her thighs as she shifted a little. “He was talking the other day about how he approves of the plan you’ve come up with to reforest this region.”

  Felix frowned. The alphas of both packs were aware of his plans, of course, but pretty much the only other person who had detailed knowledge of those plans was the DarkRiver ranger in overall charge of the flora in the leopard pack’s territory. Heavily built, with tightly curled black hair threaded with a bare few strands of gray, Harry was a gentle giant of a man. “Is Harry your father?”

  “Yes.”

  That meant Meenakshi, the petite former classical dancer who was Harry’s mate, and who’d dropped by with Harry a week earlier, was Desiree’s mother. He wondered what her parents thought of their dominant daughter, but that was a very personal question and he wasn’t going down that road with Desiree.

  “So . . .” Desiree held out a hand. “Friends?”

  Felix had soil on his hands, having not worn gloves because he loved the feel of the earth. He used the excuse not to touch her. Skin privileges were important and he didn’t want to initiate them with Desiree . . . because he was afraid that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop. And the line had to be drawn here, now. “Friends,” he said, flicking her a quick look before he glanced down.

  She stayed with him for another few minutes, asking about the planting and the trees, questions which didn’t stress his wolf and that he could answer in as much depth as interested her. Once again, he watched her leave, a strong, intelligent, and sensual woman who’d only ever see him as a pretty diversion. When it came time to choose a mate, she’d go for someone stronger, someone dominant, someone who was the total opposite of Felix.

  Chapter 2

  The planting area was quite a way down from the SnowDancer den, but Felix had decided to run home today, his wolf needing to stretch. Stripping in the garden shed, he set his clothes aside and shifted. Agony and ecstasy, piercing pleasure spliced with pain, his wolf skin forming out of the millions of particles of light that had once been his human form. Then he was shaking that skin into place, the white-streaked light brown of his fur settling.

  His packmates teased him that his fur was as pretty in wolf form as his hair was in his human form. A few of them had even threatened to comb and braid him. He knew the teases, had grown up with them, and he ragged his friends as wickedly in turn. Drew, one of the worst, had cheerfully taken Felix’s teasing during the time when the other man had been flamboyantly and—at first—unsuccessfully courting Indigo.

  As Felix stepped out into the cool night air, he considered what Drew would’ve done if Desiree had approached him while he’d been single. Not talked about plants, that was for sure. Felix’s wolf growled, and the human part of him winced at the harsh reminder. Just because he wasn’t dominant didn’t mean he didn’t have value. Every member of SnowDancer had value. That was why it wa
s such a strong, stable pack.

  He couldn’t allow his unwilling response to a leopard soldier to mess him up again after he’d spent years putting himself back together after the last time he’d played with a dominant. Sinking deep into the wolf’s mind, he let the animal take over and they padded carefully out of the planted area . . . to pick up a trail scented with lemon spice that held a wilder undertone.

  Desiree had passed this way during her watch and he was tempted, just for a second, to follow, to discover if she found him as intriguing in this form as she did while he was human. Then he came to his senses and headed homeward, the little bonsai she’d given him safely ensconced in the garden shed for the night. He’d take it home in the truck tomorrow.

  Tonight, he ran under a darkening sky still swirled with faint glimmers of vivid orange and red. The colors faded during his run and the stars were starting to appear by the time he neared the den. Slowing to take a seat on the edge of a waterfall, he looked up and watched the stars glitter to life like frozen diamonds, and when the wildness of his nature wanted to sing to those stars, he lifted his head in a howl that was answered from other parts of the territory.

  Their ensuing song was pure, primal music.

  Home. Family. Friends.

  Wolf content and the man in a better place, Felix turned and covered the final distance to the den. He padded to his quarters in wolf form, would’ve gone in using the special pressure switch built low into the door, but his sixteen-year-old sister was in the corridor and came running over to kneel beside him. “Felix!” Throwing her arms around him, she rubbed her face against his fur as if she hadn’t seen him for years.

  He returned the affection, Madison a beloved member of their small family pack that existed within the larger SnowDancer pack. At so many years younger than him, Maddy had always been a pup in Felix’s mind, a pup of whom he was deeply protective. But even as she drew back, her bright eyes the same color as his, and started to tell him all about a new project, he saw the strength in her, felt the dominance of her.