Wild Embrace

by Nalini Singh

  His slender baby sister was growing into a soldier, but he knew without question that she’d never attempt to use her dominance against him. That would break the bonds of trust and of family. Those bonds had taken a lifetime to form . . . and such trust wasn’t a gift easily handed to a stranger.

  “I hate history homework.” Maddy rolled her eyes, then leaned close to whisper, “Can I hide out in your quarters so Dad doesn’t make me do it?”

  Felix gently nipped the tip of her nose in answer, their familial hierarchy set in stone. She’d be his baby sister always. And he was her big brother. Making a face at him, she rubbed her nose, her lower lip quivering. He growled, used to her tricks.

  She stuck out her tongue at him. “Okay, okay. I’m going home to read about history so ancient it should be in cobwebs.” Another wildly affectionate hug before she rose to her feet. “If I go missing, it’s probably because I turned into a skeleton myself. I’ll tell Mom and Dad you said hi and that you turfed me out without a thought to my wounded heart.”

  Wolf huffing in laughter at her dramatics, he watched her make her way down the corridor, a graceful brunette girl in a short skirt, well-worn boots, and a slouchy sweater, a girl who hadn’t yet reached her full adult height—that pink denim skirt hadn’t been so short on her when she’d asked for it for her birthday. The same genes that had given him his six feet, three inches of height would, he was betting, take Maddy to at least five foot nine.

  Smiling at the thought of how annoyed she’d be at once again growing out of her favorite clothes, he pressed his paw against the pressure switch to open his door. Once inside, he nudged the door closed and shifted back into his human form in a fracture of light and painful ecstasy. He stretched as he walked to the bathroom, more than ready for a shower.

  As he washed off the sweat and grit from his body, he started thinking about scents. He wondered what he smelled like to a cat—probably of dirt and plants. Not sexy, but he was who he was . . . and Desiree seemed to see him, at least. The bonsai had been a thoughtful gift. Not only had she gone to the trouble of finding out that he loved—

  “Stop it,” he told himself in the mirror after he’d dried off. “You are not getting into anything with her.” Dark-eyed Carisma had been a smart, sexy dominant, too, had courted him with gifts and affection.

  The gauche eighteen-year-old he’d been had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

  “Fool me once,” he muttered under his breath and, scowling, dressed in fresh jeans and a white T-shirt before heading to one of the common rooms to grab dinner.

  “Felix! Felix!”

  A deep smile creasing his face, he grabbed the little boy running toward him. Ben didn’t hesitate to hitch a companionable arm around Felix’s shoulders as Felix settled him on his hip and continued to walk. “You smell like soap,” the boy announced. “Did your mom make you take a bath?” It was a commiserating question.

  Felix’s shoulders shook. “I was dirty from planting trees,” he said through the wolf’s laughter.

  “I got dirty from falling in a mud pool two days ago!” Ben announced gleefully, his silky dark brown hair shining under the den lights that had segued automatically from simulated sunlight to a softer glow that told those within that night had fallen.

  “Yeah?” he said in response to Ben’s story. “I bet you had to have a bath.”

  “No! Hawke threw me in the pond to clean me off!” Ben’s excitement was infectious. “That was much better than a bath.”

  Felix kissed the top of Ben’s head, his wolf already conscious the boy would grow up to be strong, fiercely so. It was easy to know with some of the little ones, even before they knew it themselves. Right now, however, Ben was still a very small boy, and like all the children in the den, he trusted Felix without question. Submissives had that effect on the most vulnerable members of their pack, the reason why they were tasked with evacuating the pups should it ever become necessary.

  “Do your mom and dad know you’re out here playing?” he asked, aware Ben had a curious streak a mile wide.

  “Uh-huh. Mama’s with Lara over there.” He waved in the direction of the common room where Felix was headed. “She made cake! And I got to eat the first piece. It was really big and it even spoiled my dinner, but Mama said it was okay this one time.”

  Having reached the doorway, Felix saw that the cake was in the process of being demolished by those in the room. “Hey,” he said when Drew went for a second slice, having wolfed down one while Felix watched.

  The other male looked at him with narrowed blue eyes, the brighter light in this room picking up fine glints of copper in the thick brown of his hair. “I’ll fight you for it.” He held out a fisted hand for a game of rock, paper, scissors.

  Snorting, Lara swept away the last slice and handed it to Felix, the soft black of her corkscrew curls bouncing around her fine-boned face, her eyes a clear tawny brown and her skin a natural dark tan. “Eat it before he decides to pounce.”

  “Please.” Drew tugged at one of her curls, the golden skin of his arm marked by thin scratches that meant he’d probably been playing rough-and-tumble games with the pups. “I have manners.”

  “Of a leopard,” another soldier said with a sly grin, the crumbs on his T-shirt telling Felix he’d successfully navigated the cake free-for-all.

  “Leopards are nice!” Ben said loyally, having two very good—and equally mischievous—friends in DarkRiver.

  Sighing, Drew shook his head. “So young and already corrupted.”

  “I’m going to mention you said that to Mercy,” Felix threatened and took a seat at the table with Ben in his lap.

  “Mercy doesn’t count. She’s an honorary wolf.” Drew sprawled in the chair across from him, smiling his thanks when Ben’s mom, Ava, brought them some coffee, having gone across to top up her own and Lara’s cups.

  “Spence have baby duty?” Felix asked the maternal female, whose dark eyes and hair were identical to that of her son.

  Ava’s smile held love, affection, and pride in equal measures. “He’s showing her off to a couple of his photographer friends who’re visiting from the other side of the territory.”

  “Mercy’s not a wolf!” Ben said suddenly, his frown deep and his small face scrunched up in thought. “She’s a leopard. I saw her. She’s all golden with spots.”

  Felix suddenly wondered what Desiree looked like in her leopard form. She was so sleek and dangerously sensual in her human form that she’d no doubt be gorgeous as a cat. “Here,” he whispered to Ben, sneaking him a bite of cake.

  Giggling, the little boy totally gave himself away to his mom, but Ava just smiled and reached over to pluck him into her lap. “What are you doing, my little cake fiend?” A snuggle, a kiss, Ben’s laughter filling the air.

  Felix grinned, his wolf watching through his eyes. This was what he wanted. A mate, cubs to protect and love, a woman who’d see value in him, not simply a body she wanted to fuck. Losing his taste for cake at that harsh reminder, he nudged the remainder of the slice over to Drew. The other man gave him a frowning look but didn’t say anything. Not then.

  It was twenty minutes later, the two of them now alone in the common room, that Drew leaned forward. “What’s up?”

  Felix chewed the bite of lasagna he’d taken. It was divine, deserved his full concentration. Pity then that his taste buds had gone into rebellion and everything suddenly tasted like dust. “I’m an idiot.”

  “About anything in particular?”

  It was hard to remember that Drew was a dominant at times like this—not only a dominant, but the pack’s tracker, tasked with hunting down and executing rogue SnowDancers. It was one of the most dangerous positions in the pack.

  “Women,” Felix muttered, hoping that’d be the end of it.

  Drew’s smile was smug. “Ah.”

  “Oh, shut up.” The othe
r male was so happily mated that Felix wanted to throw something at him at times.

  Grinning, his eyes wolf, Drew jerked up his head. “Desiree, huh?”

  Felix’s mouth fell open. “How did you . . . ?”

  “Oh, please, Felix. It’s a pack; we’re nosy.”

  Obviously, one of the SnowDancer soldiers on security patrol had seen Desiree approach him last night. “She’s a dominant.”

  “So?”

  Yeah, Drew would say that. He’d gone hell-for-leather for a lieutenant older and more dominant than him. There was one critical difference, however. Drew wasn’t, and never would be, a submissive. When Indigo snarled at him, he snarled back. In the same situation, Felix’s wolf instincts would urge him to bare his neck, submit to the lethal predator in the room.

  His hand tightened on the fork and he took another big bite to shut himself up before he said something stupid. Drew didn’t take the hint. “Look,” he said, “if you’re worried she’s with someone, she’s not. Far as I know, Dezi hasn’t been dating anyone for the past few months.”

  Dezi.

  For some reason, it irritated Felix that Drew knew her nickname when he hadn’t. “I’m not looking for a short-term lover, Drew,” he said bluntly. “I’m ready for more.” He’d been ready most of his adult life, his drive toward building a home and a family a powerful one.

  Eyes meeting his for a long minute, longer than Felix’s wolf was usually comfortable with when it came to a dominant, the other male nodded. “I get that. Dezi won’t push where she isn’t wanted—you tell her no?”

  Felix ducked his head, ate another bite of lasagna . . . then admitted his muck-up. “I accepted her friendship.”

  Drew groaned, leaning his elbows on the table to drop his head into his hands. “Damn it, Felix, you know better. She’s interested in you—and you know how she’ll take that.”

  Yes, he knew. Dominants didn’t really understand subtle when they were sexually interested in someone. Blunt was always the best response. “I’ll tell her tomorrow. I just . . . didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” His hand fisted under the table at the lie; the cold, hard truth was that he’d wanted to talk to her again, wanted to hear that husky voice rasp over his skin as she asked him questions about his work that seemed to hold a genuine interest.

  He reminded himself that Carisma, too, had asked him questions like that at the start. Humoring him, he’d realized afterward. He’d poured out his dreams into her hands, and all she’d given him in return was a pat on the cheek and a kiss good-bye before she’d gone on to mate with a fellow soldier. Yeah, no way in hell was he ever going through that again.

  Chapter 3

  Desiree was excited about a man for the first time in what seemed like forever. She’d gone through her young and wild phase like most leopard females, but that had been years ago. Though touch was as important to her as to any changeling, she’d been abstaining from intimate skin privileges for long, lonely months. There was just no one she wanted to be with, and though friends had offered to help her ease her touch hunger, she’d turned them down.

  There was nothing wrong in being with a friend, in finding comfort in each other’s arms, skin to skin as her soul craved, but she wanted more. Felix . . . There was something there, something that had her smiling as she arrived on watch to find him putting her bonsai in the passenger seat of his beat-up old truck. It had hurt her the previous day when he hadn’t taken it home, though she’d told herself he could hardly carry it in his mouth.

  But, oh, he was a beautiful wolf. It had taken all her self-control to keep her distance when she’d returned to this area in the evening just in time to see him exit the shed in his lupine form; she’d wanted to run her fingers through his luxuriant fur as badly as she wanted to pet that gorgeous hair of his. “Hi.”

  A quick glimpse from below a fan of long lashes, his skin stretched taut over the dramatic bones of his face. Not a blush this time. No, this was harsh tension. Her smile faded. Stopping a couple of feet away, she leaned against the side of the truck. “Is something the matter?”

  He blew out a breath, his shoulders rigid under the battered gray T-shirt he wore, the fabric skimming down the hard planes of his upper body. “I can’t do this.” Quiet, intense words.

  A punch to the stomach couldn’t have taken her more by surprise. The spark between them, she’d been certain he’d felt it, too. “You don’t like me?” She wasn’t the giving-up type, had to know if there was something she could do to stop him from walking away before she’d even gotten to know him.

  When his cheekbones flushed, his fingers tense on the edge of the open door, she realized she’d come perilously close to using her dominance against him. Shit, shit, shit. That wasn’t how it worked, how she wanted this to work. The cold truth was that a dominant could compel a pack submissive to obey her on the sexual level. Felix wasn’t pack but as a blood ally, he was close enough—his wolf might just obey her.

  Even the idea of it made her skin crawl.

  Turning away, she braced her hands on her knees, nausea twisting her gut into knots and shame flooding her mouth with bile.

  “Dezi?” A careful touch on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Gentle hands even now, she thought. He’d never be violent, Felix, would never tear and claw. It was always what she’d sought from lovers before—primal fury, her leopard wanting to tangle with a man who was her match. But today, she began to get an inkling of why none of those lovers had ever truly satisfied her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, staring at the ground so she wouldn’t inadvertently lock her eyes with his, make him back down. “I didn’t mean to use my strength against you.”

  “What?” Confusion in his voice, his big hand stroking her back, petting her. “You didn’t do that.”

  “I was pushing you.”

  He actually laughed, the rich, masculine sound stroking through the fur of the leopard inside her skin. “News flash, Dezi. Dominants do that. A lot.” He shifted to crouch down beside her, his hand still big and warm on her back. “The rest of us have learned to handle it.”

  This time, it was Desiree who looked at him through her lashes, their eyes catching for a fleeting instant before he broke the contact. “Please look at me,” she said softly. “I need to know for sure that I didn’t hurt you.”

  His Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed, he nonetheless held her gaze for a long second. A deep, luscious brown, his irises were almost swallowed up by his pupils. When he broke contact again, she read the flush on his cheekbones, the tension in his muscles in a different light. “You do want me,” she whispered, her fingers trembling. “Then why . . .”

  His hand fisted on her back. “I can’t be your toy, Dezi.”

  She sucked in a breath.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “That came out wrong. I just . . . I’m ready to settle down, find a long-term lover or a mate. I want pups and a home and a family I can spoil and adore.” He lifted his head, their eyes meeting for another split second. “You know that can’t happen between us.”

  Dezi wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. Her leopard was drawn to strength, to power. She couldn’t change that, as he couldn’t change the fact that he needed a partner who wouldn’t discomfort or inadvertently scare his wolf. “Damn.” It was a soft whisper. “I really like you.”

  She saw his lips curve, the lower one fuller than the upper, and wished she could see the gorgeous entirety of his smile. “I like you, too.” Petting her back again, he said, “Friends? For real.”

  “Yeah . . . friends.” The most fascinating man she’d ever met and there was no way she could have him, not without hurting him.

  • • •

  Desiree kicked at the fallen pine needles outside her parents’ Yosemite home, trying to walk off her temper before she went in for a late lunch with her mother. She hadn’t
had a restful sleep after her shift, her body torn up with primal sexual desire focused on a man she simply could not touch.

  “You’ll kick a hole in the earth all the way back to your nana and nani in Kashmir if you keep doing that.”

  Desiree groaned at the sound of that clear voice with its lilting accent. “Hi, Mom.” Shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans, she met green eyes the same shade as her own and answered in one of the Kashmiri languages her mother had taught her as a toddler. “At least that way, they could visit us more easily.” Her maternal grandparents lived in a remote area of the mountainous region.

  “Don’t be silly, cublet. You know your nani would never stand for tramping through a dirty tunnel. She likes to fly in the jets.” Petite and in dancer shape, her silky brown skin unlined, Meenakshi slipped her arm into Desiree’s. “Now, come inside. Tell your ma what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she muttered, feeling sulky and frustrated.

  That earned her a pat on the arm and a crook of a finger. Surrendering, Desiree leaned down and was kissed on the cheek, Meenakshi’s hand warm on Desiree’s other cheek as the scents of fire and water mingled with growing green things enveloped her. The fire and water was her mother—an elemental, artistic creature. The growing green things, that came from her dad, Harry’s and Meenakshi’s scents permanently entwined after so many years as a mated pair.

  Bad mood easing as the scent of home and of family sank into her bones, Desiree followed her mom through the trees and into the house where she’d grown up. Meenakshi waved her into a seat at the kitchen table and pulled out a skillet. She wasn’t the best cook on the planet, but she did a spiced omelet that Desiree loved, complete with sliced chilies, onions, a sprig of coriander . . . and lashings of love.

  It was exactly that favorite that she made for Desiree today.

  Putting it in front of Desiree along with a small bowl of steaming rice, her mother said, “You need carbs as well as protein. Eat.” She placed a platter of cut fruit on the table for afterward.