Wild Embrace

by Nalini Singh

  When she lunged up to her aerie, he just stood there and watched the beauty of her. Until she began to strip, dropping her clothes off the porch. He started to climb. His first sight of her naked body made everything in him ignite. He was on her in a heartbeat, his hands on her waist, his arm muscles bunching as he lifted.

  She wrapped her legs around him, her own arms around his neck and her mouth locked to his. Stumbling, weaving, drunk from her kiss, her taste, he somehow managed to get them into the aerie and to her bed. When he came down on top of her, she pricked at him with her claws but he knew that pricking now, knew she wasn’t telling him to stop. Nipping and kissing at her mouth, her jaw, her throat, he rubbed himself against her and knew he was going to go off like a rocket if he got naked.

  “Felix.” A purr of sound, her own mouth kissing down his jaw to his throat.

  He shuddered, the intimacy of the caress making his wolf want to throw back its head in an ecstatic howl. But he needed her mouth on his, too, and tugged up her head to initiate another kiss. She growled low in her throat at being stopped in her self-appointed task.

  Breaking the kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling. “I know you’re not mad.” His smile felt as if it filled his entire body.

  Eyes going cat, she ran her clawed hands lightly down his back. “Why are you still wearing clothes?” An instant later, those claws got busy and his T-shirt was in shreds that he tugged off to leave his upper half bare.

  Her heels digging into his ass, Desiree flipped their positions so that he ended up on the bottom. “All mine,” she purred, leaning down to flick her tongue over his lower lip.

  Blood hot and cock like stone, he reached up to close his hands over the luscious mounds of her breasts, tug at her nipples. She threw back her head, her unhidden pleasure in his touch making him feel like a god. Shifting his hands to run them up her back, he tilted her forward until he could suck and lick and bite at her.

  A sharp nip of his ear when he got a little too rough, her nails digging into his nape. Licking over the inadvertent hurt, he reached down between her legs. She was liquid under his fingertips. Shudders rocking him at the evidence of just how much she wanted him, her scent lush and erotic, he found her clit, tugged gently.

  Exhaling in a jagged rhythm, she kissed him. “I’ll go over,” she warned, her body undulating on his fingers as if she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Go,” he said, the single word a harsh whisper. “I want to watch.” Pressing the pad of his thumb to her clit as he slid a single finger inside her, he caressed her in a short, hard rhythm.

  Her nails dug into his chest so hard that he scented blood, but that was fine. Better than fine. They were changeling. Wolf and leopard. Getting wild between the sheets was part of their nature and he fucking loved that Desiree was getting wild with him. He petted her through her orgasm even as sweat broke out over his own body, his control razor thin.

  Purring in the aftermath, she melted across his body, coming down to claim a lazy, possessive kiss. With one hand, she nudged his aside, as if she was too sensitive, the fingers of her other hand playing with the flat disks of his nipples. He groaned and rubbed his denim-clad cock up against her.

  She grazed his jaw with her teeth and, smile slow and very female, said, “I’m going to be a lazy cat and make you do all the work.” A shift up his body, her damp heat coming into contact with his abdomen.

  Fuck!

  Rolling over so she was pinned under him, he took a hard, slamming kiss before rising and somehow shoving off his jeans and underwear. His shoes and socks he’d kicked off earlier, so he was naked in a matter of seconds.

  “My beautiful man,” Desiree said, her gaze leopard.

  Covering her body with his own once more, he gripped the headboard of her bed with one hand, her thigh with the other. “You’re the beautiful one.” The words were rough, growled, but he meant every one. She was strong and sexy and just flat-out perfect.

  Then his brain quit working, the erotic scent of her desire mingling with the scalding heat of her on the tip of his cock to make him a creature of pure raw need. Thrusting deep, he was aware of her body arching, her cry shattering the air.

  “Dezi?” he ground out, afraid he’d hurt her.

  Her answer was to wrap her legs around his hips and rise toward him in wordless demand.

  It was all he needed.

  Surrendering his mouth to her own when she sought it, he pulled out and thrust deep again and again. His rhythm was ragged, his heart thunder . . . and then Desiree’s teeth closed over the pulse in his neck hard enough to leave a mark. The orgasm tore through him so hot and so hard that he felt his claws slice out.

  The last thing he remembered was making sure he didn’t cut her. After that there was only pleasure, only Desiree in his arms.

  • • •

  Felix came back to his senses to find that he’d managed to flip them over at the last second so he didn’t crush Desiree’s smaller body. His breathing was harsh as he tried to recover from the hardest orgasm of his life, his body still locked with Desiree’s, and his hand still very firmly on her nape.

  He didn’t remember putting it there, but since she was lying purring on his chest, she clearly didn’t mind the hold. Trying to find words in his fried brain, he came up with, “Damn.”

  A husky laugh, Desiree rising up enough to look down at him. Her eyes were night-glow, her skin bearing the marks of his possession. “You have some moves, Felix Grady.” It was an admiring statement.

  His wolf preened. Releasing her nape, he ran his hand down the curve of her spine to lie on her butt. “That was nothing,” he said, feeling just a little smug. “Wait till I really get started.”

  She squeezed his semi-hard cock with her internal muscles, making him groan. “Ditto.” A nuzzle. “I forgot about your bruises.”

  “What bruises?” He’d felt nothing but pleasure, was still drunk on it.

  Sitting up fully on him, she checked his abdomen and side regardless. “This one’s going to turn a lovely shade of purple soon,” she muttered, petting the spot with a tenderness that made something deep inside him ache.

  “I’m good,” he managed to get out. “It was worth it.”

  “Wasn’t it?” A bright grin before she touched his jaw to nudge his head to the side. “I marked you,” she said, her tone deeply satisfied. “Now everyone will know you’re mine.”

  He grew harder inside her, his skin stretching tight over his body and his heart hurting with emotion. That wasn’t just sexual possessiveness in her voice, in her expression; it was the kind of bone-deep possessiveness he’d seen in Indigo’s eyes when she looked at Drew. It said, Mine, and told everyone else to back the hell off. It also held a deep, deep vein of affection . . . maybe even of . . . love.

  “I love you,” he said, taking a risk that could destroy him.

  Desiree’s face lit up. “I love you, too,” she said without hesitation.

  It threatened to make his heart explode. But even with emotion crashing over him, never had he felt more content in his skin—he was a predatory changeling submissive and his lover’s every word, every action, every smile told him he was perfect exactly as he was. Desiree, he knew with absolute confidence, didn’t want him to change, would never see him as not enough.

  “Mine,” she said aloud with another possessive smile. “Gorgeous mind, huge heart, a body built for sin, and deliciously talented hands.” A kiss punctuated each word. “And all of you is mine.” She pricked his chest with her claws.

  He hissed out a breath. “What was that for?”

  “Just staking my claim.” A narrow-eyed look but he saw the playful cat behind it.

  Felix’s lips curved in a smile that surely cracked his face. “All yours,” he said, his wolf daring to imagine what she’d do if he made the same blatant claim in turn.


  When she leaned down to suck on the bite mark she’d made over his pulse point, he groaned at the raw pleasure of being touched by this woman who was his lover in every way . . . but his wolf was suddenly distracted by something even more powerful, even more primal.

  Maybe it was a subtle change in Desiree’s scent, maybe it was the way she looked at him with those feline eyes that were so affectionate and so delighted with him, maybe it was just visceral instinct, but his bones sang with a knowledge so beautiful that it gripped his heart and squeezed, squeezed.

  Chapter 9

  “Felix?” Desiree raised her head, her eyebrows drawn together over eyes glowing yellow-green. “What’s the matter, baby?”

  It was only then that he realized he’d gone motionless as his wolf tried desperately to calculate his next move. But he couldn’t calculate. He was too fucking happy. “Now I know your cat likes me,” he whispered through a throat scraped raw with emotion.

  Tilting her head slightly to the side, Desiree rolled her eyes. “Of course my cat likes you. Who do you think bit you?”

  He smiled, feeling just a bit wicked. “Come here, cat. I want to pet you.”

  Smile playful, she stretched out her upper body over him as they kissed. He couldn’t stop grinning and when she raised her head, suspicion painted her expression. Nipping at his lips and jaw, she growled in the back of her throat. “You look like you have a secret.”

  Grin even wider, he tried to flip them, was stopped by the senior soldier now scowling at him. He laughed. “You really hate not knowing, don’t you?”

  “Grr.”

  “God, I love you.”

  Her eyes shifted from cat to human. Nuzzling him affectionately, she allowed him to flip them this time, their ensuing loving slow and deep and full of soft whispers. “Dezi?” he murmured when she was once more boneless in his arms.

  “Hmm?”

  Holding her gaze, he smiled again. “We’re in the mating dance.” It was a changeling truth that the male always knew before the female so he could figure out ways to hold on to his wild mate, but until the dance had kicked in, Felix hadn’t known if that would hold true for a submissive male paired with a dominant female. “Your cat really likes me,” he said as Desiree’s mouth fell open.

  “You sneak!” She threatened to claw furrows down his back. “That’s why you had that smug happy look on your face.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, smug and happy.

  Wrapping his arms tight around her, his wolf in his eyes, he growled at her. “I’m going to catch you, cat.”

  “Do your worst, wolf.” Slitted green eyes. “This cat doesn’t plan on being easy prey.”

  That was a serious challenge from a dominant female, but Felix was playing for keeps. “I never expect easy with you,” he said, dipping his head and biting her exactly where she’d bitten him, his wolf as possessive of her as she was of him.

  And that wolf knew she’d permit the aggressive caress.

  She did, her purr vibrating against him.

  Now we dance.

  • • •

  Felix was still dazzled and overwhelmed the next morning, his wolf ecstatic. But he also knew he had to push himself even more than he’d already done. Dezi wanted to be with him, but he had to win her, had to convince her cat their lifelong dance would be worth it.

  He thought of what he’d seen his packmates do to court their mates. Drew with his tricks that had annoyed Indigo, then made her laugh; Hawke throwing Sienna over his shoulder and carrying her out of a bar—though, admittedly, Felix wasn’t sure Sienna considered that part of their courtship; Cooper with his messages and song requests on the packwide radio frequency.

  All those acts had fit the man in question and the woman he wanted to claim.

  The thing that would fit Felix and Desiree . . . it would take a little planning.

  “Hi,” he said to Desiree that night, after meeting her at the end of her watch. “Want to go for a run?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You want to go for a run? After ignoring me the entire day?”

  “Sorry. Busy day.” She had no idea. “We could run to your place.”

  “Yeah, why don’t we do that?”

  Then she took off. This time, she wasn’t playing—and she was fast. That was fine with Felix. He enjoyed tracking her . . . and thinking about the look on her face when she reached home.

  • • •

  Desiree was steamed. There were rules to the mating dance. Well, okay, maybe there weren’t actual rules. It was different for every couple. But if written rules had existed, the one thing the rule book would say in bright flashing neon letters was that you weren’t supposed to just ignore it!

  Her leopard snarled. It adored Felix, but right now, it could’ve cheerfully clawed him bloody. She wasn’t expecting high romance, she thought with a stabbing pain in her heart. Felix knew she wasn’t good with the girly thing, maybe figured she didn’t really need any of the trappings of the dance. Her eyes burned. Stupid. He was amazing. Just because he didn’t want to dance with her didn’t mean that she should be angry.

  Only she was. Really, really angry. And sad. Mad and sad . . . and home.

  Breath coming in hard pants, she looked over her shoulder and realized she’d left Felix behind long ago. Great. Now he’d probably be angry about that. He’d never given any indication that he had a problem with the fact she was stronger and faster, but men could be idiotic about such things.

  She thought about going back for him, but if he was mad, her return would just rub salt in the wound. And, she was still mad at him.

  How could he just ignore the mating dance? He’d said he wanted her. He’d said they were going to play, that he was going to win her. Didn’t he realize that he had to convince the leopard to be his? The human heart’s love wasn’t enough to bring the bond into being. The cat had to agree and right now, that cat was feeling as feral as the human woman.

  Confused under the mad, she climbed up to her aerie, her nostrils flaring at the autumn and earth of Felix’s scent. It was on her skin now, in her blood, in her home. But . . .

  She frowned.

  There were far too many scents emanating from her home, sweet and wild and unexpected, but she sensed no danger, heard nothing to say anyone else was nearby. Opening her door with care, she stepped inside . . . and yelped as something fell on her. It was soft and smelled pretty and it was red and pink and yellow and white and a hundred other colors.

  Laughing, her leopard batting at the petals that were all over her, she waded her way through the thousands, millions of flower petals that filled the aerie. How had he even done this?! Utterly delighted, she fell back into the petals. There were so many that the scented carpet cushioned her fall, the velvety petals touching every inch of exposed skin. She wanted to be naked in them.

  Heart giddy with wild joy, she shifted. The beautiful pain of the change rippled through her, her body turning into a million sparks of light before re-forming into the leopard who was her other half. That leopard pounced and played in the petals and, when it caught the scent of its mate, hid itself in the delicate forest.

  “Desiree?”

  The leopard pounced, taking Felix’s big, muscled body down into the mass of petals. Laughing, he wrestled with her, his hands in her fur and yellow and peach-colored petals stuck to the mink-dark of his hair. “My wolf wants out,” he said a heartbeat before he shifted.

  She watched him shift, didn’t interrupt, and once the wolf shook its skin into place, they played again, tussling in the petals. The crushed softness released sweet, sweet scents into the air as the wolf growled and bit playfully at her throat. She growled back, pretending to claw him. He huffed in his throat.

  They both shifted back at almost the same instant and Desiree found herself pinning down a gorgeous naked man with eyes of wolf-amber. “You liked it
,” he said, his cheeks deeply creased.

  Desiree nuzzled him in answer. She’d heard she was supposed to play it cool with some of the mating dance stuff, but she didn’t want to play it cool. She wanted to lick him up like ice cream. So she flicked out her tongue, tasted him. “How did you get all these petals in here?” she asked, licking her way up his throat and along his jaw until she reached the firm but sensual curves of his mouth. She nipped his lips, met his gaze. “Tell me.”

  “Nope.” Hands moving over her back to cup her ass, he squeezed. “I’m not done, either.”

  Feeling all happy and bubbly inside, she growled at him again. “I can make you talk.”

  “I’m tough.” He reached down between her legs, stroked.

  A purr formed in her chest. Nuzzling Felix again, she sat up to straddle him, this man who gave her romance, who danced with her. Claws out, she raked them lightly down his chest. He groaned, his hands once more on her ass. “Come here.”

  “No. I’m going to torture you, make you tell me the details of how you did this.” Shifting lower down on his thighs, she wrapped her hands around his cock, stroked up then down.

  Felix shuddered, muscles rippling. When his claws pricked her skin, her leopard prowled to the surface, her vision altering as her eyes semishifted. “So you think you can convince me to mate with you?” She caressed him with her hands again.

  His breath caught, his hips pumping up into her grip. “Yeah,” he said, before doing something sneaky and unexpected that managed to flip her.

  She fell into the petals, not having anticipated the maneuver from her submissive lover. Brushing the petals from her face, she said, “Where did you learn that?”

  Coming down over her, his body braced on one arm, he kissed her and the kiss was long and soft and delicious. “I asked Drew to teach me a few things,” he said afterward, his hand firmly on her breast. “I figured I needed to get myself some tricks to deal with my mate.”