by Lauren Dane
He’d have to find a way to get through the fear and support her. She had a gift, even if it put her in danger. And she’d experienced others trying to take it from her, trying to shove it away and make her into someone and something she wasn’t. He would never do that to her.
He’d need to figure out how to do that and still protect her.
Chapter Nine
When she opened her eyes, he was there. She knew he’d been there watching over her the whole time she’d been out. It was one of the reasons she found herself able to let go and totally fall under, letting her body recharge. He was there to protect and defend, and while it might not be politic to admit it out loud, she found it a very fine quality. Loved how he took care of her. Loved that he gave her the space to be who she was, but made room for himself in her life as well. Took up a lot of space, more each day. And she loved that part too.
He wasn’t sleeping anymore. She knew he was awake, though his eyes were closed. She touched him anyway, loving the hardness of his muscles against her hands. When his lids lifted, his eyes locked on hers, and she didn’t fight the rush of pleasure at the recognition there.
“How are you feeling?” His voice vibrated through her. She stretched, luxuriating in the pleasure of it.
“Pretty good actually. I was drained, but now I’m not. And I opened my eyes to behold a tall, sexy man in bed with me all naked and everything. Handy.”
He’d been on his back and turned to face her. She moved to him without a thought, seeking his heat and his touch.
“Well then, I’m feeling even better.” He held her to him, the thud of his heartbeat where her head lay on his chest reassuring.
“You’re so warm. I may never want to get out of this bed.” She wriggled, smiling at the hardening cock at her belly. “Seems like you’re good with that plan.”
He growled, his cute and not-very-scary gruff growl. “You’re going to rest. Then I will make you dinner. Then you will go back to sleep.”
“Grr. Arrgh. Grrr. I’m the big tough alpha cat, grrr. I won’t have sex with you!” She said it while laughing and he joined her after a groan.
“Smartass. Talk to me, Kendra. Tell me. Share what scares you, what makes you happy. What brings the shadows in your eyes sometimes.”
She tipped her head back enough to see him better. It was go time. She could open up to him, accept this wonderful thing between them, all of it, or she could back off and make him wait and hurt him for no real reason. She had been a coward before and it wasn’t her. It didn’t fit right. And he deserved all of her.
“You don’t just love me, you possess me. No, that’s not the right word either. Or maybe it is. Gah! I’m messing this up.” She tried to wriggle free but he tightened his arms.
“If you really want to get up, I’ll let go. But if you’re just embarrassed, it’s only me. I like you here with me, against me.”
She couldn’t help but smile at him. How could anyone resist this man?
“I’ve never been with anyone, not ever, who made me feel so wanted. You look at me and there’s no room for anyone else. You touch me in a way I know you never have with anyone before. It’s so very big and bold and all-encompassing.” She paused, forcing herself not to hide her face. “I like it. I’m scared of how much I like it. I’m scared I’ll get used to it and then I won’t have it. I can get over a lot. I’ve gotten over a lot. But I don’t know if I could get over you.”
“You undo me. So strong. Bold. Gibson came by earlier and he said you’re a warrior. He’s right. You are. But beneath that, there’s softness, vulnerability, compassion. This is it for me. Do you know what it’s like, how hard it is for me not to mark you when I’m buried balls-deep in your pussy? When everything I am is wrapped around you, bound to you?”
She thought of Renee and the mark she had on her neck. She shivered and had to close her eyes a moment. “Like what my sister has?”
He bent and nuzzled her neck. “For a shifter, it’s more than a love bite. A mark like that is a ritual. It ties us together with our partners. It’s also a public declaration, like a wedding ring or what have you. I want to mark you. I want you to be mine all the way. I’m afraid of freaking you out. It’s not the same as with wolves, no, we don’t mate that way. But with us, imprinting is similar, marking you would seal that for me, in the eyes of my family and other shifters. I’m not going anywhere. Even if you’re uncomfortable with me marking you, I’m still here. I will always be here.”
“Can I tell you something I’ve never said out loud before?”
He shifted so that he could take her hands. “You can say anything to me.”
“What scares me is not ever feeling like I belong to someone. Like I’ll die without experiencing that connection. I know people are married and have kids and love their partners. But I want more than that. I want to be indelible to someone.”
Her voice was so small it cut him up inside. He got it then, understood her. The woman was a warrior, but inside her lived a girl whose mother had left, whose father never cared to see if she was alive. A girl who was raised with love, but clearly with a feeling of loss that never got filled.
“I know, right? I’m such a cliché. The girl with the dead mother. I’m textbook. And look at Renee, she’s done so much for herself and she didn’t have half of what I did. I had Rosemary, I had my grandmother and my uncle. I grew up with cousins. I was raised to love my gifts. I had everything and it’s not enough. I’m selfish. I’m not fixed. It’s...something I struggle with sometimes. You don’t need that.”
He wanted to laugh, but he sure as hell didn’t want her to think he agreed with the stuff she just said.
“You belong to me. You’re indelible to me. Written into my heart, my flesh.” He said it quietly, but with conviction. “From the first moment I saw you, in the midst of all the chaos, the worry over Renee, you were there and no one else existed. I stalked you like prey.” He snorted. “That sounds creepy and I suppose it could be in another context, but I knew I wanted you so I listened to myself and watched you. When I was sure, I freed myself from all relationships and set out to woo you. I want every bit of you. I’m a greedy bastard and I don’t share. You’re not broken, Kendra, and frankly the last word I’d associate with you is selfish. The things you’ve experienced have shaped you. That’s how everyone is.”
The glimmer of a smile on her lips buoyed his confidence, made him believe they were moving in the right direction.
“Let me be your family. Let me possess you, but let you be free to be who you are. I respect that you have a job to do, even if it does scare the crap out of me. I will be at your side when you find and confront your father. Let me love you. Be mine. Will you? And I’ll be yours. This can be our house. Our bed. The seeds of our family right here. I won’t pressure you anymore about it, but I want you to know it’s what I’d like to have with you. What I want to build for the future.”
The ache she felt wasn’t from sadness, not anymore, it was the good sort of ache. This was it, the right choice, the right man. The right everything, and who was she to turn her back on perfect? “Where did you come from, Max? How can you be so perfect and wonderful?”
He did laugh then, kissing her forehead. “I’m not. Weren’t you telling me how bossy and pushy I am just this morning? But I’m perfect for you, and that’s what matters.”
She licked her lips. “So, um, this biting thing, does it hurt?”
He hardened from head to toe. “I’ve never been bitten. Not sexually. My parents nipped us when we got out of line, when we were in our other forms, that is. Are you afraid of pain?”
He heard her swallow, saw her pupils grow larger as she shook her head. “I like it. Sometimes. Not real pain, I don’t want to be slapped in the face or hit or anything. But sometimes when I’m getting inked, it sends me to another level of consciousnes
s. I like to ride that edge where it hurts just enough to feel good. I think... I think I’d like that. For you to mark me.”
He let out a breath, long and slow, hoping to steady himself but it didn’t really work.
“It can wait until you’re better. And you need to know this connection we have between us, the way I felt that spike and then sudden bottoming-out of your energy today? Well, that’s the bond and it’ll deepen, strengthen after I mark you. My cat will be married to you. In the eyes of my culture, my people, we’ll be married.”
She sprang up, pushing him onto his back and scrambled atop him. “Well, wow. All right. Go big or go home, Max de La Vega. I’m just fine. I told you. I needed the rest and now I’m ready to go.”
He’d planned to at least symbolically urge her to wait, but instead she reached down, spread herself open, stroked her middle finger over her clit and that barbell she wore, making a soft moan that set him on fire.
“You’re a menace,” he growled as she reached back with her free hand and angled his cock perfectly. He lost his mind when she slid down on him.
“So you’ve said. Shall I stop?”
He growled, rolling her over so that he was on top and in control of the depth and ferocity of his thrusts. “That’s better.”
“Whatever you say.” Her lips quivered as she struggled not to smile. He bent and nipped her bottom lip, bringing a ragged moan from her and his own in response.
“I say get your hand back down and make yourself come.”
She moved quickly as he held himself away from her to give her the room. Her inner walls tightened, the muscles fluttering as she began to play with her clit.
“I love it that you know what you want and that you take it.” He said it before he licked over the spot he’d been toying with marking and she writhed, arching into him. Of course that movement around his cock and the slide of her nipples against his chest only brought him closer to blowing.
“If I don’t know what makes me hot, how can I be sure to get it from anyone else?”
“Beauty, you undo me.”
“I’m not sure anything can undo you. Mmmm, that’s so nice. You feel so good inside me. You’re always in control. I can count on you. I like that.”
She added a circle of her hips when he pushed all the way back into her pussy, ripping the last of his control to shreds. But it wasn’t until she gasped, sucking in air with a ragged cry, her pussy tightening around him as she came, that he let himself lean down to her neck.
He breathed her in as she came, breathed in her magick, her scent, the scent of her arousal, the basic clean spice of her skin, the scent his body made against hers. He scored the edge of his teeth down the tendon at the side of her neck and she whimpered.
Not a bad whimper at all, but the sort of whimper a woman made when she wanted a man to go on about his business, a needy whimper.
He answered that need with one of his own, a need so large it filled him from head to toe. And bit. Bit where her neck met her shoulder.
Her back arched as she cried out, a shout of delight, edged with a bit of pain, but not alarm. His cat shifted inside, reveling in her taste, in the way she submitted to him, the way her fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders, urging him on, urging him closer, all while he continued to fuck into her body, so hot and slick.
Their connection, the beginnings of the bond created through his imprinting and now the physical mark he gave her, blew open. He knew she felt it too as she froze a moment and made a soft sound, a sigh of satiation.
That’s when he came, buried in her physically, swimming through their emotional bond and knowing what he had was monumental. Knowing he’d keep it, cherish it and protect it for all the days of his life at her side.
Kendra lay, limp, sweaty and totally satisfied. Her muscles still twitched from the climax and now, each time he licked over the mark he’d given her, he sent a cascade of sensation running through her system.
He lived inside her, which was odd given how alone she’d felt for most of her life. Not in an intrusive sense, but he was there nonetheless. “I can feel you in me. Not physically, though that’s always a treat with you. Your emotions, your general level of satisfaction. It’s sort of there in the background.”
“Over time, it’ll strengthen. The longer we’re connected, the more we know each other and love each other. My parents have been together, imprinted, for forty-five years. They have the kind of bond I’d only dreamed of having. And now I think we’ve got it, the seeds for that sort of forever.”
She smiled at how sappily romantic he could be at times. Didn’t say a whole lot in public, not unless it needed saying. But when it was just family, just her, he opened up and showed her his creamy center.
Touching the mark sent sparks of pleasure through her. Interesting.
“Do I get to bite you?”
“If you want to.” He pulled her close.
“I may just.”
That’s when everything went sideways as she gasped, back bowing, eyes closing. Fur and fang, the scent of warm bark, trees in the afternoon sun. Golden energy rushed through her, filling the reserves of her magick she’d depleted. And more.
Sensation of a wholly different sort rushed through her. So much feeling it arched her back, filled her and filled her until she could no longer breathe without drawing in more.
Magick. So much fucking magick, more than she’d ever felt in her entire life and it lived inside, sparking, brushing against her heart and lungs, stretching her to the point of pain.
It scared her for a moment and she resisted, trying to read it before she let it in any further. But it kept coming, more and more until she drowned in it. And yet there was no end to it.
The roar of it filled her ears, greater and greater, it took over, smoothing things out in its wake. She let it go, let it settle in. Once she stopped resisting, the sharp slice against her ribs eased.
“Kendra!” Max held her upper arms, his face close to hers. “Come back to me right now.”
When she opened her eyes, he jerked back, a growl on his lips.
And she answered with a growl of her own. Where had that come from? Panic threatened, but somehow being with Max calmed it, kept it at bay. Something loomed, big, life-changing. Inside her belly there was a rumble, an expansion that felt as if her entire being was stretched until she couldn’t stand it. Thankfully, at last, it settled.
Max sat up, eyes wide, watching. “Kendra? What is it?”
The rushing in her ears muffled the sound, muffled what he said though his lips moved and she noted the concern on his face. He reached for the phone and she shook her head.
She didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but it wouldn’t be helped by a phone call. Deep within there was a sort of knowing, but she couldn’t connect with it.
She was not one anymore. But two. Which wasn’t accurate either. Time stretched as she floated, disconnected and yet not.
And then it exploded. The world lived in color and sensation on a wholly new level. She could smell everything. Everything. For long moments she simply breathed. In/out. So much sensory input she had to let it wash over her before it drove her insane. Instinct was there and she grabbed it, let it take over and once she did, the waves diminished and she went with it, rather than let it threaten to drown her.
She turned her head, opening her eyes, and caught Max looking utterly stupefied, standing next to the bed where she...crouched. Gingerly, she moved, realizing how different it was to move with four legs instead of two. With the mass that had to be triple what she normally had.
Her cat was in charge, reminding the human to back off and let her be in charge. Because she was curious, fascinated and stunned, the human part of herself stepped aside and let the cat lead. The cat was satisfied by this.
She was still K
endra and yet not. More than what she’d been. But the cat was not interested in any distinctions as she sprang from the bed and headed toward her man, toward the man within which her cat lived.
He touched the cat, fingers digging into spots her cat liked very much, butting against his thigh for more.
The man knelt, rubbing his jaw along hers and satisfaction rumbled deep, vibrating outward. This was hers.
“Come back, Kendra,” he whispered in her ear and suddenly she was there, back in her human skin, his arms around her.
“Holy shit.” Her entire body trembled, muscles spasming, the burn of a great deal of hard physical activity pulsed through her muscles. He picked her up like she was light and settled with her in the bed again. “Wh-what happened just now? I was a cat! A—a jaguar. Like you.” She reeled with it, with the wonder and excitement of what had happened, the utter miracle of it. Oddly, there was no fear, just a sense of rightness, of being what she was supposed to be. And so she went with that.
He held her tighter a moment, breathing her in, in a way she understood on a totally different level now. “I have no idea. What just happened shouldn’t have happened.” He rubbed against her, that low purr vibrating through her body. “My cat likes it.”
“I’ve taken the change. I don’t know how, but hello, big giant furry cat just a few moments ago.” She wasn’t upset as she told him this. Confused, caught off guard as she hadn’t really thought about the change at all and now it was there.
“That can’t be. I can’t transfer this to you with a marking bite. It didn’t break the skin. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not without your permission.” He licked over the bite he’d made, sending pleasant tingles straight to her clit.
She laughed, hugging him. “I’m not mad. Just, well, sort of surprised, I suppose. I know you didn’t do this on purpose and while I tend to scoff at the idea of fate, it’s certainly a recurring theme with us, isn’t it?”