Cell and tissue rejuvenation, to be exact.
His jaw clamped a little tighter around the file as he leapt over a stretch of stream bordering Raphael and Ashe’s property. He needed to talk to his boss.
“Afternoon, Suit.”
Roch’s puma whirled around and stalked forward, toward the voice. Which belonged to none other than Parish. The leader of the Hunters wore a dark, irritated expression. So he’d gotten Roch’s text. In seconds, Roch shifted into his male form.
The golden eyed male looked him over and sneered. “Only one black eye? I think you might need a set.”
Right. Baptiste might have a genius at healing, but only time erased the bruising. Roch raised his arms in surrender. “Have at it, Parish.”
The male sniffed, even kicked a rock with the tip of his boot. “Shit, brother, it’s not as much fun when you welcome it.”
“Look, I needed to speak with Lydia. It was the only way.”
Parish was silent for a moment, then he lifted his shoulders and shrugged, the wind of battle now calm. “Well, I hope it was worth it.”
Worth it? Seeing the look on her face when he’d made it pretty damn clear the cub was the most important thing to him, to the Pantera?
His jaw went tight. He truly despised himself today.
“Hey, if it wasn’t,” Parish put in, running a hand through his long, dark hair. “Or you didn’t get what you needed, you can try again. She’s over at Medical right now.”
Roch’s heart dropped like a stone into his gut. “What?”
“With my fully-clothed mate.”
Shit. “Did you see what she was doing? Why she was there?”
The Hunter studied him, dark brows descending over those gold eyes. “Paternity test. She wanted to get it done today, as she’s heading back to New Orleans in the morning.”
The blood drained from Roch’s body. He’d told her to get the testing. He just hadn’t believed it would be right away.
“I know I shouldn’t give a shit after the near-visuals in the bayou pool,” Parish began reluctantly. “But are you all right?
Hell no he wasn’t all right. He’d made a huge mistake. If he lost the woman he—
With a growl, he shifted back into his puma. After a quick nod to Parish, he scooped up the file in his teeth and took off toward Raphael’s place. Not just to give him the information he’d found, but to ask him—and his mate—for help.
***
Her heart beating wildly in her chest, Lydia stood on the porch of Roch’s home. It was a lovely two-story Craftsman-style house, more modern than any of the dwellings she’d seen in the Wildlands. And it suited him perfectly. That warm, sexy, cerebral style.
As her hand rose to the door she wondered once again why Raphael had asked her to bring some paperwork over to Roch’s place. Of course, she was happy to do it. Anything for the couple who were treating her like an honored guest. But in her gut, she knew it had to be an excuse to get her here. The only question was, who had the idea? And why?
After knocking, she stepped back and waited. It wasn’t long before the door opened and the sunset behind her revealed the most gorgeous male in the universe. Her heart squeezed with love and trepidation.
His face split into a wide grin. He wasn’t surprised to see her. In fact, he looked pleased.
She held out a large envelope. “I brought this from Raphael.”
“Thanks.” He took it from her, then stepped back. “Come on in.”
“I should get back.”
His eyes moved over her face. “Please, Lydia.”
Resisting this male was like trying to resist air or light or water. He felt so strangely essential to her being.
The moment she stepped inside, she felt at home. Not that she was going to say that out loud. Instead, as she took in all the refinished wood, modern, yet comfortable furnishings and windows, windows, windows, she said, “I like your house.”
“I like you in it,” he said, taking her hand.
Lydia’s breath caught in her throat. What was this? What was he saying?
“Come on,” he continued with a soft smile, leading her out of the foyer. “I’ll show you around.”
Confused, yet happy in a way she could never explain, his hand holding hers, she followed him through several rooms. Kitchen, dining area, a back porch overlooking a small pond. It was all unfussy and gorgeous and clever. Like him. When he led her down another hallway and she spotted bedrooms, she wondered if she was going to get a look at where he slept. The idea made her blush and grin. But the bedroom he led her into wasn’t his own.
“What’s this?” she asked, suddenly breathless as she took in the lovely white crib, changing table, and pale green rocking chair.
“It’s just a few things,” he began, his voice low and deep and threaded with hope. “I thought maybe you’d want to choose colors and how everything is arranged. And if you don’t like any of this, we can get something else. Maybe an animal theme…”
She turned to look at him. “I don’t understand.”
Ice blue eyes that were filled with only warmth and want stared back at her. “For the cub, Lydia.”
“What you said today—”
He groaned. “I was an asshole. A male so deeply in love with a female he felt he didn’t have the right to claim, he got scared.”
Lydia’s entire body erupted with heat, and her breath was locked inside her lungs. But she managed to push out a hopeful, “And now?”
He laughed, his eyes crinkling with affection. “Now he doesn’t give a fuck. He wants her. He loves her. He’s going to claim her, no matter what.”
Lydia stood there, in the bedroom this male had declared was her child’s. He’d told her he loved her, that he wanted her. And she could see it in his eyes. But she still had to know…
“I had the test performed today,” she said.
Not a flash of concern crossed his handsome features. He only grinned at her. So happy. So confident. So sure.
“I don’t care what it said, Lydia. I want you. I want this cub. I will be a strong, available father to it.” He reached for her. “And if another male tries to claim you and the cub, we’ll deal with it. No bluster. No fight.” He lifted his chin and smiled. “We may be puma shifters, but we will be civilized and supportive.”
It was all she needed to hear. It was everything. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Looked up into his beautifully fierce face. “I love your eyes.”
He chuckled softly. “And I love you.”
She squeezed him tighter. “I hope our baby gets them.”
It was as if the air rushed out of the room. Those eyes she loved widened and Roch uttered hoarsely, “What did you say?”
The happiness that filled her in that moment was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She smiled up at him. “Just that I hope our cub has your—”
“Ours?” He didn’t let her answer. His head dropped and his mouth covered hers.
Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, so fiercely, so lovingly, both of them groaned with the pleasure of it.
She was in love. Deeply and desperately. With the father of her child. How in the world was such a miracle possible?
Roch eased her down to the carpet and started taking off her clothes. Her skin prickling with heat and excitement, Lydia helped him. Especially when it was time to undress him. She just wanted them naked and in each other’s arms where they belonged. And when he stretched out over her, his hard muscle against her soft flesh, she sighed with ecstasy.
The magic of the Wildlands was here, with her and inside her. And she was never going to let it go.
As Roch took her mouth again, she wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her hips in invitation. She wasn’t going to play coy—she’d waited too long to know what he would feel like inside her. And when he entered her with one deep, hungry thrust, she cried out in both pleasure and intensity. He was long and thick and hot, and her wall
s instantly welcomed him, bathing him in cream.
Desperate for him to move, Lydia circled her hips. But Roch pressed her down into the soft carpet and held her there with unspoken authority and strength.
She looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”
He gazed down at her with eyes so filled with hunger and love, her heart contracted. “This will sound insane.”
“Tell me.”
“We didn’t get to make our cub this way…”
Pain, beautiful pain erupted within her. “Oh, Roch,” she said on a sigh. “The next one. Our next one.”
“Yes, but…” He eased out of her and thrust back in.
She gasped with pleasure. So filled. So desperate for more. Him. All of him.
“Can we pretend that we are?” he asked, lowering his head and nipping at her bottom lip. “Can we pretend that when I come inside you, when you cry out and take your release, and I follow you there, that we’re making our—”
“Son,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. She nodded. “Oh god, Roch. I love you. Yes.”
He said nothing more. His mouth covered hers, and as he kissed her deeply, lovingly, he thrust inside her. Taking her to heaven. Building the heat and intensity within her.
Lydia wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. She wasn’t going to last long. Roch was so big, so hard, the head of his cock rubbing deliciously against the spot inside her pussy that triggered her climax.
And when he ripped his mouth from hers and buried it in her neck, suckling, scraping his teeth against her pulse point, she exploded.
Crying out, she came. Her walls milking him until he too snarled and bucked and took his release.
It was moments—minutes, hours?—until he stopped thrusting inside her, until they cooled. But when they did, Roch eased to his back and pulled her in close. Satiated, Lydia snuggled against him. On the soft carpet. She smiled against his shoulder. On the floor of their cub’s bedroom.
“Tell me you’re not going back to New Orleans,” he said with a possessive rasp to his tone. “Except to get your things.”
Her heart stuttered. “You know about that?”
“Tell me, Lydia. Please. Before I lose my mind. I’m in love with you. I think I have been ever since you offered me your beignet.”
She smiled and kissed his shoulder. This male made her deliriously happy.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“I’ll stay,” she laughed. “Of course I’ll stay.”
He heaved an enormous sigh. “Christ, I’m glad. But you know, it’s not enough.”
She lifted her head, her heart jumping in her blood now. “What do you mean?”
He looked calm, satiated, tousled. Gorgeous. His eyes connected with hers and held. “You know about mating. Ashe and Julia and others too, I’m sure, have explained our ways.”
She nodded, breath held. “It’s like a human marriage.”
He shook his head. “No, Lydia. It’s deeper than that. Truer. It is a bond that lasts not just a lifetime, but beyond.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” she said with genuine feeling. “I love that.”
His eyes moved over her face. “And I love you." He reached around her naked ass and yanked her to him.
She squealed.
"Will you be my mate, Lydia Page?” he asked in the most serious tone she’d ever heard from him. “Live with me, sleep with me, make love with me, laugh with me?" His eyes flashed with sudden humor. "Let me share in diaper duties for our son?”
It wasn’t possible to be any happier than she was, but with that question—no, that proposal—she truly thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She was deeply and truly loved by the male who had given her a son.
“Is that a yes, Ms. Page?” he said with playful ferocity.
She smiled. “That, my gorgeous Pantera male—my mate—is an absolutely, definitely, love you, yes, yes, yes.”
He kissed her, soft and gentle, then eased her onto her back.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a girlish giggle.
Up on his hands and knees and headed for the lower half of her body, looking as near to his puma as possible in his male form, Roch snarled sensually at her.
“I say we seal this with a kiss,” he uttered, his breath near her belly now.
“My lips are up here, Roch,” she said breathlessly, watching him, waiting.
His eyes went heavy lidded as he grasped her inner thighs and splayed them wide. “Not the lips I’m hungry for at the moment.”
And as he proved that statement, all Lydia could do was sigh.
EPILOGUE
Three days later
“Rosalie is home, but Mercier is dead,” Raphael said to the small group of Hunters, Suits and Nurturers who were gathered in his office at Diplomatic headquarters. It was night, and they’d been at it for hours. “And our Hunters inside Haymore haven’t reported back.”
Sebastian cursed. “This new enemy is worse than the last.”
“But what is it they want?” Genevieve asked, nonplussed.
“Our DNA,” Roch said, glancing around the dimly lit room with its half empty plates and endless water bottles. “We don’t know why yet. What they hope to use it for. But it has something to do with that Stanton Locke and the mysterious man he cares for. As you know, my mate is an attorney and she’s calling all her contacts, trying to get a hold of Stanton’s financial dealings. What, how much, with whom.”
“Please stop saying that bastard’s name,” Keira ground out from her spot on the edge of Raphael’s desk. “Do you know what he said when the cops hauled me away? ‘Pantera are dangerous creatures.’ He wants us all rounded up so human society can be safe.”
“That piece of shit will come to know how unsafe we are,” Xavier muttered. He turned to Raphael. “What do we do?”
The leader of the Suits looked at each one of them and sighed. “Maybe it’s time to get on camera and speak. Tell the truth. Let the humans see us.”
A slate grey puma burst into the room and snarled at the lot of them. In seconds, it shifted and revealed a very pissed-off Parish.
“What is it?” Raphael demanded.
“The elders are with Hiss, as he asked,” the leader of the Hunters said with a sneer. “They are giving him the chance to confess what he knows.”
“The three are visiting a prisoner?” Keira exclaimed, coming to her feet. “What the hell is happening?”
“Oh,” Parish continued. “And we have photographers at our borders.”
Calmly, every bit the formidable Diplomat he was, Raphael stood up and walked out from behind his desk. “Roch, I’ll need to borrow your tie. Looks like our time on camera has come sooner than we thought.”
Hakan/Séverin
BAYOU HEAT 11-12
By
Alexandra Ivy
and
Laura Wright
Copyright © 2014 by Alexandra Ivy and Laura Wright
Editor: Julia Ganis
Cover Art by Patricia Schmitt (Pickyme)
* * * * *
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
HAKAN
By
Alexandra Ivy
PROLOGUE
Hiss wasn’t stupid.
He realized that most Pantera considered him crazy. Why wouldn’t they? No one could possibly understand his obsessive refusal to believe that his family had been killed when he was just a babe.
But now they considered him more than just insane.
He was a danger.
A traitor.
The knowle
dge burned at him like acid on his soul.
This wasn’t what he wanted. He’d never intended to betray his people, or to work with his enemies. But what choice had the elders left him?
Pacing the private room at the back of the medical clinic that kept him separated from the rest of the building, Hiss came to an abrupt halt as he caught a familiar scent.
Ah. Speak of the devil.
Or devils, as the case may be.
The elders.
A fierce smile curved his lips as he moved to stand directly in front of the door.
He’d waited for this moment for the past sixty years.
Ever since he’d been old enough to realize that the endless dreams he had of a pretty, dark-haired female clutching a child in her arms were more than just nightmares.
Even now he could remember the wild fear that had combusted through him as he’d rushed to the elders, convinced that he was having visions of his mother and sister. He’d been desperate to begin an immediate search for his family, but the elders had refused to send out the Hunters to track them down. Hell, they wouldn’t even let him go in search of them.
Instead, they’d locked him in a small cell so he couldn’t leave the Wildlands, claiming his parents and sister had died during a trip to New Orleans and his refusal to believe they were dead proved he was belatedly grieving their loss.
Bitches.
He’d been waiting for some sort of leverage to force the ancient females to tell him the truth of his missing family. And now, at last, he had it.
Outside the door he could hear the muted voices of the elders as they shared a private conversation. His hands clenched, his claws slicing out to draw blood as they carved through his palm.
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