Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  “I’m not angry.” A flash of strong white teeth in a confident, anticipatory smile. “I’ve decided something about you, cher. As stubborn and independent as you are, you’re coming to believe that the reason you do things is not so important as the fact that you be allowed to do them. That the control streak you’re adopting be given free rein.”

  “So?” She watched him warily, backing up as, naked, aroused, and dominating, he stalked toward her.

  “Tonight, love, you learn, in matters of your safety, this will not be allowed. First lesson begins now.”

  Natalie shrieked as she watched the muscles in his chest bunch, but by the time she saw it, it was too late to run. And it was too late to save the robe she had dressed in after her shower.

  The material tore and slipped to the floor as the sleeves ripped and the tatters of cloth were tossed away a second later. Natalie stared down at her bare breasts in amazement then up to Saban’s narrowed gaze.

  “That was just so wrong,” she muttered.

  “Ah, but was it as wrong as defying me, slipping away from me, and nearly getting yourself kidnapped?” He shook a finger at her before he struck again.

  Before Natalie could consider running, she found herself on her back, the light cotton pajama bottoms flying through the air as Saban tossed them over his shoulder.

  She was naked now. Naked and hot and wet, and she was damned if she going to let him get away with this.

  She jerked to rise from the bed, only to find herself pushed back, rolled to her stomach, and a hard male weight straddling her thighs as one broad, calloused palm pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her to the bed despite her struggles.

  “I said I was sorry,” she bit out. “What more do you want? I won’t do it again.”

  The opposite hand stroked over the curve of her butt as his fingertips pressed lightly against the narrow crease.

  “Saban, I love you. You know I love you. I swear, I learned my lesson already.” Okay, she was caving, but she had been wrong, she was big enough to admit to it. “You shouldn’t have walked away like that. You shouldn’t have left me.”

  “I’ll never leave you again, cher.” The words whispered over the small of her back a second before his lips grazed the flesh. “Should you ever be so foolish again, I’ll spank you where you stand.”

  His hand landed lightly on the curve of her ass.

  Natalie froze, her eyes jerking wide at the incredible streak of burning pleasure that tore through the nerve endings there.

  “Saban.” Was that weak, whimpering sound actually coming from her lips? She sounded like a sex vamp begging for more.

  “You’ll be a good girl in the future, will you no, cher?” The accent slipped out, cutting words and sounding so incredibly sexy she almost climaxed from the sound of it alone.

  “This is ridiculous,” she cried out as another firm slap landed on her rear, sending those curling fingers of heat and pleasure to wrap around her already swollen clit.

  His hand landed again, again. Oh God, she could feel her flesh heating, blushing, and she knew she should be outraged, furious; instead, she was burning alive with arousal.

  She could feel the dampness between her thighs, coating her pussy, spreading along her clit and increasing its sensitivity.

  “I’ll not walk away again, mate.” He leaned forward, his lips pressing between her shoulders, his teeth rasping over her spine. “I’ll love you until you know nothing exists in this life for me but you. I’ll protect you, sometimes, from yourself.” He nipped at her shoulder. “But never will I leave you again.”

  His hand slipped between their bodies, found the juices gathering along the swollen folds there, and he growled in hungry demand.

  His touch was like a flame. She could feel the pleasure burning inside her, her body begging for more. She should be fighting him, but she couldn’t find the will to deny herself, let alone him, what she knew he could give her.

  What she knew they both needed.

  “Come, cher.”

  Natalie turned eagerly as he lifted his weight from her, turning her to him. Her arms twined around his neck, dragging his chest to her breasts and his lips to hers.

  She wanted that kiss. She was burning for it, dying for it. When it came, it was filled with the taste of wild lust and stormy emotion. Anger and fear laced each desperate bite of passion, each sip of lips as their moans mingled, their hands caressed.

  Oh God, his hands. Calloused and strong, they skimmed over her flesh as his lips moved to her neck, licked, stroked. A frenzy of sensations tore through her. She could feel the heat like lightning, searing her flesh.

  “Mine!” He snarled the word against the curve of her breast. “Always mine.”

  She wasn’t fighting it, she couldn’t fight it. The hours he had left her alone had given her a chance to think, a chance to feel. She had faced the thought of life without him and found it intolerable.

  “Come for me, cher.” His fingers slipped inside her pussy, stroked with diabolic pleasure, as his lips covered the hard point of her nipple.

  And she did just as he asked; she came, shuddering, arching, feeling the pleasure overtake her in gentle, consuming waves.

  “Ah, cher.” He licked her nipple, grazed his teeth over it. “Ma cher.”

  “I love you.” She whispered the words against his neck as she held on tight and felt the shudder of response that rippled through his hard body. “I’ll always love you.”

  She would never be able to walk away as she had with Mike. That knowledge was both terrifying and exhilarating, knowing he held that much of her soul.

  “I treasure you.” He kissed her nipple with suckling little motions of his lips. “I adore you.” His head moved to her stomach. “Ah, cher, I love you until I feel lost without you.” His lips lowered to the swollen, saturated folds of her pussy.

  Pleasure became a vortex of sensation. She screamed his name as he licked, sucked, tasted, and growled into the wet heat of her sex.

  His teeth tugged at the swollen folds, his tongue licked and probed and wrapped around her clit with rasping little caresses that sent her exploding into the night.

  When he dragged his body over hers, his cock nudging at the entrance to her vagina, Natalie forced her eyes open, lifted her lashes, and became lost in his gaze.

  “I marked you,” he growled roughly. “Mine. Forever.”

  “Stole me with a kiss,” she whimpered, arching against him. “Steal some more, Saban.”

  With his Jaguar kiss, with the taste of lust and the touch of a conquering warrior, he had stolen her heart and become a part of her soul.

  Natalie cried out his name as he took possession of what was his. His erection pressing forward, the silk-over-steel flesh parting delicate tissue, caressing, burning with a pleasure that fired more pleasure and sent her careening into a world where nothing mattered but the pleasure, the touch, the taste of his kiss.

  Strained cries echoed around her as she felt the blaze of ecstasy, the pounding strength of his cock shafting inside her forcefully, as sensation became a hunger and hunger became a demand.

  She writhed beneath him, arching to him, driving him deeper until the force of the need exploded through her, brilliant, lightning hot, and filled with all the love she had kept inside, locked away, frightened of the pain of losing this man. If she lost him, how much of herself would she lose as well?

  As she felt his climax tearing through him, felt the barb in all its burning pleasure extend inside her, locking him in place as his semen spurted hot and fierce into the depths of her pussy, Natalie knew she would lose all of herself.

  “I love you more than life,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes as she held him to her, her nails pressing into his back, her lips pressed to his shoulder. “Don’t leave me, Saban. Never, never leave me.”

  “Even death won’t tear me from you.” His head lifted, his green eyes nearly black with the emotions ripping between them, soul to soul. “Even deat
h, Natalie, could not tear my soul from yours.”

  She lifted her hand to his face, let the tears fall, and let him shelter her in the strength of his arms, in an embrace as freeing as it was protective.

  It would never be easy, but right here, sheltered by her Jaguar, loved, protected, held, she knew it was definitely worth fighting for.

  And together, one heart, one soul, they whispered, “I love you.”

  SHIFTER’S LADY

  Alyssa Day

  This one is for Ann Thayer-Cohen, who gave me the title and who is an

  extraordinary moderator and a great friend. And, always, for Judd.

  And to my readers—thank you! Please visit me at www.alyssaday.com

  for excerpts, free downloadable screensavers, and a free short story for

  members only—“Atlantis: In the Beginning”—and watch for Lord

  Justice’s book, Atlantis Unleashed, coming soon!

  ONE

  Big Cypress National Preserve

  West of Miami, Florida

  Midnight

  Moonlight silvered down through the branches of the cypress trees, shadowing the gnarled limbs and trunks into the menacing forms of ogres from a child’s nightmare. The blood tracing geometric patterns in the dirt was no specter of childish terror, but the very real damage from a vicious attack.

  Swearing under his breath, Ethan circled the fallen panther—the sixth one attacked in two weeks—all the while scanning the chill winter’s dark for a glimpse of the unnatural predator who’d attacked it. He’d heard the animal’s screams of pain while patrolling more than a mile away and had immediately broken into a full-out run, but the attacker had disappeared into the winter night.

  At least for this panther he’d been in time. This cat was still alive.

  As the wounded panther—a good-sized male—lifted its head to snarl, Ethan drew his lips back from his teeth and preempted the cat’s defiance with a warning growl of his own.

  “Sorry, my friend, I know you’re hurting,” he said, pitching his voice to the low rumble of an alpha male asserting its dominance over a pack member. “But if you won’t let me get close enough to help you, we’re going to have to go the tranq dart routine.”

  Lifting his head, he scented the air again, memorizing the rank odor that had assailed his nostrils as he approached the clearing. His shape-shifter senses were preternaturally sharp, but even in his human shape, Ethan could track a scent trail. This one was distinct from any of his own pride, but it was somehow oddly familiar.

  The cat on the ground snarled again, weaker this time. The gouges clawed out of its side and belly glistened a deep crimson-stained black in the moonlight.

  Ethan took one last, long look around and dropped down into a crouch next to the animal. “It looks like the bastard who did this to you is gone. So let’s get you to someone who can help.”

  The panther bared its teeth in one final act of defiance before Ethan grasped the sides of its face in his hands and stared into its eyes. He sent a mental touch into the cat’s mind, simultaneously muting the pain the animal was suffering and delivering a simple message: Pride-brother. Alpha. Help you.

  As he lifted the heavy body into his arms, careful not to jostle the cat more than necessary, he uttered a grim promise. “I’ll get him for you, friend. Believe me, he’ll pay.”

  TWO

  Atlantis

  The next morning

  Marie stood on the emerald-hued grass and stared, nearly transfixed, at the white marble temple inlaid with jade, sapphires, and amethyst, memorizing it anew, though she’d lived and worked within it for more than three centuries of days. She wanted to burn its image into her very being, in the event—the almost impossible event, she reminded herself—that she were never to see it again.

  Her temple. Her sacred responsibility.

  The one she was abandoning.

  Her breath quickened, and an obstruction the size of one of her favorite sea sapphires lodged in her throat. “Erin, I—”

  Beside her, Erin sighed and shook her head, her blonde curls shimmering in the magically created sunlight that replaced the rays of a sun that had never dared venture so far beneath the sea. Erin put her hands on her hips in that peculiarly human gesture that both she and Prince Conlan’s beloved, Riley, favored when they were frustrated.

  Humans. Marie marveled anew at the idea that she had two human friends, when no human before Riley had set foot in Atlantis for more than eleven thousand years.

  “Not again, Marie,” Erin said firmly, tapping her foot in mock impatience. “We are not going over my duties in the temple one more time. As First Maiden of the Nereids for more than three hundred years, don’t you think it’s time you had a vacation?”

  “But Lord Justice—”

  Erin sobered, the playfulness fading from her face. “No one wants to find him more than Ven and I do, Marie. You know that Conlan and Ven and all the warriors have done nothing else but search for Justice since he…since he…”

  Erin’s voice trailed off, as she visibly fought for control. “He sacrificed himself to that monster to protect me. To protect Ven and me. We will never give up.”

  Marie hugged the shorter woman, offering up yet another silent prayer that Lord Justice yet lived. After admitting to the shocking truth that he was half brother to Prince Conlan and his brother, the Lord Vengeance, Lord Justice had offered himself to the vampire goddess Anubisa in exchange for his brother’s life. Marie had heard the tale of it many times but still could not comprehend the courage it must have required to voluntarily submit to the goddess of all Chaos.

  Especially knowing of Conlan’s seven years of torture at her hands.

  Erin took a deep breath and stepped away from Marie’s hug. “But life goes on. It always goes on. Women still come to the temple for help with their pregnancies and childbirth, and even though I am no temple-trained midwife, the gems give me the healing power to help them.”

  Marie smiled at the understatement. “You are our gem singer, Erin. You sing the healing power of the stones to our women and babies. You healed Riley and the unborn heir to the throne of Atlantis. Do not discount your Gift.”

  “I don’t discount it, or I never would have agreed to this. The responsibility for the unborn children of Atlantis is an enormous one, far too much for a single witch,” Erin replied. “Or at least it would be if you hadn’t trained me yourself, surrounded me with your very knowledgeable temple acolytes, and watched as I used my Gift to sing healing and peace to women in labor.”

  Marie’s desire to visit her brother, Bastien, and meet his new love, Katherine, pulled at her, but still she was torn. “I feel as though I were abandoning my duties at a time when all Atlantis must work together.”

  Erin’s blue eyes softened with sympathy. “I know. But you deserve this time, Marie. And your brother and Justice were very close, weren’t they?”

  Marie’s lips curved into a smile. “Yes, always. Thick as jellyfish, those two.”

  “Thieves.”

  “What?”

  “We say ‘thick as thieves,’” Erin said, laughing. “Although I must admit that thick as jellyfish makes more sense.”

  Marie studied the witch who had captured Lord Vengeance’s heart and restored the glory of the Temple of the Nereids through her gemsong. Abruptly, she nodded. “Yes. You are correct. Bastien will be nearly insane with rage and worry for Lord Justice, and even more so from the frustration that he could not immediately join the search. I must go to him.”

  Almost as if on cue, an icy wind swept between and around them and resolved itself into the shimmering form of Poseidon’s high priest, Alaric. He wore his customary black clothing, and the fire in his green eyes burned starkly in his drawn face. “Are you ready for the journey, Lady Marie?” he asked, his voice raspy as if little used in recent days.

  “I am,” she replied, inclining her head to the priest. He carried such a weight of bitter anguish with him, but it was not the pain of
injury or illness. She sensed it was an emotional suffering but would never presume to impose upon his privacy by asking, no matter the whispers that had circulated about Alaric and Quinn, the sister of the prince’s beloved.

  If Alaric ever chose to share his anguish, she would listen. It was her role in life, and she had been content with it. To watch, to listen, to heal as best she could. Such a life was not without its rewards. She glanced at the temple one last time and smiled, then lifted her small travel bag from the grass at her feet and nodded again. “Please call the portal, if you would.”

  Alaric merely stared down at her for a long moment before he spoke. “Know that I am against this journey, my lady. We face more danger Above than we have for millennia, so now seems to be a ridiculously foolhardy time for you to venture from the safety of Atlantis.”

  Marie answered him with the respect due a warrior priest who had fought with and healed her brother and the rest of the Seven countless times, even though she’d thought this discussion finally put to rest when he’d agreed to call the portal for her. “As always, your opinion and advice are valuable. But I am not without defenses, as First Maiden. The goddess will not abandon me should danger threaten.”

  When he looked as though he would interrupt her, she held up a hand to touch his arm. “I know, Alaric. I know. But he is my brother, and he has need of me, though he would never admit to it. I must go.”

  He tightened his lips, and she saw the muscles in his jaw clench, but he said no more, merely lifted his hands in the air, closed his eyes, and called the magic. The magic of a high priest who was more powerful than any ever before anointed by Poseidon was truly mesmerizing to behold. The portal, sometimes capricious in how and when it responded, would never dare to disobey Alaric. On his command, the shimmering oval appeared first as a tiny gleam of light no larger than the palm of her hand then widened and expanded into an ovoid sphere sparkling with the effervescent colors of a thousand gemstones.

  She’d seen it before, of course. She’d watched her brother and his fellow warriors, those elite who formed the Seven and protected High Prince Conlan, travel through the portal nearly as many times over the centuries as there were gemstones in the Temple. But the sight never failed to amaze her, and today even more so.