by Lora Leigh
He felt his teeth clench at the derogatory tone of voice.
“Don’t push me, Natalie,” he warned her softly. “My own temper hasn’t yet cooled from watching that bastard attempt to claim you.”
“No one claims me.” Her fists balled at her sides, and he could have sworn she nearly stamped her foot.
How interesting. It was definitely a sight to be wary of, because he could smell the pure violence simmering inside her. Her patience with him, with Breeds, with males in general was rapidly reaching its limit. He wondered, though, and couldn’t help but be fascinated with the idea of her losing that patience and temper.
There was a warrior inside her; he could feel it. A woman ready to take on the world when it counted and to flay a Breed at twenty paces should he deserve it. And he definitely deserved it; hell, he was almost looking forward to it. From what he had seen of his pride leader, Callan, and Callan’s mate, makeup sex could be damned satisfying.
The books Cassie had pawned off on him had assured him that it was satisfying. Often the best sex of any relationship. Though, to be honest, if it got better than last night and this morning, he may not survive it.
“Did you hear me, Saban Broussard?” Her voice roughened, rasped with her anger. “No one claims me.”
“That mark on your neck proves otherwise.” He shrugged as he stared back at her calmly. “I’ve claimed you, cher, for better or worse. There is no divorce, there is no separation, and there will be no ex-husband believing he can rescind that claim.”
Saban kept his voice calm though firm. He had a feeling that if he lost control of his hot Cajun temper, then he would have lost this battle from the beginning. Because with the temper came a resurgence of the heat, hotter and brighter than before, as he knew Natalie was now learning.
Nature did not allow the Breed mates to confront each other without a safeguard in place. They may fight, they may rage, but they would not deny each other.
In the face of her anger, he could feel no guilt. He wasn’t a man to do anything by half measures; he had been trained to know what to do, how to do it, and not question himself over every decision made.
But as he stared back at Natalie now and saw the flash of hurt and fear beneath the anger, he wondered at the ache in his chest. Guilt? Perhaps. He’d never known that emotion either until Natalie, so it was hard to be certain.
Her independence had been hard-won, and now she felt it threatened. He didn’t blame her for her anger, but he would not allow her to deny him or the mark she now carried.
“You should leave.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears and unresolved fury. “Now!”
“Well, cher, I’ll just make certain I do that,” he growled. “With your ex-husband prowling around like a demented coyote and that fool sheriff sticking his nose in where it don’t belong. Oh yeah, I’m jus’ gonna pack up and head on out, eh?”
He was growing tired of being told to leave her.
“I have to get out of here.” She shook her head. “I have to get away from you before you drive me completely crazy.”
“Until your ex-husband showed up, you had no problems with me.” He felt like snarling, like roaring in his own frustration as the thought hit his mind. “Does he mean so much to you that now you have to run from me?”
The look she cast him was so filled with disdain that had he been a lesser man, he may have flinched.
“Don’t pretend to be stupid, Saban; you just don’t pull it off well,” she informed him caustically. “I don’t know what your Breed rule book says, but common decency should keep you from acting like a complete moron just because it suits your purposes to do so. You threatened Mike. You nearly killed him. And you shouldn’t be standing in front of me as though this mating heat bullshit makes it all right.”
“I will protect you.” He stepped closer, glowering down at her as the animal part of his brain demanded that he show her, again, just how much she was his woman. “Claxton wasn’t being reasonable, Natalie, you know that.”
“And you were?” She crossed her arms over her breasts and glared at him. “You were choking him to death. One-handed.”
“Would you have preferred I used two hands? I thought it sporting to give him a handicap at least, but next time I’ll make certain I do the job right.” The next time he would just kill the bastard and have done with it.
The look she flashed him spoke volumes of her fury and her opinion of that statement.
He watched, fascinated, as she restrained her rage. Her arms unfolded, her body tightened, until he wondered if her spine would snap.
“I have things to do today,” she informed him then. “Things that do not include you. Excuse me.”
She headed for the stairs, dismissing him as though the argument were over, simply because she deemed it over?
“Not so fast, mate,” he bit out, moving quickly to slide between her and her destination. “This argument has not yet finished.”
“Why? Because you haven’t gotten fucked yet?” She flicked a glance at the evidence of his erection beneath his jeans. “I’m not in the mood.”
He growled at that. “You damned sure are ready to fuck, but that wasn’t on the agenda quite yet. Your anger at the moment is, because it’s completely illogical. Claxton was gearing himself up for violence, Natalie, and you know it. Better he found that outlet with me than with you. It ensured his survival.”
“Mike wouldn’t hurt me.” A frown flashed between her brows. “I was married to him for years, Saban, he never touched me in violence.”
It was the way she said it, the telltale flicker of her lashes, the scent of deceit. She wasn’t lying to him, but she wasn’t telling him the entire truth either.
“What did he do then?” he asked her carefully.
The sudden evasion in her eyes was proof that he had done something.
“He never hit me, and do you know what else he never did, Saban? He never started fights with men over something so asinine either.”
“No, he likely started them with you.” Saban could feel the renewed need to rip the man to shreds, one limb at a time. “Is that why you divorced him, Natalie? Why you fight the mating with me so hard? Did he attempt to control all that wild, beautiful fire inside you? Or did he attempt to douse it?”
“Conversation is over.” She said it calmly, but he could sense, smell the hurt and the anger raging inside her.
Like those flames Claxton had wanted to control, she pushed it back, buried it, hid it beneath that mask of calm self-control. She could teach a Breed about self-possession.
She could definitely give him lessons in it, because he wasn’t handling this nearly as well as she was, but also, he knew, he had already accepted what she was to him. She still had that journey to make.
“This conversation is not over.” He bared his teeth in frustration; he could feel that frustration rising inside him now, threatening the boundaries of his control. “Hear me well, Natalie. It doesn’t matter who it is, man or woman; any threat to you will be dealt with. Any strike against you will be retaliated against. So much as a thought, a flicker of threat, and I will be there. Whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not.”
“Whether I want it or not.” Her voice was bitter, cutting like acid into his soul. “Because you decree it. Stand wherever the hell you want to stand, Saban. As long as it’s well away from me.”
• CHAPTER 8 •
It hurt. Natalie couldn’t stem the hurt rising inside her, the fear, the certainty that the loss of control where Saban was concerned would be her undoing.
“I don’t need you to fight my battles.” She needed to fight her own battles, dammit. “Especially where Mike is concerned.”
She turned to move away from him, only to be confronted by his broad chest once again.
“Get out of my way, Saban.”
“So you can run and hide?” he bit out. “Rather than facing this problem and fixing it, you’re going to run away.”
“There’s no fixing it,” she pushed between gritted teeth as her fingers clenched at her side. “You think you’re right. You always think you’re right. Big, bad Breed knows it all.”
Silence met her accusation. Natalie lifted her gaze then, met his, and had to fight the thickening in her throat as she saw not anger as she thought she would find, though there was a little of that there. Instead, he watched her broodingly, as though searching for an answer or trying to find the question that eluded him.
“You didn’t smell what I smelled,” he finally said gently. “The rage, the need for violence that was filling him. You divorced him, Natalie, for a reason, and you know this. Just as you knew that violence was brewing within him before you forced him out of the home.”
She wasn’t going to let him be right about this. She couldn’t. If she did, how could she ever stand up to him later? Mike had done this at first, used logic, used a shield of understanding and patience to tear down her self-confidence.
“How my marriage ended in a divorce is my business. How I deal with Mike now is my business. Not yours.”
“You don’t truly believe that, Natalie.” He shook his head as he shoved his hands in his back pockets, obviously restraining the need to touch her.
Unlike Mike.
Not that Mike had ever hit her, but it came close too many times. His temper could be ugly, hands bruising, his tongue sharp and cutting.
“I said it, didn’t I?” She forced past clenched teeth as the irritation and the arousal combined into some funky kind of tingles that radiated from her womb outward to the rest of her body.
She was certain that in another place and time, in any other situation, this could have been amusing. If it was happening to someone else maybe.
“Why can’t you do just one thing like a normal, everyday person?” she snapped, wanting to pull at her own hair as frustration began to build in her.
The anger was bad enough. But being angry and dying to fuck that hard body? No woman should have to deal with this.
His expression eased slightly from the predatory determination, and sensual amusement darkened his eyes, lowered his lashes as he bent his head closer to her.
“Cher, if you haven’t noticed yet, normal is not a part of my genetics. Should I give you another example of this?”
She backed up as his hands came out of his pockets and rested comfortably at his sides instead.
“Sex is not going to get you out of this,” she hissed. “There’s not enough sex to make up for deliberately attacking someone who hadn’t attacked you.”
“He touched you. He caused you pain.” Saban shrugged, though his expression tightened. “That is all the reason I need.”
Then he turned away. He turned away as though it didn’t matter, as though his decisions were all that mattered and were all that was important.
“Don’t you do that.” Natalie could feel herself shaking inside and out.
“Do what? Drop this little spat we’re having?” He turned back to her, a smooth, powerful flex of muscle as he faced her once again. “We won’t agree on this, Natalie. Whether you want to believe it or not, Mike Claxton means you harm, and I won’t allow it to happen. You disagree, and that’s fine. That doesn’t mean that I’ll not put a stop to it. Now, if you’re not willing to cool off that heat building inside you with a little therapeutic sex, then I could use a snack. Are you hungry?”
Was she hungry?
Her lips parted in shock. He didn’t want to argue? He wasn’t going to fight over it?
“Since when?” She followed him rapidly. “Since when do you not want to fight? You’re male, right?”
He flashed her a wicked grin over his shoulder. “You should know by now.”
Oh God yes, she knew. She knew his hard, calloused hands holding her to him, the feel of his mouth devouring her, his cock destroying her. And she knew the cold, icy fury in his face when he had held Mike’s neck in his grip, slowly choking him to death.
“You can’t just attack people who piss you off, Saban. Especially men. I have to deal with men daily at work, I can’t afford this.”
“Then they’d best have the good sense to keep their hands off you.” He opened the door of the fridge, bent, and looked inside before pulling free a gallon of milk.
Natalie stood and stared at him, anger shuddering through her body.
“It doesn’t work that way, dammit,” she cursed.
He set a glass on the counter, poured it full of milk, then, lifting the glass, turned and faced her.
“Bet me.” His eyes gleamed in amusement as he lifted the glass and drank.
A man drinking whiskey was sexy. A man with a bottle of beer could be sexy. But a man drinking a glass of milk should not have been sexy. Unfortunately, Saban could make it erotic, especially when he lowered the glass and licked over his lower lip with sensual male awareness.
Natalie felt her stomach tighten, felt her pussy cream furiously as she remembered the enjoyment on his face as he licked her just like that.
“You’re being unreasonable.” She forced her fingers to uncurl from the fists they were making, to stretch as she strove to make sense of this attitude. He’d been ready to kill Mike. Now he was watching her with amused playfulness.
“You do not attack anyone for something so insane as touching me when they aren’t aware of this stupid mating heat,” she retorted, feeling off center, uncertain of her own anger now. It was damned hard for a woman to fight with a man when he was watching her like a piece of candy that he was dying to taste.
“We’ll see.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“We’ll see?” she pushed through her teeth, that anger rising again, along with the need, the hunger. She hated this. It was insane. The madder she got at him, the hornier she got, and that wasn’t a good combination. “The next time you attack someone, I’ll have you arrested myself,” she threw out rashly. “I won’t allow it.”
His expression changed then. Predatory, arrogant. This was the Jaguar Breed, the frightening, sensual animal she always felt lurking beneath the surface.
“You won’t allow it?” His voice rumbled with a growl, slurring the words with just enough primal power that it sent a chill racing down her spine.
“I won’t allow it.” She felt the shudder that tore through her body as the amusement fled his gaze, and savage arousal filled it instead.
He moved toward her.
Natalie wasn’t retreating. She wasn’t backing down on this, and she was not going to allow him to railroad her into agreeing that he could attack whenever and wherever he chose. If she didn’t put her foot down now, if she didn’t stop it now, then there would be no end to it. He would believe he could run over her anytime he wanted, however he wanted.
Start as you mean to go on, her mother had always warned her. She had tried doing that with Mike, tried to stay firm, and he had run over her. He had frightened her, her love for him had excused him, and she had spent three miserable years trying to make a marriage work that was doomed from the start.
“I pulled back for you,” he rumbled as he came closer. “I let the bastard go, because you said ‘please,’ because the pain in your voice for that piece of shit was more than I could bear. Did you see the look on his face when he gripped your arm, when he saw the pain it caused you?”
Natalie shook her head, denying the question.
“Oh, you saw all right, boo.” His lip curled in anger. “You saw the satisfaction, the glee in his eyes, and I smelled it. I smelled it, and I swore I would kill him for it.”
“You can’t just go killing people over something like that.” She smacked her hands against his chest, tried to push him back.
His hands lifted then, smoothed down her arms, and a shiver raced across her flesh.
“He still breathes,” Saban snarled.
“Barely!” she bit out. “Do you think that makes what you did okay?”
“I think it made it very dissatisfying,” he said softly
, dangerously. “Killing him would have been preferable at that time, but losing you over it wouldn’t have been worth it. That doesn’t mean I’ll allow him to get away with it. He’ll be more careful in the future, and so, mate, will you be more careful. The next man that comes at you in anger, get the hell out of my way. Because the more harm he causes you, the greater his chances of meeting his eternal maker.” Each word shortened, roughened, until he finished with a harsh, furious growl.
Natalie opened her lips to blast him, to argue further, though the words tumbling in her head refused to find coherency. Before she could speak, his head lowered, his hands jerked her to his body, and he nipped at her lips.
It wasn’t even a kiss. He nipped at them, then licked them, watching her through narrowed eyes as her tongue jumped to the lower curve of her lips to taste him. To savor the spicy, stormy essence that lingered there from the hormone that infused it.
A broken little groan came from her throat.
“You taste me.” He licked her again. “You feel me, Natalie. Tell me, tell me you know I’d do nothing to harm you. Including killing that miserable little bastard unless he actually endangered your life.”
“You’d hurt him.” She tried to shake her head, tried to fight the need beginning to burn in her blood.
“Oh, boo, for sure I would. I’d hurt him bad.” The Cajun slipped free, lazy, guttural, spiked with hunger and dangerous intent. “I’d make him run crying to his momma for daring to harm, to believe he could ever take what is mine alone. And you know, cher, you are mine alone.”
His.
Her lips parted, and his covered them, a weak, whimpering little moan leaving her lips as she tasted him fully. As he sucked her tongue into his mouth and then gave her leave to play. To lick at him, to tease until his tongue came to her, until she could suckle it, sweeping her tongue over it, drawing the taste of him into her mouth.
“No!”
Natalie jumped around him, ignoring the little growl that sounded behind her.
“Don’t tell me no, mate,” he retorted heatedly. “I smell your need, and even more, I smell the fact that you know I’m right. You’ll not run from this or from me.”