His gaze thawed a few degrees and he allowed himself a cheerless smile. He lifted his hand and held it out toward her: an invitation. “If you don’t believe me...” He turned his palm up. “Satisfy yourself.”
Jenna stared at his outstretched hand and then back at his face, handsome and severe. She wouldn’t touch him again, she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready for the onslaught, for the terrifying glut of sensation that came with the pressure of his skin on hers. She would never be ready. It occurred to her she might never be able to touch anyone again, and she was so upside down she didn’t know if that bothered her or not.
So...she would just have to trust him.
“Fine. Your suite then,” Jenna said, curling her hands into fists again to control their shaking. “But we’re leaving the door open.”
Leander inclined his head without breaking her gaze. His voice low, he said, “Follow me.”
The if you dare was left unsaid, but she heard it clear as day anyway.
She didn’t go first. She followed the three of them as they moved silently through the lobby with its gargantuan flower displays and glistening mirrors, past the serene glassed atrium filled with tropical plants and a dark pond with restless orange koi, through the glass doors that opened outward with a burst of hot, rose-scented air. Those doors led to the back gardens and the private staircase that wound up to the presidential suite on the top floor.
She had refused to get into the elevator with the three of them.
She couldn’t take her eyes off them as they moved, seeing the animal in each one. The way their feet stepped without noise over marble and concrete and grass, the way their limbs moved, supple and elegant, powerful and lissome, every turn and bend revealing their true nature, every motion a symphony of natural, dangerous, perfect grace.
Jenna couldn’t help but picture them moving through a darkened forest, on the prowl.
Hunting.
When they reached the top of the stairs, Leander opened the door to his suite and gestured for her to come inside.
“Here we are,” he said, his voice neutral, his body relaxed as he leaned a strong shoulder against the door to hold it open.
But those eyes, so piercing green and fierce. They sent a shiver down her spine.
“Morgan, Christian, I’ll speak to you later.” He made a small motion with his chin to indicate they should continue on down the corridor.
“Of course, Leander,” Morgan said, sounding happy to oblige. “We’ll see you later. And Jenna,” she turned her head and spoke as she moved gracefully away, her long black hair rippling down her back like waves of dark water over a bed of smooth stones. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I do hope we’ll get to see each other again very soon.”
“No—wait, where are you going! You need to stay—”
But she only smiled and turned away, leading Christian by the arm, her cutout dress revealing a tanned expanse of back and a hint of the top swell of firm derrière.
Christian looked back at Jenna over his shoulder, but his face was layered in shadow under light thrown from the sconces on the wall. She could not read his expression. They both kept walking and went out of sight around the corner.
Without speaking, Leander raised his hand in invitation to enter the suite.
Jenna huffed, ignored his heated gaze, and moved past him, carefully avoiding any physical contact. She walked through the marble foyer into the sumptuous main room, admiring the exquisite furnishings, the broad expanse of marbled veranda visible through sheer curtains, the king-size bed.
Her gaze flew away from the bed before it could linger there.
Damn. She wasn’t in control. She needed to be in control.
She was flushed and trembling. She somehow felt both exhausted and exhilarated, strung out and calm. Every fiber in her body was attuned to the room around her, to the warm air and the slanting light, and the beautiful, obviously dangerous man standing at the door, watching her, silent and so still she might have thought he’d disappeared.
Except for the beating of his heart. She still heard it and struggled to smother the staccato, pulsing beat from her mind.
“It will get easier in time,” Leander said softly from behind her, his voice surprisingly tender. “You just need to practice.”
Startled, Jenna turned so quickly she nearly lost her footing. She reached out a hand to steady herself against the back of a silk-covered chair, its polished wooden arms strangely cracked and splintered. Control, she admonished herself.
“What will?”
“The sensations. You could quite easily overdose on the glut of information your senses will be able to pick up, but it can be managed. After a while,” he said, moving away from the door to let it swing shut with a soft click behind him, “you’ll be able to control it. You’ll hardly notice it at all, unless you want to.”
He took a few steps toward her with great deliberation, his eyes focused on her face.
“No,” Jenna said, taking one step back, forgetting for a moment that he had known she could hear his heart. “The door stays open. That was our agreement.”
“No, that was your demand. However,” he said, still advancing with that suggestion of coiled power in every movement, a look of slowly simmering sensuality darkening his features. “I think it would be wiser to keep the door shut for the moment. Especially with what I’d like to show you.”
Jenna’s heart began to pound with such ferocity she thought she might faint.
Instead she jerked away until her behind hit the desk against the wall. She kept backing up as he continued to advance, stepping around the desk, moving farther into the room, until finally her shoulders came to rest against the smooth silk paneling of the far wall.
“Stop!” Her voice cracked in panic. He smiled, awfully, and kept on. Her gaze flew around the room for something to leap at, to stab him with—was that a knife on the desk—no, a letter opener—
But then he was standing right in front of her, a razor-thin slice of electrified air vibrating between their bodies.
Jenna froze. She felt burned by the heat and muscled tension of him, the aching strain of awareness between their bodies. She struggled to control her breathing, to control the butterflies in her stomach, to stand without fear and look up into his eyes.
What she saw there made the butterflies dance.
“I believe you wanted answers,” he murmured, raising his forearms to rest against the wall on either side of her head. She turned her face away and tried to flatten herself even farther against the wall to escape what was between them, that glowing dark burn.
“I don’t see how this—” she broke off as he lowered his head and trailed the tip of his nose slowly down from a spot just under her earlobe to where the pulse beat at the base of her throat.
He inhaled deeply and made a low, masculine sound in his throat.
“—is any kind of answer.” She said it on an exhalation of breath, fighting back the ripple of pleasure the touch of his skin had sent flooding through her body.
He chuckled, low and amused, and spoke without lifting his head, his breath warm on her skin. “It’s not,” he agreed. “I’m just indulging myself.”
“Well, you can stop it, please. Now,” she added severely, trying very hard to sound convincing.
He tipped his head back, looked down at her through half-lidded eyes, and smiled. A line of light from the veranda windows caught the shadows in his hair, turning it shades of mink and chocolate brown under the thick, shining layers of ebony.
“Do you really want me to?” he murmured, that lazy smile deepening. His eyes glowed green, and the line of slanted light cast rippled shadows across the arch of his cheekbone, showing the detail of his skin: perfect, poreless, and burnished gold.
“Beautiful girl,” he whispered, looking deep into her eyes. “Tell me the truth.”
Jenna preferred the truth; she’d spent her entire life trying to discern it. But now, for the second time today, she very much
appreciated the value of a good lie.
“Yes, I do,” she said coldly, with as much blunt force as she could muster.
“I see,” he said, unaffected, his smile growing even deeper, a hint of whimsy there. “So you would not like it if I, for instance, did this.”
He lowered his face and brushed his lips against hers with a bare, languid lightness, back and forth, touching but not touching, sliding and slow.
Jenna gasped and tried to turn her head away, but he caught her by the jaw, his strong hand firm against her face, and turned it back.
Her mind was instantly filled with images not her own, her skin burned with the stinging hot pulse of him, his desire, his memory, his essence. “Stop!” she cried.
“You can learn to control it, Jenna,” he said roughly, moving his lips against hers. He pressed his body hard against her so she felt the heat of him scorch straight through her clothing, burning her chest and abdomen and thighs. Her body arched against the wall, flexed hard against him, aching and wanting and full of need. Her hands made fists and she wasn’t sure if she meant to hit him or if it was to keep from pulling him harder against her.
“Try to control it,” he said, fierce and adamant.
He flicked the tip of his tongue out to stroke over her lower lip and she was flooded straight through with crystal clear pictures of herself in passionate surrender, pictures snatched straight from his mind.
Feel me, Jenna.
Lie back, let me taste you.
Tell me what you want. Do you like this? And this?
Say my name, whispered hot into her ear as he thrust deep inside her and she shuddered and climaxed beneath him. Say it and belong to me.
“Leander,” she whispered, just as her knees gave out.
He caught her up in his arms as she fell, as easily as if she weighed next to nothing, and swung her around. He carried her over to the bed and gently laid her on it, then settled himself on the down coverlet next to her in one fluid motion, warm and masculine and solid against her side. One finger brushed a lock of stray hair from her eyes, leaving a trail of images burning vividly over her skin, and though it was crazy and wrong and impossible, his body beside hers felt so right.
“Just focus on your breathing,” he said, his voice stroking and soft. “I swear you’re safe with me, Jenna—I won’t cause you any harm. Nothing will ever cause you harm again.”
He nuzzled his nose next to her throat and breathed in, a deep inhalation that sprouted goose bumps all over her skin. “I only want to protect you,” he whispered, his lips brushing her neck, “to keep you safe. Trust me, Jenna. Trust me. Let me take care of you.”
That was his hand at the small of her back, fingers spread, pressing her body closer to his. That was her knee drawing up to allow the weight of his muscled leg to fit between hers, the hem of her dress slipping up, leaving her bare thigh exposed. Those were her fingers digging deep into the soft down coverlet as his lips moved over her collarbone, as he murmured words in a flowing language she didn’t understand. That was her hand stealing up to glide over his arm, his shoulder, touching the warm skin of his neck, sliding into his hair...
“Leander,” she protested, her voice caught between a whisper and a groan, already beginning to surrender herself to the flush of hot pleasure his hands brought, his lips brought. Her physical reaction to him was overwhelming: instinctual, pure, and primal. Another few seconds and her body would take control of the decision making. “Please, I can’t think—”
But he cut her off with a kiss, deep and hot, and rolled half over her body so she was melting down into the soft, welcoming luxury of the mattress.
He pulled back, panting. “Don’t think,” he said, husky. “Just feel.”
And then he kissed her again and she couldn’t help herself—she kissed him back.
Leander made a sound deep in his throat, a rumbling low growl, like an animal’s. He put his mouth against her ear and rasped out six words that made her heart clench into a fist.
“I want to be inside you.”
He slid his open palm down her bare thigh, curled his fingers over her hip, and rocked his pelvis against hers. She felt the length of his arousal, hard and insistent, and desire slammed into her with so much force she moaned. A hot, eager lust that demanded satisfaction swelled up in her and began to rage and burn.
He caught her wrist in one strong hand and lifted it over her head, pressing it down, captive, against the pillow. He lowered his head against the column of her neck and fastened his lips against her skin, licking, sucking, making her arch against him.
Then he bit her.
It wasn’t hard, nothing that would break the skin or leave a mark, but a native, untapped burst of energy flashed to life inside her under the fleeting sting of his bite. A blinding white current of feral awareness shot through her muscles and blood and nerves as if she were a pile of dry leaves touched by a torch and doused with accelerant...
...As if an animal sleeping just under her skin had awoken to barbarous, savage joy.
Jenna opened her eyes and stared hard at the ceiling and felt something dark within her gather into storm.
9
One moment she was velvet and fire and flexed tension in his arms, the next she dissolved completely into mist.
Leander supposed it shouldn’t have surprised him. He knew this was coming, after all. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d sensed the latent power that simmered just beneath that ivory skin—he knew she would Shift, as surely as he knew his own name.
But it wasn’t only the suddenness of it that left him frozen, staring down at her empty dress still settling back against the bedcovers with a faint rustle of silk, the perfume of her skin still lingering in his nose.
It was the fact that she’d Shifted now—it was still days before her birthday.
In the entirety of a recorded history that stretched back nearly two thousand years before the appearance of Christ, Leander had never heard of a half-Blood making the turn before turning twenty-five.
It was an immutable, scientific fact. When fused with its human counterpart, Ikati Blood was diluted, warped, corrupted from the state of purity that allowed their specific genetic characteristics to flourish. The first Shift would generally occur anywhere between twelve and sixteen for an Ikati child, but for a half-Blood...
Twenty-five years to the minute from birth, and the Shift either happened or it did not.
If it did come, only a tiny percentage survived it.
And so there were unmarked graves near the outskirts of every Ikati colony where the bones of those lesser creatures were cast into the ground. The Law was clear: Shift or die.
But Jenna had made the Shift effortlessly and had done it early. Leander didn’t quite know what to make of the anomaly she was proving to be.
He looked up to the ceiling where she had spread out against the white plaster. She moved silently toward the chandelier in the center of the room, a fine plume of white mist that hovered and dipped and flowed, a curving ghost slinking through the air.
“Jenna,” he said, his breath still coming as a ragged pant from the pleasure of her lips under his, of her body so feminine and lush. “Come back.”
He watched as she gathered herself around the chandelier, moving over it, learning its edges and cool planes as she sifted through the shining drops of crystal. His gaze skipped to the veranda doors and his heart missed a beat. He’d left one of them cracked open.
He pushed off from the bed and went to stand under the chandelier.
“Please come down.” He stared up at her as she hovered above, the most beautiful phantom. “Just think it, down, and it will happen.” He watched her form and unform, ripple and flow and stretch out so thin he glimpsed the ceiling beyond.
She dropped down from the ceiling in an elegant column of ruffling white mist and Shifted to woman just under his nose. To a completely nude woman, save only for strands of that cascading mass of honeyed blonde hair, whi
ch covered a few inches of bare skin as it draped over her chest but left very little to the imagination.
His breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of the rise of her breasts beneath her hair. He took a step back and tried to look straight into her eyes.
Her eyes were wide as saucers, glowing green and yellow, staring at him with a combination of horror and flat-out elation.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Don’t move.”
He snatched the soft cashmere throw from the end of the bed, spread it open and wound it in a lush expanse of dove-hued softness around her body. She was trembling. He rubbed his palms up and down her arms to get her blood circulating and thought about baseball to distract himself from the straining ache of his erection, from thinking about what pleasures were hidden under that blanket, how just one yank would leave her entirely exposed—
“Leander,” she whispered. Her voice broke over his name.
“Yes.”
“I just—I just—”
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “You just Shifted,” he said.
She looked into his face, a clear and concentrated look, her wide-set eyes gleaming phosphorous green from under extravagantly long lashes. A faint stain of color bloomed over her cheeks. It was like watching a lovely piece of marble flush to life.
“Shifted...”
His heart skipped a beat. Even in a haze of confusion she was so beautiful it made breathing difficult. “You’re a Shifter, Jenna. Ikati. Like your father. Like me,” he murmured, drawn into her eyes.
She blinked once, and her shaking slowly stopped. She released all the breath in her lungs in one long, quiet exhalation, and along with it all the tension in her limbs dissolved.
“Ikati,” she repeated, rolling her tongue over the unfamiliar word.
“It’s an ancient word from our motherland, it means you can manipulate your human form to become...something else. Something more.”
“More than human.” She stared without blinking so deeply into his eyes he felt as if every corner of his soul was exposed, as if he was a mystery, her mystery, that she was trying to divine. Her lips began to lift into a smile, but they paused, then turned down. She frowned.
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