A Jaguar's Kiss

THREE

It was a science fiction nightmare, and Natalie was caught in the middle of it. The director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Jonas Wyatt, and the pride leader of the Breed Ruling Cabinet hadn’t come to whisk their irritating Breed back to Sanctuary. To the contrary. They had brought the heli-jet and whisked Saban as well as her back to the estate and far belowground, where the Breed laboratories were now set up.

It was definitely a nightmare. Hours of tests, drawing blood, examinations that shouldn’t have been so uncomfortable, and questions so damned personal Natalie kept blushing.

The explanations were even worse than the examinations and the questions, though. The explanations were nearly more than her mind could comprehend.

Natalie liked to think she was a fairly intelligent person. She was always open to the paranormal; she questioned everything that confused her and tried to understand. She even believed in psychics and reincarnation for pity’s sake. But this?

A pheromonal, biological, chemically based reaction that resulted in the swelling of tiny, normally hidden glands beneath the Breed’s tongue. Those glands then filled with a hormonal aphrodisiac, addictive and potent, ensuring that those affected actually had sex.

When Natalie asked if there was a cure, Elyiana’s only answer was that they were working on it. Does it go away? They were working on it.

They were working on it. The day was over and edging into night when the doctor was finally finished with her, and she knew no more then than she did when she arrived, but she was fairly certain there was a truckload of information they weren’t giving her.

By the time the heli-jet landed in the wide side yard beside her house and she and Saban were reentering her house, she was angrier than she had been when she first called Callan Lyons.

Fat lot of help he had been. He and Wyatt both refused emphatically to change her bodyguard, and they refused to keep Saban away from her long enough for her to understand what the hell was going wrong with her own body.

And it was wrong. It had perspiration beading on her forehead, her womb clenching, and the aches at her clit and in the hidden depths of her vagina were nearly too much to bear. She felt off center, uncertain, and scared.

In her life there had been few times she had actually been frightened, but she admitted that she was definitely scared now. She was tied, bound to a man that she was certain she might not even like.

Well, she didn’t actually dislike him, she thought as she stood back voluntarily and let him open the house, let him smell the air then step inside to be certain it was safe while checking the security system wired into it.

“It’s safe, cher.” His voice was gentle, patient, as he returned to the door.

“Someone could have shot me from the road while you were checking the place out,” she informed him, her voice so brittle she nearly winced as he closed the door behind her and locked it.

“The chances were slimmer. My senses are degraded a bit tonight; I wanted to be certain you weren’t walking into an ambush before you came in. The sensors on the heli-jet would have detected weapons in the area or hidden assassins.”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about the heli-jet.

“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.” She turned away from him and headed for the stairs.

“Cold water won’t help the heat. You won’t be able to sleep through it; you won’t be able to make sense of it or to apply logic to it. But we could discuss it.”

She turned back to him, her jaw clenching as she fought the emotions rising inside her.

Damn him, as frustrating as he was, she did like him despite her reluctance to admit it. She had liked him playful, she had liked him teasing, but this part of him, the part she had sensed he was hiding, this she doubted she would like.

He stared back at her, calm, self-possessed, determined. That determination was like a silhouette over his entire body, a shadow he could never escape.

Fortunately, he wasn’t ordering her to discuss it. It was the only thing saving his life at the moment.

Natalie met Saban’s eyes. Just for a second, she had been scared to do that, afraid of the satisfaction, the triumph she would have glimpsed there. There was none. Those dark eyes were somber, brooding. And she thought, for a second, she might have glimpsed regret.

“And what would we discuss that I haven’t already learned?” She kept her voice low, though she knew the fear inside her was throbbing through it.

Breeds were amazingly perceptive. Hiding emotions from them just didn’t work.

He breathed out deeply before raking his fingers through his hair and stepping one step closer toward her.

“I endured the tests today as well,” he said.

Natalie flinched, those tests had been more than uncomfortable; they had bordered on too painful.

“The heat has advanced further inside me, the hormone building in it.” He came closer. One step. “Weeks, from the moment I first saw you, I knew what you would be to me. Each day that the heat builds inside, the harder it is to endure another’s touch, no matter male or female, until the effects of the heat begin to ease. My flesh is sensitive, my distaste at another woman’s touch nearly violent.”

Natalie jerked her gaze from his and stared over his shoulder, fighting the tightening of her throat, the tears that wanted to rise.

“Natalie,” he drew the sound of her name out, as though he were relishing each syllable. “I can cook. The steaks are in the freezer. Let me care for you this evening and answer your questions.”

One step closer, his hand reached out, touched her cheek. “Let me care for my mate, if only briefly, if only in this small way.”

“I hate what you’re doing to me. What this is doing to me,” she muttered, feeling the defenses she had been building through the day crumble. He wasn’t demanding anything, he was asking, and it wasn’t a ruse. He wasn’t pretending.

Saban grimaced, his nostrils flaring. “In this moment, I don’t blame you for hating me, boo. Perhaps, at this moment, I hate myself as well. Let me take care of you.” He held his hand out to her. “Just a little bit.”

Natalie stared at his hand, fighting herself now as much as she was fighting him. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen. There was no teasing, no flirting, no deliberate male innocence, which hadn’t gone over well with her at all.

She wondered for a moment who this man was, this Breed whose eyes were so somber, whose expression wasn’t dominating but rather filled with quiet pride and confidence.

She lifted her hand and placed it against his, feeling the roughness of his palm, the strength of his fingers as he clasped it and led her to the kitchen.

“A young Breed teenager, the daughter of a mated pair, she knew you were coming into my life,” he said as he led her to the kitchen table and held her chair out for her.

Natalie sat, uncertain now what to say.

“She’s psychic or something.” He shrugged. “Cassie Sinclair has gifts none of us have really been able to determine, but sometimes she knows things. She told me more than a year ago that you were coming into my life.” He turned from the freezer and cast her an amused, baffled smile. “I didn’t believe her. But she pushed dozens of books off on me: How to Charm Today’s Woman, Sex and the New Generation.” He shrugged before pulling the steaks from the freezer and moving to the counter. “Asinine.”

“But you read them?” Natalie pushed her hair back from her head and tried to breathe through the flash of heat that suddenly tore from her.

And he knew. His head jerked around, a frown pulling at his brows as his eyes suddenly flashed with primal awareness.

“I read them.” His voice was harder, thicker. “If you were going to arrive in my life, then I wanted to be ready.”

The heat tore through her vagina then, causing her to tighten her thighs and hold her breath against it.

Saban’s fists clenched on the counter as his body tightened.

“Saban, I need to go upstairs.”

She moved to rise from the table.

“You need me.” He kept his back to her, but he snarled the words, a declaration, an agonized certainty.

“Not like this.” She breathed out roughly, then tried to draw enough breath into her lungs to breathe through the building contraction of heat tightening in her abdomen. “I trusted you enough to allow you to stay in my home. I trusted Lyons and Wyatt enough to make certain nothing happened to me. You’ve forced me into this.”

He shook his head slowly.

“You know you did,” she whispered, tears finally thickening her voice. “You knew when you kissed me what you were doing.”

“You belong to me.” He turned then, his eyes glowing in his face, hunger and need tightening his features into savagely hewn lines. “You’ve had one day to feel what has grown inside me for weeks. One fucking day, Natalie. I’ve burned for you through the days and the nights. I’ve ached for your touch, and even that you would not give me. I flirted, I teased. I did everything those fucking books said a man should do, and nothing worked.”

Natalie stared back at him, confused, uncertain. “And you thought throwing me into this would?” she finally asked bitterly. “That forcing my compliance was the only step left? You forced this on me, Saban. How is it any different from rape?”

How was it different? His lips opened, fury pounded in his head that she would think such a thing, that she could ever believe he would force such a choice from—

Saban felt it then, the knowledge, the certainty, from her point of view, that it was exactly what he had done. He had given in to his own frustration, his anger at her defiance, his hunger, and he had unleashed it on her in a way she could never fight, one she could never escape.

He had never raped a woman in his life. The Cajun swamp rat who had raised him would have been horrified that the young man he had such pride in at his death, had done something so vile.

The sickness of it clogged his throat, tore at his conscience.

“Ely gave you the hormonal treatment, didn’t she?” he finally asked.

“That injection? Yeah, she shoved something up my veins and slapped a bottle of pills in my hand before we left. Wyatt didn’t give her much of a chance to explain them though.”

He nodded quickly. That sounded like Jonas. Jonas would do that for him, but he had done Saban no favors, no matter what he thought.

“They ease the heat.” His throat was so tight he could barely speak now. “They adjust the hormones during this phase, allow you some ease.” He grabbed the steaks and stalked to the door. “I’ll fix your dinner. Take them. Bath, shower, whatever you need.”

He slammed the door behind him and took a hard breath of fresh air, fighting to push the scent of her need and her anger from his head.

God help him, it was the same as rape.

He slapped the steaks in their protective containers on the narrow table beside the new grill before bracing his hands on the wood and staring along the forests that bordered the house.

He needed to run. He needed the mountains and the silence, he needed the peace that came with it to clear his mind, to think.

God in heaven, he hadn’t meant to do this to her. To make her feel this way. She was everything he had dreamed of for so long. Gentleness, sweetness, intelligence, and determination—and his. Something meant just for him. A gift, an affirmation that he wasn’t a freak of science but instead a product of nature and God’s mercy.

He had waited for her for so long.

Deep into the darkness of night his arms ached for her, even when another woman had lain within them. His heart had beat for her, his soul had burned for her. He hadn’t known who she was, where to find her, but he had known she was there. Known that she belonged to him.

And what had he done to this gift he had so wanted to cherish?

He had taken her will, her control, with a kiss that he still remembered with the greatest of pleasure. A kiss she had met with equal force. One she had been waiting for; he knew she had been waiting for that kiss. But it didn’t excuse it. He had known what he was doing, what would happen; she hadn’t.

“I’m sorry.” The back door opened, and the scent of her wrapped around him then.

“For what?” Rather than looking at her, he lifted the lid to the grill and ignited the flames that curled over the ceramic briquettes inside.

“It’s not the same as rape.”

Saban clenched his teeth and fought the need to fist his hands.

“You decided this for what reason?” He lowered the grill lid and watched it, as though in watching it he could make it heat and burn away the shame inside him.

“Because I already suspected the truth of it,” she finally said. “I knew it existed, and I pushed anyway because you were frustrating the hell out of me. It wasn’t rape, Saban, but neither was it right. And now we’ll both have to deal with this. But I won’t deal with it with lies between us. Not from either side.”