Khan (23 page)

Khan doubted that anything would slow
down Dylan and wondered aloud what would happen to the man when he found his
mate and he could no longer cat around, pun intended.

“Don’t know, but I can’t wait to find
out.” Walker and he were still laughing about it when they pulled in front of
the house. Instead of letting her be taken up on a gurney, Khan picked Monica
up and carried her up to the bedroom himself. He needed to hold her, and stripped
down after everyone left and crawled into bed with her. He held her to him and
closed his eyes. Sleep claimed him almost immediately.

Monica woke slowly. She was afraid,
actually, and didn’t want to wake Tony if he was still in the room with her. She
opened one eye and looked around the room, knowing instantly where she was. She
heard the shower running and knew that Khan was in there. She sat up, wanting
to see how much damage Tony had done to her.

She was still staring at her belly when
Khan came out of the bathroom. She looked up at him and knew that whatever had
happened had been a lot worse than she thought it had been. He looked pale and
upset.

“Let me explain. There was no other—”

“Is he…did you kill him?” Khan nodded
and dropped his head. “Look at me, please.”

He did, and she could see the pain in
his face. “I had no choice. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did have one, but
I didn’t like it, so I killed him. I killed him because I could and because he’d
hurt you.”

She nodded. She would have done the same
thing if he’d been hurt. But she could tell there was more and waited for him
to speak. When he didn’t, she did. “I was dying. I knew it too.” He nodded. “He,
Tony, said that he wanted me to tell him that I loved him and that I’d made a
mistake by marrying you. And since I know that I didn’t, I can only assume that
you saved me, gave me some sort of miracle drug, and here I am. Mended and
well. But that’s not true, is it?”

He looked at her and she knew what he’d
done. Her breath caught at what she saw in his mind. Khan walked toward her and
sat on the edge of the bed.

“There was no way for you to make it to
the hospital. Walker tried his best, but I knew that…Walker told me either I
converted you and you died, or you died in that hotel room with Barr’s body
close by.” He looked away. “I didn’t want to, but if you died, I wanted it to
be because we’d done everything we could to save you.”

She thought about being a cat. That didn’t
bother her. None of it did really. Not even knowing that Khan had killed the
man who had tried to kill her. She reached for his hand and he pulled away from
her and stood up.

“I know that we should have talked about
this. There really wasn’t any time. You were dying. I couldn’t live without
you. Had you been lost to me, I would have attacked Walker when I could and had
Caitlynne shoot me like she threatened to.”

Monica was going to have to get more
details on that later. Right now, her mate was hurting and she could fix it. “So
you bit me and made me what you are. And no, we hadn’t discussed it because you
refused to even consider it. And then you go and do it without as much as a
simple question to me.” He started pacing the room and she knew that she had to
do this to him. “What were you thinking? That I’d just say thank you, Khan, for
saving my life and making me into something else?”

He didn’t answer, but she could feel his
anger. When she told him to stop pacing and answer her, she could see the anger
vibrate off him. He was as pissed as she’d ever seen him.

“I did what I had to do.” He stretched
his neck, something she knew he did when he was nearing his breaking point. “You
were dying and I did what I needed to do to save you. End of discussion.”

She leapt out of the bed and went to
stand in front of him. He tried to walk around her, but she shoved him, a
little too hard, into the dresser behind him. When he growled at her, she
growled right back.

“I’ll say when it’s finished. This is my
body and my life you changed, was it not?” He nodded. “Then we have things to
talk about. Like what were you thinking?”

He put his hands on her shoulders. For
all his apparent anger, he was gentle, his hands barely gripping her. Khan’s
eyes were darker in the passion of his anger at her, but she knew that when he
blew, he would never hurt her.

“You were dying. I had to—”

“Bullshit. Tell me why you did it.” She
waited, wondering if she should push him more. Before she could ask again, he
kissed her.

The kiss was passionate, not hurtful. She
wrapped her arms around his neck and held him to her as he took and took. When
he lifted his head, he looked calmer; he even smiled.

“I did it because I couldn’t stand the
thought of living another day without you. I did it because I need you. Now and
forever. I did it because, even though you drive me insane most of the time, I
love you more than I’ve loved anyone in my life.” He kissed her again. “I do
love you. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I knew that we should have—”

“Khan? Shut up and make love to me. With
me. Please?”

“Gladly.” He picked her up and carried
her to the bed. When he stood over her and started taking off his shirt, she
sat up to watch him. She doubted that she’d ever get bored seeing him naked. But
before he took off his pants, he reached into his pocket, and sat down beside
her.

“I was told you wanted me to put this
back on you.” She turned to look at him before he could put it around her
throat. “Apparently, Dylan has a lot of things he can do that he’s never shared
with us.”

She nodded. “I’m sure he does. He’s a
very quiet and reserved man, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s always been. I guess we know
why now. He’s been afraid that we’d feel differently about him if we ever found
out just how much he knows.” Khan turned her around and sat her over his lap. “But
I don’t want to talk about my brothers right now. I want to make love to my
wife.”

He took her mouth and rolled them so
that she was on her back and he over her. When he took the neck of her shirt
and ripped it from her, she watched his eyes, not what he was doing. She felt
something move along her skin and looked up at him.

“It’s your cat. She wants mine.” He took
her nipple in his mouth and nipped gently at it before lifting his head again. “When
we get home, we’re going to run in the woods behind my house and I’m going to
let him have you. He wants to mark you both.”

The next time her cat moved, she let
her. Khan lifted his head from her breast again and looked down at her. His cat
was close too. She could feel him.

“We’re going to mess up this room if you
keep that up. My cat wants to come out and play.” Khan buried his face in her
shoulder and she felt him purr. It moved along her body as if he was touching
her.

“Khan, I can’t…how do I keep her from
coming out?” He laughed and stood up. “Khan?”

“Get a shirt on. We’re going outside to
play.” He reached for his shirt and, on bare feet, padded to the door. “Hurry,
Monica. The sun will be up soon and I would prefer that the household didn’t
see where we were going.”

He walked out the door, and she sat
there for a full second before she leapt from the bed to go after him. Grabbing
up the first thing she touched, she went out the door after him.

~~~

Khan stood on the deck and waited for
her. He was excited and knew that she was as well. When she wrapped her arms
around him from behind, he put his hands over hers and held her.

“We’ll need to be naked to keep us from
having to enter the house without our clothes. We can shift with clothes on,
but it tears them from us. We’ll go out beyond those trees to do it.” He felt
her nod. “To shift, all you need to do is think about her coming to you. It won’t
hurt you. Maybe a slight discomfort the first time because she won’t know what
to do either. But when you want to shift back, just think of your human self
and she’ll flow over you like the cat will.”

He could feel her nervousness and
waited. He knew she had questions and would have many more after this. Khan was
nervous too. He loved her and didn’t want her to be afraid.

“Will she hurt you?” He started to laugh,
but was glad he didn’t when she continued. “She is making me think that she
wants your blood. I don’t know what that means really other than she wants to
hurt you for whatever reason.”

“She does. Not mine really, but my cat’s.
She wants to bond with him as much as mine does yours. They need to mark each
other, and bloodletting and the scarring after is a way to show the world of
other cats that we belong to each other.” He turned to look down at her. “Are
you ready?”

She nodded, and they walked hand in hand
toward the trees. When she started to undress, she asked him another question. This
one made him pause.

“When will I be in heat? Caitlynne said
that’s what it’s called. She told me that you would know and that it happens
four times a year.” She glanced at him as she pulled off her pants. “I want a
baby with you.”

“Once you are in heat the first time, we’ll
both know when you’re going into your time afterwards. When we have a child,
you’ll cycle around again, and we’ll have to time it.” When he was naked, he
stood before her, his cock hard and aching. “When do you want to have a baby,
Monica? Do you want to wait awhile?”

Naked, she came to him and wrapped her
arms around him. When he cupped her ass and brought her flush against him, she
lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. He rolled her over his cock
several times, her juices coating him. He pressed her against the nearest tree
and took her mouth. If they kept this up, they were never going to make it to
the forest.

“I want a baby as soon as we can,” she
said against his throat. “The next time we are in heat, I want you to give me
your child.”

Khan lifted her up and brought her down
hard onto his cock. She purred and he nearly came from the feeling it gave him.
Moving in and out of her quickly, he brought her to a quick peak before setting
her down and away from her. When she reached for him, he stopped her.

“No. I want to come inside of you as a
cat. I want to take you to the ground and fuck you from behind. Shift for me,
Monica. I want to see that beautiful cat of yours.”

He watched her struggle with it. Khan
knew that he could call her cat, but he also knew that it was painful that way,
and he wanted her first experience to be as wonderful as he could make it, as
they could make it. As she started to shift, her arms stretching and her fur beginning
to appear, he watched as she went from a beautiful woman to an even more
beautiful cat.

He dropped to his knees as she moved
toward him. “Christ, baby, you’re gorgeous. I’ve never seen a lovelier cat.”

He rubbed her behind her ears and was
rewarded with a deep purr. When she pawed at him, he let her take him to the
ground and played with her. When she backed off, he stood up and watched her as
he, too, shifted.

Their connection was immediate. He’d
never been able to connect with her verbally as a human and hoped that her
being a cat would help them. When she took off running ahead of him, he let
her. They were safe here, and he promised himself that when they were home, he’d
teach her that she had to keep up with him. There were predators even on their
own land. When he felt her fear, he realized she’d gotten too far ahead and
leapt after her.

“Stay back. He might hurt you.”
She had a large
grizzly cornered and he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“I said to stay—”

When she sat down and cocked her head at
the bear, he dropped down to his four paws as well. They seemed to be having a
conversation, and Khan sat down as well. Daniel had asked to use this land too
when he was in town and apparently had been given permission.

“He said that he knows me. He said that
I contacted him when I was hurt.”
She looked back at him.
“He’s a
human.”

“Technically, he’s a werebear. And yes. He
called the house and told me that you’d contacted him when you were hurt. He
helped us find you when we did.”
Khan shivered when he thought of
finding her as he had.
“He’s one of the good guys.”

“So he says. He said that he can whoop
my ass if I try to tackle him. Is that true?”

Khan stood up and looked at the giant of
a bear. He had to weigh in at least seven hundred pounds. Her cat was probably
a quarter of that if that much, and only because she was a were and not a
regular panther.

“I think you can take him.”
She must have
told Daniel what he said, because he growled at him.
“But not today. We have
plans.”

He took off in the opposite direction of
Daniel, and he knew that she followed him. He took her to a place he’d
discovered a few days ago before all this had happened. As soon as he saw it
again, he knew that she’d love it as well.

The lake was manmade, but no less
beautiful. He sat on the edge of it and watched her walk around the bank next
to him. She sat too and leaned her head against his. He could smell her now
that they had stopped running, and he nipped at her muzzle. When she stood up,
he came up behind her and put his paws to her shoulder. She dropped down, but
not without snarling at him. His blood heated at her response.