On the Prowl (11 page)

Nicolas’s eyes glowed a bright, intense emerald as he flowed toward her, muscles rippling and flexing in a breathtaking display of masculine power and beauty. Instinctively Saskia gathered herself into a crouch, pulling her legs up under her and shifting her weight forward until she balanced gracefully on her palms and the soles of her feet, her eyes fixed on her approaching mate. With her knees drawn up to her shoulders and her hands pressed to the mattress between her legs, she presented a tantalizing picture to the hungry male. The position stretched her open, placing her sex on vivid display, but her arms partially shielded her, leaving her mate to catch fleeting glimpses of his ultimate goal.

He prowled closer, lowering his head and inhaling deeply to draw her scent inside him. She saw the way his eyelids drooped and his nostrils flared, as if he found her intoxicating, and she felt a surge of feminine satisfaction. He pressed his face to her chest and nuzzled, then trailed a path up to her shoulder with broad swipes of his tongue. When he reached the graceful curve he bared his teeth and nipped sharply. Rather than causing pain, the sharp bite made her purr, and she tilted her head to rub her cheek against his. The crisp rasp of stubble told her he hadn’t bothered to shave when he returned to the apartment, and she savored the tactile pleasure of emerging whiskers.

Her mate growled softly, more a promise than a threat, and crowded closer to her. If she’d had a tail, it would have twitched in response. As it was, her tigress made do, sending her body twisting and turning until she dropped to her knees and faced the head of the bed, insinuating herself between Nicolas’s arms and backing into him. With her bottom nestled against his groin, she arched her back like the cat she was and rubbed skin to skin in blatant invitation.

Nicolas didn’t need to be asked twice.

With a dark rumble of satisfaction, he shifted his weight forward, covering her like a blanket. His chin hooked over her shoulder and nuzzled briefly before his teeth closed around the tender lobe of her ear in a primitive warning. He was done playing. Now he intended to claim his mate.

Saskia shivered at the feel of his big body surrounding hers. Warm skin pressed against her everywhere, his muscled thighs to the backs of hers, hard stomach and chest pinned against her back. His arms braced just under hers to bracket her in place. With his size and strength, he had her trapped. She couldn’t have gotten away if she’d wanted to, but escaping was the furthest thought from her mind. She reveled in his overwhelming presence. Her body heated at the mere smell of him, the sensation of bare skin against bare skin making her soften and flood with moisture at her core. She wanted him, woman to man, mate to mate.

Needed him.

Desperately.

Her breath caught in her throat as he moved behind her with elegant power. A twist of his hips, a curve of his spine, and she felt his erection slide between her swollen lips, searching for her entrance. She tilted her pelvis eagerly, choking on a gasp when he found his mark and began to sink into her. The broad head of his cock spread her open, stretched her to receive him. She felt a sharp sting, then a steady, itching burn as her body struggled against his invasion. The rough texture of the spines that encircled his glans rasped against her inner walls and made her whine, high and desperate. Instinctively she shifted as if to escape, and her mate snarled a warning. Saskia panted, pleasure and discomfort blending in a tangled mess of overwhelming sensation. She needed more, needed to get away, needed something so badly she could taste it, dark and bitter at the back of her throat.

Her fingers scrabbled at the bedclothes and she shifted her weight forward, trying to slide out from under her aroused mate. Nicolas roared and thrust his hips forward, even as his head dropped, teeth closing hard over her shoulder to pin her in place. She felt him enter deeper, working his way into her with shallow digs of his hips until, with a lunge, he broke through her internal barrier and slid home on a single, powerful thrust.

Saskia screamed. It started out as a sound of shock, of outrage at the physical insult to her body, but within the space of a heartbeat it became a primitive expression of exultation. Nicolas echoed it with a yowl of his own. She heard the savage satisfaction in his tone, the possessive note that told her he knew no other man had ever claimed her, and she shivered in reaction. Her virginity had never mattered to Saskia; she had kept it merely from a lack of motivation to be rid of it, and because in the back of her mind she had always felt as if she already belonged to Nicolas. The fact that he noticed and gloried in being the first to touch her thrilled her to her core.

Impatient to experience more, she pressed her shoulders down into the mattress and wriggled her hips with obvious demand. Her mate purred and laved the skin where he had bitten her moments before. Then he set his teeth to her again and held her still as he began a hard, steady rhythm of claiming.

She choked back ragged cries of pleasure as his body moved deep and strong inside her. His spines, designed to stimulate her to ovulation, rasped against her inner walls with every withdrawal. The sensation was like fingernails on her clit, one part pain and three parts ecstasy. She thrust back against him, trying to match his demanding tempo, struggling to wring every drop of sensation from the fierce mating.

The sound of high-pitched whines and sobs almost distracted her until she realized they came from her own mouth, broken and ragged because of the way she had to struggle for breath. She might as well have been running a marathon, because every ounce of oxygen became a rare and precious resource. Under the sounds she made she could also hear the rough slap of flesh against flesh as his hips thudded against her backside on every powerful thrust. She heard the raw, wet sounds of her sex clasping around him, and the animal grunts he made as he worked furiously over and within her trembling body.

She lost all track of time. They could have strained together for hours, or days, or seconds; Saskia had no idea. All she knew was that
this,
this was what her tigress had been craving, hungering for, since the moment she set her eyes on her childhood crush all grown up and glorious. The beast within her had needed to be taken, claimed, possessed, and the disappointment of the night before had driven her to the brink of her self-control. Now that control had snapped, and Saskia had become a creature of pure lustful instinct, a needy, greedy female at the mercy of her ferocious mate.

Oh, how she gloried in it.

The firm grip on her shoulder didn’t hurt in the least; instead it acted like a live wire from her mate’s mouth straight to her quivering pussy. Every swipe of his tongue, every sting of his teeth, every draw of his mouth as he swallowed and purred and pinned her in place made her muscles clamp around him like a fist. In fact, she clasped around him so hard, it amazed her he could still manage to pull out far enough to power his mind-numbing thrusts.

Her breath worked in and out like a bellows, making her head spin and her throat go raw. She strained for air, strained for pleasure, strained for
more
until she thought her heart would burst, and she didn’t even care. All she cared about was this moment and this man. This mating.

The climax snuck up on her. It stalked her like another tiger, crouching low in the camouflage of the forest, waiting and watching for its moment to strike. The moment came, unexpectedly, when strong white fangs released their grip on her shoulder and grazed a careful line up the curve of her neck to the sensitive hollow behind her ear. Hot breath stirred the tendrils of hair that curled there, caressed the tender skin into trembling softness. Then, a tongue came out, swiping at the tiny trickle of blood at her shoulder, following the path of the tendon back to that magic patch of flesh, and lapping away a salty film of sweat. A cry tore from her throat, rough and aching, and her body clenched, quivering endlessly on the edge of the precipice. Until her mate shifted, pressed himself high and hard inside her, parted his lips, and let his teeth graze the delicate shell of her ear. In a soft, toneless, airless whisper, he purred one word directly into her head and heart, and Saskia leapt blindly into climax.

He whispered, “
Mine.
”

*   *   *

She woke feeling as if either she’d just been in a car crash and trauma had wiped away all memory of the incident or someone had snuck into her room while she slept and beat her soundly with a baseball bat, for some reason concentrating rather obscenely on the sensitive area between her thighs.

Wincing, Saskia rolled and stretched and discovered her muscles would scream in protest. She groaned, the sound oddly hoarse, and memory came rushing back. With about the same force as the previously mentioned baseball bat, this time aimed right at the back of her head.

She was mated.

Quite thoroughly, from the feel of it.

Flipping onto her back, Saskia pulled the rumpled blankets to her chin and scowled at the empty bed beside her. Judging by the light spilling in through the windows, she had dozed until mid-afternoon—hardly surprising given the vigorous bout of pre-nap exercise—but the scene before her bore a disturbing similarity to that morning. Once again, she had been deserted in her own bedroom, her mate nowhere to be found.

Clearly, the two of them still needed to discuss a thing or two.

Saskia pushed herself into a sitting position and winced at the tenderness between her legs. When she slid her feet to the floor and took a tentative step toward the bathroom, she actually groaned. She’d known that the use of a bunch of unfamiliar muscles in an unfamiliar activity might leave her a little sore, but this seemed excessive. She could barely walk.

Hobbling carried her into the master bath, where she used the toilet, hissing in a breath when the tissue came away stained pink with blood. Knowing that a ruptured hymen led to virginal bleeding was one thing, but seeing proof of it in her hand felt like something very different. She felt a little contemplative as she stood at the sink washing her hands, then removed the few remaining pins from the tangled mass of her hair. It had fallen halfway down her back sometime during the wrestling match with Nicolas, and sleeping on the resulting birds’ nest hadn’t done her any favors. She brushed it out quickly and secured it in a no-nonsense ponytail before returning to the bedroom to dress.

She couldn’t quite decide how she felt as she tugged on comfortable, stretchy yoga pants—about all her body would tolerate at the moment—over a plain set of cotton bra and panties. She had always thought that joining with her mate for the first time would leave her feeling content, at peace, secure in her mating and her place in the world. Instead, she felt as if she’d opened a door with excitement brimming over, only to find herself stumbling into a dark room without having any idea where to find a light switch. Sure, the sex had been better than anything she’d ever read about or heard spoken of or even contemplated in the furthest reaches of her subconscious, but that didn’t mean she had any idea how she ought to feel about it.

She tugged a soft jersey pullover on over her head and stared into the full-length mirror that decorated the inside of her closet door. Her face looked pale, and with her makeup from the morning a distant memory, the dark circles had returned to the skin under her eyes. She looked tired and vulnerable and a little uncertain. Was that really the way she wanted to appear when she went to beard her tiger in his den?

Was there really anything she could do about it?

Making a face at herself, Saskia closed the closet door and once again padded barefoot out of the master suite, searching for her mate. This time, at least, she managed to find him.

He’d left the door to his office slightly ajar, lamplight spilling out into the hallway. The interior room lacked windows, so when she poked her head inside she saw Nicolas’s face lit by the glow of the banker’s light atop his desk and the tall floor lamp beside it. He didn’t look up when she stepped closer, but she saw his fingers tighten around the pen he held and she knew he had sensed her presence.

She pushed the door fully open and hesitated on the threshold. She felt like she should say something, but she couldn’t think what. Did she apologize for screaming at him earlier? It didn’t seem appropriate, considering she’d meant every word she’d said; and thanking him would feel ridiculous, not to mention pathetic. She supposed she could ask him what he was doing, but she wasn’t sure she cared. What she really wanted to know was what he was thinking, but she couldn’t ask him that for fear he might tell her.

Was it supposed to be this hard to talk to the man she’d be spending the rest of her life with?

Her weight shifted from one foot to the other, and Nicolas finally raised his head. For a minute, they stared at each other, neither speaking. It felt like the longest minute of Saskia’s life. Then Nicolas carefully laid down his pen.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice even and very controlled.

It made Saskia shiver. “Fine.”

Another awkward silence.

“Did you sleep well?”

She nodded stiffly. “Very well.”

“Good.”

He stared at her, his eyes dark green and impenetrable as virgin jungle. She could almost see the vines and bushes blocking her path.

Saskia cleared her throat. “I, uh … I thought that … since we both missed lunch … I thought you might be hungry. I could make something to eat.”

She held her breath, hoping he would recognize the offer as her tentative overture of friendship. Not that “friendship” seemed even remotely to describe their complex relationship, but it was the best Saskia could do while she still nursed both anger at the night before and the soreness from their earlier encounter.

He waited a long time to answer, so long that she wondered what she would do when he rejected her, but his words, when they came, almost reassured her.

“That sounds good. I just need a few minutes to finish up here.”