Saskia whimpered against his lips, her body arching stiffly for a moment, as if she meant to fight him. But a second later she melted, her sweet curves easing against his demands for surrender. Her fingers gripped his arms and kneaded, no longer seeking to steady herself but instead taking obvious pleasure in the feel of powerful muscles moving beneath her hands.
This was what he wanted, what he intended to have—his mate heating and yielding and wanting beneath his hands. Nothing else mattered and nothing else was necessary. He would have this relationship, enjoy his mate, get her with cubs, and otherwise live his life exactly the way he wanted. As
ther,
he would accept nothing less than his due.
His beast agreed, roaring its impatience and fighting hard at his already tenuous control. It wanted her now, wanted to come up behind her and cover her, to force the joining of their bodies in the most primitive way. It didn’t care about comfort or mutual pleasure; it would take her here on the cold tile floor if Nic didn’t get ahold of himself. Even if he did, he knew the beast wouldn’t be thwarted for long. About all the man could do now was move them some place where he could ravage her in comfort. He had just enough control left to give her that.
Maybe.
Somewhere in the back of Nic’s mind it registered that she wasn’t fighting him. In fact, she seemed as involved in the kiss as he was. She sucked on his tongue, tangled and teased it with her own, nipped at his lips, and shifted in his arms to press her breasts tighter against his chest. When he shifted his hands to grip her ass and lift her off her feet, she rubbed her bottom into his palms and spread her thighs until she gripped his hips between her legs. She made tiny little mewling sounds of need and clung to his shoulders as he carried her through the door and into the enormous bedroom. When he moved to drop her on the bed and step back to shed his clothes, she refused to release him and growled low in her throat at any attempt he made to put space between them. Somehow, the press of their bodies together had transformed her from the cool, elegant stranger he’d become engaged to into a fierce, demanding tigress in heat.
Thank God and everything holy.
He sank back into their kiss, reveling in the way her body surrounded him, arms and legs clasping him close. He couldn’t wait to feel her sex clasping him, too. He wanted to sink his aching erection deep into the hot cavern at her center and feel them joined together in one sweating, straining body of lust. He wanted to match their stripes until there was no way to tell where he ended and she began.
He wanted her like his next breath.
It didn’t appear that she would be all that difficult to convince. Her body writhed and twisted under his, sinking deep into the softly mounded bedding, then rising up with surprising, agile strength. He loved the feel of her female power, loved the knowledge that because she was his Tiguri mate her body had been designed to match his, to take his power in a way few other women could manage. Even other shape-shifters tended to be intimidated by the strength of a dominant Tiguri. The largest of the big cats, tigers possessed an awesome strength comparable to that of any predator on earth, and their shape-shifting cousins, the Tiguri, easily duplicated that power. Even Leos—the Lion shifters—found themselves reluctant to take on the Tiguri in battle. The same could be said for most female shifters of any species; they preferred not to face off against a grown male Tiguri, on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
As for human women, making love to them felt like trying to embrace a soap bubble—it could be done, and the accomplishment offered a certain sense of satisfaction, but it required so much care and patience that it rarely seemed worth the effort. Of course, Nic had had human lovers, but he could never relax around them, never forget to control his strength for fear of seriously injuring them. The freedom he felt in touching Saskia and knowing she could take anything he could dish out nearly drove him over the edge of reason. The urge to take her, to fuck her, had reached flash point. He had to get inside her.
Now.
Tearing his mouth from hers, Nic reared back and ripped at his shirt, his hands bumping into his mate’s as they both struggled with frantic fingers to strip him naked. Saskia finally won the battle and yanked his arms free of the sleeves before sending the garment flying into the nearest wall. He heard another purr when her hands settled on the bare skin of his back and shoulders, and the warm, rasping sound shot straight to his groin, drawing his balls even tighter.
He cursed, low and profane, and he forced his hands between their bodies to deal with the fastening of his trousers. The backs of his knuckles brushed against the wet folds of her labia and he hissed at the sensation of liquid heat coating his skin. Saskia groaned softly and pressed tighter against him, grinding herself against the back of his hand. That was it. He could take no more.
Abandoning the plan to send his trousers in the direction of his shirt, Nic simply shoved the loosened fabric down off his hips and grabbed his mate’s trembling thighs, positioning her with rough force until their bodies came into perfect alignment. His lips drew back over teeth he knew had to be growing long and sharp as fangs as he gazed down into her unseeing blue eyes and savored one final moment of burning anticipation.
The sound of the telephone rang like a bullet in the wordless moment.
Saskia jumped, awareness bursting back into her eyes as if some magical spell had been broken. Nic cursed in three languages and dropped his head to his fiancée’s sweat-sheened chest. This couldn’t be fucking happening.
Brrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnng!
The second ring mocked him, telling him that the fucking was absolutely not happening, thank you very much. Beneath him, he felt the supple quality of arousal leach from Saskia’s body until she lay stiffly pinned between him and the mattress. Her hands no longer clung to his shoulders in silent demand but braced against them as if warding him off.
“Whoever that is, I’m going to kill them.” He said the words calmly, his voice quiet and level and utterly rational. And in his head, he was wondering how hard it would be to find medieval torture devices on eBay.
Saskia cleared her throat. The sound of nerves and embarrassment made him long for a rack. Or maybe a nice old-fashioned crucifix.
“It must be important, don’t you think?” The third ring nearly drowned out her words, but Nic heard them. It would be hard not to with her mouth practically at his ear. “I mean, I can’t imagine many people who know you wouldn’t realize tonight might be an … awkward time to telephone.”
Nic chuffed in wry amusement. “‘Awkward.’ I suppose that’s one word for it.”
With another oath, he levered himself off his fiancée’s delectable body to sit on the edge of the bed. Reaching for the phone, he saw the way she snatched at a blanket to cover her nudity and decided crucifixion was too merciful for whoever was on the other line. Maybe he should buy a boat. Keelhauling had definite possibilities.
He snatched up the receiver in the middle of the fourth ring. “What?” he roared, hoping he deafened whoever had the nerve to interrupt what had promised to be the greatest sex of his life. Not to mention the most culturally important.
His father’s voice both surprised and worried him.
“You’ve been summoned before the Council of Others,” Stefan announced with no preliminaries. “We both have. They expect us there in fifteen minutes. Or half an hour ago, whichever comes first.”
Nic felt Saskia’s gaze on him, could see her look of concern out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored her. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “We’re not members of the Council. They can’t ‘summon’ us to the fucking restroom. What the hell is going on?”
Behind him, Saskia pushed herself into a sitting position, the blanket clutched to her chest like a wooden shield. He had to struggle to block her out. He didn’t have time for the distraction.
“Apparently there was an attempt a short while ago on the life of the head of the Council,” Stefan said, his voice grim and bitter and filled with sarcasm. “In a surprise move, the other members seem to have jumped to the conclusion that the Tiguri must have something to do with it.”
Damn it. Nic had known matters between the native Others and the new Tiguri inhabitants of the city would come to a head eventually, but he had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon. Hell, he’d been optimistic enough to predict he had at least another month before he had to begin worrying. So much for the best-case scenario.
“Is De Santos dead?”
“No. From what I hear, the jungle beast made his escape without coming to any serious harm.” Stefan, like most Tiguri of his generation, viewed all other Feline shifters as inferior species. Nic didn’t even bother trying to point out his bigotry. “I think we can assume he’ll be present at the inquisition. I’m getting into the car now. I’ll have Robert drive by your apartment to pick you up. I think it’s best if we present a united front in this matter. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Nic was already striding across the room to his closet and yanking out the first things that came to hand. “What about Arcos? Is he on the invitation list, too?”
“I believe he must be, but Gregor is a big boy. He can take care of himself. We’ll see him when we get there. Five minutes,” he repeated, and Nic heard the click of the line going dead.
His thumb viciously punched the off button on the cordless receiver before he tossed the thing onto the top of his dresser. Before the rattle of plastic on wood had faded, he had fastened a pair of faded jeans and was yanking a dark green sweater in place over his head.
“Nicolas?”
The sound of Saskia’s voice startled him. For a second, he’d almost forgotten she was still there. Being accused of attempted murder, even secondhand, could apparently fuck with a guy’s mind.
“I’m going out,” he said, shoving his feet into a pair of battered loafers and reaching for the wallet he habitually pulled out of his pocket and set on the dresser every evening. “Don’t wait up. I have no idea how long this will take.”
“How long what will take?” she demanded, squirming to the edge of the mattress and struggling to her feet. “Nicolas, what’s going on? Who was that on the phone? Why did you ask if De Santos was dead? Did you mean Rafe De Santos?”
He glared at her and headed for the door. “I don’t have time for you, Saskia,” he bit out, his mind already racing toward the interview ahead of him. He had more important things to worry about right now than keeping his new fiancée in the loop, especially since the matter at hand didn’t concern her. “Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that, he exited the room, leaving his new mate behind him and wondering who the hell had decided to mess with the Tiguri. Whoever it was, they would come to regret it. Nic would make sure of that.
Three
Saskia couldn’t decide if she felt more like crying or kicking something.
Scratch that. She knew very well she wanted to kick something, but unfortunately, her fiancé’s arrogant, dismissive, chauvinistic ass wasn’t available at the moment and taking her aggression out on anything else promised nothing more than bitter disappointment. And the definite possibility of a broken toe.
She couldn’t believe the man had left her—just left her!—without a word of explanation. Without so much as a bloody backward glance. One minute he’d been poised to claim her body like an undiscovered country, and the next he’d been marching out the door telling her to go to sleep as if she were a naughty four-year-old up past her bedtime. Just who the hell did he think he was?
With a groan, Saskia slumped back on the bed and stared glumly at the ceiling. She very much feared she knew the answer to that question—Nicolas Preda was a Tiguri male, a
dominant
Tiguri male, and as such he seemed to have been molded very much in the image of all the
theri
before him, men like her father and his, the kind of archaic-minded, pigheaded, mule-stubborn idiots she had vowed as a teenager she would never take as her mate.
So much for the best-laid plans, right?
Saskia’s desire not to marry a man like her father had very little to do with her affection for that man. She adored her father and had from the days when he would come home from work in the evenings and indulge her love of dry, doll-filled tea parties every night before bed. She’d loved him when he’d made it clear that she would not be dating like the other girls she went to school with, and she had loved him when he sent her off to boarding school in Switzerland so she could learn to be a proper mate for a man just like him. She still loved her father, and she couldn’t deny that her deeply rooted desire to please him hadn’t weighed in her decision to accept the proposal offered to her by Nicolas Preda. Of course, her own long-standing infatuation with the man had played a larger role, but now she was beginning to regret her decision.
Not that she had any right to. She had known what she was getting herself into; she’d seen it from the very beginning. The Predas, both young and old, had made it clear from the outset that she—Saskia Eloisa Arcos—had very little to do with the match they were determined to make. Who she was mattered less to them than her bloodlines, her background, and the fact that her family had made very sure to raise her with the traditional values of the Tiguri. As she was growing up, her few friends outside her own kind had teased her often about her family’s old-fashioned ways. She had been the only girl in her middle school who never wore jeans to class, the last girl to experiment with makeup, the only one who was never allowed to attend parties or other events where boys might be present.
She had known from the beginning that her marriage would be arranged for her, and none of her friends had understood how she could pretend to accept that. Why hadn’t she run away? Or just told her parents they were crazy if they thought she was going to be traded to another family like a piece of livestock? Her friends hadn’t understood that Saskia wasn’t pretending; she
did
accept that, the same way she accepted that the sky was blue, the sun rose in the east, and her parents loved her very much. In her world, that was just the way things worked. Why argue with inevitability?