“You’re fired,” she snapped.
“You can’t fire me; you can only quit.” He smirked. “Until that time you will obey the precautions made for your safety, or you will deal with me.”
“I’m just real scared of you!” Her hands went to her hips, her lips flattened. “What are you going to do, growl me to death? Make me watch baseball until my eyes fall out of my head? Oh no, wait, you’re going to take all my TV dinners.” Mock fear rounded her eyes. “Oh, Saban, I’m so scared. Please don’t.”
He growled. It wasn’t a hard vibration of sound, rather a subtle rumble that had the more cautious part of her brain urging wariness. And she might have paid attention if she weren’t so damned mad.
“You are in my way.” She lifted herself until her nose touched his. “Get out of it.”
His expression changed then, shifted. His eyes narrowed, and the savage, remorseless determination she’d heard all Breeds possessed flashed in his eyes.
She should have run then and there. She should have turned tail and run as fast as those rabbits he’d mentioned earlier.
The minute his hands latched on her upper arms, the second she realized his intention and his head lowered, she should have slammed her knee into his groin and had done with it.
If she’d had time.
Between one second and the next his lips covered hers, his tongue pushed between her lips as they parted in surprise, and oh hell in a handbasket, she was lost.
Those eatable, kissable lips were devouring hers. His tongue stroked inside her mouth as the taste of heated spice filled her senses.
His kiss had a taste. Not the normal tastes a kiss had, but the taste of a wild promise, a desert afternoon, heated and filled with mystery and hunger.
Natalie found herself melting against him. She shivered. That hard, luscious body braced her weight as his hands cupped her rear and lifted her closer. His head slanted, the kiss grew deeper, a hard growl rasping his throat as she let her lips surround his probing tongue, and she sought more of his taste.
It was there, each time she caressed the tongue twining with hers, subtle, urging her to consume more, to hold him closer, to devour this kiss.
And it terrified her. She felt her independence, hard-won and imperative, fighting beneath the claiming she could feel coming, screaming out in warning until she jerked back, struggled, stumbled from his grip as she stared back at him, panting from the need suddenly tearing through her.
She lifted her hand, touched his lips. Lips that mesmerized her, left her aching, a miracle of pleasure, just as she had known they would be.
“You’re mine.” There was no sexy teasing in his voice, no flirty seductiveness. His dark eyes glittered with predatory awareness and with triumph.
Her hand dropped away from him.
“You’re insane,” she gasped.
“Mine.”
TWO
Saban watched as Natalie’s eyes grew wider, a hint of fear flashing in the molasses depths, mixing with the anger and the arousal.
He knew what he had done. Knew he had spilled the potent mating hormone to her system in that kiss, and he knew he should feel guilty. He should feel remorse pounding through his head rather than satisfaction.
“You feel it now, don’t you, Natalie.” He drew her name out, tasted it on his tongue and relished the sound of it.
He had kept himself from using it, held it back, knowing he couldn’t say it without the breath of ownership in his tone, as it was now.
And she heard it, as he had always known she would.
“I feel your insanity.” She moved quickly away from him, wariness tightening her body.
Saban watched her, letting his gaze track each movement as he inhaled the scent of her, tasted her against his tongue. He could still taste her; beneath the taste of the mating hormone was the taste of her passion, of the needs she kept tightly bottled inside her and the battle she waged to hold it all in.
His Natalie, as intelligent as she was, as softly rounded and sensual as the feminine core of her was, was disillusioned, hurt, all because of one weak-minded, inept man that hadn’t the good sense to see the gift God had given him.
And now he faced that woman, knowing he had committed the ultimate crime in her eyes once she learned what that kiss actually meant. He had taken her choice from her. He had begun something which tied her irrevocably to him and thereby took away the control she so highly revered.
“I’m not insane,” he finally sighed. “At least no longer.” He swiped his hands through his loose hair and stared around the kitchen.
Damn, he should have known better than to listen to Cassie and her lectures on women who did not possess Breed DNA. He had taken advice from an eighteen-year-old, had seriously considered every word she had said, and now he’d pay for it.
“What do you mean? No longer?” Her eyes were narrowed, and her body was burning.
The sweet, spicy scent of her desire wrapped around his senses and had him clenching his teeth at the need to taste it, to taste her.
“What I mean doesn’t matter now.” Saban rubbed at the back of his neck before lowering his hand and staring back at her.
She had the width of the kitchen between them, the scent of her coffee mixed with the soft fragrance of the apple pie she had baked yesterday morning and the scent of the woman herself. It was as powerful an aphrodisiac as the mating hormone.
She watched him closely, perhaps too closely. He could see her mind working, see her sorting out the odd heat that came from his kiss, the taste of the hormone in her mouth and her need for more. And he watched as she began to suspect the truth.
His chest actually ached, and regret shimmered in his soul as his Natalie swallowed tightly, and her eyes darkened.
“The tabloids aren’t all bullshit, are they?” she whispered. “There is some kind of virus that you spread with a kiss.”
Saban snorted at the simplicity of the statement.
“The tabloids are the ones who are insane.” He shifted his shoulders, uncharacteristically nervous in the face of this explanation. “It’s called mating heat,” he finally said softly, wishing he was holding her, that he had just taken her, that he had bound her to him more fully before he had to explain this. “There’s no explanation for it, and so far, it seems it happens only once. Only one woman was meant to be my mate, and that woman is you.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts, her lips pouting with instant denial, though she only said, simply, “Go on.”
Go on. Hell, he was no good at this.
“Simply put, you are my mate. The mating hormone ensures that you won’t deny me or my claim instantly. It’s rather like an aphrodisiac. Like an addictive aphrodisiac.”
Her lips flattened. “It’s not a sickness? A virus?”
“You will not become ill,” he snapped, more to distract her from this line of questioning than for any other reason. “Merely aroused. Very aroused.” Damn. He growled that last word, his anticipation thickening in his voice as he felt the need inside him burning hotter than before, flaming across his nerve endings.
She was his. She may as well resign herself to this now. He would give her as much explanation as he had been cleared to give, but no more.
“And if it’s not what I want?” Slow and precise, the words dripped from her lips like a death knell. He was very certain this was not what she wanted. And in ways, he couldn’t blame her, but unlike those who did not carry the Breed DNA, Saban had a very healthy respect for Nature and all her choices.
“Once the heat begins, it can’t be reversed.” It could be eased, but he didn’t have to tell her that yet. There were many things he couldn’t tell her yet.