“Here, boo , let me.” He took the keys from her hand as she pulled them from her purse and moved to open the back of the compact SUV the Breed Ruling Cabinet had given her to drive while employed to teach their children.
She was the first teacher to be allowed to teach Breed children who wasn’t a Breed. This was also the first year a Breed child had been allowed in a public school. And she was going to have a nervous breakdown before the news of it ever hit the world.
“I’ll follow you back to the house. I have one of those barbecue grills that I saw on television the other day. I could fix steaks tonight.” He gave her a mocking yet hopeful look.
“You didn’t buy steaks.” She broke her silence, it was just too much. A Breed who was going to grill steaks, and he hadn’t even bought any.
He smiled, satisfaction curving lips that were too damned eatable for her peace of mind. She wanted to take a bite out of them. Taste them. Devour them. And there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to allow that to happen.
“They’re in the cooler in the truck.” He nodded to the black behemoth parked beside her little dove gray front-wheel-drive SUV. It gleamed, black and sinister. She almost smiled, almost softened. Natalie shook her head, jerked her keys from his hand, and stalked to the driver’s door of her own vehicle. She hit the lock release on the key and pulled the door open before stepping into the sweltering confines of the interior.
She didn’t check to see where he was; checking meant she cared, and she wasn’t giving in to it. She drove back to the little two-story house just outside town, pulled into the driveway, and stormed to the house. She didn’t bother with the groceries; he was just going to beat her to them anyway. Instead, she left the door open and entered the house, aware of the disapproval that followed her inside. She wasn’t supposed to enter the house without him; she wasn’t supposed to breathe without him testing the air first; and by God, she was not supposed to melt inside because he did it with such subtle moves that she felt cuddled rather than smothered.
“ Chay , you and I are gonna have a talk.” Just as she suspected, he stomped into the house, six feet four inches of irritated male, decked out in denim and boots as he plopped the groceries on the table. Natalie stared at the bags and wondered if her eggs had a hope in hell of having survived intact. Anger surged inside her, but it was at herself more than at him. Anger that she was letting another man close, risking her heart and her independence on a man she knew would be impossible to get out of her system.
“You know,” she finally said carefully, “I do have a name.”
She lifted her gaze to him, adopting her most severe expression. The one she reserved for the most difficult of children. And it didn’t even seem to faze him.
He glowered down at her, his head bent, his shoulder-length, straight black hair falling around the face of a fallen angel. Green eyes glittered with sparks of irritation, and his expression was too damned sensual to be scary in anything but the most primal of ways.
Oh yeah, Saban Broussard terrified her. She was scared to death she was going to lose control and jump his bones one night when he was parading half-naked around her house. Wouldn’t that look good on her résumé?
“I know your name, boo ,” he growled. “As well I know who your bodyguard is. Me. You do not run from me like a scared little rabbit scurrying from sight. I won’t have it.”
“You won’t have it?” She widened her eyes in amazement. “Excuse me, Mr. Broussard, but you do not have a leash around my neck or ownership papers with my name on them. I do as I please.”
“You do not.” His head lowered, his nose nearly touching her, as anger sparked inside her like wildfire flaring out of control.
Her hands pushed out, flattening against his chest and trying to push him back. Trying, because he wasn’t budging an inch.
“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.