"Haley, you don't want to touch me right now," he told her softly. She couldn't help it. She touched. She reached out, letting her palm smooth over his chest and feeling her breath catching in her chest as she felt the heat, the hard muscle rippling beneath his tough skin, and the ultrasoft feel of that darker pelt against her flesh.
"It's beautiful," she whispered, lifting her gaze to his as she lifted her other hand and touched him more.
"Don't. Haley, please." His hands gripped her wrists, but he held her in place, he didn't move her, didn't pull her from him. "You don't understand what that hormone does to me. You don't know how I burn for you."
"Why me?" she whispered. "Why did you choose me?" His gaze was heavy, black eyes that swirled with dark color and hints of emotion. They gleamed with life, with hunger, and with more than lust.
"I saw you," he said. "A smile on your face, your pretty eyes lit with laughter and hope and joy. And you dazzled me, Haley. You always dazzle me. Confuse me. Draw me. It doesn't take love for mating heat to begin, but if love truly does exist, then I knew that feeling the first moment I saw your smile. I claimed you, when I never meant to claim anything or anyone that could be taken from me. I claimed you, Haley. Now if you don't get the hell away from me, all choice I would have given you is going to be taken from you."
Chapter 6
Noble never would have believed that he had the strength to hold back as he did. To allow Haley to touch him, despite his hold on her wrists, to allow her to pet him.
And she was petting him. Stroking her palms over his flesh, feeling the slight rasp of the darker hairs that made the spots covering his chest and arrowing down his abdomen before spreading out over his thighs. They weren't large spots. Some were oddly shaped, some smaller than others. They were not human, a glaring reminder of what he was. Part animal. Bred from the DNA of the jaguar. And at the moment he had never felt more like an animal. His c**k was swollen in his jeans, thick and hard, throbbing in a hunger unlike anything he had known before he hungered for Haley. His fingers circled her wrists as he forced himself to watch her, to stare down at her. Watching the latent sensuality in her expression as she touched him. She was enjoying it. Touching him with stark innocence, discovery, and joy.
"You're so warm," she whispered.
"Haley, I'm burning," he warned her roughly.
He didn't want her to stop touching him. He wanted it to continue forever. But he knew that wasn't possible. Not yet. He couldn't let her strip his control, because if she did, then he would take the choice from her. He would mate her, even knowing it was possible she didn't love him. She said she didn't. But he could smell her. He had smelled the emotions, the pheromones breeds and mates created together, and he could smell the subtle scent of it on her. It made him crazy, smelling it, knowing he couldn't have her, that she wouldn't understand the animal he was and that he couldn't force her into the mating.
The animal that stretched inside him didn't care though. It wanted. It ached. It snarled relentlessly for the taste of her.
"If you keep stroking me, you know what's going to happen," he told her.
"Maybe I don't believe you." She looked up at him through her lashes, her gray eyes nearly blue as her features flushed with arousal.
With true, pure arousal. This wasn't heat-induced. It wasn't hormone-induced. It was her hunger for him. Pure and sweet and filling his senses.
"You believe me, Haley." He could see it in her eyes, in her expression. She didn't want to believe him, but she knew it was there. "You think I'll hold back. That I'll let you pet and stroke me and keep the need I have for you under control. What happens when I break? When I take that choice from you?" And he didn't want to. He wanted to luxuriate in the sensations of her hands on his flesh, touching him, stroking him. If only this.
She stared up at him. "Is it that bad?" Worry filled her eyes and he saw her intentions to draw back, to move from him, to leave him.
"I'll warn you when it gets that bad." Ah hell. He was insane. He had passed that point minutes ago, and he was encouraging her to go further?
"Are you sure?" Hesitation filled her now, and he didn't want her hesitation.
"I'm sure." He was crazy. That was exactly what he was, insane. The need for her touch outweighed everything else and made him insane to think he could control his response.
"I've been dying to touch you," she whispered as he released her hands and reached behind him to the footboard of the bed, gripping the wood tightly with desperate fingers. He tipped his head back. He wasn't going to watch. He couldn't watch her.
"Touch me then." He could feel the sweat gathering on his back. Her touch was like electric pleasure. It shimmered over his flesh, dug talons of exquisite need beneath if, and left him tight, tense, torn between stopping her and begging her for more. He would probably end up begging her for more, that was how damned crazy he was, a true glutton for punishment. Or for pleasure.
"Tell me when it's too much," she whispered.
"Gotcha." He gave her a sharp nod.
Too much had already been done and gone. Too much was the feel of his balls drawn excruciatingly tight and the head of his c**k flaring thick and hard, and throbbing like a damned wound. Too much was when he felt her lips touch his chest and her hot little tongue licking over a spot. That was too damned much.
Haley let her senses become immersed in the need to just touch him. Touching should be okay, she told herself. It wasn't a kiss, at least, not his kiss. It was just his flesh, just those intriguing little spots and the dampness of his flesh as she felt his flesh heat.
It was moving slowly, hesitantly into the desires that had never made sense where he was concerned. As though without even trying he touched a hidden part of her, drawing it free, and teasing it to be wild with him.
Without saying a word. Without touching her, without tempting her with anything more than a look or the quirk of his lips. He tempted that unknown something inside her.
"I love how you feel." She touched his hard, rippling abs with her hands, smoothed over them to the band of his jeans and back up.
She tasted him. She kissed his chest, licked at several spots, feeling the ultrasoftness of the tiny hairs against her tongue. Then, in a move more daring than she had ever considered, she raked her teeth over the flesh beside a stiff, hard male nipple.