She stomped to the phone, jerked it off its base, and her finger stabbed at the button programmed to ring in Callan Lyons’s main office.
Saban frowned. “Callan has nothing to do with this.”
The look she flashed him would have silenced a lesser man. Hell, it almost silenced him.
“Mr. Lyons.” Her voice was sugary sweet and lifted every hair on the back of Saban’s neck. He could only imagine Lyons’s expression and the frustration that would be twisting his savagely hewed features.
“Oh yes, we do have a problem,” she said politely, her smile tight. “You’re going to have a dead Breed in, oh, I’d give him twenty minutes, if someone from Sanctuary doesn’t pick him up. I do believe he’s rabid. Someone needs to save him, or I’m going to put him out of his misery.”
As she listened, the sides of her nose began to twitch, and Saban had to restrain his grimace.
“I don’t care if Coyotes are swarming Sanctuary with grenade launchers. Get some of those badass Breeds you prize so highly out here to collect him, or I’m going to kill him. And after I kill him, I’ll hang his mangy, worthless hide in my front yard to show everyone else exactly how it’s done. Twenty minutes.” She slammed the phone down.
“One of your handlers will be here to pick you up soon. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, and don’t find yourself anywhere near me after that.”
She stalked across the kitchen, her pert little nose in the air, her face set in lines of rejection, denial, and fury.
His mate was denying him. Not that he had expected anything less, but with a spirit as strong as his Natalie’s was, there was only one way to combat it.
He caught her as she attempted to brush past him, swung her around, surrounded her with his arms, and before more than a gasp could pass her lips, he had them in a kiss. His arms tightened around her, lifted her, bore her through the doorway until he was able to find the couch and fall into it, one hand cupping the back of her head and holding her lips to his. She wasn’t fighting it.
She was furious, enraged, but she wasn’t fighting his kiss. Her greedy lips were suckling at his tongue, and it was heaven. Her hands were in his hair, twining in it, tangling in it, and pulling him closer as a ragged female sound of hunger tore through his senses.
She was like a flame burning in his arms, blistering with her kisses, with the ragged sound of her pleasure, tightening his cock, his balls, hell, every muscle in his body with the need to possess her, to claim her so deeply that she could never deny him again.
“I hate this!” Snarling and filled with outrage, her voice stroked over him in shades of arousal and need as his lips lifted from hers.
Saban framed her face, his hands relishing the feel of her flesh as he stared into her eyes, read her inability to deny the pulsing desperation of his touch.
“I thank God for this…and for you,” he whispered, allowing his thumb to brush over her swollen lips, his tongue to taste her on his lips. “Hate me as you please, Natalie. Curse me, revile me until hell freezes over, but it changes nothing. It can change nothing. You’re mine.”
Natalie struggled beneath the statement, fighting to refute it, to find some way to counter it. But how was she supposed to fight anything when desire clawed through her system with talons of fiery lust and pulsing heat?
She had wanted him before; God knew she had. Fighting that need night after night had made her insane, snappy, frustrated. But now—now it was like some demon of lust clawed at her womb, tore at her clit, and tightened bands of wicked, agonizing heat around each.
She arched, totally involuntarily, against his hips as they pressed between her thighs, the ridge of his erection digging into the tender flesh of her pu**y as the subtle flexing of his powerful thighs stroked the denim-covered ridge against her.
She could feel her juices spilling from her sex, moistening her panties and preparing her for him. Preparing her for something she knew would tie her to him forever. That was the warning her brain had been screaming for weeks. To get away, to escape while she could still run, and to put as much distance between her and the luscious Jaguar as possible.
“You can’t do this,” she gasped as one of his hands smoothed down her neck and gripped the slender strap of her camisole top.
“I was born to do this,” he growled.
The feel of the small strap sliding over her shoulder had her lungs pumping for oxygen, her lips parting to draw more in. How was she supposed to breathe? He surrounded her, sucked all the air out of the room, and he was touching her. Undressing her.
“I have dreamed of nothing but this since the moment I laid eyes on you.” He traced the rising flesh of her br**sts as they spilled over the top of her lacy bra. Her ni**les hardened violently, becoming so sensitive she wondered if she could orgasm from the rasp of the lace against them.
“Saban.” She licked her lips, tasting him, needing more of him. The hormone, as he called it, was worse than addicting. Already she could feel the need for it overtaking her senses, battling with her common sense, and topping it with little struggling.
“Ah, here, how pretty is this.” He smoothed the strap of her bra over her shoulder, then eased one cup away from a straining breast.
Her nipple was cherry red, swollen and needy. She was almost embarrassed at the state of it. A testament to how long it had been since she had been touched? Or a testament to the power of that freaky hormone he was talking about?
She needed his lips there, needed his mouth suckling her, stroking her past the point of sanity.
“Look how sweet, cher .” He touched his fingertip, strong, calloused, to the hard tip. Natalie felt the breath rasp from her throat. Her back arched, driving her nipple into his touch as her head fell back and she let her eyes close. She just wanted this touch. Just this once. Right now.
“Please, Saban.” Was that her? Her voice? Her begging for something she knew would destroy the independence she had fought so hard for? Was she insane?
“ Cher , sweet petite bébé ,” he groaned. “Anything. Anything you need.”
She felt his lips first, brushing against the violently sensitive puckered flesh. Then his tongue, swiping over it, hot and wet and wringing a cry from her lips a second before she lost the ability to breathe. His mouth surrounded the tip as the fingers of one hand caught its mate. He covered the heated flesh, burned it, licked it, sucked it into his mouth, and fed from the hunger that began to pour from inside her. Natalie was unaware of time, place, or reality. Nothing mattered but the hunger. Nothing mattered but his touch. One hand on her other breast, the other pushing the elastic waist of her cotton pants down her hips, delving beneath them.