Christmas Heat

Chapter 5

Hours later, Haley was baking cookies out of sheer desperation. Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate oatmeal cookies, and chocolate drop sugar cookies.

Haley baked to feel good, to think, and to hide. Tonight she was hiding.

Uriel. She'd heard that name before, she'd read that name before. One of the names associated with a god of death. The Grim Reaper. The taker of life. In this case an assassin.

According to Jonas, the assassin was suspected to be a breed still under the control of the Genetics Council that had created him.

The explosion had all his signatures, but the really telling mark was the so-far-untraceable e-mail sent to Jonas at his Bureau of Breed Affairs e-mail address. It stated that he really didn't want to kill more breeds to get to her, but he would if he had to. And it was signed, Uriel.

She had a professional assassin out to kill her. So what was she doing? She was baking.

The moment Jonas had given Noble the information the demeanor of the breeds guarding her had changed. The six under Noble's command turned hard and cold.

Mordecai had demanded Jonas have his pet released from Sanctuary. So, a full-grown, malevolent-eyed natural coyote was now on her property. Great. Just what she needed.

Weren't they supposed to be impossible to tame?

Noble had changed as well, and that change made her more nervous than the others. The look he had given her had held a promise, a dark, almost forbidden promise, that shook her to her core.

As he and Jonas retreated to the living room to discuss security, Haley retreated to the kitchen to bake. And to try to forget that look she had seen in Noble's eyes. The one that promised her he had given her enough space, and that soon, he would be crowding in even closer.

"Jonas is leaving, Haley." Noble stepped into the kitchen, his black gaze hooded as he flicked over the last sheet of cookies she was pulling from the oven.

Haley nodded slowly. "Fine."

She turned and faced Jonas as he moved into the kitchen.

"We'll have this taken care of soon," Jonas promised her. "We have several leads. Uriel was careless this time. Uriel has been erratic in the past few years anyway, so the successes could barely be counted because of it."

"But someone still ended up dead, right?" she pointed out.

"Only because the victims didn't know they were targets," Jonas stated. "We know. Now, I'll leave you with Noble. You have six men guarding you outside as well as that bloodthirsty animal Mordecai carts around with him. Nothing gets past any of them."

He moved to the back door, shrugging his suit jacket on over the white dress shirt and shoulder holster he wore. Once he had the jacket on, he seemed like any other powerful businessman, until you looked in his eyes.

"Noble, I'd wish you luck with the other thing," Jonas suddenly turned back to them, his gaze amused, his hard face almost smiling. "But I have a feeling you have that covered as well."

He left the house, and Noble secured the door behind him before Haley could comment.

"What's the other thing?" she asked, as he turned back to face her.

"Something more personal," he finally stated.

His voice was different. There was a rasp to it, a brief roughness that sent a chill up her spine.

She rubbed her hands together, ignoring the tingling warmth that filled her palms. Her hands tingled every damned time he was around her. The need, the desire to touch him often nearly overcame her common sense.

She nodded rather than asking about it. For a few minutes anyway—while she transferred the cookies from the baking sheet to the wire rack for them to cool.

"What is something more personal?" She laid the spatula down beside the rack and turned to him.

Facing him across the distance of the kitchen, she somehow felt braver than she had in days. Someone was trying to kill her. Someone who knew how to kill. Excuse me for taking a little initiative here.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Sensually curved lips quirked knowingly.

"Is it about that mating crap you tried to pull on me the other night?"

She hadn't forgotten. It had been in the back of her mind, teasing her, taunting her, and following her into her dreams when she managed to sleep.

His brow arched. "Mating crap?"

She lifted her hand, indicating he should stay in place, then stomped to her bedroom, jerked several tabloids from beneath her bedstand, and moved back into the kitchen and slapped them on the table.

MATING HEAT SWEEPS THROUGH

THE BREED COMMUNITIES.

BREED APHRODISIAC RUMORED

TO CAUSE UNSTOPPABLE LUSTS.

ARE THEY MORE ANIMAL THAN WE IMAGINED?

MATING HEAT RUMORED

TO PRODUCE ANIMALISTIC RESULTS.

The headlines were ridiculous, but they all reported nearly the same phenomenon.

"You read this trash?" he asked her, flipping his fingers over the magazines.

She crossed her arms over her breasts. "How much of it is true?"

He flipped through the magazines one by one. His brows arched a few times. Mockery tugged at his lips before he tossed the last one back to the stop.

"I'd say ninety percent of it is fairly accurate."

She blinked, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"You're lying to me."

His grin was slow, and did nothing to still the nervous feelings rising inside her.

"Yeah, I am." He shrugged. "Probably more like eighty percent."

He pushed his hand into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a vial. Within it were several oddly colored pinkish pills. He tossed the vial to the table and stated. "One a day, starting tonight."

She stared at it, wondering if the breeds were into poison.

"For what?"

He moved around the kitchen then, stalking closer as she refused to retreat. He came behind her, brushed the hair from her shoulder, and his head lowered, his lips brushing her ear.

"When I kiss you, the taste of that kiss is going to make you crazy for more. The hormone in the small glands beneath my tongue will be released into your system, and the mating hormone will begin to fill your senses. It's like a drug for sex. It's like a need that only one thing will ease, and that's my semen pumping inside you. When that happens, a small, thumb-shaped extension will become erect from beneath the head of my cock. It will lock me inside you, spill another hormone into you, then, together, they'll prepare your body for the few viable sperm breeds possess. That pill will ease the effects of the heat. It might even ward off the pregnancy that will come, eventually. It takes a while sometimes for fertilization, for a child to be created. But it always happens, eventually. And the heat never goes away entirely. It grows, day by day, year by year, until mates are bound so closely together that life without each other is unimaginable.

"Breeds only mate once, Haley. One time only. A breed has one chance, and one chance only to claim something in this world that belongs to him and to him alone. And my body is claiming yours."

"You're crazy." She forced herself away from him, rounded on him incredulously, and stared back at him in shock. "That's not true."

"Why do you think I kept such a careful distance between us?" he asked her, his expression imposing, his black eyes gleaming, glittering with hunger. "A year. I've tasted the need to kiss you, to fuck you, for a year. I've tried to drown my lust, ignore it, fight it. Nothing works, Haley. Nothing is going to work until I share it. With you."

Her eyes were wide, shock resounding through her. His expression was tortured, almost agonized, almost convincing.

"Why are you doing this?" She stared back at him furiously. "I like you, Noble. Have I ever been cruel to you? Why would you do this to me?"

She was hurt. She stared back at him painfully, wondering why he would want to play with her in such a way. Okay, she gave the tabloids credit, there might be a glimmer of truth to some of it. But what he was saying was unreal.

Noble stared back at her, his jaw clenching furiously, the muscle at the side ticking in a resounding rhythm of restraint.

"You want me," he growled. "I can smell it. More than you've ever wanted another man, Haley. I'm betting on it."

She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought back her embarrassment.

"I know you can smell that I want you," she said uncomfortably, feeling the flush that worked up her neck and face. "I don't expect anything from you, but you don't have to lie to me."

His expression tightened, the flesh seemed stretched over the bones and angles of his face, giving him a darker, more animal-like appearance.

"Come here." He reached out for her.

Haley stared at his hand suspiciously. It was broad, darkly tanned, strong. His fingers were powerful and graceful, and she couldn't stop the clenching of her stomach at the thought of his touching her.

"Give me your hand, Haley." His voice hardened.

She lifted her hand to him. Slowly, he took the tip of her finger and brought it to his mouth. "Let me show you."

His lips parted, the heat of his mouth flushed over the tip of her finger and seemed to wash into her flesh. Then his tongue was curling around it, and there, beneath it, she felt the small, enflamed glands. They were hard, pulsing against her finger, hot and rasping against her.

His thick, black lashes lowered, sensuality and hunger suffused his face. And all he was doing was suckling at her finger, licking it.

Her finger heated, and she swore she felt a tingle of something more than simple pleasure move into her flesh. When he pulled her hand back, she stared at the dampened flesh, then back to him.

"Give it an hour," he told her then, his voice rasping. "It doesn't take a kiss to make the hormone move into you, Haley. Something that simple." He nodded to her finger, and in his expression she could see a need for more of her. "A kiss to your neck. A gentle taste of your flesh, and it will burn inside you, it will warm your desire more than ever before. And the sweet, sensual smell of your cream will make me crazier." His hands clenched into fists at his side. "I want you. I've wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you a year ago. Want you until the need for you overwhelms everything else. That's why your security team is so large. Why you have six breeds rather than two working to make certain you're safe. Because here, in this house, the world outside isn't going to exist for either of us soon. Soon, nothing is going to exist except the hunger."

She stared at her finger and back to him. She licked her lips nervously, her breath catching as his gaze sliced to the action.

"I want to lick your lips, too." His voice sounded torn from his throat. "I want to lick your lips, your breasts, and the sweet wet heat between your thighs. I want to take you until you can't deny me, or deny the hunger feeding us both. And it's going to happen, Haley. Very very soon. The only question is, can you accept it?" Could she accept it?

She stared back at him. "I'm not in love with you."

She wanted him. She had wanted him for a year. She was fascinated with him, fantasized about him constantly, but that wasn't love.

"Then we're in for a rocky ride, Haley." He sighed regretfully. "But it's very possible that I am in love with you. And I've never in my life had anything or anyone that belonged to me. Knowing you're my mate makes it damned hard to give you a warning, or a choice. But I'm trying to do that. In the next few hours, I want you to remember that. I'm trying, and for me, that's a hell of a concession."

He turned and walked away from her then, his broad shoulders straight, his head held high as he moved back into the living room.

There was so much pride in every movement of his body. Strength and determination, confidence definitely.

Haley collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs beside her and stared at her finger.

Was it a virus? Whatever that mating thing was? Just a hormone surely couldn't do what he said it could. She turned her gaze to the vial of pills on the table. There weren't a lot of them. One a day he had said. To help minimize the effects?

There were so many questions pouring through her mind now. And so many sensations filling her. It wasn't the hormone he had licked onto her finger that had her heart racing. And it couldn't be causing her thighs to tingle. It was a mind game. And she wasn't so simple that she was going to allow herself to be played so easily.

She rose from the table and moved quickly, angrily into the living room. He wasn't there. His bedroom door was open, and she moved there, determined to question him, to get the answers she needed. She stepped into the bedroom, where she came to a halt just inside the doorway.

For some reason, he had pulled his shirt off. God, why had he pulled his shirt off? Because before he could turn to face her, she had glimpsed his back. There, across his shoulders, were spots. Not freckles. Not scarring, but a unique, fascinating pattern of dark rings, rather like the spots of the Jaguar whose DNA she knew he shared.

She stepped forward. Her hands were tingling again, more strongly, the need to touch him almost driving her past common sense.

"I need a shower." He faced her, and across his shoulders and upper chest those spots continued. They were faint, patterned across his chest and arrowing down into his jeans.

She stepped forward and stopped. Then moved again. She had to touch them.

As she got closer, she could see that it was more than just spots. It was a pattern of the fine, almost invisible hairs she knew covered the breed bodies. But they were darker in areas, creating the pattern of spots.

Breeds appeared hairless, except for their eyebrows and the hair on their heads. Actually, according to her research they were covered in a thin, fine pelt almost undetectable, even to touch.

"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."