“Roch, how the hell did you know where we were?” Ashe demanded. Then she glanced over at Lydia and sniffed. “Never mind.”
Lydia stared at him. Standing there in a pair of faded jeans and a white t-shirt. She mentally sighed. The guy could sport casual or career and he would always be the sexiest male in the room.
Or the bayou.
His eyes, those summer sky blue eyes, captured hers. “I need to speak to you.”
“Hey Roch, we’re swimming here,” Julia called out. “You know, girl time.”
“Yeah, go back to the house, Roch, and wait for her there,” Ashe said, though her tone was far from dictatorial.
“No.” He said the word to them, but his eyes remained on Lydia.
As Lydia was held captive by his hot stare, Julia and Genevieve groaned simultaneously.
“If you hang out here and any of our mates see you they’re going to kill you,” Julia said, then turned to Lydia and explained. “Sounds uncivilized and barbaric, but there it is. It’s what you sign up for if you get with any of our males, FYI.”
Lydia nodded, but decided not to say that the idea of an uncivilized and barbaric Roch was intriguing as hell.
“She’s not going for any of our males,” Roch said tightly.
“Someone’s acting a little possessive,” Genevieve remarked. “Especially over a female who doesn’t belong to him.”
“Lydia,” he called to her, ignoring the women’s barbs. “Please.”
“I’m not kidding about our mates, Roch,” Julia called out.
He growled, and for the first time, he turned and glared at each woman in turn. “Let them come.”
“Oh Jesus,” Julia uttered.
The last thing Lydia wanted was for him to get into a fight. Get hurt. That gorgeous face did not need any bruises. “I’m coming,” she called, then started swimming toward him. When she was ten feet from shore, she stopped and addressed him. “What’s wrong?”
He looked tense. “I need to say something to you.”
“We can talk back at Ashe’s—”
“No. It can’t wait.”
She glanced behind her, then back at him. “Even for some privacy?”
“I’m not ashamed of what I have to say, Lydia.” He came to the very edge of the water and dropped onto his haunches. His jeans hugged tight to his muscular thighs, and the white t-shirt strained against smooth, tanned, muscle. “Have the testing done.”
Surprise caught and held her. “Roch…”
“We need to know the truth.”
“We?” She held her breath.
“You, me, the Pantera.”
A tight knot forming in her throat, she swam closer. “What if it’s another male’s—”
“Then the male should know.” His nostrils flared, but he continued. “It’s not about you and me anymore. It’s about the Pantera. Pack first. The cub is what’s important here. The cub and its safety is everything to our species.”
Lydia stared at him, her heart pricked and bleeding inside her chest. Yes, she was grateful for what he was saying, how he felt about her child. But gone was his fight. For her. Or for the male who might try and claim her.
Pain lashed through her, but she pushed it away. It was important to know. Her value and importance was in her cub.
“That’s what I came to say.” He stood up, nodded to the females in the water. “I apologize, and will speak to each of your mates.”
As he shifted into his puma and took off up the hillside, Ashe, Genevieve and Julia all surrounded her. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t have to. It was something all females understood and sympathized with—Pantera or human. The pain of rejection.
Chapter 8
He despised himself.
He despised everyone around him, too.
It was a good thing that the one male Roch had told about his adventure to the bayou pool happened to be a Nurturer. Because as soon as Jean-Baptiste had given him the black eye he’d deserved, the male had quickly set about treating it.
Roch stalked through town in his puma state, a file folder between his teeth. According to Damien, Hiss had claimed to know nothing about the human male, Locke. But Roch had done some unconventional research on the man with Xavier, the head of the Geeks. Locke had been a foundling, taken in by a very rich man. A man who was rarely seen and rumored to be gravely ill. Seemed that Locke was devoted to him. Among his vast holdings, The Haymore Center was one of several research and/or medical facilities he owned. And though they offered a wide range of infertility options including egg donation, testing and surgery, it looked as though experimentation was their primary focus.
Cell and tissue rejuvenation, to be exact.
His jaw clamped a little tighter around the file as he leapt over a stretch of stream bordering Raphael and Ashe’s property. He needed to talk to his boss.
“Afternoon, Suit.”
Roch’s puma whirled around and stalked forward, toward the voice. Which belonged to none other than Parish. The leader of the Hunters wore a dark, irritated expression. So he’d gotten Roch’s text. In seconds, Roch shifted into his male form.
The golden eyed male looked him over and sneered. “Only one black eye? I think you might need a set.”
Right. Baptiste might have a genius at healing, but only time erased the bruising. Roch raised his arms in surrender. “Have at it, Parish.”
The male sniffed, even kicked a rock with the tip of his boot. “Shit, brother, it’s not as much fun when you welcome it.”
“Look, I needed to speak with Lydia. It was the only way.”
Parish was silent for a moment, then he lifted his shoulders and shrugged, the wind of battle now calm. “Well, I hope it was worth it.”
Worth it? Seeing the look on her face when he’d made it pretty damn clear the cub was the most important thing to him, to the Pantera?
His jaw went tight. He truly despised himself today.
“Hey, if it wasn’t,” Parish put in, running a hand through his long, dark hair. “Or you didn’t get what you needed, you can try again. She’s over at Medical right now.”
Roch’s heart dropped like a stone into his gut. “What?”
“With my fully-clothed mate.”
Shit. “Did you see what she was doing? Why she was there?”
The Hunter studied him, dark brows descending over those gold eyes. “Paternity test. She wanted to get it done today, as she’s heading back to New Orleans in the morning.”
The blood drained from Roch’s body. He’d told her to get the testing. He just hadn’t believed it would be right away.
“I know I shouldn’t give a shit after the near-visuals in the bayou pool,” Parish began reluctantly. “But are you all right?
Hell no he wasn’t all right. He’d made a huge mistake. If he lost the woman he—
With a growl, he shifted back into his puma. After a quick nod to Parish, he scooped up the file in his teeth and took off toward Raphael’s place. Not just to give him the information he’d found, but to ask him—and his mate—for help.
* * *
Her heart beating wildly in her chest, Lydia stood on the porch of Roch’s home. It was a lovely two-story Craftsman-style house, more modern than any of the dwellings she’d seen in the Wildlands. And it suited him perfectly. That warm, sexy, cerebral style.
As her hand rose to the door she wondered once again why Raphael had asked her to bring some paperwork over to Roch’s place. Of course, she was happy to do it. Anything for the couple who were treating her like an honored guest. But in her gut, she knew it had to be an excuse to get her here. The only question was, who had the idea? And why?
After knocking, she stepped back and waited. It wasn’t long before the door opened and the sunset behind her revealed the most gorgeous male in the universe. Her heart squeezed with love and trepidation.
His face split into a wide grin. He wasn’t surprised to see her. In fact, he looked pleased.
She he
ld out a large envelope. “I brought this from Raphael.”
“Thanks.” He took it from her, then stepped back. “Come on in.”
“I should get back.”
His eyes moved over her face. “Please, Lydia.”
Resisting this male was like trying to resist air or light or water. He felt so strangely essential to her being.
The moment she stepped inside, she felt at home. Not that she was going to say that out loud. Instead, as she took in all the refinished wood, modern, yet comfortable furnishings and windows, windows, windows, she said, “I like your house.”
“I like you in it,” he said, taking her hand.
Lydia’s breath caught in her throat. What was this? What was he saying?
“Come on,” he continued with a soft smile, leading her out of the foyer. “I’ll show you around.”
Confused, yet happy in a way she could never explain, his hand holding hers, she followed him through several rooms. Kitchen, dining area, a back porch overlooking a small pond. It was all unfussy and gorgeous and clever. Like him. When he led her down another hallway and she spotted bedrooms, she wondered if she was going to get a look at where he slept. The idea made her blush and grin. But the bedroom he led her into wasn’t his own.
“What’s this?” she asked, suddenly breathless as she took in the lovely white crib, changing table, and pale green rocking chair.
“It’s just a few things,” he began, his voice low and deep and threaded with hope. “I thought maybe you’d want to choose colors and how everything is arranged. And if you don’t like any of this, we can get something else. Maybe an animal theme…”
She turned to look at him. “I don’t understand.”
Ice blue eyes that were filled with only warmth and want stared back at her. “For the cub, Lydia.”
“What you said today—”
He groaned. “I was an asshole. A male so deeply in love with a female he felt he didn’t have the right to claim, he got scared.”
Lydia’s entire body erupted with heat, and her breath was locked inside her lungs. But she managed to push out a hopeful, “And now?”
He laughed, his eyes crinkling with affection. “Now he doesn’t give a fuck. He wants her. He loves her. He’s going to claim her, no matter what.”
Lydia stood there, in the bedroom this male had declared was her child’s. He’d told her he loved her, that he wanted her. And she could see it in his eyes. But she still had to know…
“I had the test performed today,” she said.
Not a flash of concern crossed his handsome features. He only grinned at her. So happy. So confident. So sure.
“I don’t care what it said, Lydia. I want you. I want this cub. I will be a strong, available father to it.” He reached for her. “And if another male tries to claim you and the cub, we’ll deal with it. No bluster. No fight.” He lifted his chin and smiled. “We may be puma shifters, but we will be civilized and supportive.”
It was all she needed to hear. It was everything. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Looked up into his beautifully fierce face. “I love your eyes.”
He chuckled softly. “And I love you.”
She squeezed him tighter. “I hope our baby gets them.”
It was as if the air rushed out of the room. Those eyes she loved widened and Roch uttered hoarsely, “What did you say?”
The happiness that filled her in that moment was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She smiled up at him. “Just that I hope our cub has your—”
“Ours?” He didn’t let her answer. His head dropped and his mouth covered hers.
Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, so fiercely, so lovingly, both of them groaned with the pleasure of it.
She was in love. Deeply and desperately. With the father of her child. How in the world was such a miracle possible?
Roch eased her down to the carpet and started taking off her clothes. Her skin prickling with heat and excitement, Lydia helped him. Especially when it was time to undress him. She just wanted them naked and in each other’s arms where they belonged. And when he stretched out over her, his hard muscle against her soft flesh, she sighed with ecstasy.
The magic of the Wildlands was here, with her and inside her. And she was never going to let it go.
As Roch took her mouth again, she wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her hips in invitation. She wasn’t going to play coy—she’d waited too long to know what he would feel like inside her. And when he entered her with one deep, hungry thrust, she cried out in both pleasure and intensity. He was long and thick and hot, and her walls instantly welcomed him, bathing him in cream.
Desperate for him to move, Lydia circled her hips. But Roch pressed her down into the soft carpet and held her there with unspoken authority and strength.
She looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”
He gazed down at her with eyes so filled with hunger and love, her heart contracted. “This will sound insane.”
“Tell me.”
“We didn’t get to make our cub this way…”
Pain, beautiful pain erupted within her. “Oh, Roch,” she said on a sigh. “The next one. Our next one.”
“Yes, but…” He eased out of her and thrust back in.
She gasped with pleasure. So filled. So desperate for more. Him. All of him.
“Can we pretend that we are?” he asked, lowering his head and nipping at her bottom lip. “Can we pretend that when I come inside you, when you cry out and take your release, and I follow you there, that we’re making our—”
“Son,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. She nodded. “Oh god, Roch. I love you. Yes.”
He said nothing more. His mouth covered hers, and as he kissed her deeply, lovingly, he thrust inside her. Taking her to heaven. Building the heat and intensity within her.
Lydia wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. She wasn’t going to last long. Roch was so big, so hard, the head of his cock rubbing deliciously against the spot inside her pussy that triggered her climax.
And when he ripped his mouth from hers and buried it in her neck, suckling, scraping his teeth against her pulse point, she exploded.
Crying out, she came. Her walls milking him until he too snarled and bucked and took his release.
It was moments—minutes, hours?—until he stopped thrusting inside her, until they cooled. But when they did, Roch eased to his back and pulled her in close. Satiated, Lydia snuggled against him. On the soft carpet. She smiled against his shoulder. On the floor of their cub’s bedroom.
“Tell me you’re not going back to New Orleans,” he said with a possessive rasp to his tone. “Except to get your things.”
Her heart stuttered. “You know about that?”
“Tell me, Lydia. Please. Before I lose my mind. I’m in love with you. I think I have been ever since you offered me your beignet.”
She smiled and kissed his shoulder. This male made her deliriously happy.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“I’ll stay,” she laughed. “Of course I’ll stay.”
He heaved an enormous sigh. “Christ, I’m glad. But you know, it’s not enough.”
She lifted her head, her heart jumping in her blood now. “What do you mean?”
He looked calm, satiated, tousled. Gorgeous. His eyes connected with hers and held. “You know about mating. Ashe and Julia and others too, I’m sure, have explained our ways.”
She nodded, breath held. “It’s like a human marriage.”
He shook his head. “No, Lydia. It’s deeper than that. Truer. It is a bond that lasts not just a lifetime, but beyond.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” she said with genuine feeling. “I love that.”
His eyes moved over her face. “And I love you.” He reached around her naked ass and yanked her to him.
She squealed.
“Will you be my mate, Lydia Page?” he asked in the most se
rious tone she’d ever heard from him. “Live with me, sleep with me, make love with me, laugh with me?” His eyes flashed with sudden humor. “Let me share in diaper duties for our son?”
It wasn’t possible to be any happier than she was, but with that question—no, that proposal—she truly thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She was deeply and truly loved by the male who had given her a son.
“Is that a yes, Ms. Page?” he said with playful ferocity.
She smiled. “That, my gorgeous Pantera male—my mate—is an absolutely, definitely, love you, yes, yes, yes.”
He kissed her, soft and gentle, then eased her onto her back.
“What are you doing? she asked with a girlish giggle.
Up on his hands and knees and headed for the lower half of her body, looking as near to his puma as possible in his male form, Roch snarled sensually at her.
“I say we seal this with a kiss,” he uttered, his breath near her belly now.”
“My lips are up here, Roch,” she said breathlessly, watching him, waiting.
His eyes went heavy lidded as he grasped her inner thighs and splayed them wide. “Not the lips I’m hungry for at the moment.”
And as he proved that statement, all Lydia could do was sigh.
Epilogue
Three days later
“Rosalie is home, but Mercier is dead,” Raphael said to the small group of Hunters, Suits and Nurturers who were gathered in his office at Diplomatic headquarters. It was night, and they’d been at it for hours. “And our Hunters inside Haymore haven’t reported back.”
Sebastian cursed. “This new enemy is worse than the last.”
“But what is it they want?” Genevieve asked, nonplussed.
“Our DNA,” Roch said, glancing around the dimly lit room with its half empty plates and endless water bottles. “We don’t know why yet. What they hope to use it for. But it has something to do with that Stanton Locke and the mysterious man he cares for. As you know, my mate is an attorney and she’s calling all her contacts, trying to get a hold of Stanton’s financial dealings. What, how much, with whom.”