Iona growled and sprinted past him, leaving him in the dust.
Eric doubled his speed. Iona’s tail whipped across her back in annoyance, then she picked up the pace even more, running recklessly along the top of the ridge.
As soon as they hit a wide enough stretch, Eric leapt, landed on Iona, and took her down.
Iona snarled and fought, ears back, teeth snapping. Panther limbs writhed under Eric’s, Iona’s pelt foamy with sweat.
Eric closed his mouth over her throat, the alpha subduing a pride mate. He held hard without his teeth penetrating, his body weight stopping her struggling. He needed to teach her that he wouldn’t hurt her but that he wouldn’t let her get away either.
Iona shifted. Soft human flesh replaced fur, scrabbling claws became clutching fingers. Eric found himself with his leopard’s mouth on her warm throat, her pulse pounding beneath the prick of his teeth.
“Get off me, you big…cat,” she said, pushing at him.
Eric grunted as he eased away, but he remained leopard. Iona rolled away and to her feet, then she stretched, arms above her head.
Her body almost glowed in the moonlight, her black hair sleek and beautiful, matching the midnight hair at the join of her legs. Her breasts were round and full, the tips dusky.
Even in his wildcat form, Eric appreciated the beauty of her. Her body was strong but curved, hips rounding from her waist, her navel a shadowed indent in her belly. He wanted to lick her skin, revel in the silk of it, let his tongue find the sweet honey he knew waited for him between her thighs.
Iona stood above him without shame, a woman enjoying the freedom of being bare under the starlight. She laughed, then she spun away from Eric, shifted again, and ran.
Little shit. Eric growled and was after her.
Iona heard Eric snarling as he chased her, but she didn’t care. He was trying to subdue her, make her obey, and Iona wasn’t about to obey.
The human part of her laughed as her panther paws connected with the earth, her wildcat fast and strong.
Eric, though, was faster. In about ten strides, he was on her again, taking her down to the packed earth.
Iona landed on her side but instinctively rolled onto her back, feet coming up to fend him off. Eric locked his jaw around her throat again, keeping her from biting him, his teeth sharp in her fur.
She struggled against him, even that making her want to laugh. Eric thought he’d bested her. Well, he could try.
But she couldn’t get away. Eric’s leopard body pinned her to the ground, his paws heavy, his mouth unyielding.
Only one thing she could do. Iona shifted again, the shift a little more difficult this time. Once she became human, she wrapped her arms around several hundred pounds of leopard fur.
“Eric,” she said.
He shifted. In a few seconds, Iona found herself hugging not a soft leopard, but a large, well-muscled man with jade green eyes and strength she couldn’t match. He grabbed her wrists, pinned them over her head, and gave her a raw, brutal kiss on the mouth.
Iona struggled, but his strength excited her. She drew her foot up the length of his leg at the same time she parted her lips and let him inside.
Eric had kissed her like this when he’d fed her the chocolate. He glided his tongue over her lips, dipped between them, tasted her entire mouth. His weight held her down, his body and hers slick with sweat.
His breath was warm, fingers tight on her wrists, the rigid length of his cock against her abdomen, Eric not disguising what he wanted. His kiss opened her mouth, the taste of him like sharp spice.
Iona lifted her head to get more of him. His tongue tangled hers, fierce friction, lips mastering.
She curled her hands into fists, her struggles against him slowing. Eric’s touch gentled as he lowered her to the ground, his mouth becoming tender. He licked over the lips he’d kissed so roughly, then lightly caressed them, ending with little kisses to the corners of her mouth.
He raised his head, starlight glistening on his Collar, his throat damp with sweat. “Iona…”
“What?” she whispered, her body heavy with wanting.
Eric’s next kiss was savage but brief. “If I take you out here, you’ll belong to me, and me alone.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she said, still defiant.
His hands tightened on her wrists. “The mate-claim means you go to no other Shifter but me. It means I protect and take care of you, no matter what, no matter how much you fight me.”
Iona slanted him a smile. “And if I fight you?”
“You can if you want to.” He growled. “I told you, we like the chase.”
Iona liked it too, and she really shouldn’t. Eric’s heartbeat thudded against her chest, his skin so hot.
“You scared me earlier, when you called me,” she said, remembering her worry. “You sounded…” Weak, exhausted. Everything Eric Warden was not.
“I was in pain.” He kissed her again, this kiss gentle, followed by a light flick of tongue. “Your voice soothed me.”
“How? I didn’t say anything much.”
Eric nuzzled her. “The sound of the mate’s voice—her touch, her scent—calms and heals. Better if you’re in the same room with me, but I took what I could.”
“But I’m not your mate.”
“Not yet.”
Iona decided to deal with that later. “Why were you in pain? What happened?”
Eric shrugged, which moved his body deliciously against hers. “I had to pull one of McNeil’s wolves off one of my Shifters and thump him hard. Even then the wolf didn’t want to yield to me. That’s going to be a problem.”
“Did the wolf hurt you?” Iona managed to slide one hand out from under Eric’s—because he let her. She traced his shoulder and the tattoo hugging it, finding his skin hot, smooth, the muscle beneath it solid.
“He didn’t. My Collar did.” Eric frowned as he spoke, as though uncertain about something.
Iona let her fingers drift to the Celtic knot at his throat. The Collar was dormant, warm from his skin. “This went off?”
“Sparked, yep.”
Iona studied the pain that lingered in his eyes, matching the bleakness she’d heard in his voice on the other end of the phone. She brushed fingers over his face, wanting to erase every last vestige of hurt.
“And my touch helps?”
“Yes.”
She traced his cheek again, his unshaved whiskers sandpapery under her fingertips. “Part of me tells me to fight you with everything I have,” she said, her voice softening. “But part of me wants to help you, to make sure you’re all right.”
“At least part of you wants that,” Eric said, voice going low. “Let me work on the other part.”
He kissed her again. He didn’t trap her hands this time, and she shivered as she slid her palms across his shoulders and down his back as he kissed her. Eric’s mouth opened hers, the brush of his whiskers rough on her skin, the taste of them sharp.
Her need was driving her crazy. Iona ran her bare foot up his leg again, letting her toes caress his thigh.
Eric was a beautiful man, and he lay on top of her, ready for her. The space between her legs was wet, and she knew that if she moved her hips just right, his hard cock would slide right into her.
That thought brought the beast back to life. Wanting raged. Never mind how rocky the ground was under her back, never mind she didn’t want to be trapped by this man.
She wanted his seed. Inside her. Now.
Iona bit his shoulder, not gently. Eric rumbled, “Easy.”
“I can’t.” Iona nibbled his neck above his Collar, licking where she bit. “I can’t…I want…”
“Yes, you can.” Eric grabbed her wrists again, trapping them against the ground. His eyes had gone Shifter, the wildcat pupils slitted. “Control the hunger, love. Don’t let it take over.”
“You want me. You’re hard as a rock. What’s stopping you?”
Eric put his face close to hers
. “You’re frenzied. I don’t want mating with regrets.”
“But you want me. I’m going insane…”
Eric’s hands shoved hers into the dirt, his weight heavy on her. “You’re right, I damn well want you,” he said, the words a snarl. “I want you so much, it’s killing me. I want to pump myself inside you until we’re so spent we can’t get up for days. I want you here and now, all night, who cares if the sun comes up and roasts us alive? I’ll keep going, and so will you. We’ll screw so hard and be so mindless that we’ll probably die, but we won’t give a shit.”
“Die?”
“If we give in to the mating frenzy that’s crawling through me and you, we won’t notice. We’ll fuck for days, never mind about eating or drinking or even getting up off this ground.”
Iona started to smile. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
She wanted it. Wanted him. She fought to get her hands free, to touch him. She needed so much to touch him. She raised her head and licked his throat.
“I know it doesn’t sound bad,” he said. “It sounds damn good. But I don’t want to kill you, Iona. I want you alive, and with me.”
“Then why are you naked on top of me?”
“That’s my frenzy talking. And I’m naked on top of you because I didn’t want my leopard hurting you. Humans are fragile, and you’re only half-Shifter.”
“All right, so let me go. Let me run.”
He growled again, the rumble vibrating her and making her warm. “You’re out of control. You’re running like a wild thing. You have to learn to control it.”
“I have. I’ve controlled it all my life.”
“No, you suppressed and ignored it. Not the same thing. You have to let it out, love, but you need to be in charge.”
“Like you are?”
Eric licked her lips again. “I have iron control. I never came close to losing it until I met you.” Another lick. “I’ll help you through it.”
“And then you’ll boff me?”
His growl turned to a chuckle. “When we make love, it will be like the world exploded.”
Iona wanted it to be like that now. A tiny part of her mind was waving at her, telling her that if she did go into frenzy with him now, she’d hate herself later. She’d be angry, resentful, both at him and herself.
Or would she? Eric’s body on hers felt so right, as though she’d been waiting all her life for him. How would she know what she felt if she didn’t give in and let him take her now?
“Eric, I—”
Eric put his fingers to her lips. “We’ll run some more. I’ll wear you out with running, and then I’ll take you home.”
Disappointment bit her. Iona felt her fingers become claws, heard the snarl in her throat. Her panther was pissed off.
Eric unclasped his fingers from around her wrists, letting her go, and as smoothly climbed to his feet.
Iona remained on the ground and gazed up at his tall body above hers, the strength of him obvious. He was erect, the firm length of him beautiful to see. Shifter cocks were longer and bigger than humans’, Iona’s friends who were excited about Shifters had told her. Lying here with the evidence above her, Iona believed them.
The female in her made her want to rise to her knees, fit her mouth around the tip of that cock, and draw it into her. She wanted to feel how heavy it would be against her tongue, find out whether it tasted as good as had the skin on his neck and shoulders.
Eric’s gaze on her told her he knew where her thoughts were going, and that he had the same thoughts.
Unembarrassed, he reached down and helped her to her feet. Iona landed against him, and he lightly kissed her lips as she tried to catch her breath.
“There’s something I want to check out,” Eric said.
Iona blinked at him, half startled out of her arousal. “Check out?”
“Something my trackers told me about this evening. I brought us out here, figuring we can take a look while we’re running things out of our systems.”
“Oh, right. Sure.” She stared at him, bewildered by the abrupt way he could change from seduction to being Shiftertown leader again.
Eric kissed her one more time, the warm, easy kiss of a man with a woman he liked. “Ready?”
Without waiting for her answer, Eric shifted back into his leopard. He stood against her a moment, his hot leopard breath fanning down her abdomen to her too-sensitive female places.
He made a low sound in his throat that Iona swore was a laugh before he turned and sauntered away.
Iona’s shift this time hurt, the stiffness from lying on the ground not helping. She shook herself once she became panther, and trotted off to catch up to him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eric led her down the ridge, across a valley cut by another deep wash, and up another hill. At the top of this, Eric moved along a saddle between two boulder-strewn ridges, then climbed even higher to the top of the highest ridge.
When he reached the summit, he crouched low and moved in a wildcat slink that Iona hadn’t yet perfected. His belly nearly touched the ground, paws moving automatically to find the best purchase and balance his weight.
Iona copied his movements as best she could, her limbs stiff and sore. At last, Eric dropped all the way to his stomach and looked down the hill.
Sounds came to Iona from what must have been a half mile away, but her wildcat easily caught them.
People talking. Men, two of them, she heard distinctly. They weren’t saying anything important, just general conversation.
“Warm tonight.”
“Yeah, hear it’s going to be in the nineties tomorrow. Where’s winter?”
Hunters? Campers? There were no marked campgrounds out this way, Iona knew, but that didn’t mean hikers didn’t walk out and set up tents.
Drug dealers, maybe? But they sounded relaxed and ordinary, not worried about anything. As though they had every right to be out here in the middle of the desert in the vast darkness.
Eric sniffed the wind, making a soft sound in his throat. Iona sniffed too, and caught the scent. Humans. How many, she couldn’t tell, but not a lot of them. A crowd of humans smelled far different from one or two.
Eric dropped even lower. The light from the waning moon dappled both his fur and the ground around him, making the snow leopard almost impossible to spot.
Iona puffed a little as she moved closer to him, trusting her black fur to blend into the shadows.
Eric didn’t look at her. His gaze was riveted to what was below, and when Iona saw, she stilled as well.
Three rows of one-story buildings were strung along the desert floor, each about a hundred feet long but not more than about ten feet wide. Doors entered these at intervals, but there were no windows.
Square bulks of air conditioners that doubled as heat pumps squatted on the roofs. The three buildings were surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
Few lights illuminated the place, only one on either end, each near a gate. The men they’d heard were two guards, standing together, smoking cigarettes, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.
Iona tried to do what Eric had taught her this morning—reach inside and open up her scent ability. She widened her cat nostrils and drank in the wind.
She smelled very little out of the ordinary. The two men, the dust and creosote, the scent of coyotes, rabbits, birds, and reptiles that lay hidden in the brush. From the buildings, nothing. A bit of Freon from the air conditioners, but the units were silent.
Eric’s nose was twitching too, his sides moving as he sniffed and sniffed.
Finally he turned to Iona, his gaze unmistakably telling her it was time to leave. Iona let him lead the way, but as she followed, her foot caught on gravel, the stones grating. The trickle of pebbles didn’t fall over the edge of the ridge, but the rattle was loud and startling, sound carrying a long way out here.
“What was that?” one of the men said.
The other didn’t seem worried. ??
?Probably a coyote. Or a snake. This place is crawling with snakes.”
“Yeah, no one’s stupid enough to come out here,” the first one said. “Except us.”
The second chuckled, Iona heard the flick of a lighter, and then she crept away after Eric.
Iona made no more noise as she picked her way down the ridge, back the way they’d come. When Eric reached the bottom, he broke into a run, leading her across the valley and back to the hill where they’d lain. Iona pounded behind him.
Eric didn’t stop, didn’t shift, but loped on, never doubting she’d follow, all the way back to where they’d left the bike and their clothes.
The leopard stretched when they reached the motorcycle, bending his front almost to the ground to unkink his forelegs, then lengthening to stretch hind. As Eric rose from the stretch, his body changed back into that of a delectable, naked man, his tattoo black in the faint moonlight.
Iona shook herself out, trying to dislodge gravel, stickers, and creosote leaves from her fur, while Eric watched her. He made no move to dress, but waited until she’d slowly and painfully changed back to human.
Not until Iona was standing on her human feet, rubbing her aching arms, did he reach to the ground for his clothes. Iona enjoyed watching him a moment before she slipped on her underwear, sweatpants, and sport top, a bit disappointed that they were getting ready to head home.
But the stealthy move to the top of the hill and the equally careful one down had taken the edge off Iona’s frenzy. Eric had been smart to include her in his reconnaissance.
“What was that place?” she asked as Eric settled his black T-shirt over his body.
“No idea. What did you get from it?”
“You mean the scents? Nothing. I mean, apart from the guys and the usual smell of desert and buildings. But I’m not very good at scenting, I told you.”
Eric buckled his belt. “I didn’t smell anything either. It was neutral.”
“Maybe the buildings are airtight.”
He shook his head as he leaned on his motorcycle’s seat and pulled on his boots. “No building’s that airtight, unless it’s underground or something. These are crappy buildings on temporary foundations. I should be able to smell what’s inside them.”