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She wouldn’t let it bother her, she promised herself. If he intended to stick around, then he may as well learn. She, Chelsea and Liza were always joking with one another, sometimes playing pranks and always having fun. She wasn’t about to give it up.
“You make me want to laugh,” he groaned suddenly. “And if I drop my guard enough for that, what will I do if you decide to try to fight the mating?”
“So it can be reversed?” Already she was craving his kiss with a strength that had her mouth watering and her body tingling. Like someone needing their next drug fix, she needed his kiss.
She needed him.
“There’s no reversal.” Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her down for his kiss, needing it, needing her.
His tongue wasn’t swollen, the mating taste was only barely present to his senses, but still, the need to kiss her, to bind her now with pleasure, was an overriding impulse.
Catching her lips with his, he rubbed against the soft, pouty curves and tasted the warmth of them. It was a kiss of natural heat, the same passion and hunger that had flared between them when their eyes connected in the bar.
His tongue slipped past her lips, mated with hers, rubbed at it, felt the silken softness and the measure of the woman as she accepted him with soft innocence.
It wasn’t mating heat. It was just a man and a woman, that was all. Surrounded by warmth, by the attraction and the flaring emotion that happened only once in a lifetime. When one man and one woman fated to be together, came together.
That moment had happened in the bar when their eyes met. When their lives had merged and destiny had given them that one and only chance.
One chance. One moment out of time and Malachi refused to lose it.
She was his mate.
Letting her go wasn’t an option.
Holding her, ensuring her safety, her protection and, God, loving her. Those were his only options.
Easing back, he stared into the soft depths of her cobalt eyes and whispered, “For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.” Trailing his hand from the back of her head where he’d held her to him, he let his palm cup the fragile line of her jaw as his thumb brushed over her kiss-swollen lips. “You’re my mate, Isabelle. Frightening you is the last thing I want to do, but Breeds, like the animals we’re created from, heed our instincts, unlike man. Every instinct that makes up the creature I am knows what you are to me. Courting you isn’t an option. Wooing you isn’t in the equation because nature won’t allow the humanity inside us to chance losing that one moment, that single chance we have to claim what is ours. Or to allow our mates the opportunity to fear or to doubt and to turn away. That’s all mating heat is, baby. That’s all nature meant for it to be. Everything else is optional, but staying together, learning our way and learning what true love, what soul mates, were meant to be isn’t a choice any longer. It’s now a part of everything we are. It’s like death and taxes. Inescapable.”
She swallowed tightly. “Breeds don’t pay taxes.”
Trust her to have to point out the one flaw in the ages-old saying.
His lips quirked in amusement. Nature was indeed the perfect matchmaker, because this woman would be more than a challenge. She would keep him on his toes. There wouldn’t be a chance to be the lazy, shiftless Coyote that all of his Breed pretended to be.
“Breeds don’t pay taxes,” he agreed. “We have mates to keep us in line instead.”
Her head settled on his chest, her cheek against his heart as Malachi let his hand smooth from her shoulder to the middle of her back.
“It’s not going to be that easy, Malachi,” she whispered. “You know it’s not.”
He knew it wouldn’t be. “What is the old saying?” he asked softly. “Nothing worth having is easy? If it were easy, baby, would it be as important?”
He found a curl of hair that trailed over her shoulder and caught it between his thumb and finger. Rubbing it, experiencing the softness of it, he stared up at the ceiling as he inhaled slowly.
“No, it won’t be easy.” The scent he caught assured him of that. There was very little time left. “We need to get dressed, baby.”
She levered up and stared down at him. He could smell the trepidation, the edge of nervousness rising inside her. “Why?”
“We’re about to have company.” Moving from the bed, Malachi gathered her clothing, handed it to her then collected his own.
Rule was leading the pack, so to speak. He could smell his commander’s anger, j
ust as he could smell the anger of the men with him.
“What’s going on, Malachi?” Nervousness was edging into fear as she pulled her dress over her head and allowed the silken length to fall to her feet.
Hell, they hadn’t had enough time, not enough to combat what he sensed was coming, he feared.
