Ice_Reaux - Laura Wright Page 0,43

searched hers, trying to read her thoughts. “What’s that?”

“You,” she said simply.

A gleam of mischievous heat crossed his gaze. “I thought you said you didn’t want to jump my bones?”

She shrugged playfully. “Yes, but I didn’t say anything about you jumping mine.”

He tipped her face up. “Karen…”

“They’ve never been jumped before.”

He closed his eyes for a second and inhaled. “You’re killing me.”

“I’ve never felt like this about anyone, Reaux.”

His lids lifted and he was right there again. Such intensity, such promise. Such a male.

She smiled. “I swear I’m still seventeen in some ways. I don’t know how to react. What to say when I really like a boy.”

“That’s it right there,” he said, lowering his mouth to hers, and taking her in a soft, sweet kiss.

Karen melted against him, feeling both his hard muscle and the soft heat of his lips. She’d only been kissed once or twice before she was taken. But she hardly remembered it. How it had felt. Surely it was nothing compared to this.

Reaux released her face and his arms stole around her. He pulled her close and, as the bayou breeze blew cold and fresh around them, he kissed her so thoroughly, so hungrily, she forget for a moment where she was. Who she was.

When he eased back, they were just a breath away. Blurry. Their breath co-mingling.

“You do that really well,” she whispered.

He grinned. “So do you.”

“Thank you. It’s only my second or third time.”

“Oh, Karen…ma chère…” He dropped his head and kissed her bottom lip, sending a rush of heat through her belly. “This is dangerous.”

“Why? We’re just kissing.”

A soft growl hummed in his throat. “It’s different for Pantera than it is for humans. It means more. Especially to the male.” He leaned in close to her ear and lapped at the lobe with his tongue. She shivered. “Come…” he uttered. And when she gasped, he chuckled. “Out with me tonight.”

“Oh.” She laughed softly. “Like a date?”

“Yes.” He took her lobe into his mouth and sucked it gently. “Damn, woman, you taste good.”

Heat coiled in Karen’s sex and her nipples hardened against her bra. If Reaux had wanted to take things further, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to remember they were out in public, during the day.

“I’ve never been on a date before,” she said breathlessly as he continued to nip at her ear.

That revelation had him pulling back suddenly. His eyes caught hers and held. They were dark and deep, but soft as a caress. “Does it make me a bastard if I want to claim all of your firsts?”

She shook her head. It was truly all she could manage in that moment. She felt strange and wonderful, and like she was made of air. Like she could float away.

“I’ll pick you up at six,” he said, releasing her, a grin the size and intensity of the sun on his handsome face.

Would she truly float away? No. No. She had to stay here. On Earth. In the Wildlands. For him. And their date.

Awareness and urgency coursing through her blood, she watched him walk away, watched him shift. Watched his glorious beast thunder across the mossy landscape. As her mind conjured only one word to describe him.

Mine.

***

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” Irek chided as Reaux stalked through the door of the spy’s office inside the garden house, a trio of female growls echoing behind him. “I know you want the info, but I also know how crazy the sexual fanfare makes you.”

It did make him crazy, Reaux thought, dropping into the chair opposite his friend’s desk. Or it normally did. Today, though, it was odd—he hardly noticed the stares, the sounds of blatant desire as he passed. Maybe it was because his mind was focused on the need of only one female. The one he wanted.

The one he intended to make his mate.

“You said you had something for me?” Reaux said distractedly.

“I do.” Irek was never one to sugarcoat, and his dark mask of regret was troubling. “Some tough news, my friend.”

Dread slithered up Reaux’s spine, and all he could see in his mind was Karen’s face. “What?”

“This was a hard dig,” Irek told him. “Had to call in a few favors with some ex-Benson employees. Two who used to work there around the time the cub was born. Seems he was adopted by a couple related to Christopher.”

So much for not sugarcoating. This had to be bad. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Didn’t make it past day ten.”

“Fuck…”

“Cub needed