“I could taste your sweet scent on the air,” he growled, his face only inches from hers. “Needy, aching, your pu**y throbbed for satisfaction, and you found none.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in hunger, his eyes burned with it as his voice lowered. “And I knew I could ease you. I knew I longed to ease you with a strength that overcame even my need to kill the bastards who hunted us for so many years. And I knew, tasting the scent of your juices in the air, that you were my mate.”
“How?” Desperation filled her, longing, fear, so many emotions, so many needs she couldn’t make sense of. “How could you have known, Saban?”
He took her hand before she could draw back and flatted her palm over his heart. “That night was the first time in my life that I realized my heart beat. In my life I have never known fear, nor excitement, or nerves. I was always calm. Always steady. But that night, Natalie. That night, I felt all those things, cher . I felt them rip inside me, tear through my soul, and fill me. Without control. Without volition. I had no choice, because you’re the other part of me. My soul, boo . My mate.”
He should have looked ridiculous, kneeling there in front of her, her hand pressed into his chest, unfortunately, he looked anything but ridiculous. He looked arrogant; he looked like a man determined to claim his woman.
Sexy, savage, hungry. He wasn’t pleading, he wasn’t asking permission for her heart. He was claiming it, and as far as he was concerned, it was that simple.
“It doesn’t work that way.” She could feel his heart beneath her hand, strong and steady. “Just because you want it—”
“Doesn’t make it so.” His lips twisted with an edge of bitterness. “But the mating heat does make it so, Natalie. What you said, about the choice being taken from you, may be true from your perspective, at this moment. But it isn’t true of mine. If you weren’t meant to be my heart, and I yours, then it would not have happened.”
“Saban, there are no guarantees in life,” she snapped, frustrated, feeling the pressure his certainty
brought her. “I just walked out of a marriage that nearly destroyed me with one controlling man. I don’t need to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.”
As the last word left her lips, heat bloomed in her womb, between her thighs. Her teeth clenched on the agonizing pleasure. It wasn’t pain. It was a need for pleasure, and it was sharp, intense, destructive to her self-control.
“I took the damned pills,” she groaned, wrapping her arms around her stomach, pressing, fighting against the clenching, spasming need that tore through it.
“The hormone in the kiss raises the arousal level,” he said softly. “The hormone in the male se**n eases it somewhat.”
He pushed her hair back from her face, his hard hands stroking pure pleasure along the sides of her face.
“I suspected.” She shook her head. “The tabloid stories, all those silly articles. When I came to Sanctuary and met Callan and Merinus, I suspected parts of them were true.”
And she had been intrigued, curious about the Breed who watched her with hungry eyes and pretended to be something, someone he wasn’t.
“Parts of them are true,” he agreed. “Let me ease you, Natalie. Let me take away the pain.”
His lips touched hers, a butterfly kiss that had her own lips parting and a breath of need escaping her lips.
“I’m going to regret this.” She knew she was.
Natalie opened her eyes and stared back at him, desperation, need, and fear roiling together inside her.
“I can’t handle shackles, Saban. I can’t be controlled.” The fear of it was ripping through her mind, destroying the balance she had found after her divorce.
Because she was being controlled. By the mating hormone he had spilled into her system, by her own body, by needs she couldn’t deny because everything inside her was demanding his touch.
“I’ll call Ely,” he growled. “She can strengthen the pills.”
Natalie shook her head, her hands jerking up to cover his as he moved to straighten away from her.
“Touch me. Just touch me.” She could feel the perspiration pouring from her face now, the weakness invading her body. “Saban, this is worse than she predicted. Oh God, this is bad.”
Dr. Ely Morrey had explained what she could expect in the first stage of the mating heat. But she’d said it only got worse after mates had sex that first time. Before that, the arousal would stay steady, a little uncomfortable, until she and Saban actually had sex.
If it was worse than this later, then she didn’t know if she would survive it. She stared back at Saban, seeing the agony in his eyes, the knowledge that he hadn’t expected this either.
“ Cher , Natalie.” His thumbs smoothed over her cheeks. “Go inside, away from me. I’ll finish this meal for you. You can eat.”
She shook her head.
“If we stay out here, bébé , we’ll end up f**king out here.” He was breathing hard, his chest moving fast and hard as his hands tightened around her face. “The scent of your arousal is making me insane. My control is thin enough as it is.”
She licked her lips nervously. “Come in with me.”