Wild Embrace (20 page)

“I'm glad we're doing it, though,” Felix said with a smile of his own, his heart doing damn backflips inside his chest at the thought of his cat.

Riley laughed. “You won't hear me arguing.”

Thanking the lieutenant, Felix left to take care of his duties, and the next time he saw Desiree, it was that night. Raising an eyebrow, she said, “You got me hauled in front of my alpha.”

Having glimpsed the teasing glint in her eye, he shrugged. “Our conflicting schedules weren't good for romance.”

Desiree's laugh wrapped around him. “Well, thanks to you, Mr. Smarty-Pants, we both have the night off and free. Want to go dancing?”

“Sure.” He'd take any excuse to hold her close. “Did Lucas say anything about us?” The DarkRiver alpha was just as attuned to his pack as Hawke was to SnowDancer.

“Just that if I planned to seduce you into DarkRiver, I had his full support.” A deep grin. “Your horticultural skills are in hot demand.”

Felix felt his skin heat, both at the compliment and at the idea of being seduced by this wild, beautiful cat. “Shall I change? For dancing?” He was wearing jeans, boots, and a white T-shirt, all clean, since he'd showered before meeting her, but well loved. Desiree, on the other hand, was wearing tight black jeans and a beautiful rust-colored top that skimmed her curves, her hair out of its braids and straightened to a slick shine. It was pretty but he liked the crackling wildness better.

“Are you kidding?” She nipped him on the jaw, a caress he'd not
only become used to from her, but that he adored. “Those jeans cup your butt just right.”

He didn't blush this time; he grinned. “You can bite it later.” When she laughed and kissed him again, he knew he was starting to learn how to deal with his cat.

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he led her to the SUV he'd signed out of the pack's fleet. “You want to drive?” Dominants were weird about being driven sometimes and Felix didn't mind making this small accommodation.

“No,” Desiree said with a smile. “I feel like being chauffeured today.”

The drive was fun, easy.

“Look at the line outside Wild,” Desiree said, motioning at the club popular with younger packmates.

“It's good to see them having fun again.” Both SnowDancer and DarkRiver packmates had stayed close to home in the weeks directly after the battle, everyone stunned at the violence and needing to be around pack.

“But,” he added, “I'm glad we're not going in there.” He and Desiree were headed to a place that was more dinner and dancing, the music good but the volume low enough that conversation didn't mean having to shout; he'd used the SUV's built-in comm to call ahead and book them a table.

“Did you do the club thing when you were younger?”

He shrugged. “Now and then—I don't really like being crushed in with too many people.”

“I know.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “You like the outdoors, open spaces.” Reaching over, she put her hand on his thigh, the possessive touch making his wolf's fur rub against the inside of his skin. “I can't believe you did modeling for as long as you did.”

“I missed home until it hurt,” he admitted, pulling into a parking
space and closing his hand over hers. “Sometimes it felt as if I couldn't breathe.” Squeezing her hand, he grinned. “I once turned wolf and ran through the Champ de Mars.”

Desiree hooted at the mention of the famous park in Paris. “You didn't! What happened?”

“I nearly got arrested.” A grin. “But the cops couldn't catch me.” Wolf huffing with laughter inside him, he said, “Hardest part was sneaking back into my apartment building. The next time I did something like that, I made sure to cache my clothes in a place I could access but that other people wouldn't notice.”

“Wait.” Desiree turned in her seat, eyes yellow-green and glowing. “You did it
again
?”

“I spent time in a lot of cities,” he said in his defense. “Milan, New York, Sydney, Paris again. But I usually tried to find a park at least.” He laughed at the memories. “My favorite time was when a bunch of kids ran into me while I was a wolf and we played football until their moms noticed and freaked out, even though I was very well behaved and obviously changeling.”

“Well, city people probably aren't used to seeing a great big wolf casually playing football.” Desiree was utterly delighted by his stories, asked him to tell her more as they walked to Amore, the restaurant where they planned to eat dinner, dance a little, just enjoy being with one another.

The more he shared, the deeper she fell.

He was telling her about another model he'd known, when they arrived at the restaurant, to be told their table wouldn't be ready for another twenty minutes. In no hurry, they decided to hang out at the bar. They'd just grabbed their drinks and Desiree was cuddled up to Felix, telling him about her trainee soldier days, when some asshole patted her butt and said, “Hey, babe.”

Rolling her eyes,
she turned to the big, muscle-bound idiot. “Touch me again and I'll rip off your hand.”

All tanned skin and white teeth, he leaned against the bar. She was dead certain he was a nonpredatory changeling, but, from his behavior, it seemed likely he was one of the bulls from the local deer herd. They could be as cocky as predators.

“Want to dance?”

She couldn't believe the nerve of the moron. Deciding to ignore him, she turned back to Felix, to see that his jaw was clenched, his eyes wolf. “Hey.” She put a hand on his chest. “Don't let some random dickhead ruin our night.”

Felix's muscles remained bunched, but he looked back down at her. She smiled . . . and felt the asshole touch her again. Growling low in her throat as her claws sliced out, she spun around and clawed bloody lines across the back of his hand.

He hissed as blood welled, but didn't back off.

“Get out of her face.” It was Felix's voice from behind her, his body pressed up against her back.

The other male smirked. “Or what?”

“Or I'll kick your fucking ass.” Desiree slammed her drink down
on the bar, aware of the entire place going dead quiet as the others around them picked up on the violence simmering in the air.

The asshole glanced at his friends, then back not at Desiree but at Felix. “What about you, pretty boy? You gonna stand there and let your girlfriend do all the work?”

Desiree's leopard went stock-still inside her skin.
This
, this was what had been holding her back. Not that Felix was less dominant, but whether he could accept—truly accept—a woman who was
more
dominant. And not only that, a woman who was a trained soldier, designed and built to fight.

So when he said, “What? Watch my seriously hot woman put you on your fat ass and look sexy while she's doing it? Oh, yeah, I'm definitely game for that,” every single cell in her body exploded in violent pleasure.

She went to shoot him a grin, but the goddamn fuckwit who'd interrupted their date tried to touch her
again
. Snarling, she slammed out, and suddenly the bull wasn't so happy messing with her on his own. As his friends yelled and came at them, she was aware of Felix falling in beside her. They shared a grin before wading in to the melee together—and it was a melee. It seemed like everyone was ready for a good fight tonight in this very nice, very respectable establishment.

He fought side by side with her throughout and it was at that moment that she understood the true depth of his courage. He didn't have the aggressive instincts of a dominant, but like all SnowDancer submissives, he'd been trained in combat, so that he wouldn't be helpless if he was ever the only line of defense for their most vulnerable.

Tonight, she saw what it meant when a submissive fought for someone he cared about.

He was all teeth and claws and fury and an unflinching refusal to surrender, even against bigger, more violent opponents. And he never,
never
got in her way. Instead, he was there to back her up,
give her anything she needed; he made sure her flank was protected, that she never had to worry about sneak attacks.

His kicks found their mark time and again, and he smashed more than one jaw.

She saw him take a brutal punch to the gut as the instigator of the fight got in under his guard, but Felix ignored the injury to ensure she remained covered. Desiree, on the other hand, was enraged. This time, she got the offending asshole bull deliberately in the face.

“If you want to play for real,” she snarled as he stumbled back, bleeding, “then let me show you my fucking claws.”

•   •   •

Felix
had seen dominants fight before. You couldn't be part of SnowDancer and not have witnessed that, even if it was only in a combat simulation. As it was, with the recent violence, he'd seen it in truth. But he'd never seen anyone fight like Desiree. Her moves were silken, sinuous, and could turn deadly with a whisper-light change in pressure or force.

He didn't think the idiots who'd initiated this had any idea she was pulling her punches. “Damn, you're beautiful,” he said when they came face-to-face for a split second, their eyes colliding. He wanted to kiss her so badly at that instant.

But then he heard another angry battle yell and it was on again.

Four minutes later, an unbruised and unbloodied Desiree buffed her nails on the silken fabric of her top as she stood with her boot on the chest of the man who'd been stupid enough to touch her without permission. “Now, I'm going to go have my dinner,” she said to her very bruised and battered and clawed-up opponent. “Unless you'd like me to further kick your mangy ass?”

The bull groaned, spreading his hands in surrender.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” Turning, she hauled Felix down
to her mouth with her hand around his nape, claws pricking his skin. He went, his wolf perfectly happy to be in the control of this very dangerous woman—because that dangerous woman had just laid out ten other people while treating him as a partner.

There'd been no condescension, no ignoring him. She'd worked with him, left her back open—trusting him to watch it. At one stage, they'd been fighting back-to-back. And now she didn't protest when he wrapped his own hand around her nape and held her tight as they kissed. It was hot, it was wet, and it was perfect.

“A-
hem
.”

Breaking apart at the pointed sound, they turned to find the owner of the restaurant glaring at them out of eyes of uptilted jet. “Really?” the petite woman said, tapping her stiletto-clad foot. “You had to put a dent in my brand-new bar
and
bend three stools?”

Desiree grinned. “Hey, at least we didn't break anything.”

“Oh, shut up.” The woman went over and using the pointed tip of her shoe, prodded sharply at the bull who'd started it all. “Get up, you whiny baby, and call your herd leader. You're about to get one hell of a bill.”

Felix tugged Desiree away from the irritated owner—who happened to be a human member of SnowDancer. Walking over to the restaurant section, where they received a round of clapping and grinning woohoos, they took the table pointed out by a smiling waiter. “So,” Felix said, picking up the menu, “that was nice. What shall we do for our next date?”

Desiree's eyes sparkled at him from over the top of her own menu . . . and that was the instant he realized he was holding her gaze, had been doing so since their kiss. His wolf paused, considered whether to lower its eyes, but could find no reason to do so. She was no longer an unknown dominant whose actions and reactions he couldn't
predict. She was Desiree and she didn't see eye contact from him as a challenge; she saw it as natural, as what should be.

Suddenly, he didn't want to be here, with all these other people.

Her pupils dilated in front of him, her scent sharpening and softening at the same time. “My place is closer from here,” she whispered.

“Done.” Leaving a tip for the befuddled waiter, who'd just brought them a complimentary starter, he got up and, taking Desiree's hand, headed out the door.

Her place might've been closer, but it wasn't
close
, and by the time he brought the SUV to a stop at the only viable parking spot—which was still about a twenty-minute run from her aerie, his body was at fever pitch.

“We could just—” Desiree began, her chest rising and falling as if she'd run a marathon.

“No. I want all night. I don't want to have to stop later so we can run to your place.”

Desiree groaned, pulled him close for a kiss that scrambled his brain cells, then took off. He raced after her. She was
fast
, far faster than he was, but that was all right, because he had the endurance to track her, no matter how fast she went. And she never went out of sight—because she wasn't running away. She was flirting with him in the way only a cat could do.

When she lunged up to her aerie, he just stood there and watched the beauty of her. Until she began to strip, dropping her clothes off the porch. He started to climb. His first sight of her naked body made everything in him ignite. He was on her in a heartbeat, his hands on her waist, his arm muscles bunching as he lifted.

She wrapped her legs around him, her own arms around his neck and her mouth locked to his. Stumbling, weaving, drunk from her kiss, her taste, he somehow managed to get them into the aerie and
to her bed. When he came down on top of her, she pricked at him with her claws but he knew that pricking now, knew she wasn't telling him to stop. Nipping and kissing at her mouth, her jaw, her throat, he rubbed himself against her and knew he was going to go off like a rocket if he got naked.

“Felix.” A purr of sound, her own mouth kissing down his jaw to his throat.

He shuddered, the intimacy of the caress making his wolf want to throw back its head in an ecstatic howl. But he needed her mouth on his, too, and tugged up her head to initiate another kiss. She growled low in her throat at being stopped in her self-appointed task.

Breaking the kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling. “I know you're not mad.” His smile felt as if it filled his entire body.

Eyes going cat, she ran her clawed hands lightly down his back. “Why are you still wearing clothes?” An instant later, those claws got busy and his T-shirt was in shreds that he tugged off to leave his upper half bare.

Her heels digging into his ass, Desiree flipped their positions so that he ended up on the bottom. “All mine,” she purred, leaning down to flick her tongue over his lower lip.

Blood hot and cock like stone, he reached up to close his hands over the luscious mounds of her breasts, tug at her nipples. She threw back her head, her unhidden pleasure in his touch making him feel like a god. Shifting his hands to run them up her back, he tilted her forward until he could suck and lick and bite at her.

A sharp nip of his ear when he got a little too rough, her nails digging into his nape. Licking over the inadvertent hurt, he reached down between her legs. She was liquid under his fingertips. Shudders rocking him at the evidence of just how much she wanted him, her scent lush and erotic, he found her clit, tugged gently.

Exhaling in a jagged rhythm, she kissed him. “I'll go over,” she warned, her body undulating on his fingers as if she couldn't stop herself.

“Go,” he said, the single word a harsh whisper. “I want to watch.” Pressing the pad of his thumb to her clit as he slid a single finger inside her, he caressed her in a short, hard rhythm.

Her nails dug into his chest so hard that he scented blood, but that was fine. Better than fine. They were changeling. Wolf and leopard. Getting wild between the sheets was part of their nature and he fucking loved that Desiree was getting wild with him. He petted her through her orgasm even as sweat broke out over his own body, his control razor thin.

Purring in the aftermath, she melted across his body, coming down to claim a lazy, possessive kiss. With one hand, she nudged his aside, as if she was too sensitive, the fingers of her other hand playing with the flat disks of his nipples. He groaned and rubbed his denim-clad cock up against her.

She grazed his jaw with her teeth and, smile slow and very female, said, “I'm going to be a lazy cat and make you do all the work.” A shift up his body, her damp heat coming into contact with his abdomen.

Fuck!

Rolling over so she was pinned under him, he took a hard, slamming kiss before rising and somehow shoving off his jeans and underwear. His shoes and socks he'd kicked off earlier, so he was naked in a matter of seconds.

“My beautiful man,” Desiree said, her gaze leopard.

Covering her body with his own once more, he gripped the headboard of her bed with one hand, her thigh with the other. “You're the beautiful one.” The words were rough, growled, but he meant every one. She was strong and sexy and just flat-out perfect.

Then his brain quit working, the erotic scent of her desire mingling
with the scalding heat of her on the tip of his cock to make him a creature of pure raw need. Thrusting deep, he was aware of her body arching, her cry shattering the air.

“Dezi?” he ground out, afraid he'd hurt her.

Her answer was to wrap her legs around his hips and rise toward him in wordless demand.

It was all he needed.

Surrendering his mouth to her own when she sought it, he pulled out and thrust deep again and again. His rhythm was ragged, his heart thunder . . . and then Desiree's teeth closed over the pulse in his neck hard enough to leave a mark. The orgasm tore through him so hot and so hard that he felt his claws slice out.

The last thing he remembered was making sure he didn't cut her. After that there was only pleasure, only Desiree in his arms.

•   •   •

Felix
came back to his senses to find that he'd managed to flip them over at the last second so he didn't crush Desiree's smaller body. His breathing was harsh as he tried to recover from the hardest orgasm of his life, his body still locked with Desiree's, and his hand still very firmly on her nape.

He didn't remember putting it there, but since she was lying purring on his chest, she clearly didn't mind the hold. Trying to find words in his fried brain, he came up with, “Damn.”

A husky laugh, Desiree rising up enough to look down at him. Her eyes were night-glow, her skin bearing the marks of his possession. “You have some moves, Felix Grady.” It was an admiring statement.

His wolf preened. Releasing her nape, he ran his hand down the curve of her spine to lie on her butt. “That was nothing,” he said, feeling just a little smug. “Wait till I really get started.”

She squeezed his semi-hard cock with her internal muscles, making him groan. “Ditto.” A nuzzle. “I forgot about your bruises.”