Iona shifted. She didn’t want to, but some instinct told her he wouldn’t hurt her if she became a human. She felt her claws change to fingers and toes, her pelt fade and withdraw to become human flesh.
Eric lifted his long teeth from her throat, but he didn’t do anything to stop her shifting. He waited and watched until Iona became a human woman, one with a large, soft-furred snow leopard draped over her bare body.
That large, soft-furred snow leopard suddenly became a man. One minute Iona had a big kitty lying on her, the next, a strong, naked human male pinned her to the ground.
She struggled, but Eric trapped her wrists and held them against the cold gravel. He wanted her to look away as he stared her down, but she refused to. Somehow Iona knew that if she ever did look away, she’d lose—not only now, but always.
“I told you to call me when you needed to go running,” he growled.
“You follow me anyway. Why should I bother?”
“I scented you fighting the shift even as you drove away. It’s getting harder, isn’t it?”
Iona tried to ignore the stab of fear his words gave her. “Why can’t you leave me alone? If anyone finds out I’m Shifter…”
She knew exactly what they’d do. The human Shifter bureau would slap a Collar on her without listening to her protests, strip Iona of all her rights, and keep her in quarantine before releasing her to whatever Shifter they assigned to keep her under control. Three guesses as to who that Shifter would be.
And who the hell knew what they’d do to Iona’s mother, who’d kept the fact that Iona was half-Shifter quiet all this time.
“I can’t leave you alone. You’re in my jurisdiction, my responsibility. And you’re losing control, aren’t you?”
Iona shivered with more than anger. His long body was hard on hers, muscles gleaming with sweat in the moonlight. Eric’s living strength made the wild thing in her want to respond.
“I was hung over,” she said. “I’m not like this every day.”
Eric lowered his head and inhaled, his nose touching her throat. “You will be soon. Your mating need is high and getting stronger.”
That need pounded through her, tried to make Iona’s body rise to his. A male, ready for you—take him!
“What I do is none of your business,” Iona managed to say. “Leave me the hell alone. My life has been fine so far without you in it.”
“But I’m in it now.” His voice was deep and rumbling, almost a purr. The tattoo that wound down his arm kept drawing her gaze, and she so much wanted to touch it…
For Eric’s part, he was barely holding on to his self-control. Iona’s scent was that of a female Feline who’d reached her fertile years, a little over thirty by human standards, a few years past cub by Shifter.
This female Feline didn’t know how to control her pheromones, didn’t realize she was broadcasting her availability to every Shifter male far and wide. She might as well hold up a flashing sign.
Good thing Eric was so disciplined, still mourning his mate lost long ago, so uninterested in mating. Right?
Or he’d be hard as a rock, wanting to say to hell with it and take her. They were alone in the middle of nowhere, and Eric was within his rights to take whatever stray adult female wandered into his territory.
He didn’t necessarily have to mate-claim her. As clan leader as well as pride leader, he could father cubs on a lone female belonging to no pride or clan if he wanted to. For the good of the clan, for the strength of his pride. So he could say.
But those had been the rules in the wild. Shifters were tamer now, civilized. Living together in a community, in harmony. And all that crap.
Eric’s instincts said, Screw the rules. She’s unmated and unclaimed. By rights, she’s fair game, and I found her. That makes her mine.
Wouldn’t that be sweet? Iona Duncan had a face that was pure Celtic, her hair black as the night sky, her eyes the light ice blue of her ancestors. Shifters had been created about the time the Nordic invaders would have been subduing Celts in northern Scotland, and some of that mixture had gotten into Iona.
Now her soft but strong body was under his, and her blue eyes held longing, oceans of it.
“Does it hurt?” Eric asked in a gentler tone.
“Having a big Shifter male resting his weight on my wrists? I’d say yes.”
Eric wanted to laugh. He liked the challenge in her, liked that she wasn’t cringing, timid, and submissive. Untrained, yes; terrified, no.
“I mean the mating need,” Eric said. “It’s rising in you, and you can’t stop it. That’s why you’re out here, why you’ve been running around like a crazy thing. You want to be wild, to taste the wind. To hunt. To feel the fear in you flow to the innocent creatures out there, to make them fear you.”
Iona stopped squirming, her eyes going still. Eric read the hunger in her, the need to find a male, to mate in wild frenzy for days. Iona wasn’t stopped by a Collar. Her instincts would flow like fire. Untamed.
Eric’s own need rose in response. He wanted to kiss that fire, to taste the freedom in her that was now only a memory to him.
He nuzzled the line of her hair, already knowing her scent, already familiar with it.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “You’ll become part of my pride, and I’ll look after you. Me and my sister and my son. We’ll take care of you from now on.”
Iona’s glare returned. “I don’t want to be part of your pride. They’d put that Collar on me.” Her frenzied gaze went to the chain fused to Eric’s neck, the Celtic knot resting on his throat. “It’s painful, isn’t it? When the Collar goes on?”
“Yes.” Eric couldn’t lie. He remembered the agony when the Collar had locked around his throat, every second of it, though it had been twenty years ago now. The Collars hurt anew whenever a Shifter’s violent nature rose within him—the Collar shocked so hard it knocked said Shifter flat on his ass for a while.
“Why would you want me to experience that?” Iona asked. “You say you want to take care of me, but you want me to go through taking the Collar?”
“No, I don’t.” And if Eric did things right, she wouldn’t have to wear a Collar, ever.
The urge to take Iona far away, to hide her somewhere from prying eyes, to protect her from the world was making him crazy. Protect the mate was the instinct that drove all males.
Eric caressed her wrists where he held them down. “If you don’t acknowledge the Shifter, if you don’t learn how to control what’s going on inside you, you’re going to go feral.”