CHAPTER 10

Eli felt like every wish he’d ever made while blowing out his birthday candles had finally come true. All at once.

While he was pretty sure this hadn’t been his exact wish the year he’d turned five, he didn’t really think that mattered. It sure as hell should have been.

Josie melted against him like warm chocolate. Since he thought of that precise image every time he looked into those dark velvet eyes of hers, he thought the metaphor was particularly appropriate. She almost tasted like chocolate, too. The good stuff, not an ordinary Hershey bar, or the cheap stuff you could buy at the local drugstore, but the rich, dark, exotic concoctions that made a person understand what had inspired the ancient Mayans to make blood sacrifices to the cacao plant. She tasted like a sacred nectar, spicy, fruity, complex, and beguiling. He wanted to consume her and protect her all at once.

His arm drew her closer until she had to lean across his chest to return the kiss. The pressure of her sweetly rounded breasts against him pulled a deep rumble of satisfaction from his throat. Josie jerked her head back and stared down at him, her expression bemused and her lips slightly swollen.

“Did you just purr?” she asked in astonishment.

Eli felt his mouth curve in a slow smile. “I can’t help it. That’s what cats do when a pretty girl curls up in their laps.”

She laughed softly and her gaze dropped to his mouth. She licked her lips. “Somehow, I think you have that backward.”

“I’m too big to sit in your lap.” He touched the tip of his nose to hers, wrapped both arms around her, and lifted her off the sofa, resettling her across his thighs. “But you fit just perfectly in mine.”

Josie gave a purr of her own, her eyelashes drifting down even as she raised her face to his. Eli had no intention of refusing the invitation. He took her mouth again, drinking deeply of her unique, intoxicating flavor.

He thought for a moment that he could kiss her forever. He had almost forgotten how such a simple intimacy could serve as an end in and of itself. When was the last time he’d savored the intricate dance of tongue against tongue, the sweet yielding of a woman’s mouth? When had he last felt this peculiar tightness in his chest, this bone-deep knowledge that life and the universe would be just perfect if the woman in his arms would simply stay with him?

Never. He had never felt anything like this.

Itchy fingers sought relief in the cool, heavy silk of her hair. With a tug, he pulled out the elastic and tossed it away. The damp tresses slid away from her crown like dark flows of lava, slick and slow and just as fascinating. Eli slid his fingers under the thick curtain, sifted through the smooth strands, and cupped the back of her skull. The curve of her head seemed to fit his palm perfectly, and somehow his thumb felt right at home in the soft, tender hollow where the top of her spine emerged. It rubbed against the downy little hairs that clung to the skin there, eliciting a broken moan from the mouth of his mate.

His mate.

The word reverberated in his mind, opening door like a master key. It didn’t matter that this was only the second kiss they’d shared, that they’d never spoken before he’d barged into her clinic Saturday night. It didn’t matter that he was Feline and she was human. Josephine Barrett was his mate. It was what she would always be, what she had always been, even if neither of them had realized it before this moment.

It just was.

Eli shuddered when her small, graceful hands slid up the front of his chest, glided over his shoulders, and pulled herself tighter against him. Everything about her aroused him, but the feel of her touching him nearly drove him over the edge. His thumb pressed delicately against the depression at the base of her skull and she moaned again. He thrilled to know that such a tiny, simple movement had the power to unravel her, like a magic button he could push to have her melting and arching against him. He fought a fierce battle against the temptation to press again and again to see how high the innocent touch could take her. Another time, he might try it, but this, this first time, was for exploring. Later, he would learn to linger.

His free hand was already way ahead of him.

It had lingered on her waist after shifting her to his lap, then drifted slowly to her hip. Now it reversed the trip, sliding across the curve of her hip and up toward her waist. But this time, his fingers twitched aside the hem of her T-shirt and delved beneath, stuttering at the silky smooth texture of her skin. His palm urged him upward, but his fingers couldn’t be budged. Not yet. They were enthralled by the feel of her, by the gentle curve of her waist, a sweet, lush valley between the slopes of hip and torso. It seemed like such an innocent place to touch, a place anyone might put a hand in friendship or to give direction; yet he felt the way her muscles jumped and her breath hitched when he rubbed that little patch of skin and all at once, the idea of anyone else touching her made him want to scream out a warning. No one else should ever know how soft she was, how tender, how perfect.

He could feel the rhythm of her breath changing, growing faster and shallower. He sensed the subtle tension invading her limbs and gave thanks that she seemed to be responding as eagerly as he. She pressed herself forward, flattening her breasts against his chest and twisting her hips until she faced him from neck to knees.

Impatiently, his hands shifted, the fingers at her nape falling away to curl around the back of her knee. The other followed suit and guided her to shift again, until her legs parted and her knees settled on the sofa cushions on either side of his hips. He winced as she pulled away and held his breath while he waited for her reaction. He searched her face for clues, watching as uncertainty, arousal, caution, and desire all flickered across her face like images on a movie screen. Then she smiled at him, and his heart squeezed in his chest at the sight.

Something else felt squeezed when she reached for the hem of her T-shirt and her smile turned wicked. “You won’t think I’m cheap if you see me naked before the third date, will you?”

Eli shook his head and felt his mouth curve irrepressibly when she crossed her arms over her chest and pull the top off over her head.

“Promise?”

His hands returned to her waist, lighting there like homing pigeons. “I promise.”

Her hair swung forward when she bent toward him, falling around him like a curtain, and Eli groaned helplessly. When her lips settled on his, the groan turned into a purr. His hands slid up her back, pulling her toward him and tracing the graceful curve of her spine with impetuous fingertips.

Josie leaned into the kiss for a moment, then pulled back again and reached for the buttons that ran down the front of his dark cotton shirt. “Fair is fair,” she whispered.

How he kept his hands off her while she unfastened that endless row of buttons, he would never know. He managed it, though, even when she made him lift his hips so she could tug the tails out of his jeans and spread the plackets wide over his chest. He didn’t even flinch when she sat back on his thighs and ran her gaze over his chest like a child inspecting a long-anticipated Christmas present. He just hoped it would make her happy.

She stared for a moment longer, then gave a tug and finished stripping the shirt from him, dropping it to the floor behind her to join her own. Then she answered every prayer he’d ever uttered.

Wrapping her slender fingers around his wrists, she pulled his hands away from her back and guided them to her breasts, using her own fingers to wrap his around the soft mounds.

Eli thought he might even have thanked the Gods. Aloud.

Josie just grinned and smoothed her palms over the hair-roughened surface of his chest. When she leaned forward, his fingers tightened around her breasts, and she only sighed and pressed herself deeper into his grasp. Her lips brushed his like butterfly wings, once, then twice. Then her tongue swept out to tease the corner of his mouth.

“Eli?” she breathed, even though it was all he could do to remember that simple act.

His only response was a muffled groan.

“Eli,” she murmured, her tongue darting to the opposite corner of his mouth. “I want you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, then dragged them open again when the horrible thought occurred to him that this might possibly turn out to be some kind of dream.

“Eli.” More kisses, this time strung together with a series of nibbles along the curve of his lower lip. The woman was obviously trying to drive him absolutely out of his mind. “Eli, would you make love to me? Pretty please?”

Tomorrow, he might learn that the shriek Josie uttered when he bolted off the sofa with her clasped against his chest had been heard two miles away, but at the moment it didn’t matter. In fact, the idea never occurred to him. He was too busy running for the bedroom as if his life and libido depended on it. He had the horrible suspicion that in this case, they just might.

The trip from the living room to the bedroom happened so fast that Josie only realized she’d missed it when her back bounced against her queen-size mattress with a dull thud. Eli Pace, it turned out, didn’t believe in wasting time.

Well, that was all right, she decided, because at this particular moment, Josie decided that she didn’t, either.

She’d never done anything like this before, but she didn’t intend to let a little thing like that stop her. Oh, she’d had sex before—duh, she was thirty-two years old, and this was 2010, not 1810—but her experiences with the act before had all been in the context of relationships. The kind with more than forty-eight hours under their belts.

And actually, she hadn’t really had that many lovers. There had been her college sweetheart first—Jeffrey—and that had lasted three years, until he realized that she really intended to follow through with that whole vet school business, and that it would mean another four whole years of classes and studying and exams and other things that she would refuse to blow off just to spend time with him. He’d dumped her the day after she’d gotten her acceptance letter from Davis. Next had come William. He’d been more of a friend than a lover, but they had fallen in and out of bed during most of veterinary school, when neither of them had been able to spare the energy to sustain a real romantic relationship. And after that, there had been Ian.

Ian had had possibilities. She’d met him during her residency in California, when he’d brought his cat to the emergency room after it swallowed a piece of string with a needle on one end. The needle had gotten lodged in Kitty’s stomach, and one of Josie’s mentors had performed the surgery to remove it. Ian had taken Josie out for breakfast to celebrate. They’d dated for a while and ended up living together for a year. Then they’d just ended.

Since then, she’d been too busy for a relationship, and after moving back to Stone Creek she’d realized that the idea of having anything else in her hometown just skeeved her. After all, a good percentage of the population had known her when she’d been in diapers, and at least a few of those had her parents’ phone number and would be happy to call with reports on what little Josephine was up to now. No thanks.

The clinic had kept her busy enough that she hadn’t missed having a lover all that much. She had always enjoyed her own company, always felt complete in and of herself, whether she happened to be in a relationship or not. She might miss having someone to come home to from time to time, but she never felt really lonely. She never got worked up over it.

But one look at Eli Pace and something inside Josie had gotten very worked up indeed.

She let herself sink back into the softness of her downy bedcover as Eli shifted over her like a heavy, heated shadow. She couldn’t contain the slow shifting of her lips or the anticipation-filled smile that settled there. She didn’t particularly want to. This moment, she had decided, was meant to be seized, to be grasped by both hands and clung to for all she was worth. When Eli looked at her with hungry green eyes and an expression of mingled awe and debauchery, she felt as if she were worth quite a lot. A jewel beyond price.

Letting one arm rest against the pillow above her head, Josie lifted her other hand and cupped the back of his neck. She drew him to her slowly, a journey he hardly resisted, savoring the anticipation, the quiver-inducing knowledge of the power and pleasure of his kiss. When their lips met, she could barely decide which she enjoyed more, the kiss itself, or the moment just before it, when his eyes went dark and hazy and unfocused with desire.

Then his tongue surged forward and Josie forgot about every moment except this one.

Her hand slid from his neck to his shoulder, kneading her way across thick ropes of muscle and sinew. She adored the size and strength of him, the way he could be so intimidating and yet not intimidate her at all. The only thing she felt when he loomed over her like a conquering barbarian was a surge of arousal. And, unexpectedly, of joy.

She stroked his shoulder, his back, the ridge of his collarbone, and back again. A hum of pure pleasure welled up inside her and vibrated against his lips, into his mouth. He caught the sound and swallowed it, returning it was a raspy purr.

God, she would never look at a happy house cat the same way. Ever. Again.

His torso arched away from her, out of reach of her embrace, and she protested with a little moan, then realized he had no intention of breaking the kiss and returned her hand to the back of his neck. She wondered if he felt the same pleasure that she did at a teasing pressure just there, so she tried it and felt the increased ardor of his kiss. Not quite the same, she decided, but hardly what she would term a failure.

He distracted her then with busy nimble hands. His fingers hooked in the waistband of her trousers and tugged at the stretchy cloth, easing the fabric down over her hips as if he meant to take his time. Whether he intended to savor the moment or hoped to keep from startling her, Josie didn’t care. She canted her hips up to help, and once the waist cleared her hips, she used her feet and legs to kick the garment free.

She felt Eli’s surprise, then his satisfaction. His kiss deepened and roughened for the space of a few breathless heartbeats before he pulled away and smiled down at her with those hypnotic cat’s eyes. Her gaze locked with his, followed it as it slid from her to her lips, her throat, her breasts. Lingered. Moved on over the tiny curve of her belly, the round sweep of her hip. Lingered again on the neat little thatch of curls at her mound. Traced the line of her legs all the way down to the cotton-candy polish on her dainty bare toes.

Her breath caught and held, the most feminine part of her waiting for his approval. He gave it with a sigh of utter satisfaction.

“Glorious,” he breathed, and bent to her mouth once more.

Josie welcomed him and returned his kiss with ardent fervor, but the kiss was no longer enough for her. She wanted more, wanted him to touch her, to take her, to move inside and become part of her. And she didn’t want to wait any longer.

He responded to the urging of her hands at his sides and shifted, pressing her legs apart with a denim-clad knee and sliding between them. The touch of the rough fabric against her skin made her shiver, made her feel somehow more naked than she had when he’d looked at her, but there was no embarrassment. She felt like his description of her—glorious. She felt powerful and feminine and more than a little wicked. She felt like a little piece of seduction itself.

When he settled his weight above her, she welcomed it, wrapping her arms around his back and hooking one leg over the back of his. The action brought his hips into perfect alignment with hers, and they both froze at the sensation.

Grasping his face in both hands, Josie pulled back far enough to catch his gaze and whispered, “Okay, jeans have got to go. Now.”

Oddly, Eli offered no protests.

He leapt off the bed, stripped, and levered himself back over her in three seconds, flat. This time when his legs slid between hers and their hips aligned, Josie didn’t just shiver, she groaned, a long, drawn-out sound of unbearable pleasure. He felt so perfect, so right, lying above her. She didn’t know how she’d be able to handle the pleasure of having him inside her, but she’d find the strength. God help her, she’d find it somewhere.

Her head tipped back when he lifted his mouth from hers and dragged it over the curve of her throat. She would give him whatever access he wanted, to whatever part of her he wanted to touch. When his lips skidded across the length of her collarbone, she sighed and kneaded the broad muscles of his back, but when his mouth closed over the tip of one breast and began to suckle, she arched like a drawn bow and cried out his name.

He grunted in satisfaction and scraped her nipple with sharp, careful teeth. The sensation made her vibrate, now less a bow than the perfectly tensed string of a cello, offering up a low, rich hum of sound. He reacted by thrusting more sensation upon her, every touch twisting the coil of arousal tighter, every caress designed to rob her of her sanity.

She couldn’t say he played her body like an instrument, because she’d never seen a musician turn so suddenly ruthless. She had heard violins weep, but not like her body wept for him, moisture pooling in her core and spilling forth to beg him to join with her. A single, clear note of sanity somewhere far back in the recesses of her overheated mind urged her to turn the tables on him, to beat him at his own game, to touch and tease and tantalize until he lost all control. That was what he was doing to her, and sauce for the goose, after all...

But she couldn’t. The minute spark of that thought drowned and gurgled under the onslaught of pleasure. The idea had barely formed when his mouth shifted to her other breast and sly, skilled fingers rounded the curve of her thigh to dive between, sliding within her on a stroke of ruthless giving.

Her body contracted like a pill bug, curling into itself as a mechanism of self-defense. She had to protect herself against this terrible pleasure. Against the way his fingers shifted and searched and uncovered her every intimate secret. She couldn’t bear the need, the trembling, aching, yawning abyss of need that grew inside of her like a black hole, threatening to consume her from within.

Josie gasped. She screamed. She may have begged. In the end she couldn’t remember. All she could remember was that she clawed at him with desperate hands, drew her legs open and up as if she could swallow him whole. She felt his touch, heard his deep, raspy voice attempting to soothe her, but her hunger controlled her, and it refused to be soothed. It wanted to be satisfied, and nothing else.

Finally, quickly, exquisitely, her granted her mercy. His fingers withdrew from her quivering sheath and he grasped her hips with both hands. His fingers dug into her soft flesh, biting hard enough to leave marks, if she had cared about such things. Panting, his hot, sweet breath like a blessing against her cheek, he jerked her hips up and plunged inside her, diving deep to her heart and shouting his pleasure to the ceiling.

Immediately and perfectly, they began moving together, the rhythm instantly finding them as if this weren’t the first time they had been lovers, but the hundredth, the millionth. She yielded where he advanced, gained ground where he retreated. She clung to his back like the last steady handhold in a quaking galaxy, and he gripped her hips as if to release her would mean losing his own sanity.

Rising and falling together, they became one being, a single living thing made of heat and tenderness, pleasure and agony, heart and soul and mind and breath. Each lost all sense of self and a separate thing. They were only us, and as they threw themselves off the edge of the peak, hands and hearts joined, they knew they would never again go back to what they had been, alone and individual. Part of them had fused in that blinding moment of pleasure, and the bond that sealed it could never be undone.

Exp. 10-1017.03

Log 03-00133

Locating the proper radio tracking equipment proves difficult. Nothing has yet met the high standards required for the experiment. May have to proceed with Stage 4 in absence of equipment and recruit larger number of technicians to perform subject tracking duties.

Stage 4 product will be complete within the next 12–24 hours. Modifications to the active strain appear in vitro to provide hoped-for results. Laboratory testing will be bypassed in favor of active field testing. With the end goal in sight and the tools for success at hand, it would be a disservice to society, to humanity, to withhold such an important scientific advancement.

As an aside, the nonscientific participants involved in the project remain a disappointment. Science will provide our solution.

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