"What, you want an apology?" she asked him, incredulous.

"A little late, Tarek."

"I couldn't figure out why." He shook his head slowly. "Then, the strangest thing happened. The more I smelled the sweet heat flowing from your pussy, the more I denied myself a taste of it, the more I started noticing a few changes." She flushed heatedly at the explicit language, furiously chiding herself silently over her breathless reaction to it. He rose from the chair as she watched him warily.

"Changes?" She swallowed tightly as she glimpsed the morethan-healthy bulge between his thighs.

"These little glands along my tongue swelling. The taste of spice filling my mouth. The hunger for you growing by the day until I could almost taste your kiss. And I wanted your kiss bad, Lyra. So bad it was killing me. I wanted to push my tongue in your mouth and make you taste it, too. Make you as crazy for me as I was for you."

He stepped closer.

Lyra was breathing roughly, her hands knotted in the front of her robe as she watched him advance on her.

"Are you sick or something?" She had to force the words from her mouth.

A mocking, bitter smile twisted his lips.

"Or something," he agreed as he towered over her and then stepped slowly behind her.

She was not going to run from him, no matter how weird he acted.

"Would you like to know what's wrong with me, Lyra?" He bent close, his breath whispering over her ear as he spoke. A shiver raced up her spine as her nipples tightened further, rasping against her gown, almost making her moan at the pleasure of the action.

"No." She had a feeling she was certain she didn't want to know.

"There's this nasty little hormone filling my mouth." That growl was deeper now, more animalistic. "It's an aphrodisiac, Lyra. Caused only when a male Feline Breed hungers for his mate. Do you know what's going to happen if I kiss you?" Her knees weakened. A hormonal aphrodisiac? Something to make her hornier? She didn't think so.

"What?" She couldn't hold back the gasping whisper.

"If I kiss you, it goes into Mating Heat. Complete sexual abandon until you've passed ovulation. Do you know you're preparing to ovulate? That my body is reacting to it? That my cock is so damned hard, my balls so tight with the need to fuck you that it's like an open wound in my gut? All because you're ovulating. My mate. My woman."

Her eyes widened in horror at the words he whispered at her ear.

"You're crazy." She jerked away from him, turning on him furiously. "That's not possible."

The curve of his lips was bleak.

"You would think, wouldn't you?" He moved to the counter, picking up a small oval disc that he slapped on the kitchen island. "This will stop conception. Nothing can stop the heat. Now, my problem is, I'm ready to rip that gown off your body and throw you to the damn floor where I can fuck you until we're both screaming. Until you're as wild for me, as crazy for me, as I am for you. Or you can run out of that door right now, as fast as you can run, and find someplace, any place, to hide until I can find enough control to keep from hunting you down and taking you like the animal I am. Make your choice now, baby, and make it fast. Because this kitty is all out of patience."

Chapter Seven

Make a choice? He wanted her to make a choice?

She stared back at him, eyes wide, trying to force her brain past the shock to actually make a decision as to whether or not she was still sleeping. Because this had to be some kind of screwed-up nightmare. That was all there was to it.

"Let me get this straight." She edged farther back from him, simply because she was becoming so wet her panties felt damp and his eyes were getting darker. "Your tongue has glands. That have a hormonal aphrodisiac in them?"

He nodded as he advanced on her. He didn't say a word, just nodded his head as he inhaled deeply. She trembled at the knowledge that he was actually smelling her.

"If you kiss me, we go into heat?"

"You go into heat." He smiled, a tight, hard curve of his lips that denoted way more male intent than she was comfortable with.

She cleared her throat. "What do you do?"

"I put out the flames."

She moved back.

Okay. She was retreating. So fucking what? He was stalking her across the room like the damned Lion he was. And the closer he got, the hotter she got.

"Tarek…" She jerked in surprise as her back came up against the wall, staring up at him in shock as he stopped, only inches from her, his hand lifting.

He touched her. The backs of his fingers brushed against her throat before trailing down to her collarbone, his eyes tracking each movement his hand made as her breasts began to swell and throb.

"You're running out of time." His guttural whisper had her womb clenching furiously, the breath locking in her chest. This was a side of Tarek she wasn't accustomed to. A side she knew should not be turning her on as it was. He had barely touched her. In nearly six months of confrontations, arguments, and snapping debates, he had never touched her, never kissed her, and she was going up in flames for him.

She could feel it in every cell of her body, every hard pulse of blood through her veins.

"How long does it last?" she finally asked. "The heat stuff?" His eyes narrowed as his head lowered. He was going to kiss her, she knew he was. But he didn't. His lips moved to her neck, burning a heated caress to the sensitive flesh where her shoulder and neck met. There, his lips opened, his tongue stroking her skin a second before the incisors scraped against it. Her hands flew to his arms, her hands gripping his wrists as her knees weakened.

"It lasts forever." Bleak, bitter pain filled his voice. "From now until forever, Lyra. Always mine."

He bit her. Not hard enough to break the skin or to cause her undue pain. But he bit, his teeth clenching in the tender muscle as she arched on her tiptoes, a sizzling bolt of electric pleasure pulling a strangled cry from her lips.

Her clit pulsed, her vagina wept, her nipples became so hard, so tight, they were a near violent ache as a lethargic weakness left her gasping rather than fighting for freedom.

"Always?" She should have been alarmed. Always was not supposed to be in her vocabulary. She had no desire to be under a man's thumb, just under this man's body.

His lips moved back up her neck, his tongue licking at her flesh as a rumbling growl broke from his chest.

"Just a taste," he whispered as he reached her lips, his arms lowering from the braced position against the wall beside her head. "Stay very still, baby. I just need a taste." His lips ghosted over hers as she stared back at him, her gaze locked with his, seeing the hunger, the aching, soul-deep need he had kept hidden beneath lowered lashes or behind mocking humor.

But now it was laid bare to her, as clear, as desperate as the aching hunger for him that pulsed low in her stomach. She trembled as she felt his hands at the front of her robe, his lips, nipping at hers, parting them, retreating, only to come back for more as she held on to his wrists with a death grip. The buttons on her robe gave way, the edges falling apart as they both breathed harshly, the silence of the kitchen broken only by their gasps of pleasure.

"You're so wet. I can smell how wet you are. How sweet," he whispered as he stared back at her, his fingers working on the buttons of her gown. "Like the fragrance of summer, heating me, reminding me of life, of living."

His words shook her to her core.

"Do you know what the smell of your sweet pussy does to me?" He smoothed her gown apart, the cool air brushing against her naked breasts as she whimpered in an arousal so sharp, so desperate, she wondered if she would survive it. "It makes me hungry, Lyra. Hungry to take you, to hear you screaming beneath me as I bury every inch of my cock as deep inside you as possible."

She cried out sharply, unable to contain the sound. Could a woman orgasm from words alone? His explicit language was driving her over the edge, earthy and lustful, filled with a desire no man had ever shown her before.

He grimaced, showing the incisors at the side of his mouth as his gaze moved to the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

"Look how pretty." He took her hand from his wrist, spread her fingers, and then wrapped it around the lush mound. She stared back at him in shock, her eyes flickering to where she cupped her own flesh, her hand surrounded by his.

"Feed it to me," he whispered then, his voice wicked, filled with lust. "I want to taste it."

She shuddered, a whimper escaping her throat at the pure eroticism of what he was doing to her.

His hand moved back hers. "Give it to me, Lyra. Press that pretty, hard nipple into my mouth."

She couldn't believe she was doing it. That she was lifting her breast, leaning forward as he bent his knees, lowering himself to allow the straining nub to pass his lips. He licked it first.

"Oh God, Tarek." She was shaking like a leaf, pinpoints of explosive pleasure detonating through her body.

He licked it again, his tongue, rasping roughly, like wet velvet gliding over the sensitive tip.

Then he growled. A hard, savage sound as his lips opened, parted, to envelope the hard point into the wild, wet heat of his mouth.

She climaxed.

Lyra's hands shot to his head, her fingers tangling in the rough strands of his hair as something exploded deep within her womb. Pleasure rushed through her sex, drenching her, spilling to her thighs as she lost her breath.

He hadn't even kissed her yet.

His head rose from her nipple, his hands lifting, pulling hers from his hair as he settled them against her sides. He laid his against her shoulders, smoothing the unbuttoned gown and robe slowly from her arms as she shook before him. Lyra swallowed tightly, small whimpers passing her lips as she stood naked before him. Naked—she never wore underwear beneath her gowns—while he was fully clothed, watching her with glowing gold eyes, his expression predatory, savage.

"Sweet little virgin," he whispered, his gaze moving down her body, finally coming to rest on the bare, slick folds between her thighs. "Naughty little baby." His eyes moved back to hers.

"Imagine how my tongue is going to feel there. Sliding through all that hot, sweet syrup. Will you come for me again, Lyra? Will you cry for me again?"

He took her hand, moving it to the snap of his jeans as he watched her with savage eyes.

"Make your choice now, Lyra. Accept me."

Good Lord, what was she supposed to do about him? She was standing there naked in front of him, and he still could not reason out that she had already accepted him? Even with all the weird Breed mating stuff, she couldn't imagine not accepting him.

"Kiss me," she demanded roughly, her fingers moving to the metal snaps of his jeans, releasing them slowly, the hard heat of his erection beneath making the task difficult.

"God." He snarled the prayer as he shuddered against her, his hands gripping her hips as his eyes clenched shut for long seconds.

"Kiss me, Tarek," she whispered, reaching for him, her lips brushing his as his head lowered, his eyes blazing with hunger, pain, and need as he watched her. "Make me crazier." The front of his jeans parted beneath her trembling fingers, the hard, generous width of his erection rising from the material, flushed and desperate as she glanced down nervously. She licked her lips.

"I hope you know what to do with it." She finally swallowed lightly. "Because I don't have a clue."

And he didn't bother with explanations.

In that second his head lowered, his lips slanting over hers as his tongue licked and then pressed demandingly between her lips.

Immediately the taste of spice exploded in her mouth. Heat sur-iounded her, whipped through her mind, then cell by cell began to invade her body.

She thought the clawing, driving hunger for his touch, his kiss, couldn't get worse.