She flowed toward him, dressed in soft pants and a softer sweater. She looked like an angel coming toward him, and he wanted her with a force that had nothing to do with innocence.

"The wrong time to push it?" she asked him then.

"You're hurting, aren't you?"

He'd gone past hurting last night. He was to the point that if she touched him, if she pushed him, he was going to take. And he wouldn't stop taking until all the need burning inside him was sated.

"Do I look like I'm hurting?" He wanted her, not her pity.

"You look just as arrogant and as forceful as you ever have," she told him as she trailed her fingers over the footboard of the bed and stared back at him.

"Maybe I'm the one hurting, and I need to know if it's the same for you."

He could smell her arousal. It wasn't yet scented with mating heat, but the alluring scent of her, the sense of her need, the pulsing tension that seemed to throb through her body snared his senses like a carefully laid trap.

"I ache to my back teeth to touch you," he snarled back at her. "Is that what you want to hear? My cock feels like someone's sliced it open I want you so damned bad. Is that hurting enough for you, Haley?"

Her stormy eyes darkened, her breathing hitched.

"I need . . ." she swallowed tightly. "I need you, Noble, and that need terrifies me. I've never ached for anyone like this. I've never wanted anyone like this. And I'm scared. I'm terrified you'll walk away, be taken away, or decide later this wasn't what you wanted, despite what you say about the hormone. I'm scared of reaching out to someone who might only want me because he has to protect me, or who may grow tired of having a woman weaker than he is. I'm not a breed."

She shook her head as her eyes glittered with dampness. "I'm not strong like a breed woman is, and I'm not as courageous, or as adventurous."

He jerked her to him. "Not courageous or adventurous?" he rasped. "What the hell are you then?

You risked your life for Sanctuary, and now you're standing here with me, knowing what I could do to you. What is that, Haley?"

Her lips trembled. "Insanity. And I've been crazy about you since the moment you walked in the library and stared at me as though you knew me. As though you felt that same sense of knowledge that I did."

He stared back at her in shock.

"I've never wanted anything, never needed anyone like I need you," she told him, reaching up, her fingers touching his lips. "Show me, Noble. Show me how to be your mate."

Chapter 8

She had spent the day going over it. She had thought it to death, reasoned it around every corner and curve she could reason it around, and come to the same ending each time. If she walked away from this, if she let him walk away, she would never forgive herself.

Like Noble, she had feared for so long that she would never find that feeling that something or someone belonged just to her. That one heart beat for her, her heart for him.

For a year she had kept her distance, but only because Noble had kept his. It would have taken very little for her to go into his arms.

The mating heat was a frightening prospect. The tabloid stories, if they were even 80 percent true, were enough to make any woman pause. But at least she had an idea what to expect, she told herself as she stared back at him. At least she had a chance of finding that unknown something she had been waiting for so long.

"This isn't like last night, Haley," he warned her.

"There's no stepping into this and pulling back. Do you understand me? Once I kiss you, it starts. I promise you, stopping won't be a part of what comes later."

"I understand that." She nodded. And she did, she hoped. Yet he still stood there, staring at her, his expression tight, arrogant, fierce.

She gripped the hem of her sweater and, as he watched, pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She wasn't wearing a camisole today. She wasn't even wearing a bra. Her breasts were swollen with need though, her nipples standing out, hard and desperate for his touch.

She licked her lips and gripped the elastic band of her cotton pants.

"Not the panties," he growled. "Leave them on."

Her heart raced in her chest as she remembered the sight of him holding her panties to his face, inhaling the scent of her the night before.

Gripping just the waist of the pants, she eased them over her legs and stood before him in nothing but the thin silk-and-lace panties she wore now.

She shivered as the winds howled outside, and inside, the bedroom filled with steamy, erotic lust. His black eyes moved over her body as he sat down in the chair next to him slowly and lifted one booted foot to his knee.

He unlaced his boots slowly, watching her, simply staring at her, stroking her body with his gaze as she felt her breathing constrict in her chest.

No, no man had ever stared at her like Noble did.

His boots thumped to the floor.

"Do you ever touch yourself?" he asked her as he began unbuttoning his shirt, obviously forcing himself to do the chore slowly.

Haley flushed at the question. "Sometimes."

"Do you think of me?"

She licked her lips nervously. "Yes."

"You play with your nipples?"

Oh Lord, she was going to melt to the floor. Each time he spoke, his voice was thicker, rougher.

"I do," she whispered through a moan.

"Gently or rough?"

She was going to turn into one huge blush at this rate. But she answered him, her breathless, "Both," filling the room with another layer of tension.

"Show me." He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders, and she wanted to lick his spots rather than touch herself. "Let me see you touch your breasts, Haley."

She stared at his body as he slowly undressed, watching avidly as her hands lifted to her breasts. She cupped the mounds and imagined his hands. She fluttered her fingers on her nipples, rubbed against them, pinched them lightly as he loosened his belt and pulled the metal buttons of his jeans loose.

She saw his cock before he shed his pants. It eased from between the flaps of his jeans, the flesh dark, thick veins raised along the shaft as the mushroomed head throbbed fiercely.

She pinched her nipples and moaned. Between her thighs she felt her moisture gathering, saturating her flesh, dampening her panties.

She wanted that. Wanted him. She could feel the ache in her sex growing now, the heat and the need almost painful as he quickly shed his jeans and socks.

Another moan slipped past her lips as his fingers wrapped around the shaft, stroked it, once, twice.

"I want to do that." She couldn't hold back the breathless words. "I want to feel you in my hands."

The need rising inside her was unlike any other she had ever felt. She had never wanted anything as she wanted to feel Noble inside her now.

"On the mattress." He nodded to the bed. "I'm not going to take you standing up, Haley. And if I touch you before you get in that bed, then that's exactly what's going to happen."

"I want to touch you." She moved to the bed, staring at him as she eased onto the mattress. "Just for a minute, Noble. I need to touch you."

She had to be kidding. Noble stared back at her, feeling the wash of white-hot arousal tearing through his system, and prayed to God she wasn't a virgin. He couldn't handle it. Right now, he wasn't a fitting lover for a virgin.

"Have you had a lover?" he asked moving closer to the bed.

She blinked back at him. "I'm not a virgin." She frowned then. "Does that matter?"

"Thank God," he muttered. "Move onto the bed.

The middle of it."

"You're not just going to take me, are you?" she whispered though she did as he asked.

"Get real, Haley," he growled. "I've"waited a year for this. Do you think I'm going to do anything but take hours loving that sweet, hot little body of yours?"

"First, I get to touch." She reached out to him, her hands touching his hard abs, feeling them tighten painfully against her palms. As he knelt beside her, she ran them to his thighs and stared at the thick, heavy length of his cock.

It only made sense that the dark flesh, fully engorged and ready for her, would be so damned sexy. He was sexy all over. He just couldn't help himself.

"Haley, the edge is close," he warned her. "Trust me, you want me to love you before I do this."

"Yeah, I do," she murmured absently, sitting up, her hands moving to touch him.

"Fuck. You're not listening to me." His voice was strangled. She couldn't breathe.

She looked up at him, opened her lips and licked over the thick cock head.

His response was almost violent. A primal growl tore from his throat as his hands went to her head, fingers threading through the strands of her hair, and he leaned his head back.

She parted her lips farther, sucked him inside, and moaned again. Because his taste could be addictive.

He tasted like a mountain storm. And she loved mountain storms. Like the lightning rolling over the forest and the wind picking up through the trees.

Earthy and clean, natural.

"Damn you." He breathed out the curse, his voice harsh as his hips jerked. He buried the head inside her mouth as she sucked him, tasted him, and loved every second of it.

She licked and consumed, sucked and moaned around his flesh and never knew a pleasure so great.

As she sucked, she felt, tasted, the drops of pre-cum that beaded on the head. She consumed them eagerly.

If it felt as though each taste warmed against her tongue, then she ignored it. If after a few minutes she could feel the need inside her raging hotter, then she went with it. Whatever his touch brought her, she would accept.

"Touch yourself," he snarled above her.

Haley lifted her lashes and stared up at him. He was watching her, his gaze fierce, demanding.

"Let me watch," he groaned roughly. "Give me something to hold on to, Haley, or I'm going to lose control here."