Nalini Singh - The Magical Christmas Cat

"You purr," she accused when they parted.

"So do you." Coming over her, he began to kiss his way down the line of her neck. He seemed to get distracted between the curves of her breasts, leaving her to clutch at the sheets in unadulterated pleasure as he sucked and kissed. When teeth became involved, she cried out, feeling her body tighten into a fist so tight, a single touch would send her over.

He blew his breath deliberately across one wet nipple.

She shattered, and the pleasure was a tidal wave that demanded everything she had. When she finally resurfaced, Zach had recom­menced his sensual exploration of her body, the dark strands of his hair sweeping over her like a thousand stroking fingers. She ran her hands through the rough silk of it, feeling sated and content. And happy.

He looked up, a lazy smile in his*eyes. "Yes?"

"Come kiss me." She'd never imagined she would one day make such a brazen demand, but Zach listened to her. Even if he didn't always give her what she wanted.

He shook his head. "After."

"After what?"

His answer was to keep on kissing her, going steadily lower. When his lips pressed over black lace, she trembled. He did it again. Then she felt the whisper of something on her outer thighs—glancing down, she saw her panties being thrown off the side of the bed. "How?"

The eyes that met hers were wild, exotic. "I used a claw to cut them off."

"Oh." She looked at his human hand. "Like a very small shift?"

"Hmm." He wasn't paying attention, more concerned with pushing apart her thighs and raising her legs to put them over his shoulders. She'd never felt so exposed, so vulnerable. She waited, stomach tight.

But nothing could've prepared her for the ecstasy of his touch. Zach liked to take his time—he pushed her to insanity over and over. It might've terrified her except that he made no effort to hide his own arousal, murmuring his pleasure with every slow lick. "Sweet, pretty, Annie," he said. "My Annie."

She discovered she was raising her body to his mouth, moving with a sensual bliss that was scandalous in its eroticism. He liked it. She knew, because he told her so, his voice close to a growl.

"I am definitely going to bite," he whispered. And then he did.

By the time she could think again, he was getting off the bed. She exhaled in pleasure as he stripped off to reveal a body hard with arousal.

"Look what you do to me," he whispered, moving to kneel between her legs. He stroked his hands under her thighs. "Come here."

She swallowed at what he was asking, knowing it had far more to do with trust than sex. But she couldn't refuse, had the strang­est feeling that any hint of rejection from her would wound him incredibly deeply. Rising, she held on to his shoulders and let him support her bottom as her body brushed over the tip of his erection. "Zach," she whispered, drowning in the intimacy of his eyes, "you undo me."

His eyes flickered from cat back to human. "Hold on to me, baby. I won't let go."

Breath coming in jagged bursts, she lowered herself onto him. He stretched her to the limit. But she wanted him inside her, wanted to possess him as absolutely as he'd possessed her. She drove down and shuddered. "It's too much." The angle was deep, the pen­etration intense.

He kissed her. "We'll practice until you get used to it." It was a husky promise as he laid her back down, bracing his body over hers using his hands.

"How much practice?" She wrapped her legs around the lean beauty of his hips, no longer shy with this man who treated her as if she was a goddess.

He groaned, pulled out a little, then thrust, as if he couldn't help himself. "Lots." Though sweat-damp hair hung over his fore­head, and sexual need was an inferno in his eyes, he waited to give her time to adjust.

She felt a violent tenderness grab hold of her heart. He was, quite simply, wonderful. Raising her arms, she pulled him down and kissed him, telling him without words that it was okay to let go.

He groaned. And began to move.

Annie looked down at the male sprawled by her side the next morning and felt her body sigh. He was fast asleep and gilded dark gold by the sunlight sneaking in through the blinds. He'd kept her up half the night, loving her so thoroughly that she felt possessed. Taken. Branded.

Refusing to surrender to panic, to give him up to protect her­self, she reached out to trace the tattoo she'd discovered on his back sometime during the night.

It linked to the one on his biceps, which was actually the styl­ized tail of a dragon. That dragon's front claws rested on his left shoulder, the mythical creature's sinuous body stretching across his back. It was a stunning design . . . and another example of the wildness in him.

That wildness brought her alive, made joy sear her blood.

It also frightened her—the depth of what she felt. Finally, she truly understood why her mother had stayed with her father all these years. Her mind filled with the echo of Kimberly's voice from a rainy night more than fifteen years ago.

Your father used to call me his heaven.

That time had passed long ago, as would Zach's interest in her. Yet even after the spark faded, Annie now knew that the temptation to stay . . . to hope for another moment when he might look at her as he once used to, would be overwhelming. It was that futile hope that kept her mother tied to her father, but, though she understood it, it wasn't a path Annie would ever allow herself to follow.

It would break her heart to see Zach look at her with disinter­est in his eyes. She'd leave before that, at the first insidious signs of fading passion. It was bound to happen . . . but not yet, she prayed. Please not yet. Heart tight with a mixture of joy and pain, she lay down beside him, content to trail her fingertips over his tattoo and watch him sleep.

That was when she noticed his lips were curved.

"Zach." A whisper.

Cat eyes looking into hers. "Mmm?"

"How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough to enjoy you petting me." unrepentant mis­chief in his eyes. And desire. The desire was still there. Relief made her melt from the inside out. "You're such a cat."

"Want to see?" he asked.

"See what?"

"My cat."

Her eyes went wide. "Really?"

He yawned, every inch the indolent feline. "Hmm." Without warning, color shimmered all around him, sparkles of light and shadow, beauty and eternity.

She held her breath until it ended. The leopard lying on her bed looked at her with familiar eyes. Swallowing at her proximity to such a dangerous creature, she struggled up into a sitting position, sheet held to her breasts. The temptation to touch was blinding. She lifted a hesitant hand—it was one thing to know intellectually that this was Zach, quite another to believe it.

When she didn't touch, the leopard raised its head to butt at her hand. Shuddering, she gave in to temptation and stroked him. He relaxed, closing his eyes in bliss. It made her awe morph into de­light. "I think I just got conned." But stroking him, adoring him, was no hardship.

When the shimmer came again, she went utterly still. A few moments later, her hand lay on the muscular back of a man so sexy, he made her heart trip simply looking at him.

"So?" he asked.

She snuggled up to him, positioning her body so that they lay face-to-face, her hand now on his shoulder. "You're gorgeous, and you know that."

For once, he didn't smile. "Is it too much to handle?"

"No." She frowned. "Did I give that impression?"

"Just checking." She got a smile this time, a slow, lazy thing that tugged at things low and deep in her. "Some women like the idea of being with a changeling but find the reality harder to accept."