Nalini Singh - The Magical Christmas Cat

Hours later, Haley was baking cookies out of sheer despera­tion. Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate oatmeal cookies, and chocolate drop sugar cookies.

Haley baked to feel good, to think, and to hide. Tonight she was hiding.

Uriel. She'd heard that name before, she'd read that name be­fore. One of the names associated with a god of death. The Grim Reaper. The taker of life. In this case an assassin.

According to Jonas, the assassin was suspected to be a breed still under the control of the Genetics Council that had created him.

The explosion had all his signatures, but the really telling mark was the so-far-untraceable e-mail sent to Jonas at his Bureau of Breed Affairs e-mail address. It stated that he really didn't want to kill more breeds to get to her, but he would if he had to. And it was signed, Uriel.

She had a professional assassin out to kill her. So what was she doing? She was baking.

The moment Jonas had given Noble the information the de­meanor of the breeds guarding her had changed. The six under Noble's command turned hard and cold.

Mordecai had demanded Jonas have his pet released from Sanc­tuary. So, a full-grown, malevolent-eyed natural coyote was now on her property. Great. Just what she needed.

Weren't they supposed to be impossible to tame?

Noble had changed as well, and that change made her more ner­vous than the others. The look he had given her had held a promise, a dark, almost forbidden promise, that shook her to her core.

As he and Jonas retreated to the living room to discuss security, Haley retreated to the kitchen to bake. And to try to forget that look she had seen in Noble's eyes. The one that promised her he had given her enough space, and that soon, he would be crowding in even closer.

"Jonas is leaving, Haley." Noble stepped into the kitchen, his black gaze hooded as he flicked over the last sheet of cookies she was pulling from the oven.

Haley nodded slowly. "Fine."

She turned and faced Jonas as he moved into the kitchen.

"We'll have this taken care of soon," Jonas promised her. "We have several leads. Uriel was careless this time. Uriel has been er­ratic in the past few years anyway, so the successes could barely be counted because of it."

"But someone still ended up dead, right?" she pointed out.

"Only because the victims didn't know they were targets," Jonas stated. "We know. Now, I'll leave you with Noble. You have six men guarding you outside as well as that bloodthirsty animal Mor­decai carts around with him. Nothing gets past any of them."

He moved to the back door, shrugging his suit jacket on over the white dress shirt and shoulder holster he wore. Once he had the jacket on, he seemed like any other powerful businessman, until you looked in his eyes.

"Noble, I'd wish you luck with the other thing," Jonas suddenly turned back to them, his gaze amused, his hard face almost smiling. "But I have a feeling you have that covered as well."

He left the house, and Noble secured the door behind him be­fore Haley could comment.

"What's the other thing?" she asked, as he turned back to face her.

"Something more personal," he finally stated.

His voice was different. There was a rasp to it, a brief roughness that sent a chill up her spine.

She rubbed her hands together, ignoring the tingling warmth that filled her palms. Her hands tingled every damned time he was around her. The need, the desire to touch him often nearly over­came her common sense.

She nodded rather than asking about it. For a few minutes any­way—while she transferred the cookies from the baking sheet to the wire rack for them to cool.

"What is something more personal?" She laid the spatula down beside the rack and turned to him.

Facing him across the distance of the kitchen, she somehow felt braver than she had in days. Someone was trying to kill her. Some­one who knew how to kill. Excuse me for taking a little initiative here.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Sensually curved lips quirked knowingly.

"Is it about that mating crap you tried to pull on me the other night?"

She hadn't forgotten. It had been in the back of her mind, teas­ing her, taunting her, and following her into her dreams when she managed to sleep.

His brow arched. "Mating crap?"

She lifted her hand, indicating he should stay in place, then stomped to her bedroom, jerked several tabloids from beneath her bedstand, and moved back into the kitchen and slapped them on the table.

MATING HEAT SWEEPS THROUGH

THE BREED COMMUNITIES.

BREED APHRODISIAC RUMORED

TO CAUSE UNSTOPPABLE LUSTS.

ARE THEY MORE ANIMAL THAN WE IMAGINED?

MATING HEAT RUMORED

TO PRODUCE ANIMALISTIC RESULTS.

The headlines were ridiculous, but they all reported nearly the same phenomenon.

"You read this trash?" he asked her, flipping his fingers over the magazines.

She crossed her arms over her breasts. "How much of it is true?"

He flipped through the magazines one by one. His brows arched a few times. Mockery tugged at his lips before he tossed the last one back to the stop.

"I'd say ninety percent of it is fairly accurate."

She blinked, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"You're lying to me."

His grin was slow, and did nothing to still the nervous feelings rising inside her.

"Yeah, I am." He shrugged. "Probably more like eighty per­cent."

He pushed his hand into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a vial. Within it were several oddly colored pinkish pills. He tossed the vial to the table and stated. "One a day, starting tonight."

She stared at it, wondering if the breeds were into poison.

"For what?"

He moved around the kitchen then, stalking closer as she re­fused to retreat. He came behind her, brushed the hair from her shoulder, and his head lowered, his lips brushing her ear.

"When I kiss you, the taste of that kiss is going to make you crazy for more. The hormone in the small glands beneath my tongue will be released into your system, and the mating hormone will be­gin to fill your senses. It's like a drug for sex. It's like a need that only one thing will ease, and that's my semen pumping inside you. When that happens, a small, thumb-shaped extension will become erect from beneath the head of my cock. It will lock me inside you, spill another hormone into you, then, together, they'll prepare your body for the few viable sperm breeds possess. That pill will ease the effects of the heat. It might even ward off the pregnancy that will come, eventually. It takes a while sometimes for fertilization, for a child to be created. But it always happens, eventually. And the heat never goes away entirely. It grows, day by day, year by year, until mates are bound so closely together that life without each other is unimaginable.

"Breeds only mate once, Haley. One time only. A breed has one chance, and one chance only to claim something in this world that belongs to him and to him alone. And my body is claiming yours."

"You're crazy." She forced herself away from him, rounded on him incredulously, and stared back at him in shock. "That's not true."

"Why do you think I kept such a careful distance between us?" he asked her, his expression imposing, his black eyes gleaming, glittering with hunger. "A year. I've tasted the need to kiss you, to fuck you, for a year. I've tried to drown my lust, ignore it, fight it. Nothing works, Haley. Nothing is going to work until I share it. With you."

Her eyes were wide, shock resounding through her. His expres­sion was tortured, almost agonized, almost convincing.

"Why are you doing this?" She stared back at him furiously. "I like you, Noble. Have I ever been cruel to you? Why would you do this to me?"