On the Prowl Read online

  As for human women, making love to them felt like trying to embrace a soap bubble—it could be done, and the accomplishment offered a certain sense of satisfaction, but it required so much care and patience that it rarely seemed worth the effort. Of course, Nic had had human lovers, but he could never relax around them, never forget to control his strength for fear of seriously injuring them. The freedom he felt in touching Saskia and knowing she could take anything he could dish out nearly drove him over the edge of reason. The urge to take her, to fuck her, had reached flash point. He had to get inside her.

  Now.

  Tearing his mouth from hers, Nic reared back and ripped at his shirt, his hands bumping into his mate’s as they both struggled with frantic fingers to strip him naked. Saskia finally won the battle and yanked his arms free of the sleeves before sending the garment flying into the nearest wall. He heard another purr when her hands settled on the bare skin of his back and shoulders, and the warm, rasping sound shot straight to his groin, drawing his balls even tighter.

  He cursed, low and profane, and he forced his hands between their bodies to deal with the fastening of his trousers. The backs of his knuckles brushed against the wet folds of her labia and he hissed at the sensation of liquid heat coating his skin. Saskia groaned softly and pressed tighter against him, grinding herself against the back of his hand. That was it. He could take no more.

  Abandoning the plan to send his trousers in the direction of his shirt, Nic simply shoved the loosened fabric down off his hips and grabbed his mate’s trembling thighs, positioning her with rough force until their bodies came into perfect alignment. His lips drew back over teeth he knew had to be growing long and sharp as fangs as he gazed down into her unseeing blue eyes and savored one final moment of burning anticipation.

  The sound of the telephone rang like a bullet in the wordless moment.

  Saskia jumped, awareness bursting back into her eyes as if some magical spell had been broken. Nic cursed in three languages and dropped his head to his fiancée’s sweat-sheened chest. This couldn’t be fucking happening.

  Brrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnng!

  The second ring mocked him, telling him that the fucking was absolutely not happening, thank you very much. Beneath him, he felt the supple quality of arousal leach from Saskia’s body until she lay stiffly pinned between him and the mattress. Her hands no longer clung to his shoulders in silent demand but braced against them as if warding him off.

  “Whoever that is, I’m going to kill them.” He said the words calmly, his voice quiet and level and utterly rational. And in his head, he was wondering how hard it would be to find medieval torture devices on eBay.

  Saskia cleared her throat. The sound of nerves and embarrassment made him long for a rack. Or maybe a nice old-fashioned crucifix.

  “It must be important, don’t you think?” The third ring nearly drowned out her words, but Nic heard them. It would be hard not to with her mouth practically at his ear. “I mean, I can’t imagine many people who know you wouldn’t realize tonight might be an … awkward time to telephone.”

  Nic chuffed in wry amusement. “‘Awkward.’ I suppose that’s one word for it.”

  With another oath, he levered himself off his fiancée’s delectable body to sit on the edge of the bed. Reaching for the phone, he saw the way she snatched at a blanket to cover her nudity and decided crucifixion was too merciful for whoever was on the other line. Maybe he should buy a boat. Keelhauling had definite possibilities.

  He snatched up the receiver in the middle of the fourth ring. “What?” he roared, hoping he deafened whoever had the nerve to interrupt what had promised to be the greatest sex of his life. Not to mention the most culturally important.

  His father’s voice both surprised and worried him.

  “You’ve been summoned before the Council of Others,” Stefan announced with no preliminaries. “We both have. They expect us there in fifteen minutes. Or half an hour ago, whichever comes first.”

  Nic felt Saskia’s gaze on him, could see her look of concern out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored her. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “We’re not members of the Council. They can’t ‘summon’ us to the fucking restroom. What the hell is going on?”

  Behind him, Saskia pushed herself into a sitting position, the blanket clutched to her chest like a wooden shield. He had to struggle to block her out. He didn’t have time for the distraction.

  “Apparently there was an attempt a short while ago on the life of the head of the Council,” Stefan said, his voice grim and bitter and filled with sarcasm. “In a surprise move, the other members seem to have jumped to the conclusion that the Tiguri must have something to do with it.”

  Damn it. Nic had known matters between the native Others and the new Tiguri inhabitants of the city would come to a head eventually, but he had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon. Hell, he’d been optimistic enough to predict he had at least another month before he had to begin worrying. So much for the best-case scenario.

  “Is De Santos dead?”

  “No. From what I hear, the jungle beast made his escape without coming to any serious harm.” Stefan, like most Tiguri of his generation, viewed all other Feline shifters as inferior species. Nic didn’t even bother trying to point out his bigotry. “I think we can assume he’ll be present at the inquisition. I’m getting into the car now. I’ll have Robert drive by your apartment to pick you up. I think it’s best if we present a united front in this matter. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Nic was already striding across the room to his closet and yanking out the first things that came to hand. “What about Arcos? Is he on the invitation list, too?”

  “I believe he must be, but Gregor is a big boy. He can take care of himself. We’ll see him when we get there. Five minutes,” he repeated, and Nic heard the click of the line going dead.

  His thumb viciously punched the off button on the cordless receiver before he tossed the thing onto the top of his dresser. Before the rattle of plastic on wood had faded, he had fastened a pair of faded jeans and was yanking a dark green sweater in place over his head.

  “Nicolas?”

  The sound of Saskia’s voice startled him. For a second, he’d almost forgotten she was still there. Being accused of attempted murder, even secondhand, could apparently fuck with a guy’s mind.

  “I’m going out,” he said, shoving his feet into a pair of battered loafers and reaching for the wallet he habitually pulled out of his pocket and set on the dresser every evening. “Don’t wait up. I have no idea how long this will take.”

  “How long what will take?” she demanded, squirming to the edge of the mattress and struggling to her feet. “Nicolas, what’s going on? Who was that on the phone? Why did you ask if De Santos was dead? Did you mean Rafe De Santos?”

  He glared at her and headed for the door. “I don’t have time for you, Saskia,” he bit out, his mind already racing toward the interview ahead of him. He had more important things to worry about right now than keeping his new fiancée in the loop, especially since the matter at hand didn’t concern her. “Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  With that, he exited the room, leaving his new mate behind him and wondering who the hell had decided to mess with the Tiguri. Whoever it was, they would come to regret it. Nic would make sure of that.

  Three

  Saskia couldn’t decide if she felt more like crying or kicking something.

  Scratch that. She knew very well she wanted to kick something, but unfortunately, her fiancé’s arrogant, dismissive, chauvinistic ass wasn’t available at the moment and taking her aggression out on anything else promised nothing more than bitter disappointment. And the definite possibility of a broken toe.

  She couldn’t believe the man had left her—just left her!—without a word of explanation. Without so much as a bloody backward glance. One minute he’d been poised to claim her body like an undiscovered country, and the next he’d been marchin
g out the door telling her to go to sleep as if she were a naughty four-year-old up past her bedtime. Just who the hell did he think he was?

  With a groan, Saskia slumped back on the bed and stared glumly at the ceiling. She very much feared she knew the answer to that question—Nicolas Preda was a Tiguri male, a dominant Tiguri male, and as such he seemed to have been molded very much in the image of all the theri before him, men like her father and his, the kind of archaic-minded, pigheaded, mule-stubborn idiots she had vowed as a teenager she would never take as her mate.

  So much for the best-laid plans, right?

  Saskia’s desire not to marry a man like her father had very little to do with her affection for that man. She adored her father and had from the days when he would come home from work in the evenings and indulge her love of dry, doll-filled tea parties every night before bed. She’d loved him when he’d made it clear that she would not be dating like the other girls she went to school with, and she had loved him when he sent her off to boarding school in Switzerland so she could learn to be a proper mate for a man just like him. She still loved her father, and she couldn’t deny that her deeply rooted desire to please him hadn’t weighed in her decision to accept the proposal offered to her by Nicolas Preda. Of course, her own long-standing infatuation with the man had played a larger role, but now she was beginning to regret her decision.

  Not that she had any right to. She had known what she was getting herself into; she’d seen it from the very beginning. The Predas, both young and old, had made it clear from the outset that she—Saskia Eloisa Arcos—had very little to do with the match they were determined to make. Who she was mattered less to them than her bloodlines, her background, and the fact that her family had made very sure to raise her with the traditional values of the Tiguri. As she was growing up, her few friends outside her own kind had teased her often about her family’s old-fashioned ways. She had been the only girl in her middle school who never wore jeans to class, the last girl to experiment with makeup, the only one who was never allowed to attend parties or other events where boys might be present.

  She had known from the beginning that her marriage would be arranged for her, and none of her friends had understood how she could pretend to accept that. Why hadn’t she run away? Or just told her parents they were crazy if they thought she was going to be traded to another family like a piece of livestock? Her friends hadn’t understood that Saskia wasn’t pretending; she did accept that, the same way she accepted that the sky was blue, the sun rose in the east, and her parents loved her very much. In her world, that was just the way things worked. Why argue with inevitability?

  That was the million-dollar question, right there. If she had grown up knowing what sort of marriage she would eventually have, if she had accepted that when she was eight or twelve or sixteen years old, where were these feelings of disappointment coming from? Was she really going to bother getting upset because her new fiancé hadn’t shared the nature of what was clearly an emergency with her before he headed out to deal with it? There was no point to it. Tiguri men lived by actions, not words. They preferred to tackle problems head-on instead of talking about them, and they possessed fiercely rigid beliefs about the role of women in their lives. Tiguri females were meant to be protected, showered with gifts, shown off to the world, and set aside when the time for mating was past. They didn’t participate in the family decision-making process, or suggest new ways of doing things, or question their mates’ choices. “Seen and not heard” would describe the ideal Tiguri female in the minds of most of the males. Pretty as a picture and half as useful.

  Saskia had known what she had agreed to, so why did it sting when that was exactly what she got?

  “Maybe my mother was right,” she muttered to the ceiling, the sound of her voice all but echoing in the huge, empty bedroom. “What was that Alcott quote she was always spouting? ‘She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.’ Maybe that’s my problem.”

  Whatever she chose to blame it on, Saskia had to face facts—the mating she had agreed to was no longer one she could live with. But what were the alternatives?

  Did she tell Nicolas she had changed her mind? Technically, until they actually had sex—the real thing, not just mind-blowing foreplay—their engagement wasn’t considered binding under Tiguri law. She could still back out.

  She snorted. Yeah, she could really see Nicolas reacting well to that. He might not have any feelings for her in particular, but he had chosen her as his mate and publically declared his intention to keep her. If nothing else, his pride would never allow him to release her from their agreement. Plus, he had seemed to view the whole formal betrothal process the Tiguri still used as a huge pain in the behind. She doubted he’d be very eager to repeat it all with someone new when his current fiancée had no rational reason to back out of their engagement. Disappointment with their first night together would not qualify in his mind as a rational reason. Or in the minds of any other of their kind.

  So if she couldn’t back out, what other choices did she have? She supposed she could try to just live with it, to like it or lump it, as her grandmother would have said. After all, if she’d been prepared before to accept a relationship more akin to the one she had with her banker than the one she’d hoped to have with her mate, she should be able to find that resolve inside herself again. It had to be in there somewhere, right? Maybe tucked behind the frustrated lust, or covered up by the growing piles of self-pity. If she’d felt it before, she could feel it again.

  Couldn’t she?

  Sighing, Saskia twisted onto her side and clutched a pillow to her chest. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she could. She couldn’t figure out what had changed between the moment she signed the betrothal contract—yes, the Tiguri were the only living beings on earth who still used the antiquated things—and the moment Nicolas had strode out of their bedroom, leaving her alone and frustrated on their engagement night. She thought it had to be more than just the unfulfilled desire that had left her with this restless, hollow feeling. The one in her chest, that is—she knew the one between her legs had everything to do with the desire to feel her mate’s body joined with hers in the elemental celebration of their union. But the ache below her breasts felt like more than that. It felt like the insistent drive she felt to put her pencil to paper and draw the images that flitted past her mind’s eye, a sort of itching need that could only be assuaged by taking action.

  Now she just had to decide what action to take.

  She needed to do something. The idea of just sitting back and letting her mate dictate the future of their relationship no longer seemed remotely acceptable, not if it meant she could find herself abandoned at a moment’s notice without so much as a word of explanation. It wasn’t like she expected her mate to report his every move to her; she had no desire to track his footsteps like some sort of jail warden. But when he stopped in the middle of making love to her and got a phone call about something so important that he climbed out of her bed and into the damned elevators she thought she had every right to ask him what was going on. And she did not want to be told, “I don’t have time for you.”

  Ooh, that statement just chapped her ass. She had the feeling, though, that if she didn’t want to hear it again, she needed to start as she meant to go on. She had to set a whole new tone to this relationship, one in which she demonstrated to him clearly the fact that she intended to be a whole lot more than an accessory for him to wear when it suited. Saskia would make herself a partner in this relationship, or die trying.

  She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  * * *

  Sleep didn’t come easily that night, and by the time she finally drifted off Saskia felt as if she’d gone around the world in eighty days. On foot. As a consequence, she woke at her accustomed time shortly after seven feeling about as cheerful as a mortician. When she dragged herself out of bed—still empty except for herself—and stumbled into the bathroom, a quick glance in the mirror to
ld her she looked more like the corpse. Exhaustion had turned her skin even paler than usual, until her freckles stood out in sharp relief, and had painted purple bruises beneath bloodshot eyes.

  Oh, yeah, if her mate saw her now, he wouldn’t just walk out the door; he’d run straight through it to get away from her.

  A scalding shower managed to steam away the worst of her mental fog, but it took twice as long as usual with her makeup to temper the ravages of her restless night. Saskia tried every trick she knew, but in the end she was forced to settle for “not completely pathetic.” So much for using her looks to bring her mate in line.

  She pulled her hair back into a neat chignon and dressed casually, for her, in tailored gray slacks and a cashmere sweater the color of ripe plums. The cowl-neck drooped just low enough to hint at her cleavage, allowing her to go with the old standby of relying on the power of the breasts to distract a man from the flaws on the face. In defiance of the rules, she ignored the rows of shoes neatly arranged in her new closet and padded out of the bedroom in her stocking feet.

  Yup, she’d already turned into such a rebel. The way her hems, cut to allow for the elegant heels she customarily wore, bunched and trailed on the ground would have appalled her mother and every deportment teacher she’d ever had. Take that, rules!

  The huge apartment seemed to echo around her, the feeling of emptiness convincing her that her erstwhile fiancé still hadn’t returned from his middle-of-the-night mystery task. Still, a niggling touch of hope had her poking her head into each room as she passed until by the time she left his silent office she had to remind herself that anything worth accomplishing took time and dedication. She just didn’t like the fact that she couldn’t get started convincing her mate how much he needed her until he actually came back to see her.

  She found the kitchen easily. After years of training her memory to never forget a name or a face, a simple floor plan offered no challenge at all. Like every other room, this one sat empty and a little cold, the huge expanses of granite counter gleaming in the light that streamed in through the large window.