Sascha turned, her face softening even in profile. "I've said what I had to say. The rest is up to you." Then she walked toward the Circle and into Lucas's arms. Talin was dancing with Nico right next to the alpha pair and Clay saw her look up at Lucas as he said something and smiled down at his mate.

Even from this distance, he could read the look on her face: hunger.

Not sexual. Deeper, needier - as if she was witnessing something she thought she would never have. It cut him far deeper than anything Sascha had said.

Pushing off the tree, he strode toward her. Nico saw him over Talin's head and his eyes widened. Clay never danced. The juvenile said something to Talin and released her, backing off to find another partner. She turned, her own eyes huge. "Clay?" He wrapped his arms around her waist.

She seemed not to know where to put her hands. After a few hesitant seconds, she slid them around his waist but kept enough distance between them that she could look up into his face. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." He tried to pull her closer, but she resisted.

"Nothing wouldn't make you look like you want to bite someone's head off."

"Dance with me."

"Clay - "

"I'll tell you after the dance." He'd show her. She damn well wasn't going to keep hurting the way she was right now.

"Promise?"

His low growl made one of the nearby juveniles give him a wary look. Talin smiled and snuggled close enough to press her cheek against his heartbeat.

He looked down, bemused. He figured a hundred years later, he still wouldn't understand her completely. The cat in him was pleased by the thought of such an intriguing mate.

Mate.

Of course she was meant to be his mate. Something settled in him at the conscious recognition of a truth he had always known. The second she accepted the mating bond, she was going to belong to him in the most indisputable of ways. Mates were forever. No leopard mated twice.

Even if their mate died.

His arms tightened reflexively around her.

"Hey," she complained.

"Sorry."

"It's okay." She squeezed her own arms around him as they swayed in opposition to the lively music. "I like dancing with you."

"Yeah."

Talin didn't know what was wrong with Clay, but the emotion in that single word was so raw, so powerful, her heart about stopped. She wanted to ask him so many questions, but for now, she held on to him and they danced. It was a perfect moment, a dance with this man she adored beyond all others.

The clock had barely ticked past ten when they returned home. "I had fun. And now I feel bad." Taking off her earrings, she put them carefully by the comm panel, then collapsed onto one of those huge cushions Clay used as sofas. "It seems so wrong to have gone dancing while I could have been doing something."

"What?" Closing the door, he came to loom over her. "What could you have been doing?"

"Well, I could've looked at the files again."

"And seen nothing you haven't seen ten times already." Shaking his head, he sat down in a quintessentially masculine sprawl opposite her. "We've set things in motion. Now we wait - sometimes the best way to hunt is to let the prey think you've given way."

She gave a reluctant nod, knowing he was right. There was nothing else she personally could do. It was time to have faith in Clay and his pack. "Thank you for helping me. For asking your pack to help me."

She could almost see it, almost touch it - the slow rising of the same heat that had been in his eyes most of the night. And she was its sole focus. Her body tightened.

"I would've done it for their women."

Implication wasn't enough, not with this heavy warmth threatening to hijack her body. "Am I your woman, Clay?"

It seemed as if even the forest hushed as she waited to hear his answer. Those green eyes, so bright, so beautiful, skated over her face, down her throat, over the rise and fall of her breasts, the curve of her waist, and the legs she had curled under herself. She sucked in an unsteady breath and his body went predator-still.

"Come here, Tally." It was a command, sensual, rich, erotic.

Heartbeat in her throat, she uncurled her legs, a visceral awareness sweeping across every inch of her skin. What he'd said, the way he'd said it. He wanted her to accept this thing between them, accept it in a way that left no room for argument, a way that reversed her girlhood decision to cut him out of her life.

She was moving before she knew it - she had already made her decision. To love him enough. When she stopped, it was to find herself kneeling on his cushion, trapped by the muscular strength of his legs on either side. Placing her hands on his raised knees, she said, "I'm here."

He ran a finger down the row of buttons that closed her shirt. "I want to peel apart this shirt and see your breasts."

It was getting difficult to breathe. "O-okay." Her hands clenched on him.

"This isn't friendship." A blunt statement, underscoring the dividing line they were about to cross.

"No. It's okay," she repeated when he just watched her.

"Is it?" A finger nudging aside cloth to stroke the dip of her breastbone.

"What do you want?" she asked, desperate to give it to him.

"Is this punishment, Tally?" Cat-green eyes clashing with her own. "Are you giving in to me because you want to hurt yourself? Am I another faceless fuck you plan to forget?"

"What?" Her hands fisted against the roughness of denim. "No!" She couldn't believe she had ever worried about not feeling with Clay during sex. It was impossible to be anything but fully engaged - his leopard demanded it and so did her own fierce hunger. "I'm not giving in. I'm choosing this because you make me crazy with need, you arrogant cat. I want to mark you, make sure the world knows you belong to me."

Those male lips seemed to soften. "Then tell me what you want."

If her heart hadn't already been his, he would've captured it then and there. He might be in a dangerous mood, but he was hers - maybe she didn't have all of him but what she had, she would cherish with every breath in her. "I want to see you," she whispered.

His eyes snapped up to meet her gaze. "I was thinking more along the lines of what would pleasure you. I don't have much patience left."

"You never had much patience," she teased, though her stomach was tight with such frantic sensual craving, it hurt. "Seeing your body gives me pleasure."

Eyes holding a surprised, strangely vulnerable look, he reached down, undid a few buttons on his dress shirt, then pulled it off and threw it to the side. All at once, his beautiful, naked chest was there for her to taste, kiss, enjoy. This very dominant male had just given her total skin privileges. Delighted, she flattened her hands on him, luxuriating in the tensile strength of pure muscle covered by hot, dark, beautiful skin. The crispness of the hair that curled under her palms was yet another seductive sensation.

She felt him place his hands on her hips but was too focused on his beauty to pay attention. Never, before Clay, had the mere sight of a man been enough for her body to ready itself for penetration. But today she was melting from the inside out and oh, how she liked it. Trailing her fingers down his chest, she found herself wondering what it would feel like to strip off her clothing and rub her nipples against the rough heat of him. Something tightened between her thighs, a hungry, aching need that begged to be satisfied.

There was a vibration against her palms. She bit her lower lip, fought the wave of sheer pleasure...and the piercing realization that that vibration would serve to intensify the sensations she craved. "You're purring again."

His lips curved. "I can scent your arousal."

It should've made her blush. But it only made her hotter. "I can see yours." He was hard under the straining zipper of his jeans. And big. Very big. Her body clenched and unclenched, urging her to unzip him, let him fill her up. It would hurt so-damn-good.

"Drop your arms."

Face hot with the erotic images dancing through her head, she raised it to discover he'd unbuttoned her shirt. "No." Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned in. "Kiss me first."

"Going to be a brat in bed, too?" His hands slipped under her open shirt to hold on to her waist as he took her mouth in hot, languorous kiss that made her feel so sexy she thought she might just be able to conquer the world.

"I get to give a few orders, too," she murmured.

His hands slipped down, closed over her bottom. Squeezed. She was still gasping over that when one of those deliciously callused hands slid up over her back and around to her front. She held her breath.

Chapter 33

He didn't just touch her breast. He held with bold possessiveness. Squeezed there, too. And she decided to obey his order. Dropping her arms, she tugged off her shirt. It stuck at her elbows. Clay took full advantage, wrapping the material in his free hand and using it as a binding to keep her hands behind her back.

"I don't like being restrained," she complained.

He squeezed her breast again, then cut through the straps and the middle section of her bra with a single sharp claw, retracted a second later. "Can't I even pet you in peace?"

Then her bra was gone and Clay was looking at her, his hand spread big and confident below her breasts. Her heart galloped. With each indrawn breath, it was as if she was pushing up her breasts for his enjoyment. They weren't huge. Not even close. But right now, they seemed to have taken over her body.

"Apples," Clay said, his eyes cat-bright.

She had no idea what he was talking about. "Apples?"

"I love apples." He bent that dark head and closed his teeth around one nipple.

She couldn't breathe.

Then he flicked his tongue over the flesh and the air rushed out of her in a burst of hunger and need and pleasure. Releasing the nipple, he took her breast in a scorching hot kiss that reduced her to whimpers. Somewhere along the line, she got rid of the shirt and thrust her hands in his hair, wordlessly urging him to give her more.