Lucas spread her thighs with a powerful hand on each leg and dipped his head toward her pussy, laying his mouth over her cunt, much like he’d done when he’d first kissed Nyla in the pet store. Nyla’s hips bucked with a violent twist as the heat of his mouth enveloped her, damp and steaming hot. Lucas pressed his tongue flat to her outer lips, and then slithered between them, slick and rasping.

  Nyla’s knuckles whitened and she gripped the sheets beside her. She fought the urge to let go and come with a vengeance as Lucas stroked her clit with small, precise circles. Her stomach muscles clenched as he held her legs apart with big hands and lapped at her, laving the tender flesh, pink and heated to a level of intensity Nyla had never known. Stroking her with lips and tongue, Lucas moved to cup her ass, lifting her flush with his face, devouring her. His hands gripped her and the sting of them pinching her flesh made Nyla gasp and cry out between clenched teeth.

  The pleasure, tinted with a thread of stinging pain, as Lucas licked her made Nyla writhe beneath his mouth and cling to the sheets until she finally gave up and clutched at his head. His tongue dipped into her in long plunges of searing, delicious strokes.

  Lucas groaned deeply against her wet flesh, now taking long, sucking breaths as he let go of one leg and slid a finger into her, and then another, pressing upward and finding her G-spot.

  Waves of fire engulfed her, screaming through her every nerve as Nyla thrust, seeking the pleasure that awaited her, the sweet release of orgasm. Lucas left her little mobility as he held her to his face, consuming her with each bold stroke of his tongue. She was trapped against him and completely vulnerable to his merciless ministrations.

  Nyla blindly grabbed at his thick hair when the rise of electric pleasure engulfed her cunt. She let out a low howl as Lucas thrust into her with his tongue, fucked her with his fingers. The sound of slick flesh against flesh crashed in her ears as Nyla came.

  The seductive sound of Lucas’ tongue lashing out at her and his fingers driving into her wet, ready passage was more than Nyla could bear. She came with a crash of powerful, resonant heat that slammed into her cunt and clawed its way upward, touching every nerve ending she possessed with talons of sizzling heat. Nyla screamed Lucas’ name in a long sob while she dug her fingers into his thick head of hair.

  Thrashing against him, Nyla lost focus on anything but the harsh throb of her heart crashing against her ribs and the now more gentle tongue that continued to taste her.

  Sliding his fingers from her body, Lucas caressed her thighs, before standing up and unzipping his jeans. The slide of his zipper brought Nyla back to semi-reality and she popped her eyes open as he let his jeans fall to the floor, positioning himself between her open legs.

  Her eyes widened as she got her first glance at his cock, thick and hard. It bobbed between his legs as he wrapped a big hand around it and, once again, leaned over her. He allowed his shaft to slip between the sodden lips of her pussy, teasing her clit to yet another heightened state of awareness.

  Lucas transfixed her with his stare, lingering near her lips. “Taste my lips, Nyla. Taste yourself on my tongue.” Again, he demanded Nyla follow an order she was hardly in a position to decline and didn’t want to anyway.

  Nyla let her inhibition go and stroked his lower lip with a tentative tongue, savoring the firm yet silky flesh against her own.

  Lucas moaned and whispered, “Can you taste your pussy on my lips, Nyla?”

  Nyla’s breathing stopped at his question. Instead, she closed her eyes and nodded, taking a dry gulp of air.

  Lucas must have sensed that she had nothing left to offer in the way of words, so he lowered himself to her and her arms instantly wrapped around his strong, thickly muscled back. His tongue met hers stroke for stroke and her hips once again had a will of their own, pushing against his in a fevered heat.

  “You’re like the sweetest piece of candy I’ve ever tasted, Nyla. Remember your scent. Remember the flavor of your pussy on my tongue…”

  Oh, Christ if he didn’t enter Nyla soon, she was going to self combust. The head of Lucas’ cock nudged her entrance and his words cut through the haze of piercing longing Nyla fought to control.

  “Do you feel the head of my cock, Nyla? Do you want me in you, making you come again?”

  Nyla whimpered, on the verge of begging, when Lucas drove into her with a thrust driven by such power, Nyla gasped sharply as the breath left her lungs and Lucas’ mouth latched onto hers with fierce possession. His thick shaft stretched her deliciously, and her muscles convulsed around him as she greedily accepted the weight of him on her. Their tongues warred as each lift of Lucas’ hips brought with it another slick stroke.

  Lucas read her mind as he tore his mouth from her. The muscles in his chest tensed, flexing and rippling against Nyla’s, crushing her breasts. “I won’t last long, Nyla,” was what he uttered as his pace picked up.

  Nyla wrapped her legs around his lean waist, meeting him eagerly.

  “Christ, Nyla, you’re so wet and hot, so tight around my cock.” His teeth were clenched and the hard line of his jaw was rigid with tension.

  Nyla lost all coherence as Lucas gathered her wrists together above her head and plunged into her, shifting her body upward with each stroke, jolting her with the power of his hard frame.

  Nyla’s nails dug into his hands, pushing Lucas’ cock into her more deeply as she met his hips, losing her battle with control as the thickness of him stretched her, plundering into her passage, pressing at her G-spot with maddening clarity.

  In the moment they both became rigid with the final thrust and clap of flesh against flesh, Lucas’ eyes met hers. The green of them seared her, pinning her own with the innate knowledge a shifter has for another.

  As they drove the hard ball of orgasm home, rocking in a tight circle of rhythm and motion, cresting and then reaching a final plateau, Nyla sensed Lucas’ awareness.

  Crystal clear.

  Finely honed.

  Acute and powerful.

  Complete in definition.

  The awareness that you’ve found your mate.

  Of the life like variety.

  Chapter Three

  Nyla rolled her head on her shoulders as she stared at her reflection in Lucas’ bathroom mirror. Her face was flush with the fuck of a lifetime, and she couldn’t help but grapple with the magnitude of what they’d both just discovered.

  No fucking way.

  How had her movie buddy of over a year ended up being her lifemate?

  If this wasn’t a double-u-tee-eff moment, like a total “what the fuck,” then she couldn’t fathom what was.

  This meant that the gods intended them to mate for life. By discovering this, they’d opened up a world of shit. Oh, Jesus, her parents were going to freak. They had no control over who her lifemate was, but they sure as hell weren’t going be happy that they didn’t. Lucas was a tomcat, for crap’s sake! Her snobby parents weren’t going to like this one little, high-falutin’ bit.

  How had their friendship turned into this?

  Well, that oughta teach her to keep her legs shut.

  She knew rationally she couldn’t do that. The call of your potential lifemate was heady indeed and not something that could be denied. Her and Lucas’ mating had confirmed that.

  Nyla took a lungful of air and stared at her image again, like she might find the answer in her kiss swollen lips and desire hazed eyes.

  She needed to wash up and think. Turning, Nyla spotted a small door that she hoped would lead to a linen closet and a washcloth. On shaky legs, she let her feet absorb the cool of the tile beneath them as she opened the closet door and caught another gust of surprised air in her chest.

  Jesus Christ in a mini skirt!

  Why she’d thought someone as intense as Lucas had just been in that bedroom would have something as simple as washcloths in his bathroom pantry now escaped her. Where had her lighthearted friend gone and what the hell was that in the closet?

  Nyla leaned against the hard frame of the door and plucked up what she could only be described as an ideal cobweb whacker. Picking up the item by what she figured was its handle, Nyla forgot about the washcloths and focused on this purple and black thing with long strips of leather hanging from the braided shaft.

  Nyla swung it around, letting it dangle as the strips of what felt like leather clapped together. Surprise gave way to her endless curiosity and she couldn’t help but wonder what it was. Tactile by nature, Nyla toyed with it.

  Whatever the hell it was, it didn’t look like something she could pick up at Walmart in the household products aisle, that’s for sure.

  Still naked, Nyla glanced inside the cupboard again to find more than one foreign object met her eyes. All sorts of paddles and things that involved leather lined the shelves.

  A knock on the bathroom door startled her.

  “Nyla? You okay in there?”

  Okay? Sure, she was fabulous. How okay could she be when she’d just found some obviously very personal items of Lucas’ that made absolutely no sense.

  “I’m fine, just gimme a second,” she called through the door. Guiltily, she placed the cobweb eliminator back in the so called linen closet and popped the door open. “Could you hand me my clothes please?”

  “Sugarplum, are you sure you’re all right?” Lucas’ voice was tinged with genuine concern. Rather like the time Nyla thought she’d broken her paw after an eventful mouse hunt with Lucas. Damn her nearsightedness…

  Lucas plopped her clothes in her hand, and Nyla put them on with hasty, trembling fingers and slipped past his yummy bulk, looking for her purse.

  Lucas grabbed her hand and pulled her to him.

  Oh, he really shouldn’t do that. His body slapping up against hers was decadent.

  “Nyla, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. I’m still the same old Lucas who goes to the movies with you. I just have new privileges at the theater.”

  Nyla yanked her hand back and flicked his ear with her finger. “Whatever you say, Doctor Love. Right now, I want to go home. I have to think, Lucas. I mean really think about what just happened between us. We were friends and now…” Now you have crazy serial killer shit in your bathroom.

  She needed to find her cell phone and call her best friend, Erin. Erin would know what to do. She had one of those lifemates -- not one with a cobweb whacker thingy, mind you, but a lifemate nonetheless.

  Lucas grabbed her arm in a loose grip, his long fingers settling on her flesh with a possessive touch. The very same shiver that had set her ablaze at the pet store, ignited again in a swarm of heat across her skin. Dammit all! This was so out of the blue -- so left field.

  “I understand, beautiful. You do that. Go home and think. I’ll wait right here until you come back.” Lucas tugged her toward him, pressing his lips to hers in a brief, yet scintillating kiss. “Later, lifemate,” he said with smug satisfaction.

  Nyla zipped out of Lucas’ apartment like she was on her way to Macy’s annual white sale.

  Lifemate this, baby…

  * * *

  “Erin?” Nyla croaked into her cell phone on the way back to her apartment in a rickety cab.

  “Hey, Nyla! How are ya?”

  Peachy, fabulous, fucked up. “Well, I have some stuff I need to talk to you about.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I found my lifemate…”

  “Ooooooohhhh myyyyyyyyy Goooooooooddddddddd!! Who is he -- who are his people? What does he look like? Oh, please tell me he’s not some dork who’s balding and has a paunch in his human form. Or worse still, a guy who sells breast implants or something. Like Nia Schaffer. Remember her? Holy Hell, she ended up with the lifemate of the fricken’ century. Know what her lifemate does?”

  As Erin rambled, Nyla listened with half an ear. How could this be happening? She pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers and screeched, “I don’t care!” She well remembered Nia Schaffer, and right now she didn’t need the very frightening comparisons. Her carefully balanced chi was teetering. “It’s Lu…” Nyla coughed and cleared her throat. “It’s Lucas.” Nyla hissed the last letter of his name. She tried to be careful when in public, not to reveal her tendency to enunciate the letter s, but she couldn’t help it today. She was a cat. Cats freakin’ hissed.

  The cab driver glanced back at her and Nyla averted her eyes.

  A long pause ensued and Nyla took deep breaths. In with the good -- out with the bad.

  “Lucas?”

  “Lucas,” Nyla confirmed.

  “The Lucas that you go to the movies with and refuse to admit is hot for you?”

  “Yes, Erin. That’s the one. The one I go to the movies with and now have no choice but to admit that he’s hot for me, okay? That’s not the biggest issue I have right now. So could you shut up and help me?”

  “Hey! Don’t get pissy with me because your lifemate is exactly the guy I told you he should be, even if you didn’t think he was.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just fried. Whooped.”

  Erin whistled. “Was it the nasty that fried you? You know, lifemate sex is like no other. Is he good in bed? What’s his lightening rod of love like? I bet it’s huge! I can just tell, you know --”

  “Erin! Listen to me, would you? How could I have possibly not smelled him before now?”

  “I dunno. What difference does it make? He’s perfect for you, Nyla. The two of you are like yin and yang. He’s all yours and, I gotta tell ya, you didn’t make out half bad. Don’t make me remind you about Athena --”

  “Erin! Shut up, please. I can’t take anymore mindless babble!”

  “Man, you suck today. Okay, I’m sorry. I tend to get excited when my best friend finds her lifemate and he’s the caviar of lifemates,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. “If you were here and you could see me, you’d see me zip my lip and throw away the key. This is me, shutting up.”

  For fuck’s sake… “I’m sorry, Erin. I just can’t believe this has all happened. I never smelled Lucas like that before, despite what he told me. Now I can’t get his goddamned scent out of my nose, and that’s not even the worst of it…”

  Another silence at the other end of her cell phone.

  Nyla laughed because if she didn’t she’d cry. “You can ask why it’s so bad, Erin.”

  “Why is it so bad, Nyla?”

  “Because he’s not a Bast descendant, Erin. You know what my parents are like. They’re snotty, stuck up, pretentious know-it-alls. They will not be happy about Lucas being my lifemate. He’s a tomcat.”

  “Well, there ain’t shit they can do about it, now can they? Short of going to the lifemate council and we all know how that can go. I mean, remember Georgina and her arachnophobic lifemate? What cat is afraid of a spider, I ask you? Oops, sorry… Shutting up again.”

  Nyla sighed and rolled her eyes heavenward. “That’s not even the half of it. He’s into some weird sexual stuff I’ve even never heard of and can’t begin to understand.”

  “Huh? Weird like how? Does he wear women’s clothing? Oooohhhh,” Erin said on a breathy, ‘I know something you don’t know’ whisper. “Did he want to borrow your panties? God, that is freaky. I’ve heard about that, you know. There are all sorts of kinks and stuff. Women’s clothing being one of them. I mean --”

  “Erin! He didn’t want to borrow my panties. He’s very much the stud. It’s something totally different than that.”

  “Well, for Christ sake, tell me! Otherwise, I’m off on a tangent again and you know how ugly that gets. I don’t know how to shut up. It’s like I have all this stuff going on in my head and I can’t get it out quickly enough to --”

  “Beatings.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who. What. He had this thing in his linen closet and I can tell you right now, it wasn’t a hand towel from Neiman Marcus.” Nyla described what she’d seen in Lucas’ pantry to Erin on a wing and a prayer that just saying it out loud would somehow help.

  “It’s called BDSM, Ny. What you just described is a flogger used in the lifestyle of BDSM.”

  “A what the fuck?”

  “BDSM,” Erin repeated. “I know a little about it. It has to do with some kind of control and whips and chains or something, right?”

  BDSM? What the fuck kind of acronym was that? Beat Da Shit Outta Your Mate? No, that was too many letters…

  Nyla blanched. “Well… I don’t know. Oh, how the fuck am I supposed to know? I only know that this is bad, very bad, my friend. I know nothing about it and how can it be that we were meant to be lifemates if we don’t share the same kink? That is some kind of kink, yes? I’m vanilla, or at least that’s what I’ve heard from past sexual encounters. It sounds like ice cream. I always kinda liked chocolate, but --”

  “Noooo, Nyla. Vanilla means you just like the sort of average, everyday sex. You know, missionary position, lights off stuff.”

  “I can do it with the lights on…” Nyla defended her newly acquired ice cream flavor.

  “Aren’t you all sexually enlightened then, miss? All it means is he likes to play with things in the bedroom, Nyla. There are all sorts of levels to it.”

  Nyla leaned her head back on the seat of the cab and closed her eyes. “He likes to play with things in the bedroom?”

  “It would seem so.”

  Nyla groaned. “What the hell is a flogger anyway? How could I have not known this about Lucas and if I’m vanilla, what does that make him? Rocky road?”

  “A flogger is used in a pleasure/pain thing, and I think it makes him a whole lot wilder than you, babe.”

  “Duh! So now what do I do?”

  “Well, my first suggestion is the Internet. Just look up BDSM. There’s plenty of stuff about it on the net.”

  Nyla ran a tired hand over her eyes. Eyes that might need glasses but still saw some freaky shit in Lucas’ pantry. “What’s your second suggestion?”

 

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