His Purrfect Mate (12 page)

What had she been thinking a minute ago? Now she couldn’t remember. Desire flared up through her again, like the coals of a dying fire that had been stoked back to life.

She moved her hands, lightly caressing his back with her fingertips, and he groaned, and moved his hips until the head of his cock was pressed against
her slick entrance.  He pressed hard until her flesh yielded to him, and then slid inside her, an inch at a time, working his way up further and further.

His girth stretched her, her tight muscles forced to accommodate
his massive size.  It was a strange, heady mix of pleasure and pain, and she wrapped her legs around him, urging him in.

Kenneth began moving his hips, sliding almost all the way out until she cried out at the loss, and then moving to fill her again, so deliciously stuffing her full to overflowing.  She could feel his pubic hair tickling against hers, and he pumped into her, testicles slapping against her buttocks every time he plunged in to the hilt.

Her pleasure reached its peak and she could feel her muscles clamping down on his cock, and he quickly pulled out, groaning in pleasure and spilling his seed onto the ground.

“No condom,” he gasped.

“Oh. Right. Forgot.” Yes, she had, hadn’t she?  When she was around Kenneth she couldn’t think straight.

He lay beside her, his breath coming in gasps, caressing the sweat-slicked flesh of her abdomen.  The air reeked of sex and sweat.

Finally he spoke. “Condoms are inside.  Shall we?”

* * *

A fat yellow cat lay sprawled across the cob
blestones of the narrow street, basking in a sunny spot. The ancient buildings lining the town square were roofed with red barrel tile, and pots of geraniums brightened the windows. A mix of people and shifters strolled slowly past the little shops, enjoying the unseasonably warm fall weather. 

Kenneth had woken Chloe up early and insisted that they go
to town to enjoy breakfast at a little café in the center of town. Now her stomach was full, her body ached pleasantly after a night of the hottest sex she’d ever had, and she was ready to head back to Kenneth’s villa for another round.

“You know, they have universities in California,” Kenneth said, looping his arm around Chloe’s waist and pulling her up against him.

“You don’t say. I didn’t even know you people could read.”

“Careful. Sassy girls get spanked.” He pre
ssed his lips against her ear and nibbled gently.

She shivered, and lightning bolts of desire sizzled through her.

“But what will you do to punish me?” she teased him.   Instead of answering, he bent down and kissed her neck, tongue tracing the curve.  Instantly her nipples swelled and hardened, rubbing against the fabric of her blouse, and she let out a small whimper.

“Stop!”
she gasped. “There are people in the café! They can see us!”

He lapped at her neck and she felt her panties grow damp with desire.  If he didn’t stop, she was going to have an orgasm right there on the spot – and when it came to Kenneth, she was not capable of coming quietly.

“Do you give?”

“I give! Uncle, I cry uncle!”

He stepped back away from her, a self-satisfied smile on his face.

“You’re so easy,” he bragged. “I know
exactly what buttons to push.  I mean that in the dirty sense, by the way.  And now, as I was saying…we have a very nice university in Playa Linda, where I live. But do you know what they’re lacking?”

“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me,” she said.

“A classics department.  I’ve been thinking for some time that I should fund one. That department would need a chairman, of course. Or chairwoman.”

“Really?” her lips curved in an amused smile. “When you say for some time, exactly how long do you mean?”

“A week or two.  All right, since yesterday.  I thought, what could possibly lure Chloe away from her job? How about the opportunity to design her own department and curriculum?”

Chloe was temporarily speechless. Was this really happening?
Last night she’d been ready to accept that the penalty for a night with Kenneth Chamberlin could easily be a lifetime of regret and sorrow.   And now, here he was asking her to – what was he asking her, exactly?’

“Where…where would I live?”
she asked cautiously.

He gave her a chiding look, as if to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I know a weekly motel you could stay at,” he suggested. She punched his arm, laughing.

“That is a tempting offer,” she said.

“I also know a handsome billionaire who has room in his bed for a beautifu
l, stubborn, smart-mouthed, very well-educated panther.”

“Really?
Could you introduce me to him?” she grinned, and then danced away from him before he could start tormenting her with his sensuous lips and tongue again.

“You’re a funny girl.” He moved towards her, eyes gleaming, and she took a step back.

“This is…very sudden. We just met,” she said.

“Chloe, we’re fated mates.  You know it. I know it. Come live with me, and get to know me, so I can sweep you off your feet
. I promise you, I am very convincing when I put my mind to it.”

“
My mother lives in New York. My friends. I’d be on the opposite side of the country from them.”

“I have a private jet at your disposal any time that you get lonely.”

“Are you trying to lure me to California by flashing your big, swollen, oversized, throbbing…bank account?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes. Is it working?”

“Kind of,” she admitted.  “I’m apparently crazy enough to think about it. Oh, don’t look so smug.”

“I am feeling very smug, especially because you admit that I’m oversized.” He grinned hugely.
“Come inside the market with me. I want to show you off.”

She felt a little glow of pleasure at that. Kenneth Chamberlin, ridiculously handsome, most eligible bachelor on the planet, wanted to show
her
off.

But they’d passed the most amazing
chapel a block from the market place. It dwarfed the buildings around it with its wonderfully baroque architecture and its arched wooden doors were hand-painted with biblical scenes; she was desperate to get a closer look.

“Do you mind if I dash off
to look at that church first?”

“
Nerd.  Hurry back.” He kissed the top of her head, and she rushed off happily around the corner.  There was nothing she loved better than an old city.  All of the buildings here were 17
th
century or earlier;  she felt like a time traveler, walking over these ancient cobblestones.

A car rumbled by, distracting her from her reverie and jerking her back into the 21
st
century. She fought a twinge of annoyance, turning her back on the car to stare at the church, which was bathed in sunbeams.

The car door opened and shut, and oddly, she felt a sudden trill of alarm shoot through her.

“Well, well, well. You and the playboy. Wasn’t that a touching scene,” a familiar voice said right behind Chloe’s ear.

It was Alfon
se.  He had a computer tablet in his hand, which he held up to show her.  A lightning bolt of shock zapped through her as she saw the picture on its screen: it was a close up picture of her mother’s face,  looking angry and afraid.

He no longer had that fake, polite smile pasted on his face. “You could have made this much easier on all of us,” he said reprovingly.
“You could have just come with me when I asked you to.”

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed. “If you hurt her-”

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “We have your mother, and your grandmother.”

“
You bastard!” she hissed.  She was so furious that it was all she could do to keep from shifting and ripping his smug face off. The only thing stopping her was fear for her family. 

He gestured at the car. 

“Get in now, or your mother and grandmother die.”

She looked around
frantically. Kenneth was nowhere in sight.  A small group of tourists was standing across the street by the church, a family was strolling with a baby…no Kenneth.

Some of the tourists casually glanced their way.

“Act as if we’re together,” Alfonse said, and tried to put his arm around her waist.  A wave of revulsion washed over her, and she jumped back, knocking his arm away.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

His eyes blazed with anger.  “Get in the car now, if you ever want to see your mother again,” he snarled at her.

She had no choice. Quickly, she slid into the car, heart sinking in her chest as he slid in next to her and slammed the car door shut.

“From now on, do what I say, or it will go badly for your family.”

How had she ever thought he was handsome? His eyes had a maniacal gleam to them, practically bulging from his face
like a chihuahua’s. His lips were thin and white with anger.

“What is all of this about?
Who is behind this?” she demanded. “Are you really working for Hammersmith?”

“No questions.”  There was a briefcase on the seat
next to him, and he grabbed a pad of paper from it, and a pen, and handed them to her.

“Now you’re
going to write Kenneth a note, which we will have delivered to him. I will dictate it to you. Write exactly what I tell you to.”

He dictated a note to Kenneth in which she told him
that she and Alfonse were lovers and she’d been playing him for a fool.  She wrote down that she’d gotten all the information that she needed from Kenneth, and mocked him for ever thinking that she could care for someone as stupid and shallow as him.  He told her to conclude it “This is payback for Sophronia,” and then sign her name.

She kept her face expressionless as she wrote the letter, stuffing her rage deep down inside.

Kenneth.  Would she ever see him again?  The thought of being torn away from him made her physically ill, but she had no choice. They had her mother. As soon as she was reunited with her mother, she’d find a way to make this bastard pay for this.  She didn’t care what it cost her.

She handed him the note, picturing Kenneth’s reaction when he saw it and struggling not to vomit.  
Alfonse read what she’d written, and then nodded.

“So, you know that I was at
Kenneth’s villa helping him do research. You must have an inside man there,” she said, and the thought of somebody on the inside, betraying Kenneth, made her claws shoot from her fingertips. 

“I said no questions, you stuck up shifter bitch,
” he snarled, and she felt a sudden prick in her leg, and realized he’d jabbed her with a needle.

Suddenly she was terribly, terribly sleepy and dizzy. 
Her mother’s face, brave and frightened, swam before her before her, and then Kenneth’s face floated by, and then a dark cloud enveloped her and she was gone.

“The breeze is
kind of nice,” Pixie observed, sipping her coffee and admiring the view of the alley at the back of The Date Tree café. “The café’s got an open air feel to it.”

“That’s what I love
about you, Pixie. Your ridiculous and misplaced optimism. The way you can look at giant gaping mortar holes as a positive.” Bobbi drank sweet, hot coffee and dipped into her goat stew with a piece of flatbread.

“Ha! You admit that you love me!”

“When I’m not fighting the temptation to kill you.  It’s about 80-20.”

“Eighty percent of the time, you love me,” Pixie said smugly.

“Nope.” Bobbi shook her head and took another swig of coffee. “Hey. Is that Karesh heading our way?”

“
It sure is,” Pixie said. “I wonder if that means his family is ready to cooperate.”

“I doubt it.
” Bobbi frowned.  “He came here by himself. His father was clearly the one in charge; if they were ready to work with us, they’d have come here with him.”

Karesh
glanced around the shop as if making sure nobody noticed him, before sitting at the table with them.

“Sure, pull up a chair,” Pixie said.

“I just did.” He looked puzzled.

Pixie and Bobbi exchanged a glance. “I don’t think
sarcarsm translates well across cultures,” Bobbi said. She turned to Karesh. “So, you’re here without your father’s knowledge or consent.  If you have the information that we need, my boss’s offer still holds – even if the rest of your family won’t come with you.  You do know that staying here is suicide, right?”

Karesh
sighed.   He nodded at Mamoud, who had bustled up to their table at the sight of a new customer. “I’ll have coffee,” he said. He waited until Mamoud walked away before he said “It’s not that simple.  We have responsibilities that we cannot abandon.”

“
What kind of responsibilities?” Bobbi asked.

“Our family was assigned to be the guardians of those statues as soon as they were created.
Or rather you could say, we were cursed to be their guardians.   We have been guarding those statues for thousands of years.”

“
Huh. You don’t look that old,” Pixie said, squinting at him critically. “I mean, I’d guess maybe 900 years, tops. Not a day over a thousand. Botox, much?”

He
didn’t crack a smile. “It was a task handed down from generation to generation.  We guard the statues with our lives, because of the great doom that would be visited on humanity if they fell in the wrong hands.”

“Like who
se hands?”

“Like anybody foolish enough to try to meddle with powers they don’t understand,”
Karesh said sharply. “There should not even be anybody left alive today who knows what these statues can do, aside from my family, but clearly, if somebody stole those statues from your boss, then somebody knows their power.”

Mamoud
set down a small pot of coffee in front of Karesh, along with a cup and saucer.  Karesh poured milk from the pitcher into the cup, and they waited for Mamoud to walk away before they started speaking again.

“
You are the guardians of the statues,” Bobbi said thoughtfully. “So…you do have some of the statues?”

Karesh
appeared to consider the question for a minute, then finally he answered, hesitantly. “I am going to have to trust you, because I have nowhere else to turn. My father’s actions are putting this family in danger.  In fact…” And then he shook his head, scowling.

“What, for heaven’s sake?” Bobbi demanded, exasperated.

“I fear that the statues have corrupted him.  They are pure evil. Spending time in their presence is dangerous. He is acting strangely these days. He is insisting that we all stay here, refusing to leave our home, while war threatens to destroy us. If we all stay here and die, then there will be nobody left to guard the statues.”

“If you were guarding those statues so well, why did Kenneth’s grandfather get ahold of some of them?” Bobbi persisted.

Karesh sighed.  “He did not buy the statues that we guard. There were two groups of statues.   Many thousands of years ago, after the statues were created, they were entrusted to two different families.  Time went on.  There were wars, there were natural disasters, kingdoms rose and fell, and eventually, our family lost touch with the other guardians.  We believe that they were all wiped out during a plague.   Our family had no idea where the other statues were until we heard of them being put up for sale.  When we heard the description of them, we knew what they were, and we went to buy the statues. We were too late; when we arrived, the statues had been sold to your boss’s grandfather, but when we tried to buy them from him, he denied that they even existed.”

“What is this power that these statues possess?
” Bobbi asked. “What happens if they fall in the wrong hands?”

He grimaced. “I
’m not ready to reveal that. Such knowledge is dangerous.”

Of course, Bobbi thought irritably. Why should he make this easy on her? 
“So why are you even here, if you can’t give me any useful information?”

“
To see what kind of help your boss might be willing to offer me, if I can’t convince my father to reveal what you need to know.   Perhaps by the end of this week my father will agree to transport the statues back to America and we could guard over them there. If not…would your boss consider taking the statues by force, if I were to tell him where they are? Does he have the resources to do that?”

At Bobbi’s shocked expression, he added “
It may be the only way to fulfill my family’s sacred mission.   You’ve seen what my father is turning into…he tried to drug you both.  And I don’t care what he told you, if he had succeeded, you never would have seen the light of day again.  Tell that to your boss.”

He stood up, tossing a twenty
Rili bill on the table, and left.

“That was
Rili unexpected,” Pixie said. “Jeez.  Do you think we’re going to figure out what the heck is going on before the plane comes to get us?”

“We’ve only got a few days left.   Speaking o
f which…are you ready?”

Pixie’s face lit up in an evil grin. “I’m ready.”

Bobbi tossed another twenty Rili bill on the table, and the two of them headed outside, where Mayameen was waiting for them in her taxi.

* * *

Jax
woke with a start. He’d been sleeping badly the last couple of days – ever since the prince had shown up on their door step.   The prince was prone to jumping on them in the middle of the night, both in cheetah form and in human form. He’d cuff them on the head, he’d bite their arms, he’d pull the covers off them and demand that they play cards with him or read him a story, and if they said no, he’d threaten to scream for help.

Jax’s
nerves were frayed to their breaking point.  He’d radioed Tyler pleading for help,  begging for an extraction, but Tyler had remained firm. The war was heating up.  It was too dangerous for them to travel with a child.  The best way to safely remove the prince from the area was to wait for the plane to land on the national holiday; otherwise, wherever they went, they risked driving through a war zone and getting caught in the crossfire. 

So
Jax and Heath had tried their best to take turns sleeping, but even then, whichever one of them was sleeping, the prince would launch himself at like a missile. 

Prince Reginald, apparently, needed very little sleep.

Jax glanced over at Heath’s bed. Heath was flat on his back, snoring.

There was a pounding on the door, and at the same moment,
Jax’s senses blazed to life.

It was Bobbi. He could scent her, and he always sensed when she was near. His fated mate, the woman who drove him absolutely crazy, the woman he’d die for.

He leaped to his feet and ran to the door.

Bobbi stood in the hallway.
She wore a blousy ankle length white cotton dress, a headscarf, and a malicious smile.

“Having fun?” she asked.

“No,” he said fervently. “But I’m very glad to see you.” 

It was true. His body pulsed and throbbed
with pleasure whenever she was near to him.  He wanted nothing more than to strip her clothes off and throw her down on the nearest piece of furniture. Or hell, who even needed furniture? There were always walls. And floors. And countertops.

“Have we learned an important lesson?”
she continued, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yes. I’ll be much sneakier next time I – hey!” she threw a punch at his shoulder, which he quickly blocked, but
at the same time she lashed out at him with her foot and caught him in the shin.

“
Oww,” he grumbled. “That little bastard’s already kicked me there like sixty times. If he was my kid, I’d have put him over my knee so fast-“

“But he’s not your kid. He’s a prince, and the child of very important clients.  Where is the little darling, by the way? I’ve come to relieve you of babysitting duties.  You’ve suffered enough.”

“Oh, thank God,” Jax said fervently.

He turned around and yelled “Reginald! Someone’s here to see you!”

Silence.

Sudden ice cold fear washed over him.

He realized that when he’d sat up in bed, he hadn’t seen Reginald anywhere in the room.  The bathroom? He must be in the bathroom.

“Wait here,” he choked
out, and slammed the door shut.

“What’s going on?” he heard Bobbi calling outside. She began pounding on the door. “Hey! Open up!”

Jax rushed in to the bathroom. The door gaped open. So did the window that led to an alley outside.  Jax knew he hadn’t left the window open.

“Heath, wake up! Bobbi’s here and the prince
is missing!” Jax growled in a low, urgent tone, and Heath bolted upright, eyes flying open.

“What the hell? No!
She’ll kill us!” Heath leaped from the bed.

Jax
fell to his knees and looked under the bed.

Nothing.

He rushed over to the room’s one closet, and yanked it
open.

Empty.

Heath had already rushed in to the bathroom, and rushed back out again.

“You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him!” Heath
growled, eyes wide with panic.

“No, you were! It was your turn!”
Jax snapped. This could not be happening. This was a nightmare.  He and Heath were so dead. First Bobbi would kill him, then Kenneth would kill him and fire him, not necessarily in that order, then if there was anything left of him the prince’s parents were going to go medieval on his ass…

The do
orknob rattled and the door swung open, and Bobbi marched in. i  Clearly she’d been taking lock-picking lessons from Pixie. “What is going on? Why did you shut the door?” Bobbi glanced around the room.

“
Uhhh….” Words failed him. 

“Where is he?” she demanded.

“Uhhhh…”Jax mumbled. “Don’t kill me. We’ll find him. I can shift to wolf form and then I’ll be able to pick up his trail…” he hoped, anyway.

“He’s MISSING?” Bobbi’s eyes were as huge as dinner plates. “An eight year old boy is missing in a city where mortars are raining from the sky and battles are breaking out on every street corner? He’s missing?”

She clutched at her chest. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Bobbi, please. We’ll find him. I swear to God, we will find him. We won’t rest until he
find him.” Heath was clearly in full panic mode.

“I’m sorry!”
Jax cried frantically.  He’d never seen Bobbi this upset.  “We’ll find him! I’m sorry!”

Bobbi burst into tears, burying her face in her hands. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…” she sobbed.
Jax rushed over and tried to throw his arms around her, and she shoved him violently away.

“Get away from me! You’ve killed him! He’s dead, I know it!” she wailed.

“Hey.” Heath’s voice cracked across the room, and suddenly he didn’t sound panicked. He sounded pissed. “What the hell are you pulling?’

To
Jax’s astonishment, Bobbi looked up again. This time she wasn’t crying.

“Too much?” she s
mirked, and wiped at her cheeks with her arm, blotting her tears.

“What the…”
Jax turned from Heath to her and back again, bewilderment mingling with fury.

“Come on,
Jax. I know my sister.” Heath glared at her.  “And you know my sister. Think.  Is this how Bobbi reacts to a crisis? Crying and wailing like a helpless little debutante?  Bullshit. She’d already be long gone, tearing down the streets looking for him,  sniffing out his trail, and expecting us to do the same.”

Pixie strolled through the door, with a grinning Reginald trailing behind her.

“Ha!” he shouted triumphantly. “You are very stupid. It was too easy to trick you.”  He and Pixie exchanged triumphant high fives.