Page 31 of Stray Cat

This time as they fit together, Xav pressing her into the mattress, the spark in Lindsay’s heart began to glow. She ignored it in the madness, twining her legs around him to pull him closer, but when things slowed, the glow strengthened.

After the third time they made love, Lindsay ended up on top of Xav, straddling him while Xav smiled at her with languid need.

The glow inside her became a solid warmth, spreading through Lindsay and scaring the shit out of her. When her current frenzy ended, she’d have to examine what it meant and how it would break her heart.

For now, she enjoyed Xav. Lindsay laughed with him as she took him inside her as far as she could.

They were one. Connected. And if her Shifter cat had her way, they’d stay that way for always.

* * *

Hours later,Lindsay lay on her side, watching Xav sleep. He’d crashed after he’d come inside her the last time, falling into profound slumber.

Lindsay was too exhilarated to relax.

She touched her chest, feeling her heart pounding, and wondered if she’d imagined the sensation that had seeped through her.

Nope, it was real.

Tendrils that Lindsay realized had been there for a while flared as she gazed at Xav. They’d tightened every time she’d seen him laugh, or whenever he’d taken her around a dance floor, or waved to her from Cassidy’s house and jogged across the yard to see her.

It was in his smile, in his eyes, and now in Lindsay.

The mate bond.

The implications of that kept her awake as much as her adrenaline.

Xav was human. Lindsay knew humanscouldform the mate bond, because she’d seen it in Diego and also in Misty for the impossible-to-love Graham.

But it was rare, and it couldn’t be forced. If only one partner formed the bond, the one who didn’t could walk away, unfazed.

If Xav did that, Lindsay would be left bereft, maybe for the rest of her life.

Mate bonds guaranteed that Shifter mates protected each other against the most dire of perils and also filled the world with cubs. It was an old magic, instilled in Shifters by the Goddess to ensure their survival, but that magic came with a price. The mate bond could tear as much as it tied.

Lindsay’s parents shared the mate bond, a strong and sure one. It had carried them through the hardest times when they’d lived in different parts of northern Canada in the wild, through fear and sorrow, despair and resignation. Their love had endured, outlasting the moves to two Shiftertowns and the huge adjustments they’d had to make.

Lindsay had longed to find the mate bond, more possible now that they lived in a community, but even then, she’d thought herself destined to be alone.

Xavier Escobar had caught and held her attention the day she’d spied him with Diego at the ceremony honoring Cassidy’s fallen mate—another drawback of the mate bond. The grief it caused was intense.

Lindsay had looked Xav over, and her heart had flopped around in a way that had confused her.

Hey, if I provide the handcuffs, do you think Diego’s brother will do me the honor?Lindsay had said to Cassidy. She’d only been half joking.

Tonight had been better than that faraway day had promised. Lindsay had tried to keep things casual with Xav, being her teasing, never-be-nailed-down self, but that had been a facade.

Now, she was baring herself, in more ways than one.

Watching him sleep, Lindsay knew something had changed in her. She’d been running all her life, at first literally, when she and her parents had to do whatever they could to keep themselves alive.

Then evading Shifter Bureau, adjusting to life in two successive Shiftertowns, and now avoiding Graham’s contentious Lupines while everyone in this Shiftertown figured out how to live together.

Lindsay was used to fleeing from anything too difficult, too scary. Lynxes were fast, built for speed, as they were small in the Shifter world, more vulnerable than the lions, leopards, and most especially the few, rare tigers. Lindsay knew that her friendship with Cassidy, Eric’s second-in-command, held helped ease the Cummingses acceptance into the Las Vegas Shiftertown and kept the more powerful Felines from intimidating them.

When they’d lived in the wild, Lindsay’s family had been ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice. Lindsay had always been happy to go, anticipating the next adventure.

Now, she wanted to stay.

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