Page 10 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
But he didn’t know her, this creature of gilt and satin and feminine curves, skin like roses and cream and sunlight on water where the rest of his kind were dark, with hair as dark as the forest floor at midnight, skin tones of café au lait and buttered rum.
He didn’t know that the force of his desire would make him sink to his knees, crouching naked in the dark with his heart in his throat and the scent of her flaming hot in his nose.
He hadn’t expected this.
His eyes drank her in and he wondered that she possessed the Gift of beauty all the Ikati shared. She was half human, after all, an inferior race evolved from mud, prone to violence, greed, and all manner of disease. He’d never found a single one of them attractive.
But her father had. He’d done the unthinkable and mated with a human.
He’d also exacted a promise from his successor that his half-Blood offspring would not be brought back to Sommerley to live a life of confinement until the time of her first Shift as the Law decreed for the circumstance. She would be allowed to grow and live as a creature free from the shackles of protection, duty, and constraint that defined life within the colony.
And for a female, there was more constraint than some could bear.
They’d had deserters in their history as well. Those were dealt with as swiftly and mercilessly as the colony dealt with any other threat.
He watched her until the muscles in his thighs began to ache with inactivity, then stood and walked silently over to her bedside. In human form, he was as silent as a cat. He saw through the darkness as if it were high noon, he retained all the heightened senses of his animal side.
Normally this was a blessing. Now...it was closer to torture.
A book lay on her bedside table. He flipped it open with one finger, read a single paragraph.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
Leander’s lips curled into an amused smile. Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Ah, the exquisite irony.
He slanted her a look, his gaze lingering over the arc of her lips, her smooth brow, the soft planes of her cheek. Was she more than just this surfeit of sensuality so pleasing to the eye? What of her sense of humor, her intelligence, her passion? Would she fight for her freedom?
But no, one way or another, her time of freedom was coming to an end. If she could Shift, if she was fully one of their kind, he would take her back to Sommerley. Force her, if necessary. She would join their colony, she would learn their ways, she might even one day be his...
It came unbidden into his mind, startled him into stillness with his hand hovering over her open book.
Mine.
He crouched down next to her bed. A long, curling lock of golden hair hung free over the pillow. He picked it up and pressed it to his nose.
And if she cannot Shift, if she is Giftless, he thought, staring hard at her carmine lips half-parted in sleep, it will fall to the Alpha to kill her. It will fall to me.
“Jenna,” he whispered, an almost noiseless exhalation of sound from his lips.
She shifted on the mattress, made a pretty, feminine sound in her throat. Her back arched beneath the sheets, a drowsy, languid movement that pressed her body taut against the fabric.
The dip of her waist. Her flat belly. Those full, perfect breasts.
“Yes, please,” she murmured, then settled back down against the mattress with a sigh.
With a stab of desire so acute it made his mouth water, he realized she was dreaming.
He felt the ground disappear beneath him, his foundation of law and order and tribe, his entire lifetime of duty and sacrifice, safety and silence. She became—with an abrupt alteration of priority that made all else fall away—the only thing and everything he wanted.
But he was the Alpha and she was an unproven half-Blood, daughter of an outlaw, her future hanging on the scales of fate, her very existence uncertain.
She was not his to have.
The strand of her hair slipped between his fingers and he rose, heart pounding, and turned away.
When Jenna first interviewed for the coveted job of sommelier at Mélisse, she was twenty-two years old, had no college degree, no special training, and no relevant experience.
