Christmas is *this* close! I still have some cleaning to do before the family starts arriving tomorrow, and the laundry pile is about to fall over and drown the kitties, but other than that I think I’m ready for the holiday. I hope your plans are going well too!

        Here is your Tuesday Teaser from Kit and Olivia’s story. Kit is distantly related to Eddie Madison. but unlike Eddie he clues in pretty quickly that if he treats his mate roughly it hurts her. Everyone in his Pride plays rough, and since they’re all cats, they heal quickly. Olivia, he sees, doesn’t recover quickly. I think Kit is going to be a great hero! I hope you’ll enjoy this next snip.

Chapter Two

Kit ran carefully with his precious burden. His feelings about this female confused him. He didn’t like people outside the pride. He didn’t get along even with his own pridemates, and they at least left him alone most of the time. Humans were cruel. Why this one smelled so fascinating he didn’t know. He knew only that when he’d first seen her he had wanted to break her neck. Until he scented her. Then all he wanted was to get as close to her as possible. A year ago one of his pridemates had claimed a human female as his mate and gone to live with her pride. Family, the humans called it. Kit had thought him crazy. Give up the freedom of living in the wild with the Pride in exchange for a confined life with humans? But now he understood. This female was his. Utterly his and he would keep her with him, never let her go, ever. He would go to almost any lengths to make her happy. Part of him, the sliver of human reason that dimmed when he was in his shift, whispered he was acting crazy. Kit ignored the whisper. It didn’t matter what his human side thought.

“Kit!” the female said insistently again. She had tried to talk to him from time to time, but now wasn’t the time to talk. He glanced down at her, inhaling her scent, but didn’t respond. He needed to keep his attention on the rocks and trees. He was moving with all the speed he could muster, so he could have her safe in his lair before dark. It hurt him when he saw the bruises his fingers had left on her throat. Devlin had tried to warn him to be more gentle. Human females were so fragile. The bruises should already be fading, but since she was a human, he would have to take far more care with her. He resolved to never hurt her again.

Maria might not like that he was bringing a human female into the Pride. She and Juanita and Tricia were the queens and they shared all the males of the Pride between them. They might not like another female to share their males with. He didn’t care. This human, Olivia, was his. He wouldn’t allow any other male to give her sex. Olivia would be his queen. If she objected to him giving sex to the other queens he would forsake them. When Justin, his pridemate, had found his human mate last year, the human female had demanded that he service only her. That must be exhausting for Justin. Maria sometimes required three or four of the males to satisfy her when she was in heat. But Kit would be happy to spend all his time pleasing only Olivia. He snarled at the thought that she might want to invite other males to please her. He would kill any male who so much as sniffed at her. He was the youngest of them, but they all feared him. Not only was he the fastest and strongest of them in spite of only being able to take a half-form, but he was sometimes able to control their minds if he bothered to make the effort. His eyes could force them to surrender if he thought it hard enough. It was seldom worth it. His teeth and claws were easier to use. But sometimes it was good to have everyone walk away unbloodied.

He leapt from one spine of rock to another ten feet away and felt the female tense in his arms. A glance down at her showed her pale blue eyes staring up at him. In spite of a light tan, he could see her skin was naturally pale. Her fine white blond hair was long enough to flutter in the wind created by his speed. he wanted to pet it. He didn’t know if she was beautiful the way humans counted beauty, but her long bony face with its narrow long nose and high cheekbones was beautiful to him.

She tried to hide it, but he could scent her fear. Her neck with the bruises from his fingers, speckled with tiny gouges from his claws still troubled him. Once he had her safe he would tell her he regretted hurting her, but he had no time to sooth her fear now. Yes, after he had brought her to his lair, he would speak to her. There he would be secure enough to resume his man form and assure her she was safe with him. He would protect her and any kits they had. First he had to get her to his lair. He had to hide her so her pride couldn’t find her and take her away from him.

*

How long could he run like this? Olivia looked up at the sky and saw the sun was almost down. It had been at least four hours since Kit had picked her up and carried her away. His pace was faster than any racehorse and his heart rate and breathing weren’t labored. Olivia estimated he had carried her at least sixty miles. She had tried to pull a few of her hairs out and let them drop on the ground along the way from time to time. Even her father would have trouble tracking her all this way with no scent markers from her. But by now her father, brothers and the ranch hands would be searching for her. They would easily track her horse to where Kit had attacked her. After that she wasn’t sure how plain the trail would be, especially with Kit carrying her so her scent wouldn’t linger on the ground. But he was leaving some prints. Even though he crossed running water several times and moved over hard rock, surely her dad and brothers would be able to track him. She just had to leave some clues behind to help them.

Her dad would be disappointed in her. She wasn’t supposed to be more than a mile from the ranch house unless she had one of her brothers with her. According to Uncle Shadow even that was too far for a woman alone. His daughter Victoria had to scheme to get any freedom at all. Luckily Aunt Glory could stand up to Shadow better than anyone, so Vicki did get some freedom. Poor dad must be frantic to find her now. Olivia was sorry she’d pushed the limits of her freedom so far. When her dad and brothers caught up to her they’d put her in lock down for sure.

“Kit!” She’d been trying to get him to pay attention to her for the past three hours, but he’d always ignored her. Since he was running on relatively level ground now, she dared to squirm gently in his grip. “Kit, please! Let me down just for a couple minutes. I have to… I need to go to the bathroom.” When he paid no heed she pinched him and screamed, “Kit, are you listening to me?”

He glanced down at her with that alien face showing something fiercely feral and clamped his arms even tighter. “No.”

“Yes!” she snapped back. “Unless you want me to pee all over you.” She wasn’t making it up. She really did need to go, but the real reason was that her urine would be like a red flag to anyone tracking her. “Kit! Please!”

Maybe it was the “please”. He leapt up to a rock crevice and set her down. He waved a hand—paw—at the crevice. “Hurry.”

Olivia’s legs almost folded. She staggered and might have fallen if Kit hadn’t steadied her with a hand under her arm. After only a second he let her go and took one half-step back. He wanted her to pee into the deep crack in the rock. The scent would be harder for her father and brothers to catch there. She unbuckled her belt and found those rabid golden green eyes watching her carefully. Honestly shocked, she stopped.

“Can’t you go away for a minute?” she asked stiffly.

“No.”

“Then you have to turn around,” she demanded.

“Why?” he asked in apparent confusion.

“Because it’s not polite to watch someone go to the bathroom!”

That strange feline face showed bafflement. Was he totally untamed? Didn’t he know anything about common courtesy? Privacy? She felt suddenly cold. He really was feral. “Kit,” she began. Saying please seemed to help before. She tried it again. “Please step away and turn your back. It’s not like I’m stupid enough to try to run off. I know you’d catch me to two seconds. Okay? Please?”

After staring at her for a long minute he did as she asked. It was embarrassing for her, but she quickly did her business and did her best to leave evidence for her father to find. Before she had even finished buckling her belt Kit was back, swinging her up in his arms and sprinting off again. Even her father couldn’t cover ground this quickly. Her urine scent would be gone before he came this way. Helpless tears stung her eyes and in spite of her efforts, she couldn’t force them back. Kit looked down at her as he ran. His eyes really were pretty, in a fierce, non-human sort of way. Intense and staring steadily in hers, his eyes filled her sight. She felt like he was trying to hypnotize her. Her effort to look away failed.

“Sleep,” he commanded in a fierce purr-growl. “Sleep, mahmade.”

And somehow, without her meaning for them to, her eyelids dropped and she slept.

Oh, dear. Today’s teaser is very short. Sorry! Does it help if I tell you I’m writing the first love scene between Sky and Rose? Well, it’s not a full love scene. I have to ease them into this. After all, they’re both virgins. Rose is giving off confusing signals and Sky is reluctant to push her for fear of frightening her. But they’ve just woken up in the same bed, and they must have drawn close together in sleep, because when Sky wakes up Rose had her face pressed into his chest and they have their arms around each other. Sky wakes first and just lays there with a huge smile on his face, because his mate is sleeping so trustingly in his arms. Then Rose rolls away from him onto her back and his hand ends up in an interesting place. They both freeze, shocked yet delighted. I wonder how far I should have them go before Sky forces himself to stop and let Rose flee to the shower, leaving him alone in his pristine white sheets?

Well, here is the teaser from Olivia and Kit’s story:

He hauled her up into his arms and began running. She had never travelled so fast. How could he run so fast? He was running uphill, carrying her in his arms like a baby. Even her wolf-born brothers and cousins couldn’t run like this. Over his shoulder she could see Devlin shaking his head, getting smaller and smaller.

“I told you not to challenge him,” he yelled, but Kit had carried her so far so fast that the words were very faint.

He was moving too fast for her to try to throw herself out of his arms. A spill on the steep mountainside could be fatal. Kit would get tired soon; he had to. Maybe then she could get away from him. His heart pounded calmly and steadily against her cheek, not seeming to labor at all. The wind created by his speed forced tears from her eyes. Yeah, it was the wind that made her cry. Olivia blinked the hot tears away, determined to fix landmarks in her memory to follow back home when she’d gotten away from him.

And she would get away. She might have been willing to allow him to court her, but the way he’d treated her showed her he’d be a terrible mate. Escape might be difficult, but she was her mother and father’s daughter. She could track and survive in the mountains as well as either of her brothers. Even if she wasn’t able to get away on her own, her father and brothers would come for her very soon. Grimly she settled into the steely arms that held her against a warm chest, waiting for her opportunity to escape.

See? I said it was short. Sorry! More next week!

In spite of my evil computer chewing up nearly all of chapter 14 in Wolf’s Princess, I’m making good progress. I’m shooting for the rough draft to be done by December 31. With all the holiday get togethers I might not make it, but I’m going to give it my best shot. Rose is easing away from her sarcasm and Sky is beginning to open up to her. At this very moment, Rose is just waking up from a nightmare and Sky is about to comfort her. Please excuse me so Sky can get on with the comforting…  meanwhile, enjoy this next tidbit from Olivia’s story.  😉

Yermade roared and fastened a hand around her throat, and by either luck or care on his part, his claws didn’t touch her skin. “No dokdim! You mine! Mah madte.”

“Okay.” Olivia hated the tremble in her voice. “Just don’t hurt me. Okay? Don’t hurt me.”

The hand on her throat became caressing and he made that purring noise again. “Naherchu, Yermadte naherchu.”

Your mate not hurt you. Yermade wasn’t his name. Olivia forced herself to look into his eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Kih.” It seemed he struggled to make the right sound. “Kihdt.”

“Kit?” she guessed. Wasn’t that what the other man had called him? Those monstrous fangs must make it hard for him to pronounce Ts. “Kit, my family will be looking for me. I need to go home.”

The lion man roared and this time his claws pricked her neck when his hand tightened. The other man spoke soothingly, and Olivia was able to follow most of what he said.

“Kit, you’re scaring her. You don’t want to hurt your mate. Let me talk to her so she’ll understand. I won’t try to take her away from you. Kit, I smell blood. You’re hurting her.”

Kit growled something completed unintelligible to Olivia but the other man seemed to get it right away. Kit was tense as he moved a few inches, enough for her to see the other man, but although he retracted his claws, his hand remained circling her throat. “Dok nahluk,” he growled.

“Lady, we can talk, but don’t look at me,” the other man said quietly, in perfectly enunciated English, his eyes cast to a point past her left shoulder. “And don’t stare at him either. Don’t do anything to make him think you’re challenging him. He’s pretty emotional now. He doesn’t mean to hurt you, but he doesn’t have good control right now.”

Kit turned to cover her with his body. He pressed closer to her and Olivia found her nose buried against his chest. He had an earthy scent, but not unpleasant, and she could feel the vibrations of his quiet snarls against her cheek.

“His name is Kit?”

“Yeah, Christopher. I’m Devlin.”

“What is he?”

Kit’s growls rose in volume and his hand tightened.

“Sorry,” she whispered hastily. “I’ve just never seen anyone like you.”

Devlin’s voice was cold. “He’s a person, same as you are, and he can hear and understand everything you say. After he calms down he’ll go back to his human form.”

Olivia wondered what he looked like in his human form. “Sorry,” she said again.

“Kit’s chosen you to be his mate. It might be a little rough at first, but you’ll adjust.”

Were Devlin and Kit lions like her brothers and cousins were wolves? Those men in the Wolf Clan who had wolves didn’t marry. They waited for the wolves within them to choose a mate for them. If that was how Kit’s lion worked, then he should be courting her in an effort to get her to accept their mating. If this was courting she’d hate to see how he treated someone he didn’t like. Her back ached and her throat hurt from being crushed and the multiple small claw marks. Those injuries, plus his feral roaring and snarling, didn’t make her see him in a lover-like light. But if his lion had chosen her for a mate, she should be polite. She had seen her cousins’ pain when their mates rejected them. Olivia aimed a smile up at Kit’s lion face.

“If Kit and I are mates, then Kit needs to come and meet my parents,” she said brightly. Once home her father and brothers would protect her while Kit courted her. They could also teach him the correct way to court a prospective mate.

Kit roared.

“Stop that,” she told him, annoyed. On the other hand, the roars were loud enough that if her brothers were anywhere near they’d hear them and come investigate. “It’s only polite for you to meet my family. If I accept you, they’ll be your family, too.”

“You come wih me,” Kit returned, speaking very carefully, with more than a hint of a growl.

“I can’t. My brothers would worry and if I’m not home soon they and my dad’ll start looking for me.”

“Nah find you.”

“Yes they will! My father’s the greatest tracker alive. And if he doesn’t find me, he’ll send for the Clan to come help. That would be three hundred men! You can’t hide me from that many people who love me.”

His shrill scream sent shudders down her spine. “Kit –“

“Quieh!” he snarled, squeezing her throat so tightly she choked. “You come me now.”

He hauled her up into his arms and began running.