Taken By Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

Maddy, and that would change after the wedding. Werewolves could change their mates with no risk under a full moon with a mating bite. It was why Maddy wore the bite of Connor’s possession but not his mating mark. Cirro knew it was hard for the wolf not to completely bind his mate to him, but the two had made the decision. If he completely mated to her outside of a full moon, he’d never get the chance to change her. The couple relied on their love and their partial mating to sustain them until the chosen day.
    Cirro would not be so lucky. The only way that Sasha could become a wereleopard would be to receive a mortal wound from a wereleopard in a partial shifted form, the magic of their transformation extending to her. Cirro couldn’t imagine hurting her like that, or allowing someone else to do it, despite the fact that it’d break the law of his kind. No matter how he looked at it he was now bound in the one way he had always feared, and had tried to avoid at all cost. But Sasha’s fear had done something to him. When she’d screamed for him he’d been talking to Connor about their plans for returning to her house to hunt the man who hunted her. In the middle of the conversation he’d raced to her side, knowing that she wasn’t in danger. He kept a watch on his wrist at all times that was synced with his alarm system. If anyone had gotten within five miles of the katafygio, he would have been alerted and on the move to meet them with his team. But he’d wanted to reassure her, so he’d tumbled into her room, gun at the ready, and making a show of making sure she was safe.
    All to soothe a mate that he never was supposed to claim.
    And then she’d begged him to take the fear away, to make her forget it, and he’d been powerless to fight her. He couldn’t blame it on her. She’d needed him and had never hidden her desire for him. He’d seen it in her body, in her eyes every time she looked at him. He’d known, and ignored it, for as long as he could, to protect his heart, to protect himself from the ending he knew that he would have. The pain that would rip through him. He hadn’t succeeded. He’d given in to his selfish need to have what he saw every day between his vita and vitasa, between Maddy and Connor too. He wanted his mate, and she was right within his grasp. He’d wanted to forget, for a few hours at least, that she was human and she didn’t know what she was getting into.
    What the hell was he going to do?
    “A penny for your thoughts?” Connor asked from the passenger seat. He’d gotten up early, as planned, to come with Cirro to search Sasha’s neighborhood for any signs of Ice. He, Cirro was sure, hadn’t wanted to leave his bed and mate.
    “Nothing that should concern you, wolf,” Cirro answered, uncharacteristically rude.
    “Claimed your mate and pissed that she’s human, huh?” Connor guessed with his uncanny ability to state the obvious even when no one wanted him to open his damn mouth. It must have been a dog thing.
    “Go lick you balls, mutt, and let me deal with my mate,” Cirro said.
    “Ouch. Touchy. But I don’t have to. Now, you have to get over her being a human. Look at Maddy. So is she and she’s made the transition nicely.”
    “You are going to convert her, and she won’t risk dying,” Cirro argued.
    “There is that. But why do you want to do something to your mate that you know is dangerous? You only have a problem with it because, deep down, that’s exactly what you want to do—take that risk with her. We live centuries without love. You’ve claimed her. Are you going to spend the rest of her life mourning her death and never really living with the gift you’ve been given?”
    Of course the wolf would feel philosophical this morning. That was a leader’s trait, no doubt. The katafygio was home to a leap the likes of none out there. They housed a wolf, and soon would have two when Maddy made the switch, odd in itself as cats and wolves often didn’t