Falke’s Renegade

home.

She set the box of condoms back on the shelf but couldn’t stop staring at it. Could she do that to Javier? With his brother and mate both dead, Javier might never become a father. What if she was the only female with shifter blood in the world? She might be his only chance too. Did he want children?

She couldn’t answer that question, only he could, and he wasn’t even ready to answer all of the other questions she had about him, his past...

He was leaving.

Could she let him impregnate her and never tell him?

No. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. No matter how much the thought of being a mom made her want to throw caution to the four winds, she couldn’t deceive Javier.

They might be each other’s only chance at parenthood, but that must be a decision made together, openly, willingly and without deception.

She picked up the box again, grabbed a six-pack of water bottles, a six-pack of soda and paid.

She was back at the door of his hotel room in less than a half hour. When she opened the door, she heard the shower running. Carrying the bags of food, cola and water toward the coffee table at the other end of the room, she tripped over something on the floor at the foot of the bed, almost falling on the sandwiches.

Javier’s cast sat in shredded pieces on the floor. Shaking her head, she put down the bags then picked up the pieces of plaster and tossed them in the trash can. She knocked on the partially open bathroom door. “I’m back with food.”

The water shut off, and she went to the small sofa to unwrap a couple of sandwiches. Javier came out of the bathroom, water droplets trickling down his gorgeous chest, a white towel wrapped around his waist. He limped his way to the sofa and sat next to her, raising his injured leg onto the end of the coffee table.

“Go on,” he said.

She raised her attention from the puckered scar on his thigh, exposed by the gap in the towel, to his eyes. “Go on, what?”

He smiled, but his look was just a little bit condescending. “You wish to be upset about the cast, so go on and get it out.”

Rolling her eyes, she picked up one of the foot-longs and handed it to him. “It wouldn’t do me any good to say a thing, would it?” She pulled a bottled water out of the paper bag and offered it to him.

“No, it would not.”

“You’re limping pretty bad.” She opened her own can of cola and sipped.

“I will for a few more days. Thank you for dinner.”

“You’re welcome.”

They ate in silence, Javier eating two of the three sandwiches she’d brought him, while she took surreptitious glances at his body. The water droplets slowly dried on his golden skin. His chest was bare of hair, but just below his belly button a thin line disappeared into the edge of the towel. His thighs were heavily muscled, and she had the urge to just...bite him. Her teeth fairly itched to do it.

“Oy, chata. Eat your sandwich.”

She glanced at the half eaten six-inch in her hand.

“You stare at me as if I am your dinner.”

A little laugh bubbled out of her, and she finished her sandwich quickly.

Javier reached into the bag of drinks, paused, then pulled out a box instead of another bottle of water.

Heidi held her breath while he slowly turned it over in his hand. Finally, she looked into his face and found him staring at her with a confused expression.

“We have already had sex. I do not think these will matter now if it is disease you are worried about. But I do not have any. You are the first woman I have had sex with since my wife—” He cleared his throat. “For a little over two years.”

She shook her head. “Actually, that hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

His brow furrowed and his lip curled. “Then you simply enjoy the feel of condoms?”

“Ah, no. You’re the first person I’ve ever had sex with without one.” She shrugged. “Humans expect you to use them, and there are diseases that we can catch, even though our immune systems are better than theirs, so I have...until now.” She licked her lips. “I realized that—” she licked her lips again, “-there’s a small possibility that, you know...”

“No, I do not know. What are you trying to say?”

She took a quick breath and rushed out with, “I never thought I would have babies, because the only sure way would be with a catamount shifter. Because there were never any male shifters around I wasn’t related to, I never worried about getting pregnant before.”

He stared at her, silent, his expression unreadable.

“I’m sorry. I should have thought about it before we...” She waved her hand toward the bed.

“You can get pregnant by a single shifter? You do not need two males to conceive?”

“There was one other female in the Falke line that we know of, sometime way back when, and yes, she got pregnant by another catamount shifter. Just one.”

“We are not the same species.”

“I know, but that might not matter. I don’t know if a jaguar and a cougar could mate, but it’s not as if you’re pure jaguar, either. You’re a shifter. I’m descended from a shifter line. There’s no telling what might be possible. I should’ve realized it sooner, and for that, I’m sorry.”

Javier set the box of condoms on the coffee table next to the empty sandwich wrappers and stared at it a long time.

How could she have ever considered not telling him? To just go with it and hope to conceive? He looked so... She wasn’t sure what he looked like, but he wasn’t happy.

“If something did happen,” she started slowly, “as a result of that first time, you don’t have to worry about it. I would never expect you to...uh...that is... I know you have a life elsewhere.” She bit her tongue when he turned a glare on her so fierce it could knock a person dead.

Javier’s nostrils flared, the muscle in his cheek flexed. But then he blinked once and the anger cleared. “You will be the death of me, chata.” In the next instant his mouth was on her, a fierce possession she couldn’t—wouldn’t—fight. He ate at her mouth, sinking his tongue in again and again, while he buried his hands in her hair and held her steady.

She jerked away from his mouth to grab a few deep breaths, but went up on her knees on the sofa next to him and nipped at his neck, his shoulder, that gorgeous, luscious chest. When she flicked her tongue over his nipple, he hissed, so she did it again.

His hands still in her hair, he gently guided her down his body, letting her lick and kiss each rippled muscle along the way. He smelled of hotel soap but beneath that he tasted of pure male. A flavor she had never experienced yet would never, as long as she lived, forget. She pulled his towel open when she reached his bellybutton.

“Oh.” His cock was impressive. So long and thick against his abdomen, a tiny drop of silky fluid glistening at the tip. Flicking her tongue, she tasted that salty little drip and moaned as her pussy clenched. She didn’t understand her reaction to him, to his very essence, but it was undeniable. If she could take him into her, body and soul, every bit of him, maybe as she grew old alone, she would always have the memory of these few days with him.

Dipping her head, she took his cock into her mouth, suckled, licked, groaning when his fingers tightened in her hair. She wrapped one hand around his shaft—no way could she take him all into her mouth—and stroked. At the same time she cupped her other hand under his ball sac and gently tugged, squeezed and rolled them.

Javier sighed and dropped one hand from her head. It slid under her blouse, under her bra, and he cupped her breast, pinching her nipple.

When she hummed her pleasure around his cock, he thrust up just a little, so she took him as deep as she could while stroking him with a tight fist. He plucked her nipples harder, rolled them between his fingers. Her pussy pulsed with each tug, each tiny bit of pain he imposed, and she sucked for all she was worth.

“I will come if you do not stop,” Javier warned, his voice low and gravely, so sexy.

Heidi sucked harder, dipping her head again and again, stroking him hard, squeezing his balls that had