Sebastian/Aristide (Bayou Heat) by Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright Page A

skin, she was truly stunning. But it was her large blue eyes that really drew him in. They seemed both highly intelligent, and unmistakably vigilant. An unlikely pairing for a Saturday night in The Cougar’s Den.
    Though a Nurturer, Aristide didn’t work in the emotional or mental sciences, but he could always sense panic, confusion, anxiety and fear within others. Sometimes it was so close to a being’s skin, it seeped out into the air around them. And this human woman, who he couldn’t seem to turn away from, had all four infusing her delicious scent. He wondered why.
    She started walking in his direction then, her gaze jumping from a table of older guys, to her cellphone, to some bikers, then to the small Pantera crowd around the pool table. If he wasn’t mistaken, Aristide saw her jaw tremble slightly when she eyed the latter. When she eyed him. He purposely missed his next shot so that when she reached them, he could speak to her first. Human women were always a curiosity to Pantera males, but the Suits he was with tonight were notorious in their preference. Normally Aristide wouldn’t give a shit. Normally, he’d back the hell off and let Roch and Damien make their not-so-subtle moves—moves human women seemed to enjoy and seek out whenever a Pantera male was in The Cougar’s Den. But tonight wasn’t a normal night, and for some reason Aristide couldn’t understand or quell, this human female wasn’t getting near his friends, much less landing on their to-be-fucked list. Hell, if Roch or Damien even tried to touch—
    Aristide’s feral thoughts came to an abrupt halt as those fever-inducing hips he’d noticed a second ago swayed tantalizingly toward him as she rounded the table of bikers. Thank Opela by the time she reached him, his basic ability to communicate had returned.
    “How are you tonight?” she asked in a smooth, feminine voice as her gaze flickered nervously from his eyes to his chin to his mouth.
    “Thirsty,” he said stupidly, his tone lower, harsher, hungrier than he’d intended. What the hell is wrong with me?
    “Sounds about right,” she said with a small smile and a bite to her lower lip.
    Aristide’s groin tightened with the action.
    “What can I get you?” she asked.
    He was about to tell her nothing, to go away and don’t come back. And definitely don’t ask his friends the same question or he might have an aneurism right on top of the goddamn pool table. But then her eyes slid upward, over his collarbone, chin, mouth. And those baby blues met his black stare, and he felt a pull on his guts and his heart and his dick unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
    Attraction? Hell, yes. But this was unlike any swipe of attraction he’d ever felt. This was attraction times ten. No. Times a thousand. And without thought, the fingers on his right hand closed around the hem of his jacket as his gut, heart and dick instructed him to order the woman to drop her tray and slip inside his shelter of leather. Inside, against his chest, where it was warm. Where Aristide could keep her close and scent her. Where he could protect her—from the males in the bar, both human and Pantera.
    But who’s going to protect her from you, asshole, a voice inside of him whispered viciously. From what you want to do to her this very second? This stranger. This HUMAN.
    “We have a few beers on tap,” she began, her words a little breathless as she dropped her gaze and quickly checked her cellphone. “Or maybe you’d like something stronger?”
    Something stronger…yes, and maybe hotter, too…something that involved her, naked, laid out on the top of the bar, him poised over her with a bottle of tequila in his hand and a lime wedge in his mouth.
    Once again, Aristide made a growling sound deep in his throat, but he didn’t turn away as he should. Didn’t tell her to leave him be, as he should. He couldn’t. Like it or not, comprehend it or not, this woman held him, and the puma residing