Taken By Desire by LeTeisha Newton Page B

wrong, Sasha?” Sasha stopped breathing. In all her time going to visit Selene, Cirro had been the hardest to deal with. Six foot two, wrapped in muscle, with blue eyes and blond hair, the man was a walking aphrodisiac, and made himself scarce whenever she’d come around. At first she’d been hurt, something in her drawn to the quiet-speaking man who always seemed to be watching, moving through the house. Selene had told her that he ran the security for the people in the home, and she could believe her. She’d never seen him with less than two guns and knives on him at any time. He looked deadly, but all she’d wanted to do was gobble him up, to feel the strength of his body against hers. She wanted to know if his hands were as skilled as they looked. But he hadn’t looked her way, never acknowledged her. She’d decided he just wasn’t interested and her pesky heart needed to ignore him.
    “Sasha?” he asked, sighing, and she remembered to breathe. She coughed over the phone, yelling at her heart to stop beating so fast. It must be the not breathing , she thought sarcastically.
    “It’s complicated,” she started.
    “Try me,” he said then, unflappable, steady. Something in her opened up, in a way she hadn’t been able to with her friends. It was as if she couldn’t argue with him, or deny his request.
    “I have a man that’s trying to kill me,” she blurted. Cirro grew quiet on the phone. She heard muffled speaking and then Cirro came back on the line.
    “I’ll be right there. Don’t leave your house, lock the doors, have your bags packed and at the door. Stay on the phone with Selene until I get there.”
    “Wait,” she yelled, but Selene was already speaking, and the man she thought always tried to avoid her was running to her rescue.

Chapter Two
     
    Cirro didn’t waste time making sure he was armed and then sprinting out of the house. For a year he’d been trying to avoid the one woman he was heading to now. Sasha, beautiful, human—and his mate. He’d never wanted to take a human woman as his mate. He knew that is was a possibility. Hell, some of his men were mated to humans, but he couldn’t stand it. Pietr had gotten lucky, though Cirro would never wish the way it happened on anyone. Selene had been human, but she’d been turned into a wereleopard during an attack right before Pietr had been able to claim her. He wouldn’t know what it would feel like to outlive his mate. To watch her die as he lived on for a few more centuries, alone, and never able to mate again.
    When wereleopards mated they only did so once in their lives. Once their mate died, they either followed them, or lived life alone, seeking death. Cirro didn’t think he could handle it, and though Pietr and Pietr’s brother, the Vasila , Laius, were working to get the law changed with the Council to be able to change humans who were deemed mates, the go-ahead hadn’t been given. Humans could die during the conversion. Pietr’s mate had survived, they thought, because she’d been linked with her mate before her attack. Her leopard had known that there was a mate on the other side waiting for her. That was the argument to be able to change humans. If they were already linked to their wereleopard mate, then the transition could be attempted with a high success rate. But it was still a risk, a risk Cirro wasn’t prepared to take. No matter how tempting his mate was.
    She was perfect.
    She was just a hair shorter than him, something that he found beautiful in women. Her long, lithe frame had nearly feline grace as she moved, her warm chocolate eyes soothing to him. When she was in the katafygio , or haven where his leap lived, she lit up the space, her voice singing to him, her scent tantalizing him. Her hair was almost as short as his, framing her heart-shape face in waspish curls. But her mouth, Lord have mercy, it sent him running from the room more times that he could count. The things he could imagine her doing with