She felt the jerk of his cock against her hip, a throbbing of heartbeats between them. Her feminine channel clenched desperately to be filled. “Eli, I’m burning up.”

“I know,” he whispered back, his lips against the underside of her right breast. “We’ll get there. I just need to feel you’re alive.”

“I am alive, but if you don’t hurry that could change.”

He laughed softly, his breath warm against her left breast. She felt the stinging nip of his teeth and the slow slide of his tongue. “So impatient, my little Cat. We’ll do this my way.”

Secretly, she was glad her Eli was back with all his arrogant dominance. He’d been too sweet to her, too controlling of her every move. In bed was one thing—outside of it, she knew if he kept it up eventually she’d kick him in the shins, hit him over the head and totally defy him and run free when he wanted her to sit on the porch and read.

Eli kissed his way straight down from her breasts to her belly button. He made a side trip exploring each rake mark on her sides over her ribs. Six altogether. His touch was magic. Healing. His tongue soothing. He could make her forget the raw scars and the terrible moment when she’d been certain she was going to die under the rogue leopard’s teeth and claws.

Still, the leisurely way he licked and kissed her body, sipping at her as if she were a fine wine, stroking her skin with the velvet rasp of his tongue like a leopard might do, drove her insane with desire. She was drenched. Hot. Needy.

Eli framed her womb with his hands and kissed her belly over and over. “You saved our child, Kitten. You couldn’t have known, but you instinctively kept our baby safe. It’s going to be beautiful, just like you.”

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known. Her leopard had still been too inexperienced to tell her, and she hadn’t felt the pregnancy, but Eli had known the moment he’d gotten her pregnant. She brought her hand to her face and looked at the ring there. Jake and Emma had come with a justice of the peace and Eli had married her a week after she’d gotten home.

Catarina blinked back tears and reached once again for the silky mass of Eli’s hair. “I love you so much sometimes I don’t know what to do with it,” she admitted, the sound so low it was barely there. No one in her life had given her compliments until Eli. No one had ever said they loved her until Eli.