The Mating Project Read Online Free Page A

His elongated canines still held the
bloodstains of his victim and his eyes had bled to the glowing yellow of his
wolf. The claws on his hands dug into her skin as he grasped her hand and
pulled her along behind him.
    It was a maze of
corridors down here, and more than once he flattened her against the wall,
shielding her in the shadows with his big body, as they waited for someone to
pass. It seemed the night shift was largely made up of humans, which made their
escape easier. No shifter would have let them pass. Their senses would have
alerted them to their presence in record time.
    As it was Maria
was sure this latest human who stood mere feet away from them, talking on his
mobile phone, should have been able to hear her frantic heartbeat. Pressed as
close to her wolf as two people could be, without being actually joined, her
libido was going into overdrive.
    Rather than try to
fight the sensations assaulting her, Maria shut her eyes and savored them. The
feel of his hard muscular body pressed against her soft curves. The way his
solid erection strained against her belly. The way her own juices slipped out
of her pussy and trailed down the inside of her thighs. His heavy breaths that
raised the fine hair clinging to her sweat dampened skin. The
distant rumble of his wolf, which was joined by her cat's purr. They all
combined to make the atmosphere so sexually charged it was a wonder they didn’t
catch fire.
    When the human
finally moved Maria opened her eyes to find her rescuer watching her from under
hooded lids. The intensity of his gaze sent shivers of anticipation down her
spine, and her cougar rose to the surface to meet her mate. Fully awake now,
her animal wanted out to play, to run with this wolf, and to sink her teeth
into his neck. The need was so intense, so all consuming, that Maria's jaw
ached with the pull to do just that.
    Before she could
act on that dangerous impulse, the man holding her in thrall as much as his
wolf was, stepped away, and Maria drew a much needed breath into her oxygen
starved lungs. She hadn't even been aware of the fact that she'd stopped
breathing, so intense had that moment been.
    Her
wolf held out his hand again.
    "The exit
is just ahead. I killed the guards earlier so we shouldn't encounter any
problems, but just in case we do, I want you to shift the minute we get out of
here, and start running."
    A shiver of a
different kind went down Maria's spine, and she had to clear her throat
repeatedly to get the words to form.
    "What about
you? I can't just leave you, and I don't even know your name."
    "I'm
Malachi, son of the pack of Luca."
    He smiled grimly
and cupped the side of her cheek when Maria's eyes widened in horror.
    "I see
you've heard of us. For the record, I disassociated myself from my father's
antics a long time ago. In any case he's dead now and won't bother anyone
anymore. I'm only telling you this, so that you can tell your father to leave
the rest of the pack be. They are women and children, and completely innocent.
Promise me you tell him, princess."
    Maria nodded her
acknowledgement, not trusting her voice to conform to the demands of her brain,
and she blinked away tears.
    Malachi's harsh
expression softened, and he swiped an escaping tear
off her cheek. The slightly calloused pad of his thumb left a path of fire in
its wake, and Maria threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close. After
a moment of resistance he yielded and hugged her back. All too soon the moment
was lost, and he extricated himself out of her grasp, and pulled her behind him
and to the exit.
    "Now,
remember what I said. Shift the minute you're through that door and run for
your life. I'll be right behind you, and even if I'm not, keep running until
you leave the forest. By now your father and the council will have search
troops out for you. They'll find you."
    Just before they
stepped through the open door he yanked her up against him and kissed her. The
kiss was over before it started, but