Be Were (Southern Shifters) by Eliza Gayle Page A

a pregnant female. What if it was me?"
    A dark red haze filled Rafe's vision at the suggestion someone might hurt his mate. Despite his civilized approach to pack life and their ongoing issues, he still held a deep blood thirst for anyone who dared to cause harm to someone he cared about. Some things about his animalistic nature couldn't be changed.
    "Wait. What? Are you telling me you're going to have a cub?"
    She turned away from the computer and gave him a half smile. "No, Rafe. I'm not pregnant. But at the rate you're trying, who knows? It could happen any day."
    Rafe stalked closer to his woman. "Damn right. Which is exactly why you should leave Dark Moon business to the Dark Moon crew and tell me more about what we can do to make baby cubs."
    "You've just got sex on the brain. Now come over here and look at these maps. This area where she was taken isn't all that big and, from what they said about where she was held, it might not be that hard to find. Maybe Simon would help. He's a doctor and if they were trying to do some kind of testing on her baby, he'd be able to figure it out. Hell, he'd probably be raring to go. Any new information about shifter fertility could be extremely useful in his medical research."
    He took a deep even breath and waited for the patience eluding him to kick in. "You're not going to let this go are you?"
    She looked at him and shook her head.
    "Fine." He held out his hand. "Let me get a look at this map you've found. You know it's damned embarrassing we need to rely on technology to know our own woods. We used to be able to go by our senses alone."
    She smirked at him. "And I'll bet 'back in the day'--" She used little air quotes with her fingers to emphasis her sarcasm. "The wolf mortality rate was a lot higher than it is now. It's high time you all got on board one hundred percent with Simon and looked into what technology can do for the pack."
    "Hon, I know you're feeling stressed about all this, but have you looked around at your new pack? You're lecturing me about technology while sitting in our living room, using our state of the art computer system, with two cell phones sitting on the charger next to you. Not to mention all the big flat-screen televisions we watch and the video camera security system I have setup all over the core pack properties we monitor from here."
    Kitty sat back in her chair, her laugh bubbling up. Goddess he loved that sound. He needed to coax that from her more often. She worked tirelessly helping others lately and he worried she had a complex about making sure she fit in or atoned for her past.
    "Well, duh. Huh?" She rubbed her temples and scrunched her nose.
    Definitely his mate was taking on too much too fast. He moved behind her chair and began massaging her shoulders. He could feel the knots wound pretty tight. She needed to be taken care of. His thoughts drifted to a more pleasant full-body massage he wanted to give her. With lots of oil involved. And her totally naked.
    "Oh damn, Rafe. That feels good."
    Hell, yeah, it felt good. Any time he got the opportunity to lay his hands on her sweet skin was heavenly. Now she'd gone and made his dick hard.
    "What's going on back there? You're growling."
    He swiveled her chair around, putting her face to face with his cock now straining against his jeans.
    She laughed at that sweet sound again. "You, mate, have a one track mind. All roads lead to sex, don't they?"
    "Only when I'm around you. You did this, not me."
    "Uh-huh. I've never seen a man more capable of resisting his baser urges than you, Rafe. Right now you're just trying to distract me from this kidnapping thing."
    "Is it working?" He cupped her chin and stroked his fingers down her neck. Her eyes closed on contact and her mouth parted slightly in an obvious sign of pleasure. He loved seeing her like that. She did everything at one hundred and fifty percent. Whatever challenge someone threw her way, she figured out a way to rise to it. Whether it was