by Lora Leigh
He was amazed at her ability to do so. The deep brown of her eyes held a darker, almost burgundy tint. Rage had to be eating her alive for her eyes to have turned such a startling color. Yet not so much as a hint of the scent drifted to him.
“What will you do to force me to obey you, Lawe?” Her head tilted to the side as he watched her visibly struggle to keep the emotions reined in. “Will you beat me? Tie and gag me before dragging me back to Sanctuary? Because those are your only options.”
“I would never harm you,” he managed, fighting the urge to snarl in outrage. His fingers tensed, the desire to clench them almost overwhelming as he faced her and the suspicion in her gaze. “And you know I would never strike you.”
“Then that leaves tying and gagging me.” Her hip cocked, a delicate hand resting on it, and the scent of her fury finally drifted to him for the briefest second.
It was viciously hot, nearly searing him and making him want to take a step back from it as the edge of pain slapped his senses. God, what emotions did she hold back on a normal basis for such intensity of feelings to slip past her careful control?
The animal side of him flinched at the thought that he could be the one hurting her. That his need to protect her, to ensure her life could possibly have created such a well of agony.
“Those are your only options,” she stated. “Because I refuse to return to Sanctuary to be kept locked away like a favored pet.”
A favored pet?
Lawe felt his jaw bunch and his dick jerk with an imperative demand as she confronted him. He would fuck her into exhaustion if it weren’t for the fact he’d be doing the same to himself. Throughout the night she had proven she was more than a match for his sexuality, and his hunger.
Just as she was more than able to keep up with him in other ways.
“Better a favored pet than a mate tortured to death. Do you know what the Council scientists, Brandenmore’s research monsters or even the government’s so-called Breed geneticists would do if they got their hands on you? Do you have any idea of their preferred means of learning how mating heat changes the body? How horrifying a vivisection is? What it would do to me to be forced to watch such a thing happen to you?” he questioned, hearing the harshness, the guttural quality of his own voice. “And you. Could you bear to hear my screams as they dissect me alive? Perhaps more than once? Over and over again? Because, baby, I would sure as hell scream. Even the strongest of us eventually break when they lay the knife to our guts.”
Diane wanted to turn from him. She wanted to hide the painful, horrifying knowledge that she was very well aware of what any scientist would do to either of them now.
“I’ve seen it.” Agony raged in his eyes as he crossed to her, his fingers curling around her arm as he pulled her to him. “I watched, Diane. Forced to pretend disinterest. Forced to show no fucking reaction.” Animalistic, filled with horror, his voice rasped with the words. “I watched as they first cut into the Coyote commander who made the mistake of mating one of the breeders in the lab where Rule and I were confined. Then, I watched as they cut into his mate. My mother. The woman Rule and I fought to find freedom for since we were barely old enough to realize we were captives. I couldn’t roar in rage. I couldn’t beg them to cease, because if I did”—his expression was filled with tormented memories, dragging a muffled sob from her lips—“if I did, then three others in that lab would have died. It could have been Rule. Or the young Cheetah female they kept separated from us. Or another of the young that Morningstar Martinez reached out to in their dreams.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “In their dreams?”
Lawe released her slowly and stepped back. Pushing his fingers through his hair he drew in a hard, painful breath. “In our dreams. As far back as we could remember. Morningstar came to the children she was fertilized with in vitro. She rocked them. She sang to them. She painted pictures of the place she called home, the family she was certain was searching for her, and all the joys she had known as a child.”
Diane watched, silently, feeling the tears that would have fallen if she hadn’t had so many years of practice holding them back.
“Her life was a living nightmare, yet she brought us joy whenever she could. And because the Coyote commander found joy in her and mated her, they died in the most horrifying way possible.”
He had seen the nightmares he feared she would face. It was no wonder he was so determined to lock her away in cotton batting. If only she could survive it.
He and his brother, Rule, had been forced to watch, as though uncaring, forced to watch as though unconcerned as their mother was murdered in just such a way.
“It would kill me.” She knew she lost the battle to hide the emotions tearing her apart inside when Lawe’s head jerked back, his nostrils flaring as he drew in her scent. “To know I was the cause of such a fate for you, Lawe. It would destroy any part of my soul that was left at the second I faced death.”
Yes, she hurt. She had nightmares about the lives she knew the Breeds had endured. The very thought of what they had gone through was often more than she could bear contemplating at length.
“Then don’t do this,” he snarled, his canines flashing as his lips pulled back from his teeth furiously. “Give this up, Diane, and let the Bureau’s Enforcers track her down instead.”
“It would kill me,” she said again. “But being locked away, unable to be me, would make me hate you, Lawe. I would hate you and any Breed I ever came in contact with again.”
She had fought too long, endured too much. Her freedom, her existence and the reason she followed in her parents’ and in her uncle’s footsteps and followed war was too deeply ingrained inside her.
“Why?” Fury, pain, they raged inside him like a volcano threatening to erupt.
“Because I won’t be powerless again,” she whispered. “When my parents died I was just that, Lawe. I was powerless. When my parents’ murderers beat my uncle to our home, Rachel and I were alone with our babysitter.” She shuddered, the memory tearing through her with a force that never eased. “I didn’t watch my mother die, but I heard the screams of the person Rachel and I considered more than just a babysitter. Uncle Colt’s fiancée died swearing to them we weren’t there while I ran with Rachel and hid. I had to listen to her screams as she did the only thing she could do to protect us because no one, no one,” she cried out furiously, “had taught her how to fight. How to survive. And if you lock me away, then every time I hear of a Breed death, every time I hear of a mate being murdered so savagely, I will blame you!”
Because her parents had fought for the Breeds. Her uncle had fought for them. And the secret they had all died to keep was still one Diane knew had to be preserved. She had information even Lawe didn’t have. Something she knew that Leo feared she would reveal each time he caught her gaze.
She didn’t expect her answer to cause such a reaction in Lawe, though. Before she could avoid him he displayed the incredible speed of his feline DNA and crossed the room to grip her arm and jerk her to him again.
His arms were like steel bands around her, holding her in place and keeping her against his chest despite her initial attempt to place distance between them.
Staring up at him, eyes wide, her senses churning with both anger and an arousal that felt as though it were burning out of control, she glimpsed the torment that raged in his blue eyes.
“Better your hatred than your death. Or the horror of watching you taken apart piece by fucking piece.” He spat his words.
There was no fear at the display of dominance.
Anyone who was around Breeds very often learned to live with such displays and such arrogance. The torment that burned in his gaze did affect her, though. It struck through her heart, tightened it, and left her throat thick with the unshed tears she refused to free.
“You could trust my abilities as I trust yours,” she yelled back at him, her emotions driven by her anger, both for him and against him, as he displayed his complete
inability to ever consider her a worthy partner. “Tell me, Lawe, does your life go on hold with this mating too, or just mine?”
She knew the answer to her question. It wasn’t hard to guess exactly who the mating affected and who it wouldn’t.
His expression did no more than confirm her suspicions. She gave a bark of scornful laughter. “Don’t bother answering, because I can see it in your face. It doesn’t. You’ll still fight, you’ll still risk yourself and you’ll still expect me to sit in the little cage the Breeds have made for their mates and play the dutiful wife. Should I be barefoot and pregnant too?”
The flicker of his eyes, the glimpse of the sudden longing that crossed his expression before he could hide it, had her stomach tightening. With longing, or with pure rage, she wasn’t certain.
“So you’ll just go out, have your fun, then return home to fuck me before you pat me on the head and ride off into the sunset again.” Oh, she so didn’t think that was going to happen.
She wouldn’t allow it. Not even for a second.
She had never allowed herself to play any man’s doormat and she wouldn’t start now. She would be his equal partner, or she would be nothing. Nothing less was acceptable.
“At least you’ll be alive,” he bit out, the icy storm in his gaze almost frightening as he stared down at her.
“The hell I will.” Pushing against his chest she tried to escape his hold, only to become aware of just how firmly he held her without appearing to. “No, Lawe, I won’t be alive. I’ll just exist, and I’ll hate you for it. I will not be there waiting for you. I’ll be doing as I’ve trained to do all my life and I’ll do it alone if that’s what I have to do. I won’t let you cage me!”
“I won’t allow it.” One hand moved from her back to push into the hair at the back of her head as the vow slipped past his lips.
He wouldn’t allow it? As though she would ever let him have any say in the matter as long as he was doing so in such a manner. As though he owned her.
The pain of that realization had her body tightening until she was on the verge of shaking, the pain, anger, and incredibly, the fear racing through her to mix with an arousal she couldn’t force away.
She wanted him. She wanted him to touch her, to hold her, to share his kiss and the incredible taste of spiced pears that filled it. She wanted him to accept her. To stand beside her. To allow her the happiness she needed to make that decision for herself.
And she wanted to kick his ass for ever imagining she would allow him to make such a decision for her.
“Sorry, Lawe, I won’t allow you to kill her as surely as the Council would.”
The shock of the words coming from the deep, normally booming voice of her second-in-command had Lawe moving. Before Diane could stop him, he had thrown her behind him as Thor stepped into the room, twirling the key between his fingers as he stared at them, a tic of anger throbbing at the side of his jaw. “Having fun alone again, boss?” he asked. “I thought we agreed that wouldn’t be happening this time.”
He was pissed.
Lawe’s blue eyes were icy. His broad, masculine features looked carved from stone and anger had his normally full lips tightening as she knew he held back every smart-assed, purely male arrogant insult he could have thrown her way.
Thor completely ignored the fact that Lawe had one of the snub-nosed, laser-powered, rapid-burst hand guns trained on him, his finger riding the activation lever a little too firmly. But he wasn’t ignoring the fact that Lawe was attempting to shield her. The action earned Lawe one of Thor’s famous, sarcastic sneers. A lifting of his lip at one side as disgust filled his gaze.
“For God’s sake, Lawe, get the hell off me!” She pushed at the back of his shoulders as he continued to hold her behind him with the seemingly effortless strength of one arm.
Dammit, she could kick the asses of men that were twice his size and pure muscle. But she couldn’t budge him.
“What is he doing here?” Lawe’s voice was an animal’s growl.
“Move!” She finally managed to lever a few inches between them before he slowly, very damned slowly, allowed her her freedom.
She shot him a look filled with the promise of retribution.
She was not going to put up with this. “This is the number one reason most partners involved in any kind of military or covert work end up divorced,” she snapped furiously.
“Mates don’t divorce.”
“Be careful, Lawe,” she suggested, her voice raspy with the sheer depth of her anger. “You’ll be the first.”
“I get to sell the tickets.” Thor’s smile lacked any amusement or warmth.
“You’re supposed to be on vacation,” she snapped at the oversized Swede that stood in front of the now-closed door.
“And you’re supposed to be visiting your sister before you head to Sanctuary with her.” Thor’s brow arched with mocking curiosity. “I guess we both lied, huh?”
Yes, she had lied. Something she had never done to Thor as long as she had known him.
“And I had a very good reason for it,” she informed him as she moved to go around Lawe, only to have him catch her arm and hold her back silently.
He hadn’t said a word. He stared back at Thor with lowered brows and narrowed eyes, his entire body tense and ready for action.
For God’s sake, his very demeanor, so dominant and forceful had her pussy creaming furiously despite the disgusted irritation the action earned him.
She decided she hated Breeds.
“Reasons don’t matter.” Thor shrugged. “Just the action.”
Diane grunted at his standard no-forgiveness stance.
“Were you following me?” Suspicion suddenly rose inside her, dark and ugly.
Thor had been the one who had arrived with her uncle to tell her of her parents’ deaths. He had held her when her lover, her uncle’s second-in-command, had been killed, and he’d been the one who had sat and prayed at her hospital bed after her rescue from that Syrian hellhole.
Suspecting him of anything seemed nothing short of a sin.
Yet there it was.
“I wasn’t following you,” he stated with a bite to his voice. “I’ve actually been tracking your shadow. I just wanted to see who he was tracking when I caught sight of him sneaking around the hotel the night before you left. I didn’t know you were his quarry until I heard you and the Lion here arguing inside. It makes sense, though, considering the fact I warned you someone was out to kill you.” He turned to Lawe as he crossed his arms over his wide chest. “Your Breeds are falling down on the job, prick. They weren’t at the door as they should have been.”
“For a reason,” Lawe snapped irritably. “We knew you were following her. The only reason you got to the door was because you’re not considered a threat.”
Diane was more concerned with Thor’s revelation than the argument between him and Lawe. She had left before daylight. Gideon Cross had been watching for her and she had known it. Just as she had known he was tailing her, despite the fact that she hadn’t been able to catch sight of him.
One of these days, perhaps she could catch up with him and convince him to teach her that little trick.
Keeping one step ahead of her mate as well as her enemies might well be in her future. He didn’t appear to be out to kill her. She just hadn’t figured out exactly what it was he did want. Evidently, Lawe was paying close attention to Thor, especially the part about Gideon shadowing her and the rumor that there was a price on her head. Just what she needed, for Lawe to become more protective than he already was. “Let me go before I have to kick your ass,” she muttered, her fury downgrading to simple kick-his-ass anger as he slowly released her.
“That threat is getting old,” he told her quietly. “Either kick it or find another part of my anatomy to consider abusing.”
She almost rolled her eyes. She wasn’t even going to touch that one.
Pushing her fingers through her hair, she stared back at the window beside
the door. The curtains were still carefully closed and tucked in close to the wall to ensure not even a shadow could be revealed.
She had known last night that a weapon was trained on her. Right between her eyes as she