by Lora Leigh
She had never been so furious with anyone in her entire life. Even Padric, her uncle’s second-in-command, and for such a brief time, her lover, hadn’t made her this angry during the years he had helped train her.
No one or nothing had ever made her as furious as Lawe could. Just as nothing or no one had ever made her want him as he made her want his touch.
“A quickie for the road?” Incredulity filled his voice and his rich blue eyes. “Have you lost your fucking mind? As if a quickie would ever be enough for either of us.”
Tilting his head, Lawe forced her head back by simply burrowing his fingers in her hair and pulling.
The prickle of the pleasure-pain attacking her scalp seemed to echo straight to her pussy. Her lips parted on a gasp of rising excitement as his lips suddenly covered her own. His tongue pressed forward demandingly, possessing her mouth and controlling the kiss as Diane rose to him and sank beneath the pleasure.
The addictive taste of spiced pears filled her senses as the mating hormone began to spill from him. Immediately nothing else mattered but that kiss and the man giving it. Nothing mattered but holding him to her, sharing the kiss, and stroking Lawe to that point of no return, just as he was pushing her.
Even without that hormone Diane had a feeling she would never be able to say no to him. There was something about Lawe that made it impossible for her to ignore. Whether it was the pure dominance that challenged every inch of her independent streak or the primal, sexual knowledge that gleamed in his blue eyes and filled his demanding nature, she wasn’t sure.
Whatever it was, he had been a fascination for her since the night he had rescued her from that hellhole. And ever since that night she hadn’t been able to decide if she should kill him or fuck him.
She didn’t want to kill him.
She wanted to tie him to her bed and have her way with him. She wanted to stroke every inch of his broad, muscular body before riding him into exhaustion. She just wanted him to need her as she needed him, and accept her as she accepted him. For once in her life she wanted to be a part of something rather than someone attempting to manipulate her into accepting only a lesser portion of what she deserved.
“God, Diane.” Lawe groaned as he pulled back from the kiss, his blue eyes blazing with need and an inner torment that sent a shaft of aching regret to clench her chest.
She could see the conflict raging inside him.
She could feel it, and she knew it would likely destroy both of them before it was over.
Because he only knew how to be protective of her.
And she only knew how to be the woman her uncle had created when he allowed her to see what had been done to her parents’ bodies.
In the same heartbeat she realized he was jerking her shirt from her jeans. She felt the pure, primitive hunger raging through him and knew she couldn’t do anything but meet it head-on.
Lifting her arms a moan escaped her lips as the material cleared her head and Lawe’s lips covered the tight, violently sensitive peak of her breast.
The muscles of her pussy clenched. Her womb spasmed with greedy hunger and a wave of heat raced over her flesh like a wildfire out of control.
As he bent to her, his mouth drawing on her with an intense male hunger, his fingers were jerking her belt loose and efficiently disposing of the metal buttons of her jeans.
It was a damned good thing she hadn’t put her boots on yet, she thought with dazed pleasure as he began pushing them down her hips. Otherwise, they may have had problems.
The anger had intensified the arousal already amplified by the mating heat, and the need to have him inside her clawed at the muscles of her pussy.
“Hurry,” she begged as she clawed at the T-shirt he wore as well, tugging at it, jerking it up his back until his head lifted and he was tearing it from his body.
Her hands moved to his belt, then to the button and zipper of his jeans, as she kicked her jeans away.
Lawe dealt with her panties quickly. He just tore them off her legs before his arms went around her. Gripping her ass Lawe lifted her to him as she lifted her knees, clasping his hips as he positioned his dick at the heated, slick entrance to her sex.
It was only seconds before she felt the engorged head of his cock pressing inside her. Thick and hot, the wide flesh pushed against the snug entrance as Diane’s head tilted back and shudders of pleasure raced over her body.
“There’s a bed.” She gasped, her nails biting into his shoulders as the head of his cock suddenly pressed forward.
Pinpoints of light exploded behind her lashes as the crest forged inside her. Within the next heartbeat, the next thrust, he was stretching her further. The sensations, so close to ecstasy mixed with the pain of the thick penetration to become the most pleasure she had ever known.
The gift of mating heat, her sister had once told her. It had taken hours to get the information out of Rachel. It’s like being suspended within pure bliss, heated bliss. It burns, energizes and leaves a woman too weak to protest whatever touch is given, and too hungry to ever deny it.
And Diane couldn’t protest. She had no desire to deny.
“Oh God, yes,” she moaned as he continued to forge inside her. Diane could feel the snugness of her inner flesh, as though he hadn’t spent the past night, nearly all night, buried inside her.
Tightening her legs around his hips, she arched her back and moved against him, forcing the engorged crest deeper. Each pulse and throb of the thick flesh stroked sensitive nerve endings as adrenaline raced through her body.
It was like being high on the danger of a mission, only better.
The feel of his cock moving inside her, impaling her with short, quick strokes, was driving her crazy with pleasure. Each inner caress caused it to build and tighten inside her with violent intensity.
“There, baby.” Lawe groaned as he turned and stumbled to the wall, putting his back to it to brace himself. His knees bent as he held her in place and pushed in hard. The fierce thrust caught her off guard. Pleasure lashed at her body as the sudden biting pleasure-pain of the impalement had her gasping for breath as perspiration began to sheen her flesh.
“Ah hell, yes, tighten on my dick just like that, Diane. Like you’re sucking it with that snug little pussy.”
Sensation slammed through her womb. The piercing, fiery surge of clenching reaction detonated with a flash of heat inside her. The eroticism of the moment and his words went so far beyond pleasure that she had no idea how to describe it.
Moving again, Lawe turned her to the wall, braced her back against it and with a hard push of his hips stroked to the hilt between her thighs. The rasp of his flesh inside her, the sensation of it stretching her so tight, revealing nerve endings unused to such sensation, had a cry tearing from her lips.
It was so good. Oh God, it was so good.
How could she live without him, live without this, for even a day?
Her head lowered, her teeth raking his hard bicep before gripping it desperately to hold back the words that would have given him everything he wanted.
Please don’t leave.
Please don’t lose another chance to feel not just the pleasure, but the emotions suddenly whipping through her as well. Because only when he held her, when he took her, when he gave in to his own needs did Diane feel as though he were giving her more than just the release he spilled into her body.
Her hips writhed, her pussy clutching at the thick flesh as Lawe pounded inside her.
Diane felt her juices spilling, her muscles milking his erection each time he forged his way past the snug grip of her pussy.
The feel of his cock buried so deep, the engorged head throbbing in the depths of her had her senses reeling, her pussy creaming wetter and slicker. His hands gripped the curves of her ass, his fingers flexing into the rounded flesh as Diane felt her sex rippling around at the thick invasion, attempting to tug him deeper inside her.
“Lawe,” she whispered his name a shattered moan as the nee
d continued to claw at her senses.
“I’m here, baby,” he rasped as his head lowered, his lips moving to the slender column of her neck.
His teeth raked against her shoulder as she felt the change that slowly came over him. Tension tightened through his body as Diane shifted her hips, lifting herself then returning as he growled against her neck.
That growl vibrated through her, causing her hips to jerk as she felt Lawe thrust against her once again.
She couldn’t seem to make herself remain still. Her hips rolled and thrust against him as he began to move inside her. Pulling back then surging deep and hard, the engorged crest and hardened shaft caressing and stroking sensitive inner nerve endings and pushing her closer to ecstasy.
Her knees tightened at his hips as she lifted and lowered herself against him. Her head tilted to the side as his lips traveled to that point between her neck and shoulder. His lips settled there, his tongue licking, his teeth scraping over her flesh. There was a hungry roughness to his touch that sent fiery trails of sensation racing through her, the pleasure becoming a hungry greed she couldn’t deny.
Her pussy gripped his shuttling dick with desperation. The need for release tightened through her with a violent hunger that sent her pulse racing. The need for his kiss was overwhelming, an addiction she couldn’t fight.
One he seemed to sense.
With a last rake of his teeth against her neck, Lawe’s head lifted, his lips covering hers as he pressed her closer to the wall, holding her tighter as he began moving with a strength that had Diane crying out with a pleasure that tightened with painful force.
“Lawe.” She wanted to scream his name, but it only rasped from her throat.
The force of the need rose inside her and began to shudder through her body. Arching in his arms and straining against him, her nails scraped along his back, need beginning to tear at her, to tear through her as the overwhelming hunger surged hard and fast through her body.
Tearing his lips from hers, Lawe scattered kisses to her jaw, along the edge of it, down her neck. Tiny bites, the scrape of his canines; then, as the burning sensations rushing along her nerve endings suddenly exploded in an inferno, she felt his teeth pierce the vulnerable line between her neck and her shoulder.
Her orgasm erupted through her in a series of rushing waves that threw her into a place of pure, exacting ecstasy. She was lost in it. Surging through the tidal wave of it as Lawe buried inside her deep and hard, his cock throbbing, expanding and spurting inside her as the barb suddenly emerged. It became fiercely, thickly engorged, rippling against the tender, sensitive flesh it was locked inside. Diane felt the heat and burning rapture of the increased pleasure that amplified and heightened the sensations that overtook her senses.
There was a part of her that realized, distantly, that each time her orgasm rose and expanded from the surging pleasure Lawe gave her, she felt a part of herself weakening, opening. As though her heart, her soul or something was opening despite her determination to keep that part of her closed off. To remain safe from the emotional abyss that she knew would be awaiting her.
Collapsing against him, shuddering, her breathing gasps of both ecstasy and the agony of emotions tearing free, forcing her to acknowledge them and to acknowledge the fears she had held back for so long.
She held on to him, terrified something or someone would jerk him away from her. Certain that the disagreements they shared were going to blow up in her face.
There were too many explosions that threatened to blow out of control inside her. Too many emotions she couldn’t control nor push back enough to give her the chance to control them.
Instead they rose, pushed at the shields that held them back and almost broke free.
Diane was only distantly aware of Lawe’s lips still at her neck as he licked and lapped at her flesh.
Marking her.
Everything he had done in the past months had been to one purpose and she knew it. To force her to release what she held back from him. What she refused to give him.
Her entire heart. The part of her soul that only the man who owned her heart would ever have.
And Diane had sworn to herself that no man would ever hold her heart and would definitely never open that part of her soul.
She was terrified if he owned that part of her, then he would control her. Because if Lawe could change her, if he could force her independence to give way to his need to protect her, then he would do it in a heartbeat.
“The thought of losing you destroys me,” he suddenly whispered at her ear. “When I saw you in that filthy cell, beaten, almost broken, so delicate and so determined to live, you stole a part of my soul.”
Shock held her silent. To hear this strong, always so emotionally cool Breed say such a thing. Lawe wasn’t a man prone to give in to emotion. And most certainly, even for a Breed, he had seemed even more unwilling to experience emotion than most.
Keeping her eyes closed she could only hold tighter to him. There wasn’t a chance of hiding what she felt from him. His ability to smell emotion and recognize it was too good.
And she knew what he could sense from her.
The denial, a rejection of what he was offering her and the pain of being unable to reach out for it and hold it close to her.
“Why?” he suddenly asked, his face still buried in her neck. “Why don’t you want what I have to offer, Diane?”
She felt the tears that tightened her throat, and though she couldn’t smell scent as he could, and the pain wasn’t in his voice, still, she could sense it. It tightened her chest and sent an ache to burrow so deeply inside her that she knew she would never escape it.
“Because you refuse to accept who I am,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re rejecting me as well, Lawe. The rejection is just deeper. I accept you for who you are. You refuse to do the same for me.”
His head lifted and drew back.
She was still pressed to the wall, his body still a part of hers and the pleasure . . . The pleasure still throbbed inside her from the presence of the barb as it kept her mate locked to her.
“Do you accept me for who I am?” he asked quietly, somberly. “If you did, Diane, then you’d help me.” His fingers touched her cheek, the backs of them caressing her flesh gently. “You’d help us both find a way to compromise. Instead, you run. And running will do nothing but destroy us both.”
As she stared back at him and battled the tears she had no experience with, Diane felt the barb slowly releasing her, retracting back into the hood of his cock and taking with it the echoes of rapture that held her in its grip. That held Lawe in her grip.
“Do you compromise, Lawe?” she whispered. “Because honestly, I haven’t seen any give in you that would indicate the ability.”
Dropping his head to her shoulder he bestowed a gentle kiss before slowly helping her to slide from him as he pulled the still semi-hard shaft from her pussy and stepped back.
“We’ll go to Window Rock,” he said softly, and Diane had to swallow past the hard surge of emotion that tightened her throat at the chill in his voice, because when he stared down at her, she could see the torment blazing in his eyes. “Be careful while we’re there,” he said as he released her fully. “Remember what happens to me, Diane, if anything happens to you, and vice versa. Because regardless of what you believe of me, from the day I realized you were my mate, I stepped back from active status. Because nothing meant more to me than your life, your health and your safety. I would have never fought ag