by Lora Leigh
snarl tore from Dawn’s lips and a curse jerked from Seth’s.
He was staring at her thighs, at the wet flesh, plump and swollen and aching for him. She didn’t know what this felt like; she had dreamed of him almost touching her there, almost bringing her ease, and now the dream was so close.
He licked his lips and leaned forward.
“Open this door or I’ll find someone to open it for me. Are you hurt? Has that feline bitch hurt you, Seth?” False hysteria echoed through the panel as Seth surged to his feet, jerked Dawn’s pants to her hips and just as quickly rebuttoned them.
Dawn stared back at him in shock as he tried to draw her shirt back over her shoulders.
“Hell, I ripped your fucking shirt.” He stared at it as though horrified.
“Seth. Open this door.”
“Seth, don’t touch her,” Dawn pleaded. She stopped him as he tried to fix her shirt, staring up at him, feeling the agony, the burst of pain that ripped through her at the memory of him holding the other woman. “Please. Not in front of me. Don’t touch her.”
His lips tightened.
“Seth, damn you!” Pure rage flowed into the room.
A bitter curse slipped from his mouth as he strode forcefully to the door, unlocked it and jerked it open.
Dawn stood where she was; she couldn’t have moved away from the desk if she’d had to. She didn’t pull the shirt over her black bra, and she didn’t flush as Caroline’s eyes landed first on her, then Seth.
She took in their undress, the ripped shirts and the scratches on Seth’s shoulders. And he did have a fine set of scratches, Dawn thought in satisfaction.
Caroline had a bloodred wrap tied around her overblown body, and her breasts were heaving in fury as she stared at Seth in disgust.
“I can’t believe you,” she sneered. “Ripped clothes, scratches.” Her fingers flipped toward his shoulders. “You’re in here messing around with that trampy little animal when I was waiting for you upstairs.”
“That’s enough, Caroline,” Seth snapped, the anger building in his voice now. “What happened here was my fault. Not hers.”
“I believe I kissed you first.” Dawn smiled tightly at the other woman as her gaze jerked back to her.
“Dammit, Dawn.” Seth turned to glare back at her.
She met his look head-on. If he didn’t get rid of that black-haired slut, she was going to use her nails to scratch her eyes out.
Caroline’s fingers clenched at her sides. “We need to talk,” she ordered Seth imperiously. “Now.”
“He’s busy,” Dawn informed her as Seth parted his lips to speak. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
An unattractive splotchy red filled the other woman’s face as her eyes bugged out at Dawn.
“That thing.” She pointed a shaky finger back at Dawn. “Get rid of her now.”
“She’s so melodramatic, Seth,” Dawn drawled despite the gut-wrenching agony ripping through her body. Seth stood between them, staring at Dawn as though he had never seen her before. “How do you stand it? I’d have pitched her off a cliff by now.”
“Seth.” Bloodred nails uncurled and latched onto Seth’s arm.
Dawn’s eyes jerked to the contact and she saw red. She saw blood rushing across her gaze as a haze of pure fury began to flow over her senses.
“Dawn!” Seth’s voice, commanding, sharp, jerked her gaze back to him. “We’ll talk later.”
She scowled back at him as she straightened against the desk.
“Excuse me?” She could barely force the words past her lips.
“I said, we will talk later,” he snapped. “Much later.”
He turned, grabbed Caroline’s wrist and pulled her from the doorway as Dawn watched in shock and betrayal.
They would talk later?
She moved to the door, hearing Caroline’s fishwife voice screeching at Seth as he pulled her up the back stairs. Dawn followed slowly, stalking, moving with catlike stealth as she followed them.
Instinct, honed and sharpened over the years, guided her. The mating heat was blazing inside her, the animal so close to the surface she could taste the wildness in her mouth. And that animal was enraged, furious that her mate was moving away from her in another woman’s presence.
God help her if he took her to his room. If he closed that door to his personal space and took that woman with him. She wouldn’t be able to control the pain or the rage. Even now it was tearing through her with the same gut-wrenching intensity that the arousal had torn through her moments before.
She was still wet for him. Her flesh was still screaming in need for his touch and he was opening a door to another room and pushing Caroline into it.
She paused, eyes narrowed as he turned back and saw her. He paused in the doorway, his expression inscrutable, his eyes almost black with hunger.
She could smell his arousal even from the distance that separated them. She could smell it, she could almost taste it, and it was hers. He was hers.
Then he stepped into the room and slammed the door closed behind him as Caroline let out an enraged string of curses.
Dawn walked along the hall, unaware of the predatory movements in her body, the violence that almost shimmered on the air around her.
“Caroline is a bitch, isn’t she?” a male voice responded with amused drollery from a doorway just ahead of her.
Dawn paused as the male stepped out, and barely held back the snarl that pulled at her lips.
He smiled, the curve arrogantly placating, holding his hands up as his eyes roved over her with a bit more familiarity than she liked. As though he had the right. He had no right.
Dark blond hair was cut close to the scalp, almost hiding the fact that it had begun to gray. Brown eyes, bloodshot and showing the influence of liquor, encouraged amusement, she guessed, in some people.
She stood carefully and watched him, like a snake, a rattler poised to strike. Her hand lingered on the butt of her weapon and she growled warningly.
“Yeah, Caroline pisses us all off like that.” He smiled as he leaned a bare shoulder against the wall. He was dressed in slacks and nothing more, his tanned chest and abs flabby and unattractive. “I was getting ready to turn in when I heard her cursing Seth.” He raked his eyes over her again. “She has a reason to be pissed.”
He was flirting. She didn’t belong to him, she belonged to the man who was currently in another woman’s bedroom.
“Would you like a drink?” He indicated his room with a jerk of his head. “My names Jason, Jason Phelps. My old man was a friend of Seth’s father’s. I’m harmless, I promise.”
“And I’m taken,” she told him dangerously, moving slowly to pass him.
“Might want to remind Seth of that pretty soon.” He grinned as though he hadn’t taken offense. “Caroline can be persuasive.”
Dawn smiled, a baring of her teeth, a flash of the promise of violence. “Don’t worry,” she told him softly. “He’ll remember.”
The mating hormone was speeding through Seth, just as it was through her. She had felt his discomfort when that bitch had touched him, and again when he had been forced to touch her. No, Caroline wouldn’t be the least bit persuasive. Tonight.
She kept her eyes on the stranger as she passed him, and afterward she kept her senses open, tracking him as she moved to her room.
He wasn’t to be trusted. She couldn’t put her finger on why. Perhaps it was the liquor that he had obviously drank too much of, or the lust he didn’t bother to disguise as he stared at the open edges of her shirt. She didn’t know what it was, but it sent a chill up her spine.
“Hey, wait.”
She turned, pivoting on her heel and almost coming to a crouch as he stepped from his room. Her hand rose hard on the butt of her weapon and she could feel the sense of violence rising inside her now.
“Hey, come on, kid.” He lifted his hands and smiled again, almost laughing at the response as she slowly straightened. “I just wanted to talk.
Hell, everyone downstairs is either plastered or talking business. You’re sober. You might not be sane, but hey, none of us are perfect, right?”
“Stay away from me, Jason Phelps,” she told him, rising slowly to her feet. “It’s not a good night.”
“PMS?” He waggled his brows.
“You have no earthly clue,” she drawled coldly before turning again and moving past the room where Seth was obviously trying to placate Caroline.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Caroline was raging over his voice. Dawn smiled tightly and moved down the hall, made the turn to the next hallway and moved to her room.
As she went to grip the doorknob, she paused. She inhaled slowly then pulled the communicator link from her back pocket and attached the ear bud to her ear.
“We have contact. My room,” she reported into the link as she drew her weapon from her side, locked it in ready and braced it against her side.
“Are you in the room?” Dash’s voice came through the line.
“No.”
“Stay in position. I’m on my way.”
“I’m moving onto the balcony,” Lawe reported.
“Covering the stairs,” Mercury spoke softly into the link.
Each of the Breed Enforcers had reported in by the time Dash slid into the hallway beside her, his weapon held ready at his thigh as his gaze tracked over the condition of her shirt.
He moved to the door, laid his head against it and inhaled slowly as Dawn moved to Seth’s door. She checked it, clenched her jaw, then nodded. Someone who shouldn’t have had been there as well.
The scent was off, odd, as though something were covering it, barely disguising it.
“Moira, Noble, move in on the main room, balcony and back stairs,” she ordered into the link.
Dash gave her a hard look when she indicated his attention to her room, and hers to Seth’s. Her mate’s room. Someone had dared to invade it.
Dash nodded slowly.
He counted to two, gripped her doorknob then swept into the room like a shadow of death. Dawn moved to the side, waited, gave Dash time to secure the room and move to the connecting door before she did the same. She jerked Seth’s door open, went in at a roll and came up ready, her gaze scanning the darkness of the sitting room and moving unerringly to the open bedroom door.
The scent was strong here as well, causing her nose to wrinkle. There was a human scent beneath it, but something astringent and musky covered it.
“Clear,” Dash spoke into the link. “I’m moving to the connector.”
Dawn moved to the side of the door. “In position.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “One o’clock.” She gave her position in relation to the door.
Dash came through it a second later and she barely saw him. Even with her night vision, enhanced by years of working in the darkened forests, he almost slipped by her.
When she caught sight of him, he was giving her a silent order to cover him as he moved toward the bedroom.
They moved in aggressively, weapons held ready at their sides, their senses tracking the odd smell straight to the double French doors that led to the balcony outside the bedroom where the scent slowly dispersed in the night air.
“We’ve had visitors,” Dash murmured as they holstered their weapons and let Mercury begin his sweep for explosives and listening devices.
“So it would seem,” Dawn matched the near silent tone of his voice as they moved back into the bedroom and came face-to-face with Seth.
The light flipped on. The side of his face was a bit red, a long scratch scouring his scowling countenance as Dawn growled in fury that another had dared to slap her mate.
“If I hear another growl out of you, I’m going to tie you, gag you and throw you on that fucking heli-jet to be transported back to where you belong.” His gaze sliced to Dash. “I covered my part. Now you take care of yours. And get the hell out of my bedroom.”
Dawn stared back at him silently, painfully.
“Did you hear me, Dawn?” His voice was dangerously soft. “Return to your room, and do so now. I don’t have time to deal with this mess, or the hell you’re trying to throw me into, so let’s just call it quits now and get it the hell over with.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer but stalked through the bedroom into the large master bath and slammed the door behind him.
“Cold showers don’t work,” she said sadly as Dash moved past her.
“Something worked the first time,” he reminded her, his amber gaze warning. “Be careful if you’re of a mind to hold on to him, Dawn. It might work a second time.”
CHAPTER 7
Seth lowered his head and braced it against the shower wall as the stinging spray attacked him from front and back. He was breathing harshly, almost shuddering from the exquisite pleasure of the water’s caress against his flesh.
He hadn’t forgotten what this felt like, but it was worse this time. He could taste Dawn in his mouth now as he never had before. On his tongue as he licked his lips, in his senses as he tried to take a breath without feeling her on his skin.
It was the worst agony, a bittersweet pleasure enfolded in an ache that bit straight to the bone and filled him with a furious arousal.
His dick was as stiff as a poker, heavy and engorged with blood as it stood out from his body. He lowered his hand and palmed the stiff sac of his balls, grimacing as he braced his hand tighter against the shower wall at the pleasure that sang through his sensitive flesh.
Even in the most hellish nights of those first few years after making the commitment to stay away from Dawn, the arousal hadn’t been this intense. Nor had the discomfort in simply touching another woman. Something so simple as Caroline’s hand against his arm, his against hers, sent shards of blistering pain through his flesh.
He forced his hand from between his thighs, forced back the need to grip the iron-hard erection and pump it to release. Because there was no relief in it; that was another lesson he had learned so long ago. He could jack off 24 / 7 and it wouldn’t him do a damned bit of good.
He bit back a curse and straightened, shoving his hands through his wet hair and grabbing a waiting cloth from the rack beside him.
He soaped and washed, feeling every thread of the washcloth as he moved it over his body. And it made him think of Dawn. Of her hands, strong and sure as they gripped his shoulders, her sharp little nails as they raked across them.
He could feel the sting of the spray against the slight scratches. He hadn’t even cared when she made them. All that had mattered was the taste of that kiss, like a drug, like power flowing into him, a tidal wave of arousal and strength as he devoured her lips and tongue.
And when he moved lower—he shuddered at the memory of kneeling before her, staring at the swollen bud of her clit as it peeked through the lush, glistening lips of her silken, hairless pussy.
He ground his teeth to hold back a moan at the remembered smell of that intimate flesh. Like sunrise. Like standing on his balcony at dawn and tasting the ocean. Fresh, clean, tempting.
His mouth watered at the thought of tasting her, at the anticipation that had rolled through him as he almost, just fucking almost, tasted the most lush flesh that God had ever created.
And he couldn’t have it. He was a fool to kiss her. Demented if he thought he could have her now any more than he could have had her ten years ago.
What the hell was he supposed to do when he had her beneath him and the past rose in her mind and he saw the fear in her eyes? That was his nightmare. One that had chased him through ten years of fitful sleep. Dawn’s eyes widened in fear, tears filling them as she begged him to stop, and he was so aroused, so desperate to fuck her that he paused at the gates of paradise and cursed her.
As he closed his eyes, he could still see the images from the disc Jonas had played years before tearing through his mind. Dawn, no more than a baby, mindless in agony and fear, begging God as those bastards told her God didn’t exist for her. And they raped
her anyway. They raped her as the most inhuman sounds he had ever heard came from a child too small for the monsters that took her.
If there were tears left inside him to shed, he wondered if he would shed them now.
The woman he had held in the study downstairs hadn’t been a child though, and there had been no fear. She had been a temptress, wild, seductive, hungry. She had been wet and desperate for his touch, whispering his name and begging for more as he tore at her clothes.
As he bit her. He hissed in a breath. He had bit her neck, sucked at it, marked it. That mark was still there for the world to see, and they would see it.
Caroline had seen it and been enraged. And he refused to feel guilty over it.
He had been considering more than the occasional fuck with Caroline, but he hadn’t made her any promises. To the contrary, he had warned her a year ago that he had no promises to give her and she had refused to listen.
Tomorrow, the Lawrence heli-jet would take Dawn off the island and return her home. That was the best place for her, not here, not where Dawn could stare at him again with betrayal and agony filling her eyes because Caroline had thrown herself into his arms.
He couldn’t get that look out of his head any more than he could get the taste of her out of his mouth.
Getting over her this time would be worse than hell. Worse because he knew her kiss, knew the unique flavor of her hunger, the silken feel of her flesh, the sight of her need glistening between her thighs.
But he would get over it. He had beaten it the first time; he would beat it again.
But sweet merciful heaven it hadn’t been this bad the last time. Even during the worst nights, the most aroused agony he had gone through, it hadn’t been this bad. His skin hadn’t itched with the need for her hands alone. His cock had never been so engorged, so violently aroused that even the wash of the water over it was an untold pleasure. But it was nothing compared to her lips against his chest. Her nails raking his shoulders.
Before he could stop himself, he struck out, slamming his fist into the ceramic of the shower wall as an enraged snarl tore from his lips.
Damn her. Fucking damn her, he hadn’t asked for this. He’d stayed away from her, and by God that was what she had wanted from him or she would have sought him out.
Tomorrow. Dash better get her on that fucking heli-jet tomorrow or he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. Ten years was long enough for a man to torture himself over a woman. He wouldn’t be tortured any more than he had been already. If she wasn’t on that heli-jet, then she was going to be on her back with his dick buried so deep inside her she wouldn’t know where he ended and she began. And God help them both if it wasn’t what she wanted.
Dawn didn’t sleep that night. She tossed and turned in the bed, listened to Seth pace the floors, and she stared at the ceiling, a frown furrowing her brow at the scent of arousal and fury that wafted from his bedroom.
She wanted to feel regret. It was obvious he didn’t want her there, even more obvious that he truly had been ready to begin a life, of some sort, with that corrupt little witch he had had at his side.
She couldn’t feel that regret though, and she couldn’t make sense of what she was feeling. As though a veil had fallen between the old Dawn and the one that had emerged at the knowledge that Seth had a lover, Dawn no longer knew herself.
As morning peeked over the horizon and she rose, showered, despite the extreme sensitivity of her flesh, and dressed in the more socially acceptable formal uniform that the Breeds wore when working social functions, she was still frowning.
She wore a silk undershirt beneath the baby-soft cotton of the short-sleeved black dress shirt. She tucked that into snug black slacks and strapped on her utility belt before securing her weapon holster to her thigh.
A Cougar emblem with the initials B.B.A., Bureau of Breed Affairs, was stitched to the right sleeve. Under it were four small silver stars, announcing her status as commander.
On her feet she laced dress boots that went to her ankle rather than hiking boots, and tucked a dagger into the sheath at the side of the right one. Then she moved to the mirror that sat on the chest of drawers across the room.
She saw a woman she didn’t know.
She hadn’t had her hair cut in a while. The short strands were whispering around her face, a few inches longer than normal, almost falling to her shoulders. The tawny gold color was mixed with hints of red and darker brown, shades of sunlight and earth. Like the cougar. Like the animal she could feel rising inside her.
She was still short. Nothing could change that, barely five four, but she made her stature work. What she couldn’t accomplish with the advantage of height, she had been taught to make up for in calculated treachery. She could take down a Breed twice her size without getting a bruise, because she could move around him, below him, she could hit him where it mattered and use his height against him.
But she was still a woman. Her breasts were about the right size for Seth’s hands. He had filled his fingers with them the night before and groaned at the fit. Her stomach was flat, her legs well toned. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, nothing compared to the cool, dark beauty of Caroline Carrington.
But Seth belonged to her.
She felt her breath hitch at the thought of losing him. She had suffered; she had fought to strengthen herself, fought to get past the dark nightmares enough to gather her courage and maybe, one day, arrange to be where he was, to see if there was a chance.
She had tried to find a way to be a woman rather than the frightened child Dayan had used so easily, but maybe it had taken too long. Love could turn to hate, she had heard. Had the heat that tormented her tormented him until that had happened?
She wiped her hands over her face before staring at her image again. She had almost feline features. The high cheekbones, the narrow face and stubborn chin. Her nose was narrow and a little short. And it turned up at the end like a perky teenager’s. She had always hated that. And she had never cared about her looks, so why was she standing here now as the first rays of the sun slid across the sheltered balcony outside?
Shaking her head, she pulled the communications link from her utility belt, unfolded it and attached it to her ear before activating.
“Report,” she spoke in