by Lora Leigh
heat itself. You have a choice in this.”
Anya breathed in more roughly this time. “I made my choice, Hope,” she whispered, staring back at the other woman intently. “It’s just . . .” She swallowed tightly. “It caught me off guard.”
Hope stared back at her in disbelief. “The heat is terrifying,” she said. “I know well how bad it can be. Until Kiowa’s mate, and then you to a greater extent, allowed our doctors and scientists to track how it works within our bodies, we knew that horror every month. We could feel it coming before we cycled, then as soon as that was over, we were hit with the mating heat cycle. And that doesn’t even count that first month of mating, when it’s like a vicious claw tearing at your mind and your body. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Anya stared back at the lupina, the pain in her chest nearly brutal as she swallowed back her tears.
“What happens,” she said, “if I’m not able to get to your doctor? If Base is on lockdown and we’re under attack? If I don’t know how to handle it, then how do I help Del-Rey? How do I keep from becoming something he has to protect above all things, rather than someone that can help him? You learned how to work through it; I’ve heard how well you take care of your duties, even in the middle of mating heat, while Haven is under attack. How you’ve worked within the secured areas to make certain everything is running smoothly while Wolfe and the others fought back the attacks. How can I do that, if I don’t understand how to control my own body?”
“And being more than just a lover is very important to you, isn’t it, Anya?” Hope said gently.
“Isn’t it to you?” Anya asked, confused. “You were raised in Wolfe’s labs. We’ve seen what awaits them if they’re recaptured, what they came from. Protecting Del-Rey means everything to me.”
“You didn’t feel that way eight months ago,” Hope pointed out.
Anya turned quickly away from her as she ran her hand over her forehead and propped the other on her hip.
“I couldn’t think then,” she whispered before turning back. “All I knew was the anger and this fear that only grew day by day. For three weeks I lived in this horrific little world where I couldn’t control so much as a single thought.” She shook her head as she shoved her hands in her pants pockets and stared around the feminine little outer room that led to the toilets beyond. “I fought through puberty to control my temper. Once I had it conquered, suddenly there was something worse that my body and mind could do to me, that I couldn’t control.” She blinked back her tears as she stared at the lupina. “And I blamed him, when I shouldn’t have. I don’t like that about myself, and I’m damned sure not going to let it happen again. But I’m also not going to let this reaction to what’s going on between us make me a liability to him.”
Hope tilted her head and stared back at her. “Because you used your logic, your composure, and the challenge you knew it would present to the Breed to draw his notice to you,” she guessed. “Now you’re terrified to let him see the real you.”
Anya flinched. She stared back at the lupina miserably.
“I berate my bodyguards for maneuvering me into the position of coya. But I knew what they were doing, distantly, in a place where I didn’t have to admit it to myself. I knew, because
I used the same wiles to make him notice me, to make him want me, to trust me. He thought he was choosing a woman that could help him establish his freedom. Instead he found he had married a child that couldn’t accept the changes in her life. I don’t want him to learn that she grew into a woman that can’t even control her body long enough to make a rational decision.”
Hope sighed and shook her head. “I can understand your reasons. But I can’t countenance your suffering, Anya. There is help available.”
“But it isn’t help I can count on,” she cried out, before capping her hand over her mouth. “God, listen to me. I can’t even debate effectively. I won awards for my ability to debate when I was ten years old, and now I feel like sitting on the floor and sobbing like an infant.”
It had been worse eight months before. A thousand times worse. Ten thousand times. She barely remembered those weeks, the fears driven so deep in her head that she couldn’t escape them. She had sobbed then. Sometimes for hours, holding her hands over her mouth so the doctors and her bodyguards wouldn’t hear her crying out Del-Rey’s name.
And now she nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming for him. She simply wanted him to hold her. Just that if nothing else, to do something to ease the ice inside her.
“I’m a mess, Hope,” she whispered.
“Oh, Anya.” The other woman’s expression twisted in compassion. “You need to talk to him. Your body and your mind know what you need besides the sex. He could help you.”
She shook her head as she forced back her tears and inhaled again, determined to get a handle on this.
“I have it. I’ll be fine.” She wasn’t going to whine to Hope about the relationship that wasn’t a relationship between her and her mate. That was her fault. She had to find a way to fix it.
“Yes, you will be,” Hope said softly. “Tell you what, when you’re feeling more up to it, give me a call. Prima Lyons and I were thinking spring would be a great time for your official ceremony. She’s offered Sanctuary’s grounds for the vows, or Haven’s are available as well. I’d love it if you’d use Haven.”
The ceremony. A wedding. She wondered if Del-Rey was looking for the rings. Of course, he wouldn’t mention it to her if he was. He probably already had the damned things and wasn’t even telling her.
“I would love Haven,” Anya admitted. “And spring sounds wonderful. When Del-Rey finally gets around to mentioning it, I’ll let him know.”
Hope nodded. As she parted her lips to speak, the door pushed inward, leaving Del-Rey standing in the entrance, Wolfe behind him.
Del-Rey’s gaze pinned her, his brows lowering into a frown before he held his hand out to her. “We’re returning to Base,” he told her. “The alphas will reconvene there later tonight to finish the plans that have to be made.”
Because of her. Because her emotions were in such chaos that her mate knew he had to get her back to Base and fuck her. Her face flamed at the awareness that everyone else knew that as well.
“A temporary glitch.” She breathed in deeply as she moved to him. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” he stated. “There’s information we have to collect before we can finalize our plans. We’re returning to Base.”
Anya had a terrible feeling he was making excuses, but she couldn’t ignore his outstretched hand. God, she needed the warmth of that much at least.
As he drew her from the room, he gave her more. His arm curved around her shoulders, drawing her to the warmth of his body and pushing back that chill that threatened to shake through her body and leave her trembling in weakness.
Anya kept her head high, her steps measured. Her expression composed. She leaned into him when he pulled her close, and wanted to close her eyes at the warmth that battled against the ice now. She hated herself for needing it. Hated herself for being unable to stand against the need for the pleasure that built like an agonizing fury inside her.
He hadn’t needed a crutch in all these months. He had stood strong, battled against those that would have destroyed the Breeds, and kept his logic and his ability to lead intact.
Yet she couldn’t. How much harder could it be for her than for him? The difference couldn’t be such a wide divide, no matter what the doctors had told her. Male Breeds didn’t allow experiments or tests. And they didn’t take hormones to control that mating heat. How would the doctors know how much worse it was? Breed males were used to incredible pain. Pain a normal man could never survive.
As they stepped into the evening air, a military-enforced limo pulled up to the entrance to the underground bunker. Cavalier, one of Del-Rey’s personal bodyguards, jumped from the passenger side and opened the door as Del-Rey pushed her inside.
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And kept pushing her until she was flat on her back, the door slamming behind them as he came over her.
His lips were on hers immediately, the wicked, heated taste of his kiss infusing her senses, filling her with the hormone that had begun the mating heat to start with.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on tight as her legs parted, allowing him to settle between them. They were fully clothed, but the warmth of his body seeped past the material, worked into her flesh, and she felt the warmth gathering rather than the ice.
She could feel the heat burrowing inside her, making the arousal deeper, stronger, but taking away the pain.
The arousal she could deal with. The aching need for his touch, she could handle that. But the pain, the ice, the confusion—she couldn’t deal with it. The loss of complete control outside his arms? It terrified her.
The loss of control here, she could handle. The way his kiss filled her, stroked pleasure after pleasure across her lips, filled her senses with the feel and the taste of him as she moved against him. She was safe here. She didn’t have to control this.
One hand held her head in place, the other touched her, pushed beneath her sweater, settled on her stomach, and the warmth there, it was incredible. It was like melting.
“When I needed your touch,” he growled against her lips, “I grew icy here first.” His hand pressed closer. “Cold until I felt my bones would shatter from the need of your warmth.”
She gazed into his dark eyes, seeing the shadows of the pain and the cold he had endured for eight long months.
She shook her head, fighting the guilt that consumed her, the evidence of what she had left him to suffer. Male Breeds, she had learned, had an instinctive, overriding need to protect their mates. To hold them against any pain, to shelter them as much as possible.
He kissed her again, sinking into her, his tongue stroking against hers as she whimpered against his lips in pleasure. He stroked her lips, licked at them. Each touch was filled with gentleness, with aching warmth as he held her against the effects of the mating heat that would have torn her apart.
His head lifted. “Look at me.”
Her lashes lifted until she was staring into his determined, arrogant expression.
“Never do this again, Anya. Ever. When the mating heat builds, if we can’t satisfy it at that moment, then my kiss will ease it until we can. No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, my kiss is yours. My warmth is yours. Do you understand me?”
She had to battle her tears again, her guilt, the knowledge of what she had done to them both.
“Why?” she whispered. “Eight months, Del-Rey, and I stayed away. I made you suffer as well.”
“And you think I should blame you? That I should revile you?” he asked as he pushed her hair tenderly back from her face. “Anya, do you think I don’t know how terrified you were the day I took you and fired upon your family in front of your eyes? That I didn’t know I had lied to you, betrayed the trust you gave me so freely? I never blamed you, little love. Myself yes. My own impatience and lust, most definitely. But never you.”
“You should hate me.” A tear slipped free. “You suffered and your base suffered; your people suffered because you weren’t there. And you weren’t there because of me.”
“But you suffered because of me,” he sighed. “And now it doesn’t even matter if there is blame to be laid. You’re in my arms. My mate. My coya. We’ll struggle through this, Anya. Together.”
His lips feathered over hers, parted them, slanted and took hers in a kiss that took her ability to debate, argue, agree or disagree. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, teased him, tempted him.
Her hips lifted, her sex rubbed against the hard ridge of his cock, her clit gloried in the heat racing between their bodies now.
Her hands moved, dragging down his arms, pushing beneath them to pull his shirt from his jeans and burrow beneath the cloth to the hard, heated flesh beyond.
Oh God, she loved the feel of him. She wanted to wrap him around her like a blanket and hold on to his warmth forever. It seared into her palms as his kiss seeped into her soul and left her quivering with the sensations building inside her.
How she had ached over the months, and refused to admit it. How she had worried, fought with herself, and fought the need that flowed between them, even before she had known about the mating heat. He was a part of her. And he had been a part of her since the moment his black eyes had met hers when she had been no more than sixteen.
Before they touched. Before that first kiss. Before the anger and the fear and the realization of the world she was entering when she entered Del-Rey’s arms.
“I need to fuck you,” he growled as his lips lifted from hers and traveled to her jaw, her neck. “I need to be inside you, Anya. So deep, so tight that there is no you, no me. Just this.”
His fingers flipped over the closure of her pants, pulled the zipper loose. “I sat in that fucking dark room smelling your need for me and thought I’d burn out of control before I managed to touch you. Imagining how wet you were. You’ve always been wet for me, Anya. Always. Before the heat, before you were even old enough for me to touch, you’ve been wet for me.”
A ragged cry left her lips as his finger brushed the saturated curls between her thighs.
“So wet your pussy clings to the silk of your panties.” He nipped her jaw, then licked the little wound. “Your juices cling to my tongue the same way. Loving my touch. You love my touch, Anya.”
“I love your touch,” she gasped, her hips lifting into his palm as he covered it, cupped it. “Oh God, Del-Rey, I’ve always loved your touch.”
“I love your touch,” he growled. “I ache for it, dream of it. I wake drenched in sweat yet freezing from the need of your warmth.”
Two fingers curled, parted the swollen folds between her thighs and pressed, slowly, almost teasingly, into the aching depths of her body.
It was so good. So brutally good Anya jerked against him, his name a gasp on her lips as she felt her internal muscles clenching around his fingers. The heated warmth of her juices flowed around his fingers, slickening them, easing his way as he thrust them slowly inside her.
“I ached for this,” he whispered at her ear, then slid his teeth down her neck. “The feel of you, the taste of you. Your sweet pussy opening for my cock, gripping me and pulling me in as your arms and your kiss hold me closer to you. I would have died for just one more night in your arms, my coya.”
“Don’t die,” she moaned. “Just touch me, Del-Rey. Don’t stop touching me.”
Self-control wasn’t important here, in his arms. There was no need to fight for lucidity. He could think for both of them here, because Anya knew she didn’t have a hope of saving a single thought in her head.
She arched her neck as he dragged the loose neckline of her sweater to the side, found the mark he had left on her neck and then, amazingly, he lapped at it. His tongue licked with slow, sensual strokes over the wound that had become so incredibly sensitive to the lightest stroke that she felt her vagina flutter, then convulse around his fingers.
This shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be so sensual, so erotic that she wanted nothing more than to be stripped bare before him and feel him stroking over every inch of her flesh.
“I don’t know how to handle this.” She arched, shuddered in his arms. “I don’t know how to think, Del-Rey.”
“Don’t think, sweetheart,” he groaned against the mark he had left on her, before kissing it gently. “Just feel. Feel me. This is all you need to do. I’ll take care of everything else.”
She had to trust him, because she couldn’t control this. She didn’t want to fight it, not anymore. She didn’t want the hormone treatments blocking so much as a single sensation or a second of the need. She wanted it all. He had accepted it all, suffered for it, given her the freedom and the time she had needed to realize what she wanted, what she ached for. She could do nothing but let her senses fly
and give herself into the keeping of the man she had chosen years before as her own.
She arched into the thrust of his fingers, her cries shattering the space around her as she fought not to beg for him to take her now, at this second.
They couldn’t be far from Base. He would have to stop. It couldn’t last much longer.
“God, you make me lose my head.” He breathed out roughly, his head lifted despite her protests, his gaze narrowed on the window. “Come, sweet.” His hand slid slowly from her saturated flesh.
“Not yet,” she whimpered. “Don’t stop yet.”
“Just for a bit.” His lips lowered to hers, brushed against them, and he was kissing her again, slowly, deeply. His tongue pushed against hers, encouraging her to suckle at it as he fixed her pants, her sweater.
He pulled her hands from his flesh, holding them above her head with one of his as the other smoothed down her side, gripped her hip.
When he lifted his head, she forced her eyes to open, to stare back at him.
“When you need me, come to me, Anya. No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing. Suffer in silence again, and I’ll make certain you understand clearly that it will not be permitted.”
Her lips parted in surprise at the dominant, dominating tone of his voice.
“Getting awful bossy, aren’t you, Coyote man?” She had to curl her fingers against the seat to keep from dragging him to her once again.
“I’m weak where you’re concerned, Mate,” he told her gently, but the tone didn’t disguise the pure power beneath it. “But don’t tempt me in matters of your safety or where your well-being is concerned. Be stubborn, I can deal with that. Take charge in the areas that are your own, that I can handle. Argue with me when you need to, yell at me if you must. But don’t endanger yourself or allow something I can fix to harm you. That I won’t tolerate.”
“Is there a rule book?” She snorted as he helped her sit up. “Or do I get to just stumble around on my own and mess up whenever?”
“Mess up whenever.” He grinned. “I’ll greatly enjoy showing you the error of your ways.”
Charm, seductive humor. She loved his smile. The sheer wicked devilry in it, the warmth she had always glimpsed now flaring into heat.
“We’re here,” he told her as the limo pulled into the front of the caverns.
“We’re going to clash soon,” she warned him. “Very soon.”
A frown tugged at his brow, though he nodded somberly.
“Yes, I know this, Coya. But know, even when we clash, you’re my coya. And I’ll ensure, even if it chances your wrath, that you’re always safe. Now come.” He gripped her hand as the limo door opened. “Let’s go find our room. I have a need for your touch and your taste. And I’ll wait no longer to ease that need.”
CHAPTER 17
He didn’t wait. Anya was rushed into the base, Del-Rey’s arm still wrapped around her, and pulled through the tunnels until they were locked into their room.
She found herself against the wall within seconds, his lips on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth again. The hormonal release from the glands beneath his tongue seemed spicier, more addictive than ever before.
She sucked at the taste, licked against his tongue and heard his rumbled growl as she tore at the buttons of his shirt and pushed the material from his broad shoulders.
“I love your body,” she panted as his lips tore from hers and he shrugged the shirt free. “So hard and muscular.” She ran her hands over his shoulders and wanted to whimper at the heat beneath his flesh. “And so warm. Always so warm. I need your heat, Del-Rey.”
She needed him. How had she managed to stay away from him all those months? Denying herself the ultimate pleasure of just touching him, watching him move, or hearing his dark, rough voice.
“It’s yours.” His hands pushed beneath her sweater, lifting the material until he revealed the delicate lace of her bra.
He paused. Anya felt her breath hitch as his hands lifted to her breasts, his fingers curving around the mounds as he palmed them with delicious greed. The look on his face as he touched her was pure male hunger. Part lust, and part more. Something deeper, something that touched the feminine part of her soul and made her weaker, made her ache for more. It made her welcome the excruciating arousal that tormented her body, because she could see his nostrils flare, see him breathing her in as his hands flexed on her aching breasts.
“God, I love the scent of you wanting me,” he groaned, reflecting her thoughts as his lips lowered to the mounds rising above the lace cups.
Anya shivered as he licked over them. His tongue rasped her sensitive flesh, coming incredibly close to the hardened tips of her nipples.
“Are you going to torture me?” She gasped.
“I’m going to torture both of us.” A flush mantled his cheekbones as he licked over the lace that covered her nipples. “Because I need to taste you, Anya. I need to feel you against me, so sweet and warm. Lifting to me, needing me, Anya. Just need me.”
And she did need him. She didn’t have the option of blaming it on the mating heat. She had wanted him before he ever kissed her. She had wanted him after the hormone therapy had controlled the painful spasms of need. There hadn’t been a time since she was sixteen that she hadn’t wanted him.
Beneath her hands his flesh was heated and solid. Beneath his lips sensation sizzled against her flesh.
“Take this off.” He pushed at her sweater as his tongue traveled into the valley between her breasts.
Her arms lifted to allow him to push the material over her head. No sooner had it dropped to the floor than his hands were at the waistband of her pants, flipping open the closure and lowering the zipper.
Mesmerized by the pleasure on his face, by the pleasure winging through her, she could do nothing but watch his expression as his hand slid past the material, beneath her panties and into the swollen, slick folds of her sex.
Her head fell back to the stone wall as her breath locked in her throat. Pleasure, ecstasy—it winged through her with such sensual promise that there was nothing left but to hold on to him as he stroked her. Caressed her.
“I need you naked,” he growled against the rise of one breast, which he licked sensually. “Can you toe the boots off?”
The boots? She shook her head in confusion. What boots? She didn’t care about the damned boots, not with his fingers slipping into the desperate, aching heat between her thighs.
His head lifted, fingers moving slowly, so slowly before stilling altogether. Anya’s hips pressed into the touch, arching against his palm as she gazed back at him in desperate need.
“Toe the boots off.” A grin tugged at his lips as the savage features of his face softened with sensual amusement. “Come on, baby. One foot at a time.”
She whimpered in need, her foot reaching out for his.
“Ah, baby. Your boots,” he groaned, his lips feathering over hers. “Toe your boots off.”
Oh yeah. Her boots.
She lowered one hand, knee bending, fingers finding the zipper at the side of her low boot before fumbling and pushing one free of her foot. She repeated with the other foot until her toes were curling with the pleasure of his renewed, gentle strokes into the folds he possessed.
With his other hand he pushed the pants over her hips, dragging her panties with them as he went to his knees before her.
“Del-Rey, the bed,” she gasped.
“Fuck the bed.” His voice rasped along her nerve endings as pleasure quaked through her body. “I need to taste you now, Anya. My tongue in your sweet pussy.” His lips feathered over the curls between her thighs. “So sweet and soft. So damned good.”
Her thighs parted beneath the guiding force of his hands. Her fingers curled into the thick, coarse strands of his dark blond hair and she watched. Watched as his tongue licked through the saturated slit, ran around her clit and sucked the last of any