by Lora Leigh
“Damn, get your mating hormones under control there, Mal,” Ashley grimaced as she glanced back at him. “All that male lust and testosterone are about to poison me.”
“You’re not tied to that chair, Ash,” he grouched right back at her. “You can leave anytime.”
“Yeah, if I didn’t want to watch Rule weave a little bit of his magic. I just don’t want to drown in the smell of your raging hard-on while I’m doing it,” she snorted, her gaze flicking over him again before she turned back to the monitors.
The raging hard-on was about to kill him. He swore his dick had never been so hard as it had been since Isabelle had guided his hand, the glass clasped between his fingers, to allow her to sip from his drink.
Her eyes had been sultry, filled with feminine heat and hunger. He had sworn he’d seen a woman dying to taste the pleasure he could bring her, in that look. A pleasure Malachi knew would send them both racing to complete oblivion.
He forced his attention back to the monitor, forced himself to attempt to decode the expressions of the Navajo Council members as Rule attempted to convince them to give him what he wanted without restraint.
It wasn’t working well at the moment because these were men who had something to hide. Something they feared the Breeds learning.
The argument raged between Ray Martinez and Rule. The chief refused to listen, just as Rule refused to give up.
“Young man, you seem to have a problem accepting the word ‘no.’” Ray stared back at Rule implacably as the Breed lowered his brows and met his gaze.
Why the three Martinez men hadn’t yet figured out their DNA ran strong and deep in the commander, Malachi didn’t know. The resemblance to the Martinez family was damned strong, but the pure stubbornness and refusal to accept denial was identical.
“There is no disrespect meant to you or to the people of the Navajo Nation, sir,” Rule assured him as he stared back at him from where on the other end of the conference table. He appeared at ease, relaxed and confident while the Martinez males were becoming irritated and weren’t bothering to hide it. “The situation is simply too delicate and of too much importance not to make you aware of every aspect of the consequences if this rogue isn’t found.”
Ray grunted at that. “You say you have a rogue, yet you have no name, no identification, nor do you have, according to you, any idea who this rogue is, or exactly where he could be hiding on Navajo land. All you have is a genetic profile, that you refuse to share with the Council, or without our own genetic experts. Yet you expect me to give you unprecedented entrance into the records of our people and their ancestors in your search? Am I missing anything?”
“That about sums it up, sir.”
Malachi frowned at the screen, his attention held by the chief of the Navajo Nation and a subtle look of secretive knowledge that suddenly flashed between him and his father.
The look was so subtle he almost missed it. If he hadn’t been watching for it, hadn’t kept his gaze locked on him rather than Rule as he spoke, then he would have missed it.
Malachi sat down in the chair facing the three screens and began to watch them. Forcing himself to ignore his mate, which was one of the hardest things he had ever done, he concentrated instead on the three Martinez men. Ray and Terran Martinez, the two brothers, were careful not to look at each other at all. But Ray was unable to keep from glancing at his father, Orin, the Nation’s medicine man and spiritual advisor. And the look they exchanged, despite the brevity of it, was filled with concern.
His hard-on was still there. The hunger for his mate was still there. But the training for exactly what he was doing was rising to the fore. He was a collaborative interrogator. At least, that was what they called him at the labs.
There were the interrogators, who questioned suspects and persons of interest. Then there were the interrogation collaborators, trained to watch the interrogation process and pick up lies, anomalies and clues.
Public relations meant more than just speaking to the public or preparing speeches to reduce the threat of propaganda against the Breeds, or to minimize it or better yet, spin their own version of lies. It was watching, gauging expressions and atmospheres and separating the lies from the truth. It was catching the small, subtle looks and shifts of muscles bunching beneath clothing designed to hide such reactions.
Malachi’s specialty was public relations and propaganda warfare among Breeds. A vital area of warfare within the many Breed labs that had once existed. After all, someone had to know how to keep the packs and prides and various personalities at one another’s throats rather than giving them the chance to collaborate and escape.
It had been his and his trainers’ jobs to filter through the information that came in from many different sources within and outside the labs, and use it to sabotage escape or rescue attempts, as well as gathering intel concerning knowledge of the Breeds.
It was a gift he was created to have, and one he excelled at. That gift had also helped him and his trainers to plant the intel in the right places to ensure that groups that would be sympathetic to the Breeds would learn of them and stage their rescues.
Protected in Russia, far enough away from the mainstream of the other labs within the Genetics Council network, Malachi, two other Coyotes and their trainers had pushed along the rumors and intel that had helped investigative reporters learn of the Breeds. That information, begun even before Malachi’s creation, had eventually led the right people to the right information and had ensured the world learned of the horrors they suffered.
Three generations had gone into quietly ensuring the survival of the Breeds. There had been no way to do this quickly. There had been no way of ensuring public opinion would sway to the side of the Breeds unless that information came with the truth of the horrors they had lived through.
“You are asking more than our people would be willing to give you. Genetic and DNA profiles are strictly confidential. Would you give out your enforcers’ identifications so easily, Commander?”
“To you, I would.” Rule nodded with an air of sincerity.
“Bullshit,” Ashley muttered. “He’d gnaw off his own arm first.”
Malachi grunted at the comment as he kept his attention on the monitors.
“It’s the only way we have of identifying who this Breed could be searching for,” Rule stated quietly. “Perhaps the only way of finding him. I believe he’ll seek out those he considers ‘relatives.’ He may even enlist their help.”
The chief shook his head “no,” which was no more than Rule had expected, Malachi knew. The elaborate deception the Breeds were a part of in this meeting could backfire on them, if the information they had was wrong.
Malachi didn’t believe it was, though. Gideon was searching for the Bengal male and two human girls, one of them being Christine Roberts. Her own mother had revealed that her daughter had mentioned a friend named Terran who was willing to help her. And only Terran Martinez would have given a damn at the time.
He had been in the area at the same time the Roberts girl had come up missing. Just as he was suspected to be aware when the bengal Judd and the human girl Fawn had been rescued.
Unfortunately, in the two days they had been in Window Rock, they had found nothing. Not even a hint that Gideon or the Bengal Breed Judd and the two young women who had escaped further research were in the area. He glanced from the chief and the spiritual advisor back to his mate, Isabelle.
She was watching the proceedings with a blank expression, neither eyes nor face showing emotion. Every time the Breed commander spoke, she made a note. She never looked at her uncle, her grandfather, Orin, or her father, Terran.
She was watching Commander Breaker closely with that bland expression. Each time he petitioned for allowances in the investigation and was turned down, she watched him very closely.
What was she looking for?
“She’s as good as you are,” Ashley commented as he kept his gaze on the screen. “She hasn’t shown so much
as a hint of emotion or knowledge. I wonder what her scent is at the moment.”
“Hmmm.” His mate.
Pride enveloped him. Whatever her position was with her uncle, she was obviously very very good at it.
Sitting next to Terran Martinez was Isabelle’s friend Liza. As Terran’s legal assistant she made certain the files he needed were always available, and she began doing it with an efficient ease.
She seemed no more than reasonably concerned about the subject, and unaware of whatever secrets the Martinez men were hiding.
“What are they hiding?” Ashley wondered aloud. “Shouldn’t they know by now that we’ll figure out they’re lying, Malachi? I mean really, what’s the point?”
Malachi didn’t comment. He didn’t take his attention from the meeting or those attending it. Ray Martinez would have been far better off to have simply omitted the genetic typing from the registry they kept, if they felt it would endanger them, and allowed the Breeds to go through the rest. That would have allayed suspicion. This way, they were only cementing it, despite their protestations of the people’s right to genetic privacy.
Whatever it was, they were protesting in vain, Malachi knew. Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice hadn’t achieved their ranks by giving up easily.
Keeping his mate out of harm’s way would be easy enough, though. If she knew anything, she would have betrayed herself, as the chief and his advisor had earlier. She had her suspicions, that was obvious, but her reaction hadn’t been enough that he felt the need to appraise Rule of it. There was no sense dragging her into the battles that were beginning to be formed.
She was safe. And tonight, she would be his. He would make damned sure she wasn’t dragged into it any further than her suspicions had already placed her.
He had waited on her for far too long. He had dreamed of her far too many nights to risk losing her because of a matter the two parties should have been cooperating on.
He had ached too deeply for her. Always knowing she awaited him, always knowing she was out there somewhere, perhaps even as lost within the darkness as he was. Looking into the stars and wondering when the loneliness would end.
As he stood outside her room at dawn, inhaling the scent of the candles and finding her unique scent within it, he’d felt something in his chest tighten painfully. Because that scent of fear was still there. Whether it be nightmares or memories, there was something his mate feared. That fear was something he had to take out of her life. He simply would not allow it to be a part of her life any longer.
She was his now, just as he was hers.
And tonight, he would ensure that nothing, or no one, ever had the chance to destroy it.
Chapter Four
So many times I fought back tears, felt incomplete and feared you weren’t there.
Her uncle and her grandfather feared that the Breeds had finally arrived to track down the three individuals they had been hiding for more than a decade. Isabelle knew very little about the events that summer. She had been only a child herself and still dealing with the death of her mother and Chelsea’s antics.
Isabelle had barely been thirteen. Her mother had been dead for six years, but the loss of the gentle, loving woman she had been had devastated Isabelle and Chelsea for years. In ways, they still hadn’t recovered from the loss.
Their father had dealt with it by disappearing more often, searching almost continually for the sister who had been lost when he’d been a child himself.
He hadn’t found the sister or proof of her death—what he’d found instead had been a teenage boy and a young girl. Several months later another young girl had shown up and then disappeared within hours.
It had been so long ago that Isabelle couldn’t even remember what they had looked like. They had been at her home for only a matter of hours in the deepest part of the night. Isabelle had only seen their faces for moments. Pale, suspicious, resigned faces. As though they had made their peace with the world and whatever fate awaited them. The part of the night that had always found Isabelle awake and staring into the darkness had also been the time of night that others prowled the darkness. Others who came for the children took them away and ensured they were never seen or heard from again.
She had stared into the darkness after leaving Malachi the night before until she had found herself nodding off to sleep by the wide windowsill.
The night had always called to her, even as a child. Pulling her from sleep, it seemed the darkness whispered on each breeze that slid past her home, and on those currents of air she swore she felt the haunting cries of the coyotes singing through the air.
Was Malachi the reason she had always felt an affinity to those wild, often hated creatures?
The People knew the coyote, though. They knew him for the prankster he was, for the deceiver, but they also knew him for the vital part of the night that he commanded.
He wasn’t all bad. He was equal parts human and supernatural being with all the faults and fallacies that came with them. At least, in legend.
Her lips quirked as she left the meeting, leaving the players in the game being conducted to deal with one another on their own. She had done her part. She had watched Commander Rule Breaker each time he pushed for what he wanted and each time he was denied. And each time she had written the same opinion.
He had expected it.
He had known her uncle and her grandfather wouldn’t relent in turning over the genetic identifications of each of the registered human and Breed members of the Navajo Nation.
Genetic typing had begun when the Breeds had first made themselves known thirteen, nearly fourteen years before. When the Navajo Council had realized the number of their missing daughters who had been kidnapped to aid in the creation of the species, they had immediately set out to ensure they could identify which of the emerging Breeds were their own.
The Navajo weren’t the only Native Americans to have contributed, though. The members of the scattered tribes spread across the United States had sent in blood, genetic identification and all the details that went with it. Just in case. Just in case Breed blood could save a chief or a medicine man, a child or a warrior or a mother. Just in case a daughter returned and children born of her stolen eggs, or a child born of her body, came searching for her.
In case the daughter didn’t return, and the grandchildren did.
Isabelle knew that was her grandfather’s dream. That one day something of the daughter he had lost would return to the Nation seeking the blood ties the Martinez family and the Navajo Nation represented.
As Ashley had done, along with her sister, Emma.
They had come searching, and had found a family they hadn’t known existed for them. Small though they were, and as hidden as Ashley and Emma could keep them, still, the ties were there.
And Isabelle was finding a tie of her own, she thought as she returned to her room to change clothes.
Malachi.
He hadn’t been at the meeting, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been thinking about it.
He was all she could really think about.
Her ear still tingled with the memory of the nip and that tiny lick to the slight wound.
The rest of her body was heated, had been heated and refused to cool down.
Even the quick, cool shower she forced herself to have didn’t help. As she used the soft, suds-filled cloth between her thighs, she swore it was more frustrating than trying to masturbate.
Each time the silky suds and the soft pile of the cloth raked over her clitoris, it was like being pierced with a hunger so heated she could barely stand it. It made the shower quicker, though, for the fact that she didn’t attempt to masturbate.
Rinsing her hair and body quickly, she stepped from the shower and hurriedly prepared for the evening.
She dressed in a loose, silky maxi dress, the casual outfit falling to the floor at her sandals and giving her a feeling of intense, sensual femininity.
The brush of the cool, slick material
against her hardened nipples was almost an unbearable caress. The feel of her bra had chafed the tender points until removing it had been imperative.
The long length of her raven black hair fell below her shoulders in long, soft waves after she blow-dried it. Her blue eyes, almost a cobalt, looked brighter, more intense than she remembered them being before.
Her complexion looked clearer, her cheeks flushed, her lips looked almost kiss swollen. Leaning in closer to the mirror, Isabelle stared at her reflection with a slight frown. She didn’t even need makeup as she usually did. How strange was that?
This was what arousal did to a woman? Anticipation?
She could handle this. Her gaze fell to the small charm she had placed on a gold chain and put around her neck.
A curved fang, the symbol of the Coyote Breeds that he had left for her. Lifting her hand, she brushed her fingers against the fang as the need for his touch raced through her system.
Transferring a few necessary items to a small leather purse that matched her sandals, Isabelle found pulled the small note Malachi had pushed beneath her door that morning. The roses were in her bedroom next to the bed. A smile touched her lips at the thought of the Breed. She hadn’t expected him to find her so easy. Liza’s friend in registration had swore no one had asked for the room number, but Isabelle knew they would have other ways of finding that information.
Shivering at the thought of him being able to find her so easily, and wondering if he would find her again this evening, Isabelle left her room once again and headed for the elevators at the center of the hotel wing.
She had promised Chelsea and Liza she would meet them at the bar before dinner for a drink. The same bar she had met Malachi in the night before. The same one in which she feared Holden might be watching for her. The one she prayed Malachi would be waiting for her.
But if Holden were there, her sister and Liza would have called long before now.
She had no intentions of staying with them for long. She intended instead to find that damned sexy Coyote if he wasn’t waiting in the bar. If he didn’t take her soon, she just might go up in flames waiting for him.