by Lora Leigh
nd Navarro are at communications headquarters going over mission stats,” Merinus told her. As though she needed to know, Mica thought resentfully as she dug into the cake.
“I just need to know when the heli-jet will be here to take me home, Prima.” Mica stared back at the other woman questioningly. “As much as I enjoy Sanctuary, I think I’d feel better if I were at my parents’ ranch.”
“Your parents are at Haven, Mica,” Merinus revealed gently. “The ranch was hit at the same time you were targeted in the city. Your father and mother were, thankfully, not at home at the time.”
Mica inhaled slowly, carefully. “Does Jonas know why they were targeted? Does he know why I was targeted?”
Merinus gave a quick shake of her head. “I know he’s working on it. I promise, we’re doing everything we can to figure this out and to get you safely home. But the key word is safely. We’re not certain that even the heli-jet would be a secured means of transportation at the moment. Until we know for certain, it’s not a chance we want to take.”
Mica took another bite of the chocolate cake, sipped at her coffee and simply allowed the information to settle inside her.
She couldn’t leave yet. She was stuck here, which meant the support system she would have counted on at any other time wasn’t available.
Hope, Faith and Charity, and especially Cassie, as aggravating as she was sometimes. They were her friends, her support system. She could have talked to them, and they could have helped her figure out which way to go at this point, with a Breed mate MIA only hours after said mating.
“Does Jonas have any idea how long it will take?” Mica finally asked Merinus.
“I’m sorry, Mica.” Merinus shook her head, her shoulderlength brown hair emphasizing the compassion in her expression. “I do promise you, he’s not the only one working on it. Callan, Kane and Navarro are investigating as well. I’m certain it won’t take them long.”
What was she supposed to say at this point?
She wanted to go home. If it was up to her, she would have gotten in a car and simply driven. She was one woman, and as long as no one saw her leave, then there would be no one to report it to whoever the hell was out there looking for her.
That wasn’t going to happen though, and she knew it. She wouldn’t make it to a vehicle, let alone past the gates of the compound, before Jonas, Navarro, and any number of Breeds who had watched her grow up, would stop her.
“Cassie asked that you call her whenever you have time.” Merinus leaned against the counter and sipped her coffee. “She said to remind you to beware of contentment?” It was obvious Merinus was very curious as well as partly amused.
Mica sipped her coffee.
She was going to strangle Cassie.
The moment she had the chance, she was going to wrap her hands right around her friend’s throat and just start squeezing.
Cassie deserved it.
She was hiding the truth of whatever she had sensed that day from Mica, and Mica knew she was.
“You’re not going to explain the contentment reference?” There was an edge of laughter in Merinus’s tone.
“I might explain it if I understood it myself.” Forking another piece of cake, Mica shot Merinus an irate look. “Do you always understand what Cassie’s talking about?”
“Sometimes.” Merinus didn’t sound as confident as Mica was certain she wanted to. “Does that idea of contentment have anything to do with the repeat mating tests Navarro insisted Ely run this morning?”
Yeah, that was Merinus, right to the point there.
Mica sighed wearily. “According to Cassie, she has no idea what it has to do with. As for the mating tests, Navarro simply wanted to be certain.”
“I see.” Merinus nodded somberly. “And that would have nothing to do with him nearly losing his sanity when Brandenmore escaped confinement and managed to pin you against the wall either? Or how he threatened to kill Brandenmore after he managed to free you from him?”
Merinus was more perceptive than many wanted to admit.
“What do you want to know, Merinus?” Mica asked quietly as she pushed the cake and coffee back.
She could tell when someone was fishing, and at the moment, Merinus was throwing dynamite in the water.
“Are you his mate, Mica?” she asked.
She wasn’t going to lie to Merinus. Mica had lived her life amid lies, deceptions and double-talk, and she hated it. She could mark her life divided by one event. The years of contentment and safety before the night Cassie Sinclair and her family arrived at her father’s ranch. The years filled with double-talk, lies and danger had been every day thereafter.
She understood, she truly did. There was only so much you could tell most children. But Mica hadn’t been most children, and the resentment had only grown over the years.
“So it would appear.” She shrugged, the attempt to appear casual, unconcerned, took nearly every ounce of control she possessed.
There were times she forgot Merinus wasn’t a Breed herself. She’d been a mate for so long, the mating hormone now so firmly entrenched in her body, that her senses were so much more sharply advanced that she could detect emotions herself, if not scent them.
Although Merinus was by no means a Breed. Yet.
She continued to watch Mica, making her extremely uncomfortable as her dark gaze remained intent. She wasn’t a Breed, but she was developing the senses of one, which meant she was no longer a person Mica could pretend to be calm around.
“How long have you known?” the Prima asked.
This was no longer the friend who had sheltered Mica along with Cassie when they were kids. She wasn’t the woman that cut Mica’s hair the first time, or the one that taught her to use makeup when she was a teenager, when her own mother refused to so do.
She was now the Prima, the dominant feminine force within Sanctuary, and there wasn’t a Breed male or female within the compound that didn’t inherently recognize her quiet, intuitive strength and power.
Mica glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Oh, two hours maybe?” she answered blithely. “Could be a minute more, could be a minute less. So let’s not get into the whole psychological mishmash that goes with it quite yet, if you don’t mind? I’d like another minute or two to adjust.”
There was the odd situation or two when her need for truth was almost outweighed by her need for privacy.
Breeds and their mates were just too damned nosy. And she couldn’t tell Merinus to mind her own damned business as she would most other Breeds.
“You’ll likely need more than a minute or two to adjust,” Merinus said ruefully. “It’s been fourteen years since I met Callan and I still can’t say I’ve adjusted.”
But she was happy. Mica could see the happiness as well as the contentment in the Prima’s gaze. She might appear now no more than twenty-four or -five, but she was fourteen years older and wise well beyond her years, Mica often thought.
That didn’t mean she wanted to discuss with Merinus something as private and as confusing as what had happened in her bed earlier with Navarro though.
“I wondered what was going on when Navarro stomped downstairs and out the front entrance.” Picking up the plates and cups, Merinus deposited them on the sink counter before turning back to Mica, leaning against the counter and bracing her hands on the edge behind her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Navarro stomp before.”
Mica was quite certain no one had ever seen Navarro stomp before, simply because he so rarely stomped.
Just as he so rarely kept the same lover for longer than a week or two.
She imagined he was stomping because it wasn’t as easy to walk away from a mate as it was a one-night stand.
Poor Navarro, she thought mockingly.
Her shoulders almost slumped in dejection, “poor Mica” was more like it. She was the one sitting here alone with Merinus rather than trying to figure out exactly how she was going to keep her father from killing Navarro.
It would be hard, especially considering the fact that at the moment, she wouldn’t mind killing him herself.
After he fucked her again.
She wondered what it would take to convince him to fuck her again just before she killed him?
She glanced at Merinus as the other woman watched her compassionately. And that compassion grated. As though someone should feel sorry for her. They should feel sorry for Navarro, because her father really wasn’t going to be happy.
“Did you and Navarro argue before he left?” Merinus finally broke the silence between them.
“No.” She brushed her hair back from her face as she gave Merinus a tight smile. “There was nothing to argue over.” Moving from the bar stool, Mica tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
The sudden memory of Navarro’s hands cupping her rear, lifting her to him, flashed through her mind as a shiver chased up her spine.
Just as quickly, her womb clenched, a second before a rush of heat flashed through her pussy.
Mating heat.
Swallowing tightly, she jerked her hands from her pockets and stared around wildly for a moment, thrown so off balance that she knew Merinus couldn’t help but realize.
She could feel herself flushing, knowing that if Merinus’s sense of smell was anywhere close to a Breed’s, then she would know what had just happened.
Mica hated this. There was nothing worse than allowing anyone at all to realize something as intimate as her arousal.
“There’s always something to argue over if mating heat affects you. And I can imagine Navarro, as quiet as he is, could be a force to be reckoned with if he became angry.” Merinus sighed as though she had no idea of the sudden flames of aroused heat that were beginning to burn inside Mica.
“Navarro wouldn’t hurt me.” Mica shook her head dismissively.
She just wanted to escape. She wanted to run to her room, or outside, get away from Merinus’s too perceptive gaze or her possibly too sensitive ability to smell.
“No, Navarro wouldn’t hurt you,” Merinus agreed. “But, in mating heat, even the most self-controlled Breed can become unpredictable.”
“Merinus, I really hate to be disrespectful, because I have the highest regard for you,” Mica stated as she struggled to hold on to her patience now. “But I don’t understand what you’re getting at, and I don’t understand why we’re having this little chat. So if you would be kind enough to either explain it to me, or excuse me, I would really appreciate it.”
Because she didn’t think she had the patience to be social much longer.
“Your father is threatening to arrive at Sanctuary,” Merinus said then. “I need to know, Mica, if he arrives, will you be able to suppress your own anger, or any emotions that would upset him, long enough to reassure him and keep him from feeling the need to take you from Navarro at the moment? We both know how dangerous that could be.”
Oh yes, she knew exactly how male Breeds could be where their mates were concerned. She’d seen it for years; each time one mated, the possessiveness, the dominance and the pure overprotectiveness.
They were more overprotective than her father.
Mica turned her head away before shaking it slowly. “You need to convince Dad to stay away,” she stated as she turned back to the other woman. “I don’t know if I can deal with his overprotectiveness as well as Navarro’s at the moment.”
And he was overprotective. So much so that Mica often felt smothered in his presence. Growing up around him had been almost impossible. If he could, he would have kept her a child for the rest of her life.
She wouldn’t have had her first lover, let alone a chance to allow a Breed to actually mate her, if her father had had his way. And if he arrived here and had to face Navarro sleeping in her bed without the benefit of marriage, then he was likely to do something stupid. As Merinus feared, there was a very high chance he would indeed attempt to force her back to the ranch, or to Haven.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to be an adult.
He wanted her to marry a man he believed to be the kind of man she needed. He wanted her to settle down in a nice little house and have babies and be bored out of her mind.
He didn’t consider a Breed acceptable, and not because he disliked them, not because he was prejudiced. But because he knew the danger that came with being a Breed’s mate.
“Mica, I can help you.”
She paused at the kitchen doorway before turning back to Merinus. “Have you found a cure for mating heat?”
“You know we haven’t,” Merinus said softly. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t help you through this. I’m always here, Mica. All you have to do is tell me what you need. I’m your advocate here.”
“Until a cure is found to mating heat or male dominance, then I’m screwed, and we both know it,” she said bitterly.
“And is mating heat so abominable?” Merinus asked. “Is Navarro such an unworthy mate, or lover?”
“He would have been a perfect lover,” Mica answered truthfully. “But I wasn’t looking for a mate, Merinus. I wasn’t looking to confine myself to Sanctuary or Haven for a man that doesn’t even love me. One that doesn’t even want me but for mating heat.”
With those words she left the kitchen, unwilling to hear any more arguments for mating heat or Breeds as mates. She sure as hell didn’t want to see the acknowledgment in Merinus’s eyes that she was right.
The only reason Navarro would stay with her now was because of the heat, not because he was willing to fall in love with her. Not because he wanted to love her. But because of some biological reaction. Because something had matched in their hormones, their pheromones or some other bodily element that now bound them together.
She rather doubted though that it was as Cassie had always claimed, that their bodies knew what their hearts weren’t yet willing to accept.
She couldn’t accept that excuse, despite the arguments Cassie had to back up her theory. The fact that all Breed mates, all pairings had ended up being perfectly matched. That they loved. That they were devoted partners. That not once in all the years that mating heat and mates had been recorded had nature ever created a less than perfect couple.
There was always a first time for everything. And mating heat didn’t release the couple. It created a sexual pleasure that became addictive, as Mica understood it. An addict would never betray the addiction, especially if it was approved by the surgeon general, she thought sarcastically. And mating heat was definitely approved by both the Breeds as well as the humans who were aware of it. A much higher endorsement than the surgeon general’s, Cassie had once told her with a laugh.
Moving to the front entrance, Mica dragged a heavy jacket from inside the nearby closet and pulled it on quickly before leaving the house. She expected at any minute for the Breed watching silently to stop her, or for Merinus to come from the kitchen and call her back, which would have the guard moving to stop her.
Fortunately neither of them seemed to care, and Mica wasn’t in the mood to be told no.
Wrapping the overly large quilted jacket around her, Mica ducked her head against the chilly wind whipping from the mountains.
Sanctuary was one of the most beautiful places she had ever seen in her life, summer or winter. The old, heavy pine trees looked even more gorgeous at this time than at any other.
They were laden with a heavy covering of snow from the night before, which glistened in the cold air, and pine needles lying on the ground beneath them cushioned Mica’s footsteps, while the silence that surrounded her seemed almost eerie.
Sanctuary always seemed to have an otherworldly feel to it, but now even more so.
As though the world itself was awaiting the moment that the warmth of spring would finally show its face and melt the cold around it.
“You shouldn’t run off like that, not someone letting someone know where you’re heading and when you’ll be back.”
Mica swung around at the sound of Navarro’s dark voice, glaring back at him at the reminder that there was no way to hide in this damned place. There was especially no way to hide from him now.
“Reporting my possible activities wasn’t high on my list of priorities.”
“It should have been.” There was something about the look on his face, the set of his expression, that had her watching him warily.
She knew Breeds, and she knew this one wasn’t pleased.
“Fine, the next time I’ll sign out like a good little girl before I leave the house. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to enjoy a little peace and quiet for a change.” Her gaze flicked back toward the estate house in silent invitation.
She didn’t want him around her right now. She needed a chance to clear her head rather than giving her body a chance to grow even hotter. And it was. As though simply having him around her was enough to make her pussy begin weeping in arousal and her heart begin racing in excitement.
She needed him.
She wanted him, but that was really nothing unusual, she had been wanting him for years now, but she hadn’t wanted him like this. Forced. Bound to her by a hormonal reaction he couldn’t control any more than she could.
She pulled the jacket tighter around her as she felt her body sensitizing further, nerve endings and erogenous zones growing in interest by the second.
“Trade me jackets.” He shrugged the leather jacket he wore from his shoulders, revealing a black silk shirt tucked into well-worn jeans.
Jeans that were filled out exceptionally well by the heavy erection beneath them.
Flames suddenly licked over her skin as she concentrated on the jacket he was holding out to her and tightened her fingers on the one she was wearing.
“I like the one I’m wearing just fine.” She’d seen Merinus wear this one before, earlier in the fall when she had been there with Cassie for a weekend.
“As much as I like Callan, I don’t like the scent of him on my mate,” he suddenly growled.
Mica rolled her eyes, lips parting, teeth clenching in irritation, but she jerked the jacket off, barely feeling the chill in the air as she extended it to him.
But rather than taking the jacket he extended to her, she stalked away instead, heading back to the house and hopefully as far away from him as possible. And as quickly as possible. She would absolutely love it if she could get far enough away, fast enough, that the heat building in her body would simply evaporate.
She just didn’t need this.
But that didn’t seem to matter, because he moved in beside her as though her quickened stride were no problem to keep up with at all.
“We can’t run away from it,” he stated, his voice dark, heavy as she came to a stop, turned and stared back at him warily, angrily.
“And who ran from it this morning?” she questioned heatedly, wishing she were cold rather than steaming in arousal, because that steam was beginning to build to a full roiling boil.
She could feel it taking over, cell by cell, inciting not just a physical, but also an emotional response she had no hope of defeating.
The problem was, she’d wanted him before mating heat. She’d been close to falling in love with him before that first kiss. But for him, there was nothing more involved than the physical, and now more of that than he wanted too.
“I’m not running.” His eyes seemed to burn with black fire.
“And I’m not a wham bam thank you ma’am kind of woman, and I’m sure as hell not a few one-night stands that you can slip out on the next morning.” She sneered. “I’ll tell you what, Navarro, when you’re ready to ask for more than a nice little fuck, then let me know. I’ll see what I can do for you then. Until then, I think I’d prefer the hell of mating heat for company.”
Stalking away, Mica cursed her tongue, her temper and Breeds in particular as she stomped toward the main house, determined to get away from him before she ended up begging. Begging him to fuck her. Begging him to love her.
“It’s not that easy.”
Before she could even imagine he would try to stop her, his fingers wrapped around her upper arm, pulling her to a halt and, before she could stop him, pressing her firmly against the wide trunk of a bare tree.
His warmth seemed to blanket her as he pressed against her, the heavy length of his cock imprinting against her lower stomach through their clothing.
It was cold around them, she knew it was, but she couldn’t feel it. All she felt was the flush of need as it began to overflow through her, saturating her pussy, hardening her nipples and sensitizing her skin.
All she felt was the irrevocable need she couldn’t resist any more than he could.
“It’s just that easy.” She was breathing heavily, her voice much too weak to be as commanding as she wished she could be.
Her breasts were rising and falling harshly, her hard nipples raking against her sweater where his chest pressed tight against her.
“Is it, Mica?” he asked, his hand lifting, fingers brushing back the heavy strands of hair that had fallen across her face.
The touch was so gentle, the stroke of his fingers along her cheek causing her breath to catch at the need that was so much more than physical, so much more than simply the need to fuck.
“Do you really want to run?”
She did. She wanted to run. She wanted to breathe. She wanted . . .
She just wanted to hold as much of him as he held of her.
She wanted more than just his body.
CHAPTER 10
Navarro stared down at her, wondering if she knew how the walls around her emotions were slipping. There had been a time when he couldn’t have cracked those walls in any way. When she could have tucked those emotions so far out of sight that he wouldn’t have had a chance of scenting them.
The intriguing mix of subtle scents that emanated from Mica were like an ambrosia to him. Even the scent of her disappointment, her anger and her emotional pain were slight enough that they only blended with those of heated rosemary, a field of wildflowers, a hint of brown sugar. All the sweet, soft scents of the compassionate, honest woman she was. Scents of her arousal, and a hunger that went far beyond the physical, were like a soft, sweet hint of a coming day.
She wanted more than the physical pleasure that came with the mating heat. The hunger that raged inside her was for far more than just the sex.
Mica wanted love, commitment. She