by Lora Leigh
She pulled the camisole over her head slowly, slid it free of the long length of her hair and dropped it to the floor, then stepped from the four-inch heels she wore.
And he didn’t speak. Not a single word. He watched her, still and silent, but the scent of male lust suddenly filling the room was unmistakable.
Then, with the same unhurried movements, he sat down and pulled his boots free of his feet. Then, rising once again, he pulled the shirt from his pants and began unbuttoning it.
She didn’t know his name, and for a moment, she wished she did.
Then he was shrugging the shirt free, revealing the depth of strength in his body in the play of muscles beneath dark bronze flesh. Strong biceps, wide shoulders and chest, tight, hard abs.
Slowly, he released the wide leather belt that cinched his hips and worked free the button and zipper of the dun-colored pants he wore.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
What was she thinking?
She’d never done this before so she couldn’t even guess. She didn’t know how to do this.
She was standing naked but for the panties that hid the genetic mark of the Coyote just below her womb, in front of this Breed. A Coyote . . .
Swallowing tightly she hooked her fingers in the band of black lace and lowered them, forcing herself to slide them over her thighs before letting them fall to the floor. His gaze touched the hardened points of her nipples, then lowered to that mark. The faint lines, in the form of jagged scars, shadowed her flesh and had the scent of male lust spiking in the womb.
Rather than removing his pants as his need increased, he stepped to her, calloused fingers touching her cheek before cupping it gently.
He was warm. So warm.
“No kisses,” he whispered. “But you didn’t rule out this.”
As he spoke, he swung her up in his arms, sweeping her from the floor and striding to the bed, where he laid her in the middle of the mattress. Lying down beside her, his head lowered, but he kept his word. He didn’t kiss her lips.
What he did was even more maddening, more erotic. His lips touched the corner of hers; just the tip of his tongue edged at it before his lips moved to her neck, his tongue taking little tastes of her flesh as her breathing accelerated.
Because it felt good. So damned good.
One hand twined in her hair, gripping the curls and pulling just enough that the slight sensation was a merging of erotic and the edge of pain. And she liked it. Dark need and that restless, shadowed force inside her merged, clawing at her, demanding she take what was hers.
“There, little halfling,” he whispered as his lips moved to her neck, smoothing over her flesh as his tongue, ah mercy, his teeth, awakened nerve endings she didn’t know she had.
Before she knew it, her hands were on his shoulders as he rose over her, then in his hair, sliding through the cool strands, clenching in them as she arched to him. And she tried to make sense of the sensations racing through her.
The rush of heat that engulfed her body, the pinching tightness of her nipples, the warmth growing between her thighs. The ache centering in her clit as she felt her juices flowing from her sex and the demand building in her that she let go, give in, that she free the hunger raging through her.
“Feel good?” he whispered as his lips kissed slowly lower, moving for the heaving flesh of her breasts.
“Feels good.” She didn’t even sound like herself.
Why did he care if it felt good?
“You taste like heaven.” The rasp of his voice was deeper, more animalistic. “Son of a bitch, love, you taste good.”
Sensation was overtaking her, pleasure like she hadn’t expected, couldn’t have anticipated.
“Oh God. Yes . . .” She couldn’t hold back her moan as his lips covered a sensitized nipple, drawing it into his mouth, sucking with firm, hungry draws of his lips, licking it, rasping nerve endings with such pleasure.
She arched into the sensations, her eyes closing, though she wanted to hold them open. The heat was building, sensation upon sensation as he moved from one engorged peak to the other. She wanted to be closer . . .
She wanted his kiss.
Her head twisted against the pillow as he slid one hand down her side to her thighs, then settled between them, covering the slick folds he found there with his broad palm.
It wasn’t supposed to feel good. Not this good. She could feel the perspiration gathering on her skin, hear her own moans as she felt him working his pants free of his thighs.
His lips were still at her breast, sucking, his tongue abrading her nipple. His hand moved from her sex, pushed her thighs apart, and then he was kneeling between them. With one hand he clasped her hip, his lips moving from her breast to her neck.
She felt the crest of his shaft, broad, throbbing as it pressed against the entrance between her thighs. So hot, pressing inside her, opening her, stretching her . . .
Each hard, pulsing throb was followed by heated pleasure, like a rush of liquid fire filling her, easing her, amplifying the sensations.
She arched to him, knowing she shouldn’t, knowing there was something she should remember; something wasn’t right. Then he was pushing inside her, pleasure and pain merging, white-hot in its intensity, tearing through her as the short strokes inside her vagina tore through her virginity, lengthened, became quicker, harder, burying him inside her fully.
She could feel the hard throb of his cock, followed by a sense of heat and incredible pleasure.
She couldn’t halt the cries falling from her lips, couldn’t stop the whirlwind of sensations obliterating everything but the pleasure. With a sense of disbelief, she realized she’d completely lost control; then even that thought was torn aside as he began moving inside her.
Each thrust was followed by the sweet, burning trail of heat, the clenching of her vagina and a rush of liquid pleasure falling from her. Her hips lifted as she fought for more, deeper, harder.
She could hear him whispering against her shoulder, his lips and tongue caressing, teeth scraping as the thrusts became faster, rhythmic, pushing her into a storm she could feeling racing out of control inside her own body.
Her nails dug into his shoulders as each stroke of his cock pushed her deeper, as the pleasure, so extreme, so brutal it bordered on pain, began tightening inside her. Pushing her, clenching in her sex, her clit, bands of pleasure and pain until she felt her orgasm imploding, destroying . . .
His teeth sank in her shoulder. Wicked, sharp and curved as she felt him thickening impossibly inside her, stretching her inner muscles further, pushing her orgasm higher even as a sense of horror tore through her.
He was locked inside her. Releasing, ejaculating inside her because he couldn’t pull free of her clamping muscles as the mating knot pulsed inside her.
She was crying out her pleasure even as she felt her tears falling. Reveling in the sensation of his teeth buried at her shoulder, his tongue laving the wound, his cock spilling his release.
Physically, nothing could ever be so good. It was the most intense, most incredible pleasure, and it was destroying her.
From the inside out, it was destroying her.
His teeth released her, his head lifted slowly. “Well, fuck, guess the rules don’t apply now . . .” And his lips were on hers, hard, hungry . . . addictive.
No, the rules didn’t apply, but the destruction sure as hell would.
* * *
• • •
This wasn’t happening.
A rarely felt, overwhelming panic began to invade Cassie’s senses once she’d regained them again, threatening to rip away the logic and careful thought she normally approached all problems with. It was rising by the second, tearing through her and beginning to exacerbate the fear that the knowledge of a mating had brought.
This had just slipp
ed past anything even remotely resembling fear. She realized in that moment that she could have handled a mate after all. A Wolf Breed mate, a Feline Breed, hell, a Reptile Breed or a human mate.
She could have handled a mate.
She couldn’t handle this.
“Breathe, Cassie,” he whispered, those strong arms she’d once longed to feel around her, enclosing her like iron. Like a prison. A cell from which there was no escape. “It’s okay, baby, just breathe.”
Baby.
Just breathe.
She heard the words; she didn’t respond, didn’t react. She stared at the wall across from her, focused on it, tried to push back the fear and . . .
Rage.
It clawed at her, mixed with the panic, with the overwhelming sense of helpless confusion. It burned inside her chest like a viciously hot poker, stabbing at her over and over again.
“You lied to me.” The words escaped despite the tightness of her throat and the feeling that she was strangling on her emotions. “You lied to me. You assured me we couldn’t be mates.”
Mates weren’t supposed to ever lie to each other. She had never lied to him. She had always been completely honest with him. Always.
She hadn’t even considered that he could be her mate. He was her partner in adventure since those few moments they’d spent in an island atrium, albeit mostly through messages. One didn’t lie to one’s partner.
Those strong arms slid away from her, but that feeling of imprisonment didn’t recede. It couldn’t recede. There was no escaping.
She hurt now in every molecule of her body. The pain resonating with blistering intensity.
His scent followed her.
Sitting on the side of the bed, she propped her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. She wanted to rock into herself, scream and rage and claw at his face with her nails. She wanted to give in to the demented pain rising inside her and show him the lethal, killing instinct that had been bred into her. The one she held inside, always hidden, restrained.
“Well, little halfling, you must admit you suspected it; otherwise, you’d have never made up those ridiculous rules,” he said with a grunt, as though that excused him.
Mocking amusement was a trademark she’d always sensed, yet until now, he’d never turned it on her.
What was she going to do?
She couldn’t deal with this!
She had to run, to leave . . .
Yet even now the despised reaction of her body to the Mating Heat was already building again, sensitizing her, forcing her to fight herself, to fight the steady increase of the hormones now racing through her.
She wanted him again. Wanted his flesh throbbing between her lips, wanted his tongue burrowing inside her sex, spreading more of that sickening hormone.
Her hand clamped over her mouth as she felt her womb tightening, demanding his release, demanding he flood her body with his semen again.
She pushed to her feet, only distantly aware of him moving from the bed, but all too aware of the fact that he was aroused, erect and ready to give her body exactly what it was beginning to burn for.
For a moment, all she could do was ache for her mother, her father. Ache to beg them to fix this as they had so many other things in her life. To smooth it over, to make it better, to help her find a way out.
And there was no way out. She knew there was no way out.
“Should I take you again, mate?” There was an edge to his voice that sliced at her, that dug into her chest and made the pain brighter, more intense. “Shall I just bend you over the bed and push inside you? Ride you hard and fast until I knot you and give your body what it needs? Just stay behind you so you don’t have to see the Breed you mated?”
Cassie jerked, barely holding back a cry rising unbidden to her lips as her sex spilled its liquid heat and her stomach rippled with the clenching of her womb, with the need, the hunger.
Yes, that was what she wanted, she screamed silently, agony tearing through her. Take her like the animal she now knew lurked inside her.
A low, male chuckle followed her as she shook her head and headed for the shower. She had to think. She had to figure out what to do.
“Cassandra . . .”
“Cassie . . .” She corrected him almost automatically, feeling so dazed, so off-balance and filled with violence that keeping the explosion of pure murderous fury contained was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
“What?” Clipped and short, his voice raked over her senses, stroking her like a physical caress as she felt her sheath clench, felt more of the hot, silky wetness spill from her.
“Cassie,” she had to force herself to answer. “My name is Cassie.”
She was Cassie Colder. She wasn’t Cassandra Sinclair, no matter how desperately she wanted to be, how hard her mother and father—her stepfather—had worked to give her that illusion. She wasn’t a Wolf Breed. She wasn’t Dash Sinclair’s incredible, amazing, intelligent daughter. She was Daniel “Dane” Colder’s science experiment. The dirty little animal he’d helped create.
“I need a shower,” she whispered. She needed to think. To turn back time.
“A shower won’t wash my scent from you.” It sounded like a promise. A warning.
“Guess we’ll find out . . .” Straightening, she’d almost taken that first step when she felt herself jerked around, her mate towering over her, glaring down at her, his gray eyes like thunderclouds as a warning growl left his throat.
That sound was the trigger.
It ripped through her, exploded through her mind and tore aside that veil of civility she was always so certain she possessed.
“Don’t push me, Cassie,” he snarled in her face, his head lowering, almost nose to nose with her.
Lifting to her tiptoes, she bit him. Her teeth snapped at the thin line of his lips, and she tasted blood, tasted that hormone and lost control of the low, warning growl that left her own throat as she jerked back.
One hand latched onto the hair at the back of his head, the other gripped the thick, throbbing stalk of flesh that extended like iron from between his thighs. Grabbing at his hair, she pulled his head down to get her fix. To pull in the hormone spilling from the glands beneath his tongue and allow the creature inside her to fully awaken.
The kiss was like a sensual explosion. It imploded inside her senses, laid waste to logic, to common sense, to the dreams, the hopes, the certainty she could overcome what she’d been created to be.
His tongue pumped between her lips as she licked at it desperately, allowed it to duel with hers, to spill the mating poison, to rush through her senses and jerk her on that wild, furious ride once again.
Long minutes later, dazed, drugged with the sensual heat, she pulled her head back. Retaining her grip on his hair, she met the challenge in those wild gray eyes and the less-than-perfect features. As she stared up at him, one broad, calloused palm cupped her breast; his fingers gripped her nipple, tightened, and her head slammed back against the wall.
The sensations were terrible; they were exquisite. Agony and ecstasy slamming into the hard tip before ripping a line of sizzling electric heat straight to her pussy.
“Again.” Her voice was strangled. “Do it again.”
Easing the pressure, he did it again, this time harder, dragging a demented cry from her lips as his other hand slid between her damp thighs.
Damp because the slick moisture was weeping from her, spilling from the swollen lips between her thighs to the fingers now tucking between the folds to catch the silken heat.
“Come here, mate.” Releasing her nipple and the desperately aching flesh between her thighs, he lifted her to him, turned and sat her on the top of the tall table.
Still gripping his hair, she jerked his head to her breasts, her breathing hard, heavy, her chest tight with the screams she was h
olding in, the denials she so desperately wanted to give voice to.
“Suck my nipple,” she demanded, pushing one enflamed tip to his lips. “Hard. Like you gripped it. Do it.”
She watched him. Their gazes locked as he snarled, then gripped the tip between his teeth and applied the painful, ecstatic pressure she needed.
White, strong teeth, curved canines at the side, a brutal snarl of lust on his lips.
His hands gripped her legs beneath her knees, yanked them up and forced her feet to the top of the table. With his teeth gripping her nipple, his tongue lashing it, his hand moved between her spread thighs. A second later a long, agonized sound of keening pleasure escaped her lips.
Two fingers pushed inside her, hard, deep. There were no preliminaries, no warning, just the sudden fullness and a firestorm of sensation tearing through her.
Her hips jerked, then bore down on the fingers as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, devouring first one, then the other. Lips, teeth, tongue, suckling pressure and mind-consuming ecstasy. She didn’t have to think here. She didn’t have to consider what she was, what he’d turned her into.
“That’s it,” he snarled, lifting his lips as she fought to drive herself on his fingers. “Ride my fingers, mate. Look.” He lifted enough to stare down their bodies, to watch her hips, to see the penetration of her body as she ground herself onto his palm. “Greedy baby. How much do you want? How much before you beg me to stop?”
Beg him to stop? She could take anything, everything he wanted to dish out.
“Go to hell,” she cried out, but she couldn’t help but watch as her hips pulled back, revealing the heavy layer of thick juices that clung to his fingers, before she slammed onto his fingers again, burying them inside her.
She froze for only a second. Before she could halt the downward thrust he added a third finger and pushed inside her, even as she slammed her hips onto the penetration. She could feel her muscles clenching around the invasion, rippling with involuntary spasms.
“Enough?” She hated the challenge in his voice. Hated it. “Or more?”
His fingers curled, found a spot so sensitive, so explosively responsive, that she couldn’t hold back the climax that shot through her system. And it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. It only made her body hotter, made her senses more maddened.