The Devil's Due

by Lora Leigh

  “Katie, lass,” her father whispered as her mother covered her trembling lips with her fingers. “I’d give my life for your forgiveness if I weren’t terrified that you would have need of me later.”

  “And you think that’s what I want, Da?” she demanded, the anger and tears trapped in her chest as she stared back at him desperately.

  She hated the anger inside her. Hated the sense of dread and betrayal assailing her. “How much worse could my existence become if I ever felt you or Mother had done such a thing?”

  He shook his dark, graying head as her mother’s fingers tightened on his arm resting against his leg.

  “We were terrified for you,” her mother protested.

  “So you hid what I was, even from me, no matter how often I asked you about a childhood I couldn’t remember,” she reminded them both. “The one person who should have been prepared for it was the one most surprised. Had I known, Mam, I would have never allowed Douglas to take me to the ER. I would have called you or Da the moment I felt ill and I wouldn’t feel as though everyone I ever trusted cared more for the secrets they carried than they cared for the welfare of the secret itself.”

  She couldn’t remain here. She couldn’t stare into her father’s pain-filled eyes or watch the tears fill her mother’s gaze one more time.

  Each time she did, that battle raging through her body seemed to intensify to the point that she wanted to tear into her flesh and rip from her bones the very muscles that clenched and spasmed beneath her skin as though trying to reform, or to somehow burrow from beneath her skin.

  She rose slowly to her feet, her gaze locking with Dash Sinclair’s.

  “Mr. Sinclair—”

  “Get down!” Cassie suddenly screamed.

  Breeds were reacting before the words were even fully formed.

  Dash Sinclair jerked his daughter from behind the chair and shoved her beneath the table as he followed her to the floor. Jonas Wyatt rolled across the table so quickly he was a blur before toppling Katie to the floor, while Wolfe Gunnar and Dylan Killato did likewise with her parents. A volley of automatic gunfire shattered the windows and tore chunks of wood and plaster from the ancient home that had been in her father’s family for nearly five hundred years.

  Sirens were wailing in the distance, and the gunfire sliced through the room again while cries of shock and fear could be heard from the journalists outside.

  “Is this what you want?” Jonas suddenly hissed at her ear. “No matter where you go or what you do, unless you leave Europe, your father will remain at your back until he takes a bullet for you. And I promise you, it will come sooner rather than later. Now, stay put.”

  He suddenly jumped from her, pushed her toward Dylan and her parents as he ignored his Pride leader’s furious snarl of his name and rushed from the room.

  “Bastard’s going to get himself killed,” Dylan snapped as they all huddled beneath the large dining room table her mother’s family had kept pristine since the eleven hundreds.

  It was now riddled with deep gouges in the wood, no doubt from the bullets that had skipped across the top of it.

  “More than likely, someone’s going to be missing a throat instead,” Callan sighed. “It’s not Jonas I’m worried about, it’s the prey he’s chasing.” Amber eyes locked with hers. “Get ready, we’re about to be hustled out of here.”

  Even as he spoke, the door to the room flew open and Breeds began pouring in.

  American Breeds.

  Strong, silent, there were no shouted orders or codes being barked around her. She was lifted from the floor, her arms shoved into a heavy, protective vest while the bodies surrounding her rushed her from her father’s house and into a waiting vehicle in her mother’s precious back garden.

  The fence surrounding the back of the house had simply been mowed down by the half-dozen vehicles surrounding it. Armed, hard-eyed, savage-faced Breeds stood tense and prepared, weapons held ready.

  They were but a blur to Katie as she was pushed into the back floorboard of an armored Dragoon Elite, a low-slung SUV built for speed and agility in more populated areas. Rather distantly she remembered it had replaced the Sergeants model Dragoon that her father kept in a garage on the O’Sullivan estate on the outskirts of Dublin.

  “Carrier three en route.” Quiet, assured and confident, the unfamiliar dark voice above her had her craning her neck to try to identify it.

  Unfortunately, he was all but reclined on top of her, which kept her from maneuvering enough to see much of anything.

  “Carrier three affirmative,” a voice responded. “Heli-jet is prepped and running. ETA thirty.”

  ETA thirty what? Minutes? Hours? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  “Carrier three now in blackout. Update at thirteen hundred.”

  Thirteen hundred hours?

  “Get off!” she demanded, trying to drive her elbow upward. “You’re smothering me!”

  “Beats the alternative.” The male grunt above her wasn’t comforting.

  It was harsh, almost broken. His voice was low, deep, sending shivers racing up her back as the too-active muscles beneath her skin bunched harder, tighter, determined to tear past her bones, push through her flesh, and relish the heat above her.

  The response was immediate, frightening and painful.

  Geez, if she got any hotter, she was going to melt into the floor of the Dragoon.

  The vehicle was supposed to be temperature controlled to more than fifty feet below water. At the moment, it was sweltering, however.

  The heat wasn’t coming from the floor though. It was coming from the male Breed above her. It sank into her flesh, washed through her system and clenched her teeth with an arousal so white-hot and sudden she could barely control the need.

  The sexual need.

  The need to have those hard, broad hands push her dress over her ass, grip her hips and push inside her with a heavy, deep, bruising thrust.

  She wanted all of him at once.

  Her vagina clenched, rippling with hunger. It ached, flushed with heat and demanded his possession.

  She wanted him.

  She wanted to be touched.

  Taken.

  Oh God, she wanted him fucking her and she wanted it now before she was forced to scream with a need so painful it terrified her.

  Horrified her.

  Because she was going to demand it. Her lips were parting, a cry building in her throat when he suddenly lifted just enough to flip her to her back before wedging his thighs between hers, the hard length of his cock pressing against her sex as his fingers covered her lips.

  “We are not alone,” he mouthed as her eyes widened in dawning terror. “And this isn’t the time for this.”

  Of course it wasn’t.

  The time would never come.

  He was the Devil. The Grim Reaper of the Breeds and he’d come to drag her away and make certain she never became a danger to the species again.

  Everyone had lied to her. She was a liability. A secret they didn’t want to risk. She knew that now.

  She knew it, because the Breed pinning her to the floor with the strength of his hips and his very aroused cock was not a potential lover.

  He was a killer.

  He was the Devil, and he would have no other reason to be there other than—

  To kill her.

  TWO

  Terror.

  Anger.

  Injustice.

  Fascination.

  So many emotions.

  Katie couldn’t seem to settle on just one, or to figure which was uppermost. But the resounding regret, she finally realized, was the emotion that seemed to beat harder at her brain.

  Why did her body pick this moment, this man, to become sexual? She was twenty-three years old and she’d berated her sexuality as well as her heart for so many years for being unable to react to the opposite sex as other women did.

  She had dated. She’d tried to force a need, an arousal for some of
the more appealing prospects she’d known as potential lovers, yet she’d never been able to work up enough interest to actually join one in bed. Even Douglas, the fiancé who had informed her that he had no intention of allowing Breed genetics into any children he would eventually bring into the world. And besides, he’d sneered, he’d never been into fucking animals.

  He’d slipped the engagement ring off her finger while she was too weak to fight, even had she wanted to, and he had walked away without even saying good-bye. But in his gaze she had glimpsed the pure disgust he’d felt at the thought of her.

  Now, in the middle of attempting to escape a situation she didn’t understand, that sexuality had kicked into overdrive with the Breed known for being seen only when someone was such a liability to the Breed community that they were marked for termination.

  Termination.

  As though she weren’t human—

  Oh yeah, she wasn’t human, she thought half hysterically.

  She wasn’t human, she wasn’t an animal. She was a Breed.

  She was something in-between, and that wasn’t something she had expected.

  Why had the Breed leaders, the very same ones that had sat in her father’s living room such a short time ago and appeared so compassionate, marked her for death?

  “Why?” she whispered, needing to know, to understand why she had to die by this man’s hand when she would so much prefer to be stroked by it.

  The hard, savage smile that pulled at his lips was accompanied by a flash of white-hot lust in the odd, amber-speckled eyes staring down at her.

  “Orders, baby.” A shiver raced through her at the hard rasp of his voice.

  Orders? Just because of orders?

  He was going to kill her despite the fact that he was iron hard and hot between her thighs, the erect length of his cock pressing firmly against her sex.

  He was going to kill her despite the fact that he was the only man she’d ever felt her body grow hot and moist for?

  “Damn,” she whispered. “This really sucks.”

  * * *

  Why the hell did she think he was there? Devil questioned silently. Hell, wasn’t she the one that requested asylum while her grandfather Walter O’Sullivan was under investigation for having overseen one of the most notorious Breed labs in Ireland? Hell, it was even the Breeds who had managed to track him down. Then, once he disappeared, it was Breeds that found him once again, and took him into custody.

  It wasn’t as though he had volunteered.

  It sure as hell wasn’t as though he wanted to be right here, right now, his body strung so tight, his dick so hard, that he was amazed he could still breathe.

  Or could he?

  He felt lightheaded, as though he couldn’t quite pull in enough oxygen, couldn’t convince his body that he was drawing in air.

  What the hell was she doing.

  Trying to push him away?

  Before she could push against his chest with her dainty little hands, he caught both her wrists, pulled them above her head and pressed them into the floorboard firmly.

  Hell no she wasn’t pushing him off her. He liked the position they were in just fine. With her pretty legs spread, her thighs gripping his hips as though she had no intention of ever letting him go, and all the while her hot little pussy was pressed just as tight against his cock as possible.

  Damn, she was pretty too. The pictures he’d seen the night before hadn’t done her justice.

  Forget pretty, she was fucking gorgeous.

  Pure creamy flesh with the lightest scattering of freckles over those high, aristocratic cheekbones. Emerald eyes blinked up at him in confusion and in pain. Irish eyes. Damned pretty Irish eyes. The prettiest he’d ever seen in his life.

  And he’d seen a lot of Irish eyes.

  “You don’t have to . . .” her breath caught, lashes fluttering as he chose that moment to grind himself against her, to feel the moist heat through the barrier of her panties and his denim.

  He was going to end up fucking her here and now if she wasn’t careful, despite the fact that their driver, Flint McCain, would hear every hungry, pleading gasp he’d draw from her.

  “Orders. It’s all your own fault, dammit.” Her fault he was hornier than he’d ever been in his life, and it was her fault he was less than a breath from screwing them both into ecstasy.

  “My fault?” Feminine outrage and hunger scented the air around him. “How is it my fault?”

  She was acting as though she had never made the damned request of the Breed Protection Network to help her escape from Ireland and find a secure place to hide until the furor had died down a little.

  “Well it’s sure as hell not my fault,” Devil growled down at her, wondering if he could pull back if he actually allowed himself to lower his head and kiss those pretty, pouty lips. Because he really did want to kiss them.

  “Well you’re the one doing it!” Petite nostrils flared, and the hint of those cute dimples he’d seen in her pictures completely disappeared as she frowned up at him.

  She’d had dimples in the pictures he’d seen.

  “You’re the one that asked for it,” he snarled down at her, unable to resist using his free hand to slide beneath her body, grip the rounded curve of her ass and hold her to him.

  “Me?” She stared back at him in surprise for a second before comprehension slowly dawned. “Wait, you’re with the Breed Protection Network?”

  Had Lobo sent him to rescue a madwoman?

  He was beginning to think the other man might have done just that, because she was now staring up at him as though she’d believed something entirely different to this point.

  “Why the hell did you think I was here?”

  She blinked back at him before those bright emerald eyes as they darkened with uncertainty. “You’re the Devil. You only come after Breeds marked to die. Right?”

  Hell.

  Sometimes, having a killer reputation could be a hell of an inconvenience.

  “I’m not going to kill you.” Unless he ended up fucking them both to death.

  As long as she wasn’t a threat, personally, to the Reevers—or to those he’d sworn to protect. He doubted she represented much of a threat to anything or anyone, let alone the family he’d sworn his loyalty to.

  She glanced down their bodies, her breath catching as her gaze locked at where they were all but joined.

  Her scent wrapped around him. A hint of fascination, wariness, but there was also something more—something he didn’t like at all.

  The scent of pure, exquisite, lust-filled arousal and feminine liquid heat spilling from her body.

  Sweet, with a hint of spice. Clean, with a tempting freshness that made him wonder if she had ever been touched by another man in any way.

  Of course, there was no such thing as a virgin Breed female of this age. Unfortunately, most of their females had lost that innocence before they were even old enough to understand what it was.

  At that thought, he realized she hadn’t responded to his statement that he had no intention of killing her. Instead, her gaze was focused on his lips, much as his was on hers. The emerald color darkened, her pupils dilating as his head lowered, his lips moving slowly closer to hers.

  * * *

  He was going to kiss her.

  Katie could feel it coming.

  Adrenaline was racing through her body, the urge to rub her hips against his, to feel the roughness of denim scratching against the lace of her panties was overwhelming.

  And she wanted his kiss. She wanted it so desperately that the wild, stormy taste she imagined it held began to tease her senses relentlessly.

  “Boss, we’re heading to the primary pick up point and the heli-jet’s landing,” the Breed racing the SUV toward that “primary” point, wherever that may be, informed Devil imperatively. “We still have two vehicles on our asses and plenty of cameras hanging out the windows.”

  Devil grimaced as smoldering anger flashed in his gaze.

/>   “Get us as close to the entrance as possible,” he growled, lifting his head to glare at the Breed who dared to interrupt them.

  Then he was moving. Ignoring her sharp intake of air as he lifted himself from her body before quickly pulling her into a sitting position on the floor of the vehicle.

  “Get ready to move.” Restrained, clipped and cold, his voice did nothing to dilute the arousal raging through her.

  Get ready to move?

  She stared ahead of them at the huge black raptor-looking heli-jet settling on the ground ahead of them as the Dragoon raced toward it. Turning to glance behind them, she winced at the sight of the quickly moving SUVs following them.

  If they made it before the rapidly focusing cameras mounted on the roof of the SUVs that were controlled by the photographers inside, then they’d be damned lucky.

  “Put it on.” Black material was suddenly shoved over her head.

  “What are you doing?” For a second, the world was black until Devil quickly righted the fabric and pulled the narrow eye slits into position.

  Her hair was shoved down the back of her dress, black material draping over her shoulders as she stared up at the black mask he now wore as well.

  “Three vehicles left at the same time and were picked up in a heli-jet in three different locations, while all occupants were masked before disappearing into the jets.” His lips curved beneath the silky material. “You’re about to lose your tails, cupcake. Get ready to run.”

  * * *

  Brace!” Flint called back as he lifted one hand from the wheel long enough to jerk his mask from the top of his head into place.

  Devil wrapped one arm around his charge, his free hand clenched on the brace bar above him as the Breed suddenly threw the vehicle into a slight turn, skidding sideways until the passenger side of the vehicle was almost kissing the heli-jet awaiting them.