by Lora Leigh
each scent, the brush of air across her flesh, the heat of her mate’s body next to hers, the feel of him, inside her spirit, where none should exist but herself.
Yet Rule was there. A comfort. A strength that grounded her as nothing had ever grounded her before.
She couldn’t tear her gaze from him.
Gypsy felt her breathing slowly even, felt the heartbeat that she hadn’t known had been racing with fear suddenly slow and calm.
“Lawe and I survived because of a bond no one knew we had,” he growled, satisfaction glittering in his eyes as that presence inside her refused to vacate. “Because we could strengthen each other. Because we could open ourselves, allow each other in, and whether the strength we needed was physical or psychological, we could provide it. Until he mated. Until I realized he was building a much stronger, much more intuitive bond with the woman he called his mate.”
She shook her head, emotions rioting through her as she realized there was nothing she could hide from this man, this Breed. There was nothing she could do to hide from him, and nothing she could do to protect him.
She couldn’t push him out. She couldn’t hold on to the fear, the driving fury or the hunger for vengeance. She couldn’t shut that inner, emotional door on the Breed who had stood by her side since the night she had stared across a crowded bar into his eyes . . .
“Far longer than that,” he revealed as her eyes widened in disbelief. “I’ve been by your side, Gypsy, since you were fifteen years old. If not I, then later, Cullen Maverick. Or should I say, the Bengal Judd.”
He knew what she had suspected? That Cullen Maverick was the Breed Jonas searched so desperately for?
Gypsy shook her head, her breathing roughening. “No . . .”
“Your contact is the Bengal Judd, Gypsy,” he told her quietly, his expression filled with such emotion that she had no idea how to combat it. “I may not have realized I was your mate, but the instincts inside me, that animal that ensures I never completely fuck up, knew. It knew, connived and conspired within my subconscious, until I did exactly what I had to do to always watch over what belonged to me. Including conspiring with a Breed who would become wanted by every agency, every Council team, every fucking scientist in the world, and even the one man I owed every iota of loyalty to, Jonas Wyatt. I conspired to the point that I ordered him to take the bargain of working with him to you, on the condition that no other man touch you. That you have no lovers, no one to stand between you and your mate when the time came for me to claim what was mine. And later, when Jonas began searching for that Breed, I hid my knowledge of this from even my own brother. Trusting. Believing he had sent everything he had to Jonas. Knowing, without him, you would have drifted away from this world within a year of Mark’s death.”
He was the reason that demand had been made of her?
She could feel adrenaline pumping into her system—disbelief, amazement, it was all there, yet her heart wasn’t racing, and she couldn’t feel betrayal. She couldn’t feel it, because she was just as entrenched in his heart as he was in hers now. Feeling him.
Breathing him.
“I was a part of you before I ever caught your attention that night,” he promised her, his free hand moving to cup the side of her face, his thumb brushing against her lips. “I’ve always been here, Gypsy. Just a heartbeat away from you. More damned scared of what I was feeling than you could imagine, because losing you would have destroyed even the animal that lurks beneath the skin. The animal that fought with every heartbeat, with every breath, to ensure your protection every second after the night you lost what was most dear to your heart. Because you, mate, are most dear to my heart.”
She had to blink back her tears.
Gypsy couldn’t believe she was on the verge of shedding tears.
Her breathing hitched, a sob tearing from her chest as his head lowered, his lips touching hers.
“Don’t try to push me out, Gypsy. Don’t take that from me. Don’t take what completes me or allow a knowledge you refuse to share to destroy the only bond I’ve ever allowed myself other than that which connects me to my twin.”
His lips took hers then. Entrenched inside her spirit as he was, not just giving pleasure, but sharing his own. It felt like liquid nitrogen shot straight to the demand already heating in the depths of her pussy.
Her juices began trickling from her core, dampening the inner muscles before spilling the moisture to the swollen outer folds.
His lips moved over hers, his tongue sinking past them, filling her senses with the taste of chocolate and peppermint and a hunger she couldn’t deny herself. One she couldn’t deny him.
Before she could stop them, her hands were buried in his hair, the battle still raging inside her senses to hold on to him, to push him from her, to ensure that nothing risked him. Especially the ghost of the past that she knew she had to face alone.
The kiss, the hunger pouring through her was suddenly absent as his head jerked back. A snarl sounded from his chest, causing her eyes to widen as her lashes jerked open.
“You can’t hide from me, mate, not with a secret as important as your life.” The sound of his voice was animalistic. More animal than man, and with more primal intent than she had ever heard in it before. “You’ll learn, beginning now. You will never attempt something so foolhardy, ever, Gypsy.”
The next kiss locked her soul to his, she swore it did. He burrowed inside her, held her to him, opening her to emotions, to needs, to hungers she had never known existed inside her. That she had never known she even ached for the lack of.
Holding to him, she was only dimly aware of her clothes being all but torn from her. In some cases, seams ripped. A few buttons popped and rolled to the floor.
By the time Gypsy found herself in the bedroom with him, a trail of clothing—hers as well as his—lay behind them.
Naked, the muscular heat of his body wrapped around her as the taste of his kiss intoxicated, overwhelmed and bound her in ways she was certain she would protest later.
And she loved it.
She should hate the loss of control.
She should fight the hold he was securing within her. She would have, except it was the first time in nine years that she had felt really, fundamentally secure in something other than grief.
“God help me,” he groaned, tearing his lips from hers, spreading nipping kisses, the sharp edges of his canines rasping against her neck as she tilted her head to give him easier access.
Shivers worked over her flesh, icy heat striking at her nerve endings before flames began to lick between her thighs. Her clit ached, throbbing in time to the blood pumping through her veins, racing with a hungry excitement that only increased the erotic flow of her juices and the need. A need that sensitized her flesh, that only increased the hold she hadn’t realized he had on her.
Hunger poured through her.
His hunger for her.
Hers for him.
God, where was the line between his senses and hers, what he felt, what she felt?
She couldn’t find it, everything seemed to merge, to blend seamlessly until the pleasure of it was a racking chaos of sensation that she had no hope of escaping.
Demanding and hot, his lips covered a nipple as he carried her from the floor. Lifting her knees to his hips as his erection became trapped between their bodies drove a whimpering moan from her lips. The heavily veined shaft rubbed against her clit, driving her to distraction, making her crazy now to have him take her, to fill her. To experience the pleasure she could feel emanating from him, into her and from her into him.
Blending sensations, a mix of desperate need that invaded her senses, invaded her body until she was ready to fly apart in pleasure as his tongue rasped her nipple a second before a growl of hunger vibrated against her flesh.
Gypsy gripped his hips tighter, lifting herself to him as the broad shaft of his cock rubbed against her clit. That wasn’t the pressure she wanted, dammit. She wanted him inside her.
She was desperate to drive that broad crest between the plump, slick folds of her pussy.
“Oh, it won’t be near so easy,” Rule growled. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you off so easily.”
Let her off? He was killing her with need.
Lifting her from him despite her attempts to stay right where she was, he turned her, pushing her to the bed even as she struggled against him, determined to get the upper hand. A surge of dominance suddenly rushed from him, into her, pulling free a dark, powerful need to just submit, to lift her ass to him and let him do whatever the hell he wanted. If he would just make her come.
Her eyes flared open.
Submit?
A second later she found herself on her stomach, his larger body pressing her to the sheets. Gypsy felt her eyes widen, impressions, sensations, a dark demand drawing a shocked gasp from her lips.
“Oh yes, baby, you know exactly what’s coming now, don’t you?” he crooned before nipping her shoulder erotically. “Before you ever consider taking such action again, you’ll damned sure reconsider it first. I’ll ensure it before you ever leave this bed.”
His hand smoothed over the curve of her ass, callused and heated, a rasping caress that sent tingles of awareness flooding her senses, her juices flooding her vagina.
“I didn’t do anything, Rule,” she protested, desperation or was it pure anticipation engulfing her senses.
Anger, a hint of male trepidation, almost fear, slipped into her senses as she felt the wide, bulbous crest of his cock press between her thighs, parting the slick, swollen folds of her pussy and pressing to the entrance. Sliding through the heavy layer of dew collected there, slickening, preparing to take her as a rumbled half-animal, half-male sound of pleasure shocked her senses.
And she was helpless against him. God, she’d never felt this helpless, this completely dominated, completely secure and immersed in pleasure as she did now.
“What are you doing to me?” Fisting her fingers in the blanket beneath her, she couldn’t help but lift to him, even as she knew exactly what was coming next.
She knew, because she could sense him, feel him, anticipate each move, yet she was helpless to counter any of it. Hell no, all she could do was lift her ass, shift her hips and try to force him deeper inside her.
His fingers parted the curves of her ass, a callused thumb finding that forbidden, far-too-sensitive entrance hidden between the rounded flesh.
“Claiming you.” Guttural, intent, the tone was a primal growl that sent shivers racing along her spine. “Claiming what’s mine, all the way to your soul.”
He wasn’t just claiming her, though. It was far more than claiming. He was dominating her in a way that only a being as intensely protective, as fully primal as a male Breed could be, could claim a woman who had denied the sensual, erotic hungers that plagued her. A woman who had fought far too long for herself and wanted nothing more than to be taken, to submit, for once in her life, to simply exist for the man controlling her senses.
“This won’t work,” she panted, fighting for breath, fighting to separate his hunger from hers, his needs from hers. To find a line, a boundary that would divide the link he was establishing within her soul.
“Think it won’t?” A heavy press of his hips and his cock head breached her vagina further, separating sensitive tissue and clenched muscles as a cry of pure pleasure escaped her lips. “Let’s see if we can’t make it work, mate.”
His hands smoothed along her flanks before the caress was gone. Moving over her, he pressed deeper inside her, the smooth, short strokes of his cock creating a passage for the heavy width of his flesh as the heated stretch of her tissue sent pleasure-pain striking at a deepening well of hunger.
Hard, muscled, his larger body stretched over hers for an instant as he pushed deeper, deeper, filling her, taking her an inch at a time. One burning, lightning-sharp sensation at a time, until he was buried fully inside her.
Seated to the hilt, the taut sac of his testicles pressing into her clit, Rule gave no concession, took no mercy in the erotic combat playing out between them now. The more she tried to sever that steadily evolving link he’d made with her soul, the more firmly entrenched it became.
“Think of this, Gypsy.” His lips seared the tender flesh at the point between neck and shoulder where he’d marked her the night before. “Remember this. If you ever. Ever attempt to steal from me the mate I’ll kill to protect. The mate I’ll betray all others to protect. Remember what the hell you’re stealing from both of us.”
Straightening behind her, she felt him reach for something, knew what he was doing, knew how he would imprint himself in her soul and still, she couldn’t stop him. His touch returned between the narrow cleft of her rear, his thumb, slick now with lubrication, pressed firmly against the tightly clenched entrance there. Rubbing, pressing, exciting nerve endings she’d never known could be so erotically sensitive, he began preparing her.
Without conscious volition, without any attempt to accept and with every intention of rejecting, still, she felt the tightly puckered entrance ease and allow the broad tip of his thumb to enter her slowly.
Gypsy was helpless against the cries that escaped her throat. Helpless against the smooth, stretching burn that parted the snug opening and began stretching it, caressing inside, fueling a hunger she shouldn’t know, shouldn’t feel.
His hips shifted, the wide head of his cock shifting and caressing inside her pussy with such resolute sensual destruction that she nearly orgasmed for him in that second.
That diabolical thumb pressed deeper inside her, pulled back, then slid in again. He took her in a way she couldn’t fight, neither mentally nor emotionally, and that emotional edge was going to destroy her.
Gypsy could feel it rising inside her, a wash of so many emotions—
“No. Please, Rule.” She jerked against him as she felt it coming, felt the breaks in the barriers she’d built over the years as the connection to him began to tighten, to strengthen.
Her head shook as she pressed it into the pillow, her fingers clenching tighter, a band of sensation beginning to tighten in her breast.
“I have you, Gypsy,” he crooned behind her, that wicked, wicked thumb easing back as she felt his cock stroking her internally in a way that had her breath catching in near ecstasy.
A second later, his fingers returned instead.
Parting her buttocks, she felt one ease inside her, stretching her again, filling her as more of the lubrication slicked his way.
He repeated the penetration. Pulling back completely, he returned seconds later, another layer of the slick gel coating her inner, untouched flesh as she panted beneath him. But this time, it wasn’t just one finger, but two. Parting them, stretching the entrance and internal muscles of her anus further, he blazed a path of complete surrender through her senses.
She should tell him no. That was all she had to do.
She could do it, she told herself desperately.
Instead, her hips lifted as his cock pulled free of her, a cry breaking from her throat that shocked her. A sound of such wild hunger, of such need that she couldn’t make sense of it.
What she could make sense of was the fact that once this was finished, he would own her.
Her breath caught, fear edging at the boundary of pleasure . . .
“Oh God. Rule.” She cried out his name as that wide crest of his cock pressed against the tender entrance he’d prepared so carefully.
“That’s it, baby, so sweet and hot,” he groaned as virgin flesh began parting, stretching with such incredible heat that Gypsy found herself trembling in anticipation as the snug, tightly stretched entrance rippled at the intensity of sensation. “So fucking mine.” His teeth were at her shoulder, raking the little mark he’d left there, scraping it with his teeth. “Feel me, Gypsy. Feel me, inside all of you.”
He was inside all of her.
A scream tore from her throat.
Sensation rushed through her like
a firestorm of rich, thick lava. She flooded with not just her pleasure, but his. Bound by not just the velvet emotion he was wrapping around her, but also the tightly woven threads that led from him to her. From her to him.
“Rule, please . . .” she cried out, her voice hoarse as she shuddered at each sensation. The wide, brutal heat of his cock sinking in where she’d never imagined she’d allow a man to take her sent her senses spinning.
It was just as sensual, just as exciting as she heard it could be, with none of the feelings of degradation or repulsive control she’d feared it could hold.
What it held was her submission, and it was complete.
That realization swept over her as the heavy length pushed deeper, the blunt head of his erection easing that tighter, more sensitive ring of muscles deep inside her anus wide enough to take him fully. As the head popped past the last barrier, he buried himself completely inside the tight channel to the hilt before pausing, before letting her know what he had done.
“Rule.” She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t cry.
The sound was rough, the sob that hitched her breath something she hadn’t heard from herself in so many years.
And she was terribly certain she might become scared. There was something about being impaled in such a way, taken with such intimacy that was shattering something inside her.
“I have you, Gypsy.” His lips pressed to that mark and pleasure clenched every muscle further, strained her already ragged defenses. “You held yourself for nine years, baby. Every day, every dark lonely night that I was too fucking stubborn to claim you.” He licked the little wound then and she felt the muscles gripping him suddenly tighten with the wave of sensation that rushed through her senses. “I’m here now, baby. You don’t have to be brave by yourself anymore, Gypsy.”
Brave?
She jerked in his arms, crying out as she felt the final wall between them beginning to fall. His hips moved with easy, powerful movements as he fucked her with such elemental eroticism that it was impossible to fight.
The feel of the broad length of his cock impaling her anus, shuttling back and forth across nerve endings never before stroked in such a way, inflamed her senses.
“I think I don’t want this.” Her fingers clenched tighter on the blankets beneath her as he began moving, small, shallow thrusts that began to heighten each sensation in the heated, oversensitive flesh to the point she had to fight to remember what it was she might not want.
“Sure?” His voice was a croon, heavy, indolent with wicked, sensual intent and primal demand as his thrusts began to lengthen, to increase. “Are you sure you don’t just want this, baby? Are you sure both of us don’t fucking need it?”
His teeth tightened on the mark, his tongue stroking over it, easing any fear, heightening the pleasure, the erotic need pulsing through her.
Following his lead now, her hips lifted to him as he pulled her to her knees, straightening behind her once again, his hands gripping her hips, holding her steady as he began thrusting harder, faster inside her.
Every deep, stretching thrust spilled wave after wave of not just pleasure, but something more, something darker, something so intense, so hot and completely all-consuming that she knew she was lost.
“God yes, Gypsy,” he growled behind her, each stroke pushing her closer, shafting inside her with a heavy intent that Gypsy knew would shatter her.
There was no fighting it.
It was blazing through her senses, taking her, laying waste to trepidation, to fear, to anything but the knowledge that never again would she face the night alone.
“You’re mine.” His lips were at her ear, his voice darker now, deeper as the animal that ruled so many of his senses surged to the surface. “Do you hear me, damn you? Fucking mine.”
And she felt it. The animal, the beast that lurked inside him, that marked her, determined to imprint itself just as deeply inside her as the man had.
Dark. Prone to savagery but controlled by a fierce, ever-deepening honor that guided it within the man. Primitive and primal and he was claiming her.
Her eyes shot open.
Experienced, knowing fingers pushed inside the weeping depths of her pussy, fucking inside her and filling her with more than just the pleasure. More than just the alternate stretching heat of his thrusts between her thighs even as his cock laid claim to her rear.
The added sensations were too much. Too many.
It was too much heat, too many waves of striking, ecstatic bolts of hyperpleasure being hurled through her.
Before Gypsy could counter them, before she could balance herself, she was suddenly flung into the heart of a flame so intense, so rapturous that she swore she felt the brand it left on her soul.
...
He couldn’t hold on much longer.
Rule clenched his teeth as the sweet clench and burn surrounding his cock began to ripple as shudders began racking the delicate body beneath him.
It wasn’t just the physical pleasure, this link his instincts had established with his mate with such suddenness. It was an intensity of pleasure. A knowledge of it. A certainty that though the mating took the choice from her hands, still, that choice had been made before it happened.
It was being inside her, buried in the heated depths of her rear, his fingers stroking and caressing the snug tissue of her pussy as the pad of his palm pressed into her swollen, hypersensitive clit.
It was feeling her explode as her breath caught and a brilliant wash of incredible, engulfing heat blazed through her senses and into his.
Her pleasure merged with his. It became a double-edged sword of such pleasure, such desperate ecstasy, that he wondered if he could possibly survive.
White hot, a surge of energy raced up his spine; as it hit his brain a storm of intense, brilliant sensation began to wash over his body. He had seconds. Another thrust, two . . .
A brutal snarl tore from his lips as he felt the barb extend, bringing his thrusts to an instant halt as the first ejaculation shot from the depths of his balls. Where the thinner, but no less intense ejaculation from the barb originated from, he wasn’t certain. What he was certain of was the pure, undiluted ecstasy of feeling his pleasure riding so close on the heels of hers, even as he felt her knowledge of it and the sensations of his pleasure engulfing her.
A brutal, never-ending circle of rapture.
He’d never heard of it existing with another couple before. To his knowledge, no others had attained this link with their mate.
A mating so deep, so never-ending, that as the final pulses of his release shuddered through his body and she relaxed beneath him, Rule felt his senses sink deeper inside hers.
And felt the wispy tendrils of knowledge as it crept from her subconscious, seeking the warmth of the animalistic senses that were now a part of her.
A vision formed in his mind. A fact, a history, a betrayal so deep, so resolute Rule knew that before the night ended, he would do what he’d ached to do nine years before. Tonight, he would shed the blood of a man, to defend a child whose brother had died to protect her.
The same man who had bought her brother’s death.
Frightened, uncertain,