by Lora Leigh
“And a wonder you haven’t loaned her the gun,” Del-Rey sneered. “I’m getting sick of battling you over her. You’re not her brother.”
Brim’s lips quirked. “I think she rather needs a brother. Perhaps I’ll petition the tribunal for adoption. Someone needs to see beyond their own wants where this woman is concerned.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that Del-Rey was damned certain Brim was seriously brotherly rather than in lust with Anya, then he would have taken him out years ago. They had been fighting over Anya since she first showed up in that damned bar, and the confrontations had only grown more frequent over the past eight months.
“I’m losing patience with this, Brim,” he warned him.
“Try being honest with her then.” Brim crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at Del-Rey. He was possibly the only man in the world who could get away with it. “You should have been honest with her from the beginning.”
“Oh yeah, I should have told a sixteen-year-old virgin I intended to fuck the hell out of her after she grew up, and that I was going to shoot her father and cousins for the hell of it because they allowed her to endanger herself. Now, wouldn’t that have just inspired confidence in me? We’d have really managed to get her and those Breeds she protected out of that underground facility, wouldn’t we, Brim?”
This argument had played out for nearly seven years now. For some reason Brim had all but adopted Anya since the moment he saw her. There was no lust, there was concern. And Brim rarely concerned himself with others besides Del-Rey. They had been fighting together since they were kids. They had been created in the same labs and plotted to escape them since they first understood they were prisoners and expected to kill.
Five, Del-Rey realized. Brim had been five and Del-Rey had been ten when they first began planning. Brim had been fifteen and he twenty, and both were hardened killers, before they’d managed it. That had been nearly sixteen years ago, and until Anya, Brim had never questioned Del-Rey’s plots and schemes.
“You should have warned her before you shot her father about what you had to do.” Brim repeated his years-old refrain. “All you had to do was tell her that if you didn’t do it, it would endanger their lives. She would have understood that. You didn’t have to shell-shock her.”
“Well fuck, let’s just get our little time machine and go back and fix it,” Del-Rey sneered.
Brim grimaced.
“Where the fuck is my mate, Lieutenant?”
Brim sighed. “She’s asleep in the lounge. She just went to sleep less than an hour ago, Del-Rey. She’s worried herself sick about you while you were out there. She already looks like she hasn’t slept in months. Leave her the hell alone for a while.”
That was it.
Del-Rey’s hand snapped out, wrapped around Brim’s throat and applied just enough pressure to assure the other man he was dead serious now.
Brim’s gaze flickered.
“We haven’t fought since you were fifteen years old and you decided you could take me and the alpha position in my pack. Do you want to try me again?”
Brim stared back at him for long, tense moments before he sighed. “I swore loyalty to you. I won’t go back on it.”
Del-Rey’s gripped slackened. “Don’t get between me and Anya, Brim. I swore when we returned I’d deal more fairly with her. Accept that, and let’s put this behind us.”
“When she accepts it.” Brim shrugged. “Until then, you’re stuck with my shit.”
Del-Rey almost grinned before shaking his head at the mess he had made for himself.
“I’m going to take my coya to her room. You will tell her bodyguards, you will inform every soldier in this base, that any order she gives that would give her access outside this base is to go through me first. Are we understood?”
Brim grimaced. “Wrong move.”
“Are we understood?” he repeated.
“Of course, Alpha Delgado,” Brim finally replied mockingly. “I understand English very well.”
Mocking son of a bitch Coyote, Del-Rey thought fondly.
“We brought back a prisoner,” he told Brim then. “He needs transport to Haven. We haven’t finished the detainment cells here yet and I don’t want to risk him escaping. See if you can find some secure communication with Haven and let them know that we’re bringing him in. Tell them I want to be involved in the interrogation.”
Brim nodded and turned away to do that as Del-Rey moved toward the lounge. The door was closed; the interior was sound-proofed for meetings when needed, that was the reason he hadn’t caught her scent when he stepped into Command.
She was curled into the corner of the couch sleeping. A small blanket was wrapped around her, and she appeared chilled. He wondered if she got as cold as he sometimes did. There were nights the cold went clear to his bones, the need to wrap himself around her warmth eating at his insides.
It wasn’t all sexual. He’d had six years to form the bond he had with this woman, letting it go was impossible.
He should have known when he first realized he was claiming her for his own that games wouldn’t work with her. She was too damned sharp, and too easily hurt by them. She didn’t see the cunning manipulations as he did. She didn’t play those games that other women caught on to so easily. She, quite simply, was just Anya. Unlike any other woman, unlike anything he had known in his entire life.
He moved to the couch and hunkered in front of her, staring into her sleeping face. Hell, she looked sixteen rather than twenty-two. Her looks hadn’t changed much in the years since he had first met her. She still had that innocent curve to her soft lips, that impish tilt to her red gold brows.
She liked to tease, and she liked to play. Sharone had sent video after video of his mate over the months. Catching her in a snowball fight with Ashley, recordings of the three women sparring in the gym as they trained her to fight. She laughed with them. She used to try to laugh with him.
Hell, Brim should have shot him as soon as he realized what Del-Rey was doing. He’d have deserved it.
Moving carefully, he slid his arms beneath her knees and around her back before lifting her against his chest. She’d had coffee; if she woke up, she was going to go ballistic on him. He hoped she slept for a while longer. A whole lot longer, if he was lucky. But she wasn’t sleeping on this couch in the command lounge. She had a bed. Two actually, his and hers. If she needed to sleep, then she could do so in comfort.
As he moved from the lounge, she cuddled closer, her cold little nose burying itself against his neck as a little shiver worked over her.
She was cold. A surge of possessiveness shot through him at the realization. The caverns weren’t cold. They were a comfortable seventy-one degrees almost all year long. If by chance any part of them grew chillier, then there were heating units in place to take care of that.
He held her closer as he moved through the stone- and steel-reinforced tunnels to their quarters. Her bed had been turned down for her, he knew, the lights left low, but he was damned if he wanted to put her in her own bed.
He wondered if it were possible that she would sleep through him putting her in his bed. He was more than willing to leave her dressed, though he wasn’t as sacrificing where his own clothes were concerned. Tucking her against his naked body would tickle the hell out of him.
It was worth trying. Better to fight it out with her now than to try to seduce her there in a week or so. Maybe he just needed to put his foot down a bit. He’d never done that with her. Never given her boundaries other than that of not allowing her father on Haven or Base without his presence.
She had simply forgone seeing her family rather than do it in front of him.
He frowned darkly as he entered his own room.
Or had she forgone seeing them?
He glanced down at her. Dammit, he had stated she couldn’t see them at Haven or on Base without his presence. He was betting money she had seen them somewhere else. Why the hell hadn’t he considered that l
oophole? Anya would not have gone this long without seeing her family, even if it meant dealing with him.
Cunning, conniving little imp. How had he been so wrong about her? And he knew clearly that he obviously was. Anya was stubborn as hell, but she loved her family with a devotion he was frankly jealous of.
He knew clear to the bottom of his gut that she had met them somewhere else. No doubt with her bodyguards’ full endorsement. He was going to have to do something about the damned women running roughshod over him on his own base. His coya. That flighty little genius Ashley that so loved playing the dumb blonde. The too quirky Sharone and the quiet, manipulating little Emma. Hell, he hoped the Felines managed to temper some of that shit in the younger twins they were fostering.
Shaking his head, he settled his mate carefully on his own turned-down bed and eased the little blanket she had tried to use for warmth away from her as he lifted the sheet and comforter over her. He didn’t bother with the lights. He stripped to his skin, slid in beside her and eased her into his arms.
He almost groaned at the warmth of her body against his own chilled flesh. The way she settled in against him, mumbling, grumbling a bit with charming feminine irritation until she was as close to him as she could get, her nose buried against his shoulder, her rounded body tucked into his until he could feel her warmth seeping into him.
His eyes closed as emotion threatened to swamp him. Fuck, he didn’t deal with emotion. It wasn’t his damned strong suit. In the labs he’d been created and trained within, he’d learned to let no one but Brim know his weaknesses. To let nothing touch himself. To never feel regret. To never know possessiveness. They were lessons that had been taught to him in the most exacting of ways. Lessons he had adapted to, too easily at too young an age, supposedly due to his Coyote genetics.
They had rushed in on him the first time he had seen this fragile young woman though. Gently rounded, she wasn’t exactly slender. She was a nice handful for a man. Some might have accused her of being a little heavy. But she was perfect for him. With her rounded little rear, her plump breasts and silky thighs. He could hold on to Anya. She wasn’t skin and bones, nor was she muscular and hard. She was just soft. Soft and warm. And she was his.
He let his hand smooth down her hair with the lightest touch as he ignored the heavy, desperate throb of his cock. He had learned how to push that pain back over the months. It wasn’t easy, but being able to hold her, being able to warm the ice that often tormented his insides, was worth it.
For the first time in over eight months, Del-Rey felt warm. He wasn’t willing to give that up. Yes, he was going to have to put his foot down. She would sleep here, or he would sleep in her bed. Sleep. Hold her. He couldn’t demand anything more. He wouldn’t demand more. But by God, this he was determined to demand.
CHAPTER 6
She was warm. So warm she felt toasty and relaxed all over. Well, almost relaxed all over. There was that pesky arousal she couldn’t seem to get rid of in the past months. The dampness between her thighs, the ache in her clit, hard nipples.
And she had worn her bra to bed for some damned reason. She hated wearing a bra to bed. She would wake up enough to take it off, but that would mean pulling out of the pocket of warmth she had managed to find, and she wasn’t willing to do that.
She shifted closer, and realized she had to be dreaming again. Because it wasn’t a furnace she was hugging, it was a hard, clearly aroused male body.
Her lips tilted at the corners. She must be surely desperate to be dreaming this well. She hadn’t dreamed like this in, well, days maybe. But she had never been warm in those dreams. She had been cold and frightened, confused and begging him to help her. To warm her, while he stared at her in confusion.
Del-Rey.
She still had moments when she was amazed that such an incredible creation had ever touched plain, plump little Anya Kobrin. Her father had always told her she was mother material, and that one day she would find a good man that would appreciate that in her. The men she knew went for the tall, slender, beautiful women. Not the short, plump ones like her.
But from the moment she had first met Del-Rey, when she was around him, she didn’t feel plump or plain. She had felt excited and warm, tingling all over. At sixteen she had had her first seriously sexual dream, and they hadn’t stopped.
So yes, this was definitely a seriously whacked dream, because Del-Rey wouldn’t be holding her. He hadn’t held her after he’d had sex with her that first and only time, and he wouldn’t be merely holding her now to keep her warm. Not with that erection she could feel pressing between her clenched thighs.
He was just as large as she remembered, she thought with sleepy wonder. So thick and heavy. She’d felt every rasp of every bulging vein in that wide shaft as it pushed inside her that night. The pleasure/pain of it had been nearly more than she could stand. The shocking events that came later, though, had nearly thrown her into a catatonic shock.
He had been large already, but as he’d begun releasing inside her, another secondary swelling had grown in the middle of that hot, hard cock. He had knotted her. Animal genetics had kicked in like a bitch—that’s how Dr. Armani had explained it.
It was part of the mating heat. Part of the changes that occurred in both male and female once mating occurred. It was something the world wasn’t aware of, and something Anya knew wouldn’t help the Breeds if it were known.
She let herself touch him. She was asleep, and this was her dream. She liked this dream better than most too, because she could feel the warmth of his body. She could pet him as she wanted to.
Wouldn’t the big, tough Coyote Breed alpha be shocked to know that she longed to pet him? Even when she had hated him the most, she had been on the verge of begging him to just let her touch him, let her share the warmth of his body.
Her hand smoothed over his shoulder, his biceps. Timid fingers tested the hard muscles beneath tough flesh. She stroked down his arm as it lay over her hips. She let her nails scrape over his skin, enjoying the ripple of response beneath her touch.
Okay, that was a new sensation in her little dreamscape. She didn’t normally feel that.
Beneath her lips, more warmth beckoned. The taste of salty male flesh met her tongue as she licked over a hard pectoral muscle. A response rippled there as well, tightened beneath her tongue. She liked that. This dream was incredibly more satisfying than any other.
She thought perhaps she heard a groan or a growl, and filed it away to think about later. Would he growl when she touched him? She doubted it. He hadn’t wanted her touch before, just her kiss. He hadn’t wanted foreplay or warmth, just the main event.
She pouted at the thought, and for damages ensued over the months, she nipped at his flesh, just to be contrary. Her dream lover would love that little nip.
And he did. He definitely growled. A sound of rough pleasure as his arms tightened around her and his cock twitched between her thighs.
That hard flesh was pressed against her sex, heating it as his hips moved, pressing it deeper between the notch of her thighs. He hadn’t bothered with just pressing against her belly. Nope, the dream Del-Rey was just as arrogant as the one she knew when she was awake. He had just gone ahead and pushed between her legs as though it were his right.
Arrogant Coyote.
Sometimes, she liked that arrogance a little too much. She didn’t like admitting it. She intended to take that secret to the grave with her, because she didn’t care what her father said to excuse Del-Rey’s actions, she wasn’t willing to excuse his lack of trust in her.
She had trusted him. He should have trusted her.
And he should have cuddled her after fucking her, it was just that simple, rather than mounting her like he’d bought her off the streets and couldn’t bear looking her in the face.
She nipped at him again for being so damned inconsiderate.
Her dream. Nips allowed.
But then she licked over the little bite and moaned at the taste
of him. God she loved his taste. She wanted to taste all of him, from his lips to his thighs and all parts in between.
She wanted to feel the heavy heat of his erection between her lips, she wanted to lick the broad head, wanted to taste the hot essence of the man. She wanted him until she was burning for it.
A distant corner of her mind was warning her to beware, that this dream was too intense, too rich with sensation. But she didn’t want to wake up yet.
Her hands petted his arm, then traveled to his hard waist and hips. He was just so damned hard all over, and so warm.
She let her thighs clamp on the erection between them, creating a friction and pressure against her clit as she heard a muttered curse above her. She smiled at the sound. His voice was very husky, very rumbling and primal. She liked it. She wanted to hear more of it.
Later.
First, she wanted her kiss. She had longed for his kiss for so many months. Sometimes she swore she could almost taste the spicy hot wickedness of it in her mouth. Sometimes she swore she was still in heat, though Dr. Armani assured her that her hormone issues were stable.
“Kiss me,” she ordered him. It was an order, a command. She wanted to be kissed and she wanted it now. And he’d better comply. Her dream. Her kiss. It was time the coya got her due.
Del-Rey knew he was going to die. He was going to go up in flames right there in that damned bed and go to hell for every sin he’d ever committed. And kissing her would send him there.
He arched his neck back from her inquisitive little lips. No kisses. But damned that order to give it to her had sent a punch of lust slamming into his gut. She’d sounded commanding, hot. Fuck, he was so perverted. He could see his wild little coya straddling him, on her knees, demanding his cock. Instead of Kiss me, she’d order Fuck me.
He was so close to panting it was fucking pathetic.
He let one hand tangle in the red gold curls of her hair as he held her in place. No damned way he was pushing her away from him, but if he kissed her now, he was likely to find himself in front of the Breed tribunal again.
No kisses, Dr. Armani had warned him months ago. Not without Anya’s permission. And he was sure the good doctor didn’t mean her sleeping approval. The hormonal aphrodisiac in the glands of his tongue was like a damned erotic TNT. He knew. Been there, kissed her and burned in the flames.
Kissing her was only going to make it worse.
But God help him, he ached to kiss her. To sink his swollen tongue into the hot depths of her mouth and feel her sucking that hormone into herself. Then, he wanted her lips lower. Sucking his dick with the same hunger she was reaching for his kiss with now.
He sure as hell wasn’t cold now though. He was burning from the inside out, so fucking desperate for the taste of her that he wondered if he could actually hold out.
“Kiss me.” Her voice deepened, sexy and rough, that hint of command causing his hips to jerk against her, burying his cock deeper between her thighs.
“Anya.” His hand tightened in her hair. “No kisses.”
Cunning, manipulation, calculation. He was a Coyote, that was what he was good at.
He pulled her head back, staring into the dazed features of her face, the drowsy sensuality. She moaned, a lost little sound that tore into his soul.
“One kiss,” she whispered.
“Anya. Wake up.” His voice was such a hard growl it surprised him. “I won’t go before another tribunal for tricking you.”
Her lashes fluttered open; her blue eyes were darker, sexier. She looked tousled and ready to be fucked. He was sure as hell ready to fuck her.
“Wake up, Anya.” He glared down at her. “The next time I kiss you, it will only be because you know what’s coming. I will not stand before another tribunal and be flayed for taking what’s mine.”
Awareness shifted into her eyes. Heat rushed into her cheeks, staining them a perfect pretty pink as he watched realization transform her features.
“Oh my God. It’s not another dream.” She stiffened, her fingers curled against his shoulders, and Del-Rey knew what was coming.
Anya was out of the bed as quickly as she could untangle her legs from his and tear herself out of his grip. She stumbled at the side of the bed, fighting to get her weak legs beneath her as she stared back at Del-Rey in horror.
She was in his bedroom. In his bed.
“How did I get here?” She heard the squeak in her voice as he shifted lazily and lifted himself on an elbow.
“Your pussy is so wet those thin little pants are damp,” he growled. “Fuck, Anya. I can see it.”
Outraged horror exploded inside her as she looked down, seeing the faintest of dark prints against the light gray material where his cock had rubbed her pants against her sex. She hadn’t worn panties. Why hadn’t she worn panties again? Oh yeah, they had rasped her engorged clit and irritated her.
“Why am I in your bedroom rather than my own?” she snapped back at him.
He grinned slowly. “Sleepwalking? My, my, Anya, trying to accost me in my sleep? Should I protest this myself in front of the tribunal?”
She started to shake. She had actually done that a time or two. Gone to sleep in her bed and awoken in Del-Rey’s. Just a few times though. And never had he been in it.
She shook her head, feeling herself pale. “I did this?” she whispered, shuddering at the knowledge that she could have set herself up like this.
His brows lifted as he grinned again. “Actually, I carried you here from the lounge and tucked you in myself. You sleep deep, baby. I could have had you fucked and knotted before you knew what happened to you.”
Oh shit.
Anya swallowed tightly. He had carried her from the lounge and put her in his bed. And this was what had happened the first chance she’d had to forget what a lying snake he was.
“You bastard!”
“Yeah? So?” He smirked. “We’ve established this already, haven’t we? Are you going to start throwing things now?”
He was laughing at her. Daring to laugh at her because he had done this to her. This, made her sleep with him. But she remembered the dream clearly. She knew who had started touching first and who had been demanding. It hadn’t been him. It had been her crawling all over him like a bitch in heat.
Heat. The mating heat. She threw him a contemptuous stare before rushing across the room and throwing open the door to her own bedroom.
Was comm still down?
She picked up the secured landline at the side of her bed and stabbed her finger into the button to connect to Command.
“Yes, Coya?” Brim was still there.
“Is comm up?” She was breathing hard, heavy. She felt on the verge of panic. On the verge of rushing back to him and demanding he give her that damned kiss.
“Not yet. We’re still awaiting Del-Rey and Jonas Wyatt from the Bureau of Breed Affairs to go over the diagnostics on the electronics that were found with the hunters. Is anything wrong?”