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by Lora Leigh
“I never imagined you had. So why couldn’t you tell me all this after we mated? Why wait until now?” It would have been easier for her if she’d known at least part of what she was dealing with.
He was silent for long moments, his gaze thoughtful, before he glanced over at her.
“You didn’t hesitate when I told you Rhyzan had filed those papers. You didn’t ask how I knew or demand proof. You followed me. You trusted me. Why?”
“You could have betrayed me at any time over the past six years,” she admitted to herself as well as to him. “You’ve known we were mates, yet you still waited to claim me. You wouldn’t have done that if you were loyal to the Council. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I wanted your trust, simply because I’m your mate,” he finally answered her quietly. “I didn’t want it because I was suddenly more than I seemed. I wanted it, the same way I gave it.”
The same way he gave it.
And he had given it. Any other Breed would have been enraged with her father when he overheard that conversation, but Dog had known a strike against Cassie’s father would have destroyed her. And a strike against Rhyzan would have forced her father to defend the other man.
For six years, Dog had done everything she’d asked of him, no matter how difficult, and often the payment was such a blatant effort to draw her interest that she couldn’t help but agree to it.
Sunbathing in a bikini that had her parents scolding her for weeks when they caught her on the roof of the house in it. A scarf she had worn to a party left behind. Once he’d demanded that she merely talk to him for several hours on a secure sat phone he’d left for her. She’d been up half the night on that damned sat phone, listening to his voice, laughing at his often ribald humor.
“If I hadn’t trusted you, I wouldn’t have played that asinine game with you for six years and I damned sure wouldn’t have met you at the hotel,” she told him quietly as the Dragoon took a fast turn from the highway onto private land. “But that doesn’t mean I trust you with anything other than my life, Dog. And keeping more secrets, keeping me in the dark about what’s going on now, will only make it harder for me.”
He slowed as a sprawling ranch house materialized from the darkness and the wide door of a garage slowly opened. The Dragoon shot inside and shut off.
“Come on, in the house. That heli-jet is only a minute or so away working in a sweep pattern, and Mutt and Mongrel need to cool the vehicles down in a hurry.” She scooted across the console and took his hand, jumping from the vehicle and hurrying behind him as the two Coyotes worked to quickly pull the heat-masking covers over the Dragoons.
Damn Rhyzan.
Whatever his problem was, it was beginning to piss her off. God help him if she got access to the secure Mating Statutes again. Because if she wasn’t mistaken, there was definitely a way to turn the tables on him and ensure the Breed Ruling Cabinet clarified that little Reconsideration Petition.
Then she was going to make his life hell.
• • •
Dog couldn’t explain exactly what he was feeling, or what the hell it was that softened in his chest the moment Cassie had followed him without question. She hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t balked once. She hadn’t demanded to call her father or Jonas; she’d trusted her mate.
She’d had no reason to trust him, not really. Six years of messages and infrequent calls whenever she needed something wasn’t a friendship; it wasn’t a relationship. It was all that had kept him sane, though. From the moment his lips had brushed hers in that damned hospital after he’d been forced to wound her on Seth Lawrence’s island, no more than a whisper against petal-soft lips, he’d lived in hell.
Whoever thought Coyotes had it easier with Mating Heat had obviously not been talking to the males. It was ice in his gut, a chill that went to the bone, a need for his mate’s warmth that felt like talons raking beneath his flesh. Until he was close to her.
The simplest touch, his hand against her back, the warmth of her sinking into his palm through her clothes, and he was warm. Being near her would have been enough, but touching her, sharing her kiss, her lips on his flesh, his against hers … it was like life itself.
As he showed her through the single-story home, then led her to the master bedroom, he could see the weariness in her pale features, the worry in her pretty blue eyes. And the hunger. The scent of her need was like a drug hitting his senses and spurring his own.
“I need to check with Mutt and Mongrel before we turn in for the night.” He cleared his throat as she turned to look at him, her expression somber. “I won’t be long.”
Dammit, emotions weren’t his strong suit, and he was damned if he knew how to handle them.
“That works.” She nodded as she sat down in the chair positioned close to the bed and began unlacing her boots. “I didn’t pack anything to sleep in.”
“Grab a shirt from my pack. I have extras in there,” he told her. “I shouldn’t be too long, but I need to keep up with Rhyzan’s movements for a while.”
“I just want to go back to sleep anyway.” She sighed. “Rhyzan’s little meeting woke me up.”
The sexual excess earlier with her mate had exhausted her. Dragging her ass out of the bed when the chime of the doorbell sounded had been almost impossible. Now that she was coming down from the adrenaline caused her by her anger and then their flight, that weariness was washing over her once again.
She undressed quickly after he left the room, then pulled a T-shirt free of Dog’s pack as he’d offered. It almost swallowed her smaller frame, but it beat being naked.
She brushed her teeth, washed her face and, taking a deep breath, returned to the bedroom. A silent, empty bedroom. Pulling down the blankets, she slid into the bed and turned off the lamp next to the bed.
She wished there was an electric blanket. She was cold and alone. And far too uncertain about the Breed she had accepted as her mate. Or the future awaiting them now.
• CHAPTER 10 •
She hadn’t marked her mate.
That thought penetrated her sleep, filled her mind as she felt Dog slide into the bed beside her, his powerful body warm as he pulled her against him. She hadn’t known how chilled she felt until he wrapped around her, or how aroused until she felt his hardened shaft against her belly.
“Hmm, you’re warm,” she whispered, caressing his chest with her hand as she slid her leg along his.
“So are you.” Amusement rumbled in his voice, but she could sense the disquiet beneath.
“Ever’thing okay?” She pressed a kiss to his chest, feeling the muscles tighten beneath his flesh.
His hand slid along her back to her buttocks, calloused flesh rasping her skin and awakening pleasure centers beneath her skin that fed the arousal already beginning to burn.
“It is now.” He groaned as her tongue licked over a flat, hard nipple.
One hand tightened in her hair, tugging at the strands sensually as she rasped the small disc with her teeth.
She pushed against his shoulder, a lazy sensuality taking hold of her. It was unlike anything she’d experienced so far with him. It was deeper, overtaking her, but without the imperative race for fulfillment. It was wild, hungry, but with a need to relish every taste, every nuance of touch.
“What do you need, little halfling?” he whispered, turning to his back as she lifted herself next to him, her head lifting and lowering to his.
“My mate.” Her lips brushed against his, then her tongue. “All of him.”
“Then take him. I dare you.” His lips parted, taking her tongue as it slipped against him, his lips closing on it, suckling at it for brief seconds before giving her his in return.
The kiss was slow, deep. His taste and hers merging through her senses as the mating hormone began to infuse the pleasure they shared.
When she pulled back, her lips slid down his neck, nipping at the tough skin over his jugular, licking his Adam’s apple and then laving a path back to
his chest. Her hands stroked over his shoulders, his sides. The need to touch as well as taste, to pleasure as well as take, folding over her like an erotic storm.
Dog stared down at her in wonder, the scent of her pleasure overwhelming him. It wasn’t the pleasure he’d sensed from her before. This was both wilder and lazier, her pleasure drawing from his as she kissed and stroked her way slowly to the engorged length of his cock.
His fingers tightened in her hair as he bit off a ragged groan and restrained the need to push her to her back and come over her, to give her the same pleasure she was giving him. At the same time he just wanted to lie there and soak in the sleepy need and rising emotions he sensed beginning to flow from her.
He hadn’t sensed this before. This ebb and flow of emotions, both fierce and gentle, like the woman herself. And never before had he sensed both the woman and the animal instincts she possessed reaching out to him as they were now.
Lowering his hands to the sheets beneath him, he clenched his fingers in the material and eased the control he kept on the inner beast fighting to rise to meet her hunger. Just a little, he told himself. He could sense the creature she hid as well reaching out, searching, and he knew what it sought. That connection on a level never known before.
Breed to Breed, mate to mate, man to woman. Animal to animal. That dark core of a Breed’s soul where the animal waited, watched, content to lounge until needed. Or when called free by its mate.
As he let those instincts free, he felt hers leap, surge closer. Suddenly, his skin was more sensitive, his cock harder if possible, throbbing desperately to bury inside her.
He could feel her pleasure mounting as well, the scent of it infusing the air, merging with his own. And when her tongue swiped over the head of his cock, it was pure, undiluted rapture.
The growl that tore from him was met with a feminine one of her own. Her hands stroked along his abdomen to his thighs, her lips parted over his cock head, sucked it inside the wet heat, only to release it moments later.
His thighs tightened, his lips pulling back in a snarl of denial, then one of pure pleasure as she licked her way down the shaft to his balls. There, she laved, played, kissed and sucked at the sensitive flesh until the need for her was agony.
“Oh hell, Cassie,” he groaned as she licked her way up his hard flesh again. “That hot little tongue is going to make me insane.”
She rolled it over the engorged crest, licking free the pulse of pre-cum before drawing the head into her mouth again.
As her lips lifted seconds later, he had to restrain the need to force her mouth back.
“I love how you taste,” she sighed against the sensitive skin of the crest. “The feel of you taking my mouth, taking my pussy.”
His enter body jerked at the sensual whisper. Ah fuck yeah, he loved hearing her talk dirty.
“And I love fucking your mouth and pussy,” he groaned, staring down at her as her mouth covered him again, sucking him deep, tongue lashing at the underside and straining his control.
“Fuck. I’m going to come in your mouth.” His voice was a tortured rasp.
She released him then, rising beside him before she shocked him, blew his mind as she threw her leg over his hips. Reaching down he gripped the shaft and lined it up with her slick inner lips. Rubbing it in the sensitive slit as a whimpering gasp fell from her mouth.
“Are you gonna ride me, baby?” He tucked the wide crest at the opening to her body and felt the hormonal pre-cum pulse from the head to the ultra-snug channel awaiting him. “Take what’s yours.”
She pressed into the penetration, moaning as the crest began stretching her, parting and exciting the slick inner muscles as he felt them close over the tip of his cock.
“Fuck. So sweet and tight. Go ahead, baby, take my dick.”
A cry whispered from her lips as her hips jerked, taking more of him. With each increment she forced inside her, the pulse of the hormone filled her, easing the muscles, sensitizing them, making her pleasure hotter, brighter, as it sensitized his own flesh.
She was tighter than a fist wrapped around the head of his cock. Her hips rocked, shifted, lifted, then lowered again, working him inside her until Dog was sure he’d die from the incredible pleasure. It was like sinking into the center of an ecstasy so pure he could feel it against his skin, taste it against his tongue.
His hands jerked from the sheet to her hips, gripping them as he felt her trembling above him.
“Scared, baby?” he whispered up at her as her head tossed, her hands suddenly gripping his wrists as she levered herself straighter, her hips rocking against his. “You’re so fucking tight. It’s pleasure and pain at once.”
Her juices spilled along the head lodged inside her as another harder, fuller pulse of his pre-cum ejaculated inside her. Her muscles clenched and rippled, tightening on him and sucking his erection deeper inside her.
“Harder, baby,” he groaned. “Work yourself on my cock harder. Take it. Let me hear you cry for it.”
She was trying to restrain her cries as well as the hunger building inside her.
“Let the fuck go,” he snarled up at her. “Damn you, don’t you pull back now.”
Levering his upper body up, he caught a hard nipple in his mouth, sucked it in deep, hard. His mouth closed around it, tongue lashing at it as she froze for one timeless second.
Then, the wild, inner core of her jerked free of her control, surged inside her. Her hips bucked, one hand locked in his hair, bearing down, taking him deeper, deeper …
Ah fuck. He was buried full length inside her, throbbing, her grip on his cock so tight several ejaculations of the hormone filled her one after the other. He released her breast and his back hit the bed, hips arching as he forced his eyes to stay open, just to watch her.
Her cries washed over him. Straightening, she tipped her head back and began to move, rocking, lifting and falling as her hair caressed his thighs, licked over his balls. His fantasy come to life, his wild little halfling riding him as those sensual curls teased his flesh with the lightest touch.
It was the most erotic experience, the most sensual pleasure, he’d ever known in his life, and he wanted nothing more than to hold her there forever. Just let the world recede and do nothing but spend his life buried in the heat and acceptance this one woman wrapped him in.
But the world wouldn’t recede, and as her flesh milked and stroked over his cock, the pleasure tightened, rose, began straining at his senses with the need to come. His teeth clenched, hips arched to her, a growl rumbling in his chest.
Then he felt her stiffen, felt her losing her breath. Gripping her hips, he gave her what she needed, moving beneath her, thrusting hard and deep inside her as he felt her unraveling. Her pussy locked around his shuttling cock, so fucking tight, rippling, sucking at his erection as her orgasm exploded through her.
The intensity of her release, the pleasure whipping through him, sent his own senses exploding, his seed shooting inside her as he felt his cock swell halfway up the shaft, locking him inside as his release gained momentum and he swore took the top of his head off.
Son of a bitch …
It was like fucking dying in ecstasy. He heard her cries echoing around him, felt her collapse against him, and all he could do was hold her to him as his hips jerked between her thighs, each ejaculation milking him dry.
When it was over, he had to fight to breathe. His breaths were sawing from his chest, his teeth locked in her shoulder, and hers locked at his chest.
He could feel her canines piercing his flesh, her tongue spilling the heat of her mating hormone to the small wounds, marking him as no other woman ever could.
She was marking him.
The primal satisfaction that raced through him was nearly as heady as the physical release. She was his. Completely, irrevocably. God help the man or Breed who thought he’d steal her from his arms.
• • •
The room was still dark when Cassie found herself suddenly awa
ke. She lay against Dog’s side, his arm beneath her head and his body curved over her, holding her to him. Her hand laying at his heart, his covering it. And he was sleeping. Funny, but in the time they’d spent together, she’d only known him to nap.
Frowning, she blinked, lifted her gaze, then froze.
At first, she thought she had to be dreaming. In all the years she’d watched spirits walk around her, she’d never had an occasion to actually have a male visit her. And he was definitely a spirit. Tall, broad, so obviously Dog’s father given the fact that they shared the same features, the same coloring.
The spirit stood, military straight, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression curiously gentle despite the savage cast of his features. He was dressed in military fatigues, the shirt stained with blood. His blood if the torn cloth at the chest was any indication.
He laughed when he was boy, the spirit said softly, the voice filled with regret.> He had a coyote pup that would come out of its mother’s den and play with him. His laughter always reminded me of his mother.
Pain flickered across those hard features, and though he spoke to her, he never took his gaze from Dog.
I lost her, in childbirth. He glanced at her, but only for a second. She was too weak, from the damage to her body days before, when they’d found us again, to survive it. As she held our baby, she slipped from me.
Cassie didn’t speak; she didn’t think he expected her to speak.
He was ten when they found me. I’d left him in the mountains while I went for supplies. He looked at his chest and sighed before looking at Dog once again. I’d tried to train him to survive in case I didn’t return at some point, but ten is so very young for a child to be left alone. Even one trained to survive.
Ten was far too young, she agreed silently.
I swore to his mother I would always watch over him, so she could go peacefully to the other side. That I wouldn’t desert him until his mate found him, as mine found me. A thread of amusement touched his whispery voice. He’s a stubborn boy. Getting him to that island and getting him into place so I could draw you to the balcony that day took considerable effort, you know?