by Lora Leigh
kiss.
She hadn’t believed a kiss could be sexy, that it could fire the senses and pull her deeper into her arousal.
Until this kiss.
Creed’s head lowered, the thunderous gray of his eyes ensnaring her gaze as she felt a heavy, sensual lassitude overtake her. Her lips parted involuntarily, her lashes fluttered as she fought to keep them open, and her heart began to race in heavy, erotic excitement as the finger at her clit exerted just the slightest pressure at the moment his lips brushed against hers.
The touch, though oh so subtle, was like heat lightning. A small gasp escaped her lips, giving him the perfect invitation to more fully lower his head and take possession in a way no other man ever had.
Confidently, teasingly.
With his tongue, he traced the curve of her lower lip, then drew it between his teeth, worrying it with sensual precision; after one last small nip, he bestowed a flicking lick that had her lifting closer to him.
Between her thighs his index finger stroked, pressed, subtle in its destruction and sexual favors.
Kita could feel herself shaking, trembling. There was such a sense of need, of hunger rising inside her, she wondered she wasn’t crying out from it.
She wanted his kiss.
A full, seductive, melting, lust-arousing kiss that would burn her to the tips of her toes.
She had read about it.
She had dreamed about it.
She had sensed it had to be out there. After all, where there was smoke, there was surely fire, and even teenagers swore they had experienced the perfect kiss.
One that was primal.
One filled with hunger.
A kiss they couldn’t resist.
In that second, his lips covered hers. Parting the desperate curves, his tongue slipped inside in a teasing kiss against hers, retreated and came back, as her arms lifted to twine around his neck and hold him to her.
His kiss became deeper still, and as a hungry growl vibrated against her lips and the arm slipping around her back tightened, Kita finally found that kiss she could lose herself within.
A subtle hint of cinnamon met her taste buds as his tongue licked at hers once again, his lips stealing her senses and her control. This time, this kiss, was that intimate stroke of fire and ice, lightning flaring through her senses, heat wrapping around her body. It was everything she had ever heard a kiss should be.
His arm wrapped around her, strong and warm, so strong. There was no breaking that grip. There was no way she wanted it broken.
Tightening her arms around his neck, she tilted her hips, pressing the hardened bud of her clit more firmly into his fingers as she felt him pushing her tighter against the door.
This should have happened sooner, she thought distantly. She would have never run if she had known she was running away from this.
The deep drugging kisses burned like fire in her soul, obliterating any thought of protest, any need to protest. Sensation traveled through her nerve endings, exciting them as nothing in her life had before. Before Kita realized she was moving, she was rubbing against him, desperate to get his fingers lower, to fill the emptiness inside her.
Nothing mattered but getting closer to him, to fulfilling the promises he made with his lips, with his tongue, with the hungry inhuman rumble of a growl that vibrated in his chest.
That sound was a warning, and one she chose not to heed. To heed it would be to pull herself away from him. It would mean relinquishing the warmth and the tidal wave of sensations he’d unleashed within her.
“Kita.” Marked. Hungry. That sound sent a shiver racing through her nerve endings.
Digging her nails into the material of his shirt, she was on her tiptoes, arching into him. Feeling his cock pressing against her abdomen, she tried to get ever closer, his fingers curving, pressing lower, rimming the clenched opening of her pussy as she gasped and tried to draw more of the luscious, rich taste of his kiss to his tongue.
“Kita.” The hard, dark groan as he pulled back from the kiss drew a protesting cry from her lips.
Struggling to open her eyes, she stared up at him, her breathing hard and rough as she swore she could still taste him. She ran her tongue over the lower curve of his lip, almost moaning at the heated taste of cinnamon and spice to be found there.
Then the breath whooshed from her lips. Her back arched. Pleasure became sharp, all-consuming, as she felt two, hard, broad fingers pierce the clenched, tightened opening of her pussy.
Ecstasy began to build in her bloodstream, whipping through her system and spasming through the inner muscles of her vagina as it gripped his fingers in reflexive response.
Hard fingers slid up her back, tangled in her hair, and dragged her head back as he stared down at her savagely.
“Do you have any idea what I could do to you?” His voice was so dark, filled with the same hunger that gleamed in his eyes. “I could take you, Kita. I am going to take you. Every sweet, soft inch of that tight pussy.”
Oh hell, she was going to come. Sensation slammed into her womb, through her pussy, tightening it further as she felt her juices surge between his fingers and her vaginal walls.
“Why wait?”
She’d managed to surprise him. She could see the surprise in his eyes.
Then Kita got the surprise of her life.
His lips pulled back in a grimace, flashing the very defined, wicked, animalistic canines at the side of his mouth that proclaimed his animal genetics.
He was a Breed.
Her eyes widened. His narrowed.
A growl rumbled in his throat as his fingers surged deep inside her, curved, and pressed against a hidden, too sensitive spot with one, two little rubs that destroyed her senses.
She was already primed for him.
She was already ready to go over that edge into oblivion.
She hadn’t expected this. Considering all she had heard about the Breeds, she shouldn’t have been anything but terrified. So terrified that fear should have been her only possible response.
Instead, she felt ecstasy.
Rapture.
A hard, guttural cry tore from her lips as an orgasm tore through her body.
It exploded in her clit, her pussy, then whipped through her womb and drew the rest of her body bow tight.
The wailing, desperate cry that fell from her was a sound she had never made before. It came from the very core of her being, as though the pleasure, a pleasure like none she had ever experienced before, had taken control of her senses.
Clamping her thighs around his hand, she tightened her pussy on the fingers that still caressed, still rubbed that primal spot inside her. Starburst radiated through her brain.
“Creed.” His name was a sound of agonized pleasure as she felt the breath still in her chest for long, precious moments.
She wanted to feel every sensation. She wanted to know it, to memorize it. She wanted to lock it inside her and keep it with her for the rest of her life.
Because there was no way she could keep Creed. There was no way the Breed holding her could be the man she had longed for, the man she had ached for all these months. There were was no way her father’s enemy could ever love her.
As the pleasure began to dim, reality took its place, forcing back the fantasy as she slowly regained her senses.
His fingers eased from the grip she had on them.
His cock still pressed against her hip, hard and fierce, the heat of his flesh seeming to radiate through the leather of his pants.
Thunderous gray eyes were nearly black, perspiration dotted his forehead, and his chest rose and fell with his harsh breathing.
And only one question could resonate through her mind.
Why?
FIVE
“Don’t try to run again. You won’t make it far.”
Kita stared at Creed, her father’s security specialist for the past year, and oh so obviously no more than a plant by the Bureau of Breed Affairs.
Sitting
in the chair across from him, she crossed her legs, propped her elbow on the padded arm, rested her head against her palm, and just stared at him as he sat on the couch across from her, leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, his eyes locked on hers.
“Now don’t you just look like the disgruntled kitty,” she drawled mockingly. “Or is that pooch? Feline, wolf, or coyote?”
His eyes narrowed. “Feline. Lion.”
Her lips pursed in a vague imitation of thoughtfulness. “I must be top priority if the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs sent one of his lion enforcers to play babysitter for the past year.”
His lips thinned. “I wasn’t your babysitter.”
Her brows lifted. “Well, you weren’t parked on my father’s ass, so I rather doubt Jonas Wyatt had you babysitting him. So tell me, Creed, why were you there? Information? To simply keep tabs on us? Or were you there to kill one of us when the time was right?”
He sat back slowly, his arms crossing over his chest as his expression became set in cool, unemotional lines.
He wasn’t there to kill her, and he wasn’t there to kill her father.
“Information.” She sighed. “That’s why you’re there, isn’t it?”
“Then why am I here instead?”
“Dad sent you?”
“You were calling him ‘Daddy’ before,” he pointed out, and in the shadows that crossed his face, she could have sworn she saw a hint of anger in his gaze.
He had no right to be angry with her. If anyone had a right to be angry, she did.
“What I call him is none of your business,” she informed him with a mocking roll of her eyes. “He sent you?”
He shrugged at the question, and she took that for a yes. It was the only reason he would have followed her.
“When are we driving back? I can’t leave my car here.”
“We’re not going back just yet.”
How interesting.
Kita continued to stare back at him, wondering at that feeling of heated moisture between her thighs.
Damn him, he kissed like a fucking sex god. Like her greatest fantasy. He had done what others had failed to do. His kiss had only fueled her need. Then he had done what two other lovers hadn’t even managed to come close to. He’d sent her into orgasm. And he had managed it with only his kiss and his fingers. Other men hadn’t even been able to do it, no matter the grunting efforts they’d put into it.
SHE WAS GLARING at him.
Creed narrowed his eyes as he tried to read her expression.
It was impossible.
For the first time since he had become her bodyguard, Creed could not tell, by her expression alone, what she was thinking. But there was enough emotion rolling off her for him to guess by scent alone. And there wasn’t enough anger to save her.
She should be furious. Ahead of the subtle scent of arousal still coursing through her, she should be raging at him. Which would only make the arousal hotter, build higher.
Instead, she was, first and foremost, aroused; behind that, he sensed irritation and confusion.
The confused part, he shared. Because all things considered, she was truly rather rational. Especially considering the fact that she was now in mating heat.
Just as he was. He’d had her kiss, he’d had her orgasm, but he was still vicious hard, his dick throbbing with furious hunger. It was the most intense need he had ever known. Since the moment his lips had touched her, since he had felt the warmth of her inner lips, the mating hormone had begun to build in the glands beneath his tongue.
It was more than an itch now. It was a burn, an arousal far deeper than it had been before the mating heat had kicked in.
“I don’t like that look on your face,” she muttered as he continued to watch her silently, to draw in the unique scents of her.
He arched his brow, unwilling to allow her into his thoughts just yet. To give her a chance to learn how deep his need for her went when he was beginning to grow very concerned over what the next few days would bring.
“And what do you mean, we’re not going back just yet? That’s why Dad sent you after me, correct?”
She wasn’t calling her father “Daddy” any longer. And each time she said “Dad” instead, the scent of disillusionment drifted toward him.
Every emotion had a scent, and to the Breed senses, they were easily detectable.
Disillusionment was a scent that clashed with her innocence, her compassion. It was a dark scent of sulfur subtly underlying the sweetest, softest scent of a spring rain, the scent of her arousal. It was there, though, and it pissed him off.
“Cabin fever does crazy things to a person.” He shrugged as he watched her carefully. “It’s my opinion that perhaps you need a few days’ vacation. A chance to relieve some tension.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. But he wasn’t about to tell her that he and his boss were leading her father to believe she’d been kidnapped.
“He doesn’t know you’re a Breed, does he?” Her lips pursed mockingly.
Amusement joined the other scents, just the slightest hint of it.
“No, he wasn’t aware of it.”
“What about the men you were working with?”
His brow arched. “I didn’t tell them.”
He hadn’t had to tell them. They were part of the Bureau of Breed Affairs; Jonas had likely told them. If not, then it wouldn’t have been hard for them to guess simply because Creed had been working with them for so damned long.
Kita shook her head in amusement, an amusement he could easily read on her expression this time.
“You don’t hate Breeds,” he commented.
She rose from her chair and moved languidly across the room before turning and leaning against the door frame and staring back at him. “I never hated Breeds, Creed. They didn’t ask for what was done to them. They were born into it.”
Created into it, Creed corrected her silently. They had been created into this world, and trained rather than raised, to be killers.
He nodded slowly. Over the year he’d been in her home, he had seen that in her. She’d been waiting, watching, neither trusting nor distrusting the Breeds. She had paid careful attention to news stories and discussions, and at odd times had seemed to be studying her father, essentially observing him in the act of just being a father.
“And now you’ve kissed one,” he said softly. “Come in the arms of one. What do you think now?”
“I think you’re just as savage and as determined as every report I’ve ever read says you are. And I highly doubt you’ve been in my home to protect me, no matter the danger. So why not tell me exactly why you were there.”
“That was why I was there, Kita.” It just wasn’t the only reason he was there.
She nodded again, her expression, her gaze thoughtful. It was then the scent of her reached him. The increased feminine heat. The arousal burning hotter, burning brighter inside her.
“Time will tell why you’re here then, won’t it?” she whispered, breathing out deeply.
“Will it?” He rose to his feet himself then, moving toward her slowly, feeling the hunger rising inside him as well. “Perhaps it’s an answer we should find now, Kita.”
Her heat wasn’t as intense as it would be once he’d spilled his seed inside her, but the arousal was high enough to slowly become uncomfortable.
Advances into the mating phenomena were coming in slowly, being researched to damned death, and only then was certain information being shared with the Breeds.
It was still a subject considered NTK, Need To Know. And only Breeds showing visible signs of mating, or those involved in highly sensitive operations, were given the information.
Creed had been given the information. He knew the suppositions, the small advances that had been made, the research the Breed scientists had done. And he knew the heat hadn’t reach its full pitch yet. And it wouldn’t until he released his seed inside her.
Unt
il then, the hormone he had released so far would irritate more than anything else.
Unless he kissed her again.
It was a one-kiss gig unless he wanted her to hate him.
Condoms required.
There were still the tiny hairs along his visibly hairless body that carried the hormone, but the quantities were so minute that as long as he didn’t kiss her again, then he could control it.
As long as he didn’t fuck her without a condom, it would be a while before the ramifications were apparent.
At least, to Kita. He, on the other hand, was already feeling the ramifications. He’d kissed her, and so the hormone was now infused with the genetic impulse to increase the heat and torture their bodies until conception occurred. To mutate the genetics in his sperm to be more compatible with her ova even as any hormone shared with her would make her likewise more compatible with him.
Stopping in front of her, his hand reached out and gently lifted a heavy lock of hair. He felt almost mesmerized by that hair. So many shades of natural blonde shimmering against his fingers.
He could feel the rumble of a growl in his throat.
He could smell her arousal, her interest. He could smell emotion, tenderness, and yet a rising need for confrontation. A scent reminiscent of that detected within both mates and human couples alike. A scent that came close to love.
Forcing his gaze from the heavy lock of hair he held, he took in the slumberous passion outlining Kita’s face.
“You’ve entranced me, Kita Claire,” he whispered as he turned his head slightly, the need to kiss her barely held in restraint by the knowledge of the consequences.
“Have I really?” A trace of breathlessness infused her tone. “Maybe you’ve done the same to me, Creed, even if you are being rather arrogant about it.”
“It’s part of our genetics.” His gaze centered on her lips.
No kiss, he told himself. He couldn’t kiss her, he couldn’t lick her, he couldn’t bite her. His eyes closed as he leaned his forehead against hers. He couldn’t taste the silken, saturated folds of her pussy no matter how his mouth watered for it.
He had to keep his tongue in his mouth, his lips closed.
He had to protect her, at least until he could tell her the truth.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to play.
There were many ways to play. Ways that would leave them both gasping, their bodies perspiring in release.
He would make certain she didn’t miss the kiss. But he would. God help him, he would miss the taste of her wicked little tongue, the feel of her lips beneath his. And the taste of her soft pussy. That he was truly going to regret missing out on.
“Promise me something, Creed,” she said.
His lashes lifted to stare down at her as the hunger ate at him.
“If I can,” he answered.
“Promise me you aren’t doing this for some sort of Breed revenge. That you’re not sleeping with me in some attempt to make my father pay for whatever he and Uncle Phillip have done.”
Uncle Phillip. Phillip Brandenmore was her uncle through Horace’s marriage to Phillip’s younger sister.
“I can swear to you that I’m not going to sleep with you to make your father or your uncle pay for whatever crimes they committed against the Breeds.” That was easy enough. It was the truth.
Her hand lifted, the tips of her fingers smoothing over his cheek as he watched her soft brown eyes melt with emotion.
He’d encouraged emotion in her from that first day, from the first itch he’d felt beneath his tongue. He’d teased, flirted.
“Kiss me, Creed,” she whispered the one plea he couldn’t satisfy. “Like you did earlier.”
His head lowered. A little. God help him, let him be able to stop when he needed to.
As his closed lips smoothed across her forehead to her temple, he let his hands drift up her hips, pushing beneath her light sweater to find her breasts.
Smooth, firm globes fit his palms as her tight hard nipples met the pads of his fingers. He could survive without her kiss, he told himself. He could survive without releasing inside her. It wouldn’t kill him. Hell, other Breeds had gone without th