by Lora Leigh
didn’t purr on command.
And the last warning had been that the animal Lawe shared his skin with would one day overcome his determination to hold it back, and it would take the mate it sensed waiting.
If the look on Lawe’s face and his stiff, jutting erection were anything to go by, the animal and the man were pretty much in agreement that it was the time to claim the mate and they were prepared to prove it.
Icy blue eyes flared, then darkened, as his expression tightened and primal dominance suddenly marked it.
This was it.
They had been dancing around each other for more than a year now, deliberately easing in, then pulling back at the slightest hint of emotion, only to be drawn back again.
She’d teased, and she’d forgotten the warnings Jonas had given her.
She’d run from him, fighting to escape what she’d sensed was the inevitable. Jonas had warned her about running. He’d warned her about the predator living inside Lawe, the dominant animal that would move heaven and hell, kill or risk being killed, to possess his mate. And he would give her whatever she needed, whatever he knew instinctively she had to have, just to be happy.
For more than a year he had stayed away. He’d ignored the hunger, just as she had. He had ignored the need and let her run from all the emotions she couldn’t handle, and the knowledge that accepting him meant accepting the cage he would build around her.
Had he somehow sensed the monsters that rose up to slash at her emotions each time she’d fought to escape him, because he’d always let her go. Or had he been concerned with his own monsters and the battle to slip past them instead?
Whichever it was, he’d obviously decided it was time to do something about the hunger clawing through both of them.
Diane exhaled in a breath of surprise as Lawe moved for her, catching her around the waist as she turned to evade him. Gripping her hips, he jerked her back, bringing her ass against the hardened length of his cock as he pressed against her, firm and dominant, the stiff stalk of his erection rubbing against the cleft of her ass.
And she couldn’t keep from pressing back, from feeling him, heated and poker hard. She could feel him against her from her shoulder to her thighs. She could feel the rasp of his flesh, feel those tiny, tiny, almost invisible hairs that covered him from shoulders to ankles like a pelt of roughened silk.
“Living dangerously, baby?” He nipped at the lobe of her ear as her hands fell to his wrists, her grip desperate as she fought to push back the desire, or the fear. She had to let one go because he obviously wasn’t going to allow her to let him go.
The desire wasn’t budging from its position, it was only growing. The fear was holding on with bloody fingernails and faltering further beneath his touch as she felt the incredible, sexual heat sizzling up her spine.
“Scared, little wildcat?” he whispered against her ear, the warmth of his breath a caress against the sensitive shell of her ear.
“Of you?” The bravado in her tone was at odds with the vulnerability she felt, not to mention the inferno of lust building in her womb. “I think you know better than that, Lawe.”
Even as she denied that charge, Diane knew it for the lie it was. A soft exhalation parted her lips as his fingers tightened, his nails rasping over the skin of her hips as he pressed against her more firmly, grinding his cock harder against the cleft of her rear.
Pleasure whipped across her nerve endings, sending sharp flares of sensation rushing through her system.
Fear fell back as the warmth of his body seemed to penetrate the chill that wrapped around her earlier. But it wasn’t gone. She wondered if it would ever go away entirely.
A shudder raced through her with the touch of his tongue, like a roughened rasp against the sensitive flesh just beneath her ear. In that second, the fear was gone and pleasure overshadowed every nightmare that had ever chased her.
Need was a sharp-toothed demon tearing at Lawe’s cock, but even that couldn’t hold back the animal senses that drew in the scent of his mate’s desire, the heat of her need, and the chill of her fears easing away beneath the onslaught of pleasure.
He felt the animal genetics rising to the fore inside him. Each Breed carried the genetics of the animal he possessed. Some carried their animals closer to the skin than others, and for some the animal instincts were impossible to control when mating heat rose and sank its claws deep inside the primal alpha-male core of his psyche.
The need for her was tearing through him. He tried to control it. He fought it. But in that moment, Lawe knew he had lost the battle.
Pulling her around, his fingers burrowed in the back of her hair. Gripping the strands, he tugged her head back and before he could think or consider his actions, his head lowered and his lips covered hers as instinct had him pushing his tongue between her lips and burying it in the heat of her mouth.
Finding her tongue he rubbed against it, feeling the glands beneath his as they began to swell and throb further, pumping the spicy heat of the mating hormone suddenly spilling from him into the woman the animal inside had chosen as his mate.
Lawe had heard of the animal part of a Breed male taking over. How it rose to the forefront of desire as the mating hormone began spilling from the glands to mix with the adrenaline, the hunger and the lust coursing through him and into his mate.
Now, kissing Diane, touching her, Lawe felt the exquisite bite of a need unlike anything he had ever known in his life. A pleasure he realized he didn’t want to miss, not anymore. That empty hole in his soul had disappeared. That dark, bitter, unknown pain that always lingered inside him had been easing away since the moment he realized what she was to him.
Holding her head in place with one hand, he used the other to caress the soft, heated flesh of her lower back, then along the rise of her buttocks.
Diane lifted against him, arching, a small whimpering moan leaving her throat as he felt her hands press against his chest, her fingers curling, nails rasping.
He was burning for her. The tiny hairs that covered his body seemed so sensitive, so brutally alive as she stroked against him that he swore they were directly attached to his nerve endings.
Hunger clawed at him. A sexual hunger impossible to deny, creating an urgent, intense wave of lust that had him only distantly aware of his actions.
Diane whimpered as the heated, unique taste of him spilled to her tongue, her senses and, she swore, her soul.
Spicy, sweet, like candied pears. The taste of his kiss was spiked with the most addictive elixir. The taste seemed to permeate every corner of her awareness.
And it made her hungrier. Made the need so sharp and intense she could only whimper in distress as it struck repeatedly at her clit, at the tender depths of her pussy.
Jerking his head back with another animalistic growl, Lawe tensed, the hard ridge of his cock throbbing imperatively. Still immersed in his kiss, Diane let her hand travel down his bare chest, his abs, until she was running her palm along the heated ridge of the heavy erection.
“God, Diane.” He palmed the back of her head as she pressed her lips to his chest, allowing herself a taste of the hard flesh that covered the tight, flexing muscle.
“You’re going to push me too far.” His voice was so rough it was animalistic, sending a wave of sensual pleasure rushing through her.
“It’s okay for you to push me?” Diane whispered against his sensitive skin before her tongue licked out to taste him once again.
She had to press her thighs together, the muscles tightening convulsively at the sight of the heavy flesh strained out from his body.
She couldn’t help herself.
She’d fantasized about him for so long. Since the night he had rushed into a Syrian camp where she had been held by her kidnappers, her leg broken, her face swollen, her collarbone fractured from the beatings she had endured.
She had taken one look at the savage features of a Breed she didn’t know from Adam, and for the first time in far too ma
ny years, she had been more than a soldier. More than a hired gun.
Bloody, in pain, certain she was going to die, and for one heart-stopping, irrational moment, she had been a woman and had wished she’d met him at time when she had a makeup bag handy.
A nice dress.
Heels.
And she had never worn any of the three since high school. She hadn’t found a chance to.
Now, with her tongue flicking over the salty male flesh, the heavy length of his erection throbbing beneath her fingers as she stroked along the thick shaft, that need was there again.
The need to be a woman.
To be Lawe’s woman.
It had always been there, but as the taste of candied pears filled her system, it amplified, bombarding her system with need.
“Sweet, sweet Diane.” He groaned, his hands fisting in her hair. “I’ve dreamed of touching you. Dreamed of fucking you.”
A moan whispered past her lips.
“I dreamed of having your lips on my dick, watching as I fuck your mouth, stretching your pretty lips.”
Her gaze jerked up, meeting his as his fingers tightened farther and began pushing her down. “Give it to me, baby. Give me your pretty lips. Wrap them around my dick as I’ve dreamed . . .”
Pressing her forward, pushing her to her knees Lawe watched as Diane licked her lips, parted them and leaned forward to take the thickly erect head of his cock between them and into her mouth.
Lawe froze immediately.
His entire body tensed, his fingers flexing in her hair. They tightened as she let herself become accustomed to the heated width filling her mouth, the fierce throb of power and life beneath her tongue.
Holding the base of the shaft with one hand, her fingers were unable to wrap around the thickness as she held the stiff flesh steady for each exploratory lick and stroke of her tongue.
It had been too long. It had been too many years since she had known the strength and heat of a man’s desire. And she had to admit, she’d never known a strength or thickness like the one that filled her mouth.
“Diane. Fuck, yes. Suck it, baby. Give me that sweet mouth.” Strangled, his voice torn, the pleasure in the hoarse, ragged tone of his voice had her tongue lashing beneath the sensitive crest with renewed hunger.
Each stroke was met with a fierce throb, a subtle taste of powerful heat and the male he was. He embodied strength and male hunger, and she found herself becoming intoxicated on it. She was nothing if not adventurous, if not courageous. If not daring.
If not determined to destroy herself by having this man and tempting a possession she knew would destroy her.
•CHAPTER 9•
Suckling the thick crest of the heavy cock filling her mouth as deeply as possible, Diane let her tongue rub and caress the underside with languorous pleasure. At the separation of flesh at the top of the flared iron-hard crest, she felt a heavy throb as it seemed to flex, expand and retreat.
Her heart beat faster. The knowledge of the barb located there, feeling its warning pulse, the threatening stretch of the flesh, stole her breath.
Rachel had told her about it, but details had been amazingly sketchy. Diane knew what to expect though, and the thought of it had her tightening the grip she had on him as she laved the area again.
“Ah yes, wildcat.” Lawe groaned above her. “So fucking good. So sweet. Sweet, sweet fucking mouth.”
He buried his hands in her hair and his fingers clenched in the thick strands. The slight pinch of the pulling action was more erotic than it should have been. It sent flares of incredible striking pleasure piercing her womb, clenching it as her clitoris throbbed in painful need.
“Suck it, baby,” he growled, the erotic rasp of his voice stroking over her senses as a whimpering moan vibrated in her throat.
She had had only two lovers, and neither of them had been vocal. To hear Lawe’s rough voice whispering encouragement, hearing the pleasure in it, had her riding the edge of orgasm and he had yet to even take her.
“Diane, sweet baby,” he whispered above her as she stroked the heavy shaft with her fingers, ran them lower and allowed the tips of her fingers to play over the smooth, silken flesh of his balls.
The fine, barely there, invisible body hair Breeds possessed was said to be as soft as silk beneath a woman’s fingers. It was softer, Diane decided as she let her fingers caress to his thighs. Almost like a downy pelt created for a woman’s sensory pleasure.
His fingers tightened in her hair, pulling at the strands as Diane swirled her tongue around the heavy crest of his cock, tasting the head and relishing the male taste of his flesh.
Each lick only seemed to make her hungrier for him. With each little taste, she swore she could taste the faintest hint of sweet pears mingling with the taste of his flesh.
It was an addictive taste. She wanted more. She wanted to fill her mouth with him, taste him, experience every ounce of pleasure that could be gained from it.
Between her thighs her clit was swollen, throbbing with furious abandon as need flooded her system. She could feel the muscles of her pussy convulsing, clamping together as hunger overwhelmed her.
Her juices flowed from the sensitive flesh, dampening the folds between her thighs and sensitizing her clit to the point that pleasure rode the edge of pain.
“Enough! God, Diane, not like this.” The rough edge of his voice had a shiver racing up her spine as his fingers tightened in her hair and pulled her head back.
“No. Lawe, please.” Frustration, need and hunger converged as strong fingers gripped her upper arms and pulled her to her feet.
Before she could protest further, his lips were on hers again, his hands sliding to her rear where he gripped her, lifted her, then turned and pressed her against the wall.
Lawe could feel his hands trembling, feel the control he prided himself on melting from the inside out. He was losing it. Losing it in a wave of heat and pleasure that made no sense, even within the bonds of mating heat.
He had his mate backed against a wall, her knees gripping his hips, the soft, velvety heat of her cunt rubbing against the shaft of his dick.
He could feel the dampness of her juices, slick and wet. He rolled his hips, the luxurious softness against his sensitive flesh bringing a grimace to his lips, baring his canines as he lowered his head.
He wanted to taste her. He wanted to touch her.
“Ah God,” he whispered just below her ear. “I need to fuck you, Diane. Like air, like breath, I need you.”
He felt as though he would die if he weren’t inside her soon. And at the same time, if he didn’t touch her, didn’t consume her, then he would die from that need as well.
He licked the soft fle
