Enthralled

by Lora Leigh

  Lifting her hips higher, feeling the thick weight lodge deeper, she smiled up at him, arched more firmly into the penetration and whispered, “Take me, Devil. Just like you want to.”

  * * *

  It was that smile.

  Wild. Reckless. This was the smile she had used in the photos and vids the Breed Protection Network had on her. Filled with confidence, daring anyone to defy her.

  God help him, she’d stolen his heart before he’d ever been called out to pull her out of Ireland.

  With the tight heat of her pussy enveloping the head of his cock as he worked himself to the veil of her innocence, Devil could feel not just his physical possession of her, but so much more.

  Their gazes were locked. Thickly lashed, sensual, the emerald of her eyes glittered with such arousal and need that it was like staring into pools of pure emotional magic. They glistened and gleamed with wonder, pleasure, hunger.

  “It’s not enough.” Her panting whisper had his stomach clenching, his hips gathering to push past the thin barrier. “Please, Dev. Please, take me now.”

  “Hold me, Kate,” he urged her again. “Hold me tight, mate.”

  His mate.

  Sweet God, all his. Created for him. Gifted to him.

  His woman.

  The surging thrust shocked him.

  Devil was unaware of the quick tightening of his hips as he pulled back. It was only as he pushed inside her once again, moving in a quick, rapid push he was unable to halt, that the motion sent him tearing past the thin barrier of her innocence.

  Her eyes widened, lips parting on a soundless cry as he thrust his shaft and burrowed hard and fast inside her.

  The steady tightening of her slick pussy, the reflexive clench of stretching tissue struggling to adjust to the width filling her, each hard, never-before-felt spurt of the mating pre-cum, then the rush of slick, heated feminine need easing him deeper tore a snarl of pure pleasure from his throat.

  Fiery, clenching and fist-tight, her pussy milked over the furiously engorged flesh of his cock. Tugging and stroking, tightening and sucking at the engorged head until nothing mattered but feeling more and more of her. Devil was powerless to halt his own response.

  Moving against her, thrusting inside her, his hips worked against her, powering the engorged length of his dick inside the steadily pulsing flesh, he gave himself to the possession of her, only to realize he was being possessed by her.

  The heart he believed had withered and died before he even realized what emotion was pounded with a strength and response to her that surprised him. She possessed the soul that had never known the need for another’s touch until her. She possessed the man, his dreams, his hopes, his battles and his failures.

  * * *

  That first stroke of lightning-bright pain gave way to a steadily increasing inferno of pleasure Kate couldn’t fight and had no desire to escape.

  Tightening her fingers on his powerful arms, she held on to him, held him. He was her only safety in the cataclysm of white-hot sensations. Each thrust pushed through the depths of her pussy, drove her higher, deeper inside a storm that refused to ease, that only deepened with each touch of his lips as they lowered to the rise of her breasts, each stroke of his tongue as he strung kisses to the tender flesh of her neck.

  Katie writhed beneath him, lifting into each stroke, gathering herself for the next. Her knees tightened on his thrusting hips, her head lifted from the pillow to allow her lips to press to his chest, her tongue to stroke against his oversensitive skin.

  They were flying. Flying through such pleasure, such a building sense of exquisite sensation, that Kate gave up on attempting to control, or to process. All she could do was fly within it, experience it, relish it.

  Each stroke of his cock burying inside her pushed her deeper into the storm. The rake of his teeth at the bend of shoulder and neck had her crying out, the muscles of her vagina tightening, clenching furiously as that gathering tension began to ignite with ecstatic flares of pleasure.

  It was rushing around her, through her.

  Each stroke of his cock came faster, penetrating her, fucking her with increasing need and hunger until the convergence of sensations barreled headlong into each other and exploded with furious ecstasy.

  Her teeth sank into the powerful pectoral muscle beneath her lips as she felt his sharper, longer canines pierce the flesh just beneath her neck, at the bend of her shoulder.

  Her tongue, swollen and hot, licked at the slight wound she made, stroking over it madly as her body shuddered and jerked within a release so powerful it exploded within her soul.

  The feel of his tongue doing the same at her neck was an additional pleasure, fiery pinpoints of sensations that merged and mixed in a release so intense that at first, she was unaware of the significance of the heavy tightening in her vagina.

  Clenched, spasming around the heavy shaft filling her, the inner muscles began struggling to accommodate the heavy width of his cock. Stretching, flaring with sensation that mixed with the crash of her orgasm and began driving her higher, the thickening of his cock at the juncture of the tightening muscles of her vagina shocked her.

  Her eyes flared open, meeting his as his head lifted from the bite he’d left at her neck.

  “I have you,” he groaned, ecstasy clenching his teeth and tightening his expression as the amber in his eyes burned like fire. “I have you, Kate.”

  The rush of pleasure filling her system exploded again, drawing a harsh cry from her lips as she jerked against each rush of rapturous pleasure.

  She couldn’t survive it.

  The orgasmic explosions were destructive. The waves of shuddering ecstasy crashed through her senses with each tug of the thickened flesh against her inner muscles as he locked inside her.

  Heated spurts of his release filled the too sensitive depths of her pussy. More sensation. More pleasure.

  It built. Amassed. One ever-deepening release after another charging through her body until the ecstasy exploded in a powerful surge so intense she felt each pinpoint of sensation as it released inside her.

  Exhausted, wrung out by the pleasure and the force of a release she could never have imagined, Katie collapsed beneath him, wilting like a flower as the caress of the sun eased into night.

  As sleep claimed her, she felt the slow easing of the swollen flesh held captive inside her as Devil gave one last shudder of release. But as he withdrew and rolled from her, it wasn’t to leave her. Rather, he pulled her into his embrace, cushioned her head on his shoulder and allowed sleep to claim her.

  A full, deep, blessedly dreamless sleep.

  SIX

  Devil brushed his mate’s hair back from her face as he finished cleaning the perspiration and remnants of their release from her thighs, along her belly and from her breasts.

  It was an act he’d never done for another woman.

  The lovers he’d known in the past had always jumped from bed and run straight to the shower as though they were somehow dirty and had to wash the filth from their bodies.

  Kate had slipped immediately into sleep instead. Her body completely relaxed, exhausted from the force of pleasure that had exploded between them.

  Picking up a long, sun-kissed curl from her shoulder and drawing it to his face, he brushed the silky softness against his cheek and let a smile tug at his lips. Those curls completely fascinated him. It was as though they had a warmth and life of their own as they flowed around her body.

  Hell, the woman herself fascinated him. In the week since he’d taken her from Ireland, he’d become so entranced by her that he’d begun to wonder if he was losing his mind.

  It wasn’t his mind he was losing. It was his heart—at breakneck speed with no hope of slowing down.

  Spurred by a phenomenon known as mating heat—a physical and emotional convergence of hormonal shifts that occurred once a Breed came into contact with his destined mate, the heart he believed he didn’t have was suddenly alive. The one he would have
been destined to love had he been born as human.

  Unlike humans, though, there was no choice in whether to accept or reject the male or female that perfectly complemented him physically, mentally, and emotionally as well as hormonally.

  Once the body, mind and heart established that this person was the one that best fit the hungers and needs inside them, then the animal took over.

  Hormones gathered and built beneath the tongue, spilled to that first kiss and established a bond born of a sexual heat so intense that there was no denying it. Speeding through their bodies, spurring their emotions, each response was driven at warp speed to bind the pair together in a mating that the Breed scientists suspected would endure a lifetime.

  Mating heat actually existed.

  The gossip rags hadn’t printed the insanity of fear-driven drivel as they usually had. For once, they’d at least partially gotten it right.

  Returning the curl alongside the others that spilled over her shoulder, Devil pulled the sheet over Kate’s slumbering body before collecting his shirt from the bottom of the bed and pulling it on.

  Dressed, he slipped from her room and made his way silently downstairs.

  Stepping into the foyer, he stopped as Lobo and Dash Sinclair stepped from the library on the far end of the entryway and headed for the door.

  “There you are,” Lobo growled, his dark gaze fierce as savagery flashed in his gaze. “Where’s Graeme?”

  “I sent him into town to check on the whereabouts of the reporters that were here,” Devil answered, tensing at the ready violence that hummed around Lobo. “Why?”

  “There’s a fucking Bureau agent at the gates with two Irish and American Immigration agents with a warrant to search the premises for Katie. I want to know how the hell they found out she was here.”

  “Like hell.” A flash of red filled his vision for the briefest moment before he turned to Dash. “Cassie knows Breed Law; have her send them back to the holes they crawled out of.”

  Dash grimaced. “She’s going over the language now, but she doesn’t just pull these arguments out her ass, Dev. She needs time.”

  “Then buy her the time she needs,” he demanded. “This isn’t American land, it’s Navajo land.” He turned back to Lobo. “American Immigration has no rights on this land, nor does the Bureau of Breed Affairs. Ignore them.”

  “We can’t just ignore them,” Lobo argued, his thumbs hooking in the belt that cinched his hips and held the weapon he carried at all times since his wife’s death. “That’s a Bureau agent out there, Dev. We signed an agreement with the Bureau of Breed Affairs that negates any desire we have to tell them to kiss our asses.”

  “They can’t take a mate,” he reminded the other male, suddenly remembering several of the laws he himself had read when he had been given the Breed mandates. “It’s an exception to all other laws. No matter the crime, the act or the situation at hand, no mate can be taken, claimed or incarcerated unless a crime is committed after the mating.”

  He’d always wondered about the wording. It was explained that a mating was simply Breed language detailing a committed relationship between a Breed and a lover chosen as a life partner. He knew now exactly what it meant and why the wording had been so precise.

  “You’ve mated her?” Dash’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils suddenly flaring as amusement lit his gaze. “That’s why the scent of lust was so strong coming from your office earlier. The mating scent was on you when we met, so I assumed you’d already mated.”

  Devil grinned. “Not until that bit of Irish got hold of me. Hell, I met her when she was sixteen and training with the Breed Protection Network in Ireland. I was there to train their agents in computer security. I saw her for a few brief seconds, and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t forget her.” He turned to Dash then. “Now, tell me where we stand.”

  “We stand strong.” It was Cassie who answered that question.

  Standing at the top of the stairs, her hair pulled tightly from her face and hanging down her back in masses of wicked black curls, she was dressed in a dark gray skirt, silk shell and jacket paired with plain, though obviously expensive, black high heels.

  She was no longer the precocious, mischievous young woman Devil had met before being sent to Ireland to rescue Kate. The woman stepping confidently down the curved staircase was superior in every way to each and every one of them, and her very bearing emphasized it.

  Cool blue eyes. She wore no makeup, no artifice. In one hand she carried a leather briefcase as the other trailed down the stair bannister.

  “The laws are quite clear in this situation,” she stated as she stepped into the foyer to join them. “No matter the situation, the circumstance or any previous laws, mating heat trumps it. Especially in a case of any scientific laws that should be created after Breed Law, demanded or mandated. At no time, and in no way without both mates as well as the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs and three-quarters of the Breed Ruling Cabinet’s express and written agreement can any scientific research, experimentation or study be conducted on a mated pair, no matter the justification, reasoning or country that signed the mandates of Breed Law.” She smiled in triumph. “And the leaders of each section of Europe, including Ireland, signed each and every mandate of the laws presented to them before President Marion took it before the United Nations, where every delegate there signed each mandate as well.” From the leather case she withdrew a folder and handed it to Dash Sinclair. “Father, as a member of the Breed Ruling Cabinet, this is the order of a stay of exemption to be presented to the Immigration officials signed by Director Wyatt and wired to me five minutes ago. Director Wyatt is currently on the line with the Bureau agent outside our gates. He’ll need the signed orders before he and the men with him can force the Immigration officials back to Ireland.”

  Devil stared back at Cassie with narrowed suspicion. “Why are they so intent to take her? I’ve lost count of the European Breeds who had escaped to America, and the officials there haven’t sent so much as a protest. Now, they’re sending immigration officials after one lone female?”

  “Mary Katherine O’Sullivan was taken from the lab her grandfather is accused of having overseen during his tenure with the Genetics Council until the liberation of that particular lab. One of the scientists that worked there was captured several months ago by MI-6 and revealed Wallace O’Sullivan conspired to have his son’s and daughter-in-law’s samples from a fertility clinic sent to the lab he was in charge of. From there, he had the scientists insert the Wolf Breed genetics into not just the sperm, but also the mother’s ova, before fertilization. A process that was outlawed by the Council itself early in the genetic experimentations, for reasons we’ve yet to find explanations for.”

  Devil inhaled slowly, carefully.

  “It was outlawed because it allowed the Breeds to conceive. It created Breed males with a mix of both human-compatible as well as Breed-compatible sperm, and in Breed females. In females, the ova could be fertilized by either species with no complications. They allowed one of these births, but terminated the Breed somewhere around twelve years of age for reasons we were unaware of.”

  Cassie frowned up at him. “Surely there were rumors why the Breed was terminated.”

  Devil stared down at her, remembering those rumors and the concern in the scientists that ran the lab he was assigned to.

  “Rumor was that the Breed created by that pairing could not be identified as a Breed by any testing, nor by Breed senses. The animal instincts were so completely merged with the human psyche in cunning and in response that the Breed was so superior that they feared the result of allowing it to live. At twelve, the Breed already had the loyalty of every other Breed in the labs, and the scientists only learned later that an uprising had been only days away from the time they terminated his life.”

  “It was a male then?” Cassie asked curiously.

  Devil shrugged. “They always referred to the Breed as the ‘specimen,’ ‘project’ or an
‘it.’ I assigned the sex myself out of respect for the life taken, nothing more.”

  She nodded thoughtfully before turning to her father. “Director Wyatt should have contacted his agent by now. You and I can take that file—” She stopped.

  The instant tension that filled her body had Devil as well as Lobo and Dash instantly on guard as Cassie turned back and looked up the stairs.

  Devil didn’t wait to ask questions. Instead, he turned and raced up the stairs, aware of the two Breeds moving quickly behind him. Every animal sense inside his body, honed by years of training, instinct and the shadowed war being fought for Breed survival was screaming in alarm. And it was screaming his mate’s name.

  SEVEN

  The second the door clicked shut behind Devil, Katie came instantly awake.

  Regret at his departure joined the subtle ache for his touch as she rose from the bed and quickly dressed, determined to find Khileen and see if she had heard of anything resembling the pleasure she’d found with Devil.

  She knew it wasn’t normal. She’d had friends all her life until the world had found out she was actually a Breed, and those friends had had sex often. With more than one man. Some with women. Never had she heard of anything like the pleasure she had just experienced.

  Moving into the bathroom, she quickly tamed the wild mass of curls with a detangling comb before tying it back at the nape of her neck.

  As she drew her hands back, she glimpsed the mark Devil had left at the bend of her neck and shoulder. His teeth had pierced the skin, though she’d felt none of the pain she would have expected to feel.

  Reaching up, she brushed her fingers over the reddened area, the light caress sending a bold shudder to race over her flesh. A sensation of intense pleasure had her thighs tightening and a sense of amazement filling her.

  That was no ordinary hickey.

  “Wow,” she breathed out, rather impressed now. “Definitely weird.”

  As she considered the sensation, her nose wrinkled at the odd scent that teased at it.