Dawn's Awakening

  She had come to him so many times, and he had turned her away. He had stayed away when he should have fought for her. He had left her alone when she needed to be held.

  And now he had no choice but to go to her, and he prayed she didn’t reject him. He prayed because, suddenly, life looked very bleak without her.

  Dawn adjusted the shower to a temperature as hot as she could stand and, naked, stepped beneath the stinging spray of three separate shower heads.

  For pity’s sake, who needed three shower heads in one shower? It defied explanation. Just as the emotions rising inside her defied explanation. She felt like crying. She wanted to lay her head against the shower wall and sob, but Dawn hardly ever cried. Not when she was hurt, not when she was angry, not when friends died or when they walked away.

  She hadn’t fallen to the floor with the screams welling inside her when she learned her mate wasn’t her mate, and she didn’t let the need hovering inside her now escape.

  Because she wanted to pray. And if Dawn didn’t cry, she certainly didn’t pray. Why pray to a God that had deserted her? That hadn’t heard her screams as a child, and hadn’t heeded her tears? She believed in His existence, but unlike other Breeds, she didn’t believe He agreed with theirs.

  She shook her head and washed her hair quickly before tipping her head back to rinse the soap from her hair. As her head lifted, her eyes jerked open, and her lips parted on a gasp.

  The shower door was open and Seth was stepping into the spray of water. Powerful muscles rippled beneath his flesh, and standing out from his body, thickly veined, the crest dark and furiously engorged, his cock demanded her attention.

  A light mat of hair covered his chest and arrowed down his abs. It sprinkled over his arms, thighs and legs, and as she watched he slowly soaked the cloth he held in his hand and soaped it with a bar of sweet-smelling soap that he held in his hand.

  “Ten years ago,” he said, “I started collecting soaps for you. There were about half a dozen before I was led to believe that you didn’t want me, that you wouldn’t want me. But somehow, the habit held. There are over two dozen now. Several are quite unique, one-of-a-kind scents just awaiting your approval before the soap makers I found create more of what you enjoy.”

  Her lips parted in surprise as he carefully set the creamy bar on an inset shelf.

  “This one I found in Morocco.” He stepped forward and laid the cloth at her neck before beginning to wash her. “There’s just the lightest touch of sandalwood, though it’s often used just for men. Once I described you, the soap maker thought perhaps a scent that denotes male and female would be appropriate. A combination of us both.”

  Dawn almost swayed as she stared up at his face, fascinated by this information, by the gentleness and the heat in his expression.

  “The scent is simply Dawn,” he said softly. “The soap maker said it would hold the scent of a new day. Fresh and renewed, and touched by fire.”

  And that was how it smelled. Not flowery or strong or even musky. Just clean and warm as it frothed with thick, rich bubbles.

  “I think I like this one,” he told her, his voice harsh despite its gentleness. “It does smell like you, Dawn. Like both of us, combined.”

  She stood, shell-shocked, as he soaped her from neck to ankle. The thick, scented lather clung to her skin and filled the steamy interior of the shower with the scent of a new day and a heated male. Like the smell of Seth last night, his need flowing from him, wrapping around her and heating her all the way through her pores.

  He washed her stomach with slow, sensual strokes. He parted her thighs and her breath caught in her throat as he washed her there. Washed her thoroughly, then cupped water and rinsed her with all the anticipation and reverence of a boy opening a Christmas present.

  “What are you doing?” she finally managed to whisper, uncertain how to respond, or what she should do.

  “I’m seducing you, Dawn.” He leaned forward and kissed her thighs, pausing to inhale the scent of her as she felt the juices slowly building on the sensitive folds of her sex. “Every woman should be seduced her first time with a lover. Gentled. Eased. Pleasured.”

  She shook her head at the sight of the water running through his hair, where her hands should be.

  “But it’s not the first time,” she forced herself to remind him. “I’m not a virgin, Seth. You know I’m not.”

  He had seen the discs, he had seen what they did to her. Not just once. More than once before her escape with Callan.

  He touched his lips to the top of her mound then, and she shivered with the pleasure before his head lifted and he stared up at her, his gaze dominant, possessive.

  “You’re wrong, Dawn,” he said then. “You are a virgin. Sweetly innocent, untouched by a lover’s hands. All your pleasure is mine, isn’t it? Your passion for me, your need for me. You are a virgin, sweetheart, more than you’ll ever know.”

  She blinked back at him in confusion as he rose, towering over her, to turn her. The spray from the front shower washed the soap from her body as he began to lather her back. And that was even more sensual. She couldn’t see him; she could only feel him. Feel the suds gathering on her, caressing her even as his hands caressed her, stroking her flesh, delicately massaging her muscles.

  “Once, I was in Russia,” he murmured at her ear. “It was colder than I could ever imagine cold, and there I was, standing on the balcony of my hotel looking out at this pristine, gorgeous snow-covered forest. And I imagined you there, sharing that with me. The next morning I went out and found a soap maker. And I requested that scent for you. The scent of the forest at evening, of those first rays of the moon striking the snow. When I use that soap on you, I’m going to be buried inside you. So you can feel the heat that snow holds trapped. Deep within the earth, burning and waiting for spring. That’s what I’m going to be, Dawn, that fire burning inside you as I bathe you with the scent of snow.”

  Dawn felt the little cry leave her throat and her knees went weak. The next instant his arm was around her waist, holding her steady as that diabolical washrag began to wash her rear.

  “And this is the most gorgeous ass in the world,” he growled. “I almost started collecting panties for you, but somehow that just struck me as obsessive, don’t you think?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good, then you won’t be surprised when I pull out the few pairs I collected for you, no more than a few dozen, and ask you to wear them for me. Silk and satin and lace so delicate it’s no more than a whisper against your flesh. I’ll come just thinking of you wearing those panties beneath those mission pants you wear. They have ribbons too. And little bows. And some don’t have a crotch. I could slip right inside you, and not have to worry about tearing them from you first.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She was sweating despite the water pouring over her and wondered if she was going to melt right there in the shower.

  Curling tendrils of white heat were traveling through her body, and she could feel her flesh prickling with the most amazing pleasure. As though his words were stroking her skin, traveling over her entire body rather than stroking that damnable washrag over her ass, over and over again.

  He dipped into the cleft between the cheeks, cleaned her there, and then she felt the water rinsing her. Rinsing as he stroked, as he cupped the cheeks of her rear and hummed his appreciation in a kiss on each curve.

  “I love your ass, Dawn.” His voice was rough, filled with hunger. “I swear I’m going to come in my pants every time I watch you walk. I watch these sweet muscles bunch and move, and all I can think about is clenching them while you ride me.”

  She couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t moan. Her legs were shaking as she felt the weakness in them, and when his tongue licked over the inner curve of one cheek, she knew she was going to sink to the floor of the shower.

  “Steady there, sweetheart.” He gripped her hips and held her still. “Stand right there for me. I’m dying to touch you. To taste you
. My mouth is watering for your kiss the same way it’s watering for the taste of your sweet pussy. I want both. I want to suck that pretty tongue in my mouth and I want to drive you crazy while I suck your sweet clit into my mouth.”

  She was going to—do something. She had read about this feeling, but she hadn’t read about it being so strong it clenched her womb, sent agonizing streams of pleasure tearing through it as her clit throbbed with a feeling of near rapture.

  She had never, never known pleasure like this. There was nothing to compare it to. No way to know what she should do or what she should say.

  “I want to touch you.” Her voice was whisper thin and pleading. If she was touching him then he couldn’t be stealing parts of her soul a little piece at a time with his words, his touch.

  “Not tonight, Dawn.” He rose behind her and she felt his erection, so thick and hot at her lower back. Powerful, throbbing like her clit was throbbing, and her mouth began to water. It began to water and the hormone that filled the glands of her tongue began to flow free.

  The taste of heat filled her senses. The scent of him wrapped around her, and as she felt the water shut off, felt him pull her back against him, the woman and the animal merged to stretch, to rub, to prepare herself for possession by her mate.

  CHAPTER 11

  She purred. Seth heard the sound and felt the head of his cock flex and throb before pumping a fierce blast of semen against her back.

  He thought he was going to lose it right there. She had purred for him. Rumor was that the female Breeds didn’t purr. The males could, especially during sensual, sexual activities, but not the females.

  His female did. She stretched in his arms, her pert little ass tucked against his thighs, and a low, soft rumble vibrated either in her throat or beneath those pretty, swollen breasts, he couldn’t be certain which.

  It wasn’t a constant rumble, about the duration of a sigh, but it went through his bloodstream like wildfire. His Cougar purred. His fierce, determined, explosive little mate had purred for him.

  His teeth clenched as he opened the door of the shower, keeping one arm securely around her, and jerked the towel from the warming bar on the shower door. It was soft and warm, perfect to dry her. Just as the scented oil he had laid out by the bed was perfect to stroke her. If he could find the control to do it. If he could wait just a little bit longer to possess her, then he would try it out as well.

  He had oils to match the soaps. What was obsessive if not that? God in heaven what had made him think he could ever live his life without this woman?

  “Let me dry you.” He turned her in his arms, gazing down at the drowsy, sensual features as she stared back at him in feminine confusion.

  “Why are you doing this?” She was watching him as though the answer were important to her. As though the fact that he was doing it astounded her.

  “Because I’ve dreamed of it.” His lips quirked into an unwilling smile. “Dawn, I’ve fantasized about it. Even after the hormones from the mating heat disappeared, I still stood in the shower and jacked off thinking about it.”

  “Even when you were with the others?” A sparkle of anger lit the depths of her eyes.

  Seth drew the towel down her back, over her rear, and stared back at her somberly. “Even then, Dawn. And even then, there was no satisfaction. There was only the emptiness that gnawed at me, no matter where I went or what I did.”

  He should have fought for her, he thought again. He should have told Jonas and Callan to go to hell rather than letting them play upon his own fears. That had been his weakness. She was so small and delicate, and he was so much larger that he had already feared hurting her. Once he’d seen those images, the soul-deep knowledge of the damage he could do to her had slammed into his brain.

  “I dreamed of you too,” she whispered, and the sound of her voice broke his heart. All the loneliness, all the agonizing nights of arousal and heartache that he had felt now echoed in her voice. “I dreamed you came to me.”

  “And I’ve come to you.” He dried her slowly before quickly whisking the towel over his own body.

  When he lifted her in his arms, his chest actually ached. She gasped in surprise, her hands catching at his shoulders as though no one had ever carried her. And he didn’t doubt no one had. He doubted Dawn had ever been spoiled with either affection or pleasures.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice was thin, faint, as he carried her to the bed.

  “Seducing my mate.” He put his knee on the mattress and lowered her to it. “Are you willing to be seduced, mate?”

  Her face seemed to transform. It softened, grew more sensual as her eyes slitted with seductive awareness.

  “You really want to seduce me?” There was innocent wonder in her voice, a woman’s surprise and pleasure. A lover’s sensuality.

  “More than I want to draw my next breath,” he revealed, and he knew it was the truth. Nothing mattered—not riches or fame, not breathing or living—other than seducing this woman.

  He had lived his life, gone through each adventure, each trial and success, for one purpose. For this purpose. For this moment when everything he had was focused on pleasuring his woman.

  He moved over her, watching as she reclined on the bed, alluring and naturally sensual, her leg bending, her knee rubbing against his hip as he braced his arms on the bed beside her and leaned in to taste paradise.

  To taste her kiss.

  Magic and flames, pure energy and electricity—that was Dawn’s kiss, and it sank into his soul with the force of a tidal wave. He tasted the mating hormone that flowed from the glands of her tongue and murmured his appreciation for the sweet spiciness. But it was her lips, the curl of her tongue against his, the feel of her hands, her nails sliding over his arms that entranced him.

  He wanted to feel those sharp little nails on his shoulders, his back, digging in and raking him in her pleasure.

  Seth pulled back from the kiss as he heard a moan whisper from her throat. He licked at her lips and let her chase his tongue with hers. He nibbled at the lower curve and felt her tongue rub against his upper lip. It was sexy and sensuous, wickedly seductive. It wasn’t the devouring, desperate greed of their past kisses. This was slow and sweet, his eyes locked with hers and that confused innocence filling her face. The rapt, absorbed pleasure, the uncertainty that he would complete it.

  “Let me know,” he whispered against her perfect, passion-swollen lips. “Tell me, Dawn, if I frighten you.”

  She frowned back at him. “Why would I be frightened?”

  Why indeed.

  He kissed the tip of her nose and felt her stretch beneath him, the inside of her thigh rubbing against his leg, her pebble-hard nipples burning his chest.

  He could feel the need to bury himself inside her building in his balls, but stronger, moving deeper inside him was the need to simply love her. To give her the pleasure, the caresses, the building need and loving adoration he had always fantasized about.

  Seth had never loved another woman. He had fucked them, he had played with them, but until now, until Dawn, he had never loved.

  Dawn couldn’t believe the pleasure coursing through her senses as Seth kissed her nose, then moved his lips to her jaw, to the sensitive flesh of her neck.

  The glands beneath her tongue had eased, the hormone that filled them now filling him instead. He had taken it, suckling it from her, using his lips, his tongue, the warmth of his mouth to take it all. To consume it, to leave her free of the torrential effects that came from having it fill her senses.

  And still he touched her so gently. His lips moved over her neck as she panted for air; his hands bunched on the bed beside her, holding his weight above her as he pleasured her with his lips. Just his lips.

  He sipped from her flesh, then from her nipples. He drew the tight, hard points into his mouth and ignored her desperate cry as he suckled them into the heated depths of his mouth.

  “Seth. Oh, Seth. It’s so good.” It was a pleasure she
didn’t know if she could endure. She could feel each tug of his mouth as it sent echoing sensations to her clit. Her juices spilled from her vagina, gathered on the folds of her pussy and tormented her clit with the moisture.

  She opened her eyes, staring at where his lips covered the tip of her breast and watched the perspiration as it ran in slow rivulets down the side of his face.

  The heat. It was burning in him and she knew the destructive power of it. But he was slow, easy, licking at her nipple and groaning as her hands caressed his shoulders, his back.

  “Ah yes, Dawn,” he rasped as his lips slid down the slope of her breast to her stomach. “Touch me, sweetheart. I dream of your touch. Your hands on my flesh. So soft, so sweet.”

  His lips moved lower. Lower.

  Dawn held her breath and watched, watched as he kissed and licked his way down her stomach. His tongue dipped into the indentation of her belly button, then went lower.

  She held her breath, her thighs falling apart as his broad shoulders wedged between them and he hesitated. He hovered over the wet folds between her legs, his breathing harsh, heavy. A drop of sweat rolled down the side of his face, dripped to the sensitive mound, and she gasped.

  His gaze jerked up.

  Dawn watched as he licked his lips, lips swollen with need, his eyes nearly black with lust as his arms strained on the bed beside her.

  “I’ve dreamed of this, Seth,” she moaned, dying to know the feeling, to experience his lips there. “You always stop. Right here. You always stop.”

  “I can’t stop.” His eyes drifted closed, dark lashes lying on his cheeks for a moment before they opened again. “God help us both, Dawn. I can’t stop now.” And his head lowered.

  The first swipe of his tongue through the drenched slit had her arching and crying out his name. The second teasing little lick had her hands in his hair, trying to hold him to her. After the third she lost her mind.

  He settled between her thighs and slid his hands beneath her rear, clenching his fingers in the curves and lifting her to his mouth.

  Lips, tongue, suckling kisses and desperate licking strokes had her writhing beneath his lips. This wasn’t pleasure. This was torture. It was agony and ecstasy all rolled into one and she didn’t want it to ever end. She would die if it ended. It was building in her womb, in her veins, it was whipping over her nerve endings, every one, every cell of her body, and sending them into a cataclysm of sensation.

  She twisted beneath the teasing flicks of his tongue. She screamed when he plunged it inside the clenching depths of her pussy. When his lips surrounded her clit and suckled with deep, groaning pulls, she exploded.

  Dawn had never orgasmed. She had never known this building, this desperate flight, this explosion that tore through the core of her body and flashed through her soul. It shook her, inside and out, had her muscles jerking, her torso lifting and her nails scouring his back as he held her there, his lips milking her, taking her places she had never imagined she would go.

  Seth was burning. Not the burning he had known in the past. Not the burning he had known since her kiss. He was on fire. Flames were licking at his balls, semen seeped from the tip of his cock, and he swore the internal heat would melt him before he could get inside her.

  It was the most exquisite, most painful pleasure he had known in his life.

  Ten years. He had waited ten years for this. To feel her juices against his tongue, to bring her to climax with his mouth. To hear her screams in his ears and to feel her nails scratching his shoulders. And damn her, could she scratch. He arched into the little pain, growled against her pussy and licked again. And again. He consumed her release, the sweet taste of her pleasure, and when she dropped back to the bed, moaning at the slow echoes of renewed pleasure, he came to his knees and lifted her to him.

  He wouldn’t move over her. He couldn’t take her like that. He couldn’t risk the memories in either of them. Instead, he pulled her over him as he lay back and stared into her dazed eyes.

  “Ride me, Dawn,” he groaned, so desperate to feel her enveloping his cock that he was willing to beg. “Come on, sweetheart, take me inside you.”

  He gripped her hips as she straddled his thighs, watched as her fingers, so delicate and graceful, gripped the shaft and led it to the fluttering entrance of her pussy.

  He was on the point of praying. She had to hurry. She had to do this or he swore his heart was going to explode from the pleasure.

  He had to grit his teeth as she ran the thick head between the pouting lips of her sex; then she tucked it at the opening and he stilled. He forced every muscle in his body to freeze as he watched her face, the intensity of her arousal, the dazed, desperate pleasure in her eyes and her flushed features.

  “It’s not a dream,” she moaned as he felt her press against the thick head and begin to impale herself. “It’s not a dream.”

  It wasn’t a dream. This time, he was here. Dawn stared down at him as he held her. If he didn’t hold her, she would melt against him like butter, flow over him and sink right into his pores. And she would always be a part of him. She could never lose him if she was as deep inside him as he would soon be inside her.

  She felt the pinching tightness, watched his face as it twisted with pleasure, and knew, if it hurt, if somehow it hurt bad, it wouldn’t matter. To see this look on his face, she would give more than her body, she would give her life.

  But it wasn’t pain. Not the pain that tears and rends. It was a pleasure-pain. Agony and ecstasy as she fought to breathe, following the movements of his hands, feeling her juices ease his way, saturating their flesh as she worked herself on the stiff stalk of flesh.

  His cock throbbed. The heavy veins pounded against the inner walls of her pussy and caressed in another way. The thick head opened her, the shaft stroked her. Inch by inch she impaled herself on rapture and cried out with the beauty of it. The pleasure of it. The feeling of something finally coming together. Something, someone finally belonging to her.

  By time the full length was lodged inside, they were both gasping for air. Sweat covered their bodies and the fire raging between them was burning them to cinders.

  “Seth, help me!” Her fists clenched against his chest as the hard cry tore from her throat. “Please.” She clenched around him, felt the muscles of her vagina contract and more of her moisture ease between them. “I don’t know…” She arched, cried out. “I don’t know what to do.”

  But he did. His hands pulled her to him, one cupped her head and drew her lips to his, and he began to move. She was screaming into his kiss, her tongue tangling with his, his thrusting into her mouth, mimicking the hard, desperate lunges between her thighs.

  “Dawn, ah God—” He bit at her lips as his cock pushed inside her pussy, stretched her, caressed nerve endings so sensitive she swore each ecstatic thrust was going to destroy her.

  She tore her lips from his and lowered them to his neck. She had to breathe. She had to. Because she could feel the burn building again, as it had when his lips suckled at her clit, but this time worse. She could feel it growing in her womb, building and spreading throughout her body.

  She was coming apart. The pleasure was unraveling her soul and she didn’t know how to stop it. Her hips writhed as he fucked her. He fucked her hard, deep, each thrust gaining in momentum until she felt herself erupting into a cascade of flames.

  She couldn’t scream this time. She couldn’t scream so she bit. Her teeth buried in his shoulder and she tightened to the point of breaking. Certain her body couldn’t maintain such pleasure, it couldn’t survive. She couldn’t survive.

  But she did. Suddenly, bone and muscle melted into him, and the explosion that took her then was mindless. The ecstasy poured her into him even as he poured into her. Deep, heated spurts of semen pulsed inside her as the muscles of her