kowtow to Callan, and he didn’t fear him. He had staked his claim there in that room, on a mat that dampened with her sweat and her tears. And he had given her the gift of making her whole.
Dawn wasn’t a fool, and she knew Seth wasn’t either. There would be other nights when she would cry, because when she awoke from the nightmares, the memory of them would be there. But she knew he would be there to hold her. He would shelter her, and her tears would be welcome.
“I need you,” she finally whispered as he stood and stripped his sweaty shirt from his body.
“You need a shower, then you need to rest.” He finished undressing and turned to lead her to the shower.
“No, Seth. I need you.” She dug her heels in, staring back at him, the confidence of a lover, the woman that belonged in his soul rising within her. “The shower can wait. I need your touch.”
Dawn leaned forward and touched him. She licked over his chest, let her teeth rake over it.
His muscles jerked beneath the touch as a hard hiss left his lips.
She liked that sound. Male frustration, and male pleasure. Seth’s pleasure.
She pulled her wrist free of his fingers and let her fingers rake through the curls that covered his chest. The lighter brown almost blended with the deeply tanned flesh and fascinated her.
Breeds didn’t have body hair below their necks. Some Breeds could grow a beard and mustache, but it was extremely rare. Hair grew quickly, and brows and lashes were natural, but there was no crisp, silken chest hair on the males. No covering growth between the thighs.
Seth’s body hair continually drew her touch. It was light, sexy, soft and warm. She leaned forward and rubbed her cheek against it, feeling the purr that came to her throat when she meant only to give a whispery moan of pleasure.
Her hands pulled at his belt, the metal buttons of his jeans as she felt him toe his way out of his running shoes. She pushed the denim over his hips, carefully lowered it over the thick length of his cock.
The hard flesh stood out from his body, throbbing, flushed, heavy with need.
She dragged the material down his muscular thighs then let him deal with the rest of it. She had what she wanted. That gorgeous cock, full to bursting, a small bead of pre-cum dampening the tip.
She went to her knees, ignoring his strangled groan as her lips covered the flushed crest.
She needed the taste of him in her mouth. His pleasure racing inside her.
She drew his cock head nearly to her throat, sucked and licked as her hands, both hands, cupped around the shaft and stroked.
The muscles in his abdomen stood out clearly, his thighs bunched powerfully.
“Dawn, I won’t last long with this,” he groaned. “Come here, sweetheart.” He threaded his fingers through her hair and tried to lift her. “Let me love you.”
A growl met the tug on her hair, a light raking of her teeth.
“You’re spanked.” The hard retort was a sound of extreme pleasure.
Promises, promises, she thought without lifting her lips to speak the words. Maybe one of these days he would actually get around to making good on it.
She swirled her tongue over the pulsing crest, licked and purred. God, he tasted so good. He tasted like life, like a miracle, like love. And she needed all of it to warm the places in her soul that had been cold for so long. To ease the shock of the revelations inside her and, quite simply, because he made her hot.
He made her horny.
He made her want to knead his flesh in pure joy.
Instead she sucked. She sucked and licked and heard his groans, his growls, his muttered oaths and, finally, felt and tasted the hard, deep spurts of his semen filling her.
She eased back, stared up at the glitter of lust gone mad in his gaze and licked her lips slowly. Satisfyingly. Because he tasted so damned good she knew she would need more, often.
“My turn.” He lifted her.
Dawn didn’t protest it; it would have done her no good to, because her body was burning for his touch now. She had erogenous zones where there weren’t supposed to be erogenous zones.
As he laid her back against the soft spread, the caress of the material on her back made her arch. But when his hands gripped her thighs and parted them, the pleasure was like a tidal wave, consuming her and sucking her into a vast ocean of sensation.
She was lost within it as his head lowered to the heat of her pussy and his tongue worked slowly through the ultrasensitive slit.
He set fires in her that she knew would never be completely sated. They could be banked, nothing more.
Her hands slid into his hair, she twisted beneath him, arched and cried out in ecstasy as his lips surrounded her clit and sucked her to climax. Then he pulled her to him as he went to his back, dragging her over him and pulling her head down for his kiss.
His cock pierced her pussy as her tongue slid into his mouth. He sucked the hormone gathering in her tongue from her as she sucked him into the heat and snug depths of her sex.
They moaned together, moved in a dance as ancient as time, and they loved.
Dawn had never felt sensations as she felt them now. As though by confronting the worst that her past had to offer, she could now accept her present with a joy she had never known before. And she did more than accept it now; she demanded it.
She straightened until she rose above him, her body consuming his as his hands held her hips in a viselike grip. Sweat beaded his forehead, his chest. A small rivulet rolled down his abs to where their bodies met, and that just turned her on. It made a purring little growl leave her throat as she shifted her hips, stroking him internally with the flexing of her muscles.
“I love your body.” She ran her hands up his hard pecs, slid them over his shoulders as he watched her from hooded eyes. “Every hard inch, inside and out.” She shifted her hips again and watched his teeth clench.
“You’re being bad,” he groaned. “Driving me crazy is very bad, Dawn.”
“Yes. And one of these days, you’re going to spank me for it.” She smiled down at him. “Promises, promises.”
His eyes narrowed on her. As his muscles bunched as though to move, Dawn moved instead. She lifted, her breath catching as his erection slid against the sensitive flesh, stroked and heated her. She lifted until he barely penetrated her, barely heated her before lowering herself slowly, steadily, and taking all he had to give her once again.
She shook her head, feeling her womb clench and convulse as he stretched her, burned her. The pleasure-pain of each impalement was almost enough to make her orgasm instantly. She was dying from the pleasure; it raced over her, stroked her flesh even where he didn’t touch her, and left her gasping, crying for more.
She felt as though she were burning within the center of a flame of pure sensation, pure emotion. Twisting within spirals of rapture and needing it to last forever.
“Seth. It’s like the sun,” she cried out, feeling the heat gathering and burning inside her. “You’re inside me like the sun.”
“Fuck! Damn. Dawn, sweetheart, you’re the fucking sun.” He was straining beneath her, his muscles tight, vibrating and trembling with the need to hold back.
Dawn was fighting to hold back too. She wanted more pleasure. Hours of it. She wanted to hold it inside her forever and feel this, just this. Oh God, she wanted to feel held like this, loved and pleasured, just like this, for eternity.
“Seth.” She cried his name because she couldn’t find a center other than him.
Her head was spinning with the pleasure. Her vision dark, dazed. She was moving faster, harder, and it was never enough. It wasn’t enough to still that fire, to throw her past the boundaries of her body and into an ecstasy that defied description, defied need, hunger or desire. A fire that poured into her soul.
She twisted; she held on to his hard biceps, thrust and rolled her hips and screamed out her frustration.
With a shattered cry Seth lifted her, flipped her to her back as he rolled behi
nd her, lifted her hips and slammed into her.
The thrust impaled her deep and hard, every thick, iron-hard inch boring into her in one deep lunge that had her back arching and pleasure rocketing through her.
It wasn’t just one thrust. It was another. And another. His hips slammed into her, the sounds those of flesh smacking flesh, his male groans and her cries of building pleasure.
Until it exploded. Until he thrust into her and triggered an orgasm that obliterated her mind, sent fire exploding and rushing along nerve endings, through her bloodstream, into her veins.
Her pores opened and drew ecstasy into them, until she was the burning center of a flame that turned into a rushing conflagration.
She heard Seth cry out behind her, felt her muscles lock on his cock, stroke and milk it until he bucked against her and spilled more heat into her. Hard jets of liquid heat that filled her womb, rushed through her, exploded inside her again and left her mindless. Pleasure. It wasn’t just pleasure rushing through her, it was the center of ecstasy.
Seth collapsed over her.
He was always careful to keep his weight from her, to never take her as she had been forced in those labs, to never make her feel restrained, held down.
But as she drained his seed from his body, she drained the strength from his muscles as well. He fell over her, barely catching enough of his weight to keep from crushing her.
She still held his cock in a grip impossible to break. He jerked, shuddered, bit off a curse and finally let a strangled groan or two leave his throat. Because nothing in his life had ever prepared him for Dawn’s orgasms.
Her pussy tightened around his cock until it wasn’t possible to move. The muscles flexed and stroked and milked the hard shaft until there was no holding back his release. His cum pumped into her, spurt after spurt, stealing the breath from his lungs and leaving him helpless in her grip until her own pleasure eased.
And she did like to hold on to her pleasure. It rippled endlessly through her pussy and stroked endlessly over flesh so sensitive that the added stimulation was ecstasy and agony combined.
When the contractions eased enough to allow him to slide free, he found himself reluctant to. His lips were pressed to her shoulder, his breaths sawing from his lungs.
He just needed to catch his breath, then he could pull free and shift from her.
“I wish I could hold you inside me.” A little shudder worked from her body, a gasp left her throat. “Forever.”
Her voice was pure sensation, a dark caress over senses destroyed by the power of his release and the effect she always had on him.
She would do this to him, no matter their age, no matter how weak or how tired he ever became. Her pleasure would always spur his, always leave him helpless to do anything but feel, touch, taste and experience the never-ending pleasure that only she could give him.
Finally, he found enough breath inside him to drag his body off hers and pull her against his chest.
“We need a shower,” he sighed. “I even had the soap laid out.”
A weak laugh left her lips. “How many soaps do you have, Seth?”
He frowned. How many did he have?
“I don’t know. How many trips did I make in ten years?”
He felt her thinking. She would know, if she could think. Hell, he couldn’t find the energy for a fucking thought in his head.
“A lot,” she said finally and yawned, shifting and turning, finding her place against his chest.
She had a particular position she liked to go to sleep in, one that left him wrapped around her and her wrapped inside the curve of his body. Hell, he loved that position.
“A lot of soaps then.” He smirked into the predawn shadows of the room. “If a scent made me think of you, I found a soap maker. Ireland in all seasons. Scotland during a highland summer beside a clear running stream. I thought of you there. I even bought the land. Paris, the countryside alive with spring. There was even this little town, somewhere in Egypt, where the scent of the desert sands met a private oasis. Damn, I got hard thinking of you there.”
A light laugh against his chest. “You had a soap made for me every time you got hard?”
“Hell, not enough rooms in this house to store that much soap.” He grinned. “Nah, I had to be someplace I thought you’d like. A scent I wanted to share with you. An emotion I wanted you to know.” The grin turned rueful. “I wanted to share it all with you, and that was the only way I knew how to do it.”
“You never gave me the soaps though,” she pointed out.
“Because I wanted to bathe you with them myself,” he sighed, his hands running over her body. “I wanted to seduce you with scents and touch. Hell, Dawn, I wanted a reason to make myself believe I could have you. If I had the soaps, maybe you’d be curious about the scents. If you liked the silks and lace of the panties, maybe, just maybe,” his voice thickened, “you’d model them for them.”
“So you could seduce me?” Her voice was soft, and in it, he heard her joy.
“So I could seduce you. Forever.” He pressed her head against his chest.
“I love you, Seth. Until there’s no tomorrow, no beginning or end, I love you.”
And for a second his eyes closed, because the emotion that swamped him nearly undid him.
“And I love you, sweetheart. Until I’d wither away and die without you.”
And there, curled into each other, as dawn lifted across the sky, they slept. The ragged survivors of a tempest.
Cassie stared into the darkness of her bedroom.
The child was gone. It had slowly faded away hours before, but it had done so with such a look of hope that she had shed a tear and whispered a prayer that Dawn had finally let her in.
Every Breed in the house had heard Dawn’s screams. Cassie’s parents still hadn’t returned to their room after rushing to the basement, but Cassie knew it wasn’t because Dawn was in pain any longer. Dawn had awoken, just as the new day was rising.
She rose from her bed and stared down at the evening gown she still wore. They hadn’t been back in the room long before Dawn’s screams had pulled her parents away.
Her mother had been brushing Cassie’s hair. Sometimes her parents took turns brushing her hair, as they had when she was a little girl, despite the fact that she often protested it.
Her father couldn’t seem to accept that she was growing up. And her mother, Cassie often thought, saw her daughter’s maturity with a sense of fear.
She moved from her bedroom to the sitting room, pausing in front of the doors, pulled there as though by an unseen force she couldn’t understand.
She didn’t dare walk outside.
She gripped the handle and breathed in deeply, the fear building inside her.
She knew her own death was coming. Not how it would happen, or where, but she knew there was no avoiding it. If it happened here, then her father wouldn’t be nearby. Her mother wouldn’t see it. They would be safer.
She had known she would die here. She had dreamed it. The visions that followed her, the ghostly forms that had drifted away from her over the past months, had warned her of it. They had told her that this was her destiny, that only here, and only with her blood, would the future become what it should be.
She didn’t want to die. She was only eighteen; there was so much that she wanted to see, wanted to experience. She wanted to dance and laugh. She wanted to know the truth of the shadowed vision of a man she saw in her dreams. Hear his laughter in life rather than just in sleep.
She wanted to watch her baby brother grow, and she wanted to be a woman, rather than the woman-child she knew she was.
But here, she had been warned. Here, her blood would be spilled by the one that held the wavering form of a child bound in the past. He would set into motion the future for the Breeds, for Dawn, and lay yet another piece of the puzzle that would eventually form a strong, able Breed community.
She would die by that man’s hand. And far better that she die alon
e, with none but her killer to see her fear.
She turned the door handle and slowly opened the door.
The sun was rising, casting a million shades of muted colors across the sky. Everything lay in shadow, and the shadows welcomed her as she moved onto the balcony. A clear target. And she knew someone had taken sight. She could feel it. Right there, the center of her forehead.
She stared out into the thick covering of trees and ached. She ached for so many things, so many thoughts and dreams and a life she would never have. Because she was unique, her father said. The truth was, because she was a freak.
And whoever watched her knew. He knew what she was, and he knew she couldn’t be allowed to live, didn’t he? They wouldn’t want to take her in; in the Council’s hands she would be a lever against the Breeds, a shift in the balance of power. And at present, there were so few who wanted anything to shift. War was always profitable. Even a silent war such as was being waged on the Breeds.
No, whoever was out there didn’t want to take her in. But his sights were on her, gun sights, steady. Clear. She stared into them, and with a mocking smile, mouthed the words, I dare you!
From his nest, he leveled the sights on the perfect face, right between those beautiful blue eyes, and imagined caressing her.
She was dressed in an evening gown, black, and it flowed around her like the night.
He read her lips and his own quirked into a smile. His finger didn’t move for the trigger. Instead his eyes stayed on her, stroked over pale, luminescent flesh, and he drew in the scent of innocence. Pure innocence tinged with fear.
I dare you, she had mouthed.
He smiled at the challenge. One day, she just might dare him too far, but he doubted it would be a bullet he’d penetrate her with.
CHAPTER 22
The next afternoon, Dawn sat at the long table that held the meetings of the board of directors of Lawrence Industries and watched as each of them signed the agreements Seth had laid out for them.
With the agreement to finance Sanctuary and Haven were agreements Lawrence Industries made to individual companies. A promise to restructure here, to strengthen there. Each board member was also the vice president of one of the sections that came together beneath the control and guidance of Lawrence Industries. Former owners or CEOs who had lost control because of bad management, buyouts or other varied reasons.
Because they had backed Seth, Seth in turn would reach out and support them more fully as well. Concessions they had been bargaining for were given, some in part, some completely, until all but one had been satisfied.
All but Valere.
“You’re going to regret this, Seth,” he bit out as he glared at them from the end of the table. “Lawrence and Vanderale Industries will pay for backing creatures such as that.” His gaze flicked to Dawn.
Dane leaned back in his chair, lit the thin cigar he invariably kept close, smiled and lifted his hand as he beckoned to Valere. “Do your worst, chap,” he dared him. “Better jokers than you have tried.”
It was regrettable that Valere had fought the plan to ensure the Breed society and the funding of Sanctuary for the next five years. The five-year forecast had been drawn out to allow the Breeds the time needed to complete the training that would allow them to move into the private security and law enforcement arenas with far fewer problems.
At present, their social skills frankly sucked when it came to political maneuverings in a job setting or working with others, except in a clearly laid-out team. Move a Breed into an investigative team in any major city at the moment, and there would be more bloodshed within the ranks than there was on the streets.
Five years would allow them time to complete the honing of that training, as well as the programs already being put in place to make use of the Breeds’ exceptional genetics and their training in other areas.
When the five years ended, the Breeds should be in a position that funding would no longer be necessary, and the profits from the agreements made with both Sanctuary and Haven, the Wolf Breed compound in Colorado, would begin trickling in. Slowly for the first few years, but within another five, those who’d initially signed onto the deal would be very rich indeed. The board members of both Lawrence Industries and Vanderale would be rich many times over from the profits gained from the Breed corporation.
Capitalism was alive and free, and it thrived. The Breeds were poised to become a very profitable, very wealthy industry in and of itself, because of Callan Lyons and the Breed Cabinet’s foresight.
Dawn was still amazed as she stood in the meeting room that afternoon and listened to the measures agreed upon, the work Seth had been doing for the Breed community over the past ten years.
He had apparently worked tirelessly on their behalf, fighting to overthrow the legacy his father had begun by funding the Genetics Council. It was a legacy he reminded his board members of several times.
That they had sat back and gotten fat from profits made by those who suffered a hell the board members couldn’t imagine. That the profits they had gained from their agreements with the Council had been paid in blood, in the rape, murder and torture of innocent children and adults.
From what Dawn had glimpsed, he hadn’t had to fight very hard. They were signing the measures before he had begun the hardest selling points of his argument. All but Valere, who stank of the Council and something more.
Dawn watched him closely, and he knew he was being watched. His hooded gaze was cold, malicious, as it moved over her. But it wasn’t the right gaze. He wasn’t the one who had raped and attempted to destroy a child’s mind. At least not hers. She was certain, so certain she had to force her hand from her weapon, that this man had been neck deep in the rot that infected the Genetics Council.
When the others pushed their signed agreements to the middle of the table, Valere’s face flushed with fury.
“Don’t do this, Theodore,” Seth warned him quietly. “You can’t block anything we’re doing. You’re only hurting your own companies. Because, trust me, I will drop every one of them once you walk from this room. Imagine what that will do to the Valere family holdings.”
Seth’s voice was hard, harder than Dawn could ever remember hearing it.
“You’ve let this little Breed tramp corrupt you, Seth.” Valere ignored the gasps of shock and outrage at his words as he indicated Dawn. “She dresses in your wealth and