h was gone. He could smell her scent, but only barely. Only enough to know she had been there.
Anya stared down at Del-Rey, uncertain why she was toeing off her sneakers, pulling free her T-shirt. Stripping down to flesh.
“Flesh to flesh,” he had whispered as his fingers dug into the sheet and the fever raged in his body. He could be cold. Fever made one cold. Chilling clear to the bone. She remembered the one time she had really been sick, just before the Coyotes’ rescue. She had ached with the cold as she ran a fever.
She felt her breath catch in her throat as she unlatched her bra and pushed her panties from her hips. He was aroused. He could take her even as he slept and she couldn’t blame him if he did. She wouldn’t stop him if he did.
The longer she sat beside him the hotter his flesh seemed to get until touching him was almost like touching a flame. And he was shuddering, shivering.
The healing was excruciating by itself, and she knew the mating heat was hell. At least, it had been for her.
“Del-Rey.” She whispered his name as she moved onto the bed, felt him stiffen, then growl her name again.
Pulling the sheet over both of them, she settled slowly against his side, trembling with wariness, wishing she knew more about this man that nature had decided belonged to her. And that was her fault. She had forced the separation, he hadn’t.
She had no more settled beside him than he moved. Anya almost whimpered in fear as he flipped her to her side and moved. He shifted, shifted her. Pulled her over him, then under him.
Confused, she followed his mumbled directions, moved here and there until she realized they were in the exact center of the huge bed. Finally he settled, draped over her, her head tucked beneath his chin, his leg thrown over hers, his arms wrapped around her, and then he eased.
She felt it; almost a muscle at a time, she felt him relax until he was limp, curled around her, his breath stirring her hair, the inferno that had fired his body somehow seeming cooler. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she might have heard a soft little grumble, almost a snore slip from his chest as his hand curled around her breast and his heavy weight held here beneath him.
She lay there, tense, silent, uncertain what he would do next. When nothing came, when he continued to sleep, she felt her own lashes drifting closed, felt her own weariness dragging her down.
Being a coya was damned hard work, she decided. She would sleep here, just for a little while. And maybe slip away before he awoke and she found herself pinned by a fully aware, fully aroused Coyote Breed in mating heat.
But she couldn’t help the smile that edged her lips as her eyes closed. He was like a puppy. Rumbling here and there, twisting and turning and dragging her to suit his comfort until he slept peacefully.
It was kind of cute.
Hell, she had to admit, Del-Rey had a charming side that had mesmerized her before the mating crap managed to scare the hell out of her. Until she had convinced herself he had lied, deliberately, that he had taken his promises and her heart and trampled them.
He had trampled her sense of confidence in herself when her body had gone crazy with the heat. He had taken her, as lost in the pounding lust as she had been. She had convinced herself that he should have had the control to make it easier for her. That he should have taken responsibility for something neither of them had expected. That he should have been the charming, in control, teasing Coyote Breed that had spoiled her with the hint of laughter in his eyes and his promises that he would care for her. Take care of her. That he would make everything work out.
It had worked out. He had protected her. He had made certain she had what she needed even above what he needed. And like a child, she had blamed him for the results.
He was still arrogant. He was definitely too dominant. But she had learned that that was a male Breed. It was a part of them. It was even a part of him that made her crazy to touch him, even when she wanted to hate him.
She hadn’t seen a single Breed mating that went easily. They fought, they yelled, they clashed, and they challenged each other. And as Hope had once told her, once it was over, they laughed and they loved and they knew they belonged. No matter what happened in the world around them, they belonged.
Could she be lucky enough to find that with Del-Rey?
She still had issues to resolve with him, Anya knew that. But she also knew that until they clashed, fought and yelled, those issues would never be resolved and they would never have that chance to laugh, to love and to belong.
As she slipped into sleep, she prayed she hadn’t waited too long to attempt that resolution.
CHAPTER 14
He was warm. The only time he was ever warm was when Anya had slept in his bed.
He usually awakened from a healing chilled to the bone, damp with his own sweat and feeling like an animal that had lain in a gutter for two days.
He shifted, moved to stretch and realized, in one heart-stopping moment, one instant of cognition, why he was so warm.
His eyes opened and he stared into a sleeping face. Anya’s face. Spiked red gold lashes lay against her creamy flesh; her lips were parted as she breathed, her breath whispering over his chest.
Their legs were tangled together, his erection, fierce and engorged to the point of agony, throbbed with brutal insistence where it lay, pressed between her thighs, surrounded by the slick, creamy essence of her arousal.
She was wet, and her wet heat slicked his dick and reminded him of how much hotter it was deep inside her body.
What the hell was she doing here? He was wrapped around her like a vine, holding her to him, tucked against him, and he had managed to sleep through this for how long?
She moved against him then, her hips shifting as she rode the thick length of his cock against her clit.
Damn. Damn.
He felt his hand clench her hip, then relax. Did he want her to stop or to continue? Would she find her pleasure in her sleep as he watched?
His hand smoothed over her hip and down the curve of her ass to her thigh.
“Anya.” He swallowed tightly as he felt her move against him again.
He barely remembered awakening several times, moving to the bathroom or forcing himself to eat before collapsing again. He didn’t remember her being here at those times. He remembered the chill in his bones and the need for sleep or for water or food. He would have surely known if she had been in his bed.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. Forty-eight hours since he had first returned to Base and collapsed in the bed.
His teeth snapped together as she moved again, spreading her slick, hot cream along the painfully engorged shaft it cuddled. Damn her. Damn the heat. Damn his weakness.
Her thigh lifted along his, the side of her knee rubbing at his hip as she opened herself farther to him and rubbed her swollen, hard-tipped breasts against his chest.
Hell. He was supposed to control his lust in the face of this temptation and the mating heat combined? Was he supposed to be fucking made of steel?
Well, except his cock. It felt hard as steel and as hot as newly formed iron.
“Anya, wake up,” he groaned, hearing the growl in his voice.
She rubbed against him again, her hips tilting until the swollen bud of her clit was in direct contact and the fiery heat of it threatened to blister him.
Sweet merciful heaven. He held her hip, but was he smart enough to ease her back? Hell no, he was moving her, encouraging her to ride him, to stroke the brutal length of his dick as she gave herself pleasure.
“Wake up.” He lowered his head and nipped at her lip. “Damn you, do you expect me to be strong enough to simply walk away?”
Her tongue peeked out, swiped over the area he had nipped, as her lashes lifted and sleepy, aroused sapphire gems stared back at him.
“Watch the teeth,” she muttered as her lashes lowered and an expression of sublime pleasure filled her face.
Her hips rolled again as a little moan broke past her lips and th
e silky flesh of that perfect little pussy rode his dick again.
“Anya. Move,” he growled.
And oh how she moved. With a slow, wicked roll of her hips that had the head of his cock pushing against her entrance before it slid in her creamy juices and only glanced it.
This was torture. It was agony. No hell he had endured could come close to the hell of being this close and knowing he couldn’t take what awaited just within reach.
He was sweating. Del-Rey could feel the sweat building on his flesh, but he was too dick-dumb to pull away from her. If she wanted to ride him to her own release, then slip back into sleep, God knew, he’d try to give it to her. But he knew he didn’t have the control to sustain that patience in the face of a hunger that ate into him like acid. It cramped his balls, his abdomen. He swore it was setting fire to his brain as he felt the hormone attributed to mating rushing through his system.
The glands beneath his tongue were torturously swollen; the need to release the hormone into her system was damned near killing him.
“Del-Rey.” Her lashes lifted again. Gem-bright, her eyes stared back at him. “If you tease me one more time, I might have to kill you.”
“Tease you?” he groaned.
“You’ve teased me for two days.” She shifted again, rode his cock and then paused as she had the engorged head lined up against the entrance to the sweetness beyond.
“How have I teased you?” he muttered.
“Your lips all over me, but never enough. Then you tuck your cock between my legs and just sleep. That’s torture, Del-Rey. The worst kind. I bet its punishable or something. Should I take your allowance?”
He’d done this? In his sleep, without taking her?
Del-Rey shook his head.
“Kiss me,” she whispered. “I’m late for those damned hormonal therapy shots. It’s killing me.”
“No.” He couldn’t do this. “You should have called Armani. She would have come here.”
“Lockdown.” She stretched against him. “Snipers in the woods and all kinds of stuff.”
“You should have told Brim,” he snarled. “He would have gotten you there in the heli-jet. Damn you!”
He didn’t want to take her like this again. Not in the full fury of mating heat, where the scent of her was like a drug itself, whipping control from his mind.
“Brim offered.” She nipped his chin, then licked it as he tried to find sanity. “I want you the way nature meant for you to take me, Del-Rey. This is the way it’s supposed to be.”
Ah fuck. He was going to die. Her hips moved, the tip of his cock invaded the snug confines of her pussy, and he felt flames shoot up his spine.
Not like this. He wanted to kiss her, taste her. He wanted so much more for her than just the mating.
“Do you know,” she whispered roughly, “when you rub against me like that and you fill me with your pre-cum, you make me burn? Even before I felt the mating heat coming back, I felt that. You were tucked against me, and I was so wet, so wicked, I let you do it. And I felt that. And all I wanted was you inside me.”
He knew what Wolf and Coyote pre-cum did to their mates. Armani had explained it in humiliating detail. The silky fluid was filled with the hormone that induced heat as well as one that relaxed the tight flesh that would surround his cock. It would raise the female mate’s arousal, make her more sensitive, make the pleasure sharper as it prepared her body for his final release and the tight secondary swelling halfway up the shaft as his cum tore from him. It would lock him inside her, make it impossible to pull free as his seed shot into the heated depths of her pussy. And it would hold him there—the last time, he had been locked inside her for over half an hour, feeling her climaxes as though they were his own, as she begged him to make it stop.
That memory gave him the strength. God, he never wanted that shame again. To stare into her tear-drenched eyes as she begged him, pleaded with him to make it stop and he could do nothing to stop it.
“Enough.” He jerked back, pushing her away before swinging around and shoving his feet to the floor. “I’ll call Armani and tell her.”
He froze. A sense of vertigo rushed over him as he felt her at his back, hot nipples stabbing into him as her teeth raked his neck. “Call Armani, and I’ll take my injection like a good little coya and return to that dead little world where my dreams torment me, and my emotions overshadow the truth?”
“Honest arousal,” he snarled. “Give me that. I’ll take it. But not like this, where you have no control over your need.”
He couldn’t fucking breathe. The scent of her pussy was washing through his senses like a tidal wave, like an eruption of white-hot heat piercing his brain.
“I don’t want something else controlling me either,” she whispered. “I want all of you, Del-Rey. Don’t you want all of me? Mating heat and all?”
“What do you want in your bed then, the animal?” he sneered.
“And the man,” she whispered as he glared down at her, holding her down, his hands manacling her wrists to the mattress, his hips pressing against hers. “You’re both. I want both.”
“So you had to do without the injections to take both?” Self-disgust tore through him.
“Is that what you think, Del-Rey?” She stared back at him, her eyes so brilliant with arousal it hurt to stare into them. “That I have to let myself become drugged by the heat to take you? That isn’t why.”
“Then why?”
“Because the hormone therapy they were giving me deadens certain nerve endings and makes anger, frustration and fear worse. It was the only way it would work. It blocked the receptors to areas that receive the most arousal, while heightening other emotions. I don’t want anything deadened or heightened unnaturally. I want to feel you,” she whispered. “All of you. Was that so wrong?”
He shook his head. He was supposed to make sense of this right now? When need was tearing through him with a force he had never known before?
“I want your kiss, and I want to taste it, feel it. I want your touch, and I want to know all the pleasure. I want you inside me, and I want to feel the emotions I felt before. All of them, Del-Rey.”
“You’re lying,” he growled. “I can smell the fear inside you and the lie that falls from your lips.” He pressed his forehead against hers, his balls cramping with the need tearing through him. “God, Anya. Why are you doing this to us?”
“I can’t be a little bit afraid?” Tears sparkled in her eyes then. “Del-Rey, I don’t want the hormone therapy because I don’t want to cheat whatever it is that does this to us. If I don’t face it now, I’m never going to.”
No, it wasn’t a lie, it was courage and fear. She was coming to him, all of him, and she was trying.
“And what do I do when I knot you?” he snarled. “When I swell inside you and the fear overwhelms that pleasure? When you beg me to make it stop, Anya? What do I do then? Because there is no stopping it.”
“Whatever you need to do, as long as you hold me, Del-Rey. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t let me get cold,” she finally answered. “But if I take another of those injections, then I won’t come back here until it wears off again. We’ll do this right, and we’ll both become accustomed to it, or we’ll not do it at all.”
Anya could feel the old fears trying to rise inside her, the need versus the unfamiliarity of the Breed body and the mating heat. He made her wild, and control had always been her focus. He made her lose that control. He made her want to lose it, made her want to be wicked, and he had never known that was the most terrifying thing of all.
Now, as she stared into his raven black eyes, she knew the chance she was taking. If she didn’t overcome those fears, if she lost herself and the fear returned, it could damage something more between them.
She had never considered how Del-Rey had felt when the mating heat tore through both of them. When she had cried and fought him, feeling him locked inside her, becoming hysterical at the brutal pleasure that tore through her. She
had begged, pleaded with him to stop it. And she had cried. Hysterical tears that had dampened her pillow and left her exhausted even as the heat rebuilt.
“We won’t resolve this by hiding behind the hormone treatments.” She breathed in raggedly as a wave of furious need swept through her. “This was my decision, Del-Rey. I won’t blame you for anything.”
“Anya.” Agony flickered in his gaze. “Do you know what you’re doing to us? To me?”
“I’m not a child,” she told him, willing him to believe her. “I’m not the woman you probably expected. I’m your mate, and you can take me as your mate, or I can walk away.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. It was sexy; she had always found that sound to be soul-searingly sexy. It sent shivers racing up her spine, and even before the mating it had made her wet.
“Growl at me again,” she tempted him. “Kiss me while you growl, Del-Rey. I dare you.”
Never dare a Coyote. Ever. It was a law, even the Council knew to never dare them. They always accepted a dare. They always triumphed.
His lips were on hers in an instant, his tongue sinking inside her, and Anya realized what she had been missing for eight long months. Even in the past week his kiss hadn’t been just right.
The taste hadn’t been just so, because of that damned therapy. This was Del-Rey’s kiss. Primitive and primal. The hormone that spilled from his tongue was spicy and addictive. There was nothing sweet about it, nothing gentle, it was hot and sensual, and she stroked her tongue against his, drawing more to her, needing more.
This was the taste, the heat, the hunger. It merged and melded with her own, stoked the fire waiting inside her and sent it blazing. Without the fear.
She strained in his grasp as she heard the growl in his throat that rumbled into their kiss. Strong thighs bracketed hers; the feel of his cock throbbing against her lower stomach had her trying to arch closer. She couldn’t touch him as she wanted to, as she needed to.
She tore her lips from his. “Let me touch.”
He growled harder, rougher, but didn’t release her hands. He stared at her breasts as they rose and fell swiftly, the hard tips of her nipples standing tight and a blushing pink beneath his gaze.
“I kissed you here while I slept?” he asked her, his gaze lifting to hers.
“You only kissed them,” she admitted. “I wanted to beg for more.”
His expression shifted, turned arrogant and dominant as sexual tension tightened his features. “You wanted more?”
“I ached for more.”
His head lowered and she nearly screamed at the sensation. Her nipples had always been incredibly sensitive, until the hormonal treatments. Now that sensitivity had returned tenfold. She swore she was going to orgasm from his mouth sucking her in, drawing on a tight, hard tip and lashing it with his tongue.
The pleasure was exquisite. She arched against him, drowning in it now where it had terrified her before. It raced over her flesh, streaked to her clit and spasmed her womb in one heated second as she gasped his name.
The sight of him suckling at her nipple did things to her that she couldn’t describe. The pleasure was incredible, but the visual sensation, his black eyes, heavily lashed, watching her, his lips drawing on her, his dark face ravaged by lust. It was the most incredible sight of her life. It clenched her thighs, had her straining to create friction at her clit as pleasure invaded every cell of her body.
“Don’t stop,” she moaned as his head lifted.
He moved to her neglected nipple, sucked it into his mouth and with his free hand used his fingers to plump the damp tip he had abandoned.
Shards of sensation were tearing through her now. She wanted him and she wanted him now. Waiting didn’t seem to be a viable option. Then his lips lowered. He kissed and nipped his way down her torso, her stomach, as he released her wrists and loosened his thighs about her legs.
“The scent of your arousal makes me hungry.” The growl in his voice was deeper, darker. “I wanted to taste you before and didn’t get to. I swore, if ever you gave me the chance again, then I was going to lap every drop of cream from your sweet pussy.”
Anya lost the ability to breathe for precious seconds. When she finally managed to inhale, he had her legs spread and his lips lowered.
He kissed her first. His lips pursed and he kissed her clit, so gently as he watched her. As she watched him.
A heavy flush mantled his cheekbones now and Anya could feel the same heat flushing her body. She couldn’t drag her gaze from the sight of him though, his lips delivering sensual, hot kisses as his hands pushed her thighs farther apart, opening her to his lips and tongue.
“So sweet.”
She jerked as his tongue licked through the swollen slit.
“You taste like pure nectar,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, low. “Sweet and hot as sunshine itself.”
Who knew her Del-Rey could be so damned seductive? She’d known he was, but not to this depth.
“Taste again,” she panted. “You might be wrong.”
She watched in anticipation as he smiled, flashed those wicked curved canines and licked again.
Her lashes fluttered. She was nearly lost. She was sinking into a whirlwind of sensation and she didn’t want to escape.
“Lay back, my coya.” He pressed her back until her shoulders were against the mattress once again. “Let me show you how I love your taste. How I love the sweet heat flowing from your body.”
Would she survive it? She didn’t think she would. The sensations racing through her were unlike even those first destructive times Del-Rey had taken her. This was deeper, hotter, it was filling parts of her that had never been touched before.
His tongue was like rough silk licking from the entrance of her sex to her clit. Stroking and lapping, little growls vibrating against her flesh as she tried to get closer, tried to get more.
She wanted to come. She needed to. It was burning inside her like wildfire searching for escape.
Anya spread her thighs farther, her heels digging into the bed as she arched to him. One hand went to his thick, coarse hair, the other to an aching nipple. Gripping it between her fingers she pinched and rolled the tip, her head thrashing against the sheets as pleasure rolled through her like a cataclysmic wave of heat.
“Fuck, yes,” Del-Rey snarled before he was licking her with male greed, his tongue pressing inside the desperate, clenching entrance of her vagina, thrusting into it as she cried out his name and begged for relief.
“Yes, baby,” he groaned. “Beg me. Beg me to take you, to touch you.”
He licked, stroked, his hands pressed beneath her, cupping her ass and lifting her to his ravenou