Kayden/Simon

  His eyes on her still, he circled her clit with his tongue, then suckled it into his mouth. Over and over he worked this pattern as he pumped his fingers inside her. So deep he felt lost. So wet the sound of them echoed over the ocean.

  She was close, the walls of her pussy clenching and vibrating and creaming around his fingers. He couldn’t wait, wait to hear her scream—wait to drink her come as she drank his.

  “It’s too much, male,” she suddenly cried out. “Goddess, please!”

  Her words halted him firm, and he looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  She lifted her head, gazed at him with eyes wide and filled with sexual madness, skin flushed and vibrating with arousal. “It’s too much.”

  “Too much of what, ma chère? Talk to me. Tell me what you need.”

  “Too much heat, too much good, too much I want. But it’ll never be enough. I’ll never have enough.”

  Simon stifled a smile. A stunned smile. What was happening here? It was as if she’d never… His smile died. Had she never come before? No…that would be impossible—at least with her own hand. What about at the hand of another male? Fuck, he refused to even acknowledge the possibility. She was to cry out from him—only him. That’s all he was willing to grant at that moment.

  His gaze moved over her. Her pink skin, glistening with sweat, hands fisted on the rug, her breathing labored, and her expression…confusion mixed with animal-like hunger.

  “Do you want me to stop, Tryst?” he asked.

  “No,” she growled at him, baring her teeth. “Do it and I’ll bite you. And you won’t like it.”

  His mouth twitched. “Then stop thinking. Let yourself feel. Even if it’s too much. Feel all the good, all the heat…”

  He said nothing more. His fingers started to pump inside her once again, and he tucked back into his feast. Licking, suckling, flattening his tongue and moving with each thrust of her hips. She was mewling now, like a kitten, creaming around him so fitfully the insides of her thighs were soaked.

  Maintaining the pace, Simon growled into the air. Mine. Mine. Mine. She was shaking—her hands, her legs, her pussy.

  “Goddess!” she screamed, her hips slamming up and down as he thrust inside her. “Yes! Yes, please.”

  She came in a roar of sound, crying, keening, mewling, sighing. And Simon took it all in, with his mouth, his tongue, his eyes and, Goddess help him, his heart. It was truly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  She was the most beautiful sight.

  This Pantera.

  This female he knew, in his gut, belonged to him.

  Chapter Seven

  “This wasn’t at all how I thought my mission would go,” Tryst said on a sigh, nuzzling deeper into Simon’s shoulder as around them night fell and the moon glowed brilliantly over a calm sea. She’d never felt so content, so at peace.

  Not even in the Wildlands, or in her cat.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, female,” he said, kissing the top of her head, “you did capture me. Just not in the way you originally planned.”

  Laughing softly, she came up on her elbow and stared at him. This ridiculously gorgeous male. This pretty boy who, with every touch, every sound, every movement, couldn’t mask the warrior beneath. The loner and rebel who had left his family, barely out of cubhood, to take a power position as a Suit. He was cunning and clever, and had the most wicked of tongues.

  He was hers.

  If only in an alternate universe.

  He brought his hand up and sank his fingers into her hair. “What are you thinking, female? Your eyes won’t tell me a thing.”

  Oh, no, she couldn’t let him know her possessive thoughts. “I’ve never…been with a male outside of my cat form.”

  Surprise registered on his handsome face. “You haven’t?”

  She shook her head. “Never even thought about it.”

  “But you knew others did—”

  “Of course,” she jumped in quickly. “Hell, as a Hunter I’ve walked in on a few of them. It just wasn’t something that interested me.”

  “And now?” He said the words softly, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Now,” she said with a wicked smile, dropping her head and planting a slow, dragging kiss on his lips, “I think I like it. A lot. I think I may need to do it again sometime.”

  It was like a wave of hot, snarling wind rushed her, and in less than a second, she was on her back and he was poised over her. Nostrils flaring, upper lip curling, he growled, “Another male touches you and he will find breathing a difficult—”

  “Hey,” she cut him off harshly. “I was talking about you, you idiot.”

  The mask of animal ire evaporated instantly. “Oh.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh. Males. I suggest we touch and taste each other again, maybe more, and all you have to say is ‘Oh.’”

  His eyes cleared and a smile cut his fine features. He bent his head and took her mouth in the hottest, sweetest, most drugging kiss ever. “Tryst,” he breathed.

  “You are just like Parish and Lian with their mates,” she uttered against his mouth. “Angry and possessive one moment, wanting to kiss and rut the next.”

  He bit her lip.

  She gasped.

  “Mates don’t rut, kitten,” he said.

  Her heart lurched. She didn’t want to go there—question the use of that word—in her head or anywhere else. But she couldn’t help herself. He was poised overover her, his eyes drinking her in, his mouth ready and saying things that made her ache with want. “What do they do then?”

  He pressed his expanding erection against her sex. “Fuck.”

  Letting her legs fall open a little wider, she sucked air between her teeth. She wanted him. Deep inside her. Fucking her. Yes, lots of fucking. She smiled to herself despite the hot bands of tension running through her belly.

  “Have you taken a mate?” she asked him. “Outside the Wildlands?”

  He kissed her neck. “No.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t like it.”

  He eased back so he could see her. “You’re so honest. About your feelings, your past, your life.”

  “I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean it like that.” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her breast, then followed it up with a kiss to her nipple. “I admire it, Tryst.” Then he muttered, “Jealous of it, even.”

  Not understanding him, she cupped his face in her hands and held him steady, so their eyes locked. “You can be this way, too. Open, honest. No fear.”

  His gaze pulled from hers and she wondered at it. Did he not really believe that? Or was he hiding something too deep, too painful to release? She wondered perhaps if it had something to do with what he’d said in his sleep? What he’d lamented. Did he really believe it to be true? That he couldn’t shift? That he had no cat within him? Never had…?

  “Simon?” she said.

  His eyes lifted. They were shuttered and wary. “Female?”

  She brushed her thumb over his lower lip. “I see it in there, in your eyes.”

  Those eyes narrowed. “What do you see?”

  “Your cat.”

  His expression turned fierce and he tried to pull away. But she held him fast. “Listen. Please. When you had your back against the wall, growling as I took you in my mouth, I saw it. When you had my legs over your head and you were eating me like a starving beast, I saw it.”

  “Tryst,” he warned.

  “And even now, hovering above me, your eyes fierce, I see it.” She swallowed thickly. “I imagine it’s a beautiful creature. Terrifying and cunning, like its master.”

  It must be caged inside him, she thought. Somewhere cavernous. Somewhere he couldn’t access. No Pantera was born without a cat. That would be akin to saying one was born without a soul. And this male, he had a soul. It had spoken to hers, touched hers.

  If given the time, she knew she could
find it.

  But time wasn’t all that plentiful with them. And Simon’s mood had turned from romantic and connected to hungry and wicked.

  “You want to meet what’s inside me, Tryst?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her and rolling them to the side so he was on his back and she was the one poised above. “Well, I want to meet what’s inside you.” And with those words, he lifted her up, held her there for a moment. Then slowly, achingly slowly, placed her down on his shaft.

  Tryst inhaled sharply at the incredible invasion. Forgot everything she had been thinking and saying and only wanted this. Oh, yes, this was good.

  Simon dragged his palms up her belly, over her ribs to her breasts, and Tryst just leaned into him. The ocean breeze at her back, she started to move. Back and forth. Back and forth. His eyes were on hers. Hers on his. And as she circled her hips, felt him touch that deepest, most sensitive flesh inside her, she understood. It wasn’t just animal lust, a need for release. It wasn’t rutting. It wasn’t even fucking. Simon had got it wrong too. It was a connection. Between two beings. Souls colliding and swirling around each other, entering the other and changing them for good.

  As if Simon had heard her thoughts, he sat up and wrapped his arms around her. For several moments, he didn’t move. Just stayed locked to her.

  “Do you see my cat now, Tryst?” he asked.

  “Simon...”

  “Do you see it?”

  She reached up and brushed hair from his sweaty forehead. “I see it in everything you do.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you see, but it’s no puma.”

  “What do you mean?” she began. “You don’t truly think—”

  He covered her mouth and kissed her. Deep and demanding. “No more...just, no more.”

  “Simon—”

  “No more, kitten,” he said, his tone resolute.

  “Okay,” she breathed. Later. Later she would talk with him, tell him what she’d heard him say...find out what he believed and why. But right now...

  His lips were on hers again, and as he kissed her, Tryst let herself go. Let her mind fall apart.

  “Hold on, female,” he demanded, slowly thrusting into her again.

  Heat pooled low in her belly and her breasts ached, her nipples tightening against his chest. He pushed into her like a male possessed, a male trying to rid himself of pain. Gain only pleasure and peace. Clinging to him, she kissed him and followed his rhythm until the heat was unbearable. Rising from her toes to her sex to her face, then returning to the very center of her once again.

  When his hands found and cupped her ass, when he used her backside to grind even deeper inside her, her body shook and shivered. She came harder than ever before, racking groans, aching sex, and her teeth sinking into his powerful shoulder.

  The latter sent him over the edge of madness. He was like a possessed creature. Manic. Driving into her like a demon as his fingers dug into her flesh. And then he growled the word…

  “Mine.”

  And he exploded inside her.

  It was cataclysmic. Shocking in its intensity. Tryst trembled, tears behind her eyes. Tears! Unheard of. She wasn’t emotional. She wasn’t soft and sweet and tender-hearted. She was a female who could break a male’s arm without a thought or a care if he didn’t give her the information she required.

  But Simon had changed her.

  Inside and out.

  For moments—or was it hours? Days? A week? She didn’t know, but she clung to him, boneless, her mind lost to her.

  What was it, again…? Why was she here? What was she supposed to be doing? Her eyes closed and she exhaled the world. It helped some. But there was still a Hunter residing beneath her skin and inside her brain. It took the form of a very small red light that flickered on and off. A warning signal. Stay awake. Think… Do your job.

  The mission.

  You are a Hunter.

  This is your hunted.

  Suddenly, she was being lifted. The wind off the ocean was brushing her skin, making her shiver. But then warmth overtook the cold. Simon had curled her into his arms. And they were moving…leaving the room.

  Simon.

  Oh, it felt so good to be in his arms, to be cared for. To be able to be vulnerable. Why had she never wanted it? Sought it out?

  “Where?” she rasped, her voice gone from the cries and growls, the screams and the rapid breathing.

  “Taking you to bed, ma chère,” he said. “To sleep.”

  Sleep. With him. Against him. Skin to skin.

  Her male.

  The red light flickered once again.

  Sheets, cool and soft. And Simon’s hard body beside her. Red light, be gone. You have no place here.

  “Tryst,” he whispered against her hair once he’d tucked her into his side.

  “Simon,” she whispered back, allowing herself to be completely at another’s mercy for the first time in her life.

  And, her mind warned her as her consciousness started to recede, the last.

  * * * *

  Simon growled in his sleep, famished yet satiated. They’d had little rest, had “fucked” twice more after a short nap, then dropped like stones into each other’s arms. But that didn’t stop him from wanting her again. Now.

  A smile on his lips, he rolled over, reaching for her. But soft, warm female was not what he got.

  “Hands off, asshole.”

  Flash-quick, Simon was up and awake and had his fingers wrapped around the neck of the male who had spoken—a male he knew all too well. Skull-shaved head and devious-as-shit green eyes.

  “Michel,” he ground out. What the hell? He glanced around, fingers still curled around the male’s neck. Fucking assholes.

  “Hey there, brother.”

  He turned back to the Suit and snarled at him. “Don’t call me that. How long have I been out? And where’s Tryst? Where did you…” The rest of the sentence died off. A quick, terrible death as events of the day came rolling back.

  As quick as he’d pounced on the Michel, he released him and dropped into the seat of the limousine that was no doubt whisking him toward the one place on earth he never wanted to go again.

  “Not going to finish what you started?” Michel asked him, rubbing his neck and chuckling. “Squeeze my throat until I pass out? Might be able to get the car to stop. Get out. Get away. Again.”

  “Fuck off,” was all Simon said. All he had the energy for. Besides, what more was there? Didn’t matter. After yesterday and last night...all that had been said and shared… He’d fucked the beautiful, ruthless Hunter, and now he was being fucked right back. He deserved it for allowing her to get inside his heart.

  Play with his very soul.

  “It’s one hour, max,” Michel told him, his tone holding zero pity. “You don’t even have to see anyone. Just give Raphael what he wants and you’re gone.”

  Eyes on the window, he flipped the Suit off.

  “Fine. Be pissed. But you’re still a Pantera whether you reject us or not. And that means something. We are family, kin. We care for each other, protect each other—”

  Simon laughed bitterly. “The Pantera don’t know dick about protection. Or care. Or respect. Or honor.”

  “Are we still talking about Raphael? Or is this about Tryst now?”

  A low, feral snarl erupted from Simon’s throat.

  “Don’t blame her,” Michel said, his tone threaded with warning.

  Eyes still trained on the world outside the window, Simon uttered, “Didn’t I tell you to fuck off? I’m pretty sure I did.”

  “She was just doing her job. You understand that. Or you used to.”

  If the male spoke of Tryst one more time, Simon was going to lose his shit. Even now, his hands were twitching, desperate to find their way back to his neck. Pointing to the front of the limo, Simon barked, “Can’t that asshole drive any faster? I want this over with.”

  “Wow.” Michel sniffed. “After years of trying to get you
back to the Wildlands, I can’t believe I’m hearing you say that. You’re seriously not going to try and escape this time?”

  Simon’s head came around fast, and his smile was as black and vicious as his heart. “No. You got me. Congrats.” With a wink, he added, “One helluva weapon you used.”

  Michel’s jaw worked with the insinuation, but he said no more. What was there to say anyway? It was done. And once Raphael had what he wanted, Simon would be gone—never to be their pawn again.

  It would be his one and only stipulation.

  Well, that and never again having to set his eyes on the female who’d betrayed him.

  Chapter Eight

  “I want to be here when you speak to him.”

  Raphael glanced up from his makeshift desk in his hastily built private office, located in the center of town, which was serving as temporary Headquarters during the rebuild. “I don’t think so, Tryst.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think you’ve misunderstood me. I wasn’t asking. I demand to be here.”

  His brow lifted over very critical gold/jade eyes. “You know who you’re speaking to, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  The leader of the Pantera took in her stubborn stance, her rigid jaw. “Go home, Tryst,” he growled. “You’ve earned some rest, and clearly you need it.”

  She didn’t move. He was wrong on that account. Dead wrong. She’d earned nothing. Except maybe the absolute hatred of the male she wanted more than anything in this world. She hadn’t even earned the pleasure of being back in her cat. She hadn’t shifted once since she crossed the border. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was like the feline was rejecting her. And she hardly blamed it.

  A sudden commotion outside drew her attention, Raphael’s too. The door to the quickly produced space of four walls and a roof opened and two males entered.

  “He’s here, Raph,” Roch said, his ice blue eyes surveying the room and landing on Tryst.

  She didn’t know the Suit all that well, but it was clear he wasn’t too fond of her at the moment.