“A temporary glitch.” She breathed in deeply as she moved to him. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” he stated. “There’s information we have to collect before we can finalize our plans. We’re returning to Base.”
Anya had a terrible feeling he was making excuses, but she couldn’t ignore his outstretched hand. God, she needed the warmth of that much at least.
As he drew her from the room, he gave her more. His arm curved around her shoulders, drawing her to the warmth of his body and pushing back that chill that threatened to shake through her body and leave her trembling in weakness.
Anya kept her head high, her steps measured. Her expression composed. She leaned into him when he pulled her close, and wanted to close her eyes at the warmth that battled against the ice now. She hated herself for needing it. Hated herself for being unable to stand against the need for the pleasure that built like an agonizing fury inside her.
He hadn’t needed a crutch in all these months. He had stood strong, battled against those that would have destroyed the Breeds, and kept his logic and his ability to lead intact.
Yet she couldn’t. How much harder could it be for her than for him? The difference couldn’t be such a wide divide, no matter what the doctors had told her. Male Breeds didn’t allow experiments or tests. And they didn’t take hormones to control that mating heat. How would the doctors know how much worse it was? Breed males were used to incredible pain. Pain a normal man could never survive.
As they stepped into the evening air, a military-enforced limo pulled up to the entrance to the underground bunker. Cavalier, one of Del-Rey’s personal bodyguards, jumped from the passenger side and opened the door as Del-Rey pushed her inside.
And kept pushing her until she was flat on her back, the door slamming behind them as he came over her.
His lips were on hers immediately, the wicked, heated taste of his kiss infusing her senses, filling her with the hormone that had begun the mating heat to start with.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on tight as her legs parted, allowing him to settle between them. They were fully clothed, but the warmth of his body seeped past the material, worked into her flesh, and she felt the warmth gathering rather than the ice.
She could feel the heat burrowing inside her, making the arousal deeper, stronger, but taking away the pain.
The arousal she could deal with. The aching need for his touch, she could handle that. But the pain, the ice, the confusion—she couldn’t deal with it. The loss of complete control outside his arms? It terrified her.
The loss of control here, she could handle. The way his kiss filled her, stroked pleasure after pleasure across her lips, filled her senses with the feel and the taste of him as she moved against him. She was safe here. She didn’t have to control this.
One hand held her head in place, the other touched her, pushed beneath her sweater, settled on her stomach, and the warmth there, it was incredible. It was like melting.
“When I needed your touch,” he growled against her lips, “I grew icy here first.” His hand pressed closer. “Cold until I felt my bones would shatter from the need of your warmth.”
She gazed into his dark eyes, seeing the shadows of the pain and the cold he had endured for eight long months.
She shook her head, fighting the guilt that consumed her, the evidence of what she had left him to suffer. Male Breeds, she had learned, had an instinctive, overriding need to protect their mates. To hold them against any pain, to shelter them as much as possible.
He kissed her again, sinking into her, his tongue stroking against hers as she whimpered against his lips in pleasure. He stroked her lips, licked at them. Each touch was filled with gentleness, with aching warmth as he held her against the effects of the mating heat that would have torn her apart.
His head lifted. “Look at me.”
Her lashes lifted until she was staring into his determined, arrogant expression.
“Never do this again, Anya. Ever. When the mating heat builds, if we can’t satisfy it at that moment, then my kiss will ease it until we can. No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, my kiss is yours. My warmth is yours. Do you understand me?”
She had to battle her tears again, her guilt, the knowledge of what she had done to them both.
“Why?” she whispered. “Eight months, Del-Rey, and I stayed away. I made you suffer as well.”
“And you think I should blame you? That I should revile you?” he asked as he pushed her hair tenderly back from her face. “Anya, do you think I don’t know how terrified you were the day I took you and fired upon your family in front of your eyes? That I didn’t know I had lied to you, betrayed the trust you gave me so freely? I never blamed you, little love. Myself yes. My own impatience and lust, most definitely. But never you.”
“You should hate me.” A tear slipped free. “You suffered and your base suffered; your people suffered because you weren’t there. And you weren’t there because of me.”
“But you suffered because of me,” he sighed. “And now it doesn’t even matter if there is blame to be laid. You’re in my arms. My mate. My coya. We’ll struggle through this, Anya. Together.”
His lips feathered over hers, parted them, slanted and took hers in a kiss that took her ability to debate, argue, agree or disagree. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, teased him, tempted him.
Her hips lifted, her sex rubbed against the hard ridge of his cock, her clit gloried in the heat racing between their bodies now.
Her hands moved, dragging down his arms, pushing beneath them to pull his shirt from his jeans and burrow beneath the cloth to the hard, heated flesh beyond.