"We can't keep doing this." Her cry was weak, pleading. "Don't do this to me, Lance."
"Do what? Make you admit you need?" His lips moved over her jaw, leaving fire in their wake. "Make you feel what I feel, Harmony? I burn for you baby. Burn for me." Didn't he know that the flames ate her insides constantly, tearing at her will, her defenses?
"Just feel for me, Harmony," he crooned. "Just for a little while." When his lips returned to hers, they melted into her, kissing her with a longing and fervor she couldn't deny. Deep, sipping kisses that drugged her mind and sent her senses spinning.
"There, sweetheart." He was breathing hard, rough, as he pulled back, one hand sliding down her torso, over her stomach as she struggled to open her eyes.
A second later his palm slid between her thighs, pressing over the aching center of her body as she felt a dizzying sweep of pleasure tear through her.
She couldn't help clenching her thighs, holding his palm in place. It was cupped snugly over her pu**y, the heel of his palm pressing against her clit, grinding against it with devastating results.
Beneath her hands his flesh was heated, beneath her lips the strong column of his neck beckoned. His skin tasted of male arousal and heat, clinging to her tongue and mixing with the hormone spilling from the glands beneath. The intoxicating flavor had her reaching for more, her teeth raking over his skin as her senses came alive. Her defenses fell away, unable to bear the weight of their combined hunger. The battle to fight the hunger and need surging through her was one that couldn't be fought in his arms.
"There, baby," he whispered against her collarbone, his head lowering, heading unerringly to the stiff peaks of her ni**les as his palm inflamed her clit, pressing the soft cotton of her boxer-style panties against it. He ground his hand against her, tearing a harsh cry from her lips as brilliant flares of pleasure tore through her. She was lost in him. One touch and she was caving and didn't even care. The past, the present, the danger surrounding her—it all threatened to dissolve around her, and when it did, she knew she would be dead. She couldn't do this. She couldn't let her hunger destroy the only good thing she had ever found in her life.
Loving Lance was a weakness. A weakness that could get him killed.
"No." She tore away from him, not certain where she found the strength to do it. Stumbling against the bed, she reached down, jerked her shirt from the floor and held it against her br**sts as she fought to get away from him.
With the length of the room between them, she turned, staring at his back as he breathed heavily, his head lowered, his hands propped on his hips. He was fighting for control; she could see it in every muscle of his body.
When he turned back to her, she flinched at the brilliance of his blue eyes, the savage cast of his expression.
"How much longer can you run, Harmony?" His voice was a rough rasp. "Can you make it six months, baby?"
"I have to," she cried out, hating the look on his face, the hunger and need, the certainty that she would fall. "Don't you understand, Lance? I can't have this. It doesn't matter what nature wants, or what I want. I can't have this."
She clenched her fists in the hem of her shirt, fighting to hold back the need to return to him, to touch him.
"And why can't you have it?" he barked back. "Because you're the tough-assed assassin? Poor little Breed who has to fight alone. That's bullshit and you know it."
"No, it's not bullshit," she retorted furiously. "It's the truth, you're just too damned horny to see it."
"Oh, you have the horny right, baby. I'm so damned hard I could f**k you for a week without letting up. And I'll be damned if I'll walk away like this forever. You're my f**king mate. You think you can just walk away from it? That it's just going to go away?" She flinched as he yelled back at her, the graveled sound of his voice testifying to his growing frustration and anger.
"It's just lust." She swiped her hand through the air, as desperate to believe it as she was for it to be true. "A chemical reaction. It will go away."
"And you're only kidding yourself."
Harmony jumped to avoid him as he strode quickly to her, his hand gripping her wrist, jerking her hand to his thighs.
"Feel that, Harmony."
She whimpered as he cupped her fingers over the hard width of his erection beneath his jeans.
"This doesn't go away. I wake up with it and I go to sleep with it. And by God, if you try to tell me you're not just as wet as I am hard, I'll f**k you where you're standing just to prove you're wrong."
"It will go away."
"It's not going to go away," he barked as he jerked back from her just as quickly as he had grabbed her.
"Then I'll have to," she whispered, aching with the needs tearing her apart. "Don't you understand, Lance? Of everyone in my life, you're the only really good thing that has touched it. You're asking me to take a chance on letting what I am destroy you. I can't do that. I can't stay here. I can never stay here. Death is hunted, Lance, by Council soldiers and law enforcement officials alike. And whether you want to admit it or not, I will be found eventually."
He stilled.
"I thought you were a fighter," he said quietly. "The kid who shot her way out of hell and took out the monsters intent on destroying her was a fighter. What she grew into is something else entirely. That kid knew how to live. What happened to her when she grew up, Harmony?"
"She learned that only death matters," she told him sadly. "Because that's where it all ends, Lance. Everything I touch ends in death."