"I'd bargain with the devil himself for your f**king safety." An edge of impatience colored his voice. "If the first Leo exists, then his location is not going to be in those files. If the Council ever had a hint of where he was, they would have struck. A few power-hungry Council scientists would not have sat on that information before using it." He sat there so calmly, commanding, determined that this was going to go his way, period. For a moment, Harmony almost gave in. She almost agreed.
Then the faces of those babies in the labs flashed before her mind again. Screaming for attention, for warmth. They hadn't known warmth, had never known love or a gentle touch. That was the fate that awaited her child if the Council took her—that, or death. Straightening her shoulders, she let her own determined gaze meet his.
"Then I'll leave alone. I know how to contact Dane…"
She didn't expect his response, though she should have. His patience evaporated as her eyes widened. A hint of fear flew through her a second before he reached her, his hands gripping her upper arms firmly.
"Like f**king hell!" His features were contorted with fury, his eyes burning with it.
"Attempt it, Harmony, just f**king attempt it and I swear to God I'll slap you in cuffs so fast it will make your head spin."
Her lips parted as she stared back at him, shocked at the burning heat that flowed from his hands into her arms.
"Let me go." She jerked against his hold.
"Do you think I'm going to let you keep running?" His gaze bored into hers. "That I'm incapable of protecting you and our child?"
"That's not what I meant." She shook her head desperately. "You don't understand…"
"I understand that Jonas, Dane and these f**king files have haunted you for ten years, and it's coming to an end here."
His head lowered, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a primitive snarl.
"It ends here. Right here, by God."
"Even if it means our lives?" she cried out, fighting to hold back her fears, her tears.
"They've followed us, Lance. We can't even be certain who it is that followed, or who's waiting. Don't ask me to take this chance. Please."
He dropped a hand to her abdomen, his palm covering it, his eyes darkening to a near black.
"If it meant your life, I'd know it," he snapped. "I would feel it and the winds would scream that knowledge to me. This is the only way."
"No." She jerked at his hold again.
"Yes."
He didn't give her time to argue. As her lips opened to curse him, his were there, covering them as his arms pulled her against his chest.
Arousal should have been the last thing in her mind, the last thing she responded to. They were in the middle of a war zone and it was about to get worse, she could feel it. But his lips on hers were a sensual, erotic act of mastery. He didn't ask for her kiss, nor was he tentative. He demanded. He controlled. And ultimately, Harmony found herself submitting to the wicked, erotic nips at her lips by sharp teeth and the hungry growl that came from her own throat.
That dominance was her undoing. Female Breeds must have been programmed to submit to the males, though until Lance, that genetic coding had never made an impression on her. With Lance, she couldn't deny it. She couldn't deny her need, or her hunger, any more than she could deny the fears that, for the moment, dissolved beneath his passion.
His hands trailed down her arms, broad, calloused hands that stroked her flesh with sensual roughness and replaced the chill of foreboding with heated, wicked lashes of pleasure.
She was lost in him. As impossible as it should have been, as furious as she was with him, he still managed to consume her, to build the hunger simmering within her to a full, raging blaze.
She tore at his clothes, nothing so important now as feeling his flesh against hers, the warmth of his body stroking over her.
Her shirt fell beneath his hands, just as her jeans parted seconds later. Gasping, panting for air, they groped and ripped at clothing, socks, shoes, until Lance was tumbling her to the bed, his large, harder body coming over her as his lips tore from hers.
"Mine!" He reasserted his claim as he parted her thighs, his c**k pressing into the slick, heated depths of her vagina. "Tell me, damn you! Tell me you're mine."
"Yours." She could barely breathe, but she couldn't stop the word being torn from her lips as she stared back at him, shocked by the intensity of his eyes. They blazed in his dark face, deep blue flames of determination, dominance and powerful male force, glowing with an otherworldly light.
"No one will take you from me," he snapped, one hand tangling in her hair as his c**k surged inside her, fierce, hot, stretching her to her limits as she arched into the thrust. She would have closed her eyes, but she couldn't break his gaze. He held her trapped, staring into her eyes, breaching her soul even as his erection breached the aching depths of her pu**y.
She would have closed herself from him if she could. The distracting pleasure washing through her broke her concen-tration, fractured her ability to hold that inner part of herself aloof.