Collapsing against him, shuddering, her breathing gasps of both ecstasy and the agony of emotions tearing free, forcing her to acknowledge them and to acknowledge the fears she had held back for so long.
She held on to him, terrified something or someone would jerk him away from her. Certain that the disagreements they shared were going to blow up in her face.
There were too many explosions that threatened to blow out of control inside her. Too many emotions she couldn’t control nor push back enough to give her the chance to control them.
Instead they rose, pushed at the shields that held them back and almost broke free.
Diane was only distantly aware of Lawe’s lips still at her neck as he licked and lapped at her flesh.
Marking her.
Everything he had done in the past months had been to one purpose and she knew it. To force her to release what she held back from him. What she refused to give him.
Her entire heart. The part of her soul that only the man who owned her heart would ever have.
And Diane had sworn to herself that no man would ever hold her heart and would definitely never open that part of her soul.
She was terrified if he owned that part of her, then he would control her. Because if Lawe could change her, if he could force her independence to give way to his need to protect her, then he would do it in a heartbeat.
“The thought of losing you destroys me,” he suddenly whispered at her ear. “When I saw you in that filthy cell, beaten, almost broken, so delicate and so determined to live, you stole a part of my soul.”
Shock held her silent. To hear this strong, always so emotionally cool Breed say such a thing. Lawe wasn’t a man prone to give in to emotion. And most certainly, even for a Breed, he had seemed even more unwilling to experience emotion than most.
Keeping her eyes closed she could only hold tighter to him. There wasn’t a chance of hiding what she felt from him. His ability to smell emotion and recognize it was too good.
And she knew what he could sense from her.
The denial, a rejection of what he was offering her and the pain of being unable to reach out for it and hold it close to her.
“Why?” he suddenly asked, his face still buried in her neck. “Why don’t you want what I have to offer, Diane?”
She felt the tears that tightened her throat, and though she couldn’t smell scent as he could, and the pain wasn’t in his voice, still, she could sense it. It tightened her chest and sent an ache to burrow so deeply inside her that she knew she would never escape it.
“Because you refuse to accept who I am,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re rejecting me as well, Lawe. The rejection is just deeper. I accept you for who you are. You refuse to do the same for me.”
His head lifted and drew back.
She was still pressed to the wall, his body still a part of hers and the pleasure . . . The pleasure still throbbed inside her from the presence of the barb as it kept her mate locked to her.
“Do you accept me for who I am?” he asked quietly, somberly. “If you did, Diane, then you’d help me.” His fingers touched her cheek, the backs of them caressing her flesh gently. “You’d help us both find a way to compromise. Instead, you run. And running will do nothing but destroy us both.”
As she stared back at him and battled the tears she had no experience with, Diane felt the barb slowly releasing her, retracting back into the hood of his c**k and taking with it the echoes of rapture that held her in its grip. That held Lawe in her grip.
“Do you compromise, Lawe?” she whispered. “Because honestly, I haven’t seen any give in you that would indicate the ability.”
Dropping his head to her shoulder he bestowed a gentle kiss before slowly helping her to slide from him as he pulled the still semi-hard shaft from her pu**y and stepped back.
“We’ll go to Window Rock,” he said softly, and Diane had to swallow past the hard surge of emotion that tightened her throat at the chill in his voice, because when he stared down at her, she could see the torment blazing in his eyes. “Be careful while we’re there,” he said as he released her fully. “Remember what happens to me, Diane, if anything happens to you, and vice versa. Because regardless of what you believe of me, from the day I realized you were my mate, I stepped back from active status. Because nothing meant more to me than your life, your health and your safety. I would have never fought again.”
He didn’t mention her happiness. Strangely, the fact that it was forgotten had the power to pierce her heart.
He didn’t give her a chance to reply. She couldn’t have replied anyway, because she was too shocked, too uncertain about the implications of what he had just told her and the emotion he hadn’t mentioned.
To a Breed, nothing was more important than the battle for safety, the battle to ensure that the Breeds, as a people, survived.
So much so that all unmated Breeds vowed an oath to protect, even at the cost of their own lives, all mates, male or female, until they too found their own unique biological, chemical and pheromonal match.
Unmated Breeds composed the majority of the Breeds’ fighting force. Once mated, they pulled back to operations rather than active status, or to the protective and security ranks of either the Feline Breed base of Sanctuary, the Wolf Breed base of Haven or the nearby, newly created Coyote stronghold of Citadel.