Yet, he was fighting it with every breath he took.
He was drowning.
Jonas sat at his desk, glared at the wall, and felt the stifling tightness in his throat, his chest. The taste of cinnamon and cloves was choking him; the need for her was stealing his breath and his control.
He parted his lips to breathe in roughly and a growl tore from his lips despite his attempts to hold it back.
His hands lay flat on the desk, claws extruding, digging into the wood. The glands beneath his tongue were so swollen, so sensitive, he was in agony. He felt as though his tongue were being ripped out.
He lifted the comm link from a drawer, attached it to his head and pressed the direct secured line to Ely's office.
"Jonas," she answered immediately.
"Rachel will be in this evening for the examination and tests," he informed her. "Get whatever you have to have while you can."
Silence filled the link for long seconds.
"I'll be waiting for her," she stated. "Amburg was in here earlier. He's asking for more blood from the baby. He found a slight anomaly in the last test he conducted and wants to investigate it further."
"I'll discuss it with Rachel."
"If you're bringing her this evening, then whoever is watching Amber can oversee my assistant extracting the blood," Ely suggested. "There's no need to tempt her refusal, Jonas."
He shook his head. "You've learned too well." He sighed. "She's my mate, Ely, not a particularly stubborn Enforcer. I won't go behind her back."
There had been a time when Ely would have never suggested such a thing; to the contrary, she would have protested it had Jonas made such a suggestion.
"Perhaps I didn't learn fast enough from you," Ely murmured. "Whichever, I'll be waiting for you this evening. Let me know by then how to proceed."
The line disconnected, leaving Jonas to stare broodingly into the dark room as he reflected on games, machinations and his past calculating attempts to ensure that his Enforcers met, mated and lived, if not happily ever after, at least with a measure of softness in their lives.
He didn't regret a moment of it, but damned if he wasn't paying for it now.
CHAPTER 15
The tests weren't so hard, definitely not the hell Merinus had warned her that they would be after mating. Rachel consented to allow the blood to be taken from Amber, more concerned with the fact that Jeffrey Amburg felt he'd found some "anomaly" in previous tests.
The Breeds had more anomalies going on in their lives than a gardener had seeds to plant.
Once the tests were finished, Rachel had re-dressed a sleepy Amber and handed her over to the lynx Breed assigned as caretaker. Then the real problems of the evening began. And they began with the Leo.
Moving into the large family room of the estate house, Rachel followed the subtle directions of Jonas's hand against the small of her back as he led her to a settee to the side of the large fireplace, across from a matching settee shared by Leo and his wife, Elizabeth.
In the two large chairs next to Leo and Elizabeth, Leo's son, Dane, and his bodyguard, Ryan--or Rye, as they called him--Desalvo sat, with Callan and Merinus in a sofa facing the fireplace and Kane Tyler and his mated wife, Sherra, in a matching sofa beside them.
Dinner had been filled with discussions of the latest protests against the Breeds, the surge in protestors at the gates of Sanctuary, and a future still uncertain where Breed peace was concerned. It was a discussion still under way.
"The Congo has a lot of hiding places, Callan." Leo sat in the corner of the settee, his arm thrown over the back behind his wife, his gold eyes fierce as he stared into the identical ones of his son. "My compound there is completely secure and not so damned easy to get to. The mates there live in relative peace. The tribes surrounding us are loyal to us. It's a good place to raise and train our children to meet the future."
"Virginia's a good place to raise and train children as well," Callan argued.
"My grandson has nearly been kidnapped twice now," Leo argued. "Each time, David has had to face the death or injury of a friend entrusted to protect him. It's beginning to affect the boy."
The light chastisement wasn't lost on Callan or Merinus.
"David has to learn to accept the dangers in his life." There was a note of regret in Callan's tone. "There is no utopia for us, Leo, you know that. He's in danger, no matter where we are, just as our twins are."
"They'll be in less danger there."