Harmony collapsed beneath him, unable to maintain the strength in her arms. Her cheek pressed into the blankets as she fought the agonizing tightness in her pu**y. Her muscles spasmed with each furious spurt of seed Lance released, and each shattered male groan at her ear.
"Baby." He lay against her back, his voice tortured. "Sweet God. Harmony…" She jerked with the hard spasm that tore through her at his voice, then his own dark groan at her ear.
"Easy, sweetheart." His hands caressed her gently, soothingly. "It's okay, baby. I'm right here."
She was crying, whispering his name, and he was kissing the tears from her cheek.
"I'm here. I'll always be here." One hand smoothed her hair back as the other slid down her hip, her thigh. "Always, Harmony."
One last shuddering tremor racked her body before she felt exhaustion swamp her. True exhaustion. Her breath shuddered from her chest, and softly, gently, darkness closed around her.
_________
Some time later, when he came to his senses, Lance gathered their clothing together and headed for the bedroom.
The torn articles were tossed in the trash, the others in the hamper in the washroom, as he palmed his cell phone.
Moving back to the kitchen, he flipped the phone open and punched in Braden's number.
"Cuz, you're becoming a distraction," Braden growled as he answered on the fourth ring, his voice heavy with arousal.
Lance grimaced. He really didn't need to know Megan had a sex life.
"Where do your loyalties lie, Braden?"
There was a long silence as he waited for the Breed to answer.
"Fuck. I knew this was going to happen," he finally snarled into the line. "I knew it. Hell, Lance, my loyalty is with my wife. Period. What hurts Megan hurts me, so I guess I'm stuck with your f**king fight."
He didn't sound happy about it, but Lance knew his cousin's husband. Beneath the growling protest was an edge of excitement. He knew a fight was coming, and Braden did love a good fight.
"She's conceived."
Silence filled the line for long moments.
"Well. Hell." Braden finally breathed out roughly. "You're certain?"
"The winds are." He could feel the answer in the air around him, clear to his soul.
"That's good enough for me." Braden sighed. "What now?"
"Jonas wanted her pregnant for a reason," Lance said softly. "He wanted to use it. What would her pregnancy result in?"
"Her death," Braden grunted. "She's the ultimate killer. Pregnancy would weaken her. Make her vulnerable. Easy to overpower."
"And when Death is in trouble, what happens?" The more he thought about it, the more he knew exactly what would happen.
"She's taken," Braden answered, suspicion heavy in his voice now. "Always by the same team of men. Taken and hidden."
"That team is here in town. They nearly took her last night. We had a tail on the way home and someone is watching the house now. They're getting ready to move in."
"And Jonas has taken a sudden leave," Braden revealed. "He's unavailable at the moment and no one knows where he and his three best enforcers are. Merc, Rule and Lawe."
"They're here, and they're waiting. What the f**k is behind this, Braden? If Jonas wanted to contact the men who have helped her, why not just ask her?"
"She would never trust him." Braden's sigh was heavy. "When she killed the scientists and escaped from the lab, Jonas truly believed his mother, Madame LaRue, was a victim. That she was forced to cooperate with the other scientists to protect him and Harmony. He had no idea the monster she was. Harmony did. When she tried to tell him, he brushed her off, grew angry. It was years after Madame's death before Jonas learned the true scope of her cruelties. By then, Harmony had learned to distrust him. She would never trust him now and Jonas knows it."
"Then why keep me in the dark?" Lance asked. "If I had known…"
"Lance, you don't understand Breeds," Braden growled, his voice rough. "Trust, outside of our own small prides, is not a commodity we have. Jonas knows you, he likes you; otherwise, he wouldn't torment the living hell out of you. But he doesn't trust you. Jonas more than any of us, because of his mother, knows the price of trust." He wiped his hand over his face as he paced to the closed window, feeling the darkness surround him, the hint of a presence beyond it.
The cell phone was secure; Lance had made certain of that. And he knew Braden's was. The house was being watched, but whatever he said now was safe.
"What do you need?" Braden finally asked. "You're a part of Megan, a part of my family, Lance. My loyalties lie there, as does my trust."
"Her safety," Lance breathed out roughly. "I have to ensure her safety, Braden, or someone, somehow, will take her from me. I can't let that happen." He could feel the rage boiling inside him, a complete fury directed toward those who would use her.
"I'll be over tomorrow afternoon." He could hear Braden's determination as well. "Megan says to make certain she stays inside until then. Don't let her out of your sight, Lance."
"That one is a given," Lance growled. "I'll shackle her to me if I have to. She's not going anywhere without me."
CHAPTER 17
Harmony wasn't certain what awakened her. But for the first time since she had come to Lance's home, he slept deeply as she rose, showered and dressed. Dawn was high; streaks of pinks, golds and fiery reds lit up the sky as it eased over the horizon and called to her.
She could feel it pulling at her. The morass of emotions that filled her made her skin itch, made her legs long to run. The walls pressed in on her, and the air around her felt as though it were suffocating her.
And she couldn't stop thinking about Jaime Mason.
As she moved silently through the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a tank top, she stared back at Lance on the bed. She didn't want to wake him up. He made her want so many things, made her want to think of herself rather than the mission she had given herself years before. He made her want to hide in that big bed and forget that the world outside the house existed.
Unfortunately, it did exist, and the need to run, to clear her head, was overriding. Pushing in the code to the security system, she opened the window in the bedroom she had first slept in and slid into the shadows that bordered the house. She was reasonably certain she wasn't being watched. The gun at one thigh and the knife sheathed to the other afforded her a measure of confidence in protecting herself though.