“Enough.” He jerked back, pushing her away before swinging around and shoving his feet to the floor. “I’ll call Armani and tell her.”
He froze. A sense of vertigo rushed over him as he felt her at his back, hot ni**les stabbing into him as her teeth raked his neck. “Call Armani, and I’ll take my injection like a good little coya and return to that dead little world where my dreams torment me, and my emotions overshadow the truth?”
“Honest arousal,” he snarled. “Give me that. I’ll take it. But not like this, where you have no control over your need.”
He couldn’t f**king breathe. The scent of her pu**y was washing through his senses like a tidal wave, like an eruption of white-hot heat piercing his brain.
“I don’t want something else controlling me either,” she whispered. “I want all of you, Del-Rey. Don’t you want all of me? Mating heat and all?”
“What do you want in your bed then, the animal?” he sneered.
“And the man,” she whispered as he glared down at her, holding her down, his hands manacling her wrists to the mattress, his hips pressing against hers. “You’re both. I want both.”
“So you had to do without the injections to take both?” Self-disgust tore through him.
“Is that what you think, Del-Rey?” She stared back at him, her eyes so brilliant with arousal it hurt to stare into them. “That I have to let myself become drugged by the heat to take you? That isn’t why.”
“Then why?”
“Because the hormone therapy they were giving me deadens certain nerve endings and makes anger, frustration and fear worse. It was the only way it would work. It blocked the receptors to areas that receive the most arousal, while heightening other emotions. I don’t want anything deadened or heightened unnaturally. I want to feel you,” she whispered. “All of you. Was that so wrong?”
He shook his head. He was supposed to make sense of this right now? When need was tearing through him with a force he had never known before?
“I want your kiss, and I want to taste it, feel it. I want your touch, and I want to know all the pleasure. I want you inside me, and I want to feel the emotions I felt before. All of them, Del-Rey.”
“You’re lying,” he growled. “I can smell the fear inside you and the lie that falls from your lips.” He pressed his forehead against hers, his balls cramping with the need tearing through him. “God, Anya. Why are you doing this to us?”
“I can’t be a little bit afraid?” Tears sparkled in her eyes then. “Del-Rey, I don’t want the hormone therapy because I don’t want to cheat whatever it is that does this to us. If I don’t face it now, I’m never going to.”
No, it wasn’t a lie, it was courage and fear. She was coming to him, all of him, and she was trying.
“And what do I do when I knot you?” he snarled. “When I swell inside you and the fear overwhelms that pleasure? When you beg me to make it stop, Anya? What do I do then? Because there is no stopping it.”
“Whatever you need to do, as long as you hold me, Del-Rey. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t let me get cold,” she finally answered. “But if I take another of those injections, then I won’t come back here until it wears off again. We’ll do this right, and we’ll both become accustomed to it, or we’ll not do it at all.”
Anya could feel the old fears trying to rise inside her, the need versus the unfamiliarity of the Breed body and the mating heat. He made her wild, and control had always been her focus. He made her lose that control. He made her want to lose it, made her want to be wicked, and he had never known that was the most terrifying thing of all.
Now, as she stared into his raven black eyes, she knew the chance she was taking. If she didn’t overcome those fears, if she lost herself and the fear returned, it could damage something more between them.
She had never considered how Del-Rey had felt when the mating heat tore through both of them. When she had cried and fought him, feeling him locked inside her, becoming hysterical at the brutal pleasure that tore through her. She had begged, pleaded with him to stop it. And she had cried. Hysterical tears that had dampened her pillow and left her exhausted even as the heat rebuilt.
“We won’t resolve this by hiding behind the hormone treatments.” She breathed in raggedly as a wave of furious need swept through her. “This was my decision, Del-Rey. I won’t blame you for anything.”
“Anya.” Agony flickered in his gaze. “Do you know what you’re doing to us? To me?”
“I’m not a child,” she told him, willing him to believe her. “I’m not the woman you probably expected. I’m your mate, and you can take me as your mate, or I can walk away.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. It was sexy; she had always found that sound to be soul-searingly sexy. It sent shivers racing up her spine, and even before the mating it had made her wet.
“Growl at me again,” she tempted him. “Kiss me while you growl, Del-Rey. I dare you.”
Never dare a Coyote. Ever. It was a law, even the Council knew to never dare them. They always accepted a dare. They always triumphed.
His lips were on hers in an instant, his tongue sinking inside her, and Anya realized what she had been missing for eight long months. Even in the past week his kiss hadn’t been just right.
The taste hadn’t been just so, because of that damned therapy. This was Del-Rey’s kiss. Primitive and primal. The hormone that spilled from his tongue was spicy and addictive. There was nothing sweet about it, nothing gentle, it was hot and sensual, and she stroked her tongue against his, drawing more to her, needing more.
This was the taste, the heat, the hunger. It merged and melded with her own, stoked the fire waiting inside her and sent it blazing. Without the fear.
She strained in his grasp as she heard the growl in his throat that rumbled into their kiss. Strong thighs bracketed hers; the feel of his c**k throbbing against her lower stomach had her trying to arch closer. She couldn’t touch him as she wanted to, as she needed to.
She tore her lips from his. “Let me touch.”
He growled harder, rougher, but didn’t release her hands. He stared at her br**sts as they rose and fell swiftly, the hard tips of her ni**les standing tight and a blushing pink beneath his gaze.