As they stepped into the evening air, a military-enforced limo pulled up to the entrance to the underground bunker. Cavalier, one of Del-Rey’s personal bodyguards, jumped from the passenger side and opened the door as Del-Rey pushed her inside.
And kept pushing her until she was flat on her back, the door slamming behind them as he came over her.
His lips were on hers immediately, the wicked, heated taste of his kiss infusing her senses, filling her with the hormone that had begun the mating heat to start with.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on tight as her legs parted, allowing him to settle between them. They were fully clothed, but the warmth of his body seeped past the material, worked into her flesh, and she felt the warmth gathering rather than the ice.
She could feel the heat burrowing inside her, making the arousal deeper, stronger, but taking away the pain.
The arousal she could deal with. The aching need for his touch, she could handle that. But the pain, the ice, the confusion—she couldn’t deal with it. The loss of complete control outside his arms? It terrified her.
The loss of control here, she could handle. The way his kiss filled her, stroked pleasure after pleasure across her lips, filled her senses with the feel and the taste of him as she moved against him. She was safe here. She didn’t have to control this.
One hand held her head in place, the other touched her, pushed beneath her sweater, settled on her stomach, and the warmth there, it was incredible. It was like melting.
“When I needed your touch,” he growled against her lips, “I grew icy here first.” His hand pressed closer. “Cold until I felt my bones would shatter from the need of your warmth.”
She gazed into his dark eyes, seeing the shadows of the pain and the cold he had endured for eight long months.
She shook her head, fighting the guilt that consumed her, the evidence of what she had left him to suffer. Male Breeds, she had learned, had an instinctive, overriding need to protect their mates. To hold them against any pain, to shelter them as much as possible.
He kissed her again, sinking into her, his tongue stroking against hers as she whimpered against his lips in pleasure. He stroked her lips, licked at them. Each touch was filled with gentleness, with aching warmth as he held her against the effects of the mating heat that would have torn her apart.
His head lifted. “Look at me.”
Her lashes lifted until she was staring into his determined, arrogant expression.
“Never do this again, Anya. Ever. When the mating heat builds, if we can’t satisfy it at that moment, then my kiss will ease it until we can. No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, my kiss is yours. My warmth is yours. Do you understand me?”
She had to battle her tears again, her guilt, the knowledge of what she had done to them both.
“Why?” she whispered. “Eight months, Del-Rey, and I stayed away. I made you suffer as well.”
“And you think I should blame you? That I should revile you?” he asked as he pushed her hair tenderly back from her face. “Anya, do you think I don’t know how terrified you were the day I took you and fired upon your family in front of your eyes? That I didn’t know I had lied to you, betrayed the trust you gave me so freely? I never blamed you, little love. Myself yes. My own impatience and lust, most definitely. But never you.”
“You should hate me.” A tear slipped free. “You suffered and your base suffered; your people suffered because you weren’t there. And you weren’t there because of me.”
“But you suffered because of me,” he sighed. “And now it doesn’t even matter if there is blame to be laid. You’re in my arms. My mate. My coya. We’ll struggle through this, Anya. Together.”
His lips feathered over hers, parted them, slanted and took hers in a kiss that took her ability to debate, argue, agree or disagree. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, teased him, tempted him.
Her hips lifted, her sex rubbed against the hard ridge of his cock, her clit gloried in the heat racing between their bodies now.
Her hands moved, dragging down his arms, pushing beneath them to pull his shirt from his jeans and burrow beneath the cloth to the hard, heated flesh beyond.
Oh God, she loved the feel of him. She wanted to wrap him around her like a blanket and hold on to his warmth forever. It seared into her palms as his kiss seeped into her soul and left her quivering with the sensations building inside her.
How she had ached over the months, and refused to admit it. How she had worried, fought with herself, and fought the need that flowed between them, even before she had known about the mating heat. He was a part of her. And he had been a part of her since the moment his black eyes had met hers when she had been no more than sixteen.
Before they touched. Before that first kiss. Before the anger and the fear and the realization of the world she was entering when she entered Del-Rey’s arms.
“I need to f**k you,” he growled as his lips lifted from hers and traveled to her jaw, her neck. “I need to be inside you, Anya. So deep, so tight that there is no you, no me. Just this.”
His fingers flipped over the closure of her pants, pulled the zipper loose. “I sat in that f**king dark room smelling your need for me and thought I’d burn out of control before I managed to touch you. Imagining how wet you were. You’ve always been wet for me, Anya. Always. Before the heat, before you were even old enough for me to touch, you’ve been wet for me.”
A ragged cry left her lips as his finger brushed the saturated curls between her thighs.
“So wet your pu**y clings to the silk of your panties.” He nipped her jaw, then licked the little wound. “Your juices cling to my tongue the same way. Loving my touch. You love my touch, Anya.”
“I love your touch,” she gasped, her hips lifting into his palm as he covered it, cupped it. “Oh God, Del-Rey, I’ve always loved your touch.”
“I love your touch,” he growled. “I ache for it, dream of it. I wake drenched in sweat yet freezing from the need of your warmth.”
Two fingers curled, parted the swollen folds between her thighs and pressed, slowly, almost teasingly, into the aching depths of her body.
It was so good. So brutally good Anya jerked against him, his name a gasp on her lips as she felt her internal muscles clenching around his fingers. The heated warmth of her juices flowed around his fingers, slickening them, easing his way as he thrust them slowly inside her.