When he turned back to her, she flinched at the brilliance of his blue eyes, the savage cast of his expression.
"How much longer can you run, Harmony?" His voice was a rough rasp. "Can you make it six months, baby?"
"I have to," she cried out, hating the look on his face, the hunger and need, the certainty that she would fall. "Don't you understand, Lance? I can't have this. It doesn't matter what nature wants, or what I want. I can't have this."
She clenched her fists in the hem of her shirt, fighting to hold back the need to return to him, to touch him.
"And why can't you have it?" he barked back. "Because you're the tough-assed assassin? Poor little Breed who has to fight alone. That's bullshit and you know it."
"No, it's not bullshit," she retorted furiously. "It's the truth, you're just too damned horny to see it."
"Oh, you have the horny right, baby. I'm so damned hard I could f**k you for a week without letting up. And I'll be damned if I'll walk away like this forever. You're my f**king mate. You think you can just walk away from it? That it's just going to go away?" She flinched as he yelled back at her, the graveled sound of his voice testifying to his growing frustration and anger.
"It's just lust." She swiped her hand through the air, as desperate to believe it as she was for it to be true. "A chemical reaction. It will go away."
"And you're only kidding yourself."
Harmony jumped to avoid him as he strode quickly to her, his hand gripping her wrist, jerking her hand to his thighs.
"Feel that, Harmony."
She whimpered as he cupped her fingers over the hard width of his erection beneath his jeans.
"This doesn't go away. I wake up with it and I go to sleep with it. And by God, if you try to tell me you're not just as wet as I am hard, I'll f**k you where you're standing just to prove you're wrong."
"It will go away."
"It's not going to go away," he barked as he jerked back from her just as quickly as he had grabbed her.
"Then I'll have to," she whispered, aching with the needs tearing her apart. "Don't you understand, Lance? Of everyone in my life, you're the only really good thing that has touched it. You're asking me to take a chance on letting what I am destroy you. I can't do that. I can't stay here. I can never stay here. Death is hunted, Lance, by Council soldiers and law enforcement officials alike. And whether you want to admit it or not, I will be found eventually."
He stilled.
"I thought you were a fighter," he said quietly. "The kid who shot her way out of hell and took out the monsters intent on destroying her was a fighter. What she grew into is something else entirely. That kid knew how to live. What happened to her when she grew up, Harmony?"
"She learned that only death matters," she told him sadly. "Because that's where it all ends, Lance. Everything I touch ends in death."
"How could it?" he snapped. "Because you keep running, Harmony. Maybe if you stopped running, just for a little while, you would find something worth fighting for. It takes more guts to stand and fight than it does to hide and kill. Try it out once, baby, you might find it worth your time." His gaze raked over her again. "Or maybe that's your problem. You don't have to fear what you don't have to face. Do you?"
"That's not true." She shook her head wildly.
He wasn't right. He couldn't be right. She wasn't scared of anything, anyone. She was Death.
"It is true, Harmony. Have fun killing yourself with sit-ups while you try to deny it. Personally, I had a much more pleasurable cure in mind. But you just do it your way. For now."
"What do you mean by that?" Her eyes narrowed on him suspiciously as she fought the feeling that Lance's patience was quickly running out.
"Exactly what I said. Try doing push-ups. They seem to help more." His smile was tight as he walked out of the room. The threat lingered behind him though. As did the clawing, heated need.
Dropping to the floor, she started the push-ups.
CHAPTER 12
Lance replaced the decrepit Raider with his own the next evening. Unfortunately, he came with it. To add insult to injury, he changed the schedule as well.
"If I'm going to stay up all damned night long, then I might as well be working," he had snapped that morning when he informed her of the change.
As the call came in on a disturbance and fight at one of the more popular bars, she almost rubbed her hands in glee. She sat forward, straining against the seat belt as Lance raced toward the establishment.
She hadn't had a good fight in months. Unfortunately, as the adrenaline began to race through her veins, the heat building in her body increased. The arousal was almost a narcotic in her blood as her skin sensitized and her nerve endings began to throb. She was throwing off the seat belt and jerking the door open before the Raider had come to a complete stop. Ignoring Lance as he called out her name, she headed for the bar and the fight inside.
"Oh, no you don't." He caught her arm, pulling her to a surprised stop as she stared up at him in shock.
"What?"
"Take their statements!" He pointed imperiously toward the small crowd outside. "Now."
"But the fight…" Oh God, she really needed to expend energy. She could feel the need cramping her stomach, building in her veins.
"Statements," he snarled, the look in his eyes causing her to hesitate. "Now." She snarled furiously, flashing her canines as the sound rumbled from her throat. Gripping her hand, he slapped his notebook into it.
"Now." That tone was primal, such a completely alpha sound that she was taken aback for a moment. "Right now."
She took the statements, fuming at the injustice of it as he and the other deputies began clearing the bar.
"That was so not fair," she snapped as he strode from the bar an hour later, a bruise forming at his temple as he dragged a raw-boned cowboy by his shirt collar to a waiting patrol car. "I could have helped."
He grunted rudely.
"You wouldn't have a black eye if you had let me help," she retorted, her fist clenched around his mangled notebook. "I can't believe you did this." She couldn't believe she had blindly obeyed him like some submissive wimp that didn't know how to fight back. She had never ever obeyed a man in her life. Why the hell was she starting now?