Coyote's Mate (4 page)

He was aware of the eyes that watched, yet he couldn’t draw back.

“They should have protected you better, little one,” he whispered against her lush lips. “They well deserved my vengeance.”

Her lashes lifted. Her eyes were dark with misery, with pain as an exhausted sob tore from her throat.

“You betrayed me. You lied to me,” she cried. “I’ll never trust you again, Del-Rey. I can never trust you.”

He stole the words. He couldn’t bear to hear them, couldn’t bear the pain or the anger in her eyes or her voice. He took her kiss. Her lips parted for him helplessly. He could feel her fighting the need, felt her giving into it even as she cried out in surrender. And even as he kissed her, he realized there was something not quite as it had once been within him. A hunger, a need, a driving inferno of lust building inside him that made no sense, that defied description.

He needed this woman to survive it though. And Del-Rey always ensured he had what he needed to survive. He blamed it on the Coyote side of his genetics. Blood will tell and so, evidently, will DNA. At least in some part. Maybe he should blame it on the human side, he thought wearily.

Anya might have accepted that easier.

THREE DAYS LATER

Three days. She burned. Flames licked over her flesh. Fury, confusion, betrayal and pain ate at her mind while the most horrible arousal she could have ever imagined ate at her body.

It had to be the taste of his kiss, she thought. She was craving it. It was killing her, the need for that kiss. And he kept forcing it on her, as though she actually wanted his kiss now.

She paced the bedroom of the cabin she was locked in, dressed in the soft cotton pants and T-shirt Sharone had brought her earlier.

She had begged Sharone to help her escape. She had it all worked out. All she had to do was get to a town and contact the embassy; they would take care of everything. They would contact her father, and she could go home. She could forget Del-Rey Delgado ever existed.

And Sharone had been going for it. Anya had seen it in her eyes until Del-Rey had stepped into the room, furious, and pulled Sharone from it.

Now she was alone. Alone to think, to worry. God, her father was lying in the snow bleeding, her cousins with him. Her cousins had family, children—who would support them now? Times weren’t good in Russia right now; the economy was weak all over. They would lose their homes.

They would be in the cold. Her father.

She sniffed. Who would bring him his vodka when he was tired and worn from trying to manipulate the Council scientists and members? Who would bandage his leg?

The tears were flowing from her eyes again. She should have more control than this. Her father had berated her for her loss of control. But that was something he did. She had red hair, he told her often, like her mother. And her mother had learned that holding her temper always helped herself and others more than losing it did.

She couldn’t control her emotions now. She hadn’t been able to since those shots had been fired.

Since Del-Rey had kissed her. Since her world had exploded around her. Since something had exploded within her.

She pressed her hands into her stomach. Her abdomen rippled and she could feel the pulse of dampness between her thighs. Her nipples were so sensitive the rasp of the T-shirt was torture.

Her clitoris was engorged and aching. Even when she had touched herself, she had never been this aroused.

What had he done to her? He had to have done something to her. There was no other explanation.

She paced the room, she cursed. She would rage and then she would cry. She reviled Del-Rey Delgado. “Of the king” her ass. There was nothing kingly about that bastard.

“What did you do to me?” she screamed, picking up one of the few objects still in the bedroom, a wooden bowl, and throwing it at the door.

It didn’t shatter. It hit the door with a resounding bang and then fell to the carpet as she collapsed on the end of the bed, curling into herself, moaning at the need rippling through her.

Her eyes closed, and she swore she tasted his kiss, felt his hands on her flesh. One touch, she told herself. She could allow one touch, just to still the demand raging through her body. Maybe one more kiss.

“No!” she gritted out between her teeth. Not even one touch. One touch would lead to another and she would be begging. God help her if he ever kissed her. She wouldn’t survive it.

And she didn’t want that liar’s kisses. Lies. Six years of lies. Promises he had broken one right after the other. She would be warned before the rescue. She would have time to make certain her father and cousins were safe. She would have time to ensure that personnel were able to get out safely rather than being murdered in the stampede to escape.

She had seen those doctors wielding automatic rifles and turning them on the innocent administration personnel and lab techs trying to escape.

She hoped the doctors were dead. She hoped they were roasting in hell. Unlike Del-Rey. Oh, she didn’t want him dead. She wanted him alive. Alive and well so she could kill him herself.

She whimpered as another punch of sensation slammed into her stomach, her vagina, her clitoris.

It was like a racking blow of electricity being shoved inside her. It sizzled and burned and left her gasping in need as the bedroom door opened.

She rolled to her feet, stumbling, staring at the man watching her with those devil’s black eyes.

“What did you do to me?” Her fists clenched at her side.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head wearily. “Whatever it is, I did it to myself as well.”

“You bastard!” There was nothing left to throw at him. She had thrown everything she could find over the past three days and the final object, that damned bowl, now lay at his feet. “You’re lying. Just like you lied to me all these years, you’re lying to me now.”

“No, Anya.”

The sound of her name on his lips was too much. She snarled, her fingers clawed as she jumped for him. She was going to claw his lying eyes out of his face. She was going to make him hurt the same as he was making her hurt.

He caught her hands an inch from his face.

“Stop this, Anya, it isn’t helping.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried out, struggling against him, mind and body torn apart by conflicting emotions and needs. “You betrayed me, Del-Rey. You lied.”

“I know, baby.” He held her hands with one of his, the other touching her cheek, his thumb moving over her lips. “We’ll deal with that, I promise. But I need your kiss. Now.”

“No,” she moaned, a long, drawn-out sob of need and despair as she pressed her cheek into his palm, bit his thumb.

Oh God, he tasted good. So good. Her tongue licked over the pad and her lashes fluttered.

“One more kiss,” he growled. “Then we’ll figure this out. I promise.”

“One more kiss,” she gasped. “One more.”

She was reaching for him, needing him. Her lips opened beneath his, accepting his tongue and that taste she craved so desperately. She sucked it into her mouth and heard his groan of pleasure.

She arched into his arms and begged silently for more.

One more kiss wasn’t enough. She needed him to touch her. So bad. So bad that she gripped his hand and shoved it under her shirt. Then her hands were burrowing beneath his shirt, touching hot, hard flesh as she felt his hand cup the swollen mound of her breast.

Oh that was good. His thumb raked over her nipple and it was even better. He lifted her into his arms, and a second later she was stretching back on the bed as he whipped the shirt over her head.

Her hands buried in his hair as his lips covered her nipple. She tore at his shirt until he lifted his head, ripped it off and moved to her other nipple.

His skin covered hard, corded muscle. It flexed beneath her palms, her nails, as she felt his hands pushing at the cotton pants she wore.

It was desperate. She could feel the enraged lust traveling between them, as though electricity connected them, one feeding from the other until she was burning inside and she knew she wasn’t going to get enough of him. She needed more of him.

A second later she found herself flipped to her stomach. Her fingers curled into the blankets as she opened her eyes and stared in dazed confusion at the bed. Her hips were jerked up. Calloused fingers ran through the sensitive folds between her thighs, and she was wet. So slick and wet and hot. And it felt so delicious she stretched into the caress.

“Tell me you want me,” he growled behind her.

“I want you.” She sobbed the answer into the bed, tears falling from her eyes again as she felt him behind her. “I want you.”

Broad, hot, the crest of his cock tucked between the wet folds.

Not like this. She pressed her head into the bed. Not like this, where she couldn’t hold on to him, where she couldn’t find a sense of control or focus.

Why like this?

He pressed inside and she went crazy from the pleasure. Her back arched at the stretching heat, a cry falling from her lips, part protest, part hunger.

She felt a pulse of heated fluid filling her, burning her further. She felt her sex flex and ripple and draw him in. With each heated spurt she became more sensitive, hungrier, needier.

She should tell him she was a virgin. She should tell him she hadn’t done this before.

A scream ripped from her throat as he tunneled inside in three hard strokes. Every inch. And he was so thick, invading her, stretching her, tearing through her virginity without the pain she had expected, but with more impact than she could have imagined.

Her thighs parted more, her hips tilted back farther and he was rising over her, his powerful arms braced beside her head as he began thrusting into her. His lips were at her shoulder. Sharp little kisses, heated and fierce just below her neck.

She was filled with him. She could feel every heavy vein in his cock, every pulse of blood through it, and it was killing her. She needed more, wanted more.

And he was giving her more. Surging inside her as she felt her body tighten. The muscles wrapped around his erection tightened, her clit throbbed, pulsed, and then everything inside her exploded in a cataclysm of light and color that had her screaming his name.

She shuddered through her orgasm, jerking beneath him as he continued to thrust hard and fast, gaining speed, pushing into her as she felt more of those pulses of heated fluid.

A second later, she heard him snarl, and felt something shocking. Something she knew couldn’t be natural. This couldn’t be real. His cock was swelling in one place. Getting larger, separating her farther as she felt his semen began to spurt inside her.

Animal genetics, she thought distantly. He was locking inside her. Held tight and sure inside the heavy muscles of her vagina, he suddenly snarled with animalistic fervor and she felt his teeth pierce her upper shoulder.

She should be screaming in pain. She was screaming in pleasure. Another, harder orgasm ripped through her, shook her, wrenched her senses from her and left her lost. She was so lost, with nothing, no one to hold on to. Thrown into a pleasure so violent, so brutal, she wondered if she could survive it.

Behind her, Del-Rey was growling. His teeth still gripped her flesh, his cock still locked inside her. She sobbed out his name. She wanted to beg him to hold her, but the last shreds of her pride held her back.

He had taken her like this, impersonally, and he had to have done it for a reason. She didn’t matter. The same reason he had shot her family, the same reason he had lied to her for so many years. Because Anya Kobrin, and the fragile love that had been building inside her for him, didn’t matter.

Which left her alone, at the mercy of a man that she now knew had no mercy.

He had made a grave tactical error and Del-Rey knew it. The anger that had festered inside him over the years had overlooked the intense, all-abiding loyalty Anya felt for her family and friends. Del-Rey was a man who believed in retribution. He had been such a man all his life, until he sat here now, staring into the darkness of his own soul, and realized he had wounded a treasure he hadn’t known he’d held.

He had known from the moment he met her that he was going to betray her. It was the way of the world. He couldn’t fully trust. He never gave complete control or complete trust to another person, outside of Brim. Just as he had known that retribution would be dealt to the guards’

leaders, as he had always dealt it. He had always killed before. He’d pulled his punches because of Anya. He hadn’t killed, he had only wounded. Her father and her cousins would know they had been dealt with fairly. They were men of war. War had different rules than the fairy tales young women such as Anya lived within.

She was sleeping. Finally. Del-Rey sat in the chair beside her bed, dressed, his head in his hands as his elbows rested on his knees. He had sat down there the minute he could withdraw from her, as soon as the knot that had been swollen in his cock had receded enough for him to pull away from her. He had jerked his jeans back to his hips and sat. To keep from falling to the floor.

And he had remained there as she silently folded herself onto her side, tugged the blanket over her shoulders and cried silently until she went to sleep.

She hadn’t sobbed again. She hadn’t cursed him or railed at him. She had retreated into herself, and he had no idea how to pull her back.

He lowered his hands and stared at them. Large hands. The hands of a warrior. A killer. These hands had held her beneath him. His teeth had held her in place. His cock had knotted hard and deep inside her.

He had never done that. In his entire sexual life, he had never done that to a woman. Why this woman?

He rose to his feet and fixed his jeans before jerking his T-shirt on. He could hear Brim, his second-in-command moving up the steps to the second-floor bedroom. Del-Rey opened the door as the other man reached it.

Concerned light blue eyes stared back at him.

“Vehicles are here,” Brim reported. “Those women downstairs are pissed off though. Watch your back.”

He didn’t blame them. Hell, someone should shoot him.