Harmony's Way (31 page)

“I can’t let you do this.” She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze head-on. “There’s too much at stake and too many dangers that could have followed us here.”

“Of course we were followed.” His smile was tight, controlled. “We lost them in Boulder, but I’m sure they’ll catch up to us soon enough.”

Shock vibrated through her system.

“You knew we were followed?” she whispered.

She had suspected it when he drove through Boulder rather than the more direct route around the outside of the city, but she hadn’t been certain. Her own radar, the prickle at the back of her neck, hadn’t been present, so she hadn’t been certain.

Lance shrugged. “I thought I glimpsed the heli-jet in the distance in the rearview mirror, but I wasn’t certain. It could have been a plane, hell, it could have been a shadow. But we were followed.”

She wrapped her arms across her chest then, breathing in deeply. God, she hated all these emotions churning chaotically inside her. As though once she had begun feeling, it wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t ease or give her peace.

“That’s all the more reason to contact Dane.” She breathed in deeply. “He’ll know where to hide us…”

“I don’t need one of your ex-lovers to protect my woman or my child,” he stated grimly. “Don’t push this, Harmony, because you’re going to lose.”

“Is that what this is over?” She stood there, blank, amazed. “You won’t accept his help because I slept with him?”

“I am perfectly capable of protecting my woman and my child,” he informed her, his voice deepening. He retained his patience, though his gaze hardened. “We retrieve the information you have and get it back to Braden. From there, we’ll know how to handle Jonas.”

Men! She stared back at Lance in bemusement.

“Lance, I don’t doubt you would protect us. The point is that if we found a place to have the baby in safety, then we could fight the rest later.”

“If running or hiding would assure your life and our child’s, then I would be perfectly capable of hiding us. Son of a bitch, Harmony. I understand your history with the bastard, but we do this my way, not his.”

“I’m not doubting you…”

“Well, excuse me if it sounds like it,” he snapped.

“You’re bargaining with other people’s lives,” she whispered desperately. “We can’t do that, Lance.”

“I’d bargain with the devil himself for your fucking safety.” An edge of impatience colored his voice. “If the first Leo exists, then his location is not going to be in those files. If the Council ever had a hint of where he was, they would have struck. A few power-hungry Council scientists would not have sat on that information before using it.”

He sat there so calmly, commanding, determined that this was going to go his way, period. For a moment, Harmony almost gave in. She almost agreed.

Then the faces of those babies in the labs flashed before her mind again. Screaming for attention, for warmth. They hadn’t known warmth, had never known love or a gentle touch. That was the fate that awaited her child if the Council took her—that, or death.

Straightening her shoulders, she let her own determined gaze meet his.

“Then I’ll leave alone. I know how to contact Dane…”

She didn’t expect his response, though she should have. His patience evaporated as her eyes widened. A hint of fear flew through her a second before he reached her, his hands gripping her upper arms firmly.

“Like fucking hell!” His features were contorted with fury, his eyes burning with it. “Attempt it, Harmony, just fucking attempt it and I swear to God I’ll slap you in cuffs so fast it will make your head spin.”

Her lips parted as she stared back at him, shocked at the burning heat that flowed from his hands into her arms.

“Let me go.” She jerked against his hold.

“Do you think I’m going to let you keep running?” His gaze bored into hers. “That I’m incapable of protecting you and our child?”

“That’s not what I meant.” She shook her head desperately. “You don’t understand…”

“I understand that Jonas, Dane and these fucking files have haunted you for ten years, and it’s coming to an end here.”

His head lowered, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a primitive snarl.

“It ends here. Right here, by God.”

“Even if it means our lives?” she cried out, fighting to hold back her fears, her tears. “They’ve followed us, Lance. We can’t even be certain who it is that followed, or who’s waiting. Don’t ask me to take this chance. Please.”

He dropped a hand to her abdomen, his palm covering it, his eyes darkening to a near black.

“If it meant your life, I’d know it,” he snapped. “I would feel it and the winds would scream that knowledge to me. This is the only way.”

“No.” She jerked at his hold again.

“Yes.”

He didn’t give her time to argue. As her lips opened to curse him, his were there, covering them as his arms pulled her against his chest.

Arousal should have been the last thing in her mind, the last thing she responded to. They were in the middle of a war zone and it was about to get worse, she could feel it. But his lips on hers were a sensual, erotic act of mastery. He didn’t ask for her kiss, nor was he tentative. He demanded. He controlled. And ultimately, Harmony found herself submitting to the wicked, erotic nips at her lips by sharp teeth and the hungry growl that came from her own throat.

That dominance was her undoing. Female Breeds must have been programmed to submit to the males, though until Lance, that genetic coding had never made an impression on her. With Lance, she couldn’t deny it. She couldn’t deny her need, or her hunger, any more than she could deny the fears that, for the moment, dissolved beneath his passion.

His hands trailed down her arms, broad, calloused hands that stroked her flesh with sensual roughness and replaced the chill of foreboding with heated, wicked lashes of pleasure.

She was lost in him. As impossible as it should have been, as furious as she was with him, he still managed to consume her, to build the hunger simmering within her to a full, raging blaze.

She tore at his clothes, nothing so important now as feeling his flesh against hers, the warmth of his body stroking over her.

Her shirt fell beneath his hands, just as her jeans parted seconds later. Gasping, panting for air, they groped and ripped at clothing, socks, shoes, until Lance was tumbling her to the bed, his large, harder body coming over her as his lips tore from hers.

“Mine!” He reasserted his claim as he parted her thighs, his cock pressing into the slick, heated depths of her vagina. “Tell me, damn you! Tell me you’re mine.”

“Yours.” She could barely breathe, but she couldn’t stop the word being torn from her lips as she stared back at him, shocked by the intensity of his eyes.

They blazed in his dark face, deep blue flames of determination, dominance and powerful male force, glowing with an otherworldly light.

“No one will take you from me,” he snapped, one hand tangling in her hair as his cock surged inside her, fierce, hot, stretching her to her limits as she arched into the thrust.

She would have closed her eyes, but she couldn’t break his gaze. He held her trapped, staring into her eyes, breaching her soul even as his erection breached the aching depths of her pussy.

She would have closed herself from him if she could. The distracting pleasure washing through her broke her concen-tration, fractured her ability to hold that inner part of herself aloof.

“Don’t…” She begged him to release her, not with his body, but with that inner link she could feel forging inside her soul.

He rose above her, the width of his shoulders gleaming, damp with sweat. She could feel the power flowing through him, the strength that was so much a part of him wrapping around her, sheltering her. Protecting her.

“I won’t let you run.” His voice throbbed with furious determination. “I won’t lose you. Or this.”

He moved then, his hips drawing back, stroking exposed nerve endings, sending her senses reeling with pleasure as she arched against him to hold him inside her.

“Can you run from this, Harmony?” His hips twisted as he penetrated her again, a fierce, hard thrust that sent him tunneling to the depths of her as she gasped at the heat exploding through her. “Tell me, baby. Tell me you can walk away from this.”

If it had just been the pleasure, she could have walked away. But it was more. As he fucked her with hard gliding strokes, he infused her soul as well. Heat moved from his body to hers, chasing away the cold determination she had fought to rebuild inside her heart.

One hand gripped her hair, kneading, pulling at the strands and adding another level of sensation. The other hand cupped her breast, lifting it, until his mouth covered her nipple, his tongue flaying it with whiplashing pleasure.

He broke through every defense she could muster and left it lying, crumpled at her feet, as her hands gripped his hair and held him to her breast.

His hips pumped against hers, churning, thrusting, stroking inside her as his pelvis rasped against her swollen clit. The sensual stroke and slide, retreat and entrance were driving her insane. The pleasure built, layer upon layer, until nothing existed inside her but the need, the hunger clawing at her womb and in her soul.

“Feel it!” He lifted his head, staring down at her, his expression strained as the spiraling intensity of pleasure began to build. “You won’t run. Do you hear me?”

She shook her head, fighting to breathe, to think.

“Say it, Harmony.” His voice was a dominant, commanding baritone that rippled through her senses.

He wanted surrender. She shook her head, fighting against it, fighting the need to give it.

“Say it, damn you!” One hand gripped her hip to hold her still as he slammed inside her, his legs widening, pushing her thighs apart as he shifted and touched her deeper.

“Don’t do this.” Baring her teeth, Harmony fought to hold on to herself. “No.”

“Say it. You’re mine, damn you. Fucking mine. You will follow me. Say it.”

His hand gripped her wrist as her nails dug into his shoulder and he slammed her hands to the bed. Her punishment came in a slow, torturous withdrawal of his cock from her inner grip. A sensual, heated slide of powerful flesh over desperate nerve endings.

Transferring her wrists to one hand, he clamped her firmly to the bed as he gripped her hip once again and held her still beneath him. With the strength of his body he controlled her, just as he was fighting to control her with his will as well.

“I won’t,” she moaned, fighting against fear and hunger and the overriding need to do as he demanded.

“You will, Harmony.”

Before she could struggle, he moved, sliding free of her before turning her to her stomach and trapping her against the bed.

“Damn you, Lance.” She fought as he lifted her hips, shoving a pillow beneath them before thrusting inside her aching pussy again.

“Stay still.” His hand tapped the side of her ass in a warning little slap. “Give me what I want, baby, and you’ll get what you want.”

“I can’t do this.” Her fingers clenched in the blankets. “I won’t…”

“You will, Harmony. Say the words. Tell me you’ll follow me. I won’t let you run.”

Pressing her forehead into the blankets, she shook her head furiously.

“Oh, I think you will, sweetheart.” The soft, warning croon should have prepared her, but it didn’t.

She jerked as she felt him lean back, felt his cock throb inside her with a hard pulse before his hands separated the smooth cheeks of her rear.

“You’re so wet.” His fingers moved to where her pussy stretched around him. “So sweet and slick, all over.” He smoothed the rush of liquid from where it seeped past her vagina, back, back.

“Oh God!” Her eyes flew open as she stared into the room with dazed shock.

His finger pressed against the small, hidden entrance of her rear. His thumb massaged, pressed. It wasn’t the touch so much as it was the impression of dominant control, of her own submission, that threw her mind into a frenzy or confusion.

She felt him leaning over her then, his arm reaching to the night table where his shaving kit rested. As he moved, his cock stroked into her, taking her breath, leaving her little oxygen to gasp as she watched him remove the small tube of lubrication he carried.

Harmony shuddered beneath him then.

“There, sweetheart.” His hand caressed over her rear as he straightened behind her again, the movement causing her to shudder in pleasure beneath him.

“Lance…”

“It’s okay, baby.” She felt the cooling lubrication against her rear entrance. “It’s all okay.”

“Oh God… Damn you, Lance.”

His finger slid inside that back entrance, sending thrilling flames across nerve endings never stroked in such a way before.

“Never had this before, baby?” His finger shuttled in and out for several strokes. “What about this?”

A second joined the first, stretching her as tremors of ecstasy wracked her body and perspiration began to dampen her flesh.

“Do you know, little cat…” His voice was a soft croon. “My strong little kitten. You haven’t had this because you refuse to submit to any man. To anyone’s dominance over you. You didn’t belong, Harmony. Let’s see if you belong now.” Another finger pierced her.

She was crying, whimpering little sounds of pleasure and pain that stoked the hunger higher and left her mindless with the need for release.

“Give me what I want, Harmony.” His voice was strained as his fingers fucked her with the same slow rhythm he was setting with his cock. The dual penetration was mind numbing, dragging her sensibilities beneath the wake of the pleasure.

“Lance…”

“That’s not what I want to hear.” He wasn’t heeding her whimpering pleas. “Tell me, Harmony. Tell me who you belong to. Who you follow.”

The fierce need, the raging lust echoed in his voice with the demand for surrender. Total surrender.

She shook her head again, unable to voice the denial when everything inside her screamed that she give in to him.

“No. Lance, please…” She found the strength to whisper, to beg as she felt the thick length of his erection leaving her empty, unsatisfied.