Primal (10 page)

“Sanctuary is always prepared, it’s secured. We have teams of enforcers that are constantly on guard, but, for the most part, it’s more like a large community.”

“Until it’s attacked,” she guessed.

Creed gave a short nod. “Until it’s attacked. But we’re trained for this Kita. We know how to react, and we know how to fight back.”

“And those you’ve brought in who don’t know how to fight?” she asked softly. “Your wives? What do they do, Creed?”

Did she want to be a Breed wife? There was a flash of hope and concern in her gaze, as though she had given the question a lot of thought but needed more in-depth information.

“They’re protected,” he promised her. “Every Breed in Sanctuary, whether it be male or female, feline, wolf, or coyote, dedicates his life to protecting the wives and children if an attack is launched.” He lifted his hand and cupped her cheek as his thumb caressed her lower lip. “Love is something we dare never take for granted, Kita. Even those who haven’t yet felt the fire of that emotion know that they long for it. They would give their lives to ensure that a Breed mate is completely protected.”

“A mate,” she whispered. “What does it take, Creed, to be a Breed’s mate?”

She spoke against his thumb, her dark brown eyes becoming sensual, slumberous as her body softened further against him.

“Love. That’s all it takes, Kita. The only difference is, Breeds love the first time, for all time. Just as our genetic cousins do.” He was dying to kiss her. The hormone filled his mouth like a particularly spicy aphrodisiac, demanding he share. Until he kissed her, until he forced the hormone into her system, it would only grow worse.

God, if it became worse, he didn’t know if he could bear it. It was an agony now. Like a brutal flame burning in his loins, threatening his self-control.

And it wasn’t that he hadn’t had her. They’d spent the past two days fucking like minks. She’d been exhausted when he’d carried her to the porch after fixing the decaf coffee he thanked God she drank. The caffeinated brew was like an accelerant to mating heat in both males and females. He didn’t think he could bear to have anything intensify it. She wouldn’t be safe with him if it became worse.

“Just love.” Her head turned, her lips pressing to the bare flesh the unbuttoned portion of his shirt revealed. “What if your mate doesn’t love for life, Creed? If they’re human? Some humans are very fickle, you know.”

His lips quirked at the reminder. Ah yes, humans could be fickle, as could Breeds in some instances. They weren’t so different.

But the question she posed was damned tricky for him.

“There hasn’t been a problem yet,” was the only answer he could give her.

And apparently, it was the wrong one. Suspicion darkened her eyes. “Is there any truth to the tabloid stories about a mating hormone?” There was no fear in her gaze, just curiosity, suspicion.

“You know how the tabloids are, Kita,” he tried to scoff, but went no further.

Creed refused to lie to his mate.

As a covert enforcer, he was used to lying. He had to lie to maintain whatever façade was required for the job. At times, even his name changed, his eye color, his hair color. At times, he’d wondered if he even knew who he was anymore. But that was before he’d walked into Kita’s life.

“I know how they are,” she admitted softly. “And I know you. You’re avoiding my question, Creed. What are you not telling me?”

He almost smiled. As he’d said before, she was damned intuitive. And it appeared she had paid more attention to him over the past year than he would have perhaps wished.

“There are differences with the Breeds,” he finally admitted. “Things I’d prefer we discuss later.”

He felt her tense. An air of hurt descended around her as her gaze took on a wounded look.

“Later as opposed to now in what way?” She was drawing away from him and he couldn’t bear that.

The animal inside him was snarling in fury. First, he’d refused her the mating kiss more than once, then he’d sheathed his cock and prevented his body from locking inside her.

He was defying every natural instinct that his species lived and breathed for. Mating. The bonding of his life to another, the gift that would come to him only once, as far as the Breeds knew. And now, he was allowing her to distance herself, to pull away.

His arms tightened around her involuntarily, a part of his mind, his Breed senses, refusing to release her despite the fact that he knew it was best for both of them.

She stared back at him for long moments, her gaze a silent accusation.

“That’s why you haven’t kissed me again,” she finally stated knowingly. “Because it does exist, and for whatever reason you’ve decided I’m not good enough for whatever your mating is?”

His eyes widened. “Have you fucking lost your mind?” Grating, filled with frustrated surprise, the question slipped past his lips.

“Have
you
?” Her eyes narrowed back at him, heavy, thick lashes shadowing her cheeks as brown ire sparked back at him. “Do you think I’m so easy to manipulate and control that I wouldn’t notice you’ve not kissed me again? That despite the fact that conception only occurs with
mates
, you still use a condom. There are no STDs you can give me because Breeds are not susceptible to normal human diseases and viruses. Do you even fucking get a cold?” Her voice rose marginally.

She was angry. He could feel it in her, see it in the spark in her eyes.

“No, we don’t.” His head lowered until they were glaring at each other, nearly nose to nose now in a confrontation he hadn’t expected. “No colds, no STDs, no fucking flu. Anything else?”

“Plenty,” she snapped. “But as you’re suddenly refusing to answer the important questions, then I’m only wasting my time.” Her nose lifted as though she were offended by some smell. “And I do have this thing about wasting my time.”

She moved to rise from him, to leave his arms, to deny him the warmth of her, the comfort, when mating heat was like a fatal wound destroying him from the inside out.

“Then you can waste a little more of it.” Wrapping one arm around her, he lifted, turned, flipped the lever that completely lowered the back of the padded lounger before trapping her beneath his much larger body.

The chill of the fall air swirled around them as his hands gripped her wrists and pulled them above her head to clasp them with the fingers of one hand.

Straining against him, she glared back at him, frustration now anger as she attempted to drive her knee between his thighs, only to have him twist and smoothly maneuver his heavier thighs between hers, opening her to him as he snarled down at her in a warning growl.

It was a primal, desperate measure that slipped free of his control. The man and the animal trapped inside him warred, both savage in their determination to protect their mate in their way. To claim her as each felt she should be claimed.

It was the curse of any Breed. Those two halves suddenly in conflict, fighting for supremacy.

Rather than backing down in wariness, though, Kita bucked against him.

“I can’t believe you dared to snarl at me like that,” she raged furiously, her features flushing, body stiffening, and a hint of feminine arrogance defining her expression. “I’m not one of your prissy little Breed groupies to be frightened of those damned teeth, Creed Raines. Find someone else to intimidate because you’re so not getting away with attempting to intimidate me.”

His cock was on fire. It hardened further, a feat he would have considered impossible. It thickened further, his balls tighter, a lance of pure agony tearing at his mind in his need to mate her. To mark her. To claim her.

“You stubborn little minx,” he snarled down at her as she bucked against him, the soft, wet curls of her pussy pressing into his cock as his hips bore down to hold her in place. “Stay still before you get more than you even realize you’re asking for.”

“What? All of you?” She suddenly cried out. “Fuck you, Creed. You can have all of me, but all you give in return is what you think I might deserve? What little you want to allow me? You can go to hell, because I’ll be damned if I’ll accept less than what belongs to me.”

He stilled. His muscles locked in place, holding her beneath him effortlessly as surprise—fuck no, it was pure shock—had him staring down at her intently.

“Do I have all of you, Kita?” he growled back at her, knowing he should be wary of the sudden primal quality in his voice. “Because it will require your very soul, Kita, to accept the animal you’re tempting.”

She snorted at that, censure gleaming her eyes. “You’re listening to your own Breed press too closely, Creed. You’re a man. A man with a few added qualities and a hell of a lot more primal arrogance, but you still bleed. You still hurt and hope.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “You can still love, can’t you?”

And there was the crux of Kita’s fears. Staring back at her, Creed sensed, scented, felt all the emotions tearing through her for the first time. As though she had finally allowed a barrier of some sort between her and the world, between her and Creed, to slide open.

Kita loved.

She loved her father, and he wasn’t the hero she wanted to see him as. But still, she loved him, even though Creed knew there were times she wondered whether her father returned her love.

She loved the sister that had disowned her family. She loved the mother she had lost and the friends that had deserted her when the press had revealed her father’s duplicity against the Breeds.

And he knew now, she loved him.

“I love you, Kita.” And he was damning her in the same sentence. Because he couldn’t tell her what his soul held without giving her the truth, all of the truth, and all of the creature he truly was.

Part man, a primal animal, a creature that burned for her, that hurt clear to his spirit to give her the mating that would always mark her as his.

His.

She belonged to him, the same as he belonged to her.

Nature was gifting him with a strength far greater than the superb male body he had been created to have. She had given him more than the advanced instincts man had coded into his genetics. She was giving him the woman who would stoke the fires to fight, to protect. A woman who would ease the horrors of battle, who would soothe the desperation when darkness strengthened it.

Yet, at the same time, she was giving him his greatest weakness as well. A weakness that would pull him from covert duty to stay at her side. A weakness that would make him fear for the first time in his life. Creed had something far more important to fear than death. Now, fear of death would be a meager second to the fear of losing her.

Breeds didn’t just mate for life. Couples mated for life. If he lost her, if she lost him, life would become a horrible, bleak existence he never wanted to face.

“Do you love me, Creed?” A small tear slipped from the corner of her eye. “If you love me, then you won’t hide from me. You’ll give me who you are, the same as I give it to you. Isn’t that real love? You can’t love me if you’re willing to take from me the parts of you that make you a Breed.”

He swallowed tightly. “And if those parts of me change you somehow?” he whispered, his teeth clenching as the demand to kiss her, to mate her, ripped at his senses, tearing at the control he was fighting so desperately to hold on to. “If I fear those changes will change that love to hate?”

She licked her lips. Soft, silken, a pink temptation he was dying to taste, her tongue licked over her lips. “Love isn’t like that,” she whispered roughly, the movement of her hips suddenly far more than an attempt to escape. “If even part of the tabloid stories are true, Creed, then it seems to me you’ll only complete me.” For a second, her eyes flickered with shadowed pain. “You have all of me now. Shouldn’t I have the same from you?”

Complete her? He remembered when he had first come to the Engalls estate, hearing her confide to her friend Beth that she felt incomplete. That she felt as though a part of her were detached, distant, unable to reach out and find what it was she could feel missing.

He knew she was his mate. Knew she was his life. But he also knew his fear of turning that love to hate.

God knew, she was the part of his life that had been missing until the day he stared into the pure, sweet, chocolate depths of her gaze. From that moment, he had centered his entire being on drawing her to him, fascinating her, teasing her, encouraging the most minute emotional and sensual responses short of actually allowing her to touch him.

Because he knew once he touched her, holding back would be hell.

And he was in hell.

“Kiss me, Creed.” She strained against him, tempting him, destroying him. “Unless you don’t really want me?” For a second, fear flickered in her gaze.

“Not want you?” he groaned. “Kita. God. Sweetheart. For the past year, I’ve lived for you.”

EIGHT