Rule Breaker: A Novel of the Breeds (7 page)

Gypsy flinched, jerking back from him as she realized how close he’d come to her without her being aware of it.

She was getting too used to him invading her space every chance he had. Her body was damned sure getting too used to Rule doing so.

That was going to have to stop. It was going to have to stop right now.

“Is there a reason, Commander Breaker, that you have taken such an interest in me over the past months?” she asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes on him. “Because it’s starting to irritate me and I’m certain you have better things to do.”

He smiled.

Completely male, completely assured, that look was pure, calculated trouble. “Actually, I’m just killing time and trying to keep you in one place before I go off duty here in about ten minutes.” He tapped his ear and the tiny earpiece he wore. A communications device, she knew. “Besides, Control seems to think you must be guilty of some heinous act or two. I believe I might have even heard a few accusations such as breaking hearts and stealing kisses?”

Gypsy smiled with real amusement, laughter threatening to fill her voice as she stared back at him. “Does that line work for you often?” she laughed. “I would have thought a man of your experience could do much better.”

He chuckled at her response. “Very good, Gypsy, very good. But give me a little credit. You blew my mind on that dance floor. I’m still recovering. Give me a minute and I promise you I will astound you with the many ways I can stake a proprietary claim without ever touching you once.”

Her brow arched. “You would need a mind first.” She wrinkled her nose mockingly. “I think I’ll take my proprietary claim and head home. Now that you’ve found me, maybe you can rest too for a minute.” Setting the remainder of her beer and several bills for payment on the bar, she gave him a little wave. “And I’ll see if I can’t remember to find a bar with a few less complications, not to mention a few less Breeds the next time I go out.”

Proprietary claim?

Gypsy could feel a shudder racing through her at the very thought of Rule claiming her. That was a move her life simply couldn’t accommodate, no matter how tempting it sounded.

She’d already had no less than a dozen calls since returning home that night. The calls had come from friends, family and even acquaintances, informing her that the Breed Commander Rule Breaker was questioning where she’d disappeared to.

As if it were any of their business.

She made a mental note to talk to Cullen and see what he could do to get the Breeds off her ass. After all, she had been doing a job for him while she was gone. She was certain he wouldn’t want the Breeds aware of just what kind of job she was doing for him either.

Not that he’d seemed inclined to want to help her earlier. Once he cooled off, though, he might be in a more helpful frame of mind.

Leaving the loud, smoky confines of the bar for the clear, crisp Arizona night, Gypsy drew in a lungful of clean desert air.

She was growing tired of the bars and the often lecherous, always drunken attention she gained there. More and more often she put off her arrival at the various clubs and bars until late into the night.

Pulling her hair back and retrieving an elastic band from the snug pocket of her leather vest, Gypsy confined her hair to keep it out of her face. With the Jeep’s top down, the long strands could become too tangled to comb before going to bed if she wasn’t careful.

“Hey there, Gypsy Rum.” Mutt, a Coyote Breed rarely known to smile when others were around, strangely enough often smiled at her.

He was cute as shit too.

For a Coyote Breed.

There were few of that species that Gypsy could tolerate being around, but Mutt was one of them. With his shy, hesitant smile so at odds with his kickass confidence and dry wit, he had a way of making her laugh even when she didn’t want to.

He came into her parents’ sweets and gift store often, along with two others, to buy the hard candies her sister, Kandy, made to sell.

He was especially fond of the butterscotch, she remembered, while Loki, one of his partners, enjoyed the cinnamon and Commander Breaker always went for the chocolate and peppermint.

“Hey, Mutt.” Pausing, Gypsy smiled back at the Breed moving quickly from the pickup he’d slid from as she left the bar. “What’s up?”

“You’re leaving early.” Tilting his head, he posed the question in a statement as the late evening wind ruffled his overly long dark blond hair. “You’re usually still here after I leave.”

“Things to do.” Gypsy retrieved the ring holding her key fob from the pocket of her vest and casually activated the small Desert Sport II, a redesign of the ages-old Jeep that had always done so well in the deserts.

The motor rumbled with a powerful growl that reminded her far too much of the sound that had vibrated from Rule Breaker as she walked away from him. The Jeep’s top retracted with smooth efficiency, tucking beneath the backseat and floorboard neatly in a matter of seconds as Mutt watched with raised brows.

“Man, I do love your ride, girl,” Mutt murmured, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and standing rather uncomfortably in front of her, his head slightly tilted as he watched her. “One of these days, I swear I’m gonna own one.”

“One of these days?” she grinned. “I hear Breeds make a hell of a lot of money, Mutt. Go buy one.”

His lips quirked wryly. “There’s no way to make them secure without taking out the retracting hard top and completely changing the interior to make them resistant to laser and ammo fire. If I did that, it just wouldn’t be the same. And if I didn’t do it, then all I could do is watch it sit in a garage somewhere.”

Her amusement dimmed in the face of his obvious disappointment.

His gray eyes flicked to the vehicle again, his jaw bunching as Gypsy narrowed her gaze at the small, almost hidden tip of the wand attached to his comm set curving toward his cheek.

He was attempting to delay her and wasn’t exactly certain how to do so without rousing her well-known suspicious nature, it seemed.

Too late. Consider it roused.

Turning without so much as a good-bye, Gypsy strode across the wide paved road that separated the parking sections. She was in the process of gripping the door to slide into the driver’s seat when her waist was shackled from behind and she was pulled back into a hard, muscular chest.

Again.

Heated warmth surrounded her, reminding her how chilled she often felt, how lonely she always was. And how very dangerous this man could be to her precarious senses.

“Now see, I was trying real hard to play nice.” Laughter shadowed the deep drawl of his voice. “Rejection depresses me, you know. Makes me do dumb things just to get attention.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s so lame, Breaker.”

He chuckled behind her. “It could be so true.”

“Doubt it. But what I don’t doubt? Someone really needs to teach you how not to manhandle private property,” she informed him, trying really hard to be angry. Unfortunately, arousal was converging on her like alternate forces of nature intent on destroying her resistance to him.

“So who has ownership?” he asked, his breath against her ear and sending a pulse of energy straight to the sensitive flesh between her thighs. “I’ll take it up with him and ensure that those rights are transferred immediately.”

She just bet he would too, then ride right back out of town the second his boss crooked his little finger.

She didn’t think so.

“I’m going to file a complaint with the Bureau of Breed Affairs if you don’t take your damned hands off me,” she warned him, thrown off guard by his complete dominance and the shocking weakness attempting to spread through her system. Talk about conflicting responses. “Is that what you really want?”

She felt his lips brush her ear, a heated breath sending a surge of response racing through her. He felt too good. Too warm. And far too much trouble.

“All complaints are routed to me first.” Amusement laced his voice, but there was nothing amusing about the iron-hard length of his shaft pressing against her lower back. “Shall I tell you just how quickly I’d delete that particular e-mail?” He inhaled her scent slowly. “How long do you think you’d delay sending it? Long enough to bring yourself to climax while imagining me between your thighs, filling you, driving you to release?”

Heat flushed her body, raced through her system and left Gypsy fighting for a semblance of common sense. Because he was right. So right. The second she slipped into her bed she would be reaching for one of the intimate toys she kept on hand to take care of the ache growing out of control and flooding her body.

Good Lord, Breeds and their effect on women should be outlawed.

“No one could accuse you of being humble,” she snorted, pulling away from him even as she acknowledged that he was letting her pull away from him. “Or polite.”

He wasn’t releasing her because she was forcing him to, or because he had any constraints against making her retain that place in his arms. He was releasing her only because it was what he wanted to do.

She turned to him slowly.

“Before you make the mistake of spouting all that womanly ire I feel building inside you and demanding I keep my dirty Breed paws to myself—”

She had to laugh at the irritation that flashed in his deep blue eyes.

“Strange women you run with there, Breaker,” she snickered. “It’s not the paws that offend me. It’s the arrogance and the attitude. I don’t like being handled, by anyone. Don’t do it, and we’ll just keep getting along fine. How does that sound?” She had to laugh at him then, because he really did have the power not just to burn her alive with lust, but to also make her laugh. He charmed her, and she hadn’t been charmed in a damned long time. “Do you often listen to the womanly ire, then?”

“I believe Breeds listen often when they can’t smell the sweet scent of all that female honey spilling like hot syrup on a summer day,” he retorted, his tone echoing with a sense of impatience. “I’ve yet to understand why women believe lies are so very important when they’re most often more eager for a man’s touch than they let on. The moment you obey them, disappointment has a tendency to mar the delicacy of their scent while they then become angry that you obeyed them. And that only makes for a horny, irritated, not to mention confused Breed.”

“Because a man’s ego, or a Breed’s, doesn’t need to be fed?” she asked, her eyes widening for effect at his obvious confusion. “Maybe we want you to work for what we have to give you? We do tend to believe we’re worth a little effort, you know.”

It seemed Breed males, just like their counterparts, the human males, could be so incredibly obtuse when it came to women.

“Breeds can smell their lies,” he pointed out. “What’s the point in lying when one will be so easily caught in the lie?”

Yep, obtuse.

But it wasn’t the first such conversation they’d had over the past eight or nine weeks. Though it was the first time he’d approached her as blatantly as he had in the bar, and before she’d managed to get into her vehicle.

“Perhaps most women haven’t watched those little documentaries the Breeds put out close enough.” She had studied them for months. “And there could be the fact that even in those documentaries, there’s very little layman’s language. There’s also the fact that you had to have used the most incredibly gorgeous, dangerous-looking, deep-voiced male Breeds living to narrate them. I suspect those Breeds were used in an attempt to distract us just as you meant to. The same can be said for the females used in those videos. The only intent in them was to fool the suspicious and to draw the unwary even deeper beneath your spell. Besides, women absolutely love ice cream, cake and chocolate too. Doesn’t mean it’s good for us, or that we eat it without first considering the calories it contains.”

She’d already known this Breed didn’t like games, nor did he believe in the chase. That was really too bad, because she was very experienced in playing games.

She was considered an expert at them, sometimes.

He only grinned at the accusation, those laser-bright blue eyes holding her gaze, encouraging her to sink beneath the waves of hunger she could feel beating at her resistance. “And did those videos draw you deeper as you denied yourself your favorite sweets?”

Leaning against the side of the vehicle, Gypsy crossed her arms over her breasts as she smiled back at him, shaking her head at the fact that men could be so hardheaded. She was very well aware of the fact that her position only plumped the curves of her breasts higher over the vest-style top she wore, drawing his attention. Momentarily anyway. She liked that about him; he didn’t leer, despite the fact that she could almost feel his need to touch her.

“Sorry, Commander, they didn’t fool me. And my chocolate and ice cream doesn’t wake me up in the mornings, bitch at me for not cleaning, cooking and waiting on it hand and foot or leave dirty clothes lying around my house, so yes, I enjoyed it immensely.”

His lips tilted into a half grin as he watched her closely while tucking his thumbs into the band of his pants, as though trying to find something to do with them besides touch her.

He stood, his feet braced slightly apart, muscular body not exactly relaxed, but neither was he poised for danger. Dressed in the black mission uniform most Breeds wore whenever in public, he presented a dangerous male allure.

Thick black hair fell back along his nape and framed the savagery in the hewn features of his face.

High cheekbones, firm, well-molded lips, and thick, thick inky black lashes surrounding brilliant sapphire eyes, while his shoulders were wide enough that a woman could convince herself of her safety while in his arms.

Or just in his presence, in the shadows of one of the most notorious bars in three states. She could stand there with him, enjoy the banter and not have to worry about some drunken wannabe Romeo groping her.

He was the epitome of everything Breeds were being portrayed as. Strong, intent, protective and honorable. And for the most part, they were.

But Gypsy knew just how dangerous some of them could be.