Soul Deep (7 page)

“This isn’t natural,” she cried out. “I don’t act like that. Not with strangers, with…”

“Animals?” He held back the sneer, barely.

“With anyone,” she snapped back before shaking her head, the smell of her fear growing stronger. “Take me home. You have to take me back home. Call my father. Now! He’ll come after me.”

“No!” Possessive rage nearly overwhelmed him before he managed to push it back along with the pain of her rejection. “We’re taking you somewhere safe…”

“No! Take me home!”

“No.” The growl that vibrated in his voice shocked her to silence as her eyes widened, her lips parting on a gasp. “Not now. Not yet. Not by God until I can get the smell of your hunger from my head.”

He didn’t understand the rage, the determination to keep her that suddenly welled within him, but he knew if he didn’t get away from her, he was going to take her. Over and over again, the smell of her fear mixing with her lust until it drove him insane.

Jerking the door beside him open, he jumped from the Jeep, his jeans forgotten, the chill of the late October air barely noticeable for the heat climbing in his body. A heat he feared he would never be free of. Just as he would never be free of the animal Amanda saw within him.

* * * * *

“Shit’s hit the fan, amigo.” Simon spoke quietly into the cell phone as Kiowa plunged into the frigid depths of the lake they had parked beside.

Finding the little out-of-the-way place for nature to take its course had been a bitch.

Dash sighed wearily.

“How far are you from Alpha site?”

“Good four and a half hours,” he muttered. “We were lucky to get this close. That girl was in sad shape for a while, my friend. Those little moans were killing me. God only knows what it did to him.”

There were few people aware of the exact nature of the mating processes in the Breeds. Callan had imposed a strict code of silence on the few Breeds who had mated so far, hoping to secure a safer environment in world opinion before it leaked out.

Simon was the only non-breed with such information. He had it only because he was a sneaky son of a bitch with a sharper mind than most people when it came to animals.

Dash cursed low and viciously.

“Yeah, for all of me too.” Simon grimaced. “Our little pup is presently swimming in frigid waters and his sweet thang is huddled in nothing more than a blanket. What do we do?”

“Get them to Alpha Site,” Dash snapped. “We’re wasting time we fucking don’t have, Simon.”

“Hey, you’re jumping the wrong dude here, asshole,” Simon growled. “It’s not my dick tied in a knot with a woman hotter than the hounds of hell. Try telling him.”

“Try pulling out now,” he snapped. “You have escorts in position beginning one hour from your location. Move now, goddammit, no matter what.”

“Fuck.” Simon snapped the phone closed.

Major Sinclair was going to keep on; he was going to get his ass kicked.

“So?” Stephanie moved closer, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind as she laid her cheek against his back.

“So, we go,” he sighed. “Let’s hope they got enough, because we gotta trot, baby doll. My guess is, there are hounds baying at our heels and Dash knows it. He was amazingly reserved.” He grimaced at the Major’s curses. “We have escorts an hour from here, so my guess is Feline Cavalry is moving in as insurance.”

“Shit.” She pressed her head tighter against his back.

“Yep. That ‘bout sums it up,” he drawled. “Let’s get the kiddies moving and pray we’re ahead of the bad guys. I really ain’t lookin’ to tangle with government firepower here. That would be a bad thing.”

A very, very bad thing.

Stephanie moved to his side as Kiowa strode naked from the lake, breathing harshly, but the cold water had no effect on the erection straining from his body.

“Simon honey, that man is packed,” Steph remarked with no small amount of feminine interest. “But damned if I think I’d want a piece of it. He looks mean enough to bite.”

Simon snorted. Yep. And he was betting a lot of money Kiowa had bit. Very, very bad.

Chapter Ten

Stay down. Don’t risk being seen. Stay covered.

Definitely stay covered.

Amanda lay on her side, her back to Kiowa as she tried to hug the wheel cover and keep from touching him.

Cold hard reality had almost returned. Enough to realize what had happened and to remember in bleak clarity the hours before when it had all begun. How long had passed? It was nearly three in the morning now, Simon had told Kiowa a bit ago. The lights from the vehicle following them flipped in and out of the back glass, casting odd shadows around her.

Nearly three. It had been just after seven when she had closed her door on the trick-or-treaters. Seven hours. In seven hours her life had changed so drastically she was certain she could never right it again.

She shuddered at the thought of it. Not in distaste. She wished it were in distaste, it would make it easier. It would ease the tears that slid silently down her face and the ache that lay heavy in her heart.

What had she done? How had it happened? And why was she still being tortured with the need for more?

“How much longer, Simon?” Kiowa snapped from beside her, his voice harsh as he demanded the answer.

“A little over an hour,” Simon answered back. “Callan has one of the new cabins ready. They’re gathering intel now. We should have something when we get there.”

“Sinclair there?” His voice was a raspy growl. He was pissed. Good, so was she.

“He’s flying in with Elizabeth and Cassie now. He should be there just ahead of us.”

She could feel the tension filling the Jeep now. Between her and Kiowa. The more she burned, the madder he seemed to get.

Could he tell? she wondered. Did he sense the building arousal? Just what she needed. The son of a bitch didn’t just drug her with some kind of weird animal aphrodisiac, but he could sense the effect of it.

“Dash Sinclair is in on this?” She spoke up then, stilling the tears as anger washed over her.

She had met Dash Sinclair and his wife Elizabeth. Their daughter Cassie was a sweet, if odd little child. They had met with her father during one of the endless meetings the month before.

“None of us were in on anything, Ms. Marion, but protecting your hide,” Simon told her harshly. “Things are turning out bad, I admit, but we did our best.”

“Your best sucks,” she informed him furiously. “They’ll find me.”

Her father would not take this lying down, she thought. If the Breeds thought they had trouble before, it would be nothing compared to what her father and brother would bring down on them now.

“They have to know you’ve gone first,” Kiowa snapped. “The five men I took out behind your house disappeared, Manda. And they didn’t walk away. Your security detail is
still
sleeping peacefully and breathing. For the moment. And your father doesn’t have a clue you’re gone.”

She blinked back at him. She remembered Tammy Brock then, her nervousness, her request to use the bathroom. How had they convinced Tammy to help them? Better yet, why had her bodyguards ignored the back door indicator light as they had? At no time was she supposed to use that door after dark. She never had.

“The security detail was helping them,” she whispered in shock. “They had to be. Tammy deactivated the alarm on the back door when she went to the bathroom, but they should have known that. The safeguards would have warned them of that.”

“Damn, she’s a bright one, Kiowa. You might want to consider keeping her.” Simon’s glowing praise was slightly mocking.

Bastard.

“Why would they do that?” She shook her head, refusing to turn and even glance at Kiowa. If she looked at him, saw his eyes, his mouth, she would be a goner. “I can almost understand Tammy if it’s money. Kylie is so sick. But why did the guards help?”

“Well, that’s one we’re trying to figure out,” Simon answered her. “Who’s this Tammy person anyway?”

She quickly explained what had occurred with Kylie’s mother. The trip to the bathroom, Amanda seeing that the alarm had been deactivated. As she spoke, she had to forcibly push back the building awareness of the man at her side and the slowly rising hunger. It was like a demon inside her, claws raking at her womb, demanding the hard thrust of his cock, the white-hot release of his semen.

“Rumor drifted in that the hit would be made just after Dash made contact with the Feline Breeds,” Stephanie revealed, her voice soft, obviously less antagonistic than the two chest-beaters sharing the vehicle with them. “We were delayed in putting together a plan to protect you when his wife, Elizabeth, went into labor. As soon as they were able to travel, Dash met with your father. He didn’t seem to take the threats seriously.”

Amanda couldn’t control the hitch in her breathing then. Neither her brother nor her father had taken a threat against her seriously? They hadn’t even told her?

“You’re lying,” she whispered then. “My parents wouldn’t risk my life.”

“They put a damned good detail on you,” Kiowa assured her. “The four men protecting you are the best. All he had to go on was a rumor, no hard intelligence. And I believe you refused to move into the White House for any length of time.”

Sarcasm colored his voice now.

But he was right, she had refused to move into the official Presidential home for any reason. The fight had been a bitter one. Why hadn’t he told her there might have been a threat? She might have changed her mind.

No, she amended that thought, she wouldn’t have. She was high on her own independence, her new job, her friends and her home. She would have required proof, not rumor.

“What now?” she asked then.

“Now, we get you to safety then contact your father,” Kiowa answered her sharply. “And we keep you there until the vote on Breed Law comes up next week. With your safety assured, President Marion will vote the bill in rather than shoot it down because you have a gun at your head.”

“And since you’ve mated with a Breed, why everything’s just going to be peachy now,” Simon drawled mockingly. “Ain’t we all lucky?”

She would have jerked up if Kiowa’s hand hadn’t suddenly pressed her back down.

“What the hell is he talking about?” she snarled, flipping around as she held the blanket close to her nakedness.

“Ignore him. He’s a twit,” Kiowa advised, his voice dangerously soft.

“Funny, he doesn’t sound like a twit. An asshole maybe, but not a twit,” she pointed out furiously. “Why did he say that?”

“Because he wants to cause trouble. Simon likes causing trouble. Don’t you, Simon?”

Amanda did not trust his tone of voice in the least.

“Oh yeah, trouble is just my middle name, ain’t it, Steph?” he drawled.

“Or something,” she replied. The underlying messages were driving Amanda crazy.

“You’re lying to me,” she told Kiowa then. “Why lie to me now?”

He breathed in roughly. “Look, Manda, it’s about as clear as daylight that you don’t want to know anything more than you already do. Just stay down and leave things alone for now. We’ll talk later.”

“I don’t want to talk later,” she replied with all the false sweetness she could muster. “I want to talk now. I want to know why the hell he called me your mate and just exactly what being a mate entails.”

His brow lifted sardonically. “As you stated earlier, you are very well aware of what an animal is. You figure it out.”

She could feel herself paling. It didn’t help the heat building in her pussy.

“What did you do to me?” Fury was enveloping her. Unfortunately, it was driving a less wanted heat higher.

His teeth flashed as he smiled. There, at the side of his mouth, his canines glittered savagely. Her shoulder ached as though in response, the heat there spreading through her.

“Do you really want to know, Manda?” he asked, his voice dangerously rough, leaning closer as she stared up at him with wide eyes. “Or would you rather just stay nice and peaceful right now, and let that heat just simmer in your snug little cunt rather than burning out of control? Keep pushing, and baby, it’s going to burn.”

She remembered the burn. And it was getting there.

“I don’t like being treated like a child,” she snapped in response. “Stop trying to hide things from me.”

“I’ve treated you like a child?” He growled. “Maybe you don’t remember some of the more memorable moments we spent together. Want me to remind you?”

His hand went for the blanket.

“Fuck. Duck and cover. We have choppers coming in low.”

Kiowa ducked and jerked the blanket until it covered them both, head to toe, insulating them in the center of a cauldron of heat as the heavy throb of helicopters broke the silence of the night.

“We have Breed soldiers ahead of us and behind us. Enough firepower to take out a militia, and we’re close to the compound,” he assured her, jerking her closer to his body as he lay half over her.

“Don’t.” He was pressing against her nakedness now, one hand low at her back, his bare chest rasping her nipples.

She didn’t give a damn about choppers. The flames were beating at her brain, burning through her body. Her senses couldn’t think of anything else or remember anything else except the feel of him pressing into her, moving in her, swelling…

She whimpered as more of her juices spilled from her pussy, preparing her for him, making the need bloom within her with a force she knew she couldn’t deny for long.

What had happened? It still made no sense that her body would overrule her mind and force her surrender to a man that, first, she didn’t know, and second, wasn’t even her species. But it made little difference to her body as her nipples pressed into his chest, burning with the need for his touch.

“Please don’t touch me,” she sighed against him. How was she supposed to control the fires whipping through her body when she could feel him so close? The length of his body pressed against hers, the tempting pleasure of his cock pressing against her lower stomach, shielded only by the material of his jeans.

He stared back at her, his expression brooding as her fingers pressed against his shoulders, caressed the hard muscles of his arms. She couldn’t stand not touching him. Her body hungered for him, craved him.