An Inconvenient Mate

Chapter Six

I would have lost hope, I would have lost faith.

Isabelle lay against Malachi’s chest, her hand rubbing over the broad planes, feeling the presence of the pelt-like hairs that grew there.

Breeds seemed to have no body hair, and in a sense, it was true. What they had instead was a superfine hair, almost invisible to the naked eye.

It didn’t even feel like hair, but more like a finer, softer fur than his animal cousins possessed.

It was warm to the touch, heated by his body and his tough, muscular flesh. His chest was powerful, incredibly broad, and beneath her palm she could feel his heart beating in a slow, steady rhythm that comforted her, even when nothing should have been able to comfort her.

His arm was wrapped around her back as he held her to his chest, keeping her warm despite the chill that wanted to overtake her.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his lips moving against the top of her head as his fingers stroked her shoulder.

“You didn’t hurt me.” And he hadn’t.

The pleasure had been so incredible that she was still reeling from it, still trying to find her bearings as her mind fought to make sense of it.

Once the thick, heavy swelling in his cock had receded, allowing him to pull free of her, Malachi had risen from the bed, collected a warm damp cloth from the bathroom and a dry towel and proceeded to clean her gently.

She had blushed furiously. Hell, she was blushing now just thinking about how he had cleaned her thoroughly, even separating the folds of her sex and running the cloth gently through the narrow slit.

“I was created to kill,” he suddenly said. “We all were. We were Breeds. Not animal, not human. When the rescuers liberated us, when Alpha Lyons declared our presence to the world, we learned that though God hadn’t created us, He had still gifted us.”

Isabelle sat up and stared down at him somberly, watching the heavy sadness in his dark blue eyes as he stared up at her.

Lifting his hand, he brushed the backs of his fingers against the side of her cheek before lowering them to her hip and curling them over it. As though he needed some small connection to her, no matter how slight.

“How did He gift you?” she asked quietly.

“He gave us our mates.” It was an answer she didn’t expect. “As far as we’ve learned in the past thirteen years, there’s only one mate for us. Created just for us. Emotionally, biologically, physically. We have a mate waiting for us somewhere in the world, we have only to find her.”

A frown pulled at her brows. “That seems awful iffy,” she said. “What if you don’t find your mate?”

He shrugged at that. “Then I would imagine we exist within that same vacuum we were created in. Alone. Knowing we can’t have children no matter how strong the desire most of us have for them. Only mates, it seems, can conceive. Only mates can ease the soul, help heal the wounds and battle the nightmares most of us endured to just survive in the labs. Now, we watch, we search, and though many of us deny it, we long for that mate, Isabelle. For that one thing in the world that was meant to be ours, that proves that though we were not born, we were at least adopted by a force greater than man.”

Isabelle dropped her gaze to her hands as they lay in her lap, studying her linked fingers as she felt her chest tighten.

His voice resonated with such dark memories.

“Coyotes were created to kill their cousins,” he continued. “The Felines and the Wolves, we were to be their jailors. Our genetics were carefully chosen to allow us to lie, to cheat, to torture and to know no remorse or guilt.”

She lifted her gaze once again. His expression was hewn from marble, savage with its planes and angles, the high cheekbones, the sharp angle of his jaw. He could have been a warrior from ages past rather than a creation of technology and of evil.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Malachi?” she asked.

His lips quirked with an edge of amusement. “I’ve searched for you for what seems like eternity, Isabelle. The night your gaze touched mine in that bar, I swore I felt you in my soul. Did you feel it? Did you feel something move inside you that you couldn’t explain? Something that, at first, you wanted only to run from?”

She licked her lips nervously. “Yes.” She wasn’t going to lie to him. “I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.”

“And if you had suspected then, what happened in this bed earlier, would you have still run to me, rather than away from me?”

“You think I found it distasteful?” she asked him curiously. “Malachi, I was begging, scratching and pleading. Those are not signs of distaste.”

“Nor are they signs of acceptance,” he pointed out.

She could only shake her head as she looked around the room and tried to get a bearing on what she was feeling.

“I understand what you felt,” she finally said as she brought her gaze back to him. “I felt as though I had known you forever the second I met you. As though I could introduce you to my family and my world, and rather than becoming lost in the craziness, you would conquer it instead.”

Something that had never happened before. Most of her interested male friends had run screaming the moment they were introduced to her family and saw the craziness.

“But?” His lips quirked again, that little hint of mocking amusement and arrogance making him appear so very sexy.

“I didn’t say but.” She sighed. “I don’t know, Malachi. I didn’t imagine this happening.” She waved her hand to the bed, indicating the “mating” that had occurred. “I don’t know what you want from me, or what I’m supposed to want from you. Breeds aren’t said to have long-term relationships, so I really wasn’t thinking past morning.”

He grunted at that. “You lie, even to yourself,” he told her. “I saw it in your eyes, Isabelle. When morning came, you wouldn’t have wanted me to leave any more than I could have gotten up and left you.”

Was he right? Hell, of course he was right. It wasn’t as though she knew what to do with him now either, but Isabelle knew she had wanted a chance with him.

“Whether or not I’m lying isn’t the point anyway,” she told him. “This mating thing is the point, Malachi, and I’m not certain it’s something I’m ready for.”

But she could still taste his kiss, and she still longed for more of that vibrant spice and the hot taste of it. There was nothing that could have prepared her for this. Nothing or no one could have told her that this would happen, and she would believe it.

“I’ve always been a creature of the darkness, Isabelle,” he sighed then. “Not a part of either world that I was created from. I’ve waited for you, knowing that part of you was out there, and longing for you with every fiber of my being. But I know that you haven’t.”

But she had. She watched the night regularly. She had searched for him. She had known he was out there but she’d had no way of knowing who he was, or where he was. And now, she had no clue how to handle the situation she was in.

“How does it work?” she finally asked. “Are the tabloid stories true?”

“In some part.” He nodded sharply. “They’re stories we’ve leaked to the press ourselves. A propaganda war, if you want to call it that. To accustom the public to the knowledge before they learn it’s the truth. We’ll only be able to hide it for a short while longer now. This is the only way we have of lessening the threat mating heat could mean to the couples as well as those who haven’t yet found their mates.”

“Because of the fear. Because man doesn’t want to accept what’s different from him. Even when he believes he created it.” She looked down at her fingers again, only to find his covering them as she did so.

“Isabelle, this battle is one you’re only just coming into. Don’t begin looking for trouble this quickly, love, because I promise you, it will show up soon enough on its own.” He drew her to him, dragging her over his chest, though she did very little to resist him.

She should resist him. She’d just experienced something that should have been quite traumatic. After all, by time he had finished releasing his pleasure inside her, he’d bitten her, knotted her, snarled, growled and declared “mine,” as though saying it made it so.

The problem was that when he’d declared “mine,” she had felt an answering demand inside her own heart.

“What are you doing to me, Malachi?” she whispered as he turned, sprawling her beneath him as he came over her in a surge of strength and latent power.

“I’ve been crazy since meeting you,” he rasped as he pulled the sheet away from her naked body. “Completely insane, Isabelle.”

A graceful brow arched as her eyes suddenly lit with an inner amusement. “I would guess you were already crazy, Malachi, because I haven’t seen a whole lot to suggest otherwise.”

Malachi lifted his brow. “Baby, you haven’t had time to draw that opinion. Once you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m actually hardcore certifiable. It’s a Breed thing.”

“Being certifiable?” she questioned. “After meeting Ashley, I’m beginning to think that rather than a Breed thing, it’s more a Coyote thing. I just hope it’s not too contagious.”

She was teasing him. Had anyone bothered to tease him before, she wondered as he stared back at her with that reserved, cool expression.

She wouldn’t let it bother her, she promised herself. If he intended to stick around, then he may as well learn. She, Chelsea and Liza were always joking with one another, sometimes playing pranks and always having fun. She wasn’t about to give it up.

“You make me want to laugh,” he groaned suddenly. “And if I drop my guard enough for that, what will I do if you decide to try to fight the mating?”

“So it can be reversed?” Already she was craving his kiss with a strength that had her mouth watering and her body tingling. Like someone needing their next drug fix, she needed his kiss.

She needed him.

“There’s no reversal.” Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her down for his kiss, needing it, needing her.

His tongue wasn’t swollen, the mating taste was only barely present to his senses, but still, the need to kiss her, to bind her now with pleasure, was an overriding impulse.

Catching her lips with his, he rubbed against the soft, pouty curves and tasted the warmth of them. It was a kiss of natural heat, the same passion and hunger that had flared between them when their eyes connected in the bar.

His tongue slipped past her lips, mated with hers, rubbed at it, felt the silken softness and the measure of the woman as she accepted him with soft innocence.

It wasn’t mating heat. It was just a man and a woman, that was all. Surrounded by warmth, by the attraction and the flaring emotion that happened only once in a lifetime. When one man and one woman fated to be together, came together.

That moment had happened in the bar when their eyes met. When their lives had merged and destiny had given them that one and only chance.

One chance. One moment out of time and Malachi refused to lose it.

She was his mate.

Letting her go wasn’t an option.

Holding her, ensuring her safety, her protection and, God, loving her. Those were his only options.

Easing back, he stared into the soft depths of her cobalt eyes and whispered, “For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.” Trailing his hand from the back of her head where he’d held her to him, he let his palm cup the fragile line of her jaw as his thumb brushed over her kiss-swollen lips. “You’re my mate, Isabelle. Frightening you is the last thing I want to do, but Breeds, like the animals we’re created from, heed our instincts, unlike man. Every instinct that makes up the creature I am knows what you are to me. Courting you isn’t an option. Wooing you isn’t in the equation because nature won’t allow the humanity inside us to chance losing that one moment, that single chance we have to claim what is ours. Or to allow our mates the opportunity to fear or to doubt and to turn away. That’s all mating heat is, baby. That’s all nature meant for it to be. Everything else is optional, but staying together, learning our way and learning what true love, what soul mates, were meant to be isn’t a choice any longer. It’s now a part of everything we are. It’s like death and taxes. Inescapable.”

She swallowed tightly. “Breeds don’t pay taxes.”

Trust her to have to point out the one flaw in the ages-old saying.

His lips quirked in amusement. Nature was indeed the perfect matchmaker, because this woman would be more than a challenge. She would keep him on his toes. There wouldn’t be a chance to be the lazy, shiftless Coyote that all of his Breed pretended to be.

“Breeds don’t pay taxes,” he agreed. “We have mates to keep us in line instead.”

Her head settled on his chest, her cheek against his heart as Malachi let his hand smooth from her shoulder to the middle of her back.

“It’s not going to be that easy, Malachi,” she whispered. “You know it’s not.”

He knew it wouldn’t be. “What is the old saying?” he asked softly. “Nothing worth having is easy? If it were easy, baby, would it be as important?”

He found a curl of hair that trailed over her shoulder and caught it between his thumb and finger. Rubbing it, experiencing the softness of it, he stared up at the ceiling as he inhaled slowly.

“No, it won’t be easy.” The scent he caught assured him of that. There was very little time left. “We need to get dressed, baby.”

She levered up and stared down at him. He could smell the trepidation, the edge of nervousness rising inside her. “Why?”

“We’re about to have company.” Moving from the bed, Malachi gathered her clothing, handed it to her then collected his own.

Rule was leading the pack, so to speak. He could smell his commander’s anger, just as he could smell the anger of the men with him.

“What’s going on, Malachi?” Nervousness was edging into fear as she pulled her dress over her head and allowed the silken length to fall to her feet.

Hell, they hadn’t had enough time, not enough to combat what he sensed was coming, he feared.

“Commander Breaker, your father, uncle and grandfather are coming up the hall,” he told her. “The commander is trying to delay them. Breaker never moves that slow, which means they’re not heading to a meeting. They’re coming here.”

He glanced at the bed, and on the sheets he saw the proof of the innocence he had taken not long before.

“Great,” Isabelle muttered. “Just what I need. How did any of them even know where I was?”

Exactly. Neither Breaker nor Stygian would have informed the three men of Isabelle’s whereabouts, and her sister and friend wouldn’t have known. At least not for certain.

A hard knock at the door signaled the arrival of the group.

“How did you know they were coming?” she hissed as a startled flinch had her jerking toward the door.

“I could smell them,” he sighed. “The commander is pissed and your family more so.”

Striding to the door, he gripped the knob and opened it slowly, placing himself in the small opening he made.

“Can I help you, Commander?” he asked Rule, though his gaze met that of her father, Terran Martinez.

“The Martinez family is here to collect the girl,” Rule stated coldly. “Produce her, Malachi.”

The order grated on the independence and pride that Malachi knew he had a surfeit of. He pulled his gaze slowly from the father and met his commander’s. “They can see her, but no one is collecting her.”

“The hell we’re not.” Terran Martinez was clearly furious. “I’ll be taking my daughter home, Coyote, whether you like it or not.”

Hell, this wasn’t the footing he’d wanted to begin his life with Isabelle on.

He could feel her moving toward him.

“I feel I should inform you, Commander Breaker, Isabelle Martinez will not be leaving this room. To allow anyone to force her to leave will be breaking Breed law.”

He had no idea how much these men may or may not know about mating heat. There were times the people of the Nation knew more than anyone wanted them to know. He was informing his commander subtly that Isabelle was now his mate, and therefore under every Breed’s protection. Including Rule’s.

“Mr. Martinez,” Rule said softly. “As I told you, this meeting will be held with civility, and the only way Ms. Martinez will go anywhere is if it’s her wish.”

Isabelle stepped to her mate’s side. “Dad?” Confusion and hurt laced her voice as Malachi allowed her only a sliver of room to face the men confronting him from the hall. “What’s going on?”

“Get out here, Isabelle.” Stone-faced and furious, Terran Martinez spoke in a tone that had Malachi’s hackles immediately rising and a growl rumbling in his throat.

Isabelle laid her hand on his arm, a move that was immediately noticed by all five men as they stood in the hall.

“Perhaps it would be best if we discussed this in the room,” Rule suggested calmly, if mockingly. “You never know when or where a damned journalist is hiding.”

And he was right, Malachi knew he was right, but he was loath to have the fury of the Martinez family invading the scent of his mate’s pleasure that filled the room.

“Malachi,” Commander Breaker growled in a reminder that the walls didn’t just have ears, but could have eyes as well.

Turning his head slowly, he looked at Isabelle. He could smell her confusion, her fear and her hurt. The three scents were an affront to the protective instincts that raged inside him for her.

“Malachi, it’s my family,” she said softly. “I won’t turn them away.”

She didn’t say she couldn’t turn them away, she said she wouldn’t. Restraining a sigh, he stepped back and steeled himself. Because he had a very bad feeling that this first test of the world against the union he had dreamed of could very well steal the dream from his desperate, greedy grasp.