Coyote's Mate

CHAPTER 17

He didn’t wait. Anya was rushed into the base, Del-Rey’s arm still wrapped around her, and pulled through the tunnels until they were locked into their room.

She found herself against the wall within seconds, his lips on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth again. The hormonal release from the glands beneath his tongue seemed spicier, more addictive than ever before.

She sucked at the taste, licked against his tongue and heard his rumbled growl as she tore at the buttons of his shirt and pushed the material from his broad shoulders.

“I love your body,” she panted as his lips tore from hers and he shrugged the shirt free. “So hard and muscular.” She ran her hands over his shoulders and wanted to whimper at the heat beneath his flesh. “And so warm. Always so warm. I need your heat, Del-Rey.”

She needed him. How had she managed to stay away from him all those months? Denying herself the ultimate pleasure of just touching him, watching him move, or hearing his dark, rough voice.

“It’s yours.” His hands pushed beneath her sweater, lifting the material until he revealed the delicate lace of her bra.

He paused. Anya felt her breath hitch as his hands lifted to her breasts, his fingers curving around the mounds as he palmed them with delicious greed. The look on his face as he touched her was pure male hunger. Part lust, and part more. Something deeper, something that touched the feminine part of her soul and made her weaker, made her ache for more. It made her welcome the excruciating arousal that tormented her body, because she could see his nostrils flare, see him breathing her in as his hands flexed on her aching breasts.

“God, I love the scent of you wanting me,” he groaned, reflecting her thoughts as his lips lowered to the mounds rising above the lace cups.

Anya shivered as he licked over them. His tongue rasped her sensitive flesh, coming incredibly close to the hardened tips of her nipples.

“Are you going to torture me?” She gasped.

“I’m going to torture both of us.” A flush mantled his cheekbones as he licked over the lace that covered her nipples. “Because I need to taste you, Anya. I need to feel you against me, so sweet and warm. Lifting to me, needing me, Anya. Just need me.”

And she did need him. She didn’t have the option of blaming it on the mating heat. She had wanted him before he ever kissed her. She had wanted him after the hormone therapy had controlled the painful spasms of need. There hadn’t been a time since she was sixteen that she hadn’t wanted him.

Beneath her hands his flesh was heated and solid. Beneath his lips sensation sizzled against her flesh.

“Take this off.” He pushed at her sweater as his tongue traveled into the valley between her breasts.

Her arms lifted to allow him to push the material over her head. No sooner had it dropped to the floor than his hands were at the waistband of her pants, flipping open the closure and lowering the zipper.

Mesmerized by the pleasure on his face, by the pleasure winging through her, she could do nothing but watch his expression as his hand slid past the material, beneath her panties and into the swollen, slick folds of her sex.

Her head fell back to the stone wall as her breath locked in her throat. Pleasure, ecstasy—it winged through her with such sensual promise that there was nothing left but to hold on to him as he stroked her. Caressed her.

“I need you naked,” he growled against the rise of one breast, which he licked sensually. “Can you toe the boots off?”

The boots? She shook her head in confusion. What boots? She didn’t care about the damned boots, not with his fingers slipping into the desperate, aching heat between her thighs.

His head lifted, fingers moving slowly, so slowly before stilling altogether. Anya’s hips pressed into the touch, arching against his palm as she gazed back at him in desperate need.

“Toe the boots off.” A grin tugged at his lips as the savage features of his face softened with sensual amusement. “Come on, baby. One foot at a time.”

She whimpered in need, her foot reaching out for his.

“Ah, baby. Your boots,” he groaned, his lips feathering over hers. “Toe your boots off.”

Oh yeah. Her boots.

She lowered one hand, knee bending, fingers finding the zipper at the side of her low boot before fumbling and pushing one free of her foot. She repeated with the other foot until her toes were curling with the pleasure of his renewed, gentle strokes into the folds he possessed.

With his other hand he pushed the pants over her hips, dragging her panties with them as he went to his knees before her.

“Del-Rey, the bed,” she gasped.

“Fuck the bed.” His voice rasped along her nerve endings as pleasure quaked through her body.

“I need to taste you now, Anya. My tongue in your sweet pussy.” His lips feathered over the curls between her thighs. “So sweet and soft. So damned good.”

Her thighs parted beneath the guiding force of his hands. Her fingers curled into the thick, coarse strands of his dark blond hair and she watched. Watched as his tongue licked through the saturated slit, ran around her clit and sucked the last of any chance of control from her sensation-ridden body.

Del-Rey licked, stroked, tasted. His tongue ravaged her flesh, left her shaking, shuddering as she fought to keep her knees locked, her body pressed against the wall.

“I’m going to fall,” she cried.

“I’ll hold you, baby.” Sexy, wicked, an inhumanly erotic growl breathed against her clit.

She nearly came. Pulses of extreme pleasure rippled through her body at the sight, the sound, the touch.

“So close,” he crooned in that sensual, graveled tone. “I can smell how close you are, Anya. Are you going to come for me, baby?”

She breathed in roughly, her breath hissing between her teeth as his tongue circled her clit again, before slipping it in and sucking it with deliberate, exquisite draws of his mouth.

There could be no pleasure greater than this. Her sensitive flesh rippled with the agonizing sensitivity. She could feel it, racing through her blood, traveling through her nerve endings and ricocheting through every cell of her body.

Just from the suckling of his mouth at her clit. His hands on her hips, holding her in place. The feel of his hair beneath her fingers. Electrical pulses of pleasure sizzled through her. She felt tight. She felt feminine and weak beneath his touch, beneath the need tearing through her.

“Mmm. So good,” he crooned, licking again rather than suckling her clit to orgasm as she needed.

Her flesh was so sensitive she could feel the perspiration beaded on it. The brush of his hair against her stomach as he drew her clit into his mouth once again. And this time, he meant business.

His tongue flicked over the tender bud, his mouth sucked it, until she went to her tiptoes in a cataclysm of pleasure so desperate, so deep that nothing emerged as her lips opened in a soundless scream.

She lost the strength in her legs, and he held her up. She lost the will to stand on her own. Her head tipped back, her hips moving until the exploding little bud was deeper in his mouth, his lips rubbing against the sensitive folds and the world dissolving around her.

“Mine.” Her hands slid from his hair to his shoulders, her upper body collapsing over him as her nails raked along his back.

He caught her, lifting her into his arms with a growl of triumph, and bore her to the bed.

She bounced against the mattress, rolling and coming to her knees. As he moved to come over her, she was waiting for him. She pushed at his shoulders.

“My turn.”

She was weak from the pulses of ecstasy racing through her, and yet the need, the hunger that had nothing to do with the mating heat, flowed through her now.

“Mine,” she repeated, lost in emotion and possessiveness, lost in the sheer perfection of his body, his touch, and the rising natural progression of what she had known was coming since she was sixteen years old.

And he went down for her. Naked, though she couldn’t remember when he had undressed, splaying out on his back, those wicked black eyes watching her, the hint of blue stronger now, reflecting in the lights that gleamed from within the wall.

Moving over him her lips covered his, took the kiss she needed, sucking his tongue into her mouth to take the last of the spicy taste from the mating glands beneath it.

She flowed over him, lips moving from his, her tongue licking over his flesh, her teeth nipping at the heavy vein in his throat as his neck arched.

“Yours.” The animalistic sound empowered her, sent a fierce rush of adrenaline and sensation burning through her.

Because he was hers. Her mate. Her lover. Her Del-Rey.

Her lips coursed over his shoulder. Her tongue licked over his collarbone, her taste buds going wild at the heady flavor of him. Perspiration and male excitement. It was rich, spicy, earthy. And she was addicted.

She licked at the flat, hard male nipples and felt him arch to her, felt his hands grip the thick strands of her hair, heard his snarl of impatience and let a smile curl her lips as she lifted her eyes and licked her way down his stomach.

“Coya,” he groaned. “My coya.”

“Your coya.” It was a promise, a vow.

His teeth clenched, the sight of the savage, curved canines at the side of his mouth only intensifying the visual pleasure.

She licked, lowered herself, sprawled between his thighs and let a hungry moan pass her lips. His cock stretched from between his thighs to his lower abdomen, thick and powerful, engorged and iron-hard.

The heavy crown was flushed, beaded and damp with pre-cum, awaiting her tongue. She licked over it, and approved his taste with heavy sounds of delicious pleasure. She licked down the shaft, ignoring the hands in her hair, urging her to return to the sensitive crest. She licked down to the tight, throbbing sac below the shaft, where she played.

Running her tongue over the smooth, hairless flesh she dampened it, then parted her lips and sucked delicately at first one side, then the other. His groans, the low, graveled growls, filled the room.

“My alpha,” she whispered as she moved back up the wide shaft. “My mate.”

And she accepted. There was no escape, because in her heart, she had no desire to escape. In her heart, where she had hid the dreams, the memories, the wants and the pain of loss, he had always been hers.

“Yours,” he snarled. “Now fuck me. Lose your control, Anya, because God help us if I lose mine.”

She smiled, licked over his cock head, then drew it into her mouth.

Yes, that was what she wanted. No control. Not his, not hers. Just them, together, flying out of control and loving every minute of it.

“Anya, don’t tempt this,” he ordered, commanded. He was so good with that commanding tone that she shivered at the promise of the retribution his gaze held.

She sucked him into her mouth, flattened her tongue and rubbed, sucked, milked the sensitive crest with her mouth. She lifted her lips slowly, let him watch as her tongue swirled over the head and she watched his eyes. She watched the wildness fill them, felt it fill her.

She had been born for this. Born to touch this man, to steal his control, to lose hers. Born to be his mate.

“No, Anya.” His hands pulled harder at her hair. When that didn’t work, they pressed under her arms, lifting her until she let her teeth bear down on the tight flesh.

He paused, stared down at her, his expression agonized.

“It will be like the first time,” he snarled. “Do you hear me? Like the animal I am.”

No, like the man he was, the glorious male creature that filled her fantasies and sent a rush of need through her, no matter the circumstances.

She let her lips grip him tighter, not in pain, but in warning, until his hands moved from her and gripped the sheets beneath him instead. His eyes glowed with acceptance, and with concern. His expression was savage, honed, flushed with lust.

She sucked him deeper, though the width of his cock made it impossible to accept much more than the brutally flared crest into her mouth.

He was delicious. A small spurt of pre-cum filled her mouth, and she relished it. Minutes later another. Del-Rey’s neck was arched, the veins standing out clearly on it, just as they did on his cock.

Another spurt, and she had only seconds to enjoy that taste before he moved. There was no chance to react before he was dragging her up his body, beginning to turn.

Her thighs clamped on his, her hips lowered, the slick, wet folds of her sex rubbing against the hardened shaft as he suddenly stilled.

The warning growl that filled the air had her smiling as she pressed her palms flat against his chest, slid her hips up until the tip of his cock was poised at the entrance to the desperate, hungry depths of her body.

“I take you,” she whispered. “For my mate.”

She pressed down, a whimper of ecstasy leaving her throat as the head pressed inside her, stretched her, opened her.

“My coya!” It was a snarl, a demand. His hands gripped her hips, his thighs bunched, and Anya screamed with the pleasure as he thrust inside her. Heavy, hard undulations of his hips had him buried inside her in three hard strokes, and he didn’t stop.

This was supposed to be her ride, she thought hazily. And she was riding, tossing, writhing above him as he lost the control she had felt chaining him before and gave her all of himself. Not just every hard inch of his cock, but his control, his sense of self, and the power of his hunger.

The heavy lunges burrowing into her stroked nerve endings so violently sensitive that she knew she wouldn’t last long. She could feel the pleasure tightening, building. She rocked against him as he stroked into her, shafting her forcefully, groaning her name, his hands holding her in place as she tipped her head back and screamed his name and rapture imploded inside her, then exploded in a brilliant, outward force that had her tightening further on him, her nails digging into his hard chest, her pleasure a creature tearing from her body.

No sooner did it ease than Del-Rey stiffened beneath her and it began again. She felt him this time though, the fierce swelling in the center of his cock, pressing the convulsive tightness of her muscles apart, revealing yet more nerve endings, more pleasure receptors, and sending them into ecstasy with the fierce pulsing throb of the knot that now anchored him inside her.

With each spurt of cum that filled her, the thick swelling rippled and pulsed against her, sending her shaking and shuddering into yet more pleasure. It was never ending. An orgasm that eased only to explode inside her again, leaving her shaking, shuddering, and collapsed upon his chest long before it finished.

Del-Rey blinked up at the ceiling long, long minutes later, still fighting to breathe as the last pulse of release tore from his body and filled the depths of the too snug, too hot silken flesh gripping his cock. Her pussy was sheer rapture. It was pleasure that went so beyond pleasure that there was no way to put a name to it. And just as he had the first time he had taken her, he had lost control within her.

There was blood on her shoulder where he had bit her again. He lowered his head and licked at the wound he knew would never fully heal. Not simply because he couldn’t keep from biting her when he took her, but because the hormones always filled that little spot, kept it sensitive, kept it ready for the pleasure he would bring her from his lips and tongue against it.

As he held her tight against his chest, his arms wrapped snuggly around her, he felt the fierce, secondary swelling of his cock pulse again, shuddering through him as she trembled in response and a low, broken moan came from her lips.

What the hell had she done to him? Surely something he had never known before. Never, even that first time that he had taken her, had he known this depth of satiation, this satisfaction that seemed to echo through every cell of his body.

Hell, a man, or a Breed, should never know this soul-deep sense of belonging. Because it was something he would always remember in battle, something he would always know waited to be snatched from his hands by fate or the cruelties of man. Losing this could destroy him. He would be no more than a broken shell of a man, and surviving that wouldn’t be possible.

He would follow her into death, Del-Rey thought. He’d be of no use to his people if he lost her, because nothing mattered as much to him as this one woman.

Love. He scoffed at the word. This wasn’t love. Love was his joy of a good steak, a hot bath. It was breathing in the mountain air and watching the mists in the valley. What he felt for this woman in his arms, this wasn’t love. It was something he didn’t have a name for, or a way to express. She was his freedom. She was becoming an extension to his soul.

“I have to move sometime this year,” she mumbled against his chest, sweat-dampened and still breathing hard.

“In a minute,” he promised, still locked inside her, feeling the fierce grip and rippling response in the muscles surrounding his cock.

“’Kay,” she muttered drowsily. “But lying on your ass all day isn’t going to get anything done.”

There was the lightest thread of amusement in her voice, a teasing vein that he remembered often filled her eyes with impish delight. She had always teased him, flirted, made it damned near impossible to resist her.

“I could lie on your ass for a while,” he chuckled as he felt the knot anchoring him inside her finally begin easing.

He grimaced at the sensation, another lingering pleasure that he didn’t want to lose. He wanted to stay like this forever, buried inside his woman, his mate, knowing she was forever safe.

A long, low moan left her lips as the swelling finally eased, releasing them from the pleasure that seemed never ending.

Del-Rey lifted her from him, his body tightening as his semi-hard cock eased from her snug grip and she collapsed to the bed beside him.

Letting her go wasn’t an option though. He turned and pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close as he kissed the top of her head.

“Will the heat ease for you soon?” he asked her then, knowing that for Wolf and Feline mates after the initial four- to six-week cycle of the heat, it would then ease and come back for only seven to ten days per month. It was when the females were most fertile and the chances of conception greater.

She lifted her shoulder in a light shrug. “I dunno,” she mumbled. “I was different. Kinda.”

“How were you different?” he asked her as he eased back enough to stare into her drowsy expression.

Her brows creased thoughtfully. “Several years ago, the Coyote, Kiowa Bear, mated with the then U.S. president’s daughter. They learned then why the Wolves and Coyotes take so long to conceive. There’s an additional hormone the males carry that continues to attempt to block conception, even as the other hormones work to create it. Then with Aiden’s mate, Charity, they’ve only just been able to figure out why she conceived, based on the experiments the Council scientists did on her at the labs where she was held for a number of years. The hormone works to ready the ovaries and change the egg being prepared to drop, to ensure its compatibility with the Wolf or Coyote sperm. It gets complicated sometimes, the way the hormones work.

That’s why each hormonal therapy has to be different. Dr. Armani begins with a base, a therapy that’s compatible across the board, then she has to add to it depending on the individual female and her heat.”

“So each mating is different?” he asked as she settled more comfortably against him.

“Very much so.” Anya nodded. “She has a lot of trouble keeping mine within an acceptable limit.

For the first few months, the hormones she was giving me pretty much wiped out all emotion but kept me on the verge of panic. I couldn’t function. The same hormone didn’t affect the Wolf mates at all.”

His frown deepened. “When Dr. Armani came to the caves that first time, she said I was the first Coyote to mate. Kiowa Bear is Coyote as well, yet he was mating well before that.”

“Kiowa is what they call a hybrid. His mother was one of the women the Council kidnapped and tried to use for artificial insemination. It didn’t work on her. Before she left those labs, one of her Coyote guards mated her, then released her. Kiowa was conceived and born naturally, and as I understand it, that creates a shift in the DNA that doesn’t come about otherwise. But there are other anomalies with him as well. His genetics are actually closer to the Wolf than the Coyote.”

“Has Dr. Armani learned the differences in our mating yet?” he asked her.

Anya snorted at that as she pulled from him and rose from the bed. “Not hardly. Just as with repairing your wounded bodies, Coyote genetics and Wolf genetics are just separate enough to make it dangerous.” She glared down at him then. “We need our own medical personnel.”

“There’s some still living?” he asked, surprised. “What the Council hasn’t killed, I’m certain we must have. I told you, find one and I’ll consider it.” It had been a matter of pride for years to destroy those capable of creating more Coyote Breeds. If the Council left any for them to kill.

“If you can hide from the Council all those years, then I bet there are doctors as well as scientists that have managed to do the same,” she informed him. “I’ll find them.”

His brow arched. The tone of her voice was a warning itself.

“And how do you think you’ll do this?” he asked her silkily.

She was scheming. He had known Anya long enough to know when her brain was turning over a problem and working it out in a manner he was certain to disagree with.

“I have my own contacts.” She shrugged as she pulled his shirt from the floor and pushed her arms through the sleeves.

Why it gave him a surge of satisfaction to see her wrapping his clothing around her much smaller frame, he couldn’t say.

“You’ll not be making contacts, Anya,” he told her firmly. “I won’t have you risking your life in that manner. If there are any doctors left, then they aren’t ones we could trust anyway.”

“What about Dr. Armani?” She propped her hands on her hips as she stared at him, the light of battle waging in her eyes. “She’s human and she’s dedicated her life to the Breeds she cares for.

What about the doctors that work under her? They could be in the general public, probably making a hell of a lot more money than they are here. But they’re here, and they’re loyal.”

“What about the two assistants—Breeds, Anya—who betrayed Sanctuary?” he asked her. “They drugged Dr. Morrey, nearly killed her, and were attempting to sell the secret of mating heat to a pharmaceutical and research facility that likely even now has doctors and scientists experimenting on Breeds to create a drug that controls us. Or, God forbid, something that can be used on humans. What about them?”

“What about Coyotes who have a code of honor?” she asked then. “Who have a soul when they were created to have none? What about them, Del-Rey?”

He frowned, knowing she was talking about his packs, but her point eluded him.

“What about them?”

“Others took a chance on you. There are good doctors, good scientists who have escaped the Council, who know the Coyote physiology and would give their eyeteeth to learn as much as they could within normal confines. To treat them, to heal them, and to protect their strengths and weaknesses. You find them, you choose the ones you have the best chance of trusting, and you use them. Keep up the way we’re going here at Base, and eventually, we’re going to lose our people because Dr. Armani can’t treat them properly.”

“Or we’ll lose them because we’re betrayed by the very people we’ve brought in to treat us,” he bit out. “That’s not acceptable to me, Anya. Dr. Armani will figure this out in time.”

“If Nikki lives to be three hundred, she won’t figure out the Wolves, let along the Coyotes,” she argued back. “I have the contacts, Del-Rey. I can find acceptable candidates.”

“No.”

She gaped back at him. His expression had shifted from lazy satisfaction to full, dominant refusal.

“What do you mean ‘no’? This isn’t a no equation. It’s something we have no choice but to consider.”

“I’ve made it a no equation,” he informed her arrogantly. “The risks are unacceptable.”

“We need to discuss this, Del-Rey,” she told him carefully. “You can’t just brush the subject aside with an arrogant little refusal.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve done,” he told her as he turned and headed to the showers. “This isn’t up for debate, and it isn’t arguable. I won’t take that risk with my men or with you. Armani will learn enough.”

“And if we have children?” She threw out a question that had been haunting her. “Will a doctor that knows nothing about your unique genetics be good enough to treat our child if he’s wounded or sick? Will ‘good enough’ be enough for you then?”

He gave her a shuttered look before turning and jerking clean clothes from a dresser and striding into the shower room without an answer.

Anya bit off a curse, staring at the doorway and trying to figure this one out. She had seen over the months the complications that could arise in Haven, just with the Wolves and their unique DNA. Fevers from nowhere that Dr. Armani had to track down and find a way to treat. Wounds that were simple and should have been easily fixed that suddenly the Wolf genetics fought against. It was a crapshoot, Armani had told her, and the additional pressure of treating the Coyotes, a species just different enough to change all the rules, was driving the doctor to long hours and less and less sleep.

It couldn’t continue.

But it seemed that getting Del-Rey to understand the problems they were facing wasn’t going to be easy either.