She knew.
Mica swallowed tightly. She knew enough about mating heat and Wolf Breeds that she knew what had happened. She didn’t know what had caused it. She had no idea how the loss of control had occurred, but as she stared across the room at him, she realized that she was seeing the primal genetics he possessed for the first time in all the years she had known him.
It should have frightened her.
She should have at least been wary.
Instead, she was doing just as he suggested, she was stripping her clothes off. Slowly.
She knew the creature facing her, and still, she was teasing him with the slow, lazy movements, with her gaze locked with his, with the scent of her arousal no doubt reaching out to him.
And as she did, she watched as he undressed as well. Each article of clothing that dropped to the floor exposing the steel-hard, tense lines of muscle and darkly tanned flesh until finally, he wore nothing but his arousal as his fingers curved around the base of his cock and palmed the heavy flesh with a grimace of pleasure.
Thick, heavy, ridged with dark, throbbing veins and glistening at the tip with slick moisture. The sight of his fingers stroking the hard flesh, the heavy veins throbbing with hunger, had the breath trapping in her chest, a sensual weakness rushing through her.
Moisture rushed along the clenched muscles of her pussy as her womb felt as though a hard spasm ripped through it. Sexual hunger, sensual need and an erotic knowledge of what was to come had her feeling dazed, uncertain, and filled with weakening anticipation.
“Josiah is pushing his luck, Mica.” His voice was low, the hint of a roughened growl layering it as he began to move toward her. “You’re going to put a stop to this, aren’t you, Amaya?”
Her lips parted, but not to speak. Oh, she wasn’t about to make it that easy for him. Nothing she did, nothing she said, would change what was going to happen, and she didn’t want it to. That didn’t mean she was going to submit from the start. She had him this far, she wasn’t about to let him off that easy.
“And why should I put a stop to it? I’m not doing anything wrong, Navarro. And I haven’t seen Josiah do anything wrong.” Lifting her hand, Mica allowed her fingers to trail down along the curve of the inside of her breast, the feel of her nails rasping against the sensitive flesh sending a shiver up her spine.
His eyes narrowed.
“Are you sure this is a game you want to play?” he asked softly as he came closer to her, his fingers moving from his cock as his hand lifted, his fingers following the same path hers had made.
The rasp of his calloused fingertips against her flesh, stroking so close to the tight, hard tip of her nipple had her breath catching in excitement.
“Are you sure it’s one you want to play?” she asked. “Don’t make demands you can’t back up, Navarro.”
She touched him.
She was dying to touch him.
With her fingertips alone she caressed down his chest, stopping just short of the straining length of his cock, feeling his abdomen clench beneath her touch, stomach and thighs tightening to iron-hard tension.
Hers.
He was hers.
Swallowing tightly, she fought to breathe as his fingers cupped her breast, thumb raking over the swollen, hardened tip of her nipple.
“Please,” she whispered.
She needed. She needed so much more than he was giving her. A firmer touch. The heated, erotic pleasure and the burn of his cock working inside her.
And more.
So much more.
As she stood beneath his touch, feeling his fingertips rasping against her nipple, stroking a hunger and a need that clenched her womb and had her hips jerking forward.
The sensitive flesh of her pussy raked against his hard thigh, the swollen, slick bud of her clit. It pulsed. Throbbed.
Spreading her thighs, Mica breathed in roughly as the hard muscle of his upper leg pressed forward, the pressure against her clit sending a stroke of agonizing need racing through every cell of her body as one hard hand gripped her hip and jerked her forward on the heated flesh.
“Navarro.” Weak, pulsing with hunger and dazed, oh God, she felt so dazed, so weak, but strong enough to grip his shoulders with desperate fingers and to clench her thighs around his to ride the incredible pleasure rushing through her. “Oh God, it’s so good. So hot.”
His head lowered, his lips brushing against her shoulder just before his teeth raked it sensually.
“It’s going to get hot,” he growled at her ear as he caught the lobe for just a second before releasing it with a quick lick and moving his lips to her neck.
“You know what you’ve done.” His voice was now closer to a growl. “Don’t you, Amaya?”
“I didn’t do it.” She breathed in roughly, her head falling back as a low, drawn-out moan escaped her lips and her hips rode his thigh harder, fighting for release, feeling it surge through her.
“You knew.” He nipped the sensitive flesh of her neck, the pleasure burning through her womb and into her cunt.
Clenching. Slick, hot moisture easing along the walls of her vagina, creating an internal caress as Navarro’s hard thigh created a friction against her clit. Her hips rolled. Her juices heated her cunt walls as she felt it easing past the swollen folds to heat the flesh of thigh.
His lips moved lower, his tongue licking along the base of her neck.
“I didn’t know.” She gasped.
He bent lower, his lips moving to the swollen mound below as one hand cupped her breast, lifting it to his lips.
His lips covered the engorged peak, sucked it and sent a maelstrom of brutal sensation surging through her. Her fingers sank into his hair, clenched. Arching into his hold, desperate to press the hardened flesh deeper into the hot cavern of his mouth, Mica was all but sobbing with the need for more.
She knew what was coming, but she hadn’t known what to expect.
She actually felt the spicy heat of the mating hormone against her sensitive nipple. As he sucked the violently sensitive bud, a hint of the swollen glands raked against it.
She was dying for him.
His touch.
His hold.
“Kiss me.” She needed his taste in her mouth, that hint of sweetened honey rushing through her. She was addicted to him, addicted to his taste, addicted to the intensity of the pleasure that would rage through her once the heat of the hormone hit her system.
And he didn’t make her wait long.
His head lifted from her breast, one hand tangled in the long curls of her hair, and pulled her hair back as his lips covered hers with a fiery, deepening hunger. She felt his arm wrap around her hips as he lifted her.
She expected the bed.
She expected him to lay her down, but instead she found herself perched on the back of the couch that sat in the middle conversation area of the suite, her thighs spread, lifted, and his cock pressing against her.
A hard spurt of fluid jetted against the opening of her pussy, spreading fire inside and out as the engorged head of his cock began to stretch the tender opening. She felt it again, heated, numbing and sensitizing at once as Mica felt her pussy clenching tighter around the head of his cock as he began working it inside her.
His hips moved, shifting, rolling, pressing.
She was tighter than ever before, each spurt of mating fluid that splashed into the sensitive flesh tightening her cunt further, sending convulsive ripples through the clenching muscles milking him inside her.
Her juices were flowing, slick and hot, yet still, she was tight, clenching, milking his dick inside her as she arched into each rolling press of his hips.
Dazed, she looked down, the sight of his cock, so thick and engorged, spreading the folds of her pussy, the slickened flesh clinging to the darkly flushed shaft as he pressed farther inside.
“Harder.” She could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Pleasure was a rush of flames spreading through every inch of her body. Heat suffused her, rushed through her until she was crying out with it.
“More,” she moaned, arching closer. “Navarro, please.”
It wasn’t enough. Not enough sensation, not enough of the pleasure or pain she craved with every fiber of her being.
His hips jerked, thrust in deeper, and sent a wave of ecstatic pleasure burning through her.
“Say it,” he growled. It was definitely a growl. A hard, chest deep rumble as he jerked against her, thrusting harder, pushing deeper into the agonizingly tight flesh as another spurt of mating fluid squirted inside her.
His cock throbbed with each pulsing ejaculation and still, she tightened, clenched, and cried out for more.
“Fuck. Too tight,” he groaned, his back arching as her gaze lifted, watching as a rivulet of perspiration eased down the tight muscles of his chest.
Pulling back, then thrusting again, his hips straining as she arched and ground herself closer. She was shaking, shuddering with need. She couldn’t get enough. He wasn’t deep enough.
“Fuck this!”
Navarro jerked back, dragging the engorged shaft from the greedy flesh as she cried out and fought to get closer, to keep him from taking the pleasure from her.
“Come here.”
Before she understood, his hands were pulling her to her feet and turning her, and he bent her longways over the back of the couch as he lifted one leg and guided it to the armrest at her side. Her knee dug into the padded cushion as his cock pressed against her again.
The fluid filled her, his engorged flesh began pushing inside her, stretching her with a pleasure and pain that had her crying out in desperation, pressing back, taking him, her pussy milking his flesh until with a final hard thrust, he buried his full length inside her.
She was crazed with pleasure. It was past ecstasy. It flew past rapture.
Each burning spurt of mating fluid ratcheted the sensation until the pleasure was vicious, raging through her until Mica arched, crying out weakly as she felt the first, explosive release as it ripped through her, lifted her to her tiptoes and had her shuddering in pure, white-hot rapture.
And she knew it wasn’t over.
Before he came, Navarro pulled the swollen length of his cock from her pussy, and before she could assimilate to the change, he was rubbing the engorged head against the tender, previously untouched, virgin flesh of her anus.
Mica stilled as his hand gripped her hip and the rough, growling order to “still” rumbled behind her.
“You’ll never let him touch you.” He came over her as she felt the fluid spurt against her rear entrance.
Within seconds, the sensations began. The burn, the clenching, the need for not just pleasure, but for that brutal edge of pleasure and pain.
“You’ll put a stop to it.” His teeth raked her shoulder and she swore she felt just a hint of point in the canines he had once kept filed down. “Tell me, Mica. You’ll put a stop to Josiah.”
His voice was growling and rough, raspy.
His cock was rock hard and iron hot, spreading the tiny, untouched entrance as the mating fluid ejaculated inside her again, easing the muscles, allowing the thick, heavy length of his dick to begin penetrating her tender ass.
Laying along the back of the couch, her leg bent and propped on the couch arm. The perfect position for him. One hand clenched on one side of the rounded flesh of her rear and slowly parted it farther.
Mica felt the head of his dick pop past the tight ring of the nerve-laden ultratight entrance of her ass.
White-hot, blistering sensation raced up and down her spine. It tore through her senses. Mica jerked back, thrusting her hips into each thrust as he worked his cock inside her, his hips moving faster, the thick head spearing inside her as he pulled back to the thick ring of muscle, stretching it, burning it, thrusting inside again, working his cock inside her with each thrust as she began to cry out in agony, in ecstasy.
Her hips rolled on the heavy impalement, helping him work the engorged shaft deeper, thrusting inside her harder, faster until he’d buried every thick inch to the hilt and then stilled.
She could feel his cock throbbing in her ass, stretching her to the point that she wondered if she could survive it as she felt the mating fluid spurt inside her, deep in her anus, as the burning pleasure began to rise, to rush through her senses and tear the last vestiges of control from both of them.
As he pulled back, his cock sliding in the slick recess of the rear, his teeth gripped the curve of her shoulder as one hand slid beneath her, his fingers suddenly spearing into the hungry depths of her pussy.
Thick, throbbing, stretching her rear with a burning, vicious pleasure, Navarro began to thrust into her. Each impalement rocked the pleasure higher, sensations building, electrifying as his fingers followed suit, fucking her pussy with three hard fingers and driving her fast and hard to the edge of an orgasm that shook her to her soul.
She could hear herself crying out his name. Her nails clawed at the upholstery of the couch, and as she felt the release tearing through her pussy, up her spine, exploding at her clit and clenching her ass around the penetrating, shafting length of his cock, Navarro began to come.
She felt the first heavy, heated spurt of semen as the knot began to swell, to thicken. Each throbbing spurt of cum filled her rear as he jerked against her, the tiny thrusts moving the knot against tender tissue and sending sensations to rush through her again, to prolong her climax, to destroy her senses.
At the curve of her shoulder she felt his teeth pierce her flesh, just enough to break the skin, to leave a proper mating mark. His tongue lashed at the wound, the mating hormone burned it.
Sensation upon sensation.
Fire and ice and thunder and lightning. Mica was shuddering, shaking. Each breath was a gasping cry as the dark, brutal pleasure just simply consumed her.
She was crying, tears falling from her eyes as behind her, locked inside her, Navarro growled and lifted his teeth from her shoulder.
“You will stay the hell away from him!” he snarled.
“Yes.” She didn’t have the strength to push him further. There was no further point he could be pushed to and there was nothing going on but a friend using whatever weapon he could find to force the recessed genes of the animal that had once been recessed.
It was no longer recessed.
How long it took for the swelling to ease, Mica couldn’t say. She lost all sense of time. By the time he eased from her and picked her up in his arms, exhaustion was a heavy, lethargic contentment that left her boneless and sated as he carried her to their bed.
She was only barely aware of him moving away, then returning only moments later with a warm cloth, and if she had been conscious enough, she would have been shocked as she felt him gently clean the sweat and slickness of their pleasure from her body and between her thighs before gently drying her.
She was drifting into sleep as she felt him move into the bed beside her, before drawing her into his arms and pulling her against his chest. The warmth of his skin, the hard, heavy beat of his heart against her back, she drifted into sleep with an ease she hadn’t known before.
“Sleep, Amaya,” he whispered against her hair. “Sweet love, just let me hold you as you sleep.”
Navarro had never known a contentment or a sensual exhaustion as he did now. Holding Mica in his arms, feeling her slip deeper into sleep, he also felt that wild, uncontrollable sensation of heat and restlessness ease as well.
The Breed genetics, the animal side he’d never truly believed existed inside him. But it was there. Like a separate entity rising inside him when he’d seen his mate with another man, that man shirtless, teasing, laughing with her. He’d felt it, so sudden, so violently alive there had been no fighting against it. The animal had refused to allow anything but complete possession of his mate. Full possession. Full mating. Possessing his mate as only he could, in the only way that would ensure no other could ever take her from him.
She belonged to him. He’d known she belonged to him since she was sixteen years old and he’d stayed away from her as long as possible. He’d given her as much time as he could to be her own woman, before she became his mate.
Before she had to face Breed life in ways she had never faced it before.
Stroking his hand down the long, silken waves of her hair as it fell around him, stroked his chest and warmed him.
As much as he’d fantasized about having her in his bed, the true hunger that had raged through him had been for this. Holding her, warming her, and having her warm him.
He caressed her arm, the silken feel of it sinking into his palm, caressing it as a low, drowsy little moan slipped past her lips.
“Navarro,” she whispered, clearly asleep and still reaching out to him, even in her sleep. “I love you, Navarro.” Barely coherent, so thickly asleep Navarro had to strain to hear the words. And when he did, he felt his heart clench.
“I love you, Mica.” He whispered the words in her hair, low, barely loud enough to hear himself as he closed his eyes and tightened his arms around her.
God he loved her.
He’d loved her for so many damned years that there were days he couldn’t imagine not loving her. She had been the dream he’d had in those damned labs, and when he’d seen her in Haven she had become his greatest fantasy.
And he’d lived in hell ever since. Lived with a fear he’d refused to recognize as fear. If he lost her, if he failed to protect her, it would destroy him now. It would kill him.
Maybe, just maybe, he could have survived until tonight. Before she had awakened the sleeping animal that came awake with a surge of possessive fury.
And now, awake, prowling, though content at the moment, he could feel that wildness inside him. In the very depths of his heart. In the very depths of his being, that animal watched now, vigilant, determined to protect its mate.
In all the years he had fought, all the ways he’d wondered how to use the animal genetics he possessed, he’d never imagined it would happen like this. He’d believed his genetics were forever recessed, so weak that all they afforded him were the additional stronger senses and the training he’d been given in the labs.
He hadn’t expected it to awaken, surge forward, and demand his mate with such possession.
Yet it had, and he couldn’t regret it.
The sense of warmth that filled him, the sense of clear, vibrant life where before he’d felt shackled, always lacking in some way, was something he’d never imagined he could have with anyone, let alone a mate.
And she was definitely his mate.
His perfect fit.
The only woman he had ever loved.
“We need to hurry, Dad.” Cassie sat, composed and calm, as she waited at the heli-jet landing tower just outside the high, stone walls of the Wolf Breed community, Haven.
Dressed in jeans, boots, sweatshirt and heavy jacket, her body was warm, but everything inside her was cold as she stared at the cement wall across the waiting room as they waited for the heli-jet to land.
“It would be quicker to call Jonas, Cassie,” he reminded her. It hadn’t been the first time.
“You’ve already told Jonas there’s a problem.” She fought to hold back the tears that would have filled her eyes. She had to believe they would get there in time, it was that simple. That when they arrived, everything would be okay. That Mica would be safe and as happy and content as she was at this moment.
At this moment.
Cassie hadn’t expected the contentment to come this soon. She had never ever believed Navarro would give in to what he felt so quickly. He was one of the most stubborn Breeds she had ever met. She had sensed that and he had moved so much faster than she had expected.
His animal had refused to allow that stubbornness. It had refused to allow him to hold back the love or the mating heat.
And now, the danger Cassie had sensed moving closer to Mica was building. She had to get there. She had to be there.
She should have never left her friend to face this alone, but she knew Mica. She knew that her friend would have never given in to what she felt for Navarro unless she was without her family, without the one friend she knew would never truly lie to her.
And Cassie had believed she would have enough warning to get to her in time.
She was wrong.
Oh God, she had been so wrong, and now Mica was going to pay the ultimate price for her lack of foresight.
She was cursed.
Cursed to see what she should never see, and cursed to live with the consequences.
But could she live with the consequences of not reaching her dearest friend on time? It wasn’t possible.
“Mike and Serena are pulling in,” her father said quietly. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Cassie?”
Cassie nodded. “But we need to tell Mike she’s mated Navarro.”
“Uh, Cass, sweetie,” her mother said from beside her, “are you sure of that?”
Cassie breathed in deeply. “I’m certain, Mom. But I think Uncle Mike has suspected all along.”
She knew he had. Like Cassie, Mike had watched Mica and Navarro dance around each other like prizefighters in a ring. They flirted, watched each other when the other wasn’t looking, and if one was sensitive enough, then they could have caught the swirled air around the two like a gathering storm.
It was impossible to miss if one wanted to look for it, and Mike Toler adored his child. Mica was his baby. He watched the men that came around her. All of them. And he was as suspicious as hell.
Oh yes, he already suspected the truth, but it was a truth he needed to know before he was forced to see.
That is, if they reached Sanctuary before it was too late.
Her hands tightened where she held them politely in her lap. She was terrified and she admitted it. She could feel it; the darkness that had been hovering around Mica for so many months was finally coming to a head.
The danger, the men who had watched her, waited, certain they could use her for whatever their schemes were.
Cassie couldn’t allow that to happen.
If she did nothing else in her life, then she had to save Mica. Mica and the beautiful little boy she was carrying, even now.