Rule Breaker

CHAPTER 22

Exhaustion had seeped into Gypsy over the hours she and Rule had engaged in a silent, nerve-racking standoff in his room. The meeting scheduled with her parents was canceled. No surprise there, she thought painfully as Rule and Jonas discussed the option just after Ashley left.

Finally, desperate to find a moment to breathe that didn’t include his too-intent stare, she’d retreated back to bed.

She needed to think, to consider how to work around what she couldn’t go through. Rule would employ whatever means it took to keep her from leaving the room. That meant she would have to find a way to slip around him and make her way to her parents’ home.

God help her, what was in her mother’s mind to take such a risk? What had she done, Gypsy wondered, to make her mother chance her very life like this?

Where had she messed up?

Gypsy knew she had to have done something, she had to have made a mistake somewhere. What had she done to give anyone a chance to use her mother in such a way? And no doubt it was her fault. Her mother would do anything to protect her children after she lost her oldest child, and Gypsy knew her mother had suspected for years that there was a reason her elder daughter continued to attend the desert parties and clubs that had initially given the Coyotes the chance they’d needed to draw Mark out and kill him.

Would she now be responsible for her mother’s death? Were her actions risking the rest of her family despite all her precautions?

Could she bear to lose anyone else she loved to her own reckless decisions?

Huddled beneath the blankets, dry eyed, aching, she stared into the slowly darkening room, unaware of the moment her eyes finally closed and sleep claimed her. There was rarely peace to be found in her dreams, though.

Especially at night.

Gypsy had made a habit over the years of remaining awake until dawn began lightening the sky. She’d learned that if it wasn’t dark, then the nightmares didn’t come near as often.

The room was only just darkening as sleep took her this time, though, and that darkness began spreading through her, dragging her into memories she’d forced to the furthest depths of her mind.

Her parents had taken Kandy to New York with them that week. It was her sister’s first visit and teenage shopping trip. They’d left Gypsy with her older brother, Mark. Ten years older, strong, always laughing, he spoiled her, but he watched out for her. Everyone knew if they messed with Mark McQuade’s wild baby sister, then Mark would come calling.

That night she and Khileen Langer, the Wolf Breed Lobo Reever’s stepdaughter, had planned to attend a desert party that many of Gypsy’s school friends were attending. But it was also an adult party, and Mark always attended those with her, or she didn’t go.

“Mark.” She stepped into the living room, where he was working intently on his computer. “I’m going out with Khileen to a party in—”

His head jerked up, his green eyes feverish, making her wonder if he’d been drinking that night.

“No!” The harsh denial shocked her.

She’d overheard her parents talking about how much Mark had been drinking lately, and how worried they were for him. Staring up at him in shock, Gypsy felt the hurt that came from any sharp word that her precious brother gave her. Not that there had been many, which was why this one stopped her in her tracks.

“But you said—”

“I said no, Gypsy, get back to your room now! And stay there for a change instead of aggravating the fuck out of me.” Then he threw the whiskey glass he’d been drinking from at the wall to her side.

She felt herself pale.

Tears filled her eyes and for a moment, there was something in his gaze that might have been fear. And agonizing regret. As quickly as it had been there, though, it was gone.

“Go to your room, Gypsy,” he rasped, his expression hardening in an instant. “We’ll discuss these parties later.”

Her lips trembled as she ran back to her room, slamming the door behind her before moving straight to her bedroom window.

Her temper was the bane of her existence. She’d gotten into more trouble over the years because of her inability to control her anger than because of anything else. She was even worse when her feelings had been hurt.

Mark had hurt her.

Pushing some money into the pocket of her jeans, she moved to the window, slid it open soundlessly, then shimmied over the sill. Khileen would be there in a few minutes. The other girl had called minutes before when she’d turned into town. With Gypsy’s parents gone and her normally loving brother home, Gypsy had intended to beg prettily that he come with them to the party that they wanted to attend in the desert that night.

It was an agreement she and Mark had made after the first party he’d caught her sneaking out to. He would go with her whenever he could, watch over her and Khileen, make sure they didn’t get hurt or didn’t do anything stupid, and she agreed to never attend one without him.

That agreement had worked for a year now, until tonight.

Moving quickly, Gypsy made her way from the house across the street, then around the candy shop her parents had named the Gingerbread House.

The large two-story house and attached apartments had once been her parents’ home, a gift from her mother’s family when they married.

She was waiting in front of the store when Khileen made the turn onto the street in the little convertible her stepfather owned, music blaring.

Gypsy watched herself from within the dream. She could feel the tears she’d been holding back that night and the fear she’d felt that her brother had acted so oddly.

She watched as she jumped into the little car with her friend, apprehensive that they were going to the party without Mark to watch over them. He always watched over them and made certain the older boys and young men who attended the parties didn’t bother them.

The music was blaring, and they were laughing, though Gypsy had still felt that edge of fear riding her. They weren’t aware of the motorcycles that shot from behind the rising stones until their lights were suddenly shining brightly in the rearview mirror, blinding Khileen.

Everything happened so fast then.

Two of the riders jumped from the cycles to the car as Khileen screamed and began jerking the wheel. One of them was slung to the road, but the other managed to jerk the wheel, causing the vehicle to nearly flip as it came to a shuddering stop at the side of the road.

Rough, cruel hands were gripping Gypsy’s hair as the remaining rider began pulling her from the open top. Behind them, an older-model Dragoon came to a hard stop as Khileen cursed rougher than her stepfather’s cowboys and the gears of the car made a harsh, screeching noise.

As Gypsy screamed and fought, she could still feel herself being forced from the car, her feet slipping over the top of the door as the little car shot back onto the road. It swerved dangerously, then in a burst of speed disappeared from sight.

Khileen had gotten away.

Thank God, her friend had managed to escape.

But Gypsy hadn’t.

Screaming, terrified, she was thrown to the ground as a pair of heavy boots were planted in front of her. Hard hands gripped her hair, jerking her to her feet as agony lanced her head.

“Gypsy Rum McQuade.” A harsh voice laughed down at her as a smile filled the cruel, scarred face. “Shall we see if you’re as sweet and innocent as you look, baby?”

She stared up at him, seeing the curved canines, the cruelty in eyes that gleamed red in the light of the full moon and the vehicle running several feet from them.

“Let me go,” she cried, struggling to break the grip he had on her.

And he laughed. “After looking for you for so long? I don’t think so. I’ve waited far too long to invite you to my little party tonight.”

She hadn’t seen his other hand draw back, but the blow he delivered to the side of her face numbed her mind, her senses, with the torturous pain that suddenly exploded through it.

Darkness filled her vision as the lights suddenly went out, and Gypsy was left in a mindless black pit of agony of near unconsciousness.

They hadn’t been merciful.

It had taken her hours to force herself back to awareness. When she returned to consciousness, she realized she had been taken deep into the desert. She was only dimly aware of being dragged from the vehicle, then tied to the bumper. Drifting in a world of dark pain.

Blinking, her gaze blurred at first, it had taken her precious seconds to focus her eyes on the man kneeling in the dirt about twenty feet away from her. He looked older somehow, and hurt. The bruises and blood on his face were horrifying to see.

“Mark?” Her voice had been weak, shaky. “Mark, I want to go home.”

She was so sorry she had left the house. She shouldn’t have. He’d have listened to her if she had just waited to talk to him again.

“I know, Gypsy.” He stared back at her, his eyes so sad, so filled with pain.

“You fucked up, McQuade. Trusted the wrong person.” The harsh voice of the Coyote who had knocked her out caused her to flinch in terror as her brother’s gaze suddenly became so bleak, so pain ridden that Gypsy knew she would never forget the sight of it.

“Let her go, Grody,” her brother demanded, though his voice wasn’t strong like it usually was. It sounded very defeated.

Grody just laughed, a sound so evil that Gypsy couldn’t help crying. And she hated those tears. Because when Mark saw them he grimaced, and she was certain he was disappointed in her. He always told her she was allowed to cry, that it was his job to be brave. That girls needed to cry. She could still think and plan, even with tears, he’d promised her. But her head hurt so bad, and she was so scared she couldn’t think.

“I couldn’t believe it was you, McQuade.” Grody laughed again as he moved from behind her and walked slowly to where her brother was kneeling. “I was shocked as hell when our contact identified you. You just didn’t seem like the geek type, ya know?”

Her brother wasn’t really a geek, he just knew how to make a computer do whatever he wanted it to do. His broad, strong hands could fly over the keyboard and within seconds he would be crooning to it, caressing it with his voice in a way that made Gypsy laugh at him.

“Who identified me?” Mark asked then, and even Gypsy could read the defeat in his voice, in his expression.

Oh God, if Mark was giving up, then this was really bad. Mark couldn’t give up.

She couldn’t hear what Grody said when he leaned close and whispered the name in her brother’s ear. But she watched his lips. She had paid very close attention to his lips, wanting to know who to kill later. The word was forming, as though in slow motion, and she knew, just as she always knew, what Grody was whispering to her brother. She knew, but somehow, for some reason, it was as though her gaze blanked, darkened, stealing the image. Except this time, it was shorter, the darkness more shadowed than absolute, almost giving her the secret she’d fought to remember for nine years. Then, Grody was straightening and chuckling at the tormented shock in Mark’s expression, and the betrayal.

She knew who it was, why couldn’t she see the name? She knew that the man who had betrayed her brother was his friend. She could tell from Mark’s expression it was someone very close to him.

Mark nodded slowly, his gaze meeting Gypsy’s as he stared back at her intently, a message in his green eyes that she fought to decipher.

“Any last words, kids?” Grody asked then, his amusement evil, his voice sending cold chills raking at her back.

“Mark?” Her voice trembled, terror shaking through her as she fought not to scream again, not to lose control, though she couldn’t stop her tears.

“Don’t cry, Gypsy,” he told her as the Coyote, Grody, had laughed at him. “Don’t cry, and be brave, Peanut. Do you hear me?”

Grody moved behind Mark then, gripping his long hair and suddenly jerking her brother’s head back until his neck was stretched painfully. And a second later a knife pressed against the side of his neck, so sharp that the edge immediately had blood welling against it.

“No! Oh God, please. Please. No!” Gypsy screamed, begging, crying as she struggled against the ropes holding her to the front bumper of the vehicle. “Oh God, please. Please don’t hurt him.”

“Listen to her beg, Mark,” Grody laughed as her brother’s gaze met hers.

Be brave, Peanut . . . he mouthed. I love you.

He never told her to be brave. He always comforted her and told her she was allowed to cry. That little sisters didn’t have to be brave, that was what brothers were for. And now, she had to be brave.

“Please. Please,” she cried out, screaming, begging as she fought the ropes until her wrists burned and she could feel the dampness of her blood. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“Will she beg so pretty when I’m fucking her, McQuade?”

Her brother didn’t have a chance to answer him. Immediately, Grody moved the knife, digging it in deep and slicing it over her precious brother’s throat.

She was screaming. Screaming and fighting the hard hands that were on her, shaking her as someone yelled her name . . .

...

“Wake the fuck up, goddammit. Gypsy, wake up now.”

Rule could feel something exploding in his soul as he fought to wake her, staring into her wild, unseeing green eyes as they had jerked open, the way she had gasped as though trying to scream, though no sound had emerged.

The terror in her eyes had drawn his animal instincts to the fore in a surge of such fury it would shock him later. Until then, he was determined to force her awake. Shaking her, holding her to him as he yelled at her, terrified he was losing her to whatever demon had control of her.

Just as quickly as her eyes had opened, unseeing, that terror an agonizing mask that had rage surging through him, she was awake.

Blinking, perspiration and silent tears running down her face, she parted her lips as she gasped for air. Rule could feel her nails suddenly pricking his flesh and watched as she quickly realized what had happened.

Nightmares of the night her brother had been murdered. The night she had been abducted into the desert, where a Coyote had not just murdered her brother before her eyes, but had nearly raped her before the Breeds had arrived to make certain he never murdered another brother or tried to rape another sister.

“My fault,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with tears as she stared up at him now, shuddering so hard he was surprised her teeth weren’t shattering. “My fault.”

...

Gypsy could feel the tears that still ran from her eyes, the pain that pushed them free of her control as she was jerked from the nightmare.

She had never been awakened by anyone while the nightmare held her in its grip. At first, because her parents hadn’t known about them. It was years before she had actually screamed through one of them. That happened only rarely. And never had they awakened her, then jerked her against them, their arms wrapping around her as Rule did now.

Her cheek was pressed to his bare chest, tears dampening the tough skin as one hand cupped the back of her head, while the other ran comfortingly up and down her back.

“I have you, baby,” he was whispering roughly, rocking her just a little bit. “It’s okay, Gypsy, I have you.”

He had her?

Her breathing hitched as she fought to get a handle on herself, to stop the tears she hadn’t shed before now.

She wanted to push him away from her. She was angry with him, she remembered that. But she couldn’t make herself do it. No one had comforted her since Mark’s death. Not because her parents hadn’t wanted to, they had tried. Because she hadn’t deserved to escape the pain and the remembered terror.

Because her selfishness had caused Mark’s death, and she couldn’t let herself forget that.

But she had forgotten it.

“Let me go.” She couldn’t let him weaken her further, but neither could she force any real demand into her voice. Because the terror was still there, lodged inside her soul and burning through her memories. A fear that drove spikes of agony tearing through her because she couldn’t make it stop. She couldn’t make the guilt and pain of that long-ago decision to disobey her brother go away.

“It’s okay, baby,” Rule whispered, his caresses soothing, gentle, though his voice was that harsh rasp he used whenever his eyes began changing, when the animal side of his genetics began showing itself.

“I’m okay.” But she wasn’t. It had been years since she’d had the nightmare. Of course, it had been years since she had allowed herself to sleep deeply too.

Pushing at his chest, she tried to put some distance between them, tried to get away from the warmth of his body. Because she was suddenly no longer fighting the remnants of that nightmare. Now, she was trying to tell herself she should be fighting the arousal rising inside her. Not that her senses were paying any attention to her. They were in a free fall to ecstasy with no intention of slowing down.

She had to get a handle on this need for him, especially in light of what she had learned the day before. She had to think, to figure out what her mother was up to and how to keep it from backlashing on the woman who had already lost one child too many.

Besides, she couldn’t allow herself to depend on him, or to believe he’d never walk away again. He’d already walked away once.

And showered as though he’d dirtied himself with her.

Unfortunately, even remembering that wasn’t enough to dim the hunger driving her.

“Would you please just let me go?” There was no way she was going to force her body not to ache for him if he didn’t stop holding her as though she would break if he weren’t careful.

“Let you go? When I can sense your need?” he asked, that growly sound in his voice deepening to a wicked, sexual sound.

“Sense my need, huh?” Her fingers curled against his chest, feeling beneath her touch the superfine, all-but-invisible hair that covered his body. “Is that another word for smelling it?”

“When I say I scent it, it seems to upset you,” he murmured as his lips brushed against the bend of her neck and shoulder where he had bitten her the night before in the shower.

“How would you like it if I could smell every emotion or reaction you have?” she questioned him roughly, her breath catching as his tongue swiped over the little wound.

The pleasure that surged through her at the contact stole her breath. Like a thousand tiny, heated caresses over her flesh. Just hot enough to emphasize the pleasure and tighten the sexual tension already clenching with sharp strikes of sexual intensity at her womb while slickening the inner flesh of her pussy.

“Hmm, that could work for me,” he breathed against her neck. “Perhaps trusting me would come easier for you then.”

Trusting him? She had trusted him, and he’d jumped away from her to rush and shower before he’d even found his release. The fact that he’d brought her back was only due to this freaky hormone thing going on between them, not because he wanted her.

Not with the same hunger she needed him.

Ached for him.

Between her thighs, her flesh was swollen, moisture easing from her, preparing her to be pierced by the thick erection she could feel against her outer thigh.

Cupping the curves of her ass and lifting her closer, he had her legs spread and straddling his thighs between one breath and the next. Before she could evade his kiss, his lips were on hers, the spicy heat sinking inside her senses and dragging her kicking and screaming into a chaotic world of pure hunger.

“This has to stop,” she whispered as he palmed the cheeks of her rear, lifting her against him until the hard wedge of his erection rubbed against the slick folds of her pussy and the swollen bud of her clit.

It was almost playful, the way he moved her against him, nipping at her lips before taking deep, mind-numbing kisses. Caressing her back, along her sides, he moved his lips over her chin, urging her head back, arching her body as his kisses trailed down her neck.

What was this?

Gripping his forearms, she admitted it was his hands at her back that held her steady. There was no strength in her as his lips moved down her neck. It arched for him as one hand moved along her side until he cupped the swollen curve of her breast. Immediately, he found the tight, highly sensitive nipple. It was peaked, aching with the same nerve-heightened need for touch as her clit was. Hell, as the rest of her body was.

She needed the touch of his callused fingers and hands wherever she could feel them.

Tilting her hips closer to the poker-hot, iron-hard erection spearing up from between his thighs, Gypsy moaned in rising pleasure as his lips moved to the tops of her breasts, his tongue licking over her skin, murmuring his appreciation of her as he blazed a heated, hungry trail to the opposite nipple.

When his lips covered the tight peak, Gypsy felt the sharp, ecstatic pulses of arousal amplifying inside her with a violent surge. It struck from her nipple to her womb, streaked to her pussy, then surrounded her clit with such a deep-seated need for his possession that it bordered pain.

She couldn’t keep her hips still. Hell, she didn’t want to keep them still. As his lips and tongue worked her nipple into a blazing point of pleasure, she moved against him, hips lifting until the head of his cock was tucked at the weeping entrance of her sex.

“So good,” she moaned. How could she have forgotten, between the last time he’d had her and now, how incredibly erotic it was whenever he touched her? Whenever he wanted her?

The sensations were pleasure-pain, they were so sharp and filled with hunger.

“That’s it, baby,” he crooned at her breast, hard hands moving to grip her hips as she began to bear down on the wide crest of his cock. “Take me, Gypsy, love. Take all of me.”

...

He’d ached for this through the night. Lying beside her, allowing her to sleep, to rest from the incredible release that had swept through her body the day before, Rule had thought he’d go crazy.

Now, he knew he was going crazy.

Feeling her take him an inch at a time when he wanted to lunge inside her was torturous. The fiercely erect flesh was so damned sensitive that all he had to do was think about her touching it and he was ready to fuck. And blaming it all on Mating Heat was impossible. Because the Heat hadn’t begun until he’d actually taken her. Until he’d realized on some soul-deep level that he wasn’t going to let her go.

Her hips eased up, then bore back down; the slick, hot juices filling the fist-tight depths of her cunt aided the impalement but did nothing to ease the clenched, snug grip she had on him. Her flesh milked the head of his cock, stroked the throbbing shaft and sucked at his dick until he wanted to blow immediately. His balls were drawn so tight with the need to come that he was amazed he was holding back.

Slow and easy she took him. An inch at a time sank inside her, eased back, only to have her take him deeper. With each slow movement of her hips a little cry escaped her lips; the sound filled with her need for him, with the pleasure he was giving her.

And he could feel her pleasure. It wrapped around every sense he possessed until he couldn’t tell where her pleasure ended and his own sensations began. He’d never known sex like this. Never known it could be like this. So fucking intimate as the pleasure buried so deep inside emotions he hadn’t known he had, until he knew he’d never survive if he lost her.

With each thrust and impalement, each shift of her hips and broken cries that fell from her lips, Rule felt himself slipping deeper into the morass of sensations whipping over his body. Tension began to tighten his muscles as pleasure became an imperative need for release that sent heat streaking to every nerve ending in his body.

Until he couldn’t bear it. Until the need to pound inside her, to push them both into the raging ecstasy building inside him, broke the last of the control he possessed.

Muscles bunching, he moved quickly. Without pulling from her, he had her on her back, legs spread, silken arms and legs surrounding him as he began to fuck her with deep, hammering strokes that had them both exploding with a power that caused Rule to snarl with primitive dominance as the overpowering need to grip her neck with his teeth again, to bite and hold her in place, overtook him.

And God, the pleasure.

He was immersed in her.

Her pleasure, her release and his own, in the wild chaos of a sensual storm he couldn’t hope to control. In that moment, as the barb extended, became erect and locked him inside her, he realized he was being softened by her. Changed and overtaken by this one small woman with far too many secrets.

And he was all too aware that in too many ways, he was weakened by her.