Coyote's Mate (25 page)

She knew Sofia too well. She had known the other woman all her life, and she knew the games she played. She was as calculating and manipulating as any Coyote Breed. Anya remembered Sofia directing her out of the labs, from the direction she would have gone, into the direction Del-Rey would be.

Yeah, she hated Sofia. She always had. But more because of the other woman’s mocking arrogance and air of superior knowledge than for any other reason.

Del-Rey shifted on the bed. Where he had been comfortable, locked in a haze of dark peace, he suddenly became aware of something more.

First, the heat. It tunneled through his cock as he heard Brim talking. That wasn’t normal. The mating heat was always pushed back when healing took over. It was the only time he slept peacefully, the only time he didn’t ache like the bastard animal he knew inside that he was.

The mating heat pushed forward, locked inside his mind. He heard Anya, scented her. He swore he could almost feel the warmth of her body against him. He needed it, he admitted to himself.

Here in this dark nothingness, he needed her to lie against him, to warm him. God, sometimes the cold went clear to the bone and chilled him until he feared he would never feel warm again.

He shifted on the bed. He knew he should be sleeping deeper, that the near unconscious state the healing put him in should be blocking whatever was rising inside him. Hunger. Need. A craving for Anya he was never long without.

His Anya. Like a flame in winter, soothing the cold and the fears that haunted the man who wasn’t fully a man, and tormented the animal that wasn’t fully animal. Sometimes the battle between man and beast inside him was so tenacious that he wondered how long he could contain the conflicting urges.

The animal demanded that he take what belonged to him. That he steal her, kidnap her again. He wanted to throw those fucking hormonal treatments to the wind and force her to suffer as he suffered. He was ready to howl with the hunger inside him for the relief he knew they were both desperate for.

The man ached though. The man needed her acceptance. The man needed her touch given voluntarily, without the demand of the mating heat that surged between them. The man, arrogant and filled with his own sense of hunger, craved her acceptance.

“I’ve missed you.”

He heard her voice, like summer rain, washing over his senses as a cooling touch covered his brow. It didn’t ease the heat raging through his body, but it was better than nothing. At least in this tortured, demented nightmare, she was speaking to him rather than taunting him, just out of reach, always slipping past his desperate touch.

“Brim’s a dead Coyote, Del-Rey. He shouldn’t have let her in here. Let her touch you.”

She must have meant Sofia. He had warned Brim to never allow Anya to know Sofia had bathed his brow and chest while healing from that gunshot wound months before. Had he told her?

It had hurt Anya. He didn’t want her hurt.

“God, just being close to you makes me wet.”

Her little sigh had him tensing in need now. She was wet? She wanted? He was hard and willing to give. But he knew better than to open his eyes and reach out for her. When he did, the dream would be gone, as would her touch. And he needed her touch like the land needed the rain. He needed to soak it in, feel it inside him, soothing him, refreshing him.

“I’ve missed you so much, Del-Rey. Like you were before you kidnapped me. Teasing me. Just your eyes would smile and I wanted to see your lips smile too. I wanted to feel that smile in a kiss and know it was all mine.”

He wanted to give her such a kiss. A kiss filled with the promises he wanted to keep, the security he wanted to give her.

There was so little security in a Breed’s life. So little they could depend upon. They had nothing to truly believe in except this. This promise that nature gave them with the mating heat. That there was a place for them. That at least in nature, they were accepted.

Del-Rey twisted against the bed, that agony of need raging through him. His hands clenched in the sheets he could feel beneath his body, the bed he’d picked out with Anya in mind. Large so they could roll around on it. Comfortable and warm, and now it felt like a bed of bricks.

His body was on fire for her. Just one more touch. He wanted to feel her hand, not whatever that cool touch was. He wanted her flesh. Flesh to his flesh. But he knew better than to reach for her.

“Anya.” He forced the word past his lips. “Warm me.”

He could smell her, so warm and sweet. He wanted to wrap around her, just for a while. He couldn’t drag himself far enough from the healing to still the mating heat.

He was lost in this need. The need to just feel her warmth. He had ached for her warmth. It had driven spikes of agony into his soul for months, unceasing, always there, reminding him that what should have been his would never belong to him.

“You’re burning with fever.” Her hand stroked over his chest and something inside him unknotted. Flesh to flesh. That was how he needed her.

“Warm me, Anya,” he sighed, wishing he could touch this dream, feel it, just for a while. “Flesh to flesh.”

Then she was gone. He wanted to howl in agony. The sweet gentle touch was gone. The warmth was gone. He could smell her scent, but only barely. Only enough to know she had been there.

Anya stared down at Del-Rey, uncertain why she was toeing off her sneakers, pulling free her T-shirt. Stripping down to flesh.

“Flesh to flesh,” he had whispered as his fingers dug into the sheet and the fever raged in his body. He could be cold. Fever made one cold. Chilling clear to the bone. She remembered the one time she had really been sick, just before the Coyotes’ rescue. She had ached with the cold as she ran a fever.

She felt her breath catch in her throat as she unlatched her bra and pushed her panties from her hips. He was aroused. He could take her even as he slept and she couldn’t blame him if he did.

She wouldn’t stop him if he did.

The longer she sat beside him the hotter his flesh seemed to get until touching him was almost like touching a flame. And he was shuddering, shivering.

The healing was excruciating by itself, and she knew the mating heat was hell. At least, it had been for her.

“Del-Rey.” She whispered his name as she moved onto the bed, felt him stiffen, then growl her name again.

Pulling the sheet over both of them, she settled slowly against his side, trembling with wariness, wishing she knew more about this man that nature had decided belonged to her. And that was her fault. She had forced the separation, he hadn’t.

She had no more settled beside him than he moved. Anya almost whimpered in fear as he flipped her to her side and moved. He shifted, shifted her. Pulled her over him, then under him.

Confused, she followed his mumbled directions, moved here and there until she realized they were in the exact center of the huge bed. Finally he settled, draped over her, her head tucked beneath his chin, his leg thrown over hers, his arms wrapped around her, and then he eased.

She felt it; almost a muscle at a time, she felt him relax until he was limp, curled around her, his breath stirring her hair, the inferno that had fired his body somehow seeming cooler. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she might have heard a soft little grumble, almost a snore slip from his chest as his hand curled around her breast and his heavy weight held here beneath him.

She lay there, tense, silent, uncertain what he would do next. When nothing came, when he continued to sleep, she felt her own lashes drifting closed, felt her own weariness dragging her down.

Being a coya was damned hard work, she decided. She would sleep here, just for a little while.

And maybe slip away before he awoke and she found herself pinned by a fully aware, fully aroused Coyote Breed in mating heat.

But she couldn’t help the smile that edged her lips as her eyes closed. He was like a puppy.

Rumbling here and there, twisting and turning and dragging her to suit his comfort until he slept peacefully.

It was kind of cute.

Hell, she had to admit, Del-Rey had a charming side that had mesmerized her before the mating crap managed to scare the hell out of her. Until she had convinced herself he had lied, deliberately, that he had taken his promises and her heart and trampled them.

He had trampled her sense of confidence in herself when her body had gone crazy with the heat.

He had taken her, as lost in the pounding lust as she had been. She had convinced herself that he should have had the control to make it easier for her. That he should have taken responsibility for something neither of them had expected. That he should have been the charming, in control, teasing Coyote Breed that had spoiled her with the hint of laughter in his eyes and his promises that he would care for her. Take care of her. That he would make everything work out.

It had worked out. He had protected her. He had made certain she had what she needed even above what he needed. And like a child, she had blamed him for the results.

He was still arrogant. He was definitely too dominant. But she had learned that that was a male Breed. It was a part of them. It was even a part of him that made her crazy to touch him, even when she wanted to hate him.

She hadn’t seen a single Breed mating that went easily. They fought, they yelled, they clashed, and they challenged each other. And as Hope had once told her, once it was over, they laughed and they loved and they knew they belonged. No matter what happened in the world around them, they belonged.

Could she be lucky enough to find that with Del-Rey?

She still had issues to resolve with him, Anya knew that. But she also knew that until they clashed, fought and yelled, those issues would never be resolved and they would never have that chance to laugh, to love and to belong.

As she slipped into sleep, she prayed she hadn’t waited too long to attempt that resolution.

CHAPTER 14

He was warm. The only time he was ever warm was when Anya had slept in his bed.

He usually awakened from a healing chilled to the bone, damp with his own sweat and feeling like an animal that had lain in a gutter for two days.

He shifted, moved to stretch and realized, in one heart-stopping moment, one instant of cognition, why he was so warm.

His eyes opened and he stared into a sleeping face. Anya’s face. Spiked red gold lashes lay against her creamy flesh; her lips were parted as she breathed, her breath whispering over his chest.

Their legs were tangled together, his erection, fierce and engorged to the point of agony, throbbed with brutal insistence where it lay, pressed between her thighs, surrounded by the slick, creamy essence of her arousal.

She was wet, and her wet heat slicked his dick and reminded him of how much hotter it was deep inside her body.

What the hell was she doing here? He was wrapped around her like a vine, holding her to him, tucked against him, and he had managed to sleep through this for how long?

She moved against him then, her hips shifting as she rode the thick length of his cock against her clit.

Damn. Damn.

He felt his hand clench her hip, then relax. Did he want her to stop or to continue? Would she find her pleasure in her sleep as he watched?

His hand smoothed over her hip and down the curve of her ass to her thigh.

“Anya.” He swallowed tightly as he felt her move against him again.

He barely remembered awakening several times, moving to the bathroom or forcing himself to eat before collapsing again. He didn’t remember her being here at those times. He remembered the chill in his bones and the need for sleep or for water or food. He would have surely known if she had been in his bed.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. Forty-eight hours since he had first returned to Base and collapsed in the bed.

His teeth snapped together as she moved again, spreading her slick, hot cream along the painfully engorged shaft it cuddled. Damn her. Damn the heat. Damn his weakness.

Her thigh lifted along his, the side of her knee rubbing at his hip as she opened herself farther to him and rubbed her swollen, hard-tipped breasts against his chest.

Hell. He was supposed to control his lust in the face of this temptation and the mating heat combined? Was he supposed to be fucking made of steel?

Well, except his cock. It felt hard as steel and as hot as newly formed iron.

“Anya, wake up,” he groaned, hearing the growl in his voice.

She rubbed against him again, her hips tilting until the swollen bud of her clit was in direct contact and the fiery heat of it threatened to blister him.

Sweet merciful heaven. He held her hip, but was he smart enough to ease her back? Hell no, he was moving her, encouraging her to ride him, to stroke the brutal length of his dick as she gave herself pleasure.

“Wake up.” He lowered his head and nipped at her lip. “Damn you, do you expect me to be strong enough to simply walk away?”

Her tongue peeked out, swiped over the area he had nipped, as her lashes lifted and sleepy, aroused sapphire gems stared back at him.

“Watch the teeth,” she muttered as her lashes lowered and an expression of sublime pleasure filled her face.

Her hips rolled again as a little moan broke past her lips and the silky flesh of that perfect little pussy rode his dick again.

“Anya. Move,” he growled.

And oh how she moved. With a slow, wicked roll of her hips that had the head of his cock pushing against her entrance before it slid in her creamy juices and only glanced it.

This was torture. It was agony. No hell he had endured could come close to the hell of being this close and knowing he couldn’t take what awaited just within reach.

He was sweating. Del-Rey could feel the sweat building on his flesh, but he was too dick-dumb to pull away from her. If she wanted to ride him to her own release, then slip back into sleep, God knew, he’d try to give it to her. But he knew he didn’t have the control to sustain that patience in the face of a hunger that ate into him like acid. It cramped his balls, his abdomen. He swore it was setting fire to his brain as he felt the hormone attributed to mating rushing through his system.