She paced, or rather walked gingerly, to the other side of the room before turning to face him once again. “Is there another bed?” She gestured to the bed he stood beside.
“Sorry, baby, this is it.” He grinned back at her. “But don’t worry, we shouldn’t be here long. Jonas and Stygian are working on a route out of the city straight to Sanctuary. There, we’ll have a heli-jet arriving to take us to Haven.”
“The heli-jet can’t come after us now?”
“They’re all on a mission, including Jonas,” he answered in an unconcerned voice. “Don’t worry, Mica, you’ll be protected. Didn’t I promise you I’d keep you from harm?”
Mica felt her heart crash in her chest. A quick, hard bounce of emotion that flooded her body with sensitivity and tightened her throat with the strength of it.
“You promised.” It was all she could do to whisper the words as the memory of that night washed over her.
Staring back at him, her lips parted, the memory of that kiss sent a wash of furious need shuddering through her.
“You remember that kiss.” His voice dropped to a rough rasp, the black of his eyes growing impossibly darker. “You’ve distanced yourself from it. Why?”
Mica inhaled sharply. “You don’t mince words, do you?”
To retreat as he paced closer would have been the same as admitting fear. She’d learned in the years she had been raised around Breeds to never show fear.
It wasn’t fear, though. Trepidation maybe.
He stepped closer, his broad chest nearly touching her br**sts where the robe covered them. It made her want to breathe deeper, to draw in enough oxygen to clear her senses, enough to make the material covering her br**sts press against the hard, muscular contours of his chest as his hand cupped her cheek, his thumb finding the curves of her lips.
Mica froze. Standing still beneath his touch, she felt the rasp of the calloused pad of his thumb against her sensitive lips.
“Silk or satin?” His voice was a hard, graveled tone. “There wasn’t enough time to determine before.”
“There was enough time for you to shove your tongue in my mouth.” She wanted to cap her hand over her mouth, to hold back the words that had already slipped past.
She could feel a flush of embarrassment, a sense of mortification rolling through her. But not enough to pull back or to break his touch.
“Ah now, that sweet tongue is another story. Definitely velvet and silk. Just enough rasp to tempt a man’s imagination.” His voice dropped as a wash of sexual intent seemed to spread over his expression.
“Or a Breed’s libido.”
Weakness flooded her limbs, a sensual, highly sexual weakness that threatened to steal even her ability to breathe. The heated flood of her juices spilled along the inner walls of her sex, lubricating her, preparing her for him.
For a Wolf Breed. A man whose humanity was so closely related to the animal whose genetics he shared that one day, one woman would become more than his soul.
One day, he would find his mate.
And nature had proven she wasn’t his mate.
She tried to remind herself there was no future here, with this man, this Breed. As his thumb pressed against her lips, parting them, the memory of that fact seemed hazier by the second.
Pleasure swirled through her system, heating her, drawing her deeper into a chaotic world of sensations.
“Please, Navarro.” Finding the strength to deny what she sensed awaited her was harder than she had ever imagined it would be. “I know what you are. I know what mating heat is. I know what I will never be to you, and it isn’t fair to tempt me to care for you.”
She wasn’t going to love him. She couldn’t allow herself to love him, but she knew it wouldn’t take much, it would take very little to cause her to lose every part of her woman’s soul to him.
“The world was exploding around us and all I could do was taste you,” he growled, his voice rough. “My pack leader could have been in danger, only my mate’s safety can supersede his. I never gave him a thought. All I could focus on was your kiss. My genetics are recessed, Mica. Perhaps so recessed that I’ll never know what mating is. But I’ll be damned if I can walk away from the pleasure I know awaits in your kiss.”
Mica stared back at him in shock. A Breed was judged by his loyalty to his mate first. With no mate, he was then judged by his loyalty to his pack, and/or his pack leader, as the two were considered interwoven.
To know he had ignored that basic rule, one that seemed almost genetically coded into the Breeds, for a single kiss, was almost more than she could believe. It was considered worse than a crime in the Breed world, a taboo he had committed for a woman that was not a mate.
He hadn’t raced to his pack leader’s side to ensure his safety as well as the safety of the leader’s mate, the one person whose death would destroy his pack leader and thereby possibly weaken the pack as a whole. And he had done this for a woman he wasn’t mated to.
Lips parted, her breathing shallow, Mica stared up at him as he dragged his thumb back from her lips and lowered his head.
It was coming. She could feel it beginning to burn the air around her. She knew what his kiss felt like.
What it tasted like. Just that little hint of honey.
His lips brushed against her. A heated rasp of sensation, a precursor to an exquisite pleasure that she knew would capture all her senses.
She felt snagged, bound, unable to fight the pleasure as his lips brushed against hers.