Too Hot to Touch Page 19

  • • •

  Could he love anyone more than he loved her at that moment, Hawke wondered. Pure joy lit up her gaze; sweet heat and unconditional love filled the air around them. She was indeed a mate he could be proud of. One he knew would always walk at his side.

  Turning, he lifted her in his arms and bore her back to the mattress.

  “I believe we were in the middle of something when that bastard disturbed us,” he stated as he came over her, her arms wrapping around his neck as her lips curved into a tempting, loving smile.

  “We weren’t exactly in the middle,” she shot back saucily. “I believe we were just getting started. Don’t go missing steps there, mate.”

  He had to laugh at her. She’d always been able to make him smile, make him laugh. She had always lightened his heart even as she hardened his dick.

  “I love you, Jess,” he growled, the man and the animal speaking, the primal need and emotion that erupted inside him impossible to contain.

  “I love you, Hawke Esteban. With everything I am, I love you.”

  His lips covered hers then. Deep, sipping kisses kept them both drugged as they fought with their clothes, pulling them from each other, tossing them to the side, baring their flesh to the stroke and caress of the other.

  Her hands roved over his back, her nails rasping over his flesh as she arched against him, urging him with little moans and cries for the possession he couldn’t hold back.

  He had nearly lost her. So easily, she could have been taken away from him tonight. How the hell was he supposed to live if he ever lost his Jess? Not just his mate, but his woman, his lover. She was a part of his soul that he knew he never wanted to be free of.

  Sliding his hand along her side, he reached the ripe curve of her breast. He cupped the mound in his palm and lifted it, rolled his thumb over the distended peak of her nipple before lowering his head to taste it.

  Drawing the tight little nub into his mouth, he suckled at her as though he was dying for the taste of her. Actually, he had been dying before he tasted her. Frozen on the inside, locked in a loneliness he couldn’t bear. For a year he had fought to prove her innocence, fought for her release. And now she was here, in his arms, touching him, arching to him as he touched her.

  He moved down her body and relished each broken cry of pleasure as he fought the heated, slick folds of her pussy. Starving for the taste of her, for the heat of her, he licked through the narrow cleft, moaned at the slick essence of her and devoured her. With lips, tongue and sucking little kisses, he teased and tormented her silken flesh. Tasted her until there was no doubt in his mind that he could ever live without her, then drew in the tight little knot of her clit and sucked it, flicking his tongue over it until she erupted in pleasure.

  And it wasn’t enough. He could never get enough of her.

  He pressed her thighs farther apart, lifted her knees and opened her farther to his gaze.

  Soft pink flesh parted, revealing the snug little entrance he sought. Tucking the head of his cock against the fluttering, clenching entrance to her snug pussy, he shifted his hips, moved, penetrated until the crest was pressed firmly inside her.

  Tiny eruptions of the pre-seminal fluid jetted from the tip of his cock, filling her, easing the tender, delicate muscles, allowing her to take him without pain, without distress. It increased her pleasure while adding to her natural lubrication and allowing the wide width of his shaft to sink inside her.

  Hawke watched as he took her, listened to her excited little cries and knew he wasn’t going to last long. His balls had drawn up tight to the base of his cock, a sure indication that his release was only a few strokes away.

  Tunneling inside her slowly, working his way in by small degrees, he grimaced at the building rapture surging through his body.

  Sweet and so hot. Her pussy wrapped around his cock like the tightest, most silken glove. Each stroke of her intimate flesh against the crest and shaft of his erection was torturous ecstasy. Sizzling fingers of electric current wrapped around his balls, stroked along his cock and had him gritting his teeth to hold back until he was firmly seated inside her.

  Lifting his head, Hawke stared into her lovely face. She was flushed, perspiration standing out on her forehead as the tracks of her tears dampened her cheeks.

  “My precious Jess,” he whispered, leaning closer, pressing himself deeper inside her and moved to steal a kiss. “My beloved Jess.”

  “My heart.” She sobbed against his lip, and he lost it.

  The hitched, breathless quality of her voice tore through him. The devotion, the love in her soft whisper, destroyed him.

  Groaning her name, he began to thrust inside her. Heavy, probing thrusts that worked inside her, stroking him past pleasure, past ecstasy. He was surging through sensations that he didn’t have time to make sense of, sensations he had never known before.

  His mate. His woman.

  She cried out his name and his thrusts increased and he shafted inside her as he held her hip with one hand and braced himself above her on an elbow. His lips moved over her jaw, her neck.

  He could feel the intensity rising inside her as well. Her orgasm was coming closer, the sweet scent of it was wrapping around him, urging him to take her fast, to fuck inside her harder. Nothing mattered but taking her, marking her, blending their scents until they were one, until they were bound so irrevocably that they could never be parted.

  Gasping moans fell from her lips as his kiss moved to her neck, her shoulder. So close. She was tightening around him. Her legs lifted, wrapped around his hips, her pussy tightened, the muscles convulsing around his thrusting cock.

  One thrust. Two. And she exploded. He felt it. Like an eruption of fire clenching around his dick she clamped on him as she cried out his name.

  Hawke felt his own release follow hers. His teeth locked in her shoulder, the mark of their mating, as he thrust inside her again and let sensation tear through him.

  A growl tore from his throat as he felt his semen jetting from him, filling her. The fierce swelling in the center of his cock locked him inside her, creating another pleasure, another violent edge of sensation that rocked them both.

  Hawke fought to hold on to just enough of his senses to relish this, to memorize it, to know every emotion, every sensation that erupted around him. His and hers. Her pleasure, rising so hard and swift she lost her own senses. Her screams of ecstasy, his growls. The lick of fire across his flesh, the feel of her teeth in his shoulder.

  Shock almost tore away that last edge of control. She was biting him as he bit her. Two little canines pierced his flesh and she held on for dear life, just as he held on to her.

  Held on until the last pulses of pure rapture tore through their bodies then left them to float back to Earth on a peaceful, comforting cloud.

  They were fighting for breath. Holding on to each other like the survivors of a storm. Sweat damped their bodies, their hearts raced and Hawke could feel her, heart and soul, wrapping around him.

  Lifting his head from her shoulder, he opened his eyes and stared down at her. She was lax beneath him, her breasts rising and falling with hard breaths as her lashes fluttered open.

  “You’re my soul, Jess,” he stated simply. He knew no other way to say it. “I lose you, I lose all that I am.”

  Her hand lifted, touched his cheek, before her finger fluttered over his lips.

  “You’re every breath I take, Hawke,” she said, her voice drowsy but echoing with such love that he felt humbled. “Every breath I take, you’re a part of it.”

  They were a part of each other.

  Moving to her side, he dragged her coat over them for warmth, pulled her against his chest and let himself believe.

  It was Christmas morning, and he held his gift in his arms.

  Looking at the angel with the broken wing, he knew that next year there would be another. A perfect one to represent her perfect love. But this one was even more precious for the wing that had been shatt
ered. This one had survived. Just as his own angel had. Survived and still retained its beauty and the essence of what it was meant to be. A reflection of love. Not always perfect, not without trials. But always there, surviving and enduring.

  Just as his Jess had survived, endured and loved.

  His own Christmas Angel, and he held her in his arms, knew her taste, the feel of her heartbeat, the touch of her body against his.

  A true gift from the heavens. His Jess.

  His mate.

  Always.

  PRIMAL KISS

  • • •

  They draw us in.

  They fire our blood, make us dream.

  They give us comfort when the world turns dark.

  They warm us when we’re cold.

  They begin our fantasies, they end them,

  and when we dream, when we reach for the perfect

  fantasy, they’re always there.

  This book is for that ideal, that comfort, that

  fantasy, and that dream.

  This book is for,

  that perfect kiss.

  •PROLOGUE•

  FELINE BREED HOME BASE

  SANCTUARY

  BUFFALO GAP, VIRGINIA

  The secured communications and defense bunker sat inside the base of a mountain less than a quarter of a mile from the main family residence in the valley now known as Sanctuary.

  The main level was mission control, outfitted with the most technologically advanced electronics, satellite tracking equipment, and mission communications available.

  The main level was also the entry level, with the first entrance winding through the various workstations from which orders were transmitted and Breed missions tracked throughout the world.

  Sanctuary was the main mission base that the Breeds, the ultimate fighting machine, the balance between man and beast, were hired from and sent around the world to fight in the wars the non-Breeds began.

  They were extraction experts, the perfect spies, assassins, trainers, commanders, and the best logistics experts in the world, and they were in high demand.

  Mission control was never silent.

  The second entrance was further around the side of the mountain, hidden from the main house and sheltered by a thick grove of trees. It opened into a serene lobby that could have graced the most expensive, most exclusive resort but was actually the site of the single most state-of-the art security system ever created. Breed guards manned the entrance both inside and out, while advanced surveillance apparatus scanned, identified, and logged even the stray insects that managed to breech the glass and metal doors.

  The lobbylike setting was in fact the entrance to the Breed labs, and thus the security employed was even greater than that for mission control. In the past six months, the entrance had been all but welded closed and buried in an attempt to ensure an impenetrable defense against unauthorized access or exit by any Breed daring to betray the community fighting to save Breedkind.

  Breed traitors weren’t unheard of. There had been more than one in the fourteen years since the feline pride leader, Callan Lyons, had announced to the non-Breed world the existence of the Breeds.

  He was both cursed and revered for his decision. There were days he wondered if he had made a mistake that would eventually destroy them all, or if history would see him as a visionary who had taken the only path the Genetics Council had left him.

  Now, as he swiped the security card through the reader, then laid his palm on the electronic identification plate, he cursed himself.

  Leaning closer for the retinal scan, he waited.

  “Hello, Pride Leader Lyons, may I have your passcode?”

  “Lyons, alpha, niner six, point seven three eight.”

  “Thank you, Alpha Lyons. I detect you have guests. Please pass alone. Each guest must pass verification before being allowed access into the inner lobby.”

  The electronic security couldn’t be ordered, manipulated, or bribed. It could be programmed, but even that programming had so many damned safeguards that just setting the passcodes for today’s meeting had taken more than thirty-six hours. He almost grimaced at the necessity of it.

  As the doors slid open, he passed into the lobby, stood back, and waited as each of his “guests” went through the same security. Standing in the lobby, he could feel the faintest wash of heat over his flesh, a warmth most humans wouldn’t detect but any Breed would sense.

  To complete its verification function, the bio-scan system would compare his blood type, any unique internal anomalies, and the scan of his brain to the ones on file for him, just as it would for each of those coming behind him.

  Taking this entrance into the labs wasn’t the quickest way in, but it was the quietest. If they entered through the main house, family, Breeds, the human soldiers assigned to Sanctuary, and most especially any Breed spies still left within the base would be aware of it. Going through mission control held the same lack of discretion. And a few of those meeting today were men and women the feline, wolf, and coyote Breeds had gone to great lengths to hide.

  They were there for a job, to make decisions that none of them were truly prepared to make and the additional security allowed for this meeting, and would give the participants the ability to make the decisions needed based on a live scrutiny of the situation at hand.

  Feline Pride Leader Callan Lyons was certain that those with him today were, like him, unsure how to handle what they were about to face. The director of Breed affairs, Jonas Wyatt; the wolf Breed alpha, Wolfe Gunnar; and the coyote Breed alpha, Del-Rey Delgado, were accompanied by the scientist Jeffrey Amburg, a human Jonas had managed to capture nearly two years before. Others that must remain hidden included a human geneticist known for her advanced research in genetic anomalies, Amelia Trace. Alexi Chernov and Katya Sobolov, coyote genetic and physiological experts, stood next to her. Behind them stood Dr. Nikki Armani, council trained and human and one of the foremost experts on wolf biological, genetic, and physiological attributes. One by one they moved to the scanners, gave their passcodes, and stepped inside.

  The feline Breed genetic expert, Elyianna Morrey, waited in the labs below with Jonas Wyatt’s latest captive and the scourge of the Breeds.

  The arrival of the other alphas and scientists was a closely guarded secret. The heli-jet that had flown them in was listed as delivering medical supplies and had landed in the secure area outside the labs to offload the fictional medical supplies.

  Every precaution had been taken, but Callan had no doubt rumors of the visit were already swirling. No matter their attempts, it still seemed Sanctuary was plagued by too many eyes and ears that reported to either the Council fighting to destroy them, the pureblood groups determined to imprison them, or simply a host of other enemies that believed the Breeds were a sign of the destruction of humanity.

  The fact that there were Breeds still betraying their own was an acid eating at his soul. The cruelty the Breeds had suffered in the labs hadn’t been enough for some, it seemed. Compelled by bald-faced greed, the Breed traitors would send their fellow Breeds back to the labs and see them destroyed.

  Once the final member of the group had passed the entrance, Callan led everyone to the lobby’s large elevator and entered first. He stood at the back of the cubicle, his eyes narrowed, his gaze touching on each scientist as he prayed, God how he prayed, that despite the horror of what they were facing below, that some hope for the Breeds would come of it.

  His gaze lifted as the elevator lights dimmed and a hovering blue light began to swirl around each individual. Unlike the bio-scan upon entry into the lobby, this DNA scan was unconcealed, overt. This final scan would identify the members of the party once again and ensure each person matched the criteria and identity the computers had been given.

  Along with the automated check, a Breed enforcer of each pack as well as a feline would watch the monitors and compare the identities to known individuals before the elevator opened ten floors below the base of the mo
untain.

  “Welcome to Sanctuary’s labs, Alpha Lyons,” the wolf Breed on duty spoke through the intercom. “All identities have been verified and access granted.”

  The double doors to the elevator slid soundlessly open, revealing a silent, steel-lined hallway.

  Sanctuary had once been an unnamed lab in the control of the Genetics Council. The labs below ground had seen the countless births, tortures, and deaths of Breeds. Now, it was home to the hope-filled research that could possibly save them all.

  At least, that had been their hope when they had taken the compound after arguing successfully that the Genetics Council owed it to them. A small partial payment for the horrors they had suffered. Breed financial accounts were still being contributed to by the countries and financial empires that had been found to have contributed to the Genetics Council’s work.

  But who could they sue now for the horrors they were still suffering and the extreme prejudice building around them?

  “How is Ely doing, Callan?” Jonas asked, his voice quiet as they walked down the hall, scanners quietly humming as they did a final check for weapons, weapon components, or any conceivable manner of threat to the facility.

  “She’s doing better,” Callan stated. “The past year has been hard on her, but she’s coming out of it.”

  She had been used against the very Breeds who trusted her to ensure their health and well-being. A mind-control drug had been slipped into her system, creating in her an addiction and an inability to refuse the orders of those who had initiated the reprogramming of her delicate mind.

  She had almost died as a result. And she had almost taken Jonas and one of their best enforcers with her, and Callan knew she still suffered the guilt of it, a guilt that might torment her for the rest of her life.

  “The past year has been hard on us all.” Jonas sighed.

  For the past month, it had been especially hard on Jonas and his mate, Rachel, as they watched the changes in the child a monster had managed to get his hands on.