Authors: Lora Leigh
She turned on the cold water, stuck her wrists under the stream of water and laid her head against the cool mirror.
She’d tried to ignore the heat building in her. She should have had a few more hours before it became this bad. Before her breasts swelled, her nipples becoming so sensitive that her bra was painful. Her clit was so swollen, so engorged, it was touching the silk of her panties. Each move she made was agony now.
Part of her was cold, chilled to the bone and aching for Del-Rey to wrap his arms around her, and another part of her refused to ask, to beg for what she needed. She had made the first move. She had ignored Sofia’s insults to begin with, then she had made the first move and initiated that sexual adventure they had taken. She was forcing back her pride and trying her damnedest to make up for the past months, but it wasn’t easy.
And while that ice collected, she also burned. It was terrifying. Hot and cold at the same time.
No, not just hot and cold. Icy and blazing. It was affecting her ability to think, to hold on to her composure and restrain herself.
Composure was everything. If she was going to take her place at Del-Rey’s side, then she had to prove she was competent and able to make decisions when needed. If she let the mating heat do this to her, then she was going to fail.
She almost whimpered at the thought. The way she felt right now, she couldn’t help him do anything but roll around in bed. What if they were attacked? What if Base was in danger? How could she do what she needed to do, and know Del-Rey had faith in her to do it while he and the other Coyote soldiers defended the inner caverns?
He wouldn’t be able to trust her. She would be a liability again. Something to fuck. That would be the extent of her worth to him, and she couldn’t bear that.
“Coya?”
She straightened quickly at the sound of Hope’s soft voice behind her. Dammit, she should have hidden herself before she gave into the ragged emotions filling her.
Straightening, she quickly shut off the water and pulled free several paper towels to dry her hands as she turned to face the other woman.
“Lupina.” She smiled back at her friend. “Do you ever feel strange as hell when someone actually calls you by your name?”
Hope’s lips tilted with charming amusement. “It’s according to the person. I’m Hope to many, but I’m also lupina.” She shrugged. “I’m the same person, no matter the name they use.”
“True.” Anya smiled as she inhaled slowly. “I’ll get out of here for you.” She headed for the door.
“I stopped in to talk to you.” Hope’s statement had her pausing.
“Why?”
“Brim informed our head of security, Jacob, that you were no longer on the hormone treatments, even those that still the more painful effects of the heat. You don’t have to suffer, Anya. The base hormonal therapy controls the pain and conception until you’re ready for it. What you were taking before controlled the heat itself. You have a choice in this.”
Anya breathed in more roughly this time. “I made my choice, Hope,” she whispered, staring back at the other woman intently. “It’s just . . .” She swallowed tightly. “It caught me off guard.”
Hope stared back at her in disbelief. “The heat is terrifying,” she said. “I know well how bad it can be. Until Kiowa’s mate, and then you to a greater extent, allowed our doctors and scientists to track how it works within our bodies, we knew that horror every month. We could feel it coming before we cycled, then as soon as that was over, we were hit with the mating heat cycle.
And that doesn’t even count that first month of mating, when it’s like a vicious claw tearing at your mind and your body. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Anya stared back at the lupina, the pain in her chest nearly brutal as she swallowed back her tears.
“What happens,” she said, “if I’m not able to get to your doctor? If Base is on lockdown and we’re under attack? If I don’t know how to handle it, then how do I help Del-Rey? How do I keep from becoming something he has to protect above all things, rather than someone that can help him? You learned how to work through it; I’ve heard how well you take care of your duties, even in the middle of mating heat, while Haven is under attack. How you’ve worked within the secured areas to make certain everything is running smoothly while Wolfe and the others fought back the attacks. How can I do that, if I don’t understand how to control my own body?”
“And being more than just a lover is very important to you, isn’t it, Anya?” Hope said gently.
“Isn’t it to you?” Anya asked, confused. “You were raised in Wolfe’s labs. We’ve seen what awaits them if they’re recaptured, what they came from. Protecting Del-Rey means everything to me.”
“You didn’t feel that way eight months ago,” Hope pointed out.
Anya turned quickly away from her as she ran her hand over her forehead and propped the other on her hip.
“I couldn’t think then,” she whispered before turning back. “All I knew was the anger and this fear that only grew day by day. For three weeks I lived in this horrific little world where I couldn’t control so much as a single thought.” She shook her head as she shoved her hands in her pants pockets and stared around the feminine little outer room that led to the toilets beyond. “I fought through puberty to control my temper. Once I had it conquered, suddenly there was something worse that my body and mind could do to me, that I couldn’t control.” She blinked back her tears as she stared at the lupina. “And I blamed him, when I shouldn’t have. I don’t like that about myself, and I’m damned sure not going to let it happen again. But I’m also not going to let this reaction to what’s going on between us make me a liability to him.”
Hope tilted her head and stared back at her. “Because you used your logic, your composure, and the challenge you knew it would present to the Breed to draw his notice to you,” she guessed.
“Now you’re terrified to let him see the real you.”
Anya flinched. She stared back at the lupina miserably.
“I berate my bodyguards for maneuvering me into the position of coya. But I knew what they were doing, distantly, in a place where I didn’t have to admit it to myself. I knew, because I used the same wiles to make him notice me, to make him want me, to trust me. He thought he was choosing a woman that could help him establish his freedom. Instead he found he had married a child that couldn’t accept the changes in her life. I don’t want him to learn that she grew into a woman that can’t even control her body long enough to make a rational decision.”
Hope sighed and shook her head. “I can understand your reasons. But I can’t countenance your suffering, Anya. There is help available.”
“But it isn’t help I can count on,” she cried out, before capping her hand over her mouth. “God, listen to me. I can’t even debate effectively. I won awards for my ability to debate when I was ten years old, and now I feel like sitting on the floor and sobbing like an infant.”
It had been worse eight months before. A thousand times worse. Ten thousand times. She barely remembered those weeks, the fears driven so deep in her head that she couldn’t escape them. She had sobbed then. Sometimes for hours, holding her hands over her mouth so the doctors and her bodyguards wouldn’t hear her crying out Del-Rey’s name.
And now she nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming for him. She simply wanted him to hold her. Just that if nothing else, to do something to ease the ice inside her.
“I’m a mess, Hope,” she whispered.
“Oh, Anya.” The other woman’s expression twisted in compassion. “You need to talk to him.
Your body and your mind know what you need besides the sex. He could help you.”
She shook her head as she forced back her tears and inhaled again, determined to get a handle on this.
“I have it. I’ll be fine.” She wasn’t going to whine to Hope about the relationship that wasn’t a relationship between her and her mate. That was her fault. She had to find a way to fix it.
“Yes, you will be,” Hope said softly. “Tell you what, when you’re feeling more up to it, give me a call. Prima Lyons and I were thinking spring would be a great time for your official ceremony.
She’s offered Sanctuary’s grounds for the vows, or Haven’s are available as well. I’d love it if you’d use Haven.”
The ceremony. A wedding. She wondered if Del-Rey was looking for the rings. Of course, he wouldn’t mention it to her if he was. He probably already had the damned things and wasn’t even telling her.
“I would love Haven,” Anya admitted. “And spring sounds wonderful. When Del-Rey finally gets around to mentioning it, I’ll let him know.”
Hope nodded. As she parted her lips to speak, the door pushed inward, leaving Del-Rey standing in the entrance, Wolfe behind him.
Del-Rey’s gaze pinned her, his brows lowering into a frown before he held his hand out to her.
“We’re returning to Base,” he told her. “The alphas will reconvene there later tonight to finish the plans that have to be made.”
Because of her. Because her emotions were in such chaos that her mate knew he had to get her back to Base and fuck her. Her face flamed at the awareness that everyone else knew that as well.
“A temporary glitch.” She breathed in deeply as she moved to him. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” he stated. “There’s information we have to collect before we can finalize our plans. We’re returning to Base.”
Anya had a terrible feeling he was making excuses, but she couldn’t ignore his outstretched hand. God, she needed the warmth of that much at least.
As he drew her from the room, he gave her more. His arm curved around her shoulders, drawing her to the warmth of his body and pushing back that chill that threatened to shake through her body and leave her trembling in weakness.
Anya kept her head high, her steps measured. Her expression composed. She leaned into him when he pulled her close, and wanted to close her eyes at the warmth that battled against the ice now. She hated herself for needing it. Hated herself for being unable to stand against the need for the pleasure that built like an agonizing fury inside her.
He hadn’t needed a crutch in all these months. He had stood strong, battled against those that would have destroyed the Breeds, and kept his logic and his ability to lead intact.
Yet she couldn’t. How much harder could it be for her than for him? The difference couldn’t be such a wide divide, no matter what the doctors had told her. Male Breeds didn’t allow experiments or tests. And they didn’t take hormones to control that mating heat. How would the doctors know how much worse it was? Breed males were used to incredible pain. Pain a normal man could never survive.
As they stepped into the evening air, a military-enforced limo pulled up to the entrance to the underground bunker. Cavalier, one of Del-Rey’s personal bodyguards, jumped from the passenger side and opened the door as Del-Rey pushed her inside.
And kept pushing her until she was flat on her back, the door slamming behind them as he came over her.
His lips were on hers immediately, the wicked, heated taste of his kiss infusing her senses, filling her with the hormone that had begun the mating heat to start with.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on tight as her legs parted, allowing him to settle between them. They were fully clothed, but the warmth of his body seeped past the material, worked into her flesh, and she felt the warmth gathering rather than the ice.
She could feel the heat burrowing inside her, making the arousal deeper, stronger, but taking away the pain.
The arousal she could deal with. The aching need for his touch, she could handle that. But the pain, the ice, the confusion—she couldn’t deal with it. The loss of complete control outside his arms? It terrified her.
The loss of control here, she could handle. The way his kiss filled her, stroked pleasure after pleasure across her lips, filled her senses with the feel and the taste of him as she moved against him. She was safe here. She didn’t have to control this.
One hand held her head in place, the other touched her, pushed beneath her sweater, settled on her stomach, and the warmth there, it was incredible. It was like melting.
“When I needed your touch,” he growled against her lips, “I grew icy here first.” His hand pressed closer. “Cold until I felt my bones would shatter from the need of your warmth.”
She gazed into his dark eyes, seeing the shadows of the pain and the cold he had endured for eight long months.
She shook her head, fighting the guilt that consumed her, the evidence of what she had left him to suffer. Male Breeds, she had learned, had an instinctive, overriding need to protect their mates.
To hold them against any pain, to shelter them as much as possible.
He kissed her again, sinking into her, his tongue stroking against hers as she whimpered against his lips in pleasure. He stroked her lips, licked at them. Each touch was filled with gentleness, with aching warmth as he held her against the effects of the mating heat that would have torn her apart.
His head lifted. “Look at me.”
Her lashes lifted until she was staring into his determined, arrogant expression.
“Never do this again, Anya. Ever. When the mating heat builds, if we can’t satisfy it at that moment, then my kiss will ease it until we can. No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, my kiss is yours. My warmth is yours. Do you understand me?”
She had to battle her tears again, her guilt, the knowledge of what she had done to them both.
“Why?” she whispered. “Eight months, Del-Rey, and I stayed away. I made you suffer as well.”
“And you think I should blame you? That I should revile you?” he asked as he pushed her hair tenderly back from her face. “Anya, do you think I don’t know how terrified you were the day I took you and fired upon your family in front of your eyes? That I didn’t know I had lied to you, betrayed the trust you gave me so freely? I never blamed you, little love. Myself yes. My own impatience and lust, most definitely. But never you.”
“You should hate me.” A tear slipped free. “You suffered and your base suffered; your people suffered because you weren’t there. And you weren’t there because of me.”