Authors: Lora Leigh
She flew with him. Brilliant explosions of light and ecstasy tore through her as she felt him jerk against her. Her pussy clenched tight on him, holding him deep, convulsing around the hard length of his spurting cock as she screamed out her pleasure.
There. Ecstasy. Rapture. And a merging. She felt a part of him merge with her, deep inside her very spirit, and in that moment, she knew freedom wouldn’t come in leaving Lance. Leaving Lance would destroy her.
CHAPTER I5
“I wanted to save Jonas. She was going to kill him.”
Drowsy, immeasurably sad, Harmony spoke into the predawn light that filtered through the crack in the dark curtains of the room.
Lance held her close against his chest, his chin resting against her head, his arms wrapped around her, pressing her back against his chest and abdomen.
“Who was going to kill him, Harmony?”
“Jonas,” she whispered after a long pause. “Madame LaRue gave birth to him. She cuddled him as a babe and as a toddler. He was given the best of everything the labs could provide, but he was kind. He would brush my hair when he returned from a mission. LaRue always ordered my tests while he was gone. She didn’t want him to know the extent of her cruelty. He believed the other scientists controlled her, forced her to the acts she committed in the name of science.”
He would brush her hair. It sounded simple, a small enough gesture, but Lance heard the reverence in her voice when she said it. “When Jonas captured me last month, his scientist Elyiana had to take blood and swabs. I hate that. I hate the needles poking into me. He came to my cell a while later. He still had the brush he used when I was at the labs. And he brushed my hair.”
Her voice was thick with emotion, and Lance had to blink to force back the rush of moisture as he let her talk. The tone of her voice, reflective, husky, tore at his soul.
“Madame LaRue was going to kill him.” Her hands tightened on his arms. “All but a few of us were ordered to die. The other Breeds in that room, the ones I killed, they had been betraying Jonas for months as he planned an escape for all of us. Even Madame.” A small shudder raced through her body. “He was her personal experiment, and he could never see it. I was her child as well, but only Jonas knew peace within those labs. Only he knew gentleness. And I wanted to preserve the kindness I saw in him. The memory of a mother. Such memories are precious, aren’t they?”
“You wanted to protect him,” he whispered. “Because you loved him.”
Her breath caught as a silent sob shook her body.
“Within weeks, his personal guards, two Coyotes known for their viciousness, found me. He had sent them. Their final words to me were the message he sent. Rogues die. The last words he said as I ran from the room where I had killed his mother.”
Lance swallowed tightly. God help him, he wanted nothing more than to tear Jonas apart. The bastard had no idea what he had done to the child who had risked her life for him.
“You have proof of what she was,” he said then. He knew she did. “Why didn’t you give it to him?”
She was silent for long moments. “There was so little that we had to hold onto.” She inhaled roughly, her voice rasping on her tears. “We knew we were creations of man, rather than of God. That we were created to kill. But Jonas, he had a mother. He had gentle touches and soft words. He had something to dim the hatred and the pain, the brutality of our lives. And giving him the information wouldn’t change anything.”
She trembled again, her breathing jerky as she pressed tighter against him, and he felt her hunger for all the things she had mentioned. She had fought to protect Jonas’s vision of a mother that was a monster because she had hungered so desperately for the illusion herself.
“I couldn’t let her kill him,” she whispered raggedly. “He brushed my hair…” He had given her the one bit of warmth and gentleness in a dark, horrific world.
Lance pulled her closer to him, tucking her in as tight as possible as he buried his face against her hair.
“And now, there’s you,” she whispered tearfully. “Honorable. Patient. What do I do, Lance, if you die because of me? If the monsters find you and destroy the life that burns so pure inside you?”
And what would he do without her?
“I’m a child of the earth,” he told her softly, feeling her still against him. “The winds call to me, the very air around me whispers the secrets of others at my ear. It warns me of danger and it protects me when others would have seen me fall. It led me to that bar the night I met you. As I sat outside, wondering what the hell I was doing there, it whispered your name.”
She turned to him slowly, staring up at him with tortured pale green eyes as he lifted himself on an elbow. He wanted to surround her. He wanted to wrap himself around her in such a way that she would never be alone again.
“You have something Jonas wants,” he told her then. “I hear the knowledge of it each time I see Jonas, each time you mention his name. A secret or secrets that go far beyond the mother you share.”
Lance watched as her face paled and fear filled her eyes.
“Jonas doesn’t want revenge, Harmony. The only reason he’s still alive is the fact that there’s no true malice in him when he’s around you. But he does want whatever you’re hiding from him. And he wants it bad enough that he’ll use you, or me, to get it.”
She shook her head slowly as he watched her expression. It went from fear to confusion, her eyes shadowing as she frowned back at him.
“He can’t know what I have,” she said. “No one knew but the scientists in that office, and I killed them.”
“Knew what, Harmony?”
“That the first Breed created still lives.” Her voice lowered until it was no more than a breath of sound.
———
Unknown secrets. What came before and still is
. The words whispered at his ear, breathed across his mind.
“There’s more.” Lance ran his hand comfortingly down her arm as she trembled beneath him again. “But considering it’s Jonas, only God knows what he wants.”
“And if we can’t afford to wait to learn what he’s after?”
Lance felt her fear then.
“Alonzo knew me as Death, when I was younger. If he recognizes me now, my cover is blown. If that happens, every Coyote still alive and working with the Council will be after me. The price on my head is very high.”
God, could it get much worse?
“What was he doing there? How was he involved?” Lance asked.
“I’m not sure what role he played.” She sighed. “But he was very important to Madame LaRue, and I know he provided vast amounts of money toward the Breed project.”
“Do you have proof Alonzo was part of the Council?” He would love to see the good reverend taken down.
She shook her head. “I don’t have that proof. But he was at the lab several times and met with Madame and my trainer. If he recognizes me, Lance…”
“Then we’ll have to make certain Alonzo doesn’t find out.” He could feel that danger intensifying around them then, and heard the whisper of relief at his ear, even as the air warned of the danger Alonzo could represent. He didn’t know who Harmony was, and that was all that mattered at this point.
A small smile tipped her lips. “Are you listening to the winds?”
He smoothed her hair back from her cheek. “Finally,” he acknowledged ruefully. “Grandfather would be pleased with me.”
“The Council searched for women who had gifts such as yours,” she said. “They were perceived as the perfect incubators for the implanted Breed embryos. It was believed that the women who carried the creations added an element to the final makeup of the Breed. Psychic power is one of the elements they believed could be transferred in such ways.”
Embryos and creations. Never babes or children. God help him, but the rage burning in him against those who had scarred her soul from birth terrified him.
He had known that many psychics and Native American women were taken, held captive until the children they were implanted with were born, then released. The women they used in such ways had come from all over the world, and Jonas knew they had searched heavily for psychics.
“I won’t let you leave me,” he finally said.
“How do I stay?”
He held himself still, silent, staring down at her as she reached up, running the tips of her fingers down his cheek.
“I’ve never had anyone,” she whispered. “I knew better. I knew they would be used to capture me. They’ll take you, they’ll torture you, and they’ll make certain I know. I would give my life for you, but all it would do is ease the pain you would experience because of me. You would die anyway.”
A tear fell from her eyes, creating a silvery track down her cheek as her lips trembled.
Lance felt his chest jerk, felt the emotion that welled within him like a cruel fist, clenching around his heart. “We fight to survive. To love. What the earth wills will be, Harmony. Running won’t change that. It won’t save either of us.”
Her face twisted in agony as she turned from him, huddling on her side, her body trembling as he pulled her close once again.
“You’ve fought to live,” he said gently as he wrapped his body around her, feeling his heat flow to her, his soul easing around her. “Fight for us now, Harmony. You’ve fought for your life, now help me fight for our love.”
Their love.
Harmony stared into the room, watching as pale fingers of dawn peeked from the sides of the dark curtains. Was that what she was feeling? Was that what she had been feeling all along? Was this why she couldn’t walk away from him?
It wasn’t her way to stay when she knew the danger outweighed the chances of escape. It wasn’t her way to allow anyone to breach her inner defenses. But Lance had done just that—with the warmth of his body that flowed into her, the pleasure from his touch, the aching realization that Lance had been created for her.
A mating. And he had accepted that mating, accepted her as though he had known her all her life. Because the winds whispered to him.
“What do they say?” she asked. “The winds. What do they tell you about me?”
“That you’re wild and incorrigible.” A thread of amusement filled his voice.
Her lips kicked up in a grin as she turned back to him. “I’m serious.”
“Seriously.” His hand cupped her cheek while his thumb smoothed over her parted lips. “I hear your cries echo around me. I hear a whisper of strength and of need and sorrow. I hear your heart. Each time you’ve denied me I’ve heard your soul crying out for me. The wind doesn’t speak in words, or in explanations. It speaks in laughter, a cry, a wailing denial or a whisper of strength. And I hear all that as the air flows around us, pulling me to you no matter how many times you’ve pushed me away.”
He kissed her lips gently before rising to stare down at her once again.
“I don’t know what to do.” Her lips trembled as she fought to find a way to make him understand what she felt. But she didn’t understand it herself.
“Just be you.” He lay beside her again, pulling her against him and letting his warmth wrap around her. “Just be Harmony.”
———
That night patrol was destined to be boring. Lance was stuck at the office with paperwork and she was covering for one of the officers who had taken off for family concerns. The dark surrounded her, cocooned her, and left her with too much time to think.
Just be Harmony
. Not for the first time, she wondered who Harmony was.
As she made her way through the quiet streets of the main section of Broken Butte, Harmony frowned at the thought.
She had always known who Death was; there was no question there. Death was vengeance. She was the shadow that slid through the night and brought justice to those the law had somehow missed.
She was dark, wrathful, cold and merciless. She didn’t regret and she had no second thoughts. As she came to a stop at a red light, she frowned into the lamplit street. But who was Harmony?
She had taken the name as a lark. Harmony Lancaster. Harmony, because that was what was left in Death’s wake. Lancaster was the name of the street where she had taken the last innocent life she had allowed the Council to foist on her.
That night was engraved on her memory, stamped into it with the force of a burning brand.
“Let me help you. I can, I can get you to safety.” The woman had watched her with such compassion, such fierce determination that Harmony had almost believed it was true.
But her Trainer had warned her that the operative was a master at deceit. At fourteen, trained as Death, she had known only what the “proof” had given her. And that proof marked this woman as a vindictive peddler of juveniles. A woman who ripped innocent children from their homes and sold them to the highest bidder.
“Let me help you.” A trembling hand had reached out to Death. “Let me get you to safety.”
Death had struck. She gripped the woman’s hand, using it as leverage, and let her knife answer for her. She had followed her Trainer’s orders, but as she watched the woman crumple lifelessly to the ground, she knew she had shed innocent blood.
Harmony shook the memory from her mind before it could tear through her soul as it did each time she allowed it free. The woman she had killed had been a CIA agent investigating the shadowy group known as the Genetics Council. She had a husband and a child. She had been one of the good guys, and Death had taken her life.
As the light turned green, Harmony turned up another well-lit street, her gaze searching the shadows as she patrolled the quiet. Lights blazed from within the houses; some residents still sat on their porches enjoying the late evening air. The scent of barbecues drifted in the air, and the laughter of children.
This was what Lance fought for. The peace that echoed here, that drifted through the half-lowered windows and wrapped around her.
This was what the agent had fought for as well.
Shaking her head, she pulled onto Community Street. The full block held the community center, ball courts, a tennis court and a public pool that had closed for the night. The lights within the basketball court were still on though, as were the tennis courts’, and both were in use.