Lion's Heat

CHAPTER 11

Rachel couldn't imagine the pain Ely had described to her. She couldn't imagine anyone enduring such pain, even Jonas. The man accused of being stone-cold ice inside.

After she returned to her desk, Jonas walked from his office, staring back at her, his expression perfectly calm and perfectly composed.

"I apologize for biting you so hard," he stated, his tone no longer tortured. "It was an accident, Rachel. One that won't be repeated."

She watched him now, trying to see beyond the calm expression to the torment Ely swore was a part of the mating heat.

She should have questioned him more, she thought. She should have taken the time, no matter the danger at first, and the business of their routine in the past week, to learn more about what she was refusing.

"Do you love me, Jonas?" The question slipped past her lips, almost unbidden.

She had always dreamed of love, not mating heat. Commitment. Loyalty. Faithfulness.

His expression hardened, became more stony than before.

"I love you." As though the words were torn from him, ripped from the very center of his being.

"You so obviously didn't want to admit to that," she said painfully. "Why did you?"

His lips tightened, the muscles at his jaw clenched furiously. "You deserve the truth, whether I want to tell you or not," he stated.

"Why?" He was such an enigma sometimes, and at others, she felt as though she had known him forever.

"You're my mate," he growled. "The same as my wife, the other half of me. I won't lie to you, Rachel. You are what I never thought I would have in my life. I don't lie to myself; I won't lie to you."

Nothing could be so simple. So easy.

Shaking her head, she rose from her chair, desperate now to get away from him, to think without him staring back at her with that icy gaze.

"The world was simple to you once, wasn't it, Rachel?" he asked her as she headed for the door. "You had your parents, your sister, the little house in the country, a pet dog named Ruffy, a cat named Kitty."

She stopped, closed her eyes and fought not to remember those days. She didn't want to remember what had been, because it was so different from what it had become.

"Then it was taken from you."

"And your point?" she asked painfully.

"You've run ever since," he stated. "You and your sister both have run from what you lost. A senseless accident, a lack of foresight by your parents to ensure you were cared for if they were taken away and the loss of everything you knew."

Even the dog and the cat had been wrenched from her arms.

"I didn't have to run," she said, holding the pain of the past deep inside her.

"You've run." He stepped closer, blocked the doorway and reached out until his fingers held a thick curl of hair, rubbing against it sensually. "You've made certain nothing could be taken from you again, until you had Amber. And now you hold on to her with everything you have, don't you baby." His voice dropped, softened.

"She's my daughter."

"She's your life."

She stared back at him, not certain where he was going now.

"She's my life," she agreed.

"You live for her. You would die for her."

And she would, so easily.

"Where are you going with this, Jonas?"

"I'm making a point, love," he stated gently. "Imagine the love you feel for your child, and then multiply that by a thousand. Imagine what you felt the first time you gazed upon her, and knew that God had given you the most perfect gift to complete your life, and multiply that again. That is what you are to me. That is what I felt the first moment I saw you. Unlike humans, Breeds live for the small gifts, the little kindnesses fate would hand to us. We search for them. We cherish them. The moment I saw you, the animal inside me roared in triumph, the man melted in the face of the woman who stared back at him.

"That was love, Rachel. It was the acceptance, the knowledge that what I feared the most, what I ached for the most, was now standing before me, and reaching out for it, claiming it, could destroy everything I am."

She shook her head desperately. "Love doesn't happen like that. It takes time. It builds."

He nodded slowly. "It can happen like that. It can build slowly. It can come like a gentle rainfall, or it can slam into you like a tsunami. You are my tsunami, love."

She couldn't accept that. Staring back at him, she saw his understanding that she refused to accept his logic.

"Racert left a message while I was in my office." He changed the subject coolly. "He's decided that the decision the appropriations committee made needs to be reviewed. He believes the amount awarded initially to Sanctuary and Haven were well above what we deserve. He's moving to have the funds reduced."

"Stop." She lifted her hand in refusal. "You can't just switch that way."

"Of course I can." He shrugged as he moved away from her, dropping the curl he had been caressing. "As you stated, you refuse the mating. My control isn't inexhaustible. I have my limits. And I'm drawing close to that limit. I need you to pull the information we have on Racert and bring it to me. We need to find a weakness."

She inhaled slowly. "Jonas."

"Do it." His voice was like a lash of ice now. "Questions are for later, when I can handle what you do to me. That isn't something I can do at the moment."

He turned and stalked back to his office. The way his body moved had little to do with simply walking. The Lion his genetics came from was too close to the surface now, too much a part of him.

She had seen that before, she realized. In Callan, in Sherra, and in Taber and Tanner. Merinus's family, the ruling Pride. The animals that were so much a part of them were often close to the surface in the presence of their mates, when they were forced to control more than simple arousal.

Turning away, she moved to the computer and began pulling together the information they had on the senator.

Unfortunately, from what she remembered, there was very little they could use against him. Racert had kept his nose clean. He hadn't done drugs; he had conducted his shadier dealings under the auspices of legitimate actions. There was no way to prove he had done anything illegal. He had a wife, no mistress. One child, a daughter, widowed. A granddaughter still in high school.

She finished the file, sent it to Jonas's computer, then left her desk to check on Amber.

She was still sleeping. At three months old, she was only now beginning to fill out. She smiled and laughed often. She was the greatest joy in Rachel's life.

Rachel couldn't imagine that Jonas could take one look at her and feel more, love more, than she had felt or loved the first time she'd held her child.

Lifting her from the crib, Rachel cuddled Amber close to her heart, reached out and stroked the tiny strands of red-gold hair from her brow.

The soft blue dress and little stockings she wore had been bought by Jonas. The clothes, tiny shoes, everything Amber now possessed had been provided for by Jonas. Everything Rachel now owned, Jonas had given her. He provided everything. And he did so without demanding payment. Without asking for the slightest thing in return.

Had anyone besides her sister ever done that?

"You were born to be a mother."

Jonas was behind her again. She had felt him before he spoke, and that amazed her.

"You don't make sense to me, Jonas," she whispered. "What are you trying to do to me?"

"Complete you. Protect you." His voice deepened as it speared through her heart.

Rachel kissed Amber's forehead gently, smiled as the baby pursed her lips as though to kiss her back, then laid her back amid the incredibly soft blankets that covered the mattress.

Turning to Jonas, she passed him, moved back into the office and felt his presence as he followed.

"I have to return to D.C. tonight," he told her as she moved back to her desk.

"Running away?" She stopped at her chair and turned back to face him. "Isn't that what you accused me of, Jonas?"

"My running is the only thing that will save you," he informed her, his voice turning to ice once more. "Never doubt that, Rachel. If I stay here tonight, I won't have the control not to take you. Now get everything ready--"

"No." Adrenaline raced through her as though she were facing losing something, someone. Jonas would be back, she knew he would, but something inside her couldn't bear to see him go.

Reaching out, she gripped his arm and held on tight. "You wouldn't let me run, you won't let me hide. Why should you be able to?"

"Because of this." His finger touched the mark he had left on her: the small scratch his incisors had left on her neck. "I drew blood, and for a second, love, I nearly licked over the wound. Do you know what would have happened, what I would have done to you, had I done that?"

She shook her head as she fought to control the pain that tried to twist her expression.

"The mating hormone would have infected the wound. Within hours, it would have moved into your system. A few more hours and you would be begging me to fuck you. Screaming for it. That's what's going to happen if I stay."

Rachel jerked away from him. Raking her fingers through her hair, she fought to make sense of her emotions, her needs, her confusion.

What was he doing to her?

She remembered, so many years ago, seeing his face on a news interview. She had watched his eyes, the swirl of color, and had felt her heart clench. Over the years, nothing had changed. Each time she saw a glimpse of him in the news, she had watched, absorbed by the sight.

Meeting him had produced a stronger reaction. It hadn't been simple attraction. It hadn't been mere interest or even absorption. From that first face-to-face meeting, Jonas had inspired emotions inside her that she hadn't wanted to face.

"Rachel." His voice rasped across her senses as he moved behind her.

His hands gripped her hips, held her to him as he laid his cheek against the top of her head.

"I don't sleep because I can do nothing but hunger for you," he whispered. "I smell your scent, heavy with arousal, and it burns inside me. I see you and I want nothing more than to taste you, every inch of you. I'm a strong man, baby, but I'm not that strong."

His hands stroked up her side, moved around, cupped her breasts.

She breathed in sharply and arched into his touch.

"I sat in that office, fighting for control, and the scent of you drew me back. Do you know I can smell the wet heat of your pussy clear into that fucking room? All I can think about is spreading your legs." His fingers found her nipples, stroked them, gripped them between fingers and thumbs before rolling them firmly.

Her head fell back against his chest as her back arched in pleasure.

"I can't keep my hands off you."

Did she want him to keep his hands off her?

She didn't.

Her breathing roughened as sensation sizzled across her nerve endings. His hands moved, his fingers flipping apart the buttons that held her blouse together.

"Do you know what mating heat does?" he growled.

She shook her head. Merinus had evidently neglected to give her a lot of information.

"The pleasure is unlike anything you could imagine," he whispered at her ear as he parted her blouse, his fingers moving to the clasp of her bra between her breasts.

The pleasure was unlike anything she could have imagined. Rachel lowered her head, watched as his large hands cupped her breasts, caressed them, his fingers stroking across her nipples.

Biting her lip, she fought to hold back the whimpers of pleasure that fell from her lips, and failed.

This was incredible. It was unlike any pleasure she had known in her life.

"All it takes is a kiss," he whispered. "Or a lick. I could taste the sweet heat of your pussy, push my tongue inside the tight little muscles there, and you'd go crazy for the pleasure, Rachel. You'd beg, but you wouldn't have to beg. I'd give it to you. All night, all day. Over and over again while your body begs for more, demands more."

His hands slid from her breasts, down. He flicked open the button to her pants, slid the zipper down and pushed his hand inside the silk panties beneath.

"Is this mating heat?" she gasped.

She could feel her juices spilling over his fingers, the swollen folds of her sex parting beneath his fingers. The sensations were exquisite, heated, rife with such longing that she wanted to beg for possession.

"Not yet." He breathed out, his chest laboring at her back as they both fought for air. "Not for you."

But it was killing him. She felt it now. The tension in his body, the primal rasp of his voice. This wasn't the cool, logical, in-control Jonas that she knew.

His breathing was heavy at her ear, a groan tearing from his chest as his fingers met the swollen bud of her clit. A groan that mingled with her whimper of need.

"Then something's wrong." Her hand moved to her thighs, pressing against his as the need for a firmer touch surged through her body. "Jonas, this is killing me."

Then what was it doing to him?

According to Ely, it was thousand times worse for him.

He growled behind her. A sound so reminiscent of the animal he shared his genetics with that she shivered.

"Tell me . . ." She had to swallow tightly to continue as his fingers eased through the lush collection of heat between the folds of her sex. "Tell me, Jonas, what this does to you."

His head buried against her neck as his large body seemed to shudder behind her.

"Heaven and hell," he groaned. "I want to go to my knees and beg, Rachel. I would beg for just a taste if I knew you wouldn't hate me once you realized you were tied to me forever. And from all we know, mating is a long, long time."

The Leo was more than a century in age.

Her lips parted, her eyes closing as she tried to force herself to move away from him.

His fingers moved again. They curled, two pressed together, and a heartbeat later they were thrusting inside the tight, clenched depths of her vagina.

She went to her toes. The pleasure was so extreme, so intense, a cry tore from her lips.

He didn't stop. His fingers moved fast, hard, thrusting inside her, fucking into her with smooth, sure strokes and throwing her over the edge of completion.

Rachel clamped her thighs on his hand, her entire body tightening as ecstasy raced through her body over and over again. She didn't want it to stop. She wanted to feel this forever. She wanted to lock the sensations inside her and never let them go.

"I love feeling you come for me." His voice was barely recognizable now. "The way your pussy clenches on my fingers, sucks at them. I would die to feel it around my dick, sucking me in, pulling my release from me."

His fingers were still buried inside her, locking her into the pleasure swirling through her as it slowly, so very slowly and yet too quickly, began to ease inside her.

"I have to get away from you." He kissed her shoulder gently. "If I don't, Rachel, one day, my control will snap. The animal that wants nothing more than the promise of what it knows belongs to it will accept nothing less. I'm not just a man, baby. I'm a Breed. Animal and man, and the animal isn't nearly as patient as the man wishes he were."

He was going to break behind her, his body was drawn so tight.

"It hurts," she whispered. "Ely said it hurts."

"Ely has a big mouth." He drew his fingers from her, released her slowly.

A second later, Rachel opened her eyes, stared up at him and watched as his gaze held hers while he tasted the fingers that glistened with her juices.

His silver eyes turned nearly colorless. His face tightened until his cheekbones seemed to push against his flesh, his lips tightening, his brows lowering.

The animal was there, close to the skin, fighting to be free as he tasted the release that had poured from her body.

"If you need anything, Harmony will be here for a while." He pulled from her as though he had to force himself to do so.

Then he was gone.

He didn't go to his office. He left the cabin entirely. The door slammed behind him, something that had only happened once before in all the months she had known him. Jonas didn't make noise, until now. And he'd nearly slammed the door off its hinges.

Stumbling to the bathroom, Rachel cleaned herself, repaired her clothing, then stared at the woman gazing back at her from the mirror.

Who was she?

She touched her perspiration-damp hair back from her face and stared at the stranger she had suddenly become. The stranger who was suddenly wondering what in the hell she was allowing to happen here.

She shook her head. Jonas wouldn't be gone long, and she knew it. She rather doubted he would make it to D.C., despite his claim to be heading there.

He was too protective. He had claimed her, even without the mating. She was his mate, despite the fact that he hadn't possessed her.

He wouldn't leave without her, and he had no intentions of risking her by taking her and Amber from Sanctuary until he managed to capture Brandenmore.

Moving back to her desk, she sat down and stared at the computer. They needed information against Racert. Something that would force him to back off and to stop his attempts to destroy the Breeds.

She pulled up her email, located an address and typed in the message she knew would produce results.

Racert is a threat. Diana would know what she meant, and she would know what to do. If there was information to find, then Diana would find it. If there was a weapon they could use against the senator, then her sister would ensure that Rachel had it.

Rachel had never asked Diana to help her. The one time she had tried, her sister had been impossible to locate. Diana had sworn she would make up for it. That all Rachel had to do was ask.

She would have never asked for herself.

For this, for Jonas, for Merinus, for the Breeds who now stood between her and whatever plans Brandenmore had had in store for her and Amber, she would make the request.

Jonas strode into the estate house and moved directly to the labs below and Ely's office.

Pushing into her office, he watched as she lifted her attention from the samples she was studying, her gaze clearing as she watched him enter the room.

"Damn, she's killing you." She moved back from the bio-scope, a computerized biological scanning machine that she used to detect anomalies in Breed fluid samples, and crossed her arms over her breasts as she glared at him. "You touched her again, didn't you?"

"Give me a break, Ely," he growled before staring around the room. "Where the fuck is Jackal?"

He'd assigned Jackal to her security months ago. The other man was only to leave her side in the most extreme emergencies.

"The man has to sleep sometime, Jonas." She rolled her eyes at the question. "He has someone else on duty outside." She waved her hand to the door. "I don't want them in here."

She had been endangered. The protection he'd arranged for her hadn't been good enough; her assistants had nearly killed her, slowly poisoning her body and her mind in their attempts to betray the Breeds. It had nearly destroyed her.

He sat down gingerly on the stool she pushed toward him. He felt as though he had been through a war. Hell, he'd been through wars and hadn't hurt so damned much.

His cock throbbed worse than any bullet he'd ever taken; his flesh was so sensitive that the air around him was painful. This mating shit was about to kill him.

He held his arm out to Ely.

She shook her head. "More samples aren't going to help, Jonas. It's only going to show the same thing. The hormone is getting stronger. There's nothing I can find to stop it."

"Something's happening to me, Ely." He shook his head. "I haven't slept in days, and it's not just the arousal. I can't keep my claws sheathed." He showed her the deadly sharp claws, which had retracted beneath his nails. "My incisors ache and the barb is trying to emerge without sex. This is killing me."

Picking up the pressure extractor, the slender, wandlike needleless instrument used to take blood, she pressed it to his vein. The flesh was so tough from the tension inside him that nothing filled the vial.

"I'm going to have to use the needle." She sighed as worry filled her expression. "I've never had to use a needle on a Breed before, Jonas."

Moving to a cabinet, she pulled a sterile needle and vial from the supplies stored there and moved back to him.

Minutes later, two vials filled, she returned with a swab.

Jonas opened his mouth, grimacing at the swollen condition of the glands beneath his tongue as she swiped the swab over them, producing a heated ache as the hormone pulsed from overly filled glands.

"Kane didn't have these symptoms, but he's not a Breed," she stated as she began to make notes on the electronic pad she pulled from another counter. "Your genetic and biological makeup is so different from other Breeds that I don't know how to help you."

He was in agony. He was so close to losing control of the animal pushing at his mind that he could barely function now.

"I have to leave," he growled. "I'm going to end up raping her, Ely."

Ely turned back to him, sympathy and aching affection reflecting in her gaze now.

"I need samples from her," she told him. "The only chance I have at developing anything to help you will have to come from her."

"No." He had been refusing that idea since bringing her to Sanctuary. "I don't want this for her. I don't want her to see this part of the mating, Ely. The constant tests, the embarrassment of them. Hell, she's wary enough as it is."

He ran his hand over the back of his neck and fought to hold on to the furious lust raging through him. It was worse than feral fever, and he should know--he'd been there, done that.

"She's destroying you." There was an edge of anger brewing in Ely now.

Jonas shook his head, forcing himself to stand. "Do you need semen samples?"

She breathed out roughly. "Can you produce any?"

It hadn't happened yesterday. He hadn't been able to masturbate, to find release. Nothing worked, and he'd been trying for days.

"Is there any other way to get them?" Hell, he'd try for the needle if he had to. Anything to help Ely find a way to ease the agony washing through him in fiery waves.

"There's no other way, Jonas." She shook her head. "I need the semen samples. The blood and saliva isn't enough."

He grimaced, feeling the tightness of his expression as he tried to think of a solution.

"What about Amburg?" he asked. "Does he have any ideas?"

"Amburg always has ideas," she snorted rudely. "Unfortunately, he hasn't come up with anything to help with this."

Jeffrey Amburg was strange as hell, but if he said he had no solution to this problem, then he had none. He was a master geneticist, a third-generation Genetics Council scientist, and once considered the scourge of the Breed labs. He lived for his research and for his granddaughter. Nothing else mattered to the man. When Jonas had extended the option of living and serving the Breeds versus dying, Jeffrey had actually smiled.

Seeing the evolution of the Breeds, even if he couldn't share it outside of Ely and Elizabeth, was worth more than gold to the man. It was almost worth more than his granddaughter's life at times.

"Looks like I'm screwed then," he grunted as he headed to the door. "Let me know if you figure anything out."

"Jonas." She stopped him as he gripped the doorknob.

"Yeah, Ely?" He was certain he didn't want to hear whatever she was getting ready to say to him. There were times when she was a little too honest.

"Kiss her."

Jonas clenched his teeth at the overwhelming urge to do just that. He'd nearly taken the choice out of her hands earlier. The only thing that had saved her was the fact that he had managed to keep her back to him.

And still, he'd nearly kissed her. When her head had lifted back, when she had watched him taste the sweetness of her pussy, he'd almost taken her lips and spilled the hormone into a kiss that he knew would have burned them both alive.

"Let me know what you find out after you've finished with the tests." He opened the door.

"You're going to let her destroy you," she stated, her voice painfully low. "If she does that, Jonas, then she will destroy all of us."

Jonas shook his head. "No one is indispensible, Ely, even me. I've ensured that."

"You think you have," she said, her voice trembling. "But you haven't, Jonas. What you do, no one else can."

He almost laughed at the statement. "Ely, every Breed alive can manipulate and calculate until hell freezes over. Brim, Del Rey, Callan, Wolfe, any of them could do what I do and not cause nearly as much trouble doing it. You're just prejudiced because I don't let you sit around and feel sorry for yourself when others do."

He teased her. He refused to let her sink into despair of the lapse she'd had when the drugs spreading through her system had eroded her judgment.

Ely was a fragile little thing, despite her facade of strength. She had seen too much in the labs at too young an age, had been forced to harm too many Breeds while there. She lived with the nightmares of those years, and now she lived with the nightmare of nearly being forced to do it again.

"No, you don't allow me to feel sorry for myself," she agreed quietly. "But I should stand aside and watch you allow this woman to destroy you. Would you do the same, I wonder, if the tables were turned?"

He pursed his lips and stared back at her for long moments before saying, "I've been allowing it, little cat. Do you think I haven't figured out who your mate is, and that you know it as well?"

She blanched, her brown eyes skittering away from him as fear flashed across her face.

"Do something about it soon," he warned her.

"As you are?" she shot back, anger filling her voice now.

"I think I'd try a different venue there if I were you," he retorted as he left the office. "A far different one. Kiss him. I really don't think he'd object."

Closing the door behind him, he moved through the hall, back to the flight of stairs that led to the main level of the house.

He was trying to force himself to leave Sanctuary. Leaving was the best thing he could do for Rachel. If he didn't get the hell away from her, then he was going to end up taking this decision out of her hands.

"Jonas." Mordecai met him in the hall as he reached the main level, his expression hard. Several Enforcers followed him.

"What now?" he growled, sensing the trouble that was sure to follow.

"You have a problem."

It wasn't "we," as in the Breeds had a problem; it was "he," as in shit was about to hit the fan.

"And that problem is?" He propped his hands on his hips and regarded the Enforcers with a frown.

"Devon Marshal," Mordecai sneered. "He claims he's the father of Rachel's child. He's at the gates with his lawyer as well as a county official. They have papers signed by a judge out of D.C. demanding Amber be relinquished to Child Protective Services until the matter of custody can be resolved. The papers state Amber's safety is in danger due to Breed carelessness." Mordecai slapped the file into Jonas's hands. "I don't know about you, but I say we shoot the fuckers, bury the bodies and deny they were ever here. Because trust me, you don't want to turn that baby over to him."

Jonas stilled.

He was aware of the Enforcers backing away, even Mordecai, and glancing at each other as though uncertain about even their own safety.

Jonas grinned. He knew it must have been a frightening sight; the scent of nervousness began to pour from the three Enforcers, who watched him with varying expressions of concern.

"Well, then, Mordecai, perhaps you should appraise Callan, Kane, the Leo, of course, and the rest of the Pride that we're about to have a burial. I'll see you outside when you've finished."

With that, he moved toward the main doors, distantly aware of the growls vibrating in his throat and the rage tearing through his body.

Devon Marshal was a dead man.