Navarro's Promise

CHAPTER 7

Navarro sat on the steel gurney, the thin padding that cushioned the cold metal doing little to obliterate the reminder of the same gurneys once used at the Genetics Council labs. The only exception was the fact that the Council hadn’t bothered to pad the steel, or to hang around the labs the bright, childish drawings that Ely had hung on the partitions surrounding her examination area.

He was wrong, the only real resemblance to the labs was the steel gurneys, but that was more than enough. Any reminder of those hellholes was too much for even those Breeds who hadn’t suffered the full measure of the scientists’, trainers’ and guards’ brutality.

The one he had been created in, high in the Andes Mountains, had been one of the worst.

His jaw tightened. Deliberately, he tried to push those memories behind him and focus on now and the question of mating heat.

He dressed once again, blood samples, saliva and semen having been collected, as well as skin and hair scrapings, which contained the minute, all but invisible silken body hair Breeds possessed.

In the thirteen years since Callan Lyons had stood before reporters, his mate Merinus at his side, and revealed the secret experiments that had been going on for more than a century in the creation of the Breeds, mating heat had become an imperative secret.

“Let me get your blood pressure, pulse and a few other readings and we’ll be finished,” Ely promised as she came toward him, her assistant pushing a lab cart behind her.

He remained still and silent, forcing himself to relax, to accept the electrodes on his chest, at his temples and his back. To hold out his arm for the pressure cuff, and his finger for the heart rate monitor.

“What happened to the simple stuff? Blood, saliva and semen?” He stared down at the cuff, resigned to the fact that to get the answers he wanted, he would have to deal with it. He didn’t have to like it. He didn’t have to like the memories the tests evoked, but he’d been trained to endure them.

Ely gave a muttered little snort, a sound filled with both frustration as well as resignation. “Evidently you haven’t been paying attention to your friends in the past few years, Navarro.”

Oh, he had, he just hadn’t wanted to admit what he was seeing.

His brow arched as though he was still unaware of that was going on. As though he was going to convince her he’d been living under a rock? It wasn’t going to happen.

Her head lifted, her brown eyes so confidently knowing he almost grinned. She knew he knew, but he wanted confirmation.

All amused knowledge and irritation aside, he knew what they’d learned in the Andes, knew what he’d read in the files that had been stolen from the labs during the rescues. And he knew that the signs of mating heat from then to now were far different.

“Mating heat is changing,” Ely finally revealed, her lips thinning as a hint of fear flashed in her dark brown eyes. “It’s becoming very unreliable in its symptoms and progression, as well as its reactions from couple to couple. I don’t know what we’re looking at anymore, Navarro.”

He could hear the hint of weariness, a fear for the future, and a sense of failure in her words.

“Have you managed to decode any of the files we sent from Haven?” In those files were years of research the Council scientists had done on mating heat at the Omega lab. The Omega Research Project had been a fully funded, closely watched project researching the mating heat phenomena that the scientists had been unable to grasp.

The aging delay, the higher human immunity and the strengthening of both body and senses of the human mate had fascinated the scientists, and pushed them to greater heights of depravity and pain than Navarro had seen before, or since. But what had especially fascinated them had been the rare times that they’d seen diseases disappear after a mating. The most notable, and the one that had infuriated the Council the most, had been the young scientist that had escaped with her Coyote mate. The scientist had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just weeks before. The members of the Genetics Council had been desperate to find them and to learn what drove the mating heat, as well as the anomalies that went with it.

“Bits and pieces. We’ve decoded nothing significant from them, but the files Storme Montague gave us are also giving us nightmares.” Ely recorded the readings on blood pressure, heart rate and whatever the hell the electrodes were on his flesh for.

She was trying to avoid the memory of whatever those files had revealed. He’d seen it in Styx Mackenzie several weeks before, when Navarro had come to Sanctuary before heading to New York, just as he’d seen it in both Jonas’s and Callan’s gazes.

There was something in those files that had left a portal of dark fury raging in each of them, and Navarro knew exactly what it was: Breed mating heat research and the mated couples who had been tortured so severely, so horrendously, that even though they couldn’t hear them, every Breed in those labs had sensed them, and raged inside for them.

Navarro stared across the room, ignoring Ely and the quiet assistant working with her as he once again pushed back those memories. He’d been a part of those labs. He’d sensed more than just their rage, their pain. He’d sensed that soul-deep darkness of an inner insanity that came with being unable to stop the destruction of their mate.

“Jenny, could you put a rush on those tests for me?” Ely asked, her tone more reserved as she spoke to the assistant. Suspicious. Ely would never be able to drop her suspicion of anyone who worked with her now.

How she had found the courage to choose another assistant after what the two the year before had attempted to do to her, he wasn’t certain. They had nearly killed her, secretly drugged her, forced her to unwittingly do things she would have never done otherwise and nearly destroyed her mind.

She was stronger than he was. She had a new assistant; Navarro had yet to settle in one place, or to make more of a commitment than it took to remain at the Bureau of Breed Affairs as an enforcer.

He stayed on the move, never really making friends, never allowing himself to acquire anything permanent. It was better that way. It kept the memories at bay, as well as the knowledge that he had failed the most important task of his life.

He’d once been a pack leader. More than a dozen Wolf Breeds and a few Coyote Breed trainers who had secretly turned against the scientists at the Omega lab had been a part of his pack.

He had worked tirelessly, commanded with confidence and strength, and in the end, he had lost the two most valuable members of his pack. He’d lost the very ones he and his pack had fought so hard to protect. He’d lost the couple that had secretly mated beneath the scientist’s noses, and their unborn child.

It was a failure he was unable to forgive himself for, and something he’d been unable to forget.

“Perhaps you could give us a bit of your time to help decode some of the files while you’re stuck here,” Ely finally suggested as the last of the electrodes were removed. “You knew those scientists better than anyone, as well as their codes.”

“No one knew those bastards, and their codes are a bitch. I’ve been studying some of them for years and I still can’t make sense of them.” Moving from the gurney, Navarro jerked his shirt from the end of the steel medical bed and pulled it on with restrained violence.

He could see Ely from the corner of his eye, her head tilting curiously to the side as she watched him.

“You’re not as calm as you’ve always been. You seem moody, on the edge of violence, and restless. Those aren’t Wolf Breed traits.”

“They’re human traits. I was created to be human, remember?” But the growl brewing in his chest was far from human. “Look, Ely, I’m ready to get the hell out of here—”

“And find Mica?”

He stared back at her silently.

“Her father and Dash are very close friends, aren’t they, Navarro? They’re loyal to each other. If you mate her, if he learns you’ve touched her, Dash Sinclair won’t be pleased.”

“Mike Toler might not understand, but Dash is well aware that nothing can change mating heat. Besides, I don’t live my life to suit Dash Sinclair, or his friends.”

“Would you live it to suit Mica Toler?” A questioning slant tilted her brows.

Navarro buttoned the shirt slowly before loosening his jeans, tucking the shirt in and neatly refastening the denim material. When he was finished, the fine cotton shirt and well-worn denim felt as comfortable against his flesh as the silk he’d worn at other times.

“What’s your point, Ely?” he finally asked, knowing she wouldn’t let it go, she wouldn’t stop harping at him until she got whatever warning was itching her ass out of her system.

“Human’s aren’t the only ones who rely on a system of politics,” she finally stated. “We have our own system of hierarchies, loyalties and understandings. Do you truly want to risk Dash Sinclair’s displeasure for a woman that is not your mate? He wouldn’t understand you touching her for any other reason but a mating.”

And this was between him and Dash Sinclair. Ely had no say in it either way.

“Do you really want to risk my displeasure by continuing to poke your nose into my affairs?” he grunted testily.

“You seem to be forgetting there are still unwritten rules among the pride as well as the packs,” she snapped back at him, the challenge in her tone raising his hackles just enough to piss him off. “Just because we’re no longer in the labs doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a certain code we live by, Navarro. Dash is still your superior—”

“None but Wolfe could make such a claim. Make no mistake, Ely, Dash Sinclair is not my superior, but even more important, neither are you. Hierarchies and politics be damned, Dr. Morrey. I’d highly suggest you pull back.” Savage and echoing with strength, his voice may have been low, but Ely recognized the latent command in it if the flicker of her gaze was any indication. Just as Navarro recognized the sudden guarded distance she instantly placed between them as her assistant scurried away.

Hell.

He was forced to restrain a curse. He could feel a growl tearing at his throat to be free, and at the moment, losing the hold he had on it could be more detrimental to his temper than Dr. Morrey could even begin to guess.

Ely’s lips thinned, but the angry defiance in her expression and in her eyes eased away, allowing the primal instinct to suppress it to ease back into a relatively guarded position.

Where the hell had that come from? He hadn’t felt such an overwhelming need to reinforce his own command since he had been in the labs and he’d been called commander rather than enforcer.

“I’ll be at the main house when the tests are completed.” Staying here wasn’t happening.

“Just because you’re a Breed male doesn’t mean you have to display your arrogance and sense of worth like a damned banner, Navarro. You are still just an enforcer.” Exasperation rather than anger filled her tone, but still, the words she used, and the insult behind them, set his teeth on edge.

He stopped in front of her slowly, his head lowering. Just because the confrontation in her tone had disappeared didn’t mean her disrespect had.

He knew the moment she caught the scent of the fury raging inside him.

Her eyes widened as she swallowed tightly, the knowledge of his strength as well as her own lack of judgment flickering in her gaze.

“Never speak to me in such a way again.” The growl definitely escaped. “I am not one of your pets here to plead for your help, nor will I ever be. I am not a Breed that you can speak to with such disrespect and expect that the memory and/or the guilt of what happened to you in these labs last year would convince me to allow you to take such liberties. I may no longer carry the title of commander, or of pack leader, but what you should well remember, Dr. Morrey, is that dropping those titles was by my choice, and there isn’t a Breed alive that would have dared to attempt to force it from me.”

Navarro turned sharply on his heel and stalked to the exit, the flames of such hidden anger building in that dark, icy pit he normally kept them locked within. He couldn’t afford to lose the precarious control he had been holding on to since the moment he’d realized the danger Mica was in.

Activating the earbud communication device he wore, he snapped the code in for the locks that automatically slid into place each time the door closed.

This time, the locks slid free, allowing Navarro to jerk the door open and stalk through it before easing the heavy steel panel closed behind him.

Hell, ever since that bastard Brandenmore had managed to bribe two Breed physician’s assistants to drug and betray Ely, she had had this attitude. She was changing before their eyes, and Navarro knew it greatly worried every Breed that called Sanctuary home.

They had hoped that once she came out of the padded cells that Jonas had been forced to lock her within for her own protection, she would heal. She had been so damned moody and confrontational, though, that even Jonas was having problems with her now. And normally, Jonas was the one person Ely refused to get angry with.

The subject of mating Mica seemed to be a particularly sore one with her, however. Ely seemed insistent on locking mating heat back into the parameters it had once existed within. The fact that nature was dictating its metamorphosis, rather than Ely predicting it, seemed to be throwing her off her game.

Navarro had warned Wolfe it would happen.

He had warned Callan and Merinus it would happen, and no one seemed to want to hear him. He had watched and listened as the scientists at Omega had fought with the conflicting and often confusing phenomena for years.

He knew just enough about it to get himself into trouble as the old saying went. Because he was damned sure nature wasn’t finished playing with them yet.

What he did have was more than twenty years in the Omega lab, watching, listening, waiting. He’d spent his time there wisely once he’d matured into adulthood. He’d worked, along with his men, to contact those who could help them, who could provide the needed backup for escape. He’d gathered information, stolen as many files as possible, and fought to help those who mated within his own pack, of which thankfully there were few, to escape.

And through those years he’d listened to the agonized screams of those suffering the research that merciless scientists had conducted without guilt or compassion. Because he hadn’t been able to help those that the Council brought in from other labs. There hadn’t been a damned thing he could do to rescue them or to ease their plight.

He’d done whatever was possible to save those men and women he could, who were a part of the group he commanded. In the year before the rescues, the entire team had fought to protect one too small young woman and Navarro’s second in command, the brother whose blood he shared. Nothing had mattered but hiding the truth of what had happened from the scientists, trainers and Coyote jailors.

He’d raised the girl, and his brother—

For a brief second his eyes closed in agony. He’d raised his brother alongside her, and now both were gone.

Opening his eyes, Navarro punched the button for entry to the secured elevator and waited until control identified him and the doors slid open slowly.

Stepping inside, he clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, suddenly so fucking impatient to find Mica he could barely stand it.

He got like this whenever she was around.

He knew when she arrived at Haven, whether he was told or not. It was as though his body became too sensitive, too aware of her. His response to her had always been confusing, uncertain. Even as a woman/child Mica had had an effect on him that had made him highly uncomfortable. An effect no woman could inspire.

It was the reason he had stayed away from Haven as much as possible, and the reason why he tried to remain indifferent now. When a man realized what he was doing to a woman as gentle as Mica, then it was time to fix it. Or it was time to mate her. And for whatever reason, the remnants of the animal inside him hadn’t made the move to claim, and to mark, her as his alone.

Not that he wanted a mate, he assured himself as the elevator dropped him off on the second floor, just around the corner from Mica’s suite. He hadn’t gone out looking for what other Breeds considered the only consolation to be found for the suffering they’d endured.

And perhaps he even understood it now, because when he was with Mica, a part of him seemed to ease, to find a small measure of peace.

Mating heat. As Ely had said, it was changing, becoming harder to detect, harder to match and harder to treat the females with the hormonal therapy that had been created by the doctor that had helped Callan’s pride survive outside the labs all those years.

And Navarro couldn’t say that what he was beginning to sense himself wasn’t mating heat, because she drew him as no other woman ever had.

And she was there, waiting for him.

He’d wondered if she would be.

She had friends in Sanctuary. She could have been anywhere on the property if she wished.

But she was waiting on him.

His stride slowed until he was pausing at the corner before turning up the hallway.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t have a choice. The soft, subtle scent of her, heated and sweet, sent pure silken hunger piercing his senses and hardening his dick in a split second.

He rubbed his tongue against his teeth as he checked the glands beneath his tongue quickly once again.

The mating hormone that all Breed mates created instilled a hunger, a need for the taste, the touch, the very presence of their mate until the time to conceive had passed. And even then, the need for that mate was high.

It never went away, he’d heard. That need was always fiery, an exquisite burn that wrapped a man in a pleasure so intense it bordered pain.

He didn’t imagine mating heat could be much worse than what he was feeling. His hunger for her, even before he had kissed her, was like a fever only building inside him.

Before he realized what he was doing, he moved around the corner of the elevator area and headed to her suite.

Within seconds he was opening the door and stepping into the sitting room, his gaze moving to her, watching as she stared back at him, that sizzling burn reflecting in the warm depth of her eyes.

The arousal that flushed her face and created that subtle sweet scent of a summer rainfall tempted him as nothing else ever had in his life. And she was still furious with him. Anger and arousal building and peaking.

When she had mentioned sucking his dick in that damned examination room, he had nearly lost his mind. Nothing but sinking into the tight, wet heat of her pussy could be better than fucking those pouty lips.

“I knew I should have locked the damned door,” she muttered as she uncurled herself from the low chair and rose to her feet. “You can leave the same way you entered.”

Dark blond hair fell down her back like a heavy silken ribbon, gold and caramel highlights mixing with softer and darker blonds, sifting together in a rich fall of silk that only nature could create.

“Are you okay?” His gaze jerked to hers, holding the rich, soft golden green color as she crossed her arms over her breasts and faced him with such endearing confrontation that the recessed animal that would normally blink and grow irritated, remained calm inside.

She was no threat to him. Not that Ely had been, but there were ways to counter Ely’s aggression that were far different than how he intended to counter Mica’s.

“No, Navarro, I’m not okay.” She was incensed and highly volatile, and he could practically smell the white-hot heat rolling from her.

“I will remind you I didn’t actually lie to you,” he pointed out, knowing exactly where this discussion was heading.

Pure disbelief filled the feminine little sneer that curled at her lips. “Navarro, do you really take me for a fool?”

Actually, he didn’t, but she didn’t seem inclined to believe him, so he merely watched, drawing in her scent with slow, even breaths to hide the fact that he was enjoying every damned second of the heated sweetness.

She fixed a level stare on him, the scorching look in her eyes almost searing his skin as she stared back at him.

Dressed in jeans, a soft, light gray sweater that fell loosely around her hips, and thick white socks on her feet, she looked as threatening as a kitten and so damned sexy he wanted nothing more than to push her against the wall and fuck her until she was screaming in release.

“I don’t like that look in your eyes.” Her hands went to her hips, her delicate little nostrils flared, and Navarro took a step forward before he could stop himself.

Mica took a step back.

Navarro couldn’t help but let a grin tug at the corner of his lips.

“And what is the look in my eyes?” he asked her. He had a pretty good idea.

“I’m not having sex with you.” Point-blank and without an ounce of the nervousness he knew she was feeling.

He couldn’t see it, he couldn’t smell it, much. There was a hint, a second here and there, but she had it covered damned well.

“Aren’t you?” If she didn’t have sex with him, then he was going to burn to cinders in the middle of her sitting room.

“No, I will not.”

Mica had to forcefully restrain the urge to tighten her thighs, to ease the ache in her clit. The delicious, heady burn there was pleasure and a grinding ache. The need to clench her thighs on it was nearly overwhelming.

And there he stood, the reason for it, so damned male, so damned confident. And all she wanted from him was a touch. His hand stroking her, his lips covering hers. Just one more time.

“You’re so self-conscious,” he said then, pulling her out of the almost inebriated state she had been sinking into at the thought of him touching her.

“You’re so crazy.” She stepped back again, wishing there was some way to keep him from detecting the smell of her arousal.

“Yes I am. You would be, Mica, if you had any idea how soft your scent is, like silk and roses. And just how fucking hot it makes me.”

Her knees went weak. Mica swore they went weak. They wanted to melt and take her right to the carpet beneath her feet.

“A strong breeze makes a Breed horny,” she said, scoffing, hating the fact that from what she’d seen, that was close to the truth. They were very highly sexed, and very highly sensual.

Their sex drive was hard and driven, and the men at least had no problem whatsoever going after what they wanted. And the way he was looking at her now? Oh yes, he definitely wanted.

He chuckled at that. A low, wicked sound that had her stomach clenching with a tight, hard punch of sensation. Damn him, she didn’t want to feel this. She didn’t want to ache like this. The implications were too strong, the hunger was becoming something she knew she should be wary of.

“I would say it takes slightly more than a hard breeze,” he murmured as he moved closer.

“And I would say you’re simply playing with me.” Dropping her hands from her hips, Mica moved away from him, keeping a wary eye on him as she stepped back. “You know there’s nothing to this, Navarro. This isn’t a mating.”

And she should be happy about that. She was happy about that, she assured herself as she watched him carefully.

“Does it have to be a damned mating?” That flash of irritability was unusual enough in him that Mica’s gaze sharpened on the pitch-black of his gaze, watching the glimmer of something in those dark centers as he stepped forward again. “I’m sick of hearing about a mating, Mica. It doesn’t have to be a mating to make a man want a woman until his dick is spike hard and his balls torturously tight. Does that feel like I’m playing with you?”

His hand moved to the belt of his jeans, jerked it loose, and within seconds he was toeing off the ankle boots he wore and sliding the denim from his body.

Unashamed. She had always known he would never be the least uncomfortable, or the least defensive, in baring his body.

And why should he be? Hard muscle, corded strength, and the thick, so thick, heavily veined, engorged flesh of his cock spearing out before him as he quickly unbuttoned and shed the white shirt he wore.

Naked, powerful. He was the quintessential male animal, literally. Dark-skinned, as though he had lived his life in the sun, the golden sheen giving the hard muscle beneath a rippling effect as he moved.

Like the dark, powerful Wolf he shared his genetics with, he moved with predatory grace and primal sexuality. Intent glowed in his black eyes and transformed his expression from wickedly sensual to completely sexually dominant. And it should have terrified her.

It had her pussy creaming, her nipples hardening, her womb contracting with a hard, sensual spasm that shouldn’t have felt so damned good.

Before she could have moved, even if she had wanted to, before she could have avoided him, he crossed the distance and caught her wrist. She couldn’t avoid him; there was no way to guess his intentions until she found her palm cupping the tight sac of his balls. Heated, the silken, tiny hairs that covered the flesh gave it a sensual rasp against her palms.

Weak. Yep, her knees went weak; she might have actually lost her breath as her head jerked back to stare up at him.

She couldn’t break away, and she tried. She tried to force her fingers from the intimate position, but instead they curled against the heavy weight, testing, cupping as she fought to hold back a pleasure-filled moan.

“Does that feel like a game, Mica?” His head lowered, his lips brushing against her ear as he spoke. “Feel how hard you make me? Do you know I can’t remember ever being this damned hard in my life.”

The feel of his breath against the sensitive shell of her ear, the lightest brush of his lips, and she swore her juices were ready to pour from her pussy.

“Don’t do this to me.” She hated the thought of begging, she really did. “Don’t hurt me like this, Navarro.”

She was going to pray he had a conscience, that the plea, whispered with a voice roughened by the hunger tearing through her, would force him to back off.

“I would never hurt you,” he promised as his lips nuzzled against her ear, the hand lying over her fingers urging her to caress the sensitive flesh as he sent electric thrills of pleasure chasing from the lobe of her ear across her body.

Her nipples hardened to the point that the rasp of her bra over them was an exquisite ache of pleasure. She was ready to clench her thighs, her muscles were tensing in preparation, when he suddenly pushed the heavy width of his thigh between her legs, as one hand cupped her bottom and pulled her closer, tighter against the muscular limb.

“You’re not protesting anymore, Amaya.” Both hands gripped her rear; they clenched, then with a smooth, powerful motion began grinding her against his thigh, pushing her pussy against her jeans, her clit rasping against the material as the heavy muscles pressed firmly against the swollen folds.

Protest? She was actually supposed to protest this? Oh God, she knew she was supposed to protest it, but she wasn’t exactly certain why. She couldn’t seem to remember how he was supposed to hurt her.

Her head fell back as he pulled her closer, lifting her against him until her legs wrapped around his hips and she began to tremble in reaction.

Yeah, that was it.

Thick, so thick and hard, his cock pressed against her jeans, between her thighs. The engorged Wolf Breed cock, wide and powerful, a heated wedge of flesh that she had heard from some of the women in Haven stretched them with such delicious pain it bordered on agony. She could clearly see why. Feel why. She shivered at the prospect of taking him.

“I need you, Mica.” Dark, a rough rasp of hunger against her ear, his voice stroked over her senses. “Do you remember how good it was, Amaya, at the hotel? How it hurt to stop?”

Of course she remembered. She would never forget.

“It could be that way again.” He was moving. He was moving her, though she wasn’t certain where until she felt her rear meet the hard, smooth wood of the buffet that sat at the side of the room.

“The bedroom,” she whispered, forcing her eyes open to stare back at him, almost gasping at the sight of the Breed now standing between her spread thighs.

His face was tight, savage with lust; his black eyes gleamed like polished onyx and glowed with a hidden fire. Jaw clenched, his hands gripping her hips, his hair falling around his face, he looked like a sex god rising before her.

And she wanted him. She wanted him until her entire body felt on fire.

She swallowed tightly. “Is it the heat?” Mating heat. Was he her mate and their bodies just hadn’t quite caught up yet?

“Not heat.” His hands gripped the hem of her sweater.

Mica didn’t fight. She couldn’t fight.

God, he hadn’t even kissed her yet.

Lifting her arms, she let him draw the light cashmere from her body before he tossed it carelessly to the floor beside them. Next, he flicked open the front clasp of her bra, drew it from her and tossed it to the floor as well.

Licking her lips, Mica told herself she wasn’t disappointed.

“You’ll break my heart.” She could already feel the grief beginning to churn inside her. “When you leave me, when you find your mate—”

And those were the last words he allowed her.