Navarro's Promise

CHAPTER 10

Navarro stared down at her, wondering if she knew how the walls around her emotions were slipping. There had been a time when he couldn’t have cracked those walls in any way. When she could have tucked those emotions so far out of sight that he wouldn’t have had a chance of scenting them.

The intriguing mix of subtle scents that emanated from Mica were like an ambrosia to him. Even the scent of her disappointment, her anger and her emotional pain were slight enough that they only blended with those of heated rosemary, a field of wildflowers, a hint of brown sugar. All the sweet, soft scents of the compassionate, honest woman she was. Scents of her arousal, and a hunger that went far beyond the physical, were like a soft, sweet hint of a coming day.

She wanted more than the physical pleasure that came with the mating heat. The hunger that raged inside her was for far more than just the sex.

Mica wanted love, commitment. She wanted a man whose affection would warm more than just her body. And he’d sworn long ago he’d never let himself step into the treacherous waters of emotion.

Even for his mate.

“I would run if I could,” she finally answered. “You ensured that wasn’t possible when you mated me.”

He cupped the side of her face with his palm, amazed at the silky softness of her skin even as a twinge of amusement filtered through the arousal, and the irritation with that arousal, and had him restraining the tug of a grin that would have pulled at his lips.

“I could say the mating was more your fault,” he stated. “I wasn’t having a problem with any other woman until you.”

“That is such a screwed argument.” The dark frown she angled up at him was accompanied by the disbelief that glittered in her gaze. “Only a Breed would say something so asinine. Sorry, Navarro, but only Breeds have the ability to mate. That cancels me out.”

She had him there. But he noticed the confrontation was increasing that hint of a summer rain as her pussy grew wetter, hotter.

The remembered taste of that soft flesh had the glands beneath his tongue swelling further, the mating hormone spilling to his mouth in increments as he fought the need to kiss her.

Not yet. He wasn’t ready yet.

“Amaya, you are never canceled out,” he assured her. “I believe perhaps it’s a two-way street if we’re placing blame. Because as I understand it, only you could have awakened that ability within me.”

“Go ahead, pawn the blame off.” Her hands flattened against his stomach above the silk of his shirt. “You’re good at that Navarro. I’ve noticed you never take the blame for anything.”

“But, Amaya, there’s so many so very capable of taking the blame,” he drawled.

Amaya. Night rain. This was what she reminded him of. A soft, sultry summer night’s rain. Soft, warm, caressing. Stroking not just the flesh but also the senses.

“I’m not one of them.” Her lashes drifted over her eyes as her expression softened and her face flushed with the pleasure rising inside her.

Stroking his fingertips down her neck, he came to the loose neckline of the sweater and hated the clothing covering her nakedness from him.

He wanted her here, and he wanted her now.

“I followed you when you left the house,” he told her. “As you walked here, I could smell the sweetest hint of summer in the air.”

The rush of dampness between her thighs teased his senses.

“That’s enough,” she whispered. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me ache like this, Navarro.”

“Should I ache alone then?” Trailing his fingers over her breast, down, he tracked a path to the hem of her sweater as he watched the rise and fall of the soft mounds increase.

Pushing his hand beneath her sweater, he fought soft, feminine flesh.

He could take her here, he told himself. Turn her, press her to the trunk of the tree. He could push inside her and warm them both with the heat of her need.

Her pussy would milk him in, suck at the head of his dick until he found himself fully seated inside her.

The thought of it was enough to have his cock throbbing beneath his jeans. Or rather, throbbing harder. He’d never lost the hard-on he’d been packing before he fucked her earlier. Hell, he’d come like he was dying as he was locked inside her, and still the erection hadn’t abated.

“See, this is why Breeds were on my ‘no date’ list.” She was huffing with charming irritation. “You never pay attention.”

“I would pay more attention if you weren’t rubbing your pussy against my thigh, Amaya.”

Her eyes widened as surprise glittered in the golden green depths. Her hips paused; the sensual little motions she’d been making against his leg had been about to drive him insane. The heat of her pussy had been like a brand against his thigh. He missed the feel of it grinding against him and the invitation inherent in the motions.

She inhaled slowly, deeply, as his knees dipped, placing his cock against the juncture of her thighs as his hands gripped her hips, lifted her just enough and notched his cock against the sweet pad beneath her jeans.

“I could take your jeans down, lift you and let you ride me.” He swore his cock thickened impossibly at the very thought of it. “Or I could turn you and just ease your jeans to your thighs and take you from behind. Do you think, Mica, that the chill of the air would ease the heat that will burn inside us?”

He didn’t think it possible that anything could ease the heat torturing him at the moment, or the rain of liquid fire he knew was spilling between her thighs.

Her head fell back against the trunk, her breathing short and jerky as she stared back at him.

“I think this is a very bad idea,” she answered, her voice weak as his finger moved to the snap of her jeans.

“I’ve decided what I would prefer,” he told her as his head lowered to her lips, brushing against them, “I’d prefer to have you ride me, Amaya. To have your hot, snug pussy lifting and falling on my dick as you work yourself on it.”

His fingers moved to the snap and zipper of her jeans, releasing them as he allowed her to settle on her feet once again.

They were secure here in the shelter of the pine forest. No eyes could see, and the chances of anyone slipping up on them were next to zero.

He’d been seen following his mate, and Breed security would ensure they were protected. Not that he trusted anyone else with her life.

“Ah, Mica.” His hand slid into the opening of the fabric, pressing in to find the soft, swollen folds and saturated curls of her pussy.

With one hand he pushed the jeans down over her legs to her ankles, halting their journey as he wrapped his arm around her hips.

Lifting her, Navarro stared down at her, then he jerked her sweater above her breasts and guided her knees to his hips, as he released his cock and felt the engorged head pressing against the hot curves of her pussy.

“Ah fuck!” Heat surrounded the very tip of his cock, blazing, an inferno of lush, slick juice easing his way as he began to press inside her.

Turning, he braced his back against the tree and lowered his head to catch the ripe fullness of her nipple between his lips to suck. To draw the overly sensitive bud between his lips and tongue it erotically.

She shifted in his grip, the image of her face, delicate and flushed with need, imprinting into his brain as she began to work her pussy against the thick, heavy length of his cock pressed inside her.

There wasn’t enough foreplay, he knew there wasn’t. For some reason the seminal fluid that usually came with Wolf Breed matings, to ease the female mate’s clenched muscles, hadn’t developed. But still, he could feel her taking him. Her juices were thick and heavy, coating his cock and allowing her to work it inside her as a tremulous cry pierced the silence of the trees surrounding them.

He was only barely aware of the snow that had begun to fall outside the stand of pine. A thick, heavy fall of fluffy white enclosed them in their own wonderland, one of sensuality and erotic promise.

Her hands clawed at his chest as she tried to get closer, her cry turning to a heavy, hungry moan as she moved against him.

His lips surrounded her nipple, sucking at it, drawing her deeper into his mouth as his tongue lashed at the tender peak.

Navarro could hear his own growls rumbling in his chest as he pierced and parted the tender flesh of her pussy with his cock, separating the clenched tissue and easing forward as she worked her hips against him, slowly, with peaking pleasure. He was forced to pull his head back from the tender nipple to clench his teeth in agonizing ecstasy.

“Ah fuck, sweet Mica,” he groaned, his hands gripping her ass, palming it, parting the delicate curves with greedy hands as he helped her move on him. “I could stay inside you forever, just feeling you fuck me like this, rising and falling against me.”

After that first, wild cry, she began to restrain the sounds, as though she were frightened of being heard.

Being heard was the least of her problems, but he allowed her the illusion, at least for now.

How could he not? Her nails were biting into his shoulders, her head thrown back in ecstasy, and she was giving him more pleasure than he had ever known in his life as he took her.

The desperation that filled her scented the air with a unique, delicate scent as it blended with the arousal and the varied emotions that raged through her. The unique scent it created was an aphrodisiac to his senses. It filled his head, made him high, made his dick harder, his heart race, his body dampen with perspiration as he fought to hold on to enough control to allow her to set this pace.

Until he could figure out why the seminal fluid wasn’t present, the slick, sensitizing, muscle-relaxing fluid that was ejected into the vagina from the tip of the Wolf Breed’s cock and eased the mate’s flesh for penetration. He couldn’t risk hurting her.

Wolf Breeds were taught from their first sexual instruction that the unique design of their cocks could be either an instrument of pleasure or one of pain.

And his Mica deserved nothing but pleasure. Nothing but the sweet cries of hunger that spilled from her lips as he felt the walls of her cunt grip and flex around the head of his dick as it penetrated her fully and began to make way for the heavy shaft.

Thick and pulsing, the heavy veins standing out in stark relief beneath the darkened flesh, his cock ached like a wound. It was all he could do to keep from taking over, to keep from taking her fully and pounding into her.

The need for just that was ripping through him as she’d barely taken two inches of the length.

“Navarro. Oh God. I need you. I need you so much,” she whispered, barely able to speak, let alone breathe as he finally slid inside her halfway, stretching her until she felt on fire, burning with the rippling pleasure surging through her.

She could feel her cunt flexing, rippling with need as instinct had the muscles rippling around him, sucking him in deeper as though desperate to milk every inch of his cock inside her.

“Take me, Mica,” he groaned against her, his head lowering as Mica stared unseeing at the canopy of evergreens above them.

She felt secure, so heated and warm. The engorged strength of his erection penetrated her by slow degrees as Navarro allowed her to take him at her leisure, at her pleasure.

His body strained, the tension evident in the corded strength of his muscles against her as she felt the wicked nip of his teeth against her shoulder, then a slow, erotic lick over the mark he had left on the flesh between her neck and shoulder earlier.

Each rasp of his tongue over the abrasion had her jerking in his hold, her hips writhing against the impalement of his cock as streaks of sensation whipped from the bite mark to her womb, clenching it violently.

Tension rose inside her. The need to feel him thrusting hard and deep inside her obliterated any other thought that may have threatened to penetrate the ecstatic pleasure surrounding her.

Whimpering with rising need, Mica fought the jeans at her ankles until one leg slipped over her ankle, pushing her shoe from her foot, allowing her to part her legs farther, to wrap them around his hips and find the position needed to allow her to take him more fully.

It was like climbing through flames to reach the explosive center of the sun. She was burning, on fire from a pleasure so intensive, so extreme it was nearly unbearable.

Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, using his hips as leverage, she lifted, rising along the stiff stalk as incoherent whimpers left her lips. His hands clenched on her ass, helping her lift as rapid-fire ecstasy began to throb in her womb, her clit.

Poised at the crest, Mica opened her eyes, her lips parting at the savage pleasure in Navarro’s expression. Black eyes narrowed and glittering with wild intensity, lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral grimace.

“Slow,” he growled as she fought against his hold, desperate to feel him shoving inside her, taking her with the fierce, hard strokes she was beginning to crave.

“No. Harder,” she demanded fiercely, but she was willing to beg.

A hard growl tore from his chest as his head jerked forward and lowered, his teeth biting into the shoulder he bared by stretching the loose neckline to the side.

Mica shuddered violently as she bore down on the heated erection piercing the entrance to her pussy. Pleasure raced through her like a wildfire fever. It pierced her womb, her clit, the sensations racing up her spine and spreading through her body with a rush of heat intense enough to steam the air around them.

Her pussy clenched on the engorged head of his cock, the width of it stretching her with a shock of fiery sensation that was both pleasure and pain.

Bit by bit, he allowed her more. Inch by inch, slipping inside her, as Mica felt her flesh giving beneath the iron-hard erection pushing into her.

She struggled against him, needing more, and needing it harder. She wanted those desperate hard thrusts that would send each surge of pleasure tearing across her nerve endings.

Crying out with the need, with the sensation of his teeth biting into her neck, his tongue laving the mark he had left earlier, Mica tightened the inner muscles of her pussy on the thick wedge of his cock as her hips writhed, her knees digging into his hard hips as she bore down, struggling against the hold he had on the cheeks of her ass.

She couldn’t have anticipated his next move. She couldn’t have guessed the sudden loss of control that would herald the hard, powerful thrust that buried him to the hilt.

A shock wave of ecstatic sensation raced up her spine and spasmed through her womb. Flames crackled over her flesh as electrical sensitivity raced through her veins.

She could feel his fingers on the cheeks of her rear, his palms cupping them, gripping them firmly as he began to move her in sync with the powerful rhythm of his hips.

Fierce, hard thrusts, deep and fiery, as he buried himself to the hilt before pulling back and thrusting deep again. Each powerful stroke stretched, burned, pushed pleasure to its limits, to the border that teased pain and amplified each sensation.

With her head thrown back, gasping for breath, Mica felt the tension rising, each fiery stroke pushing her higher, burning through her, clenching the muscles in her pussy, her womb, until she felt the pleasure implode with an explosive, furious detonation that dragged a strangled cry from her throat and arched her convulsively in his hold.

Within seconds, the fierce, rumbled growl tore from his chest and she felt the first spurt of his release jetting inside her. A second later, a low, delirious moan slipped from her lips as ecstasy built, rose and erupted into a harder, hotter orgasm that went through her system as his cock throbbed, swelled, and locked inside her with vicious pleasure.

His fingers clenched in her ass.

His body drew tight, his teeth tightened at her shoulder, a grating sound between a growl and a snarl vibrated against her flesh and heralded another, hard pulse of his release inside her. Another surge of explosive pleasure, the involuntary tightening of her inner muscles around the hard, throbbing knot locked inside her. Another pulse of his release and it began again.

Mica shuddered, trembled, a kaleidoscope of pleasure raging through her as she collapsed in his arms, gasping for air as each shudder, each hard contraction spilled a release of ecstasy to flood her senses.

Held against him, she fought against the need to lower the fragile barrier between pleasure and emotion, between the bonding of the flesh and the bonding of the soul.

Because only her soul would have reached out. Only her heart was bound it seemed.

“I won’t let you get away from me, Mica,” he whispered as he sat her on her feet, seconds before she watched in shock as he went to his knees in front of her.

Lifting her bared foot from the cold ground, Navarro drew her jeans leg back over her ankle before slowly, almost hesitantly, dressing her. After fixing the snap and zipping the jeans slowly, he knelt before her once more and held her leather running shoe to her foot as she pushed it on.

“I guess things could be worse,” he stated quietly as he stood to his full height, staring down at her. “We could have hated each other.”

Mica gave her head a hard shake.

“And how does that change the situation?” As far as she was concerned, it only made it worse.

It would have been easier, she thought, if she hated him. Then perhaps she would have found a way to deny him, to survive when she forced herself to walk away from him.

She wasn’t born to be a Breed’s mate and nothing more. And Navarro refused to love. She needed love, devotion, the qualities she had seen with her married friends, both human as well as Breed.

Her parents were a great example of the type of relationship Mica wanted for herself. Her mother shared with her father even the most mundane details. They were a couple, a unit, and the thought of settling for less had her heart clenching in dread.

Because with mating heat, she had no choice. She was forced to settle for what nature had given her. A mate that neither knew how to love nor wanted to learn.

“Are you okay?” Navarro could sense more coming from her than the scents of her alone.

Emotions were roiling inside her, but she was keeping them so tightly contained, so carefully hidden, that even with his advanced senses, he couldn’t define them.

It was a scent that was just almost there, a knowledge the animal inside him was awakening to yet hadn’t yet managed to decipher.

“I’m fine.” She swallowed tightly, averting her expression from him as she continued straightening her clothing. “I think you’re right though, it’s time I return to the house.”

To hide.

He knew what she was trying to do, what her uppermost desire at the moment was, now that the sexual needs had been sated. She just wanted to hide.

He had noticed that about her years before, when she was younger. Mica tended to hide whenever she was in Sanctuary. Though that had been wise of her in the past years; otherwise, this mating would have occurred long before now.

“I was going to invite you to go into town with me.” The words slipped from his lips before he could call them back, causing him to clench his teeth in self-disgust.

That was no way to place any distance between them, he told himself sourly.

She gave her head another hard shake, causing the dark blond strands of her hair to ripple around her. “Not today. I’ll just return to my room.”

“Our room.”

He could tell she didn’t think much of his comment, by the stiffening of her body and the frown that creased her forehead.

“I am not moving into your room.” Fiery stubbornness gleamed in her eyes now.

Navarro tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I assumed you would want to keep your bed. That’s the reason I had my belongings moved to your suite instead.”

He laid his fingers over her lips in warning as they parted, and for once, her scent was unmistakable. Pure feminine outrage.

“You can argue until hell freezes over,” he warned her, his tone darker than he would have liked, as though instinct were giving her the only response he was capable of. “But the plain and simple fact of the matter is that I’m not sleeping without my mate. You can deal with that however you like.”

Possessiveness wasn’t a part of him, he’d always assured himself. He was dominant. He knew what he wanted. But he’d learned long ago to never be possessive. It was far too easy to have what he thought belonged to him taken away.

Until now.

The possessiveness rose from within, surprising him with the fact that it had been so carefully hidden until now. She belonged to him, and he’d be damned if he’d allow her to hold herself back from him.

He couldn’t keep her, and he knew it.

But he also couldn’t let her go, couldn’t remain distant from her, no matter how hard he tried.

“We’ll see about this.” Lips thinned, teeth clenched, Mica swung away from him and began marching furiously down the incline that led from the pine thicket to the main house.

He let her go this time. Chasing after her would only incite both their tempers, and he knew exactly where that would lead. With his dick buried deep and hard inside the velvet heat of her pussy for the third time that day.

He grimaced, fixed his own clothing, then raked his fingers through his hair before moving back toward the main house himself.

He had work today. There were any number of projects that he should be working on while he was at Sanctuary. This wasn’t a vacation for him, though he clearly didn’t have his head where it should be in regards to his job.

A job he should have taken care of years before, he admitted, as he headed back to the labs and the files awaiting him on the horrors of the Omega Project. A project Phillip Brandenmore had funded and overseen.

The project that had killed Navarro’s brother, Randal, and the mate Randal had adored. The project that had inspired the vow Navarro had made to ensure Brandenmore died at his hand.

Ely moved among the equipment in the lab, her gaze studying with a frown the readings that came through, as the steel doors slid open and her personal irritant and bodyguard, Jackal, entered the room once again.

In his hands he carried a heavy tray filled with what was obviously lunch.

Her favorite.

Ham and cheese sandwiches made with the homemade bread Sanctuary’s cooks had prepared.

How amazing it had turned out to be that Breeds who were trained to kill, to stain their hands with blood, could also cook and bake with such perfection as to bring tears to the eye.

The sandwiches were piled high with ham, several different kinds of cheeses and with them were a variety of vegetables, along with roast beef, turkey and chicken luncheon slices.

Chips and pickles completed the meal along with frosted glasses of sweet, sweet iced tea.

Strong and muscular, Jackal should have looked out of place as he carried the tray of food dressed in his black heavy-metal-band T-shirt and worn jeans, his dark hair cut close to his scalp.

He didn’t though. She’d determined over the past years that nothing could make Jackal look out of place, and few things could make him feel out of place.

“How are the tests going?” he asked, his baritone voice a deep, almost Breed-like growl.

She gave a heavy sigh as she moved to the sink and washed her hands thoroughly before stepping over to the table and taking the seat he pulled out for her.

“That sigh isn’t exactly an answer,” he drawled, the Texas accent filled with concern.

“The tests aren’t exactly conclusive either,” she told him as she accepted the plate he lifted from the tray and set it in front of her. “It doesn’t matter how many tests I run, the final results remain inconclusive. There’s a mating, but they’re not mated.”

She hadn’t seen anything like it and still couldn’t make sense of it.

“You may have to explain that one to me, Ely.” He watched her expectantly as he bit into his sandwich with strong, white teeth.

“Who will explain it to me then?” she countered with the same frustration that had pricked at her for the past hours since beginning the tests.

“What’s the problem with the tests?” he probed further, obviously becoming impatient with her refusal to explain the situation.

She took another bite of the sandwich as she tried to figure out the best way to explain it.

“I’m not a moron, Ely,” he assured her, obviously reading her look, and he was very good at that actually.

“The tests are positive for mating,” she finally stated. “But I’ve never seen such weak results during an active mating. All the hormonal requirements are there, but they’re in such small quantities, that I wonder if Navarro couldn’t easily walk away from Mica without suffering for it. Once the hormone, weak as it is, reaches Mica’s system, it seems to grow stronger though.” She frowned again, still bothered by the hours she’d spent attempting to figure out the problem. “The test results are responding differently to different stimuli as well. Such as the weakened hormone, once introduced into Mica’s system, becoming stronger. The mating hormones in their blood are different, and in different levels than those in his semen and the natural lubrication in her vagina. Just as it was when we tested the saliva. But if I introduce other parameters to the tests, such as a variable of the hormones created during certain emotional responses, then the mating hormone in Navarro’s specimens explode.”

Jackal’s head tilted to the side as he frowned back at her questioningly. “It has to do with the emotional responses during mating heat then?”

Ely nodded again, chewing another bite before continuing. “Most Breeds are actually looking forward to finding their mates. They see it as a gift that God has arranged just for them, for their survival. So despite protestations or the levels of anger, fear or just sheer stubbornness, that need and that hunger are there to begin with, and the mated Breeds don’t have the subconscious desire to suppress those emotions. Once they find their mate, possessing her means everything. But I know Navarro and Mica well. Neither of them would have come within ten feet of the other if they had suspected this would happen, no matter how intense the attraction or the need. Mica, because she was already aware of the emotions that would build and grow within her and she feared the consequences of them. Navarro is a little different, and harder to define. Suffice to say, he has no intentions of loving her, and he just might have the training and the strength to suppress those emotions.”

“That doesn’t make sense. How can not wanting to mate, or a subconscious desire not to love, affect whether or not they do it? As I understood it, it’s supposed to be impossible to deny it.” There was a definite growl of suspicion in his voice, as well as a reluctance to believe what she was saying.

“Because Breeds were created to have no emotions. Our very genetics were altered to ensure the Council’s ability to train any chance of those emotions out of us,” she reminded him. “And we were trained to put aside any emotion that slipped past the creation process. We were lucky to maintain any feelings at all; still though, we were taught how to hide what we were feeling, to push it aside. Navarro, perhaps more than others, was taught this lesson with savage determination.”

Navarro Blaine was an Infiltration Level 5 Breed. He had been created for recessive Breed genetics. He was still stronger, faster, his senses more advanced than any human’s, but there was no way to detect those genetics.

He had been created to infiltrate the corporate and political world and to work it to the advantage of the Genetics Council.

“Then it’s Navarro’s ability to lock out those emotions, and the resulting hormones, that could allow him to walk away from this when no one else has been able to?” Jackal asked.

She gave a sharp nod. “And, until he or Mica or both acknowledge those emotions or they lose the battle to fight them, then they may never be fully mated.”

“Or fully free,” he said.

“Or fully free,” she agreed.

And she blamed this on Navarro. When she wrote up her statement later, she would be certain to include that.

“Poor Navarro,” Jackal finally grunted as he lifted his glass for a drink.

“No, poor Mica,” she argued. “She’ll receive the brunt of the pain if Navarro manages to walk away from her. She’ll be the one that suffers. And that leaves me in a very untenable position. Do I use this unique response to search for a way to ease mating heat, perhaps grow closer to curing it? Or do I instead attempt to convince Navarro to understand, before it’s too late, because Mica may never be free of him?”

And the suffering wasn’t easy. Mating heat demanded touch, it demanded a kiss. And now with Mica and Navarro it seemed to demand love and the mate.

“I should warn Mica,” she sighed. “She needs to know what the possible outcome to this can be.”

“No, don’t.”

She stared back at him in surprise. “This isn’t your call, Jackal.”

“And it’s not yours either, Ely,” he stated, his tone harsh as she stared back at him in disagreement. “Stick to the science of mating heat, and leave those two to figure out their emotions alone. They won’t thank you for interfering, and you’ll only end up hurting yourself if you don’t stay out of it, and blaming yourself if you don’t attempt to see what effect Navarro’s control of his emotions could have on future mates, or the world’s discovery of mating heat.”

“Just let him break her heart, Jackal? Is it worth following this if she lives her life in pain?” she questioned him bitterly.

“It doesn’t sound to me that you could help either of them either way, Ely. Let them have a chance to find each other’s heart. Just because you’re determined to deny it yourself doesn’t mean Mica should.”

Ely stood to her feet slowly. She was finished at this point. She’d be damned if she would be drawn into this argument again.

“I don’t deny anything, Jackal. Nor do I avoid it. I leave that to the rest of you.”

She turned and walked away from him, shaking on the inside at the confrontation and wondering if this time Jonas would finally give her a new bodyguard.