Navarro's Promise

CHAPTER 13

A cold shower didn’t help.

A hot shower didn’t help.

And she wasn’t even about to try masturbation, no matter how badly she needed to.

Walking from the bathroom, a robe wrapped around her, no one could have been more shocked than she was when the door was shoved open, the panel crashing against the wall as she froze and stared at Navarro in shock.

He stepped in and slammed the door closed before turning the lock.

Mica blinked.

He looked . . . different.

The sensual Asian features of his face were suddenly sharper, his eyes darker and gleaming with surprising, shocking hunger. A physical need that matched her own, that could even threaten to surpass it.

Staring across the room at him, her gaze locked by his, held by it, Mica found herself unable to break that invisible line, the hold those deep black eyes had on her.

She could feel that touch inside her. It wrapped around her clit, tightened her womb and the tender tips of her nipples. A ghostly caress raced up her arms, stroked across her swollen breasts. It was like being wrapped in the most incredible heat. For the first time since the mating had begun, Mica actually felt as though there was more flowing between them than just his lust and the love she had fought to keep hidden for so long.

“What do you want?” She shook her head as she tried to shake off the dazed, drugging hunger flowing through her now. Before, it had just been heat. It had been lust. Now it was something more.

Something had changed. She could see it in his face, in the ink black of his eyes and the violent tension raging in his body.

Her breathing escalated, her breasts rising and falling heavily as the blood began pumping hot and wild through her body.

“Mica, are you okay?” Her gaze jerked to the door as the sound of Josiah’s concerned voice came through the panel. “Just say something, baby. I’ll get Callan and Dane, Mica. You don’t have to let him touch you.”

Mica blinked again, shock resounding through her at not just the tone of Josiah’s overly familiar words, but also the offer and the suggestion that Navarro would somehow demand something she wasn’t willing to give.

For a moment, she wondered when she had managed to step outside reality into this perverse ”almost” world and the Breeds she was facing now because of it.

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” she asked as Navarro’s head turned, his teeth snapping at the closed door in a completely un-recessed-Breed-like way.

What had happened to the icy, determined-to-walkaway Breed she had seen that morning?

“Josiah wants to die.” Navarro turned back to her, a tight smile curving his lips as his eyes narrowed on her. “I hope he wrote out his will. I heard he had some impressive art hidden away.” This time, the smile showed teeth. “He even offered me a piece if he died. He didn’t say how he had to die, and I think I’m ready to collect.”

“Not a chance, Navarro,” Josiah snapped from the other side.

Mica licked her lips nervously, then her breath caught at the expression that appeared on his face. If the savagery reflected there was anything to go by, then Navarro was definitely going to attempt to collect that piece of art.

“I want that hot little tongue on my body,” his voice grumbled. “I want to feel it stroking my dick, Mica. Licking it like a favorite treat as you go down on me.”

So explicit, and so sexually exciting she nearly orgasmed where she stood.

Her gaze went down; the bulge at his thighs, heavy and engorged beneath his jeans, was impossible to miss. The effect of his words and the image implanted in her mind were impossible to resist.

His cock was so thick it would fill her mouth. It would be hot, throbbing against her tongue, rubbing against it as he fucked past her lips. Would it be hard thrusts? Would he do it with deliberate, controlled strokes? How much more could he make her want him?

She had a feeling it would be a hell of a lot more.

“That sounds interesting,” she whispered breathlessly, refusing to allow herself to melt beneath the power of the arousal rushing through her. At least, not quite yet. “Do I get the same in return?”

She wanted that and so much more. His tongue on her pussy, stroking over her flesh.

Her stomach tightened, sensation clenching spasmodically at the sudden thought of his tongue thrusting inside her, stroking inside the aching center of her body.

His gaze stroked down to the juncture of her thighs, spreading a wave of intense sensation over her. Her clit throbbed, her pussy pulsed as she nearly whimpered with the sudden intense need for touch. A hard, dominant touch. A thrust that stretched her muscles with blistering pleasure that raked over her flesh with flaming intensity.

“Mica, sweetheart, just give the word. I’ll have him removed.” Josiah called out to her again, his voice attempting to cajole, sounding concerned as it raked across her nerves and had her grimacing in irritation.

“He wants to die,” Navarro suggested quietly as his eyes moved from her swollen breasts to lock with her eyes.

She had entered the Twilight Zone or something. This was unreal. There was no doubt in her mind that Josiah was playing some game; she had never been his sweetheart, his baby, or any other endearment. And she was coming very close to stepping out and shooting him herself. If he didn’t stop messing with her pleasure, and messing with it now, then he was going to be in a world of hurt. If Navarro didn’t beat her to it.

She swallowed tightly, her breathing rough as Navarro took a step toward her.

“Mica, honey, I’m going to go get Callan and Leo. Just give me a few minutes, I’ll be back. I’m not going to let him get away with this.”

Her lips had parted to speak, to inform Josiah she was fine when Navarro turned, jerked the door open and went nose to nose with Josiah.

“She’s fine, you fucking mutt!” he snarled in Josiah’s face. “Get the hell away from my mate and go find your own.”

The pure fury in his voice, the rough animalistic growl and the tension amped with the threat of violence had her eyes widening in concern. This could become a problem if Josiah refused to stand down.

Josiah crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at Navarro with a snarl. “She’s not your mate, remember? No more mating hormone, Navarro. And for all we know, she is my mate. It’s time you move to the side and give someone else a chance.”

The snarl that came from Navarro’s lips would have been damned impressive even if he was a full Breed rather than recessed. For a recessed Breed, it was bordered on frightening.

“Fuck off!” Navarro seemed taller, broader, more imposing. His whole body was tense, the aura of danger pulsing around him like a volcano preparing to explode.

This was really quite interesting, but Wolf Breeds didn’t posture for the hell of it. They didn’t posture at all. Right now, he was at his most dangerous.

“Excuse me, boys.” She stepped between them as the growls began to deepen and become more alarming. Two Wolf Breeds fighting was not a pretty sight, and Dash Sinclair had once told her that Wolf Breeds would fight to the death for a mate, just as wolves did in the wild.

Now if she could just figure out what the hell Josiah was up to.

“Mica, you don’t have to deal with this, sweetheart,” Josiah assured her, his voice gentling. “Come on, we’ll talk to Callan.”

He made the mistake.

Mica tried to avoid it. She tried to move back quickly, to get out of the way of the hand reaching her before it actually touched her. The last thing Josiah wanted to do was antagonize Navarro further at the moment. Blood would be shed, and it wouldn’t be Navarro’s.

But she wasn’t fast enough.

His finger curved around her arm. First discomfort, then a flare of pain that shot up her arm and caused her to cry out at the shock of it. She wasn’t expecting it. There hadn’t been a problem until now. But now there was a serious problem.

Navarro felt it explode inside him.

If he thought the animal genes had awakened earlier as he left his room, then what they did now was more like a wave of shocking intensity rushing through him. He literally felt the animal he had been bred to be awaken with a surge. It leapt beyond his control, broke the bonds of restraint that had been wrapped around it since his birth and broke free.

He threw Josiah back from his mate, one hand clamping on the other Breed’s wrist to ensure the fingers that touched Mica didn’t tighten or jerk her along with him.

Josiah fell back as the door slammed in his face, and the next thing Mica knew Navarro had her in his arms, his lips coming down on hers, the incredibly sensitive, swollen flesh of his tongue sinking inside her mouth.

It was like lightning, like fusion, like being immersed in the most pleasure that any one man could endure. It was silk and silken velvet as his tongue found hers, stroked against it, then hers pressed into the caress, stroked over the glands that had swelled beneath his tongue with such tight need, before her lips closed on them and sucked the mating hormone from them with greedy abandon.

It was fiery. Wild flames screamed across his flesh as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her close. A sense of how delicate, how fragile she was sank into his mind. Sank deep. He could feel it. The frailness of her bones, the tenderness of her flesh. Like waves of knowledge mixing with the hunger and the pleasure, the knowledge of how easily he could hurt her, how easily he could break her, seemed to sink into the very heart of the genetics he’d been fighting to hold back.

It was there now. In the forefront where the animal inside him now ruled, demanding, intent on claiming his mate so irrevocably that no man or Breed would dare to touch her.

When the glands beneath his tongue seemed to ease, Navarro tore his lips from hers, the need to feel her hot little mouth sucking his dick too strong to resist.

“Take off the robe, Mica. Don’t make me tear it off.”

He was tearing at his shirt, jerking buttons from their moorings, pulling it over his shoulders and dropping it to the floor before toeing off his low boots and removing his jeans.

His dick was so hard it was painful.

And Mica didn’t hesitate.

Her fingers stroked down his stomach as her lips and tongue began to move down the hairless flesh, stroking, tasting him, her sharp little teeth nipping as she moved inexorably closer to the straining length of his dick.

He watched. Sensual and as beautiful as anything that could have been created, past or present, she was the fantasy that he’d not known he had until she was sixteen.

Sixteen and so fucking beautiful, and a part of him had known. He’d looked at her and felt the animal stirring inside him for the first time in his life.

“Ah fuck!” His hands jerked from his side to bury themselves in the heavy length of her thick blond hair as her fingers wrapped around the base and her tongue licked over the engorged head of his cock.

The broad head pulsed, shards of pleasure raking through the heavy length as ecstasy ripped through his balls and a spurt of the heavy pre-cum spilled against her lips.

She was his mate.

She was—

His thighs tightened as her lips parted and she sucked the nerve-laden crest into her mouth, filling it, wrapping silken heat around the engorged crest and sending sensation exploding through his body. Flames shot up his spine, filled his brain and burned through his senses. It was beyond pleasure. It was the most sensual, most sexual pleasure he could imagine at the moment.

It was all he could do to hold back another spurt of the pre-cum as his fingers tangled in her hair, loving the feel of it against his fingertips, like warm, living silk caressing his flesh.

Watching her, God, loving her as she loved him, and he’d never let himself admit. Couldn’t let himself admit it, until his primal genetics had taken the decision out of his hands. Until the knowledge that he could lose her, that she was in danger of slipping from his grasp and he would never touch her, never have her again.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Enough.”

Pulling her to her feet, Navarro lifted her into his arms, carried her to the bed before following her down.

His lips moved over hers, his tongue sinking past her lips for a kiss that sent the flames ripping over him again.

He wanted more of her. His lips moved down her neck, licking and nipping, tasting her with each greedy lick, each desperate kiss, until he reached the soft, silken curls of her pussy.

Parting the swollen, slick folds, his tongue licked through her slit. He flickered it over and around her engorged clit, tasting the heat and the need flaming through her.

Covering her clit with his lips, he gave it a deep kiss, sucking it into his mouth, his tongue stroking around it. The sweet, summer rain taste of her was an aphrodisiac to his senses.

Filling his senses with her, he pushed as far as he could. He tasted as much of her as possible before he was forced to draw back and rise between her soft, silken thighs.

He rose over her, his cock pressing between the swollen folds of her pussy.

Tight. Hot.

Inch by inch he pumped inside her slow and easy, each spurt of the pre-cum easing her, making her wilder, hotter. He could feel her pussy tightening, clenching around his dick like a slick, hot little fist. Each clench and flex around his iron-hard cock was an exquisite agony, the ecstatic pleasure rushing through his senses like flames gone wild, making him crazed to fuck her with enough force to throw them both into a violent rush of release.

Her pussy flexed around his cock, sucking him inside, as he began to move faster, to thrust harder. Inch by inch he stroked inside her, filling her, shafting inside the snug tissue of her pussy with heavy thrusts as he felt the wild, uncontrollable rush of heat beginning to consume him. Like a drug overtaking him, stealing his control of himself, overwhelming his senses.

He was only dimly aware of his teeth locking in her shoulder, his hips moving with heavy, quickened strokes as the pre-cum jetted inside her, mixing with her juices, making her slicker, hotter, destroying them both until he felt her coming. Felt the deep, hard contractions of her pussy milking his dick, stilling the pre-cum only to tear through his body with the hard, powerful spurts of come as he drove in deep and felt the rush of incredible, intoxicating rapture overtaking him.

His cock pulsed and swelled further. The heavy swelling in the middle of the shaft stretched the heavy muscles of her pussy, locking him inside as each spurt of his come began to shoot straight to her womb. The Wolf Breed knot locked him inside her, holding him deep and tight inside her as the thick, heavy swelling throbbed with rapturous pleasure, spilling his cum inside her, and he swore, releasing more than that throughout his system.

He could feel something primal, something dominant and possessive, tearing from him as he spilled inside her, spurt after spurt of seminal fluid ejaculating from his cock followed by a hard, heavy flush of semen and a surge of wracking pleasure.

He was consumed by her. By her pleasure, reflected in her inarticulate cries. By her touch, her nails digging into his shoulder, the taste of her on his tongue where his teeth latched onto her shoulder, the scent of her invading his senses, and he was possessed, even as he possessed. Even as he lost himself in her, a part of him knew not only would he never be free, but he never wanted to be free.

Mica wrapped her legs around Navarro’s lean waist, her hips writhing beneath him, working her pussy on the hard knot throbbing in the thick, agonizingly sensitive muscles that gripped him tightest.

Rolling and jerking against the impalement, the thick penetration working inside her as she began to moan, gasping for more as she felt another hard spurt of his come spill into the greedy depths of her pussy.

His teeth were at her shoulder, locked inside her, holding her, marking her. His tongue lashed at the small wound, spilling the mating hormone from his tongue into the tiny wound, knowing this would tie her to him in ways she couldn’t fully comprehend.

“I love you.” The words were torn from her. “Oh God, Navarro.” Her arms and legs tightened around him as the words escaped her lips. Words she should have never allowed free.

She felt Navarro freeze against her, felt his hard, corded body as the words torn from her settled in the air around them.

What had she just done?

Oh God, what had she done?

She should have known better. She should have controlled the emotions she had promised herself she would never allow free. But it didn’t quite work that way. All those years she had kept her emotions tightly inside, kept the words, the feelings hidden, even from herself.

This was the most dangerous game she could play, and Mica knew it. Navarro didn’t want to love, and she knew, he didn’t want her love now.

He didn’t speak.

His teeth released her shoulder slowly, his tongue licking over the sensitive flesh as she felt the knot that had swollen in his cock ease, allowing him to pull back from her.

She couldn’t stop the low, pleasure-filled moan that left her lips or the tightening of her arms around his neck as he began pulling away from her.

She let him go.

There was no way to hold on to him, no way to steal his heart as he had stolen hers.

Just how dumb had she been in her inattention to the words that spilled free from her lips?

“You were supposed to be protecting your emotions,” he said flatly as he sat at the side of the bed.

Mica opened her eyes and then wished she could close them back, because he was staring at her, those black eyes seeming intent on unlocking her very soul and slipping inside.

“It was pillow talk.” She cleared her throat cautiously. “I’m sure you’ve heard it before. You know how women can get.” Her throat tightened. Too emotional. That was what women were like. They were too emotional, and she was damned sure not as intelligent as she liked to believe she was; otherwise, she would have never allowed those words to slip past her lips. “Besides, you’re my mate, aren’t you? What does it matter, Navarro?”

It was too late to stop feeling it. She’d been feeling it since she was sixteen years old and she’d given up hope of ever tearing the emotion out of her heart. And she was supposed to love her mate. Her mate was supposed to love her. Wasn’t he?

His gaze was too intent as he stared down at her, and she had a feeling he was waiting for something, watching for something. What more could he want from her? What more could she give that she hadn’t already given him?

She breathed in slow and easy. Damn him. She didn’t need this. After all the warnings against loving him, about allowing him too close.

“It matters,” he growled, tension emanating from him as she stared back at him in confusion.

“Oh yes, I forgot, the mate that isn’t really a mate,” she mocked painfully. “So sorry, Navarro. Please excuse me for complicating your delicate little life.”

“Don’t push me, Mica.” There was a roughness to his voice that sent a shiver of awareness chasing up her spine.

“Don’t push you.” Pursing her lips, she nodded slowly. “I’m you’re mate, but I’m not supposed to love you. Mating lasts forever, but for some reason you’re escaping what you’re doing to me.” She shook her head as she watched him intently, pushing back the anger and pain as she always did.

It was harder this time. This time, the pain was rising so sharp, so hot inside her that battling it back took every ounce of control she possessed.

“That’s not the way it is, Mica,” he began to protest.

She lifted her hand sharply, palm outward. She didn’t want to hear his excuses. She didn’t need them. “I have things to do. Thank you so much for relieving the pain though. It was becoming a bit of an irritation. And do forgive me for that lack of discretion in the emotion department. I won’t let it happen again. You can leave now, Navarro. I’ll let you know the next time I need you to perform.”

She was so glad Cassie wasn’t here. If the other girl ever learned she had said anything so corny, then Mica would never live it down.

And on top of it, she had just asked her mate to forgive her for promising him her heart. Before she knew it, she would be promising him his freedom if she could give it to him.

It was killing her though. The pain was driving a wedge so sharp and deep inside her soul that she swore she could feel herself splitting apart inside.

“A bit of an irritation was it?” he murmured. “I don’t think I meant to simply scratch your itch, Amaya.”

She almost shivered at the rough quality of his tone. It wasn’t a growl, but the rumble was a distinct warning.

Her teeth clenched until her jaw hurt. It was a warning to stop whatever she was doing to irritate the animal, to awaken it inside him. She could feel it, like a premonition, an instinct, and it demanded she submit to him. A demand and a submission as primal as the genetics that went into his creation.

“A bit of an irritation,” she agreed as she rose from the bed and grabbed her robe. “And if you’ll excuse me now, I believe I have things to do.”

She could feel adrenaline racing, surging through her. That primal demand for her submission was just pissing her off. Where the hell did he get the nerve to demand she not love him, to demand that she not be a true mate to him, while inside it felt as though she were still dying for his touch?

Her pussy was still heated, still aching. She felt as though her flesh was desperate for his touch. Not so much a sexual touch, but a touch. A stroke.

She wanted that touch so desperately she knew that if she didn’t get the hell away from him, she was going to end up begging for it. To keep that from happening she pushed herself from the bed, her movements jerky, the emotions tearing through her threatening what little control over revealing them she had left .

“Where do you think you’re going?” He caught her wrist, his look domineering and so sexy in its arrogance that she sincerely wished she could find a defense against it.

Whether he was pissing her off, breaking her heart or making her scream out in need, he still had the power to make her want to laugh with him, to hold him, to feel his arms around her.

“I have a few things to do,” she told him. “And spending twenty-four-seven here in my suite isn’t exactly my idea of a fun time to be had.” Especially when he was so rarely there with her.

“You appeared to be enjoying it enough,” he stated, that dangerous calm intensifying.

The look of wounded male pride that flashed for the barest second in those deep black eyes had the feminine side of her almost giving in with a weakening gentle amusement.

“Of course I was enjoying it.” She shrugged, refusing to let her heart break just yet, or the softening that threatened to fill her, free. Damn him, he wasn’t going to get by that easily, that quickly.

Not yet.

She didn’t have time to deal with a broken heart and she didn’t have time to deal with a confrontational Breed either. Especially her mate. Breed males could be very unpredictable while in mating heat, or if they believed their mates were in danger. If they were mated that was. She was beginning to wonder if Navarro was even her mate, despite the signs he showed of it.

Pulling her wrist from his grip, she shot him a dark glare. He had no idea what he was doing. No idea that the feelings, the need for emotional vengeance was about to tear them apart.

“What the hell are you up to, Mica?” He rose from where he sat on the bed, his dark face savagely intense as he glared at her, naked, powerful.

“Doing something besides sitting here alone and waiting on you?” she suggested with mocking sweetness.

Damn him. She should hate him. She really should. He shouldn’t be able to do this to her, to make her so crazy for him that she could barely breathe just minutes after him telling her that she shouldn’t love him. Where was the fairness in this?

And double damn him, he was still hard.

She cast an irritated glance at the fully erect flesh he was currently covering as he pulled his jeans over his powerful legs and buttoned and zipped them with arrogant confidence. And not once did he take his eyes from her, staring at her as though with the silent command in his eyes he could will her to do whatever he wished.

Oh boy, he better rethink that idea. He’d known her long enough to know that simply wasn’t going to happen.

Besides, she really did have things to do today.

She’d decided to find out exactly what was going on with her life. Why was she mated when her mate wasn’t? And what had Josiah been after as he stood outside her door calling her by endearments he had never used with her before?

She was going to have to figure out what this was, and how to deal with it, if she was going to find a way to live with it.

“Why does a person have to be up to something simply because they’re not bending to their knees to kiss your ass?” she asked, wondering just what it would take to distract him.

“I don’t require that, as you well know,” he stated flatly as he pulled his shirt on and began buttoning it. “But I know you, Mica. I know you well. You’re definitely up to something, and I want to know what it is.”

“Really? Can you smell it?” Okay, she sounded definitely mocking, perhaps just a little bit snide, but she assured herself she had the right. After all, it wasn’t every day a woman got tied to a man in the way she was tied to him, right?

“I can smell the anger.”

The anger? Oh, he just had no idea. If he could smell the anger, then it was a hell of a lot stronger than she thought she was.

Or rather, she wasn’t hiding it as well as she hoped. He was breaking her control, and she hated that, because it was evident she wasn’t touching his in the least.

She wasn’t to him what he was to her.

She stared back at him, wondering how that could be? How had it happened? Why did nature hate her this much? She couldn’t understand that. Why was she the only woman mated to a Breed who wasn’t mated to her?

Well, at least not fully mated.

“What the hell have you managed to pull off here?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. And once she’d started, she finished. “How did you get so lucky to have escaped the mating heat, the symptoms and the ties you forced on me, Navarro? Tell me, how did I get lucky enough to get the only Breed who could beat mating heat?”

She couldn’t believe it had happened to her, and she wanted to know why. She wanted to know how. And she wanted to know how to fix it, one way or the other.

Either he mated her fully, became as desperate for her as she for him, loved her as deeply, or she wanted a cure. And she wanted it now.