Primal Kiss

FIVE

“Don’t try to run again. You won’t make it far.”

Kita stared at Creed, her father’s security specialist for the past year, and oh so obviously no more than a plant by the Bureau of Breed Affairs.

Sitting in the chair across from him, she crossed her legs, propped her elbow on the padded arm, rested her head against her palm, and just stared at him as he sat on the couch across from her, leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, his eyes locked on hers.

“Now don’t you just look like the disgruntled kitty,” she drawled mockingly. “Or is that pooch? Feline, wolf, or coyote?”

His eyes narrowed. “Feline. Lion.”

Her lips pursed in a vague imitation of thoughtfulness. “I must be top priority if the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs sent one of his lion enforcers to play babysitter for the past year.”

His lips thinned. “I wasn’t your babysitter.”

Her brows lifted. “Well, you weren’t parked on my father’s ass, so I rather doubt Jonas Wyatt had you babysitting him. So tell me, Creed, why were you there? Information? To simply keep tabs on us? Or were you there to kill one of us when the time was right?”

He sat back slowly, his arms crossing over his chest as his expression became set in cool, unemotional lines.

He wasn’t there to kill her, and he wasn’t there to kill her father.

“Information.” She sighed. “That’s why you’re there, isn’t it?”

“Then why am I here instead?”

“Dad sent you?”

“You were calling him ‘Daddy’ before,” he pointed out, and in the shadows that crossed his face, she could have sworn she saw a hint of anger in his gaze.

He had no right to be angry with her. If anyone had a right to be angry, she did.

“What I call him is none of your business,” she informed him with a mocking roll of her eyes. “He sent you?”

He shrugged at the question, and she took that for a yes. It was the only reason he would have followed her.

“When are we driving back? I can’t leave my car here.”

“We’re not going back just yet.”

How interesting.

Kita continued to stare back at him, wondering at that feeling of heated moisture between her thighs.

Damn him, he kissed like a fucking sex god. Like her greatest fantasy. He had done what others had failed to do. His kiss had only fueled her need. Then he had done what two other lovers hadn’t even managed to come close to. He’d sent her into orgasm. And he had managed it with only his kiss and his fingers. Other men hadn’t even been able to do it, no matter the grunting efforts they’d put into it.

SHE WAS GLARING at him.

Creed narrowed his eyes as he tried to read her expression.

It was impossible.

For the first time since he had become her bodyguard, Creed could not tell, by her expression alone, what she was thinking. But there was enough emotion rolling off her for him to guess by scent alone. And there wasn’t enough anger to save her.

She should be furious. Ahead of the subtle scent of arousal still coursing through her, she should be raging at him. Which would only make the arousal hotter, build higher.

Instead, she was, first and foremost, aroused; behind that, he sensed irritation and confusion.

The confused part, he shared. Because all things considered, she was truly rather rational. Especially considering the fact that she was now in mating heat.

Just as he was. He’d had her kiss, he’d had her orgasm, but he was still vicious hard, his dick throbbing with furious hunger. It was the most intense need he had ever known. Since the moment his lips had touched her, since he had felt the warmth of her inner lips, the mating hormone had begun to build in the glands beneath his tongue.

It was more than an itch now. It was a burn, an arousal far deeper than it had been before the mating heat had kicked in.

“I don’t like that look on your face,” she muttered as he continued to watch her silently, to draw in the unique scents of her.

He arched his brow, unwilling to allow her into his thoughts just yet. To give her a chance to learn how deep his need for her went when he was beginning to grow very concerned over what the next few days would bring.

“And what do you mean, we’re not going back just yet? That’s why Dad sent you after me, correct?”

She wasn’t calling her father “Daddy” any longer. And each time she said “Dad” instead, the scent of disillusionment drifted toward him.

Every emotion had a scent, and to the Breed senses, they were easily detectable.

Disillusionment was a scent that clashed with her innocence, her compassion. It was a dark scent of sulfur subtly underlying the sweetest, softest scent of a spring rain, the scent of her arousal. It was there, though, and it pissed him off.

“Cabin fever does crazy things to a person.” He shrugged as he watched her carefully. “It’s my opinion that perhaps you need a few days’ vacation. A chance to relieve some tension.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. But he wasn’t about to tell her that he and his boss were leading her father to believe she’d been kidnapped.

“He doesn’t know you’re a Breed, does he?” Her lips pursed mockingly.

Amusement joined the other scents, just the slightest hint of it.

“No, he wasn’t aware of it.”

“What about the men you were working with?”

His brow arched. “I didn’t tell them.”

He hadn’t had to tell them. They were part of the Bureau of Breed Affairs; Jonas had likely told them. If not, then it wouldn’t have been hard for them to guess simply because Creed had been working with them for so damned long.

Kita shook her head in amusement, an amusement he could easily read on her expression this time.

“You don’t hate Breeds,” he commented.

She rose from her chair and moved languidly across the room before turning and leaning against the door frame and staring back at him. “I never hated Breeds, Creed. They didn’t ask for what was done to them. They were born into it.”

Created into it, Creed corrected her silently. They had been created into this world, and trained rather than raised, to be killers.

He nodded slowly. Over the year he’d been in her home, he had seen that in her. She’d been waiting, watching, neither trusting nor distrusting the Breeds. She had paid careful attention to news stories and discussions, and at odd times had seemed to be studying her father, essentially observing him in the act of just being a father.

“And now you’ve kissed one,” he said softly. “Come in the arms of one. What do you think now?”

“I think you’re just as savage and as determined as every report I’ve ever read says you are. And I highly doubt you’ve been in my home to protect me, no matter the danger. So why not tell me exactly why you were there.”

“That was why I was there, Kita.” It just wasn’t the only reason he was there.

She nodded again, her expression, her gaze thoughtful. It was then the scent of her reached him. The increased feminine heat. The arousal burning hotter, burning brighter inside her.

“Time will tell why you’re here then, won’t it?” she whispered, breathing out deeply.

“Will it?” He rose to his feet himself then, moving toward her slowly, feeling the hunger rising inside him as well. “Perhaps it’s an answer we should find now, Kita.”

Her heat wasn’t as intense as it would be once he’d spilled his seed inside her, but the arousal was high enough to slowly become uncomfortable.

Advances into the mating phenomena were coming in slowly, being researched to damned death, and only then was certain information being shared with the Breeds.

It was still a subject considered NTK, Need To Know. And only Breeds showing visible signs of mating, or those involved in highly sensitive operations, were given the information.

Creed had been given the information. He knew the suppositions, the small advances that had been made, the research the Breed scientists had done. And he knew the heat hadn’t reach its full pitch yet. And it wouldn’t until he released his seed inside her.

Until then, the hormone he had released so far would irritate more than anything else.

Unless he kissed her again.

It was a one-kiss gig unless he wanted her to hate him.

Condoms required.

There were still the tiny hairs along his visibly hairless body that carried the hormone, but the quantities were so minute that as long as he didn’t kiss her again, then he could control it.

As long as he didn’t fuck her without a condom, it would be a while before the ramifications were apparent.

At least, to Kita. He, on the other hand, was already feeling the ramifications. He’d kissed her, and so the hormone was now infused with the genetic impulse to increase the heat and torture their bodies until conception occurred. To mutate the genetics in his sperm to be more compatible with her ova even as any hormone shared with her would make her likewise more compatible with him.

Stopping in front of her, his hand reached out and gently lifted a heavy lock of hair. He felt almost mesmerized by that hair. So many shades of natural blonde shimmering against his fingers.

He could feel the rumble of a growl in his throat.

He could smell her arousal, her interest. He could smell emotion, tenderness, and yet a rising need for confrontation. A scent reminiscent of that detected within both mates and human couples alike. A scent that came close to love.

Forcing his gaze from the heavy lock of hair he held, he took in the slumberous passion outlining Kita’s face.

“You’ve entranced me, Kita Claire,” he whispered as he turned his head slightly, the need to kiss her barely held in restraint by the knowledge of the consequences.

“Have I really?” A trace of breathlessness infused her tone. “Maybe you’ve done the same to me, Creed, even if you are being rather arrogant about it.”

“It’s part of our genetics.” His gaze centered on her lips.

No kiss, he told himself. He couldn’t kiss her, he couldn’t lick her, he couldn’t bite her. His eyes closed as he leaned his forehead against hers. He couldn’t taste the silken, saturated folds of her pussy no matter how his mouth watered for it.

He had to keep his tongue in his mouth, his lips closed.

He had to protect her, at least until he could tell her the truth.

But that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to play.

There were many ways to play. Ways that would leave them both gasping, their bodies perspiring in release.

He would make certain she didn’t miss the kiss. But he would. God help him, he would miss the taste of her wicked little tongue, the feel of her lips beneath his. And the taste of her soft pussy. That he was truly going to regret missing out on.

“Promise me something, Creed,” she said.

His lashes lifted to stare down at her as the hunger ate at him.

“If I can,” he answered.

“Promise me you aren’t doing this for some sort of Breed revenge. That you’re not sleeping with me in some attempt to make my father pay for whatever he and Uncle Phillip have done.”

Uncle Phillip. Phillip Brandenmore was her uncle through Horace’s marriage to Phillip’s younger sister.

“I can swear to you that I’m not going to sleep with you to make your father or your uncle pay for whatever crimes they committed against the Breeds.” That was easy enough. It was the truth.

Her hand lifted, the tips of her fingers smoothing over his cheek as he watched her soft brown eyes melt with emotion.

He’d encouraged emotion in her from that first day, from the first itch he’d felt beneath his tongue. He’d teased, flirted.

“Kiss me, Creed,” she whispered the one plea he couldn’t satisfy. “Like you did earlier.”

His head lowered. A little. God help him, let him be able to stop when he needed to.

As his closed lips smoothed across her forehead to her temple, he let his hands drift up her hips, pushing beneath her light sweater to find her breasts.

Smooth, firm globes fit his palms as her tight hard nipples met the pads of his fingers. He could survive without her kiss, he told himself. He could survive without releasing inside her. It wouldn’t kill him. Hell, other Breeds had gone without their mates for years before, and they had lived.

He would live as well.

But first, he would have to distract her. He would have to give her so much pleasure that she didn’t realize the kiss wasn’t there.

Bending, he put his arms behind her knees and her back, lifting her against his chest as he carried her quickly to the bedroom he had found earlier.

The bed was already turned down. She’d let someone know she was coming because the pantry as well as the refrigerator and bathroom were stocked with new items. Nothing had been used before.

Laying her on the bed, Creed moved to her feet and carefully pulled off her sneakers, then the soft cotton socks. Undressing her became one of the most sensual chores he had ever undertaken.

She arched to him as he pulled her jeans from her body. Free of those, she began to fumble with the buttons of her sweater.

He watched. Watched those graceful fingers release each button as he hurriedly tore his own clothes from his body, carefully laying a condom aside.

This would be agony. Agony and ecstasy. It would be the heights of rapture, and it would be the further depths of pain if what he’d heard was true.

And it would be worth it.

It would be worth every second of agony to feel her clenching and coming around his dick.

As she tossed her sweater aside, Creed tossed aside his own shirt.

Naked, so fucking hard each pulse of blood pounding through his cock was a pleasure so intense it was painful.

Sitting up in the bed, her hair falling around her face in sunlit and shadowed blonde waves, she looked like a damned temptress come to haunt his fantasies.

That was exactly what she was. His fantasy. That nameless woman he had dreamt of for years before Jonas had sent him to the Engalls estate.

She was his mate.

And she was reaching for him.