He didn't bother to release the utility belt, or her weapon. He left them on her as he worked the waist of her pants beneath them until he bared her thighs. Harmony stared up at him in surprise as he straightened and began to loosen his pants.

"I've been so hard since you left last night I could drive spikes in railroad ties," he growled as he freed the raging length of his erection, pushing his jeans and briefs below his thighs. "All I could think about was fucking you, Harmony. Tying you to my bed and making you scream for me. Making you beg for me."

She whimpered as he turned her, one arm wrapping around her waist to brace her as he moved behind her, nudging her feet wider. Harmony stared into the mirror, watching him through the dim light that fell from the office. His cock tucked against the desperately wet folds between her thighs before he paused.

Heat seared her, the feel of the heavy crest parting the juice-laden folds and sending sizzling arcs of sensation racing from her vagina to her engorged clit.

"I remember how tight you were." He grimaced, his expression growing heavier with lust. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips swollen, sensually full. "So tight I wondered if I would die of the pleasure before I could ever come."

His hips shifted, the thick crest parting her, working inside her, stretching tender tissue to its furthest limits as she screamed behind the gag.

"There, baby," he crooned, his free hand hooking into the leather belt that still cinched her hips. "There I am. Let's see how much you can take. Can you take me, little cat?" Harmony went to her tiptoes as he began stroking inside her, pulling back, pushing in deeper, impaling her inch by straining inch on the thick cock burrowing inside her. It was agony. It was more pleasure than she could bear. She bucked backward, fighting for more, relishing the pleasure-pain screaming through her nerve endings. The slick juices of her response eased his way, but nothing could ease the extreme snug depths of her vagina. Little used, rarely aroused, her flesh was now making up for the years it had gone without Lance's touch.

"More, baby." He slid in deeper. "God, your pussy is so sweet. So wet and tight. I could fuck you like this forever, Harmony."

He pulled back, the hard length of his erection nearly sliding free of her before he paused.

"Look at me, baby. Open your eyes."

She struggled to force her eyes open. He was a weakness. She had sworn she would never allow herself to be weak, but had Coyotes attacked in that moment they would have to just kill her, because she didn't have the will to tear herself from Lance.

"I want to see you when I take you. I want to see how much you love it, since I can't hear it. Do you like this, baby?"

One hard, fast thrust sent him to the very depths of her. Searing, white-hot ecstasy tore through her as she felt her flesh struggle to stretch, to accommodate the length and width penetrating it. Darkness washed over her gaze, though her eyes remained open, directed at the mirror, fighting to focus.

"Hell yeah, baby. Move your hips just like that."

She was moving her hips? She was. She could feel it now, writhing against him in tight little circles that stroked him inside her and caused her pussy to ripple in pleasure.

"There, baby, suck at my cock just like that. Keep that up and I'm going to give you exactly what you need to cool those fires until I get you to my bed." He moved then, a slow retreat and return, thrusting inside her, stroking violently sensitive nerve endings and throwing her deeper into the quicksilver arcs of pleasure tearing through her.

Harmony was losing herself. She could feel it happening, the layers of defenses she had built between herself and the world were crumbling beneath his possession. Nothing in the world mattered but this. This man, his touch, his hunger, his cock filling her until she was certain she could take no more.

Then she took more.

He fucked her like a man taking possession, a claiming. One hand held to her belt, pulling her back on his hard length, driving inside her deeper, harder, with each stroke as she began to tighten.

"Yeah, baby, tighten like that. Work my cock with that sweet pussy. There you go, sweetheart." His voice was heavy, dazed, the pleasure infusing it, as it infused the shattered cries that escaped her gag.

The hard, steady rhythm began to quicken then. Behind her, Lance's breathing grew ragged, heavy, filling the room with the scent of power and lust as he began to take her with hard, driving strokes. He thrust inside her, holding her firm by her own belt as she felt the world dissolving around her.

She was trembling. Shaking. She couldn't make her legs hold steady, she couldn't fight the vortex swirling within her. Emotion. Sensation. They clashed and burned in her mind and in her body, and she was lost within it.

When her orgasm hit, it destroyed her. She felt her legs weaken, her back arching violently as she strained to scream past the burning, tearing pleasure. It rushed through her like violent forks of lightning, detonating in her womb, convulsing her body as she felt Lance tense behind her.

A second later, he bent over her, his teeth clenching on her shoulder, biting her as she had bitten him, as the first pulse of semen began to fill her greedy vagina. Hard, desperate pulses of heated warmth that shot to the entrance of her womb, burned with agonizing pleasure and threw her into another desperate, mind-numbing release. She was sensation only. Shuddering in his arms, twisting in his grasp, with the spasms that threw her higher, then exploded in a white-hot haze of ecstasy. Harmony was lost. Death didn't exist. There was only this. This blinding pleasure and the pure sensation, emotion and desperation that whipped through her soul. A distant part of her recognized that the fallen shields, the defenses she had relied on all her life, lay as dust. And Harmony, past and present, collapsed weakly against the arm holding her steady, and gave herself to what nature had intended all along. To her mate.

CHAPTER 5

Harmony was unable to even fix her own clothes. Lance helped her dress, his touch gentle after he released the cuffs and the gag from her mouth.

She avoided his eyes, keeping her head down as tremors shook her body. This wasn't the woman they called Death. The woman who trembled beneath his touch wasn't the killer portrayed in the file Braden had given him.

Lance carried her to the office couch, then fixed his clothes, strode to his desk and picked up the link. Attaching it to his ear, he clicked the inner office link and waited for Lenny to pick up.

"Blanchard." Lenny's voice was quiet as he answered the summons.

"Lenny, I'm slipping out the back entrance and heading home. I'll be there if anything important comes up."

"Gotcha, Sheriff. Everything's pretty quiet for now," Lenny answered. "But Alonzo's been stomping around town again, trying to stir up trouble."

Lance grimaced. H. R. Alonzo had been a thorn in his side since the day Megan had opened her home as a halfway house for the Breeds selected for the National Law Enforcement Induction.

The six men and women were spending the next year at Megan's home, learning tactical maneuvers and command situations from several members of the family who worked in law enforcement. There were a lot of them.

"Keep an eye on him and let me know if the situation begins to heat up." Lance turned as Harmony lay across the couch, her eyes closing. Her face was drawn and pale, exhaustion marking her features as she curled into herself.

"I gotcha, Sheriff. We'll see ya in the morning," Lenny drawled. "And I don't blame you, dealing with that Wyatt dude would wear me out too."

Lance grimaced. Jonas was well known in Broken Butte by now. And not well liked.

"I'm out then. Keep me updated." Lance severed the link before breathing out wearily and smothering his own yawn.

He hadn't slept a wink last night after Harmony left. Hell, he had been in the office before daybreak searching for information on her. He strode across the room and knelt by the couch, gently brushed back the hair that had fallen across her face.

"I have to leave," she whispered, her eyes struggling to open as he stared down at her. His little cat was thrown off balance, shaken. The mating had thrown her into a reality she was ill equipped to deal with.

"Come on, let's take you home and get you to bed, baby." He helped her sit up, before lifting her to her feet. "You won't have much rest before it builds again." He wrapped his arm around her waist as he led her from the office to the back door. Sliding the electronic key through its slot, he waited for the click of the lock before opening the door and moving quickly from the exit.

His Raider was parked in front of the door, so getting her into the passenger seat was accomplished without a problem. She slumped into the comfortable seat, her eyes drowsy, her body nearly boneless.

Lance allowed a grin to quirk at his lips as he buckled her in, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

"Go ahead and nap, baby, I'll wake you when we get home."

He brushed the hair back from her face, his fingers lingering against the incredibly soft skin of her cheek as she stared up at him. Exhaustion marked her face, glazed her eyes. How long had it been since she had slept?

"I have someone trailing me," she whispered.

He frowned down at her before scanning the parking lot, knowing instantly what she was talking about.

"Have you identified him?"

She shook her head slowly. "I'm weak," she said then, distress filling her eyes. "I can't be weak, Lance."

"It's okay, baby, I've got your back. You rest, I'll keep an eye out for your tail." She shook her head, drugged with the exhaustion overtaking her.

"I can't be weak," her voice slurred. "I can't be…" Between one second and the next she was asleep. Lance sighed as he closed her door gently before loping to the driver's side. After closing his door, he set the radio to link into Lenny's line.

"Lenny, I'm setting security protocols on the way to the house," he told the sergeant as he activated the energized shields around the vehicle. "Track GPS and see if I have a tail on the way."

"You got problems, Sheriff?" Lenny's voice was concerned.

"I don't know yet. See if you can detect anything suspicious from the public GPS and let me know."

GPS protocols were required on all vehicles, though they could be disconnected legally in many areas. He didn't have high hopes of Lenny catching anything, but it was worth taking the chance.

"I got you, Sheriff," Lenny answered. "I'll let you know if we catch anything." He pulled out of the parking lot, hitting the main street as he headed home. Lance cracked open his window, and for the first time in his life, he deliberately opened his mind to the whispers flowing on the wind.

A world of secrets, of pain, happiness and fears could be heard in the winds, his grandfather had once told him. If he listened close, then the wind would bring him what he needed, but only if he was willing to hear what it had to say.

He had never been willing before. Lance had fought the secrets of the wind, and his place as its chosen child. He had believed he could live without it, and perhaps he could, but he knew that saving Harmony was more important than his reluctance to follow something as unseen as the air around him.

As he drove, he let the wind blow around him, curling around his body, and Harmony's, before he detected the whisper at his ear. There were no words, there was the whisper of her cry, but he had heard that before. Behind the cry, though, was the secret he searched for, the whisper of deceit. And the warning.

He was being watched. Lenny hadn't reported on the GPS, which meant control wasn't picking up the tail, but the winds whispered the knowledge.

He grimaced at the illusive whispers. There were no answers, and that was the part that had driven his reluctance over the years. There were no answers, no proof, nothing to hold on to to give him what he needed to solve the problems he faced. He was a sheriff. He dealt in facts, in proof. A whisper of danger, or a ragged cry that only he could hear, and a strong intuition weren't enough to arrest a man. They weren't enough reason to pull the trigger.