"Puss in Boots." She glanced at the boots. The man had some fine legs in between, too.

Tension filled the air. It wasn't angry tension; it was hot, blistering in intensity. He set his coffee cup on the counter, moving closer, his shoulder brushing against hers as he passed her, moved behind her.

Megan stood completely still, feeling the displacement of the air around her, the way he moved, turning until his chest nearly touched her back, his breath wafting over her sensitive earlobe.

"You know, Meg," he breathed out softly, his voice rough, growling,

"you'll call me that one time too many, and then I'll have to show you which of us belongs on top. And it isn't you, sweetheart. I'd be careful pushing me, if I were you. The scent of that sweet, hot little pussy has my mouth watering and my cock pounding. I might show you not just who belongs on top, but exactly how a Breed teaches dominance to his woman."

She felt herself pale then flush, her eyes widening at the realization that he could actually smell her arousal. That he knew she was wet, hot. Ready to take him. That he fascinated her more than any man ever had. It was a fascination that scared her to death.

"Get your vaccinations first,'' she snapped, moving away from him, covering her embarrassment with snide anger rather than dissolving in his arms the way she wanted to. She would be damned if she would. Just what the hell she needed—the hots for a Breed, and he hadn't even kissed her yet. Could life get more complicated, please?

"Megan, the snide Breed remarks don't become you," he finally chastised her as she moved to place more distance between them. He only followed her. Stalking her. "If you want to insult me baby, then keep it personal.''

He was right, her insults weren't fair. Megan turned her back on him, forcing herself to breathe, to find just a moment of stability amid the conflicting needs surging through her. She wanted him so badly the ache was a pit of fiery longing in her womb. She had forced herself to keep

distance between her emotions and the men that existed in the periphery of her life. But she wasn't maintaining distance with Braden. The irresistible draw he was becoming made her angrier at herself than at him.

She turned to face him again, her eyes widening as he came flush with her body, trapping her against the counter, his thighs pressing against hers, his erection cushioning itself in the soft warmth of her abdomen. Her womb clenched, spasming with a sexual hunger that nearly took her breath.

"Don't." She pressed her hands against his chest, shaking her head, certain that if he touched her she wouldn't be able to fight.

"Sweet." He inhaled deeply, bracing his hands on the counter, his arms holding her in place as her hands flattened against his chest. "You're hot and wild, Megan. I could make you hotter. Wanna try me?"

She shuddered as his head lowered, his lips catching the sensitive lobe of her ear, licking it with a slow, seductive move of his tongue. A hard shudder raced up her spine as heat began to envelop her.

Her clit swelled in a resounding yes to his question; her breasts grew heavier, her nipples harder.

A shiver streaked up her spine, then back down again before a tremor of need sliced through her sex. She knew she couldn't hide it. As his head raised, his gaze meeting hers, she knew the hunger filling her was reflected in her eyes. It wasn't just a need for sex. It was a need for everything. To curl in his arms, to rub against him, to find a place to rest. And she knew the illusion that she could do just that couldn't be real.

He inhaled deep, his eyes darkening as sensuality suddenly darkened his expression. "Get ready to ride,''

he growled rather than touching her further as she expected. "We either get this show on the road or we head to the bedroom. Your choice. Otherwise, you're going to find out exactly how a Breed fucks the fight out of tempting little wildcats like yourself. Now get moving. One way or the other.''

He kept trying to remind himself that he wasn't like her. Not really human. Not the right man to start an affair with a woman who had no idea what she was getting into with him, sexually speaking.

His lips quirked at the thought. Her snappish little comments against his Breed birth hadn't bothered him. He saw more than he was certain she wanted him to. The clash of emotions inside her was clearly felt, as was the arousal, hot enough, deep enough to bum a man to his soul. And it frightened her.

He drove across the desert, the gentle rocking motion of the Raider making the silence inside the vehicle seem all that much deeper. It was hard to forget what he was, who he was, when the heat of her arousal scented the cool interior of the closed vehicle.

He was a Breed. The bastard of the human and animal species. His genetics were a mismatched collage of human and lion DNA that made him stronger, faster, more predatory, more vicious than any human should be. He was identified by the genetic marker of a lion's paw on the inside of his left thigh, and by the longer, sharper canines at the sides of his mouth. Not that those were the only anomalies, but they were the most apparent.

His sexuality was hard, driven. If there was anything better than sex and a wild, hot woman, then he hadn't found it.

It was better than a good bloody fight, and he loved those, too.

Adrenaline was the spice of life, be it sexual or lifethreatening. But he had never taken a woman who wasn't a Breed. And he had never taken one as fragile as the woman sitting beside him. The one burning, slick and wet and ready for him.

From the comer of his eye he watched her rub at the earlobe he had nipped the other day. He had broken the skin. The small curve was abraded, though it didn't look as though it should cause her any problems. But she kept rubbing and tugging at it as though it bothered her.

"I didn't bite you that hard," he grumbled as she continued to toy with it.

"You're not making me feel guilty for it."

"Think what you want to." She glared back at him. "It's still sensitive."

He flashed her a lazy smile. "That little nip was nothing. You need to toughen up, sweetheart."

It was nothing compared to what he had ached to do to her earlier. As his tongue had licked over the little abrasion on her lobe, he had longed to move to her shoulder, to taste the sweet flesh there, to rake his teeth over it, to mark her in a way no other man could ever mistake.

That need surprised him. He had never known a desire to mark a woman. This woman he wanted to mark in all ways, so that no other male could ever mistake to whom she belonged.

"You need to refrain from biting," she parried with an edge of nervous arousal. Oh yeah, she felt it too. The need was burning inside her just as hot, just as fierce as it was burning in him. He could feel it, could smell it.

He shifted in his seat to relieve the pressure against his swollen cock. The scent of her arousal was driving him crazy. He wanted nothing more

than to hold her beneath him, his teeth gripping her sensitive shoulder as he worked his engorged cock as deep inside the melting depths of her pussy as he could go. And she was melting. So hot, so wild that her frustration was making her angry. Making him impatient.

"I'll see what I can do about that," he grunted as he turned and made his way down the inclined entrance into the gully. The same path Megan had taken the day before.

"You stopped here before coming into the gully the other day," he remarked, determined to do the job he had been sent to do before he did the woman. "Why?'

He watched her as she stared into the entrance to the deep gully, her gaze reflective. He could feel the subtle tug of her ability to pull his natural shield around her. It was intimate. As it enfolded her, shallow though the protection was, it bonded him to her, made his spirit a part of hers.

"Someone followed the jeep down on foot, wearing hiking boots. The tracks were fresher than the tire tracks. Did you see who it was?" she asked then, peering from the side window as she pushed the dark shades above her eyes to see the ground clearly.

He shook off the knowledge of the deepening bond, relaxed his guards against her and allowed her to pull the shield further around herself.

"That was me." He eased the Raider into the wide gully before coming to a stop. "I found the jeep about six hours before you came through. I made it to about here, smelled the stink of the Coyotes around the bend." He pointed to a fissure at the other side of the gully. "I noticed this area is riddled with fissures and caverns. They're like a maze inside, many of them connecting together. I was able to slip through those to work my way closer to the cavern they were hidden within."

Megan nodded. "We had a particularly hard rainy season about ten years ago. The gullies stayed flooded and many of them washed out deep grooves into the stone. This is one of about a dozen of the hardest hit areas. The floods in these washouts would come hard and fast, many revealing small caves that go deep beneath them and now collect water when it does rain."

"I worked my way through those washouts until I found a way to get around them," Braden continued.

"I wasn't far from you when I heard you call in to Lance. They were waiting on you."

"But why me?" That was the one she didn't understand.

As he started the vehicle forward again, she lowered the window, staring up at the steadily rising walls that grew steeper as they moved deeper into the gully.

He didn't answer her. There was no way to answer her until they found out the reason for the Coyotes'

arrival.

He drove around the steep bend, pulling to a stop behind the black SUV

Mark and Aimee had driven.

He watched as she glanced around the area, her eyes narrowed, almost distant as she seemed to listen to something he couldn't hear. Finally, she gripped the handle of the door and stepped out of the vehicle as he set the security controls and followed her.

He continued to watch her. Leaning against the front of the Raider, testing the wind every few seconds for the rancid scent of Coyotes as she stared at the SUV, her expression solemn, intense.

"They looked so young." Sadness washed over her, regret for the lives wasted before they could be lived.

"Aimee was twenty-three. Mark was twenty-four,'' he told her. "Neither had been out of captivity long enough to know freedom."

She moved to the open doors of the SUV. The smell of death was thick, the blood-soaked interior boiling with heat beneath the afternoon sun. She didn't throw up as he would have expected her to. Her expression tightened as she leaned in and bent forward, checking beneath the driver's seat, then in the console beside it.

She flinched every few minutes as though she were in pain. Or feeling that of another.

"Did your people have time to go over it?" she asked him then.

"Thoroughly." There was nothing to be found. A few fast-food bags, gasoline receipts. No notes, no letters, nothing to indicate why they had left or why they had died.

"So why are we here?' She moved back, turning to face him with a frown on her face.

"Because those Coyotes waited here for almost twenty-four hours for you to arrive. We checked the SUV. This canyon is another story. We're going to go over it, inch by inch. Every tributary leading into the rock wall, every cavern. We're going to go over it. Because the Coyotes that are dumb enough to stay with the Council are the ones too stupid to cover their tracks well. They've left something here. They were here for too long not to. Now it's up to us to find what they left and to figure out why they want you. And they do want you, baby. Real bad."

Fear flashed in her eyes but only for a second. It was followed closely by anger, then determination.

"They can want on then." A cool little smile curved her lips. Calculating, filled with cold purpose. "So where do we start?"

Chapter Five

They started with a perilous climb from the bottom of the gorge to the uppermost section of the cliff that rose above it. More than ten feet from the ground, handholds were few and far between; and though a fall wouldn't lull her, it would sure as hell hurt.