His hands were hard on her hips, his male cries harsh and pulled roughly from the depths of his chest as

his body shook above her for long seconds. Finally, blissfully, the violent tremors of rapturous pleasure eased, releasing him to clasp against her, his mouth at her neck as he fought for breath. And he was still hard.

Sherra blinked back tears of weary knowledge. The Breed males were exceptionally powerful, built for endurance, allowing them to hold up beneath the intense eroticism of the mating heat. How would Kane endure it?

“I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can move,” he whispered at her neck as he began to thrust inside her again. “Until there’s nothing left of you or me, Sherra. Only us. Only the knowledge that you’ll never…” a hard thrust lifted her to him with a weak cry of growing hunger, “ever…” deeper, harder,

“fucking refuse me again…”

Chapter Nine

Kane helped her dress and carried her to his room hours later. Sherra was limp, exhausted in his arms and his cock was still hard, raging with the need to be buried inside her again. As he undressed her and tucked her in the bed he sat down heavily in the chair beside it after undressing himself and just stared at her.

She was sleeping deeply—so deeply that the move had barely disturbed her. Dark shadows lay under her eyes, a testament to the sleepless nights she had spent over the last few weeks. Nights spent pacing her room or roaming the mountain. Just as he had spent his nights. He leaned his head wearily against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. His erection throbbed like a damned toothache. He couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t spill his seed inside her fast enough or hard enough for satisfaction.

He smiled slowly. It would kill him, but damn if she wasn’t worth it. She was tight and hot, fitting him perfectly, gripping his cock like a silken glove and making him work to fit the entire length inside her. No matter how slick and wet she got she was fist-tight around his bursting erection. Not that he was overly large, but he wasn’t lacking either.

He watched her, his heart heavy now, his emotions as jumbled together as his desires were. God alone knew how much he loved her. Loved her until his heart had ripped from his chest when he thought she was dead. He hadn’t wanted to live, hadn’t wanted to go on, it had hurt so bad to be without her. Every cell of his body had mourned her for eleven long, empty years. The night she had stepped from the shadows in Sandy Hook he had breathed for the first time since losing her. His heart had begun beating again, blood refreshing his body, reminding him he was indeed alive after that long emotional hibernation he had gone into. Suddenly, nothing else had mattered but touching her, holding her. Being a part of her. And she had hated him. He had seen it in her eyes, a pain that darkened the soul, a fury he could never extinguish by himself. He grimaced at the reasons behind it. Surging to his feet he pulled a pair of loose jogging pants on, wincing as his cock tented the fabric away from his body.

Pacing to the balcony doors he stared into the darkness silently. She had lost their child, been raped, had suffered through a reaction to the drugs the scientists had given her with such violence it had nearly killed her. And even after the escape her torment hadn’t been over. She had endured years of building arousal so intense the physical pain was destructive. She had suffered in ways he could never imagine, and sometimes he wondered if it would ever end. Kane crossed his arms over his chest as he sighed wearily. He had forced her into accepting the mating heat. Had taken her kiss, knowing she would have no choice after the hormone was shared between them. Was he any better than the guards who had raped her in those labs?

“Kane.” He turned quickly to her voice.

She lay watching him, her green eyes darkening as she glimpsed his aroused body.

“You’re hurting,” she said softly, moving to pull the blankets back from her naked body.

“No.” He was there before she could finish the move. “You should sleep, baby. You’re exhausted.”

She frowned in confusion. “You’re aroused, Kane.”

“I’ve been aroused for the last eleven years.” He grinned wryly. “A few more hours won’t hurt me.”

Her gaze flickered with emotion before it was quickly shielded by the thick, white-blonde lashes he so loved.

“What if it doesn’t go away for you?” she asked him. “How can you bear it, Kane?”

Shaking his head he moved beside her, propping his shoulders against the headboard as he pulled her against his chest. She resisted for a second before sprawling over him as he wanted. Almost boneless, like the lazy little cat she should be, he thought with a grin. It wouldn’t bother him if she was draped across him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

“Sherra, I’ve been like this since before our first kiss. I have a lot of time to make up for. It will be quite a while before we’ve slaked the hunger that’s built up over the years,” he told her with a thread of amusement. “Don’t you worry about me. Worry about you for now. I don’t want you hurting anymore. I can’t stand to see the arousal and the need shadowing your eyes when there’s nothing I want more than to ease it however I can.”

He kissed the top of her head, male pride filling his chest at the tangled condition of her hair. His fingers had messed it up, had torn it from the neat braid she normally kept it in. Her body was sexily boneless, warm and satiny against his flesh. His balls tightened with the need to make her scream his name again. She was silent for long moments, thinking. That worried him. Sherra never failed to piss him off when she started thinking. The woman’s mind was like a steel trap, sharp and always effective as hell. But she was a female and he’d be damned if he could make sense of a female’s mind at the best of times. Maybe fucking her wasn’t a bad idea. At least then she would stop thinking.

“I thought you left me,” she finally said, her voice low, thick with emotion. “For so long, I thought you had just left. At first, it hurt, but I had the baby…” Her voice broke as his arms tightened around her.

Everything in Kane shattered again at the pain in her voice. He buried his head in her hair and fought the emotion ripping through him.

“I could have survived with our baby, Kane,” she whispered. “I dreamed of a little boy that looked like you, that laughed like you.” He could hear the regret, soul-deep, the dreams she had buried so far inside her. “I died in those labs, Kane. You can’t resurrect something that no longer has life.”

Kane shook his head, a whisper of a smile crossing his lips. Yep, female logic sucked, he thought, not for the first time. And this woman’s was sure to drive him insane.

“Sherra, baby, I’m sure as hell you believe every word that just came out of your mouth,” he finally said gently. “But that’s the biggest crock of bull I ever heard in my life.”

She stiffened and would have risen from his chest if he hadn’t held her still.

“Stay right the hell where you are before I fill your mouth with my dick, so I don’t have to listen to such nonsense,” he warned her. “Dead, my ass. If you were dead, Sherra, you wouldn’t ache. You wouldn’t hurt. You wouldn’t give a damn how hot and horny I got or whether or not that sizzling hormone you put out would hurt me. You would fuck the hell out of me, get off and be done with it.”

He could feel the anger building in her. Better the anger than that damned certainty that there was no love left within her. He wouldn’t accept that. He wouldn’t let her accept that.

“You’re such an asshole, Kane.” She jerked back from him, her eyes glittering fury. “Do you have to think you’re always right? You haven’t survived these years with me…”

“I would have,” he snarled back at her, amazed at how quickly his lust was beginning to build now. “I wasn’t with you by your choice, Sherra. You decided not to let me know. You decided to let me believe you were dead. You decided, baby, so don’t even attempt to discredit me because I wasn’t with you.”

“Oh yeah, I should have just called. ‘Oh, hi, Kane baby, I lived through the fire but I miscarried our baby. Would you please come fuck me again even though I believe you lied and left me to begin with?’”

she snapped sarcastically. “Not hardly, stud.”

Stud. His cock jerked. He’d show her stud .

“That would have worked for me,” he told her irritably, watching her carefully. Her face was flushed, her eyes glittering dangerously. But he could see her arousal building, the perspiration that dampened her forehead, the state of her hard, baby pink nipples. His mouth watered to cover them, suck them, hear her scream as she begged for his cock.

“I just bet it would have.” She slapped at him as he moved, pushing her to the bed, restraining her hands to the mattress as he straddled her. “Get off me, moron. Merinus is right—you’re an asshole, plain and simple. You’re not worth talking to.”

“Then don’t talk,” he snapped furiously. “Because I’ll be damned if you make sense when you do. Put that smart-assed mouth to some good use and kiss me instead.”

Chapter Ten

Kiss him she did. Furious, hungry, desperate, their mouths mated, tongues twining, giving and taking until Sherra thought she would explode from the pleasure of that alone. He infuriated her. He drove her insane. But below it all was this need. This terrible physical and emotional hunger that she could never still.

Sherra was smart enough to know that it went beyond just the mating heat. There was a need that curled inside her very soul, stretched and roared in demand. She whimpered beneath the onslaught of heated yearning and awakening emotion, her body clenching, tightening, as her nails bit into Kane’s hard shoulders and her tongue pressed passionately into his mouth. His lips closed on it, his mouth drawing on the swollen flesh as he pushed her thighs apart his hands moved between her and the sweat pants he wore, quickly ridding himself of the offending material. His lips sipped at hers, his tongue stroking, fueling the lust building between them as he positioned his erection, sliding it between her plump pussy lips as he groaned roughly. Sherra could feel the moisture there slickening the broad head of his cock, preparing her for the invasion that she knew would take her past all her preconceived notions of pleasure. There was nothing like being touched by Kane. Being held and loved by him.

“You’re so hot,” he whispered when he tore his lips from hers. “So hot and sweet, baby, it’s like being surrounded by the sweetest fire on earth. Burn me again, Sherra.”

His lips buried at her throat as he began to work his cock inside her. Short, fierce thrusts that opened her, stretched her, had her screaming for more of the erotic pain that built inside her cunt.

“There, kitty. So sweet and hot. You fit me perfectly,” he groaned roughly as the last inches slid in, seating him fully inside her, sending impulses of exquisite pleasure ricocheting through her body. She could feel him, so thick and hard, wedged inside her, stretching her until the boundary between pleasure and pain could no longer be distinguished.

“Look at me, Sherra,” he whispered, his voice strained as he raised his head, bracing his weight on his elbows as he stared down at her intently. “Look at me, baby. See how wild you make me. See me, Sherra. Just this once.”

Her breath hitched at the huskily spoken plea. His eyes mesmerized her. So deep, dark and filled with emotion, haunted with pain and pleasure as he moved slowly inside the convulsive grip of her pussy. Her womb flexed as he stared down at her, the eroticism of watching his face flush, his eyes glitter with sexual hunger, filled her like a surge of electrical energy. Her hips jerked, driving him deeper as her neck arched, his hands tugging at her hair where they threaded snugly within the strands.

“Tell me it feels good, Sherra.” A slow, sexy smile shaped his swollen lips as his cheeks flushed a deep, brick red. “Talk to me, darlin’. Let me hear your voice, sweet and low and rough from needing me.”