“You’re crazy,” she gasped as his hips rotated, his cock screwing into her deeper when she thought it wasn’t possible for him to get further inside her. “You want me to talk to you?”

“Mmm,” he murmured, lowering his head just enough to kiss the corner of her lips before he rose again, watching her carefully. “Tell me how good my cock feels inside you, Sherra. Do you like this…?”

Her back arched, a low, fierce growl emitting from between her lips as he pulled back several inches then thrust in deep again. Nerve endings caught fire, her womb convulsed and a shiver of impending release shuddered through her body. She could feel it, just out of reach, despite the fact that he was doing little more than filling her sensitive pussy, his cock throbbing like another heartbeat inside her.

“Yes. Yes. I like that.” She writhed beneath him, the pleasure whipping through her like an impending firestorm. “More.”

“More?” His hands tugged at her hair as his hips rotated again, the head of his erection stroking her sensitive flesh, sending building waves of sensation tearing through her. What was he doing to her? Why was he delaying the release she knew tormented him as well? Sherra could feel the building sensations bordering on pain within her own body. Each thrust sent her higher, closer, but they were too few to send her over the edge.

“More,” she panted, her fingers digging into his shoulders. “What do you want, Kane? Do you want me to beg?”

He was driving her crazy. She fought to drive her cunt harder onto the impalement of his cock, but he used his weight to hold her to the bed, to control the movement of her hips as her legs rose to wrap around his lower back.

“I want what you gave me the first time, Sherra,” he told her. “I know you haven’t forgotten. You couldn’t have forgotten.” For a moment his voice was tortured, his expression flickering with pain as perspiration dampened his features.

Yes. She remembered. Every moment of that night, every touch, every…

She whispered a protest, her gaze going to his roughly scarred chest and the mark she had left so long ago.

She had whispered to him before placing the wound. Words that echoed in her mind, filled her with lust and left her longing for the same haunting need she glimpsed in his eyes.

“Kane.” She protested the rising hunger to go back, to allow the dreams to take over once again.

“I’ll never leave you again, Sherra.” He stilled inside her as she stared up at him in shock. Her soul wailed in misery at his words.

“Stop.” She shook her head desperately. “Not now. Not yet.”

She couldn’t deal with the overload of emotions while his cock was straining the walls of her pussy, the need for orgasm beating at her brain.

“Now.” He denied her the ability to hide any longer. And hiding, she knew, was exactly what she had been doing. “Here, now, Sherra.”

His hips bunched as he began slowly—too damned slowly for the needs rocking through her—pumping inside her just enough to keep the pain from clawing at her womb, but not enough for orgasm.

“Do you like that, baby? Do you like feeling my cock fucking inside your tight pussy, making us both crazier by the second?” he asked her softly, an echo of the past. “Tell me what you want, Sherra. I’ll give you anything you want.”

“No.” Her head thrashed against the mattress as she fought the potent, irresistible call of her own soul, and the needs hammering at her brain. “Stop this, Kane. Please. Just let me come.”

“No,” he growled, baring his teeth as his own body shuddered with the need. “Not yet. Feel it, baby. Feel how good it is.”

He drove inside her hard, paused, his cock throbbing heavily inside the sensitive clasp of her pussy.

“Kane…” She sobbed his name.

“Now…” He drove inside her again. Paused. His eyes watched her, glittering wildly, hunger and demand tightening every line of his expression. “Now.”

“Oh God.” Her hips jerked at the next hard thrust, her head turning, her tongue swiping over the mark on his chest as he suddenly stilled. “Fuck me, Kane. Fuck me hard and hot until nothing matters but us. Nothing but us…” Her mouth covered the spot, her teeth raking over it, then her tongue, a second before she bit him.

A male shout of satisfaction filled the room as he began to move. One hand lowered to her hip as his own began to churn, thrust, driving his cock deep and hard inside her as she tasted blood. Her tongue, rasping and filled with the unique mating hormone, began to lap at the wound, her mouth sucking at his flesh as the taste of him became the final straw to drive her past reason. Her orgasm erupted, her pussy tightening on his driving cock as she tore her mouth from his chest to scream out her completion.

“Fuck yes. Come for me, baby.” His head buried at her neck as he stroked inside her powerfully, lengthening, driving her orgasm higher until reality, past and present, was extinguished. There were only her and Kane. Together, melting, blending, orgasm and bonding clashed and in the fires of their release, satisfaction weaved for the first time in years, two hearts beat, bonded, and eased. For now, there was peace.

* * * * *

Seth Lawrence had seen many things in his life. At thirty-five, he guessed he would have experienced damned near every adventure a man of his temperament could have imagined. He had spoiled himself with the darker edge of life, but nothing had prepared him for Dawn Daniels. He had read her file. Age twenty-seven, Cougar Breed, the horrors recorded from the Lab files didn’t bear thinking of. She had endured a hell no child should have ever lived.

Her golden-brown eyes were haunted with that past, deep, somber pools of suspicion and hunger. Not sexual hunger, but the soul-deep, mind-consuming hunger to live. He bet the sizeable fortune he possessed that Dawn had never known either a lover’s touch or a friend’s gentle embrace without remembering the fear and the nightmares of her past.

Now, she stood within the guesthouse of Sanctuary, watching him with those mysterious pools of emotion, her body stiff, defensive as she answered to his latest demands. He hid his smile, rubbing his finger over his lips as his elbow braced on the padded arm of the couch and his knee bent, his foot resting on the teak coffee table in front of him.

“You’re not in a position to demand anything, Mr. Lawrence,” she reminded him severally, the high cheekbones and kittenish angles of her face revealed by the severity of the French braid which pulled her hair back from her face. Soft, golden-brown strands, not nearly as dark as the color of her eyes, like rich, light caramel. “Sanctuary is not one of your offices,” she continued. “My men are not under your command.”

Her men? His brows snapped into a frown. He didn’t like the way she phrased that. Her guards perhaps?

Yeah, he could handle that phrase.

“Furthermore, may I also remind you that you are here only under objection. If it wasn’t for Cassie, you’d be recuperating in a hospital rather than reclining on that damned couch staring at me as though I were a bug under a microscope.”

His brow lifted. Actually, he was watching her like the tempting little package she was. Her short, compact little body was driving him crazy. Tempting breasts pressed against the soft cotton of her dull green T-shirt and that gun strapped to her thigh, over the snug mission pants she wore, should not have been sexy. He was more a pervert than he believed, because his cock was spike-hard as she faced him so defiantly.

“I believe the phrase ‘watching you like a tender morsel of meat’ would be more appropriate.” He held back his smile just as he tried to dim the interest in her response in his gaze. She jerked alert, her jaw tightening, her lightly tanned face paling the barest bit as her gaze darkened. Then she snarled.

His cock jerked, flexing in a harsh reminder of its aroused state as she flashed those pearly canines.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can play with me, Lawrence,” she growled, but he saw her nipples harden, caught the quick intake of her breath. “I could tear you apart before you knew what hit you.”

He smiled then. A slow, confident curve of his lips as his gaze went over her once again.

“Play with you?” he murmured softly. “I’d actually be quite serious, darling, never doubt that for a moment.”

Had he had ever wanted a woman as swiftly, as heatedly as he did this one? It wasn’t possible. He would remember a hunger this strong, this consuming. As he continued to watch her, her face flushed, paled, then flushed again. Her breathing became harder, faster. But her hand dropped to her gun, her fingers caressing the handgrip as though seeking reassurance.

“Don’t make that mistake, Lawrence.” Her voice chilled, but catching the undercurrent of pain, of anger, wasn’t hard. “Better men than you have tried. They failed.”

“They weren’t men.” He didn’t move, despite the need to jerk to his feet, to pace in fury, to pull her to him and fill his senses with the taste of her. “Rabid animals, Dawn, don’t count.”

Her hand tightened on the gun as regret filled her eyes.

“Don’t fool yourself into thinking I’ll fall at your feet as the women who fill your life do,” she snapped,

her shoulders straightening, which only pressed her breasts tighter against her shirt, her nipples clearly revealed beneath it. Hard, pointed tips he would give his left nut to taste. Well, maybe not a nut, but damned near anything else.

“I’d be disappointed if you did, sweetheart.” He braced his arm over his upraised knee as he fought to maintain a relaxed, calm demeanor. Now wasn’t the time to spook her. He wanted her off balance, not running from him. “I’m merely stating the obvious. You said I was watching you like a bug under a microscope. I’m actually watching you like the very beautiful woman you are, nothing more.”

“I’m an animal. One it would pay you to be wary of,” she snarled, flashing those wickedly sharp teeth again.

Son of a bitch cock, it flexed painfully, more interested than it should have been. His eyes went over her again.

“You guys have a thing about being animals, don’t you?” he stated then. “I’ve heard that comment several times this week. If that’s what you truly believe, then why the hell are you trying to mix with the rest of us? Where’s the closest pen, Dawn, I’ll help you lock yourself in.”

He was pushing, he knew was, and he couldn’t help it. It infuriated him to hear her describe herself in such a way, to see the belief flashing in her eyes. It enraged him to remember how the belief had been beaten into her. As a child, nothing more, raped by Council soldiers, jeered at, forced to be the animal they called her.

“I can kill you and get away with it.” Her voice was hoarse now. “And I wouldn’t regret it. I’ll sleep just as well as I do every other night…”

“You don’t sleep, period,” he retorted, his anger finally showing as she faced him, her expression drawn with exhaustion, nightmares haunting her eyes. And he couldn’t even explain why he fucking cared. “A child could see how little sleep you get, woman. Pull the badass Breed persona on me, it doesn’t work. You could kill me in a heartbeat but you’d never forget it.” He leaned forward then, watching her, knowing she would run, just as he knew he’d never let her go. “You would never forget, Dawn, that you killed the one man capable of holding you during the nightmares, of accepting who you are, and all that entails.”

“So you think you can cure the nightmares?” She sneered then. “Letting you touch me would just wipe it all away, huh, Seth?”

“No,” he whispered, watching her pale again, but this time, the color didn’t return. “Nothing can wipe it away, Dawn. Nothing can change the past or the nightmares. But I would be there when you awoke. You wouldn’t be alone anymore, and in time, maybe, better dreams could take their place sometimes.”