Chapter 3

The night was her friend. Sherra moved along the mountain above the Breed estate. She often took for granted the clear view she possessed in the darkness. It may as well have been daylight, despite the lack of light that came from the moonless sky. She found comfort in the darkness. A place to hide and attempt to make sense of the growing demands of her body.

The demands Kane was making were even worse. She fought the unexplained growing awareness inside her on a daily basis. Fought her need to touch him, not in hunger or in lust, but just to assure herself he was there. That he lived. That he breathed. She fought it to the point that she feared even the lightest contact between them because it was growing harder by the day to deny the fragile bond she could feel forming within her soul.

The cold was more than welcome now. The crisp, sharp edge of the temperature helped to clear her head, to hold onto her defenses. She could endure the temperatures better than the rest of her family could. Though she didn’t have the pelt that the Snow Leopard possessed, she did have a tolerance to cold weather that the other Breeds didn’t. The heat surging inside her could have had a lot to do with it, though. The mating heat was worse than she had ever known it to be. As though Kane’s presence had somehow stoked the fires hotter inside her. Her tongue was swollen now; the glands at the sides were engorged, pulsing with the need to release the rich hormone contained within them.

It had shocked her, the knowledge that she was displaying some of the characteristics that the males were showing. Her mate wasn’t a Breed. The aphrodisiacal hormone would drive his sexuality higher, as it would hers. She closed her eyes at the thought. Doc Martin had warned her it would be like pumping Kane full of super Viagra, making certain he was able to perform often enough to ensure conception.

The thought of Kane with a perpetual hard-on was more than she could fathom. Hell, he kept one now for the most part. Every time she saw him, his eyes glistened with arousal and the bulge in his pants seemed to get bigger. Tempting her. Oh Lord, how he tempted her.

She licked her lips as she worked her way along the mountain. She remembered clearly the steely hardness that rose from between his thighs. The shape and length, the thickness of the flesh, the feel of him. She wanted to groan in need at the remembered taste of his come pulsing across her tongue and down her throat. Or the feel of him thrusting between her thighs. Her pussy wept at the thought of that one.

Sherra gritted her teeth and kept moving. She would be damned if she’d give in to it. She could just see Kane, as dominant and domineering as any Breed ever born. He would turn into the same type of monster both Callan and Taber had turned into. She snorted. As though she would ever survive being confined to that house amid the danger growing around them. In the past two weeks there had been three attempts to breech the outer perimeters of the security fence that ran around the mountain. They had yet to catch whoever had attempted to break the security, though. Sherra couldn’t imagine hiding within the confines of the estate during such a time. Callan and Taber had both lost their minds in their attempts to protect Merinus and Roni. It would make her crazy.

She couldn’t hold back her regret that she couldn’t conceive, her grief at the loss of the child she had once carried. Her womb flexed warningly, a prelude to the hard spasms that she knew would come soon—her body’s demand that new life be created, that conception be allowed. She had destroyed any chances of that with her own ignorance years before. And she was growing so tired of fighting Kane and the heat building within her.

He was her mate. She had known that since learning the true depth of the bonding between Merinus and Callan. It didn’t make the situation any easier to handle. To know he was the only man she could allow to touch her, to hold her, did not bode well for her future.

“Can you get anymore stubborn, Sherra?” Kane’s voice snapped into the comm link at her ear, causing her to tense as she paused on her way up the mountain. With a silent curse she flipped the field glasses from the top of her head over her eyes and activated the pinpoint locator. She prayed he was in the communications building rather than heading up the mountain. Damn. There he was. She watched his unique locator as it moved steadily closer to her. The other Breeds on patrol were pulling back, giving him clear room as he made a beeline for her.

“I probably could,” she grunted in frustration.

She could feel anticipation rising in her now. As though his voice had triggered a switch that let her body know he was coming near. Her breasts were suddenly sensitized, swollen again, the nipples poking against the material of her tank top as she paused and sat down on a large, moss-covered boulder. It wouldn’t do any good to run from him. He was amazingly persistent.

Sherra breathed in deeply, catching the faint trace of his scent as he neared her. Her eyes closed in response to the sudden rush of blood that began to thunder through her veins. He smelled delicious, dark and exciting, his lust lending a dangerous edge to the heated smell.

He would be hard, she thought with a sigh. His cock would be pressed tight against his jeans, daring her to release it, to take him as she needed. She shook her head at the thought. Her self-control was running low. Lack of sleep and the building heat were starting to take their toll on her.

Sherra flipped the mic to the comm link away from her face, cutting off the others from anything she would say. The headphones were still in place, though, and she was able to keep up with the other guards as well as the communications center. She pulled the glasses off as she saw Kane’s pinpoint marker coming steadily closer. He knew where she was. The small receptor pinned to the back of her jeans allowed her to be tracked easily by the computerized glasses that the Breed security force wore. She tucked the glasses into the pack on her utility belt and waited for Kane. The winter night was suddenly filled with a sultry, evocative warmth that seeped into her bones and made her want to relax into the touch she knew Kane would be eager to give her. He might be madder than hell, but as he entered the boulder-strewn area where she sat, his lust wrapped around her senses like a lava-hot wave of hunger.

“I didn’t take you for a coward, Sherra.” The first words out of his mouth had the hair at the back of her neck prickling in fury. She was unable to contain the low growl of anger that vibrated from her chest.

“There’s a difference between cowardice and indifference, Kane,” she snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest, watching as he drew closer. “I’m not frightened of you in the least. Now why follow me up here? Anything you have to say could have gone through the comm.”

“Really?” he grunted as he stopped inches from her. “Do you really want the rest of the Pride to hear me tell you just how hard I intend to paddle your ass for leaving like that? And how far I intend to have my dick buried up your slick cunt while I do so?”

She would have been insulted if the sudden image that shot through her head didn’t have her pussy pulsing in response instead. Pulsing? Hell, it was throbbing like a raw, open wound, begging to be filled. But that didn’t mean she had to let him know that.

“Oh, aren’t you brave?” She lifted a brow disdainfully. She would be damned if she would go to the trouble to actually get pissed off. Like she needed the blood rushing harder to her clit, carrying the faint traces of the hormone that escaped the glands in her tongue to the rest of her body faster. “You know, Kane, I could claw your eyes out easily. I’m a Feline. Remember?”

He grunted sarcastically. “I’ll pretend to be your wolf and eat you then,” he sniped.

“Spread out.”

Her arm moved before she really put any thought into it, her hand aiming for his face. Remarkably, he caught it a second before impact.

“You are out of line,” she spat furiously. “I’m sick of your sniping and your veiled insults, Kane.”

“And I’m damned sick and tired of being tied physically and emotionally to a hellcat who doesn’t have the sense to take care of herself,” he snarled back. “Do you think I haven’t learned just what you’ve gone through over the years, Sherra? How bad the heat gets and the lengths you’ll go to in denying it? You could have found me at any time.”

Rage glittered in his eyes now. The deep blue flashed with fury as his lips tightened with it. It excited her, infuriated her.

“Oh yeah, I was really going to do that.” She jerked her arm back, her body tingling, her heart aching from even that touch. “Come crying to you fresh out of that compound, believing you had betrayed me to begin with. I was just going to march right up to your door and ask you prettily to fuck me and make it easier. Even if I had known what the heat was, there wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening.” Keeping her voice low, keeping the rage tempered behind a harsh growl was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life. She needed to scream, to rage, to strike out and hurt him as badly as she had been hurt when she believed he had deserted her.

“You knew I wouldn’t just walk away from you, Sherra.” He wasn’t backing down. He was right in her face, the heat of his anger and his lust wrapping around her like invisible chains as his hands gripped her arms.

His flesh burned into hers. She could feel each individual finger, every cell as they came into contact with her body and became inordinately sensitized. She fought to drag in enough air to clear her head, to reinforce her self-control, but all she could smell was Kane and hot male lust.

Sherra stared at him, drawing in the scent of him, intoxicated by the sudden, overwhelming need to touch him. She was trembling with it, she realized. He was staring down as her as though he wanted to shake her senseless. His eyes were narrowed, thick lashes shadowing his cheeks, his usually sensually full lips pressed into a thin line of anger. And she wanted his kiss.

Her tongue throbbed as she strained away from him. She could taste the hormone spilling into her mouth as the engorged glands began to fill and demand the sharing.

“Get away from me.” She tried to pull back from him, to deny the need and the hunger sweeping through her and the rage that lingered just under the surface. “If you had cared you would have taken me with you as I begged you to, Kane, but you left me instead.” Even she was surprised by the guttural sound of her voice, the harsh unbidden pain that echoed in it.

“God, do you think I don’t hate myself for that enough, Sherra?” His eyes were bleak, filled with his own pain, his own regret. “Do you think I haven’t literally prayed to go back and do it differently? To make sure you got out of there?”

He released her, as though he couldn’t bear to touch her any longer. His hands pushed through the short strands of his thick hair as he blew out a ragged breath. He was fighting for control just as much as she was.

“Look, Kane.” Sherra moved back, fighting to breathe past the emotions ripping through her and pouring off him. “It’s too late to go back, and too much has happened to go forward…”

“The hell it has,” he growled, staring back at her implacably. “Do you think I searched all these years, Sherra, risked my life and my family’s and drove myself insane so you could wave me away as though none of it fucking matters?” A harsh laugh echoed through the night. “I don’t think so, baby. And I think you know it’s not going to happen as well. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be running like a scared little cat in the opposite direction every time I come near.”

His voice had risen, but even more, he had moved. Sherra backed away, realizing she was retreating a second before she bumped into the boulder behind her.

“I’m trying to be sensible,” she snapped. “Something you aren’t, Kane. You have no idea what could happen. You don’t know how it will affect you…”

“I know how you affect me,” he growled. “I know my cock is like steel in my pants ninety percent of the time, I’m so hot to get inside you. I know every time I see so much as a scratch on your flesh I want to take someone apart. A bruise makes me rabid. I know whatever the fuck happened in that lab that night, I’ve never gotten over it, Sherra. I’ve never forgotten. And, by God, I never gave up. You gave up.”

“I accepted.” Ragged, hoarse, her voice reflected all the pain and rage of the past years. “And now it’s your turn, Kane. It’s time to accept it’s over. It was over the night those bastards raped me… Oh, God.” She pressed her hand over her mouth as she watched him pale, watched the pain that washed over his face. Pushing herself violently away from the boulder, she moved far enough away from him to avoid his touch, to breathe in the sultry night air rather than the bitter tinge of his pain.

She barely remembered that night. It had been hazy, misty. The drugs had reacted against the hormones that were surging through her system. The scientists had no idea the mistake they had made until she began going into convulsions beneath the bastard raping her.

“Sherra. I would give my own life to have saved you from that,” he whispered behind her. “And that’s the God’s truth.”

She shook her head with a sense of fatality. “No, Kane. You nearly gave your life, anyway, and we never knew it. It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for it.” And she didn’t. She merely accepted it. “I’m not the girl you loved then. The girl who loved you doesn’t exist anymore. She died with the child she lost. All that’s left is the killer.” She turned back to him, seeing the somber cast of his face, the bitterness in his gaze. “I’m a Breed, Kane. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I’m in heat. It’s physical. It’s biological. And we have no idea how it could affect you. I’m not willing to risk it.”

A short, sarcastic laugh escaped him. “You must take me for a hell of a fool, Sherra.” He shook his head, surprising her with the edge of amusement in the sound.

“You’re good, baby. So good, I think you may have even fooled yourself. But you haven’t fooled me. Think about that, Sherra. And start counting the days. Because I’ll be damned if I’ll let you run much longer.”