Navarro's Promise (18 page)

She couldn’t have anticipated his next move. She couldn’t have guessed the sudden loss of control that would herald the hard, powerful thrust that buried him to the hilt.

A shock wave of ecstatic sensation raced up her spine and spasmed through her womb. Flames crackled over her flesh as electrical sensitivity raced through her veins.

She could feel his fingers on the cheeks of her rear, his palms cupping them, gripping them firmly as he began to move her in sync with the powerful rhythm of his hips.

Fierce, hard thrusts, deep and fiery, as he buried himself to the hilt before pulling back and thrusting deep again. Each powerful stroke stretched, burned, pushed pleasure to its limits, to the border that teased pain and amplified each sensation.

With her head thrown back, gasping for breath, Mica felt the tension rising, each fiery stroke pushing her higher, burning through her, clenching the muscles in her pussy, her womb, until she felt the pleasure implode with an explosive, furious detonation that dragged a strangled cry from her throat and arched her convulsively in his hold.

Within seconds, the fierce, rumbled growl tore from his chest and she felt the first spurt of his release jetting inside her. A second later, a low, delirious moan slipped from her lips as ecstasy built, rose and erupted into a harder, hotter orgasm that went through her system as his cock throbbed, swelled, and locked inside her with vicious pleasure.

His fingers clenched in her ass.

His body drew tight, his teeth tightened at her shoulder, a grating sound between a growl and a snarl vibrated against her flesh and heralded another, hard pulse of his release inside her. Another surge of explosive pleasure, the involuntary tightening of her inner muscles around the hard, throbbing knot locked inside her. Another pulse of his release and it began again.

Mica shuddered, trembled, a kaleidoscope of pleasure raging through her as she collapsed in his arms, gasping for air as each shudder, each hard contraction spilled a release of ecstasy to flood her senses.

Held against him, she fought against the need to lower the fragile barrier between pleasure and emotion, between the bonding of the flesh and the bonding of the soul.

Because only her soul would have reached out. Only her heart was bound it seemed.

“I won’t let you get away from me, Mica,” he whispered as he sat her on her feet, seconds before she watched in shock as he went to his knees in front of her.

Lifting her bared foot from the cold ground, Navarro drew her jeans leg back over her ankle before slowly, almost hesitantly, dressing her. After fixing the snap and zipping the jeans slowly, he knelt before her once more and held her leather running shoe to her foot as she pushed it on.

“I guess things could be worse,” he stated quietly as he stood to his full height, staring down at her. “We could have hated each other.”

Mica gave her head a hard shake.

“And how does that change the situation?” As far as she was concerned, it only made it worse.

It would have been easier, she thought, if she hated him. Then perhaps she would have found a way to deny him, to survive when she forced herself to walk away from him.

She wasn’t born to be a Breed’s mate and nothing more. And Navarro refused to love. She needed love, devotion, the qualities she had seen with her married friends, both human as well as Breed.

Her parents were a great example of the type of relationship Mica wanted for herself. Her mother shared with her father even the most mundane details. They were a couple, a unit, and the thought of settling for less had her heart clenching in dread.

Because with mating heat, she had no choice. She was forced to settle for what nature had given her. A mate that neither knew how to love nor wanted to learn.

“Are you okay?” Navarro could sense more coming from her than the scents of her alone.

Emotions were roiling inside her, but she was keeping them so tightly contained, so carefully hidden, that even with his advanced senses, he couldn’t define them.

It was a scent that was just almost there, a knowledge the animal inside him was awakening to yet hadn’t yet managed to decipher.

“I’m fine.” She swallowed tightly, averting her expression from him as she continued straightening her clothing. “I think you’re right though, it’s time I return to the house.”

To hide.

He knew what she was trying to do, what her uppermost desire at the moment was, now that the sexual needs had been sated. She just wanted to hide.

He had noticed that about her years before, when she was younger. Mica tended to hide whenever she was in Sanctuary. Though that had been wise of her in the past years; otherwise, this mating would have occurred long before now.

“I was going to invite you to go into town with me.” The words slipped from his lips before he could call them back, causing him to clench his teeth in self-disgust.

That was no way to place any distance between them, he told himself sourly.

She gave her head another hard shake, causing the dark blond strands of her hair to ripple around her. “Not today. I’ll just return to my room.”

“Our room.”

He could tell she didn’t think much of his comment, by the stiffening of her body and the frown that creased her forehead.

“I am not moving into your room.” Fiery stubbornness gleamed in her eyes now.

Navarro tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I assumed you would want to keep your bed. That’s the reason I had my belongings moved to your suite instead.”

He laid his fingers over her lips in warning as they parted, and for once, her scent was unmistakable. Pure feminine outrage.

“You can argue until hell freezes over,” he warned her, his tone darker than he would have liked, as though instinct were giving her the only response he was capable of. “But the plain and simple fact of the matter is that I’m not sleeping without my mate. You can deal with that however you like.”

Possessiveness wasn’t a part of him, he’d always assured himself. He was dominant. He knew what he wanted. But he’d learned long ago to never be possessive. It was far too easy to have what he thought belonged to him taken away.

Until now.

The possessiveness rose from within, surprising him with the fact that it had been so carefully hidden until now. She belonged to him, and he’d be damned if he’d allow her to hold herself back from him.

He couldn’t keep her, and he knew it.

But he also couldn’t let her go, couldn’t remain distant from her, no matter how hard he tried.

“We’ll see about this.” Lips thinned, teeth clenched, Mica swung away from him and began marching furiously down the incline that led from the pine thicket to the main house.

He let her go this time. Chasing after her would only incite both their tempers, and he knew exactly where that would lead. With his dick buried deep and hard inside the velvet heat of her pussy for the third time that day.

He grimaced, fixed his own clothing, then raked his fingers through his hair before moving back toward the main house himself.

He had work today. There were any number of projects that he should be working on while he was at Sanctuary. This wasn’t a vacation for him, though he clearly didn’t have his head where it should be in regards to his job.

A job he should have taken care of years before, he admitted, as he headed back to the labs and the files awaiting him on the horrors of the Omega Project. A project Phillip Brandenmore had funded and overseen.

The project that had killed Navarro’s brother, Randal, and the mate Randal had adored. The project that had inspired the vow Navarro had made to ensure Brandenmore died at his hand.

Ely moved among the equipment in the lab, her gaze studying with a frown the readings that came through, as the steel doors slid open and her personal irritant and bodyguard, Jackal, entered the room once again.

In his hands he carried a heavy tray filled with what was obviously lunch.

Her favorite.

Ham and cheese sandwiches made with the homemade bread Sanctuary’s cooks had prepared.

How amazing it had turned out to be that Breeds who were trained to kill, to stain their hands with blood, could also cook and bake with such perfection as to bring tears to the eye.

The sandwiches were piled high with ham, several different kinds of cheeses and with them were a variety of vegetables, along with roast beef, turkey and chicken luncheon slices.

Chips and pickles completed the meal along with frosted glasses of sweet, sweet iced tea.

Strong and muscular, Jackal should have looked out of place as he carried the tray of food dressed in his black heavy-metal-band T-shirt and worn jeans, his dark hair cut close to his scalp.

He didn’t though. She’d determined over the past years that nothing could make Jackal look out of place, and few things could make him feel out of place.

“How are the tests going?” he asked, his baritone voice a deep, almost Breed-like growl.

She gave a heavy sigh as she moved to the sink and washed her hands thoroughly before stepping over to the table and taking the seat he pulled out for her.

“That sigh isn’t exactly an answer,” he drawled, the Texas accent filled with concern.

“The tests aren’t exactly conclusive either,” she told him as she accepted the plate he lifted from the tray and set it in front of her. “It doesn’t matter how many tests I run, the final results remain inconclusive. There’s a mating, but they’re not mated.”

She hadn’t seen anything like it and still couldn’t make sense of it.

“You may have to explain that one to me, Ely.” He watched her expectantly as he bit into his sandwich with strong, white teeth.

“Who will explain it to me then?” she countered with the same frustration that had pricked at her for the past hours since beginning the tests.

“What’s the problem with the tests?” he probed further, obviously becoming impatient with her refusal to explain the situation.

She took another bite of the sandwich as she tried to figure out the best way to explain it.

“I’m not a moron, Ely,” he assured her, obviously reading her look, and he was very good at that actually.

“The tests are positive for mating,” she finally stated. “But I’ve never seen such weak results during an active mating. All the hormonal requirements are there, but they’re in such small quantities, that I wonder if Navarro couldn’t easily walk away from Mica without suffering for it. Once the hormone, weak as it is, reaches Mica’s system, it seems to grow stronger though.” She frowned again, still bothered by the hours she’d spent attempting to figure out the problem. “The test results are responding differently to different stimuli as well. Such as the weakened hormone, once introduced into Mica’s system, becoming stronger. The mating hormones in their blood are different, and in different levels than those in his semen and the natural lubrication in her vagina. Just as it was when we tested the saliva. But if I introduce other parameters to the tests, such as a variable of the hormones created during certain emotional responses, then the mating hormone in Navarro’s specimens explode.”

Jackal’s head tilted to the side as he frowned back at her questioningly. “It has to do with the emotional responses during mating heat then?”

Ely nodded again, chewing another bite before continuing. “Most Breeds are actually looking forward to finding their mates. They see it as a gift that God has arranged just for them, for their survival. So despite protestations or the levels of anger, fear or just sheer stubbornness, that need and that hunger are there to begin with, and the mated Breeds don’t have the subconscious desire to suppress those emotions. Once they find their mate, possessing her means everything. But I know Navarro and Mica well. Neither of them would have come within ten feet of the other if they had suspected this would happen, no matter how intense the attraction or the need. Mica, because she was already aware of the emotions that would build and grow within her and she feared the consequences of them. Navarro is a little different, and harder to define. Suffice to say, he has no intentions of loving her, and he just might have the training and the strength to suppress those emotions.”

“That doesn’t make sense. How can not wanting to mate, or a subconscious desire not to love, affect whether or not they do it? As I understood it, it’s supposed to be impossible to deny it.” There was a definite growl of suspicion in his voice, as well as a reluctance to believe what she was saying.

“Because Breeds were created to have no emotions. Our very genetics were altered to ensure the Council’s ability to train any chance of those emotions out of us,” she reminded him. “And we were trained to put aside any emotion that slipped past the creation process. We were lucky to maintain any feelings at all; still though, we were taught how to hide what we were feeling, to push it aside. Navarro, perhaps more than others, was taught this lesson with savage determination.”

Navarro Blaine was an Infiltration Level 5 Breed. He had been created for recessive Breed genetics. He was still stronger, faster, his senses more advanced than any human’s, but there was no way to detect those genetics.