Navarro's Promise (22 page)

In a matter of no more than eight weeks, the changes that had been wrought in Phillip Brandenmore were horrifying. But other than a few anomalies, Amber seemed to be thriving as any other infant would be.

“What if I wasn’t certain?” he mused when she said nothing more. “What if the recipe was one I found, the notes indicating success?”

Ely froze.

She stared at the files she’d pulled up on the holo-comp’s grid and prayed he’d continue with his musings. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t.

“Are you listening to me, Ely?” he asked.

“I’m listening, Phillip,” she assured him with apparent absentmindedness as she continued as though she were concentrating on the files on the grid.

She heard him sigh heavily.

“I’m dying Ely,” he stated. “I wasn’t supposed to die.”

“You killed yourself, Phillip,” she reminded him.

A rough chuckle sounded from him, a wheezing, ugly sound.

“Angels await me,” he sighed.

“Last I heard demons inhabit hell, Phillip.”

“Fallen angels, beauty and grace, the most beautiful of God’s angels. Then man thought he could be God, and create a creature in his image. Beings of beauty and grace. And they betrayed us, as do all beings betray their maker.”

She shuddered at the reverence in his tone and the sense of omnipotence in his words.

“If we couldn’t control the creations, could we become the creations?”

Ely turned slowly.

He was watching her. Sly. Knowing. He knew she was listening to every word that passed his lips.

“Project Omega.” He nodded to the file on the screen. “It came from there. From where her Breed was created. From where he was trained. From where his brother died.”

Ely knew that. Brandenmore had funded that lab. He had researched there. He had tortured Breeds there.

Ely turned back to the files, staring at them. He always talked about the Omega lab. It was his favorite of those he’d worked within and those he’d funded. It was there the mated couples they’d found were taken, and there that the breakthroughs in mating heat had been made.

The answers to the formula he’d injected himself with had to be there. It could save him, and she wasn’t certain she was doing anyone a favor in saving him. But in saving him, they would save Amber as well.

“He controls his animal,” Brandenmore sighed. “Ahh, such training. Such insight into the Breed mentality and creation there, even all those years ago. Insight into the genetics, into training, into the psychology and physiology of each Breed. They were the masters of genetics.”

He rambled and Ely let him. Unobtrusively she turned on the lab recorder rather than relying on security video and audio alone.

And as she pretended to ignore him, pretended not to believe him, for the first time Phillip Brandenmore gave out a few clues, just enough for her to start working on, just a few directions to lead her to the answers she needed.

And, she prayed, at least a clue as to the direction to take to save Mica.

What now?

Navarro paced his suite, the restlessness he’d fought to contain building inside him despite his attempts to hold it at bay. It was like a million electrical pinpricks racing beneath his flesh. Irritating, the reminder that there was more to him than he wanted to admit. That his genetics were those of an animal, a predator. And that predator wanted out. It wanted free.

It wanted its mate.

Recessed genetics were rare in Breeds, or perhaps it was that known surviving recessed Breeds were rare. Most Council scientists had terminated recessed Breeds in the womb if they were detected. If not, then they were usually terminated at birth.

But there were those few who had used the recessed infants for further research. They had kept some, others had been given to adoptive parents and kept under close supervision. Others, like Navarro, lived between the two worlds.

He’d been placed with his birth mother’s parents after his tenth birthday. His nanny had been Council, his bodyguard had been a Council trainer, and his pediatrician had been a Council scientist. And he’d always known, always been aware that each day of his grandparents’ lives hinged on his perfect adaptation of the Breed they wanted him to be.

The Infiltrator. The Breed with the ability to move between both worlds. The human world, and the world of a Breed assassin.

He raked his fingers through his hair, grimacing as he inhaled roughly, searching for the scent of her, the action unconscious, primal. And he couldn’t stop it.

He couldn’t smell her. Not the scent of her or the arousal of her. He was at this moment truly recessed in ways he had never been.

Protection.

It was the only way to rein in the animal searching for her, the one intent on throwing him back into mating heat.

It was mating heat, or lose her.

He’d seen it in Callan, Jonas, and Dane Vanderale’s gazes. They’d actually considered Josiah’s suggestion that he should be banned from her. No doubt they were discussing it now.

Like hell.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to allow it.

Pulling the sat phone free of the holster at his hip, against his better judgment, he put a call through to Dash Sinclair.

It was the height of idiocy and he knew it, but he was damned if he knew who else to talk to at this point. He had no idea what was left.

“Navarro,” Dash answered the call quickly. “Talk to me.”

There was a wealth of suggestion in his voice, a controlled command from a man, a Breed, who had known nothing but command for most of his life.

“She’s mine!” There was no other way to put it. “If they try to ban me from her, there will be a war.”

Silence filled the line.

“I know from Dr. Armani that the mating heat has disappeared,” Dash said. “Your genetics are making you crazy. It feels as though there’s something beneath your flesh threatening to break free. As though those genetics are creating an animal inside you that’s fighting to be free.” He paused, and Navarro remained silent, waiting until Dash continued. “Why do you think I asked if you had mated her, Navarro? Why do you think you’ve been watched so closely around her?”

“You could have told me.”

“And have you hoping for a mating that might never happen?” he asked. “Just because I mated didn’t mean you would. It doesn’t mean any other recessed Breed will. I had hoped you’d come to me once you experienced the first symptoms.”

Navarro grunted at that. “Who knew? I kissed her the night of the attack against Haven and there was nothing.”

Frustration roughened his voice. “There was nothing, Dash. I assumed she was safe.”

“Safe?”

Navarro grimaced again. “Hell. Yeah. Safe. I won’t say I haven’t wanted her, we both know I have. Bad. But I tried to keep her out of mating heat. I came in slow, Dash. Touches here and there, a kiss to the cheek. A kiss to the lips only. I tried to keep this from happening.”

“And I warned you, you couldn’t expect normal mating symptoms as a recessed Breed, Navarro,” Dash growled with an edge of anger.

“You didn’t say to expect no symptoms at all,” Navarro snarled.

The primal rasp had him stilling instantly, the loss of control a warning so deeply ingrained he couldn’t ignore it.

“Do you want to lose her, Navarro? Is it what you want, to have the one thing you could call your own taken from you?”

“And if nature is taking that out of my hands?” He felt as though he were numb from the inside out. The mocking laugh was more a grim sound of disapproval than anything resembling amusement.

“She’s loved you since she was sixteen years old,” Dash stated. “We’ve all sensed it, Navarro, we’ve all known it. All but you. You’ve ignored it, just as she ignored it every time you came around. Letting her go won’t change what’s going to happen, or what has already happened. You’re changing, just as she is. Your genetics are becoming active rather than recessed, and denying it, or fighting it, will only end up hurting both of you in the end.”

“It happened to you.” It had to have. There was no way the other man could have known all this if it hadn’t.

“It happened,” Dash admitted. “And it had the potential to steal my mate from me. I felt, at the time, that I could make the choice, Navarro. I could be unencumbered; I could accept what my heart was longing for, what my soul needed to survive, or I could let that part of me die forever. Are you willing to lose the only person that could mean anything to you?”

“The question is, am I willing to destroy her?” he asked.

He definitely wasn’t willing to stand here arguing it, not when he could smell Josiah nearing, sense the other Breed going to Mica.

As though the bastard could take his place.

A growl definitely rumbled in his chest this time. A low, dangerous sound that would have shocked him, would have had him pulling back in a desperate attempt to rein in the animal he could feel surging forward.

But it was too late.

Just that fast, he went from recessed genetics to full, raging beast, in the blink of an eye.

The door was jerked open hard enough that it bounced against the wall as he released it. The resulting crash was loud enough that as he stalked from the room, several doors opened along the hall.

Taber Williams stepped from the suite he shared with his mated wife, his broad chest bare, his jeans obviously hastily pulled on.

Behind him, his wife, Roni, stared into the hall in surprise, her fingers gripping the robe tight at the top of her neck as her disheveled hair fell around her delicate face.

“Problem, Wolf?” Taber drawled, his green Jaguar eyes knowing as Navarro moved past him without speaking.

He would get to Mica’s door before Josiah, but the other Breed would be there before Navarro could get inside her room.

Perhaps.

As he made his way to her, the most intriguing scent met his senses. A dark hint of a raging storm as it rolled in across the ocean. A taste of honey, a hint of cinnamon and spices. And heat. Pure wild heat so addictive he wondered how he’d survived the past hours without tasting her.

His tongue became sensitive, swollen. He could taste the hint of spicy sweetness in his own mouth, feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, raging through his body.

He’d felt it that last night he’d taken her as well though. Then the next evening it was as though the mating had never happened, as though it had never existed.

Until now.

It was flames tearing through his senses. It was a rush of heat, of hunger; it was being infused by the lush, earthy scent of her and the determination rocking through him.

He couldn’t even say he was himself at the moment. Hell, he knew he wasn’t himself. He was a creature bent on one thing and one thing only.

A mate.

His mate.

CHAPTER 13

A cold shower didn’t help.

A hot shower didn’t help.

And she wasn’t even about to try masturbation, no matter how badly she needed to.

Walking from the bathroom, a robe wrapped around her, no one could have been more shocked than she was when the door was shoved open, the panel crashing against the wall as she froze and stared at Navarro in shock.

He stepped in and slammed the door closed before turning the lock.

Mica blinked.

He looked . . . different.

The sensual Asian features of his face were suddenly sharper, his eyes darker and gleaming with surprising, shocking hunger. A physical need that matched her own, that could even threaten to surpass it.

Staring across the room at him, her gaze locked by his, held by it, Mica found herself unable to break that invisible line, the hold those deep black eyes had on her.

She could feel that touch inside her. It wrapped around her clit, tightened her womb and the tender tips of her nipples. A ghostly caress raced up her arms, stroked across her swollen breasts. It was like being wrapped in the most incredible heat. For the first time since the mating had begun, Mica actually felt as though there was more flowing between them than just his lust and the love she had fought to keep hidden for so long.

“What do you want?” She shook her head as she tried to shake off the dazed, drugging hunger flowing through her now. Before, it had just been heat. It had been lust. Now it was something more.

Something had changed. She could see it in his face, in the ink black of his eyes and the violent tension raging in his body.

Her breathing escalated, her breasts rising and falling heavily as the blood began pumping hot and wild through her body.

“Mica, are you okay?” Her gaze jerked to the door as the sound of Josiah’s concerned voice came through the panel. “Just say something, baby. I’ll get Callan and Dane, Mica. You don’t have to let him touch you.”

Mica blinked again, shock resounding through her at not just the tone of Josiah’s overly familiar words, but also the offer and the suggestion that Navarro would somehow demand something she wasn’t willing to give.

For a moment, she wondered when she had managed to step outside reality into this perverse ”almost” world and the Breeds she was facing now because of it.

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” she asked as Navarro’s head turned, his teeth snapping at the closed door in a completely un-recessed-Breed-like way.

What had happened to the icy, determined-to-walkaway Breed she had seen that morning?

“Josiah wants to die.” Navarro turned back to her, a tight smile curving his lips as his eyes narrowed on her. “I hope he wrote out his will. I heard he had some impressive art hidden away.” This time, the smile showed teeth. “He even offered me a piece if he died. He didn’t say how he had to die, and I think I’m ready to collect.”

“Not a chance, Navarro,” Josiah snapped from the other side.

Mica licked her lips nervously, then her breath caught at the expression that appeared on his face. If the savagery reflected there was anything to go by, then Navarro was definitely going to attempt to collect that piece of art.

“I want that hot little tongue on my body,” his voice grumbled. “I want to feel it stroking my dick, Mica. Licking it like a favorite treat as you go down on me.”

So explicit, and so sexually exciting she nearly orgasmed where she stood.

Her gaze went down; the bulge at his thighs, heavy and engorged beneath his jeans, was impossible to miss. The effect of his words and the image implanted in her mind were impossible to resist.

His cock was so thick it would fill her mouth. It would be hot, throbbing against her tongue, rubbing against it as he fucked past her lips. Would it be hard thrusts? Would he do it with deliberate, controlled strokes? How much more could he make her want him?

She had a feeling it would be a hell of a lot more.

“That sounds interesting,” she whispered breathlessly, refusing to allow herself to melt beneath the power of the arousal rushing through her. At least, not quite yet. “Do I get the same in return?”

She wanted that and so much more. His tongue on her pussy, stroking over her flesh.

Her stomach tightened, sensation clenching spasmodically at the sudden thought of his tongue thrusting inside her, stroking inside the aching center of her body.

His gaze stroked down to the juncture of her thighs, spreading a wave of intense sensation over her. Her clit throbbed, her pussy pulsed as she nearly whimpered with the sudden intense need for touch. A hard, dominant touch. A thrust that stretched her muscles with blistering pleasure that raked over her flesh with flaming intensity.

“Mica, sweetheart, just give the word. I’ll have him removed.” Josiah called out to her again, his voice attempting to cajole, sounding concerned as it raked across her nerves and had her grimacing in irritation.

“He wants to die,” Navarro suggested quietly as his eyes moved from her swollen breasts to lock with her eyes.

She had entered the Twilight Zone or something. This was unreal. There was no doubt in her mind that Josiah was playing some game; she had never been his sweetheart, his baby, or any other endearment. And she was coming very close to stepping out and shooting him herself. If he didn’t stop messing with her pleasure, and messing with it now, then he was going to be in a world of hurt. If Navarro didn’t beat her to it.

She swallowed tightly, her breathing rough as Navarro took a step toward her.

“Mica, honey, I’m going to go get Callan and Leo. Just give me a few minutes, I’ll be back. I’m not going to let him get away with this.”

Her lips had parted to speak, to inform Josiah she was fine when Navarro turned, jerked the door open and went nose to nose with Josiah.

“She’s fine, you fucking mutt!” he snarled in Josiah’s face. “Get the hell away from my mate and go find your own.”

The pure fury in his voice, the rough animalistic growl and the tension amped with the threat of violence had her eyes widening in concern. This could become a problem if Josiah refused to stand down.

Josiah crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at Navarro with a snarl. “She’s not your mate, remember? No more mating hormone, Navarro. And for all we know, she
is
my mate. It’s time you move to the side and give someone else a chance.”

The snarl that came from Navarro’s lips would have been damned impressive even if he was a full Breed rather than recessed. For a recessed Breed, it was bordered on frightening.

“Fuck off!” Navarro seemed taller, broader, more imposing. His whole body was tense, the aura of danger pulsing around him like a volcano preparing to explode.

This was really quite interesting, but Wolf Breeds didn’t posture for the hell of it. They didn’t posture at all. Right now, he was at his most dangerous.

“Excuse me, boys.” She stepped between them as the growls began to deepen and become more alarming. Two Wolf Breeds fighting was not a pretty sight, and Dash Sinclair had once told her that Wolf Breeds would fight to the death for a mate, just as wolves did in the wild.

Now if she could just figure out what the hell Josiah was up to.

“Mica, you don’t have to deal with this, sweetheart,” Josiah assured her, his voice gentling. “Come on, we’ll talk to Callan.”

He made the mistake.

Mica tried to avoid it. She tried to move back quickly, to get out of the way of the hand reaching her before it actually touched her. The last thing Josiah wanted to do was antagonize Navarro further at the moment. Blood would be shed, and it wouldn’t be Navarro’s.

But she wasn’t fast enough.

His finger curved around her arm. First discomfort, then a flare of pain that shot up her arm and caused her to cry out at the shock of it. She wasn’t expecting it. There hadn’t been a problem until now. But now there was a serious problem.

Navarro felt it explode inside him.

If he thought the animal genes had awakened earlier as he left his room, then what they did now was more like a wave of shocking intensity rushing through him. He literally felt the animal he had been bred to be awaken with a surge. It leapt beyond his control, broke the bonds of restraint that had been wrapped around it since his birth and broke free.

He threw Josiah back from his mate, one hand clamping on the other Breed’s wrist to ensure the fingers that touched Mica didn’t tighten or jerk her along with him.

Josiah fell back as the door slammed in his face, and the next thing Mica knew Navarro had her in his arms, his lips coming down on hers, the incredibly sensitive, swollen flesh of his tongue sinking inside her mouth.

It was like lightning, like fusion, like being immersed in the most pleasure that any one man could endure. It was silk and silken velvet as his tongue found hers, stroked against it, then hers pressed into the caress, stroked over the glands that had swelled beneath his tongue with such tight need, before her lips closed on them and sucked the mating hormone from them with greedy abandon.

It was fiery. Wild flames screamed across his flesh as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her close. A sense of how delicate, how fragile she was sank into his mind. Sank deep. He could feel it. The frailness of her bones, the tenderness of her flesh. Like waves of knowledge mixing with the hunger and the pleasure, the knowledge of how easily he could hurt her, how easily he could break her, seemed to sink into the very heart of the genetics he’d been fighting to hold back.

It was there now. In the forefront where the animal inside him now ruled, demanding, intent on claiming his mate so irrevocably that no man or Breed would dare to touch her.

When the glands beneath his tongue seemed to ease, Navarro tore his lips from hers, the need to feel her hot little mouth sucking his dick too strong to resist.

“Take off the robe, Mica. Don’t make me tear it off.”

He was tearing at his shirt, jerking buttons from their moorings, pulling it over his shoulders and dropping it to the floor before toeing off his low boots and removing his jeans.

His dick was so hard it was painful.

And Mica didn’t hesitate.

Her fingers stroked down his stomach as her lips and tongue began to move down the hairless flesh, stroking, tasting him, her sharp little teeth nipping as she moved inexorably closer to the straining length of his dick.

He watched. Sensual and as beautiful as anything that could have been created, past or present, she was the fantasy that he’d not known he had until she was sixteen.

Sixteen and so fucking beautiful, and a part of him had known. He’d looked at her and felt the animal stirring inside him for the first time in his life.

“Ah fuck!” His hands jerked from his side to bury themselves in the heavy length of her thick blond hair as her fingers wrapped around the base and her tongue licked over the engorged head of his cock.

The broad head pulsed, shards of pleasure raking through the heavy length as ecstasy ripped through his balls and a spurt of the heavy pre-cum spilled against her lips.

She was his mate.

She was—

His thighs tightened as her lips parted and she sucked the nerve-laden crest into her mouth, filling it, wrapping silken heat around the engorged crest and sending sensation exploding through his body. Flames shot up his spine, filled his brain and burned through his senses. It was beyond pleasure. It was the most sensual, most sexual pleasure he could imagine at the moment.

It was all he could do to hold back another spurt of the pre-cum as his fingers tangled in her hair, loving the feel of it against his fingertips, like warm, living silk caressing his flesh.

Watching her, God, loving her as she loved him, and he’d never let himself admit. Couldn’t let himself admit it, until his primal genetics had taken the decision out of his hands. Until the knowledge that he could lose her, that she was in danger of slipping from his grasp and he would never touch her, never have her again.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Enough.”

Pulling her to her feet, Navarro lifted her into his arms, carried her to the bed before following her down.

His lips moved over hers, his tongue sinking past her lips for a kiss that sent the flames ripping over him again.

He wanted more of her. His lips moved down her neck, licking and nipping, tasting her with each greedy lick, each desperate kiss, until he reached the soft, silken curls of her pussy.

Parting the swollen, slick folds, his tongue licked through her slit. He flickered it over and around her engorged clit, tasting the heat and the need flaming through her.

Covering her clit with his lips, he gave it a deep kiss, sucking it into his mouth, his tongue stroking around it. The sweet, summer rain taste of her was an aphrodisiac to his senses.

Filling his senses with her, he pushed as far as he could. He tasted as much of her as possible before he was forced to draw back and rise between her soft, silken thighs.

He rose over her, his cock pressing between the swollen folds of her pussy.