Navarro's Promise (28 page)

She stared up at him in surprise. “But, Navarro, the message was waiting for me in my room when I came out of the shower, and it was Ely’s voice.”

“I escorted her down here.” The Lioness stepped from the doorway, her dark gaze lacking fear, but showing only resignation as Navarro’s gaze swung to her.

“I too had a message left for me by Dr. Morrey that I was to escort Ms. Toler here for her tests and examination. At least, it sounded like Dr. Morrey.” Her shoulders straightened as though preparing for a blow.

“Where is Ely?” Navarro growled as he turned back to Jonas.

“She’s in Buffalo Gap until later this afternoon,” Jonas stated, his gaze narrowed as he stared around the room. “But don’t worry, I’ll definitely find out how this happened.”

“He did it.” She nodded to Brandenmore’s cell before turning her gaze back to Navarro. “Somehow, he did it.”

“He doesn’t have the means,” Jonas answered before Navarro could.

“Bring a snake into your home and expect him to strike when you least expect it.” Jerking away from Navarro she stared from him to Jonas with disbelieving mockery. “I’m ready to get the hell out of here now. And you can inform Ely I won’t be returning this evening. Until my so-called mate actually begins experiencing this mating crap himself, then I see no reason to torture myself further. Later boys.”

She turned and stalked from the lab before turning and heading back to the elevators, knowing someone would follow her. It wasn’t as though they would allow her to actually roam the halls alone. God only knew who else they were keeping down there and intended to keep hidden.

First Jeffery Amburg. She hadn’t seen him, but she knew from Cassie that he was safely hidden in the labs and working for the Breeds now, rather than against them. Then Brandenmore. Who was next? The head of the Genetics Council himself?

She snorted at the thought.

“If you don’t stop running from me, we’re going to have words.”

The sound of Navarro behind her had her heart rate tripling and her pussy creaming. The response was just enough to piss her the hell off.

Where was the fairness in it? It wasn’t as though he was dying for the taste of her as well.

As soon as the thought passed through her mind she found herself pulled around, pressed into the steel wall, lifted until her legs automatically gripped his thighs, and his lips covered hers.

Ambrosia.

The subtle taste of honey filled her senses as his tongue pressed inside and stroked against hers.

Oh yeah, that was what she needed.

She needed this kiss, deep and drugging, filling her senses with the taste of wild sweet honey, and male heat. One hand wrapped into the strands of hair at the back of her head, tugging on them, caressing her scalp with heated little pulls as she begin to sink into the sensuous swirls of arousal that rose like a tidal wave inside her.

She wasn’t alone anymore.

She wasn’t aching, needy and hungry by herself at this moment.

She could feel the glands swollen at the sides of his tongue, just a bit larger than normal. The taste of honey that filled the kiss had changed, just a bit, as well. It was wilder. Just as a primal hunger filled his touch and his caresses.

Long moments later his head lifted, his eyes black, as black as the darkest night, as his lips lowered to hers for a kiss so gentle, so filled with possessiveness that she had to fight back more tears.

“I love you, Mica,” he whispered back to her. “I love you as you’ll never know.”

As she would never know.

Mica felt her eyes fill with tears. “I always loved you, Navarro.”

As he touched her cheek with his fingertips, his lashes lying at half-mast while he held her gaze, Mica felt the final, heated bursts of his come inside her.

His head lowered. “Only you could have freed me,” he whispered against her ear. “You released what was hiding inside me, Mica, making me whole. Don’t let that part of me sleep again. Don’t let me lose you again.”

She could barely breathe. She could barely believe she was hearing his request. That he was there, that he was holding her. That he was admitting, finally giving, his love to her, when she had all but lost hope.

“Ahh, how sweet.”

The moment the heavy swelling had eased, the horrifying voice whispered through the silence of the room.

Dangerous. Heavy with menace. Rasping with animalistic fervor and cunning, Phillip Brandenmore stood just on the other side of a panel that had opened in the wall of the bedroom, revealing a hidden passageway that obviously led to the labs more than four stories beneath the ground.

“It’s okay,” Navarro mouthed. “Just follow me.” Moving his lips silently as he eased from her, careful to keep the blanket over her, Navarro moved to her side, then slipped slowly from the bed.

Keeping his attention on Brandenmore, he dressed with no apparent hurry.

His fingers slipped over the activator located behind the small Wolf’s head enforcer belt buckle he wore, sending a silent alarm out to the Breeds and activating the locator that would track them, no matter where they went.

“Is Ely still alive?” he asked the monster that had tortured the Breeds for so long as it watched him with curious disbelief.

“Unfortunately yes,” Brandenmore said and sighed as though irritated, a frown creasing his dark forehead. “Strange, I couldn’t kill her.” His teeth snapped together as an odd, sickeningly mutated purr was heard vibrating in his throat. “And why are you dressing? Strange, Navarro, I didn’t give you permission to dress.”

Navarro let a growl rumble, dark and warning, a dominant alpha sound that affected Brandenmore immediately. The gun nearly dropped from his hand before he caught himself, shaking his head and pointing it toward Mica as he stared at Navarro.

“Stop, or I’ll kill her.”

Genetics could be a bitch. Navarro was the natural alpha, and Brandenmore’s genetics were weak, submissive.

Navarro lowered the sound, knowing Brandenmore didn’t have to hear it to be affected by it. It was natural law. He could and would do whatever it took to Mica to get what he wanted. But he wouldn’t be able to strike against Navarro unless violently provoked.

“Put that gun down, Brandenmore. You don’t want to die here today,” he commanded.

It almost worked, but once again the crazed Brandenmore fought it back.

“I want the girl.” Brandenmore waved the gun he carried at Mica as he let a smile cross his lips. “No need to dress, love. You’ll just be undressing once I meet up with my friends. You’ll be my gift to them.”

Like hell.

Navarro wouldn’t allow it to happen.

Briefly, barely felt against his lower stomach, the vibration of the answering call from the enforcers moving into place came from the buckle.

They knew he was with his mate. They would know by now that there was no chance of ever allowing her to mate with another Breed. She was his. She belonged to him. And he would be damned if he would ever allow Brandenmore to take her from him.

“Get up, Ms. Toler,” the monster ordered, his voice brooding and deep, a gentle, pleasant sound from a creature of pure evil.

Navarro kept his eyes on the other man. Watching each move. Refusing to allow himself to be distracted even when Mica rose from the bed, dragging the sheet around her naked body and drawing Brandenmore’s gaze.

At the same time Navarro sensed the men on the other side of the bedroom door, just to the right of where Brandenmore stood. There was always the chance the animal genetics he possessed now would allow him to sense the Breeds moving in on the other side of the door.

God, he prayed this worked. There was no way to warn them of his precise location, but their senses would have picked it up, just as they would have picked up Brandenmore’s scent.

They were prepared.

As Brandenmore let his gaze focus entirely on the rich rise of the mounds of Mica’s breasts above the sheet, Navarro moved.

Shock crossed the other man’s face, because Navarro didn’t jump for him.

He didn’t move to take a prisoner, there was no time.

“Move!” Grabbing her wrist, Navarro jerked Mica to the floor as his hand moved to the side of the nightstand, jerked his weapon from the attached holster, rolled his body over Mica’s and fired as the bedroom door was thrown open and Breed Enforcers rushed in.

Mica watched Brandenmore’s body fall. A red stain bloomed across his chest as his eyes widened, first in shock, then surprisingly, in absolute horror.

His lips formed a desperate “No!” His hands reached out as though searching for something, someone to hold on to as he went to the floor, his gaze locked on hers, a pleading desperation filling them as he realized he wasn’t escaping death.

She watched the evil cunning slowly fade from his eyes, the light of life dimming until it was gone.

It was over.

Brandenmore had killed so many. He had tortured Breeds as though they were of no worth. And now he was gone. He couldn’t torture, he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Slowly, Navarro eased from her, lifted her to her feet and held her safely in his arms as he stared at the silent, icy facade of the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Jonas Wyatt.

“I had no choice.” Navarro knew the fears, the nightmares that would haunt Jonas now. And God help them all if his daughter suffered for this, because Navarro knew it would kill the other man.

Navarro couldn’t help but believe Brandenmore no more knew what he had done to Amber than he knew what he had done to himself though. If he’d known, he would have traded the information, he would have given it to Ely for even the slightest chance it would save his own life.

No, he didn’t know what he’d done. He had no idea the concoction he had taken himself. Navarro was beginning to wonder if it was something he had even created himself.

There was an evil that he could tell was slowly easing from the room, from the overall atmosphere of Sanctuary. As though Brandenmore’s existence had somehow darkened the community and thrown a shadow over it.

“None of us did,” Jonas answered as he gave the fallen Brandenmore a last look, one filled with loathing and burning rage. “None of us ever did.”

As his head lifted, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled, a new scent suddenly caught his attention. At the same time, it caught everyone else’s but Mica’s.

Oh hell, they were all fucked now.

He reach for Mica, intending to get her into the bathroom until she could dress. To hide her until he could figure out how to handle this new threat.

“Mica!” Cassie burst into the room at a dead run, black curls flying around her, her blue eyes filled with tears, her face pale as she rushed for her friend.

Mica tightened her hands on the sheet, her gaze meeting her mate’s as Cassie’s arms enfolded her.

“Oh God, I didn’t get here in time,” she cried out desperately. “I didn’t make it, Mica. I was supposed to be here before Brandenmore. What if Navarro hadn’t been here?”

Cassie was clearly distraught, clearly upset. But it wasn’t Cassie that worried either Mica or Navarro. It was the sight of Dash Sinclair and Mike Toler standing in the doorway.

Mike’s gaze went from the dead Brandenmore to his daughter, his expression composed, calm. Thankfully, Navarro didn’t seem to sense a building fury in him, or even an overwhelming anger.

The other man simply stared at his daughter as she kept a death grip on the sheet and the other Breeds began to file slowly out of the bedroom.

Mica couldn’t believe it.

She stared at Navarro, then her father, then back again, almost fascinated by the two men she loved most in the world and their silence. She didn’t expect the silence to last for long.

From the corner of her eye she was aware of Jonas ordering two Breeds to get the body out of her room, which she appreciated, but the blood was still there, and the memory of the corrupt evil he had been wouldn’t disappear so easily.

Her father still watched her silently.

“Mr. Toler.” Navarro cleared his throat, clearly nervous as her father turned to him.

Taller by several inches, wider, but older and definitely not as powerful, still her father wasn’t a comfortable man to have that fierce stare directed from.

“Yes, Mr. Blaine?” Her father had been around Breeds too long. He’d learned how to growl.

“Sir, I would like to request your permission to marry your daughter.”

Mica’s head swung around in shock as she stared back at Navarro in disbelief.

Wasn’t he supposed to ask her first, or something?

Her father gave an irritated grunt. “Rather late for that, isn’t it, son? Haven’t you already mated her?”

“I have, sir.” There wasn’t even a breath of apology. “But I think we’ve both been aware that was coming for a while now.”

Nope, no apology. But Mica was still shocked to the soles of her feet. Someone could have told her.

She glared at Cassie, who stood by her side now, a pleased little smile on her face, as though she had orchestrated it all. Mica wondered if she and Navarro would receive any of the credit for their own mating, or was everyone else simply going to steal the credit for them?