Rule Breaker (Breeds 20)

They tiptoed around their alpha as anyone else would a rabid animal.

“I can’t believe the three of you are scared of your alpha,” she laughed back at them.

“Two,” Sharone informed her. “Those two”—she pointed to Ashley and Emma—“are terrified of their alpha because they know damned good and well he would have nightmares for weeks if he knew what they were doing. And he would ensure they did it no more.”

“Sharone’s the good little Coyote soldier,” Ashley smirked, a hint of her former self in the sudden sparkle of merriment in her gaze. “She never gets into trouble.”

Sharone merely rolled her eyes, but Gypsy could see the concern in the other woman’s gaze as it drifted around the room.

She might be a stick in the mud, as Ashley and Emma called her, but she was intuitive, cautious and rumored to be a stone-cold killer whose efficiency, lack of emotion and attention to detail was nearly unparalleled among the female Breeds.

Despite the hard, fast pace of the music, the driving tempo and the perspiration that poured from her body and dampened the black cami top she wore, Gypsy was still burning inside. She could feel the moisture collecting on her bare skin, running in small rivulets here and there. It was a caress that drove her crazy, that made her ache for Rule’s touch.

That ache was becoming deeper, hotter. She moved with the music and found herself drifting, remembering his touch. His lips at her throat, her need to feel his teeth raking against her flesh.

As his lips had caressed her shoulder, she’d waited. Ached. Needed to feel his teeth there.

His touch was an addiction.

She was seeing that now.

What they called Mating Heat was a compulsive, overpowering drug. One taste. One kiss, and she’d become something, someone she wasn’t.

She wasn’t a lover. She’d known that since the day she’d been told she couldn’t have one and still avenge her brother’s murder.

Hips swaying, her body moving sensually as languid need burned ever hotter inside her, Gypsy railed at herself for her decision that night.

She’d given to him, given him everything only to learn that everything was either too much or not enough.

“We should go.” Ashley’s suggestion had her eyes opening as she lifted the beer to her lips and sipped at it lazily, her gaze raking over the club.

“Why?” The Coyotes weren’t here yet. She still had information to get.

If the Unknown didn’t want it, then she knew many, many groups still involved in routing out the hidden labs who would want it.

Hell, Jonas would want it.

She could just work for him.

The thought was almost amusing.

“Because it’s nearly dawn?” Ashley drawled, her tone amused, her eyes flat and hard.

Gypsy let her gaze wander over the club again, her skin suddenly prickling with a latent warning of danger. She could feel it stroking against her flesh with an icy stroke.

“Bye-bye.” She waved back at the three girls as they seemed to share a concerned look. “Catch you at the next party.”

She wasn’t going anywhere.

Sleeping with Rule wasn’t nearly the compensation she would have imagined for giving up her entire life. What the hell had made her do something so irrational to begin with?

Mating Heat should be outlawed anyway. It made a woman’s heart do things that her head knew was inadvisable. Things that hurt worse than facing the loneliness.

The music shifted, pounding harder, faster. Turning from the three girls, Gypsy opened her eyes once again and found herself confronted with a broad, male chest.

It wasn’t Rule’s chest.

Her gaze lifted.