Gypsy shook her head, her breathing roughening. “No . . .”
“Your contact is the Bengal Judd, Gypsy,” he told her quietly, his expression filled with such emotion that she had no idea how to combat it. “I may not have realized I was your mate, but the instincts inside me, that animal that ensures I never completely fuck up, knew. It knew, connived and conspired within my subconscious, until I did exactly what I had to do to always watch over what belonged to me. Including conspiring with a Breed who would become wanted by every agency, every Council team, every fucking scientist in the world, and even the one man I owed every iota of loyalty to, Jonas Wyatt. I conspired to the point that I ordered him to take the bargain of working with him to you, on the condition that no other man touch you. That you have no lovers, no one to stand between you and your mate when the time came for me to claim what was mine. And later, when Jonas began searching for that Breed, I hid my knowledge of this from even my own brother. Trusting. Believing he had sent everything he had to Jonas. Knowing, without him, you would have drifted away from this world within a year of Mark’s death.”
He was the reason that demand had been made of her?
She could feel adrenaline pumping into her system—disbelief, amazement, it was all there, yet her heart wasn’t racing, and she couldn’t feel betrayal. She couldn’t feel it, because she was just as entrenched in his heart as he was in hers now. Feeling him.
Breathing him.
“I was a part of you before I ever caught your attention that night,” he promised her, his free hand moving to cup the side of her face, his thumb brushing against her lips. “I’ve always been here, Gypsy. Just a heartbeat away from you. More damned scared of what I was feeling than you could imagine, because losing you would have destroyed even the animal that lurks beneath the skin. The animal that fought with every heartbeat, with every breath, to ensure your protection every second after the night you lost what was most dear to your heart. Because you, mate, are most dear to my heart.”
She had to blink back her tears.
Gypsy couldn’t believe she was on the verge of shedding tears.
Her breathing hitched, a sob tearing from her chest as his head lowered, his lips touching hers.
“Don’t try to push me out, Gypsy. Don’t take that from me. Don’t take what completes me or allow a knowledge you refuse to share to destroy the only bond I’ve ever allowed myself other than that which connects me to my twin.”
His lips took hers then. Entrenched inside her spirit as he was, not just giving pleasure, but sharing his own. It felt like liquid nitrogen shot straight to the demand already heating in the depths of her pussy.
Her juices began trickling from her core, dampening the inner muscles before spilling the moisture to the swollen outer folds.
His lips moved over hers, his tongue sinking past them, filling her senses with the taste of chocolate and peppermint and a hunger she couldn’t deny herself. One she couldn’t deny him.
Before she could stop them, her hands were buried in his hair, the battle still raging inside her senses to hold on to him, to push him from her, to ensure that nothing risked him. Especially the ghost of the past that she knew she had to face alone.
The kiss, the hunger pouring through her was suddenly absent as his head jerked back. A snarl sounded from his chest, causing her eyes to widen as her lashes jerked open.
“You can’t hide from me, mate, not with a secret as important as your life.” The sound of his voice was animalistic. More animal than man, and with more primal intent than she had ever heard in it before. “You’ll learn, beginning now. You will never attempt something so foolhardy, ever, Gypsy.”
The next kiss locked her soul to his, she swore it did. He burrowed inside her, held her to him, opening her to emotions, to needs, to hungers she had never known existed inside her. That she had never known she even ached for the lack of.
Holding to him, she was only dimly aware of her clothes being all but torn from her. In some cases, seams ripped. A few buttons popped and rolled to the floor.
By the time Gypsy found herself in the bedroom with him, a trail of clothing—hers as well as his—lay behind them.
Naked, the muscular heat of his body wrapped around her as the taste of his kiss intoxicated, overwhelmed and bound her in ways she was certain she would protest later.
And she loved it.
She should hate the loss of control.
She should fight the hold he was securing within her. She would have, except it was the first time in nine years that she had felt really, fundamentally secure in something other than grief.
“God help me,” he groaned, tearing his lips from hers, spreading nipping kisses, the sharp edges of his canines rasping against her neck as she tilted her head to give him easier access.
Shivers worked over her flesh, icy heat striking at her nerve endings before flames began to lick between her thighs. Her clit ached, throbbing in time to the blood pumping through her veins, racing with a hungry excitement that only increased the erotic flow of her juices and the need. A need that sensitized her flesh, that only increased the hold she hadn’t realized he had on her.
Hunger poured through her.
His hunger for her.
Hers for him.
God, where was the line between his senses and hers, what he felt, what she felt?
She couldn’t find it, everything seemed to merge, to blend seamlessly until the pleasure of it was a racking chaos of sensation that she had no hope of escaping.