Rule Breaker

CHAPTER 23

It was full noon before Gypsy awoke again, her senses clearer, her anger no longer simmering but fully cemented, and the independent streak that her brother had often declared was a mile wide hardened painfully inside her.

As she opened her eyes and stared around the still-dim bedroom, the narrow shafts of sunlight that spilled from behind her reflected on the wall across from her. They were mocking reminders that the danger of losing everything she cherished was staring her in the face.

Her choices, her ability to live as she chose, her very independence was in danger of being taken away from her. Even in the nine years that she had steadily become one of the Unknown’s best contacts, she had never endangered her life or risked her cover. She’d never had to fear her freedom or her independence.

Until now.

Rule had denied her the chance to leave the night before without so much as an explanation or the opportunity to argue her point. She’d seen it in his gaze. He hadn’t been willing to hear an argument, his mind was set.

She was going nowhere.

Gypsy was determined to show him differently at the first opportunity.

But first, as much as it offended her pride and sense of fair play, she would have to let him think he’d won. Besides, she needed answers first. Before she escaped him, she needed to know exactly the effects she would experience once she separated herself from him.

Exactly how factual were the gossip rags where this phenomenon was concerned?

Staring up at the ceiling, with the sheet Rule had pulled over them sometime in the night held snugly over her breasts as the heat of his big body braced her back, she considered exactly how to broach the subject. Because she could feel the stiffness of his erection against her lower back, and the answering ache building between her thighs. And God knew she wanted nothing more than to rub against him like a cat and feel that iron-hard flesh pressing into her and overtaking her. But a woman had to draw the line somewhere.

“Would you like to explain to me exactly what happens there at the end?” Gypsy made certain her tone was calm, controlled.

After all, she didn’t do hysteria very well, and learning that the far-fetched stories written in the gossip rags had a chance of being true was definite grounds for slipping into hysteria.

Whether one was into that mode of existence or not.

The arm lying over her waist tightened momentarily as he took a deep breath at her back. “You’ve read the damned papers,” he growled.

“The gossip rags, you mean?” Giving a mocking, desperate little laugh, Gypsy felt her fingers tightening in the sheets. “We call them gossip rags for a reason, Rule. Because the stories in them are supposed to be lies. Remember?”

“For the most part, they are,” he admitted, though his tone of voice was anything but relaxed or amused, as it usually was.

“Why don’t you just tell me what I can expect,” she demanded, still and unyielding against him as she felt adrenaline beginning to gather behind the anger she was determined to keep him from sensing. “Exactly what is truth and what is lie? Because that whole orgy thing, it’s not going to work for me.”

“There are no damned orgies.” His palm flattened at her stomach, stroking over the soft flesh as Gypsy closed her eyes and tried to tell herself that she wasn’t going to allow him to distract her.

“Then what exactly is there?” The question was pushed from between her teeth as his fingers found the edge of intimate curls that led to the aching, swollen bundle of nerve endings throbbing below.

“Mating Heat. What you felt as I released inside you is the mating barb. About the size of the end of a man’s thumb, it becomes erect beneath the crest of a feline Breed’s cock, and not always in the same precise location. According to our scientists, the grip of the mate’s vagina determines where it thickens, because its main purpose is to reach that little spot behind your clit, rich with erotic nerve endings.” Acceptance filled his tone, surprising her. “And just as the articles suggest, Breeds secrete a hormone from tiny glands in their tongues. Those hormones fill their mate’s system, creating an inability to hide or run from the bonds that are being built between them. It increases the arousal as well as the pleasure, and makes it impossible for the couple to be apart for long.”

Great. Just wonderful.

“And what happens if they’re apart?” she retorted, her thighs tightening as his touch tried to move lower.

As if that pleasure, that temptation weren’t enough, his lips pressed to the area he had bitten into the night before, his tongue licking over the little wound with devastating results. With a liquid, brutal pleasure she couldn’t fight.

“If they’re apart,” he whispered, his voice rasping with sensual pleasure as Gypsy felt her thighs weaken, part and give him access to the flesh his fingers were searching for, “then the arousal only increases until it’s too painful to endure. Especially for the female mate.”

Maybe she was just trying to distract him, she told herself. She was giving him what he wanted so he would keep talking and be completely unaware of her intent to slip from the hotel later.

“That doesn’t sound particularly fair,” she gasped as his fingers slid past her clit to find the excess dampness building between the plump folds below. “There’s no way to make it stop?”

“Only with your mate,” he assured her. “A few have managed to bear it longer than most, but the Heat always brings them back together again, forces them to confront whatever’s held them apart and find a compromise that works for both of them.”

“What if . . .” She gasped as those knowing, experienced fingers parted the slick folds and slid past to rub against the clenched entrance of her pussy.

She wanted his fingers inside her, she thought desperately. Stupid, traitorous body. It was responding to him, her hips shifting, her leg lifting, guided by the broad male palm beneath her knee to rest over his as he moved lower.

“What, baby?” His lips moved against her neck as the wide crest of his cock eased between her thighs and the tip of two powerful male fingers eased inside her—began to rub, to caress as the pleasure began tightening her body further.

“What if there’s no compromise?” she whispered, the fear that the threat to her independence could destroy her becoming a hazy thought as his fingers reached farther inside her, filling her, increasing her hunger to be filled.

“There’s always a compromise,” he promised.

Her lips parted to refute that when his fingers suddenly thrust inside her, sending a shock of spiraling sensation tearing through her senses.

A moan broke past her lips as her hips pressed into the heavy thrust, her head tipping back against his shoulder to give his lips greater access.

“You don’t compromise, Rule,” she cried out, forcing the words into the open while his fingers began moving, fucking her with deep, even strokes. Her fingers gripped his lower arm as he pushed it beneath her head, bracing her more firmly against him, holding her steady.

“You have no idea, Gypsy,” he groaned, his fingers sliding free of her a heartbeat before the head of his cock was pressing into the fiery heat beginning to burn inside her. “Oh baby, you simply have no idea.”

A hard thrust of his hips and the throbbing crest lodged inside her, stretching her with exquisite fiery pleasure that bordered pain and lifted her on a rack of torture nearing ecstasy. Each withdrawal and thrust only increased the pleasure as well as the heavy presence inside her. The width of the crest made way for the heavy stalk following as he thrust inside her, slow and progressively deeper.

The rasp of the flared head caressing oversensitive nerve endings and flesh stretched exquisitely tight around him was driving her crazy. Each thrust, each roll of his hips that caressed her inner flesh with the iron-hard crest sent rocketing flares of sharp, internal sensation streaking through her clit before it caused her womb to flex, to clench at the impending explosion she could feel building through her body.

“God, you’re so fucking pretty,” he groaned, forcing her to lift her lashes and turn her head enough to stare up at him with only hazy awareness. “So damned pretty, Gypsy, you took my breath away the first time I saw you.”

His blue eyes flashed, so brilliant, filled with such an inner fire as the color began to overtake the whites that a distant memory teased at her senses.

It was gone just as quickly, another burning peak of pleasure ratcheting through her pussy and overswollen clit as it stole her breath for a precious heartbeat.

His fingers stroked from her hip to her breasts, testing the weight of first one swollen curve before moving to the other. Lifting the one nearest him, his head lowered, his lips suddenly surrounding the painfully tight peak of a nipple as his hips surged against her, shoving the thick length of his cock inside her with a tight, controlled thrust that caressed that hidden, ultra sensitive spot high inside her pussy.

She heard herself scream at the pleasure, unable to hold the sound back as his hips flexed, shifted, causing the pressure against that internal nerve-laden spot to increase until she was certain she would explode in climax.

His teeth rasped her nipple, as he suckled at it exquisitely while torturing her inner flesh until her hips moved against him, thrusting back. Whimpering, driven to complete pleasure-pierced insanity by the sensations building inside her pussy, Gypsy worked her hips against him as one hand slid unconsciously between her thighs to the swollen bud of her clit.

“That’s it, baby,” he groaned, his head lifting, as she forced her eyes open enough to follow his gaze to where her fingers were pressing against her clit. “Rub your pretty clit. Let me watch. Let me see you find your pleasure there while I fuck your tight little pussy into coming.”

The erotic naughtiness, the dirty words and encouragement stole the last of her common sense. Nothing mattered now but teasing him, urging him to take her faster, harder.

“Fuck me,” she begged him, her fingers moving against her clit as desperate pleasure began to shoot through her. “Oh God, Rule. Fuck me harder. Faster.”

A snarl echoed around her as his teeth raked against the small bite mark on her neck. Even that sent agonizing pleasure lancing through her system.

“I love . . . it.” Oh God, she nearly betrayed herself. “Love this. Like shoving the pleasure to my soul.”

He was pounding inside her now, her juices spilling faster, slicker as he suddenly pushed her to her stomach, shoved her thighs apart and came between them without ever completely withdrawing from her.

Hard hands jerked her hips higher, forcing her to pull her knees up, to dig them into the mattress as her clit swelled further between her stroking fingers, pleasure building in the little bud until she was crying out with it.

Or was she crying out for the pleasure pistoning inside her pussy, thrusting hard, fucking fast and deep inside her as she felt the flared crest rake over that hidden trigger inside her pussy one last time.

She exploded.

Her clit imploded from her stroking fingers, shards of racing sensation striking deep inside her vagina, driving through her womb until the pulsating power of the internal eruption of ecstasy overtook her completely.

Shuddering, her body was taken out of her control as she felt his teeth bite into her neck, his cock driving to the very depths of her as that additional erection beneath the head of his cock locked him inside her, and the fiery spill of his seed jetting at the mouth of her womb sent her flying higher.

She was burning. An exploding flame she couldn’t hope to control raced through her, licking over every nerve ending she possessed as she jerked beneath him, crying out his name as she felt the barb inside her caressing, pressing inside her.

There was no escaping it.

There was no escaping him.

And as she understood it, there was definitely no escaping Mating Heat.

...

Rule watched his mate warily, sensing something changing, something hardening inside her. It wasn’t a scent, it was a sense, as Jonas had explained it to him. An undefinable feeling whenever the mate was out of sync, or out of sorts with her Breed.

The director had smiled, a curve of his lips at once unfamiliarly softened and terrifying for all the love it held as his gaze had found the sight of his mate while she played with their child.

He understood it now, Rule thought as he urged her into the shower with him so he could wash her hair, wash her body. The need to do such things for her confused the hell out of him. He’d actually laughed in disbelief at the rumor that another Breed mate and benefactor to the Breeds, Seth Lawrence, had bought exquisite handmade, often hand-painted silk panties as well as unique handmade soaps of one-of-a-kind scents from around the world for his mate during the ten years he’d been unable to claim her.

It was said that the scents that Dawn Daniels Lawrence’s skin was infused with were so unique that some Breeds had offered him a fortune to disclose who had made them.

Seth had refused. He had a one-of-a-kind mate, he’d declared, and as long as it was in his power, he’d ensure that she had one-of-a-kind scents.

Rule wished he had a one-of-a-kind scent to give her. Something that she could possess that she knew none but he could give her. Something besides that animalistic mating that overtook him each time he touched her.

“You don’t have to dry me, Rule.” Irritation was blooming in her tone as he grabbed her towel and began drying her sodden hair, watching the curls that filled the silky mass as he dried the water from them.

“Would you stop complaining over every little thing?” he breathed out roughly as the instincts clawing at him in self-disgust refused to relent.

It was obvious the Breed spirit he harbored inside him wasn’t happy with him at the moment. But hell, it hadn’t been happy with him since the night he’d first glimpsed her nine years before.

Oh yes, he remembered now.

He’d realized how unsettled he was months later, and hadn’t tied the restlessness to the young girl being brutalized by those bastard Council Breeds that night. The fact that he’d moved to pull his weapon faster than he had ever done in his life should have warned him, though. If that hadn’t warned him, then the fact that he’d fired on the head of the Breed preparing to rape her before being given the order by Jonas should have.

Everything had happened so fast that night, though. All he remembered was seeing those horrified, shock-filled green eyes as the Coyote fell from her a second before the four Coyotes with the bastard had fallen dead as well.

Then Lawe and Jonas had hidden the sight of her from him. Rule had turned and rushed from the cavern. He’d called the Reever ranch for their medic, a female he knew would take care of her. He’d ordered blankets warmed and rushed inside, made the arrangements for her parents, ensured that her brother’s body was cared for properly. And he had nearly beaten the Coyote Loki to death before Lawe and several others had pulled him from the Breed. He’d refused to hear the Coyote as he swore he had been the one contacting Jonas that night.

Rule had wanted to kill him. He’d wanted to kill every fucking Coyote bastard there who hadn’t kept Mark McQuade alive for his fragile, broken little sister.

Everything that could have helped her or meant anything to her, he had taken care of, and he hadn’t even thought to wonder at the impulses that had driven him to take charge in such a way. To ensure that nothing else could hurt her, that no one else could harm her.

When her parents had arrived and had refused to go to the vulnerable, broken child who stood alone in the desert, staring back at them miserably, that animal had nearly rushed to her. Not until Jonas and Lawe had stepped to each side of her—his brother, along with the only man they called a friend at the time—positioning themselves as a protective barrier alongside her, had the animal stood down. At least a bit.

Rule remembered his anger at the parents, his disgust with their hesitancy to rush to her rather than standing at the son’s side as though he would suddenly open his eyes and declare the night some joke. It had been no fucking joke. Their son was gone; better to protect and ensure the life of the living child and grieve later, than to leave the living in the cold while trying to warm the dead, he’d thought at the time.

Grimacing at the memory, he finished drying her, then allowed her to move away from him while she combed her fingers through the long tresses of her hair. He’d actually had Lawe purchase him a particular brush when he and Diane had gone out the past evening. One he could use on silky, soft waves without harming the delicate strands of hair.

He’d looked forward to using it once the unbreachable shock of the night before had passed.

He’d longed to go to her last night as she’d lain in their bed alone and silent. The pain of being unable to confront her parents and the truth of what her mother had done had enraged her. Sometimes rage was better slept off, he’d learned over the years. And though the rage was gone, he thought perhaps he’d made a mistake, because something had hardened inside her instead.

“Am I allowed out of my perfect little prison today?” The caustic tone of her voice as she slid her arms into a bra and secured the front clasp had the animal stilling while the man watched her carefully.

He winced at the sudden, sharp pinching sensation that came and went too quickly to be anything but those animal instincts extracting vengeance for causing his mate to feel as though she were a prisoner.

Dammit, he was the man, he was the one in charge, yet he swore he could feel an alternate, detached spirit inside his soul growling out a refutation of that thought.

“You’re no prisoner, Gypsy,” he told her, glowering silently as those instincts settled marginally inside him.

Fucking animal instincts. If he could wrap his hands around that being’s throat and choke the life out of it, then he would do just that for driving him fucking insane.

“I can come and go as I please, then?” The confrontational expression and tone had him tensing at the knowledge that in pissing off the woman, he would be pissing off the animal side of her mate.

Namely him.

Jerking his jeans from the counter, he pushed one foot into the leg before doing likewise with the other and pulling the denim to his hips. He threw her a glare as he sat down on the comfortable stool in the corner and pushed his feet into black wicking socks then, refusing to give her what she was looking for.

At least, as long as he could keep from answering that question.

“I didn’t think so.” She did likewise, pulling on silky mint green low-rise panties before donning her jeans.

“The scent of the mating is detectable by every Breed with a nose to detect it,” he told her warily. “There’s no hiding, Gypsy. And your involvement with the Unknown . . .”

“My involvement with who?” She turned on him furiously as she pulled a dark gray T-shirt over her head before staring back at him in outrage. “You’re keeping me locked up here because you think I’m telling some fairy-tale group information about the Breeds?”

His jaw clenched as his lips parted to deliver a scathing retort. A growl rumbled in his chest instead as the words refused to part his lips.

Fucking animal. Son of a bitch, he was crazy. The only Breed in existence with an alternate personality that was literally all animal. Wouldn’t he just make the list as weirdest Breed ever?

Not exactly where he wanted to see his name highlighted.

“Why not let me know when you’re willing to confront me with honesty, mate,” he told her as the anger brewing inside him began to simmer.

His cock was becoming erect, and as she turned on him after shooting him a disgusted look and giving him a glimpse of perfectly rounded ass cheeks beneath those snug jeans, the urge to fuck that cute little ass nearly overwhelmed him.

“I’ve been a hell of a lot more honest with you than you’ve been with me,” she informed him, her face flushing with anger as her arms crossed over her breasts protectively.

He could sense the secrets she kept. At this point, he wasn’t smelling a damned thing, he was feeling it. She was his mate and yet she had no idea of the bonds that were beginning to build between them.

Just as he knew the vow she had nearly made as her pussy tightened on his cock. She’d nearly sworn her love. He’d sensed it, felt it, the emotion wrapping around him even as she broke off the words to declare that she loved what he was doing to her instead.

His pretty little liar.

All long hair, big green eyes and raging secrets. Secrets she was going to have to reveal soon, before it was too late for him and Jonas to help her or her parents.

“Listen to me, Gypsy,” he growled, moving before she could evade him and gripping her upper arm to hold her to him when she would have turned and flounced off.

Her anger only rose, as did the fury toward him that his instincts began to pour out to him. His mate was pissed at him, and her mate was pissed at him.

He was getting fucking tired of both.

“Listen to what? More of your accusations?” she cried out.

“More of my truths.” He tried to soften his tone, something he’d never done with another person in his life. “I can sense your deceptions, mate. Of all the people in the world that you can never lie to, that you can never deceive in any fucking way, I am that person. Do you hear me? Listen to me well, damn you, if you aren’t honest with me, then I can’t protect you and I can’t protect your family. Not without knowing exactly what they face and what I’m protecting them from.”

“My family doesn’t need your protection.” But he could hear the hesitancy, the sudden fear that filled her.

“Gypsy.” Releasing her, he raked his fingers through his hair in frustration as he tried one last time. “Sweetheart. Your brother died because he refused to trust those who could help him . . .”

“My brother died because his sister betrayed him.” Flat, hard, she spoke the words as though it were a trained response.

“Baby, no.” The softness of his voice shocked him as he reached out to touch her cheek, only to have her flinch away from him.

“Go do whatever Breed stuff you do when you’re not accusing innocent people of lying to you,” she charged, turning away from him, the insulting sense of her complete distrust causing the animal to react before the man could pull back.

He had her against the wall, using his stronger, heavier body to hold her there as she stared up at him in shock.

“I watched my mother lie screaming in inhuman agony as her living body was dissected just hours after her mate’s,” he snarled in her face, ignoring that flash of horror in her eyes. “Her screams cut into my soul like a blade whose sharp edge I can never escape because I was unable to warn the mate who could have saved her. I was too young, and I was too slow to slip past the guards plotting against them or to sense the packmate, the fucking brother Lawe and I wanted only to protect. One whose loyalty to the Council exceeded his loyalty to his mother. There is nothing, mate, not a fucking thing you can teach me about guilt, dark memories or nightmares. But have no doubt I have much to teach you about fucking loyalty to the only person you know in your heart can help you without betraying you.”

Her gaze flickered. For a moment, for the briefest moment he swore she was weakening, that the trust he knew she felt, that he could sense her about to give into, was suddenly jerked back.

Her green eyes hardened, her expression flushing with anger—at herself, at him, at whatever thought or brutal pain ravaged her heart.

“Did you betray your mother?” she asked then, the tears that thickened her voice unbidden, and hated—by them both. “Were your actions the ones that caused her and her mate to die?”

“My inability . . .”

“I’m the brother who betrayed your mother,” she retorted furiously then, the agony that raged inside her like her own beast shocking him with its strength. “Do you hear me, Rule? I’m the same as that gutless coward—”

His lips covered hers.

The kiss, filled with fury, with pain, with the need to cut off the agonizing torment of a child made to believe she was a monster, was infused with the hormone that filled the glands beneath his tongue with a suddenness he hadn’t heard of.

Anything to hold back the words she would have spilled between them. The knowledge that his mate couldn’t differentiate between an innocent girl’s actions and a depraved Coyote’s use of them.

Tearing his lips from hers, he stared down at her, watching as the tears she should have shed remained locked in her soul and flailed at his like the barbed whips the lab soldiers had used against him when he was just a cub. She didn’t shed the tears, but they dripped down her soul, gouging into it and leaving wounds that bled night and day. The sobs she held inside shuddered through her body, causing her to flinch repeatedly in barely perceptible little jerks that tore past her control.

“Say such a thing to me again and I swear to God I’ll make sure you regret it,” he warned, furious that she believed such a thing. “Never ever, Gypsy, let me believe you are even considering such thoughts inside that far-too-complicated little brain of yours, or the battle you’ll have with me is one you never want to face.”

Her lips trembled, then hardened.

“Go to hell, Breed,” she retorted flatly. “Better yet, get out of my hell and leave me the fuck alone.”

Leave her the fuck alone?

His hand moved, a quick reflex action that had him grabbing the curve of her ass and jerking her into the cradle of his thighs.

He’d be damned if she would defy him this way. He’d be damned if she would ever allow another such thought of herself to see the light of day, let alone the dark of a nightmare as long as he lived.

His lips curled over the sharp canines at the side of his mouth, a rumbling growl of dangerous intent sounding in his chest and echoing around them as her eyes widened before her lashes flickered nervously.

He was one second from tearing the clothes from her body and showing her, proving to her exactly why she never wanted to push him to such an extent again. His free hand was only a heartbeat from jerking open her jeans when the vibrating ping of the comm device lying on the counter went off with a distinctively coded sound, a warning he knew he couldn’t afford to ignore.

“Get away from me,” he all but whispered, though the deep animalistic sound of his voice sent a sharp wave of submissive wariness instantly striking at her senses. “Get away from me now, mate, and pray to God that by the time I finish this, I can forget the fact that you’re not just trying to destroy us, but you’ve already by God all but destroyed yourself, and that I will not tolerate.”

With that, he jerked away from her, reached out and snatched the link from the counter as he turned for the exit and stalked through it, placing the link competently in his ear and barking out a “What the fuck is going on?” to the Breed unlucky enough to send out the imperative summons.

“The McQuades have just been arrested for bringing another device into the hotel after requesting a private meeting with Jonas,” Lawe stated furiously as an enraged snarl could be heard in the background along with raised voices. “This time it was video and audio programmed with an electronic nano-nit. Jonas has just fucking lost his mind. Claws are out, and I need some fucking help here.”

Rule slammed the door behind him as he raced from the room, carrying his boots rather than taking time to actually put them on.

A nano-nit was serious.

The tiny, almost-too-small-to-be-seen electronic robot hitchhiked on the back of audio or video devices to the desired location, where it was only activated once the parent device was. It then worked its way from the device to attach itself to an electrical source to power up before following the current and homing in on the specific electrical identifier it was programmed to infiltrate.

A nano-nit was all but impossible to detect, the reason why Jonas had everything that came into the elevators scanned for audio or video before it reached the eighth floor. By doing so, he ensured that the hidden little bugs didn’t have the chance to infiltrate the independent wiring and network systems into which all cameras and wireless electronic devices were programmed.

The very attempt to get to the eighth floor with such a device was an infraction of Breed Law. To be caught with a nit was punishable by imprisonment and even, in some cases, death.

And Gypsy’s parents had been caught, not just once, but twice, attempting to get a device into Jonas’s suite. The second such attempt had included one of the dangerous little nits, which placed Gypsy in a tenuous position, that of being forced to watch her parents arrested, tried and sentenced for breaking Breed Law, for which there were no extenuating circumstances. Or bargaining with Jonas. Either of which, Rule knew, would destroy the fragile trust and love for him that he knew his mate was already fighting.

But it also had the potential to destroy his mate.