"Soon," he whispered. "Easy, baby. Let's see how hot it can get." She couldn't imagine hotter. Couldn't imagine surviving it if her body became so much as a breath more sensitive.

"It can't get hotter," she gasped, no longer recognizing herself or her own body as his teeth raked over her nipple, drawing a ragged cry from her throat. If it became hotter, there was no way she could survive. No way to turn from him unaffected.

"Of course it can," he crooned, his voice husky, rough. He gave her nipple a gentle nip. She stared down at him, seeing the sexual, sensual animal bending over her, and wanted to cry out at the injustice of it.

One night. Just one night.

Her hands were tangled in his hair, and she couldn't remember moving them from the bed. But she felt the coarse strands between her fingers, the warmth of it heating the sensitive pads.

"I need you now." She was shaking, trembling with that need, but she couldn't control the impulse to touch him. One hand fell from his hair to his face, her fingers moving over the hard planes and angles, tentatively smoothing over his lips.

He nipped her thumb, gripped it between his straight, white teeth as his tongue swiped over it with hungry heat.

"We could play later," she whispered breathlessly, on fire, feeling the thick length of his cock by her thigh as her pussy wept in need of it.

"We'll play later too." His fingers wrapped around her wrist, lowering it to his shoulder as his head dipped, his tongue trailing down the middle of her stomach in a rapid course to the tormented flesh between her thighs.

He glanced up at her with each kiss to her quivering belly, his eyes sparkling with warmth, laughter and hunger. A wild, vibrant hunger echoed and built within her until she could feel the flames overtaking her.

"Lance." The sound of her own cry shocked her—hoarse, edged with desperation as his head neared the soaked curves of her pussy. "I can't take it… Please…" She was on the edge of a precipice that terrified her. She had never flown so high, never known such pleasure. Holding onto her control, shredded though it was, became imperative.

"Just a little bit more, baby. I just want a little taste. That's all… Just lay back and let it feel good. I promise to make it feel good." His wicked smile was followed by a puff of air over the violently sensitive, swollen clit.

Darkness shrouded her then. Her eyes closed, her strength drained until she could do nothing but respond. She arched to him, a shattered cry leaving her throat as his tongue moved in to torture her, to torment her quaking cunt.

"There's a good girl." He groaned as her thighs fell open farther. "Let me show you how good it can be, baby."

Good? It surpassed good. It was torture.

His tongue was a flaming lash of pleasure, working its way slowly through the narrow slit as his fingers parted the plump lips.

"So sweet and bare." He groaned. "I love your naked pussy, Harmony. I love feeling all your silky flesh, wet and hot and straining toward me."

She strained harder. His tongue licked through each fold, tickled around her clit, slid down, rimmed the spasming opening to her vagina and then began again. Gasping, fighting to breathe, Harmony felt her hands gripping his hair, her nails digging into his scalp as she fought to hold him in one place, to find the release hovering just out of reach.

His tongue was wicked, imperious. It sought, demanded, and drew from her a pleasure that exceeded any she had heard of, let alone known. It sent lightning crashing through her system. Tidal waves of sensation clashed through her mind, causing her to jerk, to shudder, her cries to echo around her as control was lost.

When his lips moved back to her clit, a hard male finger tested the entrance to her pussy, worked in, caressed and stroked, sending spasms racing through the very heart of her womb.

"Lance…" Her scream was strangled. "For God's sake. Please…" Another finger joined the first. His lips covered the swollen bud of her clitoris, drawing it into his mouth, his tongue flickering over it like flames of lust as she felt herself fly higher. Higher.

Sensation ripped through her. Tore through her nervous system, shredded her soul. Her orgasm slammed her, tightened her body, and sent her racing toward a heat and brilliance so extreme, so intense she lost herself within it.

Lance's hard growl filled her head as he moved to cover her then, his thighs spreading hers farther, the blunt, thick head of his cock separating the folds of her pussy.

"Look at me."

Look at him? She struggled to open her eyes, to make sense of the violent tremors surging through her. What she saw did nothing to restore her control or her equilibrium. His eyes were so blue, a deep, impossibly brilliant blue, his features taut, savagely so, his lips swollen as he stared down at her and slapped a condom into her hand.

"Now." He jerked upright, the thick, pulsing stalk of his cock angling away from his body, spearing toward her, throbbing with the same furious, desperate hunger surging through her cunt.

Her eyes moved slowly, reluctantly to her palm and the condom he had placed there.

"Put. It. On."

She blinked at the guttural sound of his voice.

"You don't need—"

"Now!" His hands gripped her thighs, his eyes blazing down at her. She swallowed tightly, her fingers shaking, trembling as she moved to do as he ordered as quickly as possible. She needed him; her pussy burned, hurt. Her tongue throbbed. Every cell in her flamed in demand.

Her fingers were shaking so bad she could barely fit the disk over the bulging, damp head.

"I can't." It slipped, moved, slid. She couldn't make her fingers work.

"Put the damned thing on, Harmony." His body jerked, shuddered.

"Fuck it." She threw the condom, lifted her hips until the swollen head pressed against the entrance to her cunt. "Fuck me. I told you, you don't need the son of a bit—" The invasion—it could be called nothing else, an impalement, a penetration that tore through her, stretched her and destroyed her.

Harmony heard herself screaming his name. Her legs wrapped around his plunging hips, her lips opened for his, her tongue battling his the moment they touched. She was filled to her limit, the tearing pleasure whipping through her, overloading her senses until nothing mattered, no one mattered, the world dissolved until nothing existed but Lance. His touch. His kiss, feeling the jackhammer strokes of his cock powering inside her pussy as her tongue filled his mouth, the taste of wild honey, of spice, an aphrodisiac that heightened each sensation and sent her careening into ecstasy.

Her body jerked violently as the next orgasm ripped through her. She bucked, shuddered, fighting to scream, but only a whimper emerged as he tore his lips from hers. A strangled male cry filled the air then, followed quickly by the strangest, most terrifying sensation she had ever known.

She cried out at the feel of his semen rushing through her, seeping into the very pores of the spasming flesh, easing the flaming lust, soaking into her womb. She felt it. Felt each heated pulse of semen fill her, change her, complete her just before her teeth sank into his shoulder and she tasted his blood. And in that moment sensed her own defeat.

CHAPTER 3

Lance was enraged. The next morning he paced his office, scowling, his body burning as his cock throbbed in his jeans and the bite at his shoulder burned in need. Son of a bitch. A fucking Breed. He became aware of what she was the moment those sharp little teeth of hers pierced his flesh. He had seen the mark on his cousin Megan's shoulder nearly a year before. Placed there by her mate, Braden Arness.

"I can't find anyone that meets your description in the database, Lance." Braden growled in irritation.

"Now look, dammit, I know she's a Breed," Lance snapped. "She has to be in there."

"Lance, I've been searching these damned files for an hour now. She's not in here. What the hell is this about?"

Lance drew in a hard breath.

"The bitch bit me last night, Braden," he finally snarled. "I picked her up at the bar and took her home."

"You had sex with her, and she bit you?" Braden's voice was carefully bland. "What did you say her name was again?"

"Harmony. She didn't give me a last name. Russet hair, pale green eyes, about fiveseven."

"Any tattoos or distinguishing marks?" Braden asked.

Lance frowned. He barely remembered a small tattoo.

"Her right shoulder, I can't be sure, but I think it was a scythe." Silence filled the line as the air around him whispered in warning.

"Are you certain of that? A scythe."

"A red scythe, no more than an inch and a half high. I saw it just before she jerked her shirt on. By the time she turned around with the fucking gun in her hand, I forgot about it."

She had held a gun on him. A small, snub-nosed though powerful military-issue Beretta. And those babies packed a wallop, despite their size.

"Damn. That's bad." Braden's voice was suddenly deeper; the animalistic growl of his Breed heritage only showed itself in times of anger or stress.

"The Breed part or the scythe part?" Lance asked. "You have to be a bit clearer here, Braden. My mind's not exactly working at its normal speed."

And he knew why. He knew and it pissed him off. God help her if he got his hands on her again. The first thing he was going to do was spank that pretty ass for running. The second thing he would do was fuck her until she didn't have the strength to run again.

"According to my files, the Breed with that mark is one badass you don't want to mess with. We call her by her lab name, because she never chose another that we knew of. Her name is Death, Lance. She's wanted not just by the Bureau of Breed Affairs but by several government agencies as well, for questioning in the assassinations of suspected child abusers as well as suspected Council scientists. If Death mated you, cuz, then you're screwed."

The woman in his arms had been no killer. "There has to be a mistake."

"No mistake," Braden said in denial. "No other Breed would dare wear that mark. Death is a possessive bitch. She's a class A assassin with the added rating of knifemanship. Death doesn't feel, Lance. And how the hell you could have mated with her makes no sense."

Because every instance of mating heat that had occurred in the Breed society had involved emotion. To their knowledge there hadn't been a mating that hadn't been a match of not just the physical, but the psychological and emotional as well. Lance knew that from the few explanations Megan had given him in regards to her relationship with Braden.

"Then there's a mistake," Lance grated out. "Is there a description on this 'Death'?"

"Oh yeah," Braden sighed. "The description of her hair was throwing me off. Her hair is the color of a true lion's mane rather than just a similarity. Eye color pale green. Height five-seven, age twenty-five. She escaped the labs at fifteen after killing every scientist in the facility. Including her own mother."

The air began to wail at his ear.

"There's a notation here that an op went out a few weeks ago to a suspected sighting, but no update."

"Get me her file. I want the complete dossier on her, and see what else you can find out. I'm taking the day off and going looking for her myself."

"Whoa, hold up there, man," Braden protested furiously. "Didn't you hear what I just said? This woman is one of the most lethal killers in our ranks. She hunts Coyotes for fun, Lance. And she kills them. She'll take you out if she even thinks you're going to get close."

"According to you, the mating heat goes both ways, right?" Lance reminded him.

"As far as I know. According to all the reports the Bureau has listed of mated pairs, it's always a two-way street."

"Then she's likely in no better shape than I am," Lance pointed out. Braden sighed. "If the mating went both ways, she's likely in worse shape," he growled.