pped furiously. “Ask him which lab he was created in, daughter. Ask him if he wasn’t there when your Aunt Morningstar was murdered.”
Isabelle swung around to Malachi. But it wasn’t he who responded.
“Malachi wasn’t in those labs.” It was Commander Breaker who spoke instead, his tone heavy, almost too soft to make out.
Her father had obviously heard him, though. “And how can you be so certain?” he demanded, disbelief clear in his expression. “You of all people should know how easily those records could be manipulated.”
Rule’s expression only darkened. “I know he wasn’t there, Terran. Malachi was created in Russia, far away from the labs your sister was in.”
The tension that began filling the room was strangling. Isabelle could feel Malachi all but holding his breath, holding in whatever he knew, or whatever he would say.
“And how the hell do you think you can be so sure of that?” Terran sneered. “And why would I believe you over someone I’ve known for most of his life?”
Who?
Isabelle stared at her father in surprise. Who could have told him anything and known what they were talking about?
“I was reported to have been created in that base because there was no one left alive but Breeds to deny it,” Malachi stated softly. “But I wasn’t there. And even if I had been, nothing could have changed the outcome of her fate, Mr. Martinez. Nothing could and no one could have saved her that night.”
The disappearance and death of his sister had haunted her father, she knew. So much so that he made certain he knew where his daughters were, at least their general vicinity, every second of the day.
“Even the dirty Coyote that reported the escape attempt another Breed was initiating to get her out of there?” Terran snapped back at him. “That Breed was you, Malachi Morgan. You were there, and you reported the attempt.”
“And I told you he wasn’t there,” Rule injected again.
“And you’re lying for him.”
Isabelle was shocked to hear her father raise his voice, to lose the calm that was always such a constant and steady part of him.
“Dad, please, don’t do this.” Isabelle stepped forward, shock and pain filling her at the fury in her father’s face. “I don’t know what Malachi did in those labs, but whatever he did, it was to survive. And I don’t believe he would have ever deliberately brought danger to an innocent.”
It didn’t matter that his gaze had swung to her, narrow-eyed and strong, as he stepped to her. She may not know the particulars of the circumstances or the story behind his escape or anyone else’s. What she did know was the man who held her in his arms and the fact that he couldn’t have, wouldn’t have, participated in her aunt’s death. Not in any way.
“Isabelle, if you’ve ever trusted me, come with me now.” Her father turned to her, the eyes she had grown up staring into whenever she’d needed answers, whenever she was frightened or confused, and that gaze was demanding she obey him. That she follow him. That she turn her back on the man she had already begun accepting into her heart.
“I trust you with my life, Dad,” she whispered painfully. “But I need you to trust me. Trust me to know the man I’ve fallen in love with.”
That was all she asked of him. Just for now, for this moment, trust her and allow her to make her own decisions. She couldn’t bear being controlled, being forced, without a choice. Neither Malachi nor Commander Breaker was doing that.
Malachi stood close behind her, not touching her, trying not to influence her. The commander had his back to her, but her father was glaring at her.
“Terran, watch what you say,” her uncle Ray advised him as it became obvious that her father’s anger was only growing.
She stared from her uncle to her grandfather then back to her father. They were obviously there only to ensure her father didn’t make a mistake he couldn’t take back.
“What does he intend to say, Uncle Ray?” she asked softly as she felt her throat tighten with tears. “What do you intend to do, Dad, when I tell you that I won’t walk away from Malachi without proof that he’s done something vile? A mistake I can forgive. Anything he was forced to do in those labs I would have to forgive. It would break my heart that he were forced to be something he wasn’t. That he carried the nightmares of it. But I wouldn’t turn my back on him.”
“Even if he killed your aunt?” her father yelled back at her, causing her to flinch. “You would forgive him for it?”
She was going to cry. Isabelle could feel the tears coming. She could feel her chest tightening, her lips trembling with the need to spill her tears, her pain.
“Even if he were forced to do that,” she whispered. “I’ve never lied to you, Dad. I won’t start now. I’m not saying it wouldn’t break me in half. That I wouldn’t live every day of my life knowing the unbearable weight of it, but what happened in those labs I won’t hold against him.”
“Then I dis—”
“No!” her grandfather yelled behind him as another voice broke over him.
Her father had been only a single word from disowning her.
“I was in that lab.” Commander Breaker stepped forward and spoke as Isabelle’s eyes began to widen in horror of what her father was about to say.
Her father swung around to the Breed. “What did you say?”
“I was there,” Breaker growled. “I was created there. I was trained there. And I knew your sister. I swear to you, Mr. Martinez, on the soul I hold as my dearest possession. I swear to you, Malachi wasn’t there. And I know he wasn’t there, because I was.”
Her father seemed to shrink before her eyes. His shoulders slumped, horrified remorse filling his gaze as he turned to Isabelle. He stepped back slowly, shaking his head in disbelief as his gaze swung back to the commander.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered. “And you have nothing that will prove it.”
To that, the commander growled with primal, deepening anger.
“I have blood.”
“And what the hell will that prove?” Her father threw his hands up in a gesture of fury. “How will your blood prove anything?”
“It will prove I’m the son of Morningstar Martinez,” he snapped back at him. “And as you know, those bastards never, ever separated the male Breeds from their birth mothers. They used them. Tested us for compassion and sympathy with them,” he snarled with animalistic rage now. “My blood will prove it, Mr. Martinez, and then as far as your daughter should be concerned, you should get fucked. Because a man that would turn his back on a daughter is no man. He’s even less than the godforsaken bastards that created the Breeds.”
“Enough.”
Isabelle watched her grandfather through her tears, his lined, weary expression making him appear a decade older than his actual age.
“It is time to speak of this without this most precious child present. The sins and the nightmares of the past are for those of us who have faced the monsters in the world. Not those who we fight to protect from them.”
Her breathing hitched as her grandfather stood staring back at her with all the gentleness and love he had always given her.
Malachi’s arm went around her. As though he couldn’t bear the physical separation between them any longer.
Her grandfather nodded as though in approval of the move.
“Take care of the gift I give you my consent to accept,” her grandfather stated then. “What you have been blessed with, no man can tear from your grasp. Be foolish enough to turn from her love, though, and I will see you as no more than the sniveling child who knows only to blame others for his misfortunes.”
“Thank you, sir,” Malachi stated softly. “And I know well the gift I’ve been given.”
Her grandfather turned away. As he did, her uncle nodded to her gently before following. It was her father who hesitated.
“I love you, no matter your choices or what you do,” he finally said roughly. “But no matter the man or the Breed, o
nes with honor would never stand by calmly while one more innocent and undeserving died in agony.” He glanced to Malachi as he spoke.
“And I don’t believe that, Dad,” she whispered. “Sometimes, to protect others you love, you have no choice but to put on a brave face and hide your horror or your pain to ensure the protection of others. I watched the documentaries. I watched the Senate hearings that are retelevised year after year, and I heard the stories of the horrors they faced. Every Breed who survived those labs, made it out alive and swore vengeance against their creators and tormentors are worthy of every second chance they can be given. If needed.” She glanced up at Malachi, certainty flowing through her as his gaze met hers. Turning back to her father, she stated, “Malachi doesn’t need forgiveness. He wasn’t there. If he had been, he would have told me before anyone else had a chance.” She was certain of it.
With tears glittering in his eyes, her father raked his fingers through the military short gray and black hair as he turned away.
“Who told you Malachi was there, Dad?”
He paused. Keeping his back to her, he shook his head and Isabelle swore she could feel the weariness that slumped his shoulders.
“I have the right to know. It’s my life they were attempting to destroy along with the negotiations between the Nation and the Breeds.”
“I gave my word, Isabelle.” He sighed, his voice husky. “I won’t break it.”
And he wouldn’t. No matter the cost.
“The next time it happens, if you have to give your word to retain the secrecy of their identity, then don’t bring the suspicions to me where Malachi’s concerned,” she informed him, her heart heavy. “Because I won’t hear them. Whoever is attempting to destroy these negotiations would destroy me, Malachi and my family without a thought. I don’t want to hear anything else they have to say.”
She had made a choice and Isabelle knew it. In that moment she’d chosen Malachi over suspicion, rumor or hints of wrongdoing whether they were real or imagined.
She had chosen him over everyone else in her life.
She may not know every act he had committed or every experience he had ever known, but she knew the soul of the man she had given her heart to. And she knew that soul was one that deserved her love.
That soul was the mate to hers.
Chapter Eight
Your lips touched mine.
He couldn’t bear to feel her pain.
As the room emptied and the door snicked closed quietly behind Rule, Malachi turned his mate to his chest and held her there.
For the first time in his life he didn’t just sense the pain, or scent it. He could feel it with every fiber of his being. It wrapped around his heart, his soul, and squeezed with a merciless grip.
“What’s going on?” she whispered against his chest as she felt his hands smoothing down the silken material of her dress to her hips and back to just below her shoulders. There, his fingers tangled in the long waves of her hair, twisting them around to pull her head back.
“I don’t know what’s going on, baby,” he told her, keeping his voice low, the pain emanating from her still too strong for his comfort.
It made the animal inside him rage, desperate to take the pain away and replace it with something more. Something more intimate. Something that would resonate with pleasure rather than pain.
Lowering his head, he let his lips settle over hers. Gently. The glands beneath his tongue were swelling in response to the emotions rising inside him, just as they had since the moment he had laid eyes on her.
Flicking his tongue against her lips, parting them, he let his lips fuse with hers before parting them farther and finding her tongue with his.
As though the taste of the mating heat was as much an addiction for her as the taste of her kiss was becoming for him, she immediately drew the taste of him into her. For lush, impossibly ecstatic seconds her lips captured his tongue and drew the heat from it.
Pulling back from her, his lips slanted over hers, rubbed against them, parted them with his, and they shared the taste. Mating heat fused them together, but Malachi knew where the heat came from: from the hearts of two souls that had searched the night.
Pulling the dress from her, he could only groan in anticipation and rising hunger as she released his pants.
There were no boots to take off this time—he’d met his visitors in bare feet, just as she had. It took only seconds to strip the pants from his legs and lift her to him, but the bed wasn’t an option. As he palmed her breasts and took her kiss again, his thumbs flicked at her pebble hard nipples, rasping over them as he backed her the few feet to the couch and felt the primal instincts that rose inside him crashing through his control.
She was his mate. The need to take her, to mark her, to indelibly imprint himself on her was tearing through his senses like wildfire.
Though she had stood beside him and defended the accusations brought against him earlier, still, there had been an instinctive hesitation. The need of the daughter to give in to the father, to obey and accept the protection she had known all her life.
That hesitancy had terrified him. For the briefest second Malachi had felt pure, gut-wrenching fear, certain he would have to fight for her and chance destroying them both in the effort.
That streak of pride and independence had held her to him, for the moment. Now, God help him, the animal inside him was tearing loose now and asserting its determination to tie her irrevocably to him.
“Malachi,” she whispered on a desperate sigh, her nails biting into his bare shoulders as he backed her to the couch before allowing his lips to trail to the sensitive column of her neck.
The ripple of response raced up her spine, sending the scent of summer heat to fill his senses. The smell of her passion, her sweet, soft, feminine lust, was the most intoxicating scent. He could live on it. He could survive the rest of his life with no other scent in his head.
The growl that rumbled in his chest surprised him. It was more animalistic than normal. It came from deeper inside him, from the depths of his diaphragm to vibrate in his throat, and sent a shiver chasing up Isabelle’s back.
That response heralded the heated scent of her pussy and signaled the rush of her slick juices as her body prepared for him.
His cock, already engorged and throbbing in hunger, pulsed with a demand he’d never known before. He could feel the mating fluid building in the shaft as his balls tightened in a pleasure-pain that had that damned growl rumbling again. It was uncontrollable. It was primal and heralded a rush of hunger that stripped him to the depths of his being and to the animal that resided there.
Isabelle could feel the need rising like a storm inside her and racing through her bloodstream like a drug determined to overtake her. It wasn’t just determined. It was definitely overtaking her. Washing through her body with a wave of heat as Malachi’s lips blazed a path of fire down her neck.
Once he reached the small, sensitive wound he’d made earlier, his tongue brushing across it, Isabelle swore she nearly climaxed. A rush of sensation tore through the mark as a hungry kiss was applied to it before his lips began nipping and kissing their way to her breasts.
Her nipples were tight, hard with excitement. As she arched to him, Isabelle felt the brush of the fine hairs of his chest against them, the rasping pleasure dragging a whimpering moan from her chest.
She couldn’t get enough of him. Not enough of his kiss, his touch, or the incredible pleasure that seemed to invade every cell of her body.
“I can’t wait.” The sound of his voice was part animal, part human. An equal mix of who and what he was and from where he had come.
“No one asked you to wait,” she cried out as his hand moved between her thighs, his fingers finding the moisture that lay on her thighs and following it to the swollen folds of her cunt.
Parting the saturated flesh, he found the clenched, sensitive entrance, rimmed it then, and with a dominant, exciting thrust, filled the snug channel with
two powerful fingers.
Isabelle went to her tiptoes, her cry muffled against his chest as her flesh clenched involuntarily, becoming tighter and rippling around his fingers.
“Malachi.” She cried out his name as his lips found the tight, hardened peak of a nipple. Arching closer to him, she cried out again as he began to suckle the tip with strong, heated draws of his mouth.
Whatever the incredible taste that flowed from the glands beneath his tongue, the presence of it on his tongue now increased the sensitivity of her nipple. It hardened further, becoming so tight and peaked that the pleasure-pain of it had her nails curling against the flesh of Malachi’s shoulders.
Her hips moved, writhed as she worked her pussy on his fingers, her clit rasping against the pad of his hand as he curved it against her.
Her juices were flowing over his fingers, saturating them as she whimpered with the rising desperation to climax.
She was close. She could feel it building, burning in the pit of her womb, the release she was reaching for so desperately tightening through her.
“Not like this.” The words rasped from his lips as he straightened, his fingers immediately pulling free of the heated clasp of her pussy.
“No. Malachi, please . . .”
He nipped her shoulder. As a gasp of pleasure tore from her lips, he pulled back once again before gripping her shoulders, turning her around quickly and pushing her to the couch.
“On your knees,” he growled as he pushed her down.
Catching her weight on her elbows against the high, thick pad of the armrest, she felt him coming behind her, over her.
Covering her like a warm, sensual blanket, a sexual creature intent on possession, Malachi braced his hand next to her elbow as he positioned the width of his cock at the entrance to her sex.
Immediately the heavy spurt of sexual fluid erupted against her entrance, heating her further. The flesh there became more sensitive, clenching tightly even as it stretched easier beneath the penetrating width of his cock.
Another spurt of slickening fluid invaded her, increasing the sensitivity, the pleasure that whipped through her senses. She could barely breathe. The stretching impalement of his flesh inside hers was like a whirlwind of sensations so intense, so brilliant she could only writhe in response. She pressed back, feeling her vagina milking the heavy width, drawing it deeper inside her as he worked his hips against her with strong, shallow thrusts.
“You’re mine.” With his lips at her ear, he made the declaration in that rasping animalistic tone that only increased her arousal.
“You’re . . . oh my God, Malachi.” Her back arched as he thrust inside her deeper, harder, sending spasms of sensation to throb through her pussy and echo to the swollen bud of her clit.
She was panting for air, tiny cries spilling from her lips until she wailed in pleasure as he pushed to the hilt inside her with a final thrust and a last spurt of the preseminal fluid that seemed to help the ability of her sex to take the incredibly wide cock that filled her to overflowing.
“You’re mine!” she cried out, making her declaration match his. “Just the same, Malachi.”
She was sobbing with the pleasure and couldn’t seem to stop it. Pinned as she was, her hips arched to him, her cheek against the side of the armrest, she felt the violently sensitive nerve endings come alive inside her as he began to move.
He fucked her with hard, heavy strokes. Burying himself full-length inside her, Malachi had no hesitation, no doubts while impaling her with animal-like force, one hand gripping a hip, the other sliding over her as he braced his elbow against hers.
His fingers clasped hers. In a gesture as old as time and as intimate as a kiss.
“There, baby, fuck me back,” he groaned as she worked her hips back on the width of his cock. “Milk me inside. Let me feel that sweet pussy take me, Isabelle.”
The explicit words spoken at her ear had her body jumping with pleasure. She couldn’t remain unaffected, nor could she stop moving, even if she tried. Nothing mattered but the tightening spirals of sensation beginning to tug at the nerve endings in her pussy and throbbing in her clit.
Behind her, Malachi was thrusting rhythmically, with each penetration pushing into her to the hilt as she cried out, writhed and thrust back on the heavy stalk of flesh.
She was dying beneath the onslaught of pleasure. There was no way she could survive it, she told herself, even as she rushed headlong into the burning release awaiting her.
When it hit, it enveloped her in white hot flames. Shards of bliss began ripping through her senses, and when he buried himself one last time and that first spurt of release began jetting inside her, she felt the incredible presence of the additional thickening in his cock as it stretched her farther.
Locked inside her, his release spurting to the very mouth of her womb as each heavy throb of his cock extended her release, Isabelle felt all the world disintegrate. All but the part of existence that she and Malachi inhabited. That was all that existed, all that sustained them.
And within that world, within the fiery haze of pleasure, pain and swirling intensity, nothing mattered as much as the beat of his heart against her back, his teeth locked at the flesh between shoulder and neck, and the man as bound to her as she knew she was now bound to him.
Nothing mattered but the bonds that she knew would hold them together and the hunger that would never abate.
And when all was said and done, the most important part was being his mate.
Chapter Nine
For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.
No Breed or human had ever claimed that Nature in all her glory didn’t like to amuse herself with the children she was in charge of overseeing.
They were her amusement as well as her responsibility and she took both seriously, Malachi thought as he held his mate against his chest the next morning.
A warm, comforting weight, her head pillowed over his heart, one small hand resting at his side as the soft weight of her breasts pressed against him.
Sleeping with a woman had never been a comfortable experience. In the early days of the Breed liberations it was common for Breeds to be betrayed by their lovers. Council soldiers found it much easier to take the Breeds when they were distracted by a lover in the midst of intercourse. To a lesser extent it wasn’t uncommon for it to happen now.
Sleeping with Isabelle was another story. He’d slept the deepest sleep he’d ever known in his life as he held her in his arms. Not that he’d slept unaware. The animal part of him never seemed to relax its guard.
He was aware of every move outside the door,