One that was being deliciously interrupted by a hot, hard male body sidling up behind her.
She instantly pressed back against him and sighed. His chest was bare, but he was still wearing his sweats. She wanted those off. Wanted him naked and rubbing against her.
“Sleeping without me, Gia?” he whispered, brushing her still-damp hair off her neck with his cool fingers, then leaning in to plant a kiss on her pulse point. “Naughty kitten.”
Eyes still closed, she grinned. “I know. How will you punish me?”
A growl vibrated near her ear. “I can think of a few ideas.”
She shivered.
“But first, the guards brought dinner,” he said, licking the shell of her ear, then biting down hard on the lobe. She gasped and arched her back, felt his impressively hard cock at the base of her spine.
“I have it on the table,” he continued. “You hungry?”
Heat was swirling through her now and her mind was slow and soft. “Not for food,” she managed.
“Yeah,” he uttered. “Me neither.”
The heat and hardness of him left her momentarily, and she felt the covers being pulled away. Frustrated, heady with lust, she rolled to her back to see what was going on. Demand that he return to her. But he already had. He was positioned over her like a predatory animal, his steely gray gaze pinning her where she was.
“In my bed,” he growled. “Where you belong, Gia. You know that, don’t you? Understand that?”
Breathless, she nodded.
“Tell me,” he commanded. “I need to hear you say it.”
“This is where I belong, Hiss. In your bed. With you. Under you.”
His brow arched. “On my tongue?”
Her sex tightened and she canted her hips.
“What about on my fingers?” he demanded. “Your sweet cream coating my fingers?”
“Oh, Goddess,” she breathed. “Yes, yes, yes. Please, Hiss. I can’t take it anymore.”
“You never have to beg me, Gia.” He smiled. “Not more than once, anyway.” With deft fingers, he untied the knot of her white robe and spread the cotton flaps wide, revealing her nude body to his gaze. At first, he just stared, skimming her from face to neck, to shoulders to breasts to waist… But when those two gray orbs settled on her sex, which she’d shaved bare in the shower tonight, his nostrils flared and for a second she saw his cat shift in and out of his features.
It made her wild with lust. Every muscle in her body going tense, ready, waiting for his command. She was a puma female and she loved when Hiss showed her his Pantera male fierceness.
“Did you do this to tempt me, Gia?” he asked, his eyes sliding up to meet hers.
“You bet your ass I did, Hiss,” she shot back, then smiled wickedly.
“It wasn’t necessary,” he said, dropping his head and kissing her mouth. “The sweet scent of your pussy has been driving me insane for weeks.” He started moving down her body. One hand fisted her breast, while his mouth hovered above the other. “I need no more encouragement.”
Gia was hardly breathing. She was stiff. Dying to be touched, licked, eaten.
“However…” As his right hand kneaded her breasts, he nuzzled the other with his nose, then flicked the tight bud with his tongue. “It is a most tempting sight.”
She inhaled sharply and canted her hips again. “Hiss, please. You’re being cruel.”
He laughed, his hot breath teasing her wet, sensitive nipple. “I’m savoring, ma chère. Every delectable inch. And you are that…delectable.” He sucked her nipple into his mouth hard.
Gia grabbed his head, threaded his hair with her fingers and growled.
“Your pussy had better be soaking wet by the time I get to it, Gia,” he warned, his tone savage, guttural. “Or else I may not put my mouth on you.” He lowered his head and kissed her ribs, then her belly. “Do you have enough cream for me, kitten?”
Back arched, fingers digging into Hiss’s scalp, Gia was one strung-out nerve ending. She was afraid that one lick of Hiss’s sharp, demanding tongue and she would come. Goddess, she didn’t want that. She’d dreamed about this moment. Being taken by this male. It wouldn’t be momentary bliss.
His fingers scraped gently down her lower abdomen and over her shaved pussy. She moaned and bucked, so sensitive it was almost torturous. Almost. And then he dropped his head and kissed her. One soft kiss on the seam of her sex.
“Hiss,” she breathed.
“Yes, ma chère,” he uttered, his tongue making one long swipe from the opening of her pussy to her clit. “Not to worry. You are most definitely wet enough. It pleases me. You are a good kitten.”
His tongue was on her again, gently circling her aching bud. It was too much. Her body…her breath…she was going to come.
“No,” she cried out, abandoning his hair and gripping his shoulders. “No. Please. Hiss. No.”
He stiffened and pulled his head back. “What’s wrong, Gia? You don’t want me to touch you? Lick you? Tell me.”
Gia cursed herself. She hadn’t meant it that way. “Of course I want you to touch me,” she cried out. “But I need to touch you too. Taste you while you taste me.”
He groaned.
“Give me your cock, Hiss.”
For a few seconds, he didn’t move. Then he cursed and repositioned himself so she had access to him. Hungry, happy, and insanely excited, she rolled to her side, grabbed the waistband of his sweats and yanked them down.
Oh, Goddess, yes. This was what she wanted. All of him. Every glorious hard inch of—
Her thoughts died there because Hiss had her pussy spread wide and his mouth was on her again, his lips suckling gently on her clit. Heat surged to every cell of her body. Heat and mind-stealing pleasure. She fisted his cock and dropped her head. As she sucked him, reveling in the thickness of him and the taste of him, he consumed her. Lapping at her cream, circling her bud, then flattening his tongue and thrusting up. Over and over. Again and again until she was panting and bucking against his mouth.
“Oh fuck, Gia,” he groaned.
She drew on him tighter and faster, loving how worked-up she was making him, loving the taste of his salty pre-come on her tongue.
And then he slid two fingers inside her and she was done for.
Fucking her slowly as he licked her, Hiss thrust into her mouth. They were both a wild mass of hunger and need.
Crying out, Gia broke apart. She was like an animal possessed, riding his mouth as she sucked him off.
“I’m going to come,” Hiss warned her, trying to pull away.
But she held him fast. She wanted his come, wanted to taste him, drink him down. And with three furious, deep thrusts to the back of her throat, she got her wish.
Hot seed cascading down her throat.
Minutes later, Hiss had his head to the pillow and was pulling her into his arms. “Just breathe, ma chère,” he uttered. “I have you. Always will have you.”
She snuggled up against him, feeling satiated and tired, and hungry for him. For him inside of her. Her mind felt altered somehow. Shaken and stirred, and yet her heart felt indescribably full and happy.
“I feel as though I waited a lifetime for that,” Hiss uttered, kissing the top of her head. “For you.”
She smiled, loving how vulnerable he was being with her. She hoped it would extend to everything else in their lives. Fears, plans, the past…
“How did it go with your sister?” she began gingerly, her arm draped across his chest.
He sighed. “It was good. To see her, talk with her. There was so much I needed to say, explain. She didn’t know all that had happened when she was gone. What the elders told me about her and Mom and Dad.”
“Was she upset?”
“She was surprised. But she has moved forward, and she urged me to do the same.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked, then held her breath.
“I do.” His arms tightened around her. “Now I do.”
/> It was all they said. Their bodies were weary. Not from the pleasure they’d just experienced, but from hours and days and weeks of pain and torture and living breath-to-breath.
As she closed her eyes and let her body relax completely and utterly for the first time in a long time, Gia felt loved and safe and cherished.
For the first time in a long time, she fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
CHAPTER 7
Hiss hadn’t slept.
He’d wanted to. With Gia wrapped in his arms, her near-nude body draped across his. Fuck yeah, he wanted to fall asleep. Then wake up the next the morning, maybe before dawn, and sink into the hot, wet sheath he’d been so fortunate to taste tonight. But he had a promise to keep.
One he was sure the Leader of the Pantera was going to fight him on.
Just before midnight, Hiss had sent one of his guards to fetch Raphael. He’d offered to go himself, but the two fairly green yet overly rule-rigid Hunters hadn’t enjoyed that idea. So Hiss had waited, stood at the edge of the bayou, under the moon’s clear light. If he went back into the cottage he was afraid he’d crawl right back into bed with Gia.
“Summoning me?” came a taut male voice behind him. “And just as I was saying goodbye to my mate.”
Hiss turned. “You’re going on the mission?”
“No. But I’ll be at Headquarters monitoring the entire thing.” The male’s eyebrow drifted up. “I haven’t heard an apology. I don’t look kindly on interruptions with my mate before a battle. Unless of course it’s the glorious squawk of one called Soyala.”
Hiss inclined his head. “I’m sorry. I left mine as well. So I understand your frustration.”
“Then tell me, why are we here?”
Hiss glanced at the guards bracketing him. “Can we speak in private?”
“You can go,” Raphael told the males, then stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Hiss. “I grow weary.”
“I have to go on this mission,” Hiss told him.
“Prisoners don’t go on missions,” he countered. “You know that.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that why you brought me out here?”
“This is different. You need me there. You need all the Hunters you can get.”
The male’s eyes flashed with unrest. “That’s why I have a full team of Hunters coming. None of this should concern you. You’re not a Hunter.”
The words hurt. Cut deep. Because to Hiss, he would always be a Hunter. The title, his genetic makeup, it didn’t just go away because he’d fucked up. Or did it?
He exhaled heavily. “So what’s the plan then, Raphael? Keep me captive here? Or in a cage lined with malachite? Or maybe you’ll feed me to the bayou and be done with it once and for all?”
The Suit’s brows lifted a fraction. “That sounds interesting.”
Hiss turned away and cursed. “I know what I’ve done. What I’ve caused. How I lost my way. Let me earn back the title of Hunter.” His eyes came back to the male and they were brimming with the passion of his cat. “Just this one night. I know my way around the lab. But more importantly, I made a promise to Blade and the others. I also swore vengeance on those assholes.” His nostrils flared and his gut tightened. “They had Gia, Raph. Were about to force a pregnancy on her.” His lip curled. “Any way they could.”
Raphael growled. “Fuck me.”
“And she wasn’t alone in that. They’re making hybrids in there. For blood, for power. I don’t know. But the suffering is horrifying.” A cold wind whipped up around them and a cloud shaded the moon. “The puma in the Sub know me, trust me—yes, I realize what I’m saying, and how impossible it sounds to you.”
Raphael stared at him. Hard. “I don’t know…”
“I can’t allow her to love me this way.”
“And what way is that?” Raphael asked, his jaw working.
“As a traitor.” He inhaled sharply. “Let me try and change that moniker. Or do penance for it, at least.”
“How do I know you won’t run?”
“Because Gia is here.”
The simple, truthful, vulnerable answer stalled the leader’s anger and bluster. He glanced past Hiss to the cottage. Then exhaled, shook his head slightly. “I must be insane to even be contemplating this.”
“Or just…curious?”
Raphael’s gold eyes narrowed on him. “If you try to run,” he warned, “the Hunters will shoot to kill.”
Hiss nodded. “Understood.”
“Come with me.” He started walking away from the bayou. Then stopped. “Will you say goodbye to your female?”
Hiss glanced up at the cottage. “I don’t want to wake her.” Every inch of him, the blood in his veins, all wanted to be back with her. In his bed. He turned back to Raphael. “Can you do me one last favor?”
***
It wasn’t a nightmare that woke her this time, but a hunger for Hiss. Her mate. The male who had sent her flying and reeling and…just over the moon.
She wanted more.
Craved more.
Saying his name, she reached for him, searched the other side of the bed for him, and the feel of that hot skin over steely muscle. Right now she wanted the muscle between his legs. She was so ready. But her search came up empty.
She sat up and turned on the light. Her gaze moved about the room. What time was it? There was no clock in the bedroom.
Slipping out of bed, she re-tied her robe and headed for the living room. The house was so quiet, bathroom was vacant, and inside her chest, her heart started to thump.
“Hiss?” she called, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It was dark except for a single light coming from the kitchen area. She followed it.
But again, he wasn’t there.
A thread of panic moved through her now. She stared up at the clock. It was two in the morning. Where the hell was he? Had someone taken him? She was just about to head to the front door, see if maybe he was out on the porch or down by the bayou or checking up on the guards, when she spotted a piece of paper on the counter near the sink.
Instantly she snatched it up. As she read, her heart started to ache with anger and frustration and longing. He was gone. Of his own accord. To the lab in Baton Rogue with the other Hunters.
She stared at the paper. At his messy scrawl. You damn bastard. Leaving a female in your bed without saying goodbye.
She read the note over again, one last time, then tossed it in the trash and returned to bed.
She’d learned a grave lesson. It was time to call her family.
CHAPTER 8
The building was dark, seemingly shut down for the night—maybe even for good. As the wind swirled around him, Hiss stared at the place that had held him captive, drained his life’s blood. The place that had given him Gia. Dark. Like nothing truly lived within it. But Hiss knew what was happening behind those walls—those thick walls stained with blood and tears. So much pain, so much fear. And his puma brothers and sisters, waiting.
“We should’ve used a helicopter,” Keira remarked as they all spilled out onto the roof of the Chancey Hotel.
“Right,” Hakan answered dryly. “Because that wouldn’t alert them to our presence or anything.” He shot Hiss a grin.
Though momentarily surprised, Hiss returned the gesture. For too many years to count, Hakan had been his closest friend, and the one Hiss had felt devastated about disappointing. It was good to know the male was giving him a chance at redemption. The other Hunters on the mission were acting as if he didn’t belong. Even though he had fallen back into their ways, their rhythm, seamlessly.
“Keira,” Parish said, standing on the edge of the parapet. “You need to get that fear of heights under control.” And to really send the point home, he jumped to the roof of the building next door with ridiculous ease.
A few of the Hunters laughed, especially after Parish turned around, grinned and beckoned them all onward.
Keira cursed at him under her breath, but managed to stick not only the first ju
mp, but the second, landing softly on the roof of the lab with the rest of the Hunters.
“Quiet now,” Parish commanded as they headed for the door.
As expected, it was locked, but Rosalie made quick work of it. She was exceptional at breaking and entering, and Hiss wished he could tell her so. But the Hunter hadn’t spoken to him or even glanced his way since Raphael had brought him in for the mission. Not that he blamed her. His choices had led to the death of her mate, Mercier. Odds were that she wouldn’t ever see it in her heart to forgive him. But even so, he would always have her back.
With the door unlocked and propped open, Parish stood just inside it, regarding them all. Weapons were drawn and a solemn focus came over the unit. “Hiss, Lena, Bayon and I will go down to the Sub,” he said. “Rosalie, Talon, Mal and Rage, you clean the second level. Lian and Keira check the other floors. Take out as many staff as you can, then we’re going out the front door with the captives. Alisa, Jessa, Pride and Striker will be waiting with the vans. Backup cars are parked around the building, keys inside. Use them only if you can’t get out, can’t get to the vans.” He looked at each one of them. “Are we clear?”
Everyone nodded.
“Be careful. I want no accidents. We are all going home alive.”
No one nodded or confirmed this. They didn’t have to.
Parish tossed them a dark, menacing grin. “Let’s go hunting,” he said before he disappeared into the stairwell.
Focused tension clung to them as they descended. Every eye looking out for movement. Every ear listening for footfall. With each level they reached, a pack broke off and, with a silent nod of understanding, went to work. Until finally, Hiss, Parish, Lena and Bayon were at ground level.
The Sub.
Surprisingly, being back inside the lab didn’t fill Hiss with fear or anxiety. Just purpose. After performing a quick audio scan of the long, cold, dark room, they moved in. The familiar scents rushed Hiss’s nostrils. “Blade?” he whispered into the dark.
“Hiss?” the male called out.
“Yeah.”
All around the room, shifters stirred in their cages. Without being able to see all that well, Hiss could only guess they were at the doors of their cages, waiting for the sign to emerge.