Payton gasped at the sensations that streaked through her.
She’d always known that Hakan was talented with his hands. She’d seen the homes he’d helped design and build for his fellow Hunters. But who the hell knew he’d be a magician with his lips?
She gripped the cushions, barely capable of holding still as his teeth lightly scraped her tender flesh. Oh, Goddess. It felt like she was being burned from the inside out.
“Not soon…now,” she breathed.
CHAPTER 4
Hakan sucked in a deep breath, his cat basking in the scent of vanilla and warm, willing female.
He wanted to ignore her breathless plea.
After all, he’d spent the past twenty years fantasizing about making love to this female.
He wanted to make it last for the entire night.
But as he spread her legs wider and headed toward that delectable pussy he knew he was fooling himself if he thought he could take this slow and easy.
His dreams of how this moment would be had been nothing compared to the brutal need that blasted through him. This wasn’t the shallow attraction of his youth, or the playful games of his cat.
The need to possess this female was fierce, and powerful, and so raw he felt it to his very soul.
Deep inside, his animal roared in anticipation, spicing the air with a musk that would cling to her skin, warning other males this female was his.
Payton bit her bottom lip, a sweet little moan wrenched from her lips as he finally moved to stroke his tongue through her slick pussy.
Hakan tightened his hands on her legs, licking and sucking at the thick cream. Christ. He’d never tasted anything so good.
A heady excitement charged through him, stiffening his cock until it throbbed with a painful need.
He was desperate to impale himself in her female heat, but he grimly squashed the urge to lean her back and shove himself into paradise.
This had to be perfect for Payton.
He’d spoiled her tentative declaration of love. And spent the last twenty years keeping her at a distance.
Now he had to make this night so special that it would help to erase the past.
Attuning himself to her every sigh and moan, Hakan held her in place as she squirmed against the ruthless swipe of his tongue.
Over and over he teased her tender nub, his cat delighting in the sexual play even as the male was barely holding on by a thread.
“I love the taste of you,” he growled, his voice thick with the power of his animal. “Vanilla and honey. My favorite.”
She studied him from beneath half-lowered lashes, her cheeks flushed.
“I want to taste you,” she breathed, her tone shy.
His cock twitched, silently pleading to give her what she wanted.
Only the knowledge that he was going to come at the first touch made him give a rueful shake of his head.
“Next time,” he promised. “Tonight is all about you.”
“But…”
Her words broke off in a soft gasp as his tongue plunged into her body, thrusting in and out in a promise of what was to come.
Muttering something beneath her breath she lifted her hips, instinctively moving in rhythm with the ruthless stroke of his tongue.
His cock throbbed with a hot, aching need as the taste of her slid down his throat. She was like a drug. Intoxicating him with a heady pleasure he knew would be addictive.
The intensity of his sexual drive would have been terrifying if it wasn’t for the knowledge this female was his.
His mate.
The female meant to stand by his side for all of eternity.
The fact that she was driving him out of his mind with lust was only more proof that she was his destiny.
Intent on giving her more pleasure than she’d ever experienced before, he continued to explore her sweet cunt, sending her to the very edge of her climax.
“No, Hakan,” she rasped in thick tones. “I want you to be inside me when I come.”
Leaning back on his heels, Hakan took a minute to appreciate the sight of her in the throes of passion.
The halo of coppery curls. The heart-shaped face that was flushed a pretty pink. The green eyes that glowed gold as her cat studied him with a hungry gaze.
She was so fucking beautiful.
Feeling a sense of awe that fate would have given him this exquisite female, he surged up to claim her lips in a kiss that spoke of possession and need and utter surrender.
He slid an arm around her waist, turning her on the chaise so he could push her back against the cushions. Then, continuing to kiss her with a fierce desperation, he settled on top of her slender body, groaning in pleasure as she wrapped her legs around his hips.
Balancing on his elbows to keep from squashing her, he tilted his hips forward. They both hissed in anticipation as the broad head of his cock slowly breached her body.
Oh…Christ.
She was tight. So blessedly tight.
Sweat beaded his brow as he pressed into her damp channel, penetrating her with his thick length.
Threading his fingers in her damp curls, Hakan nipped the sexy fullness of her bottom lip before he was planting a trail of kisses down her throat.
“There’s no going back,” he breathed, heading lower to suck the tip of her breast between his lips. “You’re mine.”
Tormenting her nipple with his tongue and teeth, he gave one last push, battling to maintain control. She needed time to adjust to his invasion.
Of course, Payton couldn’t remain passive.
Once, his shy, eager Geek would have simply waited for him to take the lead. Now she grasped his shoulders and arched her back, angling herself until he was pressed so deep his balls were fitted against her ass.
“Shit, Payton,” he groaned, hoping like hell he didn’t embarrass himself. “I’m trying to make this good for you.”
“It’s good,” she rasped, her breath hissing between clenched teeth as he pulled out until just the tip of his cock was inside her and then surged back in with a powerful thrust. “Oh hell, it’s perfect.”
It was.
Hakan pressed frantic kisses over her breast before he was burying his face in the curve of her neck.
She was clenched around him like a hot fist, intensifying the electric pleasure of every stroke. He groaned, the tip of his cock tingling and his balls drawing up tight.
Around them the scent of male musk and sweet vanilla arousal saturated the air, the whisper of their soft moans the only sound.
“Come for me, Payton,” he commanded softly, driving into her with a quickening pace.
His orgasm was thundering through him, threatening to explode. Sliding a hand beneath her hips, he angled her to take him even deeper, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her throat.
“Hakan,” she rasped.
“I’ve got you, little one,” he murmured. “Give me what I want.”
She released a cry of pleasure, her heels digging into his lower back as she met him thrust for thrust.
Over and over he plunged into her welcoming body, his cock torturously sensitive as her silken heat wrapped tightly around him.
Then, feeling her stiffen in stunned pleasure, he moved to press his lips to her mouth, capturing her shout of frenzied fulfillment.
His cat roared in wild pleasure as he unleashed his hunger and drove into her at a ferocious pace, his fingers digging into her hips as he held her in place.
White-hot bliss arrowed down his spine before it was tightening his balls and then shooting through his cock in a violent climax.
He lifted his head to cry out in sharp ecstasy, his muscles clenched so tight he felt as if he was going to shatter into a million blissful pieces.
Minutes—or perhaps an eternity—later, he heaved a heartfelt groan and pressed his lips to Payton’s damp forehead.
Her soft convulsions squeezed his cock, milking the last of his bliss.
Yep. Perfect pretty much sum
med it up.
***
Two hours later, Payton stumbled across the bedroom, and flopped onto the mattress as she struggled to catch her breath.
Wow.
She’d thought that nothing could match the pleasure Hakan had given her in the library. That had been…stunning. But when he’d joined her in the shower, he’d verified that you really could improve on perfection.
Now she sprawled across the bed and allowed Hakan to dry her off with a fluffy towel. She felt boneless as sated pleasure flowed through her with liquid heat.
Of course, that didn’t halt her appreciation of the sight of the naked Hunter as he gently bent over her.
The moonlight streamed through the large upper-story window, gliding over his carved muscles and adding a rich sheen to his dark caramel skin.
Dear Goddess. He was so deliciously male.
Purring beneath his touch, Payton sighed with regret when Hakan at last finished and tossed aside the towel.
Standing at the edge of the bed, he stared down at her, his expression uncharacteristically tender.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low. “I wasn’t too rough?”
Her lips twitched as she pushed herself onto her elbows. “Are you fishing for compliments?”
“Do you have some to share?”
“I think your head is big enough,” she said, her attention lowering to his cock that instantly hardened beneath her gaze. “Along with other parts of your body.”
“I just want to know that I pleased you,” he said gruffly.
He had to ask? Payton would have assumed that her screams of pleasure might have given him a clue.
Oddly, his need for reassurance made her feel all warm and gooey inside.
“You pleased me very, very much,” she murmured softly.
“Good.” A slow smile of satisfaction curved his lips as his musk filled the room with an intoxicating fragrance. “This wouldn’t have been my first choice as a setting for our mating, but—”
“Wait.”
The euphoria that’d been clouding her mind with a sexual contentment abruptly shattered as Payton hastily shoved herself off the bed.
Hakan watched her awkward movements with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
A sudden, acute awareness of their mutual lack of clothing made Payton blush. Pantera possessed the ability to absorb whatever they were wearing when they shifted, so it wasn’t as if she was used to waltzing around naked. Still, she forced herself to stand her ground.
Dammit. She’d been so caught up in the sizzling passion that she hadn’t really considered what was going to happen when the momentary madness ended.
Now she felt an unpleasant knot of tension settle in the pit of her stomach.
“Who said anything about a mating?” she demanded.
The amber eyes abruptly narrowed. “Don’t play games, Payton. Not with this.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, refusing to be intimidated by the force of his glare.
“I’ve never been the one who plays games, if you’ll recall.”
“We’ve discussed this,” he growled in frustration. “You know why I had to walk away.”
“I do.” She wasn’t lying. She could look back and see that she’d been unbearably young when her cat had decided on Hakan as a mate. But that didn’t mean the past twenty years had been erased. “I even understand you were probably right.”
“And?” he pressed.
“And while I can logically accept our past, my heart isn’t ready.”
He abruptly stepped forward, framing her face in his hands. “Then what the hell were we doing in that shower?”
Heat flushed her cheeks as she recalled in precise, Technicolor detail what they’d been doing in the shower.
It’d involved hot water, shower gel, and Hakan on his knees…
Payton slammed the door on the memories.
It was distracting enough to feel the press of his thick arousal against her lower stomach.
“I told you that sex wasn’t the same as trust,” she reminded him.
His thumbs brushed her cheeks, his touch so tender it brought tears to her eyes.
“That wasn’t sex,” he said in husky tones. “We made love.”
She gave a slow nod. She wasn’t going to lie about her emotions. Even if she wasn’t ready to make the leap he was demanding.
“Yes. I do love you.” She tilted back her head, allowing him to see the sincerity in her eyes. “I have always loved you.”
His jaw clenched, his features looking like they’d been carved from granite.
“But you won’t mate with me.”
She winced at his flat tone. The less emotion Hakan revealed the more intense his feelings.
Which meant that she’d just deeply wounded him.
“I…” She licked her lips, a part of her yearning to simply accept what he was offering. She had belonged, heart and soul, to this male for the past two decades. But another part rebelled at the mere thought of giving in so easily. It wasn’t pride. It was…hell, she didn’t know. But she wasn’t ready. She firmly pulled from his grasp and headed for the walk-in to pull on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from the spares that were always kept in safe houses. “Not now.”
Hakan was standing in her path when she stepped out of the closet, his arms folded over his chest.
“Then when?” he rasped.
Turning, she reached to grab a pair of jeans off a shelf and tossed them toward him.
Dammit. That huge, naked body was making her want to do things with her tongue that weren’t going to convince him that she was serious about putting their mating on hold.
Things that involved licking that thick cock until he was pleading for mercy.
“I don’t know.”
Snatching the jeans before they hit his chest, he pulled them on with jerky motions.
“So this is my punishment,” he snarled.
“This has nothing to do with punishment,” she protested, even as a small doubt gnawed deep inside her.
A doubt she easily squashed.
Blistering heat filled the room as he straightened to glare at her with a barely leashed frustration.
“I understand. I hurt you,” he said, not sounding like he understood. At all. “Now you need to hurt me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You know we belong together.” He leaned down until they were nose to nose. “Even now I can sense your cat’s hunger for us to complete the bond.”
It was true, but she refused to back down.
The needs of her cat didn’t control her. Not since she’d left the nursery.
“Just a few hours ago I hated you,” she pointed out, trying to be reasonable despite his annoyance. “I can’t just turn my feelings off and on.”
“Payton…” The infuriated male stiffened in alarm at the shrill beeps that echoed through the hallway. “What the hell?”
Taking advantage of his distraction, Payton stepped around his large form and headed for the door of the bedroom.
“The download is finished,” she muttered.
She managed to reach the sweeping staircase before Hakan was standing directly in front of her, his expression grim.
“We’re not done with this conversation, Payton.”
She shoved a weary hand through her still-damp curls. When was the last time she had a decent night’s sleep?
It seemed like an eternity.
“Hakan—”
“You’re my mate,” he stubbornly interrupted. “Nothing is ever going to change that.”
He turned to jog down the steps before she could answer. A good thing, considering she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to say.
They were mates.
No doubt about it.
It was just…
Giving a resigned shake of her head, Payton followed Hakan down the staircase and into the library. Then, trying to pretend she wasn’t vibrantly aware of his large form standing nex
t to the desk, she crossed the room to peer at the computer screen.
Tapping in her private password, she studied her account, unconsciously chewing her thumbnail as she scanned through the long list of files.
“I think I managed to get something,” she at last said.
Hakan moved to stand behind her as she slid into the chair and used the mouse to click on the first of three files that she’d managed to retrieve that weren’t fragmented.
“What are they?” he demanded.
Payton skimmed through the various documents, swiftly realizing she didn’t have the skill to decipher the medical forms.
“This first one is some sort of lab work,” she said. “Blood. DNA.”
“Is it Lydia’s file?”
“It’s impossible to say, but it looks like there’s more than one patient. I’ll need the Nurturers to look at it to make sure.”
Hakan stiffened. “How many?”
“At least ten.”
“Damn,” he breathed. “It’s one thing to suspect that they’re screwing around with Pantera DNA, but to think they’re impregnating women with our semen…it’s intolerable.”
“I don’t think that these files are dealing with creating cubs,” she said, clicking open the next icon.
His breath brushed her cheek as he leaned over her shoulder. “Then what?”
She grimly concentrated on sorting through the documents. “I’m not sure. This is the only complete file I can open.”
“Patient Z,” he read out loud. “Why wouldn’t it have a name?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know much about medicine, but I suppose if you were doing some clinical trial…” She sucked in a shocked breath as she located a folder of pictures and clicked them open. “Hakan.”
She felt him grip the back of her chair as they studied the grainy photograph of a female strapped to a gurney in the center of a lab.
There was no mistaking the dark-haired Pantera.
“Reny,” he growled.
Payton made a sound of distress as she zoomed in. She could detect wounds on the unconscious Reny that suggested that the chains that bound her to the gurney were laced with malachite.
Not only must the pain have been unbearable, but the separation from her cat would have been a constant torture.