His scent followed her.
Sitting on the side of the bed, she propped her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. She wanted to rock into herself, scream and rage and claw at his face with her nails. She wanted to give in to the demented pain rising inside her and show him the lethal, killing instinct that had been bred into her. The one she held inside, always hidden, restrained.
“Well, little halfling, you must admit you suspected it; other- wise, you’d have never made up those ridiculous rules,” he said with a grunt, as though that excused him.
Mocking amusement was a trademark she’d always sensed, yet until now, he’d never turned it on her.
What was she going to do?
She couldn’t deal with this!
She had to run, to leave …
Yet even now the despised reaction of her body to the Mating Heat was already building again, sensitizing her, forcing her to fight herself, to fight the steady increase of the hormones now racing through her.
She wanted him again. Wanted his flesh throbbing between her lips, wanted his tongue burrowing inside her sex, spreading more of that sickening hormone.
Her hand clamped over her mouth as she felt her womb tightening, demanding his release, demanding he flood her body with his semen again.
She jerked to her feet, only distantly aware of him moving from the bed, but all too aware of the fact that he was aroused, erect and ready to give her body exactly what it was beginning to burn for.
For a moment, all she could do was ache for her mother, her father. Ache to beg them to fix this as they had so many other things in her life. To smooth it over, to make it better, to help her find a way out.
And there was no way out. She knew there was no way out.
“Should I take you again, mate?” There was an edge to his voice that sliced at her, that dug into her chest and made the pain brighter, more intense. “Shall I just bend you over the bed and push inside you? Ride you hard and fast until I knot you and give your body what it needs? Just stay behind you so you don’t have to see the Breed you mated?”
Cassie jerked, barely holding back a cry rising unbidden to her lips as her sex spilled its liquid heat and her stomach rippled with the clenching of her womb, with the need, the hunger.
Yes, that was what she wanted, she screamed silently, agony tearing through her. Take her like the animal she now knew lurked inside her.
A low, male chuckle followed her as she shook her head and headed for the shower. She had to think. She had to figure out what to do.
“Cassandra …”
“Cassie …” She corrected him almost automatically, feeling so dazed, so off-balance and filled with violence that keeping the explosion of pure murderous fury contained was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
“What?” Clipped and short, his voice raked over her senses, stroking her like a physical caress as she felt her sheath clench, felt more of the hot, silky wetness spill from her.
“Cassie,” she had to force herself to answer. “My name is Cassie.”
She was Cassie Colder. She wasn’t Cassandra Sinclair, no matter how desperately she wanted to be, how hard her mother and father—her stepfather—had worked to give her that illusion. She wasn’t Wolf Breed. She wasn’t Dash Sinclair’s incredible, amazing, intelligent daughter. She was Daniel “Dane” Colder’s science experiment. The dirty little animal he’d helped create.
“I need a shower,” she whispered. She needed to think. To turn back time.
“A shower won’t wash my scent from you.” It sounded like a promise. A warning.
“Guess we’ll find out …” Straightening, she’d almost taken that first step when she felt herself jerked around, her mate towering over her, glaring down at her, his gray eyes like thunderclouds as a warning growl left his throat.
That sound was the trigger.
It ripped through her, exploded through her mind and tore aside that veil of civility she was always so certain she possessed.
“Don’t push me, Cassie,” he snarled in her face, his head lowering, almost nose to nose with her.
Lifting to her tiptoes, she bit him. Her teeth snapped at the thin line of his lips, and she tasted blood, tasted that hormone and lost control of the low, warning growl that left her own throat as she jerked back.
One hand latched into the hair at the back of his head, the other gripped the thick, throbbing stalk of flesh that extended like iron from between his thighs. Jerking at his hair, she pulled his head down to get her fix. To pull in the hormone spilling from the glands beneath his tongue and allow the creature inside her to fully awaken.