He couldn’t resist them.
He didn’t want to resist them.
And he was within a second of tasting them—
“Hey, Devil, you in there?”
Katie froze.
Her eyes flew open, her gaze meeting Devil’s as horror began to wash over her.
What was she doing?
“Just a minute, Graeme,” he called back, his body taut, tight with lust as he seemed poised on an edge of control and teetering her way.
“This is important, Dev,” the faceless Graeme called back. “One of the mares is acting freaky and there’s some dude out here asking about some Irish girl. Have you seen an Irish girl?” Just enough mockery filled his voice to assure them that Graeme had denied knowledge of her but was concerned.
Who the hell was Graeme?
Devil jerked away from her as though it had taken the last measure of strength he had. And in the next breath he was lifting her from the desk.
“Get dressed,” he ordered, his voice low. “Get to your room. Don’t let anyone outside the house see you and don’t make any calls until I find you.”
Katie nodded, though she doubted he saw her as he quickly straightened his clothes before striding to the door.
Jerking it open, Devil stepped into the hall, opening the door no farther than necessary as she quickly dressed. Seconds later, Katie slipped out as well and raced to the guest room she’d been given.
Stepping inside, she could see that the curtains had been drawn, blocking so much as a hint of the late afternoon sun or anyone brave enough, or lucky enough, to get a view.
Closing the door behind her, Katie curled into the large wingback chair next to the door, wrapped her arms across her breasts and stared into the darkness of the room.
Would this be her life from now on? Running? Hiding? Always searching for safety and never being certain it existed?
She couldn’t imagine such a life for herself. Because that life would mean leaving the Reever ranch and leaving the Breed whose eyes seemed to stare straight to her soul and whose touch could make her forget everything but her need for him.
She’d never known a connection to another person as she felt with this Breed. She had never wanted to be with another person, not just sexually, but just near him, as she did with Devil.
For the first time since she’d learned exactly what she was and how she had come to be, Katie began to regret it. Because the very fact of her creation could very well be exactly why Devil was fighting the desire between them so hard.
Perhaps he simply didn’t want a woman whose life, whose very existence came with the kind of problems that hers would come with. He could want a nice, normal woman who would present no problems and no additional dangers to his own existence.
She could understand that.
The hell she could.
No nice, normal woman could ever tolerate a Breed male. They were arrogant, dominant, forceful, and so damned aggravating they made a woman want to kill at times. She knew exactly what they were like. She’d been dealing with them since she was sixteen years old during her first training year with the Breed Security Network.
Breed males were always certain they were right. They rarely, no, they never, at any time accepted that a woman, whether she was Breed or human, could survive without a male’s protection, and they were prone to prove it in a variety of ways.
They were peculiar, particular and perverse.
And she had a very bad feeling she might well be falling in love with one.
Graeme, secure the grounds,” Devil ordered quietly as he watched the Jeep rumble from view, the high-range camera mounted on the top pointing back at the grounds.
It had been pointing forward when the vehicle stopped at the gates.
“They’re secured,” he answered, and Devil knew if Graeme said they were secured, then they were damned well secured.
The Lion Breed was one of the few recessive Breeds Devil had known with actual Breed traits. He’d arrived six months before with nothing more than a change of clothes in a small pack, a knife and a sense of security weaknesses that had immediately found favor on the estate.
Tall, broad, laid-back and rarely displaying a temper, Devil was beginning to rely on the exacting precision in which the Breed did everything he set out to do.
“The girl’s still in her room,” Graeme reported as he consulted the wireless electronic security monitor he carried. “She left your office just after you and went straight to her bedroom.”
Devil glanced at the other man briefly. “You knew she was there.”
“It would be damned hard to miss the smell of her need,” Graeme agreed. “I have no doubt Mr. Reever and Mr. Sinclair were well aware of her presence there as well. Speaking of, Mr. Reever has requested a report immediately. I’d be prepared for questions regarding your activities in your office if I were you.”
Devil came to an abrupt stop, not really surprised that Graeme managed to stop the instant he did as well.
“Do you have a problem with the activities in my office, Graeme?” he asked the other Breed, knowing that the continued mention of it meant that Breed likely did have a problem with it.
Impassive, his expressive gaze showed little-to-no emotion at the best of times, were it not for the glitter of life in the dark brown of his eyes.
“I have no problems with them at all, Mr. Black,” Graeme assured him. “But, I’d expect questions from Mr. Reever as well as Mr. Sinclair, because they definitely seemed to have an opinion on it before the reporters showed up.”
Great, just what he needed, not just Lobo questioning, but also Dash Sinclair.
Lobo was bad enough.
“I’ll deal with Lobo and Sinclair,” he growled. “You deal with security and we’ll continue to get along, Graeme. Otherwise, your nosiness may cause you quite a bit of trouble.”
More than the feline would want to deal with, and Devil would make damned certain of it.
But first, he needed to deal with Lobo and Sinclair. Because any dealings he had with the sumptuous Ms. O’Sullivan was his business and no one else’s.
No one else’s at all.
FIVE
Stepping from a cold shower, and it wasn’t the first she had taken in the past twenty-four hours, Katie quickly dried the water from her body before donning a loose robe and belting it in irritation.
She had no idea what was wrong with her.
She was too young for hot flashes, right?
She didn’t have flu symptoms. She wasn’t running a fever. But she was too warm, her body aching, and the remembered taste of Devil’s kiss teased her senses with the persistence of an addiction. Or at least, what she’d always heard an addiction could be like.
But, it wasn’t really possible to be addicted to a kiss, was it?
To the wild, heated taste of a man’s lips on hers, his tongue stroking against hers as flames swept through her body and tension pounded at her clitoris and the clenched, untried depths of her sex.
Her breasts were swollen, her nipples hard and tortured, dragging an irritated moan from her lips as she stomped back into her bedroom, only to come to a sudden stop.
She hadn’t heard him enter the room. She hadn’t even suspected he would be there, and she could normally anticipate most people’s actions.
“Did you get rid of the reporters?” she asked before clearing her throat while drawing the edges of the robe above her breasts tightly together.
Narrowed, intense, his gaze swept over her body.
“For the time being,” he assured her. “But I’d like for you to stay within the inner grounds for a few days; the walls surrounding the house are equipped with special diffusers to ensure no cameras or other tracking equipment can penetrate it.”