“Then I’ll tie her up and gag her before I throw her on a heli-jet,” Lawe snarled rashly as he ignored Diane’s snort of mockery.
Hell, he was never rash. He never, ever made empty threats until he had come against Diane’s stubborn will. Any other woman and he would have had a team of Enforcers abduct her and transport her to a secure location until the situation was resolved.
But Diane wasn’t any other woman. She was his mate. Besides, she would probably shoot his kneecaps off at first opportunity for the insult.
“And you’ll make her hate you as well as make an enemy of her,” Thor warned as his gaze snapped with fury. “Because you’ll have to kill me, Breed, to pull that one off. And trust me, I’m her favorite.”
Her favorite? Lawe’s eyes narrowed on the mercenary as he began assessing any other threat Thor may represent. At the look, Thor flashed a confident, taunting smile.
Lowering his head, Lawe was only distantly aware of his lips curving back at one side to display the canines there as a growl sounded in his throat.
The danger, the threat that the other man might represent, had the primal animal that lurked inside him rising dangerously.
Diane stepped forward at Thor’s smile and the answering, savage sound vibrating in Lawe’s throat. She could hear the anger in Thor’s voice. That anger was something he rarely showed, and the fact that it was bleeding from him was an indication that the confrontation needed to stop now. Because he was intent on pushing the one button he knew would only piss Lawe off.
Even more dangerous, though, was that totally feline, completely enraged sound Lawe was making. She had never heard that from any Breed, and she’d fought with two of them for several years before Jonas and Lawe had made it impossible to keep them on the team.
“Leave, Thor,” she ordered him, making certain her tone brimmed with authority. She had to separate the two before she had more trouble on her hands than she could deal with.
Thor glared at Lawe accusingly for long moments before turning back to her, his shoulders tense, his expression tight with outrage as he glanced at her. “Are you sure, boss?”
“I gave the order, didn’t I?” The lash of command that hit her voice before she could stop it had Lawe’s gaze slicing back to her.
Thor grimaced tightly before turning back to Lawe. “Don’t make me your enemy,” he warned Lawe. “Take her by force, and I promise you, I’ll retaliate.”
“Thor! Now!” The last thing she needed right now was Thor playing his games with Lawe.
Thor threw Lawe a look that even Diane clearly understood. A look that assured Lawe he wouldn’t hesitate to strike out if he felt he had to. It was a side Diane had always sensed in the other man. Thor followed her, he respected her abilities and her command, but he would always see her as a female first and a soldier second. It was his one fault as far as she was concerned, and one of the main reasons she had already ruled him out as the traitor. Thor had had far too many opportunities to kill her and make it look like an accident if that was what he wanted to do. He didn’t have to play games.
“Do I really have to say it a third time?” Third time meant cash from his account to hers. And a hefty amount it would be too.
“Fuck, fine. But it’s not the damned money. It’s the ass kicking that goes with it,” Thor bit out as he turned quickly, opened the door with a furious jerk, then paused. Looking over his shoulder, he glared at Lawe. “She can’t really kick my ass, you know, but she plays fucking dirty and goes for the balls,” he said before striding out and slamming it heavily behind him.
She flinched as the metal door met the frame hard enough to rattle the windows.
“Teenagers,” Diane muttered as she glared at the door, then at Lawe.
She swore men were no more than overgrown teenagers.
Glaring at him she had to restrain a sigh. She had fought the good fight and she knew she had to ignore the heat blazing through her body while Thor was there. The tormenting waves, the lash of hunger and the overwhelming urge to rub against him were nearly impossible to deny, though.
The sensitivity of her nipples and breasts, her clitoris and even her flesh made her feel as though every nerve ending in her body had turned erogenous. She wanted to take him. She wanted to feel him. She wanted to burn the anger and pain from his eyes and for just a few moments, she ached to be a partner, if only sexually.
She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have time to be some Lion Breed’s sex kitten. She had a mission to finish, but all she wanted to do was crawl over his tight, hard body and feel him against her. She wanted to rub on him.
Hell. She wasn’t doing this. This was not the way to prove she could handle mating heat and the mission.
And she had no choice but to prove it or she would have to back off and give Lawe exactly what he wanted. The end of her freedom.
Lifting her hand, she pushed it beneath her hair and rubbed at the sizzling sensations that seemed to pulse just beneath the skin there.
The bite Lawe had given her ached with a sizzling sensation and almost brought a moan to her lips as she touched the wound.
Jerking her hand back, she glared at him before turning to the bed and grabbing her bags.
Pulling the short hiking boots from the closet along with the clean socks she had pushed into them the night before, Diane threw them on the bed as she prepared to leave.
“You can go with me or you can haul your ass back to D.C., I don’t really give a damn which,” she told him as she prepared to leave.
Liar. Liar. The inner sex kitten was chanting the word as her body screamed for sex. For mindless, erotic, nasty sex and another one of those primal, primitive bites at the back of her neck.
She turned to inform him exactly what he could do with his protective possessive attitude and his refusal to consider anything but his own way, when he was suddenly right there behind her. He gripped her arm and hauled her against the exciting heat of his much larger body, his arms surrounding her, the heat of him seeming to penetrate through her flesh straight to the core of the arousal blazing higher at his nearness.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“You want to be fucked so bad you can’t stand it, let alone protect yourself and that arrogant behemoth you fight with,” he snarled down at her. “And still you would walk away from me?”
“In a heartbeat,” Diane flung back at him. “If you’re so damned stubborn and chauvinistic that you can’t accept the fact that I can’t be anything but what I am any more than you can, then you’re damned right I will. I won’t beg you to be my partner, Lawe. You should be intuitive enough to want to be.”
She would die of arousal before she would beg him to allow her to be anything but herself. She was who and what she was and she wouldn’t apologize for it. Just as he could be nothing other than who and what he was.
She didn’t ask him to change and knew he couldn’t even if she did ask it of him.
He had no right asking it of her either.
“You can barely walk for the need to fuck,” he charged again, lust and anger burning in his gaze, darkening the blue of his eyes and intensifying the hunger she knew he already felt.
Mating heat was nothing if not demanding. And exacting.
“So fuck me and get it over with.” Going on tiptoe she pushed her nose almost into his, her gaze locked with the wicked, sexual fire in his as she felt his cock pressing into her stomach. “Come on, Lawe, if you’re not going to go with me, then at least give me a quickie for the road.”