Hell no.
He moved along the hall silently as he watched his mate, who stood in front of the Breed’s bedroom doorway, obviously talking to him.
“Come on, Mica, anything you need, sweetheart, you know that.” She shook her head as another soft laugh both stroked his senses and offended them.
Her scent hadn’t changed. She didn’t smell of Josiah. He hadn’t touched her, he hadn’t kissed her, and the need that he knew was only for him still surrounded her.
As he stalked up the hallway, it wasn’t Mica that realized he was there first; it was Josiah. Mica stepped back, surprise registering on her face as Josiah stepped out in front of her. With no shirt on. His chest, broad, though unlike most Breeds carrying a light sprinkling of dark chest hairs. His jeans rode low on his hips, the belt undone and Navarro knew without checking that he was aroused.
“She didn’t do anything, Navarro.”
Navarro didn’t answer.
Approaching Josiah slowly, his gaze locked on the woman behind him, he came to a stop six feet in front of them, then held out his hand. “Mica.” He spoke her name softly. “Let’s go.”
She moved to step from behind the other Breed when Josiah moved again, blocking her.
“Dammit, Josiah.” In typical Mica fashion she gave him a hard push, surprising him long enough to skip around him before giving Navarro a wary look.
“You don’t have to go with him, Mica,” Josiah promised her as Navarro caught her hand and pulled her close to his side, his arm falling over her shoulders.
Damn, now that felt good. Too damned good.
Gripping her upper arm, he turned and moved back along the wing to the main hall, and from there to the suite they now shared.
He wasn’t going to ask her what the hell she was doing there, no matter how desperately he wanted to ask. Nothing had been going on. Josiah was her friend, and Navarro knew her scents. She had no thought of betrayal, and he’d learned long before the rescues that nothing could change whatever a person decided they wanted the most. If she wanted Josiah, if his arms were the ones she wanted, then it would have been Josiah she would have mated.
That didn’t mean he was going to let it go. He couldn’t let it go.
He could feel the sudden hunger for her as it exploded through his system and sent a part of his control ricocheting through him before it was lost forever.
It was all he could do to maintain the wild, howling part of his psyche. That part of him that he didn’t know, didn’t understand, and hadn’t even been aware he possessed until now.
He pulled her into their suite, closed and locked the door securely behind them.
He stared at her. Just watched her as he released her and she moved across the room before turning to face him.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He had no idea where those words came from, why he even thought she would need the promise until he watched her swallow tightly, watched as he began unbuttoning his white cotton shirt.
“I never imagined you would.” She was breathing heavy, her face flushed, her golden green eyes filled with trepidation.
“You’re watching me as though you’re expecting me to rip your throat out.” He couldn’t help the rough, rumbled sound of his own voice.
She shook her head, and he swore the soft brush of her hair through the air sent the smell of her arousal rushing through him again. He couldn’t get the scent out of his head. He couldn’t stop what it was doing to him.
His cock was thick, hard and fully engorged. There was none of the mating sensitivity that he could detect, but the hunger for her, the need for her taste, her touch, was beginning to pound through his system.
She swallowed tightly.
“If you don’t want this, then say so now.” He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders as her eyes widened.
He couldn’t explain the hungers suddenly tearing through him any more than he could explain the dominance he could no longer keep a handle on.
She was his mate. That was all he knew, and he knew it for damned certain. She belonged to him. She had been born to belong to him, to be his mate, to touch him as no other woman ever had or ever could.
What more should matter?
Josiah didn’t matter. Ely’s fucking tests didn’t matter. All that mattered was that before he left this room, she would never allow another man to set him up, even unconsciously. And he had no doubt in his mind that Josiah hadn’t done just that. He was trying to prove to Navarro that he had a chance at Mica, when the opposite was true. He would never have a chance to touch her, she would always see to it. Especially once they finished with the need beginning to claw inside her.
He knew what was about to happen.
He could feel it. The need, the hunger, the pure iron-hard dominance raging through him was pulling a single white-hot need through his veins, burning through his senses.
He watched as she took a long, slow breath.
“Take off your shirt.”
She hadn’t told him to leave, she hadn’t told him no, and he knew she was well aware of certain aspects of Wolf Breed mating.
He’d been pushed, and he’d handled it well.
For more than a week. He’d been pushed, he’d been chastised. And then, he’d stood still, silent, and allowed another Breed to threaten to take what he knew was his and his alone. And he hadn’t killed him, simply because he knew Josiah was full of shit.
The other Breed wanted her, he’d always wanted her. From the moment she had landed her fist in his face Josiah had lusted for her.
But she belonged to Navarro.
And today, he was going to prove it.
“Undress, Amaya,” he warned her. “Do it now. Because I’d hate to tear all those pretty clothes.”
Because God as his witness, he didn’t think he had the control left not to.
CHAPTER 16
She knew.
Mica swallowed tightly. She knew enough about mating heat and Wolf Breeds that she knew what had happened. She didn’t know what had caused it. She had no idea how the loss of control had occurred, but as she stared across the room at him, she realized that she was seeing the primal genetics he possessed for the first time in all the years she had known him.
It should have frightened her.
She should have at least been wary.
Instead, she was doing just as he suggested, she was stripping her clothes off. Slowly.
She knew the creature facing her, and still, she was teasing him with the slow, lazy movements, with her gaze locked with his, with the scent of her arousal no doubt reaching out to him.
And as she did, she watched as he undressed as well. Each article of clothing that dropped to the floor exposing the steel-hard, tense lines of muscle and darkly tanned flesh until finally, he wore nothing but his arousal as his fingers curved around the base of his cock and palmed the heavy flesh with a grimace of pleasure.
Thick, heavy, ridged with dark, throbbing veins and glistening at the tip with slick moisture. The sight of his fingers stroking the hard flesh, the heavy veins throbbing with hunger, had the breath trapping in her chest, a sensual weakness rushing through her.
Moisture rushed along the clenched muscles of her pussy as her womb felt as though a hard spasm ripped through it. Sexual hunger, sensual need and an erotic knowledge of what was to come had her feeling dazed, uncertain, and filled with weakening anticipation.
“Josiah is pushing his luck, Mica.” His voice was low, the hint of a roughened growl layering it as he began to move toward her. “You’re going to put a stop to this, aren’t you, Amaya?”
Her lips parted, but not to speak. Oh, she wasn’t about to make it that easy for him. Nothing she did, nothing she said, would change what was going to happen, and she didn’t want it to. That didn’t mean she was going to submit from the start. She had him this far, she wasn’t about to let him off that easy.