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A full, deep, blessedly dreamless sleep.
SIX
Devil brushed his mate’s hair back from her face as he finished cleaning the perspiration and remnants of their release from her thighs, along her belly and from her breasts.
It was an act he’d never done for another woman.
The lovers he’d known in the past had always jumped from bed and run straight to the shower as though they were somehow dirty and had to wash the filth from their bodies.
Kate had slipped immediately into sleep instead. Her body completely relaxed, exhausted from the force of pleasure that had exploded between them.
Picking up a long, sun-kissed curl from her shoulder and drawing it to his face, he brushed the silky softness against his cheek and let a smile tug at his lips. Those curls completely fascinated him. It was as though they had a warmth and life of their own as they flowed around her body.
Hell, the woman herself fascinated him. In the week since he’d taken her from Ireland, he’d become so entranced by her that he’d begun to wonder if he was losing his mind.
It wasn’t his mind he was losing. It was his heart—at breakneck speed with no hope of slowing down.
Spurred by a phenomenon known as mating heat—a physical and emotional convergence of hormonal shifts that occurred once a Breed came into contact with his destined mate, the heart he believed he didn’t have was suddenly alive. The one he would have been destined to love had he been born as human.
Unlike humans, though, there was no choice in whether to accept or reject the male or female that perfectly complemented him physically, mentally, and emotionally as well as hormonally.
Once the body, mind and heart established that this person was the one that best fit the hungers and needs inside them, then the animal took over.
Hormones gathered and built beneath the tongue, spilled to that first kiss and established a bond born of a sexual heat so intense that there was no denying it. Speeding through their bodies, spurring their emotions, each response was driven at warp speed to bind the pair together in a mating that the Breed scientists suspected would endure a lifetime.
Mating heat actually existed.
The gossip rags hadn’t printed the insanity of fear-driven drivel as they usually had. For once, they’d at least partially gotten it right.
Returning the curl alongside the others that spilled over her shoulder, Devil pulled the sheet over Kate’s slumbering body before collecting his shirt from the bottom of the bed and pulling it on.
Dressed, he slipped from her room and made his way silently downstairs.
Stepping into the foyer, he stopped as Lobo and Dash Sinclair stepped from the library on the far end of the entryway and headed for the door.
“There you are,” Lobo growled, his dark gaze fierce as savagery flashed in his gaze. “Where’s Graeme?”
“I sent him into town to check on the whereabouts of the reporters that were here,” Devil answered, tensing at the ready violence that hummed around Lobo. “Why?”
“There’s a fucking Bureau agent at the gates with two Irish and American Immigration agents with a warrant to search the premises for Katie. I want to know how the hell they found out she was here.”
“Like hell.” A flash of red filled his vision for the briefest moment before he turned to Dash. “Cassie knows Breed Law; have her send them back to the holes they crawled out of.”
Dash grimaced. “She’s going over the language now, but she doesn’t just pull these arguments out her ass, Dev. She needs time.”
“Then buy her the time she needs,” he demanded. “This isn’t American land, it’s Navajo land.” He turned back to Lobo. “American Immigration has no rights on this land, nor does the Bureau of Breed Affairs. Ignore them.”
“We can’t just ignore them,” Lobo argued, his thumbs hooking in the belt that cinched his hips and held the weapon he carried at all times since his wife’s death. “That’s a Bureau agent out there, Dev. We signed an agreement with the Bureau of Breed Affairs that negates any desire we have to tell them to kiss our asses.”
“They can’t take a mate,” he reminded the other male, suddenly remembering several of the laws he himself had read when he had been given the Breed mandates. “It’s an exception to all other laws. No matter the crime, the act or the situation at hand, no mate can be taken, claimed or incarcerated unless a crime is committed after the mating.”
He’d always wondered about the wording. It was explained that a mating was simply Breed language detailing a committed relationship between a Breed and a lover chosen as a life partner. He knew now exactly what it meant and why the wording had been so precise.
“You’ve mated her?” Dash’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils suddenly flaring as amusement lit his gaze. “That’s why the scent of lust was so strong coming from your office earlier. The mating scent was on you when we met, so I assumed you’d already mated.”
Devil grinned. “Not until that bit of Irish got hold of me. Hell, I met her when she was sixteen and training with the Breed Protection Network in Ireland. I was there to train their agents in computer security. I saw her for a few brief seconds, and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t forget her.” He turned to Dash then. “Now, tell me where we stand.”
“We stand strong.” It was Cassie who answered that question.
