“We have men at the bars?” he asked his brother.
“Heading there now,” Lawe assured him. “You need to pull back. If she sees you like this, Rule, you’ll terrify her.”
What she would see was the animal in his eyes, eyes that gleamed in shades of blue so brilliant they were nearly neon.
“She ran.” The snarl was impossible to hold back.
Swinging his head around to meet his brother’s darker gaze, Rule glared back at him, his hands clenching the weapons holstered on both thighs.
“Did she have a reason to run?” Lawe asked softly. “Think about that, Rule. What reason did you give her to run?”
“I didn’t harm her.” He knew what Lawe was thinking. That somehow he must have hurt the woman that the animal inside him had claimed. The woman the man had already fallen in love with.
“Physically,” Lawe agreed. “I would never have imagined you had hurt her physically, Rule. But what happened otherwise?”
What happened otherwise.
What the hell had happened?
Explaining it was a bitch, but he knew hiding it wouldn’t work, as Lawe would just keep probing until he figured it out.
“I pulled away as I felt the barb emerging.” Releasing the hilt of the blade holstered at his thigh, he pushed his fingers through his hair restlessly, his senses continually testing the air around him for Gypsy’s scent.
“You did what?” Lawe stepped back, staring at him in shock, as though the information was far too much to take in.
“What?” Rule growled, furious, humiliated with his own weakness. “I could feel it emerging. Fuck.” He turned away from his brother as the other man blinked back at him, the disbelief growing. “What the fuck is your problem?” he snarled as he immediately rounded on Lawe once again.
“You pulled free of her before releasing?” Lawe cleared his throat as though suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation.
Rule shifted, suddenly even more unwilling to discuss this subject than ever before. “Maybe, just as it began.” His teeth clenched at the admission.
“And umm, exactly at what stage was your mate in?” Lawe asked, wincing as he rubbed at one side of his face uncomfortably.
His mate had been locked in her release, holding to him, her delicate little nails digging into his shoulders as the fist-tight sheath surrounding his cock rippled around him with a fiery pleasure that had shocked him.
“Fuck, Rule! No damned wonder she ran out on you.” Lawe’s eyes widened, filling with shocked amusement as the memory surged into Rule’s conscious thoughts and echoed into Lawe’s.
That damned link.
Rule pulled back immediately, breaking that awareness they had of each other that enabled them to draw on the other’s strength or knowledge.
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Rule muttered, unable to meet his brother’s gaze now. “I told her I would take her home after I showered.”
Why had he done something so insane?
“Shower?” Lawe sounded confused.
“Cold shower,” Rule muttered.
“A cold shower?”
“Are you a fucking parrot all of a sudden?” he snapped out, his anger surging at Lawe’s response.
“Parrot? No.” Lawe shook his head, one hand bracing on the butt of his automatic laser weapon where it rested against his own thigh. “But Rule, I have to say, tonight I’m beginning to wonder if we’re truly brothers.”
Rule snorted at the comment. “I’ve been questioning it from the day we were told. Never made sense to me either.”
Though for far different reasons than his brother’s, he was sure.
“She’s going to kick your ass,” Lawe chuckled then, turning from him to stare around the darkness and the Breed shadows hidden within it as they awaited their orders.
Two-man teams had been sent to all the bars the Breeds knew of. Those that were public, private and underground. Still, two hours after she had stepped into her apartment, she hadn’t been seen.
“She’s welcome to kick my ass,” Rule breathed out roughly, turning and staring into the darkness, desperate to see her walking through it. “As long as she’s safe.”
As long as the soldiers and Breeds still operating on orders from the Genetics Council didn’t get their hands on her. As long as the scientists still living, intent on deciphering the secrets of the animals they had created, didn’t cut into her.
“Stop, Rule. Let those memories be. No good can come of remembering them.”
Swinging around, he released an animalistic snarl from his chest as he bared his teeth at the Breed who had stood by him, behind him or in front of him for as long as he could remember.
“She’s alone. Any Breed in the vicinity will scent the Heat. They could take her.” The thought of it had his teeth snapping together as he fought to bite off the growl of renewed rage.
“And losing control of yourself will do nothing but endanger her further,” Lawe rebuked him firmly.
He hadn’t lost control of himself since the labs. Since his mother’s youngest cubs had been sent away and he’d been informed they were too weak to be allowed to live.
Rage burned inside him when he’d learned the little Cougar Breed female had been lost. It was one of the reasons he’d been so secretively protective of the main Pride’s Cougar sister, Dawn Daniels, until her mating.
Now, fighting back that demonic fury was harder than it had ever been. The animal inside him was demanding freedom. Demanding that it be allowed to protect its mate no matter the consequences or the blood that flowed. It demanded that the man step back, and Rule couldn’t allow himself to step back. He knew the rampage of fury the animal could create.
Still, his guts tightened as another growl tore from his chest, that inner fury he kept locked so deep inside himself rising closer to the fore as each second passed and Gypsy wasn’t found.
CHAPTER 18
There was too much energy.
It surged inside her. It laid waste to any concept of controlling the need to move, to undulate in sensual abandon. Her body was a mass of electrical stimulation with no place to discharge.
And it was driving her insane.
The underground club, Caine’s, was a country-pop-rock free-for-all where dirty dancing was almost required and the things that happened in the corners of the rooms weren’t dared to be mentioned in polite society. It was a club she rarely came to. But tonight, a Coyote group was headed there. A group that promised to hold the key to some much-needed information.
A year before she’d overheard a Coyote soldier discussing a lab in the western United States and hinted that it was still in operation, carefully hidden, fully funded and still experimenting on both Breeds and humans. The soldiers heading to the club now were rumored to be coming off duty rotation there before heading to another assignment.
This was the information her contact had been trying to get to her the week before when he’d been forced to abort the exchange of information. She could have had advance notice. She could have eliminated the mistake she’d made by going to Rule’s bed, and already had plans in place and questions prepared that would draw out the information she needed.
Now, she was working without plans, without backup and without the careful control she’d always depended upon to ensure that the suspicious, scent-sensitive Coyotes never picked up on the fact that each question, each smile, each flirtatious comment was no more than a careful deception.
Until her much-sought-after Coyote team arrived, though, she was going to dance.
Her lashes lowered over her eyes as Ashley, Emma, and Sharone danced with her, Gypsy sipped at the beer she’d carried onto the dance floor with her and fought back tears. She’d been fighting back tears since she’d left that damned hotel the night before.