“Hey.” She turned quickly to Ashley rather than allow a lone teardrop to fall. “Cassie couldn’t come with you?”
Her gaze lacking the sparkling excitement it once held, Ashley still managed to give her a slight smile. “Jonas has her on lockdown for some reason,” she called back over the music, the hint of Russian in her voice giving it a mocking undertone.
“Let’s go rescue her,” Gypsy suggested, ignoring the amused, mocking horror that flashed in the Coyote female’s gaze while her sister stared back in pure fear.
“We don’t fuck with Wyatt, Gypsy.” Emma shook her head, shoulder-length dark hair flowing around her face as the Russian accent crept into her voice as well. “He’s damned scary.”
Gypsy snorted at the description. “He can’t kill us.”
“He can make us wish we were dead once he gets finished telling the alpha all our dirty little secrets,” Ashley informed her, leaning close, her gaze intent. “We do not let the alpha know all our dirty little secrets.”
They tiptoed around their alpha as anyone else would a rabid animal.
“I can’t believe the three of you are scared of your alpha,” she laughed back at them.
“Two,” Sharone informed her. “Those two”—she pointed to Ashley and Emma—“are terrified of their alpha because they know damned good and well he would have nightmares for weeks if he knew what they were doing. And he would ensure they did it no more.”
“Sharone’s the good little Coyote soldier,” Ashley smirked, a hint of her former self in the sudden sparkle of merriment in her gaze. “She never gets into trouble.”
Sharone merely rolled her eyes, but Gypsy could see the concern in the other woman’s gaze as it drifted around the room.
She might be a stick in the mud, as Ashley and Emma called her, but she was intuitive, cautious and rumored to be a stone-cold killer whose efficiency, lack of emotion and attention to detail was nearly unparalleled among the female Breeds.
Despite the hard, fast pace of the music, the driving tempo and the perspiration that poured from her body and dampened the black cami top she wore, Gypsy was still burning inside. She could feel the moisture collecting on her bare skin, running in small rivulets here and there. It was a caress that drove her crazy, that made her ache for Rule’s touch.
That ache was becoming deeper, hotter. She moved with the music and found herself drifting, remembering his touch. His lips at her throat, her need to feel his teeth raking against her flesh.
As his lips had caressed her shoulder, she’d waited. Ached. Needed to feel his teeth there.
His touch was an addiction.
She was seeing that now.
What they called Mating Heat was a compulsive, overpowering drug. One taste. One kiss, and she’d become something, someone she wasn’t.
She wasn’t a lover. She’d known that since the day she’d been told she couldn’t have one and still avenge her brother’s murder.
Hips swaying, her body moving sensually as languid need burned ever hotter inside her, Gypsy railed at herself for her decision that night.
She’d given to him, given him everything only to learn that everything was either too much or not enough.
“We should go.” Ashley’s suggestion had her eyes opening as she lifted the beer to her lips and sipped at it lazily, her gaze raking over the club.
“Why?” The Coyotes weren’t here yet. She still had information to get.
If the Unknown didn’t want it, then she knew many, many groups still involved in routing out the hidden labs who would want it.
Hell, Jonas would want it.
She could just work for him.
The thought was almost amusing.
“Because it’s nearly dawn?” Ashley drawled, her tone amused, her eyes flat and hard.
Gypsy let her gaze wander over the club again, her skin suddenly prickling with a latent warning of danger. She could feel it stroking against her flesh with an icy stroke.
“Bye-bye.” She waved back at the three girls as they seemed to share a concerned look. “Catch you at the next party.”
She wasn’t going anywhere.
Sleeping with Rule wasn’t nearly the compensation she would have imagined for giving up her entire life. What the hell had made her do something so irrational to begin with?
Mating Heat should be outlawed anyway. It made a woman’s heart do things that her head knew was inadvisable. Things that hurt worse than facing the loneliness.
The music shifted, pounding harder, faster. Turning from the three girls, Gypsy opened her eyes once again and found herself confronted with a broad, male chest.
It wasn’t Rule’s chest.
Her gaze lifted.
Lifted.
Wow, now this dude was fucking tall.
And he was pissed.
Six feet six if he was an inch, super long black hair pulled back in a low ponytail and Celtic green eyes. Eyes so bright, so lacking in warmth or mercy that they were like a frozen sea.
“You are becoming a nuisance, Ms. McQuade.” And his voice was like serrated gravel, rough and sharp with a deadly baritone.
“Oh God, we’re dead.” That was Sharone behind her.
“Will we get that lucky?” Emma sounded completely terrified.
“We’re screwed. He’ll tell the alpha . . .” Ashley was actually whispering in the sudden silence of the club.
“Stop already!” Gypsy turned on the three girls with a furious hiss before turning back to the guy with freaky-as-hell too-green eyes. “Who the hell are you anyway?”
“Their worst nightmare if you don’t leave this establishment this moment,” he stated firmly, frozen sea green eyes gleaming icily back at her.
“Go now,” Ashley gripped her arm.
The pain.
It struck at her with a suddenness that had her jerking from the female Coyote violently, causing all three of them to jump back as Gypsy swung away in a graceful pivot. She cleared not just the female Coyotes, but also tall, dark, and who-the-hell-ever.
They stared back at her, shocked, four gazes each going slowly to the military-perfect, well-trained stance she had taken.
And in that second, Gypsy realized that this man knew things about her that even Rule couldn’t suspect yet.
The music was pounding again, loud and hard, the beat racing through her bloodstream and thankfully covering from others’ gazes the perfect stealth maneuver that had swung her away from Ashley as well as the male attempting to reach out for her.
The Breed grinned, displaying strong, white, wickedly sharp canines at the side of his mouth.
“Breed,” she muttered, eyes narrowing.
“You have no idea.” Emma was shaking her head as Gypsy read her lips.
“Go!” Eerie green eyes shifted color and became more frozen as he made the demand.
She didn’t have to hear the tone to know the order in it.
“No.”
He stared back at her with an intensity that was almost frightening. She had to admit, that was one damned freaky look.
Still, she turned her back on him, flipped back her hair and made her way to the bar. She ignored the looks. She ignored Ashley’s nervous calling of her name behind her.
Her friends might be scared of Mr. Freaky, but she wasn’t.
Tonight, she would be damned if she was scared of anyone.
Not Mr. Freaky, and not some half-assed Breed mate who thought she should be waiting whenever he decided to get around to claiming what he’d thrown away to begin with.
“Ms. McQuade.” The deep drawl directly behind her had Gypsy turning again as she reached the bar, anger flaring in her at the sight of the tall Breed towering over her.
“What the hell do you want? And who are you anyway?” she practically yelled at him as the music rose in volume, thundering through the crowd filling the club.