Rule Breaker

  “I have some wine,” she told him, hesitating at the combination bar and counter that separated the two rooms.

  “That’s fine.” He nodded. Not that he cared much for wine, but he could feel her nervousness building as he watched her.

  Tilting her neck as though to stretch the tightness from it, she moved into the kitchen area, reached beneath the cabinet and pulled free a surprisingly recognizable wine.

  It was one of the sweeter wines, he saw. The same brand the Pride Leader’s wife preferred when drinking a glass before going to bed.

  She opened it, filled two wineglasses, then set aside the empty bottle. Handing one glass to him, she led the way into the living room.

  Rule watched as she curled herself into the corner of the couch, watching him as he sat, not too close to her, but not too far away.

  She was too nervous.

  He could feel her, ready to jump and run at a moment’s notice as that elusive scent of fear strengthened marginally.

  Turning his head, he stared at her for long moments, suspicion biting at his control as he sipped at the wine, watching as she did as well, and seeing the fine tremor in her fingers.

  Fuck, he couldn’t do this to her.

  “You never date. You never allow any man to dance too closely to you and never allow them to even consider that they could have a chance to leave with you. You’ve had no lovers, and you’ve had no relationships. Yet you’re twenty-four years old and I know you’re not a cold woman. The warmth of you flows over my senses, and the scent of your feminine need has me so hard I’ll carry the brand of my zipper on my cock long after I shed my pants. So tell me, Gypsy,” he asked her, watching her stiffen until she was so tense a good wind could have broken bones, “why is your life in deep freeze?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, and that lie filled her entire expression as well as her scent.

  “I intend to share that bed in there with you,” he stated. “And don’t bother denying any chance that I’ll make it there. We both know I will. Before I do so, I’d like to know any obstacle that would stand in the way of the pleasure I can give you.”

  “Aren’t you just as cool as you can be?” When she lifted her head, those witchy eyes glared back at him as she gripped the wineglass with both hands now. “You just state your intent and think I’m going to just follow along with you? Just because you decree it?”

  Reaching forward, he placed his own wineglass on the low coffee table before turning back to her and lifting his brows. “It’s a thought. I could live with the idea of it.”

  “Well, bully for you, badass.” Gripping the glass in one hand once again, she lifted it to her lips, finished it, then all but broke the glass when she placed it on the table as well, but with a much heavier hand. “I knew this was a mistake.”

  She moved from the couch with a suddenness that had absolutely no attempt at subtlety.

  He’d played with her in the past weeks, letting her get away, letting her run.

  He was tired of watching her run.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” He was at her side, the fingers of one hand shackling her wrist as she stared back at him in surprise.

  “I’m tired of being bullied by you.”

  He had to laugh at that. At the very thought of it.

  “Bullied by me? Or having the truth become an object you can’t push away like you push away those cowboys when they try for more than just a dance? I’m not bullying you, Gypsy, but neither do I intend to watch you run any longer,” he promised her.

  ...

  He wasn’t going to watch her run any longer? What she was going to do was kick his ass out.

  “From what? You?” Her lips curled in derision. “Really, Rule, do you think you’re the only Breed who’s come on to me? Trust me, you’re not.”

  “I’m the only one you’ve ever left with.” The smile that shaped those too-damned-sexy lips should have been a warning.

  In the next second he’d managed to swing her around, pulling her against the heat of his chest and holding her securely against him.

  Why wasn’t she fighting him?

  She knew a few moves of her own, and she’d used them more than once to escape holds that were more forceful than this one. Yet she couldn’t make herself fight. She didn’t want to fight.

  And that was far too dangerous.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  Gypsy couldn’t force any of this to make sense.

  This wasn’t her. She didn’t tell her secrets, not any of them. If she trusted anyone with one of them, then she would be tempted to trust more. And she knew better than that. Yet she wanted to tell him her secrets. She needed to talk to him, needed him to listen, to understand the why of so many things.

  “I think we’ve talked enough—”

  “I watched my mother die.” His head turned to her, his eyes so brilliant they burned.

  “What?”

  “In those labs,” he told her, his voice rough. “I’ve never spoken of it to anyone, including the brother forced to watch with me. We had two young siblings to protect. If we showed emotion, they would have been killed instantly. But we were forced to hear her screams and the screams of the Breed she loved as they were dissected while still living. The memory of those screams, of hearing the death of the woman who fought every day of her life to find a way to get her children, no matter that they were forced upon her, out of those labs, torments my nightmares. So should you awaken to my screams, perhaps you will simply awaken me, share your warmth and your courage with me, as I would do for you should the nightmares come to you as well.”

  The offer shattered her.

  She felt her lips tremble as she stared into his gaze, saw the torment, the loss, the pain he suffered in a way that only made him stronger in her eyes.

  “I would hold you through those nightmares if you allowed it, Gypsy.” His fingers cupped the side of her face as he stared down at her.

  “If I could,” he continued. “I would hold the nightmares at bay for you.”

  “If I could, I would throw you out of my apartment and out of my life,” she whispered painfully, her fingers gripping his forearms, feeling the hard muscles beneath the tough flesh as she stared up at him. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you messing with my head and ruining my plans and my life.”

  “And what plans have I ruined, little Gypsy?” he questioned her gently, his eyes disbelieving as he brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “Your plans to exist like the perfect frozen little princess? To deny yourself something so basic as this?” The backs of his fingers caressed down her cheek, her neck, sending tingles of pleasure racing through her.

  “You’re the reason Jonas offered my parents a chance at that contract, aren’t you?” she accused him, the way she’d been maneuvered still chafing at her.

  He grinned. A self-satisfied, smug smile. “I would hate to have to attend the parties and gatherings I’m certain you’d send me to alone, if you could.”

  Her frown turned to a glare. “Because of you I have to wear a dress I had designed just for another event this fall. A ball that’s damned near impossible to be noticed at without a dress as intriguing as it is unique. Your last-minute invitation to that Breed ball just ruined those plans.”

  The dress wasn’t really the objection she had to it, Gypsy admitted. Hell, she’d admitted it to herself hours ago.

  “Why do I sense far more than your ire that a dress is being sacrificed?” he asked gently, and she hated him for that gentleness.

  She hated him for making her want to reveal things he had no need to know and to force her to attend a party she’d had no intention of attending.

  “I hate being manipulated,” she bit out between clenched teeth, moving to pull from him, expecting him to let her go.

  Instead, his hold only tightened as a flash of male, dominant sexuality sparked in his eyes.

  “And I hate aching, hungering for a woman who wants me
just as desperately yet finds herself too terrified of the past to take what she wants.”

  The accusation struck far too close to the truth.

  “So, should I just sleep with you and thank you very nicely for fucking me once you’re finished?” she demanded with mocking sweetness. “Did you think that damned contract would get you into my bed, Rule?”

  His lips curled with just a hint of amusement. “A man can hope, but I have to admit, I wasn’t betting on it.”

  “You’re an arrogant ass,” she accused him roughly.

  And she was insane. Somewhere she had managed to lose what common sense she possessed.

  “It’s time you le—” She didn’t have a chance to finish the rest of the demand. His lips came over hers with a powerful, dominant force that had a surprised moan slipping from between them. Her hands rose to his shoulders, nails digging into the material of his shirt as she was drawn to her tiptoes, suddenly so desperate to get closer that the need was exploding through her senses.

  She could taste the chocolate and peppermint candies he was known to enjoy. The taste of the sweet was licked onto her tongue as he pressed past her lips and stroked over it. It filled her senses and gave her a whole new appreciation of the candy.

  The stroke of his hands down her back caused her to arch closer, pleasure rasping over the sensitive flesh, then exploding across her lower back as they slipped beneath her blouse.

  Had she ever wanted to be touched in this way? Had she ever wanted a man to stroke her flesh, to tear her from the safe confines of her world and into a heady, chaotic storm of pleasure? Had she ever craved having all her plans for vengeance destroyed for a single man’s touch?

  She hadn’t, she knew. Heat rushed through her as his nails scraped down her back lightly, rasping over her flesh and causing her to press closer to him. To rub herself against him as she felt the iron-hard, thick wedge of his erection beneath his jeans.

  The impression of that erect flesh was large, too large, perhaps.

  And she swore she could feel the heat of the engorged flesh through his jeans and hers as he pressed closer to her.

  A tugging heat at her scalp had her head tilting back for him, her lips parting further as he began taking long, deep kisses from her. Sipping at her lips, nipping at them, only to rub the ache away with his far too experienced tongue.

  “I want to taste you just like that.” His head lifted, his lips only brushing against hers as she forced her eyes to open, to stare up at him.

  “What?” She couldn’t believe he meant—

  “I want my tongue between your thighs, lapping at the sweet, hot cream I can smell dripping from you. I want to catch it on my lips, taste you on my tongue, then lick between your inner lips until it’s buried in the sweet heat hidden there.”

  She gasped; her vagina clenched with such hard, involuntary spasms that the juices gathering there were suddenly forced to flow from her and further dampen her panties.

  “You like that,” he growled. “Admit it, Gypsy. You want my lips there.”

  His hand was suddenly between her thighs, cupping her mound, his fingers pressing firmly into the material where the moisture fell from her. The pad of his hand ground against her clit, rubbing it in short, erotic strokes that had her breath catching.

  It was so good. So hot. She’d never even fantasized about a man touching her like this, of drawing such pleasure from her body that she suddenly wondered at the small amount of control she had over it.

  “Your body knows me, Gypsy,” he warned her, his teeth nipping at her lips as he urged her to part them for him again. “It knows the pleasure I can give it, the heated caresses and the sweet release.”

  A muffled cry, barely smothered, escaped her lips as his lips moved from hers and began spreading a line of kisses over her jaw and down her neck.

  Sizzling arcs of sensation rushed through her system, burned straight to her clit and echoed in her womb.

  God, she didn’t know how to keep him out of her bed. She wanted to beg him to join her there now. Beg him to do exactly what he had just told her he wanted to do. To bury his lips between her thighs and taste the pleasure he was giving her.

  “Rule. Oh God—” The small buttons at the front of her nearly sheer blouse suddenly released. The sides fell away, revealing the silk and lace of the nude bra she wore, the full curves of her breasts rising above the cups.

  “Have mercy,” he groaned, one hand cupping a breast as his lips pressed to the rise over its mate. “You taste like pure pleasure.”

  His tongue stroked over the sensitive flesh, the slight, roughened rasp causing shards of increased need racing through her senses.

  She wanted his lips on her nipples. Now.

  She wanted his mouth devouring them.

  His fingers gripped the lacy top of the material, drawing it slowly over the firm flesh, scraping the material against her agonizingly engorged nipples.

  They pushed out from the tip of her breast, pebble hard and aching painfully.

  Gypsy had to watch. She couldn’t help it. It was so erotic, so wicked, watching as his incredibly thick, long lashes lifted from the brilliance of his gaze as he watched her watch him.

  His lips parted. His tongue peeked out, that roughness that covered it rubbing against her nipple.

  Fire exploded in the tip.

  It tore through her body in a rush of such pleasure she was certain she couldn’t survive it. Certain she couldn’t remain standing if he didn’t stop, and knowing she couldn’t bear it if he stopped.

  Then standing wasn’t an issue.

  Sweeping her from her feet and lifting her into his arms, Rule carried her the short distance to the couch, laid her on the wide cushions, then came down over her.

  His lips covered a nipple immediately, drawing it into the heat of his mouth and suckling it with firm, hungry draws of his mouth. The sight of his cheeks hollowing, his expression suffused with pleasure, was something she didn’t know if she could survive.

  The pleasure lashed at her nipple, and then as his fingers surrounded the other and began tugging and caressing it, the increased sensations tore free any further objections she might have been working on.

  What the hell was she doing?

  Panting for air, her fingers sliding in the warm, coarse thickness of his black hair and tightening as his teeth suddenly surrounded the tip and bit sensually, Gypsy could feel the sexual woman inside herself pushing free.

  Releasing the tender tip, his tongue licked at it, stoking the already burning sensations arcing through her body and leaving her quivering in erotic need.

  This was why, she thought hazily. Why she hadn’t wanted to tease and flirt with the often-too-grim Lion. This was why she’d stayed as far away from him as possible.

  Because he could do this to her.

  He could make her lose control.

  His caresses trailed from her breast, over her stomach to her hips and the buttons of her jeans. He flicked them open with experienced fingers, sliding beneath the material, moving closer to the humid ache tormenting her there.

  And how much more was it going to ache if he continued? She couldn’t let him have her. She couldn’t let this happen.

  His fingers pushed beneath her panties as his lips lifted from her breast and moved to hers once again, covering them. His kisses sipped at her lips, stroked them, stole reason and objection as his fingers continued their journey and slid between the lush, saturated folds of her sex.

  Sensation lashed at her body as the callused tips of his fingers rasped through the narrow slit, parting the swollen folds before caressing lower, rubbing against the clenched entrance to her vagina.

  The feel of her juices spilling to his fingers, eagerly welcoming his touch and tempting him further, had her thighs tightening in an effort to ensure that pleasure remained.

  Oh God, just for a minute. Let her feel that rush of indescribable sensation for just a little while longer.

  “Shh, it’s okay,
Gypsy.” Rule’s voice was thick, filled with hunger as she realized the whimpers she could hear were falling from her own lips.

  “It’s okay, baby, I promise. I have you. You can let go of my wrist, sweetheart.”

  She had hold of his wrist?

  She had to force her lashes open, feeling dazed and uncertain as her gaze fell to where her nails were digging into his wrist.

  Then the heated rush of moisture that spilled from her at the sight of his broad hand filling her jeans caused her hips to jerk upward. The punch of sensation that attacked her womb stole her breath.

  “I’m just petting you, Gypsy. That’s all.”

  Her eyes lifted to his once again, shocked, a cry parting her lips as his fingers rubbed at the aching entrance of her body and the hard pad of his hand pressed against her clit.

  “I don’t do this.” She could feel the fear trying to ease into the pleasure, trying to destroy her acceptance that her body would feel pleasure with such mind-numbing force, that it could ache or want or grow wet for such a touch despite her knowledge of what she would have to leave behind.

  “Yet how pretty you are as I pleasure you.” His gaze darkened, his lips pulling back from his teeth to reveal the sharp, overlong canines as her body spilled more of her slick response to his fingers.

  His expression was tight with his own pleasure. Yet where he was deriving that pleasure from, Gypsy had no idea. And as his fingers slid through the thick layer of moisture covering her folds to the swollen bud of her clit, Gypsy’s thoughts splintered as a strangled cry of pleasure tore from her lips.

  “Your body was made for pleasure,” he crooned, his lips lowering to hers once again, taking brief, hard kisses that kept her aching for more.

  His hand moved again, her fingers tightening on his wrist as he stroked from her clit to the entrance of her vagina and back again. Stroking, rubbing at each, sending waves of need clashing through her senses as her hips arched, her body begging for more.

  Each stroke of his fingers tightened the pleasure building in her womb, in the tight throb of her clit and the ache in her pussy. She could feel it, like a band tightening between those pleasure points, stretching tighter, the need for more growing with each second.

  “Rule,” she moaned, though whether in protest or plea she had no idea. “Please . . .”

  She had no idea what she was begging for, what her body was burning for. This was so unlike her own touch or the toys she kept that it was laughable to even compare the two.

  This was addictive, brutally ecstatic, and she wondered how she would ever be the same now that she had known it.

  With each stroke of his fingers between her thighs, her hips lifted to him, begging for more, aching to be touched deeper, harder.

  Pulling back from the narrow entrance to her vagina, his fingers circled her clit, the firm, rubbing caress sending a shower of pure pleasure arcing through her body. The swollen bud throbbed, the ache tightening as Gypsy felt a building wave of sensation threatening to burst through her.

  She had never known this could be pleasure.

  She had shied away from any man’s touch, pushed would-be lovers behind her and become their friend instead. She had told herself she could do without the touch or the aggravation of a man in her life.

  And now, her body was intent on making up for lost time. It was burning in a Breed’s arms, her hips lifting to him, eager for more as he rubbed at the tiny bundle of nerve endings, stroked them, kept her hovering on a pinnacle that became sharper by the second.

  “Look at me, Gypsy,” he growled, the rough rumble of demand rasping from his chest as her eyes opened for him.

  Dazed, unable to fight past the waves of sizzling sensation building beneath his stroking fingers, she opened her eyes, her gaze locking with his.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, his breathing rough, as harsh as her own. “Let it have you, baby. It’s only pleasure, I promise. Nothing to be frightened of.”

  Nothing to be frightened of? Gypsy could feel the waves of control-destroying sensation tightening in every cell of her body. She no longer controlled her own body. She no longer controlled herself, and it was beginning to frighten her.

  She had to control this.

  She had to know what was coming before she stepped into it.

  “No.” The hard growl in his voice had her body jerking as another powerful wave of sensation lashed at her as his voice rasped over her senses. “Stay with me, Gypsy. No fear.”

  The stroking, rubbing, diabolical touch of his fingers increased.

  Her thighs tightened, his image becoming hazy as she stared up at him, the lashing, heated waves of pleasure growing, becoming hotter, brighter.

  Her hips arched to him, her breathing becoming harder, faster.

  “Rule . . . please . . .” She was suddenly frightened of where it would take her, how it would change her.

  She wanted to pull back, wanted to wait, feel her way through whatever was beginning to tear through her.

  “Give to me, Gypsy, just this,” he groaned, the strokes shifting again, tightening.

  Her eyes widened.

  “I have you, Gypsy,” he promised again. “I’ll hold you right here, I swear.”

  She lost her breath.

  A strangled cry rasped from her throat as her hold on his wrist tightened, nails digging in as an explosion of white-hot ecstasy ruptured her mind.

  Her hips were jerking beneath his stroking fingers, her juices spilling from her again, a wash of rapturous moisture weeping from her as her head tilted back and a cry of agonized pleasure tore her apart at the seams.

  There was nothing she could do but stare up him, so dazed, so lost within the clash of sensations, pleasure and need that did just as she had feared it would.

  Somehow, it changed her.