“Elizabeth.” He sighed deeply. The sound was filled with regret. “Listen to me, baby. If you go with her, then we’ll never draw Grange back to his estate at the right time. We get Cassie safe then we take care of the monster. It’s the only way we can do this.”

There had to be another way, because she wasn’t accepting this one.

“Cassie stays with me.” She rose to her feet, staring back at the men calmly, amazed at herself and the lack of fury, fear or rage inside her.

She should be screaming this morning. Her insides should be a shuddering wreck at the thought of what her daughter was facing. She shouldn’t have been able to function considering the state of shock she knew she had entered.

“Elizabeth.” Dash stepped in front of her as she moved to leave the room. “We don’t have a choice.”

She stopped before she could touch him. She couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t let his heat seep past the icy protection she had pulled around her heart. She stared at his chest for long moments, seeing how well the Army T-shirt hugged the broad muscles, stretching and conforming to a body she hungered for. A body she couldn’t touch. Had no right to desire.

“Of course we do.” She shrugged as she finally stared up at him. “We do the same thing the Felines do. We go to the media.”

She could almost feel the air humming around her now, charged with anger and volatile protest. It was a simple solution. The Felines had done it and were now so securely protected and autonomous that no one dared mess with them for fear of public outrage. Her daughter could be protected in the same way. Couldn’t she?

“The media,” Dash said carefully. “Think about that, Elizabeth. Cassie isn’t an adult and she doesn’t have a Pride backing her. What’s more, she wasn’t lab-created. She was conceived naturally, which raises the stakes in ways you can never imagine. You’re a woman alone and the scientists who will be eager to get their hands on Cassie for studies ,” he sneered the word, “could contrive any manner of charges against you. You’ll go from a mother fighting to save her child, to a money-grubbing mercenary using her baby to make her own way. They could frame you for Dane’s murder. Make it appear you were in league with Grange…”

She shook her head desperately, panic flaring in her chest. “No…”

“They will, Elizabeth.” Dash kept his voice soft, almost sinister. “Listen to me. Hear what I’m saying because you know it’s true. They can do it. And they will. Cassie is exceptional. She’s also exploitable. Don’t think you can win with them. If you go to the media now, before she’s listed as a Breed and under their protection, then you’ve lost her forever.”

Elizabeth swallowed tightly as she stared into his eyes, seeing the total conviction there, the strength of his beliefs. She hadn’t considered it, that they would try to take her child away from her, to manipulate opinion in such a manner. She looked over at Mike Toler. His face was somber, his gaze concerned as he nodded in agreement. They could do it , his expression seemed to shout. They would do it. And where did that leave her except without her child?

“But, she’ll be without me,” she whispered as she turned back to Dash, wrapping her arms protectively around her chest. “You have to make them let me go with her.”

She couldn’t imagine being separated from Cassie. Not being there when her daughter had nightmares, when she was frightened. If something happened. How else could she be sure her daughter was protected?

“Grange knows your habits, baby,” Dash continued. “He believes you would never let Cassie go anywhere alone. He won’t expect this. Then, when we’re ready, we’ll let him think he’s found you. If you disappear with Cassie, then he’ll go to ground, hide, until he gets his chance to take her. A chance you won’t be able to anticipate. We have to take him out, Elizabeth. It’s the only way.”

Take him out. For a moment the memory of the news report flashed in her mind. Grange’s henchman found in a pool of blood, his throat slit open, an efficient killing, the reporter had concluded. Dash had taken him out, completely.

“Kill him?” she asked him weakly. She had never killed anyone. But, she had never been given the chance at Grange’s throat, either.

“Only if we have to,” he promised her, but she saw the naked fury in his eyes. She had a feeling he would make it a ‘have to’ case. “First we get Cassie protected. Then we see what we can do about Grange. We might get lucky and he’ll listen to reason.” He shrugged. Elizabeth blinked. His eyes glittered savagely and his tone of voice clearly reflected his hope that Grange wasn’t inclined to listen to any kind of reason. In that moment, he looked like what he had been created to be. A savage, merciless hunter.

“So in essence, we go hunting?” she asked him slowly.

The smile that crossed Dash’s face was nearly a snarl. “That’s a good description.” He nodded. He seemed to like the idea.

Elizabeth watched him. As she did, she felt the blistering-hot fury creeping around the edges of the shield she had fought to put in place all through the night. Terrance Grange had hunted her and Cassie for two years. Killing anyone who would have helped them, standing in the way of any chance Cassie would have had at a normal life.

He had done it out of greed and a lust for power. To possess someone so unique, so special, and use her for his own twisted, depraved ends. He was a demon. A monster that wouldn’t stop until he destroyed Cassie.

She took a hard, steadying breath. “Teach me to hunt.” She gazed back at him, allowing the anger to strengthen, feeling the shield crumble. “I mean it, Dash. You teach me how.”

She wouldn’t sit on the sidelines. If she had to do this his way, then she would fight as well. And she knew he could teach her how to fight.

His eyes narrowed and what glowed there should have terrified her. It was lust. Hot. Hungry. As though the thought of her fighting him had ignited a flame he had no intentions of dampening.

“Train you?” he asked her carefully. “Are you sure that’s what you want, Elizabeth? You could do this the safe way. I don’t mind carrying the brunt of the work. I know how.”

Her lips thinned, nostrils flaring as her head raised and she met his look directly. She could tell he knew how. He was like that, willing to carry it all whether it was his fight or not.

“She’s my baby,” she said flatly. “It was our lives he destroyed. If I have to send my child away to

protect her, then someone is going to have to pay for it. It’s his fault.”

So he should pay. She left it unsaid.

Dash stared down at her for long, silent moments. In that time, the heat seemed to build in his eyes, in the very air around him. She expected any moment to feel the flames licking over her body. He looked like a man ready to give into all of his baser needs whether he had an audience or not.

“Mike,” Dash murmured. “Can I talk to Elizabeth alone?”

There went the audience. Elizabeth stilled the tremble of trepidation that shuddered over her body. Mike rose slowly to his feet, clearing his throat. “I’ll just be in the kitchen, breathing in clear air. It’s getting too damned hot in here to suit me anyway.” He was grinning as he passed them. As the door closed, Dash turned back to her slowly.

“I’ll fuck you,” he told her softly, without a doubt in his voice that it would happen. “If I train you, I’ll do more than just teach you how to shoot or how to fight, Elizabeth. I won’t be able to stop it.”

She licked her lips nervously. “You would have anyway. We both know that.” It was something she had accepted as she lay in his arms the night before. There was no hiding from it. He could have had her then. Could have taken her there in his bedroom and she wouldn’t have stopped him. He shook his head warningly. “It’s different, Elizabeth. Protecting you and fighting beside you are two different things. If you’re tough enough to go for blood, then you’re tough enough for everything I am. Every part of me. Are you willing to accept that?”

She frowned then. “What? You fuck different from other men?” She finally snapped. “What more could you do?”

He moved around her. He stalked, actually, watching her closely.

“I bet Dane fucked you missionary. Lights out. A shuffle in the dark, a grunt or two and then it was over.”

The disgust for the other man, dead though he was, was clearly apparent. Elizabeth flushed. It was much too close to the truth.

“So?” She shrugged. “What will you do? Leave the lights on?”

He was behind her, his head leaning close to hers, his lips at her ear.

“Have you ever been mounted?” he asked her roughly, heatedly. “Taken to your knees because the lust was so hot, so powerful, it couldn’t be denied? Your clothes ripped from your body and taken so deeply, so hard, you couldn’t do anything but scream out your orgasm?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened, her heart suddenly racing in her chest. She shook her head slowly as she tried to speak. “No,” she finally gasped.

He wasn’t touching her, but her breasts were swelling, her nipples hardening almost painfully as her pussy wept its thick juices in need.

His hand moved over the curve of her rear, ignoring her flinch of surprise. “What about here?” He actually growled. The sound rasped down her spine, but rather than fear, it brought an edge of excitement she couldn’t deny.

His hunger pulsed in the air around her. It was deep, consuming, making her womb clench in response.

“What?” She was confused now. Consumed by the image of him mounting her, taking her.

“Have you been fucked up that tight ass, Elizabeth?” he asked as her eyes widened in shocked surprise.

“Do you know every time I watch you walk, watch that pretty rear flex, all I can think about is sinking my cock inside it?”

As if it were possible! He was trying to scare her. Trying to make her back down, she was certain. She wasn’t about to.

“Stop.” She jumped away from him, turning back to him furiously. “Why are you trying to scare me off like this? I have the right to do this, Dash.”

The look in his eyes was almost frightening. Dash didn’t have blood on his mind; he had hot, explicit sex filling his head instead.

“You don’t understand.” He shook his head slowly, a feral smile tipping his lips. “You keep forgetting. I’m not just a soldier, baby. I’m a Breed. And trust me when I tell you you’ll never fuck another man like me. You’ll never be taken again in the ways I’ll take you. I can protect you, and in doing so, rein in some of the harder aspects of my lust, for a while. But if I have to train you, teach you to fight beside me, then you’ll take me. Every way. You’ll have all I am, Elizabeth, not just the man you want me to be. Now make your choice. And know that once you make it, there’s no turning back. No whining, no pouting, no false denials. You will accept it.”

Her mouth was dry, but other parts of her body were too damned wet for comfort.

“Will you rape me?” she asked him suspiciously. No man would take her except on her terms. Dane hadn’t and Dash sure as hell wouldn’t.

He tilted his head, cool confidence washing over his expression.

“I won’t have to.”

“No means no,” she told him tightly. “Will you abide by that?”

He nodded instantly. “Of course.” Then he smiled that smile that made her more than nervous. “You can’t say no after the fact, though. Agreed?”

She looked at him sardonically. “Agreed. But that confidence could find you on your ass, buddy.”

“Or up yours,” he murmured. “So we have an agreement?”