Her hands tightened on his shoulders as she stared back at him in shock.

“Last night, watching you give those treats out to the kids that came to your door, I was so hard I was about to bust my jeans. I could see so much life in you, so much wonder and joy, that I wanted to snatch you away myself and relish every drop of it. Mating you is no hardship for me, Amanda. But I would have never done this to you, had I known what that kiss would do.”

And there was the man. No anger, no regret, simply stating no more than the truth as he saw it. It shouldn’t make her heart ache. It shouldn’t make her wish for things she knew couldn’t be real. She swallowed the lump that came to her throat and pushed back the tears that would have filled her eyes as her hand moved from his shoulder, her fingers smoothing over his rough velvet lips.

“I’m supposed to be resisting you,” she whispered huskily. “You aren’t supposed to be the answer to all my sexual fantasies and make my heart ache at the same time, Kiowa.”

His brow arched slowly. “The answer to all your sexual fantasies?” he asked, the forced playfulness in his voice rending her soul.

He was so strong. Too strong. There were no regrets for who or what he was, no apologies or condemnations for the past. And she couldn’t love him, she told herself. She wanted to be a teacher, she wanted her freedom, her independence, didn’t she?

“All my sexual fantasies,” she finally answered, her voice tight with unshed tears as her body responded to the touch of his.

Her hand slid into his hair, her fingertips luxuriating in the cool black silk as his head lowered to hers once again. His tongue painted her lips with a whisper stroke, causing a broken sigh of hunger to escape them.

His hands threaded through her hair as he seemed to relish the taste of her lips and nothing more. He licked them, sipped at them, moaned a deep little growl that came from the depths of his chest and vibrated against her lips.

She watched him, unable to close her eyes or to miss the hungry intent in his expression. This was what she had dreamed of during all those hot nights that arousal stormed her body and wicked wishes pushed at her imagination. Just this.

“Spread your legs for me,” he whispered then. “I want to watch your eyes while I fuck you. See the blue darken, the flecks of green lighten. You have such pretty eyes, Amanda.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. She spread her thighs slowly, opening herself to him as he moved between them. She could feel his cock, hard and heavy as it lay against the mound of her pussy now, pressing against her clit.

She rolled her hips against him, her breath catching as the steel-hard heat of his erection caressed the sensitive bundle nerves peeking from the folds of her cunt.

“Temptress,” he growled, licking her lips again, his eyes locked on hers as he shifted against her, his cock dragging along her sensitive pussy until the thick head was poised at the entrance.

“Are you going to punish me?” She gave him a look of drowsy sensuality, a smile curving her lips as her neck arched, pleasure streaking through her in hard, rapid bolts of heat as he began to push into her.

“Hmm. Punish both of us maybe.” He was gritting his teeth now, and Amanda could see the struggle for control that filled his expression.

Had it really been less than twenty-four hours since he had first touched her? In that moment, she realized she knew things about Kiowa that she didn’t know about her closest acquaintances. Then he was sliding into her, filling her with a heavy heat and hard strength that stole her thoughts and her mind. She could feel him, stretching her, her muscles protesting in the wake of each hard surge of precome that filled her, then eased her. Tingling, curling lashes of sensation assaulted her body as he lay over her, his cock moving slow and inside her, taking her with a gentleness and depth of emotion she didn’t want to feel.

She shouldn’t feel any emotion. She should feel nothing but the hot grind of their bodies together, his erection sating the unnatural hunger in her body. But she felt more, far deeper than just the depths of her pussy.

With her gaze still locked with his, there was no hiding the pleasure lashing at them both. His expression was feral in its intensity, his eyes so black she felt lost in his gaze. Her body was sensitive, sensitized to him, each rasp of his chest over her hard nipples, his pelvis on her straining clit rocked her to new heights. Each stroke stretched her, filled her, caressed hidden nerves and had her breath catching at the diabolical depth of pleasure building within her.

She rocked beneath him, her legs rising to encase his hips as his lips lowered to hers again. And then her eyes closed. There was no control, no strength to hold them open as he kissed her with a melting passion that left her weak.

With his lips moving on hers, his hips straining against her, driving his cock in harder, faster, sending the bolts of sensation tearing harder through her body, Amanda was lost. Her back arched as everything inside her exploded. Her body tensed, her pussy tightened around his surging erection until she felt that change, the swelling within her that signaled his own release. It lit a fuse to her already exploding senses and sent her reeling again as she felt his semen jetting inside her. Long minutes later, she gathered the strength to unlock her legs from his waist and release the hold she had taken on her shoulders. Exhaustion rode her now, as hard as lust had ridden her minutes before. Her eyes fluttered opened, her vision sleep-blurred as she stared into his dark eyes, sighing in blissful, sated pleasure.

“Sleep, baby,” he whispered, resting his head against hers, a restrained shudder working through his body as another pulse of seed filled her milking cunt. “I’ll take care of you while you sleep.”

Her eyes fluttered closed. She knew that, she thought. He didn’t have to say the words. Above all things, she did know Kiowa would take care of her.

Kiowa rarely dreamed. He considered it a blessing. After some of the nightmares of his childhood, he had no desire to visit that inner realm and tempt the angers of the past. But when he drifted into sleep beside Amanda, they were there. Like demons raising their dark, horrifying heads.

The woman who bore you is dead,” his grandfather informed him. She was killed in a car crash.”

Kiowa raised his head from the book he had been devouring. Five. Pitifully thin and small, little else had mattered to him but the words he needed to learn. And learn them he was. He didn’t know the woman who bore him, as his grandfather called her. He couldn’t even remember her face, though he knew there had been a time that he had been with her.

Kiowa nodded solemnly, staring up at the broad frame of the older man, wishing he could see something other than the twisted expression of distaste that was on his face.

“You don’t even care do you?” the old man had growled.

“I don’t know her,” he had whispered then.

“That’s an animal’s response,” his grandfather had lashed out. “One without a soul.”

The dream distorted, moved in time. Kiowa was eleven, living alone in the shack high in the mountain, waiting eagerly each week for his grandfather’s visit. He knew he had to stay hidden, knew that the people who had forced his birth on the mother he never knew, were searching for him. The television was his constant companion and with it, he had learned to read over the years, to decipher the words and to make sense of how to use them. Books sat in stacks around the small living room. A blanket was tucked in the couch. He didn’t sleep in the bed. In the dark, too many thoughts raced across his mind and too many sounds in the mountains outside fueled his fear. But that television was his lifeline. On it he saw his dreams. A family. A mother, a father, children who were loved and protected, and in those dreams he could laugh and be free, fly a kite, ride a bike. He didn’t have to fear detection.

“Here’s some more books.” The box was dumped at his feet as his grandfather stared down at him emotionlessly.

The other man had gone from disgust to chilly dislike over the years. “I’ll put the food on the porch. You’re big enough to put it away yourself.”

Eleven years old. He had celebrated his birthday alone, clumsily wrapped several pinecones he had found and books he had read in old newspaper and pretended they were a mother’s gifts.

“Thank you, Sir.” He had stopped calling him grandfather years before. Grandfathers loved their grandkids. They spoiled them, showed them the world, took them to amusement parks. They didn’t lock them away on a mountain and leave them to suffer the silence and the cold alone.

“Have you found your soul yet?” the old man snapped then.

Kiowa had stared up at him quietly, years of loneliness and grief locked inside him.

“No, Sir. No soul this week.” He had moved slowly past him then and collected the boxes of dry goods and canned foods that he survived on.

Winter was coming on, he could feel it in the air. He wondered if his grandfather would forget to bring him a coat again this year.

Time shifted again. Kiowa had been fourteen the night the news had reported a car crash on the interstate. Joseph Mulligan had been involved in a head-on collision with a semi-truck and killed instantly. He was survived by no remaining family members, the newsman reported. And for the first time in years Kiowa had shed a single tear.

The next day, he packed his meager belongings in a pillowcase and set off down the mountain. Winter was coming again, and the cold was a bitter enemy when you had no dried foods, no warm clothes. He had read enough and watched enough that he understood certain things where the world was

concerned. He knew he had to be careful, that his very creation was a law against nature, the sharp canines that he kept filed down at the side of his mouth were proof of that. He knew there were ways to survive, he just had to be tough enough. Strong enough.

As he walked away from the cabin, he paused and stared back at it quietly.

“I have a soul,” he had whispered forlornly. “I always did.”

Kiowa’s eyes opened slowly, the dream dissipating, but not the woman he held in his arms. Her head lay against his chest, her hair a cloud of silk around their bodies as she slept deeply, peacefully. He stared to the window, the dark curtain shielding the rays of the sun and tightened his hold on her. If Felines and Wolves mated only once, then there was a chance a Coyote could mate forever as well. He had never wanted another woman as much as he had this one, before he ever touched her. He had never dreamed of another before her, but he had dreamed of this one. He couldn’t let her go.

Chapter Seventeen

“Welcome to Sanctuary.”

Amanda raised surprised eyes to the front door as it pushed open and Merinus Lyons walked into the cabin. She carried a baby in her arms, the woman behind her carried a foldaway playpen.

“Just put it in the corner, Lilly,” Merinus directed the other woman. “We don’t want David terrorizing the place while we’re here.”

Behind her walked an older man, his shoulders stooped, his gray hair mussed. Dark brown eyes regarded her quietly as he sat a large black bag on the living room table. It looked like a doctor’s bag.

“I’m Merinus.” Her smile was bright, though her brown eyes were shadowed with concern as she turned back to Amanda. “This is Dr. Martins, a very dear friend of mine, and behind him, Serena Grace. She’s one of the scientists working within the Feline Breed labs to help find a reason for this mating stuff.”

“Hello.” Amanda stood still in the kitchen, staring back at them nervously. Kiowa had left more than an hour ago, leaving her to shower and eat without him. Not that she hadn’t been looking forward to a chance to think and to make sense of what was going on.

“I know you have a lot of questions, Amanda,” Merinus said gently, her gaze compassionate. “We’re here to answer as many as we can, and hopefully manage to steal some blood off you while we’re doing it. Callan and Dash said the mating heat is much stronger with you than it has been for the rest of us. Which is saying something, because trust me, there for a while, it sucked in my case.” She laughed freely, her expression self-mocking as she made the statement.