But what a way to go.
He would have grinned at the thought if she hadn"t chosen that moment to tell daddy, in that sweet innocent tone, that she was going to work all evening.
It was enough to make him groan silently.
"Yes, Dad, I promise I"m being careful and locking the doors and windows at night." The promise was made in an almost automatic tone. "I promise, the only wild animals I"ll let in are the four-legged variety. Not that I"ve seen any lately." She grinned cheekily at her words as she winked at Tarek.
Insane woman! He snarled silently, mouthing the words to her as she rolled her eyes at him. Who did she think was believing this?
"This isn"t bread-baking day," she yawned after the muted sound of her father"s deep voice stopped speaking. "Besides, I"m busy. They can wait another day or two." She nestled deeper in the pillows, frowning as he watched her with almost morbid fascination.
She was actually convinced she was pulling this off. He could see it in her face. In her father"s tone of voice, he heard another story. Not that he could hear the words, just the alert tone, the almost military crispness.
She was going to get him killed. His training was excellent, but three Special Forces of the caliber that had helped free the Breeds from the Council Trainers and soldiers wouldn"t be in any way easy to defeat. Especially considering he couldn"t exactly kill his mate"s family.
"Yes, Dad, I promise to rest, and I"ll call you tomorrow," she answered in a placating tone that was so sickeningly sweet, it had him wondering if his dinner was going to stay down.
He made a note to never be taken in by that tone of voice himself.
When she finally hung up the phone, he glared at her sternly.
"I hope you are not convinced that you pulled that off," he growled furiously. "We will now have your entire family ripping the neighborhood apart looking for you."
"Don"t be silly." She laughed at his prediction. "They"ll come here first. I don"t think they entirely trust you. Something about not being able to find enough background information." She wiggled her finely arched brows suggestively. "Have you been a bad boy, Tarek? Hiding records and such?"
She shimmied beneath the sheet, bracing her hands on the mattress as she leaned closer to him, her eyes dancing with shimmering lights of amus.e.m.e.nt as she gave him a suggestive little smile.
"Should I spank you for being bad now?"
His brows snapped into a frown. He was ignoring the ache in his c.o.c.k. He needed a shower and food or he was going to collapse in exhaustion.
"You, I will spank later." He pointed his finger at her with determined emphasis. "Someone needs to teach you better than to play such obvious games with men who know you much too well."
"Yeah. Right." She had the nerve to laugh at him. "I didn"t he to him. He can see straight through my lies. Everything I said was the truth..."
"In a roundabout way," he grunted.
"How do you think I managed to get out of his house?" She plopped back against the pillow, the sheet falling away from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and their hard, tempting nipples. "But you can punish me now if you want to."
She was becoming much too confident in her ability to drive him completely insane.
Finally he just threw up his hands as he rose from the bed and stalked to the bathroom door. If he was going to have to fight her brothers, he didn"t want to smell of s.e.x when that happened.
"I am taking a shower," he snapped. "I have a feeling I might want to be prepared for the visit I will have to endure by your family. And you are a troublemaker, Lyra. This will come back and smack you on the a.s.s one of these days."
"Really?" Interest lit her laughter-filled gaze. "I bet it makes me wet."
He snorted. "I have no doubt, you little h.e.l.lion."
And before his body could overrule his mind, he forced himself into the bathroom, closing the door behind him before he joined her in the bed again instead.
As he stepped beneath the steaming water, he made a note to contact Braden and warn him to be expecting trouble. He had a bad feeling that plenty of it was now heading his way.
Lyra laughed as the bathroom door closed behind Tarek and let the warmth that teasing him brought her fill her heart. She loved the look on his face. For once, the shadows that normally lingered there were gone. In their place may have been irritation or incredulity, but she had seen the happiness there as well.
She made him happy.
She sighed at the thought, an odd satisfaction filling her.
Making him happy shouldn"t make her feel as though she were glowing from the inside out, but it did.
And it made her want to cook. Something really incredible.
Something that would make that bit of confused happiness fill his eyes once again.
She had food. Finally. It had taken her hours last night to convince him to have someone deliver the basic kitchen products as well as some real meat, rather than that stuff he nuked every day.
Yuck. That was nasty stuff.
She shook her head, rising from the bed and pulling on her gown and robe as she ignored the tenderness between her thighs. That and the pulse of desire. She had a feeling that Mating Heat or not, she could forget her response to him ever dimming. He had made her wet the first time she laid eyes on him, and she had a feeling she would be wet for him on her deathbed.
She left the bedroom, padding quickly down the stairs to the wide foyer and turning into the kitchen.
She stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened, terror rushing through her system as her knees weakened.
"Well, it looks like Tarek took a little mate," the intruder sneered, his weapon aimed at her heart. "I bet the Council will have a lot of fun with this one. After we take her Lion out, of course. The only good Feline is a dead one."
Lyra turned to run only to slam into the hard body blocking her way. The contact sent pain streaking across her nerve endings, causing her to gasp in shock as she jerked away from the other intruder.
What now? Breathing roughly, she fought to hold back her fear, her eyes wide, as hard hands pushed her into a kitchen chair.
"He"ll kill you." She clenched her fingers at her side, trying to think, to find a way to escape, to warn Tarek.
"He might try. He"ll fail. We were very careful this time. He won"t even be able to smell us." Evil, malicious. The taller of the two men stared down at her curiously as he held the weapon on her. "So tell me, what"s it like to f.u.c.k an animal?"
Lyra swallowed tightly. "Ask your wife."
He grunted at that, smiling mockingly. "Doesn"t matter." He shrugged. "The scientists will get the answer."
She had to warn Tarek.
Her gaze flicked to the entrance of the kitchen. He would be finished soon, coming down the stairs, unaware of the danger awaiting him. Unable to smell the threat.
She swallowed tightly.
The Council had tortured him for most of his life, treated him like an animal, refused him even the most basic human considerations.
He had never eaten homemade bread. Had never drunk real coffee. He didn"t know how to cook, but from what her brothers had said, many of the Breed labs had been dens of filth and neglect. Yet he kept his home sparkling, free of dust, and took off his shoes at the door. He was a man desperate to live, to be free. A man who knew how to love despite the horrors he had known.
And now these two thought they were going to use her to kill him?
She couldn"t, she wouldn"t allow it.
He belonged to her now. He was her heart, her soul, and she couldn"t imagine life without him. She would die without him.
Think Lyra. Her eyes darted around her as the two watched her closely. Warn him. How could you warn him...
Smell. He could smell arousal. He could smell fear.
Rather than tamping back the horror racing through her, the terror clogging her mind, she gave it free rein instead. She had to warn him...
Tarek stepped out of the shower, drying quickly before jerking clean sweatpants on and moving to the door to let Lyra know the shower was now free.
He stepped into the bedroom, frowning at the empty bed for a long second before his head raised slowly, a new, intrusive scent reaching his nostrils.
Fear.
He could smell it, sharp, warning, riding the soft trail of Lyra"s unique scent. But there was nothing else. No other smell drifting through the bedroom door to give him an idea of what awaited him downstairs.
She was his mate, and he could feel the danger surrounding her pulsing in the air.
He jerked the cell phone from beside the bed and keyed in the alert for trouble before tossing the device to the mattress and striding to the chest of drawers.
He pulled one of the smaller weapons from the drawer before stripping the adhesive backing from the light, skin-adhering holster. Smacking it to the side of the gun, he anch.o.r.ed the weapon in the small of his back before pulling on his shirt.
He grabbed the spare gun from the top of the chest and checked the ammo before moving for the doorway.
Pausing, he listened carefully. There were no lights on, but he didn"t need any. And he didn"t know who or what was downstairs, but it wasn"t a Breed. There wasn"t a chance in h.e.l.l a Breed could disguise his scent so effectively. But sometimes, rarely, certain humans could.
Trainers knew how. It was hard, at times nearly impossible, but it could be done.
As he moved to the stairs he inhaled carefully. He smelled no Breed or human scent other than Lyra"s and her fear. It was overwhelming, imperative. But alongside it was a curiously hollow sterile scent. As though something had been cleaned.
And another, not quite as crisp, as though something were bleeding away whatever had been used to disguise the evil that filled it.
A cold snarl shaped his lips.
There were two, and one of them was nervous, wary.
Perhaps not quite as certain as the other. That one was weak.
He would make a mistake.
As Tarek started down the stairs, he laid the extra weapon on a step, close enough to jump and retrieve if he needed it. If he went in armed, they would know he had been aware of them, and they would search him, using Lyra to keep him in place while they took the hidden weapon.
"Lyra, you left the lights out," he called out as he stepped into the foyer. "No more of your games now. Where are you?"
He kept his voice teasing, taunting as he moved to the kitchen where her scent was strongest. He stopped at the entrance, placing his hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene.
Everything inside him clenched with fear as he fought to present a casual att.i.tude. He could feel the growl growing in his chest, his jaw clenching with the need to taste blood.
The two men stood on each side of her, one with his weapon lying threateningly against her temple. She didn"t make a sound, but he could see the tears shimmering on her face, her lips moving.
I"m so sorry...
"Well, I admit, Tarek, I hadn"t thought it really possible."
Anton Creighton shook his head as he made a clucking sound.
"And to find you so careless. Your Trainers were sloppier than I had thought them to be during your stay at the labs."
Cold, steel-gray eyes stared out of a pale face. A black cap covered his blond hair, but Tarek remembered the color well.
His broad, heavily muscled body appeared relaxed, but Tarek could see the tension in it. The other man wasn"t nearly as confident as he appeared to be.
And his partner was terrified.
"The stink of your man is starting to bleed through whatever you used to cover him," he informed Creighton coolly. "He"s scared."
Creighton"s eyes narrowed as Tarek refused to rise to his prodding. His gaze flickered to the other man.
"Good help is so hard to come by." He smiled coldly. "But he did well enough to keep you from detecting us until the time was right."
Tarek nodded with all signs of absent attention as he glanced at Lyra.
"So what do you boys want tonight?" he asked, keeping his voice measured, nonthreatening.
He knew Creighton better than the other man thought he did. He was easy to play with, maneuverable to a small degree, and living on a prayer as he fought to escape both Breeds and Council soldiers.
Creighton was basically a coward. When the labs were attacked by government and independent forces to rescue the Breeds held there, he had deserted the fight rather than risking capture. He was considered a criminal to both sides now.
"Just the girl." Creighton shrugged dismissively. "As soon as I dispose of you, I can use her for a little trade. You should have stayed off my a.s.s, Tarek. But because you"re so persistent, I"ll take care of you now and ensure my return to the Council ranks with your pretty little mate."
"The Council is disbanded, Creighton." Tarek watched him pityingly. "There"s no one to trade with."
A rich chuckle filled the air.
"You really believe that, Tarek?" he asked, shaking his head.
"No need to worry, Lion-boy. They"re still there. Tucked away nice and safe, but there all the same."
"Shut up, Creighton," his partner hissed. "Kill him and be done with it."
Lyra flinched, her gaze turning wild at the demand.
d.a.m.n. She was the wild card, not these two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. And there wasn"t a d.a.m.n thing he could do but pray her common sense won out.
"Your boy is a little impatient, Creighton." Tarek mocked as he leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched them. "A little bossy, too, isn"t he?"