Dawn’s Awakening (34 page)

She twisted; she held on to his hard biceps, thrust and rolled her hips and screamed out her frustration.

With a shattered cry Seth lifted her, flipped her to her back as he rolled behind her, lifted her hips and slammed into her.

The thrust impaled her deep and hard, every thick, iron-hard inch boring into her in one deep lunge that had her back arching and pleasure rocketing through her.

It wasn’t just one thrust. It was another. And another. His hips slammed into her, the sounds those of flesh smacking flesh, his male groans and her cries of building pleasure.

Until it exploded. Until he thrust into her and triggered an orgasm that obliterated her mind, sent fire exploding and rushing along nerve endings, through her bloodstream, into her veins.

Her pores opened and drew ecstasy into them, until she was the burning center of a flame that turned into a rushing conflagration.

She heard Seth cry out behind her, felt her muscles lock on his cock, stroke and milk it until he bucked against her and spilled more heat into her. Hard jets of liquid heat that filled her womb, rushed through her, exploded inside her again and left her mindless. Pleasure. It wasn’t just pleasure rushing through her, it was the center of ecstasy.

Seth collapsed over her.

He was always careful to keep his weight from her, to never take her as she had been forced in those labs, to never make her feel restrained, held down.

But as she drained his seed from his body, she drained the strength from his muscles as well. He fell over her, barely catching enough of his weight to keep from crushing her.

She still held his cock in a grip impossible to break. He jerked, shuddered, bit off a curse and finally let a strangled groan or two leave his throat. Because nothing in his life had ever prepared him for Dawn’s orgasms.

Her pussy tightened around his cock until it wasn’t possible to move. The muscles flexed and stroked and milked the hard shaft until there was no holding back his release. His cum pumped into her, spurt after spurt, stealing the breath from his lungs and leaving him helpless in her grip until her own pleasure eased.

And she did like to hold on to her pleasure. It rippled endlessly through her pussy and stroked endlessly over flesh so sensitive that the added stimulation was ecstasy and agony combined.

When the contractions eased enough to allow him to slide free, he found himself reluctant to. His lips were pressed to her shoulder, his breaths sawing from his lungs.

He just needed to catch his breath, then he could pull free and shift from her.

“I wish I could hold you inside me.” A little shudder worked from her body, a gasp left her throat. “Forever.”

Her voice was pure sensation, a dark caress over senses destroyed by the power of his release and the effect she always had on him.

She would do this to him, no matter their age, no matter how weak or how tired he ever became. Her pleasure would always spur his, always leave him helpless to do anything but feel, touch, taste and experience the never-ending pleasure that only she could give him.

Finally, he found enough breath inside him to drag his body off hers and pull her against his chest.

“We need a shower,” he sighed. “I even had the soap laid out.”

A weak laugh left her lips. “How many soaps do you have, Seth?”

He frowned. How many did he have?

“I don’t know. How many trips did I make in ten years?”

He felt her thinking. She would know, if she could think. Hell, he couldn’t find the energy for a fucking thought in his head.

“A lot,” she said finally and yawned, shifting and turning, finding her place against his chest.

She had a particular position she liked to go to sleep in, one that left him wrapped around her and her wrapped inside the curve of his body. Hell, he loved that position.

“A lot of soaps then.” He smirked into the predawn shadows of the room. “If a scent made me think of you, I found a soap maker. Ireland in all seasons. Scotland during a highland summer beside a clear running stream. I thought of you there. I even bought the land. Paris, the countryside alive with spring. There was even this little town, somewhere in Egypt, where the scent of the desert sands met a private oasis. Damn, I got hard thinking of you there.”

A light laugh against his chest. “You had a soap made for me every time you got hard?”

“Hell, not enough rooms in this house to store that much soap.” He grinned. “Nah, I had to be someplace I thought you’d like. A scent I wanted to share with you. An emotion I wanted you to know.” The grin turned rueful. “I wanted to share it all with you, and that was the only way I knew how to do it.”

“You never gave me the soaps though,” she pointed out.

“Because I wanted to bathe you with them myself,” he sighed, his hands running over her body. “I wanted to seduce you with scents and touch. Hell, Dawn, I wanted a reason to make myself believe I could have you. If I had the soaps, maybe you’d be curious about the scents. If you liked the silks and lace of the panties, maybe, just maybe,” his voice thickened, “you’d model them for them.”

“So you could seduce me?” Her voice was soft, and in it, he heard her joy.

“So I could seduce you. Forever.” He pressed her head against his chest.

“I love you, Seth. Until there’s no tomorrow, no beginning or end, I love you.”

And for a second his eyes closed, because the emotion that swamped him nearly undid him.

“And I love you, sweetheart. Until I’d wither away and die without you.”

And there, curled into each other, as dawn lifted across the sky, they slept. The ragged survivors of a tempest.

Cassie stared into the darkness of her bedroom.

The child was gone. It had slowly faded away hours before, but it had done so with such a look of hope that she had shed a tear and whispered a prayer that Dawn had finally let her in.

Every Breed in the house had heard Dawn’s screams. Cassie’s parents still hadn’t returned to their room after rushing to the basement, but Cassie knew it wasn’t because Dawn was in pain any longer. Dawn had awoken, just as the new day was rising.

She rose from her bed and stared down at the evening gown she still wore. They hadn’t been back in the room long before Dawn’s screams had pulled her parents away.

Her mother had been brushing Cassie’s hair. Sometimes her parents took turns brushing her hair, as they had when she was a little girl, despite the fact that she often protested it.

Her father couldn’t seem to accept that she was growing up. And her mother, Cassie often thought, saw her daughter’s maturity with a sense of fear.

She moved from her bedroom to the sitting room, pausing in front of the doors, pulled there as though by an unseen force she couldn’t understand.

She didn’t dare walk outside.

She gripped the handle and breathed in deeply, the fear building inside her.

She knew her own death was coming. Not how it would happen, or where, but she knew there was no avoiding it. If it happened here, then her father wouldn’t be nearby. Her mother wouldn’t see it. They would be safer.

She had known she would die here. She had dreamed it. The visions that followed her, the ghostly forms that had drifted away from her over the past months, had warned her of it. They had told her that this was her destiny, that only here, and only with her blood, would the future become what it should be.

She didn’t want to die. She was only eighteen; there was so much that she wanted to see, wanted to experience. She wanted to dance and laugh. She wanted to know the truth of the shadowed vision of a man she saw in her dreams. Hear his laughter in life rather than just in sleep.

She wanted to watch her baby brother grow, and she wanted to be a woman, rather than the woman-child she knew she was.

But here, she had been warned. Here, her blood would be spilled by the one that held the wavering form of a child bound in the past. He would set into motion the future for the Breeds, for Dawn, and lay yet another piece of the puzzle that would eventually form a strong, able Breed community.

She would die by that man’s hand. And far better that she die alone, with none but her killer to see her fear.

She turned the door handle and slowly opened the door.

The sun was rising, casting a million shades of muted colors across the sky. Everything lay in shadow, and the shadows welcomed her as she moved onto the balcony. A clear target. And she knew someone had taken sight. She could feel it. Right there, the center of her forehead.

She stared out into the thick covering of trees and ached. She ached for so many things, so many thoughts and dreams and a life she would never have. Because she was unique, her father said. The truth was, because she was a freak.

And whoever watched her knew. He knew what she was, and he knew she couldn’t be allowed to live, didn’t he? They wouldn’t want to take her in; in the Council’s hands she would be a lever against the Breeds, a shift in the balance of power. And at present, there were so few who wanted anything to shift. War was always profitable. Even a silent war such as was being waged on the Breeds.

No, whoever was out there didn’t want to take her in. But his sights were on her, gun sights, steady. Clear. She stared into them, and with a mocking smile, mouthed the words, I dare you!

From his nest, he leveled the sights on the perfect face, right between those beautiful blue eyes, and imagined caressing her.

She was dressed in an evening gown, black, and it flowed around her like the night.

He read her lips and his own quirked into a smile. His finger didn’t move for the trigger. Instead his eyes stayed on her, stroked over pale, luminescent flesh, and he drew in the scent of innocence. Pure innocence tinged with fear.

I dare you, she had mouthed.

He smiled at the challenge. One day, she just might dare him too far, but he doubted it would be a bullet he’d penetrate her with.

CHAPTER 22

The next afternoon, Dawn sat at the long table that held the meetings of the board of directors of Lawrence Industries and watched as each of them signed the agreements Seth had laid out for them.

With the agreement to finance Sanctuary and Haven were agreements Lawrence Industries made to individual companies. A promise to restructure here, to strengthen there. Each board member was also the vice president of one of the sections that came together beneath the control and guidance of Lawrence Industries. Former owners or CEOs who had lost control because of bad management, buyouts or other varied reasons.

Because they had backed Seth, Seth in turn would reach out and support them more fully as well. Concessions they had been bargaining for were given, some in part, some completely, until all but one had been satisfied.

All but Valere.

“You’re going to regret this, Seth,” he bit out as he glared at them from the end of the table. “Lawrence and Vanderale Industries will pay for backing creatures such as that.” His gaze flicked to Dawn.

Dane leaned back in his chair, lit the thin cigar he invariably kept close, smiled and lifted his hand as he beckoned to Valere. “Do your worst, chap,” he dared him. “Better jokers than you have tried.”

It was regrettable that Valere had fought the plan to ensure the Breed society and the funding of Sanctuary for the next five years. The five-year forecast had been drawn out to allow the Breeds the time needed to complete the training that would allow them to move into the private security and law enforcement arenas with far fewer problems.

At present, their social skills frankly sucked when it came to political maneuverings in a job setting or working with others, except in a clearly laid-out team. Move a Breed into an investigative team in any major city at the moment, and there would be more bloodshed within the ranks than there was on the streets.

Five years would allow them time to complete the honing of that training, as well as the programs already being put in place to make use of the Breeds’ exceptional genetics and their training in other areas.

When the five years ended, the Breeds should be in a position that funding would no longer be necessary, and the profits from the agreements made with both Sanctuary and Haven, the Wolf Breed compound in Colorado, would begin trickling in. Slowly for the first few years, but within another five, those who’d initially signed onto the deal would be very rich indeed. The board members of both Lawrence Industries and Vanderale would be rich many times over from the profits gained from the Breed corporation.

Capitalism was alive and free, and it thrived. The Breeds were poised to become a very profitable, very wealthy industry in and of itself, because of Callan Lyons and the Breed Cabinet’s foresight.

Dawn was still amazed as she stood in the meeting room that afternoon and listened to the measures agreed upon, the work Seth had been doing for the Breed community over the past ten years.

He had apparently worked tirelessly on their behalf, fighting to overthrow the legacy his father had begun by funding the Genetics Council. It was a legacy he reminded his board members of several times.

That they had sat back and gotten fat from profits made by those who suffered a hell the board members couldn’t imagine. That the profits they had gained from their agreements with the Council had been paid in blood, in the rape, murder and torture of innocent children and adults.

From what Dawn had glimpsed, he hadn’t had to fight very hard. They were signing the measures before he had begun the hardest selling points of his argument. All but Valere, who stank of the Council and something more.

Dawn watched him closely, and he knew he was being watched. His hooded gaze was cold, malicious, as it moved over her. But it wasn’t the right gaze. He wasn’t the one who had raped and attempted to destroy a child’s mind. At least not hers. She was certain, so certain she had to force her hand from her weapon, that this man had been neck deep in the rot that infected the Genetics Council.

When the others pushed their signed agreements to the middle of the table, Valere’s face flushed with fury.