Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [77]
“Then that leaves tying and gagging me.” Her hip cocked, a delicate hand resting on it, and the scent of her fury finally drifted to him for the briefest second.
It was viciously hot, nearly searing him and making him want to take a step back from it as the edge of pain slapped his senses. God, what emotions did she hold back on a normal basis for such intensity of feelings to slip past her careful control?
The animal side of him flinched at the thought that he could be the one hurting her. That his need to protect her, to ensure her life could possibly have created such a well of agony.
“Those are your only options,” she stated. “Because I refuse to return to Sanctuary to be kept locked away like a favored pet.”
A favored pet?
Lawe felt his jaw bunch and his dick jerk with an imperative demand as she confronted him. He would fuck her into exhaustion if it weren’t for the fact he’d be doing the same to himself. Throughout the night she had proven she was more than a match for his sexuality, and his hunger.
Just as she was more than able to keep up with him in other ways.
“Better a favored pet than a mate tortured to death. Do you know what the Council scientists, Brandenmore’s research monsters or even the government’s so-called Breed geneticists would do if they got their hands on you? Do you have any idea of their preferred means of learning how mating heat changes the body? How horrifying a vivisection is? What it would do to me to be forced to watch such a thing happen to you?” he questioned, hearing the harshness, the guttural quality of his own voice. “And you. Could you bear to hear my screams as they dissect me alive? Perhaps more than once? Over and over again? Because, baby, I would sure as hell scream. Even the strongest of us eventually break when they lay the knife to our guts.”
Diane wanted to turn from him. She wanted to hide the painful, horrifying knowledge that she was very well aware of what any scientist would do to either of them now.
“I’ve seen it.” Agony raged in his eyes as he crossed to her, his fingers curling around her arm as he pulled her to him. “I watched, Diane. Forced to pretend disinterest. Forced to show no fucking reaction.” Animalistic, filled with horror, his voice rasped with the words. “I watched as they first cut into the Coyote commander who made the mistake of mating one of the breeders in the lab where Rule and I were confined. Then, I watched as they cut into his mate. My mother. The woman Rule and I fought to find freedom for since we were barely old enough to realize we were captives. I couldn’t roar in rage. I couldn’t beg them to cease, because if I did”—his expression was filled with tormented memories, dragging a muffled sob from her lips—“if I did, then three others in that lab would have died. It could have been Rule. Or the young Cheetah female they kept separated from us. Or another of the young that Morningstar Martinez reached out to in their dreams.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “In their dreams?”
Lawe released her slowly and stepped back. Pushing his fingers through his hair he drew in a hard, painful breath. “In our dreams. As far back as we could remember. Morningstar came to the children she was fertilized with in vitro. She rocked them. She sang to them. She painted pictures of the place she called home, the family she was certain was searching for her, and all the joys she had known as a child.”
Diane watched, silently, feeling the tears that would have fallen if she hadn’t had so many years of practice holding them back.
“Her life was a living nightmare, yet she brought us joy whenever she could. And because the Coyote commander found joy in her and mated her, they died in the most horrifying way possible.”
He had seen the nightmares he feared she would face. It was no wonder he was so determined to lock her away in cotton batting. If only she could survive it.
He and his