Beast Within

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Beast Within

  ISBN 9781419919480

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Beast Within Copyright © 2009 Betty Hanawa

  Edited by Briana St. James.

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.

  Electronic book Publication February 2009

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Beast Within

  Betty Hanawa

  Dedication

  To Delilah Devlin and Myla Jackson, mentors extraordinaire.

  To the Mt. Helicon Muses for support, fun and the Magic Time Machine.

  And to my husband, a true-life romance hero.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to veterinarian Dr. Skip Tewell, his wife Nancy and their staff for information on animal vaccines.

  Thank you to Laura Clayton Furst for directing me to information on the amygdala system of the brain.

  Any errors are mine.

  Chapter One

  Mate. My mate.

  Dylan Gomez took a deep breath and focused on identifying the scent of the female he knew was his mate. He smelled parched grass, dust, deer crap filled with rotting mesquite tree beans, the rusty residue of rabbit blood spilled during a kill in the night. The almost overwhelming stench of metal surrounded him, but it didn’t have the antiseptic pinch of the Hell Hospital or the pungent stink of fear and despair.

  Since this wasn’t Hell Hospital, he figured whatever held him now wouldn’t hold him long. He reminded himself he’d almost gotten out of Hell Hospital. He cracked open one eye and realized he was in a cage within a van. He scented oil, grease and gasoline from the van. With the van’s doors open and this simple cage, he had a good chance of getting away. He ignored the metallic tang at the back of his throat and sniffed again, trying to get a sense of how many people he needed to take out.

  There. He caught it again. His mate’s aroma. Near.

  Every molecule in Dylan Gomez’s being knew his mate. Despite having a fun life with pleasurable sex, he never had settled with one woman. At this moment he knew this new, unique fragrance was that of his lifemate.

  He inhaled the bouquet of her womanly scent mixed with the clean aroma of detergent, starched and ironed cotton.

  The woman he would mate with.

  His woman.

  Still lying in whatever metal cage held him, Dylan savored the redolent combination of wet, sun-heated skin and the spice of his future mate’s juices. But she also exuded a nip of hunted things. Of fear.

  She had nothing to fear.

  She was going to be his mate.

  He would protect her.

  Kill for her.

  Her.

  His mate.

  Dylan opened his eyes to see the black barrel of a gun pointed at him.

  The woman he knew in his gut to be his mate, the woman he’d never seen before, stood in front of the too-small cage his naked body was crammed into, holding a semi-automatic pistol rock steady.

  He wanted to snarl and scream at her for threatening him with a gun. He saw her face tighten and the tang of her fear grew more pungent. Dylan reached deep inside himself to push back the anger and focus on calming her apprehension. He had to reach this woman, not scare her.

  He wanted her.

  And, on the more practical and essential side, he needed her to get him out of this damn cage.

  She was a Valkyrie, a goddess of large bones, voluptuous curves and streaky blonde hair worn short under her Parks and Wildlife officer hat. However, gorgeous and sexy didn’t mean much when she held the gun in a no-nonsense two-hand grip aimed straight at his face. Her solid hold on the pistol took long, concentrated hours of practice at a firing range.

  Dylan knew intimately how much that gun weighed with a full load. He had used the same gun first as a part-time Texas State Trooper while he worked on his college degrees, then during his military stint. With the familiarity of her hold, he didn’t think she kept her gun anything but fully loaded.

  “Who the hell are you?” His Valkyrie’s voice shook a bit, but even nervous, but her tone demanded an answer to not only who he was but any other questions she had.

  At this point he didn’t think he’d share answers with her, not even his name.

  He needed to pull himself together better before he talked to her, before he mated with her.

  His muscles and joints gave him pain as though they were finally stretching after being tied tightly. Once again he was coming back into himself after one of the blackouts that had afflicted him since his sojourn at Hell Hospital. This time his hard-on ached and pulsed more than any other time. This time he knew he had found his mate.

  He wanted her lovely pale hands wrapped around his shaft, not around a pistol’s handle. Unfortunately, his cock needed to wait. It pulsed with exquisite pain. What it wanted, it wanted now.

  With sheer will, he overrode his blind third eye and forced blood to his brain. He needed to think. Yeah, he needed to fuck too, but it had to come later. But not much later, not with his mate within reach.

  “I asked you a question. Who are you? ¿Quién son usted?” Her Spanish held the accent of classroom lessons, unlike Dylan whose bilingual skills came with his mother’s milk.

  Her voice had strengthened and Dylan knew he had to coax her to release him from this cage. He cleared his throat. “Water? Please?” The gun and the pretty hands disappeared from Dylan’s view.

  The cage sat near the edge of the back of a van. An aluminum ramp extended downward. Its bright metal reflected the sun with the heat of summer into the van and through the mesh wire cage. In deep south Texas, it didn’t matter the calendar said mid-May. At least, he thought it was still May. It had been before this last blackout.

  Dylan checked his internal clock. Yes, he realized, this blackout had lasted barely two days.

  Hell Hospital had put him through sleep deprivation and tried to mess up his concept of days and nights by keeping him in windowless rooms with lights and meals at odd intervals. They had even placed him in complete sensory deprivation. Despite their best efforts, his internal clock took the licking and kept on ticking. His shaman uncle, who practiced holistic medicine, told him it was because he was in tune with Mother Earth. He was grateful for it. Because he always knew when he was, he always kept a kernel of who he was. His clock kept him sane.

  He cringed away from the jumbled memories and dreams that haunted him since the last time he’d been fully aware of himself. This waking up naked and with no idea where he was had to stop and stop soon. He wanted to go back to being a state trooper since his mi
litary service was now kaput. The damn blackouts got him invalided out of his military duty and Special Forces, despite his protests.

  The lovely hands came back into view, set a bottle of water and a pile of solid-colored material beside the cage. When he spotted sleeves, he realized the material was a jumpsuit. He found it touching that despite being frightened, she had the kindness to bring clothes for a stranger. On top of the jumpsuit she placed a digital camera, then efficiently unsnapped the clasp on the cage. Damn, he hadn’t realized it wasn’t locked. Of course, he didn’t exactly have the strength to cut and run, even if he had opened the cage. Plus he had no room to maneuver around to undo the clasp anyway.

  The click of a double-barrel rifle being cocked into ready position had him looking at her again. Shit, the woman was the epitome of the Norse warrior maidens. She would probably shoot his balls off before he got three feet away even if he tried to run. The woman had a freaking arsenal. In addition to the pistol, now holstered at her side, and the rifle she held, he spotted a tranquilizer gun.

  Rage that his mate—his mate—held guns on him and didn’t trust him roared through him. Dylan battled the instinctual rampage, barely gaining control. Just as his cock and his emotions knew she was meant for him, his cool logical side reminded him they’d never met. She had no reason to trust him. Yet.

  Before he could mate with her, he had to earn her trust. Now it was time to start that.

  Slowly, feeling joints creak and pop with strain, Dylan squirmed from the cage far enough to get an arm out to grab the water bottle and gulp its contents. Water flowed down his throat, easing the dryness. He practically felt his system absorb it. With a deep breath, he emptied the bottle down his throat.

  The lovely hands exchanged a second bottle for the first one. Dylan was falling in love with those hands. He lusted after this woman, but he truly appreciated her compassion. He drank the second bottle more slowly, but still finished it quickly.

  “More water?” The feminine voice, as gentle as her hands, circled around his head.

  Usually content with casual relationships, Dylan grew hungry for something more permanent at the sound of her voice.

  Plus she smelled so good. Her light scent held no perfumes, just the pleasant scent of sun-warmed woman in starched clothes. With her standing closer to him, he more clearly scented her pheromones. His cock assured him he was still alive and it was fully functional and ready to go.

  No, his logic told his cock, it isn’t time to mate. Not yet.

  “Maybe in a minute. Thanks.”

  “You’re not an illegal. Your accent is south Texas, not Mexican. Who the hell are you and where is the jaguarondi? Did you have a falling out with your poacher buddies?”

  Despite the firm, no-nonsense tone, the cadences of her voice still warmed him.

  Dylan propped himself up on an elbow and tilted his head up to see his captor who sounded more confused than he was. “What are you talking about? I just regained consciousness trapped in this cage. Who the hell are you and where do you think you’re going to take me?”

  The Parks and Wildlife Management uniform’s name badge read “Lundberg”. To his surprise, Ms. Lundberg’s face drained of color as he watched. Her knuckles whitened when she tightened her grip on the rifle. The barrel never left his face while she sank onto the dirt.

  “Ma’am?” Dylan pushed on the cage back with his feet. The cage rolled backward allowing him to further slither from it without falling face first on the hot metal ramp protruding from the van’s bed.

  Jumping to his feet, Dylan leaped from the van to get to her, to help her.

  The rifle swung to his chest, which was the only thing that kept him from touching her. He shrugged off the slight pain of the rocks and stickers under his bare feet and focused on Brunhilde.

  He didn’t dare try to take any of the weapons at this point. She might decide to blow his head off if he touched her rifle.

  Her pale blue eyes looked a little wild. She didn’t look at his engorged cock, which kind of surprised him. While he didn’t think he was any more of an egotist than most men, women did tend to view his package with appreciation whenever he was naked. And God knew his cock wanted her to admire and appreciate him.

  Instead, she looked at his left ear as though it were a snake about to bite.

  Dylan touched his ear, suddenly aware of it throbbing with its own sharp pain. His fingers rubbed on a chunk of plastic embedded in his upper cartilage like a weird earring.

  “What the hell?” He tugged at it but wasn’t able to dislodge it. “What is this?”

  The Norse goddess shook her head as though she were rearranging her thoughts. Her dark blonde hair gleamed with the late afternoon sun trapped in it. Color began to come back into her face. She stood up in one swift movement and poked Dylan in the chest with her rifle. Her full lips thinned until they were white. Her jaw locked so tightly it could have been a statue’s jaw. “It’s an endangered wildlife tag. I put it on a jaguarondi. Now where is the cat and how did you get it on? As a matter of fact, how did you get it off the cat? Those things have a special locking mechanism that only PW personnel can remove.”

  What kind of trap had he fallen into this time?

  No way in hell was he going to give her the psychological advantage of standing over him. Not that it helped him much to stand next to her. In her boots, she stood several inches taller than he. Plus she had bigger bones, a rifle and clothes on. Granted, he just barely hit the height level for the troopers and active military duty, but no one ever made him feel like a shrimp. And Hell Hospital had taught him not to let being naked rattle him. So far she hadn’t shot him. At this point he didn’t think she would. Dylan pushed the rifle’s barrel away from him and stepped into her personal space. Grim pleasure warmed him when she took steps back.

  She was his mate He was going to start proving it. But first he wanted to know what was going on. It would really suck if his mate were part of the Hell Hospital crew.

  “What jaguarondi? Lady, I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “You poachers are getting damn brazen. I parked this van exactly once. I was out of sight of it a grand total of five minutes. How did they manage to get the cat out and you in while I was gone?”

  “You know more than I do,” Dylan snarled back. “I’ve been unconscious. I don’t know what happened to your damn jaguarondi. I just woke up naked and squashed in that cage. I’m not a poacher. Why’d you leave the van anyway?”

  “I went in the convenience store to pee after I filled the gas tank. Got a problem with that?”

  Dylan modulated his voice to more gentle. “No, Ms. Lundberg, I don’t. I do have a problem with waking up naked in a too small cage and no idea where I am.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  Dylan grinned, then drawled, “Forget you’re wearing your name tag?”

  She blushed lightly with a sheepish look of having swallowed a stupid pill. She dropped her eyes from his face, then quickly returned her attention to his face. Her blush flashed scarlet.

  Dylan crossed his arms over his chest, well aware his cock still proudly commanded attention. At this moment, he held the upper hand in their subtle battle for control. For the first time, he began to relax. Even though they never completely broke him, the people in charge at Hell Hospital never got rattled by anything. Since Ms. Lundberg’s composure was slightly shaken, he tentatively thought she might not be part of that organization. Maybe she really was a Parks and Wildlife officer. Time for him to go on the attack and press his advantage.

  Again ignoring the rifle, he moved closer to her. This time she not only didn’t move away, she lowered the rifle slightly.

  “I am damn tired of people trying to mess with my mind. I don’t know what kind of drugs were in that gun your friends shot me with.” Dylan rubbed his thigh feeling the adhesive of temporary skin. The bullet must have gone cleanly through. Someone had carefully patched the entry and exit h
oles. “But I know damn well I’m not going to be held prisoner again.”

  He watched her blush fade to pale again, too pale, almost as if she were trying not to faint.

  “Where were you a prisoner? Mexico?” Her milk-white face registered confusion. Her innocence became more convincing for Dylan when her hands fractionally relaxed around her rifle.

  She acted as if she was hoping he’d been in one of the God-forsaken Mexican jails. If he had been, he might have been able to bribe his way out, unlike the Hell Hospital.

  “In a circle of hell.” Dylan stepped closer into her personal space. Her hands tightened around the rifle again.

  The closer he stood to her, the more he wanted to touch her. The horniness that came after his blackouts grew stronger each time he breathed her scent. This went beyond a rigid cock. This hunger to possess her came from his gut, as though his heart knew she was the one for him. Dylan reached a single hand with one finger extended slowly, carefully toward her head, making very sure he didn’t move near her rifle. Her short hair feathered across his finger and the skin behind her ear was soft. He drew his finger forward to touch her jawline and slide across to her chin.

  His mate.

  As much as he wanted to cup her face in his hands, he moved back and clasped his hands behind his back. It made him hurt to not caress her, but he wanted her to make it clear he was allowed to touch her. She relaxed her hold on the rifle and he watched her eyes. As they widened, her breath hitched. The tip of her tongue touched her lips, then he leaned closer to her.

  When she didn’t move away, he pressed his mouth to hers. God knew he tried to keep the kiss simple. When her lips opened to his, the taste unleashed the wildness in him. His tongue ravaged her mouth and he pressed his naked body against her clothed one. He needed his scent on her, to mark her as his mate.