Amanda rubbed her hands slowly up her arms and back down. The thought of being touched by another had her skin crawling.

“It won’t be easy,” Merinus said gently then. “But what we learn with each case, gives us a greater chance to help others, further down the road.”

Amanda stared at the kindly doctor and the scientist that accompanied her.

“What do you need?” she asked as the woman who had set up the playpen and deposited the child in it left the cabin.

“Serena will take vaginal and saliva samples as well as blood. She’ll ask you some questions, perform a quick physical then she and Doc will be out of here in no time flat. Then we can talk.”

Amanda drew in a deep breath. “When do I get to talk to my father?” She watched Merinus warily.

“Callan is arranging that now,” she promised. “We have to be certain of the security on the lines and make certain there’s no way anyone can tap the conversation. Keeping you safe is our highest priority, Amanda.”

Amanda swallowed tightly, her gaze flickering to the aristocratic features of the scientist and the weary sympathy in the doctor’s.

“Fine. Let’s get it over with,” she breathed out roughly.

“Ms. Marion, the samples needed and the examination won’t come without its discomfort,” Dr. Grace warned, her voice soft, her gray eyes worried. “The mating heat creates several different hormones that we’ve been able to identify and isolate. One of them is extreme sensitivity to any touch other than the mate’s. Surgical gloves aid in that, but the body chemistry doesn’t take long to identify the fact that an alien presence is touching it. It reacts with pain.”

“Yeah. Been there, done that,” Amanda muttered wearily. “Let’s just get it the hell over with. This is starting to get on my nerves.”

It wasn’t helping that she needed Kiowa. You would think she would be fucked dry, Amanda thought cynically. Instead, she was damned near as willing and eager as she had been the first time.

“The good news is, that the body slowly adjusts to the hormones,” Serena revealed. “After this, if you follow the same pattern as Merinus, Roni, Sherra and Elizabeth, then you’ll see a reduction in the heat and its symptoms until ovulation reoccurs.”

Amanda blinked back at the scientist in amazement before turning to Merinus.

“It never goes away?” she asked, horrified.

Merinus’ lips tilted in amusement. “Not completely. But it’s really not that bad. Makes for some wicked bedtime stories,” she finished with a throaty laugh.

“This is a nightmare,” Amanda sighed, pushing her fingers through her hair as she stared back at the scientist. “Fine, let’s just get it over with.”

“We’ll use the bedroom.” The scientist picked up the bag the doctor had carried in and followed Amanda into the bedroom.

It was horrifying. An hour later Amanda was sweating profusely, agony racing through her body as she forced back her cries and endured first the vaginal exam and collecting of fluid samples from the agonized channel. The breast exam had her biting her lip until she tasted blood. It felt like needles—no, knives—were being plunged into her shrinking flesh as the scientists hands examined them carefully. Finally, her gown covering her modestly, she sat on the edge of the bed, tears pouring down her cheeks as Dr. Grace snapped a rubber tie around her upper arm and began to prepare the vein for the extraction of blood.

She hurt. God, she had never hurt like this. Every cell, every nerve ending in her body was screaming against the touch as she forced her cries back in her throat. She watched the needle coming close to her skin, her eyes wide, seeing almost in slow motion as the sharp point came closer and closer to contact. Her body was rioting, her stomach twisting with the pain.

A second before it made contact, a broad hand clamped over the scientist’s wrist and a violent, enraged growl echoed around them. Amanda followed the hand to the arm, up to broad shoulders to the black, furious eyes of the man staring down at them.

“Kiowa.” Merinus entered the room behind him. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He turned his head, his black hair flowing over his shoulder as his lips curled back in a snarl and he growled again. An animalistic possessive sound that even Amanda had no intention of protesting. The needle dropped from the scientist’s hand as she stared at Amanda in shock.

“Get the fuck away from her,” he ordered harshly, drawing the other woman back slowly. “Get your needles and your samples, pack up and leave. Now. Come back without my permission and I’ll kill you.”

He meant it. Amanda could see it in the tense lines of his body, the fury emanating from his voice.

“And you accuse me of being childish,” she said in amazement as the doctor moved away quickly, massaging her wrist as she kept a careful eye on Kiowa.

“You are being foolhardy,” he snapped, swinging his gaze back to her. “Why suffer this way? Why would you allow yourself to be hurt in such a manner?”

“They need the information,” she argued back. “Dammit, Kiowa, someone has to find a cure.”

He recoiled as though she had smacked him. She watched the mask drop into place, the blank eyes, the emotionless expression. She shivered at the look, knowing that somehow she had just made him angrier than he already was. No, she had hurt him. That stark, blinding truth whipped through her mind and had her staring back at him in surprise. Somehow, she had hurt him.

“Merinus, tell your mate I’ll return to the communications shed later,” he finally said quietly, never looking at her.

“We need those blood samples, Kiowa,” Merinus said firmly. “We’re almost finished.”

“No. You are finished. Not almost.” His voice was too soft, too dangerously controlled. “Leave now,

Merinus.”

He was exceedingly polite but Amanda swore she could feel murder in the air. Amanda rose slowly to her feet as the room cleared out.

“This is my choice,” she told him coldly. “Not yours.”

He stood stiffly in front of her for one long moment before turning away from her.

“Are you hungry? I thought I would fix us dinner. Your father should be calling in a few hours. I think I should warn you, though; Callan has a ban on information concerning the mating heat. It’s the one thing you cannot mention to him.”

She stared at his back in shock.

“No, damn you,” she cursed furiously. “You will not pull that I-feel-nothing-change-the-subject routine on me. We’ll discuss what I can and cannot say to my father later.” She gripped his arm just inside the living room pulling him to a stop as he turned back to her slowly. “This was my choice. My decision. You had no right to take it from me.”

“I’m your mate. It’s within all my rights to protect you. Even from yourself.”

“From myself?” She lifted her brows in amazement, her hands fisting at her side to keep from knocking him over the head with something. “I wasn’t trying to commit suicide. It was just an examination.”

“Which caused you excessive pain.” He could have been discussing the weather. Oh, by the way, the sun was shining today but I think it was a bit overbright, she thought sarcastically.

“My pain,” she snapped. “Dammit, Kiowa, they will never figure this out without the tests. Without someone willing to endure them. Do you think this is comfortable for me? That I enjoy having my very will stolen from me in such a way?”

“The heat eases.” He shrugged dismissively, pulling away from her. No emotion. Nothing.

“That doesn’t help when it’s burning you alive,” she informed him furiously. “And that’s besides the fact it was none of your business. It was my choice.”

“Then make another choice. “

“Then leave again.”

He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, his shoulders flexing beneath the light gray shirt he wore.

“I think I’ll stay, thank you,” he finally said mildly.

Amanda shook her head as amazement cascaded along her senses.

“Do you think I’m just going to accept this, Kiowa?” she finally asked him softly, knowing she never would.

“I really don’t think you have a choice. Now we need to discuss your father and what you cannot say.”

He stared back at her unblinking then, and for a moment she wondered if he did have a soul.

Chapter Eighteen

She refused to just accept.

Amanda made her way as quietly as possible from the cabin, staying in the shadows as she forced herself to move into the darkness of the mountain the cabin sat within. She had listened to Kiowa, Kane Tyler and Callan Lyons discussing the security of the compound earlier, before Kiowa left to help Kane with some kind of computer malfunction. After she had talked to her father and reassured him she was fine. Not that she could do anything else with Kiowa standing over her like an avenging angel. She had even whispered their code phrase— I’m fine, Poppa—rather than Father…and she still couldn’t explain to herself why she had done that. Perhaps because the independence she had won from her family had been so very hard to achieve. Her father and brother were just waiting on the excuse to haul her back into the fold, marry her to a nice, staid, dependable young man and see her become the perfect Washington wife. She didn’t think so. Fighting it out with Kiowa would be easier. And she was about to show him here and now that she wasn’t someone he could so casually order around. She would get herself off this damned mountain, out of the Breed Compound and back to the White House on her own. It wouldn’t be so difficult. By rescuing herself, she could assert her independence even in the face of the danger surrounding her.

Escape wouldn’t be that hard. All she had to do was hit the old logging road and head to the county road several miles away.

She could flag a car down, get a ride to the nearest phone and call her father. He wouldn’t have left her in the Breeds’ care if he had known the truth. And she knew Kiowa was desperate to keep that truth hidden until he could convince her to accept the mating as it stood. She snorted at that as she sprinted past the clearing at the back of the house and headed into the tree line. Nature could get as ugly as it wanted to. Amanda hadn’t chosen Kiowa, and having the choice forced on her wasn’t her idea of a perfect relationship.

There had to be a way to cure it. A way to make the heat go away and give her a chance to decide for herself the man she wanted.

Would she have chosen Kiowa if she had a choice? Her body screamed yes, her heart ached. Love didn’t come in a day, did it? No matter what she had read or how she had fantasized, she knew reality was a different matter entirely. Kiowa was a loner, a Coyote Breed, bred to manipulate and to deceive. But didn’t humans, whether Breed or not, do those very same things?

Confusion was a morass of thoughts and feelings inside her head that she couldn’t make sense of. Couldn’t control. Fear was as overriding as the building arousal, and safety could only be found in the normal. She needed to go home. She had to talk to Alexander. As coldly furious as he would get, he would help her.

She stumbled through the forest, the long flannel shirt she wore snagging on the brush she passed. The jeans and sneakers protected her from the chill in the air, but nothing could protect her from the internal heat. It was building. She had prayed that by separating herself from Kiowa and the scent that seemed to fill the cabin that she could survive the need.

She would survive it, she told herself fiercely. All she had to do was get home. Clouds moved slowly over the night sky, dimming the moonlight and increasing the darkness of the forest. Dammit, she hated the dark. This was why she lived in the city rather than her father’s estate in upper Pennsylvania.

It wasn’t that she was scared of the dark; she just didn’t like it. It was filled with sounds she couldn’t identify, sounds that sent chills up her spine and made her think of every horror movie Alexander had ever dared her to watch.