Free The Man Within by Lora Leigh Page B

aware of Callan following him, sensed the strange discord in his leader, and sighed wearily.
    “Shoot me,” he muttered as they entered the lab on the basement floor of the mansion several minutes later.
    “What would be the point?” Callan asked, a thread of amusement coloring his deep voice. “I shoot you and there goes Roni’s mate. She may not thank me for that later.”
    Taber removed his shirt as the doctor indicated he should. He knew what was coming. Blood samples, saliva, semen and perspiration samples. The list went on and on and the very thought of them had his body tightening in distaste.
    “She might kill me herself when she sees me again,” he grunted, his anger building by the second. “I took her like an animal, Callan. I fucking drugged her, then raped her. Like an animal.”
    “Stop, Taber.” Callan shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest as his golden-brown eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t rape. I could smell her heat when you brought her into the house. And we both know the hormone doesn’t react unless you’re with your mate.”
    “She said ‘no’.” He shook his head, unable to stare his leader in the eye any longer. “She said ‘no’, Callan, and I ignored her.”
    Taber extended his arm for the doctor and his wicked needles as he avoided Callan’s gaze. Son of a bitch, this wasn’t how he had foreseen his first time with Roni. He had wanted—hell no, he had needed —to touch her gently, to ease her into the mating.
    “My studies indicate that the ferocity of the mating is mutual, Taber.” Doc Martin slid the needle into his arm with no more than a small prick. “Wait and see how she feels when she wakes up. The heat of lust often makes little sense when reality returns. Even if you aren’t a Breed.”
    “She can’t go back, Taber. You know that,” Callan told him softly. “Besides, we have other problems. From the minute that story hit the airwaves, movement began among the Council members and their known soldiers. Her home was set ablaze within the hour and there are indications that orders have gone out to take her, no matter what, before conception. She’s in more danger than Merinus ever was.”
    The Council. Rather than negotiating with Washington and trying to play fair, they should have slipped into the homes of the bastards running that little show and sliced their throats. They didn’t deserve the mercy that had been afforded them.
    In the past three months, since the discovery and rescue of nearly a hundred other Feline Breeds that Kane had located, the Council had waged a silent, deadly war against them. They hadn’t been neutralized as the government had promised they would be. They weren’t powerless as Kane had hoped would happen.
    In the past month alone, four of their liaisons to the government and military had been murdered. The last, a young female, had been returned to them in pieces, literally. And now Roni would be in even more danger. They needed her to understand the mating process that had been leaked to the media. Needed her to figure out the best way to control, or to destroy, the creations that had escaped them. Taber was determined that anyone who tried to take her would die.
    Taber’s lip lifted in a snarl. “Let them try, Callan. I won’t play nice this time.”
    Through the years they had tried to be merciful. They ran rather than killed, and they killed only when no other answer was available. They had gained more amusement, more satisfaction, in seeing the soldiers running back to base in disgrace rather than in pieces. But if one dared to touch Roni, then he swore there would be too many damned pieces for anyone to attempt to collect.
    “None of us will play nice in such an event,” Callan assured him. “But this worries me. The Council has lain low until now, with the report of the second known mate to the Felines, and suddenly they’re moving. It leaves me wondering what they’ve been planning while they were so