Stygian's Honor (26 page)

As Stygian pulled into the driveway of her home, Liza stared as though she didn’t recognize the place. As though it were someone else who had rented it. Someone else who had invited her best friends to share it. Someone else who had dreamed of freedom as she moved her belongings into it.

After returning to the hotel, he’d had Flint and Rule take another vehicle to follow them.

She’d demanded to return here. She didn’t like the confinement of the hotel or the room they shared. She didn’t like the feeling of imprisonment or of being watched every second.

Now, she was here, and she wondered where “here” was.

From the corner of her eye, Liza was aware of Stygian staring at her, his expression more savage than normal, the dark bronze skin of his face stretched tight over the sharp planes and angles that made up his face.

He was furious at her decision.

He could have been Navajo if not for the darker color of his flesh.

Of course, she had no doubt there were Navajo genes in his DNA. Almost all Breeds held the DNA of the Navajo, or one of the tribes that had joined with the Nation in the early part of the century.

“Where do you go when you disappear, Liza?”

The question threw her off guard but not enough to eliminate the mental and emotional distance between them.

A brief shrug was all the answer she could come up with.

To be honest, she didn’t know herself where she was at the moment. Was she hiding? Or was she finding something she only found in her nightmares?

Strangely enough, though, she did feel something: the swollen sensitivity of her clit, the engorged readiness of her nipples, the ache just beneath her skin for his touch. The need for his kiss.

That was odd. She’d never felt such arousal for a man, especially not at a time when whatever emotions caused this distance pulled her back from reality.

Hell, she’d never ached like this for a man period.

“You won’t do this.” There was no anger in his tone.

That too was odd. Even her housemates were known to become angry when Liza let herself become lost, as Claire called it.

And what was it that he wasn’t going to let her do?

She stared at the house. The pretty green, well-watered lawn. The blooms that sprang in abandon through the small flower beds and abundance of shrubs.

The single-story adobe ranch house looked bright, welcoming. The windows and curtains thrown open, the sheers giving her house a slightly hazy, serene look.

She’d worked hard to make the rental a home. Of course, the owner, a good friend of her father’s, had already told her the house was hers whenever she was ready to buy.

She hadn’t bought but perhaps she should have.

“Liza.” He touched her.

The touch was as simple as the calloused pads of his fingers stroking down her arm.

A shudder rippled over her flesh, then, as she fought to steel herself against the consequences, it began to quake through her inner, hidden emotions.

“I don’t want to talk.” Maintaining the shield around her sensitive soul wasn’t easy. “I just need to think for a while.”

“You’re not thinking, you’re hiding,” he accused her again. “You’re hiding so well that even my animal senses can’t seem to find you.”

As though that was a bad thing. She was thankful for it.

The rough quality of his voice, slightly demanding and dominant, had the power to make her nervous though, to assure her he intended to drag her back from wherever she had gone to hide.

“I’m going in.” She felt a hundred years old as she gripped the door handle and moved to release it.

“No.” Just that easy, he stopped her as his fingers curled around her upper arm. “Let’s take a ride instead.”

“Where?” She didn’t really care where. It didn’t matter if she went inside. It didn’t matter if she didn’t.

“Where you and Claire were in that accident when you were fifteen.”

Panic stole her breath as it slammed into her stomach with a punch of horror. No, she couldn’t return there. She had never returned to the actual site where the accident occurred and she wasn’t going to do it now.

“No.” Shaking off the loose grip, she was out of the SUV and striding quickly to the house as she pulled her bag from her shoulder, opened it, and dug the house key from inside.

She never had a chance to use it.

The front door swung open and that damned cigar-smoking Coyote with the smug smile and knowing gray eyes leaned against her door frame with arrogant confidence.

“Hello, kids.” He grinned around the cigar clamped between his teeth before reaching up to grip it in his fingers and lower it from his lips.

“What is he doing in my house?” Turning to Stygian, Liza found herself jerked back to reality with a suddenness that had her breath heaving.

The distance was gone. The inability to feel the panic, fear, but especially the overriding hunger and desperate need for something she had no idea how to describe, came crashing inside her as the abrupt appearance of the Coyote sent a rush of adrenaline crashing through her.

Dog straightened from the door frame, his expression morphing from the smug arrogance to complete business.

“He’s merely helping his men complete the security system the Bureau ordered for backup in the house,” he told them. “I apologize for the inconvenience, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am and please get the hell out of my way.” Brushing past him, Liza entered the living room to find Chelsea, a suitcase sitting beside her as she stared around the house with a frown.

“You’re leaving?” Liza came to a stop, her emotions, already thrown into chaos with too many sensations and suspicions, rife with confusion.

“I think you know we can’t stay here, Liza.” Chelsea sighed, her brown eyes somber. “Malachi and Isabelle have offered their spare room until this is over.” Her lips tilted at the corner. “Besides, there are a few too many Breeds lounging around here.” Her eyes slid to the Breed stretched back at the bottom of the stairs, propped on his elbows and watching them with mocking silence.

Loki. He pretended and played at charm and sensual abandon, but there was something tormented and angry that drove that Breed.

She barely held back the agonized cry trapped in her throat as fear slammed inside her. How did she know that? How could she sense those emotions churning inside the Breed? And why had she sensed her father’s lies and deceits at the office? Sensed them with such strength that it was like staring inside him and seeing his hatred for Stygian and his fears for her.

“I understand.” Forcing herself to nod as though she did understand, Liza admitted she didn’t understand a damned thing anymore. “Hopefully this will all be over soon.”

“That’s what we hoped when Malachi’s crew showed up. You know, I like Ashley and the girls who visit, but these male Breeds are pricks.” Chelsea shrugged as she glanced around the room at the Coyote Breeds working there. “Oh well. I guess we have to take the good with the bad, right?”

“So we were taught,” Liza agreed, aching with the loss tearing through her.

She hated this. She hated everything she was losing and everything she could feel threatening to come alive inside her. And for a moment, she hated herself for the weakness she could feel. Fear. Panic. It was all there.

The knowledge that there was something at the edge of her mind waiting to destroy her tormented her.

The aching arousal and burning need for Stygian’s touch only seemed to make it worse. Whatever was awakening within her, it had begun with this hunger for a Breed.

“Come on, Liza, we knew this was coming when Isabelle was nearly taken.” Chelsea sighed as Liza watched her
painfully. “We’ve just been fighting it, hating the fact that we’ve had to give up our freedom for a while.”

Perhaps all Chelsea was giving up was her freedom, Liza thought. Liza could sense losing so much more than her freedom though.

“Maybe.” Liza shrugged. “Tell Isabelle and Malachi I said hi.”

What more could she say? She couldn’t beg Chelsea not to leave when she knew herself that even she couldn’t stay. Not right now. Perhaps not ever.

Striding to her, Chelsea gave her a tight hug. “It won’t be too long, Liza,” she promised. “And you know we’re going to invade that hotel they’ve stuck you in and have a total girls’-night-out shindig.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” A tight, brief hug and Liza released her friend before stepping back.

“Well, come on, Loki.” Chelsea gave the Breed one of those superior, you-are-my-servant looks that she was so well known for.

Loki eased from the stairs with a lazy smile and amusement gleaming in his dark gray eyes. “‘Please’ not in your vocabulary, sweetheart?”

“Neither is ‘sweetheart,’” she assured him. “So let’s get moving. Isabelle promised me lunch.”

“Lunch sounds good.” Loki seemed a bit more energetic at the mention of food.

“You weren’t invited,” Chelsea informed him.

To that, the Breed only laughed as he picked up her suitcase and followed her to the front door as Dog, Mongrel and Mutt bid Stygian good-bye and left as well.

The house was empty but for her and Stygian now.

Turning to him, her gaze went instantly to his, the glints of blue in the night-black background more intense than before.

“You always know, don’t you?” She had to draw in a hard, deep breath at that realization. “No matter what I’m feeling. No matter how aroused or how angry I am.”

“Or how distant you are.” He inclined his head in agreement.

“Can you sense it with everyone?” Wrapping her arms across her breasts, she considered how she would feel if he could sense every woman’s arousal for him.

Because no doubt, there were quite a few women more than interested in taking him to their bed.

His lips pursed thoughtfully. “In some situations,” he finally admitted. “But our senses in regard to our mates are incredibly heightened, Liza. That’s how I know when you’ve retreated to the point that you’re barely on the same plane with the rest of us mortals.”

She flinched, jerking her gaze from his and looking away as he moved closer to her.

“It’s how I knew the second that distance began easing and your need for me kicked in with a vengeance. The mating heat may ease when you do that, but it will also bring you back to me. You may have found a way to delay it at times, in ways no one else can, but you’ll pay for it when you return.”

“So you admit it exists?” Why wasn’t she even surprised? Or angry? “So you have to wait until you kiss your mate before you can tell them about it?”

He shook his head. “No, I have to wait to be certain you won’t reveal it to anyone, even friends or family. Because the news stories are partially true. Mating heat has the potential to destroy us, because we don’t completely understand it ourselves. How do you assure others it’s not something they should fear if you can’t explain exactly what it is?”

“So why tell me now?”

He stared back at her, his gaze somber, intense. “Because we both know where it’s going. You’ve known what was coming and you’ve still come to me. You know where it’s going. Why fight it any longer?”

“Why me?” Turning back to him, she asked the question that had plagued her since the moment she realized something wasn’t exactly right with the attraction she felt for him. That it was more intense, more primal.

“If I knew that, then I would have the single secret that could possibly save the Breeds from extinction should the world ever learn of the mating heat, Liza.” His fingers curled around her upper arm as he pulled her closer.

The heat of his body met the chill in hers before it sank to that core of lava-hot arousal simmering and growing inside her.

A hard, involuntary breath pushed her breasts against his chest while he pulled her even closer with a hand at her hip. When she was flush against his body, the length of his erection imprinting itself against her lower stomach sent a wave of furious heat washing through her.

“See?” he murmured as he laid his lips against her temple. “It’s like fire and gas. One touch is all it takes to make the arousal burn brighter, make it torment and ache until nothing helps but another, deeper touch.”

His touch firmed, gripping the silk of her shirt and pulling it from the belted band of her skirt. Pressing his hand beneath the material, the calloused palm stroked up her spine, sending a shiver raging across her flesh as pleasure flared from each point of contact.

“And it doesn’t stop?” Could that be possible? Could the tabloids have that much right? That the Breeds, like some of their animal cousins, mated for life?

“It doesn’t stop.” His breathing was heavier now, his tone rougher, rasping as his head lowered, his lips brushing down her neck, the wet heat of his tongue licking against her flesh.

Tilting her head to the side, Liza all but begged for more. Just that one careless caress against her neck was enough to send a spike of sensation racing through her nerve endings and peaking in her swollen clit and the clenched, saturated depths of her pussy.

Her hips moved involuntarily, rubbing the sensitive nub of her clit against the hard muscle of his thigh as his lips lingered at the base of her neck, his cheek rubbing against the sensitive flesh of her inner shoulder.

Each stroke of the wet heat of his tongue against her skin had her body tightening further. Pleasure and a violent need for more began to amass in her system.

“The night Isabelle met Malachi,” she whispered, the words tearing from her as her fingers moved restlessly over his shoulders, “I watched you in that bar.”

“I could smell your heat,” he growled as his teeth raked
across tender nerve endings at the curve between neck and shoulder. “I waited for you, Liza. Until well after the bar had closed, still I lingered, certain you would return.”

Liza felt a rush of regret and hunger as it tore through her. Lifting his head, he met her gaze with his, the blue in his eyes like dark stars on a midnight background.

“I won’t wait any longer.” He gripping the hem of her blouse and yanked it up.

Lifting her arms, Liza forced back a whimper as the erotic intensity began to build, the heat charging nerve endings she hadn’t known her body possessed.