Stygian's Honor (40 page)

Working his hard width inside her, stretching her, burning her tender flesh with ecstasy, Stygian rocked against her, possessing more and more of her soul even as he possessed each inch of her inner flesh.

The stiff length of his cock parted her entrance, pushed inside, filled her ever more with each thrust, until one hard stroke buried him to the hilt inside her.

A cry tore from her lips, meeting the harsh, primal growl that left his throat as his chest covered her back once again. Holding her hips elevated, his thighs bunching and tightening against hers, he began working the broad length of his cock inside her, thrusting, stroking, pushing in over and over again. Each driving invasion sent her inner muscles spasming around it as nerve endings screamed out at the ecstatic sensations digging into her senses.

Stygian’s fingers tightened at her hips as he held her in place for each impaling of the fierce width of his cock. Working inside the snug heat of her pussy, the broad shaft caressed violently sensitive tissue and pushed her closer, harder, toward the burning center of ecstasy.

“Stygian, please,” she begged, the sensations agonizing, so filled with such sharp, brutal pleasure that she feared she’d lose her mind from his possession. “Oh God, please. Fuck me. Fuck me harder.”

Out of her mind with the sheer erotic rapture, she lost
herself to it. Control was gone. It couldn’t exist alongside such exquisite sensations.

The shields protecting her heart and soul evaporated, turned to dust beneath the certainty that this man, this Breed, was the one anchor that would protect her through any storm.

Releasing her hold on those emotions seemed to open her further to the pleasure, allowing it to build with sharper, more heated intensity.

She couldn’t bear it.

She couldn’t live through it.

As her inner flesh sucked at his shuttling erection, she couldn’t help releasing the mat with one hand, her arm curving back to bury her fingers in the long silken strands of his hair as it fell over her shoulder and face.

He licked at the mark on her shoulder.

His incisors raked over the little wound, and she knew—

Liza shuddered at the knowledge.

Her thighs clenched, her pussy gripped his cock tighter, spasmed and with a desperate, agonized cry, she felt herself suddenly hurtling through the blazing, blinding center of pure ecstasy—a rapture that imploded, crashed inside her and began setting off an explosive series of fireworks that radiated through her body.

Behind her, Stygian was still fucking her. The hard, driving strokes powered inside her with a force that triggered one ecstatic explosion after the next.

Throbbing violently, the blood pounding through heavy veins, each impalement was another sharp, brutally explosion burst of release until he buried inside her with one last desperate thrust. A snarl sounded behind her a breath before the sharp incisors sank into the mating mark once more.

She was jerking beneath him.

She was melting around him.

The feel of his release spurting inside her, the mating knot suddenly extending a portion of the already broad length of his cock, locking her in the desperately flexing muscle that milked at it, sent her rushing headlong into an explosion of pure violent ecstasy.

An agony of rapture held her suspended, exploding over
and over again inside the quaking depths of her pussy. Spurt after spurt of heated semen gushed inside her, filling the depths of her pussy as tears of agony and ecstasy spilled from her eyes.

It seemed never ending. The waves upon waves of such overwhelmingly intense sensation tore reality from her mind and kept her hips jerking against his, her body shuddering until she feared there was no way to survive it.

But as each pulse of ecstasy became shorter, less dramatic, until finally, with one last wave of electrified sensation, Liza found herself collapsed against the mat, soaked with perspiration and weak with exhaustion.

Behind her, his cock still locked in the heavy muscles of her pussy, his tongue lapping at the mating mark, easing the bite, Stygian’s breathing was harsh, growls emanating from his throat at irregular intervals.

As the pleasure eased and a shadow of reality returned, she could feel the change within herself. Some feeling, some knowledge she wasn’t yet certain of, that she knew would change her forever.

The knowledge of it had a wave of fear just waiting to tear through her.

“What have you done to me?” She was too exhausted, too drained to feel anything other than repletion at the moment.

Repletion, and a certainty that there was no preparing herself for what was to come.

“The same thing you’ve done to me.” His voice was heavy, dark and indolent with the pleasure and release that had swept through him as well.

“And what is that?” She had to force each word past her lips.

Exhaustion was making her voice slurred, heavy. Making herself worry was impossible. Fear didn’t have a chance.

Yet.

As she waited for him to speak, she felt him shudder above her, the knot that had locked him inside her slowly receding and losing possession of her inner flesh.

“What is it?” He sighed. “Possession. You own me, Liza. That’s what mating ensures. Heart. Body. God, my very
soul. You own it all. We belong to each other in ways we’ve never belonged before. In ways I never imagined I could belong to anyone.” His lips pressed against her shoulder, warm, lazy with satisfaction. “I love you, Liza. With every part of my body, my heart and my soul. I love you.”

Trepidation was rising inside her now. She’d already begun to suspect the truth, and the certainty of it now filled her with dread.

“I wasn’t in the market to be owned,” she whispered as panic tried and failed to rise inside her. “I liked myself nice and free and single, thank you.”

“I think you’re very nice,” he drawled as he eased his cock slowly from the grip of her pussy and collapsed beside her before pulling her against the warmth of his chest. “You’re free. You’re single,” he said gently as he brushed his cheek against her hair. “But, you have to admit, Liza, it’s nice to belong, isn’t it? To know you were the dream that kept me fighting for my freedom, for all the Breeds’ survival. For this moment in time, for the heart of a woman I knew awaited me. Surely it’s not so terrifying?”

Terrifying? No, it wasn’t terrifying.

Levering herself up enough to stare into the drowsy depths of his now dark blue eyes, Liza glimpsed the wild, dark, primal core of the man now.

He was like the earth itself: safe, strong and as unpredictable as the wildest storm.

And he wanted to belong to her?

He believed he did belong to her?

“What makes you think I deserve you?” she whispered then, her lips trembling with a sudden surge of impending panic.

“What could ever make you believe that you don’t?” He brushed her hair back, the gesture so tender, so gentle that her heart clenched in such emotion that it sent a shaft of agony radiating through her senses.

“Ah, Liza.” His expression softened, though still, the arrogance and dominant male power was still there. “You deserve better than I could be. But I’m such a selfish bastard. Completely and irrevocably unredeemable where my need
for you is concerned. I’d die without your heart to warm me now. I’d cease to exist if I thought I’d never have your love. I told you, no matter the fear, no matter the secrets you have, nothing can change what I feel for you. Nothing can ever touch my determination to protect and hold you. You and your secrets, should you ever trust me with them. I’m yours, sweetheart. But I’m not the only one who belongs. You belong now as well. To me.”

She belonged, and she could feel it, whether she believed it was safe or not. Whether she believed, before him, she had even wanted it.

She belonged to him.

And she knew, somehow, someway, she knew—

“You’ll destroy me.”

CHAPTER 19

By the time Monday rolled around, Liza was more than ready for a break from the spiraling emotions converging on her.

The only thing that saved her was the ever-present sexual arousal that seemed to flame between them with just a look.

That didn’t help when she slept though.

When dreams invaded and further confused her.

Who was she?

As she dressed for work the question plagued her, just as it had plagued her since she had gone to the crash site five nights before.

“Do you know, young children, the choice you have made this night?”
Joseph Redwolf, grandfather to the mate of Braden Arness, Megan Fields Arness, whispered through her mind.

Holding the mascara brush carefully and applying her makeup, Liza fought to ignore the memory that wasn’t really a memory.

It really was like a dream.

Just as her memories of her childhood were—until the day after that wreck, Liza really had no clear, concise memories.

Finishing the mascara, she picked up the lip gloss she
normally wore before her gaze landed on the tube of color Stygian had packed.

He’d collected most of her additional clothes and accessories, including the makeup in her bathroom the day before. For the most part, he’d chosen things she preferred to use, with the exception of several tubes of colored lipstick.

She’d bought them to use at Halloween with the Goth costume she’d intended to wear on Trick or Treat night. Instead, she, Claire, Chelsea and Isabelle had been called out by the Navajo warriors who fought for the Breed Underground.

The job hadn’t been dangerous. It had been more a training mission; they provided distraction while the warriors spirited a young Breed they had helped escape years before, from beneath the noses of the Genetics Council agents sent to find her.

The Breeds and humans targeted by the Genetics Council needing rescue or aid were much fewer now than they had been in past decades. Those the warriors had hidden over the years though, sometimes needed additional help if the Bureau of Breed Affairs or the Genetics Council managed to track them down.

The young female they had moved in the fall had been such a Breed—one the Navajo warriors had hidden, along with her mother, when she was just a babe.

Where the girl had been taken, neither she, her friends nor the warriors who moved her would ever know. She was passed to another team and, Liza knew, would be passed several more times before she was relocated to ensure the secrecy of her final location.

Picking up the tube of lipstick and uncapping it, she stared at the berry-colored hue, like a fully ripe dark raspberry. Turning her gaze to the mirror, she applied the color, rubbed her lips together then stared back at herself.

The color made her eyes seem brighter, her complexion creamier. It brought a luster to the naturalizing effect of the makeup she wore and made her lips appear just a bit lusher, with a hint of sensual poutiness.

Taking a deep breath, she smoothed her hands over the
snug fit of the apple green skirt and eyed it as well as the white silk shell she wore with it.

That was as good as it got, she told herself before turning and striding out of the bathroom.

Her briefcase sat next to the bed, her laptop securely zipped inside.

Grabbing it, she made a mental note to turn it over to her father when she arrived at the office. That flicker in the screen was about to drive her crazy. Not to mention what it was doing to her eyes. While she was there, she intended to get to the truth of her past as well.

Ray had all but fired her and Claire the last time she had seen him, but hell, he’d fired them before. At least once a year he disagreed with something they said or did, then after a day or so, he’d get over it. He’d never really fired them. He loved Claire. Her father loved her. They wouldn’t take their livelihood from them.

Walking from the bedroom, she met Stygian and Flint in the sitting room as they waited to escort her to the office.

“I’m going to be late,” she told them as she walked toward the door.

“You always think you’re going to be late,” Stygian growled, opening the door and escorting her into the hall as Flint followed.

The edge of tension that had existed between them over the weekend hadn’t abated, just as the edge of panic attempting to overtake her hadn’t abated.